Busy Winter Day

For a Monday in January it has been a fairly busy day.

We were contacted by a professor at Miami University about some of his student coming out to interview us about what we do for a living and maybe later on putting in a day or two of work out here. This is something we have done for years-been a repository of sustainable farming knowledge for students at MU and at Earlham College. I graduated with a degree in anthropology from Miami and Eugene got his BA from Earlham and so we help out students and teachers from our Alma maters as well as teach the next generation a bit about sustainable/organic farming and why this is so important . And it is something I really enjoy, college kids are fun, especially the hippy, Birkenstock, dreadlock wearing, treehuggung types.

I also finished up one batch of garlic powder and started another. It is taking forever to dry garlic this year and the whole garlic is beginning to go bad about 2 months earlier than average. processing and cleaning garlic took up about 3 to 4 hours of my day.

In the middle of the garlic project I got a phone call from Allstate asking about the property damage that occurred Saturday morning. they wanted a police report that we did not have and said they would be out to look at things and assess the damage sometime soon (tomorrow? Wednesday? who knows?). I hope soon so we can clean up the mess/fix one sign. At any rate, I gave the guy the name of the deputy sheriff who was on the scene and that seemed to be enough for the insurance adjuster.

Oh and got a call from the periodontal people reminding me I have an appointment with pain Wednesday at 4pm. I go in to have a tooth scraped and a tooth implanted. this will be expensive (about $3,000) and quite painful. The last time I used this guy for a huge bout of periodontal disease (I had the mouth of a 75 year old at age 35 and had to get everything scraped but my front teeth) I had to go in for 2 separate surgeries and than visit monthly for 6 months (it was supposed to take 12 to 18 months for me to heal but I did it in 6 months-This is what eating nutritious fresh organically grown food can do for a body).

Once I was done with the garlic I hopped on-line and was informed by WOOF that it is time to update my listing on their site. I have a listing there to attract interns/volunteers. I also emailed a friend to get the phone number of a new Italian restaurant in Germantown, OH that he went to last week and declared wonderful. But he found out the owner/chef cannot find any fresh greens especially arugula which is one of our specialties. We grow some of the best there is.

Now I am blogging and thinking about what to have for dinner, maybe cole slaw using the yummy cabbages we are growing. Tomorrow we go to pick up our raw milk allotment for the week.

Weekend Events

The weekend is over and I am spent. Had a lot going on-a visit by my Father, my cousin Jack and my brother Scott and his girlfriend Speranza. They arrived Friday afternoon and left Sunday morning. The visit was nice. Jack stayed with us and everyone else stayed in a motel near Brookville, OH. Friday we all went out to eat in Eaton at Fiesta Charra. Saturday we went to market with Jack and Dad and Scott met us there minus Speranza who was "taking the day off". It was a good but windy market. We sold out of a lot of things. Dad and Scott left us at market to go see Joe Bien, a neighbor from our Springwood days (Springwood is a subdivision east of Oxford where my father built a house in 1957). Joe taught viola and music theory at Miami University and played in several orchestras. He was also my viola tutor/teacher when I was 15 or 16 years old.

We left market with Jack and said we would meet Dad and Scott back at the farm. The wind was getting heavier as we drove home. We got home and the Mort Miers for Congress sign, one of the political in our yard (but these are bigger than yard signs) was trying to break loose. Eugene went out to fix it but noticed that one of the hoophouses was also beginning to break loose so he left the political sign to its' own devices and ran up to try and get the plastic back in the ground. The political sign flew across the street never to be seen again.

Jack came out and went up to help Eugene get the hoophouse back down and than Scott and Dad showed up and Scott went out to the garden to help the boys. Dad told me the reason for Speranza's absence was because she and Scott had a fight that morning and wanted to be alone. The boys came back having been successful with the hoophouse but reporting the wind had blown all the row covers off. C'est la vie.

We were all sitting in the kitchen having a beer when Speranza called and soon after Scott left to go be with her. That left us with the problem of what to do about dinner which we postponed for naps around 3pm. When we all got up we again faced the problem of what to do about dinner and I got some ratatouille I made back when eggplant was plentiful out of the freezer and made some garlic biscuits with local organic lard and fresh garlic and we had pasta for dinner with beer because the red wine my father had bought for dinner was back in the motel room in Brookville, OH. Scott and Speranza came by to collect Dad at 8:30pm and Jack, Eugene and I watched some of the world series but went to bed at the beginning of the 8th inning missing the cardinals win the series. It was a bad game, lots of errors.

An odd addendum to the World Series it was played this year by the teams of the two most dangerous cities in the US and the most dangerous city won.

Sunday we got up to a time change and Eugene got domestic and made some tasty waffles. Dad, Scott and Speranza arrived to collect Jack and take him back to Detroit before the waffles were all done so they waited while we ate breakfast (they had eaten, ironically enough, at a waffle house). With breakfast done we said our long goodbyes and off the visitors went to the great state of Michigan.

Than we opened the store and waited for the Earlham student to show up for her tour and interview. Around 1:30pm I looked out the window and did not see the Earlham student but did see Chuck Herm's car turning into Kayler Rd. And than around and end up in our driveway. He came in and about 5 minutes after he arrived the Earlham student called to reschedule so suddenly we had a fairly free afternoon and Chuck to hang out with. And that is what we did along with selling things to the occasional customer that cam to the store.

Weekend Visitors

It's raining once again so that means harvesting for tomorrow's farmers' market will be on the miserable side 'ceptin the stuff in hoophouses which will be dryish (the hoophouse plastic collects moisture and when you walk in to one it tends to dump all that moisture down the back of your neck sending a delightfully invigorating stream of water down your back and into your underwear). Fortunately, on Wednesday I did harvest some greens-turnip greens (yuk!) and spring mix (yum!) and yesterday Eugene dug more sweet taters so really the only unpleasant things to harvest will be chard and kale and perhaps some arugula (if I can find any that has not been wind burned or is too big). Oh, and we need more cilantro and parsley for tomorrow too and maybe the lettuce is big enough to cut. With two of us harvesting this should take us about 2 hours, perhaps less, of outside work. Than another couple of hours in the hoophouses harvesting and pollinating. Than another couple of hours cleaning and packing greens and roots and we are basically done with prep for market tomorrow except loading the van which can be done this evening.

And I also am expecting a visit from most of my male relatives (we will have a house of testosterone this weekend!). My brother, Dad and favorite cousin are arriving from Tiger country (that's Detroit to those few of you NOT paying attention to the World Series) some time this afternoon. I have no idea when they are leaving and don't care, they can stay for weeks if they want. Generally, when my Dad visits we do a trip down to Jungle Jim's, the world's best grocery store. I have not been to JJ's in several months and need to restock on several items-Olive oil, maple syrup, vanilla powder, flavorings such as hazelnut and orange, a case of cheap but excellent wine, a good feta (the local Kroger's and Wal-Mart both have feta but not good feta), exotic fruit and other things I have not even thought of. I guess, if we do not do a family trip to JJ's Eugene and I will have to go on our own in the next 2 to 3 weeks. The reason why I have doubts about getting to JJ's is because we are over scheduled for the weekend. We have relatives visiting, a farmers' market saturday Morning, the farm store will be open Friday, Saturday and Sunday and Eugene agreed to show an Earlham Student around the farm Sunday afternoon which would be the most logical time to go to JJ's if everyone decides to leave Monday (which they might, though I am dealing with folks who are either retired or self employed or seasonally employed so they likely will be able to stay past monday). I told him that this weekend was not the best time to schedule a farm tour and if we do decide Sunday is the day to go to JJ's he gets to stay home and tend the store and do the tour (it's his alma mater after all and he did the scheduling).

I hear the husband stirring upstairs and rain pouring on the roof (a really nice sound). The Arlo dog has just walked into the computer/guest room (he sleeps outside most nights but I let him and the other dog in when I get up around 5am and Arlo generally goes upstairs to sleep on the floor beside Eugene. Nate, the other dog does not do stairs). It is time for me to end this entry and go coffee up and watch some morning news-The Daily Buzz being the preferred news show

The Weekend

It's been a nice weekend, weather-wise and that means things have been progressing smoothly here. Eugene, after what seems like years (but has really just been 4 or 5 weeks) has finished painting the upper roof. It is now a brilliant red and looks quite fetching. As I write, he is finishing the lower roof (see picture).

Eugene also got 5 of the garden beds tilled for (hopefully) a final time before we plant the garlic which needs to go in in the next 2 weeks or so-at least before the ground freezes for the winter. I started cleaning the grass out of the beds. Rake an area than squat down and start fishing for grass roots and shoots and toss them out of the bed and rake another area. At this point this work seems meaningless but if we keep on doing this over the next few years we will have beautiful weed free beds for the long term. this is something no herbicide in a bottle will ever do, get a garden free of weeds for the long term. the best a chemical herbicide can do is get rid of the weeds short term (and do some good damage to the flora and fauna in the soil to boot).

I got a bunch of bare wood on the porch primed and ready for painting and if the wood does not get painted this fall it will be covered for winter weather. A lot of the porch still needs scraping and a good cleaning-it is dirty up in those rafters.

Today we did education. A small group of Earlham students came out to interview us and see the new farm and ask us questions about what we do and why. They had all come out to the old farm last year on a field trip to learn about sustainable agriculture.

They asked us questions like why do you farm (and other small topics) and we answered their questions and took them on a short walk around the place and told them a bit about what we wanted to do with the place.

Hopefully this will be the first in a long line of such tours. We here at Boulder Belt feel education is key to getting this idea of sustainable and local agriculture off of the ground.