My First Weekend in May

May has come in like some sort of energetic animal that seems to need so sleep-a shark perhaps. oh that's right that's March that comes in like some sort of animal-lions, sheep, lorises, etc..

But so far may has been one busy and energetic month. May is my favorite month, not just because I was born on May 11th but because it is the best month of spring-everything is in bloom, the trees are pretty much leafed out by mid May, the grass is green for real, the garden kicks into high gear production wise (you should see the lettuce crop-spectacular!) and our markets start up again which means steady income and not living from savings any longer.

This year May started on a Thursday and I spent May Day morning harvesting greens for our markets (our farm store and the Saturday FM in Oxford) and the afternoon dealing with the packaging for the green (I like to have labels on bags and it takes time to print labels, cut the printed labels to size and than adhere them to the bags. Especially when I am using sheets of labels that are not exactly compatible with my new laser printer-if anyone reading this knows what labels work best with a Samsung CLP-300 let me know. It sure ain't the ones I am using currently). Generally I wash the greens ASAP after harvesting but by 10 am Thursday morning we had 25 mph winds and since my "packing shed" consists of a table, a wash tub and a salad spinner and no shelter of any kind around all this stuff I decided it would be better to put the unwashed greens right into the fridge in an unclean state and get out early on Friday morning and get them washed and re-hydrated than.

So after harvesting 5 kinds of heirloom lettuces (Amish Deer Tongue, Cracoviensis, Marvel of 4 Seasons, Red Sails leaf lettuce and Green Oakleaf) arugula, spring mix, baby lettuce and cilantro I opened the store and than went inside to watch the Price is Right (something Eugene and I have done for the past 15 years or so because we can most days because of our work schedule. We love the almost mindless competition, the blatant commercialism and Drew Carey).

Had several customers drop by the store to buy asparagus, spinach, lettuce, seeds, herb plants between 11 am and 5pm. I found after running the numbers that our sales are up 10,000% so far this year over last. of course last year there were a lot of weeks where the store generated less than $20 a week gross income. Which is something we expected because it seems to take people about 3 years to figure out you are here without an expensive and aggressive marketing campaign.

Since we do not have $50K to spend on marketing and a lot of time on our hands we have opted to go cheap with the marketing and allow our on farm business to slowly develop and flower. My web based marketing (website and email list, which you can subscribe to by going to the Boulder Belt website and following the instructions there) has really taken off in the past 4 or 5 months. All I can say to that is, Finally! The Boulder Belt Eco-Farm website is about 13 years old and it has taken a long time for it to get noticed by the right crowd (that would be people in Ohio/Indiana). It also has taken that long for it to evolve into a really nice website that is both useful to me and to you the www public. I also have made a very nice brochure (another bit of work that has been evolving over the past 10+ years). I have a background in art and the person who introduced my to computers, my late friend Ann Bell, was a DTP person who was also a classically trained artist as well as having a lot of experience in printing using movable type. She trained me to use computers for graphics and nothing else. So, to this day I can barely use a spread sheet (and do not keep any records on the computer. That's all done by hand with paper and pen/pencil) but give me a drawing/paint program or word processing app and I am good to go.

Any Hoo, Got through Thursday and Friday came. In the past Friday has always been a bear of a day. Lots of harvesting and cleaning and bagging/bunching to do for the Saturday farmers' market. But I hope, this year, to have my act together to start harvesting Thursday or even Wednesday for the weekend (and I believe if things continue as they have, I will have to do quite of harvesting on Wed. to keep the store stocked) so that Friday becomes a day of light harvest and lots of selling. It sure was nice this past Friday not to have to work 14 hours getting ready for market.

So Friday morning arrived and I got breakfast early and started to work on washing the greens picked the day before. I was hoping to get done before the high winds redeveloped but did not. I was able to get through all the crates of lettuce before the 25mph+ winds kicked and started blowing by baby lettuce and arugula all over the place. Got everything clean, re-hydrated and back in the fridge by 10 am. Harvested asparagus and took lunch. After lunch started in on bagging the greens, bunching radishes and asparagus and waiting on the occasional customer. Wyatt came by for a visit and kept me company as I bagged up stuff (Eugene was mowing). It started storming which pretty much put a kibosh on business for the afternoon. Around 5 pm the rain stopped for a few hours and we decided we needed more asparagus than we had so the 3 of us grabbed knives and piled into the van and took a trip over to the Crubaugh Rd farm and did our annual raid on the asparagus we planted there 5 or 6 years ago. Got just over 5 pounds and noticed that about 1/4 of the row is not producing any longer. We decided this was probably the last time we would go over to get the stuff. The farm looked pretty good. The apple trees there are in amazing bloom and beautiful. Went back home cleaned up and bunched the asparagus than went out to eat at Fiesta Charro in Eaton (our second favorite eatery in Eaton, which has few decent choices. Our favorite place is Adam's Rib but since we had Wyatt, a vegetarian, and Adam's rib is a BBQ shop with no real veg choices we opted for the Mexican place). went back home and to bed before 11pm.

Saturday dawned stormily. We were up by 4am. Did coffee got the last few details finished for the farmers market, ate breakfast, packed the van and got on the road about 1/2 later than we should. Somehow when working with Eugene we both get stuck in some sort of time sucker and can rarely get anywhere on time. But since I am one of those people than tends to be early to things most of the time we are not very late (on our first date he was 4 hours late and I found this was not a fluke. The boy is very time challenged) and more and more often we are on time.

So we leave the farm later than we should in a driving rain storm and hydroplane our way down to Oxford. get to the market and park the van in our spot and the rain stops. Hooray! We do not have to set up in pouring rain. We get set up about 15 minutes after the market has started. But because of the wet weather few people are there to buy so no big deal we are running late. we get set up and we start selling asparagus. By 9 am we are out of the stuff. Val Taylor, the Locavore Queen of SW Ohio (join her list at cincilocavores) had put in an order for all our remaining leeks and arrived for those around 8:30am. It was nice to be done with the leeks after 9 months of harvesting and selling them. They were a wonderful crop but it was time they were sold. By 10 am the market was getting fairly busy, though not as busy as I would have like to see. the Oxford Gourd and Drum Ensemble set up and played for a couple of hours which was fun. The weather got quite windy and peoples shelters started doing bad things and had to be secured (we tie ours to our van). The market extended its' hours of operation this year from 11:30 to noon. It was dead from 11:30 to noon. We did sell a few things as we were packing up but i do not like the new hours. They will likely not be profitable for us and mean we get home a half hour later than in the past. This means things could go wrong on the farm. As an example, this past Saturday because it was storming when we left home we left all the hoop houses and cold frmes closed up. It got sunny around 11:30 or noon but since we had to tarry in Oxford for an additional half hour, plus run to the the Striets to pick up raw milk for ourselves and the Cox's and than drop that milk off at Adam's Rib, The Cox's restaurant, we were worried that when we got home around 1:30pm many things might be roasted to death (fortunately, they were not) in the hot houses.

Ate lunch, took a 45 minute nap got up and went to a Derby day party at Jules' and Rosie's house. because of life we were an hour late to that and forgot to bring salad (and we had a lot of salad greens left over from market-stupid, stupid, stupid) but did get the brisket from Adam's Rib (which I want to develop a religion around, it is that good. By far the best brisket I have ever eaten. Pete Cox is a master at brisket, the ribs are also excellent.) Got to the party got a mint Julep and put in my bets for the race just in time. watched the race and for about 2 minutes were were all jubilant about Big Brown winning in such fashion and the impressive run of the filly Eight Belles with her second place finish. And than just like that Eight belles is dead. Such a tragedy but that's racing luck (know that I spent a lot of my life working with horses both show and race horses and have seen some them die in competition or because of competition. Death happens but 99% of time death does not touch these animals when in their youth and at the top of their game). This event will not be good for American horse racing as there are simply too many sentimental people who will be permanently offended by this.

Got home from the party around 1am, which meant we had been awake for 21 hours (less the 45 minute nap). Went to bed and because I cannot sleep past 6 am no matter how late I go to bed, I got 4 hours of sleep and spent Sunday feeling hung over (and from two not very strong mint Juleps). Harvested asparagus for the store and set up the store for business and spent the early afternoon dealing with customers. but by 3pm I was spent and Eugene took over sales. I am happy to say we had quite a bit of business that day. Not enough to support the farm yet (which is why we still go to the Oxford farmers markets Saturdays and Tuesdays) but things are picking up, a lot, over the past 2 years and it looks like this year the store will be close to self supporting and when the store becomes self supporting we can stop breaking our humps doing farmers markets and stay home.

At 5pm I closed up the store and started making a big salad for dinner that was full of yummy things from the garden while Eugene mowed the grass that is growing at a scary rate. At 8pm we ate and by 9pm I was asleep on the couch, utterly exhausted.

That was our week.

Beer and the Grid

The beer we made on thanksgiving is fermenting nicely. But the project was not without it's problems. First of all Eugene could not find the airlocks or rubber corks that are needed after the beer is made. He did eventually find an airlock but the rubber corks are still AWOL. He suspects he lent them to our friend Jules (as the wine corker is also missing). But we do not know for sure as she is out of town (or at least not replying to our phone message).

Eugene did use the oxygen set up Wyatt loaned him. This is supposed to make the beer much clearer and likely other good things. I can't tell at this point if the beer will end up cloudy or clear. I do know it has been fermenting well since I raised the ambient temp in the house from 58F to 63F. I got up Friday morning and noticed there was zero fermentation going on in the carboy (the 5 gallon glass jar that one ferments beer and wine in, if doing small batches) so I went to the thermostat and raised it 5 degrees and within an half hour there was a thing line of foam appearing on top of the beer. Within two hours the beer was definitely waking up and by noon it was happily chugging away.

When we lived at the Crubaugh Road farm we heated with wood and always put the carboy of new beer by the wood stove as that was the only place in the house above 50F/55F in winter. now we have central heat and this means the house does not have the hot/cold spots (mostly cold) that we grew used to and actually took advantage of (cold areas make great areas for cold cellaring. Uniform heat makes cold storage quite hard to do without shutting off a room or two). This means if the beer needs the heat a bit higher to ferment, than everything in the house gets to be a bit warmer. I find this wasteful but unavoidable, short of blasting a hole somewhere in the roof for a flue for a wood stove in the house. Than having to deal with the dirt and bad air that comes with having a small wood stove in the house. That said, I do miss heating with wood in a lot of ways. I gotta say when the grid goes down due to storms, when you heat with wood you stay warm. When you heat with an electricity dependent furnace you get cold quickly when the power grid is not running. No fans, no forced air, no heat. It will be nice when we have the wherewithal to get the farm more energy independent. Having a wood furnace, a wind tower, batteries and several solar panels will be a good start. In time we will amass such.

Tempting Rain

Another weather post.

The last decent rain we received was May 16th.

Late last week we were supposed to get big storms. We were even under a severe Thunderstorm watch most of the day Friday but got nothing more than a trace of rain around 1pm.

My theory is, because we keep getting too prepared for the rain by removing all 40 or so row covers, rolling up car windows, bringing things in that should not get wet like full chicken feeders, tools, water soluble amendments, etc., the rain purposefully misses us.

Instead of bringing in things and removing row covers we need to be putting out laundry, washing cars, running irrigation-basically scoffing at Ma Nature and her withholding of the rain.

In past dry years we have noted often, within 24 hours of getting the irrigation system totally set up and functional it starts raining and keeps on doing so. The more difficult the job the better the long term rain chances.

This year the job is difficult because we are trying to use the system from the other farm and it is not the same size. It's maddeningly close to fitting in but not quite there. So new feeder lines have been needed to be cut to get the drip tapes where they need to be and a lot of new drip tape has been cut to accommodate all the additional beds we now have. Sometime today or tomorrow the system ought to be completed. So we should be getting good rains by mid week.

If not, we have a good well and a lot of irrigation to keep the crops growing

Winter Storm '07

We got an, honest to God, Winter Storm yesterday. It started at midnight with a light dusting on the deck when I put the dogs out for the night and by 5am in the morning I could barely get the back door open to let the dogs in. There must have been 4" on the deck with heavy snow.

It snowed most of the morning than turned to ice for a short time (maybe an hour) than became sleet, which is ice that does not stick to much of anything. the sleet stuck around until after dark. it sounded as if tiny elves were pelting the side of the house with tiny stones.

The winds were not too bad in the morning but by noon they were cranking up and heavy snow warnings to the north of us turned into blizzard warnings. We have not had a blizzard in the area in years. The least one we had was when we lived at the old farm on Crubaugh Rd. We got 18" of snow which closed Crubaugh for several days due to heavy drifting (some drifts were well over 8' deep).

We kept the dogs in most of the day but being dogs they had to go out a couple of times to pee and poop. early in the day the snow was a minor inconvenience to them but by 4pm the snow was almost too deep for Danny to get through. Arlo and Nate, having longer legs, had a good time bounding through the 8 inches of crusty powder and making places where they could do their dooty.

The most amazing part of this storm to me was the fact people still insisted on driving. Granted, traffic was way down yesterday-probably off by 75%. But there were still plenty of cars, trucks and semis on the road. Fortunately no one had a wreck on the 40' pitch (yay!) though I guess that was not the case on I-70.

This morning the storm is winding down. It is still snowing a bit and the winds are blowing the snow into drifts and likely making some roads impassable. It will be interesting to take a walk around the farm and see where drifts have appeared. I suspect the hollow behind the bank barn has 4' to 6' feet of drifting snow in it. I am hoping the hoophouses are still standing. they looked in good shape at sunset yesterday but with enough wind and snow things could have changed overnight. the last snow did damage the hoophouse with salad mix and head lettuce growing in it. Too much snow weight and not enough supports = a cave in.

Later on today I will post pictures of the winter wonderland

Happy Solstice

Summer came in with a bang. We awoke to severe thunderstorms this morning that included a 1/2 hour power outage and 2" of rain in under 45 minutes.

When the rain left the heat and humidity set in. It is definitely summer.

I was out picking strawberries, zucchini and cucumbers and after 15 minutes I was drenched with sweat. Not fun. A lot of the garden went under water during the torrential downpour but by noon most of that water had drained out of the garden (this place has excellent drainage, not like the other farm, which would have had standing water for several days after such a storm). This left a lot of the veggies in a muddy state but happy enough.

Summer means that the onions are growing fast, they love the long days and short nights. The garlic has had its' scapes cut (and to the person who got here searching for scape prices, we sell them for $2.50 for a 1/2 pound bag) and now is growing big bulbs. I dug one up this afternoon that had its' greens knocked off (either by Eugene and the weed whacker or a deer) and it was a good size already even though it won't be ready to harvest for another 2 to 4 weeks. The first potato planting is in full flower and that means we will be harvesting them in a few weeks (we have not gotten all our potatoes planted yet, we do our last planting around July 4th) and can start stealing the new potatoes now if we want, though that cuts back on the final harvest since the potatoes taken early do not grow back.

The peas are going nuts. We did 3 plantings and the first two snow peas beds are in full roar with the third flowering heavily but not yet producing peas. The sugar snap peas are bit slower. The first planting is going great guns and the second has skinny peas but the third planting has not yet begun to flower. Picking peas is back bending work and can get old after a few weeks of daily harvesting.

It's summer and the garden is bountiful.

Fresh Food, it's What's for Dinner

A shot of zucchini (on right) and basil (on left) in one of our hoophouses

We are finally able to eat fresh from the garden and not the freezer. We have lots of lettuce, arugula, kale and other greens coming in now as well as zucchinis, squash blossoms, radishes, cilantro, fresh basil, chives & tarragon. We took a trip to the old farm to see if there was any asparagus there and there was some that had not gone into its' fronding stage and it is very good. We also got some rhubarb too.

Tonight's dinner is almost all grown by us. I am roasting a 5.25 pound chicken we raised last year. I put a rub of kosher salt, rubbed sage, garlic powder and rosemary all over the outside and in the cavity and now it is in a 400˚F oven. Along with the chicken I will make squash lyonaise from a costata Romanesque zuke Eugene harvested 2 days ago and some of our onions from last year. I will probably also make a salad from a left over bag of spring mix and put some radishes and feta cheese on the greens oh and may some organic vidalia onion I bought at Jungle Jim's. made some brownies for dessert which have nothing local in them but will be yummy none the less.

Soon enough we will also have snow peas, garlic scapes, spinach (unless it gets too warm which is pretty likely), cukes, cherry tomatoes (the cukes and maters are being grown in a hoophouse so will be about 6 to 8 weeks earlier than the main crop of these items), small sweet onions.

We have been quite busy getting things ready for the peppers and eggplant to go out. We have had to burn holes into landscaping fabric for the above mentioned crops as well as the winter squash and melons we will be planting in another 10 to 15 days and the tomatoes that will be going out in about 5 to 7 days. Eugene was burning holes in some landscape fabric before lunch and when we came back out after lunch we saw that one sectioned had burned completely up leaving a 3' x 50' burned area. So when we got started again we were VERY careful about starting another fire. He was doing two layers at a time to save time and the under layer must have caught fire and smoldered hidden from view for a while than caught and burned up 100' of mulch. I wish I had seen this happen, it was likely a cool fire. We managed to get the other 12 or so pieces prepared and put away with no further mishaps. The next step is to put down the irrigation tapes and than put down the fabric and dig the edges in than plant the seedlings.

It's just that simple (not).

The Plastics Order

Rowcovers on the ground surrounded by hoophouses. Both row covers and hoophouses allow us to grow in some pretty bad conditions and get better quality and yields in good conditions but they are made from PLASTICS, which are not sustainable

It's Solstice week meaning we in the north have the shortest photo periods of the year but at the same time the sun is as close as it will get to us. Does that make summers in the southern hemisphere just that much more hotter than in the north?

For solstice week we got busy getting orders for farm stuff together. We got our first order of the 2006 season (and ironically our last order of 2005) phoned into Nolt's Produce Supply (Amish outfit, no web-presence) on Monday. About $2,000 worth of plastics for hoophouses, landscape mulch and AG-30 row covers. In the past we have ordered about $500 worth of plastics from this company but they had an ominous note on the cover of their newest catalogue suggesting the price of plastic will sky rocket Jan 1st. Plus they give an 6% discount to everyone who orders before the first of the year.

Because this new farm has a hell of a lot more storage space than the old farm we decided to order more than we will need this season (hopefully). I believe this will save us about $500 bucks in the next couple of years on shipping and plastic prices. This will also buy us a bit of time while we figure out how to farm using without using as much plastic.

You see over the years this sustainable farm has started using less than sustainable practices and it is now the time to reassess our sustainability. We need to grow a lot more op/Heirloom crops, we need to cut the use of plastics dramatically (and how we will be able to make lightweight moveable hoophouses is a mystery) and we need to get off the power grid. And when we do these things than we can feel more honest about using the term sustainable.

Rainy Sunday

Its' been a rainy lazy Sunday. Watched the Bengals beat the Ravens. Watching football on any level is not something I do often (I go to a superbowl party every year and that is usually the extent of my football watching. Eugene will watch even less than I do). But hey, it is not every year the Bengals do well. And there wasn't much else on TeeVee (we get 6 channels here at Boulder Belt Farm and have no interest in satellite/cable). About half time Eugene got bored and went out in the drizzle to plant day lilies on the eroding banks around the pond. He dug up many buckets of them about 5 days ago at the old place.

This work in November will make for a pretty display in May, June and July. And it will keep the bank from slumping any worse than it already has. That is if Nate, the large, possibly German short haired pointer puppy, will let these plantings be. He tends to dig up anything can get at. He took out a rather big clump of pampas grass. Eugene replanted elsewhere, where nate cannot get to it until it roots (than I want to see the dog try and drag the grass out of the ground. Sure its' easy when the grass has been in the ground less than 72 hours ). He got out into the front yard overnight a few weeks ago and pulled out several irises I had just planted. He's a rascal.

So while Eugene is getting muddy I am blogging and making a pizza dough for tonight. it will have onions, cheese, locally made organic Italian sausage, sweet peppers from the freezer and perhaps some zucchini from the freezer.

Might make some winter squash to go along with though we did have winter squash last night.

Oh and I have some hot chocolate warming on the stove that will get a shot of kaluah or rum (or both!) when it is served.

Bird Flu vs Pastured Poultry

A picture of our pastured hens about 4 years ago hanging out in the doorway of their coop

An article from AP (This reported contacted me to interview me for this story but since I do not have any birds currently I did not respond)


Free-range Farmers Dispute Whether Flocks At Risk For Bird Flu

by Carrie Spencer Ghose - Associated Press

REYNOLDSBURG, Ohio - State officials and poultry
researchers say there's little risk of bird flu coming to
Ohio, but if it does, the flocks most at risk are the ones
being raised in outdoor pastures to meet growing
consumer demand.

Farmers who specialize in free-range poultry downplay
the concerns, saying their birds are protected and their
farming methods inherently healthier.

A new strain of avian influenza that infected geese
appeared in July in Asia, and the worry is that the disease
could spread to wild birds that migrate to North America,
said Theresa Morishita, an Ohio State University
veterinarian. The disease also could be imported through
smuggling of parrots, songbirds or fighting chickens.

About 90 percent of Ohio poultry are raised in cages in
enclosed barns, according to OSU. Strict measures to
prevent germ transmission should protect them, state
Agriculture Director Fred Dailey said.

About 5 percent of Ohio's wild ducks, geese and other
waterfowl carry bird flu, but it's a weak type that doesn't
make the birds sick and does not transmit to humans. At
worst, if it infects domestic poultry, they lay fewer eggs -
but that means money to farmers.

If wild birds do bring the more virulent form of the
disease to this country, they could mix with the small
number of outdoor flocks, said Y.M. Saif, head of the
food animal health program at the OSU agriculture
research center in Wooster.

"It could be then a danger to commercial birds," Saif said.

The virus rarely transmits to humans, so the risk of that
here is extremely low. Free-range farmers said wild birds
generally don't mingle with their flocks. They said they
watch their birds constantly for health concerns, such as
not eating or drinking.

"I want to follow good science, not just emotionalism
about what's better," said Carl Bowman, co-owner of
Bowman & Landes. The 140-acre farm in western Ohio
has one of the state's largest open-pasture turkey
operations in the state, with 60,000 turkeys. The company
raises another 13,000 at a farm in north central Ohio.

Bowman & Landes raises some turkeys for a different
purpose in barns. "By far our healthiest birds have been
the ones on range," he said.

The only wild geese he's seen mingling with his birds are
so-called resident Canada geese, which don't migrate.

Still, Bowman said he might be more concerned about
bird flu next year if the disease spreads beyond Asia. All
the chicks the company hatches are tested.

Eventually, the Ohio Poultry Association would like all
commercial producers to test their birds, said Jim
Chakeres, executive vice president. The U.S. Agriculture
Department has biosecurity recommendations for smaller
flocks.

Safety starts off the farm for a larger scale indoor
operation, said Terry Wehrkamp, production manager of
Cooper Farms in Oakwood in northwest Ohio. The
company has divisions that raise feed, raise poultry and
even cook the birds for deli and grocery products.

Employees are screened for exposure to other birds, even
pet birds, and pigs. If they break biosecurity rules, such as
not showering and changing into work clothes kept only
in the barns, they're fired.

Indoor poultry growers are prepared if an outbreak were
to occur, Wehrkamp said.

"I would be very nervous if my livelihood depended on
free-range products right now," he said.

Chickens at Brunty Farms outside Akron are protected
from wild birds in 12-by-12-foot pens covered with a net
about 3 feet high, owner Ron Brunty said. The pens,
which house about 1,000 free-range chickens on two
sites, are moved through the pasture throughout the day to
give the chickens fresh grass to feed on.

"I'm not concerned about our birds catching it," Brunty
said. "I'm concerned about people flipping out about it to
the point where they don't buy."

AP International

---

I do not currently raise poultry but I was planning to get 50 or so pullets this coming spring and perhaps a few adult hens as well. but now I don't know. I am not so much afraid of the actual strain of avian flu taking out a flock of birds but rather what the reaction of the ODA or USDA to a positive bird in a pastured flock will be. I figure the government will over react by a factor of 10x and will try to kill off every pastured fowl in the USA or at the very least will come up with some horribly complex system of monitoring the birds that will take several hours every day for a small flock and most of the day for large flocks. This will ensure the small farmer either has to give up on pastured poultry or give up on other aspects of farming.

I really hope this is all bad paranoia on my part and this does not happen and we small farmers can go about our business unimpeded by bad logic.

As one person wrote on SANET saturday:

"The problem of Avian Flu is an opportunity for us to stop and ask some very basic questions. Firstly, why does the pathogenic virus manifest in the first place? Little importance is given to the conditions that result in the creation of the virus. A lot of attention is given to exposure avoidance and eradication once the virus manifests. As many have stated throughout history, it is not the virus that we should focus on, but rather, the condition of the birds or people that manifest the virus. What is it about these birds or humans that created a fertile environment for the virus? This question must be explored not just from an exposure avoidance perspective but from a health building perspective."
Alan Ismond, P.Eng.
Aqua-Terra Consultants

I can only hope some of these questions will be asked before any flu eradication program goes any further. But I doubt it because if such questions are asked than the way corporations raise animals for consumption will be called into question. And since these are the folks who hold the purse strings I think the conventional wisdom will be:

Pastured Poultry bad; Caged/Confined poultry good

First Snow

A pile of gourds drying

This week we were able to get pretty much the last of the crap from the old farm. Eugene seems to think there is more stuff to get but I say that is just the pack rat coming out in him. From what I can see all that is left is trash. Ah he can deal with that sort of thing-if he wants to take a day and load trash into the van and move it somewhere let him.

Monday he got the perennial herbs, the rest of the peonies, the rest of the parsnips (which, I believe, means the garden is empty of food except for a few kale plants that are on their own) and a pine tree Doug Ross gave me two years ago for my 40th birthday (which is now in front of the house, where it should grow into a majestic tree). he also dug up many buckets of day lilies in all sorts of colors. I have been propagating day lilies for about 5 years now and had a pretty good sized bed (maybe 15' x 15') going at the old farm. Now it looks like I have enough to do a 30' x 30' bed

Yesterday Eugene planted the perennial herbs-thyme, oregano, tarragon, lovage and some chives (chives are a poor seller for us but a garden just ain't complete without them and the are sooo easy to grow). This morning he planned on mowing the field where the garden beds are going but an early snow dissolved those plans quickly. By early I mean in the day-snow was predicted by the prognosticators we call the weather people. they had predicted a dusting of snow to fall sometime this afternoon but the snow decided to come early and drop a couple of inches. Makes it pretty outside.

So instead of farming we are cooking. I am doing the stuffing/dressing today and if I get motivated will also do the rolls today (at least get them proofed and par baked). Eugene is making an apple pie that smells Fantastic. he is a very good pie maker. he is not much of a cook otherwise, serviceable but not great. But his pies are to die for, he could make a living selling these things, I think. But pie making would bore him and farming fascinates him so I don't see the pie sales happening.

Friday is Buy Nothing Day
and buying nothing is my plan on Friday

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.

Garden After Frost

We had the second night of frost and that did in pretty much everything in the market garden except the spuds, carrots, parsnips, kale, celery, pac choi, beets and chard.

Found that since we are no longer living on the farm where we started the season and the dogs are gone, the deer have come in and have made themselves at home. They have been pulling beets, eating the tops and leaving the roots to desiccate, they ate all the strawberry plants. Spent at least one night dancing on the row covers over the carrots, poking holes in the covers and eating any exposed carrot tops. So we grabbed all the drip tapes we could find and festooned the carrots and beets with drip tape in hopes that the deer will not want to walk on the tapes and will leave the crops alone (yeah, right...).

I cut the twine from the tomato plants and now all we have to do is remove about 175 fence stakes and move them over to this farm. dead tomato plants remind me of Halloween more than pumpkins. probably because the maters tend to be frost killed right around Halloween and we do not grow pumpkins.

Yesterday Eugene got the hoophouses and move them over here. Now we can put them up here. Or we could if we had anything to protect. but alas, we have nothing in the ground yet but we do have 12 50' beds tilled. Some of those beds are for garlic that will be planted this week or next and at least 2 will be for strawberries and the rest probably will get early for next year greens such as lettuce, spinach and spring mix (which is 2 beds planted with 15 different lettuces plus arugula, tat soi, mizuna, etc..).

Moving a Farm (pt 2)

When we last saw our heroes they were painting, cleaning, installing appliances in the basement and yes they were moving a few farm related items such as tillers, lawn mowers, etc..

But they had not started on moving the house because they had a plan, a good plan called the Moving Partay.

It all started with a simple email sent in early September:

Greetings,

As you know we are moving and we will be having a moving party. This will occur on Sept. 18th (Sunday) starting at 10am. We want to get the big items moved (we should have the house mostly set up by the time this party happens) What we will be moving is a large 3-door commercial fridge, some grain bins, other fridges, freezers and a few other things.

For this part of the effort we need 5 or 6 strong backs and 2 to 3 truck/vans that can carry weight and large bulky items. We also could use 5 to 6 big coolers to put food from the freezers in while the freezers are in transit

We also need a crew to facilitate clean up at the new place. The old owner left a variety of "farm art" (as my friend Pat Flick calls junk in fields) and we need to get it sorted and moved out of the planting area and put somewhere else. Some of the stuff is good stuff some of the stuff can be recycled and some of the stuff can be burned.

We will supply food (pastured chicken, a big tomato salad, burgers, etc.) and beer, wine and a bon fire for the after moving festivities. feel free to bring a dish your self.


Please let me know ASAP if you are coming. If I don't hear from you I will assume you will not be participating.

If you cannot make this event butt want to see the farm we are planning on having an open house some time in October when we are more settled in

The Partay
And on Sunday Sept. 15th it culminated in a gathering of people, a 17' U-haul truck, our Dodge cargo van and a few other vehicles. Eugene's Brother was the only person to show up in the morning and Eugene had to pick up the U-haul truck so we were only able to get the Dodge van and dave's car loaded for the first run to the new place. We took stuff over, foundf no one there so unloaded and went to lunch in eaton. came back and the ferrario family had arrived as had Molly Willburger, A MU student interested in us farmer types. By 2pm Marc and Lisa biales and Chuck herms arrived and later Steve Dana showed up. Soon both places were a hive of activity. By day's end we had managed to get most of the household items moved and even got the living room and kitchen set up decently. Food was provided by my friends Lisa who brought a deelish black bean soup and Karen who brought a spicy BBQ. We supplied the beer and wine. A good time was had by all

The Big Fridge
Moving the household was not too big a job though we do have 2 big freezers, fridges and a few other big items. The big job of the day was moving this 3-door commercial fridge we bought about 6 years ago from Kona Bistro in Oxford, OH when they remodeled their kitchen. The fridge is HUGE and can hold about 35 bushels of food. It had been sitting on the west side of our old place under an metal roof Eugene had built around the thing. I was not there when the crew got to moving the fridge but from what I hear they had no problem getting the roof down and the fridge moved off of its' pad. But they did have a problem getting it into the 17' U-haul truck-it was too tall by about 4". Bummer.

So the solution was to not load the fridge and load other things into the truck instead and get all that stuff over to the new place, unloaded and in the house or barn. When that was done several people left and a few latecomers arrived and as the sun was setting Eugene, Syd, Chuck and Scott decided to go back and wrestle the big fridge into the 17' U-Haul truck. While they were gone us ladies sat on the deck, watched the sun set and sipped single malt scotch and drank beer. Shortly after dark the guys came back with the fridge loaded on at an angle. They got the thing unloaded and than found that the biggest doorway we had was still 2" too short for the fridge so it sat outside overnight awaiting Eugene to take off all the molding around the doorway so it would be big enough to accept the fridge.

The Following Day
After the moving partay was over we were still needing to move more large items before taking the truck back so the next morning we went back to the Crubaugh Rd farm and moved the chicken tractors (these are movable coops, not tractors like what one would plow with. Our chickens do not drive), rolls of fencing, 2 big grain bins (like 65 bushels each) and many really long bamboo poles. Pile those things in the truck, drove back home and when got there we found that one of the chicken tractors had almost gotten loose. Good thing we were driving back roads and not a major highway in case the thing had fallen out of the truck. It seems we did not secure the latch well on the back and it had come loose and the door was trying to slide open. It did not so no damage.

After the final use of the U-haul we cleaned it out and returned it and ran into a problem. According to U-haul we had not rented the truck and therefore they felt they could charge us more than the estimate. We did not like that idea at all so they quickly backed down and than found we were not in their system and that the problem could be traced back to the poorly trained employee who rented Eugene the truck the day before. this was going to take a while so we went to breakfast at the Main St Diner in Richmond (a little hole in the wall breakfast and lunch place that has been around forever). I had biscuits and gravy and some pretty bad coffee. Eugene had the same plus pancakes. After B-fast we finally returned the truck and drove back home via Lowe's to pick up some hardware items for the new house.

Stay tune for part moving pt 3: Living Between two Farms

Moving the Farm (pt 1)

September 1st at around 11:30am we were official landed gentry and that meant it was time to move our stuff. Or was it? Actually no it wasn't. It was now time to go over to our house and take a good look at what needed to be done before we moved in. I figured the place needed a good cleaning but the place had no hot water because the gas was not yet turned on and the water heater was a gas heater. So one day I used the cold, sulfery very hard water that came out of the tap but all that would do is stink and curdle soap and detergent. I had rented a carpet cleaner from the local Kroger's and this water was not up to the task so the next day I hauled hot softened water from the old farm and was able to get all but the living room done.

Meanwhile Eugene is getting into fixing windows and plumbing. This goes on for many days and involves numerous daily trips the various hardware stores in the region plus K-mart. I will go on record here in saying we did not use Wal-Mart for any part of the initial house repair/cleaning/painting episodes. I find I really like the Ace hardware in Eaton, OH.

At any rate, by week's end we have installed a new electric water heater, a water softener, have had the gas turned on than off less than 24 hours later due to a gas leak in the line going from the street to the meter, cleaned a lot of cow shit out of the barn (Carlos forgot to secure the basement of the barn and that allowed 3 calves to have a lot of fun down there tossing objects around and crapping on everything) and because Eugene was really antsy to get things moved in a hurry I suggested that we paint the inside of the place before we started putting our stuff in it. He did not like the idea because he wanted to MOVE but saw things my way and soon he was doing the math to figure how much paint we would need and than we were in K-mart looking at paint chips and picking out colors. Soon enough we were taking many cans of paint home.

The following day our friends Saundra and John came out to help us clean and paint and see the place. They are great champions of local farmers and sustainable food, as well as into historical clothing. They did a bang up job of cleaning the upper rooms and the kitchen which allowed Eugene and I to get a jump on painting. Saundra also made a wonderful lasagna and I believe the 4 of us shared the first meal at the new farm out on the deck looking at the pond

The painting went on longer than we expected but not much longer as the house is in pretty good shape on the interior. While I painted Eugene was putting large appliances into the basement in a water heater and a water softener. The goal was to get 4 rooms painted and the hot soft water running by the weekend when we had planned a moving party.

We missed a midweek farmers' market in order to get the job done. It was a bit difficult getting brushes clean with no water but I learned from my brother that wrapping wet brushes up in plastic bags will keep the wet for days. So despite no having water I did not lose a single brush to dried paint. Eugene had to wire in a new breaker for the electric water heater which put us both on edge but we found out that this process is not much more difficult that wiring up a circa 1980's stereo system, only the wire is thicker.

By Thursday we had the appliances installed and the rooms freshly painted and we were ready to start moving in a way serious manner so we rented the big 17' U-haul truck, emailed friends and arranged for a move to happen the following Sunday September 15th

part 2 coming soon