March Winter Market Adventures

It is the last morning of winter (as far as the position of the sun in the sky) but it has been spring here for weeks.

We did the March edition of the Oxford Winter farmers Market and sold out of everything but garlic, garlic powder, dried beans, catnip and dried herbs.

We brought in a lot of greens (and some roots)
30 bags of spinach
18 bags of lettuce
13 bags of spring mix
5 bags of arugula
3 bags of mizuna
13 bags of kale
15 boxes of potatoes
4 bags of parsnips
5 bags of chard
52 leeks

and around 95% of it sold in under 1 hour. That was some crazy selling for us, constant taking orders, fulfilling orders, making change and refilling the baskets. Eugene and i were busy little beavers.

than it was over, we had few things left on our table and an hour of market left to go.

So I went shopping and bought 4 packs of nitrate free Organic sauasages from the Filbruns and than got ground beef from Hokebee farms and stew beef and a roast from Reserve Run and 5 pounds of honey from Scott Downing, the Apple Man who sets up next to us and sells it cheap ($15!).

Eugene bought me a new mixing bowl from the potter who was set up next to us. He had broken a favorite mixing bowl of mine, an 8" Roseville bowl my sister gave to me years ago. I have several 10" Roseville mixing bowls but only one of the 8" bowls. And I discovered it is very hard to replace this 8" bowl with a Roseville bowl or anything not made from plastic. Or at least it was until last month at the farmers market I saw that this potter (I really should learn his name as he has been selling at OFMU for 2 or 3 years and now I own one of his pieces) has a cobalt blue 8" bowl. The bowl is everything I wanted-locally made, ceramic, 8" and blue.

Ended the day bartering 2 leeks and a bag of beet greens for some bread with Pia Terranova. She wanted to just give me the bread but I had 2 leeks and a single bag of greens left over and because she took those items we could turn off the commercial fridge when we got home

So all and all a fantastic market

Decisions

Eugene  showing Doug Randolph, new manager of the MOON Co-op, spring mix in a hoophouse

On Thursday we had a visit from Doug Randolph the manager of the MOON Co-op which is set to open in early April. The MOON Co-op will be offering as much locally sourced food as it can find so Doug is visiting the farms from which they will be buying which is a great thing. He is both verifying his sources and developing a relationship with us farmers so that all parties have the best experience possible.

We have been patiently waiting for this co-op to open for at least 10 years, maybe 11. Long ago there was an OEFFA chapter called the Miami Whitewater chapter and that became the Miami Oxford Organic Network or MOON. in the beginning we were a group of OEFFA members, mainly farmers who got together once a month and shared food and talked about issues pertaining to Organic food and farming. It was a pretty loose group that over time became more coalesced and changed direction from a group that had monthly potluck dinner meetings with no real direction but the connection of Organic/sustainable food and farming to a group with a new direction-creating a cooperatively owned natural food store (this is quite different from a privately owned health food store though they may look very similar) that will provide the Oxford, OH area with an alternative to the other grocery stores around. Gone were the monthly dinners for us Boulder Beltians as the change in direction meant a big change in the potluck dinners-they were phased out quickly.  But now on the horizon was a potentially fantastic market for us. So when Harv Roehling asked us if we wanted to buy a share of the co-op we got out our checkbook, cut a check and bought a share. Than we waited and waited some more. For the entire story (and more) go to the MOON Website

So now we have to adjust our planting plans a bit. We were well aware that the co-op would open sometime this coming spring for sometime but had no real idea how much food they would need. It turns out they will likely need a lot. But they will not need a lot of everything we grow. They will need a lot of say, 15 things we grow (we generally grow 60 different crops). Looks like they want spring mix and garlic so far and I am sure they will come up with other needs. We seem to be enjoying success with the Farm Share Initiative as well this year. So far we are way ahead of where we were last year at this time with our membership. We have 8 paid members and many more interested in joining. This time last year we had 1 paid member and not a great deal of interest until March. I hope we are sold out by March this year.

What this means for us, being a small farm run by 2 people, is we have pretty finite resources-we can only grow so much and between the FSI and the Co-op we just might sell everything and that means we have a 3rd market that we may have a hard time filling-the farmers market. So we either have to make the hard decision to cut back on the farmers market in the future (probably not this year, though) or go the expansion route and figure how to grow and harvest more.

Winter Farm Fun

I had a spring mix order to fill for tomorrow so that meant going up to the salad house and seeing what there was to cut. So Eugene and I went up to see what's what and among other things, found buried in the area that is supposed to have onion seedlings a deer leg. Nice.


So he moved the leg out of the garden and we proceeded on to the salad house, went inside and found it nice and warm-a good 10 degrees warmer than outside. Nice conditions for the arugula, lettuces, mizuna, mustard and weeds growing in there.

We keep row covers on everything to keep the risk of frost damage down and so far this winter it has worked well. Though, in past winters, even with row cover and gallon milk jugs acting as heat sinks, we have had major damage to the crops. But not this year and it has been real nice to be able to eat fresh greens in deep winter. But using row covers means we have to remove them to work the beds

and That is exactly what Eugene is doing here, removing the cover over the arugula and mustard bed. And you can see the beds beyond him and next to him have no covers over them because I took those off so I could cut greens.


While I cut Eugene hoed. Even in winter we have to do some weeding. But the weeds and crops grow slowly so it is relatively easy to keep up with them. This arugula/mustard bed was not too bad and the soil was dry enough to work


But this lettuce bed to the south of the arugula/mustard bed was quite wet and hard to hoe. But it has to be done before these weeds all flower and go to seed


and you can see already some of the winter hardy weeds are beginning to flower. That is because in the hoop houses it is already late Feb/early March.

So for about 30 minutes we hoed weeds and cut salad. I harvested a pound of spring mix in that time. In warmer months I would have easily harvested 15 pounds in a half hour of cutting and within 10 days the cut beds would have grown back. This time of year it takes about 8 weeks for the greens to grow back. though this will change in a matter of days, by mid month the crops in the hoop houses will have broken dormancy and will start growing again.


About the time we were all done with work in the hoop house and were debating whether or not we should call it quits or not (there was a little bit of hoeing that could have been done) betty makes the decision for us by appearing outside the hoop house-we heard a noise and the next thing we see black paws on the side of the house. Betty had escaped from the fenced back yard. how? We do not know.


So we leave the hoop house taking our harvest and tools with us and see what Betty is up to.


Betty is hunting mice because she remembered that yesterday she caught her first vole right out side this hoop house and she hoped to get more (and she will in the fullness of time). So We let her poke around the perimeter of the hoop house for a bit than eventually went back to the hiuse. okay Betty and Eugene went to the house and I went to the store to bagged the Spring Mix for tomorrow's order.

Market Shelters

New market farmers facing an impending farmers market season will ask what is the best shelter to get. So today we will discuss what is best and what to avoid.

Many people will say get whatever is cheap. In my opinion it is best to stay away from the $100 and under shelters you can buy at any Wal-Mart, Big Lots and even grocery super centers like Kroger's . The photos below show such 2 cheap shelters. The support system for the red canopy is a bad design. It is weak and the supports have a nasty tendency to bend and break at their joints (any black piece you see in the picture below) when it is being raised or lowered. The mechanism that locks the legs is usually hard to use.

I have seen a lot of this kind of design fail at market due to heavy snow load, wind, and rough handling. I believe we own at least 5 broken frames (they make good scrap for projects and the canopies, even if ripped a bit make handy shade cloths) and one that is one piece but was frustrating for the owners to put up and down they one morning gave it to Eugene after, for the 4th time, he helped them put the thing up.


The photo below shows a cheap EZUP Knockoff (though it may be a cheap Express III or Encore II). The support system looks a lot like their "Truss System" but it is not built nearly as well. yes it does have cross pieces connecting the sides to the middle support but the material the use for the joints is weak. You can see that the frame is broken in this picture (that would be the black thing sticking out in the lower left)




What we use is an EZUP Express, which they no longer make. These days you would buy an Express II, which is pretty much the same, just more expensive. You will pay at least $200 for a decent shelter be it an EZUp or a Caravan. Sides will be extra, usually, and my experience, not needed all that often (unless you sell something like soap or something else that cannot get wet). Our EZUP is 9 years old this year and it is in great shape. We did have to replace the canopy 2 years ago but the frame is solid.



Just what makes these shelter so much better (and worth the extra money)? It is the truss design
As you can see in the picture above of my EZUP the support system is completely different from the red canopy above and somewhat different from the cheap white (possibly an EZUP Express II or Encore II) shelter . You can see there are supports going across the area of the shelter connecting all four sides to a central support. And that the truss is flat not at an angle as it is with the cheaper models. This makes the whole system a lot stronger. And it makes the things a lot easier to erect and tear down.

Now lets talk costs. I will assume if you are growing for market your are serious about making your farm into a business and that you will be paying taxes on this business. These shelters are a tax write off so why go cheap. The higher end shelters look much more professional than the cheap back yard shelters and you always want to project yourself and your farm as professionally as possible. A high end shelter does tell the public "Hey, I'm serious here and I plan to be around for years".

And how cheap are the $100 shelters if you have to replace them 3 or 4 times a year? Not only will you be spending as much for a series of cheap crap shelters as you would for a really high quality EZUP or Caravan but you also will be wasting time going back to the store to buy more and will have to deal with disposal of the broken units. Not to mention the shelter will almost always break as you are putting them up or half way through market. It almost never will break at home or when you are done for the day (Murphy's Law prevents this happening other than on very rare occasions). So it will cause a crisis at market and you will be without a shelter for the day.

In conclusion, I feel it is well worth the extra money to buy a good shelter from the get go, especially if you are doing more than 2 markets a week. In the long run these will save you money and time.

The New Farm Sign

The old sign circa 2007 (the white one, not the yellow one). As you can see, you cannot read it from any distance. This is an example of a horrible farm sign

After 5 years of having really bad signage we now have a very nice sign for the Farm and people should start noticing that there is a produce farm on US 127. And it has already had effect. Before we even have the sign completely done people stopped and said they had never noticed the farm before.

The sign has been 6 years in the making. We bought two of them from a local Dunkard who was getting out of the clock repair and sales biz. He had been bothering us to buy his 2 huge signs for about a year and finally he offered the two signs for $50 each (they cost him $1500 each). We at the time had no real use for the signs but we went out on a cold windy day and cut both signs down. one fell on me and almost caused me great harm. The guy's father saw us taking one of the signs and assumed we were stealing his son's signs and almost called the sheriff on us. But we explained that his son had sold us the signs so he called him first and found we were telling the truth and left us to our work.

The signs laid around the Crubaugh Rd farm for a couple of years than were moved to this farm with the intent of getting at least one erected within a year. But since I did not want to go the vinyl letter route-I hate vinyl lettering- it took a bit longer. I wanted a proper sign that was painted by an artist. I was hoping that perhaps my father could do it but by the time we got around to getting our shit together enough to get one of the boards painted my Dad was in failing health. So that did not happen. I asked around to various artist friends and acquaintances I know and no one wanted to do the sign (I was pretty amazed, especially with the younger artists, that no one seemed to want money for their art. I guess sign painting is considered too low brow). Finally, our friend, artist and farming colleague Debra Bowles said she would do it.

So we got the big board we planned on using prepped for her (it had been, in a former life been a clock repair and sales shop sign) and took it to her farm in the spring of 2008 and waited. Many months went by and nothing had been done on the sign. Autumn happened and Debra told us she still had not had time to work on the sign because of family, goats and other issues and and now it was getting too cold to paint her unheated space. My brother visited for Thanksgiving and we told him of our sign progress and he made the observation that we were using a hippy artist and we would just have to be patient. That the result would likely be wonderful. I believe he said the fact we were using a hippy artist was perfect for us (and one who learned her craft under the teaching of Crossan Curry, one of my Dad's best friends, a person I have known my entire life and a wonderful master artist in his own right. So keeping all this in the family, so to speak).

Winter passed and spring and warmer weather was upon us and still no sign.

At this point (early May) Debra implied that perhaps she was not the person to do the sign after all. This hit me hard. Now we were looking at paying someone close to $1000 to create a design in vinyl, resurface the sign (which had been primed for pain by this point) and apply the design. Yes, we would have likely gotten a decent sign (and far, far better than what we had) but it would have been vinyl. Somehow she seemed to feel my bitter disappointment and decided that she could do the sign. So in mid May the project finally was started in earnest and by mid June she told us it was finished and we could pick it up. We drove to her farm and put the new sign in the back of the van and took it home where it languished on the front porch of the store until yesterday.

We now have a beautiful new sign and just in time for the 127 Yard Sale. I suspect this will increase business by several hundred percent in the next few weeks. I cannot use this coming week to gauge as I expect business to increase by at least 2000% during the yard Sale (as it has the past 4 years)

Eugen dismantles the old sign

Digging out the eastern post that had been cracked in half 3 weeks ago by a truck that had hit it

Surveying the work so far-old sign down, new sign about to be erected



First post being put in place

Second post erected and Eugene with his trusty level is getting his bearings on where the post need to be exactly in their post holes so the entire sign is level

Sign is up but not quite finished. Eugene is bring a rope to put around the sign so the side bolts can be tightened

Sign is up and almost finished. Still needed to pour concrete in the post holes and than the final step is painting the white horizontal board so it matches the rest of the sign.

A Farm Share Update

A year ago if you asked me if I was doing a CSA as a marketing strategy I would have sneered and said been there, done that, ain't gonna do it again. What a difference a year makes. As regular readers know, we did a small and short (12 week) winter CSA. We limited the program to 6 members, though we could have done 10 easily. Doled out the shares every other week starting in mid November and went til the 3rd Saturday in January, than we stopped. There were few problems on our end-Christmas week was a bit dicey on scheduling due to the pick up day being 2 days after Christmas and the second to last pick up was rescheduled due to bad weather (ice). the week after the last pick-up we had a combo of snow and ice and a lot of both and 2 hoop houses came down (but they were put back together within 2 days). So I would say we ended the winter farm share program just in time.

We did the winter program to see if we still had affection for the CSA style of marketing produce and I found I still loved it. So the decision was made to drop the Tuesday farmers market that we had help to found and had been doing for the past 13 years and revive the Boulder Belt farm Share Program in earnest. So I put together a Farm Share Page on the Boulder Belt Website in December so people interested in our FSP could go there for more information. Than I did not do much about the 2009 season for a while. I had the winter program to deal with, the holidays, etc.. In January I revived the Boulder Belt CSA page on Local Harvest because they sent me an email saying they had cut the commission 50%. And since some people like to use a credit card for such purchases this site allows us to go that route without getting our own credit card account (which we do not want to do for a variety of reasons). Than last week I decided why not put up an ad on Craig's List. So I did and saw a huge jump in hits to the Boulder Belt website and specifically the Farm Share Program page all coming from that add (I also get a lot of CSA hits from the Cincinnati Locavore blog). But while there seemed to be interest in this farm share idea I was not getting many bites. I did get 2 or 3 people to say they were seriously considering our farm share program and one person who committed early after sending out an email to my list in early January.

So after a few weeks of not doing much marketing on behaft of the FSP and not getting any people signing up I got nervous and started doubting my instincts. Maybe the cost is too high, maybe people are turned off by the on farm pick-up. Maybe I should change everything or maybe I should just drop the idea and figure out something else for the upcoming season to make up for the weekday farmers market we dropped. Maybe it is the economy and everyone is out of money so no one can join (okay that did not last long as I feel that what we do will not be all that effected by the economy crumbling-folks gotta eat, after all).

I mean after all, I had one member and a couple of maybes and only 8 weeks until the season starts. So I decided perhaps before I change everything or simply ditch the whole idea perhaps I should send out another email to my list. You know do some marketing, let people know what we are up to. So yesterday afternoon I composed an email about our FSP and sent it out to several hundred people. This morning I had my first hit and by noon had 6 people firmly commited to joining up. Perhaps by Friday the FSP will be 50% full at least through may. Since we have a monthly option later months will fill later on in the season.

So if you are planning on joining our FSP or another farm's program you need to get on the ball now and sign up as things are filling up quickly

The Last Winter Farm Share

This is the news letter for the last Farm Share of our Winter program

Greetings and salutations Farm Share Folk,

Here it is last winter share-we made it through despite the weather being a lot colder than is normally is in late fall/very early winter. I don't know about you guys but I am happy with the way things went. I would have like it to be a lot warmer in November and the first part of December so that the greens would be more varied. the kale took a big hit early on (and very unexpectedly as it is supposed to take cold down to -10 if protected) and I know some of you really really love kale. but this is a part of the becoming a member of a farm.

Overall though, the variety was good and the shares were always worth far more than the $25 a week you paid. Next winter I will likely double the share price and make the shares much bigger, especially since winter shares happen every two weeks and not weekly unlike the main season which will be weekly shares.

Okay, since the last share it got cold-our lowest point was -14F which means we likely lost a lot of over wintered crops as most are good to around -10F if properly protected but below that all bets are off. The good news is we harvested spring mix and heirloom lettuce heads before it got so sold. granted the greens are not fresh picked but in winter these things last a lot longer than they do in the summer. I suspect this is because they are not growing much this time of year and that inertia carries on after harvest so they do start rotting but at about 1/10 the speed they do in summer. I know I have some lettuce in the home fridge I picked for the December farmers market which is in fine shape and still tastes good. The spring mix you are getting superb-we have been eating it lunch and dinner (and one breakfast) for the past 9 days or so. The lettuce we have not touched because we have spring mix and like it more than plain old lettuce.

I still have not heard from most of you as to whether or not you want to join the spring farm share program. You can go month by month or sign up for the entire 31 week season. If you can get friends to sign up as well than you can divide up the driving duties. We do this with our raw milk share-there is another family in Eaton and we pick up twice a month between us so we only have to drive to Middletown once a month (we used to pick up milk weekly and had no one to divide up the driving with for about 2 years so we do know about the drill of driving to get local foods)

We hope to see most of you as members come April.

We sincerely mean it when we say thanks for your support on this trial CSA deal. We did a CSA for over 10 years and dropped it because we did not like where it was going. We were a bit uneasy with this winter farm share program at first because of the sour taste our old CSA left in our mouths. But you guys have given us faith that this form or marketing can work for us. Now we are very excited about the main farm share season. So again, thanks a zillion for your support

Okay, on that note, here is what I am planning on putting in each share

Lettuce
Spring mix-1 to 2 heads
Red onions-over a pound
Parsnips
Carrots
Garlic
Garlic powder-I make this from the 3 different garlic s we grow. If you have not had this before know it is a lot stronger than store bought garlic. It's powerful good
Honey (we do not raise bees but buy this from a crazy guy who lives about 5 miles from us and has organic bees, or as organic as you can get bees around here)
Red turnips
Potatoes-mainly red and white taters
dried Cinnamon basil
catnip-if you do not have cats this makes a nice soothing tea. just put some in a tea ball and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. If you have a cat than crumble a small amount in front of them and watch the entertainment start.

Recipe

Roasted Vegetables
Preheat the oven to 400F
Clean and cut into big chunks root vegetables such as garlic (leave whole) red or yellow onions, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, potatoes, beets and celery (which is not a root vegetable) is very nice). Put everything into a roasting pan and drizzle a good olive oil over top and sprinkle some kosher or seas salt, cover and put in the hot oven for about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. When you smell the veggies and they are soft it is done. Serve with a salad and a nice crunchy bread.

Winter CSA; Week 1

The first installment of the CSA went very well. All the shares were picked up and I ended up putting far more food into the shares than I had planned on because we have a lot of stuff coming in that has a fairly short shelf life and needs to be used. And who better to use the food than the CSA members.

I realized this week that I made an error in planning this CSA. Past CSA's have been weekly affairs and I have created shares and charged accordingly. But this winter CSA is bi-monthly which means the shares should be twice as big as what I am used to putting together (though the shares for the first week are close to a 2 week share) and I should have charged the members twice as much as I did. So what is likely to happen is I am going to dole out big shares (except in January when I expect winter to come in and shut the fresh greens growing down for several weeks) and the members are going to be very happy and I am going to rip off the farm by selling food at too huge a discount. This is what I get for throwing the CSA together so quickly-I did not think out all the minute details. Ah, c'est la vie.

This is not all bad. We are getting additional income from the CSA that we would not have gotten otherwise and low cost with lots of food should make all the members happy campers and thus loyal customers and repeat CSA members. And this is making me think hard about the details of a main season CSA

So what did the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm CSA members get this week?

They got:

2 pints of strawberries
3 leeks
4 peppers
1/2 pound baby heirloom lettuces
1 pound Napa cabbage
1 small bag of either tarragon, thyme or dill
3 heads of heirloom garlic
1 bunch Easter egg radish
1 charantais melon
1 pound turnip greens
2 pound keiffer pears
2 pound Dr Matthews apples
1 pound yellow onions


Which is worth $45 if I were to sell the stuff at the store or farmer's market. Great deal for the CSA members but not a great deal for Boulder Belt Eco-Farm if Boulder Belt Eco-Farm wants to be economically sustainable (and we do, otherwise we go out of the farming biz, sell the farm and get jobs as Wal-Mart greeters or fast food "cooks". Okay it probably would not be that bad). Now all that said, the winter CSA and it's huge shares will not shut down the farm. But if I were to continue to do this for into the spring summer and fall we could end up in financial difficulty.

I have learned in the 15 years of selling what we grow is underpricing one's harvest is a sure fire way to put yourself out of business (as can overpricing. Setting prices is an art and a science)

Boulder Belt CSA Lives

So I did something I did not think I would do again for a long time if ever. I started up the CSA again. The market season ends for us in less than 2 weeks and the store has been dead for the past month and it is not looking like there will be carloads of people flocking to the store to buy fresh and local produce in November so I got a bit desperate the other morning thinking about how we have quite a bit of stuff planted for fall winter sales along with long storage items like garlic, onions, potatoes, etc., and no real market for it all.

So I thought why not see if I can get any interest in a short winter CSA so I sent out an email to everyone on the official boulder belt email list and within an hour had 5 seriously interested people and within 4 hours 4 of the five had committed (and I believe the 5th potential member is a go as well).

The ressurection of the CSA upset Eugene for a while but he seems on board with it. He's worried that we won't have enough food and if we were going the entire winter instead of November through mid January I would agree. But a 6 week CSA should be no problem for us. I also told him there would be no delivery so none of us have to drive food anywhere. The members will come here and pick up their food. And hopefully the members will take advantage of being physically on a farm and walk around and see the sights.

My ressurecting the CSA with a short winter affair now has the two of us thinking about doing the CSA pretty much year round and replacing the Tuesday market with the CSA. If we can get 10 members at $25 a week we will be making more than what we averaged this season at the Tuesday market. And we won't have to pack up stuff in the van, drive 30 minutes to Oxford and unpack it. Set up our farmers market stand, sell food in all weather, repack the stuff, load it back in the van, drive home and unload before we can relax at 9pm or so. If we can sign up more members, even better. But with the "you have to drive out here to get the food" condition I don't really expect to get more than 10 to 20 members for the summer season.

I really got burned out on doing the CSA and killed ours about a year ago (or was it two?). The CSA had become a delivery service and was not doing what I wanted it to do, which is to connect eaters with the farm. If we deliver the food and the CSA members never come out to the farm how can they connect? It got so bad over the years that we did not even know all our members. They would sign up through the web via our Local harvest Store and come by the drop point and get their food. yes we got our money and they got their food but the whole idea about connection simply was not there. Nor was their any community in our CSA (CSA BTW, stands for community supported agriculture). So after 10 years I decided it was time to not do CSA.

So Boulder Belt was no longer a CSA and we were pretty damned happy about the decision. And now I have ressurected the thing but with a deep change. We will not deliver food shares to our members (as has been mentioned several times in this post). They have to come to the farm to pick up their shares and it is my hope when they do they will become engaged in the farm and therefore much, much more engaged in their food and start paying attention to the state of agriculture as a whole. The fact the members have to pick up their shares here on the farm also means no longer will we have mystery members and thus community will be far better served.

Cleaning Red Turnips

People often comment on how beautiful our produce is but it did not start out that way. What you see at the farmers market or on the sales floor of our store is the result of many hours of wet muddy work on my part (Eugene does some post harvest/cleaning of produce but I do most of it-like 85%). The produce generally comes in muddy.

Some things, like these red turnips are dirtier than other things like tomatoes or peppers which hardly ever need washing


I had 6 crates of red turnips to clean and what you see here is a crate of turnips yet to be cleaned up, a compost crate over stuffed with turnip greens that were not usable and next to the pears in the corner turnip greens that were sellable being put aside to be cleaned after the turnips got washed.


Some turnips that have had their greens removed and have been tossed in the wash water.
The wash tub late had about 10x as many roots as are shown in this photo.



The finished product. A crate of beautiful, clean turnips ready to go in the fridge for storage so we can sell them for several weeks. They will store beautifully in the fridge for about 3 to 4 months but we will likely sell them out well before that.

Selling to Miami University

Yesterday sold 120 pounds of sweet heirloom onions to Miami University. MU is doing a huge local food dinner on Thursday Sept 18th and Boulder Belt onions will be a part of that dinner. This is about the 5th time we have sold food to Miami since David Lodge became university president and enacted a local food initiative with the Miami's food service.

I think it is way cool to sell food that I grow to my Alma mater. I am still under Mother Miami's wing it would seem.

Labor Day

Happy Labor Day. I wish farming allowed us to take this holiday off, but sadly, there is harvesting to do, food to put up and other late summer activities to do. Farming means rarely having a day off during the season (for us that is April through November). We are slaves to the farm but that is what pays the bills, allows us to put new windows in the house and eat like royalty

If it would rain we could kick back (and we could really use a day or two of rain). But unless Hurricane Gustav comes up this way as a heavy rain event towards this weekend I don't see us getting rain for at least another 10 days. So we work; harvesting, putting food by, marketing, tilling, planting, seed saving and all the other fun and glamorous things we small farmers do.

The good news for us is the store is NOT open today so we actually can kick back more than normal. Mondays, after all, are our (ahem) day off, meaning we don't do any marketing and sometimes we go away from the farm to shop for necessary items, often in Richmond, IN (our version of "the big city").

Days off do not often mean no farm work. I know apples, pears and leeks need to be picked/pulled. There are also greens such as chard, parsley and basil that will need to be brought in this morning for market tomorrow. We would harvest these thing tomorrow morning but tomorrow morning we have to go to the bank, post office and run other errands before going to the farmers market because many of these places are closed today for the holiday. So we are switching up the harvest schedule a bit so we can get everything done.

Maybe we will go fishing this afternoon evening, we have not made time to fish the pond in months. We have not had time, it seems, to do anything but deal with farming and its' myriad of aspects since May. I will be glad when fall arrives and the work load goes way down for a couple of months.

Onions, Onions, Onions

Sunday I harvested about 120 pounds of huge red onions from a single 50' x 4' bed and still have about 1/3 of the bed yet to bring in. Yesterday I harvested five 50 pound boxes of Ailsa Craig onions and Eugene got an even heavier box of Boulder Belt Sweets. We still have another 5 beds to harvest of the sweet onions (so another 20 to 25 bushels) plus a of bed of yellow onions.

I would say the average weight of the onions is 1/2 to 3/4 pounds with a lot of 2 to 3 pound onions (they are ginormous). Last year, a droughty year, the average weight was around 1/3 pound with a few onions getting close to a pound. I now wish we had entered our onions in the county fair as we have several that are twice the size of the onions that won the largest onion class at the fair.

Last year the sweet onions were a failure-the seed did not germinate well in the winter and most died over the long hot and dry spring and summer. I believe we ended up with 10 small to almost medium sized onions So this year we bought fresh seed and over planted assuming we would not get the perfect season for growing alliums. The result is 10+ beds of gorgeous, huge, great tasting onions

The big question is what will we do with a ton of sweet onions that in 2 months without refrigeration will start to go bad. I am hoping we can hook up with a few restaurants and Miami University food service and move some quantities out the door. We have a situation with the onions with which I am not completely comfortable- we have the onions but we do not have great markets for all that we have raised. It is never good to raise a crop with no market for it but than we were not expecting to have such a great onion year.

A Short Tuesday

Yesterday, being Tuesday meant we had a farmers market in Oxford. So we got up early and did a lot of harvesting, washing, bagging and bunching in order to get various produce items ready for market before 2:30pm.

Around noon a woman stopped looking for berries. She wanted to know if we were open and I said no. She wanted to look around the store to see what we had to offer and I told because we are not open on Tuesdays I did not have the sales floor set up. that most things were stored away in the back but that I could still sell her what ever it was she wanted. She wanted strawberries and red raspberries so I grabbed her a box of each and she went on her way. I continued getting things ready for market.

It was good she stopped and bought some berries as we have a lot of raspberries and they are showing no sing of letting up. every day dither Eugene of I go our to pick the berries and we say "well tomorrow there should be less. It looks like they are beginning to slack off." And the next day we go out and pick more than the day before. We were thinking when the Japanese beetles exploded, which they have done in the past 5 days, they would damage most of the berries and we would have less to pick. That has not happened yet. I am not complaining, the raspberries have been great sellers and will likely allow us to either buy another vehicle (we only have one-the market van and that does not get the best gas mileage in the world) or put a new roof on the barn so it quits leaking when it rains. maybe both if they keep on keeping on.

Any way, at 2:45 I go up to the garden to see what Eugen was doing and to tell him it is time to wrap up his project so we can go to Oxford for the farmers market. he's picking raspberries and still has 6 empty 1/2 pint tills (what we call the berry boxes). So I pick up a till and start to fill it with the biggest and best tasting raspberries we have so far harvested from these bushes (it seems every day they get better). 20 minutes later we have the the 6 tills filled and go back to the store to wrap them and put them in the fridge. Than I quickly load the coolers and crates in the van. I run into the house to change and notice it is after 3pm-we are officially running late. I yell at Eugene to stop whatever he is doing (piddling around) and come in the house and get some dry and clean cloths on (it was hot and very humid so we were both sopping wet after picking berries). We get dressed and in the van and are about ready to leave when Pekar stops by to tell us about his upcoming Birthday party this Saturday. This is a party I have gone to for at least 15 years but over the years it has drawn in more and more people I do not know or want to hang with (a lot of neo-cons and cops). Add to that that our buddy Chuck is having one of his annual parties the same night and he has a pool and a lot of old hippy liberals, most of whom I have known for a couple of decades. So we had to tell Pekar we probably would not make his party. Chuck's party is a lot more fun, better food, better conversation and a pool.

So we got rid of Pekar and got on the road and got to Oxford right around 4pm (so not late). The weather was becoming changeable and the winds were gusting up to 30mph. this was making it hard for Kim Traylor to keep her jewelry from falling to the ground and the Ison's had their shelter damaged when the wind caught it and moved it several feet. We got set up and started selling produce to the public all the while keeping an eye to the sky. Around 6pm, just as our business was really picking up, the sky was looking pretty black and officer Butts, one of the OPD, came by and suggested strongly we close up the market as there was a severe storm coming towards Oxford and was about 15 miles west of us. So everyone packed up their stuff and we all traded food. We got some Lamb and an orange bread and gave out boxes of raspberries in exchange. I dunno where the other went after the short market but we went to the Smokin' Ox for a draft beer and light conversation. while we were there it started raining and the winds came up a bit and it even thundered a little but looking at a weather radar we saw the big storm missed Oxford. it went about 1/2 mile to the south. So it turned out we did not need to tear down early. We justified doing so by telling ourselves it was just rainy enough to keep everyone indoors and we would not have sold anything. After the beer we left the restaurant and headed home and had an early night.

Busy, Busy, Busy

We have been very, very busy the past few weeks. Eugene has been ripping out old plants , tilling the ground where they were and replanting with new crops. Monday he removed several beds of peas and pea fencing, tilled and planted potatoes. I have been harvesting and selling raspberries. I am a slave to the raspberries at the moment. I spend around 3 to 5 hours daily harvesting the things. It's an interesting job as there is a wonderful ecosystem living in the berry bushes. I see many kinds of spiders, Daddy long legs (harvestmen), wheel bugs, pirate bugs all preying on the stink bugs, aphids, worms laid by some sort of moth, japanese Beetles etc.. The birds have surprisingly, not done a lot of damage to the raspberries, maybe because there are so many that even if they are eating a lot I am not noticing it.

Along with harvesting raspberries we are also picking kale (except the dinosaur kale that has pretty much died-We think because it has been too wet), broccoli, peas (which take almost as much time to pick as the raspberries), turnips, rutabagas, basil, parsley, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, garlic, scallions and a few strawberries.

On top of all that the rain has lead to many weeds so someone has to hoe and pull weeds. Eugene has been doing the bulk of that work though I pull weeds when I harvest out of beds that have a weed problem.

And if all that work is not enough we have to market the crops. We have markets 6 days a week right now though I am thinking of closing the store either on Wednesday or Sunday (even though we do good sales on both of those days) just so we have an extra day to get stuff done in the garden and also off the farm as we have errands to run just like everyone else and lately it has been difficult to schedule trips to the bank, grocery, post office (they don't deliver out here). the good news is even though we are insanely busy business has been excellent so at least we are getting minimum wage for our efforts (in the past were doing well to make $2.50 an hour-farming has not been a well paying profession since the 1920's)

I will be happy when work slacks off a bit. if you don't see any new entries to this blog for a while this is why.

Almost Summer

It's the last dawn of spring 2008. It is cool, pink to the east and the birds are singing. The full strawberry moon is setting to the southwest. By 8pm this evening we will have passed the summer solstice.

For us this means more never ending work. Peas, broccoli, zucchini, strawberries, raspberries, radishes, red turnips, etc. to harvest. Tomatoes to tie. Carrots, onions to hand weed, squash, kale, broccoli, etc. to hoe. Leeks and potatoes to be hilled. Beets to be thinned. Everything to be foliar fed a combination of water soluble kelp powder, fish powder, Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap and GSE for fungal problems. More planting to be done such as the last potatoes to put in the ground, winter squash seeds to replace the seeds that did not work or. More carrots, arugula and other crops will go in as things like garlic and onions come out in July. Row covers to be put back on the crops every time there are strong winds (almost daily this spring). And we have to sell all this stuff on top of maintaining the market garden and believe it or not marketing takes at least as much time as the growing.

For us farmers, when it is summer the livin' ain't easy at all

A Typical Day

Today Eugene spent the morning getting half frozen beds hoed and prepped for planting seeds like spinach. The soil is very wet from all the rain/snow we have had over the winter so getting the early beds prepped has been a bit of a challenge. But we have found if you work the soil while it is partially frozen you do not destroy the tilth and the worked soil can dry out a lot more quickly than leaving it alone.

While he was doing that, I yanked 36 leeks out of the ground for an order for Miami University. Miami (of which I am an alum) which has started buying local food in the past 6 months or so. We sold them food last fall for a special dinner for the president of the University but did not go through the official channels to do this sale. It was just Frank Page, the Marcum Center Chef and an old friend who came out to the farm to buy Cornish hens and some other items. this time the order was from Paula Greene, the Associate Director of Dinning Services at Miami. So this meant paper work had to be filled out and filed and official looking invoices printed out (which I did not know until this morning my iMac has some great templates for invoices that add up your total and everything-sweet!). Around 2pm a van arrived from MU and the order of leeks, potatoes, rutabagas, garlic and parsnips was picked up. This was a timely order for us as the taters and rutabagas would not have made it to the next farmers market in 4 weeks and even though the parsnips would have been alright it is nice to have sold them out for the year. I would have liked it if Miami had needed 100 garlic bulbs instead of just 12 as they are getting into pretty bad shape as they are wont to do in the spring time.

After Miami went away I checked the seedlings saw the basil had to be put into bigger soil blocks so I made a batch of soil mix and made a tray of blocks and got the basil into them. now the basil can grow big and pretty and in 3 weeks will be ready to go out into a hoop house.

Between the Miami order going out and the end of prepping beds Eugene had started tearing the water pump off the van. He had gone back and forth for about a week as to whether or not he should do the work or take the van into a mechanic and let them do the job. He even made an appointment at Fudge's, the garage closest to us (about 3/4 of a mile south of us). Than on Saturday he decided to go and buy a water pump and put it on himself, canceled the appointment with Fudge's and is doing the work himself. So since noon he has been hard at work trying to get enough of the van apart to get at the old water pump and get it off and replace it with the new water pump. For a while I was "helping" him. Helping seemed to be standing in front of the van keeping the fan from moving too much while he took off bolts so something would come loose (the fan? I don't know nor really care-fixing cars is not my bag, baby). Oh, and listening to him bitch and moan about the whole affair while I kept quiet. I realize from living with him for the past 15 years or so that it is best to let him rant and not make what I think are great suggestions like take the van to the mechanic and let them deal with it. Eugene will get the job done and will feel good about it in the end and we will have the van back on the road. If we do not get the van running again than we are SOL as it is the only running vehicle we own.

But I have great faith in Eugene's mechanical ability. He understands how they work and knows how to use tools, read the Chilton's manual and he is a careful worker. The one thing I do not have great faith in is his getting this job done before the sun goes down. This should not be a huge problem as we don't have anything pressing to do tomorrow other than moving a couple of hoop houses so the cukes, zukes, tomatoes and basil have a place to be planted in April.

So that is our day, pretty typical

First Day of Spring

It was nice yesterday so I went to work. Planted about 100 lettuce seedlings in a hoop house. It was a hodgepodge of varieties-lollo rosa, cracoviensis, marvel of four seasons, Amish deer tongue, forellenschluss and Simpson green leaf. All heirlooms. They should be ready to harvest in 35 to 40 days. Just about right for the first regular season Farmers Market.

Planting lettuce in a hoop house on a sunny day is hot work. I was dripping sweat in minutes and realizing a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans was way too many clothes. But I did not want to get naked (Eugene was okay with the idea, though) so I sucked it up and dripped on the seedlings while I dug my hands in the warm damp earth planting cube of lettuce after cube of lettuce. once in the ground we gave each plant a hit of kelp/fish solution and put up #9 wire hoops and than a layer of row cover over top of them.

After that was done I went in for lunch and did some business with Miami University which is getting into supplying local foods to their numerous dining facilities. they have a local foods dinner coming up next week and needed root vegetables so we have sold them all our remaining taters, rutabagas, parsnips and about half of the leeks we still have in the ground and a dozen heads of garlic. After that we will pretty much be done with our winter vegetables. that is as it should be, it's spring after all.

The afternoon was spent cleaning and mulching the asparagus and Eugene pruning the two big and unkempt apple trees. I hate heights. No let me rephrase that, I am terrified of heights. So I don't do ladders or getting up on roofs or things of that nature if I can avoid it. That means if the tall trees are gonna get pruned Eugene has to do it. Fortunately he seems to enjoy climbing around in trees with saws and cutter. More power to him.

I stayed on the ground and spent the afternoon yanking dead asparagus canes out of the ground and putting them into a pile. I really should have worn gloves as the things will give your hands a lot of tiny cuts. I knew that going into the job and yet I went with naked hands and now regret that decision. Cleaned up 6 50' beds than went in to wash the cuts on my hands and rub them with shea butter. My hands were really sore, not so much from the cuts (though those did and do hurt) but muscle soreness. I had to do some serious yanking on some canes and my hands were not used to that kind of abuse (but they will get used to it soon enough). The shea butter helped my hands a bit and I went back to the garden to finish the job by digging up some of the perennial weeds which was not all that much fun with sore hands and heavy waterlogged soil. But I got many weeds extracted and than started cutting open bales of organic straw and spreading it on the 6 beds occasionally picking out thistle down and entire flower heads. This is a hazard with using certified organic straw-there tends to be a bit of thistle seed in it but with my sharp eyes I can usually get 95% of it out. I really do not want to get a thistle problem in the asparagus beds if I can help it so it pays to be alert when using the Filbrun's straw.

Got done with the mulching around dusk and picked some tiny heads of lettuce that overwintered under a row cover and were basically forgotten and assumed dead. They were not dead and quite delicious. And it looks like they will grow into nice sized heads of marvel of four seasons and buttercrunch. I also found a patch of cilantro that made it through winter and should get nice in the next 2 or 3 weeks. went back to the house and star fed the dogs than made dinner of brats from the Filbruns hogs and the lettuce and some scallions we over wintered. A locally grown meal except the buns and condiments.

Took a long hot shower and rubbed my now very sore and swollen hands with arnica, watched Lost and went to bed. Over night the arnica did wonders to my hands and today they are hardly sore at all. It's amazing stuff.

It was a good way to usher in the vernal equinox

March Winter Market

Eugene selling produce to happy shoppers

We did a farmers market last Saturday, March 15, the Ides of March. Fortunately no ancient Roman rulers were dispatched at the market.

It was the quietest of the winter markets despite the weather being almost decent. It was a bit below freezing with a thick fog but compared to the heavy snows and very cold, windy weather the other winter markets have had, this was almost nice. But despite the nearly decent weather there was still the fact that Miami University had just started Spring Break and that tends to drain a large percentage of the population of Oxford.

Pia Terranova Selling her incredible artisan breads to hoards of eager customers

That said, we were able to sell a lot of food and made nearly as much as the February market even though we had fewer items to sell. Unlike the last market, we had almost no greens for this market because the voles helped themselves to the spinach under row cover and most of the other greens we have been picking over winter have decided it is spring in the hoop houses and have gone to seed. The winter spring mix was at it's end. We did get several pounds of it for market but that was the last cutting of that bed. Pity, as that also means we go without salad for a bit. We harvested twice as many leeks as the Feb market and sold all but 5 and we had scallions which we did not have at any of the other winter markets.

Seth Filbrun selling organic and pastured meat to a steady line of people

I have been impressed with all the vendors this market brings out in the winter. There are 4 of us growing and selling produce, 2 bread makers, 1 meat seller, 2 soap makers, a potter, a cheese maker and a couple of folks selling a hodgepodge of stuff from eggs to cat toys. There was even a goat in attendance (a kid really). I believe there were ten stalls at this last market. We have a group that is getting good at having things to sell all winter long. This is especially tricky for us produce growers with out using heated greenhouses, which is very expensive. But we have 2 farms, us and Locust Run/Harv Roehling that are very good at season extension and winter growing.

The next, and last, winter market should have more people and a lot more greens as we have been planting a lot of head lettuce (something like 8 different heirlooms), arugula, spinach and spring mix along with radishes and scallions for April. We may also have asparagus and chives, ready to go by than. After that market we start our regular season two weeks later on May 3rd.

Wake Up America

This is written by a cyber friend and fellow farmer Alan Bishop who has a diversified farm in Southern Indiana. You can respond directly to him (and visit one of the better farm/garden forums on the world wide web at Home Grown Goodness

Wake up America!
Your local farmer, produce suppliers, and mom and pop stores need you more than ever, and chances are your going to need them!

A call to end “Big Box” mentality in America!
Written by: Alan Reed Bishop of Bishop's Homegrown and Hip-Gnosis seed development.
February 28, 2008


Hey America, it’s time to wake up! Your dollar value is dropping, your waists are expanding and you’re a generally unhappy bunch of folks from what I have seen. And that my friend is from the mouth of an American himself. Alan Reed Bishop.

I’m not here to berate anyone, surely what I’m about to say even applies to myself and I’ve got a lot to learn so that I too don’t sound like a hypocrite. What I’m here to say is something that probably won’t set so well with many blue collard American folks, but it is the truth. A hard truth that if not faced will bare the consequences of an even more uncertain future.

What I’m here to ask, is just exactly how long will it take the fact that we are destroying our own culture, food supply, and future by shopping at the corporate owned big box stores, to set in? You may not realize it, but every time you drive to your local Wal-Mart, Meijers, K-mart, Home Depot or whatever and drop one of those dirty dollars on the counter, you are further eroding the very culture and substance of the American way of life. How many news reports about poisonous toys and unsafe food do you have to hear before you get it? It seems so obvious. Many of you may think that loosing the mom and pop owned five and dimes is of little consequence to your bread and butter, but look what happened to their bread and butter when you took your dollar elsewhere, and guess what, other consumers suffer due to your bad decisions as well, being forced to pay higher prices for lower quality products and food. A damn shame if I do say so myself.

In my profession I’ve seen it time and again. The local produce business can be quite fickle at times, particularly when it comes to un-informed customers. Now, don’t get me wrong, people will have to eat regardless, and I will be able to stay in this business on that fact alone, however the hurt is really being put on the local farmers and co-ops by the Wal-Marts and Jay-C-Food stores of the world and their supposedly “organic” produce, and perhaps more importantly, you the consumer are feeling the burn as well. Prices on organic food keep on sky-rocketing while quality keeps sinking. Perhaps you believe that the much coveted “organic” label actually means something to the big companies who use different names to market “organic“ versions of their products? If so, you‘d be dead wrong. You see, the USDA and the Corporations of the world don‘t care about what the word “organic“ means as long as it equals money in the pocket. That‘s why there are 35 non-organic substances allowed in the production of USDA “Certified Organic“ food production. Thirty five substances which may or may not be any better for you than conventional products. Thirty Five substances which may or may not have been outlawed in other countries around the world due to their links with rates of cancer and environmental damage. Thirty five substances that mono-culture farms half the world away and in your own backyards would rather you never know about.

I’m not here to bash “Organic farming” at all, as a matter of fact I consider myself to be an Organic farmer in the truest sense of the word. In that my produce and products are produced and protected using only the most natural of methods and minus gas to local venues and diesel for my tractor, my carbon foot print on this farm is pretty small. The USDA, big box stores, and corporate agriculture however don’t see “Organic” in this way, as a matter of fact their measure of the word “Organic” would be much easier summed up in monetarily inspired numbers. As anybody knows, self sustainable, nutritious, and organic food is right up my alley and I try my hardest everyday of my life to further improve my systems of delivery, production, and self sustainability in an attempt to treat the earth and it’s inhabitants with the utmost respect and dignity while also providing a premium product LOCALLY, and therein lies the problem.

You see, when you walk into Wal-Mart and see those big blue organic labels, your looking at a lie. Your looking at a money grubbing scheme to both take your money for a sub-par product, run local farmers out of business, and further erode the meaning of the “organic” label, while at the same time making you feel all warm and fuzzy inside because you just bought something “organic”. So, what’s the problem with that organic food? Well there are a lot of problems with it. Much of that “organic” food comes from other counties around the world, particularly third world countries where “organic” standards are much less observed and regulated. Another problem is that there are several organically approved, yet none the less dangerous chemicals that are allowed to pass as suitable for “organic” production systems and in the preparation and processing of those foods, mostly because the USDA Organic law is catered to large mono-culture farms. And last but not least, most of the “organic” food that your buying on those nasty, dollar inflated Wall-Mart shelves that is actually grown in the USA is grown by large corporate farms, owned by multi-million dollar companies that you already know well by their more common brand names, in systems that would make a septic sludge pond look organic, by folks who have little to no respect for local farmers and business and the local economy,environmental concerns and health of the consumer, and to boot the food is then shipped hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away to those big ugly boxes, effectively leaving a carbon foot print so large it should immediately affect the value of that food as “organic” to any clearly thinking human being. And yet many people continue to shop in these huge emporiums of low-grad crap.

Do you know how many times that market farmers hear the phrase, “well, I’ll go to town and buy that at Wal-Mart cheaper.” ? Does that even make sense to anyone? You’d rather eat poisonous food from 1,000 miles away than to pay an extra $0.25 for quality, local products that you know support the local economy and that you can trust? Not to mention the fact that you are only lowering the value of the dollar and putting wealth and power in the hands of countries which are not exactly on friendly terms with us? I mean to me it doesn't make any sense, you would rather buy food from someone you don't know from a thousand miles away than to actually talk to and see the face of the very person who grew the food? This country is a long strange trip indeed!

I can understand now why so many little mom and pop stores have shut down. People stop supporting them and drive to town, paying more for gas, inflating the economy of the rich corporate stockholders and countries with horrible track records like China, while depleting our own country of natural resources, a healthy lifestyle, community, and yes even culture. For as much as a mom and pop store, a farmers market, or a local feed mill is a source for material goods it is also a source of knowledge and local and regionalized culture. Not only that, but I get a distinct impression that the materialism of this country drives one even more so to go out and buy the latest fashions and gas guzzling vehicles, so one can be trendy and “fit in” while at the same time pretending to “know“ and “care“ about global warming, politics, and the economy. Well America you go ahead and keep drowning our economy, keep pumping yourself full of dangerous chemicals, keep saying that the big box stores are good for us, keep thinking that you need all that crap that you waste your money on, keep playing into the game, keep destroying your history and culture, just keep right on conforming. Soon we can just go ahead and close down all the mom and pop stores, replace everything with “organic” McDonald’s and Taco Bells, put a big Wal-Mart on every street corner and change the name of the United States of America to The Amalgamated states of Conformity. Me, well, I’m going to do the best I can to inform myself and those around me to make the right decisions while meanwhile continuing the god given work that I am doing and not pretending to be anything I am not. I’ll be your valuable market farmer, the source for your healthy food and lifestyle, your alternative to “New America”, I’ll just keep right on being the plant breeding, worm ranching, truly organic, seed saving, hill-Billy, ridge running farmer that I have been, and when the shit hits the fan, I’ll be sure to plant a little more for the extra needy and pray that those of you that have caused this can take the crash course in survivalism to protect yourselves and your families from the terrorism that you have inflicted on your own country.

So, here is my question, who are you going to turn to when things take the deep downturn we are headed towards? Is it going to be the mom and pop stores you put out of business? The farmer that couldn’t afford the tools he needed to get the job done?

Really, we have no one to blame for our health, our economy, our loss of morals and our horrible leaders other than ourselves. We have lost sight of what made this country great. Local culture and ideas. Self sustainable family owned business that care as much about the community as they do the money that they make. Independent people with independent ideas who stand up for what they believe in! When the last family farm falls, will you be there to say, this is our fault?


P.S. If you don’t believe that this country is in a sad state then take the time to rationalize that instead of working on national issues, congress is currently more interested in holding hearings regarding steroids in sports. You tell me, where are the priorities?