The Wisdom Of Growing Berries Workshop

On Wednesday we went to Columbus Ohio to the 4-H building (or the 4-H mother ship) to the Wisdom of Growing Berries workshop. If you remember we had a farm tour back in August. That was stage one of the Wisdom of growing Berries and this meeting in Columbus was the second and final stage. This was all about sharing our knowledge with beginning farmers and farmers getting into berries. I saw quite a few people I know who are definitely not beginning farmers but I guess felt they needed more knowledge.

I was very pleased to see Kristi Fisher there. We met in 2000 when we both sold produce at the Dayton Second Street Market (which neither of us does currently). We see each other it seems about once a year, though I think it has been about 3 years since our last meeting. Any hoo we had a nice chat about chickens when we should have been talking berries-oh well...

Eugene and I went to the event as "Mentors" and sat on the afternoon panel. I gotta say I learned a from both the mentor panel and the new grower panel. Lots of good insights from both groups. I found that once again I felt kind of behind the other Mentor growers as we have not made good use of extension/OSU research. But considering most of the research is for the chemical farming crowd I have avoided it. But I was made aware that there is much there for the organic growers as well. If nothing else, pictures of pests and diseases and links and references to other sites.

But back to what we did. We sat on this panel of 5 mentor farmers and we were asked three questions and each of us had five minutes to answer each question. Most of us went over time, some way over time. But it was all useful information. After the panel discussion was over we broke into small groups. There were 43 participants plus the panel members so around 50 people in all. I know a few people left before the afternoon stuff started taking down the numbers. Unfortunately we only had about 25 minutes to talk in these small groups. There is so much to say and teach and rarely enough time to do it at these events.

But Sharon Sachs, the woman who put on this event for IFO, at the end had a solution to the not enough time to teach problem-she wants to pair up beginning and struggling farmers with experienced farmers in a mentor program. We have had apprentices and interns on the farm but this is a bit different. In this case we would get paid by the mentee to teach them what we know. it is up to them to initiate the contact and tell us exactly what they want to learn and than we go from there. Several farmers in the room had been on both sides of the table and the # 1 thing I got from this is don't trade work for information. Charge money for the information.

In the past we have done this mentoring thing a bit and always were disappointed because we would trade information for work but found that we spent a lot of time training the person to do the work and in the end it slowed us down too much. these people said if you do trade work for education than have that work be something big and something you do not really want to do like clean out a livestock barn-something you might pay someone an hourly wage to do for you. But do not include any chores that you are teaching. As one guy said he did not want any students pruning his blueberries but he is more than willing to travel to their farm to show them how to prune on their berry plants. In other words he does not want these people working on his farm and making their mistakes on his farm. Good policy.

I have no idea if we will be come mentors to anyone from this event. We are willing but have yet to be contacted

High Anxiety

I have been quite anxious the past 5 days or so and this will likely continue until sometime next Wednesday.

As regular readers know i am doing a workshop at the OEFFA conference this coming Saturday at 2:15pm on pastured poultry. For some reason I have been in a major procrastination mode and until 2 days ago did not even have an outline to work form. That has changed for the better. I now have on my desktop a decent handout out that I will work on today to make it a really nice handout for the workshop, complete with pictures and references.

I have been talking a lot about how to do the workshop with Eugene since Monday. I want to bring in a chicken tractor, fencing, feeders etc., so the participants have more than a general idea about what we are talking about when it comes to raising chicken on pasture. Eugene does not want to deal with hauling a chicken tractor around Granville High School and I don't really blame him but I think we will be able to get the thing in and out of the building without much too do (unless it is too big to get through a door, than we have a problem)

The other thing that has me quite anxious is the fact that next Wednesday I will be getting a tooth implant in my jaw. I am not looking forward to this. it will involve pain and it will likely effect how I eat somewhat. Though probably not too badly as the part of my mouth where this implant is going is already fucked up from a crown and a deep cavity that has recently been drilled badly filled which makes for a painful quadrant on my lower left jaw. Anyhoo, I have noticed each time I have something done to my mouth these days, other than cleaning, I get ever more pain. I am hoping this will not be the case with the implant, but I will not be holding my breath. From what the periodontal surgeon has told me the implant is way better than a bridge for a couple of reasons. 1) It is permanent. 2) because there is a titanium screw implanted in my jaw with a fake tooth affixed to the screw I will not lose bone density (osteoporosis) in my jaw due to a lack of tooth/lack of pressure. Apparently when you lose a tooth or teeth your jaw starts to degrade because there is no pressure on the bone from the act of chewing/grinding/clenching of teeth. This is why dentures slip within 2 years of being prescribed-because the jaw literally changes shape and shrinks. And the same thing happens with a bridge only on a smaller scale as it is just 3 teeth involved instead of the whole shootin' match. there is a third reason for the implant-it is cheaper than a bridge. A bridge costs around $3500US. The implant will cost around $2000US, maybe a bit less

I seem to have a pretty horrifying mouth-my teeth and jaw are not set right. I have already had major periodontal surgery at age 35 (the average person has this surgery at 55 to 65 years of age-I'm a trendsetter!). And I still have 7 baby teeth in my mouth (I had 8, one got horribly infected and pulled and this is why I am getting the implant). I figure by the time I am 60 I will have replaced a lot of my teeth with implants.

I suppose I could get multi-colored teeth or gem chips in each veneer. I have not really thought of that possibility. I have until May to decide since the implant will be toothless for 2 to 3 months while it heals and bonds with the jaw bone.

What color teeth would you get if given this kind of choice?

Hoophouse Workshop This Saturday

We will be doing a hoophouse workshop this coming Saturday at 4pm at Harv Roehling's farm south of Oxford, OH as a part of the M.O.O.N/OEFFA chapter's 1st annual "Let's Get Growing" program. This will be a day full of workshops and farm tours. We will be the last workshop and Eugene plans on putting together one of our hoophouses from scratch starting with bending the metal conduit into hoops and going from there. This may turn into a very hands on demonstration, I dunno. But I do know it will be very informative.

For more information about this program either click on the "Lets Get Growing" link or the title of this entry and you will be taken to the MOON website where you will find all the information you will need.

Snow

We had our first snow this morning around dawn. but because it was above freezing (a balmy 35˚F) it did not stick around and by mid morning it was all rain (with a nice NW wind)

Lovely day.

Ironically on our first snowy day I will be giving a lecture on season extension in Oxford, OH. A bit late for fall season extension (if anyone was hoping this lecture would save their tomatoes, well...) but will give people something to ruminate over for spring/late winter ideas.