The Wizard of Oil

I have tried to stay away from pure anti Bush lefty political postings that do not have something to do with food and farming but I could not resist writing about the site The Wizard of Oil. This is one of the best things I have ever seen on the web as far as political parodies are concerned.

Okay a bit of background on me-I have read the complete Oz series, at least I think I have I have read over 55 Oz books in my life, most being 1st editions that my grandmother had lying around her house for us kids to read when I was young. I have probably seen the movie, The Wizard of Oz 50 times (and this does not count watching it via tape or DVD). I am a cerified Oz Nut, mavin, fanatic, etc..

I have studied this stuff and this parody lives up to the legend of Oz beautifully

Just say No To OP Seed Patents!

"One Seed At A Time is seeking out and collecting samples of the heirloom varieties that are currently being raised and banked by farmers and gardeners in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Tennessee, and banking these seeds both here in the Southeast and also at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah,
Iowa. They'll also be regularly growing out all of the collected varieties at least every five years to ensure their viability today and for generations to come.

One Seed At A Time will also be combating the patenting of our
heritage seeds by huge corporations. As you read this, the largest seed companies in the world are busy patenting all of the open-pollinated varieties of vegetables, flowers, and grains that they can. The major seed companies of the world have already patented thousands of open-pollinated varieties. As of now, the only way to keep a public variety from being patented by the largest seed dealers in the world is to document it and preserve a sample, as the One Seed At A Time project will do.

Seed saving organizations and foundations from around the country
have indicated they are interested in supporting this project, but for it to succeed, we also need support from folks like you. All donations to the project are tax-deductible. To make a donation, you can write a check to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association with the words "Seed Bank" on the memo line or click here- http://www.savingourseed.org . "

Early Morning Storms and Nate (a wide ranging ramble)

Nate, the cause of my insommnia this morning.

I have been up since 3am sitting with Nate the not so small nor young puppy, who is scared of thunder but doesn't want us to know he is scared by thunder so he covers this fact up by running around and barking at it. He knows if he barks long enuff and loud enuff the thunder will eventually run away, at least it has so far in his short life. But this thunder has been stubborn, hanging around and booming intermittently for the past 3.5 hours.

I did get to watch bad TeeVee in the wee hours of the morning while holding and soothing Nate so he would not worry so much and not bark and wake Eugene up again.

I saw Elimi-Date™ (called Limo-Date for this episode) I watched the "Farm Show" I think it is really called Town and County Living or some such. It is the last bastion of agriculture on non cable TV ('cept for a couple of new shows on PBS that showcase small "hobby" farmers sponsored by Monsanto a company that wants to see the demise of this kind of farmer, 'specially us organic types that do not buy their products. So they sponsor programs such as NAIS, but I digress). I learned that bird-flu is bad, Wal-Mart is going organic and soybean rust is still a problem for conventional and GMO farmers (but it is not a big issue for the organic soybean growers) and that we need to watch our kids around farm equipment and livestock and especially ATV's which kill thousands of children each year. Why that is more than all the people killed by raw milk in the past 100 years (I add this because I deleted a post from an unfortunate individual that likes to post anti-organic and small farm opinions here and he said I was irresponsible for posting the Raw Milk Under Attack missive because raw milk kills people. I doubt he will come back and tell me that ATV's should be outlawed because they kill thousands each year. Nor would he think the feed lots and meat packing plants should be shut down because they kill hundreds each year and sicken tens of thousands annually. Nor does he discuss the damage caused by farm chemicals to the environment and us humans. But he loves to go after local and organic foods. Wotta putz).

After getting my fill of bad early morning TeeVee I got on the 'puter and did things, interrupted occasionally by Nate whining or getting up and running to the back door to look at the pouring rain and whine some more. About 1/2 hour ago we got some particularly loud thunder which he had to bark at a bit (but I insisted he not bark at it fully).

Our other dog, Arlo, got up after I did when he sensed that Nate might be getting attention and came down stairs and started mooching in on the love-fest. Soon I had to send him away because he was pushing Nate out of the way which got Nate nervous and which causes him to bark at the storm (which is what I wanted to avoid and my whole reason for getting up insanely early).

And now I am waiting for the coffee to finish brewing and I am covered in dog hair (it is spring and they are both shedding, a lot)

The whole reason this is happening is because a warm front has come up from the south and stalled right over my head and there are storms riding up this boundary from west to east soaking southern Ohio and Southern indiana. We have had copious amounts of rain since thursday and it looks like we will get at least another 48 hours of rain. After that it gets colder and it may snow by the week's end (just in time for the March edition of the Winter Market in Oxford).

Well it is time to get coffee and start on breakfast-Biscuits and Gravy made with locally raised organic pork (but the sausage is not organic because it has nitrates added)

It's Been a Busy Week...

It's been a busy week in Lake Wobegone...Oh wait that's Garrison Keillor's line from a A Prairie Home Companion which airs live Saturday evenings at 6pm on most public radio stations across the USA.

Lets start again. It's been a busy week here at Boulder Belt Farm. Spring is here (The whistlepig was wrong!) and we have stepped up the work load a bit (we are not in full swing yet but we are getting there. It has been a rainy but warmish week which has made working in the market garden a bit hard to do but we did have dry weather Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and so Eugene was able to get the beds we need for strawberries and asparagus tilled (plus a couple of more ready for spinach and lettuce) so now all that needs to be done is getting irrigation and landscape fabric mulch put down on the strawberry beds so they will be ready for the strawberries when they arrive on March 15th (The Ides of March what killed Julius Caesar. Okay Brutus Killed Caesar on the Ides of March).

We got many thing started this week. We planted a bed of spinach which should be ready for the last winter market in April. I finally got the second phase of my onion experiment started by direct seeding a cold frame with 3 kinds of onions and 2 kinds of leeks. Phase 1 of this experiment was planting onion seeds in deep pots rather than into flats filled with soil to see if we would get bigger seedlings (so far the answer seems to be YES). Now I want to see if the seeds planting into the garden will be stronger seedlings than those in pots.

I also planted in soil blocks to go under grow lights (I use plain old fluorescent lights as they work just as well as "gro lights™" at about 1/3 the cost), a second round of lettuce (Salad Bowl, Lollo Rossa, New Red Fire and Nancy) , 4 kinds of tomatoes (yellow Taxi, Moscovich, Early Big Red and Sunsugar) that will go into a hoophouse for an early harvest sometime in June. Two kinds of celery (Ventura and Red ventura), fennel and artichokes from really old seed that I will be very surprised if we get any germination out of.

Yesterday, Molly, a Miami Student and also the current Market master of the Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown (a market I worked on from its' inception and later was a board member until this past November), came out to help us for the afternoon. Despite intermittent heavy downpours (it is spring after all) we managed to get a lot done with her help. We moved an old hay wagon that had been sitting where sever beds need to go since we bought the place to a new location where it will not be in our way (but it has not been moved to it's permanent and yet to be decided location).

After moving that we went into the hoophouse and finished cleaning up the beds. It was surprisingly wet in the hoophouse and got wetter as we worked. Water was seeping in from the bottom and the more it rained the higher it got. This made raking the beds a bit diffract where they were drenched and or under water. but most of the soil was dry as a bone so we were able to rake the big clumps of weeds out, put down irrigation tape and landscaping fabric mulch over top and get the edges of that dug into the ground to the mulch is reasonably tight. In 2 weeks we ought have the crops that will be going into that house-Cucumbers and specialty zucchini ready to go into the house so we will have early cukes and zukes for market. We try to get these crop ready to go at least 6 weeks before anyone else has such items to offer at market.
It was fun working with Molly and she helped us get a lot done in a short amount of time (about 4 hours).

Today it is supposed to be sunny early and than rain some more this afternoon and evening. It will be too wet to any outside work but we plan to make a few flats of soil blocks and plant some cucumber and zucchini seeds. After we are done with that we will run some errands in town and perhaps look for ancient human artifacts (aka "arrowheads") in the garden beds since the heavy rains have washed the soil in the beds and things have been exposed.

Raw Milk under Attack in Ohio

A couple of days ago I received an email with horror stories of what the ODA (Ohio Dept. of Agriculture) is doing to farms selling raw milk via "Cow Shares". Basically the ODA is aggressively seeking them out and shutting them down often using bogus reasoning.

Than last night right before bed I see a story on the local FOX newz station (I do not trust FOX national news but they are the only news on at 10pm that we can get and we watch it for the weather) about how the State is cracking down on raw milk sales and with the strong implication that raw milk is very bad for our health and that we will be better off consuming pasteurized milk from confined cows fed GMO grains and a steady diet of therapeutic antibiotics and bovine growth hormone (FYI the USA is the ONLY county in the world not to ban rBGH, likely because its' creator, Monsanto, has a lot of pull with both the FDA and the USDA). This report put me in a bad mood and made it hard to get to sleep.

So I got up early this morning and went to the want milk website to see what they had to say about this bad press. To my amazement they were positive because they have an ace in the hole. Here's what Warren Byle has to say about this

The press is beginning to pick up the story of the Raw Milk Prohibition in Ohio. The timing couldn't be better! Here's some recent news.

The ODA continues to move boldly to prosecute an Amish farmer for giving away a gallon of milk to an undercover agent last fall. They are also pursuing actions against other family farms in Ohio.

I attended the Ohio Milk Sanitation Board meeting on Wednesday to request that the ODA work with us toward a resolution to allow raw milk sales in Ohio. While I did have some beneficial discussions with members of the board and ODA staff after the meeting, I received no response to my offer.

Legislation should be introduced soon by Representative Arlene Setzer to legalize raw milk in Ohio.

Thank you to all who have contacted the ODA and/or your legislators to make them aware of the need to resolve this issue.

I don't know if I share his optimism but I was compelled to email my state Rep and Senator about this issue and asked them to co-sponsor Ms Setzer's bill when she introduces it in the near future.

Here is what I wrote this morning and sent off to my state politicians:

To the Honorable ,

I am writing to you today to ask you to support Rep. Arlene Setzer' bill that would decriminalize raw milk sales in Ohio. I am a consumer of raw milk products and it makes me angry that our state has outlawed a healthful food product. raw milk is not the same as pasteurized milk and many people who are allergic to pasteurized milk can drink raw milk.

There has been news about raw milk poisoning people lately. Two people in the Miami Valley who were known users of raw milk products from a farm in Versailles, OH got infected with campybolactor. Now the farm is being sued by the state because the ODA is blaming them for the contamination despite the fact that not one of their milk samples tested positive for campybolactor (or e-coli 157h7, for that matter). Considering campybolactor commonly comes from chicken that has been raised in confinement and rarely ever comes up in milk raw or pasteurized I would want to see further research in this matter before jumping to conclusions and closing down a person's business. To me this is dishonest on the part of the ODA. It seems more like a fishing expedition and they found what they wanted to find, even if what they found is not really reality.

Yes because raw milk has not been pasteurized it can, if handled in an illegal manner, cause sickness but let us not forget that pasteurized and homogenized milk is not without problems and badly handled pasteurized milk can also contain pathogens such as e-coli157, campybolactor, etc.. So can badly handled meat. But we do not hear about big milk processors or packing plants being shut down forever because they made several hundred people sick because of contamination. Seems to be a double standard, the big corps can get a way with murder, sometimes literally but not the independent farmer who will be shut down if even one person comes up sick.

So today I am asking you to research the benefits of raw milk (http://www.realmilk.org) and to become a sponsor of Rep. Arlene Setzer's bill when she introduces it to the Ohio House. To support this bill will mean you are supporting Ohio's small farmer's and Ohio people who simply wish to have a choice as to what kind of milk they drink.

Thank you for your time on this very important issue. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this and to see your name as a sponsor on this upcoming Raw Milk Bill.


If you are an Ohio resident and want to do something to make sure those who want to purchase and consume raw milk than feel free to copy this letter and send it off to your State Rep and Senator.

I guess what upsets me the most is it seems as soon as I find a place to purchase raw milk it gets threatened. I used to use Young's Jersey Dairy over by Yellow Springs, OH but they got their raw milk business closed down several years ago and since than I have been looking for another source with little success until this past month when I signed myself up for a cow share and got my first 3 gallons of milk. And it was good milk too. I have been suffering from heart burn/acid reflux and after a day of drinking raw milk from hormone, GMO and antibiotic free pastured cows the heartburn went away completely. Only to return about 1/2 hour after ingesting factory farmed pasteurized milk. I hope this farm is not forced to cease its cow share program because I don't think I am ready quite to buy a couple of cows of my own in order to get raw milk, butter, cheese, etc.. That and this place is very clean and sanitary, especially compared to another farm I used over a year ago in EC Indiana that was selling raw milk in used containers. Now that was a recipe for disaster and it is farms like that that give the rest a really bad name.

Taxes

It's tax time at Boulder Belt Farm and that means Eugene is in a bad mood for the rest of the day trying to figure out what we owe the gummint. I would help him more but I tend to glaze out when reading an IRS Tax form. I have been helpful in going to IRS.gov and looking up and down loading forms and instructions. I have even tried reading instructions and I was able to decipher the form 8093 instructions (I think, you never really know, though).

Okay Eugene just came in asked me to call up the 8093 instructions again and it turns out I had not deciphered the damned thing and it looks like after doing a couple of hours of work figuring out the form that we cannot take a deduction anyhow.

Welcome to the wonderful world of farm taxes (aka Schedule F, with numerous attachments such as form 8903 and form 4562). The good thing is you can deduct almost anything as a part of your farm business. The bad thing is there is no 1040EZ form to do this. Perhaps if we used a program like Quicken or some other tax application things would go more quickly but I have far too many hard drives go south on me so I do not keep financial or farm records on the computer. These are things far too valuable to risk on a mere machine. Plus I enjoy the act or manually writing down things, of having a pen in my hands and putting thoughts or images down on paper.

Soon enough the figuring will be done and than we will wait until the last minute to write the check and put it in the mail, no sense letting the government use our money any sooner than necessary. especially if they are going to use it for the betterment of the super-rich and an illegal war.

Finding Your Inner Squirrel

Squirrel Name 2.2 (Patent Pending)

So you are in touch with your inner squirrel and want to know your true squirrel name.

Just take our scientific test and submit your name below to discover it.

We accept no responsability for any psychological damge caused by discovering your true name.

Finding your inner Squirrel

I am Commander Fluffyfarts

Some March Pictures

A picture of our market garden, looking west, about 2 weeks ago. Since this picture was taken most of the field has been plowed up. In the center of the image you can see the hoophouse, it's the whitish thing just in front of the trees



A picture of the pond facing north, looking up the hill toward the market garden area (which you cannot see). If it were late spring the hillside would be covered with daylilies.

Harbingers of Spring

The harbingers of spring have started to return. In the past 3 days I have seen 2 killdeer, a soaring black vulture (I have seen this bird every day around 11am flying over the farm) and hundreds of robins taking advantage of the plowed garden beds (our soils are jammed packed with many kinds of earthworms). I have yet to see any redwinged blackbirds yet but they like to wait until it is a bit warmer.

The maple tree in back of the house is just beginning to get swollen leaf buds. I was at a friend's house just north of Oxford yesterday and the trees at her house looked like they would be leafing out in 10 days or so-the leaf buds were BIG and she said the ephemeral green haze that appears in late winter was already there. But the green haze has not yet come up this far north and probably won't for another couple of weeks.

But spring will be here soon enough and than we start to get really busy with planting-both seeds started indoors and seedlings that will need to be transplanted into garden beds. We have started a few things already, heirloom lettuces, a variety of onions and leeks and soon I will get on the early tomatoes. I was going to do them the 1st of the month but it was a new moon, a bad time for planting things that grow above ground so I am now waiting for the 1st quarter and warmer weather (which luckily may well coincide if the local weather people are at all on the ball. Of course they have been covering their asses a lot lately with new forecasts every 12 hours or less)

Karma Tosses Us a Bone

Yesterday things got even more active with the road work. Lots of workers showed up and put up more signs and around 11am the supervisor of the project yells at us to get our attention and than the next thing he says is "Hey I know you guys! We met at Pekar's party" (Tom Pekar is a long time friend who has a birthday party every July at his house. I have missed only one in 15 years due to my mother's funeral). And indeed he was correct we had met Bob several times at many of Pekar's parties. So some good karma-we know the boss man of this project that will be going on for the next 8 or so months.

The reason he had yelled at us was so he could get permission to cut back several trees along the road so the traffic lights will be more visible. We gave our okay but wanted as little cut as possible and told him so. He came back about 20 minutes later and said the tree cutters wanted to cut the limbs back to the trunk because that would be better for the trees, we agreed. Than he said he'd ask the tree guys to dump the wood chips on our property and they did when they were done and than said if we wanted more wood chips they would be happy to dump them here on a regular basis.
Way cool.
We can use them for pathways around the farm and in compost (but sparingly-wood can drop Nitrogen supplies in compost and soil dramatically as it decomposes) and in areas where we need a more acid soil (these are chipped pine boughs).

Oh and I asked Bob how the downed flagger was doing. He is alright folks, he has a broken ankle and a busted nose and a lot of bruises but nothing else.

So it looks like Karma has tossed us a bone after being a bit cruel with this road work thing. The fact we have stop lights almost in front of our drive will likely make it difficult for our customers to get in our parking area. But because we are now getting to know the crew I think we can expect some loyal customers from their ranks all season long. And at least they did not close the road and detour everyone away from us (Bob said that was what he wanted and I know the work crew would want that as it would be about a zillion times safer for them). That would have made it hard to start the farm stand this year but would not have killed us since we still have farmers' markets and other marketing outlets but it would added several layers of difficulties to our goal of having a thriving organic foods farm stand in Preble County.

Road Work Starts

For weeks we have been expecting some serious bridge work to start happening but as I reported here about 2 weeks ago, a worker got hit by a pick-up truck and injured (I still do not know how seriously) and that stopped the project dead in its' tracks. Until today Eugene and I were beginning to think they had called off the project altogether (leaving us with a bridge in bad repair). We were wrong.

At 8:30 am there was a guy across the road putting down yellow pin flags showing where the gas line was. Around 11am there was more activity as trucks with blinking lights showed up in the valley where the bridge is. Than a truck with a huge ass auger shows up on the road and drills a big hole (in about 25 seconds) on our slope by the road and than repeats the same thing on the other side. I thought they were putting in power line poles but now I see they are moving the stop lights up the hill almost to our driveway. And the holes are for the telephone poles they are about 20 seconds away from putting in the ground that they will hang the stoplights from. At least I think that is what they are for. I draw this conclusion from the truck in the driveway full of traffic lights. oh and now the fact, that in the time I wrote the last 3 sentences, they got a pole up and in the ground and now a guy is pulling on wires that are attached to two traffic lights.

I am not surprised by all this activity. An O-DOT worker I spoke with on the day of the accident said that the State had majorly messed up where they had placed lights and signs for this project. But the State, until the accident, stood by their incompetent decision of sign and light placement. It turns out no one from Columbus had actually ventured out to US 127 N, Eaton, OH and thus did not know that the road gets pretty scary dangerous going up the 40' pitch. Apparently the topo maps do not do this area justice. They do not indicate that coming south into the valley you are on a blind curve almost until you get to the bottom. And going northbound was even worse because they needed to have signs starting about 1.5 miles from the construction area but started the signs about 1/2 mile from said area which barely gave a driver time to react before he/she is at the traffic lights. Having been in a queue for bridge work on US 127 in Preble county and almost getting creamed by a semi that was not paying attention on a straight away I can see this was a certain recipe for disaster. Shame it took a really nasty accident to make things better. Why the Brass cannot listen to the guys out in the field and pay attention to their requests is beyond me. but they did not and a person had to get badly injured in order to get safer conditions for everyone else.

But in the past two weeks there have been many folks out here from Columbus taking a look and it looks like the O-DOT worker I spoke to was right and now all the signage is being put where it needs to be for the safety of the workers and the drivers on the road.

And now we get about 10 months of stopped traffic at our driveway. this could be unsatisfactory for the farm Stand we plan on opening sometime this spring. than again it will give folks time to take a good look at what we have so maybe this will end up being good for business.

EggplantHead Zen

It is March and the EggplantHead my father gave me in October is still alive, albeit very shriveled. My friend Marge wondered when she saw it if the eggplant would never rot and just shrivel away much like an ancient Chinese Zen Master would. It looks like this is exactly what is happening with the EggplantHead. Not a bit of rot after 5 months in a warm room exposed to direct sunlight. the thing has even beed dropped on the floor many times in the past 3 months due to a curtain over the window where EggplantHead lives most of the time.




A side view of the shrivelled humanoid fruit

The back of the fruithead; note the deep fissures in the skin. We are talkin' some serious dehydration here

Here we have the other profile. The back of the auberginehead has a definate hollow in it. Like an old nag's back

The face of the zen aubergine itself