07.20.08
Great Apprentices…..
I have been so focused on the workload required of my husband and I this season because of the folks we hired who did not fulfill their commitment to us, that I felt I was overly negative of the new “me generation”, so I thought I should post about Apprentices that we hired in the past who were very dedicated to farming/homesteading, were amazing workers, and who have continued to pursue a farming/homesteading oriented career. These apprentices made our farming seasons “easy” in that they were extremely dedicated workers who helped us meet our CSA production goals. They didn’t quit when the work was too hard and they didn’t quit when their backs hurt from working 8 to 10 hour days in the fields with the sun blaring. These are the folks who kept on pushing themselves while understanding the importance of the education we provide, leaving me to believe that we will find many other folks have the same perseverance and dedication to fulfill a commitment given the opportunity!
Mandy, who spent a couple years on the farm, has purchased a farm for herself in Tennessee and is now running her own farm, for us it is very exciting hearing the news from her farm. She has a great barter system in Tennessee with her neighbors and is already growing crops for market, meat birds for her family, and laying chickens for eggs. Her biggest success is Piper, her and Trappers daughter, and Piper is gorgeous and brings great joy to Mandy and Trappers lives! Mandy will be extremely successful because she is VERY hard working and DRIVEN!
My husband just spoke with Tim and Stephanie, who apprenticed with us four years ago, and they just bought land and have big plans for their farming operation. Both Stephanie and Tim were excellent apprentices and they have two lovely children, River and Meadow, and we are certain that Tim and Stephanie will be able to live off the land and earn an income from their farming operation. They are hard working and DRIVEN!
Amelia, who apprenticed with us from Sterling College in Vermont, we learned from the last email we received that she is currently homesteading/farming with her husband and they just had a baby. I am going to make it a point to try and contact her because she had amazing energy, a great mind for farming, and the perseverance to make it living off the land. She taught us much about raising meat chickens for which we are extremely thankful! She is probably farming with draft horses which was her passion!
Marion and Dean who apprenticed with us a few years back is very successful at homesteading. They have a lovely landscaped yard, chickens, a HUGE garden, and also have a beautiful little boy Forest who brings complete joy to their lives.
Thinking back, we might just have been unlucky the last couple years in our interviewing and hiring, but I have believe that we will continue to find people who REALY want to FARM and fulfill their COMMITMENTS!
06.17.08
We want to drop our CSA!
This has been another year of unreliable help for us. Last year was our first year where our farm help left without notice, and it has happened once again this year.
We hired four apprentices in March when we normally have only one with the expectation that 2 of the 4 would stay for the entire growing season. One was expected to return to college and did, but the others got arrested in Asheville for drinking under age, causing another of the three remaining to unexpectedly quite and move to Asheville so they could deal with their court hearings. That left two, one promising to stay the entire season while the other promising to stay until we found a replacement; however, one of them who promised to stay until we found a replacement, mentioned one Saturday morning that “their plans have changed” and they left that day leaving us without the proper amount of help in the peak of our Strawberry season. For a couple weeks we were only able to harvest without getting any other farm work done leaving us in a bind.
We are working exceptionally hard just to keep production up to feed the CSA, that is why we want to drop our CSA, because our “farm help” is crucial to providing a continuous harvest for the CSA. The folks we have been hiring the last couple years have not taken their commitments seriously and we are not sure why.
Our gut feel when these four came, was that they weren’t serious, and we had a few other applicants that we recommended to other farms that would have worked out much better. We asked them after they were here a week, “If you are not serious about this commitment, please let us know, because we have others we could hire.”. Once in the peak of season, it is very difficult to find help for the growing season.
If we are just to grow for market rather than the CSA, then we wouldn’t feel the pressure to work unbelievable hours when folks quit, because it is ”promising food” to folks that puts the pressure on us to work unbelievable hours.
It
02.09.08
What was I thinking?????
I spent the past two days trying to save our garlic and I’m only a third of the way done. I am trying to remove our rye/clover cover crop from the entire garlic bed – that is the cover crop growing between each clove of garlic, and each clove is planted about 6 inches apart, and from in-between the two rows of garlic within the bed – it is a very tedious job.
Normally when planting fall garlic, we begin by broadcasting a cover crop of rye/clover a few weeks prior to preparing the garlic beds. This allows the cover crop to germinate, after which we come through the field with a hilling tool, which makes a nice mounded bed for planting two rows of garlic. In years past, the hilling kills all the cover crop on the garlic beds leaving a nice matting of cover crop between the beds that is mowed periodically through the spring into summer until the garlic is harvested.
This past season we never got around to broadcasting our cover crop in the field where our garlic was to be planted. So when it came time to plant garlic we debated: Should we go ahead and broadcast a cover crop then hill OR should we make beds and just mow weeds in-between the beds? Me being the eternal optimist, thought that the hilling would throw so much dirt onto the beds that the cover crop wouldn’t germinate, so I talked Carl into broadcasting a cover crop.
The outcome of this devastating experiment was that all the cover crop was thrown on top of the garlic bed, leaving basically nothing in-between the beds, but germinating perfectly right where the garlic is planted. I have been told by cover crop experts that burying the seeds too deep prevents them from germinating but I guess all our seed went near the surface. So now I need to save the garlic. I am asking myself why we planted 1350 row feet of garlic? If this years garlic crop is harvested, which I am praying for, I expect it to taste ever so better after all this work. I don’t reckon we will make this mistake again!
02.03.08
Freeing the Strawberries
I just spent the entire weekend freeing roughly 600 strawberry plants from Henbit (Lamium amplexcaule) that is winding it’s way throughout the strawberries making it rather difficult to remove the henbit rooting system without damaging our strawberries. I just took a package of frozen strawberries out of the freezer so that I remember just why one would spend two days crawling along the ground trying to remove the weeds from the strawberries. . I will certainly enjoy a few unfrozen, wonderfully sweet berries then perhaps a smoothie. I am praying that we have a decent crop this year because last year we experienced a late frost and drought conditions resulting in a reduced yield. At the moment the leaves are very brown perhaps from the cold weather when we had temperatures hovering around 5 degrees for a few days.
One thing about winter weeding, I don’t feel the need to push myself like in summer when 4 acres of crops need weeding, because we only have an eighth of an acre to maintain between strawberries and garlic.. It is nice to go at a slow pace and enjoy the crows, bluebirds, and beautiful mountains!
01.06.08
We live in the most beautiful place!
This past weekend we hiked with our neighbors, the Daltons, along the ridge above our farm. Winter makes for great hiking in the mountains because of the spectacular views the deciduous trees provide us with once they have dropped their leaves.
Thanks to our neighbors, who invited us and guided us on our hike along the ridge, or we might never have made it home the same day. In addition to the views, we encountered the most amazing deer stands, that I hope we can build us one on our farm someday. I didn’t have the camera or I would share with you the design. Next time we hike I will be sure to take the camera.
12.31.07
Is it too late for a cover crop in our greenhouse?
This weekend we just finished pulling out the spent plants from this years greenhouse crop of peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers and basil. We have gotten in the habit each year, normally around mid December, to pull all the spent plants and trellising out of our greenhouse so that we can plant a cover crop. (We use cattle panels for trellising.) For the past several years we tilled the earth, seeded our cover crop of cereal rye and crimson clover, then we watered the cover crop in. During the winter, without any heat, we get pretty good growth from our cover crop which adds decent organic matter and a source of nitrogen back to the soil.
Last year we did an experiment of seeding our cover crop directly into our rye mulch without any tilling. We were amazed at how great the germination was that this year we did not till the earth but seeded our cover crop directly onto the rye mulch.
It will be an interesting experiment to see if we get enough growth before early April when we transplant these crops for another season of wonderful veggies. Every year we consider growing a crop of greens for our “winter garden” but decide that we need to re-furbish the earth. Someday we will grow for ourselves in our greenhouse for a continuous source of greens throughout the winter!
12.16.07
Making Wethers
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| We use a “burdizzo” to neuter our goats. PETA would probably not be happy with us for this type of castration! This method seems to work well for us as it crushes the spermatic cords and requires no tetanus shots, no possibility of infection, and it is a quick procedure lasting around 60 seconds per goat. Our goats scream a little during the procedure but directly after they are bouncing around and eating grain just like nothing happened.
My husband holds the goat while I clamp the burdizzo on each spermatic cord for 30 seconds. We don’t dare do this within the goat fencing or our guard dog, Harvey, would probably try and bite us while protecting the goats. So we bring the goat to the equipment barn away from the herd. We were a little worried about GB this year because he has HUGE balls of FIRE. After his procedure, we could tell he was a little sore, then that evening a few hours later, he wasn’t interested in his evening hay portion. The Next morning I went to feed the goats and GB didn’t want anything to do with me. I am giving him a little grain each morning until he is no longer afraid of me. His brothers did great and still like humans! |
12.10.07
Fencing…..
We chose to use electrical fencing to contain our goats and horses. The problem with electrical fencing is that it frequently needs maintenance; fixing wire that has stretched too much, cutting away trees and brush from the fence line, and cutting down the weeds underneath the wire so that it the electrical current is not shorted out.
Perhaps our neighbor, Arthur, has fencing maintenance figured out. He simply loads some spray in his tractor sprayer and goes along and sprays his fence line. Easy and quick. It seems as though whatever “miracle spray” he uses has a residual affect because it his spray job will work for almost a year before he has to re-spray. Both Carl and I normally spend a few weekends each year on fencing maintenance.
We aren’t quite sure what the “miracle spray” does for the wildlife so we have not decided that approach is best for this farm. Now that we have put off fencing much too long; the goats are once again storming the chicken coop each day eating the chicken’s grain, and now the goats are escaping out of the fencing area only to find our “grain stash’ in our equipment barn. (The equipment barn is not near the goats fencing area; however, the goats still discovered the stash! We are temporarily storing grain in our market van so the goats can’t find it. The goats and rats seem to always find it no mater where it is stored.) Our plan was to do fencing once mid summer but we never found time outside of our vegetable production.
So here it is winter and that is what we have done all weekend; weed eat under the wires, cut away multi-flora roses, and put up new T-Posts in the woods where the wire began growing into the pine trees. We bought this new fancy tool – a weed eater on wheels – so we were excited about this job because we thought we could cut our labor spent on fencing in half. So we brought the cool new weed eater on wheels up to the pasture. But we were WRONG…. We went through 15 strings in just 20 feet because the weed eater would not cut through our weeds. So we ended up using our STHL weed eater that we had just gotten back from the repair shop. Our STHL is so much better after being repaired – we can start it and it will continue running – so I used the weed eater underneath the wire in the goat fencing area while Carl used our D.R. Mower in the horse pasture.
To keep our goats contained, it requires 5 strands of electrical wire, but horses only need 2 strands of wire. Our D.R. Mower works great for the horse fencing because there is enough room between the ground and the wire for the mower, but goat fencing only has a foot between the ground and the wire. Goats are adventurous and always trying to escape.
11.28.07
Lead Paint In Toys….
I just got to thinking about the concept of a “toy” which is mostly for nourishing our souls, versus food, which is to nourish our bodies. Within the last month or so the news has been packed with “toy recalls” for lead paint. I then started thinking of Americans….. We are so concerned about lead in our toys, and for that matter, unsafe toys. We don’t want our children exposed to unsafe toys. When we, as consumers purchase a product, it normally has a label indicating where it was made and lists the manufacture. “Made in USA”… “Made in China”…. “Made in Brazil”… Made by Childcraft.. Discovery… This labeling allows us, as consumers, to make choices in purchasing the goods that we feel comfortable with and that are the best for us.
One thing I feel passionate about is that I believe that our “food” should have a label of origin (where it was grown) or producer.
It is amazing to me that when we go to the grocery store to purchase food for our children, we don’t have labels indicating the origin of the produce, yet that is what we “feed” our children’s bodies with. How can we possibly make a decision and feel comfortable that the food we are feeding our children is any better than those toys that contain lead?
Please write your representatives about requiring label of origin for our food products.