RJP Farm Blog

Nice to meet you: reflections on death

2011-12-18T17:52:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, legions of faithful, long-suffering readers. I'm in a new place from the last post, many months ago, with places in between, but those details can wait.

I am living and working with a lot of animals right now, at a place I just moved to this week. We have a good number of pigs, and at the end of the day we were called to load one up to be taken to the butcher in the morning. Winter is coming on and the bounty from the summer season has been mostly already killed, processed, and eaten or sold off, and the prospect of a whole pig being available to us is pretty exciting. Katelyn the other intern and I went off to try to wrangle the animal into the trailer at the end of the barnyard, neither of us having a really clear idea of the best way to do it. I have driven oxen and dairy cows for a total of one full day, and she had helped load a pig before (to my knowledge), but we were game.

We found the pig fitting the description we were given ("the biggest one") after some deliberation and I was standing in the arena in the barn, with he and I still and quiet in the flattest light possible, straw floor reflecting it all, much warmer than the gray sky. The Gloucester Old Spot's ears flop down, almost completely covering their eyes, and the effect is of the pig wearing a mask. I must assume he could somehow see me, though like shaggy dogs, I can't see how. I approached, murmuring regret, and tried to tap him on the rump like I would an oxen. The next twenty minutes would've been pretty comical to bystanders, I imagine: herd-animal handling concepts, as I understand them, kind of worked on this pig, except that I think instead of following social cues the pig just wanted to get the hell away from me.

He was pissed. When he got far enough away he would almost freeze, like when we first met in the barn. Pigs make really unfortunate screeching, screaming sounds when they're hungry, or thirsty, or pissed, or whenever. I really didn't want to stress this animal, but it seemed pretty clear that he was. When I lost control and he'd run to the fences where other groups of pigs were being kept, they all gathered and faced him and each other, looking exactly like a group of people would if they were saying goodbye, or clamoring for help, or commiserating. The other animals were far from indifferent to the activity in the barnyard. We eventually got him to go through the gate, and after that down the channel and into the trailer was easy.

I believe that it's appropriate for humans to eat meat. I believe that any animal should be able to fully express their evolutionary inheritance, Joel Salatin's "pigness." Is it more or less stressful, or ethical, or disruptive to nature for an animal's space and life to be carefully managed and curtailed, or to be subjected to the stress of wild life, and then be hunted, or trapped, and killed? It's my inclination to say that the animal has it better in the latter scenario. It seems like the hunter and quarry meet as a version of equals, consignees in a contract more or less out of the control of either. Both retain their maximum dignity and agency, because each is making their way independent of each other. When the prey is property of the hunter, making her a farmer, the prey has the dignity and agency conferred on him by his owner.

Derrick Jensen observes as much in A Language Older Than Words. He sees the of dominion over animals progressing historically to a belief in the right of dominion over the whole natural world, that the two are philosophical kin. He raises poultry to eat, too, though his methods would be difficult to commercialize. Even so, here with our guard dogs almost all our layers are never shut in and could go anywhere they want.

Poultry seem like a special case, too, at least in this country. Poultry and rabbits can be slaughtered on the farm for sale, the number varying from state to state. As I write this, the pig in question is sitting alone in the stock trailer, deprived of food for cleaner processing. Chickens would have food withheld too, but the trip from daily routine to killing cone would be very short. The pig will have to travel 25 minutes to the slaughterhouse, and this might as well be next door when we look at the availability of processing facilities in the US. It's entirely common for a farmer to have to drive several hours whenever they want to turn an animal into meat they can sell. Maybe selling is itself at the heart of the issue - it is a question of ownership after all (and a question of skill or expertise in preparation, I admit). I won't go down this road because I'm sure that all the questions can be resolved when freed from the concerns of commerce.

And what about us? What is it to take on the responsibility of maintaining the dignity of another creature, and in some cases, whole species? It seems like a lot to take on, if you care about the task. The path of least resistance, aside from abandonment, is to fail to do so. Seems fair to say that the most common advice, lay and expert, would diminish the fullness of the critter's life. This must certainly be true where production is concerned.

I have an aim in mind when asking these questions: my long-term hope is that my future farm will see a highly diverse forest producing lots of food and other products for humans and other animals. Could it be possible to have increasingly-wild animals form another "crop" from this forest, harvested by hunting, kept in balance with the rest of the system? Could this be a production model? I think of the folks now practicing rotational grazing through herding: no fences, just a "predator" or a few on horseback.

Of course, I haven't much compared the flavor of wild animals to their domestic counterparts..

On Friday they arrived

2010-05-25T10:34:00.001-07:00

Planting party pictures soon

2010-05-24T07:40:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday, the 16th, we had about a dozen people here at the farm,
where we dug small hills and planted corn in them; the first phase of
a "three sisters"-style planting, our best approximation of the native
American technique. A month from that date we'll have another party
and add the other two sisters, pole beans and trailing-habit winter
squash. The beans trellis up the corn and fix nitrogen that the heavy-
feeding corn takes up, and the squash covers the ground, suppressing
weeds and reducing evaporation. I've also heard that the spiny squash
plants are unpleasant on the legs of marauding deer, but that they'll
come if they really want. We want to experiment with other trailing
crops in the system, like melons. There will also be scattered plants
that are beneficial in other ways, like radish and amaranth.

Just a couple days before the party I decided to plant onthe hillside
rather than the field in the picture from an earlier post. The topsoil
has been almost totally removed from the large fields and the soil
test has the level of organic matter at 1.2%. Eventually dawning on me
that planting corn there would be an uphill battle and that we might
not have enough compost to make the little hills, the 4.1%, nice-and-
black, south-facing "future forest garden" slope was clearly the
better option. Tracing the shadow line of the large tulip poplar and
eastern white cedars, which are unfortunately toward the south side of
the slope, we still packed a lot of hills and seeds on there. A border
of sunflowers was planted on the north edge. Watered in with fish
emulsion, we called it a day and i led a tour through the woods and to
the far fields. As we walked back on the road and emerged at the main
farm, we were dazzled by how pretty the tesselated pits-and-mounds
were, dotting the hillside, and how they would look with ten-foot bean-
covered stalks on them.

The pits were excavated to build the mounds directly downhill from
them. We believe that we will experence very little erosion even
though we dug on a hill because runoff can't travel more than a few
feet before pooling in these little divots, where they will perc into
the soil, right into the root zone of the crops below them. I believe
this cultivation will actually be an improvement to the hydrology of
the site.

The party was also a potluck and we had a great lunch out on the front
lawn. All in all it was a great day and talk of future planting/work
parties was met with great interest. We already know the task of the
next one (beans and squash) but I want to try to make it a monthly
occurrence, maybe switching up the day so people who can't make it
Sundays can come sometimes. And I want to develop the camping-music-
and-bonfire element, which was present in embryonic form last weekend
but can go much farther.

My friend Matt Crooks was there taking pictures while not planting
sunflowers, and as soon as I get my hands on some of those I will post
them here, an probably repeat some things I've said.

They grow up so fast...

2010-05-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

Nesting box indeed

2010-05-12T12:38:00.001-07:00

All about the clover patch

2010-05-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

This one is more recent.

Buckwheat sings

2010-05-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

Buckwheat coming up in a starter patch in the vegetable garden.

Dorsal feathers...

2010-05-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is old news. Their head feathers are coming in now. I'm getting a
lot of old posts out of the way. I'll be current soon.

We're Coming Out

2010-05-08T12:43:00.000-07:00

First tentative steps once the door had been left open long enough.
This was two Mondays ago.

Another

2010-05-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

They look like Carolina allspice flowers but dangle down like in the
previous picture. If you're in their range and these look familiar,
watch those trees for fruits in August...

Paw Paw

2010-05-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

This picture is also a few weeks old and I haven't seen any paw paw
blossoms in a while, but this is what they look like, and they have
been everywhere. We shall see how well their pollinators have been
working because if there are anywhere as many fruit as there were
flowers, we are going to be up to our noses in it, innit?

Sisters' playground

2010-05-08T12:24:00.001-07:00

Here's the field where we'll plant the large three-sisters patch. To
the left of the white tank back there is the six-mound trial patch.
This picture was taken a few weeks ago and the grass has grown up a
bit since then. But really, not all that much. This field is depleted,
hence the big load of compost back there. There have been several more
of those, and I should try to find some more for good measure. I hope
it isn't too hot for the plants...I should do a few more patches on
Monday to make sure.

Atop the pizza box

2010-04-19T16:04:00.001-07:00

As you can see, they're outgrowing their pen. I bet they'll be ready
to go outside Monday morning, when I come back from Wisconsin. I
figure they need to be unable to squeeze through a chainlink fence,
which may be for a while yet, but I think they've grown just today. If
grass and such is kept tall next to the fence maybe they'll be
stymied...

Lookit them grow

2010-04-19T05:57:00.001-07:00

Canary in the spring frost

2010-04-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

As I drive around it doesnt look like real farmers have planted their
corn yet. This might yet get waxed but for now it's at about the same
level as corn planted in the greenhouse.

Chardonnay

2010-04-18T18:50:00.001-07:00

Tough chick

2010-04-09T13:23:00.001-07:00

The load-in

2010-04-09T13:19:00.002-07:00

Loud Box

2010-04-09T13:19:00.001-07:00

Ding!

2010-04-07T16:10:00.001-07:00

The Call

2010-04-07T14:51:00.001-07:00

I got it last night. Our unspecified assortment of fifty chicks is in
the mail, and I should expect it tomorrow morning. Time to go plug up
critter holes and make the corral in the doghouse, which will be the
brooder.

Peanuts

2010-04-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Peanuts going live----

Corn Action Now

2010-04-06T09:33:00.001-07:00

This picture may or may not look silly to someone more experienced
than me but I am planting some Bloody Butcher corn in these the mounds
at the center of the BB cornfield. In a few weeks beans will be
planted to climb up the corn and squash and melons in the spaces
between. I don't know if this is seriously undercultivated or not. The
"topsoil" underneath is very soft and I expect to hoe anyway.
Hopefully the kinks will be worked out for the PLANTING PARTY time
TBA. I'm thinking Friday the 17th or the next day.

Water etc.

2010-04-06T08:36:00.000-07:00

Jugs are our hose for now until I fix the inside shutoff valve for the
outdoor hose, hopefully today. My dad's old table saw which isn't
staying here, and a comfrey division from Ecosystem Farm in Accokeek,
where Liza is working. It hyperaccumulates nutrients and grows like
mad. It was half the size two days ago. Mulch and compost tea plant.
Never grown it before but see it in every permaculture garden.

Hole

2010-04-01T09:16:00.000-07:00

I need to put some chicken wire on the bottom...

Potato towers

2010-04-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

Double-digging potato towers. The uprights are old tobacco sticks for
hanging leaves. Bad news if they have tobacco mosaic virus on them...

First double-dug bed

2010-03-31T16:32:00.001-07:00

First potato tower with megabeauty

2010-03-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

Back at it

2010-03-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

I had to be away from the farm for a while and then it was rainy, so
I'm getting going again. Last week we picked up this round bale at
progressive farm in harwood for mulching, composting, and filling
potato towers.

One layer back is the dwindling but still big pile of horse compost,
which the little plants in our potting mix seem to like, though it
clearly has the weed seeds in it.

In the background looking tiny is about five yards of woodchips; I
took the neighbors to the salvage yard and had to swerve around the
tree on the way there, on the way back the county was just finishing
up chipping it up. They followed me back and unloaded it. Must create
a turnaround for large vehicles...

The chips will be used for garden paths, "paving" over green areas
where we need truck traction, and deep mulching where we will plant
trees in the future.

What's up?

2010-03-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

Cotton. Sea Island Brown, a long fibered variety. Maybe all 22 will
come up.

Dam pt. 2

2010-03-09T16:20:00.001-08:00

Im trying to be cognizant of how water will flow around these holes,
because this great plug of organic matter is right in the crotch of a
ravine and concentrates the flow of a fan of land, some of which is in
roads or bare, and which has some animal pressure. I imagine that this
dam is an excellent and hygeinic filter for the water shedding on from
there. I also imagine that the increased nutrients in the runoff
provides enough N to take care of the extra carbon that is the sawdust
bedding.

I know I keep talking about this stuff and don't really know if it
will work yet. But a guy at the gas station asked to make sure what I
was going to use it for, and said "oh, that'll grow." And plants are
starting to come up, looking pretty good in the potting soil we made.

Matt Lowe
jeffersonpermanent.blogspot.com

2010-03-02T15:46:00.001-08:00

Test

2010-03-02T15:44:00.001-08:00

Test

Cover Crops

2010-02-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

We need to get the soil tests in, but what grew in the L-field last year was pretty sparse and homogeneous. Last weekend Liza and I went to the Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association (MOFFA) conference and had a fine time. The talks were largely about cover crops, which is what I think we really needed to hear about. A summary of what we learned as applies to cover crop choices, pasture, and building fertility on our farm:

Going in there was the idea that the way to improve the whole field was by grazing a grass/legume mixture. We have neither of those in the area in question. It was suggested that the best early-spring planted cover crop would be oats and Austrian winter peas, which the good Dr. Morse said could be planted as soon as the snow was out of the way. Buckwheat (the cornerstone of Morse's beneficial-insect-attracting projects) needs a bit warmer weather to be planted. But the suggestion was to just turn the chickens on what is growing there now, let them eat and stomp it to the ground, and see what comes up following this different sort of disturbance. This is encouraging because it is definitely the cheapest of the options. I don't know how hopeful I should be, though, considering that over most of the field there was what looked like broom on 5-inch centers and bare ground between. I do home something good comes up.

Springing

2010-02-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

The Snow is starting to fade to the ground, but even where the land is accessible it is just waterlogged. I imagine it will be a while yet before the land is well drained. I am thinking most about this affecting our ability to dig and haul compost from area stables. Perhaps some places have a front end loader and piles that are on high ground right next to a gravel road. We should be so lucky.

Here is a shot of the first and only load of compost so far, before I was sick and before the snows. Like I said before, it was dug out of a ditch where there were apparently once tall piles of it. This stuff has rotted and settled for years. It is beautiful, and is a tiny fraction of what they had there. We shall return.

Though we can't spread and dig now, the seed- starting season has swept us up and we are making use of the compost, some sphagnum moss and native soil to start seeds and make transplants. A little late, but I've heard this happens to others as well. The house is pretty dark so a well lighted place for the starts is overdue.

This is the frame i put together from scraps in the barn for a small, portable plastic tunnel/greenhouse. The top angle pivots and the obtuse angle is fixed. long vertical members are 6 feet, horizontal around 3 feet. I expect it will be necessary to stake the thing down when it is skinned, and to stake the side flaps as well. It's about tall enough for me to move relatively easily in, though a few inches shorter than I am.

I think I will like this design, as it is rigid and different work paths are revealed at different settings.

Here it is opened up a bit. I can get in here with the working-at-ground-level posture but as you can see there is a good bit more to the footprint. It opens up far enough for the cross-member to be horizontal, so it could span several planting strips. and i think will be good for an emergency frost cover, or to give a boost to heat-loving plants if the spring is cool.

But I misjudged the path of the sun and this site isn't as good for a starting greenhouse as I'd hoped. The solution was much more desirable anyway.

Inspired by Frank and Christina Allen's plexiglass-walled front porch passive solar heating, I rigged this up once I realized the front porch got a lot more sunlight this time of year than I thought. The area is already protected and semi-enclosed, adjacent to a warm body (the house), much larger and easy to work in, and most importantly close to the house, which means we pay it better attention.

We have high winds right now so the fastening is being put through the paces. Currently residing in the sun room are red russian kale, Black from Tula, Amish paste, and Henderson's pink Ponderosa tomatoes, chocolate habanero and fish peppers, and red and white cabbages. We need shelves in here and lots more seeds planted very soon, not to mention sunny weather so it warms up real well.

Making Landfall

2010-02-10T20:04:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a loong time but please indulge me as this kind of updating takes a special kind of effort on my part.

The plan of attack has evolved, as far as this season goes. It has mercifully simplified a bit, as follows:

The general layout remains the same. The major change is that it seems likely that in general the planting of trees will probably be delayed a season or so. This is to allow us to focus on the more immediately-productive annual crops, and the fertility-generating combination of pasture/cover crops and livestock. I have taken the lesson that it may be possible that a fruit or nut tree may end up bearing better and earlier after allowing a full year for site preparation than just putting it in the ground at the beginning of that year. We'll still plant some trees, but it probably won't be full-farm scale. Plus it will give us time to learn trees, their varieties, and propagation.

This means that we get to focus much more on improving fertility, and on highly productive pastured poultry. We've started ordering seeds, and have enough corn to plant about 1/4 acre. This is probably lowballing our needs a bit but it's just one grain so far. It's one of my goals to eliminate the need to buy feed for the chickens, perhaps excluding mineral and probiotic supplements and the like. To meet this goal we'll probably have to plant a good amount of some other grains. This is hardly disappointing to me. I see brisk bread sales in our future.

We have also hatched plans to experiment extensively with the three sisters planting scheme (pole beans grow up corn stalks as squash shade the soil). This venerable native polyculture promises amazing results when properly executed. The search for old, explicitly suitable varieties was challenging but I think we found some promising candidates.

We are currently experiencing the highest snowfall in recorded history in the DC area. The third once-in-a-decade snowstorm this winter has us under a few feet of snow. This makes it tough to go dig compost. This is annoying because we got in one good load before I fell ill and the snow followed. But this old horse manure was jet-black, smelled great, had excellent texture even though it was soaking wet, and there were yards and yards of it...just at one stables. This, to my mind, bodes very well indeed, especially when John Jeavons says you can only add one inch max of compost when starting vegetable beds. He also says to sow grain seeds in flats and prick them out by the thousands, so like any good (former) Catholic I expect I'll pick and choose my labors a bit.

The other side of hauling stuff in will be (I hope) directing willing tree-trimmers to dump their chipped trees on our hillside, the site of our future high-diversity forest garden. This zone appears particularly worn-out, having a kind of sanbox look under the scraggly vegetation found there. My hope is that a few inches of (free) wood chips and the ensuing fungal action and decomposition will provide excellent food for ongoing plantings of nut- and fruit-bearing trees on that south-facing slope.

So to summarize I think that our big chores ongoing this year will be to work the garden, move the chickens in their tractors (for the shorter-lived males) and mobile, moving-fenced coops for the layers. We will also continue our research and design apace, and be ready for some thoughtful planting next year.

In other news it has been fun making contact with other no-chem producers and retailers in southern MD, an activity which for me basically all took place several days ago when I went on a field trip to the hippie-food-retailers in the area. It was great to meet all the people who will no doubt all get mentions on this page in the future, and I'm grateful to Frank and Christine for the information they've already given me: a whole community, chugging along.

Update - Point Arena

2009-11-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

Liza and I left San Francisco at the beginning of October and have been working at Oz Farm in Point Arena, Mendocino County CA for the last 6 weeks, where there is basically no internet access, so I'm writing from the library in town. It is extremely beautiful up here and after my first brief reluctant jaunt to the city it almost felt like coming home once i reached the coast and started wending my way north. I don't think there's any danger of me staying, though. In two weeks we grab the train eastward.

To paraphrase a friend, it's been all that we'd hoped for and more. There are so many things that would take probably years to figure out that can be gleaned from a few weeks on a working farm. Things like, what is the quality threshold for different markets, and how to prepare produce for them? Though we won't be ready for production at RJP for a while, we can hit the ground running when we do.

Some assorted highlights so far:
Abalone diving
Lessons in roadkill recovery and hide tanning
Wooden and wood-fired hot tub
Virtually unlimited bolete mushrooms
Widespread inspiration, difficult to distill.

Pictures later

Forest Garden Map

2009-09-18T22:02:00.000-07:00

I started working on a design for the RJP Hance Rd farm, in the shape of a map overlay hosted at google maps. It may go back and forth from being accessible to the public, as revisions are made and drafts developed. Not like anyone's looking. It's an experiment to draw it in this way so it might have some awkward teen years.

Fuel Alcohol

2009-09-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

It has distracted me recently. My curiosity is piqued, big-time. I want to see this guy's notes on different feedstock crops for fuel fermentation and distillery. How do you ferment some of the harder, more lignified stuff he talks about? What would be the cost in land and money to be able to grow and process 1000 gallons of fuel ethanol a year. He talks about a perennial 800 gallons per acre from mesquite tree pods and their groundcover combined. He's also a permaculturist, which for better or worse I treat as a shorthand for a set of values that make sense to me.

This is David Blume's alcohol talk. An hour and a half, but extremely interesting. I like the part about prohibition, its funding from Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

David Blume's book, Alcohol Can Be a Gas!, is at the library. Coming soon.

Forest Garden

2009-09-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is a big subject because it is really the question of the overall design of the farm. Integration is the name of the game and we can't expect for it to be anything other than a work in progress.

To that end we may as well follow the conversation. Ive been getting into this part in my reading, as I wend my way through Edible Forest Gardens. I have an impulse to try and read everything through, which may or may not be helping me here. But Matt blew up the conversation by sending me this and got me started going through the index of the second EFG volume for the various economic uses of trees, few of which I knew about. I don't know trees well anyway, but it's coming. I learned that green ash is a great species for coppice forestry, where the main stem is cut and many stems spring from the stump. This can be great for firewood and ash is the tradtional wood for long-handled tools (hickory for shorthandled).

Also listed on uBid is the Osage orange, which was conspicuously absent from the EFG indices. Though its native range is east Texas, it is one of the most planted trees in the US and has favorable associated trees for our area: walnut, hickory,ash, mulberry, and oak. Also called hedgeapple it was used widely as a thorny impassible living hedge. Its wood packs the most BTUs of any wood at 32 million and change per cord and burns bright colors. It is also held to be the best wood for making bows. Its aromatic qualities (in the chemical sense) make it useful in a number of applications.

Paw Paw is the tree I have been thinking most about recently, and believe it could be one of our most important trees. I am not aware of any economic uses aside from its fruit, though it is the (semi?)exclusive forage of the zebra swallowtail butterfly.

But it is the fruit that is the most exciting. I have never had a Paw Paw but it sustained indigenous people and was George Washington's favorite dessert. You eat it with a spoon and the fruit is held to be like vanilla custard with pineapple and mango. It sounds like a tropical fruit in every way but its native range is the east coast of the US and into Kentucky and Ohio. Our very own tropical fruit!

But it's soft and hard to transport and hasn't gotten the PR attention. But once I identified this tree I was seeing it everywhere. Fruit all around me and I never knew!

In the woods at the farm, within about 100 feet of the treeline, where openings in the canopy cast a patch of light on the forest floor, foot-tall Paw Paw saplings grow like a ground cover. I've seen a hundred individual plants, I'm sure. That is, unless these seedlings are suckered from the root system of an older tree... We should be able to determine this when we dig some out, though one report said they have deep taproots and fragile root systems. Hopefully we'll be able to identify seed-borne saplings.

I envision the Paw Paw as one of the principal fruit trees, a centerpiece yield, in our forest garden/orchard project, for many reasons. Chief among them is the fact that this is a native tree. This means that it is already adapted to the conditions it will face on the farm. It knows the soil and the weather and the insects and microbes, and is in balance with them, meaning, like, bugs won't whack your trees. More broadly, this is the rightful home of this tree and incorporating it into our diets and landscapes helps us live in more right balance with the land. Other reasons:
1. The aforementioned zebra swallowtail butterfly. If we have Paw Paws all over the farm, we also have these scenic critters.
2. Interest in native foods is growing all over the country and the Paw Paw in particular has seen press and attention from extension folks. This could mean an interesting and potentially lucrative market for fresh local Paw Paws. There is a lot of information at the KYSU site linked above.
3. The fruit is apparently extremely nutritious as well as being billed as luscious, complex, and tropical in flavor.
4. The Paw Paw is a floodplain understory tree and is tolerant of shade, making it especially useful for our forest gardening. The more sun it gets, the more fruit it bears, but it's nice to have some flexibility.
5. There is tremendous potential for the development of new varieties. The site maintained by Kentucky State University lists 46 named varieties as well as sources for nursery stock. That isn't terribly many for orchard fruit.

Each tree sprouted from seed that we replant in the sun will be a chance at a new variety. This is maybe even more exciting to me than if the hundreds of trees I imagine were all of the tastiest variety. The amount of grafting that may follow is daunting but that first big fruiting year where we get to taste and compare all the wild paw paws is really something to look forward to.

Greywater and other water systems

2009-09-07T00:34:00.000-07:00

In the last post I started to talk about plans for a greywater system, and it is really worthwhile when considering a greywater system to think holistically about the larger role that water will play on the landscape, and what we can do to make the most of the rain that falls and water that flows, used, from the house.

First, I'll do some definitions. Clearwater is not necessarily strictly potable but is clean enough to wash with and for certain other uses. Greywater has gone down the drain from a clothes washer, bathroom sink, or shower. Blackwater comes from the toilet, and many consider kitchen sink and dishwasher sources of blackwater. I must stress that ALL WATER is BLACKWATER if non-biodegradable/biocompatible products are sent down the drain. Dawn, Crest, Pert, and Tide are no-go for greywater. If you pay for water and you water plants, you'll make back the cost of biodegradable products in savings on your water bill. OMRI certification is a decent indicator of biocompatibility

The reason for grouping kitchen sink and dishwasher with the much nastier toilet effluent is because these first two often contain large chunks or large amounts of fat or meat, sometimes raw, which demand more than your basic topsoil can handle safely. People divert greywater from the sewer or septic system to water plants, usually fruit trees. In places like California, where I currently live, there is no rain for half the year or more, so reusing water is of critical importance (though there is little awareness, though just this month California deregulated greywater systems). I believe that it is so easy to filter out these chunks and fat that there is no reason to consider anything but toilet water as blackwater. It merely presents an opportunity to make a constructed wetland which filters your water and creates a new and unusual habitat, right next to your house. This can be done in, for instance, an old bathtub or something smaller, or a lined trough on the ground.

From the house, we could feed an array of ponds dug on the north side of the house, roughly along the treeline or set in slightly further. I would want to place these all along the south side of the strip of trees north of the house. This strip slopes at about 20% to the field below, and retaining water on high ground will promote deep percolation, high water table and greater flexibility in applying water where needed, not to mention the possibility of stocking fish and other water crops near the house. This plan to install ponds (and level, non-draining swales) would include the north side of Horse Field, where I noticed a troubling runoff channel running through the woods. Semipermeable linings (such as tamped clay) would let this water slowly percolate into the groundwater, where deep-rooted plants would be able to reach it, both in the garden and in the strip of timber. I will write much more on this topic, particularly in forest garden and vegetable garden sections.

Poultry plan

2009-09-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

I have to start here. I am too excited about these plans, for a number of reasons. I love birds, and their eggs and meat. Poultry are much less expensive than larger livestock and represent more decentralized value. One way of putting this is that failure with a flock of chickens would seem less dramatic than with cows or goats. Poultry are capable of doing large amounts of farm work which would be tedious or difficult otherwise, namely weeding, picking bugs, composting, fertilizing and more. It is also far easier to have many kinds of poultry than many kinds of sheep. Finally, their products are generally delivered in a saleable form: eggs only need to be collected before they can be sold, and dressing a chicken is relatively quick and straighforward. So let's start with them:

Chickens

I foresee chickens being the centerpiece enterprise on the farm for the immediate future, certainly the first year. It may be hard to gauge the volume of produce from the garden, fruit won't bear for a few years, and herbivore meat and milk is difficult to produce, harder to produce well and far harder to market, as it is fraught with regulations. I want to follow Joel Salatin's model, put forward in his book Pastured Poultry Profit$. Yes, that dollar sign really is in the title of the book. Very briefly, this model puts a number of chickens, more than you think, in a 10'x12' covered, bottomless pen where we provide them with water and feed, not to mention shelter and protection from predators. It looks something like this: This picture is from Amazing Graze Farm. Once they are more than chicks they are kept outside in these pens 24/7. The pens are moved one pen-length per day, to give the birds access to fresh pasture (they need grass and bugs, not just vegetarian feed!) and gives the land a chance to rest after the animal impact, and incorporate the turds into the soil and plants. This is suited well to broiler chicken production, where males are dressed at 8 weeks old. Attached laying boxes may suffice for layers, but as these birds will be older and their breed more suited to foraging I want to figure out a way to let them range a bit more. A dozen or a few hens would fertilize and improve the soil on which they graze while producing enough eggs to have a reliable surplus. I see this as the first thing the farm can plan on selling, as opposed to unplanned vegetable surplus. Eggs also have the marketing advantage of being more standardized and less perishable than produce; worms will not get into them, nor will their skins be scarred or split. Finally the quality of these eggs will be among the most dramatic demonstrations of the superiority of pasture diet and husbandry.

Turkeys

Can be raised in the same pens as the chickens (maybe not at the same time) but take about twice as long to mature. The appeal here is obvious and a dozen or two turkeys would make some sensational gifts for family holiday dinners and a nice holiday bonus income at $2.50 - $6 per pound. They pitch in on pest control as well, leaping "five feet straight in the air to pluck a [tobacco horn]worm off the top of a tobacco plant" They are excellent foragers and can get a far larger percentage of their diet from forage than chickens can.

Geese

Geese are vegetarians and so fit into the equation differently than the rest of these fowl. They are renowned mowers; that may be a good start. It would be fun to be able to not fire up the lawnmower. We'll see. Cotton Patch Geese got their name from their job on the farm: weeding the cotton field. They would studiously avoid the cotton plant and do the same for tobacco. I wonder if they, and the turkeys above, would do the same for tomatoes and other solanaceous or general garden plants. It turns out that these strong, loud, territorial birds are great guard animals for a mixed flock. They are also apparently effective for snake control. An account I read in How to Raise Poultry told of a fellow who had a copperhead problem on his land, but following introduction of geese he didn't see them and his dogs stopped getting bitten. One goose was bitten on the head and it swelled up, but the bird didn't die. The prospect of goose down is also appealing to me. Finally, I think it is high time that the tradition of the Christmas goose enjoy a revival, at least in my house.

Ducks

Khaki Campbell Ducks

Ducks are exciting for a host of other reasons. I anticipate that they will be the real pest control livestock, even if other fowl get plugged into this role. They are often small and agile (not prone to knocking plants over) love bugs and especially snails, and do not scratch the ground as chickens do. When I think of adding ducks to the system, all sorts of neat "accessories" become all but necessary. I want to build a duck house between the house and the Horse Field (Field 1 on the map) which has the vegetable garden now and will continue in this capacity. Next to the duck house site is a sinkhole which is apparently the drainage area for runoff from the house. I see this as the farm's first pond. Lined with tamped clay or an EPMD membrane, with some mosquito fish, duckweed, and water hyacinth (in Oakland. I don't know about in MD), it can become a thriving, clean pond right there for the ducks to clean their nostrils. When we go to work in the garden, we can open up the garden-facing door of the duck house and it will take no time for the ducks to know that this means they get slugs and bugs now. I foresee a relatively pest-free garden. Of course we will still need predatory insects and the rest. Ducks can't do it all.

Hold on now because this is where it gets exciting. Despite frequent rains the sinkhole drains pretty well and would do well to have supplemental runoff. The obvious candidate here is a greywater system. All the plumbing above the foundation is relatively new, and all of it period is on the north-facing wall. only the kitchen sink is on the first floor, meaning that two bathroom sinks, the shower, and clothes washer all come from the second floor. "Squander no fall" is a mantra with greywater systems, and here we have fall to spare, with vertical drainpipes clustered together in an emimently manageable way. Not to mention the fact that there is a site perfect for an outdoor sink (for dirty and big jobs, and extra prep space) as well as an outdoor shower. It's a big house for the one pretty small shower. All of these sources could be directed to this pond and other ponds that we could dig. Some sources would require the filtration of a constructed wetland, which would flow along the grade to the pond basin. Hell, if it was wide enough we could grow rice there.

Bamboo!

2009-09-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

I am interrupting my planned presentation of the detailed farm program with some news today. Actually this would definitely be part of it but I wouldn't normally put it first. Today I met and spent the day at the land belonging to the president of the American Bamboo Society, Darren DeBoer, in El Sobrante (CA). He has a natural building company (and the visit was a lab day with my natural building class) but I had the chance to ask him about something that was bothering me.

First, some background: The bamboos, which consist of many genera, are divided into clumping and running species. The meaning of this should be clear enough, especially if you've tried to eradicate a rapidly expanding bamboo grove. My extraordinary and lovely new book Edible Forest Gardens suggests that the only bamboos that can be grown in the temperate climates of the middle east coast are the running varieties, notably many of the genus Phyllostachys. I asked him about this today, and he said to look at the species of genera Fargesia and Borinda. Bingo! A glance on the species list of the American Bamboo Society shows the variety of cold-hardy clumping bamboo species, though it does suggest that they are intolerant of very high summer temperatures. We can freely experiment with these, though, for there is little danger of expansion even without a rhizome barrier. I'll check this out and report back.

A bit more than skeleton plan

2009-09-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

I've been debating how best to articulate the plan, or design, for the farm, and I think I should go over it all twice, with two different organizing principles.

One will be according to design elements. This is the "I want this stuff" part of the design: poultry, greywater, field crops, forest garden, herbivores, etc. The other principle will be according to the permaculture concept of zones, which focuses more on the spatial organization of elements to make them more usable and mutually supporting. This is the what goes where part. It will probably serve as a check to make sure that the design is usable. The higher the zone number, the less traffic the area receives. Zone zero is the house, and zone five is untouched, usually forest, kept intact as a classroom for nature, a source of balance and established biology. This can be tricky because a forest is a great resource, but if overmanaged the lessons it could teach us may be clouded or confused by our intentions.

So I'll put up a series of posts about all the stuff I want to do, then imagine routes of work through the day to tie it all together.

Oz Farm - October and November

2009-09-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

We'll be working at the Oz Farm in Point Arena, Mendocino County CA after moving out of SF. They have an espaliered apple orchard, retreat and event center, and sundry mixed organic farm.

Certainly the biggest gap in my experience is extended time on a working farm. There are a few ways I could be spending this time but I think this is the best, because I think I need to get real, because Ive been feeling lofty and a dose of practicality will be tempering, I think. It may be that the realities and challenges there are close to my expectations, which would be nice. There are also lots of cultural things that I think I understand but seeing old hands doing it will save me a lot of wasted time. They also manage a coastal forest and keep chickens.

The month of September

2009-09-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Will be spent packing and getting ready to leave San Francisco. There are lots of loose ends etc., and next weekend Liza and I are taking a trip, to visit the place we just found out we'll be the next couple months

Part time job first

2009-09-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

It isn't strictly official yet but all signs point to yes. It looks like I will be able to work this small vineyard on Kent Island. it's coastal!

I would plan to put farm chores in the hands of another resident a couple days a week, and drive up to the vineyard to work a couple whole days, probably staying in Annapolis or camping on Kent Island if I can. This way I can have some income and work both sites without ballooning my transportation costs. I'm hoping that this can bring in a couple hundred dollars each week or so.

Observations:
-20 rows of trellis (detensioned), each 85 paces long.
-Trellised area approximately half planted
-Really delicious grapes
-Not many bunches, ripening time appeared to vary widely, sometimes on same inflorescence among same color grapes.
-On most inflorescences, a crop of green grapes would begin to grow and ripen as the deep purple grapes were ripe to shriveled and dry.
-Leaf shape varies, rounded leaves and deeply lobed leaves (vinifera - winemaking?) both present. Difficult to tell if non-vinifera vines are suckered from rootstock.
-About 80 plants seem to be bearing reasonably well. 80 more fall somewhere between technically alive and ready to be nursed to health.
-A vine with five-leaflet buckeye shaped leaves is swallowing the grapes in some places.

80 plants x 10 lbs/plant x 0.075 gal/lb = 60 gallons from vines currently bearing. Formula from Wagner, Wine Grower's Guide This is the median per-vine yield

My friend Ben who's worked there for a couple years says that after the pruning they did last year he estimates there is 80% more fruit. There is still lots more pruning and training to be done. Hopefully this indicates the possibility for further improvement. Right now they're probably nowhere near the median expected yield.

Very exciting. This is still really big for a hobby farm/homestead. We could probably produce a lot of good vinegar. White wine vinegar for pickling! I want it.

Big News

2009-09-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

It's official.

A few ideas

2009-07-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

Cards worth five dozen free eggs that get punched with each dozen. Printed on HOMEMADE paper (so they can't be replicated), we can give them out in lieu of legal tender to willing people who would otherwise ask money for goods and services. Maybe we could do this more broadly to take money out of the equation to a greater degree.

Bring ducks into the vineyard when we want plants to grow between the rows, and chickens when we want to till. Would this mean moving birds around in crates?

Shrink the acreage at Patuxent grazed (managed) by a very small number of goats by moving them from Patuxent to the vineyard and back again, with stops along the way to provide goatly services...for dough? Moving them would probably be a bad idea as a long term solution but it might soften the learning curve so that we could learn from the variety that the goats chose from in the different places as we try to provide balanced browse in one place.

2Ways to start graze/browse use of open area
-Take walks with goats every day, all around the area, including woods. Observe feeding patterns
-Start high-density grazing, even with two animals, and watch the grass as much as the animals. I am led to believe the pasture's behavior will change. We should allow greater pasture growth to lead adding animals. Instead of struggling to provide enough forage, we should be needing to figure out what to do with it all.

The Mysterious Vineyard

2009-07-27T19:15:00.000-07:00

I may be working at a small vineyard in Maryland. It isn't nailed down so I won't say much about it. I don't really even know where it is. There may be no one else minding it anyway, but I may be effectively in charge of it.

Wine is what I really want. A rough formula estimating the yield of the roughly fathomed dimensions says we might be able to expect 50 cases of wine from this vineyard. I don't know the varieties or for what purpose they are extended, but table grapes or raisins would be fun too. Reading Joel Salatin (in particular You Can Farmhas forced me to think about that dread topic, marketing. It occurs to me that in order to make a saleable product as soon as possible and make investment in the vineyard feel like worth the effort earlier, there might be better options than waiting to make the kind of wine that people want to buy. Certainly some from the first and from all crops should go toward figuring out how to make good wine of it, but people like to have good vinegar too. Perhaps I'm being cavalier and some gourmets would take offense but I think it's probably faster and easier to make good vinegar than good wine, and then there would be money to turn back into the site.

I also read an article today in Acres USA about using animals and turning them off from the crop plant by inducing nausea after the first time they eat the plant. Say, grapes, leaves, or the wood itself. I've seen a lot about training in feeding in Stockman but it's usually been to maximize pasture use or control weeds, but exclusion is new to me. It's probably common for pets. Mulberry trees would have to go in if there were goats cause I could hardly deprive them of stems and leaves. I wonder if geese would be prey to raccoons and such. I've heard of them as guard animals for other fowl so maybe they'd be fine without getting locked up nightly. It would probably be more useful to run some ducks and chickens to eat the bugs that the vegetarian geese reject. And if the geese roosted near the smaller birds perhaps even the slyest of foxes would be foiled. Cause it would be a pip to not have to be there every day and have eggs meat, feathers and sweet critters, better fertility and pest control. I'm trying to visit the site in August so I'll know more then.

One count before they're cracked.

2009-07-07T23:59:00.000-07:00

Skeleton plan for how to have enough to eat:

First, muchos vegetables on horse field. Then,

we should have some of these numbers drifting along L-field, tilling, fertilizing, and reducing the seed bank in the top of the soil. Maybe concurrent with or in preparation for row crops. Also then we will have alarm clocks.

Surely we must plant some whinter wheat.

And a goat! or two. Don't know how to feed them yet. Or one cow.

Textbook Tyme

2009-07-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

A seasoned person would look at me spending borrowed money on books, claiming the right to say I will be a farmer, not having yet set foot in a dialed-in farm's field and have low expectations for the results. But there was, and is, serious learning going on at MyFarm and the classes are work school. And my view is I know just enough that to pass up land that's available now in a place I want to be would be the dumbest thing to do.

I ordered some books today.

This is a magazine.

This is four books.

Basically my hope is that these will in great part tell me what to expect and what is expected of me as far as livestock goes in particular. I'll finally be able to formulate an idea of how to use the pasture and keep animals on the grass. This is the element that I haven't known enough to design or plan around. After this I can hope to have a picture of a "complete" farm.
Part of me wishes I didn't have to buy them but part is so pumped that I didn't have much choice. I've been doing well with finding stuff at the library but these I am going to have to refer back to and I did my best to find them: no library accessible through SF public has access to them, or any similar books. What to do? They should arrive soon.

To demonstrate commitment in a superficial way, I bought a three year subscription to this rag. Though it's true that the price was adjusted radically in favor of the long bomb.

I am loving Will Allen.

2009-07-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen this movie Fresh the Movie but this fellow is in it.

He was in the Times too.

He took in 6 million pounds of food last year to make compost, making more than he needs. I bet there is space in cities for companies doing nothing but on-site large-scale composting. Seems like there's no reason that compost have to go all the way from San Francisco to Vacaville and back. Seems like it would mostly involve diverting waste streams. To build a dam to harvest energy, as it were, would be grand so long as the farms outside the city could maintain fertility as well. Then maybe MyFarm really could cart its fertility around by bicycle. Chris Shein, permaculture teacher of many MyFarmers, said that a restaurant supplies his personal garden with a 55-gallon drum of food waste every week...I think that's right. It's a lot. Much is eaten by the chickens, faster than any compost pile would.

This raises a lot of questions regarding the role of inputs in a sustainable system. I said a word before about looking forward bringing into the farm as much organic material as possible, to jump-start fertility. But maybe I want to prove that the land is fundamentally capable of healing itself with only onsite plants and onsite solar energy. Seems like it is sensible to think of it like plowing - at the outset, a lot of progress can be made with relatively little harm to the developing soil ecology. But it shouldn't be treated as a long-term strategy to the extent that the activities (e.g. a tree-trimming company or grain grower) that produce these inputs are capable of returning them to the biological systems that produced them in the first place. At the same time, there are possibilities for a healthful input cycle: nothing could seem more natural than a farm/woodlot-sawmill and farm/woodlot-restaurant nutrient cycle, which would produce concentrated inputs that can and should be depended on on a long-term basis.

It seems like the goal of land management should be to return biological matter to the actual area of earth where it originated, whether in an agricultural setting or a forest or some other wild system. It will be a challenge to be flexible on the emergency-stability continuum of fertility.

Raising Grain

2009-06-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

Gene Lodgson's book that I've mentioned a few times is one of my more recent encounters, but it has gone a long way to making the logic of field crops clear. I'm starting to follow the actual mechanics of crop rotation and imagine how field crops could be useful and not just annoying. A dozen or so crops...maybe all after a year or so of alfalfa or controlled grazing. He's got me thinking that we might be at the right latitude to grow both flax and cotton, which would be a pip. J-field will accept 14 different 1/4 acre crops, leaving more than 6 acres for pasture and horse-field and the house yard for intensive beds and forest garden. Let's go through the contenders to see how they'll yield per 1/4 acre. Some I won't estimate. Here, by the way, are commercial bushel weights.

Flax: 30 liters (.38l/kg / 2.2 = .17l/lb x 60 lb x 3 = 30 l linseed oil)
Cotton: around 200 lbs (831 lbs/acre)
Corn: 20 bu, 1400 lbs
Sunflowers: 18 gal. oil
Tobacco: 500 lbs - click this. ($4/lb organic! plant near sunflowers)
wheat: 20 bu, 1200 lbs
barley: 20 bu, 1200 lbs

then, say, cabbage, dry beans, rice (upland? Mexican?), buckwheat, peanuts. Clover, alfalfa. Must try to figure out legume under- or interplanting. And at least wheat is an overwintering crop, maybe it can be double-cropped. It really might make the most sense to graze poultry on the pasture and keep one or two goats or a cow. So many birds versus what seems like will be a cow for every two acres. I have a hard time imagining those requirements, especially with what sound like will be quick recharges during the growing season. I can see having to cut hay but I hold out hope that i could keep a dozen head there. Many who read this might laugh. Seems like a pretty simple piece of information to have eluded me so far. Maybe I just don't want to accept what I've gathered so far.

That tobacco figure is exciting. Not to mention that I'll probably be having to pick out one of these bad boys soon enough.

2009-06-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

If you look at the farm on google earth, you can discern what looks like a pretty accurate topography of the place. The road that runs the length of the property is on the east side, and it is below a ridge to the west. Over the ridge is a deeper hollow that curves along. The larger fields to the south are higher than the rest.

A few things have gotten me thinking a lot more about water. In class we spent much of a day talking about graywater. We get much more rain than Oakland's 24 inches, and it is frequent, but its probably just as important in a place that doesn't have a 7-month annual drought. Joel Salatin was all about ponds. Ive been thinking about where they could go. Maybe between the horse field and the L-field. Anyway we hardly need terracing at Patuxent farm but that doesn't mean we can't experiment. Alternatively we could plant clumping bamboo and others at high-flow areas - either on falls between fields or at greywater systems. I get the feeling that the means of achieving water conservation will serve equally well to deal with large volumes of water. From the Chesapeake Ecology Center , "Slow it down, spread it out, soak it in," and water people around the SF bay say "Slow, spread, and infiltrate." I remembered something about needing to cool off the water too, and though it was in the slogan, but no. All but some natives are dormant here in CA when it rains so I doubt anyone cares about the temperature of the water. Actually, spring gardeners would love to warm it up. The growing season in beds would be two months longer.

Whether too little water or too much, soaking it in is the only way to manage it without externalizing it. It seems the only way to do this that is biologically relevant without heavy leaching is to have great soil structure, with or without ponds and terracing. How convenient that that is exactly how it seems that plants will grow best and manage pests on their own. I hope I don't eat my glibness. Not like I'm claiming I have perfect soil or anything.

I read Lodgson's Small Scale Grain Raising, which is referenced in the first post, and his chapter on rice was mostly about one experiment he and a friend did. We could try paddy rice if we put in a paddy on a short fall, and upland, dry, rice other places. A woman did a presentation in class from her masters thesis about terrace agriculture, especially in Peru. She covered technical aspects and revealed their sophistication but also talked about the kind of social contract that such an undertaking and practice necessitated and created, and tracked the peoples' orientation to their land and these public works projects as they went through cycles of empire, foreign and domestic. Super interesting.

Masanobu Fukuoka's manual The Natural Way of Farming and then Joel Salatin and the Permaculture class have renewed and greatly clarified my hots for no till and no dig systems, especially because they suggest it can be useful more often than I thought. Fukuoka says no way to it most of the time, Salatin says that historically tillage was limited to 2 of every 7 years. And it's clear why no-till didn't work for me in the spring - I wasn't giving it what it needed. It needs a lot of food, especially to start. I needed lots of straw at every location, and real compost instead of the Disaster Mix. Ready to try again. And have to remember that it can take a while for the life to come back (though there were lots of worms at the time). MyFarm should do like Christopher Shein and get 55 gal of kitchen scraps a week at the gardens. Then we would be talking compost. Similarly, we should figure out neighbors of Patuxent who can supply us with mulch materials for fertility - organic isn't critical, but no toxics.

Total acreage

2009-06-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

I just measured the acreage breakdown with an online planimeter.

The total acreage comes to 70, according to the line Matt J drew. The fields comes out to 11.68 acres, which is 17% of the total property. This is obviously an extremely rough survey, but I followed those treelines on Google pretty carefully. I would be surprised if the field acreage were off by more than a tenth or two of an acre.
In theory, the 17% figure may indicate that the landscape could support some conversion of timber area to cropland or pasture, but this must be considered with great restraint.

Check out the map on the sidebar to see how each field measures up. There is some space that is not measured, namely, the area around the house and doghouse and other potentially semi-exposed places. These spots are ripe for permaculture orchards.

Pasture Forage Estimate per Acre

2009-06-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

I just ran a formula provided in June's Stockman Grass Farmer to determine the quantity of pasture forage per acre I should be able to expect if I am maximizing the pasture's ability to capture solar energy. The environmental variable (as opposed to growing methods) is rainfall during the growing season and one month prior. I found average rainfall data here.

In my range of rainfall (30.5 inches March-October) I should expect between 350 and 400 lbs/inch of rain (I'll say 375) = 11,438 lbs/acre.

5.72 tons per acre. Now I need to find out how that translates to animals and how to build pasture.

Introductions

2009-06-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

The deal with this blog is that I'll be moving to this former tobacco farm at the end of the year in order to start a new farm with my friend Mr. Matt Jenkins. I don't yet know the things I need to do that, because I intend to keep animals as soon as possible. Plants-only, I could muddle through, it being eminently clear so far that growing plants really well depends on building great soil and I understand the fundamentals there. But I am not certain I know how to keep the animals healthy and well fed. I believe I know my sources: Greg Judy, Allan Nation, Joel Salatin, Newman Turner, ATTRA, and The Stockman Grass Farmer magazine, and their ilk. They advocate livestock rotation on pasture in such a way that allows grass to grow back rapidly and builds soil: Management Intensive Grazing, or MiG.

I'm also about to start taking some classes at Merritt College in Oakland - Permaculture, Dams to Greywater, Herbs, Cycles of Land Use.

One day this will be a real farm blog. For now it's a record of the stuff I want to do and learn, and the stuff I'm doing and learning. I'll work on plans and post drafts of them here.

So, here's the broad plan, as just promised: I want to build a mixed farm where microscopic life, plants, and animals work with humans to build fertility and abundance without chemical inputs, and eventually, without inputs of any kind. I want to first establish a subsistence farm, with at most a farmstand at the street. When this proves viable, we can expand our volume, first to serve the immediate community (at bargain prices) and later the broader area (at boutique prices). One of the goals is to incentivize economic action in the community. I want to produce a broad variety of crops and value-added products, and become a reliable source for clean, ethical, health-promoting goods for my neighbors and family.

Please, write me with any questions or comments you may have. Encouragement or reinforcement, especially from Chesapeake farmers or food people, is particularly appreciated.

Robert Kennedy Jr. and Pigs

2009-06-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

2 plans:

Pigs would probably be the third or fourth animal family on the farm, following almost certainly a milk-bearer, either goat or cow. I need to find out more about rotation and stock density, not to mention pig nutrition and whey fattening. This last one is the primary reason it seems indispensable to keep hogs if one is trying to make cheese. After all this time I don't have a clear idea of how to make sure I have enough of the correct food to keep the animals happy. Maybe its that I haven't grown grass before, outside of the cover crop last year, which seemed quite happy. To be fair I haven't read a manual on that yet. Ought to get a grazing book today and close that gap. It's clear enough that making good soil is how to grow everything else. On the other end of the spectrum, I just read a piece written by Robert Kennedy Jr. to the people of Poland regarding Smithfield Pork's incursion there:

I got a call to be in the Playwrights Foundation Festival, which has been brought almost as much good stuff as the Mime Troupe. I'd miss too much class to make rehearsal. Too bad, it would be a good cap on things in SF. Made me think one more time about doing theater in MD, DC, and farmside.

Just to get things moving

2009-06-04T00:57:00.000-07:00

Class starts between the 11th and 22nd of this month depending on whether a class called "Dams to Greywater" is offered. The farms are all but transferred to Chelsea and it looks like next week will be my last week on rounds. I'm trying to spend the time making up class as I go along and spend time convincing myself that watching videos and scouring for farm/ecology resources online qualify as productive work.

I'll post books and articles I read or saw.

http://farmlandgrab.org
the fight against foreign acquisition of farmland.
it appears rising industrial powers are leaping to buy land in africa to feed them

http://www.breadinfo.com/flour.shtml
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18082.cfm
A 10' by 10' plot of wheat will grow 10-25 loaves of bread and produce a huge amount of compost material. It's less demanding of nutrients than most vegetables...Ive never tried milling in a blender or food processor but they say it's a breeze. Zing!