Herbs, ponds and such

Hallo again,

I really wish I could be writing here more often; so much goes on in between entries. The fencing around the 30 acres of irrigatable land is all done -- about a mile of it, stretching up and down hills, along the road, etc.

The cob-building workshop has officially begun -- six interns and James, the teacher, arrived Sunday and have put in several days already, building the foundation of the cob structure -- a 200 sq. foot place. They've also been dragging downed pine trees out of the forest and prepping them as poles to use for the frame of the roof. They seem like a great bunch; we call them, affectionately, "the cobbers". We're gonna be having a dinner with them every Friday for the six weeks that they're here.

Just about all of the flowers and herbs that Eden and I sowed in the greenhouse are out in the the front field now, and are growing well, albeit very slowly. We had planned to have flower arrangements ready for customers of the Siskiyou Coop, a local CSA, by early July, but the combination of the cold weather and the late transplanting has made that a pipe dream. Our optimistic hope now is that we can have bunches of flowers for sale by the end of July. It's been pretty dispiriting actually, and hard especially on Eden, who was never completely behind the flower part of the business to begin with. Neither of us have had the proper time to devote to the project, and it has suffered from that lack of time/care. We talked Sunday night and agreed to just do what we can this summer, hoping that we'll be able to have something to offer both the CSA and a couple of other flower vendors that are interested in our wares.

The encouraging part is that we do have some herbs planted -- echinacea, yerba mansa, yarrow, skullcap and a few others -- which are perennials, meaning that they don't need to be resown and can produce year after year. And the plot we've cultivated should be easier to work next year because we've broken up the sod that was there. Still, Eden's lukewarm about the possibility of doing this next year, in light of the many projects she's interested in. We've agreed to meet briefly once a week throughout the summer to bandy about various ideas for growing herbs/flowers, and see if we can come to some kind of resolution about whether or not we will try for next year. I'd like to know either way by the end of August, which is when my six-month trial period here is over. If we're not going to do that, I need to figure out some other career direction. If we DO decide to continue on working together, then we need to put together a carefully considered plan of action that will leave us in good shape come next spring, with a carefully articulated business plan, and soil that has been cared for and prepped, so that we can slip our greenhouse plants into the ground much earlier.

Some ideas we've talked about:

-- growing herbs directly for herbalists, to stock their apothecaries. We both like this option -- it fosters direct connections with herbalists, who can depend on local sources for their herbs, and supports the local economy.

-- growing and drying herbs for tea. Another cool idea. Not sure how we're gonna create the space to dry the kind of quantity we need.

-- wildcrafting. I'm very jazzed about this possibility, as it involves loads of time in the wild and on people's land, foraging for medicinal herbs. It's a great way to get to know the people and the land around here.

-- flowers. Some kind of smaller version of what we're doing now. I don't imagine Eden's gonna be too keen on it, since it was so hard to do this year. But I love working with flowers. It's possible that we could focus on mostly perennial cut flowers over annuals, which reduces the workload alot.

-- flower essences. I haven't talked to her about this one, but it just occurred to me while I was out working our plot, because I've been taking a flower essence recently. The main flower essences are produced by Bach, a company based in England, so it would be great to provide a local source for them, from an environmentally sustainable point of view; plus it would allow me to continue to work with flowers, which I really enjoy.

-- wildcrafted, value-added products -- mead, wine, salves, shampoos, etc. Another idea I love.



.........In other newz.....the new pond is finished and filling as I write; hopefully it will be mostly full by the time we have our solstice party this friday. It was really cool to watch Rourke doing the earth work -- moving dirt around, compacting it so that it will hold 3-400,000 gallons of water. Yesterday Jo and I dug holes for posts that were set in so that we can build a dock for diving off of and lounging on. It's a really sweet spot for a pond, with ample parts shade and sun. I can't wait to start fishing for food as well.

......we're now in the process of laying pipe down in a mile-long ditch that runs from our first pond around much of the property, thru the farm, and up into the woods, where it ends up in Yale creek. Rourke has been working on scraping the bottom of the ditch with a machine, and Matt has started connecting pieces of 8" pipe which will run the length of it. We're hoping to get a grant to cover some of the costs of the piping, but we will still have to pay for most of it, so we are buying something like $8,000 worth of this black plastic pipe. I'm gonna help Matt connect the pipe tomorrow, as well as helping him plant several rows of broccoli on the farm.

....we'll have massive amounts of strawberries from the farm in a few weeks. I love strawberries, so I'm already drooling at the prospect.

.....and that's it for now. I'll try to write sooner, next time.

....Lots of projects going on at the same time, to wit:

1) Rourke, a friend and tractor guy, scalped an area yesterday in preparation for digging our second irrigation pond. For the next three days that will be happening; I'll report back once I've been involved in that one.



2) Electrical conduit needs to be laid from the barn all the way up a steep hill, up to the site of the cob house the interns are building. Matt dug out a deep trench that goes probably 500 feet or so, and I shoveled the loose dirt out of it yesterday. We're looking to hire someone to lay the conduit.

3) The common building. John, our general contractor, is working with Matty, a neighbor of ours who's also a carpenter, on the building. I believe at this point they've got all of the upright beams -- 18' and 22' poles that're 12" in diameter -- secured, and they're starting to put brackets on top of them so that they can start laying on the beams that will support the rafters. This weekend I helped sand and apply wood finish to a few of those beams. There are tons of beams left to sand and finish.

Ok, I'm off to babysit Jo and Rosie's daughter Ocean. More later.....

...Hey there. Life continues apace here; today I did a bunch of top-wire along the deer-fence, which is SOOOO close to being finished. Eden and I are pretty close to transplanting all of our flower starts; we've given up on making garden beds and are just transplanting straight into the ground for the rest of the season, as we just don't have time. We're also due to meet and talk about our project together, both all the little tasks we have going now and our future for next year. Growing flowers has been great for us, as a way of focusing and motivating ourselves. But the main thing we're interested in is in growing/wildcrafting medicinal herbs. There are so many forms it could take, and we just have to sit down and pick a few directions to start with.

As the fossil fuel economy falls apart, and people aren't going to be able to afford or otherwise have access to pharmaceutical medicine, what are the really useful plants to offer to folks? Some herbs have been overly wildcrafted (harvested from the wild), to the point where the plants are now endangered. So we definitely have interest in growing those, as well as growing herbs that suit our climate. And then there's the whole wildcrafting side of things, which I'm probably the most interested in. I'd like to learn how to identify and harvest both herbs and edible plants, and I've really been enjoying going on walks around the land, taking in the different plants. The wildflowers are all out now, and it's pretty gorgeous.

I spent some time at a party at Trillium Farm nearby here, and met a guy who makes wildcrafted wines with his partner. The idea of making things -- wines, ciders, tinctures, salves, etc. -- with the plants that grow around here is exciting. The byproduct of that work is that I would get a much more intimate view of the place I live in -- not just the land I live on, but many of the neighboring places around here. I'd get to know which plants are where, and when they flower; and I'd get to be out in beauty alot. The Siskiyou mountain range that I'm in is the most ecologically diverse mountain range in the country, so there's lots to explore.

....It's been raining part of almost every day for a week now, after blistering heat. The weather's been warming up though, and today was great -- overcast, but very comforting for working. I've had my clothes out on the line for days now, waiting for the wet period to be over, and I finally went to check them out, only to find out they were totally dry.

....I received a wonderful book of haiku written by a friend from Zen Center, and I've taken to bringing along a little bit of paper and a pen around with me, in case the muse strikes me, but so far I've completely forgotten about it.

That's the newz. Please comment if you'd like.

Peace, Danny

Hello again,

Another full day; Eden and I have been trying to create more beds in our garden plot and put our flower/herb transplants in there, starting at six-thirty in the morning and going till nine or nine-thirty (it's getting light at five now). This morning we transplanted yarrow, sweet peas and marigolds; on Tuesday we put zulu prince, orange prince (both daisy-type flowers), black-eyed susans and one other one I can't remember. Tomorrow morning we'll be putting statice and some others in. In the meantime our seeds have come up and are starting to grow -- daisies, clarkia, poppies, safflower, bee phacelia. Sunchoke tubers we planted have also started to come up, and all the starts we previously transplanted are doing great. We've planted about 11 beds of plants so far, and there are many more flats of transplants to plant out. It feels never-ending, and we haven't even started weeding in there yet. When I'm not out there, I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the amount of work that has to be done. When we're doing it though, it feels great. I'd like to be doing more work on this project, but I'm constrained by the paid work I'm doing, plus all the household responsibilities, plus I just started dating a great gal in the area, plus, plus, plus.

There are so many projects to be done. We saw a deer inside the fence near the herb/flower plot this morning, which is the second one in a week, so we really need to finish stringing up top wire along the huge stretch of fencing that encloses the irrigated portion of the land. Then there's building work, which I'm not so involved with, but I'm going to start working on cutting back blackberries. I started in on some blackberries around a huge old apple tree that's in a gulch (called "Prince Gulch") near the herb/flower plot. I'd been wanting to clear the area around this tree of blackberries and dead wood, and today I put in a couple of hours, mostly sawing off dead limbs. My idea was just to improve the health of the tree (although it's doing pretty well on its own) and improve access to its many delicious apples (which I've never tasted, but I hear they're yummy). Right now it's pretty tangly. Anyway, we have some apple trees closer to the house that didn't have many blooms, so this tangly tree would probably be our main source of apples this year, since it bloomed quite alot this spring.

After lunch I worked with Matt on the farm, rolling out black plastic sheeting to mulch around the beds of strawberries that he's got goin' there. I really hate this because I hate using plastic, but it's pretty standard for commercial strawberry growing. I don't think I'd grow strawberries for this reason; my interest is in learning how to do things sustainably. Basically, we rolled out the sheeting over an entire bed of strawberries, stretched it taut and covered the edges with dirt, then Matt went along and felt with his hand for where the strawberry plants were and made cuts with an exacto knife, and I came along and popped the plants out thru the cuts. Now the whole bed is mulched except the little holes where the strawberries are peeping out. Matt and I had already been weeding the beds pretty thoroughly to get them to the point where he could make accurate cuts with plastic -- although he did mess up a few times here and there and made a cut where there was grass instead of strawberries. I'll be doing some kind of farmwork with him again tomorrow.

That's it for this installment; just trying to keep current here, and keep the flow of writing going. I'll write more soon...

Veggie oil car fuel

Hello there,

It's six a.m., and I just came back from turning on irrigation in our herb/flower plot. Yesterday Matt finished setting up aluminum piping with overhead sprinklers, which we're gonna use until we have time to get the trenches between the garden beds properly shaped to use for flood irrigation. It's such a relief to have the piping in place for now -- trenching is a lot of work, and there's too much work in general right now to really do that in a timely way. We've got about ten flats of flowers sitting outside, waiting to be transplanted. And more inside the greenhouse that will go in soon.

The weather has changed dramatically, and we are supposed to have record high temperatures in the next few days. It also feels like the days have gotten much longer recently, with it being light enough to work at 5 a.m. now, although five-thirty is maybe a more realistic time to start.

....I've been working on setting up a way to collect and filter used vegetable oil from local restaurants to fuel my car. Last night in Jacksonville I stopped by a new restaurant, "Jazushi," and arranged to pick up their oil, which is very clean to begin with, which is great. The only downside is that they only use about 30 gallons of oil per month, although that could increase if the place gets popular and they have more orders for tempura. I'm doing this with Jen, a friend of Full Bloom who lives in Ashland and also has a car that runs on veggie oil. So it would mean about 15 gallons/month for each of us, which is about 300 miles worth of fuel for my car. Which isn't bad, actually. They have a 55-gallon drum in the back that they dump their used oil into, so now Jen and I have to figure out how transfer the oil into something we can transport back to her house. Probably we would put a bedsheet over the drum behind the restaurant so that the oil gets pre-filtered before we even pick it up.

I've been hearing that most of the restaurants in the area have been asked by various individuals or companies to give them their oil. And that's been reflected in the calls I've been making to places in Ashland and Medford -- almost all of them are spoken for, and only two maybes -- places where I couldn't get ahold of someone who knew whether their restaurant had their veggie oil available. Alot of the restaurants are giving their oil to companies who convert it to biodiesel, and some folks are using it like me, just filtering it and then pumping it into their car as purified veggie oil.

Hey hey, the end of another day.

The community had a "fun day" today at Trillium, which is a wonderful arts and ecology center about a half-hour's drive from Full Bloom. The parents put the kids on their backs, and we went hiking up through their gardens, past beautiful former trout farms and rustic cabins, meandering streams. The poison oak is really starting to leaf out, and there were lots of beautiful flowers -- trilliums for sure, plus bleeding hearts, lilacs, shooting stars, and some others I couldn't identify.
Trillium is one of my favorite places so far -- the little meadows, the crystal-clear blue ponds, water running everywhere. There's something so peaceful and quiet about the place. And the couple that own it, Chant and Susannah, are great. Chant is so lively, and his knowledge of the little Applegate area is so deep, including the natural world, indigenous and early white American history, and a long involvement in the environmental activist world to save the area from further logging attempts. Susannah I don't know as much about, but she's been very kind and gracious with me.

After the hike we picnicked at Trillium and then drove home. Then it was back out to the herb/flower plot with Eden to continue the work of creating beds and irrigation ditches. Both of us are feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the work that has to be done there right now. In a few weeks, when the beds are all dug and the starts in the greenhouse are all planted, it will be alot more mellow -- just weeding, watering, then harvestin starting sometime in July. But now we have bed after bed that has to be dug out on contour, in order that the trenches between beds can be relatively level and not slope off too much. That way we can fill each trench full with water, and that water will seep its way into the adjacent beds, watering our flowers and herbs. It's hard because Eden's been gone alot, and I'm trying to work as much as possible on other projects here to make enough dough to support myself, and my work with Eden seems like alot, considering we won't be making much money off it this year. I wish we had started this whole process last fall, but of course I wasn't here then. So it's a big learning experience. We're thinking of taking a couple of full weekdays next week to finish off the planting/trenching job.

....Other than that, things are moving right along. Work at the common building continues to go apace. The foundation is done, and 12"-diameter, 22'-long wooden posts have started to be sanded, grooved and set in place to hold up the roof. So far four posts are up, held in place by brackets set in the foundation. I assume we'll have most of the rest of the posts up by the end of the week.

....We've been losing chickens to a skunk the last week or so. We've already lost some this spring to a coyote, so there's talk of buying some more, but I don't know when. Matt, I believe, is intending to shoot the skunk. The one night he went out to try and kill it though, it didn't show up. The skunk had made a whole in the fencing and killed a few last week.

.... We also finished the main part of the deer fencing last week, which was completed when Matt welded a top piece to the front gate. There's still top wire to do along some sections, but for all intensive purposes we are now deer-proofed! It allowed us to take down some fencing we'd had near the main house to protect some veggies and fruit trees. Also Ryan's planted out a bunch of vegetable starts -- lettuce, cabbage, broccoli. I sowed some flowers earlier and will probably plant them out near the house this week as well. There's a new kitchen garden between the common building and Ryan/Eden's cottage, but unfortunately half of it has been commandeered by the crew working on the common building, to be used to stack the wooden posts used for the stick-framing. So we have half the space we thought we'd have. But it's still alot of space.


Can't think of anything to say now. Bye!

Herbs and Flowers

Hello there,

Not much that's new to report. We've just about finished deer-proofing 30+ acres of land (the whole property is 282 acres). It's an enormous amount of fencing, as well as many gates, and all that remains is to string top wire along several sections; but we are deer-proof enough that we can start planting vegetable and flower starts from the greenhouse.

Eden and I planted our first seeds out of doors, and our first flower/medicinal herb starts, at the end of April. Matt tilled up a quarter-acre for us at the beginning of the property, which is a bit of a walk from the main house. But the soil is great. So far the flowers we've planted: plains coreopsis, various poppies, bee phacelia, clarkia, safflower, sunchokes (which are in the sunflower family), hollyhock, cardoon, daisies. Medicinal herbs: echinacea, yarrow, lavender and California goldenrod (which can also be used as cut flowers), and lovage. We also planted some excess cabbage for the community, so that there'll be lots of sauerkraut goin' on. Mostly we'll sell cut flowers to a local CSA and possibly other venues, and begin to build up a cache of perennial medicinal herbs for the long-term.

Another cool thing we got going there at the herb/flower plot, yesterday, was a hand-dug flood irrigation system, just like people have been doing for thousands of years. It took a lot of work, but basically the paths between the garden beds also function as irrigation trenches. You just turn the water on, irrigate whatever trench you want, and the water soaks the adjacent beds. Capillary action brings the water upwards as well as down. We're still having to water the seeds we sowed out there, but the starts, which already have pretty well-established root systems, get watered from the bottom up, and eventually all the plants can be watered this way. It's still very much a work-in-progress, as, there are places where the water sits too long, and there's more digging to do. And there are many more beds to create, meaning also that there are many more trenches to dig.

OK, that's it for now. I've been postponing journaling here, thinking I didn't have much to say. But I'm back on track now. Have a great day.

Urbaculture

Hey there,

I went into Grants Pass yesterday, a beautiful drive thru the Williams valley, with lots farms, country stores, wooded hills, etc. I visited Arbel and Yonatan Shemesh; Arbel's sister Sharon is my oldest friends, and one my closest friends as well. I've known Arbel since I was six, although she's alot older than me so we never really saw each other much, as she was pretty much out of the house when I became friends with Sharon. Anyway, we got a chance to check out the Grants Pass farmer's market, which is close to her home in the old part of town; not a lot of produce yet, which is not surprising -- people were mostly selling plant starts, bread and other value-added products like jams, etc. Afterwards we returned to the Shemesh house and talked gardening. They have asked me to put in a vegetable/herb garden with them, and so we had a long talk, sitting in the sunny backyard, about how to do that. This is a wonderful opportunity for me because I've long been interested in doing edible/permaculture landscaping for people, with the aspiration that city folks can access food as locally as possible as well as hopefully learning themselves how to grow it. A few months ago I read an article in Orion magazine about two women in Portland, OR who have started a business called "Your Backyard Farmer." (www.yourbackyardfarmer.com) They set up and maintain vegetable gardens in people's backyards, and every week during the harvest season they pick a box of vegetables for you and set it on your back porch. usually there's enough to feed their clients and their clients' neighbors, extended family, etc. Anyway, I am really enthralled by this idea. I also read an article about a guy in Santa Cruz, CA who does edible landscaping for people, and part of his service is that he hooks his clients up with a local herbalist, who gives them a health diagnosis and prescribes herbs, which are then planted in the clients' gardens as well. I love this idea too. Anyway, I would love to set up a business where I am setting up vegetable/fruit and medicinal herb gardens in people's backyards, so that everyone can have a stronger connection to their food, to plants and nature in general.

It's a trek for me to get to Grants Pass (an hour each way) and the other big towns, Ashland and Medford, aren't much closer, so I'm unsure if it's really a practical thing to do if I stick around here long-term, but I think this scenario with Arbel and Yonatan is perfect for now -- a test case, a chance for me to give it a try and see how I like it, with friends who are flexible and enthused about growing their own food. They get a CSA box every week already from a local organic farm, "Fry Family Farm," so mostly I'll be planting culinary herbs and a few vegetables that they eat a ton of, like dark leafy greens (kale, collards, etc.), cabbage (they love sauerkraut and make it all the time), lettuce, etc. It's a good challenge for me.

.....Today I helped Ryan and Eden out with finishing up their strawbale cottage in the morning; they're putting down a floor, which involves laying gravel down, sprinkling it with a tiny bit of pulverized clay (to help it stick together), spraying it with water and then running a tamping machine over it; then laying down black plastic as a vapor barrier and repeating the process. I just helped them with one of the layers; they have several more layers to come, and the final surface is gonna be cob -- some mixture of clay, sand and straw, I would guess. One of the guys that's been working on the house started applying the orangey plaster on the outside of the house. With the red roof it looks pretty good.

After lunch I went out to the field with Matt and planted a ton of "everbearing" strawberries. The soil is so soft and crumbly, it was a pleasure to work with, and I worked in my bare feet in the surprisingly hot sun all afternoon. I'm pretty beat, but it was great to talk with Matt, pick his brain about farming, get a greater sense of his overall vision and squat there, planting strawberries together. Tomorrow there are more strawberries to plant, including another variety called "Chandler," as well as golden raspberries. I've never seen or heard of them before, but apparently they're delicious. He's got a bunch of varieties of berries and fruit trees that are gorgeous, delicious and not present in the regional markets here, so he's hoping he'll create a niche for the farm that way. Apparently his plan is to grow mostly culinary herbs and fruit, with a few veggies thrown in there as well.

OK, that's it for today. Peace out.

First week at Full Bloom

Ahh....I just finished my first week as a "provisional member" at Full Bloom Farm. It's been a full week, for sure. So many things have happened, it's hard to sum it all up. I could probably blog each day about the things I'm learning, and that might be more helpful than once a week, because in retelling what I've learned, I integrate them better, and I'm less likely to forget.

I got here last Saturday, March 1st. I've done a bunch of different work so far. This afternoon (Friday) I planted a few hundred strawberries in the farm field while Matt Vivrett, the farm manager, was busy ploughing, discing and rototilling all around me. The section I'm working on is all on a slope, and will be a combination of berries -- strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries -- and fruit trees. I think it's good that all those plants are going on the slope -- operating a tractor on hills is really difficult, and all the aforementioned plants, with the exception of the strawberries, will not need to be turned every year, which means much less tractor work. I'll have to report later about the various fruit trees the farm will be growing -- can't remember it all now. The berries and fruit trees arrived in the last couple of weeks, and there is a push to get them all in soon.

In the meantime, I've been helping Ryan and Eden put up deer fencing around the perimeter of the cultivatable area. There are about 30 acres at the base of the property that the farm owns irrigation rights to -- the other 250+ acres on the surrounding hillsides are forested. So the project is to fence in most of the 30 acres, and lemme tell ya, that's a lot of fencing, up and down slopes, around a pond, thru a bit of exotic blackberry growth, etc. When I was here in Feb. I helped put in metal fence posts; there's still a lot of posts that need to go in, but this past week, I've been putting the actual fence up -- rolling out long stretches of it, stretching it with a "come-along," and finally tying it to the posts. Some of it's a little bit difficult, as the rolls are heavy and awkward to deal with. But it's also satisfying to look back and see how much got done. And a little sad -- fencing is ugly, keeps out wildlife, etc. Ryan and I were talking about the possibility of eventually replacing the fencing with hedges that achieve the same purpose -- keeping the deer out so that they don't ravage the veggies, herbs and young trees we're trying to grow.

The fencing is coming along, and today we just got a huge load of manure, about 15 tons, which will allow us to start another project that needs to run concurrently with the fencing project, and that is the creation of a "hedgerow." First we're gonna put down a long stretch of sheet mulch -- cardboard, then manure, then straw, in a strip about 25 ft. wide and a couple hundred feet long. The sheet mulch will eventually decompose completely into soil, while keeping down the weeds, and slowly adding fertility to the soil. Then into the soil we will be planting all kinds of shrubs, a complex mixture of plants that will function in many ways -- as a windbreak, as a "nectary" (a source of nectar for many insects, as well as shelter for them) and also as a source of food for us. The planting has to happen this month because, well, that's when these particular plants really need to go into the ground. But they need to be properly fenced so that the deer don't totally destroy these young plants. So there's a lot of work to be done on two fronts.

In addition to the hedgerow, the berries/fruit trees for the farm, and the deer fencing, Ryan and Eden are trying to finish the house they just built for themselves, a cute little strawbale house fifty yards from the main house. I may be helping them out with that as well. The house is livable -- they started sleeping in it as soon as I moved into their old room in the main house. But it still needs lots of work -- the outside has to be painted, and the floor needs to be put in, and probably other things as well. Also, we are going to be putting in the kitchen garden for the year -- about a quarter acre of crops grown for the community. So right now we're sowing vegetable seed in the greenhouse for that.

Another cool thing that happened this week is that the beginnings of a cob oven were begun right outside the main house. Jo and Rosie are going to be building their commercial bakery on the land, but it won't be operational till next year, but they want to start baking on a small scale this spring, to start building a loyal base of customers. So they commissioned an outdoor oven to be built, by an organization called "House Alive" which is probably fifteen minutes from here. Cob is a mixture of sand and clay, or sand, clay and straw. Earlier in the year, a roof was built on the patio in front of the house, and then a platform was made, and on wednesday the cobbers came. We started out by building a dome of wet sand. It partially collapsed a few times, but finally we got it up. Then we layered wet newspaper over that. And finally we applied a 3-inch layer of a sand/clay cob mixture, about the width of a hand, all the way around the sand dome. That will be given time to dry, and then the cobbers will come back and cut the door to the oven, and scoop out the sand. The newspaper is just there to tell them where the sand ends and the cob begins. Then they'll light a candle inside the dome to try the cob out further, and then...I can't remember exactly, but they're gonna build another layer or two, of what I'm not sure, and then the oven'll be done. I'll have more to say on this next week probably -- hopefully I'll get to participate in the next stages of the process. I loved working on this oven -- the materials were really fun to work with, and it was very social -- the cobber and his wife, as well as another couple, plus me and Ryan, on a sunny day with "The Be Good Tanyas" on the radio. It was a good day.

Later on this summer Full Bloom will be hosting a six-week cob-building workshop, and the product they'll be working on will be Jo and Rosie's new house, a cob house. I'm really excited to be a part of that as well.

Mmm...I guess that's all for now. I must do this more often -- so much more to tell, about living in community, about all the various plans and projects going on around this wonderful place. But I'll save it for another day......

A New Home

Hey there,

I've found a new home! Things weren't really working out so well for me at SMIP Ranch; it never really was a sustainable situation, living in so isolated of a setting. I was out of my depth as a farm manager as well. So I paid a visit to my friends up at Full Bloom Farm in southern Oregon in November to talk with them about the possibility of moving up there. It's mid-February now, and I've spent 2 weeks living here as a kind of litmus test to see how it felt to live and work with these folks. And it's felt great. Aside from a general anxiety about the unknown future, especially with regards to finances, I have been really enjoying myself here. So, we've agreed to extend my stay to a six-month trial period, starting in early March, which could turn into a more long-term situation. I'm driving home next week to say my last goodbyes, pack up my things and pick up my cat Sukey before driving back here.

So let me just say a few things about Full Bloom Farm. There are six adults, five of whom I've lived with at Green Gulch Farm Zen center, and all six have gone thru the six-month farm apprenticeship I did there. Two of them, Ryan Ginn and Eden Luz, did the apprenticeship in the same year that I did it, 2001. The rest of the adults are Matt Vivrett, Aria Bettinger, Jo Ferneau and Rosie Demmin. It feels very homey to be among people I've known for 6-7 years. In addition, there are 3 children, all girls -- Matt and Aria's kids, Tara & Talia, and Jo and Rosie's daughter Ocean.

The land is comprised of 282 acres, much of it wooded. There's about 30 acres that's available for pasture, crops, housing, etc. At this moment there's a main house, an old victorian that's in great shape, which is the de facto common building -- all meals are eaten here, and it's also where general play and relaxation, movie watching, etc. happens. Downstairs is a cellar full of root vegetables, a big freezer full of local meat and home baked bread, sauces and preserves canned by hand here. The ground floor consists of the kitchen, a dining room, an office with a small library, a living room, a bathroom, a laundry room, and the bedroom where I'll be sleeping. Upstairs is occupied by Matt, Aria, Tara and Talia. There's a zendo up there as well, in a little alcove.

A short distance southward from the house is a tubehouse, the greenhouse where the vegetables will get started. There will soon be an outdoor area built near the tubehouse for mixing soil, hardening off plants, etc. A little past that is a huge barn that looks brand new, with about 5 tractors and many tractor implements. Just above the barn is a chicken coop, with about 40 chickens and a couple of roosters. I've been told that when it's warm we'll get about 40 eggs/day; right now it's about 15. Beyond the barn is a schoolbus that's been beautifully remodeled as a dwelling for Jo, Rosie and Ocean, with insulation, new flooring, lighting, etc. If you continue past the bus, there's what is currently pastureland, which bottoms out in a wetland area next to Quartz Creek, a small stream. Much of the pastureland is being fenced right now for growing vegetables. Beyond the pasture is a couple acres of land that has already been fenced for deer, and will house the first vegetables, as well as a large swath dedicated to berries and fruit trees, which will be planted in the next month or so.

Going northward and uphill from the main house about fifty yards, is a small strawbale cottage which Ryan and Eden are almost finished building for themselves. Just south of that is about a quarter acre set aside for a kitchen garden to feed the community (right now there's just garlic in there), and right next to the kitchen garden is a pad that's been scraped out, where large common building will be built this year, housing a commercial bakery/kitchen, dining room space, a library, etc. Just above the common building is a reservoir for irrigation that was created this past year. Above that gets into wooded hills, some of which are on the property.

Southward and down the hill is Yale Creek Road and Yale Creek itself. There is some area on the other side of the road that will be farmland, as well as a spot for compost and brush/burn piles. The terrain rises again on the other side of the creek and becomes wooded, with several trails. The plan is to create several hiking trails on either side of the valley for people to enjoy. Also, the land was heavily logged by a company that bought the property in the '80s, and so reforestation/restoration work will be ongoing. I was part of a tree-planting project the past couple of weeks that got about 4,500 baby sugar pines and ponderosa pines planted on the steep hillsides of Full Bloom's land. In addition to the planting, quite a bit of brush and some trees need to be removed in order to allow the new trees to have enough space and light to grow properly.

Ryan currently owns the land. The community is in the process of setting up the operating agreement for and LLC, the Earth & Sky Collective, which all member will buy into to collectively own the land. Right now there are a couple of businesses happening. Matt and Aria will be running the farm, which will start small, maybe a couple of acres. The focus this year is on continuing to get a lot of the infrastructure built for the farm, so not many crops will be grown. Next year will be the first full season for the farm. Jo and Rosie will be running a commercial bakery. This year they're going to go very small-scale, and build an outdoor cob oven which will produce a small amount of bread they can sell to locals to begin to build up their clientele, while they focus on getting the common building, which houses their full-sized bakery, built. So next year will also be the first full season of baking. Eden and I are planning on growing about a quarter acre of medicinal herbs this year, mostly just for learning purposes, while we do a lot of research and networking, in order to be able to start a small herb-growing business next spring. Ryan will be helping out on the farm. He's also looking into starting a non-profit that will host workshops related to sustainable living, environmental ed., etc. And he's thinking of going back to school to become a therapist.

It's still unclear how I fit into all of this. I believe that this next six months I will be helping out on numerous projects -- the common building, the farm, childcare, fencing, restoration work, building Jo & Rosie's cob house, etc., probably about 3 days a week. I still need to find 2-3 days/week of labor outside the property, to sustain myself financially. And I'll be working with Eden to slowly build up this business plan for growing herbs. If all goes well, I'll be able to work full-time on-site next year, between growing herbs, childcare, farming and baking.

And that's it! I'm really excited, and glad to get this blog going again. I'm in a location that's ripe with sustainable living activities -- everything from making our own apple juice, bread, etc. to farming, raising animals (sheep and goats are on their way) and sustainable energy projects like solar panels (Full Bloom generates almost all of its own power thru solar panels). So there'll be plenty to write about. It seems like a good place to be, here at Full Bloom and in southern Oregon in general. I hope this was enjoyable to read, and I'll be in touch soon....

Thinking out loud (about next year)

....Still trying to figure out about next year -- do I want to do this? And if so, how would I do it differently?

.....I guess what it comes down to is that I WOULD like to run the farm next year, if the conditions change to support my work here. If the conditions don't change, then I need to quit and start life over in some other locale, with some other job. I'm dreading that; I don't have as much money saved as I'd like, and I'd prefer to already have something lined up that I can slip into easily when I do leave here, both for my own comfort and my cat Sukey's; I'm concerned about her. If I leave here suddenly, I'd have to find a place for her to live while I looked for my own place, which could take a month or more; then I might end up finding a place in a city, which wouldn't be as good for her as the country, since she's used to the great outdoors.

What I have started thinking more about is my six friends -- 3 couples -- up at Full Bloom Farm in southern Oregon, near Jacksonville. They were all farm apprentices at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, two of them in the same class as me, and we've remained good friends. My friend Ryan Ginn inherited some money and used it to buy land -- 287 acres -- up in Oregon, and he, along with his partner Eden Luz, Jo Ferneau & Rosie Demmin, Matt & Aria (can't remember their last names right now) have set up an intentional community there. They're spending this year setting up the infrastructure for a farm, building housing, getting permits and building a commercial kitchen to bake bread in. They're looking ultimately to have 10-12 adults living and working on the land (there are also 3 children living on the land now).

Anyway, my dream since coming home from farming and living communally abroad 12 years ago has been to start an intentional community with friends, which has both spiritual and permacultural components to it. What my friends up there are doing fits all of that, and ever since they started it a couple of years ago, I've day-dreamed about the possibility of moving up there. The things that have stopped me are 1) it's a long drive away from my family and friends in the east bay, 2) I don't know what I'd do, work-wise, up there, and 3) I'm not thrilled about the idea of being the only single person among couples.

It's been a hard summer here for many reasons, but the main one is the fact that I'm alone up here; I live alone, for the most part I work alone, and the work, and life in general, doesn't seem to have much meaning when I'm not sharing it with people. I don't enjoy carrying the stresses of managing an entire farm by myself (which is partially why I started this blog -- to verbalize the things that I'm otherwise keeping to myself). I had expressed some of this feeling to Jo, Ryan and Eden when I saw them at a wedding on Labor Day weekend.

A few weeks ago, Ryan called and said that he, Eden, Jo and Rosie had been talking about me, were concerned, and had decided that one of them would call me every week to check in. Hearing that was so heart-warming, made me feel a little less alone here. Then I had a phone conversation with Eden, who was verbalizing some of her stresses around living in community, around figuring out what her work is there. She's interested in herbal medecine, and in growing herbs, and was trying to figure out how to incorporate doing that into the farm. We'd talked about that a few times over the last couple of years, and brought up the possibility of me coming up there to live and grow herbs as well. Anyway, she said something about wanting to do her own thing on the farm, but not do it alone; in other words, she wanted to do work that she had some control over and responsibility for, but she didn't want to do it off by herself. And that expressed exactly what my struggle here has been. I AM doing something that I have control over and responsibility for, which allows for great creativity. But I'm doing it alone, and it's no fun. I'd rather collaborate on a project.

I was musing over the conversation in the field the next day, and thinking about the various possibilities that Eden had up there with respect to herbs. I remembered this article I'd read in a local paper, describing a landscaper down in Santa Cruz, who specialized in permaculture and native plants. One of his practices was to involve a local herbalist in his projects, who would work with his clients to determine which herbs would help their health the most, which he would then plant in their gardens. I got to thinking about CSAs, and then about a CSH -- community-supported herbiculture -- in which, along with whatever veggies each member would receive, they would also get medicinal (and culinary) herbs, which had been pre-determined by an herbalist who had prescribed herbs for all the members, which we could grow. It was just an idea, a seed, but it was really fun to think about, and I realized that I finally had something, work-wise that I could get passionate about while living at Full Bloom Farm. That, combined with this grateful feeling towards my friends there who care about me, got me thinking more seriously about moving there. Also, I realized that I could be an uncle of sorts, and have some meaningful relationships with children, which would be so great. As for the other s0-called obstacles I mentioned earlier, well, I can't really control the romantic situation in my life, i.e. who i meet and when, so there's no use in seeing being single as an obstacle to moving up there. It certainly will be easier to meet women up there than in my current situation. So the only remaining thing that gives me pause is how far it is from my family. But I'll never have everything I want in one situation. And if it really feels like a hardship after a few years, then I could move back, closer to home.

....Right around the time I started thinking about all this, my dear friend Sharon called me and asked if I wanted to drive to southern Oregon to see her sister Arbel, who lives in Grant's Pass -- about an hour from Full Bloom. I could really use some time away from the ranch, and it's an opportunity to also see my Green Gulch friends, and talk with them about this possibility of moving up there. So it's all arranged, I think. I'll go up there for four days, see my friend's and Sharon's sister, and get the ball rolling with regards to seriously considering moving up there.

So that's one idea. I don't have a lot of money saved, and whether it's Full Bloom or some other option, I need to work, so the question remains, will I stay at SMIP Ranch? And if I do, what would make life livable here?

I've got a car, something I didn't have the first year I was here. I've got some semblance of community now -- I know a lot more folks here, including new friends, and old ones who've moved closer. What I really need is a work situation that is manageable. As it stands, the work isn't really any easier than it was last year, even though I had 30 hours/week of help this year. The reason it's not easier is because I have twice as much to take care of, harvest and deliver. Last year I farmed close to the same amount of land, but if a row got too weedy, I would ignore it and move on to another row, since there was too much food out in the field for one restaurant anyway. This year, there are two restaurants, which means that I can't just ignore crops that are weed-infested; I have to take care of them. It also means that there is twice as much to harvest as there was last year; actually more than twice as much. So 30 hours/week of extra labor really doesn't cut it.

The question is, how much labor do I need, and can I do it with labor alone, or do I need to buy a tractor with implements and other equipment that can boost production by cutting down on labor costs and speeding up farming tasks. This is a major question, and to answer it I'm gonna need to sit down with several farmers in the next month and a half to get a proposal on paper that I can present to the powers-that-be.

Also, I need direct access to someone representing the funders of the farm, to talk about money issues that come up. Right now, I cannot for the life of me get ahold of Tim Stannard, who holds the purse strings of the farm. It is incredibly frustrating. He is very busy, and it is understandable that he doesn't have time for me. But I need a stand-in for him, who I can talk to every week, in person if need be, about finances, who can help me manage a budget better, who can do the bookkeeping for me. There are many crucial decisions that need to be made on a farm, in a timely manner, and if I can't reach the funder at the right time, the farm falters.

Ok, that's it for now. I'll continue this discussion later, when more thoughts materialize.

Thanks again for listening.


Danny

Work party and soil testing thoughts

Tired.

Yesterday I held a work party here, and 15 people showed up, for at least part of the day. I need lots of help pulling weeds from the rows of vegetables growing in the fall/winter portion of the field. I got some of that, with friends clearing four rows of lettuce and two rows of red-ribbed dandelion of weeds, which I can now harvest on Monday for Tuesday’s delivery. I also needed help clearing the two-thirds of the field that I grew the spring and summer’s crops on, so that the tractor can come in, very soon, and disc the soil for the cover-cropping that also has to happen very soon. So we cleared that part of the field of all drip irrigation lines, piling them up in piles along the edges of the field. We also removed all pumpkins and much of the butternut squash, which I’ll store in the barn until needed. And we were able to do some seed saving – four different varieties of bush beans, plus cranberry beans and curly cress/pepper cress seed. I was a little disappointed because there weren’t as many dry beans available as I thought, and the amount gathered yesterday won’t be enough to allow me to avoid buying beans to plant next year. But it’s something. I’m not sure how dry the beans/pods have to be to pick them; I could possibly pick a bunch of beans that are tweeners – the beans are full-sized but not dry – and spread them out to dry in the barn. Another thing to ask my farming mentors, Martin Bournonhesque and Liz Milazzo.

I went over the results of a soil test I did back in January with Liz this past week. I had sent her a copy in the mail, but she moved to a new housing sitch and couldn’t find it, so I just read it to her over the phone – the various levels of calcium, magnesium, etc., the pH of the soil, the recommendations that the lab had for how to improve the soil. I sent another copy to her and she’s gonna go over it more deeply, since she is also getting the soil tested at the UC Santa Cruz farm she manages, which allows her to research more in depth what all these levels mean for the fertility of the soil.

The main thing about the results for SMIP Ranch soil seems to be that the pH is slightly acidic, and very high in magnesium. The high levels of magnesium result in a denser soil that is harder to work with. Both the pH level and the magnesium level can be changed for the better by adding lime, which is mostly calcium. I can either do that now, with this cover-cropping event that’s happening, or in the spring, when the cover crop gets turned in. I’ve elected to wait till the spring, since it takes both money and time to procure and spread the amendment, and I’m limited on both those things right now. In the spring I should have more energy and less to do; right now I’m trying to harvest tons of food from the summer field so it doesn’t get wasted when the ground is tilled, as well as harvesting from the fall /winter field, plus weeding, delivering, and clearing the last bit of debris from the summer field so that the tractor has free rein to do its thing.

NOTES FOR NEXT YEAR:

• I wonder if it makes sense to use less of the field, more intensively; in other words, let some of the field lie fallow, and work the remaining portion more, doing more than one planting in a given piece of ground. So for instance, the fifth of an acre I was able to plant right away in March (which is probably the best, most crumbly soil in the field) could be replanted 2-3 times. I’ve done this a little bit both last year and this year. It’s hard to tell if that would save any time; on the one hand, there’s less land to deal with. On the other hand, there’s a lot more work on every row I replant. The only things I can be sure of are 1) that the soil that’s replanted will be more depleted than if I just planted it once, and 2) I could rotate where the land lies fallow every year, which would help build back those nutrients. I guess it could make sense to replant a small section each year, and set aside a similar-sized section each year that lays fallow. Then the following year the section that was planted more than once could be the fallow one.

• I’m wondering about cover cropping what is currently the fall/winter field, next spring, when the summer field’s cover crop is turned in. The problem is that there isn’t enough pressure in the irrigation system to do overhead watering, which means that, since the cover crop wouldn’t go in until after the last rains of the season, I’d have to do drip irrigation for the cover crop. That seems insane – a huge time expense. Another thing to consult about.
  

A recent photo of me at the ranch

Cover-cropping, part II

Hey there,

Adventures in cover-cropping. I'm excited, actually; I've never done this part of farming before. It looks like I will be scrambling, in the next week plus, to remove all irrigation from the summer field, remove all edible crops that are save-able (mostly winter squash), transplant any herbs I can (sage, marjoram and chives) to the herb patch in a corner of the field, and remove any seeds I want to save (mostly flower and bean seed). It's supposed to rain tonight and then there'll be a blush of hot weather starting Sunday 10/21. By Monday 10/29 I should have the field ready, and the idea would be to have a tractor with a disc come in that morning, and turn in all the remaining vegetation (of which there's lots). That afternoon I would come in with a couple people and spread two things:

A)Cover crop seed -- a mix of triticale [wheat/rye hybrid], "biomaster" peas, bell beans, purple vetch and something else I can't remember. This is largely for the nitrogen the field will get thru the cover-cropping process. I may also buy a "spinner," which is a tool that helps distribute the seed evenly.

B) Amendments. I'm still looking into this, but it's looking like lime/gypsum, to add calcium and change the Ph of the soil from 5.9 (too acidic) to something closer to 6.5 (right in the middle, between acid and alkaline). I contacted a place in Half Moon Bay called "Romeo Packing" which sells amendments and fertilizers in bulk. I'll need about a thousand pounds of lime per acre, and I'm doing two of the field's three acres in winter cover crop, so that's about a ton of lime, in fifty-pound bags. They have two kinds of lime there -- dolomite, which is a mixture of calcium carbonate and magnesium, and oyster shell, which is strictly calcium carbonate. I have to figure out which one is more appropriate for the soil I have, and I'm hoping, in the next few days, to go over the results of a soil test I did back in January with Liz Milazzo, my farm mentor at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center when I was there. She might also recommend other amendments, based on the test results. The oyster shell is more expensive than the dolomite, but not by much -- 10 cents per pound compared to 7.5 cents per pound. So the question is, really, do I need magnesium? According to the soil test, the magnesium levels of the soil, measured in parts per million, is very high, so it seems that the oyster shell will be the way to go.

I have mixed feelings about adding this stuff, only because it has to be imported from somewhere far away. I'd like to figure out a way to eliminate any outside inputs -- saving all my own seed, finding local sources of minerals, etc. But for now this seems like the right thing to do. My interest seems to be leading me to exploring indigenous ways of farming, wondering how local peoples tended this land. I don't think there was very much agriculture going on in this part of the world, but I could be wrong.

...........Anyway, once both the cover crop seed and the amendments are added, by hand, to the field, then the tractor would come in the again that day and disc them in, lightly. According to Martin, this involves changing the angle of the disc so that it penetrates the ground in such a way that it just lightly covers the soil.

So the actual cover-cropping would all happen in one day -- discing in the morning, spreading seeds in the afternoon, then discing again in the late afternoon/early evening.

Rain should come soon after, and then I'll be set. It's just the work between now and then that's daunting. It looks like the whole process is gonna cost somewhere between $1,200 and $1,500. That's quite a lot actually, and I'll need a one-time influx of cash from the restaurants to cover this cost.

And that's about it on the subject. Thanks once again for listening.

Danny

pre-workday thoughts

Good morning,

It's 7 a.m., a half hour before my two coworkers, sisters Jahnavi and Radha, show up to do the harvest for tomorrow's delivery. Jahnavi, my main co-worker (her sister only comes once a week) is leaving at the end of the month, and I met with a couple of possible replacements yesterday. I'm feeling a little nervous about post-Jahnavi era, mainly because I haven't found anyone so far, and whoever that person will be, it's likely that they will have less experience/skill than her.

It's been wet and cold the last week. According to the national weather service, it's supposed to be in the mid-seventies next week -- the last full week of October. That bodes well for the work party I'm hosting here on the final Saturday of the month. Jahnavi works her final couple of days the following week and then whoever's the newbie will start soon after.

The melons have been a bust so far. I went ahead and harvested all of the blackail mtn. watermelons yesterday and will give them to Spruce; hopefully some of them will be edible. It's a little frustrating. I was checking them semi-regularly, but I really didn't know what to check for, and the melons I gave the Pub on Tuesday were mealy, apparently. I didn't have much luck with melons last year, either. Somehow, if it's not gonna sit on the ground and be easily noticeable when ripened, I don't do a very good job of growing it. I think the main reason is that my learning curve is so steep, and there is so much to do, that I really don't want to have to deal with anything that's gonna require extra babying to come out right. I'm willing to try melons again next year, but I should probably have some discussions about it with an experienced melon farmer.

Part of the problem this year was that I grew varieties that I knew nothing about, and was looking for color change as the first predictor of ripeness. I've got this one variety of muskmelon, for instance, called "petit gris de rennes," requested by Mark Sullivan, the executive chef at Spruce, and I guess I assumed that it would turn pale from the dark green it's been the last month or so. Mark had given me a book of melons at the beginning of the season, with these beautiful color plates, which is where I viewed the varieties he was interested in -- blacktail mtn., petit gris de rennes, orange-fleshed honeydew, yellow sugarlump (a watermelon), etc. One of the seed companies also sent me some free seed for a couple other varieties. Anyway, I can't remember what the pictures of the melons look like, and so I'm having a hard time distinguishing when they're ready. The other major indicator is supposed to be that the melons come off the vine easily when moved, and give off a sweet smell. But that doesn't seem to be the case with the watermelons, since I waited and waited for that, and now they're mealy and over-ripe. So it's back to the drawing board, I guess.

That's it for now. More thoughts later.

Danny

those hot crops that never quite heated up, cover-cropping et al.

Hey there,

It's Tuesday afternoon and I just got done with delivering, picked up produce boxes from The Village Pub, had a little lunch there and now I'm on the way home, stopping briefly at the Woodside Library for a little blogging.

I delivered "Blacktail Mountain" watermelons today, and watched as the chefs at the Pub opened one up. It was mealy and over-ripe. This is the first time I've brought melons in, and the cooks were surprised that the melons came so late. Fact is, I've been waiting and waiting, watching them, testing them to see if they come off the vine easily, or have that sweet smell, and neither has happened. Finally on Sunday Mark Sullivan, the executive chef at Spruce restaurant in S.F., was over at the farm and tried one of them out. He thought they were OK. So I decided to harvest and deliver them today.

I'm a little out of my depth with melons at this point. I was told last year to wait until those telltale signs, mentioned above, were apparent. but apparently, I was wrong, at least on the subject of watermelons. I must find out some more info on how to tell when to pick 'em.

The tomatoes have been a semi-disappointment so far too. I planted a bunch in early may, and those have been good so far -- mostly sungold cherry tomatoes, which are fabulous. there was a second batch, planted almost a month later, that are just chock-full of fruits but never got ripe -- the hot weather just never came this summer, and now it's mid-October and raining. We never got an Indian Summer either. Last October, my mentor and ex-SMIP farmer Martin Bournonhesque called the weather we were having "Indian Bummer," because it was so much less warm than usual; but this year is ridiculous; we're getting into the forties in the evening now, and it's rained almost an inch and a half in the last week. He discouraged me from trying to ripen the tomatoes inside, saying that my focus should really be on weeding the fall/winter acre I am behind on, and that I'm not gonna get enough yield from the ones I bring inside to really make a difference anyway.

Now the subject of cover-cropping is up. I should get a tractor to disc in the summer field, about 2/3 of the acreage I have, soon, then spreading cover crop -- beans, vetch, etc. -- plus any amendments, and then get the tractor to return to disc in those seeds, which will then be watered by the rain and need no further management till next spring, when they'll get turned in, in preparation for planting the summer field for next year. But there is a much narrower window in which to do this cover-cropping, because of the rain situation. Right now, the field is wet but still workable. If it continues to rain though, it will be too muddy for any machinery. According to Martin, it will be dumping rain by the end of November. So I have this window of a few weeks in which to find out the costs of cover-cropping, hire a tractor driver, order seeds, pull up all the summer crops I can salvage and remove all the drip irrigation, before the work can be done. It's daunting, because there's so much OTHER work to be done -- namely harvesting and weeding/thinning, in the fall/winter field that's inundated with weeds. I'm organizing a work party at the end of the month, which should help speed some of the prep for the cover-cropping along.

On a different note, I'm still trying to manage the onslaught of produce that's coming out of the field. Winter squash, beans, tomatoes, cooking and salad greens, roots, herbs, etc. -- so much! And the field is soaking wet, which makes harvesting, or any kind of work, much slower, as the mud cakes to the boots, making walking difficult. thankfully, I believe I am done with the bush beans as of today, and probably the zukes/cukes as well. No more squash blossoms or basil either. On the other hand, I have sunchokes, pumpkins, delicata squash, some shell beans and the requisite staples like beets, turnips, dandelion greens, lettuce, etc. Radishes should be done in a week or two.

And that's it for today. Thanks again for listening.

Danny

sick on saturday

I've hit a wall. Friday was a little rough because the friend who was supposed to help me harvest the last delicate vegetables in the early morning didn't show up, so I had to really kick it into gear; even so, I was 45 minutes late with the delivery to the SF restaurant, Spruce. The executive chef (and part owner of the farm), Mark Sullivan, had been pretty adamant when the restaurant opened two months ago that the produce needed to be there no later than 10:30 a.m. so far, it hasn't seemed to really matter, but I feel a little stressed about trying to get it into him by then. It's quite a push: in order to get it to Spruce by 10:30, I have to leave the farm by 8:30 or so, go to the restaurant in Woodside, The Village Pub, and have all the produce unloaded by 9:30. The drive from there is about 50 minutes, so if I leave the Pub on time, it's cool. But getting out of the farm on time is difficult. It doesn't get light enough to harvest until about 7 a.m., and there are a few things that really do better if they're harvested the day of -- lettuce, dandelion greens, edible flowers. A last look around for any zukes and cukes that may have sized up. If push came to shove, I could just do lettuce and flowers, although flowers aren't usually asked for anyway. But the Pub happened to want them for this event on Sunday that they're doing, and it was just bad timing, given that my volunteer never showed. It was an extra-big harvest, so I had to cut about 7 cases of lettuce, a case of broccoli rabe, a pound of edible flowers, and more zukes and cukes. then I had to go back and weigh those out, record them, load them in the van, change out of my dirty clothes, which were totally mud-stained due to the rain. It was kind of miserable; I was stressed, pissed off about not having help, and then it rained most of the morning.

Tomorrow's the event -- "An Artful Harvest," which is a fundraising event for the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, next door to the farm. The program was founded by Carl Djerassi, whose son Dale owns the land that the farm is on. So the event is put on by the program at the site where most of the artists have their studios, The Village Pub cooks the food, and I grow/harvest/deliver that food. Tomorrow there will be a group of donors coming for a tour of the farm. It's a little wet out there, due to Friday's rains, but it's not as bad as I feared. The farm is kind of junky-looking, however, and I need to spend time cleaning it up, as well as cleaning the barn where I live.

It's a nice event, but I'm wiped, and I'm not looking forward to having to work most of the morning and then be social on top of that for several hours. One of the nice parts about the event is that I get some recognition for my work, and that I actually see people eating what I grow. One of the tough things for me about this job is how disconnected I feel from the people that cook and eat the food I grow. My contact is limited to brief visits to the restaurants to drop off produce, pick up produce boxes and kitchen waste (which I use as compost), and the very occasional meeting with the farm owners. It's not very gratifying. But it is what it is.

OK, nothing super-special to report, really. Just wanted to post something.

Peace,

Danny

the longest day of the season

My first blog post! Feedback is welcome. I'd like to find some kind of format that both allows me process life at SMIP Ranch while also making it accessible to anyone interested in gardening. This blog will probably address some of the physical, practical, emotional, sustainable and spiritual aspects of growing food, and living off the land in general. I feel like I'm rediscovering a lost art. Please help me discover it too, by posting any feedback. Whether you're a seasoned farmer who has a tip or two to impart, a dude who makes a mean homebrewed cider or a newbie to gardening/sustainable living who has questions, or somewhere in between or beyond, your contribution is welcome.

What follows is an account of my day yesterday, as well as reflections on the last 5 months of farming this land, this year.


Yesterday was my longest, most intense day; along with several other co-workers, we harvested about 500 lbs. of food, which doesn't seem like much by farm standards, but everything on this farm is so labor intensive, it took a lot of hands to do it, and when it was all done (at dusk), I still had to spend time divvying up the produce between the two restaurants, setting aside a ton of produce that's being cooked up for an event next door, weighing everything out, and entering all the weights onto a spreadsheet.


Luckily an old friend came over, and he made us a great dinner, plus did the dishes, while i was out in the greater part of the barn doing the sorting/weighing. He's now sleeping, assumedly peacefully, in the next room while I'm sitting up in the early morn with a sore throat, wondering about this life I've chosen for myself. I tweaked my back last week, as I was standing up from harvesting radishes, and had to step back for a bit until it felt better. Now I'm feeling a little under the weather, and as I was taking my normal mid-afternoon break, I realized how tired I am. And I remembered my experience at Green Gulch Farm, where I did their 6-month organic farm apprenticeship; how tired I was and how hard that job was on my body. I remember one particular task, which was carrying around a 5-gallon bucket, half- or three quarters-full of gypsum, and flinging it onto one of the fields, to amend the soil before the tractor came in to disc. The combination of carrying a heavy bucket of amendment while broadcasting it so that it covered the section I was working on uniformly, was really hard on the bod. I was working 30 hours a week (in addition to getting up early for meditation, taking classes and doing the other parts of the zen center schedule), and I remember thinking at the time that if I was tired after only 30 hours, how would I ever work on other farms, where the workweek would certainly be longer. Later on during my stay at Green Gulch, I met Kamala (can't remember her last name), a permaculture designer near Occidental who also did the apprenticeship at GGF, as well as working a year or two in the garden there. I was telling her about my concerns with the physical side of farming, and she related that she had had the same concerns. She said that she realized that she had a "bellydancer's body" -- strong, supple/flexible, but not really geared for the hard work of farming. I think I've also got a belly dancer's body. I'm 5'7 and weigh about 120 lbs. Most farmers I know are a little bulkier than that.

It was a surprise to me when this job I'm in now came up last year; I was surprised that the opportunity presented itself, and a surprise that I took it. I reasoned that since I was my own boss, I could take breaks when my body dictated it, and could make decisions not to do certain tasks that might cause me injury. It's been interesting to watch how it's gone. Part of the difficulty cannot be avoided -- I must work this walk-behind tractor, for example, which is like a bucking bronco in the heavy clay soil I've been given. There's no way around it that I can see.

And then there's part of the difficulty that is self-created. I've been feeling a lot of stiffness in my wrists, and I know, from previous experience doing data entry 7 years ago, that the stiffness can lead to some serious repetitive stress issues. The repetitive stress issue in the wrists came up again for me when I was the "kitchen cleaner" in the GGF kitchen. Part of my job was to cook like the rest of the crew, but I also had to spend time organizing the walk-in, stocking the shelves -- lots of lifting, sometimes in awkward places. And I realized that all summer I've been trying to carry as much in my hands as possible each time I have to transport something, - whether it's tools, boxes of beets, etc. -- in order to get the work done faster. It's a repeat of what happened in the GGF kitchen. Even now, as I'm mindful of this habit, I still fall into it every day.

Anyway, it's all grist for the mill. I realized this past spring that growing food was what I wanted to do with my life, for the foreseeable future. I've been on that trajectory for the last 12 years, but it took trying out another potential life (in my case, physical theatre work) for me to realize how happy I was with what I'm doing, right now. So it's a matter of refining that passion, turning it into something that is manageable and enjoyable, not a grind. I've been at this job for about a season and a half now, and I'm constantly monitoring the process, and refining the different aspects -- not only working with the physical impact the work has on me, but the psychological/emotional impact of living alone and so remotely, as well as the impact of work-related stress.

My friend who's sleeping in the next room suggested that I start a regular blog, as a way to both process my experience and elicit a dialogue with others who are doing similar work. I had started a farm journal in the spring, but I just couldn't keep up with it, partly because the physical act of writing with a pen/pencil takes so long. The blogging format seems right for this kind of journaling, with the added bonus that it's public, so responses from others out there are possible.

Some of my biggest lessons this year to date:

• I need more help, labor-wise, with the field work. It'll be a little easier on my body, reduce the loneliness/increase the camaraderie, and I would be able to get the work done with less mental stress. The challenge, as always, is finding the funds. This year about $10,000 went to buying a delivery van, repairing it and buying a kit to convert it to run on veggie oil. If I can stay with the same total budget, but spend more money on labor and less on capital projects, I can go a long way towards making next season successful.
  

• There were several things that I did out in the field this year which made my life harder, and it's a matter of either not doing those things, or putting in a little extra work at the beginning of the year to make life easier later on, when I'm more tired and there's more to do:

1. Staking tomatoes -- What a pain it's been this year, especially with the cherry tomatoes. I went down to Blue House Farm, an organic farm about the size of mine that's in Pescadero, which specializes in dry-farmed tomatoes. They have a beautiful staking system that makes harvesting so much easier on the body, as well as being much faster. This is a case of putting in the extra time/expense early in the year to simplify things later on. Right now I can't wait for the cherry tomatoes to be gone, as delicious as they are, because it takes forever to harvest them and you have to bend in all kinds of weird ways to reach the tomatoes.

1. Tomato problems in general -- I have lots of green caterpillars eating tomatoes, and some end rot happening. This morning my co-worker Daniel, who's an expert tracker and who knows a lot about wildlife, found fresh coyote tracks in the tomato patch. I've been noticing several tomatoes that have huge bites taken out of them. Not as concerned about the coyotes, but I've noticed that certain tomatoes seem to do better than others with the first two problems. The cherry tomatoes, the early girls, the green zebras and the black prince tomatoes (both heirloom varieties) all do well and don't get caterpillars or end rot. The san marzanos and the lemon boys consistently get both problems. I don't know what is the cause of the bugs or the rot, but I need to find out, and focus more on the varieties that are problem-free. Also, the san marzanos (a roma tomato generally used for sauces) also don't taste very good; they get soft and mealy pretty quickly. I have no idea why. it's the same with the tzacalulas, (heirloom variety) which I planted last year. They're coming up on their own this year and taste just as ordinary. I've been using them in my own kitchen for sauce though, and they're fine for that.
   

1. Timing of the tillage -- This is probably the most crucial thing I've learned this year. PART 1) After a heat spell in March dried the field significantly, I consulted with another organic farmer by phone, and then had the entire field disced (sp?). Unfortunately, only a small part of the field was actually dry enough; the rest was too wet, and the result was that when it did finally dry, the texture was brick-like -- not at all conducive to growing food (massive crop failure followed). On top of that, it rained about 5 times after the field had been tilled, which meant i had to spend week after week beating back the weeds that were sprouting all over the field -- hours of wasted time. Last year, the field was tilled AFTER the last rains (in May), and the weeds only came up where I set up irrigation lines; a much more manageable situation. Next year I will make sure to have a seasoned farmer come up in person before I make this crucial decision. And if I run into a similar situation, where only a small part is ready before the rest, I'll see if I can get only that small part tilled, so I can get a jump start on the planting: this year I was able to get a fifth of an acre planted by March 31st, and had my first harvest on April 28th, -- exactly two months earlier than last year, which was fantastic. PART 2) I waited too long to re-till the front acre set aside for fall/winter planting, because all of the weeds there had already gone to seed. The result is that now I have a huge weeding problem on my hands, and can't keep on top of it. I had mistakenly thought that I shouldn't let too much time pass between the discing and the planting, because the nutrients released by the new organic matter in the soil (the weeds) would dissipate, leading to shittier soil. Dunno if that's true, but it's probably not true enough to really matter in comparison to the weeds-going-to-seed issue.
   

1. Using the walking tractor -- I had been informed that this tractor, which had been bought for the farm the first or second year (the farm's now in it's fifth year), needed a whole lot of work -- servicing it, welding some broken part, etc. It sounded like a lot of shlepping and money and time, and I was so busy planting and beating back weeds it didn't seem feasible this spring. Plus, I had never used a tractor before, and had a gut reaction of being intimidated by it. Necessity forced me to reconsider before doing the fall/winter plantings this July, and it turned out that no welding was necessary, nor was there any need for hauling it down to the BCS dealership to service it. It just needed an oil change and some gas. And the difference between the soil in the summer field, which was disced at the wrong time and not spaded with the walking tractor, and the fall/winter field, which had the spading done, is amazing to me. the soil is crumbly and the plants are bursting out of the ground, and look so vibrant and happy. Next year I'll use the walking tractor from the get-go.
2. Spacing between rows -- For two years in a row now, I've eschewed walking path space between rows in favor of cramming more crops into the small (3-acre) space that I have, as well as trying to plant rows of crops too close to each other, because I was focused on maximizing the space I have. The fear behind that is that I won't have enough for the two restaurants. But the result, generally, has been that I often have to put the box I'm using to harvest on top of an adjacent row of crops, as well as having to move awkwardly in a small space to do the harvesting. Also, planting the crops so close to each other means that I can't get in between the rows with the wheel hoe, which makes weeding between rows a much longer affair. Some crops -- lettuce, beets & turnips, and a few others -- work well being close together, because they grow quickly and shade out the weeds. But others, like kale and fennel, take much longer to grow. It's hard enough having to thin so many rows (the result of direct seeding everything I grow except tomatoes), but not being able to wheel-hoe (a new verb!) stinks. Also, I planted too close to the path where the van comes in and out of the field, and have run over some of my crops trying to turn the van around in there. Again, I'm just being overly uptight about using every last bit of space to grow food.
   
3. Side projects -- This year I spent a significant amount of time in the spring/early summer creating a culinary/tea herb patch in a weedy corner of the field, as well as finding/buying the van, researching the veggie oil conversion kit options, etc. This really distracted from my main priority -- figuring out how to cope with all the crop failure that was going on, the drop in irrigation pressure, etc. Those kinds of projects are really best done in the winter. I'm hoping to install the conversion kit in the van (ran out of money to do it this year) and get a tool shed built in the field this winter.
   
4. Pre-planning -- This year, I didn't know whether the farm was actually going to happen until 2 weeks before I was to start the job, because the farm owners weren't able to find the time to get together and work out money issues until the last minute. I didn't want to invest time in planning a planting schedule and other details if I wasn't going to have the job, and also I was intimidated by the planning process. The result is that I've been going by the seat of my pants all summer long, and really just throwing seeds in the ground without spending time thinking about quantities and times. There will always be excess crops coming out of the field, but I was also faced (and continue to face) with shortages as well, and I could have helped myself out by doing a little pre-planning. I'm lucky that the ground is so fertile -- haven't used any amendments so far.
   
5. Avoiding shading out the veggies -- There were some instances where I planted one crop which totally, or almost totally, shaded out another crop, stunting it in the process.
6. Flower placement -- I planted tons of flowers this year in an effort to bring in a lot of bugs, birds and reptiles into the field. Unfortunately, I planted them too close to the veggies, again because of space concerns, and that made for more awkward body positioning. Also they shaded out some of the veggies.
7. Back problems -- Bending over for hours at a time is really hard. I'd like to learn about how to hold my body so that I don't get so much pain and discomfort while doing farmwork; and learn restorative/preventive exercises as well. There's a woman at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, Michelle Vesser, who teaches the "Tai Chi of hand tools" every year, and she's a good resource -- she's been gardening for years, including 8 years managing a CSA, and never had any injuries or chronic pain.
   

That's it for this installment. Thanks for listening.

Danny