Popcorn fail

Posted on November 23, 2011 by jim

Corn is a point of some contention in our family, one of the few subjects that we don’t agree upon wholeheartedly. I like corn; it’s tasty when it’s really fresh and sweet, it’s fairly easy to grow, and it makes good biomass for the compost. Heck, I just like the way it looks in a garden. Emily, however, is quick to point out that is has one of the worst dollars-per-square foot returns of anything we plant, is time intensive, and uses up a  lot of garden space that could go to growing something else. This year, I planted two full beds of it- one was sweet corn (which she does admit was pretty tasty to eat) and the other in popcorn.

Now, you have to know, that I have tried popcorn before. I excitedly planted some in Guatemala, thinking I could leave a legacy to the kids who were always eager to eat popcorn at our house. However, we had to leave before it got harvested, and I never did find out if it worked or not. I assume it got harvested, mashed, and turned into tortillas like every other corn in those parts. I can see them now, shaken their head at how small the kernels are and wondering what I was thinking.

With that in mind, I was excited to see our popcorn stand actually grow this year. When the weather turned foul, I harvested all the ears so they could dry indoors. I put most of the ears in one of the ventilated plastic bins I made for the potatoes, and I hung a few cobs from the rafters of the shed, as a nod to the way our Mayan neighbors always did it.

“Someone’s snacking on your corn,” Emily said a few days later as she came in from the shed. A quick inspection revealed that mice had discovered the suspended cobs and had made a meal of them (much like they do in Guatemala. Huh.). I cleaned up the mess, saw that the lid was secure on the bin, and went about my business.

In the next few weeks, I occasionally noticed corn scraps on the floor of the shed, and assumed that I’d missed some in the corners and the mice were scattering it around. Today, however, I decided to clean more thoroughly and discovered this: a mouse-sized hole in the back of the corn bin.

Fail.

What was I thinking, that mice can’t chew through plastic? I feel kind of silly, and my popcorn supply is entirely gone. They ate it ALL. I guess I will miss homegrown popcorn yet another year. Note to self: next year, use metal storage bins for grains.

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Oregon state beekeeping conference

Posted on November 21, 2011 by jim

I was starting to feel a little jealous about the scholarship that Emily won to go to the Young Farmers’ Conference, even though I’m so happy for her. Then, out of the blue, I won my own scholarship to the state-wide annual beekeeping conference! It turns out that our local club got a free pass, and they decided in the end that I should go. To make it even better, this year the conference is in Seaside, just 40 minutes north of here, so I didn’t need airfare or a hotel room.

It was fun to see so many beekeepers (over 200) from all over the Pacific Northwest. There were hobbyists with one or two hives to commercial guys with one or two thousand. I saw 10-year-old kids there for Bee School and several beekeepers that I KNOW are in their eighties. There were PhD lecturers from Delaware, Luisiana, and Oregon. I even saw seminars on apitherapy (using hive products for medicinal purposes) and mead making (which I am totally going to get back into). They even had a display of traditional beehives throughout history, including a skep.

The conference was big, but still small enough that you could go up to anyone after their lecture and have a discussion with them. I talked for a while with Darren Gordon of House of Bees about his design for a Warré hive. He builds and sells VERY nicely made top-bar hives, a type that is not as well known as the traditional Langstroth hive. I made one last summer, but too late to catch any more bees to put in it. The Abbey Warré was very specific about the dimension of his hive in the book he wrote almost a century ago, and I changed them somewhat to be more efficient in their use of modern dimensional lumber. After some discussion, Darren felt that the changes I made were in noncritical areas that wouldn’t adversely affect the overall quality of the hive. Good news! But I guess we’ll know for sure next spring, when I put some bees into it.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the lectures were about sustainability; turns out that beekeepers are as concerned about the environment as the hippie farmers we normally hang out with. In his lecture on sustainable apiculture, Dr. Steve Shepard from Washington State University talked about the “true costs” of cheap agriculture. Farmers in places like Nebraska and Missouri use petrochemical fertilizers to produce record amounts of grains cheaply, then the residue from these chemicals washes into the Mississippi watershed and the Gulf of Mexico, causing hypoxia in the coastal regions and killing off the marine life, which in turn causes damage to the commercial fisheries. Does saving money making corn justify the costs of subsequent loss of jobs and food resources downstream? Beekeepers are equally concerned about systemic pesticides and GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). Besides a general level of unease about sticking fish DNA into plants, there is evidence to suggest that these cheap ways of increasing grain production are causing Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious disease responsible for the nationwide loss of nearly half our bee colonies in the last decade. Bees are in danger, and projections indicate that if the trend is not reversed, honeybees could cease to exist by 2035. This is not just a matter of no more honey; honeybees pollinate much of the groceries you see in the grocery store.

Speaking of honey, I also learned some disturbing news about China. We’ve banned Chinese honey in the US for years, in part because its low price would put US producers out of business, but more because it’s poisonous… among other things, they use a known carcinogen (chloramphenicol) to control hive diseases, and some of their processing equipment has lead parts, leading to traceable levels of both in their shipped honey. But apparently, their product is still making it into your breakfast cereals and honey bears because they’ve been selling it to India, Malaysia, and even Australia where it is repackaged and sent on to American ports and bought by the train car load by large scale food companies. The whole things is like an espionage novel, and you can read more about it in this fascinating article in Food Safety News. I remind you once again: if you want to be sure your honey is safe, know your beekeeper. Not even your legislators are going to protect you; for some reason food labeling laws in the US do not require honey to show a list of ingredients if it’s at least 51% honey. Much of what you see on the shelf is “funny honey” with a lot of water or high fructose corn syrup in it.

It was a great way to spend a weekend learning about bees, even if I did miss the only two sunny days we’re going to have for months.

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End of the Garden

Posted on November 14, 2011 by jim

The winter cold has finally brought the gardening to a halt. But our winter is not much like the sudden, piercing cold we were used to in the midwest and other parts of the country. We’ve had a few soft frosts, but what really means “the end” around here is a lingering damp cold that brings all growth to a standstill and starts the decomposition process. After looking at a garden full of zombie plants, half-alive and half-rotting, Emily declared that it was time to lumpiar la milpa.

It only took about 6 hours with the two of us working: pulling out dead plants, weeding out the occasional blackberry, and raking the beds level.  We carried a dozen wheelbarrows full of grade-A compost material to the bin for next year, and then spread clover seeds of the clean beds to give them some ground cover until we can replant them in spring.

But not ALL is dead in gardenland. Some of our crops don’t mind this weather at all, and will keep right on chugging. Beets, carrots, and broccoli actually LIKE this weather, and can be left in the ground until we want to pull them for dinner. It’s like having a grocery store in your yard, but better.  We also have a few random plants that were put in as afterthoughts late in the season, and are cold resistant enough to make it this late.. if you look in the photo, you can see a few cabbages and some Brussels sprouts.

Now that we’ve totaled out the garden, we can look at the statistics for the year. Here’s a partial view of the 2011 spreadsheet. Some items don’t have data, because we had a problem with them (like the Lebanese squash) or we haven’t yet harvested them all (like the beets). This data will help us better plan for next year.

Now all we have to do is clear and till another 20 beds before March…

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Young Farmer’s Conference

Posted on November 7, 2011 by emily

Good news: I won a scholarship to the Stone Barn Center‘s 2011 Young Farmer’s Conference to be held at the center, 45 minutes outside of Manhattan, December 1 and 2. The conference will have representation from 17 states in the union and cover topics from compost to animal husbandry to financial planning for your farm to the ergonomics of farm chores. It’s a power packed two days of information.

I applied for this scholarship on a last minute whim, certain that I wouldn’t get it. It was two days before the application deadline and I had just found out about it. Additionally, I tend to feel under-qualified for most things I attempt to do. I suppose it has a lot to do with being a perfectionist and feeling like it’s going to take more knowledge than I currently possess to do things perfectly. But apparently my insane work schedule over the last few months made me perfectly qualified for this conference.

This summer I spent 24 hours a week working with farmer Ginger Salkowsky at her off-the-grid organic vegetable farm, R-evolution Gardens. She grows for her CSA members as well as to sell at the Cannon Beach and Manzanita Farmers’ Market. Unofficially I tagged along with Ginger helping her with projects around the farm as early February, but by April she had me and another half-time intern working like crazy; seeding, up-potting, planting, preparing beds in the field, protecting beds from the weather, feeding, cleaning, and moving her flock of chickens across the property as we geared up for the first vegetable deliveries and sales of the season in the beginning of June. It was one wild summer. We had a bacterial blight that wiped out hundreds of plants in the spring, lots of rain and cold. Too much, it turned out, for some of the plants to handle. But Ginger kept us all moving in the right direction and we worked on lots of things that like to grow in our cooler wetter climes: salad greens, kale and chard were abundant. It didn’t seem long at all before beets, carrots, and radishes were in constant supply. To keep surprising our family share holders, Ginger (with our help) grew romanescos, kohlrabi and rapini and managed hot weather delights like tomatoes and melons in her three hoophouses. Over the summer the farm turned out constant supplies of locally grown, beautiful heirloom variety produce. It was so beautiful that tourists at the Friday market in Manzanita would patiently hover over shoulders and between the elbows of our eager customers with their cameras snapping shots of the produce display. We had pink and red radishes, rainbow carrots, rainbow chard, Japanese egglplants, lush basil leaves, and wildflower bunches for sale. I worked hard, ate well, and learned an incredible amount about farming. I balanced this farm apprenticeship with a part time job at a local nonprofit, volunteer involvement with Food Roots, and weekends spent weeding, harvesting, and selling the vegetables Fletch and I have managed to grow—about 1,000 pounds of food all told.

Now that I stop to write about it, it turns out that I am quite the qualified candidate for a scholarship to this very exciting and information-packed conference in December. The scholarship covers room and board as well as my registration fee. The only difficulty of spending more than half of my time this summer working for information rather than cash pay is the cost of buying a plane ticket from Portland to New York and back.

While Fletch is thrilled that I won the scholarship, and also a little jealous, we’ve been working very hard to balance our bank books, and I promised him that I will not go unless I can fundraise the ticket, which will cost about $400. Recently we sold $140 dollars worth of produce to a local restaurant, Art Space in Bay City. As I wandered around the gallery looking at a photo exhibit, I spotted myself in soft focus behind a beautiful display of farmers’ market produce in one of the photos. That same day we bought $60 worth of strawberry plants and stuck ’em in the ground. We are trying to reinvest our farm revenue back into our future ventures, so that leaves $80 to put toward a ticket, plus $20 that a friend from Food Roots has pledged. Would you, dear readers, be interested in becoming a small-time slow-money investor (named after the slow-food movement and meaning people who invest in small, sustainable, slow food ventures) by donating to send me to a farm conference? I have $300 more to find, and every little bit helps. If you’d like to donate, email me and I will get you some options on the easiest way to do it. Peace Crops thanks you!

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Oh dear

Posted on November 3, 2011 by jim

This one goes out to my Dad, who likes these kind of stories.

When Emily and I left the midwest to move out to Oregon and start our farm, my dad stopped me as I was packing, to talk about the family guns. You see, my grandpa and my dad were both avid hunters, and I am known to do a bit myself sometimes, so he wanted to discuss which if any I should take with me. Some, like the old Remington 870 shotgun, were obvious- it had been “mine” for over a decade, since Dad upgraded to a magnum model, and I always keep it with me because the ammo is cheap, it’s super reliable, and it’s good for just about any type of hunting. Since I was moving somewhere new, it didn’t seem prudent to take any others. Then I remembered and mentioned that Oregon is one of the states that allows hunters to use high powered rifles for deer. I expected dad to let me take the .348 Winchester as I had occasionally in the past, but he surprised me.

“You should take grandpa’s .30-06,” he shrugged. “It’s a good gun, and it’s probably killed some 30 deer.” Like I said, grandpa was an avid hunter. I’d never even shot it before, since it came into dad’s possession only after Grandpa died. I bought a hard case for it, threw it in the pickup with the rest of our belongings, and mostly forgot about it.

A few months ago, the subject of deer season came up. Emily is supportive of my occasional deer hunting forays, in part because she knows it means a lot to me to spend time in the woods with my dad, but also because she likes eating venison. It’s tasty, grass-fed, antibiotic-free, and as “free range” as you can get. We don’t eat a lot of meat, so the last time I got a deer, we didn’t buy beef for a year.

I looked up the game regulations and season dates online, and went out and bought a hunting license. This is a lot like gambling: you spend $50, and you don’t know if you will get a deer or not. Things have been tight around here lately, and Emily frowned when she heard how much I’d spent. Yes, permits for state residents are about a tenth of what they would have cost us if we didn’t live here, but that’s still a lot to bet on some venison.

Days went by, and I suddenly realized that it was the week before Opening Day, and I’d still never shot grandpa’s rifle. I bought bullets, grabbed a cardboard box out of the recycle bin, and headed down to the farm. There is a great spot I noticed months before, a hollowed out stump atop a hill overlooking several acres of open field and treeline… a perfect deer shooting gallery. And the deer are known to frequent this area; I regularly find their poop around my garden, and Aunt Betty took this picture of one bedded down just 30 feet from the aforementioned stump (that’s my pumpkin patch in the foreground).

I paced off a hundred yards into the field, set down the box, and returned to the stump. As I loaded the old gun, a World War II surplus item, I wondered how off the scope was going to be, and how long it would take me to get it sighted in. I’m a fair shot (it tends to run in the family), but this gun was totally new to me. I cycled the action, took aim at a dot about the size of a quarter on the center of the box, and squeezed the trigger.

BLAM!

Yeah, it kicks, but not badly. The box remained as it was, so I looked through the scope again. Drat, no hole. The scope must be WAY off; the box was almost two feet wide. I sighed and walked out to the box to see if I could figure out what happened.

Imagine my excitement when I saw that I didn’t miss at all- I put the bullet right through the center of the box. Hoping it wasn’t luck, I went back to the stump and took five more shots, all of which were close enough together that you could cover them with a coffee mug. Nice rifle, grandpa! If Mr. Deer shows up, he’s going to be in big trouble.

Thus, this morning I found myself sitting in the dark against a tree, mostly hidden behind a hollowed-out stump. It was still dark, and even though it wasn’t raining, the mist was heavy in the valley and collecting on the branches of the hemlock above me, falling in sporadic drops on my head and shoulders. It wasn’t as cold as other places I’ve hunted, where the landscape was white from frost or snow, but I was glad to have the scarf and fingerless mittens Emily knit for me years ago.

One of the secrets of hunting is to get out there in the early darkness, so you can hide yourself and let the countryside return to quiet before the deer start moving. I really like this part of hunting, because sitting quietly in the woods as dawn breaks lets you catch a fleeting glimpse of how nature really is. It’s very peaceful.

So peaceful, in fact, that it often leads to napping. A hawk screeching brought me back awake, and I realized that the sun was up and not much was going on. There was no sign of any deer at all. Today is the next-to-last day of deer season, and was becoming a repeat of opening day, where I saw nothing except a few thin trails and scattered droppings. The last few weeks of deer season were busy with farm, work, life; now the season was coming to a close with my $50 deer tag still unused- and this was only the second time I’d gone out. I felt kind of bad about that, even though Emily is too considerate to ever chide me for wasting our money.

“Oh well,” I shrugged. Hunting is like that; sometimes you get nothing except a pretty walk in the woods. I stood up, stretched my cramped legs, and slung my rifle over my shoulder. The wind was coming from the south, a gentle breeze, but enough to carry my smell and make this location less-than-ideal for hunting deer to the north of me. I figure it was late enough now that most of the deer were bedded down for the day, but a little walk around the property would be a nice way to finish the hunt and get some air. A hike around the perimeter of the farm is a bit over two miles, through some gorgeous scenery.

As I walked, my mind wandered. I’d like to put in a jogging path some day around the farm, to get even more enjoyment out of the place. I crossed the brook by the bee hives, past the marsh, and into the lower field where Sturm and José are growing raspberries. There are some bare spots where the water damaged the crop, but for the most part they are growing pretty well. I walked along the rows, and stopped at a giant pile of elk poo. I didn’t get an elk license this year, and that’s just as well; I have no idea what to do with an 800-pound dead animal.

I eventually reached the extreme northern tip of the property, a pointy triangle of land where two barbed wire fences come together. I turned around to take in the entire 120-acre vista, surrounded by mountains on both sides and with mist rolling down the valley. My plan was to work my way south along the river (where I could hear salmon splish-splishing upstream) the entire length of the property with the wind in my face. It would be my best, and probably last, chance to come upon a deer by surprise from downwind.

I was suddenly brought out of my planning by a curious huffing sound right behind me. I turned around to find a pair of big deer leisurely trotting towards me, perhaps 40 feet away. The second one was grunting and bobbing his head up and down as he followed the first. In a state of disbelief, I counted four points on the rack of the grunting deer.

Still not really sure what to make of it, I clicked the safety off of my gun. “The regs said I could shoot any buck with a forked antler,” I though. “What is this moron doing trotting right up to me?” Without thinking, I shouldered my rifle, realizing that if I tell this story without having taken a shot, I’ll feel like the moron. By this point, the pair were about 20 feet away.

This is when I realized I had a problem. The magnification on the scope was such that I couldn’t take aim. The deer was too close! The last deer I took was with a shotgun with open sights, and the one before that was with a scope, but at about 200 yards. I frowned, ducking my head left and right to try to see around the scope, but on a 50-year-old gun, there aren’t view-through scope mounts. Giving up on that idea, I looked back through the useless scope. By now, the deer were trotting away from me to the left and starting to bounce, but still too close. I saw the scope completely filled with:

grass

fur

grass

leaves

grass

fur

grass

shoulderblade BANG!!

Without even thinking, as soon as I saw the sweet spot, I had pulled the trigger. I lowered the gun in disbelief; the deer was not even 50 feet away. It turned slightly to trot directly away from me, and I noticed a Monty Python-esque hose of gore blasting out of his right side. I guess I hit him.

At this point, I was still in a state of shock. I absentmindedly ejected the shell, put in a new one, and set the safety. What now? I’ve read that you’re supposed to wait a bit, so the deer can go lay down somewhere nearby and bleed out. After about 10 seconds of that, I remembered the graphic image of the gore pouring out of the deer, and realized that he wouldn’t be going far. I slung my rifle again, and walked over in the direction he’d gone.

I’d also read that you’re supposed to look for a blood trail. Would I be able to find it? It had just started raining, and things would start washing away. I soon realized that this fear was completely misplaced: not only did it look like he lost a full gallon where I hit him, there was actually a gobbet of flesh there as well. Standing over this mess, I looked up in the direction he’d gone, and there he was, collapsed about 20 feet away.

About this time, I remembered another important hunting lesson my dad shared with me. I approached the deer cautiously… and kicked him right in the ass! Legend has it that my grandpa neglected to do this once, and when he went to gut the deer, it jumped up and chased him around for a bit. This one seemed to be nonresponsive, though, so I thanked him for giving his life so that my family might eat him, and I went back to get the truck.

The rest of the morning was pretty procedural, in a homesteader-frontiersman sort of way. I locked the hubs on my 4×4, narrowly avoided getting stuck in some REALLY muddy fields, and was able to haul out the deer. Although I’ve helped my dad gut a deer twice, I’d never done it by myself, and I was a little nervous about it. So much so, in fact, that I bought a book (Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game), thus adding even more to the $50 already spent. More than the book or my experience with dad, though, what was mostly relevant was my Peace Corps experiences helping my neighbors slaughter and butcher livestock in Guatemala. Who knew?

While gutting the deer, I discovered that my shot had been about perfect- right through the heart. The deer is now hanging in Farmer Ned’s hay barn, curing in the chill air. He and José helped me string it up, and even offered me the use of their freezer. Incredible though it may sound, there is a full-size freezer plugged in and running, right in the middle of the otherwise empty barn. José told me that Sturm had it ready for elk season, but he didn’t get anything this year. I peeked inside, and all that’s in it right now is a half-open box of ice cream sandwiches.

This week is the one-year anniversary of us beginning our farm, and the deer is a great capstone to our first year of homesteading. We’ve harvested fruits, vegetables, honey, and now venison. I can’t wait to see what next year will bring.

Dad, grandpa’s rifle is now at 31.

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Brother Jim the monk

Posted on October 29, 2011 by jim

Wow, today was gorgeous. I celebrated by spending the entire day in the garden, by myself, listening to the birds and working in nature.  I often feel like I’m a monk on days like today, eschewing personal contact to be closer to the divine through meditation, contemplation, and work. I think it’s one of the best parts about this entire farming venture.

I pulled the last of the pumpkins today. Pretty exciting news: we grew 276 pounds of pumpkins this year in 200 square feet of earth. I also harvested some butternut squash, as well as tomatoes. The tomatoes were a big surprise! Emily employed a secret technique she learned at Ginger’s farm, and she cut off all the leaves last week. This forced the plants to throw everything they had left into fruit, and ta-daah! some turned red. Who knew? Of course, for this technique to work, they have to already be close, and the only variety that worked in this climate without a greenhouse was Chadwick’s Cherry Tomato. We’re for sure doing that one again next year. The other three varieties bombed, but we’re going to try all of them again next year if we realize our dream of getting a greenhouse, to give them a fair shake.

Indoors, I moved to the final stage of my hard cider process and bottled the brew. It’s been almost 10 years since the last time I made cider, but when two bushels of apples fell off of Ryan’s feral apple tree, I couldn’t resist the temptation to put that to good use. The process is pretty easy, so I only needed a little reminding from the trusty Internet, and since I was using two different carboys I did an experiment. In one, I fermented the cider as-is with added champagn yeast (the yeast of choice for this type of brewing). In the other, I did the same but pasteurized the cider first, to kill off any natural yeasts as well as other biologicals that might make it more likely to go bad in the fermentation process. As you can see, the end product was very different, with the pasteurized cider coming out clear, and the other one cloudy. I was worried that the cloudy one was skunked, but surprisingly enough, both were quite drinkable. The un-pasteurized one has a more complex, apple-y taste; but the clear one is definitely more visually appealing. I primed the bottles (to allow them to self-carbonate) then moved them into the root cellar for a few months of rest before final tasting. Maybe that’s how I will ring in the new year?

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Pumpkin pie, kids, and strawberries

Posted on October 24, 2011 by jim

Since the very beginning of this venture, Emily has been dedicated to the idea of educational outreach as part of our mission. Today she put that into action at a local preschool in Tillamook, where she and a bunch of kids did a farm-to-food activity. She brought a pumpkin, pumpkin leaves, and pumpkin flowers for the kids to touch. As they were exploring, she explained to them how the pumpkin grows, and that you can eat it. They helped to pull the seeds out of the pumpkin, mashed some pumpkin chunks she precooked for them, and eventually eat pieces of pumpkin pie. They all seemed to have a really good time, and learn something in the process. I think programs like these are a great idea, to help kids know more about their food and where it comes from. From there, as they get older, they can progress to learning about how quality food affects their health and the health of their loved ones, and eventually to understanding the complex interactions that pesticides, monoculture, and genetically modified foods have on the overall food chain. And dare I hope, maybe some of them will even grow up to be lawyers, politicians, and scientist who can do something about it.

In other news, our garden is winding down. We’ve cleared what was left of the squash, corn, cucumbers, and so forth; we’ve also harvest the next-to-the-last of the pumpkins. But we’re not done! The farming is never done.

We’re already looking forward to next season. We’re going to double our acreage for vegetables, and that means a lot more machete-and-hoe time. Some plants for next year actually have to go in right now (who knew?), like the garlic. We bought some Spanish Rojo garlic from the organic farm store, and we’re interested in trying that, but the real score is two varieties of heirloom garlic we got from our friends Anthony and Victoria. They’re a nice couple in their 70s that we hang out with regularly. They’re been planting garlic for decades, and these are special strains they’ve carefully cultivated for flavor, size, and general awesomeness. They kindly sold us enough to plant both soft neck and hard neck to get us through an entire year, as well as having enough left over to plant THAT the following year. We’re pretty excited about it.

Besides garlic, it’s also strawberry season. We planted 150 square feet of two different types. The first is “Hood,” a strawberry generally accepted as being the best tasting the Northwest has to offer. It’s junebearing, so we will get a pile of them all at once, leading to both a feeding frenzy and a fierce jam-making campaign. The second is “Albion,” a berry that is tasty in its own right, but has the advantage of being everbearing, meaning snacking goodness all season long. And by all season, I mean ALL season… the seedlings we bought had a few berries still on them, and they were marvelous. Our newly planted strawberries will overwinter in their cozy bed, getting set up to grow explosively in the spring and give us pounds of red goodness.

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Vanishing of the Bees

Posted on October 24, 2011 by jim

We just watched an interesting documentary, The Vanishing of the Bees. It’s about CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), a mysterious new problem that is affecting bee populations all over the US. Basically, all the bees in an affected hive just disappear. 30,000 bees are there one day, and a few weeks later, they’s gone. No bodies, nothing. Sometimes the queen and a few babies are left, and they soon die from starvation. It’s a scary thing, in part because bees pollenate more than a third of all crops you see in the grocery store (next time you’re in the grocery, imagine a third of the store being empty. Yikes!). More importantly, bees are like the canary in the coal mine- indicators of overall environmental health. If you want to see a good documentary and learn something interesting about modern agriculture, especially the sort of things we’re doing here at Peace Crops, check it out on Netflix or wherever you get your video entertainment.

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Tomatoes

Posted on October 10, 2011 by jim

Much of this year’s work has been an experiment. Some of it is qualitative, like “do we enjoy this?” But much of it is quantitative, to see how much of what we can get how quickly from a square foot of ground. These numbers are really important to help us make realistic business projections for the coming year, and also to give us more general information, like “how well do tomatoes of different varieties grow in this microclimate?”

Whenever we’ve mentioned tomatoes, people around here say that you really need a greenhouse if you want to grow them. The season starts too late, so you can’t get them to market in time, and the summer is not hot enough, so many of them won’t ripen before the fall rains come and you lose the whole mess to blight. Despite the warnings, we tried them anyway. We’ve learned that much of the local farm wisdom is dead-on, but sometimes it pays to try weird stuff, as you can get surprising successes from time to time that really open up your options… our deeply dug beds with close crop spacing is a good example.

In the case of tomatoes, though, the local wisdom has proved accurate. Ginger at Revolution Gardens has a greenhouse, and her tomatoes were ready the second week of market, nearly two months before ours, and they came in abundance. Our cherry tomatoes, the fastest-growing of the varieties we planted,  finally started turning red the last week of the market. They trickled in for about a week, then the summer ended with a big wind and rain storm, crushing our plants to the ground as the cool weather effectively stopped any further growth. The result? Hundreds of pounds of green tomatoes that will never ripen.

A lot of people felt bad for us when they heard this happened, but really, I’m not upset at all. The experiment was a success. We know that we can grow a LOT of tomatoes in a tight space (like I said, HUNDREDS of pound of green ones) and we also learned that getting a greenhouse is a high priority item before next season.

And the tomatoes themselves? Not a guaranteed loss… I cut down all the vines, and hung them to dry in Farmer Ned’s retired cow barn. They say that if tomatoes are hung somewhere dry and you have patience, they will oftentimes ripen and be salvageable for spaghetti sauce, salsa, and so forth. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and in other news, the market season is over, so we took last week’s harvest to a friend of ours who is a restauranteur. She bought the whole truck’s worth of produce, including pumpkin, squash, sweet corn, beets, cucumbers… and we gave her half a bucket of cherry tomatoes for free.

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Opening day

Posted on October 3, 2011 by jim

Saturday was a special occasion for us: the first market we’ve attended where we had our own produce stand. This might seem odd, being the last market of the season, but it’s because up until this point, Emily was working at Ginger’s farm (including manning HER stand at the Manzanita market) and we were selling our vegetables through the Community Table (a business incubator) at the Tillamook market. This weekend, however, all the other markets were closed, and we were at the LNCT Harvest Festival. We’re a bit behind the other growers since we got our crops in the ground late (long story), and that turned out to actually be a bonus this time… we were offering some things the other growers didn’t have, like sweet corn. We received a lot of positive comments on how nice our stand looked, and I feel like we made a good showing with the vegetable variety, including pumpkins, potatoes, red onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets.

The big surprise for me, hover, was how popular the canned good were. We sold most of what we took, people were excited to talk to us about them, and none of the other vendors were offering those products. Pricing was the trickiest, and to try to get an accurate guess, I ended up having to make a spreadsheet beforehand to tally raw material costs, time spent, and so forth. Our profit margin right now is really slim on the value-added products (we have to keep the price within reach, even if they ARE more expensive than buying the same thing at the grocery store), but they’re still worth it since we “pay ourselves” for the vegetables that go into them. Once I streamline the making process, the numbers will get better. And people really seemed to like the sweet pickle samples we were giving out.

At the harvest festival, there was also a cider press available for public use. We collected a bushel of mixed apples from Ryan’s two trees and pressed them, getting about two gallons of incredibly tasty cider. Ryan had been considering taking the two trees down, as they are pretty old and ratty, but after a taste of the cider, he had to reconsider. The plan now is that I am going to try a few years of restorative pruning on them, to bring them back into shape.  And the cider? I started fermenting a double batch of hard cider this afternoon.

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