Mud Puddle Farm’s Weblog

We have done a lot in the last week. And I meant to be better about keeping everyone updated, but we are without internet, so get ready for a whirlwind of pictures and information!

So, Chad worked his ass off over the weekend, and lost sleep thanks to Daylight Savings and his new work schedule, but he managed to get a door structure on the Greenhouse:

Doesn’t it look great? We still have to figure out what goes in the door area, but we now have plastic connected all around and are working on building a raised bed at the back of the structure. That is how we have decided to fix the fact that the ground is not even. Take that land!

Friday night we went into town because the first Friday of every month Grants Pass does a little art walk thing. I was way more interested in ice cream than art though:

It was birthday cake ice cream, and had chunks of yellow cake and chocolate frosting in it. How could I pay attention to mediocre artwork with that on my hands?

Our asparagus has sprouted and is growing like weeds. They are even bigger than this now, but to give you an idea of how little and awesome they are:

The feathery tops you see have really taken off, and they kind of look like solid green sparklers that are frozen in place. They rock. Chad prepared a whole bed for them in the perennial garden. This week I am hardening them off (this is what you have to do to kind of unspoil seedlings from their luxurious inside growing atmosphere.
You get them outside during the daylight hours over the course of a few days for longer periods, and then leave them out over night, still in the flat, and then you can put them in the outside soil), and they will move to their permanent home next week.

This is how our broccoli and cauliflower look now, plus a picture of me showing off the ever expanding belly:

These are ready to be transplanted as well, but our field has been giving us continual frustration with it’s level of moisture. Today, finally, before he went to work, Chad was able to get the tractor out and disc the field:

Pretty cute, huh?

Anyway, this is what discing does. The field on the right hand side of the picture is NOT disced, and the left is:

So, after working the left part a little more, I will finally be able to get my brassicas outside. I started another round of those, as well as my first round of tomatoes and peppers. When those start to come up I will get pictures up.

Speaking of seedlings, still no sign of the peas that I planted last week, but it takes a minimum of 8 days for those to germinate, so I am not going to stress out yet. The one thing with those beds that has caused me major stress is that there have been deer tracks through them! So Chad and
I got fencing around them. OK. I don’t have a picture of that fencing, but here is our deer fencing around the orchard area, plus one wee arbequina olive tree right at the corner.

You will notice a stuffed animal hanging from this. You are supposed to hang fabric off the fencing when you first put it up to make animals aware of its existence. Kirby and I put up the strips of white fabric you see. Chad’s contribution is the Raggedy Ann doll…He wanted to do the whole fencing like that. I am so relieved he has better ways to occupy his time…

Like making a burn pile. you ask? Why yes, indeed!

He did this Monday with our friend Chris while Katherine and I were at the League of Women Farmers meeting.

I think that about sums up the past week. I did want to show you the pretty crocuses that are blooming all over:

And here is a picture of God chilling with his favorite thing in the whole world, a stick:

I am off to buy baby chicks for the house. You better believe I will get pictures of those cute little things up here for you to see!

So we got 30 cubic yards of compost delivered last week to amend our soil in the field, our raised beds, and the beds in the existing garden (which we have taken to calling the Perennial Garden).

30 cubic yards is a lot:

And after taking quite a few wheelbarrows back and forth from the pile to the beds, we were able to plant our first round of peas today:

There are five kinds of peas in the bed. Hopefully we can get some deer fencing up before the plants start poking their heads out of the dirt. Pea shoots are pretty tasty, and, unfortunately, deer know that, too!

We also planted the gooseberry and black currant cuttings that we got from our friend Lori. We put them up in the thick clay soil by the house. Apparently these are a couple kinds of plants that actually prefer the clay, which is great for us.

This morning we went to another meeting of area farmers who are exploring the idea of planting hops. We have met a few times over the last month to share information on cultivation of these plants, and also to meet with local brewers to see what their interest is in buying locally and organically grown hops. It has been a very eye-opening experience, learning about this niche within farming. Hops are a very unique plant, and while we definitely want to get a few in this year to see how they do, we are not going to focus on doing a ton with them because they require a lot of work. So first, we will see how they do on our land, and then if they really take off, we will let them and we will focus more time and energy into them.

The whole reason we first considered getting into them in the first place is that there is a hops shortage going on right now, and that is drastically affecting small scale breweries. You all know we have to do our part to keep beer production up! So, we will see how it goes. They are a very beautiful flowering plant, so at the very least, we will have some pretty flowers around, and who knows, maybe we will try our hands at home-brewing as well!

I made sourdough bread yesterday, and today Chad has made Rye bread, and he is currently working on a brioche bread, some brownies, home-spun ice cream, shortbread cookies, and caramel sauce. I am pretty spoiled by him, huh?

I spent yesterday transplanting our perennial herbs out of their seed start pots and into the next size up. We have lavender, anise hyssop,  winter thyme, orange thyme, winter savory, lovage, rosemary, and sage all going. About a dozen plants each, which should be plenty for a small army, let alone 2 cooks.

That is about it for this past week. Sorry we haven’t been so good on updating this week. My knitted baby blanket is coming along nicely. I will try to get a picture of it up soon.

So, we have been trying to decide on a name for our farm.

Chad and I started with the idea of Four Horsemen Farm. We thought the Apocalyptical tone weirdly appropriate, and hysterical to boot. Kirby didn’t like it.

Kirby wants it called Blue Lily Farm because there are a lot of blue lilies that grow on the property. Chad and I feel this is lacking a certain je ne sais quoi…

Upon talking about it, Chad and I want a name that encompasses not only what is on the land, but the spirit in which the land is worked. And this is where you people come in.

I want suggestions of a name that incorporates a spirit of learning, and curiosity. (School of Crop?) Maybe something that implies stewardship of the land, and providing for future generations. Something that will look good on a T-shirt, yet connotes inherent tastiness. That isn’t too hard to come up with, is it?

What do you have for us, my intelligent friends with large vocabularies?

The winner receives…Umm…Never-ending gratitude? A free T-shirt with the farm logo on it? A big box of produce? We’ll set up a barter of some sort…

Sunday we put the plastic on the outside of the greenhouse. This makes it sound really easy.

It wasn’t.

I really wish all of you could see the instructions for assembly that came with this structure. There have been 4 pretty intelligent people puzzling over them for weeks now– I have a degree, Chad has 2, Kirby has a Masters in Science, and Lee has a Doctorate! And STILL we can’t puzzle out a damn thing in this packet.

So, we guessed.

First, we unrolled the whole 30×100 foot piece of plastic.

Then, we folded it in half.

Then, we bunched it in a few different places and tied it with string. The other end of the string went around rocks, which Chad threw over the top of the greenhouse into the grass on the other side.

Then, Kirby and I started to pull on the string on the far side of the building, while Lee and Chad yanked the plastic up the side the plastic was on. This included Chad nearly falling off the top of a 6′ ladder, and using the Explorer as another climbing surface to clear the 12′ peak of the structure.

Then, the plastic was on!

Now what do we do, you ask?

We aren’t quite sure ourselves. We know we have to get the ends sealed, which may mean using 2×4s and plywood to create end caps that we can attach the rest of the plastic to. And then we inflate the space between the 2 layers of plastic to provide more insulation. And then, hopefully, finally, it is done.

Friday evening Kirby and I drove up to Corvalis, OR, about 2 1/2 hours away because on Saturday there was a Small Farms and Farm Direct Marketing Conference taking place at the Oregon State University campus. We met Kirby’s nephew, Al, for pizza (and then gelato after–it was so yummy!), and we crashed at his place in town so we could be at the conference bright and early on Saturday morning.

The day started with the keynote speech by Fred Kirschenmann, a Distinguished Fellow at the Leopold Center, and rancher from North Dakota. He gave a very good speech about the small farms, where they stood half a century ago, and what seems to be the future for them. He made some really great points about how we seem to be moving into a “Post-Industrial Agricultural Period”, and how the future economy will be based on relationship value–meaning a community will work together to provide for all of its needs rather than depending on large corporations to provide it all. Some interesting facts and figures he gave us:

Over the last decade, there were 2.1 million farmers (this is a smaller number than our prison population in this country, btw). Of this number, in 1997, 1.3 million farmers produced 9% of farm sales, with the largest portion of the crops coming from the smallest number of farmers. In 2002, this disparity was even greater, with 1.7 million farmers producing only 7% of farm sales. This means (not that you can’t deduce it for yourselves) small farms are struggling to survive. And big farms are growing corn for ethanol. Which is why every single person needs to educate themselves on the Farm Bill, and how important it will be to our future economy and food security in this country.

Another set of interesting numbers:
In 1910, the farmers under 35 figured for 30% of the total farmers, and those over 65 were 8% of the total.
In 2002, only 5.8% of farmers were under 35, whereas those over 65 were 27%.

Again–What does this mean for future food security? I urge all of you to please please please look into what is going on with the Farm Bill and if you have any time at all, write to DC and let them know how you feel.

OK, so back to the conference. Fred told some funny jokes, including how our country seems to be suffering from ADD (as defined in the Subject line of this post), and told a great story about a group of inner city kids around 8-9 years old from New York going out to a farm to learn where their food comes from. In the middle of the tour, the guide reached down to the ground and pulled up a carrot, getting ready to pass them out so the kids can eat them and see how great they taste freshly picked. Before she could go any further in her talk, one of the kids goes “Gross! Who put those in the ground?! Now we can’t eat them!”

The first session I went to was on Passive Solar Greenhouses, and growing year round crops. It was really interesting because the guy giving the talk is actually from Michigan State University, and they successfully grow crops 12 months a year there, with temperatures outside, without windchill, getting down to 20 below. That is some impressive farming. The funniest part of his talk, even though it was only funny to me, was when he said that you can get a 30×100 foot greenhouse up in 3 days with four people. Yeah, right. While I was in this session, Kirby was in the one on Farmer’s Markets Sales: Advice from Secret Shoppers. She said the bottom line is to make your booth look pretty and to be really friendly and inviting. And samples never hurt. Then we broke for lunch.

After lunch, Kirby went to a session that was supposed to be on business planning, but ended up being a promo for the USDA Risk Management Agency. I learned a lot more at my session on Grant Writing. There is a lot of money out there if you are willing to jump through the hoops to get it. It just requires a painstaking amount of reading and re-reading the directions for the application so you do it JUST SO. I have a lot to research and follow up on from this session.

In the last session of the day, Kirby learned a ton on Marketing Extended Season Production, while it was my turn to be let down. The session was described as educating you about access to community kitchens (among other things), but ended up being largely about the Ecumenical Ministries outreach programs to low-income and immigrant/refugee farmers. I snuck out and joined the last 30 minutes of a session on Value Added Products. They were talking a lot about internet sales, which is not really applicable to us, but I made a good contact with a professor in the audience who might be able to help us out is the future.

The capnote speaker was Andrew Stout from Full Circle Farm in WA. He started with “3 acres, a 60 foot extension cord, and a beat up pick-up.” They now run a 260 acre fully organic operation. Again, impressive, and really inspirational. His closing words were, “Have a great year, grow good food, and be well.”

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When i got home from work i built a wagon. Not any wagon though this is an Equine Fecal Extreme Transport (EFET). The EFET wagon will be useful in obtaining the much needed manure we need to improve and maintain optimal function of our Food Producing Lifeforms (FPL). EFET attaches to our Non-Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer (NEBFE) or Zee Fireball Van (aka FireVan). EFET will wagon manure behind either NEBFE or Firevan depending on my mood from our neighbors pile directly to a compost pile, under the cover of a tarp, or sometimes directly amending the soil to help FPL. Here are pictures our jankily constructed EFET WAGON XTL.

to those who know what is going on here… Drug Sniffing Dogs forever.