Ag report: suck in 47 languages.

Planting began last Sat., about when I’d usually be finishing for spring. It was the first time all spring that the soil was dry enough to work, so everything was a sod patch. I hadn’t tilled in the fall, and let the fall weeds be a sort of self-sowing cover crop. If I could have tilled in early May, that might have worked. By the end of the weekend I’d gotten the middle patch done (brassicas and nightshades, incl. potatoes) and the front of the front patch (sweet corn, vine crops). We’d gotten 3/4″ of rain Tues. morning, but the ground was fine to work Weds. afternoon. One small problem: the tiller had been acting strangely. Finally I decided to check the oil…whoop, what oil? filled it up, she’d turn, but no power. [F-word deleted]. Loaded it into the truck, and down to repair. diagnosis: toast. Probably catastrophic ring failure: no compression, oil in the filter, gas in the oil It’s a 12-year old Craftsman/ Replacement would be about as much as repair. Repair guy didn’t have any in stock. So I went off to the Niles mall, and in 3 stores (Sears/Despot/Lowes) there was ONE front tine tiller, a funky Bolens with 1 wheel and a non-adjustable depth bar. Do-cut also had none, but could get from another store by Friday, so I’m doing that. Meanwhile, I’m scrod. I can probably make a seedbed of what I tilled yesterday, though I usually like to make 2 passes. But the back plot is untouched. I’d had fantasies of spring wheat (Ha!) or potatoes in there. I can still do beans or buckwheat this month, and winter wheat after. Tiller rental is $45/day. Hand-digging is impractical. Here’s the deal: I have maybe an hour the rest of the week, and the weekend to get the full-season stuff in…Mon. AM I leave for Pittsburgh for a week. Before 2 weeks from tomorrow, I have to get the Hiram Band music ready, which means scanning and transposing Eb horn parts into F, emptying and refilling folders, and oh, finding some easy old stuff to pad the program with.

So that’s the garden. Then there are matters orchardy.  1 walnut and the pawpaw I ordered didn’t grow.  The 4 raspberries I put in next to the strawberries croaked as soon as the rain stopped.  A lot of the strawbs did too, and they generally taste kind of shitty.  No fruit on the honeyberries, hardly any on the asian pear, spotty on the backyard apple (and very nasty-looking leaves. On the plus side: pear is OK (not as good as last year), 2 cherries are as loaded as trees that young can be, and blueberries look excellent. Grapes made it through the winter, but it will be several years yet before fruit. I’m not seeing honeybees, though there are lots of bumblebees making their home in the barn — in the way, but I don’t dare remove them.

Critters: 1 litter of 5 rabbits, another litter lost because Daddy didn’t do short-arm inspection after sex and put the nest box in with the male. None of the incubated eggs hatched; they were set without reading the book, at one point were at 103 and may have been cooked.  We’ll try again, but since the coops have been integrated, we’ll have mongrels instead of New Hampshires. Precious’ kids were lost, but Sissy had 2 boys. Their dehorning didn’t take, but their elastrator treatment seems to have. Thursday was hurt in an accident (neck firmly wedged in a feeder). He’s hanging in there, but not improving…and it’s too hot for a mercy killing. Then there’s William E., our new buck.  Some drunk buddy of Jeff Wells wanted to give him up, and Rusty didn’t say no firmly…so he showed up one day while she was gone. About 8 years old, short legs and stocky (Boer?), solid black, horns. Yes, she’s going to breed with him before we kill him…poke holes in the chocolates to see what you’re getting, I guess. We’re getting about a gallon of milk a day between the two. Rusty has just built a cheese press. Buddy continues to be better eating than we’d thought, thanks to riusty’s skill with moist heat cooking methods.

I’ll try to keep this blog up at the CMAA Colloquium, but we’re pretty scheduled, and there’s no Internet in the dorms (most everywhere else though).

The doings at Black Water Farm

Sorry all that I haven’t written. There hasn’t been much to say; politics continues its usual disgusting course.

We’ve been a bit in survivalist mode at BWF, with a lot of money going out.  The dishwasher, which has been dead for quite some time, began leaking water on the floor, which necessitated the dread repair call. The leak is fixed, but the dishwasher is indeed terminal. and may or may not be replaced. Then on Ash Wednesday, I dropped $1000 on the family vehicles (mostly Rusty’s).  Rusty’s computer is down, and maybe terminal, but she’s got money from elsewhere to fix it, we hope. I’d also dropped money, slightly earlier, on chore boots and a Henry Milker for her and a double keyboard stand for me.

The Henry was invented by a guy in Alaska, and it’s a wonderful piece of appropriate technology. It’s a single-teat milker made of a hypodermic syringe body, milk hose, a wide-mouth quart Mason jar, and a brake bleeder. The bleeder creates enough suction to keep the syringe stuck to the goat and to draw milk from the teat into the jar, which can then be capped with a normal lid if desired and stuck in the fridge. Precious seems happier with it than with Rusty’s hand (though still wanting to kick it away), it’s easier on Rusty’s arthritis, and the milk is cleaner…no more lost milk from her getting a hoof in the bucket. We seem to be getting more too, about 3 cups per milking. I got cross-trained in milking this morning; she’s been doing it all.

She finally had enough milk today to assay cheesemaking. She made mozzarella, a fussy recipe with a need to maintain precise temperatures for a long time. She used culture, which she had, instead of the citric acid recipe, as she didn’t have that. The mozzarella was a failure; what she ended up with was a sort of plain curd, tasty and nutritious enough. She made ricotta from the whey, which was good and much easier, though I think she oversalted it.,,,though that will be fine for lasagna. Meanwhile I did various honeydo jobs, paid bills, planted seeds for veggie starts (the bunching onions and sweet potatoes I had done earlier got to play in the greenhouse today.)Tonight while she was gone I tried oven-fried veggie chips (not a success) and canned 8 pints of zanahorias en escabeche (way too many carrots in the garden yet). I got the 2-keyboard rig up.  It’s not entirely satisfactory; they keyboards are too distant from each other (I know a way to rectify that) and the SY77 has ciphering Bb and C# around middle C. I don’t know yet whether repair will be cost-effective, or if I’m better off getting a cheap MIDI keyboard from craigslist or somewhere. But now I can play my Hauptwerk organs with both great and swell (no plans for pedals; an AGO pedalboard would take up too much real estate in this tiny office.). All in all, not bad for a day with a cold (aggravated by the jalapenos in the carrots).

So yes, we’re gearing up for productivity here. But on one level, it’s kind of pointless. If TSHTF, the same folks who have been mobbing state capitols will be after our stuff, because they “need” it. And some things just can’t be prepped for: witness the Japanese tsunami. And if those nukes blow, what will that do to the supply chain for so many things?

 

Life is wonderful

I came home to a fabulous chicken/purslane/meatball soup, with lots of cilantro in the meatballs. Rusty’s really developing her cooking skills these days.

I also got clippings of the two write-ups of my award, in the Michigan papers. My father had dissed the Port Huron Times Herald writeup, but it’s actually marginally the better-written of the two. Garcia got extra points for calling the Archdiocese of Detroit for info on the new translation. I suspect that (contrary to what you might expect from the Hispanic surname) she’s not a Catholic, as her questions on the phone showed that she didn’t quite get what I had done, so it’s good that she did her homework. The Jeffersonian piece doesn’t quote any independent sources. (I could have been blowing smoke up their ass, though I did include the Foundation’s website in the press release…but then, maybe I should start my own foundation and give myself awards. What would Richard Nanes do?). It relied heavily on my mom (with the results you’d predict) and on my personal web page. The Weekly Villager pretty much just printed the press release.

After dinner, I picked everything but the beans (that’s tonight) and ran electric wire around the chicken yard, as the new kids have developed the bad habit of roosting on the fence (and then jumping off the wrong side). Then, as we went to bed, it started to rain, and then stopped. “Oh well, same old same old.” Uh-UH! We awoke to about 2.6 inches!  I didn’t believe the rain gauge until I walked to the garden and saw a bit of standing water. Maybe a little too much at once, and I’ll come home Sunday to burst tomatoes and other mischief, but it was very badly needed.

I got an email from Bob Cronin, and the new alto shawm is about done. I briefly considered having him wait for his money for as long as I waited overtime for the instrument, but there was nothing to be gained by that, and I want the instrument…though I’ve been toying with the idea of giving up playing. I seem to gone directly from asking “What do I want to be when I grow up?” to “What do I need to get done before I die?”  Isn’t there supposed to be an intermediate state in there?  The axe should hold value, and I won’t be able to afford it after I retire (and Bob IS retiring; this is his last batch). So I will soon have an A460 alto. I’ll have my cell on, waiting for the calls…don’t worry, I’m a euphonium player, I’m used to it.

Tomorrow: off to glory! Or at least, off to Mordor on the Potomac.

Goats channel Satan

I came home to see the new apple tree mauled to within an inch of its life. “OK, which one got out?” “Buddy.” So Rusty showed me the improvements she’d made to his quarters near the barn, including fixing a door which I’ve needed to fix. Good girl!

So after dinner I go out to pick elderberries in the chicken yard. I close up the gate and all, go into the garden for that picking (eggplant, okra). I come back to find the the goats mysteriously in the chicken yard, which wouldn’t be such an issue except for said elderberry bush. I assume they crawled in around the excuse for a gate, so I go for bungee cords (which along with zip ties hold most of this farm together) and a wife. We shore up the gate, turn our backs…and we see them going in again, next to the side of the barn. I had wire-stapled the hog panet to the wall, back when it was only meant to keep chickens in, and they’d worked it loose. So we got them locked up, and Rusty nailed it tight.

This morning I let them out, and the first thing they did was head to their former hole. Thursday put his head through the panel and pushed a little. Then he turned and looked at me, as if to say “You sonofabitch…”

Hang her high and drop her fast

Quite a charming family the Sherrods have, per Dan Riehl.  Daddy’s a race-baiter, kids are named Kenyatta and Russia…

And a commenter notes on the loss of the family farm:

a 6,000 acre farm that can’t generate enough revenue to cover the mortgage ??? what am I missing here ???

from:
http://www.ces.uga.edu/Agriculture/agecon/pubs/comm/pdf/CASH%20RENTS%20PAID%20FOR%20GEORGIA%20FARMLAND%20IN%202007.pdf

Dry land, no particular crop: 42.27 per acre (average)

lease out 2,000 acres for $84,540 annually …

on a 6% mortgage 84K would service $1.4 million … since they have been on that land for decades I would suspect their mortgage was alot less than that …

Marxism in action, inherit a 6,000 acre farm and run it into the ground …

Happy St. James Day

It was the big patronal festival, and AR had engaged a pro soprano, but hadn’t closed with her during the week on showing up…so she didn’t. Rehearsal was the usual disorganized mess, and I almost had another “no Eucharist because I want to kill the choirmaster” day, but then we did the Byrd Ave verum for communion and it was good enough to find last minute forgiveness, and I was glad I did. At least he played real music (Bach and Mendelssohn) for prelude and postlude, instead of making it up. And the Stanford Te Deum went well too.

Dan Johns showed up at 2 and I got a lesson in tractor repair. Yes, my points were worn, and the rotors that advance the spark at high RPM were sticky. But I got a new appreciation of the simplicity and hardiness of the Ford design. He showed me what worn points looked like. But then there were the Taiwanese points that I got from the New Holland dealer yesterday. The hole in the spring part was not big enough for the screw. I had no mini-round files, and the small flat file in my reed-making kit had no grooves on the side. Dan borrowed a drill and drilled it out. Once he got the points in and adjusted, and all together, it was good. He replaced the plugs (new not as good as the old, which I kept). Unfortunately, i had neglected to charge the battery. We finally jumped it, and once it got enough gas in it, it fired right up. Carb is weak; float adjustment makes no difference. There’s an odd click in one wheel. And the battery is still weak, and I may replace it. But so far, it’s running fine. He didn’t really want to take any payment, but I insisted. He was on the job 3 hrs, but $60 was too much for him to take, so I made him take 40.

The brush hog was another issue. I finally got it hooked on and unstuck from Buddy’s pen. But I couldn’t get it hooked UP; the drive shaft is rusted stuck after 2 years, and DW used up all my WD40 without telling me. I decided to work on it tomorrow, with new WD and a hammer…then lithium grease.

Family Farm Field Day

I spent Saturday at the Family Farm Field Day down in Amish country (southern Wayne Co.). Rusty and I have been going, jointly and severally, since about when the thing started. I’ve missed some years because of Madison Early Music Festival, and Rusty missed this past year because of her weed presentation that evening. I’ve noticed a few more “English” over the years, but it’s definitely an Amish event.

The keynote speaker this year was Dr. Arden Anderson. I didn’t actually sit through all the keynote, as it was largely preaching to the choir. But for the first session, I heard Dr. Anderson talk about growing high-brix vegetables. This year, it seemed that speakers were pulling out their refractometers with the vigor of cowboy action shooters pulling out their Colt .45s. (“You can get yours at Keim Lumber in Charm!”- apparently not online though) Dr. Anderson’s presentation was clear and confident, and he looked like somebody who takes his own health advice. Best, he had some very concrete suggestions for creating specific changes in crops through foliar feeding.

After that, I heard Nick Leone’s presentation on the scythe. This was actually the main reason I went. The scythe should actually be appropriate technology for many tasks at Black Water Farm, but my attempts at using my American scythe have not been inspiring thus far. I learned that I had setup and stance problems, and was trying to use too much of the blade. And of course “everyone says” that American-style scythes are crap, and they probably are, but if they were useless there wouldn’t have been so many made, and right now I don’t have $150+ for a Euro-scythe setup. I haven’t worked with it yet; I hope to tonight, but I also need to finish burying an electric line to Buddy’s paddock.

In the afternoon, I heard some presentations by veterinarian Dr. Will Winter on herd care and on 12 new trends in eco-ag. Great poise (even when the generator operating the PA overheated) , great sense of humor, and again, concrete solutions.

Greg Judy I knew was there as well, but I’m not really a grazier and there were other tops more pressing. Apparently Gearld Fry and Dr. Richard Olree were there as well, but not an official part of the program. In other words, it was the biggest collection of eco-ag know-how outside of an ACRES USA convention (which I’ve never managed to attend.) Plus there was homemade ice cream and kettle corn for sale, and cute little boys in bowl cuts and suspenders.

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The Black Water Farm Report

OK, here’s the main garden plot, and a bit of the middle one (the garlic in foreground) and all the fun up to the house, such as it is.

Things this year have been…odd. The early-planted things went extremely well…kohlrabi, lettuce, chard (producing) carrots, beets (waiting for size). Things I planted around Memorial Day had terrible germination and had to be replanted. It’s all up now, but things like squash and cukes that should be about starting now are nowheres near ready. I’m not even positive that winter squash will make. I need to put in late coles, roots, peas yet, mostly in ground sown once already. We’ll eat OK, I think. Here’s that early stuff:

Blueberries are coming on, decently for the first time. The fiberglass poles are holding up a bird net.

Critters are doing OK. We had to reorder chicks because the first batch were wiped out by a predator within 24 hrs. the 2nd batch stayed in the bathroom for almost 3 weeks, and are now in one coop with 2 caged roosters, which doubtless sound scary. they seem to be doing well.

Rabbits are doing well. We’ve put them in the chicken tractor quite a bit, which works well as long as the ground is level; otherwise, you’re chasing bunnies. They’re getting fed more clover and less pellet, and seem to be doing well, but have not hit puberty yet.

Goats are less popular than they used to be. Buddy is on Rusty’s shit list as he deliberately butted her in the accident-cracked leg, leading to several days of pain. the girls found/created a hole in the fence and did a little unauthorized cherry pruning. They haven’t come into heat either.

Dylan Johns came over last night at Rusty’s request to brush-hog the pasture. He took a look at the down tractor and declared it was an ignition problem, told me what parts were needed and that his dad could do it in a half hour.

At the trough

I was just looking at some old posts at The Other Site, and found an interesting link; I figured I’d see what my Portage Co. farm neighbors were up to in 2009:
14 Timmons Farm Partnership LLC ∗ Garrettsville, OH 44231 $16,094 (this is Dan Timmons, local lawyer and Windham Twp. trustee)
33 Little Ireland Farms LLC ∗ Middlefield, OH 44062 $4,308 (this, it grieves me to say, is where we get our chicken feed from)
80 James Pochedly Hiram, OH 44234 $919 (Greenhouse owner)

There are 147 other cheesesuckers on the list.

Crying over spilled milk

…that isn’t even spilled yet.

Yes, the EPA thinks that milk is oil, due to the trivial amount of butterfat in your usual Holstein milk.

Matt Smego, legislative counsel for Michigan Farm Bureau…said its an unnecessary regulatory burden that creates additional costs. He said it could cost $2,500 for a certified engineer to safeguard milk, plus more to construct secondary containment structures.

‘sOK, when enough farms fail, The People will take them over. The Liquidation of the Kulaks proceeds apace.
H/T: Venlet