January 31st, 2023 Collette Kramer's Rememberence Day

 We celebrate two Collette Kramer anniversaries here on the Farm. The annual Birthday notice, and this secondary day of remembering her after-life. I write about her a few times a year in remembrance, this is a seven year anniversary so perhaps more important to me than others.

I wrote this public obituary on Facebook seven years ago, prior to this I had kept her name out of my postings for the most part:

Collette Kramer passed on this weekend after fighting for a month or so against a stomach tumor which came out of nowhere. She was sixty-four (near as I could tell) and the person who I bought the Farm property from. She lost everything more than once during her life, never had anything worthy of any notice, collected everything she found in hopes of someday having something she could call a life achievement. I found her living on the street in her broken down Toyota and all life is precious, all is temporary, all is suffering. She lived like a tiny boat on a big sea that didn't seem to owe her anything. She fought against almost everything and everyone in a effort to keep her dignity. In the end the pseudo-dignity she got from having a fingernail hold on a peice of property was really all she had to pin her hopes to. She sold me that property in some pie in the sky scheme to eventually find herself a permanent home. Her life didn't amount to all that much in the end. A short story with a bunch of sad chapters. Tragic only because it was so short. The shortness becoming something of a mercy.

As for us and the Creekside Farm Project, nothing is ever easy. We haven't done much that was over-funded or straight forward except being married to one another. Our successes have all been hard fought. We have the plan and it might work whether we build it in Manning or some other place. She left us with a bunch of legal hurdles to jump before we can call the place ours by virtue of a deed with our name on it. Only time will tell.

I think Collette would be proud of what we have built here, had she made it. There's still a bunch of legal hurdles to jump over before we finally get the place to ourselves, but things look okay going forward, at this point. 

She lives on in our memories.  

January 4th, 2023 Dogmatic Pest Control Theories

 

My one and only New Year's Resolution for 2023 is Step Two of the Grand Plan: to make the Farm profitable through production of food.

We made the Farm self-sustaining a little over one year ago and this meant no longer augmenting our income with savings. But this year is about making the future of the Farm more profitable so that we can begin the massive improvements we have been working toward for nearly eight years. Step One of the Grand Plan was to build the Farmhouse and we did that last year. Step Two is to build a Farm Business. Step Three is all about hospitality and creating a wedding venue in the future.

Our first year Step Two goal is to earn $25,000 in cash sales. Since we assume we will earn about a dollar a pound on produce then we will need to sell 25,000 pounds. But this level of efficiency is not likely to happen right away. Instead, we are assuming that we will need to grow nearly double this amount in order to find the highest quality goods, then preserve or donate the rest. The problems are many in reaching this level of growing things and many more in finding a way to sell it all when we succeed.

Of the things we have learned in our Farming practice so far I think getting rid of pests is perhaps the most important. In our second year of planting we found Squirrels, Gophers, Rabbits, Rats, and Mice all were very happy to come in and eat anything we had growing. We lost our entire crop that year as we learned to deter rodents and shoot straight. Last year all we had on the Farm were Chipmunks and a few field rats, so the problem wasn't too large to handle and we were able to sell a bunch of our production. But, even as we succeeded in getting the mammals under control, we found that insects began taking their place.

Cucumber Beetles

There are a great many insects that can harm crops. Last year we had Cucumber Beetles, Japanese Beetles, Flea Beetles, and a few grubs, but there were doubtless many more we didn't look for.  There are Ants, but they didn't come into the garden much. You might see the scope of the problem we will face as we expand our gardens this year.  

Of particular concern are the Beetles since they nest and over-Winter in plant debris. Since we are importing hundreds of yards of plant debris as part of building a no-till farm, we are likely going to give a home to huge numbers of beetles.  

Japanese Beetles

Adult Beetles have few natural predators and many have chemical defenses so birds usually stay away from them. Almost all have significant jumping and flying abilities too, so they are hard to catch. As we plan for the Spring we are spending quite a bit of time on the problem of Beetle eradication and prevention. As is turns out there are quite a few ways to get the job done in an organic garden. We will likely use them all. The first thing we can do is to put the right plants in the right places. 

If you put all of a Beetle's favorite food in one row the numbers will increase and soon the wee beasties will finish off the crop and need to find substitute food. One way to plant right is to use barrier plants, things that stop the beetles from moving from row to row and finding new food to eat. We will plant our rows with the following in mind.

• Marigold is a plant we have been using since beginning to grow stuff. It gives off an odor which most mammals, and quite a few bugs, tend to avoid. Marigold also gives Bumbler Bees a great place to sleep at night, so pollinator populations tend to increase in number. Marigolds are cheap, fast growing, and long flowering plants which look great in rows which border the larger gardens. We usually put in around a hundred Marigolds, this year we will put in around one-thousand as we expand our growing spaces. 
• Nasturtium is a plant I put in during year one of planting, but haven't used in any year since.  Nasturtium is a different sort of barrier plant, the bug attractive sort which tend to bring insect to one spot. In the first year I thought Nasturtiums didn't do well here so we gave up on growing it.  But after reading up on the subject we found that bugs loved them. They ate them down to nothing ahead of the plants growing out and before moving on to other sorts of plants.   There are other plants that attract bugs too. Radishes and Kale haven't done well here, for the same reason as the Nasturtiums didn't.  We are planning to plant at least one large row of Nasturtium in each larger garden bed, then treat the one row with Diatomaceous Earth once a week to kill off those bugs that have been drawn to it.  
• Diatomaceous Earth is a natural pesticide, it gets into the joints of bugs' exoskeletons and they simply stop moving around until they die off.  But care must be taken even in using this relatively innocent dust because Diatomaceous Earth also kills off beneficial bugs. We will restrict its use to these Nasturtium beds and then dust other plants only if we find a problem.
• Onions, Chives, and Garlic, all form a barrier to certain insects. We always grow these but now they will become border plants to hold back pests. These will be grown as "companion" plants along side of potatoes, beans, and tomatoes. Some plants simply do better near some other plants. I have a few charts describing these relationships and so we will plan accordingly. 
• Many herbs also deter insects. Oregano, Cilantro, Dill, Rosemary, and Basil all can deter insects, some have insecticidal properties.  Dill and Thyme can prevent some insects from laying eggs.

Cutworms

So it seems safe to say that planning to put the right plants in the right places might make things go along a bit easier. But there is a second way to keep buggy populations down: bringing in some good bugs to eat the bad ones. 

• Nematodes are non-segmented microscopic worms that hunt down many pesky bugs while the pesky things are in their larval stage. Nematodes invade their evil larval guts and eat them from the inside out. Some larvae, of some bugs, infesting root systems and killing the plants from below. Some adult Pests eat leaves and stunt growth from above. Putting a few billion Nematodes on the garden in Spring will help to kill off the larvae and prevent the adults from laying eggs in the soil.  
• A large number of different varieties of Nematodes are available, cheap, and easy to find, and these things come in very large quantities. You put them out using a garden sprayer and they breed and persist in the soil so long as the bad bugs are around to eat.
• Ladybugs and lace wing flies eat aphids, so they can be bought to release into the gardens, or encouraged to come in from the wild. We usually have a lot of ladybugs in Summer and we don't seem to have much of an aphid problem so far, so we are not likely to buy these predator insects this year. 
• Our Ducks and Chickens all like a good snack and many bad bugs, like houseflies, slugs, and snails make good duck food.

Aphids

The third way is to use insecticidal soap sprayed directly on the bugs. This is mostly a few tablespoons of detergent soap mixed in water and put into a garden sprayer. This stuff works by covering the little breathing holes on buggy bodies and suffocating them. There are no chemicals in Insecticidal Soap, but it can't be sprayed without care since it kills beneficial insects too. 

Finally there are physical barriers like cloth row covers. These keep the pests away from plants in an attempt to give the plant a running start. But row covers are time consuming, light depriving, and expensive to buy, so it's not likely we will invest in them this year. 

Since our problem is mostly beetles, we will rely heavily on the first and second means of keep their numbers down. We will carefully plan our gardens to include elements which deter bugs from sticking around or attract the bad bugs to their death. We will put down Nematodes to try and get them out of the soil. 

Flea Beetles

We have no hope of getting rid of all the bad bugs, but we can encourage the good ones that eat them if we are mindful of the problem.  The bug problem is a large and growing concern as we open more planting spaces and put out much more composted materials and leaf debris. The bug problem is much on our minds right now as we plan on making the Farm a planting success.

December 15th, 2022 Our Christmas Letter

 

December 3rd, 2022 Winter Sets In

A bit of snow on Tuesday morning.

 Winter in northwestern Oregon is a weather grab bag. In the past few weeks we have had torrential rains, sunny days, ice, snow, hail, and everything in between. The one thing we don't get it plant growth. So, as in years past, we work projects and plan for the future. This year seems different because the potential for impending doom. But so far nothing has changed and our future, though not settled, may well turn out much as we had planned it. So we are working projects.

We began remodeling the tiny home a while back. It was fairly worn out from living too long in something that was only built to last a year or so. Our son Jack is living in it and helping out, so we are having to work around him just a bit as we re-do what was a difficult job in the first place. 

Part of our Thanksgiving decor.

I built half of our tiny home Cabin in the driveway of our home in town. When we built it there was plenty of time and the space was empty. We built the walls from 2x3 lumber, not the 2x4 or 2x6 one would expect, so we had to find work arounds to put in electricity and plumbing and this is still the case. When we built the thing we intended to build a second half of the Cabin as needed, but hoped not to find the need if we could get away with living in 220 square feet of house. We built the bathroom at one end, a living space at the other, and a kitchen in the middle. But the remodeled Cabin is not going to be used for the same purpose in the end. So the remodel moves the bathroom to the middle of the thing and puts two 8x8 rooms at either ends. We are also separating the bathroom into two separate rooms, one for showering, the other for the water closet. Eventually we will separate the two sides of the Cabin behind the Farmhouse and into one two bedroom, shared bath, side and a dog kennel. When Jack moves off the Farm we will use the two bedroom as a guest house or even put it up on AirBnB. The remodel is taking up much of my time, but we are doing quite a bit more.

Leaf mountains.

Part of next year's farm planning is to use the knowledge we found last year and go BIG on planting in the Spring. We found a great thing in a relatively new farm practice called No-till, and I have described this quite a bit in the last year. So we have been bringing in about a forty yards of mixed landscape debris in every few days.

We have to move the leaves physically to clear the driveway before more can come in. Right now we have about 240 yards of leaf piled behind the Farmhouse, most of it sorted to get woody debris out.  Some of the "sticky stuff", which has some small sticks and branches in it, is piled separately in a few smaller piles. The big clean piles will compost and be used to prepare new planting beds in early Spring. The "sticky" piles will will be left along until next Summer before we screen the results and use it to top dress the beds. We have another eighty yards in the driveway right now which will be spread very think on the raw ground we will till in late Winter, Composting this raw leaf in place will protect the soils and feed the worms. We will cover every foot of farming space we can before  they run out of leaves to bring us. 

Our Tin Tree

Christmas is coming. This year we'll have four people living on the Farm, so Christmas will be a bit bigger deal than before the Farmhouse was finished. We put up some of our house lights today. There's a bigger plan for holiday lighting, but this year there's no time or money for it. Ann has decorated the house and stuffed every available space with as many little Santas, reindeers, Christmas bears, and snow-folk she has saved up for the thirty plus years we have been married. Snow villages and nutcrackers are everywhere. We also have a special little tin tree which we bought the first Christmas on the Farm when we had no space for a real Christmas tree.  The tin tree has become something of a tradition. We light it the day after Thanksgiving and let the batteries run out. It takes until New Years to run the batteries out. 

We'll go out and find a real Christmas tree next weekend. Last year we were lucky to find one because we moved into the Farmhouse late. We took what we could find on Christmas Eve last year. This year will be different.

Farming experiment update: We put thirty-six pepper plants from last season under individual covers in later September to see if we can Winter-over them into next Spring. Pepper plants are supposed to be perennial, but above the forty-fifth parallel this is debatable. Some uproot their plants and bring them inside their homes or into heated greenhouses and then put them back into their gardens. We tried such a thing last Winter but that experiment failed for a few good reasons. We might have heated the space, it got pretty cold in the greenhouse when it snowed; we might have been a bit more regular in watering, in the cold of Winter getting out to the greenhouse seems a bit of a slog. These failings of ours prompted me to thinking about the thing and, as always, I spent entirely too much time on it. We decided to try over-Wintering the plants in the ground. The soils temperatures never go below fifty-two degrees, water is always available, the soils don't get disturbed, etcetera.  So I decided to steal an idea, something I read about in a book about French market gardens, so we cut the plants down to one leaf, we cut the bottom off of some two-liter plastic bottles, and we covered the plants with the bottles before burying the whole thing in a foot or so of compost. The upshot of this is that, as far into Winter as we have come, including the snows and freezing rains, we find the plants still seem to be alive, though dormant.  We found this out by accident. Never wanting to disturb the process in place we didn't plan to open anything up. But one of our hounds (Abba Zabba) decided the bottle looked like fun and pulled one of them off. But so far the plant we did see was in pretty good shape. We put the bottle back and hope for the best.

Legal stuff update: We're still waiting out the probate stuff and hoping for the best. We talked to their lawyer the other day and she was rude, combative, and generally horrible. So we're talking to lawyers again. We don't intend to do anything differently than we have been, but we do want to exercise a bit of care so we'll spend a few dollars against the possibility of an unforeseen circumstance.  This is our home after all.  Post script: We talked to a few other lawyers in the past few days. This morning we met with one very good lawyer, who we did not hire outright because he didn't need assurances. This was the right guy. So we will sleep better knowing he is there if needed. 

November 2, 2022 Farm Business

 

Our Mini-Barn Produce Stand.

We closed the Produce Stand last week. The Summer came late, the Spring was a long and wet one. We had little luck with sprouting in our Greenhouse too.  But we somehow got plants in the ground and the Summer heat came on strong, so things went very well in the gardens. So well in fact that we found ourselves building the Produce Stand in August. The Summer went on nice and hot so we put quite a bit of our produce into the Stand and by the end of the season had sold enough to cover all of the costs for building the Produce Stand. All in all we had a very good Summer season. We were able to put Tomatoes, Peppers, Corn, Cucumbers, Zucchini, Pumpkins, Acorn Squash, Gourds, Watermelons, Cantaloups, and even some flowers, in the Stand. Quite a good year considering it all started off a bit rocky at first.  

Our main goal, following the finishing of the Farmhouse (Phase One goal) was to begin to make money on the Farm as a business.  Phase Two is building the Farm business and this is well under way now that we have found a good means for growing things to sell. But there are many parts to the Farming business, some which still need figured out. 

The first way we make money is by raising Basset Hound puppies for sale. This is something we've done for many years now, but once the house was finished we were able to do the job much better than what we could do in the tiny home. Our Pantry converts into nursery quickly and I built some enclosures which go together quickly and are effective in keeping the little monsters penned up. 

In the years since we went into business the business itself has changed. True to economic form we were making good money, so a few others have jumped into the business and customers are a bit harder to come by. We've had another way to sell our fur babies since the beginning so there really isn't any hold up in moving them on to new families, just the profit margin is a bit tighter. Still and all, it is a fun business and we are delivering another litter next week. Another solid addition to an already good year.  

We also have boarding for some of our puppies throughout the year too. We don't put a price on it since we aren't really set up to do proper dog boarding, but the families which trust us with their dogs chip something in and it all adds up. 

Puppies are a happy business.

We delivered a litter earlier in the year too, giving us the money we needed to finish the Farmhouse and buy a few new tools. And about a month ago I found a red and white female to bring into our kennel. Four month old Rocketdog Dulche DeLeche (Lilly) comes from Oklahoma, by way of Blackfoot, Idaho. A friendly breeder there is leaving the business and didn't need her, so we were fortunate to be able to bring her here. She is very pretty and fits right in with our tangle of hounds. We still need one more female to keep things going because we are taking two of our females our of service this coming year and we need three to satisfy our goals. 

We also do a brisk business in eggs from the forty hens we have kept for many years.  Since we no long have to leave the Farm to deliver eggs, because people come visit, we no longer have the high expense of labeling and buying new cartons. This means we can make a small profit on eggs and still get out eggs for free. Not a big add to the bottom line, but no longer a loss either. 

My Dog Coat Design
is simple and robust.

Despite all of the above, most of it good news this year, we are always on the lookout for other opportunities to add to our bottom line.  One thing I did last year, which is looking pretty good, is making coats for our dogs. We spent quite a bit of money on coats for our hounds in past years, most of these things simply never worked out. Most had Velcro straps and materials too light to survive the pounding a Basset Hound gives a coat, so I designed one myself and last year figured out how to build them. Our Rocketdog coat is tough, washable, and looks great. It's not cheap to make, but the way it's made means they should last for years. Our dogs line up to get their coat on once the weather starts to turn cold. So far this year I have sold four, so it is well worth doing in the context of building a Farm business. 

Between eggs, dogs, produce, and coats, we're doing all right. Not going to spend much time spending money frivolously, but we're not spending savings either. All part of our plan to stay here for the rest of our lives, so we're happy with the results.

The Farmhouse is finished.

Phase Two of our plan is to build a Farm business. One where we have people come and visit. A business where people take our goods and produce and are happy about supporting us while receiving good stuff. I'd say we are well under way.  Still to come: a cafe, more produce, and value added stuff -like canning and baked goods. All in its time.

In  other news . . .
My younger brother came to stay with us as he figures out where he wants to be in his retirement. He has a very nice camp trailer which sits next to the tiny home (which we have rented out to our son). So we have quite a bit of family here now. We also have quite a few visitors too. Last week we had nineteen visitors come for one reason or another. We've always meant to have a lot of visitors here in the plans we made. It seems funny to have all of these people here now after being alone together for the most of the past five years. It takes some getting used to, but we like it even if it is complicating.