March 29, 2019 It's a Wonder Anything Gets Done

It was a very nice week at our Creekside Farm, at the very bottom of the Apple Valley. Much got started, much more to do, and it is entirely possible that none of it will ever come to a close. Farming, as it turns out, isn't a linear process where most projects have a scheduled start and definitive ends, but it seems like it ought to be. But no matter  . . . I'm not complaining.

The Front Fence as it was.

We spent much of the week continuing to clear the front fence of all the loose vegetation and feral trees. We are after a clean fence line. As of today we have, for the first time, nearly fifty feet of absolutely clean fence. Only thirteen hundred feet to go.

The clearing started in the Spring of 2015. We had to clear a solid ten feet of berries, wild cucumbers, grasses, bamboo, and feral plum tress from the outside of the fence, much more had to be cleared from the inside. This is an up-hill job, even on level ground, because as we would cut, burn, or haul stuff, every plant struggled to re-impose itself. The wild fruit trees along the front had planted themselves over the years were in pretty sad shape. Some had overgrow power lines and a few had grown through the chain link fence. All have to come out to let the sun through to the gardens, so I started cutting them down last week. But all of this clearing is making the Farm look less interesting. All according to the plan. This newly "blank" canvas is where we will begin intentionally adding interest.

The Chicken Run is located at the front, western, corner.

We will be putting up a Tibetan prayer flag pavilion over the chicken run in the next few weeks. Without some color, a chicken run looks just like a bare patch of dirt, so adding the flags will bring color and movement to the front facing appearance of the Farm, attract the eyes of people driving by,  and keep the local hawks off our hens. Making the Farm colorful in late winter is a bit of a challenge.

Making the Farm colorful in late Spring won't be difficult. There are hundreds of flowering plants ready to be planted sitting in the greenhouse. We also have about twenty thousand square feet of wildflower and cover-crop seeds we can put on any unused land to liven things up.  Most of the plantings are produce to be sold starting sometime in May, but quite a few will stick around until they fade out in Fall. By mid-May the Farm will be covered in color.

Wild-flowers and cover crops  will be a pretty mess.
Only slightly better than the unplanned mess we once had.

The wonderful weather we've been having make it seem like the garden are dragging a bit, but planting in the Market Garden continued on schedule with a few hundred yellow and white onion sets going into the rows we finished a few weeks ago. We found our red onion sets this afternoon, so we'll put them in next week. The potatoes are mostly in the ground. Kennebecs, Pontiacs, and German Butterballs, just as last year crop, which we ate all winter and there we plenty of seed potatoes left for planting. I ordered some Purple Vikings to add to the mix this year, but they are a bit late and will have to be planted next week. All the rest will be planted in the next few weeks and the stuff going in as seed will wait until the end of April. Until then we will put plastic down on the rows and encourage the weeds to sprout so that we can burn them down prior to planting.

Spring comes a bit late to the bottom of the Apple Valley. The hills are high and set close together, so the Winter Sun comes late in the morning. But things are growing and the Farm is getting better every day. Our soil seems wonderful and the rains has come every other night, at around mid-night, to get things growing.

March 21, 2019 Springtime Ready.

We've been working fairly hard this past week, getting the place ready for Spring planting. So much has been done, so much more to do. The idea is to try to make money at farming so that we can get on with other projects. And I think we are well on the way.

Our ducks and chickens are giving us about five dozen eggs for sale every week. All of our eggs sell quickly and we deliver them twice a week. At the rate they are selling we will hit our first year egg sales goal by August, then it is all profit till the end of the year. The birds are profitable right now, but we're not going to get rich doing eggs and we're not going to grow the egg business much going forward. The eggs themselves are award winners for taste and the whole egg thing is a good kick off for our entry into the farming business. We are making money enough to pay for gas and we get our personal use eggs for free! A base hit, if you understand the baseball metaphor. But we're getting ready to go into the produce business in a substantial way.

Ann did the back breaking job of planting the new Strawberry field by hand. Twelve double rows, about forty-five feet long, each row about one hundred plants. If things go as expected we might be getting twelve quarts a day from the field in May and triple that in June. Some of the plants are ever-bearing, so it is possible that we'll be harvesting up to twenty quarts a day until late October. This evening brings rain, so the baby strawberries will be up and getting green right away.

While Ann planted, I worked the Market Garden soils and layout. We put out many tons of compost and tilled it into last years inadequate soil, pulling the row making tool we built for the Strawberry Field behind the rototiller. Then we put a fence around the whole garden to keep the animals out. I think our Market Garden looks as a vegetable garden ought to look and should do pretty well this year. We still have a rabbit-gopher-mole problem, but we've got a few new ideas to try this year (most involving chicken wire of some sort).

Once the weather warms a bit the Greenhouse is full of baby plants to go into the garden. And since we have so many things to plant we invested in some professional planting tools. We already had a row seeding tool, but since we are sprouting much of the early seed into planting flats we bought a tube planter which opens a hole for a sprouted plant to drop into. Each plant dropped through the tube takes only a few seconds to plant and there is no stooping down. We also bought some trellis hooks to grow vine crops like tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini plants. Using this system takes a bit more pruning, but the hooks suspend the fruit as the vines grow out and keeps the plant growing within it's own space for the entire season. But growing the stuff is only half the job, we still have to sell it.

Ann signed the Farm up for a Farmer's Market at Tuality Hospital. It is two hours a week, very small, and absolutely loaded with the lunch break people. We don't really want to be in the farmers market business because we prefer people come visit us at the Farm. But getting started will take a bit of extra effort, so we will do some off site selling along with the produce stand out front here at the Farm. The Farm Stand will operate on a pay as suggested ,or pay what you will, basis. Part of the Farm Stand is a trailer we are building to sell to the highway traffic on weekends.

Much to do. Much is done. At some point during all of this we still need to build a house. So it looks like we'll be very busy this Summer.

March 3, 2019 Reflection on increasing happiness and reducing suffering

We spend a great deal of time in reflection on what we are doing. And while it is possible that these words never reach any other person's eyes, this is an article about reflection: the act of looking inward. Taking stock in the now.

Some of our great schemes work out right away, many do not.

But these ideas are often thought about very deeply before we decide to put the plan into action. We use deeply held principles to guide our plans into action.

Our primary principle is that we make the world a better place for all that come into contact with our actions. Another principle is to try to include, into everything we do, the idea that we cannot know the true outcome of what we do, so as insurance against doing something which is of no use to anyone we always try to include many possible outcomes in everything we try to do. We use this multiplicity of outcome principle to guide our decisions involving others, but our primary principle always involves making the world a better place for ourselves (a greater good principle).

Before reading on, there are a few (potentially new) words that might be helpful to know:

• A "dolan" is a thing which decreases the general happiness of any activity.
• A "hedon" is a thing which increases the happiness of any activity *.

This being known I will try to explain how we think about our ideas prior to doing: by using our electric bicycles as an example. If you believe in cost to benefit ratios, then these bicycles deliver at least five times the benefit (perhaps more) than they do cost, just from the one act of buying them.

When we first thought of buying ourselves electric bicycles (expenses are always dolans) . We said that one of the primary uses would be to use them to run into Banks (three miles down a purpose built bike path in the country) for food and restaurants. This was our stated primary benefit and the reason we used to justify the expense.

But the benefits are manifold: Riding into town keeps us off the highway (decreasing the traffic and therefore reducing the world's pain, both hedons); saves gas and money (better for our world and wallet, both hedons); and provides good recreation (both physical and emotional hedons).

The benefits continue where they do not directly effect our outcomes: The people who created and maintain the path we ride on did this to increase the benefit themselves and the world they live in (hedons abounding). The benefit to the Store we bought the milk from, the truck that brought the milk, the machine makers that put the milk into the cartons, the farmer who milked the cow, and the cow itself, likely all received benefit of our riding into town for milk. And I didn't mention the people involved in providing the bikes. So the one simple (potentially hedonistic) act of buying the bikes becomes a multiplicity of benefit; both for ourselves, and for some in-known mass of un-named others, while doing little to add suffering to the world in general. But this is not simple conjecture or justification for our excess of materialism,. There are real world benefits which can be counted all along the way. This week we made the short bicycle trip into Banks twice; once to get propane tanks and tractor fuel filled (a bad idea that worked out) and to get lunch (a good idea which benefited both ourselves and the people we transacted with (people like ourselves who dream of having a brew-pub but have too few customers at present)). We made another trip into Banks to get a few groceries (the intended use of the bikes). These trips out were nice, the rides home nicer. So both direction greatly increased the happiness of ourselves and our world.

But there are other uses for these expensive bikes which reduces the impact of the expense (dolan) while increasing the benefit (hedon): We often run the other direction on the trail, riding away from town and into the hills, purely for recreation (one of the intended outcomes of the larger Farm conception). A few Saturdays ago we took one such trip. Intending the ride to be about looking in on a place to see if they sold chicken feed (and we did this). We also,  accidentally, found a wonderful coffee place where people can simply go to sit around on a gloomy day (recreation: hedon). This great little re-purposed feed and food place in Buxton serves wonderful drinks on a pay-as-you-like (or can) basis.  The trip was nice for us; we got great coffee (having no cash in our pockets greatly made a difference in happiness on both sides) and spent time warming ourselves and solving part of a community jig-saw project. So our benefit was also a benefit for the people who built this place to give to their community (their expressed goal). Just as we intend to improve our world, these people also to improve their own.

So two simple primary benefits, like using a bicycle for the work-a-day use of getting groceries or riding around in the countryside, becomes a multitude of benefit for the local world in general. All of this benefit from a few electric bicycles . . . But these trips are not the only uses we envisioned for the bikes even as we searched them out and wrote the check.

We might use our bikes to forage the forest for plants and decorative wood to use in our "Crackedpot Garden" idea (little garden spaces people might take home to improve their world and help ourselves as well). In this we might realize the benefit of our spent labor (labor is an expense: dolan) and realize the benefit of the recreational and transnational nature of finding free stuff, building good stuff, selling expensive stuff, and having that loved stuff decrease the suffering of our world in general (all of this massively hedonistic). Of course we put a burden on nature somewhat (dolan), but we can mitigate this by caring for nature as we work with its output. But the possible benefit of these simple bikes might continue even further:

We might share our benefits (hedons) and rent the bikes to others (hedons) who would like the same experiences (massively hedonistic), but have no need for the expensive things on a full time basis (hedons), and realize the money (hedons) for use in other good projects (potentially wildly hedonistic).  Only yesterday I though that it might also be interesting to pull a small trailer with a bike, perhaps to sell strawberries at  one of the trail-head areas this Summer. The benefit to ourselves and to others from the one decision seem infinite and absolutely justify the expense.

The e-bikes are a good example of, through right thought and right action, doing good in the world. But the bicycles are just one of multiplicity principle in action, when guided by the greater good principle in action, that have worked out so far.  Another good example of this is the hoop-houses we built: while providing a warm place for propagating plants for ourselves also serve as vegetable growing space for tomatoes and other vegetables  for people to take home and enjoy in Summer, and also serve as a sunny and dry recreation space in Winter, when the weather is too horrible to get out of the house much. Yesterday evening, after working outside most of the day, then riding into town on our e-bikes for groceries, we relaxed in our hammock in the waning sunshine, inside of the greenhouse. It was a beautiful seventy-five degrees in there, reminding us both of laying out on late afternoon Summer days. Outside it was nice, but under forty, with a wind out of the East. An excess of hedons bordering on hedonistic, but having too many benefits without creating negative benefits to become a negative thing in the world.

As stated in the preface, most of our good ideas involve doing some thing which does the work of more than one thing and we hope that the things we do increase greatly the happiness of the world and remove (if only for a moment) the suffering from those who come to the Farm looking for just one thing: to make their lives better.

The Farm itself, written large, is another multi-use idea that, at its heart, is intended to become a place for people to disconnect with the outside world so that they can re-connect with the world and its people in a restorative way (just as we have). We hope to provide a place and activity that will remind those who come here about what is truly important. It will: grow food to feed people to make them healthier; grow food to make us money; grow food so that people can get closer to the experience of their food. And there are growing things on the Farm which are not food as well: flowering plants for sale to decorate peoples homes; but also to walk through on a nice day; so that they can disconnecting from the work-a-day world and re-connecting with themselves and their people. We have animals to look at and interact with. And the future plans for weddings and hospitality are only pipe dreams today. Imagine if it works.

We hope to do this sort of thing a great deal as the coming years go past. But in reflection, it seems we are on the right path.
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*A person who engages in the world solely for the purpose of their own happiness (even at the expense of others) might be called called "hedonistic".  The intention of doing something which might make some other person unhappy is the negative outcome of hedonism, but hedonism is not inherently negative. You might overdo happiness too.

February 27, 2019 Winter is a hassle, but . . .

The Winter this year was pretty mild, right up until the beginning of February.

The Groundhog (if it were at the Farm) would have seen his shadow and foretold of six more weeks of Winter. And it would have been right too. The Winter since Groundhog's Day has been horrible. (Stupid Groundhog should have stayed in bed.) Six more weeks of Winter was the Groundhog's forecast, let us all hope so.

Since then there have been many nights of heavy rain, some of it more than three inches. The days following are usually nice, but the mud can be a bit much. The cold mornings bring frost, but the frost melts and makes the mud a bit worse. We put a bunch of hay down to make for a firm footing on the paths, but the hay has slowly sunk into the mud. It is still better than  it was without the hay.

We had snow one night, sufficient to collapse the hoop-house roofs. We repaired them easily, but it has snowed twice since then and this is a worry. We have to  spend the snowy nights paying vigilant attention to keeping the weight of snow off them. We get little sleep on snow nights, but it is pretty out there when the snow falls. Last night is threatened snow all night long, but the stuff didn't show up until around six this morning. As I write this snow is falling and it is very pretty out. But we are melting the snow off of the hoop-house roofs about once every hour just in case.

Yesterday we had winds. Not really fast moving but very heavy and cold, spilling out of the Gorge.  We spent the morning in the greenhouse planting seed for succession crops and sorting strawberries into buckets for replanting. The wind made the job worse, but we got another bunch done. The wind continued all day and all night long, and some of it was pretty scary. The house shook at times during the night but the hoop-houses took it all in stride.

While sorting the frozen berry plants we discussed the problem of re-planting the berries. This problem is more about having a good place for them to go than having plants to go there. So we spent the sorting time talking about how we could distribute the good soil we made (last year) without making a mess or causing future trouble. The soil is very wet, so making a mess is pretty easy to do, and the weight of it makes moving it around a bit of a problem too.

While I was picking plants out of the freezing clay and mud I thought up an idea for a new tractor implement. So after lunch we went into the cold and windy workshop and built it out of scrap wood. The idea was to take the dirt which comes out of the tractor's 48 inch roto-tiller and focus it into a six inch deep and thirty inch wide berm suitable for planting. After we got the thing built, we had to figure a way to get it to trail behind the tractor, and then make a few adjustments to make it to work properly. Eventually the thing worked pretty good.

We moved the good soil out into the feild and just dropped it in piles, then roto-tilled the ground in an east to west direction until it was mixed fluffy and even. Then we put the new tool behind the roto-tilller and ran it in a straight lines in a north to south direction. Following the tire track from the previous run the rows came out wonderfully straight and look great. Each new row is about six inches deep and very well formed. This new tool will easily give us the 750 row feet we will need to put 4500 strawberry plants into the ground, in a meaningful way, before the growing season begins. But the weather simply must calm down a bit before we get out there to plant.

The forecast is for cold and dry all weekend, so we are hopeful. There are still a bunch of plants to sort out and planting in the rain sounds pretty horrible.

February 24, 2019 Seeds Sprouting

One of the new chain sign designs

It may be that we will never
have enough eggs to hang this one.

We have been keeping an eye on the new seeds put into flats the other day. The great news is that it seems the sprouting tables are working much better than the sprouting chamber I built last year. We have carrots, dikon and french radishes, and a few others showing up, only three days after planting.

Carrots usually take seven to ten days, same for radishes, so this is a vast improvement. Others might take a bit longer. Tomatoes usually take abut two weeks, in last year's chamber it took ten days to sprout a tomato and we couldn't keep the flats cool enough when the sun came out. The tables can simply be left uncovered in full sunlight.

Things are definitely growing. And to that end we are beginning to work on the produce stand as we continue to sort out strawberry plants and all the rest of it.

Today I did the graphics design for twenty-four placard signs, each for a different crop.  These signs have to be seen and recognized from a half a mile away by a driver, enough time that the driver can make a decision to take a closer look and make a decision. Since the signs will be relatively small they graphic elements have to be familiar to them. So I kept to simple elements and few words.

We will buy pre-painted wood trim boards at the Home Depot, cut them into two foot lengths, then paint the graphics on each board using my art projector to keep things neat. These individual signs will hang in a chain to make a bigger sign and to tell people what we have available.

The produce stand itself will primarily be a trailer which we will re-purpose for the job. Again, the thing must look like a produce stand to those seeing it from a long away. The colors and shapes have to remind the driver of a produce stand the moment it comes into view. We have a good design but describing it in text would be tedious, so I'll put up pictures as soon as we have it under way.

Ann is signing herself up for a Thursday farmer's market at Tuality Hospital. She has quite a following there and we expect it will be a good "warm" market for our produce. We will also put the stand out on the highway as the Summer gets nearer too. Probably just on Saturdays this year. The rest of the time the stand will be by our front gate where we hope to attract people to come off of the Banks-Vernonia Trail.