A walk through the orchard, part 1
Jotting down my impressions of the various trees in the orchard after the harvest. In this first installment I review the trees in the southern rank of the orchard.
Kurt on 09.28.06 @ 09:51 PM PST [more...]
The Living Green Farm Journal
"Sweet fields arrayed in living green, and rivers of delight"
&t
Home
Archives
Local friends' sites
OSU Organic Grower's Club
Queen Bee Apiaries
Esther's blog
Muddy Clogs
Agriculture links
The Modern Homestead
Soil and Health Library
Many Tracks
City Farmer
Path To Freedom
Farmlet
Herb Farmer
Journey To Forever
The New Agrarian
The New Farm
Mossback Farm
Sweet Home Alabama?
Political/philosophy links
Debt, Diesel, and Dammerung
Life After The Oil Crash
Urban Survival news
Cryptogon
Deconsumption (on sabbatical)
Ran Prieur
Rototillerman
Powered by Greymatter
| September 2006 | ||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Thursday, September 28th
Wednesday, September 27th
The Early Morning Routine
I was down at the farm on Sunday morning, and I had an opportunity to let the ducks out to pasture. The ducks are definitely creatures of habit; when I presented myself outside their pen at the back of the barn they looked unsettled about going out: initially they were clustered up against the pen door, but when I opened it and stepped back they took one look at me and retreated further back into the pen, muttering away in duck-talk. One could almost imagine the discussion going on: "Well, the door is open... but we don't know him... let's wait for Nate... well, I for one am hungry... it's getting late... but who is he? what does he want... come on, lets go" and so forth.
Kurt on 09.27.06 @ 07:38 AM PST [more...]
Monday, September 25th
So Close to Following Mother's Orders
We'll gladly eat our Brussels sprouts; they just need to get a little bigger.
Channa on 09.25.06 @ 09:48 PM PST [more...]
When Life Hands You Plums...
You figure out how to make it alcohol!
We were fortunate enough to have a copious amount of plums this year. The first crop seemed never ending. Kurt distributed a good chunk of it to his church, while I made several jars of plum sauce. We sent friends home with buckets and bags of plums. The other tree held onto its beautiful, candy-sweet fruits for nearly a month longer. That's about when I figured out that they were drying on the tree!
So, out came the carboy. This a picture of my cat, Winter, helping me chop the plums. MakingPlumWine So if you receive a bottle of plum wine in a few months, take the black cat hair as a sign of affection!
Channa on 09.25.06 @ 09:31 PM PST [more...]
Tuesday, September 19th
A Blessedly Beautiful Place
This living place amazes us everyday. We're so thankful.
Channa on 09.19.06 @ 04:40 PM PST [more...]
Monday, September 18th
Welcome to Quacker University!
And I don't mean UO! 
Nate and I are convinced that ducks are the ideal poultry for the Pacific Northwest. They love the rain, mud puddles, slugs and snails. They lay huge, delicious eggs. They (mostly) lay at night, so there are fresh, clean eggs in the nest. They have more sense than chickens, love to be part of a herd, and are very predator aware. And they're cute!
Channa on 09.18.06 @ 06:38 PM PST [more...]
Wigglers, Wigglers Everywhere
And plenty of food to eat! 
In preparation for the arrival of Queen Aura, we've been cleaning out the cowshed. There is a very large layer of manure and straw, about 15ft x 15ft x 1ft, that we're trying to get out of her pen and onto the compost pile. Rebecca and her mother, Brenda, were helping us with that task when they made the wiggler discovery. A shovelful of the muck from a certain area of the pen was alive with worms! There seem to be thousands of them in a very concentrated area of the pen. This is just a handful of the manure and it had more worms than not!
Channa on 09.18.06 @ 06:02 PM PST [more...]
Friday, September 15th
Million workers to join Living Green Farm!
Well, a million worker bees! Some friends of Rebecca's, Tad and Karen, are full-time beekeepers, and they need a place to park some hives for the winter. Supposedly, the bees won't be too active in the winter, and so shouldn't impact us. However, as part of the deal Tad and Karen will mentor us on the care and feeding of the apis melifera. Nate is going to clear a space in the area just west of the cottage for the bee hives, which apparently will arrive on pallets (these are bees that Tad and Karen 'rent out' to agricultural enterprises for pollination, apparently). The move will be done at night, so that all the inhabitants are safely inside. What's exciting is that Nate and I had talked about eventually getting some bees, and now here are some practically leaping into our lives! A little ahead of schedule, like the cow, but welcome nonetheless. Rumor has it that Tad and Karen are the source of the fabulous meadowfoam honey that we've enjoyed as a condiment down at The Farm.
(photo courtesy of Jon Sullivan
Kurt on 09.15.06 @ 08:56 PM PST [more...]
Thursday, September 14th
Queen-size bedding
One of the conversations that we had during the Labor Day cider-pressing concerned livestock. Our friend Dorothy is a realtor with contacts all over the Willamette and Yamhill area, and she mentioned casually that sometimes she hears of situations in which someone has a cow either for sale or to give away to a good home. Of course, we told her we were interested in hearing about situations like that, and a week later she called us. "Do you want a purebred Dexter cow?" Do we ever!
Channa on 09.14.06 @ 09:33 AM PST [more...]
Wednesday, September 13th
Orchard harvest time
The turn from summer into fall has brought a bounty of fruit: luscious plums, tart apples, and sweet pears. Join us as we celebrate our first harvest.
Kurt on 09.13.06 @ 09:41 PM PST [more...]
Monday, September 11th
In the beginning...
...there were pictures. Here are some photos of The Farm as it looked around the time that I purchased it from a specialty poultry-raising farmer. There is a barn, there is a house, there are a few outbuildings, an orchard, a tiny greenhouse, and lots of grass.
Kurt on 09.11.06 @ 03:11 PM PST [more...]
Sunday, September 10th
Amend this!
Ours is a small farm, but even for a few acres things scale impressively. You can't just go down to the Fred Meyer or even the local feed and seed and expect to haul back enough fertilizer to spread over a couple of acres. The really big boys buy it in bulk, or rent the pre-filled spreader itself from a specialist dealer like Marion Ag Service. But that requires a working tractor, which unfortunately we no longer have (a story I will relate some other time).
Through a long series of phone calls to Wilco, Coastal Farm and Home, etc I was finally able to locate Tobin Bowers, who was willing to spread our amendments over the six acre main pasture area (contact information given at the end of this entry). However, we had to buy in bags, since he was using a small tow-behind broadcast spreader. What you're looking at in this photo is Nate standing atop 120 fifty-pound bags of gypsum and 90 bags of agricultural lime. I represents our best guess at what it will take to sweeten our pH 5.5 soil (acidic!) and lower the potassium level. So these aren't really fertilizer per se, but rather mineral amendments to alter the soil dynamics. It's kind of a long-term investment, rather than a short-term fix. We'll test the soil again next year, and see what effect it will have had.
If you're looking for someone to spread amendments on your small-acreage holding, we can recommend Tobin Bowers of Harrisburg, Oregon. His phone number is (541) 912-3079. I would also recommend Marion Ag Service as a willing partner for small operators like us. They gave us a fair price on the bagged material, and were very easy to work with as far as delivery and unloading.
Kurt on 09.10.06 @ 10:36 PM PST [more...]
Friday, September 8th
Welcome, and an introduction
I'll keep this brief, as this is our first posting. Bringing up this web log is a little bit like The Farm itself - a work in progress, lots of potential, who knows where it will all lead. Join me for a short explanation of how we arrived at the name Living Green Farm. As the twig is bent, so grows the branch; one has to take care in naming things.
Kurt on 09.08.06 @ 08:52 PM PST [more...]