Farm machinery and hopeful future garlic buyer

We went with the Urban Worm Girls to Family Farmed Expo in mid-March. It was a different crowd than when I've attended before in years past. The speaker was Sally Fallon, whose cookbook we have Nourishing Traditions. She is a follower of Weston A. Price Foundation. Her talk was very interesting. The crowd was definitely a little more of the Weston A Price followers; which I'm fine with, there is a lot of that diet and their beliefs that I can totally get behind. (Um, lard pie crusts? Yum! I just happen to have 2 jars of lard in my fridge.) It was a good conference and we were able to bike there so that added to the fun. We also connected with our friends at Breslin Farms and The Gentleman Farmer. Breslin Farms is selling a mountain of heirloom beans. I helped them harvest for a couple of days last fall so it was wonderful to see their beans all packaged and ready for sale. They have great things in the works for this year! Likewise, the farmers of The Gentleman Farmer are offering a CSA this year. I passed their info around at my food coop. They are trying to sell at the Logan Square Market. They are growing full-force and it is wonderful to see. Additionally, while at FF, I re-connected with Irv of Irv and Shelly's Fresh Picks. Irv spoke at our farm class and when he said, "I can never get enough garlic" it was music to our ears. I saw him at the FF dinner so I went over and introduced myself to Irv and his wife Shelly. I told them how much they influenced our business plan and we hope to sell to them in 2013. I gave him my card and he was very encouraging. The Rural Landowner's Conference last weekend in Wisc was a good experience. We re-connected with our farmer mentor and I attended a breakout session led by Barb Ingham, the food preservationist specialist of Wisc. She was great! After the conference, we went and plunked down some money on some farm implements. We never buy anything new, but in this instance, we tookthe plunge and purchased new equipment - funny enough, to run our on our 60 year old tractor. We bought a rotovator and a tine cultivator. Still to purchase are a disc, but Bill wanted to do some additional research before making that decision. The rotovator ships from Madison and the tine cultivator has to ship from the manufacturing plant in Oklahoma. (Yes, US made.) The salesperson said to us, "it's going to take 4 - 6 weeks to get the tine cultivator." I responded, "that is why we are here in March!"

Tomorrow is the end of the 1st Quarter and Bill is hard at work on our transition plans. He has been able to get a lot of the major Chicago projects well under way or completed. In addition, ReAdapted has developed a new product and he has been meeting with patent lawyers and may pursue a patent!

Slope Stabilization

On Sunday, 3/13, we got the seed down along with about 500 sq yards of erosion mat. Whoa, that is hard work - much harder than I expected! I thought it would simply roll out and we'd tack it down and call it a day. Not so! We arrived at the farm at about 8:30 am so the soil was frozen. As the day warmed up, the soil melted slowly. At first it was just a little softness on the top, which made it slippery when working on a 45% slope!

There is seed in there - we used a Slope Stabilization mix from JFNew

Bill putting spreading the seed with a belly seed spreader

Rolling the erosion mat down the hill

We only got about a 1/3 done

Silt fence at the bottom

The installation, which involves hammering stabilization "pins" (5" steel dual-tines which will rust) every yard or so. I kept sliding down the slope. Bill was able to stay put on the middle of the slope but my feet would just slide down and I would end up sliding down the mud. It was warm out and it was fun to get really, really filthy.

Rural Landowner Conference

On Saturday, March 26th there is a rural landowner conference in Grant County. We have two friends that will be presenting one of the breakouts. (Driftless Market and Two Onion Farm) Other items of interest - Barbara Ingham, the guru of food preservation. A very exciting opportunity that we are looking forward to - especially since we missed MOSES this year. http://grant.uwex.edu/files/2010/12/RLC-Brochure.pdf Our MOSA application has been mailed! It is very exciting to be pursuing organic certification. We are in Wisc and tomorrow we try some frost seeding of a slope stabilization native mix. We don't want to re-create this previous mistake. Over the seed we are installing an erosion blanket. It will be a long hard day of work - can't wait! And the Family Farmed Expo is next weekend. Hope to make some connections for future sales.

Prez Day in Wisc

We are in Wisc for an extended weekend. Bill was up here solo a few weeks back -during the Chicago blizzard. I was supposed to join him after a few days but I couldn't get the car out of our garage for several days. I also spent a night without heat. The electricity cut off about 10:00 pm on Tues of the blizzard and came back on at 10 am the next morning. I was glad it was overnight as being in bed with lots of covers and two cats is OK with no power. So that Wisc visit was cut short as Bill came home early instead of me joining him.

We are up until Monday now. We anticipate some fierce barn work: cabeling the structure together, constucting the columns for which we poured concrete footings for in December, having someone pick up the tractor and fix the oil leak, brakes and hydraulics. We may place an order for a rotovator, disc harrow and a cultivator while here as well.

Additionally, we placed one of our many garlic seed orders last week and it added up to 50 lbs of garlic. We need about 30 more lbs.

We also now have wi-fi at our church-home. I am attempting to connect my work laptop right now - having some issues so I'm waiting for the helpdesk to call back - but I am hopeful that this is the beginning of the ability to do some working remotely this summer.

Hard at work on the farm planning

We spent our vacation between Christmas and New Year's working - except this time our tools were laptops, spreadsheets, calendars and pencils. Bill put together a spreadsheet with all of the tasks that we need to accomplish prior to our planned move in March 2012. Each project has its own spreadsheet: our buildings in Chicago, our church/weekend home, an agriculture plan, a new shop building at the farm, and the farmhouse renovation. Each sheet has a goal (i.e. "all remaining improvements" (for the Chicago buildings) or "plant crops", or "remodel house to occupy"). From there each sheet has a list of the tasks to accomplish that goal (i.e. excavation of footings, or drywall back hall, or remodel 3rd floor apartment kitchen, or repair sunken fence post and water meter well, or finalize crop and site layout, etc.). We sat down and prioritized each task into timing (1Q11 or 2Q11 - what can I say? I work at a bank!) and then plotted each task onto a main calendar.

And we worked out the specifics on our crop layouts using measurements of the wheel distance of the tractor and laid out the fields, beds and rows. We've chosen varieties of garlic and begun plotting the actual planting on paper. I also rebuilt our website (http://www.3flatacres.com/ - check it out to see our garlic varieties). We've also made some equipment decisions on what we need to buy as well as cover crop varieties. Come spring, we'll break up about 1/2 acre and cover with a spring manure mix and innoculant from Johnny's and turn under mid-summer. We'll replant with buckwheat and turn under before the garlic gets planted in October.

Additionally, we contacted an organic certifying agency and have started working on the paperwork to obtain organic certification.

Also while we were on vacation, we spent a lot of time at the farm just walking the ground. I think that I never got to walk to the side pastures the whole summer because we were always so busy working on the barn. We also took advantage of the snowcover and sprayed out the footprint of the new construction and sprayed the interior of the old house to see where the commercial kitchen, garage, walk-in cooler, laundry, stairway up/down, etc., will go to make sure it flows effeciently and to our liking.

I feel like we have learned a lot about our farm plan in the past month. Additionally, having everything that we need to accomplish prior to the move written down on spreadsheet and calendar has really cemented the plan and we feel more organized and productive. We've restarted our weekly farm meetings with a to-do list and goals to accomplish from week to week. Managing this is easier if it is done one step at a time, week to week.

New blogs I've found

I'm exciting to have found several new blogs of folks that are planning relocation to SW Wisc or already have. (Barb and Penny, you may find these folks of interest too!)

http://digginginthedriftless.wordpress.com/

http://mintleaftea.wordpress.com/

http://www.driftlessappetite.com/

SW Wisconsin is becoming a hotbed of sustainable agriculture!

Pink Sunrise

Standing on the 'L' platform this morning, I saw a beautiful sunrise. (Sorry for the terrible photo.)