Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

Had the downloaded digital version of this book since the 2nd edition, for at least a couple of years now, dipped into it, but still haven’t read it through. I should and I will. This winter! The 3rd edition of Building Soils for Better Crops: Sustainable Soil Management came out last year and it’s even better, full of practical science for the upward-looking tiny farmer and veggie gardener. Here’s the blurb: “A one-of-a-kind, practical guide to ecological soil management. It provides step-by-step information on soil-improving practices as well as in-depth background—from what soil is to the importance of organic matter. Case studies of farmers from across the country provide inspiring examples of how soil—and whole farms—have been renewed through these techniques. A must-read for farmers, educators and students alike.” The PDF version is a free download, the printed version is about 20 bucks. There’s a fair number of soil books and books that cover soil out there, but for the tiny farmer, this is pretty much one of a kind.

Tags: books, fertilizing, reference, soil
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Reading about building stuff

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A great chance find at the library, lying there on top of a returned-book cart. This isn’t a book review or recommendation, although Barns, Sheds & Outbuildings is a cool browsing volume, full of clear explanations, instructions, and photos. What it did was remind me, as my year of living mainly in town has its effect, how little most of us (I’m talking about the majority of North Americans, at least, living in cities and towns) have to do with actually building things. And how kinda HELPLESS we are, not knowing how to put together and repair the structures we need. I read somewhere that in the 1950′s, around half of the houses in Toronto (so, I assume, in other big cities as well) were built by the owners. Who’d think of doing that now?

The interesting thing is, like growing food, building basic structures IS NOT HARD. For me, working alongside Bob to put up a wood-framed, winterized, 450 sq. ft. barn extension clued me in to that a few years back. Not a huge project, but it was basically a tiny house constructed to withstand cold Canadian winters. We leveled land and poured a concrete pad, built a concrete block retaining wall, framed, installed a metal roof, windows and doors, insulated and wired…everything. Being warm and dry in the middle of winter inside a structure I knew literally down to the nuts and bolts was satisfying and fundamental. Working alongside someone with old-school farmer skills, following his lead, doing whatever he did, made it…simple.

There aren’t that many old-school farmers left to learn from, but we do have books! :)

Tags: books, buildings, carpentry, reference
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Foundation

New seedling room: getting there!

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What a difference a day makes

Galvalume!

Winters on the tiny farm have always been a time for research and a bit of book learning. My first two seasons were crazy for reading, especially the winter before Year 1, when I had four months to pick up enough, from zero knowledge, using books and the Net, to map out the initial one-acre plot, order seed, get some gear, and “pass” the initial organic certification inspection, in order to start the market garden that spring. That was fun!

Over the last six years, though, a curious thing happened. My original urge to find out how everything worked, to soak up endless technical detail, full of labels and scientific explanations, died down quite a bit—often I’d rather watch a squash decay than read about it…

It seemed more fun to find specific, practical solutions on the farm: how to fix this or improve that. At the same time, I’ve become more and more aware of the growing process as a whole (and really, how relatively little I have to do with it…), not so concerned about its parts. It’s a little hard to explain, though real easy to feel. Maybe it’s just…a phase!

MEANWHILE, this year, Year 7, is a bit of a shake-up. Compared to the old farm, the new farm is pretty bare-bones. One big change: I don’t have the tons of well-aged, almost completely composted cow manure that was available there.

Every year, I made manure-based compost in 50′ (15m) windrows, incorporating crop residue and culled veggies, turning it with the tiny tractor, checking it out, but it wasn’t CRITICAL to fertility. A fall spreading of fine, on-farm, composted manure always did the trick!

Now, with no on-farm animals yet (chickens to come first!), and no prospect of generating huge amounts of manure, compost that relies more on plant sources will be my new friend. Composting and green manure are on my mind.

New necessities require…new learning! So along with everything else over the last 2-3 months, there’s been a more intense hitting of the books, thinking over, chatting, scouring the Net. It’s not exactly like starting over, but it’s definitely…FRESH. I’m excited. More as it happens!

Tags: books, composting, fertilizing, manure, research
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Different kind of compost heap

A spot of tea…

Checking on the beef

Like a pile of gold!

Ways to spread

The Shaver Red Sex-Link laying hens are doing fine in the fairly chilly chickenhouse, eating up a storm, looking and sounding healthy and happy, and producing away. They’ve been in artificial light days for the last couple of months, about 16 hours made up of daylight extended by a 60W bulb on a timer that’s on till 11pm. I’m curious whether at least some of the girls would really stop producing for the winter if the light dropped below 15 hours for even a single day. I don’t actually want to see it happen, but what if there’s a power failure? Hmmm… Kerosene lamp? In any case, fall egg production has so far stayed steady at about 20-23 a day for the 25 girls… Chickens are easy, you don’t have to know a lot to raise them casually, but there is a lot you could know. And of course, the more you know, the less you need! My winter chicken reading is Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens.

Tags: books, chickenhouse, chickens, eggs, lighting
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Definitely ready to lay

Chickens on egg

Chickens love eggs

Advanced lighting automation

Chickens to the slaughter

Since I mentioned buying this book a while ago, I might as well wrap it up! I recently, finally read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, an investigative reporter’s full-on indictment of modern food. It came out in 2006, but with all of the praise and recommendation I’d heard from people around me and online, it almost felt like I was waaaay behind a life-changing, or at least, EYE-OPENING, experience. In fact, I’d read excerpts and heard Pollan speak on radio and TV, and I had a pretty good idea of what the book would be like: HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and densely packed with condensed bits of accessible scientific explanation, intriguing and disturbing facts, and involving eyewitness accounts. OD definitely delivered on all counts.

I read it over a couple of days, a real page-turner! For a week afterward, choice nuggets of often alarming info swirled in my head. And then, the details started to fade. It’s now a couple of weeks later, and a few choice bits remain. I really like the idea of being driven by the complementary opposing forces of neophilia and neophobia (kinda like the angel and the devil, sitting on each shoulder…), and that we humans developed big, powerful brains in order to figure out what to eat (something like that). The description of grass farming was absorbing. Mushroom hunting sounds…extreme! And so forth. Oh yeah, and we’re feeding ourselves crap!

The one big downside of this sort of intensely involving overview, covering so much territory in just 400 pages, is that you can’t absorb that much in a practical way. So, you’re entertained in an agri-suspense/thriller/horror style. The result: if you weren’t already convinced (I was…), you’re now likely quite certain that our food industry and the food it produces are both…horrifying (that’s not good!). You also hang on to some interesting facts that you didn’t know before, maybe stuff that you’ll go on to explore. And perhaps all this will fuel some significant personal action (that would be good).

All in all, OD is engagingly written edutainment, and I’d recommend it as a good read. As for its life-changing impact, the mileage no doubt varies.

Tags: books, horrifying
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Books! Seed! Orders arrive…

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Rubbermaid storage bins are the main harvest containers again this season (I suppose that’s a plug for Rubbermaid, unintended, it just seems like they’re the only company in the plastic storage bin market!). They’re inexpensive (around $8 each), hold a little over a bushel, and the lids fasten well. They’re easy to clean, and they stack well, loaded and covered, or empty. And they’re durable. I somehow ran over one with the Kubota compact tractor, pulled it back in shape, and it’s in service again. They’ve changed color this year, the new ones available around here are a kinda tacky metallic blue, but that’s no reason to give ‘em up. We have about 25, along with a dozen or so green bushel trugs…so I guess that’s the cap for the maximum harvest haul for now! Today at market, there were about 15 of ‘em full… Balanced on the edge of one is a stack of three selected gardening books, brought to market for customers to check out…

Tags: books, marketing, post-harvest
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First harvest 2008!

Trimming garlic

Post-harvest aftermath

CSA share!

Early harvest day…