Picked one helluva year to be a chicken herder.

I just wanted to make a few comments about how the price of corn stinks. I mean really stinks. Can I cuss some more than just in the title?  OK, last year I was paying round about $5 for a 50 lb bag of whole corn for the chickens. This year, it is over $10 for the same bag.  What just happened?  Is it all being foolishly turned into ethanol?  Or, have the Chinese fallen in love with the corn dog?  Right now I have three patches of corn growing. One at the city house, one at the farm and one is at William's house. With my commitment to the USDA to raise and sell chicken products, it is a tall order to turn a profit in such turbulent times. If my corn does come in, it will be weeks before it is ready to pick.  All of it is heirloom variety dent corn, multicolored in fact, red, green and blue. Couldn't just settle for plain old yeller.

The solution in my mind is to get rid of off-farm feed inputs. I hope to just raise as many animals as the land can support, and they can keep their high-dollar corn. That'll show em.

A mast year.

Hi Folks, it has been a long spell since my last writing. I hope to do better at this public journal thing when I am finally settled on the farm.

A remarkable thing is happening this year. It is an "on" year for wild blackberries.  The farm was blooming with blackberry canes during April and May, and now a breathtaking crop of blackberries is the result.  The photo is a small version of what nature and my addition of honeybees can do.  Lore has it that next year will be a pitiful crop.

The birds are full, and ripe blackberries turn into raisins on the cane, going uneaten.  On the hillside of the adjoining property, there is an untapped bounty of perhaps thousands of pounds of berries. I watched in amazement this spring as the slope bloomed all silver-tipped in the distance.  I have not hiked up there, but it is likely an impenetrable thicket of luscious ripe berries.  It is what becomes of a hayfield that is left untended, it becomes a paradise for rabbits, and torture for the beagles that try to chase them.  The old-timers call this kind of thicket a "hell" though the term is most often reserved for Mountain Laurel.  I can envision being trapped without hope on such a hillside.  I could hear the neighbors beagles baying and harassing in the near distance, and occasionally yelping in pain.

I spent about an hour yesterday on my day off waiting for the State Apiary Inspector to reach the farm. I picked a gallon and a half in short order.  I stomped my way up into the thickets and pressed the hay and weed growth down with my boots (passing flashes of fear entering my mind regarding snakes unseen). It is noticeable that the first wave of ripening produces berries as large as the tip of my thumb, the later flushes have smaller less rewarding fruit.  I noticed the agonizing randomness of the ripe fruit, no order to my mind. A berry to the left, and more to the right, close to the edge, higher up, lower down, four together, one by itself. I had to really focus to pick an area clean. It feels like a deliberate effort on the part of the plant to prevent me from cleaning it off. I wonder why?  Clearly though, this is a plant that intends for birds to eat it's fruit.  No mammal would be happy about pushing through those thorns.  Birds however, easily navigate the canes, without so much as a note of worry about thorns, singing as they pick the berries,shielded in prickles.  What a perfect strategy for spreading seed. Seed bombs on the wing as the birds fly off.

I used a gallon plastic milk jug cut out, leaving the handle intact to make a picking bucket. I filled it twice, I didn't even make an impact on the available crop within reach.  Boy, I feel pretty darn lucky.  It is great to be able to forage for food. I can't wait to turn these darlings into jelly. Sorry folks, not a big fan of blackberry jam. It is like eating sweet gravel to me. Let's ditch the seeds, shall we?

Guard dog

Here she is, Daisy.  Ready for adventure, defending against all comers. Maybe she is not quite ready yet. She may just make intruders smile themselves to death, she is so cute and fluffy.  This dog is growing at an alarming rate, and at approximately 10 weeks old is nearly the size of a Spitz.  In this picture she is just home with us having just left her litter mates at 8 weeks.  She is actually much bigger now.  Once she grows up a little, about 8 months actually, she will patrol the farm property keeping predators away from the livestock.  By then she will hopefully have a friend, a second LGD to give her backup in those coyote show downs. Most predators won't tangle with two Great Pyrenees.  Daisy is a Great Pyr./ Anatolian Shepherd cross we got from Nature's Harmony Farm in north GA. 

Tilling the Fields

Last week was a big week for LJF.  We hired a man to do some plowing and tilling with a tractor. One acre is now scratched open and needing planting. The hayfield will take it all back if we are not quick about it. We will be planting feed corn and fox tail millet for poultry feed, market veggies and potatoes.

The plan is to under plant clover as a green manure/ living mulch for the corn.  We will pre-treat the clover seed with organic inoculant.  The inoculant is a specially selected strain of nitrogen fixing bacteria that will colonize the roots of the clover, and grow  in nodules that secrete nitrogen into the soil.  Since corn is a nitrogen hog (and depletes the soil readily) we are doing this to eliminate the need to treat the field with petroleum based fertilizers.  This is considered a "deep organic" method as described by the organic gardening guru Eliot Coleman.  The idea is not to just use processed organic fertilizers but to amend the soil and improve it. Chemical additions,be they organic or petroleum  based, do not offer a long term improvement to the soil.  In  fact, they can burn and kill earthworms and beneficial insect (yes, even if they are organic). The only other amendments will be manure and compost.

Later in the season the clover will  be knocked down and in-planted with Oaxacan Green Dent Corn.  I tried to pick a heirloom variety from a region with a similar humidity and growing conditions to East TN.  I may be wrong about the selection, but that is how things go, you try and see what works.  I also have a batch of Ohio Blue Clarige from Broadened Horizons Organic Farm.  This is a landrace corn that the farm has developed over successive growing seasons. I will plant it on another schedule so it won't tassel at the same time as the Oaxacan so it doesn't cross pollinate and resemble nothing like we intended.

1253

Now the preparation paralysis is over. Planning has to give way to action. The non-romantic truth of the matter is that I have 1253 feet of property line without any kind of fence. The perimeter fence is the last barrier to farm critters making a break for it. It is also the first barrier to critters that want to get in and make a quick meal of my livestock. I worry about coyotes the most now, but then I worry about weasels, rats, owls, hawks and now bald eagles that frequent the lake a quarter mile away. Don't even get me started about people's pet dogs roaming the area looking for blood. This is the secret life of some dogs unfortunately, one that would shock the most loving of dog owners. Everybody loves chicken. William lost about a dozen birds to a roaming Husky last summer. He captured the dog and had a nice conversation with the owner. All was set right with a check to cover the value of the birds. "You lick your owner's face with that tongue doggy?" Sinister, but the dog-ness of the dog I suppose.


This weekend we went out to the property to take a walk around the perimeter, check the existing fences and pick out a place to put our driveway and cabin. We decided on the driveway and cabin, and walked the entire property line checking out the property line fence and seeing how it must be fixed. The old fence is rough in places and is not up to snuff. 1253 gets bigger.


This will likely be a really good fitness plan for William and me, more for William I suspect who will wind up bearing the bigger part of the work. There is just a limit to what I can do with a day job.

We were also happy to meet the neighbor across the street who has lived there for 50 years. She is a very friendly person with a big smile. We got the strange look we sometimes get when we mention organic farming, but when we explained; no chemicals, no poisons, lots of manure and lots of compost, a big smile came over her face. "Oh, so you are going to farm the old way." she said. Yes neighbor, the old way. Call us crazy, and insanity may soon come to pass.

January Deep

The long climb out of winter feels interminable. Here in Tennessee the winter is mild and bearable, others are not enjoying an easy winter this year. My woodpile is not gone yet, but then I have not been trying hard enough. I read yesterday that the sun calendar has today's twin at November 26. The upside is just as long as the downside.

I have ordered my obligatory seeds from the 20 pounds of seed catalogs that have arrived in the mail over the past three weeks. They know just how to get me. A few pretty pictures of cucumbers here, a few colorful pictures of tomatoes there, and I am happily ordering seed for plants that I cannot grow for another 3 months. THEY'VE GOT ME. These seed catalog companies have the marketing savvy of the best of the tobacco men. Give the garden groupies pictures of chlorophyll laden plants during the dead of winter, and we will order anything, even seeds for veggies we ourselves don't like to eat. It is a compulsion.

So much planning and plotting is going on. I have ordered (and am waiting to have to pay for) a LGD which is a Livestock Guardian Dog, Great Pyrenees to be exact. He/she will be the chickens' NBF. I have also ordered two splits of VRS honeybees, for pickup in May. All acronyms, all the time. Also waiting for the arrival of the shipment of turkey chicks in late March. These will be be Standard Bronze and Bourbon Reds. I feel that both breeds have a great context for this area of the country, and both are heritage breeds. And, unlike grocery store turkey breeds, these types are able to reproduce naturally. The turkeys you buy in the supermarket were all created via artificial insemination, the bird's breast is too big to allow...well you can get the picture. All I know is that I will hopefully have to only do the minimum to facilitate turkey nookie. The idea is to not have to keep buying livestock all the time. This is the definition of sustainable.

Last but not least, I am waiting for my order of soil blocker equipment for seed starting.
I am a dork, and I am not ashamed to say that I am very excited about the arrival of these garden tools. I have tried several methods of seed propagation over the years, and I am hopeful that this will be the best yet.

I have tried cell trays and peat pots. I have tried those fun but disappointing peat pucks that poof up when you soak them. I have tried bedding flats and hand picked the seedlings with an English made stainless steel Widger tool (it is an excellent propagation tool by the way), transplanting the seedlings into larger pots. This last method is a great space saver, but I loose some to transplant shock and damage, no matter how careful I try to be.

The idea with the soil block maker is that you load up the device with some potting soil and compress it into neat individual blocks ready for seed. No pot, no cells and supposedly the plant cannot get root bound since the sides of the block are just open to the air. Then, when the seedling is at the right size you simply deposit each mini-block, plant an all, into the well in the medium size block....and so on. Minimal transplant shock. Since I've noticed that even the "biodegradable" peat pots do NOT degrade after planting, I figure this is a great way to get my seeds started indoors this year, without wasting effort or money on "infrastructure". The soil block maker is a tool that can be used over and over. It will eventually pay for itself I hope.

What it means

Lightning Jar Farm.

Does it name inspiration, captured creativity, moonshine, or 1860's canning jars? Yes. It means what I think it means after all.

It is the act of holding my breath and diving in. It is fifteen acres to keep open without owning a tractor. It is holding a day job and staying good at it so the dream survives. It is giving the kids a landscape to roam in and explore freely. It is growing and raising really good food, and then eating it, and sharing it with others. It is about learning and teaching, and art. It is conservation, ecology, whole farming, and harvesting the sun.

It is my alter ego, my cape in a phonebooth transformation.

Twenty years of living in the burbs have not put the walking ghost inside my heart to rest. The ghost has been tap, tap, tapping on my strings. The spirit has been walking through hayfields and woods, and wandering amongst newly tipped Christmas trees in the spring time fog (a particular shade of green, impossibly fluorescent), she has been galloping horses, listening to spring frogs, and digging potatoes. In autonomic response, I have planted a larger garden every year. I take my shoes off after work in the summertime and stand squeezing the garden soil between my toes. In this way all the worries and fatigue of the day have drained through the rough soles of my feet into the earth, I am grounded in the warm dirt. The ghost is not yet quiet.

It will not be anything that exactly matches my imagination, but it has an exceptional chance of being wonderful. Anticipation.