Archive for September, 2009
September 16, 2009 – Movin’ the Compost
One reason the old man got the tractor and loader was precisely for jobs like this – moving the animal composter. The composter was designed to be movable with eye hooks and electrical conduit connecting the four sides. See February 11, 2006 for some design details. This composter is where dead animals end up. I needed to move it to get the tractor loader close enough to the barn to be able to use the loader to get higher up on the barn and remove the old doors.
Here the sides have all been disassembled and the tractor is moving in to try to move the compost to the new spot of the composter.
So far, so good, the pile is sliding into the new location. Doesn’t it look like a raccoon sticking its head out in front of the loader bucket? It’s just some old bones.
Voila! Back home again – just need to put on the last side and the roof of the compopster. This job went much easier than it could have. Moving it by hand would have been a royal pain and if the pile broke apart, it might have been rather stinky as there were recent additions to the pile – but it all kept together.
one year ago…”Grilled Mushrooms”
September 15, 2009 – Mulberry Feast
It doesn’t take long for a mulberry tree to get away from you. This one was growing in the fenceline south of the raspberries. It was overdue to take out. One of those things that’s on “the list” for a long time.
The tractor sure made the job easy – instead of cutting it up into pieces and hauling it away – I just had to drop it with the chainsaw, wrap a chain around it and drag it into the pasture. I wanted to do it before the leaves dropped.
In the pasture it became well appreciated browse for the goats and sheep.
September 14, 2009 – Gettin’ the Cub Runnin’
We’re swapping time and goods for Farmall Cub repair. A few years ago the fan belt pulley froze up.
The initial look-see is starting. We’re replacing many other things as we’re at it – including plugs, points, condenser, rotor, fuel filter etc. It will be nice to get this tractor running again.
one year ago…”School Farm Tours”
September 13, 2009 – Catch Sunday’s Des Moines Register?
I’m not too sure how long the Des Moines Register links are live, so I copied the story below, without the photographs. This story appeared on the cover of the Iowa Life section of today’s Sunday Register. It’s about “Comida – County of Marshall Investing in Diversified Agriculture” one of the offshoots of the college farm and program Linda spearheaded.
Latino Farmers Remember Their Roots
By MIKE KILEN
mkilen@dmreg.comBenigno Lopez smoothly swings the machete and, whoosh, tall grasses are laid flat on the garden’s border. He takes another fluid swing and another, until his wife grows impatient.
Ramona Lopez yells and whoops in the distance to summon visitors to her side.
“Come look at my peppers!”
“Look, jalapeños.”
“Habaneros.”
“And look at these!”
“Chilies!”
“Most of the time, I’m not as happy as my husband. But this year, when I come and see my peppers …,” she calls out, finishing the sentence with a look of adoration.
Benigno, who people call Bernie, and Ramona grew up in Jalisco, Mexico, but left behind farm life 13 years ago to move to the United States.
They worked in the meat-packing plant in Marshalltown, became citizens and hoped to one day grow food again.
Now they have a plot of land and are harvesting, thanks to a continuing education program to develop new farmers that heavily taps into Marshalltown’s Latino population.
“Take it,” Ramona says, shoving a green tube of something-or-another at the visitor. “Take it!”
OK, but what is it?
A Mexican yellow squash called a calabacita. Slice it, put it on the grill with a little seasoned salt, she said. Oh, the taste!
Just the day before, as August waned and the vegetables hung ripe with promise, she had a party and served them. It was a special evening in a season of growth.
Years ago, the couple planted a peach tree in their yard and others said it wouldn’t grow. But fruit appeared, not every year, but enough to maintain hope that new ideas, new people, could prosper here.
Bernie’s father and grandfather grew peaches, mangos, oranges and avocados on their farm.
“Bernie is very happy to work outside. Works 10, 12 hours a day,” Ramona said.
Ramona works at Iowa Home Care, visiting the sick and elderly in their homes, then comes out to see her peppers, which grow on plots at Marshalltown Community College.
Its Entrepreneurial and Diversified Agriculture Program (EDA) led an adult education class last winter, “Start Your Own Diversified Farm,” whose goal is to help people learn to farm and contribute to the local food economy.
In looking for farmers in Marshalltown, a town long populated with Latino immigrants, it made sense to tap into their willingness and expertise.
A survey of 111 Mexican and Central American immigrants in Marshalltown and Denison by Iowa State’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which paid tuition for the class, discovered that 83 percent grew up on farms and 93 percent wanted to farm, although buying or leasing land was an obstacle.
A third of the 18 students in the eight-week bilingual class were Latino, joining Anglos, American Indians and Sudanese.
“We always ate. It seemed important that we eat together to help us integrate,” said Linda Barnes, the EDA program coordinator. “The thing we learned is so much of it is about relationships. The reason that is true is we are talking about food.”
Bernie and Ramona helped recruit Latinos, earned certificates from the class in March and joined a dozen who planted plots in the spring.
Some grew excited on the first warm April day and made the mistake of planting early.
Bernie waited until May 5. He had experience, working on a ranch in Mexico. “Never with a tractor but with an ox,” he says. “Old fashioned.”
“He use a tiller here,” his wife adds. “I’m happy for Bernie to use a tiller.”
Just then Norm McCoy, the farm manager of the college’s 80 acres, suggests Bernie may benefit from a weed eater to tackle his chore.
He smiles. New Iowans with unusual ideas like peach trees wisely take some advice from the natives.
It’s a longtime dream. While working at the packing plant, a job she didn’t like, Ramona began attending farmer’s meetings.
“I would go home and look in dictionary what they say. I realized the problems same for farmers everywhere,” she said.
The main challenge for new farmers is money to buy land. But students can establish three years of growing history here, which most lenders require to buy land.
All they want is a few acres, just enough to grow fruits and vegetables and raise a few cows, chickens and sheep to sell to local customers and restaurants.
Claudia Prado-Meza saw the same hunger while talking to traditional Iowa farmers.
“They miss growing food that they know where it goes,” said the Iowa State graduate student in sustainable agriculture, who helps the Marshalltown farmers. “But they are trapped inside subsidized systems.”
Latino farmers remember their farming roots.
“To hear (Ramona) gush about the potential for growing vegetables is like the embodiment of the American dream,” said John Paulin of Prairie Rivers Resource Conservation and Development.
“But the institutional knowledge of growing truck crops has disappeared.”
Paulin hopes the college program, which became part of an effort carrying the acronym for food in Spanish – COMIDA (County Of Marshall Investing in Diversified Agriculture) – helps connect local farmers and buyers.
Only one-tenth of a percent of Marshall County residents get food directly from farmers, a fourth of the national average. If consumers bought 15 percent, according to a study by Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center in Minnesota, $8 million of new farm income would be generated in the county.
So they are trying to grow farmers in Marshall County, dreamers like Ramona and Bernie.
Ramona steers her truck past the rows of white corn for tortillas, tomato plants and twisting vines of melons.
It hasn’t been an easy growing summer with early cool weather and college land that hasn’t built up enough organic materials yet. Still, the group gathers enough produce to sell at the Downtown Farmers Market in Des Moines, in McCoy’s Pine Crest Farm stand.
She is chomping on a just-picked cucumber and had few complaints.
“This place is the future for new people,” she says. “We raise seven kids here, three still at home. Marshalltown open the doors to us. We need to do something to give back to the community.”
Adept at translating, Ramona helps recruit immigrants interested in farming while working to save money to buy land.
Her husband, she says, is never so happy as when he can stop to donate garden items at Helping Hands Temporary Services for the less privileged.
She pulls her truck up to the plot of Jorge Ibarra, a 35-year-old construction worker and father of five who learned to farm from his grandfather in Mexico.
“I like to be farmer,” he says. “I lived on a farm. I like the life.”
He begins filling up boxes of his sweet corn to give away.
Like Ramona, he wants to return something.
As the Iowa sun sets over the standing corn, visitors take home the corn and calabacita to put on the grill, as Ramona instructed.
She also cooked the squash the day before at a party for her daughter Jacqeline, the first in her family to ever leave for college. They ate it near the peach tree in Iowa.
one year ago…”Jim Sinning Memorial”
September 12, 2009 – “Fresh – The Movie”
Today we went to a screening of “FRESH the movie.” One of the people featured in the movie is long-time friend George Naylor who has been President of the National Family Farm Coalition and was the Iowa farmer featured in Michael Pollan’s #1 selling book, Omnivore’s Dilemma.
The movie highlights some of the dangers, both from an animal husbandry and health perspectives, of confined feeding operations and contrasts them with some farmers doing things a different way.
The movie was hosted at a farm in Greene County. It’s always fun to see other people’s ideas.
This is an old grain bin that has been converted into a pool room. Here’s a view from the outside.
And here’s what it looks like from the outside.
Here’s a cheap gazebo – the top off an old small grain bin, some poles and you’ve got a dry place to stay outside over a fire or cup of tea.
one year ago…”Alltel Prepaid Wireless Review”
September 11, 2009 – Carrot Harvest
It’s time, er, maybe too late, in some cases, to harvest carrots.
The short, stubby carrots are an example of planting a variety suitable to soil conditions. One of the gardens has very hard, clayey soil and that results in planting a variety that is short and fat to ease getting them out of the ground. To try to change this we tried planting tillage radishes in part of it to break it down some, added lots of compost this fall – so we’ll see if it is better next year.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #132″
September 10, 2009 – Thingamajig Thursday #176
Here’s this week’s thingamajig Thursday.
Also check out the last thingamajig answer.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
Hold mouse over this sentence to pop-up answer.
one year ago…”Season’s Turning”
September 9, 2009 – South Side of Barn – Before
I neglected to take a picture of the south side of the barn before I started, so here is one after I couldn’t help myself and got started.
The weather has been fantastic for painting – upper 70′s and little if any wind for the last 10 days or so and not much change in the forecast going forward. This side will take more time – almost every door needs to be rebuilt and new trim cut and painted. I’m also not sure how I’m going to handle painting the top six feet or so – it’s out of ladder range for me – so I’m tossing around renting a cherry picker or hiring it done.
one year ago…”Season’s Turning”
September 8, 2009 – North Side of Barn Painted!
When I started staining the north side of the barn a few weeks ago, I never imagined it would get done so quickly. The combination of dry days in the 70′s and helpers at home to watch when I was on the high areas helped this get done very quickly. It’s very seldom something gets done ahead of schedule, but this project beat winter by a long shot.
We completed the west and north sides of the barn this summer (as long as we don’t look at the east and south sides, we can be happy).
Here’s a head-on view of the north side, recently stained and painted barn. There are still some odd boards to replace, but the barn is more ready for wetness now! The white trim against the red sure makes it look sharp.
one year ago…”Never-Ending Raspberries”
September 7, 2009 – Garlic Cleaning
It’s time to clean the garlic for sale. How best to get it out of the barn?
Get the loader bucket…
put a couple of girls up in the loft and bring the garlic down…
in bushel baskets.
My mom and a friend came down for the long weekend and graciously hopped into life on the farm and here helped clean some of the garlic.
September 6, 2009 – Heirloom Tomato Tasting at Grinnell Heritage Farm
We took some time away from our farm and visited an heirloom tomato tasting event and farm tour at Grinnell Heritage Farm. It’s a 5th generation, yet new farm reinvented as a diversified organic farm with vegetables, animals, hay, and hoophouses.
Here owner Andrew Dunham begins the farm tour.
They planted 30 varieties of heirloom tomatoes to try to decide which ones they might like to grow and eat the best and shared the varieties with the public during a tomato tasting/potluck/string band event at their farm. I’d say there was an overwhelming turnout.
I, of course, was struck with the beauty of all the vegetable beds. If I remember correctly, there are about seven acres in vegetable production. These organic varietal lettuces in front of the old barn are noteworthy for their beauty and being relatively weed-free.
Bright Lights Chard makes for a beautiful landscape as well.
These bug-free cauliflower rows were a wonder to see. Andrew and Melissa have much to be proud of as they convert this farm to organic, local food production.
September 5, 2009 – Tomatoes Finally Arrive in Bulk!
It’s been a lousy year for tomatoes so far. We had the bad combination of getting them in late and a cool summer that delayed their growth a couple of weeks.
The Roma tomatoes aren’t ready yet, but these are ready to eat and hit the canner.
Martin works on cutting up the tomatoes before processing. He like to style in his Bob the Builder apron!
September 4, 2009 – Maizie Ready for Makeover
Mazie must be tired of the same old monochromatic black and white look.
When I was painting the barn and went in the house for a glass of water, I found that Maizie grabbed the paintbrush out of the stain can and decided it would be great to rub on. Now she’s sporting a rather stiff barn red look!
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #131″
September 3, 2009 – Thingamajig Thursday #175
Here’s this week’s thingamajig Thursday. What kinds of seeds are these?
Also check out the last thingamajig answer.
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
