Archive for the ‘Farm – All’ Category
October 17, 2011 – Tomatoes Won’t Stop
OK, this is it. The final tomato harvest of the year – frost is forecast in the next few days.
The plants loved the dry late summer and fall. It was an epic tomato canning year – our final tally ended up to be 97 quarts and 37 pints canned – even for us, a lot! So, we are ready in case there is a crop failure next year – we’re good for a couple of years for chili, minestrone soup, red hot dish and whatever else we can use our summer canned in a jar.
October 16, 2011 – World Food Prize/Oxfam Visitors
Once more this year, we were fortunate to host some amazing folks who were in town for the World Food Prize Symposium. This year’s event was much smaller than last year’s, but just as interesting.
Many of the folks who stopped by were international visitors who are used to living in rural areas, and were thrilled to get out to the country after spending a week in hotels downtown. One of my favorite moments is when one of the visitor’s eyes light up when they see or smell something familiar to them – whether it be the aroma of a fresh herb in the air or seeing and old standard-breed chicken.
Here Linda speaks with Mrs. Silas Samsom Buru, a farmer from Ethiopia. Although she had never traveled more than a few miles from her village in her life before this trip, she was on a panel at the symposium panel with VPs from Wal-Mart, Kraft Foods, and NGO Director Generals and was a natural at expressing her viewpoints. She spoke about a new crop insurance program that pays out not based on an individual farmer’s crop loss, but instead if average yields fall below a certain level in the region. Farmers can pay with cash, or improve their long-term farming sustainability by soil organic matter improvement to make the soils hold more water through droughts. She said the program has the possibility of improving the lot of the next generation so they will not need so much outside food aid.
The woman in front of Linda is Nelly Velandia from Columbia. Nelly practiced civil disobedience by setting up a farmer’s market in towns where they were not prohibited, on the steps of the government building. The markets were a huge success and the rules were changed. In Bogotá, she even convinced the mayor’s office to help cover the cost of setting up markets in parks and public squares. The markets offer poor rural farmers a much more profitable return and urban residents cheaper, more nutritious food.
It was uplifting to share stories among these women of their efforts to improve their corners of the world.
one year ago…”Oxfam Event at High Hopes Gardens”
October 14, 2011 – High Hopes Blog Slowing Down
Since Feb 13, 2005, I’ve committed to daily posts on the High Hopes Blog and have done that for the most part, except for periodic computer breakdowns – my WordPress dashboard tells me I have 2,439 entries. The blog now receives clicks from about 150 visitors a day, 55,000 visits last year, 170,000 visits in the last three years and the highest number of visitors on any one day is 1,066. However, as much of an advocate for sustainable and self-sufficient living that I am, a post that has nothing to do with this topic remains the most popular post – the picture of Claire’s home-made duct tape Homecoming dress is far and away the single most visited post!
One astute observer refers to it as my “electronic scrapbooking” as the blog chronicles the farm and family. We often look back on it when we can’t remember when something happened, or how old an animal is.
With some of the farm activities winding down, there will be less material – so I am no longer committing to daily posts – instead, when something happens I will still post – it might be once or twice a week, we’ll have to see.
A big thanks to all who have and continue to keep up with the goings on at High Hopes Gardens and its denizens.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #229″
October 12, 2011 – Potato Yield from 50 foot Row
We had one more row of potatoes to dig up in the garden
It was a great row – here’s the yield from one 50 foot row! A rinse, dry and storage in the basement will give us potatoes well into winter.
one year ago…”Francis Thicke for Secretary of Agriculture”
October 11, 2011 – Today’s Facebook Steal
one year ago…”Lovin’ the Garden Chickens”
October 10, 2011 – Seeds
One benefit of not getting around to pick beans before the pods get too big is that later in the season, you’ve got some seeds for next year’s gardens. These are Rattlesnake Master pole beans, a non-hybrid, so the seeds grow true.
It’s still amazing all the information stored in each of these – instructions about when to sprout, what to do, what parts to make, how to respond to weather, and how to make more beans!
one year ago…”Lovin the 48 inch Tiller”
October 9, 2011 – Corn Recovery from Flattened
After the July windstorm, all the corn around here was flat on the ground. In less than a week it popped back up.
But walking is a field is almost impossible since the main part of the stalks are about 18 inches or so from where the stalks come out of the ground. Might make for some slow harvesting.
one year ago…”Duct Tape Hammock”
October 7, 2011 – Tomatoes for Salsa Project
The Marshalltown School District has a sizable minority population (not to be the minority much later since over half the births in the local hospital are of Hispanic origin.) The school has started a local foods project to make salsa using local ingredients.
These tomatoes are destined to become salsa in the lunch room.
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #228″
October 3, 2011 – Chicken Butchering Commences
Yesterday was the day to put the chickens in the freezer. We skipped the first step in the photo sequence of butchering.
Here a nice bird is ready for the scalder.
A few dips and twists in the hot water and as soon as a wing feather can be plucked off easily by hand, it’s done.
Into the plucker.
about 15 seconds later, they look a lot like rubber chickens.
Emma and Linda cutting them up.
When we went to the chicken tractor, we found one critter had eaten part of a chicken through the wires. It’s always disheartening to feed an animal to its last day and lose it, but it was only one, and it could have been, and has been worse.
one year ago…”Marching Band Contest”
October 2, 2011 – Getting Ready to Fill the Freezer with Chicken
Here’s the scene the before the chicken butchering commenced. We’ve now done it enough times that we’ve got it down pretty well.
The line starts in the distance where the chickens are first hung upside down and bled out, then brought to the scalder, then the plucker, then the eviserating, and finally a couple of cold rinses before they are later either washed and bagged whole or cut up.
one year ago…”Chicken Butchering”
September 30, 2011 – Raspberry Applesauce
In the never-ending quest to preserve apples, the third product is now on the shelf. First was canned apple pie filling, then dried apples for snacking, now applesauce.
These jars sitting on the storage shelves in the basement have a red color due to the raspberries added to the apples. One canning episode was good for about 44 jelly-sized single serve jars for lunches at work. We’ve had no trouble using our raspberries without going to market this year – we traded raspberries for buffalo meat, and handed off 18 lbs of berries to a vinter who promises us bottles of dry wine 6 months from now.
one year ago…”Thingmajig Thursday #227″
September 28, 2011 – “Hot”
Here’s Linda chopping up some hot peppers to warm up winter days.
Peppers like this are easy to preserve – they don’t need to be canned or blanched – just cut up.
Ready to spice up winter dishes!
one year ago…”Updates from U of MN”
September 26, 2011 – Fall Garden Goodies
Some of the veggies we planted in the middle of the parched August for a fall garden are now coming to the table.
Nice to have fresh spinach. lettuce, and radishes out the door.
one year ago…”Garden Cleanup Begins”
September 24, 2011 – A Sweet Day
Today was honey extraction day. As GJ says, it’s all about separation today. First, you separate the supers from the hive and therefore separate the bees from their honey. Then you separate the individual frames from the supers.
Then you separate the beeswax from the frames. Emma with the heated knife and gj with a wax scraper.
Then you separate the honey from the frames in the extractor.
Then you filter out all the bee parts and remaining wax from the honey.
A final look at Emma with a nice frame. We ended up with about 15 gallons of honey from two hives. Shortly after the aerial jockeys sprayed around our farm, the hive at our place ha greatly reduced activity. After the bees died, the wax moths took over and there was no honey – but the two hives at another location adjacent to about 15 acres of prairie, did very well.
one year ago…”U of M Public Relations Disaster”
