Lost Road Farm Spring Pictorial

Hive after being inspected

New Chicken Condo

Highway Rhythms

(February 2011)    
     Relieved of its load of several tons of fabricated steel, the big Chevy flatbed seems to yawn and stretch as it leaves the restricted confines of the paper mill and heads out to open road.  The delivery complete and with time no longer of the essence, I decide to forgo the interstate and head home via  highway 99E, cutting through the farms and small villages that fill the Willamette Valley.  Turning off the radio, I consciously take a deep breath, holding it for several seconds before slowly letting it out  and allowing my shoulders to release any accumulated tension.  The tires on the wet asphalt intone a guttural, buddhist chant as my awareness drifts to the open fields.  

     It's a fairly typical Northwest winter day, where the moisture hangs in the air, not as rain, but a perpetual mist.  Little lakes form in low lying areas where the ground is thoroughly saturated and unable to absorb another drop.  I still marvel at the expansive fields of green - grass grown for its seed or a Winter cover crop.  The farms here make me think of a race horse, pressing against the gait, eager to run at the first hint of Spring weather.  I wonder how the owners of these farms are spending their "down" time.
     At the beginning stages of developing my own farm, I am some years away from being able to make a living by farming only.  My few acres require minimal care during the winter months.  With no animals to care for, there is little to do but plan and wait for warmer, dryer weather.  I am already following the trajectory of many established farm families - the wife works to provide a steady income while the husband farms and works part time jobs as needed to make ends meet.  My wife's (Denise) full-time work as a nurse is the financial backbone that makes the farm possible.  My goal for the farm is not only to provide our family with quality foods, but for farming to provide a living as well.  Big dreams, perhaps, but one I feel is achievable, and necessary.  I feel a sense of importance and urgency in this undertaking that I have never felt about any other job or previous projects that I've been a part of.
     Before the village of Shedd, I pass a sign indicating the location of the town cemetery.  The arrow points down a narrow lane which makes its way through  the middle of a field.  It seems appropriate somehow, that the road ends in the fields that are the focal point of the community.  My thoughts drift to more personal losses - my mother, aunts and uncles, school classmates.  The memories, while tinged with a sadness, give me clarity on the importance of living from my vision, and not being a pawn in the world dream.  Our time on this planet is short, no matter how long we live.  I don't want to waste my existence chasing the values of the mass culture only to come to my final moments with someone else's life passing before me and regretting the life not lived.
      I may not always be able to choose the road that lies before me, but I can choose how I travel it.

"On the highway of life, we most often recognize happiness out of the rear view mirror"
                                                                                - Frank Tyger
     

****************

(May 2011) 
  

    

 New residents were added to the farm in April.  Ten Barred Rocks chicks and two Chinese Geese.  The residents began their stay in a large tupperware storage box in the house.  After adding another storage container after a week, it became necessary to build a bigger wooden box and move them all into the garage in order to salvage the air quality inside.  Due to their rapid growth, the large tupperware container came back into service to insure they had adequate space and weren't constantly pecking at each other.  Another three weeks and they'll be relocated to their permanent home in the orchard which has been fenced for their protection.
    The chickens are primarily for eggs, though theyare a dual breed (also good for meat) and will likely make their way to the pot when they stop laying.  The geese are to provide security for the hens.  (You don't want to make a goose angry!)

**********

The bees are buzzing.  I lost three of the seven hives I had going into winter.  The good news - one hive's growth has been so explosive that I had to add another super even after I created a split - taking out four frames that had larva (and queen cells) with honey and bees to start a new colony in one of the hives that had died out.  Hopefully we'll have enough warm dry weather over the next few weeks to allow the bees to forage and expand their colonies.

                    

                                                                                **********    
The transition from hobo to farmer continues as I switched jobs in April, leaving the highway behind to begin working for the Department of Agriculture as a commodity grader.  Having more of a set schedule will make it easier for me to plan and execute my farm duties.                                                                                              

 

       

Label Ire

     I'm a compulsive label reader and it may not be good for my health.  Let me explain.  The other day I received an email from my sister, Kathy, expressing her frustration at shopping in the supermarkets.  We share the same frustration and it's this:  it is getting more difficult to find real food in the aisles of most markets.   There is an increasing preponderance of food products on the store shelves these days, but less and less real food.  I read labels, not to figure calories, carbohydrates, protein or fiber content, but to see what the product is made of.  My supermarket reading selection usually annoys the hell out of me which can't be good for my blood pressure.  I must appear a lunatic, my glasses sitting atop my head(don't need them to read),  expletives bursting spontaneously from my mouth as I toss the offending item back onto its shelf and go grumbling down the aisles in search of the next likely offender.

     Try to find real ice cream, for example, and by that I mean the product made from milk, eggs, sugar (sucrose) and perhaps a flavoring or fruit.  My forays into the store to find this simple, basic product have proved to be a fools errand.  The first problem is corn syrup.  Now if you believe the ads paid for by the corn industry, who try to convince us that sugar is sugar - then as the old saying goes, I have some swamp land I'd like to sell you.  Scientific studies have shown that high fructose corn syrup increases weight gain, even when compared to taking the same amounts of table sugar(sucrose).  If you look at the rise in childhood diabetes in the last twenty years and the rise of the ubiquitous corn syrup in our processed food during the same period you  have to at least ponder the possibility of a connection.  But that's just the front end of my ice cream anxiety.    Corn syrup as a sweetener is certainly a terrible choice compared to table sugar as far as I'm concerned, but it's long list of other additives beyond the milk, eggs,  and salt also leave me shaking my head in wonder and disgust.  Xantham gum?  Used as a thickening and stabilizing agent it's also used in medicines to lower total cholesterol and blood sugar, but it may also cause bloating and flatulence and you may not want to have your blood sugar lowered (could be a problem for those recovering after a surgery).  Add to that list other ingredients such as dyes and artificial flavorings...my cart has been mostly devoid of this treat for several years.  The same is true of jams and jellies which I never buy from the store anymore.

    Breads often produce the same problem - riddled with additives you can't pronounce and that leave you guessing as to their purpose.  While I can find good breads from local bakeries, I've taken to baking my own.  An investment in a quality stand mixer has made my bread making almost embarrassingly simple and easy.  The smell of baking bread filling the house is alone worth the effort.  And tortillas...we're talking flour, salt, a little lard... shouldn't have a list of more than three or four ingredients.  See if you can find that short of a list on your grocer's shelf.  Fortunately tortillas  are about as simple an item to make as there is.  If you're spending the time to cook up a good chili verde, why wouldn't you spend the few extra minutes to have freshly made, warm tortillas to go with it?

     While time can be a limiting factor for many working families, making the effort to cook a meal with high quality, local ingredients is time well spent.  Cooking does require physical effort which may be difficult to muster  at the end of a hard day's labor, but the process is often more calming and restive that sitting in front of the television.  And good cooking does not have to be complicated.  The crock pot is a wonderful invention, allowing you to put together a great meal with a little prep time in the morning before your energy has been spent, and come home to a waiting meal. Your taste buds, your body, and your soul will appreciate the outcome.  

     I find the more I farm the more I want to do justice to the quality ingredients that I've worked to produce and so I enhance my cooking skills; and the more I expand my abilities in the kitchen the more I want to work with quality ingredients.  One feeds the other in a continuous loop.

     It all starts with one act - buying a cookbook, or growing tomatoes in a pot on your deck, or reading a label in a supermarket.    It's not important how you get there, it just matters that you start the journey of appreciating real food.  And whether you are a family of ten or one, don't you deserve the real deal?    

     

Reflection and Planning

      I'm not among the 45% of Americans who make New Year  resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense.  As a person who is vastly aware of his own ignorance, I find that I need to be in a continual state of reflection, evaluation, and planning in order to keep from being held hostage by that ignorance.  For me, setting smaller goals and then taking "bite size" steps, followed by outcome analysis and tweaking the plans accordingly is a more realistic scenario than setting  big goals at the beginning of the year that can't take into account the inevitable contextual changes that will occur.  Perhaps that's the hobo speaking, but I do believe that continual adaptation to the "is" is a better survival technique than a rigid goal set in a context of what you hope "will be".  Putting it in simpler hobo cowboy wisdom - "No matter where you ride to, there you are."
     The beginning of the new year, while not a time of resolutions for me, seems to be a good time for reflection.  This winter I've been pondering my own evolution to beekeeping and farming, wondering why this passion has crept up so late in my life.  There appears to be no straight line connecting the events that have brought me here, nor any single "aha" defining moment.  Farming is a state of consciousness I am gradually evolving into.
     Back in the mid 1980's, when I erroneously thought teaching might ease my restlessness and provide me with stability and a satisfying career, I attended Wayne State University in Detroit for a Masters Degree in teaching.   I did my student teaching at Chippewa Valley High School in Clinton Township, Michigan where I befriended an experienced teacher with over 25 years in the profession.  As I got to know him better, I discovered his first love was not teaching but farming.  He had inherited his family farm in central Michigan and spent his summers farming full time. During the school year he would fly his Cessna Skylane to work the farm on weekends.  He admitted that the farm lost money every year, but that his teaching salary allowed him to keep the losing enterprise alive.  I took what he was telling me at face value - he was doing something he loved in spite of the financial loss.  Most of us have hobbies that we spend money on, not expecting any  financial return - music, model trains, camping, quilting...  Thinking back now I realize I didn't really understand his commitment to farming.  I had no cultural context for understanding his devotion to that way of life.  Few in our modern industrial, high tech society can understand.
     Remember back to your childhood when you were so stoked with anticipation at Christmas of getting that "hoe, rake, and shovel" set that you could hardly breathe?  Or how you and your friends would play "cowboys and sod busters" for hours, often forgetting to come home on time for dinner.  And, remember as a teenager how you felt receiving your first baseball cap with the logo of your favorite seed or tractor company on it and how you couldn't wait to wear it to school with those new overalls and muck boots?
     No?...  Really?  No conversations with your high school guidance counselor about farming as a highly lucrative career and the need to take pre-farming classes at the local community college to make yourself more competitive for the crowded agricultural programs at the university?  Well, perhaps I'm being just a tad facetious, but hopefully with a point.  If you didn't grow up on a farm I imagine the likelihood of choosing farming as a full time career to be very small.  Even then, many farm kids, especially women, choose to seek alternative livelihoods far removed from their childhood experience.  How many people have you met whose goal is to work pre-sunrise to post-sunset, seven days a week?
     Don't get me wrong,  I'm not claiming long hours are my goal either.  But the more I  develop the few acres I have, the more it demands of me in sweat and time.  The peculiar thing is that I find great joy in being absorbed by the land at this time of life, where in my youth it would have been repellent.  Maybe I'm ready for the Geezer Ball - overalls and muck boots required attire.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     The weather hit the low 60's this past weekend which provided me the opportunity to dig into my hives.  I went into winter with seven hives, having lost the 8th to Colony Collapse Disorder last October, and unfortunately have lost three more.  The three loses are not due to CCD however.  One colony appears to have died due to starvation.  There was no honey to be found on any of the frames.  This is a little curious in that I left the hive two deeps full of honey and one medium which had several frames of honey going into the cold weather.  It is possible that the hive was weak to begin with and other hives robbed it of its honey.  Perhaps I should have reduced the entrance sooner to help prevent robbing.  I found frames filled with honey in the other two hives and so the bees should not have starved to death.  Their demise is a mystery to me.
    I cleaned the dead bees from the three hives and scraped away any burr comb.  All three have mold covering the frames (a result of the inactivity and not the cause) and supposedly when I relocate some bees from the thriving hives into those vacant hives, the new occupants will clean them up nicely.
    The warm weather left the four surviving hives literally buzzing with activity; the bees returning from foraging laden with pollen.  If the dry warming trend continues, I hope to be able to complete a more in depth inspection of the healthy hives in the next two weeks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the "To Do" list:
 * Cut down the row of pines on the south side of my fledgling orchard.  The trees are blocking much needed sunlight from the fruit trees, especially in early spring and late fall.

 * Build the chicken coop and buy and install fencing for same.

 * Build trellises and plant recently acquired old French grapevine cuttings.

 * Enjoy doing all the above. Celebrate accomplishments with home brew.