Creating a community

In advance - sorry for the wall of text!

As I mentioned in this post, I have been thinking about our community of farmers a lot lately.  We run in to each other at events, where we can chat for an hour (or more!) after the event, catching up and sharing information, ideas, and ideals.  There are a few organizations that want to help us new farmers who have our contact information, such as Jillian at Beyond the Market (who also has a list of local farms and an email list for their newsletter) and Garry and Wendy at Twin Meadows Organics.  However, there's no system set up for us to contact each other.  As I've been catching up with new and familiar faces at events, we've all mentioned a desire for more communication within our community, not just from third parties.  I do not want to replace what Jillian is doing for us, as she is a fabulous workshop organizer, a wonderful source of information, inspiration, and advice, and a tireless advocate for all farmers in the region.  What I would like to see is a way for us new and young (and experienced!) farmers to collaborate; there are certain things each of us needs to know (farm status info, where to find tractor implements, good fencing suppliers, etc), and certain things each type of farm needs to know (sources of seeds/breeding stock/young animals/feed, innovative designs for greenhouses/heated waterers/livestock pens and chutes, etc).  There are also some of us who have other time commitments that keep us from farming full time (for example, Jordan and I are both working full time), and also limit the time that can be spent researching.  If every farmer in the region who wants to do chickens this year has to independently find suppliers for chicks, feed, and necessary items, each one would be spending probably at least 4 hours gathering this information.  If 6 farms want to do chickens, that's 24 hours spent researching.  We could collaborate on this, and one person checks out chick suppliers, another checks out local feed producers, and a third stops at the farm stores in town to check prices of equipment, it would be less work for each farmer, and many other farmers could benefit if that knowledge is shared with the group.  If we build a repository of this information that each of us is collecting, we would all save time and money (fuel, phone bill, and we all know time is money) and we'd build a supportive community at the same time.  We could also get together for work parties, harvest potlucks, and other social events.  (Ideally, I'd love to see a makerspace or co-op workshop set up in the future, but that's a little extreme to be thinking of at this time.)

So, what I'm hoping to build is an online space where we can get to know each other, communicate amongst us, share information and ideas, and collaborate to develop innovative solutions.  There are two parts to this: communication and knowledge-sharing.  I've chatted with Tessa and Matt (another young farming couple) and Cam (a student at the local university where I work and a young farmer) about how we can best set this up.

Communication has a shorter lifespan than sharing; email works great, but it can be hard for each of us to build an email list of like-minded farmers.  A few ideas:

• Develop an email list - I've thought about this one pretty extensively.  I can easily build a Google form to capture information from each of us, and then email the link to the results to everyone who submits their info.
• Listserv - similar to the email list, but we wouldn't get as much any info about the subscribers, and the sender has no connection to the receivers
• Forum - captures the conversations, and allows anyone else to join in
• Google groups - in my experience, they can be a bit clunky, and end up being similar to a listserv
• Facebook group - like this one (it's a closed group, but I requested to join and was added with no problems); creates a neutral place for people to post and discuss things, and allows others to join in, can be public or private

Sharing knowledge requires a stable online space that is easily organized and fully searchable.  Potential solutions:

• Forum - like this one; can be public or private, easy to set up, organize, and search
• Wiki - like this one (good find Cam!); easy to organize and search, must know a bit about wikis to add or edit a page; can be public or private
• Co-op blog or website - like this or this; more difficult to organize and search, must know a bit of website coding, can be managed by one person or multiple people, or allow posts from many contributors
• Google docs - like the ones on my Resources page; harder to organize (unless there is a doc for each sub-subject), can be edited by one person or by many, can't search across multiple docs

In my opinion, a forum might be the best way to go; Tessa, Matt and Cam seem to agree.  It is easy to set up an area for communication (with a thread for introductions, gathering the info I would have asked for in the Google form when I was thinking of an email list - good thought Matt!) where people can chat about anything by starting a thread.  There can be another area for knowledge and ideas, which can be organized into subcategories (suppliers, plans and designs, events, resources, etc) and into threads (for example, in the suppliers section, there can be a sub-forum or a thread for chickens where we can post about the best local organic feed producers).  We should be able to make the introductions thread members-only, so our email addresses and whatnot wouldn't be out there for spammers to access.

So, fellow farmers, what say you?  Are you interested in being part of this community?  What do you think is the best way for us to accomplish this?  Comment below (please sign your comment with your name so we know who you are if you are commenting anonymously!), or email me at lonepinefarmbc[at]gmail[dot]com.

Please send this post out to all of the farmers you know, so we can reach everyone - just grab the link from the address bar in your browser :)

Joel, visiting, and predator-proofing the seedlings

It's been another busy few weeks for us.  I'm starting to notice a theme here, what about you?

A few weeks ago, we attended a live streaming of a talk by Joel Salatin (of PolyFace Farms) called You Can Farm.  It was an overview of his ideas, his farm, and the reasoning behind the systems he uses.  It was great!!!  All the notes I took can be found on our Resources page (up in the top right).  I really liked that he explained why he farms the way he does - I often come across great ideas, but I have a hard time figuring out the logic behind them.  Joel explained things clearly, so that it made sense to the rest of us.  He also reminded us to stop thinking "Well that's great for them, but it won't work for me" and start trying to apply ideas to our farms.  Sure, we don't have 100 acres of cleared land to do pastured cattle followed by chickens, but we do have about 26 acres that we can use for a smaller setup.  It was a great talk, and I'm sorry we couldn't make it to his other two about pastured chicken and pastured beef.

Almost a week later, I was packing for a trip (more on that in a moment) and I noticed water leaking through the walls.  Oh joy, I thought, another leak.  So we headed out at 7 at night to try and clear the ice off the deck.  Jordan got what he could using a sledgehammer, and the next day I cut some drainage through the ice using the hatchet.  By the time I finished an hour and a half later, I was getting pretty good at aiming that hatchet!  Not the best circumstance to get familiar with our tools, but it worked :)

I cut the ice along the logs so the water could run below the seams between the logs.  Then I cut a channel to drain it out to the deck.

Closeup of the ditch along the wall.

This worked perfectly, and we'll be keeping a much closer eye on this next year.  I was worried this would happen, but I'm glad I noticed it before there was any major damage done to the bedroom or the kitchen.

With that done, I could finish packing for my trip.  Kim invited me to come along to visit her grandparents in southern-ish BC, so I packed up Zim and off we went.  They are raising cattle, and also have horses, ducks, chickens, and a garden.  Being much farther south than we are, there was no snow, and everything was already turning green!  We hit 23C on Sunday while we were fencing - what a treat!  Kim has a family of great people, who have experience with agriculture and lots of great ideas that they were excited to share with me.  It was a weekend of amazing food, hard work, wonderful conversations, and fabulous company!

The cows, complete with calves

Zim and Doodle playing with a stick near the cattle

Part of the fencing team, tightening the wires.

This is the view the cows will have once they are put up in the top pasture we were fencing - lucky cows!

A few weeks ago, my friend Liz offered us her old oven - it works great, she said, but it didn't match the fridge they bought when theirs died over the winter.  Of course, I said "Sure, we can take the oven off your hands," especially as it's a full-sized one.  Great!  We've got apartment-sized appliances because the kitchen is so small, and we find both the fridge and the stove too small for our liking - the oven couldn't fit some of our baking sheets, and the stove had only one large burner.  so we swapped out the stoves, and this new (to us) oven is FABULOUS!  I can bake two dozen cupcakes or muffins, all on one rack, and each of them comes out perfect.  This, friends, is bliss :)

Perfectly baked Banana Chocolate Chip muffins

The big project this past weekend was to set up the seed-starting station.  I picked up a little greenhouse at a garage sale two years ago, and I used part of it to build the station.  Of course, this required swapping this piece for that, moving this shelf, and removing the top completely.  Once I developed a setup that would do what I want and fit in our tiny living room, I moved on to the next stage: predator proofing.  What predators?  Who would harm the tiny seedlings springing to life to provide us with nourishment?  These two: 

Yes, they look cute, but don't let them fool you: these are plant-destroying machines.  They don't hesitate to dig in the dirt, gnaw on leaves, and knock pots off windowsills.  So, to protect the seedlings, I needed to cat-proof the seed-starting station.  After a quick discussion ("Do you remember seeing any chicken wire?" "Maybe..... but I know there's some of that rabbit wire out in the pole shed.") I traipsed across the top of the snow (hint: this only works in the early morning!) and found said rabbit wire.  It's 2" landscaping wire, and it should work to keep the cats from laying on top of the seedlings.  I put that around three sides, and used screen for the fourth side, so I can roll it up out of the way easily.  This ended up taking all day (leaving me to franticly throw supper together and hope I didn't burn it - success!).  And the end product doesn't look so bad:

I decided to experiment with heat tape to increase the soil temperature without having to buy a heated pad.  I had it plugged in all night and did some quick testing this morning: Tray with heat tape: 14C.  Tray without heat tape: 16C.  Ambient temperature: 18C.  Hmmm, well that didn't work at all.  I might have to break down and buy the heated seedling pads.  I'll see if I can come up with something else.  Or maybe I'll just wing it - we're only growing for ourselves this year, so perfect seed starts is not a requirement.  The money would likely be better spent on the roof or the root cellar or the car or...

And, you guessed it, it will be another busy few weeks.  I'm heading to a root cellar workshop tonight, then I'm out of town for a few days.  When I get back, I'm hoping to start some seedlings (if the setup can survive the cats for the next week, the seedlings should be fine in there!) and begin fixing the roof.  We're still just itching for the snow to melt - we have so much to do, but we can't start on any of it until the snow is gone!!!  Jordan typically loves winter, and even he is tired of the snow.  Be gone, white stuff, you've overstayed your welcome!

Potluck deliciousness

As I mentioned last post, I've been playing board games with friends, and last weekend we decided to make it a potluck.  I volunteered to make desserts, and by request, here's what I made:

Brigadeiros

These are wonderful little balls made mostly of sweetened condensed milk, with some cocoa and other stuff thrown in, then rolled in sprinkles.  I found the recipe here.  Mine weren't quite as pretty, but they came pretty close:

The verdict: Pretty sweet, but even Jordan ate the ones I brought back home, and he isn't fond of sweets.  (Disclaimer: Jordan now claims he ate them because they were "in the way".  Mm-hmmmm.)  I'd make them again :)

Raspberry Whip

This is really a meringue that is frozen instead of baked.  I really know nothing about meringues, but it looked good, and easy, and was Kim's pick for the potluck.  I found the recipe at the same site, here.  It was definitely fluffy and pink!

The verdict: Consensus is that it "tastes like diabetes" but in a delicious way :)  It is definitely VERY sweet, and was even too sweet for me (and I'll eat sugar cubes just for fun).  Small servings would be perfect on a hot August day.

Our next game day is next weekend; we'll be organizing it this week.

Some other bits and bobs:

Winter still has a firm grip on Northern BC, and we're both sick of it.  Jordan has always preferred winter over summer, and even he is complaining about how long this winter has been.  The snow banks along the driveway are now 5' tall, and we continue to get snowy days between weeks with highs of +5.

The snow on the lower south roof of the barn.  We've been watching it creep down for months!

I'm battling winter by growing stuff in my window at work.  I've got one aloe vera and her babe (which will be going to my former landlord when I get around to repotting it), 4 spider plants (two adults and two young'uns), Ugly Plant, and a window box of lettuce.

Clockwise from top left: my 'work garden', complete with adorable guard bovine; the window box with one lettuce seedling emerging and another seed just planted; Ugly Plant is flowering!; Ugly Plant, the spider kids, and the wonderful pot kitten that showed up one day :)

My friend Liz is redoing her kitchen this year (now that she's retired she needs a project, you know) and she started by replacing her stove.  Being the awesome person that she is, she offered her old stove to us!  Of course, we said yes :)  It's about 15 or 17 years old, but it still works like a charm, and is a full sized stove to replace our apartment-sized one.  We'll move the old stove out to the longhouse, to join the other stove from the trailer.

Over the Easter long weekend, Kim (Doodle's Ma) is taking me down to visit her grandparents in Southern BC.  They are running a hobby farm and "have had every animal except alpacas."  They process their own meat birds, and though it's too early in the year for that, I'm excited to go down and pal around with Kim and her family.  We'll be bringing the poochies - hopefully Doodle's companionship will keep Zim from oozing sadness during the 6-hour drive :)  He only likes car rides during the day and when we're going to Doodle's house; coming back in the dark, he's restless and nervous.  Going to Edmonton in the truck is just barrels of fun - he's terrified the entire way.

I've added a link in the "More About..." box in the top right for Resources - this is a collection of my notes, links, and useful spreadsheets.  I've shared these to help other young farmers and gardeners - why should we all be reinventing the wheel?

Sharing knowledge; and, our grand plans for 2013

As we take in as many farming workshops as possible, I begin to think: there must be a way to share this information. We can't make it to every workshop (both of us are still working full time, remember) and we've begun to recognize faces that are attending the same workshops and we've noticed that sometimes they are missing some workshops too. Being a library person, I am first and foremost a helper person - everything I do I want to share with people. Knowledge is meant to be shared; what's the point of knowing something if you can't tell someone else and help them improve their situation?

I stumbled across a post on FarmHack about a month ago that really got this all started for me: encourage each farmer in the community to set up a specialized workshop, one farmer per specialty, and visit whoever has the equipment you need. One can set up a welding/fabricating shop, one can set up a mechanic's shop, one a woodworking shop, etc. That way, each farmer does not need to purchase the same equipment - this will definitely give the best bang per buck, while encouraging a sense of community and camaraderie among the farmers. Of course, it would only take one bad apple to ruin it for everyone, but if we're all in this together, why not help each other out? And why would you want to piss off your neighbours anyway?!!


Along this same train of thought, I've wanted to set up some sort of knowledge collective, where new and young farmers in the region can build a community and share knowledge and ideas. I have no idea how to go about this - at the moment, I'm sharing my Google Doc of event notes, but in order to encourage others to contribute, I was debating the merits of a blog, or a wiki, or a forum, or.... I really have no idea how to get this started, but I want it very badly. I started writing this post over a week ago, and at that point, I'd already been mulling it over for weeks. As I've also been researching seed saving, I came across a guide to growing for seed production, put out by Farm Folk City Folk. So, as I'm currently waiting for delicious things to happen on the dessert front (preparation for another game day tomorrow, and we're doing it potluck style this time! I, of course, claimed desserts, as I am a terrible cook... but, I digress...) I decided to quickly check out the Farm Folk City Folk website.  It's much like what I was hoping to set up!  They also have a Young Agrarians site - again very much like what I was thinking of! Brilliant! It's exactly these moments that give me that growing-heart sensation - knowing that there are like-minded, friendly folks out there who also want to build a community to help newbie farmers. It's very re-affirming: we can't be completely off our rockers if other young people are doing this too! This is something I knew already, as quite a few people I'm starting to recognize from local farming events are about our age, but I am always thrilled to find someone with similar interests (be it board games, raves, or heritage chickens). So now, we just need to get Prince George on the FFCF/YA radar! Who's with me?

 On to a more specific update: we've been planning. And planning, and planning, and planning. And we're getting tired of just planning. Today I realized why people do "spring cleaning": the days are longer, the sun is out, and we're itching to move, to accomplish something, to come out of our dormant winter state, but it's still too darn snowy to do anything outside. I cleaned the floor and the lower cupboard doors/outer structure today. This wasn't a planned event, like most of my cleaning, it was "ugh I need to do SOMETHING and it's still only +1 out and it's starting to cloud over....."

 As for our plans: they're a constantly shifting target. Our biggest variable right now is money. Jordan just started a new job here in town, so we'll be spending MUCH less on fuel (yay!!!!!!). His pay is also higher, but there are potentially more deductions, so we're waiting on a full paycheque to estimate how this will change our budget. A (not so) brief list of our current hopes for this year:

• Do something with the roof. It's still leaking (although it's not as bad if we keep it shovelled) and we're still discussing the best way to fix it without spending a small fortune to get it fully replaced. We could rip the tin off, replace whatever insulation needs replacing (if it's water damaged beyond salvation), lay Tyvek and screening, and put the tin back on properly, including replacing any flashing for vents and the chimney and overlapping the tin properly around these vents. We could also raise the roof over the bedrooms and put in a loft. I feel it's likely that the former will be what happens, as we can do all that ourselves in a weekend. We also need to increase the ventilation, and likely trim back the eaves - this will be interesting, but we can manage. After we fix the roof, we have to... 
• ... fix the bathroom wall. There's a decent leak happening behind the drywall and tub surround in the bathroom. It's bad enough that we have dampness and mould growing on the log walls on either side of the bathroom. Fun. I'm really concerned about opening it up - who knows what we'll find back there. Plus it means no showers for two weeks as we let the logs dry out so we can... 
• ... chink the house. Our heat bill is absolutely ridiculous. We can do the chinking ourselves - it will be a steep learning curve, but I'm not scared of that. A bigger concern: emptying and moving the huge food shelf to get at that wall. 
• Rebuild the root cellar. Right now, it's railway ties, which will leach creosote and who-knows-what else into whatever we store in there. Not cool, and quite counterintuitive; why bother growing organic food if we're going to store it in there? So we're researching, and planning, and trying to figure out the best way to do this on a budget. If we get really desperate, we can probably harvest some trees and build it out of those. Hopefully we can come up with something better than that. 
• Grow some food! We've got some seeds, and we're looking forward to planting them :) We'll have to create some more garden space somewhere - if we'd been thinking in the fall, we should have done it then. Oh well. Also, we only have one tiny south-facing window... I have no idea how we're going to start seeds. Under grow lamps? We'll figure something out. That reminds me, I wanted to do a post on seeds.... 
• Move the greenhouse. Who builds a greenhouse on the North side of a building??? 
• Grow some green manure on the hay field. It's starting to look like we'll be using part of the hay field to grow our market garden - it's relatively flat, and very easy to get to. If we want quality hay off it, it needs to be reseeded anyway - may as well till in a cover crop in the meantime. Hopefully we can get the farmer we leased it to to help us out. 
• Harvest rainwater. We've got eaves troughs for the house, they just need to be installed (see: fix the roof). I have a rough plan to hook up a bunch of barrels in a sequence so we can fill multiple barrels at once. Once I finalize it and get the barrels, I'll post some plans and pictures. then we can install a similar system for the shop, the longhouse, and the barn. We'll need to get eaves troughs for all of those, of course. 
• Get some chickens. At this point, we'll likely stick to meat birds. That way, we can build a quick chicken tractor (smaller movable coop) and move it around the yard with some fencing. The minimum order of heritage birds from the hatchery is 25 chicks, and we have a friend interested in going in with us so she can have some too. And if she buys the chickens when they're alive, then they're her chickens, and we can get around the 'no farm gate sales' law I think. Sneaky? Maybe, but that's how folks are circumventing the 'no raw milk' law - they buy shares in a cow, and 'pay' the farmer to look after it and milk it. Then they show up and collect their share of the milk. 
• At some point, we need to fix the vehicles. The car is leaking oil, and the truck's exhaust rusted through at the manifold connection. Jordan is getting dirty looks from people when he starts the truck, because this huge plume of exhaust erupts from underneath the cab. 
• We will likely also have to replace the well pump and pressure tank this year. We've noticed a decrease in pressure, and the shower squeals when it happens, so I think it's probable that we've lost one stage of the pump. And we know the pressure tank is shot. 

There is also a very very long list of "wouldn't it be nice if we could..." including fencing, clearing out the area around the pond, fixing up the longhouse, fixing the ceiling in the stalls of the barn (though we might have to just rebuild that side if we want stalls big enough for draft horses), and continuing to clean up the shop (which Jordan has already started). This is going to be a very, very busy year - and that's precisely why we went East to visit with my family last year. We might be able to sneak away from the garden (I bought hose timers last year for our vacation!) but there's no way we can leave the chickens overnight. So we're hoping for a quick trip or two back to Alberta in the spring (it's my 10-year high school reunion this year - time flies! - and I'm still debating if I'll go) and then if anyone wants to visit, they'll have to come here. Looking at the list above, I'm noticing a challenge about blogging about farming: in the winter, there's lots of time to blog but nothing to blog about; in the summer, there's lots to write about but no chance to actually sit still for 5 minutes!