pumpkin substitution, irrigation work and orchard plans

Here is where not to buy cows! These poor beasts are destined for feed lots, and fast foods.
But I had to see the auction site for myself. We will buy from other farmers directly, inspecting the cleanliness/health conditions. We do plan to get a couple of cows soon, just to get started.
And the horse may arrive this weekend...he'll have to get used to being with cows.

It's true that honeybees prefer (no, not blondes) wild flowers...here, they are always humming amongst the Florida pusly and the wild melon flowers.

Larry has worked hard. He is getting a farmer's tan, and building up a lot of muscle! Over the weekend, he glued together about 3/4 miles of pvc pipe and irrigation outlets. You can see him here making the connection with our well. It's impressive to look down the length of the trench, with pipe laying beside it. You cannot see the end.

I am working on our orchard plans. Our nurseyman friend will look it over with me this Thursday. He has a great deal more experience, especially with the local growing issues, as well as with irrigation systems. I'm looking forward to seeing his nursery and talking more about growing fruits. Here is my initial plan, which will go through a few more revisions, no doubt. December is planting time for most of these trees and bushes.

It's a rainy day here. Even though they say a cold front is coming in, the temps are in the upper 70s. Strange! But it is keeping Larry and I indoors - to plan, to read, to dream, and to miss our northern family and friends.

our farm plan

Larry prepping chain saw for clearing around seedling pecan tree. (seedling trees are not true to type, and the Atkinson Pecan company won't buy these...a different buyer, in Portal, GA, pays only 33 cents/pound for seedling nuts - half what he'll pay for hybrid nuts like our Stuarts.)
The burrow in this shot is in deep sand in one of our seasonal "branches". I hope it's a gopher turtle, but it could be many things, and inhabited by as many as 300 other critters besides. It's so round and hobbit like with its crown of moss.













Coming up with a farm plan was challenging, and valuable. It focussed our dreams into clearly stated goals. But we were forced to do some more research in order to tie all the parts together. Even though we are happy with the results, we realize this is just an outline, with lots of room for learning, tweaking and reshaping as we go through this...it is not just the farm being transitioned from conventional to more sustainable...it is us as well!

Here is a synopsis of our farm plan:

Snug Hill Farm Plan

Our products currently include: (organic) pecans
We will add pastured chickens and eggs, hardwood timber, firewood & finished lumber, various organic fruits and organic grass-fed beef cattle & goats.

These plans below will be implemented alongside and contingent upon development of marketing channels for the products.

Rotational Grazing of Organic Grass-fed Beef Cattle:
We will use a silvoculture scheme, with approx. 70 acres broken into 7 paddocks ranging in size from 1 - 16 acres (which will be used in roughly 1-acre blocks with more intensive grazing using temporary electric fencing).

(**silvoculture is the combination of grazing animals and orchard growing)

We want to install approx. 4925 feet of electric fence for managing rotational grazing. We estimate we will be able to support 35 grassfed cattle and will add more if the soil and other imporvements allow.

Existing pecan trees provide shade for the grazing animals. Additional trees will be required, approx. 250 additional trees (walnut, chestnut, etc on approx. 40 acres. Temporary shading will be required until trees mature. We will need to build permanent electric perimeter fencing along the approx. 6000 feet inside existing treeline. We will need to provide pipeline from a new dedicated well and water storage tank of approx. 5000 foot length, using 2 inch pvc. We will use a to-be-constructed pond as backup to the well. We will need to do additional grass seeding in the paddocks to get them established and reduce erosion.

Pastured Poultry:
We will use chickens and/or ducks following the grazing rotation to provide additional protein to the chickens and pest control for the cattle. We will arves eggs as well as chickens for consumption. We will build a transportable house for the chickens to be used for pasturing as well as a fixed house for additional chickens and eggs.

Organic Pecans:
We have 140 mature, producing pecan trees. (only 114 of these are hybrids with excellent grade nuts) We plan to manage them organically. Each tree requires approx. 200 gallons water per day (150-250 gal/day per Ted Sammis - New Mexico State Univ) Each tree also requires compost tea applications every 6 weeks during the active season (Joe Bradford - Texas A&M, ARS) and a cover crop of legumes seeded underneath. we will need a large sprayer with aerator for making and applying compost tea, a chipper to deal with fallen limbs and add to compost, and a covered compost and compost tea producing facility approx 1500 sq ft in size.

Hardwood Timber/finished lumber:
There are approx 50 acres of mature hardwoods currently on the farm. We will actively manage this asset, harvesting, replanting (and adding via silvoculture) and thinning as growth allows. We lan to purchase a sawmill for the production of lumber. This will allow us to build a small farm worker house on the property.

Small Scale Organic Fruits and Vegetables:
We'll grow 2 acres of vegetables using water harvesting from the barn roof. For this we'll need to install gutters on the barn and two 2500 gallon water storage tanks.

Organic Orchard Fruits and Nuts:
We will plant a 5 acre orchard of tree and vine fruits (blueberries, Kiwis, raspberries, plums, pine nuts, peaches, grapes, apples, figs, chestnuts, loquats, persimmons, etc) many to be offered for sale, irrigating via well water with a tap off the system to be installed for the cattle. We will experiment with some varieties of olives, pomegranates, etc as well. Walnut and chestnut trees from the pasture will contribute too. Wood chips from the forestry as well as pecan growing will be used as mulch, and chickens will be allowed to roam in the orchard, at appropriate times. Compost tea will be used on foliage as well.

Aquaculture:
We plan to build a pond of approx one acre, for several purposes:
1. erosion control - the target area is eroding with runoff from approx 40 acres of fields.
2. backup for cattle watering and pecan irrigation
3. raising catfish for personal consumption
4. firefighting
To accomplish these purposes, the pond will need to be at least 1 acre in size, and at least 12 feet deep. It will be fenced off from livestock to protect shoreline. Well water will be used to top off the pond as necessary.

Larry's day in the trenches & mystery scat

Note: These pictures are in opposite order from the text! Last is first...
Larry is hard at work digging trenches!! Yes, it is a tough life on the farm!
He is doing the prep work for his cattle watering and irrigation system. Here is a pic of the 2000 ft long trench (2 ft deep) to our south pasture. That pasture is too far away to see.
And a second trench going east-west to irrigate the newly planted orchard. (That is when we get the orchard planted!)

Aoi is happy in the window sills, though he twitches with excitement at the site of outdoor varmits. We are happy taking nature walks here...the woods are full of fascinating puzzles.
Can anyone identify this seedy scat-like stuff?

The pecans are beginning to fall faster...especially when the breeze picks up. The trees are ready to shake when all remaining nuts are freed from the husk, but still on the tree. (so we have been told) And finding individual nuts on the ground can be a challenge itself...much like easter egg hunting...or where in the world is Waldo?

Here is a shot of our least favorite plant pest: sandbur...or sandspur as I call them. The spiney seeds grab anything that touches them, and dig in for a ride and sharp scratches. Ouch! We have some large drifts of them in the fields. I haven't yet looked up what soil indicator usefulness this plant may have to offer us.

Our neighbor gave us a taste of one of his crops: peanuts. We plan to boil them as the locals do. Here is a photo of them next to my baby green tea camelia. The harvesters turn the plants upside down in the field and pile them up in rows with the peanuts up in the sun to dry.

Another long day of farm work! Larry mowed under pecans. Remember there are 114 of them, each about 70 feet diameter, at least. I fixed dinner in the solar cooker - vichyssoise (potato leek soup with home grown cuke and sour cream) and salmon which Larry grilled last night.
And we are munching on "crispy pecans" fixed ala Sally Fallon. Soaked overnight in brine water, then drained and slowly dried in a food dehydrator. We left our large solar food dryer behind, and my solar cooker can be used this way, but it was being used for dinner.
Pecans never tasted any better!! We both love the outcome, and especially so as preparing any nut or grain in this manner makes the nutrients more available to us.

We may have a horse soon!! I am thrilled, even if I can't ride any faster than a walk. His previous owners couldn't afford
him any longer, and he'll get plenty of love from me and excersize from Larry!

an ATV - fence mending and pecan harvesting

After a trip to the emergency room last night, we decided hiring some help sooner than later would be a smart idea. We're both OK. I've got a big headache and some stitches. My sight is not what it used to be, I was tired and I ran into a pecan limb - which fell on me. Today I am taking it easier. We've both been feeling rushed to meet farm deadlines...(You'd think farming was more laid back...but that's only in the winter up north.) I worked until 2 yesterday on my tree list - plans for our polyculture orchard - to be faxed to George the nurseryman by today, as he is waiting on his order until he gets mine. He and his wife will drive to a number of growers from GA, to TENN to ALA and back, picking up fruit and nut trees. The best planting time for fruit trees in GA is December, according to George. FYI, in my plant research, I learned that pomogranate trees are really easy to start from seed...something I plan to try soon.

Our property is actually 3/4 mile long (it felt like it was a mile long in the heat)..none the less, it's a long hike over uneven, sandy soil with numerous trees and fences...especially with him carrying tools, walky talky, buckets, nut pickers, lunch/water etc.
Larry bought a used atv today, with winch, carrying racks and tow bar. He's pretty happy! It'll save lots of time. It only took him 15 minutes to drive our perimeter fence on the atv. And it's much gentler on the earth than the tractor. Plus, we can pull the Bag-A-Nut to harvest nuts with the atv.

We've gathered our first pecans, filling about 4 buckets to date. The pickers (we found an old one in the grove this week) are really helpful. Our pecan expert friend says these are inferior pecans, as they are still immature...just wait until the nuts start falling in earnest, from fully opened shucks. Those will be the REAL pecans!
Anyhow, we are enjoying the nuts now - which taste better than the store bought ones we've been used to. Larry learned how to open pecans without a cracker...squeeze 2 nuts together. But that doesn't work for me...so we bought a kinetic kracker, which can crack 26 per minute!

GA has had a record rain for the last year, bringing Lanier Lake up by 20 feet in one year - back to normal 2005 levels. This is Atlanta's water source. No drought here!
It's starting to cool down to the 60-70s by day here, with the trees rising out of the mist in mornings. The excess rains have been troublesome for crops, causing a big mite problem with pecans. But pecans also need a great deal of water - I saw an estimate of 200 gallons per tree per day in one study.

The old homesteads here are usually left to sink back into the earth...and I love their ancient textures and silent stories. Here's one on our way to town. Cotton is paying higher prices, and a lot of it is being grown here. It is however a crop which gets lots of chemicals in its life. Right now the cotton has been sprayed with a defoliant so the leaves fall, making it easier to harvest with huge machines. It looks like snow on the field when driving by...but not the snow we hear you are experiencing in New England! We don't miss that snow.
And here is a photo of the road from Garfield to our house. Enjoy.

pecans are falling now!

Deadlines have us working at a fast pace. (I can't keep up with Larry, but I try!)
The pecans are falling early, and we don't have proper equipment to do the harvest ourselves...yesterday I ordered the Bag-A-Nut, which is pictured on my earlier blog, and a couple of pecan crackers. We learned from our neighboring pecan grower, that in usual good pecan years, the nuts are only 60-80% viable, and in a bad year like this one, we can expect as little as 30% of the nuts to be acceptable. The trees have been hit hard with mites and scab due to the wet weather. It has rained every 2-3 days for the last 2 months (since we've been here.) The pecan buyers have to take a risk when they buy, as there is no way they can know which nuts are good from looking at them. A few nuts are obviously not good, but doing a visual on every nut isn't possible. So we will have to crack nuts for ourselves with the same unknown outcome. Only we'll only be cracking a few pails full, not 1,200 commercial pounds at a time!!

It's raining today. A good day to bake corn fritter yeast bread, with chives, corn and sour cream. Can you smell it? And we will do the shopping for Larry's cattle and orchard watering system materials - 2600 feet of PVC will have to go underground to start with. Larry has already done the price comparisons and he knows he wants to get PVC at Lowe's. Although we'd prefer to use locally owned businesses for all our needs, there are far fewer choices down here, and cost is an issue as well. We will go out of our way for local eggs until we have our own chickens.

And I will continue my planning for the orchard, which is slow going (but our favorite privately owned nurseryman is holding his order for us until this Friday - so I have to speed up my list making), but exciting to think about as well...it's like painting with plants/trees, and the coordination of their individual needs.

fencing for cows

Larry is working hard to get one of our several pastures electrified for cows. We plan to get 5 cows as soon as that pasture is working. It's a 15 acre field bounded on 3 sides by wild woods. He found oyster mushrooms there today, and reishi's last week. Trees are continually dropping branches on the fence wires, so it's going to be a regular job cleaning the wires. The work is harder when it's 93 degrees outside!

Pecans are slowly dropping from the trees...not all the trees. This is a low yield year for our trees. But over the last week we've begun to collect a few around the house using this handy picker - useful only for a few, as you have to look down and target each nut, though it almost never fails to grab the nut if you roll the basket over it. The knees and back can stay happy, although it can get hard on the neck.

Snakes like the road. The heat must feel good to them. And I feel safer seeing them there than in our yard/fields (though they aren't safer and I like the menu they follow, and don't want them to lose their appetite for rodents, either). Here's a small one I saw this week, while out to gather information/pricing on watering troughs, float valves, etc. Spider tells me this is a copperhead snake. Highly poisonous, though not aggressive. Yow!

It's hard to define jobs, when you do a little of this and a little of that, take rests, tylenol, do adjustments and just keep going. I'm definitely the cook...with cornbread in the solar cooker, and salmon ready to go into the same oven. My kitchen garden is limping along...needing a lot of organic matter worked into the soil, so the plants sprouted readily, but haven't thrived...we will, however, have a few zucchini, collards, cabbage, daikon, and maybe cucumbers. Wish you were all here to join us for dinner!

early harvests?

We totally enjoyed a long visit and tour of our farm with the USDA soil/water conservation officer, Sidney Lanier. He identified many plants for us, and used his gps to pinpoint our fencing and future fencing spots on the survey. This is the first year his office is dealing with organic farm needs, and we'll be learning as we go I believe. Larry regaled him with the compost tea/soil organism mechanisms which we plan to use...all of our neighbors will be VERY surprised if this works for us.
We are determined to give this a college try...even if we get to the end of 3 years and find that we can't get the certification after 3 years of following the formulas, we will still be growing without chemicals and happy about that.
Sidney advised us to get our pecan harvest plans going very soon, as pecans are beginning to drop early this year...just as the grapes ripened earlier than usual. Sure enough, we have been picking up a few nuts each day for the last week, and eating them!
They're wonderful!!

So we drove the 2 miles into Garfield to meet the biggest pecan buyer in the county. Donald Atkinson is a wonderfully warmhearted man who welcomed us to town, invited us to fish in his pond, and volunteered to inspect our pecan crop today. If you ever stop at South of the Border, or any of the other I-95 stops and see pecan candy for sale, try some of his "Atkinson Candies", Garfield, GA... aka: Garfield crack.
And let me tell you - it is a very addictive combination of caramel, chocolate and pecans! YUMM.
Donald harvested and bought pecans from the previous owners, so he already knows some things about our grove. For instance our trees are 90% Stuart variety of pecan.
While we would like to do as much of the work ourselves as possible...harvesting 3,000 to 20,000 pounds of nuts from the ground by hand is really for the squirrels.
I'll post a picture of the golf ball harvester that one of our new friends uses in her grove of 35 trees. It works for pecans or walnuts with some adjustment for the size differences.
From Sidney and Donald, we learned that the 30 or so pecan trees on our woods edges are from seed, not grafted, and inferior nuts that are best left to the animals who all love them. Maybe then, the animals will leave more of the grafted papershell pecan crop alone? Donald toured the trees with Larry and predicted we have maybe a few thousand pounds of nuts, which is not enough for him to bring his harvesting equipment here...but he'll buy them if we get them picked up ourselves. Maybe we can rent the Bag-a-nut device from our friend? Otherwise, people generally pay migrant workers to pick them up by hand. The nuts falling now are not mature yet...mature nuts will fall free of the husks completely (most of ours still have a piece of husk attached).

Larry is looking forward to going to an equipment auction with Donald this Thursday. Meanwhile he is doing what is required before harvest - mowing around all the trees!
When more nuts start falling, we hire Donald, we hope, to shake the trees. Then we hire help to get them picked up. Small farmers don't do it to get rich!

The Georgia soil is usually nutritionally poor and slightly acidic. The organic farm plan asks us to plan how we will know that we are increasing fertility over time. We can eyeball the health of plants as always, but since there is so much skepticism from other farmers (and even some of the coop ext agents) that having concrete test results will be important later. We need to do soil tests now as a baseline. The standard test assesses a number of soil minerals and Ph, although it doesn't give a picture of the microbial soil life. But key to correcting that is something we plan to do even without testing: add biology using compost and compost tea.

We have longleaf pine (which fills an important ecological niche for some 300 other species - many of which are endangered species: according to Janisse Ray, An Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.) , lob lolly pine, slash pine, black gum (is this your tree, Bob? the black berries taste slightly sweet), sweet gum, oaks with loads of acorns (the turkeys and deer will be fat this year), wild persimmon, pecans, pecans, pecans, willow, chinaberry and privet (both invasive - but the privet is good food for wildlife), bahaia grass (a non native that is supremely well adapted to this environment), partridge pea, Florida pusly, tropic croton, maypop passionflower (we can eat its fruits), prickly sida, sickle pod, crabgrass, and dog fennel. And this tiny list is only what we learned today!

This is as hodgepodge as it is coming to us...every bit of it a gift we're thankful for!

indigo buntings and soil innoculations

My computer failed. Larry has jury rigged his laptop to my monitor and keyboard; a great solution for now. I've got new eyeglasses and can see clearly again...yippee. And there is so much wonderful wildlife to see here... our new friends ID'ed the indigo buntings...beautiful dark blue 4-5 inch birds that flit low over our fields like swallows catching insects, while using the electric fence as a launch pad. We have a few of these very fast and shy birds, as well as lots of eastern bluebirds, hawks, owls, armadillos, tree frogs, blue tailed lizards (are these skinks?), and reishi mushrooms (which Larry found in a very special area with the 40 foot deep sandy soil, dense woods and numerous scarce flora and fauna).

Today Larry worked out his new PTO chipper. It runs off the tractor, so it has no engine of its own. It filled the back of the pickup with fresh wood chips, which came from trees/shrubs that were cut to let pecan trees free from the encroachment of the woods.
Then we took a gallon of soil from around the healthy pecans and wild trees, and spread it underneath two of our largest pecan trees located in the middle of the grove -which are suffering by contrast to the woods locked pecans. (A previous farmer plowed right up to the trunks!) After inoculating these two big trees with healthy soil life, and spreading wood chips under one of those big ailing trees, the second ailing pecan got a mulching with straw (7 bales spread out very thinly just barely covered the vast expanse underneath that tree.) Ethan - you were so right about the hugeness of pecan trees! I'm sure Larry did the brunt of that work, but I am extremely tired and sore nonetheless. We are talking over the idea of finding a younger farming couple to live here and partner with us.
We will watch and compare the two ailing pecans with all 110 other trees also needing help, and the 30 pecans that look healthy but are being crowded by forest.
Chemical treatments over many years have killed much of the soil life so necessary for tree roots to take up nutrients.

Grazing animals will do a lot of this work for us...in fact Larry may choose not to do the keyline work. Mob grazing may be all that is needed...and I am anxious to get our fence fixed up, and the watering system in place to allow us to bring water to the animals, in all of the pastures. Another huge job! Farming is not for the faint of heart.