Spring is in the Air

The doldrums have ended. A never ending world of projects have emerged, and I am sore from my first go around. Over the past two weeks, I have been over loaded by my three agricultural projects of home, school and farm. Each will be split off into a separate journal to keep this devoted to just the homestead.

1

In the past two months since my last posting I have made some progress on constructions fronts. On one of the 1/4 inch snow days I built an entire duck house in my garage without thinking of how to get it out. It wasn't until my friend Adam (6 ft 5 in) helped me take it out the sliding garage door, into the alley and up over the fence that I could put it in the yard. As seen above painted in Cosmic Blue, it is gorgeous and shelters two Indian Runner ducks. I purchased them a week ago, and they are still adjusting to their new surroundings. Hopefully they will be able to serve as free range slug assassins but when I let them out one hid in the corner and the other just hung out with the chickens. We have a little training to do but I am hopeful.

2

The three White Rock hens in the back are doing great and consistently produced 19-21 eggs a week. I am waiting for them to molt and take a break. The only issue I ran into was my fault. I cleared the left-overs (3 cartons) from a huge rich breakfast at a local restaurant and tossed it all in. When I returned it was all gone and one of the chickens had massive diarrhea which was doubly a problem since it was 5 degrees. So her feathers and butt wouldn't freeze, I brought her inside, thawed her out and wiped her chicken butt. We chilled for a couple of hours, me drinking bourbon and her squirting disgusting chicken fecal juice in my kitchen. I thoroughly learned to be more careful of the quantities of weird supplements to feed, especially in cold weather. I have been trying to figure out a way to replicate that learning situation with my kids at school in regards with forms of government instead of the feed supplement lesson but anyway I look at it I would get fired.

3

About three weeks ago I had the honor of running my mouth at the Kentucky School Garden Network annual meeting. It was amazing to be in a room with so many people with similar visions. Something that confused me was that few of the people seemed to be concerned with the financial restraints of the projects. Most of the participants were teachers in their late 30's or 40's and those outside the educational system looking in. Of those people, what seemed to be lacking was the critical mass to get the ball rolling at more than a moderate speed. It is hard to go alone on these projects, and I sympathize with these people but if I could borrow from an often quoted movie I have never watched all the way through "If you build it, they will come." Every beach starts with one grain of sand. Be that first grain thrower and plant some tomatoes or flowers. Make people ask questions and force them to see the power of growing. I believe that growing food is deep in each of our hearts, or instinctual heritage since the Neolithic Revolution if you want to be more of a hard scientist, we just need to peel back the layers of PSPs, X-Boxes and Television to get to the deeper need to connect with the real world. Once we make that connection with people, you will have a ball rolling with such momentum that few barriers can stop.
4

Joel Salatin, owner of Polyface Farms in Swoope, VA, came and spoke at the Clifton Center on Friday night. I refer to him loosely as my "hero." As a person he combines the two attributes that I value in myself and am constantly trying to strengthen: storytelling and creativity. He excels in both of these areas. With storytelling, he is able to rope in an audience as he weaves country humor and agricultural stories together with libertarian ideology. His timing and presentation is on target as he expounds the critical situation of the American food system and culture. I took 3 pages of notes on a 40 minute lecture even after reading the majority of the literature he has written. It was an awesome experience to put all of the pieces together. My experience was put into perspective when a few friends brought up some valid points about underlying sexism and unrealistic demands on the system, the latter I had noticed myself in the Q and A session.

The second attribute, creativity, is used in this context as the ability to see multiple perspectives of an item or situation and create something efficient and effectual. I like to refer to this as MacGyver Critical Thinking. In reading about Mr. Salatin, you find this creativity in creating his animal shelters and mobiles, his intensive management grazing system and his perspectives on marketing and sales. To me, this creativity is what makes agriculture fun as you constantly try to solve problems with the plants, to build new shelters and developing a more sustainable system. I wish that I could pass this type of critical thinking onto the children in my classroom but can't get much farther than the idea of smashing old kitchen appliances on the floor and telling them to make something awesome when I think of how many students I have in a classroom and what would be deemed acceptable. I might be on the cusp with the appliances too.

5

The seeds have been ordered. I debated where to order them from based on organics, price, locality, quantity and variety. I ended up selling out and ordering from Burgess, the cheapest, rationalizing that I would give away more vegetables and feel better because I paid less for the seeds. You can rationalize anything when you only argue with yourself. I have saved a massive amount and variety of seeds from last year which left me with these newbies for this year:

Horseradish Root

Summer Squash Variety Pack

Butternut Squash

Heirloom Tomato Mix

Kentucky Wonder Bean

Grand Duke Kohlrabi (thanks for the introduction friends from Portland)

30 White Onion Sets

30 Yellow Onion Sets

Luffa Gourd

Hales Best Melon (Cantaloupe)

Flat Dutch Cabbage

Blackeyed Peas (with the hopes to make my mom's awesome soup with all local ingredients)

Meanwhile the garlic is blasting, brussel sprouts are budding, kale and matsoi tatsoi leafing and blackberries itching to send out new canes.