Farm Blog

Thank you again for braving the blizzard to celebrate, connect with great food, and 'planting an orchard'! Just imagine all those future cherry trees (don't forget to squat:-).
I am so uplifted from all the good vibes, intentions, laughter and seeds shared and planted.

We were able to raise $850.00 in funds! This will go a long way, thank you! Additionally, with all the seeds donated today and from what I've gleaned from others, The women growers in the Sine-Saloum region will be able to plant out a couple hundred row feet/farm. In the past we've planted shared 'demonstration beds' ie since many of the farmers share space/land to grow on we've constructed seeds beds to trial different varieties, plant insectory herbs and flowers and share techniques. From there seeds are harvested and shared forward amongst the individual farmers. So in essence your generosity helped plant teaching/learning/eating/

sharing beds of veggie, herb, and flower goodness!
 

I will honor my commitment and extend the immense gratitude, generosity that was shared during the workshop with the women farmers in the following ways:

Work with NCBA CLUSA Farmer to Farmer Program to transfer funds and mail seeds.
I'll also email and share highlights, photos forward later this week in celebration of our workshop success.

I am tentatively set to travel there Nov/Dec. or January in 2016.

I also finally remembered the name of third grower group, JUBO (means widespread). If you're interested in learning more about how they got started, here's a link to an interview I did as part of my last Farmer to Farmer adventure in Senegal.

I Will keep you in the loop as the project evolves and thanks again for sharing your generous spirit!

For the chocolate lovers:
Becky Otte, who made the amazing truffles, has more of her chocolate goodness to share and is selling some of her creations just in time for Valentines. if you're interested send her an email: raonine@gmail.com

Also Here is a link to Roots Chocolate website.

For the Fruit Lovers:

I've enclosed a handout of some of the different fruits we grow at our farm as well as a flyer highlighting this season's events at the farm! We'd love to have you venture out and tour the orchard, come visit us (though not nearly as cool as the orchard poses we did during the workshop).

Thank you again for helping me transition from being a butterfly weed seed (ie wind pollinated, not knowing where or how my intentions, projects might stick) to more of an oak or cashew seeds - wherein I can deepen my awareness, provide support in the same place(s) in Senegal for the growers and in my backyard in Wisconsin:-). Here's to planting the seeds of the as yet to be imagined on and off the yoga mat! Wishing you all much abundance.

Happy Mid-winter!

Yours in hardy kiwi,
Erin


PS If you are into exploring the planting side as well as enjoying more local fruit creations, we'll be hosting a Local Fruit Tasting May 16, details on our website.

 

Growing onions and organization's: Tips and Successes from the Jubo Grower Association of Senegal →

Past the cashew groves and groundnut fields, pausing to wave at the workers and to let roving donkey carts, and goat herds pass, I stepped out of the truck, exchanged greetings, and settled in under the canopy of neem, acknowledging warmly the curious smiles and stares of villagers. “What's it like to farm here?” I asked Fatou Dianka, an organic farmer and founding member of the Jubo Farm Association, in Batamar, Senegal.

Gazing toward an open space where melons carpeted the ground and climbed the stray papya tree, Fatou extended her hand, “There,” she pointed, “We needed a place to grow food and make a living during the dry season.” Her eyes lit up as she relaxed into memory and I listened attentively, scribbling notes as she told me about how she started to cultivate space, turning over the Earth and singing as seeds beds were tucked—planting more than seeds that day.

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Thank you for your help with growing our fruit n farm community!

Our IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign a Success!

We so appreciate your contributions to our orchard fencelifting campaign. You helped us raise $4,840 on-line through IndieGoGo. That's 82% of our on-line goal of $5,900. Serendipitously, 84% of our fenceposts are firmly rooted in our orchard soils thus far. Our hope is to finish installing the fenceposts before the ground firmly freezes and complete wiring, gate building by Spring 2015. While we were just shy of our on-line goal, we were also able to raise an additional $930 in funds off-line and received another $800 through in-kind donations in the form of materials and support with staging posts and digging ~230' of holes.

Thank you for helping give us structure to our dreams! You can hear the saskatoons exhaling as we speak, as they can finally grow beyond 2 feet!

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Investing in Women Farmers - Happy IDRW (Oct 15)

Join the 65 funders and hundreds of farm friends, who have invested in the future of our farm...and the millions of people around the world supporting and celebrating the efforts of women farmers.

Women are the backbone of farming. Across the planet, women play many roles in changing the food system from one of insecurity and scarcity to one of sustainable abundance and nourishment. October 15th marks the International Day of Rural Women and with it a chance to pause, reflect, celebrate and honor the stories, skills, and experiences women bring to agriculture and honor our roles as farmer, entrepreneur, daughter, caregiver, teacher, learner, farm-a-cist, auntie, soil steward, logistician, beekeeper, tour guide, facilitator, cook, wife, and fruit lover to name just a few of the hats I wear on any given day.

October 15th also marks the (almost) endpoint to our fruit n fencelifting campaign on IndieGoGo. I will be celebrating the IDRW through a combination of facilitating/engaging in a global discussion with others through my role as Women's committee member with the World Farmer Organization, and honoring the day, hoisting a toast, shovel in hand, to fellow women farmers from the field, digging and placing fenceposts for our orchard.

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Your Food Calorie Receipt

As ever, October has somehow lept upon us. Indeed so fast this year, that we never got out a proper September newsletter. Apologies for the elipsis.

With all 20 share bags behind us now, it's time to look back at the growing season and see just how things stacked up, or didn't. By comparison with 2013, the immediately noticeable difference is in the totals: Last year, we provided 154 lbs of produce per share, this year 138. Last year's calorie count was 26,300; this year's is 20,400.

While those numbers are slightly shocking (at least I was shocked when I looked at the bottom of this year's spreadsheet), the 16 pound / 5,900 calorie deficit was almost entirely down to two crops: can you tell what they were?

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Sometimes Good Neighbors Build Good Fences...

Digging in toward the home stretch...

Since we extended the invitation for others to be part of growing our fruit n farm community by supporting our fencelifting campaign, we had an idea of what we needed ($5,900) to support costs and labor, and to build a long lasting, reliable and sustainable piece of infrastructure that would support the next generation of orchardists and fruit lovers.

With three weeks into our campaign, we are reminded that fence-building, like farming, relies on our ability to respectfully be in relation to the Earth and in relation with people, observe openly and learn before taking action.

What we have recently learned is that contrary to poetic insight, good neighbors do build good fences.

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On Apples, Black Locust, and Functional Design

We are just over halfway to our Fruit n Fencelifitng goal, help us Fall into Success this Season

With fall, comes reflection, shifting seasons, birds in flight, chanaging colors on the landscape, settling in with warm socks and tea. So its fitting that thoughts shift to t-posts and apples. The first fruit trees we planted at the farm were apples. We like them, they grew well in Wisconsin and Alar was the commercial food scare of the moment. Rob and his father picked up a couple at a local nursery, brought them back home and plopped them in the ground. Thirty years later, we're still enjoying being perched up in an apple tree (one of our favorite varieties for baking that my grandma's mother planted) harvesting the all-purpose floral fruit. Nonetheless, when Rob and I set out to turn an acre of the front pasture into an orchard apples didn't make the long list. For what we envisioned as a sustainable orchard, apples were in small doses at least here in the buggy humid upper midwest.

So we worked from our first principals in our design. Observing and working with nature and utilizing different niches in the landscape and season to find fruits that are well adapted to the climate and would be relatively unhampered by pests and diseases. Having had good successes thus far with pears, hardy kiwi, currants, and yes even a malus or two, our orchard has started to take shape. We've had lot of fun with over 740 people along the way, started to harvest a substantial amount of currants, are celebrating our first quince harvest and bemoaning our first bout of growing pains. In farming, as in life, there are always wildcards. For our farm, the Queen of Spades are deer and woodchucks.

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In Some Cases, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

It's been just over a week since we've launched our 'Fruit n Fencelift' Crowdfunding Campaign on IndieGoGo. We are almost half-way to our goal of $5900 and have been overwhelmed with the response in support and participation with our campaign. We've also discovered an entire sub-culture of crowd funding marketers, campaigners, 'possibilitarians', all offering a chance to help leverage our campaign…at a cost of course:-). One request in particular captured our attention and a food blogger asked us to summarize our campaign and what makes it unique. We diligently set to task and have yet to hear a response, so we thought we'd share with you, gain some perspective as to how we view what we do on our farm.

We try to approach both our farming and our interactions in society as collaboratively as possible, understanding that the health and stability of both biotic and human realms relies upon our ability to respectfully be in relation, to observe openly and learn before taking action.

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Those Dog(ged) Days of Farming – a Mid-August Manifesto...

Mid-August. The dog days of summer came to be known as such due to Sirius's (or Dog Star's) close proximity to the Earth and relevance in signifying the shifting of seasons and weather patterns. To the Egyptians, the star's rising meant the flooding of the Nile was just around the corner. To the Polynesians, a welcome sign from which to navigate the winter seas. The ancient Greeks observed that following the star's heliacal rising, unsettled weather conditions abound and gave way to the hot, dry time of summer, causing plants to wilt, men to weaken, and women to become aroused. Anyone suffering its effects was said to be astroboletos, or 'star-struck'. Hence these dog days of August coincide with the dogged days of farming. Any farmer suffering it's effects, shows symptoms of being awe-struck by the sheer abundance of growth heralding the produce.

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Photosensitivity

We appreciate your forebearance with the schedule change a couple of weeks ago. A family portrait on Sunday, scheduled by the photographer for the low-slanting rays of the late day sun, required that we remain in Reedsburg through the evening, delaying our usual delivery until Monday. The shot was originally scheduled for 6:00 pm, then moved foreward to 5:00 at the last minute -- even the photographer, whose metier is light, was blindsided by the sea-changes of the August sun.

The few weeks after Lammas see a startling decline in day length, with afternoon repairing into evening so much earlier day by day that as a child I had the sense that the year itself was preparing for the sad, school-bound days of autumn by going to bed earlier and earlier, leaving the long after-dinner sun of June, with its sense of endless possibility, a distant, choked-off memory.   

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Be Part of Growing our Fruit and Farm Community

Help us reach our goal of raising $5,900 to fund a fence-lift for our farm. 

We would rather feed you than the deer and woodchucks!

We invite you to help us grout the future of our orchard! As interests grow in tandem with our fruits, our orchard has outgrown our fencing. We would so appreciate your help with raising funds spreading the word about our campaign to your friends and networks.

Specifically funds raised through our campaign will be used for an orchard fence-lift. Not only would a durable, 8' high, woven wire fence give us a 'peace of mind', but would allow us to focus on growing great fruit that you've grown to love. You would reap the rewards of more fresh, local fruit and fun with us at the farm and around the world.

You can help us get started today with a sneak peak of campaign perks, or wait for our crowd funding efforts to launch on Indie-Go-Go later this month.

Want to be healthier, enjoy life, and eat more fruit? By supporting our campaign to grow our orchard and farm community, not only do you get to take home an awesome perk and feel good about helping sustainable farmers, but you are also helping us grow and inspire others with fruit in Wisconsin and around the world. 

You can start today! Check out the fruit-toipia of creative ways we can help feed you. All of our perks are grown and thought through with love and care from the farm.

Sampling of campaign perks from pies and plants to coffee, consults, orchard picnics, farm products and more… 

our elderberry are poised to grow to new heights...

our elderberry are poised to grow to new heights...

We are so grateful for your support in helping realize our dreams of growing fruit and building community.​

Abuzz in your Bouquets with Pollinator Possibilties

I've just wrapped up a few big weddings I had the delight and opportunity of providing flowers and bouquet design for. I love the challenges and creativity that working with what's in season entails whether flowers or fruit. And so my sights naturally turn toward the ditches, right of ways and green spaces en route to the farm and I take mental note of butterfly weed, daisy fleabane, liatrus, solomon's seal, coneflowers and the occasional cardinal flower and Canada Milk Vetch coloring the roadsides and in my mind design how they might compliment the brilliance of the first gladioulus spike, or soften the demanding shine of sunflowers. I've often wondered why we congregate toward conformity – whether it's in the landscape, flower shop, or farmers market bouquet – the colors, shapes, and textures all bear a similarity, style. While I have fond memories and love of lilies and deep gratitude for bellflower, of the 200,000 plus flowering plants in the world, we seem as a culture to cultivate roughly 20 or so in the flower beds. Sigh.

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Sizing up the Mid-summer harvest →

The annual cicada has sounded, if tepidly, so it's time to have a look at what the heat of deep summer might produce for us. Sunday the 20th is the warmest day of the year climatologically, but, one hopes, not actually. Low 80s are nice, but we could use a week or two up in the 90s, ideally with a good bit of sun, to really let the warm weather crops unwind. So far, July is running close to 3°F below normal.
Corn, melons, squash and solanacea (the “nightshades,” tomatoes, peppers and eggplants) are the parties most likely to be affected by lack of heat and/or sun.

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Plant to Table: Herbs through the ages

"Keep it dry by you all the year, if you love yourself and your ease, and it is a hundred pounds to a penny if you do not." - Nicolas Culpeper, Culpeper's Complete Herbal 1652

Nostalgia seems to have overtaken our herbal instincts, with many of the herbs in your mid-July - August CSA shares reminiscent of the Medieval Garden. Enjoy a bit of herbal renaiisance in your next stir fry, rice bowl, or barbecued cornish hen and pay homage to your ancestors in carrying on such herbal traditions including the following herbs...

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Forest Gardening: Growing a Community for your Orchard

Check out the latest issue of USDA Agroforestry News, featuring our farm's experiment with growing food forests, building community.

And here's a little preview/teaser for some tips for getting started...

Tips for your food forest: 

Forest garden guilds can also serve as a metaphor for how you relate to people and to your community. A few transferrable tips to consider while you establish your food forest: 

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Malus Aforethought

The first fruit trees we planted at the farm were apples. We liked them, they grew well in Wisconsin, and Alar was the commercial food scare of the moment. My father and I picked up a couple at a local nursery, brought them back home and plopped them in the ground.

Thirty years later, when Erin and I set out to turn an acre of the front pasture into an orchard, apples didn't even make the long list. Our two older trees provided halfway decent fruit most years, and our CSA subscribers appreciated them once they got past the typically blotchy skins and occasional coddling moth larva. But the apples were rarely salable and we knew that fifty trees would draw a lot more pest pressure than two. For what we envisioned as a sustainable orchard, apples were the last thing we wanted, at least here in the buggy, humid upper midwest.

So, we worked from first principals in our design.

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Plant to Table: Cilantro & Coriander - What's in a Name?

Cilantro and Coriander are one in the same plant, though different times of the year and phases in it's life-cycle render different namesakes. Catch it in early summer or early on it's plant development and the lacy leaves prefer the cilantro namesake. Should your 'cilantro' bolt or you forgot where you planted it (both scenarios have occurred in our gardens), let the seeds size up and harvest as 'Coriander'.

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Calm and Chaos Amidst the Asparagus Soup

Even though Beltane (mid-point between spring/summer) has come and gone, it's that time in the season where spring culminates before an exhale into summer (think honeybee swarm riding a rip tide at a painted turtle's pace). The result is a melting pot of planting, harvesting, weeding, fertilizing with compost teas – enough to make your farmers' head spin. Sometimes it's best just to breathe into the chaos wherein you find calm in the rhythm of turning soil, thinning carrots, planting squash, and harvesting spinach—knowing that the late June pause is just over the horizon before the next peak into summer.

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Livestock!

Farming can certainly take you in directions you never thought you'd go.

The concept: “Three pounds of bees,” for example, is one I would have found preposterously grotesque when I was younger, enough so to make me both laugh and shudder. (“When I was younger” refers to the time period up until last week.) But, just a few hours ago, I was staring through mesh screen at three pounds of bees in a foot-long cage we had picked up from a supplier, still red-eyed from his whirlwind journey across the Sierra Nevada to retrieve them. The bees' collective thrum – generating a noticeable amount of heat when I put my hand near to them – is what I would describe as “not fully one of joy.” Nor was their attitude later improved by the bumpy ride up our half-mile driveway.

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Food: A Basic Human Right: What does it mean at the farm and for you?

I recently had the privilege of being nominated to apply for the John Kinsman Beginning Farmer Food Sovereignty Prize through Family Farm Defenders. John, at 87 recently passed on from this world though his legacy continues. He has literally touched the lives of thousands of people as a grassroots pioneer of organic sustainable agriculture and globe trotting advocate of food sovereignty for decades. Rob and I also had the privilege of knowing and having John as a farm neighbor in our rural La Valle, Wisconsin foodshed. His presence will be sorely missed.

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