FARM NOTES - August 13, 2007: Week 9

Farm Notes are a way to keep connections between our CSA Members and the Farm. BAGS, BAGS, BAGS is the only required reading this week. It explains how members help us make the bag system work (Click Here!) There is also a wonderful letter from Carolyn Walsh, Veggie Coop Member, explaining why she is not able to pick up her bag this week; she is in China to meet her new, adopted son. See the Website she has created to follow the travels with her family to meet Daniel. It has maps of China and the region where Daniel lives. The rest can be left in the bathroom magazine rack for that casual reading time. Send us any news and information you would like to share! That’s what makes life down here on the farm interesting and fun for us. Thanks, Melba Rabinowitz.

WHAT’S HAPPENING OFF THE FARM?

LETTER from Carolyn
Barry, Anna, Clare and I are leaving on Saturday for China, to adopt our son, Daniel Xinguang, almost 3 years old. If you would like to put the Website in the Farm Note, we hope to be able to journal and upload pictures to it while we are in China. It is: Click Here!). The Ministers have changed but little else. Maybe with the new agency, the ant may be able to crawl out of the basket, onto the table, but it is still a long way from an anthill, where it can find collective support from like minded ants. Don’t worry about the ant right now. Start with the picnic basket of Agriculture - with a theme of local and accessible. Let’s see if we can get it moved from under the table.
(Editorial Comment from Melba Rabinowitz, Registered Social Worker and Co-Owner, Organic Farm; also Board Member, ACORN, (Atlantic Canada Organic Regional Network)

EVENT: Eastern Edge's 8th Annual 24 Hour Art Marathon

When: From noon until noon on August 18th and 19th
Where: Eastern Edge Gallery, 72 Harbour Drive
Admission: $3 from 12:00pm-5:00pm; $5 after 6:00pm; free for children under 10

This is the Gallery’s main fund raiser of the year and they go all out. It is an incredible event, where you can look over the shoulder of local artists while they work and bid on paintings you like in a silent auction and a live auction at 7 on Sunday. Bring your tent and spend the week-end, or drop by as the spirit moves you. Buskers and outdoor performers such as Endearing Perversion, on the Soapbox Stage, a traveling venue will follow the crowd. The ever-popular live concert on Saturday night will feature talented local musicians and performers, such as Tim Baker, The Rosalines, The Idlers, Maggie Myers, Kevin Hehir, Dzolali, Sally Can't Dance?, Meghan McCabe, Michael Jackman, Jason Penney, Blair Harvey, The Discounts, and more. As well, that evening there will be film screenings in our own mini drive-in theatre without the cars in the Gateacre garage 9pm onward.

For more details please visit: http://www.24hourartmarathon.blogspot.com or contact Meghan King or Michelle Bush at 739-1882.

EVENT: Torbay open-air community market!

You want it and we got it: It's locally grown and locally made!

Fresh local and organic produce, arts and crafts, baked goods and more - all in one family-friendly, community-inspiring place. Keep your money in the local economy and support local farmers; come on out and see the fruits (and vegetables) of their labour!

Where: Torbay Town Hall, Torbay Road
When: Saturday, August 25th from 9:00am to 1:00pm
Cost: FREE
Contact: Torbay Environment and Trails Committee at 437-7200 or torbayenviro@nf.aibn.com.

WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THE FARM?

How far out of town are you, the caller asks?
It is about twelve minutes from the Parking Lot at the Science Building at MUN as the truck flies. This is when the lights are green and there is no traffic in the way to impede progress. This is the speedway, Mike and Sarah take on pick-up nights, when they leave the farm at 5:45 p.m. for the 6 o’clock. Last year, this may have been because people were still in the fields picking or washing onions, but not this year. We have an incredbly efficient team, even with one handed, farm hand, Sarah Stoker. (Sarah had stitches on her hand this week, after helping to take down a wall at Eastern Edge.) Everything is ready and accounted for, except the week we left one of the containers with six bags in the cooler. At the last minute, Mike often wanders out of a greenhouse or the family kitchen. As he is getting in the vehicle, he may have to send someone back for his clipboard or the cell phone or the money box. Still we admire him for his loyalty to the Veggie Coop, which was his creation about ten years ago. He insists on taking in the bags and meeting and greeting our members. He usually goes to the Aquarena afterwards, then comes home for supper in time to call his Dad by 9 o’clock, which is 7:30 North Carolina time. Dad is still in a health centre in North Carolina, mending from a broken hip. He fell on July 7th, two weeks before his 101st Birthday.

Bring Your Swimming Suit! The Pond Is Almost Ready!
The Irrigation Pond Area may soon be ready for landscaping and Mike plans to have a swim when it is finished. Louie, Mike and I were each working at different places on the farm last Saturday, when we saw Sterling Keane’s white truck creep onto the property and wind it’s way toward the pond. We all dropped what we were doing like a hot potato and headed for the pond. This was the epiphany we had been waiting for. Would Sterling tell us if the pond we started digging three years ago seemed healthy and sustainable? It was so mucky in the spring you couldn’t see anything because the peat lurking the edges had leached into the water over the winter. Now, with the latest treatment, it is so clear we can see several quite hefty tadpoles swimming around the edges. Is it ready for him to install the ultra-violent purification system we ordered last year? Sterling is very pleased with the results of the latest work and has declared it ready! He says, he’ll be back in a few days to install it.

Although it is difficult for Sterling to fit us in, we know if we wait long enough, he will come. We wait because he is the most knowledgeable person we know. He sold Keane’s Pump Shop, the business he started and managed when he did the water and sewer installation for our house in 1977. He now does free lance consultant work which interests him. That’s why he accepted the pond project. It was a puzzle that needed a solution. This challenge began in 2004 before we started digging the pond inside an incipient bog. To filter the water, he put in a long, wide culvert at the end of the pond, near the pump, and filled the culvert with clean gravel, to create a filter to catch the dirt and peat before it reached the pump system. Over two seasons, the peat that seeped into the pond from around the edges, continued to support the growth of algae and bacteria, even though we pumped and cleaned the pond several times. Finally, last year, we made a decision to invest another $1,000, behind the $3,000 we had already invested to bring in another excavator. The task - remove the soil, peat and all vegetation from around the pond for a distance of twenty feet or more and replace it with hardpan. We made this decision in April and then had to wait two and a half months for the specific equipment operator and excavator that Sterling felt could do this work successfully. The equipment was under contract to another job, so he came on a weekend, as a favour to Sterling. Then, a truck brought in three truck loads of hard pan and the little excavator spread it around the pond, much like you and I would do with a shovel. In case you don’t know what hard pan is, it looks and feels like cement, but is uglier. This work was done based on Sterlings instructions, but Sterling was not present. We knew that when he got untangled from his other projects, some of which are in Springdale and finished installing the insulation and fire walls for his daughter’s daycare centre, he would find his way back.

Why an irrigation pond instead of a deep well? That’s what we said, at first, when we met with a provincial consultant about digging an artisan well and also draining our bogs to bring them into crop production. He suggested that rather than dig a deep well that tapped into the underground water, that it was more environmentally responsible to capture the surface water from the forest and hills at the back of the property and the incipient bogs. We started this project in 2004. Three years later, three different excavations with three different types of equipment, we may have finally arrived at a place where we are able to sustain a viable pond from season to season. One of the last pieces is to install the purification system. So, when you visit the farm, walk up the road behind Greenhouse #1 and have a look. Right now, the area around the pond is filled with several inches of gravel and looks more like a gravel pit with water than the natural looking gardens and tiny lake that we envisioned. Next season, you may find Mike swimming proudly in his 14 ft deep pond, surrounded by all kinds of natural vegetation. So, bring along your swimsuit. You can change in the pump house, which is also where we store the soymeal and hempmeal.