Tiny Farms

The fight for GMO labeling revved up this week, as the Connecticut state Senate and Vermont House of Representatives both recently voted in favor of bills mandating the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods. On May 9, the Vermont House voted 107-37 in favor of the bill, which does not include any food from animal products. Though the bill will now move onto the Senate, it will not be reviewed until sometime in 2014, as the state’s legislative session as ended for 2013. Opponents of the bill argue that GMO producers could sue the state if the federal government determines there is no substantial difference between conventional and genetically engineered foods. In Connecticut, the Senate voted 35-1 in favor of the bill on May 21. Because of the economic implications of such a law, the bill requires at least three other states in the region to pass similar bills by July 2015 before the law can take effect. With about 12 other states in the country reviewing proposed GE labeling laws, Connecticut is not alone in its initiative, though no states have passed a comparable measure yet.It seems opponents to the bill might have good standing, since on May 23 the U.S. Senate voted 71-27 against an amendment to the farm bill that would allow states to decide whether genetically modified products must carry a label. The initiative would not have determined whether GMO products be labeled, but rather leave the ruling to states on an individual basis. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sponsored the bill, which he called a “fairly commonsense and non-radical” idea. Sanders proposed a similar measure in 2012 that was also voted down. Internationally, 64 countries require food containing genetically modified organisms to be labeled.At an Organic Trade Association meeting in Washington D.C., Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack vowed to shake up the future of organics with policy changes. Vilsack assured organics will receive more coverage through the federal crop insurance program, and as of next year the organic surcharge for crop insurance will drop by 5 percent. Vilsack also said he would provide USDA agencies with new instructions regarding the requirements for organic certification. Organic prices are under consideration for 2014, as only corn, soybeans, cotton, processing tomatoes, avocados and some stone fruit crops currently have a price separate from that of conventional. The USDA Risk Management Agency already determined there will be an organic price for oats and mint, with apricots, apples, blueberries and millet to be determined.Pink is the new green, at least for vertical farmers. Urban vertical farming is booming across the globe, with Sweden even gearing up to build a 177-foot skyscraper to grow vegetables on each floor. Horticulturists found, however, that the most practical and economically efficient way to farm vertically is in empty warehouses on the outskirts of cities, due to the lower cost of electricity. What’s more, plants only need certain types of light to grow. Rather than using fluorescent lamps to light the many layers of a vertical farm, using just the red and blue lights have the same effect but use significantly less energy. The result is a vertical farm ablaze with pink light. LED lights differ from conventional fluorescent lamps used in greenhouses because, in addition to being more energy efficient, LED lights can be set to a specific wavelength. The low temperature of LED lights also allows farmers to maximize energy use by placing the lights closer to the plants than a typical greenhouse light. Using a system of stacking the LED lights, one vertical farm in Texas, Caliber Biotherapeutics, is experimenting with the idea of growing plants entirely indoors using the artificial light—void of cumbersome variables like weather and pests. The practice is far from affordable for the average farmer, but could be a viable way to control such aspects of farming for finicky specialty crops.And, finally, we couldn't

Our garden is poised at that moment when the autumn leaves blaze and fall, and the aloe torches catch fire for winter. Plum with Pride of India Aloe So many plants claim heart-shaped leaves, but Hibiscus tiliaceus succeeds. (Tropical and subtropical coast, worldwide). There are hearts at all stages of life, from youngsters bronzed glowing with health, to vigorous green ones, to the battered but still standing gold and crimson. Not a ‘for autumn’ display, as these leaves fade year round in glory. Hibiscus tiliaceus Hibiscus tiliaceus Hibiscus tiliaceus Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light - from Dylan Thomas’ poem The roses settle into their autumn flush. Great North, Perfume PassionBlack Prince, Anna's Red Casanova, casa nova, new house, new home Our family is gathered in New Mexico, thoughts and prayers around my great-nephew Nic, lost to us last Thursday. Stop all the clocks - W. H. Auden read in Four Weddings and a Funeral Pink Dimorphotheca jucunda The third poem in my mind is from Christina Rossetti. Remember by Christina Rossetti Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land;? When you can no more hold me by the hand,? Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned:? Only remember me; you understand? It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterwards remember, do not grieve:? For if the darkness and corruption leave? A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,? Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.? And this by Mary Frye 1905-2004 Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there From a poem written by Mary Frye in 1932 for a young German Jewish woman, who couldn't “stand by my mother’s grave and shed a tear”. Nic skydiving Today my plants are worldwide commonorgarden. The aloe and the pink Dimorphotheca jucunda reach back to South Africa, where Nic was born. RIP Nic Clegg 1991-2013 Pictures and text by Diana Studer(also on Google Plus)AKA Diana of Elephant's Eye- wildlife gardening in Porterville,near Cape Town in South Africa(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. Those are my links)

I am home all day.After being in Wisconsin Wed and Thursday for the Vernon Hershberger Trial (still not over, will cover it in detail on raw milk Monday) , I am THRILLED to be home all day. The sun is shining, the wind is minimal,I slept great last night, the GK's come later this afternoon. I am in one happy mood!Then Keith came bearing bad news. Yesterday while waiting on a raw milk customer, one of our piglets decided the free range- great food- wonderful time with mommy-life was just too much for him.He committed suicide via the old bucket of milk trick.Keith had accidentally left a half filled bucket of grain and milk in the pen with mama pig and her 3 week old babies. One of the males, a greedy little tard, threw himself head first into the bucket and unable to wiggle his fat self back out of the five gallon bucket, he drowned in the quicksand consistency of grain soaked milk. Of course because he told no one where he was going, asked no one to accompany him, we can only assume it was suicide. The fact that no note was found really means nothing since the brilliant Red Wattle pigs don't learn to write until they are at least 4 weeks old. But then again no witnesses have come forth so perhaps fowl play was at hand.The barn is fill of ducks and chickens you know.Seriously, we feel bad. Very very bad. I never would have guessed that the weight of the piglet was not enough that he couldn't have knocked the bucket on its side with his wriggling around. Hopefully with his snout buried deep in the milk he died a good quick death. Another hard farm lesson learned. And one more piece of advice we can share with all our new homesteading followers.

Are you going to eat it... or look at it?

It seems to be a week of split trees here at Roundrock Journal. When I was last out to my forest, Libby and Queequeg took a nice nap in the cabin while Flike and I took a nice walk in the woods. We ranged all over the place, but it was a spontaneous walk and I failed to take my daypack along, which has a bottle of water in it, and the loppers, with which to liberate cedar trees from their earthly toil. The walk might have gone on longer or gone on farther if I’d had either or both, but at least we came to the spot in the forest that you see above. When we first came to Roundrock more than a decade ago, I put this little round rock (the size of an orange) in the fork of this tree. When I’d come by again, the rock would have fallen out, and I’d wedge it in there again. I did this several times. And then, it seems, I stopped coming to this part of the forest. But I remembered the rock in the fork on my hike with Flike, and we made this our farthest point. You see above what I saw when I reached it. The tree is eating the round rock now. This was, of course, my plan all along. It was also part of my plan to have a grandchild or two who I would bring along and point out the progress of the rock-eating tree. The grandchild part hasn’t happened, but the rock eating continues. And it seems I may need to find a larger round rock to wedge in the fork above this one so that it can begin being consumed, just in case I am honored with a grandchild some day in the next ten years. But I don’t want to be pushy about that.

This simple straight dough French bread (not sourdough) is the perfect baguette recipe for new bread bakers. Note: If you're a beginning bread baker, you might find my Ten Tips on How To Bake Better Artisan Breads at Home helpful. And if you've been longing to learn how to make your own sandwich bread, my popular Farmhouse White Easy Basic Sandwich Recipe (which can also be made with whole wheat flour) is a great place to start. While e-mailing back and forth six years ago, I asked Daniel Leader, founder of the renowned Bread Alone Bakery in New York and my bread baking hero, to recommend a summer picnic bread from his new book, Local Breads. He immediately suggested I try the very first recipe, Parisian Daily Bread, or what he calls The Four Hour Baguette. "It's simple, it's foolproof, and it's delicious," he said, and he was right. I've been baking it ever since. I credit Daniel's wonderful first book, Bread Alone, with turning me into a bread baker, and I've been recommending it for years to anyone interested in learning how to bake their own bread. After 20 years it's still in print, and considering there are thousands of new cookbooks published each year, that's really saying something. My original copy of Bread Alone is in four pieces. My second copy was signed and sent to me by Daniel himself when he learned my first one was falling apart, which of course thrilled me to no end. (Sidenote: one of my favorite novels is also called Bread Alone, written by my good friend and fellow Daniel Leader fan, Judi Hendricks.) Fourteen years after he wrote Bread Alone, Daniel came out with Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. It's the culmination of dozens of trips to Europe over two decades in search of bakers who are still using time-honored methods and ingredients to create loaves unique to their towns and cities. Part travelogue, part bread making class, and part gastronomic history lesson, the book is full of colorful stories of local artisans and 80 of their authentic treasured recipes. Beginning bread bakers needn't shy away from Local Breads. The first 60 pages are packed with detailed information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, all of it clearly written and easy to understand. Even better are the several dozen Q&As throughout the book, which are Daniel's responses to the questions most frequently asked by his students at the Culinary Institute of America and other places where he teaches bread making. The only trouble you might have is ever making it past this first recipe. Recipe below. . . Click here for the rest of this post »

I guess this could be a post continued about the big changes. Or not. The fact is, time and money are short and the heat is long. One thing about homesteading is that you MUST keep it moving along to suit your own family's needs. There is no set answer. First you pray, then you plan, then you pray more.I have no need for 12 good production hens, 6 meat hens....and a handful of roosters. So I sold them. They are making a family on 5+ acres very happy.I have a pen of bantams.....and they are happy. We get the eggs we need for us, and that makes the budget happy, I have a little group of hobby chickens that makes me happy, and I fix Bob eggs on the weekends that makes him happy. WIN-WIN over and over again!There are some odd chicks in the bantam pen....but that's for another day.

My site has moved. You can subscribe to my new feed by clicking here.

Today's topic for The Beginning Farmer Show is one of those subjects that is way over my head, but it is something that all beginning livestock farmers will have to deal with much sooner rather than later! I hope that there is something that you can take away from my thoughts, but more importantly I hope you join in the discussion and share your experience.Whether you are raising cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens, rabbits, or any other livestock on your farm the breeding animals you keep and choose will have a huge impact on your business. They are the foundation of what you produce and they can have an impact (good or bad) that lasts for generations. So, it is very important that you select the right replacement heifers, gilts, ewes, hens, does, and so on and so forth! On this episode of The Beginning Farmer Show I will talk about how I go about selecting replacement animals from and for my farm in a very unscientific manner, and I will also share a few tips from people that really know what they are doing.When it comes to selecting replacement breeding stock (heifers, gilts, bulls, boars, etc.) my biggest and first piece of advice is to consult someone with experience, knowledge, and results. I have none of those things (remember I'm a beginning farmer), but I have tried to learn as much as I can in a short while. Way back in 2008 I attended a Practical Farmers of Iowa field day feature Gearld Fry ... a very well known and respected cattleman. Obviously he speaks specifically to cattle, but I think the importance he placed on selecting breeding stock has helped me with all of the different animals we have. You can learn more about Mr. Fry and his thoughts on cattle (including linebreeding) by checking out Bovine Engineering. If you'd like to read about the bullet point take-aways from a beginning farmer listening to Mr. Fry speak you can check out my blog post about the field day.There are a few things that I look for though when selecting replacement gilts for the Hereford pig herd ...Priority number one is that I select gilts from sows that are good mothers who protect and take care of the litters.I like to choose gilts that grow faster than the other gilts in their litter, and that have nice muscling and no physical deformities.The bigger the litter the better! Ideally we keep back gilts from sows that consistently have larger litters.Finally, it is important to me that the gilts are from sows that do a good job with the farrowing process (they go into a hut or build a great nest for farrowing).All of that selection criteria though can be summed up in two points that I learned from a farmer that has been farrowing out on pasture for years ...Select gilts with down ears (floppy) as opposed to up ears (ears that stand up). I realize this won't be true in all cases because there are some great heritage breeds out there with "up ears", but it worked for him and I saw the success he was having!Select gilts that lay down slowly. He said he watched his potential replacement gilts lay down and that he liked to see them get down on their front knees first, before settling down their backside. His reasoning is that if they lay down slowly the won't just flop down on their litter of pigs and crush them.That seems like very simple advice, but I saw the results of those two pieces of selection criteria and it was a sow herd that I would be more than proud to have on my farm. Also, it illustrates the most important thing that I can say on this subject ... find people that raise livestock like you raise them or raise the same breeds you raise and pick their brain on the subject.There is more to this show though than Farmer Ethan's ramblings on subjects that he knows nothing about! As you can see from the picture on the right the pigs are loving their new woodlot paddock, and this image is exactly why I love raising pigs so much. Most of the time they get a bad rap for being dirty and stinky, but our woodlot raised pigs are just a joy to rai

Trillium grandiflorum was one of the first wildflowers I learned to recognize.Trilliums have charmed and fascinated me ever since my days as a Girl Scout, when I learned to identify a few wildflowers. With three leaves and three petals, trillium practically named itself (tri = 3) and was easy to remember. I never set out to have a trillium collection, but I’ve never turned down an opportunity to acquire a new one, either. With my recent purchase of T. luteum, I now have five, possibly six, different trillium growing in my garden, and I thought I’d share them for Wildflower Wednesday.Either a smaller T. grandiflorum, or possibly a different species?These trilliums appear to be T. grandiflorum, but they are much smaller. (See photo below which illustrates the difference in size.) I don’t even remember when or from where I got them, but they have had several years to grow larger, and they haven’t. So I am not certain if they are really the same plant, or a different species.Trillium recurvatum with offspringI bought Trillium recurvatum at a plant sale several years ago. It was one bitty little thing, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it emerged from the ground after its first winter. This spring it has grown much taller than in past years, and I’m so pleased to see the seedlings growing around it.Trillium cuneatumTrillium cuneatum bears a superficial resemblance to T. recurvatum. They both have red flowers and mottled leaves. But the sepals of T. recurvatum curve down and point to the ground, while those of T. cuneatum point up. The leaves have different shapes as well. These four trilliums grow in the same bed, and the size differences are easier to see when you view them simultaneously: These four trilliums all grow in Fern Alley. Click on image to enlarge it.I bought T. cuneatum from Sunshine Farm and Gardens, but here’s one trillium I acquired just by moving here: Trillium erectum grows wild on our property. T. erectum grows along the bank of the side brook, and I have also seen it growing in other spots along the glen. It seems to be fairly common in our area. Last Saturday I went to a multi-vendor plant sale at the Ithaca High School in upstate NY, and I purchased T. luteum from the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society–of which I am a member, which qualified me for a discount.Trillium luteum, a recent purchase This trillium will join the others in Fern Alley, which is a nursery bed for my spring ephemerals. Eventually I hope to divide my trilliums following Margaret Roach’s instructions and plant them along the side brook where T. erectum already grows. But for now, I am just enjoying them. Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”