Musings from Glen Eco Farm

Nasty but Interesting Little Boogers

2010-06-23T12:51:00.003-05:00

Imagine a bacterial infectious disease which can imitate 300 or more other illnesses, affect multiple organ systems at once, disseminate to almost all areas of the body, or move around to cause symptoms in any part of the body over a long period of time. Unlike many infectious organisms which can be easily be seen in the blood and in sites of infection, the bacterium that causes this disease is seldom seen in the blood and if isolated, nearly impossible to grow in a laboratory culture dish. This germ can generate widespread inflammation that causes excruciating pain and damage throughout the body but the inflammation is mostly invisible. With the exception of the well known “bulls eye rash” seen around a tick bite in about 30% of Lyme disease sufferers, there is little to no swelling, abnormal rashes, or pus formation usually associated with other kinds of infection. One of the blood tests commonly used to detect this disease is designed to pick up evidence of antibodies formed by the immune system in response to infection. Even though a person may be seriously ill with this disease, the blood antibody test is often negative because his immune system is not generating enough antibodies to be detected. In other words, his immune system is not recognizing the presence of an infection, and is not fighting it. It is not unusual for the sick person to not even have a fever.

The name of this unusual bacterium is Borellia Burgdorferi, a corkscrew shaped spirochete which resembles another bacterial spirochete responsible for the disease known as Syphillus. The Borellia organism is transmitted by the bite of several known species of ticks (most commonly deer ticks) and possibly other kinds of biting insects such as flies and mosquitoes. The disease is named after a town in Connecticut where it was first identified in the United States in the early 70s. Though generally assumed to be confined mostly to the Northeast and upper Midwest, Lyme disease is now appearing more and more frequently all over the country and is well on it’s way to becoming a world wide epidemic.

The Lyme spirochete is a nasty booger indeed. The corkscrew shape allows it to drill itself deeply into joints, muscles and nerves where it can hide from infection fighting white blood cells normally found circulating in the blood. Once deeply entrenched in these locales the spirochetes cause chronic arthritis (joint inflammation and pain), myalgias (muscle pain and weakness), neuralgias (peripheral nerve pain), brain encephalopathy (headaches, dizziness, mental malfunctions), and a form of meningitis (neck pain and stiffness). Lyme bacteria can also invade the heart, kidneys, respiratory system, digestive tract, and even the eyes. Because of its effect on the nervous and musculoskeletal systems, Lyme disease most frequently causes overwhelming physical and or mental fatigue, along with deep and widespread pain, the extent, variety, and intensity of which can be very difficult to describe.

I have put off writing this document for a long time because of my reluctance to risk coming across in a complaining spirit as I attempt to articulate my experience with the excruciating pain of Chronic Lyme disease. Never before in my life have I experienced pain as intense, as widespread throughout my body and in so many variations as I have since my Lyme disease got serious about a year and a half ago. Once I sat down to write all the qualitative adjectives I could think of describing the pain. I began with the usual—stinging, burning, shooting, aching, etc. and ended with the more unusual—gravelly, grinding, crawling, salty, smooth, electric shocking, chemical shocking, pulsing, vibrating—on and on. I got up to 35 variations before I ran out of adjectives and had to give up. There were still qualities of my pain that simply defied description. I had to find other ways to describe it—“Japanese beetles crawling across my eyelids”, “my head and face wrapped tightly with elastic tape to keep it from exploding”, “head feeling like a beehive”, “sensations of large wound scabs being pulled off my legs with adhesive tape”, “barbed wire strung through and wrapped around every muscle in my arms, legs, and torso and every time I moved something was jerking it”, “a huge invisible elastic sock covering the lower half of my grit covered body, squeezing it until the grit ground through my burning skin”, ”arm, rib, and skull bones feeling like half healed fractures”. Sometimes when I felt random stinging sensations under the skin in widely dispersed areas of my body, it became easy to visualize those corkscrew shaped spirochetes drilling their way through nerves and muscles. When one puts this perspective of pain up against the oft asked question in hospital emergency rooms—“Describe your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, one being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you have ever had”, it all sounds so very stupid!

One of the more interesting and insidious characteristics of the Borellia organism is its ability to change from the spirochete (cell wall) form to a cell wall deficient form (sometimes called an L-form). The cell wall deficient form is more resistant to attack from the body’s immune system and antibiotics which may be thrown at it. There are several classes of cell wall destroying antibiotics (generally the penicillin and cephalosporin derivatives) which if used, may cause the infection to worsen and become more difficult to treat because of the spirochetes’ capability of morphing into the cell wall deficient form in order to escape the antibiotics’ effect. For this reason, antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease may need to be applied selectively and strategically over a longer period of time than is recommended for many other infectious conditions. The other form taken by the Borellia is a cyst form which is nearly impossible to kill with antibiotics. The cysts can lie dormant in body tissues for months or years and immerge later as an active cell walled or cell wall deficient form and cause a relapse long after antibiotic treatment has stopped.

Some of the most recent and “cutting edge” research of Lyme disease has revealed other interesting characteristics of these evil critters. Lyme spirochetes are now believed to be capable of screwing themselves into lymphocytes and phagocytes (white blood cells), converting to cell wall deficient form, and combining their DNA with the DNA of the white blood cell. This means in effect that the infection fighting capacity of the white blood cell has been hijacked and that the white blood cells now become antagonistic and confused into attacking healthy tissue. This may be an explanation of why chronic Lyme disease often appears to behave as an autoimmune disease like Multiple Sclerosis, Lupus, or Rheumatoid Arthritis. Other leading research has uncovered evidence that another escape tactic used by Borellia organisms is to form biofilms within body tissues. Biofilms are clumps or congregations of the infectious organisms with cell wall deficient or cystic forms in the center of the clump and more active spirochetes on the outside. Killing them is in effect like peeling an onion. Pulsed application of different antibiotic classes over an extended period of time combined with drugs designed to break up or inhibit formation of biofilms, and various herbal and or nutritional supplements intended to modulate the immune system are being found to be the better approach to dragging down this vicious enemy.

Currently there is major controversy raging within medical circles about how to most effectively diagnose and treat this horrible disease. One side says that Lyme disease is rare in most areas of the country, and is easy to identify and treat. The other side says that Lyme disease is a very complex illness to diagnose and treat, widespread throughout the country and world, and is on the increase. Research is still being done and much is yet to be learned. Currently there is no laboratory test considered reliable enough by its self to rule out or confirm a Lyme disease diagnosis. Too many doctors are misdiagnosing Lyme disease sufferers with labels such as “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”, “Fibromyalgia”, or “Anxiety Disorder”. Some doctors appear to not be recognizing the existence of chronic Lyme disease because they fear discipline by medical review boards if they exceed the inadequate treatment guidelines handed down by CDC (Center for Disease Control) or IDSA (Infectious Disease Society of America). Many health insurers refuse to pay for extended antibiotic treatment of Lyme disease considered necessary by LLMDs (Lyme Literate Medical Doctors). Other doctors appear unwilling to spend the time and energy to do the medical detective work necessary to properly diagnose and treat suspected Lyme disease. It is easier and more profitable to deny Lyme disease and to send patients back out their doors with prescriptions for palliative medications. Meanwhile there are possibly hundreds of thousands of sick and confused people in this country, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, and suffering in desperation.

This is nothing less than a huge moral travesty! It is not right! Both patients and doctors are falling through the gaping holes in this country’s hopelessly broken and dysfunctional health care system. It has got to be fixed! As an individual I feel so small and inadequate to consider taking on this monster. But I am going to try. I will begin by joining local support groups for Lyme disease, MS, and Fibromyalgia. There already is talk of arranging an informal neighborhood picnic where a few doctor friends will be invited. Gently and thoughtfully we will breach the subject. At some time a couple of persons’ stories of struggle and recovery from Lyme disease will be published in the local newspaper. Sound scientific research on Lyme disease has been done and is still forthcoming. There are doctors out there who care and who will likely come through if given a little encouragement. We will overcome with God’s help and direction.

It Doesn't Happen Very Often in Virginia But All of Us Old Timers Know It Can

2010-02-08T22:47:00.005-05:00

Virginia has always been not only my home but one of the more interesting states. Most people know Virginia as one of the most significant states of the confederacy where most of the major civil war battles were fought. Located south of the Mason-Dixon Line, Virginia is part of the southeastern quadrant of the United States—a land of extensive pine forests; paw-paw patches; tobacco and cotton fields; friendly if they know you, coon hunting, beer drinking, laid back country folk who speak with a funny “suthun akceeunt” ; and a place where the winters are-uh- usually mild. The western side of the state extends into the Appalachian mountain ranges and valleys where the elevation is a little higher and the climate a little colder than the rest of the south but generally not nearly as cold as way up “nawth wheyuh dem yaan-keees leeuv.”

Our winters are usually characterized by 3-5 inch slushy snows which melt off in a day or two or those wintry mixes of SS&FR (snow, sleet, and freezing rain) which come about once a week. Between this it is not that unusual to have short shirt sleeve days even in the middle of January.

Yet I remember hearing as a child stories told by older folks of snow so deep it was over the fences. Now that I am rapidly moving into that “older folk” category, I too can tell similar stories to my grandchildren. There was the “blizzard of March 6-7, 1962” when around three feet fell and paralyzed the Shenandoah Valley for a week. In 1966 we got a 14 incher on a Saturday, six more inches on Wednesday, and another foot the next Saturday plus a hard blow for the next two days which pretty much packed full the 5-6 foot deep trench created by the snow plows earlier in the week on the road through our farm. My dad and about four of my brothers spent a whole day with a medium sized tractor with a rear mounted blade and several grain scoops shoveling out the road so we could get a tanker truck in to pick up our overflowing milk. I still vividly remember the truck high snow banks scrubbing both sides of the truck as it squeezed through.

Since we have moved to Glen Eco Farm we have seen at least two 18 inch snowfalls and the most memorable 30 inches that marooned us in 1996. Christine was stranded in town for a couple of days that time and we ended up walking our recently acquired herd of about a dozen Hereford beef cows the ¾ mile down the road to the empty barn at the farm where we used to live because I couldn’t get hay to them at home.

After about five years in a row in which we hardly had a snowfall worthy of a good snowball fight, the winter of 09—10 has proved it’s mettle in cold weather and heavy snow. Early December brought us a nice six inch fall. On December 18-19 the “blizzard of 09” rolled through Virginia and left two feet at our place as Christine and I floated through the Louisiana bayous and strolled the beach on the Mississippi gulf coast. We came home to knuckle whitening cold for the next two weeks and a good melt off and a three inch rain with local flooding in mid January followed by two nice snows (six inch and four inch respectively) towards the end of the month. Then it happened again!

I was glad I respected the weather forecasts on Thursday February 4 as I pushed myself through the pain of Lyme disease to wrestle two large round bales up the steep snow covered hillside with my big tractor and after a lot of spinning and sliding, I finally managed to dump them into the hay feeder wagon parked along the edge of the woods on the upper side of the upper hayfield. This would give the cattle more than a week’s supply of hay and nearby shelter in the woods if another big snow comes.

All day Friday and Saturday it snowed—and snowed—and snowed! Boy was I ever glad I didn’t have to be out slogging around in a manurey barnyard, climbing silos, and milking cows. It was nice to have Bud Driver around to do some driveway scraping with the Ford tractor before the snow got too deep and to tend the chickens the farthest distance from the house. I did have to venture out to carry a few buckets of feed and water to the young chickens behind the greenhouse and to pull snow off the one standing hoop house. One of the church neighbors appeared Friday night and again on Saturday afternoon with his new Kubota 4WD tractor to open our driveway. I think he was having fun. A sensible estimate would be that we got a good two feet of new snow. Some people not too far from us claimed that we got 30 inches of course. I just know that when I walked out in it, it was up to my knees and my knees are a little higher than the average man’s.

It was awfully nice to be able to slip back into the house, stomp the snow off my boots, flop into the lazy boy recliner, flick on the floor lamp, read a nice nature book written by an Amish farmer with a passion for bird watching, and to watch the falling snow through the picture window.

Tonight I checked the weather forecast and another winter storm warning is up for Virginia. They are calling for up to another foot around here tomorrow and Wednesday.

Trotten Hard Cider at School

2010-01-17T18:16:00.002-05:00

The last two stories I posted here were on the subject of illness. I have been wanting for some time to post some stories from my past and get away from this subject but somehow the theme of illness crept into this one too. However there were no doctors involved and telling it from the perspective of forty five years later gives it a considerably different spin. I hope the reader will enjoy reading this one as much or even more than I enjoyed writing it.

Every year as the days get shorter, the kids go back to school, the air gets that invigorating and nippy coolness commensurate of autumn in Virginia, and the harvest season begins its downward trek towards the dead and delightfully dreary doldrums of winter, my thoughts invariably go back to the days of my childhood when—sooner or later, Dad would gather up a half dozen or so glass gallon vinegar jugs or better yet, the old 20 gallon oaken vinegar barrel, and have them filled with fresh pressed apple cider at the local mill.

Apple cider in those days was not like the pasteurized and sometimes syrupy apple juice currently sold as cider since the USDA successfully instilled in the minds of the American public the fear that a little deer poop in the cider might make it lethal for little children. Deer poop or not, unpasteurized apple cider contains sufficient bacteria to give it that distinctive flavor that marks it as real cider several days to a week after it has been pressed. A real apple cider connoisseur will of course immediately recognize the superior taste of the fresh unpasteurized product and how a few days of aging will make it even better.

We were a large family of seven boys and one girl so it didn’t really take that long to put down five gallons or more of fresh apple cider before it “went too far”. “Went too far” of course, was that vague designation of cider that had either gotten to taste too much like vinegar or had developed enough alcohol content to “knock you on your butt” if you drank too much. We were a conservative Mennonite family which had grown up with the dictum that “a tablespoon of wine or rum used to flavor a fruitcake” was absolutely verboten! But somehow good Mennonite church going folks like us could get away with occasionally having a stash of slightly hard apple cider in the cellar or the back shed. It never really occurred to us that cider that had not been completely cleaned up in a week’s time and had gotten to that fizzy and yellower stage, most likely had an alcohol content equal to or greater than most beers. Never mind, frugality was enough a part of our culture that we must not throw it away. If the delightfully aged cider was in a glass jug we usually went ahead and drank it up. If it was in the barrel we would drink it as long as we thought it was safe and then leave the rest to go to vinegar. This was the stuff I really liked!

It was Halloween night in the year 1962. Most of us boys were into our teenage years and I was in the ninth grade. That was the year that Dad had decided to drag out the wooden keg which had been stored behind the kerosene tank in the cellar and have it filled with cider. As best as I can recall we had already gotten cider in glass jugs for drinking and his intention was to allow the cider in the barrel to go to vinegar. Unbeknownst to him sometime during the several years while the keg was in storage next to the kerosene tank someone had spilled some kerosene onto the keg while filling the tank. The kerosene had soaked into the wooden container and as the cider gracefully aged it acquired an interestedly different flavor.

I don’t know who had gone down to sample the cider but apparently they had noticed the off flavor and had brought the keg up from the cellar to the back porch. I do remember several of my brothers complaining about the funny taste and entertaining some discussion about whether or not we should consider throwing it out. I could taste a little kerosene but it wasn’t that bad. Otherwise the cider was at the perfect stage of fizz and bite and I didn’t really mind the extra flavor. So that evening as I did my algebra homework, I kept on going back to the back porch and getting myself another nip.

I crawled out of bed the next morning at the usual early hour of 5:30 AM and helped to do the chores of feeding and milking the 40 head of dairy cows. Then I came in and wolfed down the usual breakfast of two eggs and toast, three or four pancakes, and a big bowl of cereal washed down with another glass of my beloved cider, and dashed off to the school bus.

The first class of the day was in the woodworking shop, my favorite. I was at the wood lathe thoroughly engaged in transforming an old discarded bowling pin into a nice table lamp. I hardly noticed when sometime near to the end of the class period a little jab of pain shot somewhere down in my lower guts. Now farm boys usually don’t get excited about such things so I just went on to the next and least favorite class, Algebra I.

It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after settling into the algebra class that a much stronger pain surged through my innards and reminded me that all of that cider I had been drinking might have something to do with it. When an even harder pain hit about five minutes later I stared at the minute hand on my watch (showing twenty minutes after ten) and realized that this thing just might get serious!

As I looked around the room I began to realize the predicament I was in. Being the shy boy that I was, I had always chosen the desk in the farthest corner of the classroom from the doorway to the hall, at the back of the room next to the windows. To make matters worse, the school had recently made this stupid rule requiring anyone needing to leave the classroom during a class session for any reason to secure a pass from the teacher in the form of a wooden paddle on a leather thong with the room number engraved on it. Upon granting permission to leave, the teacher was to give the student this paddle which was to be carried with him all of the time he was out of the classroom and returned when he came back.

As I contemplated the real possibility that I might have to make a dash for it before the end of the class, I realized that had I been smart enough to choose a desk near the door I could have been out and gone before anyone knew what was happening. Now I would have to run to the front of the room, and cross over by the teacher’s desk in front of the entire class in order to make it out the door. I wasn’t about to stop and explain to the teacher in front of all my friends why I needed to leave the room so urgently and to get that dumb paddle! So my only alternative was to scrunch and squirm and hope that I could hold it til the end of the class.

As the pains kept getting more frequent and stronger I bore down with ever more determination until that blessed bell finally rang and I was up and out of there like a rocket off a launch pad. I fled down the hall to the first boy’s room which seemed like about a football field’s length in distance, but the instant I opened the door I realized that luck was incredibly in my favor.

Right straight inside the door from the hallway was a row of toilet stalls. Some hoodlum had seen fit to rip off the privacy door to the toilet stall nearest to and facing the hall door. Evidently whoever had done this deed had thought it would be really cool to be able to enter from the hallway and to get a direct visual shot of someone on the loo as soon as they opened the door. Little did that hoodlum know that he had done this favor just for me. All I needed at that instant was the path of least resistance provided by that open stall. I was hardly through the hall door until my body was into a reverse spin and my pants were a falling. In the same nanosecond that my bare bottom touched the seat, what felt like a big wet cork the size of a baseball exploded from my nether end.

A minute or two later the hall door opened again and two guys came in and began lighting up cigarettes. One in particular swaggered in sort of an Elvis Presley like style directly in front of me as he held his weed between thumb and first two fingers with the last two fingers extended. He would glance at me occasionally out of the corner of his eye as I sat there totally involved in blowing out the rear and trying my best to ignore him. After about five minutes or so they finished their smoke and left. I remained on the pot, continuing to purge as long as I could, and finally as the bell rang signaling the beginning of the next class, I decided that it was now safe to get up and go. I sneaked into the next class, a little bit tardy but unnoticed.

Once more about ten minutes into the class period the pains returned with a vengeance and I found myself again surveying my emergency escape plan. I was in the same dire situation as before—sitting near the back of the classroom and in even deeper trouble. I knew that I had already blown the first plug and that the possibility of a really serious accident now loomed more eminent than ever! This was Miss Driver’s third period English class and she was really cranky about enforcing that room paddle thing! If I didn’t make it through this crisis there would be no way that I could ever live this thing down! Don’t ask me how I ever made it to the end of that class period! It had everything to do with a shy 14 year olds shear determination to avoid getting into an unimaginably embarrassing situation, no matter what.

The final bell rang and I shot out of the room again, this time deeply grateful that I was only a door or two up the hall from that wonderful boy’s room with the open fronted toilet stall that had served me so well less than an hour earlier. I made the much shorter dash and made the same landing on the same pot. About a minute later just as I was really “cutting loose” the hall door opened and right on cue my two smoking friends walked in again. The one who swaggered like Elvis stopped bold in his tracks, his mouth fell open, and with eyes as big as saucers, he stared straight at me and gasped. “Have you been setten thur since I was here last time? Gaw wood die-eee-yum! You mus reee—uuly have thuh sheee—yuts!”

The next period was lunch hour followed by home room study hall. I dared not eat lunch that day and I made darned sure that I knew exactly where the doors to the boy’s rooms were as I walked to the remainder of my classes. By now getting through the classes was not nearly as bad, but I did have to continue making “the dash” at the end of every class. By the time the final bell rang dismissing classes at the end of the day I made my last trek to the BR before getting on the bus. I was then good for the 45 minute bus ride home plus the quarter mile walk down the side road from the bus stop to our house before going inside and giving it my final shot for the day. By then I felt thoroughly cleaned out and I couldn’t resist getting off the stool and peering into the bowl. What I saw there looked a lot like what one would have blown out his nose with an average cold. I knew that I was on the road to healing.

I never remembered what was done with the remainder of that kerosene tainted apple cider.

End of Year 2009 to Family and Friends (Jan 4, 2010)

2010-01-12T13:27:00.012-05:00

This past year has been an unusual one filled with a mixture of good and bad news, joy and pain, anticipation and disappointment. I will begin by sharing the positive things first, then the bad things. I feel badly about writing about the pain but it was a big part of my life this past year and can’t be simply passed over and ignored. Hopefully out of the difficulties will come blessings which will touch others and spare them some of what I have been through?

Despite periods of drought and one late freeze the market gardens produced bountifully except for a few of the minor crops.

We successfully grew three good crops in succession in one 690 square foot high tunnel (unheated greenhouse structure). I transplanted a variety of lettuces into the tunnel in mid March and had good quantities of top quality lettuce at the market by mid April. I had seeded carrots between the lettuce rows as they were transplanted and there was a wonderful crop of carrots coming out by mid June. The middle row of carrots on each side was harvested first and that space was immediately filled in with late started tomato plants which yielded most of their crop in October and even a little into November.

Normally the open field tomato crop is finished by late September. Considering that the area covered by the high tunnel was not large, (enough to park four average sized cars bumper to bumper) that translated into a tremendous amount of production per unit of area.

In 2009 I made good on my promise to try grafting of tomato plants and was partially successful. The grafts that took went into the high tunnel between the carrot plants in mid June and granted me bragging rights on good quality heirloom tomatoes at the market in mid October.

We were blessed this year by the presence of a top notch intern (a college friend of our son Hans) who supplied bounteously the energy that I didn’t have for working the farm. He even tackled (and finished) during the fall, the stone veneer job on the basement walls of the house, including putting down the slate on the south end patio. He also gets the credit for procuring a couple of borrowed incubators and hatching a batch of chicks which are now growing in the garage.

Both the blackberry and raspberry crops produced exceedingly well thanks to relatively dry weather during their bearing seasons and functional drip irrigation. Also the muskmelons ripened during the dry weather and, thanks to the walk in refrigerator, were mostly successfully marketed. The ones that over ripened or didn’t quite make the cut were either turned into nice orange yoked eggs or deposited into the neighbor’s mailboxes. Those who thanked me graciously for the first one, got one or two more.

We didn’t flub on winter squash this year and (believe it or not) the cauliflower--which did not look as good coming out of the greenhouse as last year’s crop--and then socked into the rows of a weak stand of edamame soybeans, still came through and produced a decent crop. We started getting rain after the cauliflower plants were in and soybean seed which had not germinated during the previous month of dry weather came up and nearly choked out much of the cauliflower. Fortunately we were able to harvest out enough of the earlier germinated beans in time to keep the cauliflower going. A little later we landed a deal with a newly opening white cloth restaurant in town to buy a regular supply of fall cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, winter squash, Chinese cabbage, Japanese turnips, mizuna, and arugula through December.

Now for the bad news!

After a full year of alternating persistent and acute suffering, beginning with dizzy spells, panic attacks, extreme fatigue, and chest pain--progressing to peripheral nerve pain--and then going on to wide spread muscle pain, weakness, and cramping accompanied by frequent headaches, I was clinically diagnosed with chronic late stage Lyme disease by a Lyme literate doctor in Rockville MD on December 29, 2009.

I now realize that the illness had most likely begun with mild symptoms several years ago and had begun to get more serious by December of last year when I first presented for medical consultation. There followed several trips to the local hospital ER and a three day hospitalization in mid February. All of the heart diagnostics offered by the hospital, several chest X-rays, a CT scan, brain MRI, two brain EEGs, and two pulmonary function tests, along with several urine and blood tests were done throughout the year. In August a hair sample test revealed evidence of heavy metal toxicity and I underwent 12 weeks of EDTA chelation therapy treatments. I saw a string of specialists including an internal medicine specialist, a heart specialist, an allergist, a pulmonary specialist, and two neurologists, all of whom could make no specific diagnosis and tried me on a variety of drugs intended for symptomatic relief. None of them worked with significant effect.

The MRI (done in March) was the only test done which revealed possibly significant abnormalities (scattered bright spots in the brain) and the report included a prompt to evaluate for possible multiple sclerosis or Lyme disease. The first neurologist denied MS and ordered a basic blood test for Lyme. When that test came back negative I believed him and trusted his declaration that Lyme could be ruled out on the basis of the test results. Seven suffering months later I read a magazine article about several persons’ experience struggling with Lyme and learned that standard blood tests for Lyme usually come back negative for persons who have had Lyme for an extended time and do not serve as a reliable diagnostic tool. It was at this point that I suggested to my primary care physician that it might be necessary to revisit the Lyme disease issue. A follow up search in the following weeks on numerous internet sites relating to Lyme disease, plus an opportunity to briefly pick the brain of one doctor outside of a consultation, supported the ideas that there are few if any accurate diagnostic lab tests for Lyme and that there is an apparent scarcity of doctors (including specialists) who are truly knowledgeable about the diagnosis and treatment of this complex disease once it has gone beyond the early stages. My primary care doctor supplied me with a reference to the doctor in Maryland who saw me last week. That doctor has ordered expanded tests not only for Lyme disease but also for several other infective bacteria known to be transmitted by the tick that transmits Lyme, and for various other specific blood chemistries affected by Lyme. In the event that these tests should fail to nail down the diagnosis, he will then fall back on the initial clinical diagnosis based on my symptoms and my response to treatment which has already been initiated. My prognosis at this point is fairly hopeful but the process of recovery will probably involve several years of treatment and will be expensive.

Neither I nor anyone else should ever have to go through the kind of suffering I have endured for the past year because there seems to be no doctors in this area who know about or are even interested in learning about the proper procedure for diagnosing and treating Lyme disease. There is mounting evidence that with deer populations (and the ticks that infect them) increasing in populated areas all over this country and the world, that Lyme disease has the potential of becoming a major pandemic. There needs to be increasing awareness of this problem both within the public and the medical sphere. I feel a strong need to work at channeling my anger at the existing local medical establishment towards connecting with others who may be affected by or who are already struggling with this illness by forming a local Lyme disease support group which can spread public awareness and perhaps work in a more positive way to attract Lyme literate doctors to our area or even to encourage doctors who are already here to learn more about this illness. I hope to be able in the coming months to get my story well enough written to have it published in the local newspaper. I purposely desire to avoid lashing out at the doctors or the system which so grossly underserved me.

I now depart from farther writing about this unsavory subject to share the news that in December Christine and I traveled as far west as central Texas to visit friends and her sister and husband near the city of Waco. On the way we toured an Appalachian folk art museum and visited a dulcimer shop near Ashville, NC. On the return we passed through southern Louisiana to enjoy a boat ride in the bayou swamps and to taste some Cajon food, then on to the Mississippi gulf coast to the areas struck by hurricane Katrina several years ago. About this time we got the exciting news that our neighbors were digging out of more than two feet of snow at home. We returned through Alabama and Georgia to visit a few more of Christine’s relatives before getting home on Christmas Eve. We had talked of going as far as Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon and relatives in that state, but gave it up when things worked out for the doctor appointment in MD on the 29th. I didn’t feel comfortable for much of the trip but I tried to make the best of it.

I cannot honestly say that I had a very merry Christmas as I spent much of that day lying around the house in deep pain. However, that is OK for I am thankful to be alive, that there are family and friends who support me, that it does not appear to be something really serious like cancer, MS, or ALS, and that there is hope for recovery. My journey through illness in 2009 has been like getting lost in the wilderness. After following several trails which lead nowhere, one finally finds what appears to be the right trail. He is still in the woods, and the trail out may be steep, rough, and long, but knowing that this one may eventually get him out, keeps him going.

We look forward to the coming year with anticipation. Our son Hans will be coming home in March from two years of living and working in Paraquay. I’m sure he has grown a lot through this experience and both of us are delighted that he has expressed some interest in helping us to run the farm, at least for awhile. I for one intend to bend over backwards to make room for him to work with us comfortably and to become actively involved in management and decision making. There will most likely be some serious talk about how to go about arranging for a smooth and successful transition of the farm management and ownership from us to him (or another person). This is both exciting and a little scary at the same time.

When one begins to peel away the layers of silliness, superficiality, triteness, overindulgence, and crass materialism surrounding the way so many celebrate Christmas, he eventually gets down to that wonderful story of a not really high class couple who traveled over a long distance into a crowded city to attend civic duty. Mary arrived in Bethlehem very fatigued and in much pain with a baby soon to be born. The prospect of even finding a place to lie down looked bleak. But God was behind that scenario and out of it all came songs of angels and a King who offers us forgiveness and the hope of eternal salvation.

May God take care of all of you in 2010.
Marlin

PS. I have just learned that there is a Lyme disease support group in our area and I plan to begin attending their monthly meetings this coming Saturday.

How Could I Have Been So Sick When the Tests showed I Was So Healthy?

2009-03-02T00:28:00.001-05:00

The story I am about to write is one that almost didn’t get written! It is a story about illness. I do not like illness! I do not like to hear about illness! I do not like to talk about illness! I do not like to read about illness! And most of all I do not like to write about illness! The only reason I am trying to write now is that I have heard from a few people that have told me that I need to write about my recent struggles with environmental illness. It will be an excruciatingly painful and difficult task. I hope the pretty picture serves to diffuse somewhat the pain of what I am about to write.

What is environmental illness? Environmental Illness (EI) is a multifaceted illness characterized by a long list of symptoms affecting multiple body organs and systems. Triggers for EI are almost too many to count including a broad diversity of mycotoxigenic molds, plant pollens, animal danders, and other airborne dusts normally associated with common allergies, and the inexhaustible list of synthetic and toxic manmade chemicals which permeate our modern world. These things are found in the walls and floors of the buildings where we live and work, in the upholstery of our furniture, in the clothes we wear, in the air we breathe, and in the food we eat and drink. Many people slather copious amounts of toxic substances on their bodies and in their hair to mask odors, and they swallow toxic drugs to ease their pain. More toxic substances are used in our germ fearful culture to sanitize our surroundings. Toxic volatile chemicals emanate from the machines we work with and the vehicles we ride in. Little research has been done to effectively evaluate the impact of frequent and multiple long term low level toxic exposures on human health.

One of the most frustrating aspects of environmental illness is its diffuse nature: multiple symptoms which can vary tremendously from person to person and from time to time, and an often nebulous sense of what the triggers are and where they are coming from. The more common symptoms themselves—fatigue, dizziness, weakness, depression, anxiety, an indefinable sense of “just feeling bad” can apply to a broad range of illnesses and, of themselves, do not lead to a definitive diagnosis. Batteries of diagnostic tests can be done on persons suffering from environmental illness which show no or little evidence of organic disease. Therefore there are few doctors, who are knowledgeable of or interested in environmental illness and, on the basis of their medical training, are inclined to write off such cases as persons who are suffering from a psychosomatic illness and are in need of psychiatric treatment. Believe me! I have 20 years of experience with environmental illness under my belt and I am not about to believe any doctor who tries to convince me that I am merely mentally ill!

According to recent estimates, up to 15% of the American population could be suffering from some forms of environmental illness. Following is a list of frequently misdiagnosed illnesses which can be linked to environmental exposures:

Allergies of all sorts
Arthritis
Anxiety
ADHD
Asthma
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Clinical Depression
Cold extremities
Diabetes
Emotional instability
Fainting and(or) dizziness
Fibromyalgia
Headache
Heart arrhythmias and (or) tachycardia
High blood pressure
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Indigestion
Frequent colds and flu
Lyme disease
Memory loss, confusion, inability to concentrate
Panic Disorder
Respiratory distress
Recurrent infections
Post Menstrual Syndrome
Reactive Hypoglycemia
Sleep disorders
Zoloft deficiency

I have tried to be fairly accurate with my listing of these illnesses which can be linked to EI but recognize that some of this information could be challenged as I recognize that I am not a medical expert. I have personally experienced many of these conditions and been misdiagnosed and medicated for some of them. My heart goes out to the thousands of persons who are, as I write this, being treated symptomatically for illnesses or conditions which could be resolved if the roots of their environmental exposures could be recognized and properly dealt with. This is my real reason for undertaking this difficult writing.

I will now summarize as briefly as I can my past and more recent journey through environmental illness.

Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing into the 1990s I suffered through several acute episodes of mold induced hypersensitivity pneumonitis and later chronic mold and chemical sensitivities which culminated in a four day hospitalization in late 1991 and my decision to liquidate a dairy farming operation.

In the years since 1991 I have repeatedly developed chronic mold and later chemical sensitivities during the winter hay feeding months resulting in respiratory discomfort and chronic fatigue symptoms. I have tied to resolve this by becoming more vigilant about wearing breathing protection while handling hay..

In the past month I experienced a three day hospitalization following several weeks of daily episodes of extreme weakness and fatigue, dizziness, respiratory distress, and sensations of shock radiating throughout my body. I suffered intensely through this time and experienced days of near total disability. The reasons for the several trips to the hospital emergency room and several days admission was to check out possible heart related problems. Most of these tests were negative or revealed minor abnormalities. We think that I may have experienced significant mold and bird dust exposure during the month of January while daily tending a small flock of chickens in an out building and some chemical exposure while repairing and refinishing a few pieces of small furniture. Though I thought I was using adequate breathing protection while feeding hay to livestock, this may need to be evaluated also. I am currently undergoing follow up diagnosis and treatment with a new doctor who seems to have a much more open attitude towards my illness and a desire to get to the root of the problem.

I am deeply grateful that medical tests done so far reveal that there is as yet no evidence of serious damage to my heart and lungs and that there is good hope that the neurological symptoms, as intensively distressful and frightening as they were, will resolve as my body heals. I am also grateful for the quality care given to me during the hospital stay and the financial assistance given by the hospital to defray some of my expenses. Things could be a lot worse.

Five Reasons Why I Garden

2009-02-06T22:34:00.002-05:00

Every once in a while I come across something someone has written that expresses my passions and philosophy more eloquently than I can ever hope to articulate here. Therefore I feel that it must be shared on this blog. The author of this essay was one of my farm subscribers last year who worked for part of her CSA share. One of the joys of operating a CSA farm is the realization of the truth that my farm and my business belongs, not just to us, but also to those who become actively involved, either as work share participants on the farm, or as volunteer help with the annual CSA organization process. Something similar can also be said on behalf of those who support our farm in other ways with their patronage. Without their contribution, the successful operation of this farm would probably be impossible. When I include the thoughts and words of others as a part of my blog, the blog becomes not just mine but theirs also. I like to think that when I include their contributions, the blog becomes that much the better than it would be if I was trying to do it all myself.

Five Reasons Why I Garden
by Anna Maria Johnson

I am not a gardening expert. I am, in all honesty, a fairly lousy gardener! But I do work at it, and if my actual garden fails to measure up to the orderly, weed free, and well mulched cornucopia of abundance imagined in my head, there is probably a good lesson in there somewhere.

Here are five good reasons to garden.

Peaceful Protest:
Gardening is a peaceful protest—my response to all that is ugly in the world; all that is cheap, easy, and gas guzzling; all that comes wrapped up in plastic after being shipped 3000 miles across the planet; all that causes cancer, social injustice, and oppression.

I am powerless to end these things myself on a global scale, but when I set my shovel down on my small plot of earth, I declare, “In God’s name, not here! Not in my back yard!”

Hope:
Gardening keeps me hoping. It often delivers on its promises, such as the summer when our Tarahumara sunflowers reached mythological heights. In autumn we feasted on squashes and late harvested vegetables, and during the winter my fifteen quarts of salsa nourished us and warmed our tongues.

Groundedness:
Gardening is, by its nature, grounding. There is nothing like physical work with our hands to bring comfort in times of disappointment. Anger can be a force for good, giving my measly 103 pound frame an extra punch as I throw my weight upon my shovel and churn up the dirt.

Digging is hard. After a couple of hours, dirty, sweat-soaked, and stinky, I feel cleansed. I ache with a good kind of ache.

Wonder:
To grow a garden is to marvel at creation. I drop tiny brown wrinkled things into the ground and every time I feel surprised when something eventually sprouts. I get so excited that I call my children and point to the tiny dicot leaves.

“Look, our food is growing!” I say.

We stoop down to admire its tiny new life, its persistence, its goodness.

Love:
Finally and most importantly, I garden for love. I love digging and the smell of rich earth. I get a kick out of compost—nothing wasted, just re-allocated, renewed, and regenerated. No death is so great that it cannot serve yet another life, another body. I am forgiven for letting those vegetables sit in the fridge until they rotted. Worms, soil, and detritus work together to make yummy vegetables and beautiful flowers. Gardening makes me strong, healthy, and whole. It is a relationship of reciprocity—I feed the garden and the garden feeds me. The food that the garden gives to me is physical, tangible, and tasty but it is also spiritual.

Gardening helps me to love God, who becomes less of an abstract theological construct and more the Surprising, Creating, and Sustaining force that I really do believe in.

The fruits of the garden nourish those I love—family, house guests, neighbors, and friends. Eating home-grown produce together is love in tangible form.

Anna Maria Johnson lives and gardens with her family near Broadway, Virginia.

What Does It Feel Like to be an Old Man?

2009-01-11T16:47:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago I quietly joined the ranks of that segment of our population identified by a variety of monikers—senior citizens, the elderly, old folks, geezers, etc by passing my 60th birthday. I remember when my dad had his 60th birthday roughly 30 years ago. One evening as I was milking the cows I answered the phone to find one of my aunts on the other end. Expecting my dad to answer, she yelled brusquely into the phone, “How does it feel to be an old man?” My dad had a gravelly voice which I could have easily faked and I have always regretted not playing along with her a little and having some fun.

Sometimes I like to reflect back on my life journey. When I entered first grade at the age of six I began to think of myself as a “big boy”. Seven years later I became a “teenager” and that coincided closely with entering high school. I missed the next common rite of passage of most teenagers—“getting their beer license”, as I didn’t start drinking at the age of 18. I didn’t have my first date until past 20 and somehow never thought of that as a significant marker of transition in my life as some of my peers were already married and having children. I did become aware, however, that somewhere in the distant future I would hit the age of 30 and become a hopelessly old fogy. I married at 28 and of course I saw that as a very major life changing event. The same also goes for my becoming a father two years later. I had just passed 30 then and no, I did not yet feel like an old fogy. The next ten years flew by ever so quickly and there I was looking at the big “four oh”, the boundary line in life (or perhaps the top of the mountain) where one crosses over from youth into middle age! From then on, the sages say, “It is all downhill!”

It did indeed feel like my life started going downhill as I entered the 40s seeking physical therapy treatment for chronic back problems and, a few years later, I began a gradual descent into a vaguely defined environmental illness which expressed itself in a manner similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Fortunately, as one grows older and his physical capacities begin to wane, another force, the accumulation of hard won wisdom, is kicking in and that helps to level out the descent. By that time I had learned that I was strong enough to injure myself, that it really is a good idea to eat healthy foods and to protect oneself while working in dirty or toxic surroundings, and that it makes a lot of sense to work smarter instead of harder. By applying some of these principles, I eventually found the downward slope becoming more gradual and less slippery and at times even ascending a little once again.

It has now been 20 years since I crossed life’s summit and mathematically speaking that works out to half of the time it took for me to get to the top. That means I should be half way down by now! Something inside me yearns for the hope that I will get to stay high up on the mountain to work and to enjoy the view for a good while longer and that the best way down will be to drop off a cliff when the time is right.

So back to the question that was popped to my dad 30 years ago and was mine to field at a time when I perceived myself very much a youth, “What does it feel like to be an old man?” Well, I could begin by mentioning the various kinds of “itis” that seem to constantly pop up somewhere in my body all of the time or to hang around like mosquitoes or deer flies on a muggy day. It’s kind of like farting. Some people seem to get a certain pleasure out of yammering about their aches and pains just like they do--well you get the idea! But it is best not to do it any more than you have to because most people would rather not hear it anyway.

My Style of Christmas Shopping

2008-12-27T21:33:00.007-05:00

I have always hated going shopping with my wife. She always has her list of things she must buy and considers it an inefficient waste of time doing anything but focusing on what must get done and what must get bought. If I ever get stuck shopping with her I usually tag along, bored and frustrated to tears.

I love to do my kind of shopping, especially at Christmastime—browsing around in my favorite stores, savoring the smells and sounds, and enjoying looking at the kinds of things I would never buy. The secret is to be able to sneak away and do this without my wife being fully aware of it. It never works if she is along.

Before leaving for the holiday farmers’ market the morning of December 13^th Christine had told me that I would need to be home by 4:00 because we were invited to a wedding reception of one of our friends at 4:30. I figured that I would probably be out of the market easily before noon, leaving me a nice chunk of time to do my Christmas shopping. One of my favorite haunts is a multi store market a few miles south of Harrisonburg. That’s where I headed as soon as farmers’ market was over.

The first thing to do after walking into the Dayton Farmers’ Market (not even close to being a farmers’ market but really a collection of specialty stores) is to walk by the Coffee Klatsch and smell the $3--$4/ cup gourmet coffee. I always think to myself that if they were smart they would figure out a way to charge everyone who walks through there 50 cents just to get a sniff and I for one would probably not mind paying it. But fortunately it is still free and I surely would not want to pass that one up.

Next to the Coffee Klatsch is Country Village Bake Shop where one can draw in the heavenly aroma of fresh baked bread and cookies still warm from the oven and gaze at the pretty young Mennonite ladies flitting about doing their jobs.

I walk on a little more and wander into an art store where among the first things I see are prints by several unknown to me artists and of one who I know fairly well, priced in the range of $60--$200. I would consider buying one of those if I had a good place to hang it and it had some special meaning to me. Then I see a few more priced $500--$600 and “Oh my gosh! There is an original P Buckley Moss for $7,500!” I keep looking and there are several more around the same amount and a really big one for over $11,000! Well thank goodness that I can appreciate some kinds of art and can have the privilege of perusing some occasionally without getting myself in hock in the process.

Next stop is “Zolas”, a specialty shop where lots of really nice dried flower arrangements, wreathes, and dust collectors of every sort imaginable can be had by those who are abundantly blessed by lots of the green stuff. Another thing I like about “Zolas” is the nice smelling potpourris along with the tasteful displays of colors and textures throughout the shop. Of course another good reason I drift by her nook is the fact that she is my sister and the least I can do is to drop in and say “Hi”.

I turn a corner and there is “10,000 Villages”, a fairly big store originally started by Mennonite Central Committee to establish markets in North America for artisanal products made in 3^rd world countries where MCC workers are located. There is lots of nice stuff here. I’ve never bought much at 10,000 Villages but I have worked as an MCCer in a 3^rd world country and I can readily appreciate what is being done to boost the income of highly deserving skilled artists living in parts of the world where their economic opportunities are limited. If I could justify spending serious money on artistic objects it would be here.

I pause awhile along a wall full of highly ornate wall clocks long enough to check the time and to hear several them play a preprogrammed melody on the hour. There is a different tune for every hour of the 12 hour cycle. They are pretty, but $700-$1000 per clock? The $5.00 Wal Mart wall clock at home will get the job done.

Then I drift into the store that draws me to this place every year—Crafty Hands Toy Store! This is a toy store of real character, featuring toys that challenge you to think creatively and if you do that you might even learn something. I have quickly walked through many a toy store but this one I always linger in. I know Ric Bowman the owner personally and he knows me. I have heard him admit with a twinkle in his eye that the reason he has a toy store is that he has never managed to grow up.

Along an aisle near the front of this store is a row of hanging wind chimes and I always make sure that I bump several of them with my elbow as I walk by. My favorites are the “Corinthian Bells” which have long and wide chimes which keep on ringing with the richest deep tones for at least a minute after being stroked. If I didn't have one already, I might buy one but the one I like most is $350 and I still have the $60 one I bought here about five years ago. That one I dug in pieces out of the fire rubble a year and a half ago and paid $20 to replace some of the lost parts and a few parts I didn’t buy, I made myself. It hangs on my porch today with some scars and blemishes but it sounds pretty good and I am satisfied with it.

Strategically placed right inside the entrance is a large table piled with a bunch of scientific puzzles, stacking blocks, and various other interesting gizmos with magnetism and other mysterious forces in them, lying around calling out for people to play with them. It is no small surprise that many of the persons playing are pretty big kids! I mess with the Kapla blocks for a few minutes until I knock down part of the tower that someone had dutifully stacked up a few minutes before. Then I pick up something called a Whacko. It is a ball of rare earth magnetized tetrahedrons that can be pulled apart and reconfigured in all sorts of different ways. It’s about as magnetizing of my attention as a Rubic’s Cube and maybe more so. I think, “Should I buy it?” Then I see the price $30. “Nah, I have enough to do with my time. But maybe if I drop a few hints in the right places someone might get me one for Christmas.” Then out of the corner of my eye I see Ric blowing a marshmallow at someone with a shooter made of pieces of ½ inch PVC pipe and elbows stuck together. “We used to have one of those things! For $6.00 I”ve got to have it! The grand kids will love it!”

On the way out of Crafty Hands I noticed lying on a small pedestal a fairly thick book entitled “Exhaustive Encyclopedia of Fun Things to Do for Those Who Never Really Wanted to Grow Up” for $29.95. I must have killed more than a half hour flipping through that thing! Definitely not the kind of book I would buy but I sure would love to borrow it for a few days.

Then I looked up and the thought hit me. “I’d better be checking the time!” I rushed to other end of the market where the fancy wall clocks were displayed. It was five minutes after four! “I’ve got to get my butt home!” I had a 20 mile drive ahead of me and Christine had said that I should get home around 4:00! I could see her now standing in the doorway with that dark glowering look on her face, ready to launch into that “Your irresponsibility really breaks my heart!” speech. I must have hit 70 mph at a few straight stretches on that section of country road between Dale Enterprise and Singers Glen.

As soon as I spun into the driveway I quickly sneaked down to check the feed and water for the baby chicks instead of going directly into the house so that when Christine would tear into me I could at least say that I had done something since getting home.

I walked into the front door and Christine looked up with a cheery smile on her face. “Good to see you home! You just made it in time.” I peered up at the clock, 4:35! “Weren’t we supposed to be there around 4:30?” I queried. “Well yes, but it is a drop in occasion so the time we get there is not that critical. I was a little behind myself in getting some things done before we go so everything will be OK.”

When Life Gives You Frozen Cauliflower Make Alegria

2008-12-27T21:22:00.001-05:00

We had a hard time this fall growing cauliflower.

It’s not unusual for a disappointing crop to have its beginning when something goes wrong with getting the crop started. Oftentimes there is something wrong with the seed like low germination if the seed is too old or perhaps disease organisms in the seed that causes it to germinate poorly or to become sickly after it comes up. If the seed does come up properly there are many ways to screw up if it was started in a greenhouse like many of my crops are started. Sometimes I have inadvertently gotten something out of whack with the way I had mixed or selected my seed starting medium resulting in disease or chemical imbalance in the medium. Assuming that I have gotten everything right up to that point, the next common way to fail is to lose control of temperature, light, or air flow fluctuations inside the greenhouse. All it takes is one night of letting the greenhouse get too cold in the early spring or one day of letting it get too hot or dry in early summer to lose or to seriously set back the growth of a bunch of tender but otherwise healthy seedlings. If the temperatures are kept in the proper range it then becomes important to know when to set up fans inside the greenhouse to simulate the action of wind or to move the plants outside for a few hours per day in order to expose them to natural wind and temperature fluctuations, a system otherwise known as cold hardening, usually done in the last week or two prior to transplanting into the field. Most greenhouse started plants need to transplanted by six weeks after their germination in the greenhouse. If field preparation or other work scheduling delays result in greenhouse plants sitting in the greenhouse much beyond six weeks, the plants can become root bound and will not start off well once they are transplanted.

Compared to last year’s more successful cauliflower crop which had gotten off to a much slower start in the greenhouse and even more pestilence after transplanting than this year’s crop, I should have seen cauliflower doing at least as good as last year. I had done a better job with the plants keeping them growing on in the greenhouse and had even set up curtains of protective cover and window screen to keep out the yellow and white butterflies that often lay eggs of the imported cabbage worm on the plants while still in the greenhouse. I transplanted mostly healthy well started cauliflower on schedule in late July and early August. Except for a marauding groundhog that repeatedly raided one end of the patch, most of the plants took off vigorously following transplanting. I had to dust them a few times to keep off the cabbage worms but the harlequin bugs were not nearly as bad as they were last year and everything pointed to a good harvest beginning in early October.

October came in and steadily went by with no evidence of heading up in my otherwise healthy looking cauliflower crop. We finished up the CSA season on October 20 and still there were few cauliflower heads big enough to harvest. I waited and waited and waited. November came in and finally I was able to cut a few small to medium sized heads for sale at the farmers market. Then it started getting cold—unusually cold for this part of the country in November! I watched helplessly as we got several nights in a row with temperatures in the low 20s and teens. I tried pulling frost protecting row cover over some of the rows but this effort proved futile as we were getting a lot of wind and without a good way of holding down the cover over two foot tall rows, much of it ended up in the road and on the neighbor’s fence. Broccoli can handle freezing temperatures down to 20 degrees without serious damage but cauliflower is in real trouble if the temperature gets below 30. The killing frosts that began around Oct 20th had pretty much stopped the cauliflower from growing any further and now the November freezes had turned the whole unfinished crop ashen white and weeping on the ground.

I pretty much gave up hope with the beleaguered cauliflower and began threshing out the heads of grain amaranth I had cut and spread out to dry in the greenhouse in mid October. By now the colorful heads had dried nicely and a few hours of rubbing them over wooden frames covered with hardware screen separated the grain and chafe from the coarse stems. The next step was to rub the grain and chafe over window screen. The grains and fine chafe goes through the screen and the coarse chafe and any remaining stem pieces come off the top. Following this I winnowed the mixture by pouring it slowly in front of a box fan set at medium speed. A large stainless steel dish pan set directly beneath where I was pouring caught most of the grain as the wind from the fan blew the chafe onto a tarp spread out on the ground behind the pan. I had to repeat this process several more times with the caught grain before I got most of the chafe out of it. Two 150 foot rows of amaranth yielded about three quarts of straw colored grain. I scooped up the chafe and put it in feed sacks. This chafe is wonderful for sopping up oil spills in the shop and spreading on ice in the winter.

I finished up going to the farmers’ market on the last Saturday before Thanksgiving. This year would be different though. The farmers’ market board decided to hold holiday markets on the three Saturdays before Christmas. I decided that it would be cool to make some “alegria” to sell at one or two of those holiday markets. Well it turned out to be way too cool to go to the first holiday market on Dec 6th. In fact it was ungodly cold! Not only that, Christine needed me to finish trimming out the basement rooms of the house in preparation for a party she had been planning to host on Dec 7th for our local Kurdish community. I didn’t get a chance to make my alegria that week. While a few intrepid souls stood around shivering on Saturday morning at the market I finished installing baseboard and closet shelves, something I didn’t mind one bit.

Okay, by now you probably want to know, “What in heck is alegria?” Would it help if I told you that alegria is the Spanish word for happiness and joy? It is also the name that Mexicans use for a candy made by mixing popped amaranth grain with a little molasses or honey and pressing it into cakes or bars. It looks a lot like those seed cakes sold at pet stores for feeding to parakeets. Alegria is commonly sold by street vendors and in open air markets throughout Mexico and has been made since the days of Aztec civilization. It is simple to make and it is a tasty and nutritious snack. So why not make some alegria and share some happiness and joy at the Harrisonburg holiday farmer’s market?

It’s a lot of fun to make alegria. You start by finding a clean and dry skillet. It is very important that it is clean and dry. Use a large stove burner and set it at high heat. Use no water or oil in the skillet. You will need a cover over the skillet, preferably made of glass, so you can see the popping amaranth grain. Have a clean dry brush near by and a large (no plastic) pan to dump the popped amaranth into. Once the skillet is hot, scoop about a ¼ cup of grain into the skillet, cover, and immediately begin sliding the skillet back and forth on the burner as the grain begins to pop. The objective is to keep the grain rolling as it pops in order to avoid sticking and burning. The popping will continue for about 30 seconds to a minute, and begin to slow down. Dump the skillet immediately once the popping has slowed and brush out any grains still sticking to the bottom or sides of the skillet and return to the burner to repeat the process. This process moves rapidly once you start and requires some practice. You will most likely burn a few skillets full until you get the hang of it, knowing when to dump and how to keep it moving smoothly.

When the dish pan is about ½--3/4 full add about 1—2 cups of honey and stir until the mixture is well mixed and sticky enough to press into balls or squares. Press firmly into a lightly buttered pan and chill. One can form the candy and lay it out like cookies on a sheet or cut it into desired shapes after it has chilled.

Now back to my story. I made my alegria on Thursday night Dec 11th with plans to go to the market on the 13th. On Friday afternoon I got to thinking, “I should have something else to sell besides eggs and alegria tomorrow.” So I go tramping down to the cauliflower patch just to see if there might be something there worth salvaging. I immediately saw some exposed heads that obviously had frozen and thawed several times and were a little soft on the surface but, I figured, “We could probably still get some good out of them,” so I picked them, about a five gallon bucket full. Then I got to pulling the wrappers off some more small heads and lo and behold there were some pretty little baseball sized heads, still firm and with little freeze damage, apparently sufficiently protected by those wrapper leaves. They were not full sized but they would sell! I ended up with about three buckets full.

The more damaged heads were taken up to the kitchen and I realized within a few hours that I had made a mistake. The whole house stunk! After a few more days of eating frozen and cooked cauliflower in about everything my wife could think of putting it in, I would realize that I had really made a mistake! By then other things besides the house were stinking.

I went to the holiday market the next day and I was pleasantly surprised. It was a little cold but I had dressed for it and the wind was not blowing, so it was not all that bad. There were a good number of vendors there and enough shoppers to make it all worth while. People loved the alegria and I could have sold more. Several even thought my slightly frozen cauliflower was beautiful. And I sold most of it!

An Eight Cow Wife

2008-12-22T11:16:00.002-05:00

My wife Christine and I found this story years ago not long after we were married. We liked it so much that we want to share it now.

The value you put on a person greatly affects the way they value themselves. The story of Johnny Lingo shows how you can bring out the best or the worst in a person.

An Eight Cow Wife

My trip to the Kiniwata Island in the Pacific was a memorable one. Although the island was beautiful and I had an enjoyable time, the thing I remember most about my trip was the fact that "Johnny Lingo gave eight cows for his wife."
Johnny Lingo is known throughout the islands for his skills, intelligence, and savvy. If you hire him as a guide, he will show you the best fishing spots and the best places to get pearls. Johnny is also one of the sharpest traders in the islands. He can get you the best possible deals. The people of Kiniwata all speak highly of Johnny Lingo. Yet, when they speak of him, they always smile just a little mockingly.
A couple days after my arrival to Kiniwata, I went to the manager of the guesthouse to see who he thought would be a good fishing guide. "Johnny Lingo," said the manager. "He's the best around. When you go shopping, let him do the bargaining. Johnny knows how to make a deal."
"Johnny Lingo!" hooted a nearby boy. The boy rocked with laughter as he said, "Yea, Johnny can make a deal alright!"
"What's going on?" I demanded.
"Everybody tells me to get in touch with Johnny Lingo and then they start laughing. Please, let me in on the joke."
"Oh, the people like to laugh," the manager said, shrugging. "Johnny's the brightest and strongest young man in the islands. He's also the richest for his age."
"But …" I protested. "… If he's all you say he is, why does everyone laugh at him behind his back?"
"Well, there is one thing. Five months ago, at fall festival, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He gave her father eight cows!"
I knew enough about island customs to be impressed. A dowry of two or three cows would net a fair wife and four or five cows would net a very nice wife.
"Wow!" I said. "Eight cows! She must have beauty that takes your breath away."
"She's not ugly …" he conceded with a little smile, "… but calling her 'plain' would definitely be a compliment. Sam Karoo, her father, was afraid he wouldn't be able to marry her off. Instead of being stuck with her, he got eight cows for her. Isn't that extraordinary? This price has never been paid before."
"Yet, you called Johnny's wife 'plain?' "
"I said it would be a compliment to call her plain. She was skinny and she walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked. She was scared of her own shadow."
"Well," I said, "I guess there's just no accounting for love."
"True enough." agreed the man. "That's why the villagers grin when they talk about Johnny. They get special satisfaction from the fact the sharpest trader in the islands was bested by dull old Sam Karoo."
"But how?"
"No one knows and everyone wonders. All of the cousins urged Sam to ask for three cows and hold out for two until he was sure Johnny would pay only one. To their surprise Johnny came to Sam Karoo and said, 'Father of Sarita, I offer eight cows for your daughter.' "
"Eight cows?" I murmured. "I'd like to meet this Johnny Lingo."
I wanted fish and pearls, so the next afternoon I went to the island of Nurabandi. As I asked directions to Johnny's house, I noticed Johnny's neighbors were also amused at the mention of his name. When I met the slim, serious young man I could see immediately why everyone respected his skills. However, this only reinforced my confusion over him.
As we sat in his house, he asked me, "You come here from Kiniwata?"
"Yes."
"They speak of me on that island?"
"Yes. They say you can provide me anything I need. They say you're intelligent, resourceful, and the sharpest trader in the islands."
He smiled gently. "My wife is from Kiniwata."
"Yes, I know."
"They speak of her?"
"A little."
"What do they say?"
"Why, just …." The question caught me off balance. "They told me you were married at festival time."
"Nothing more?" The curve of his eyebrows told me he knew there had to be more.
"They also say the marriage settlement was eight cows." I paused. "They wonder why."
"They ask that?" His eyes lighted with pleasure. "Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the eight cows?"
I nodded.
"And in Nurabandi, everyone knows it too?" His chest expanded with satisfaction. "Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid eight cows for Sarita."
So that's the answer, I thought: Vanity.
Just then Sarita entered the room to place flowers on the table. She stood still for a moment to smile at her husband and then left. She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen! The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, and the sparkle in her eyes all spelled self-confidence and pride. Not an arrogant and haughty pride, but a confident inner beauty that radiated in her every movement.
I turned back to Johnny and found him looking at me.
"You admire her?" he murmured.
"She … she's gorgeous!" I said. "Obviously, this is not the one everyone is talking about. She can't be the Sarita you married on Kiniwata."
"There's only one Sarita. Perhaps, she doesn't look the way you expected."
"She doesn't! I heard she was homely. They all make fun of you because you let yourself be cheated by Sam Karoo."
"You think eight cows were too many?" A smile slid over his lips.
"No, but how can she be so different from the way they described her?"
Johnny said, "Think about how it must make a girl feel to know her husband paid a very low dowry for her. It must be insulting to her to know he places such little value on her. Think about how she must feel when the other women boast about the high prices their husbands paid for them. It must be embarrassing for her. I would not let this happen to my Sarita."
"So, you paid eight cows just to make your wife happy?"
"Well, of course I wanted Sarita to be happy, but there's more to it than that. You say she is different from what you expected. This is true. Many things can change a woman. There are things that happen on the inside and things that happen on the outside. However, the thing that matters most is how she views herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. As a result, that's the value she projected. Now, she knows she is worth more than any other woman in the islands. It shows, doesn't it?"
"Then you wanted …"
"I knew that I loved Sarita...”That I wanted to marry her.”
"But …" I was close to understanding.
"But," he finished softly, "I have always wanted an eight-cow wife. And if I couldn’t find an eight cow wife, then I would make myself one!"
The above story was based partially on an article found in Reader's Digest (February, 1988). The original work was copyrighted by Patricia McGerr in 1965.

An important note from Marlin:
Out on the hillside at my farm are approximately 20 head of beef cattle. I would be glad to give up those cattle and maybe even the flock of 50 laying chickens too if I had to in order to keep my wife Christine.

Happy Reunion with a Special Former Teacher

2008-11-17T01:12:00.002-05:00

Several weeks ago Christine and I had the good fortune to visit one of my special elementary school teachers for a special occasion.

I had Miss Mabel Horst as my 3rd and 4th grade teacher in the 1957-58 and the 1958-59 school years at the old Singers Glen elementary school. I was nine years old the first year I had her and I remember sometime in one of those years she announced to the class her 40th birthday. She taught one more year at Singers Glen after the last year I had her, and then taught another 20 or so years in private Mennonite schools in the Hagerstown, Maryland area where she had grown up. I had not had any contact with her for most of the 50 years since I had had her as a teacher. It was a joy to find her at a relatively healthy 90 years of age residing at a Mennonite owned retirement home in Maugansville. MD.

Miss Horst was a highly dedicated teacher who always began the school day with a Bible story and prayer back in the days when those activities were still permitted in public schools. She taught both third and forth grades in the same room for both of the years I had her. At the beginning of the school year the Bible story book she read from began with the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis and by the end of the school year it had covered most of the Bible, ending with the stories of Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys.

During my growing up years my parents took us to a conservative Mennonite church but there was ongoing tension within that church over conservative-liberal issues relating to worldly dress and entertainment, resulting in our family not being well accepted in the church. I do not remember going to Sunday school regularly during those years or having many positive memories of my parents relating to the church leaders. This span of my life paralleled the years of the civil rights movement, hippies, student unrest, and the Vietnam War. I passed through my teenage years uncertain if I would remain connected with the Mennonite church and at times unsure if I really believed in God. Looking back I acknowledge that even though my church experience wasn’t what it should have been, it still was better than no church.

Miss Horst was a very conservative Mennonite lady but she modeled genuine Christian character and made lots of effort to instill in her pupils Christian values that went beyond mere adherence to conservative custom and tradition. Once during my years in her classroom she had her students competing for a prize for memorizing the Christmas story in Luke chapter two and I won the prize, a book entitled Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by Charles Foster. It was the Bible stories remembered during the two years I sat in her classroom and the brief descriptions of the roughly 400 illustrations in that book that laid the foundation for much of what I know today about the Bible.

The book I had won was just a simple Bible story book written to a level of mid
elementary school understanding, but it was a reprint of an edition first copy written in 1886 and as I grew older I began to realize that the artwork of those 400 woodcuts and lithographs was superb and although I didn’t look at them often, I began to cherish them when I did.

This precious book was among the wall full in the library where the house fire of last year burned the hottest and it was among the first that I thought about and wondered if I would find any traces of as I dug through the rubble a few days later. There were many books in that collection that I valued a lot and would miss, but this one was special because Miss Horst had written a short note and her signature on a flyleaf inside the front cover. Finally I found a fragment of the front cover with part of the title and the name of the author still visible.

I knew that this book might be difficult to replace due to its being an antique edition long out of print but even if a copy could be procured it still wouldn’t really replace the memories I have associated with it. But I was fortunate to be living in an age of Internet access and I couldn’t resist the urge to pull up Google and type in the title of this lost treasure to see what might come up.

Lo and behold there were indeed websites that listed book sellers throughout this country where copies of this book or something close to it could be ordered online. I finally settled on one that looked like what I was looking for and advertised to be in good condition. The only difference I could see from the thumbnail picture on the Web page was that the covers would be brown instead of blue like the copy I had lost. When the book arrived in the mail I opened it and “Yes indeed, everything between the covers was pretty much exactly as I had remembered it!”

So now we go back to our recent visit with Miss Horst. The picture says it all. She autographed once again the replacement copy of a simple book that represents the influence that she most likely left on my young life that may have helped to keep me from rejecting the Christian faith. And now I can look forward to sharing this regained treasure and the story behind it with my grandchildren.

End of Season Finale-a Year Later

2008-11-17T00:56:00.001-05:00

Here we are at the middle of November, a little more than a year later than the last time I posted on this theme. For the benefits of those who won’t spend much time digging around in the archives of old blog posts, I will remind them that I had been gloating a little on the success of last year’s fall planting of cauliflower. I had posted spectacular pictures of about three colors of the various varieties I had grown. Sometime during the ensuing months something screwed up the server that allows the pictures to load. I’m either too dumb or too impatient to figure out how to edit pictures on old posts in order to fix the problem. Since I am fairly confident about posting pictures to new posts, I am just going to do them again on this post. I’m telling you though, that this year’s cauliflower crop has not done nearly as well so no more bragging this time around.

The first killing frost occurred about a month ago. There were several of these in succession, the last of which caused the last planting of tomatoes to bite the hay mulched compost enriched earth on a Sunday night. Those tomatoes were in a plastic covered high tunnel and I was assuming that they were safely protected so I had spent that Sunday afternoon reading and sleeping instead of going out and placing additional row cover over the plants—an activity which might have saved them for another several weeks of production. Of course I was disappointed and ashamed of myself when I discovered the frost blackened plants the next day but I didn’t need to complain long for that planting had produced abundantly throughout September and halfway through October—a time of year when we normally don’t expect much from our tomato patches.

The highlight of this year’s fall garden has been the abundance of greens, two kinds of kale, early mizuna (Japanese mustard), white Hakurei (Japanese) turnips, Napa Chinese cabbage and, ah yes, the Asian pears! Some of those puppies sold for over $2.00 a pear! I admit that it was kind of fun to set a bushel of those things from the back of the truck onto the market table and within a few hours to turn them into about $160! Oops, am I bragging again?

Several weeks ago they staged the grand opening celebration for the new Harrisonburg Farmers” Market pavilion, complete with speeches by the city mayor, blue grass music, cake and apple cider, face painting, clowns—the whole enchilada. There was a scarecrow contest among the vendors with each vendor pitching in a few dollars or some of their product to a kitty for the winner to take all. My live in hired man and market helper decided to paint himself up and pose like a frozen statue, changing position occasionally, to freak people out. It was a real hoot to stand back and watch people walk past him. Of course he won the contest, hands down.

This past Saturday I went to the market possibly for the last time of the season. I still had a lot of Chinese cabbage which I have been holding in the walk in cooler, plenty of fall greens, and as much of the belated cauliflower crop as I could harvest before serious cold weather sets in this coming week. I actually was able to make a pretty impressive pile of bright orange “Cheddar”, dark purple “Graffiti”, and snow white “Freemont” cauliflower on one of my tables. I sold most of it and went home with less than a dollar short of $400 in total sales for the day—not bad for mid November. If I could have gotten another dollar for each time I answered the question “Does it taste like cheddar cheese?” I probably would have cleared $1000 for the day! I really had to suppress the urge to stick my tongue way up into my cheek and respond “Oh yeah, just slice it onto a hamburger along with a slice of onion, add the mustard, tomato, and dill pickle, and away you go!” When the seed supplier that now sells “Cheddar” cauliflower first offered this variety about five or six years ago, they called it “Citrus”! Yep, you guessed it. “Does it really taste like citrus fruit?” “Why of course! Just add the bananas and coconut and a little whipped cream or ice cream and you are all set.”

Aren’t people a lot of fun?

Farming On MY Prayer Bones

2008-11-05T22:57:00.004-05:00

I originally wrote a version of this article in 1994, a few years after I had started Glen Eco Farm. I hadn't attempted writing anything since college days way back in the early 1970s. I had spent several days diligently working on the manuscript with thoughts of sending it to one of our church publishers or maybe to some small "country living" magazine. Finally I proudly handed it to my oldest daughter (then in her senior year of high school) for her evaluation. Her response: "You have got to rewrite this! Its full of word junk!" She then proceeded to go through the document marking out what seemed like 3/4 of the content and writing in suggested changes. "For gosh sake" I protested. "Its no longer my writing!"

I printed off one hard copy and then laid the thing aside for awhile with the honest intentions of working on it again another day. Before long a busy spring season took my mind away from writing and the saved file containing the article eventually went the way of virtually all used computers after one has had them for several years.

Ten years and several computers later I got inspired once again to resurrect "Farming On My Prayer Bones". Copies of my original writing, both electronic and hard copy, were no where to be found. I decided to rewrite the whole thing as much as I could remember and several weeks after completing a draft that I felt fairly satisfied with, I found myself at a sustainable agriculture conference in Pennsylvania, shaking hands with the publisher of a small circulation country magazine from the heart of Amish country in central Ohio. "Sure, send me a copy! I would like to see it" he replied. "Farming On My Prayer Bones" became my first and thus far only attempt at writing for publication. It appeared in the summer edition of "Farming Magazine-Land,Community,People" in 2006.

Farming On My Prayer Bones

About ten years ago, I had just finished spending a long morning down on my knees weeding a large strawberry patch and putting in transplants. I had come in for lunch and one of my brothers in law had dropped in for a short visit. Noting my morning activity, he told a story he had recently read about some naughty boys who had tried to get revenge on a neighbor by seeding his strawberry patch with hay chaff from his barn floor. The boys had gotten caught and had to pay for their mischief by spending much of their summer vacation down on their “prayer bones” undoing the results of their misdeeds. My own knees were feeling a little sore at the time, and the threadbare condition of my blue jeans bore witness to the reality that I too had been “farming on my prayer bones”. The metaphor appealed to me and gave me the idea for writing this story.

My story begins on the family dairy farm that I took over in 1975 and operated for sixteen years until a chronic and debilitating illness forced me to sell out in early 1992and begin anew with a different style of farming built on principles of healing and sustainability. The five year struggle with this illness literally brought me to my knees both in an attitude of humility concerning my abilities and in practice as I performed much of the work on my new farm, transplanting, weeding, and picking vegetables on my prayer bones. The story continues with the lessons and observations I’ve made while transitioning from the style of farming which wrecked my health to the style of farming which is restoring it.

I took over the management and work of the family dairy farm immediately following my return from an overseas agricultural mission assignment with the Mennonite Central Committee in the mid 1970’s. I was working with my dad in a partnership which began with me providing most of the labor input and he carrying all of the real estate and most of the capital investment. It was a typical conventional farming operation, following the pattern of most dairy farms in Virginia. I grew silage corn and alfalfa hay in the summers and immediately following the corn harvest; I would plant rye for a fall and winter cover crop which was often harvested for silage the following spring. The fields would then be sprayed with a mixture of herbicides, insecticides, and chemical fertilizers in preparation for planting the corn crop into the dead rye stubble without further tillage. Most of the crops were put into silos for feeding throughout the year along with a little hay and pasture. Our 50 Holstein cows spent most of their time in a free stall loafing barn and were milked in a modern milking parlor.

Like most dairymen, I constantly struggled to control numerous herd health problems endemic to modern dairying: mastitis, milk fever, ketosis, uterus infections, cystic ovaries and various foot and leg problems. These herd health problems resulted in my need to cull cows nearly as fast as I could raise replacements. Though I felt that these problems were environmentally related to the way we handled cows, I accepted them as a normal “cost of doing business” in modern dairying.

As my dad got older and less able to work, I systematically bought into the operating capital and took on increasingly more of the most difficult, dangerous, and dirty work. On two occasions in the 1980’s I became acutely ill following massive exposures to airborne molds while working inside silos. The first time I toughed it out. The second time I went to the doctor three days later when I realized that I wasn’t getting better. I now believe that these illnesses set the stage for the multifaceted illness that would put me out of the dairy business a few years later.

In the late 1980’s, came a major and much needed remodeling of the milking parlor, expansion of the cow loafing barn, and installation of a computerized supplemental feeding system. Despite the upgrading of the facilities, I still found myself disappointed with improvement in the work load or the herd health problems and knew that the production model I was following was still seriously flawed. The long hours of frustrating and strenuous work impressed on me the realization that I was still spending too much money and energy putting out the fires caused by an unhealthy environment, both for the cows and for myself. I tolerated this situation primarily because it was the norm for all the dairymen I knew in our part of the country and because I was deeply invested in the operation and breaking out of the pattern seemed difficult and risky.

It was during these years that I had begun reading Rodale Institute’s New Farm and other magazines devoted to sustainable agriculture, and had been inspired to experiment with farm scale composting, alternative soil management practices, and more intensive pasture and crop rotations. I began adopting integrated pest management (IPM) practices which allowed me to reduce by 50% and more my use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the crops. I learned to use hot water baths and “Absorbine” veterinary liniment on swollen udders to reduce the need for antibiotic treatment of mastitis. In response to improved herd genetics and better control of feed utilization, the herd’s production climbed steadily. I took pride in my work and saw my farm as at least partially successful in transition to a more sustainable operation. Compared to other dairymen in this area, I was among the more successful (as measured by milk production per cow). Deep down I knew that I was headed for an eventual breakdown or burnout, but I continued to press on, assuring myself that I was doing some things right, was physically strong, and could take anything. Little did I realize that major changes in my life were about to occur as the 80’s drew to a close.

The first hint of trouble began during the winter of 1989 when I developed a dry and persistent cough. At that time I was tearing apart and hand feeding to a group of calves some large round hay bales with a few moldy spots. I suspected then that my exposure to this hay mold might be causing my cough but I didn’t become concerned because I was otherwise not feeling sick.

The symptoms gradually worsened during the following year, leading me first to the family doctor, then to an allergy specialist without any fruitful resolution to the problem. Two years after my illness began it reached a climax with a four day hospitalization in late September of 1991. I would later tell people that on the day that I entered the hospital, “I felt like I had chronic fatigue syndrome, smoke inhalation, and a nervous breakdown all rolled into one”. All diagnostic tests were negative except for one which indicated that I had reactive hypoglycemia, a condition exacerbated by stress and my other underlying illness, I would later learn. I was discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis of “Panic Disorder” (a type of psychosomatic illness) and a nerve medicine prescription which I refused to have filled. I then proceeded to seek out a clinical ecologist in Washington DC who diagnosed “multiple environmental sensitivities” (also known as “environmental illness”) brought on by long term and frequent exposures to molds, diesel fumes from tractors, and various other chemicals used around the farm.

I knew then that I would have to get off of the farm and proceeded to hire someone to do my work for the remainder of the year until I could complete arrangements to have an auction sale for the liquidation of the dairy on Jan 1, 1992. God had allowed my farming career to be derailed and would soon be setting me on a different track. The long journey up the road to healing was about to begin.

One of the hardest challenges for me in the coming months and years would be to face my vulnerabilities. I had been raised to endure pain and discomfort and to not complain or back off from work because of minor illness or injury. A few years earlier I could pick up 200 pounds and walk away with it. Now I could feel thoroughly exhausted walking a short distance to help one of my children collect a few leaves for a school science project. Once I could work in any kind of hot, dirty, and smelly situation. Now all it took was one whiff of a woman’s hair spray or body perfume to send me fleeing out of a church service in search of an open window or door where I could stick my head out for fresh air. The world I lived in had apparently become a hostile place where I could no longer go anywhere or do anything, including being inside my own house, without finding myself reacting. Many times I could be reacting and have no idea what was causing it. Doctors had proved themselves to be of little help. Well meaning family members would try to convince me that I needed to “get in control of my emotions” or to “go get some exercise”. Sometimes I could sense the Devil taunting me with the thought that I would probably continue feeling like this for a few more years until I would die with something like cancer. Several times I wasted money on questionable alternative health modalities in a desperate search to get relief. I found some solace in reading the book of Job and being assured that I was not the first person in history to go through this kind of experience. At least I still had a good wife and healthy children. It was even still possible to find someone who would pray with and for me. Then there would come times when some of the symptoms would go away and I would feel healthy again. It was these periods of remission that gave me hope and carried me through the numerous periods of relapse that would return during the following months and years and occasionally still happen even today.

I now end the account of my journey through environmental illness to tell the story of my transition from being a conventional dairy farmer to becoming the ecologically oriented market garden farmer that I am today.

In order to adequately articulate the magnitude of adjustment I had to make in my thinking as I made this transition, I will quickly summarize my background of involvement in agriculture. My parents both came from a farming background, and they in turn reared their family on a farm where I learned to do farm chores from early in my childhood and began driving tractors around 12 years of age. I took vocational agriculture classes in high school and was an active participant in the “Future Farmers of America” organization. Following high school, I attended Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, one of the better known land grant agricultural universities in the nation, and earned a BS degree in Dairy Science and Agronomy from that institution in 1972. I spent the next two years in Bolivia teaching Bolivian farmers and Mennonite colonists to care for dairy livestock which had been imported to Bolivia through the Heifer Project International organization. Following the Bolivia experience, I returned to run the home farm for the next 16 years. Shortly after I had liquidated that farm in early 1992, I attended a sustainable agricultural conference or two and did some reading about alternative agriculture in an effort to prepare myself for the new style of farming I was about to undertake. Only then did I come to the humbling realization of how pathetically little I actually knew about agriculture! It is now 12 years later and I still feel that I have much more that I need to learn.

I started out small, feeling very much that I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I began by planting some perennial crops like asparagus and raspberries and a modest variety of conventional garden vegetables which I sold at a local farmers’ market two days per week. From my experience as a dairy farmer, I knew lots about producing but nothing about marketing. As a novice market garden farmer I had a strong tendency to overproduce certain items and would end up running around town and walking into the back doors of restaurants hoping to sell them some of my surplus. Invariably I still ended up giving lots of good stuff to local soup kitchens and food distribution centers. I pretty much learned by the seat of my pants the intricacies of retail marketing and how to talk to restaurant chefs. Later I added to my marketing venues by starting a Community Supported Agriculture Program and by accommodating Kurdish immigrants who began appearing at my farm gate preferring to buy produce directly from my farm.

As I grew in my hard won knowledge about what does and doesn’t work in marketing (and also growing things without weed and insect killing chemicals), I developed a deeper understanding of the needs and wants of people and the need to understand and appreciate the interconnectedness of people of all racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. A similar interconnectedness also exists among the complex mixture of microorganisms, plants, insects, birds, and animals found in a farm ecosystem. Understanding this interconnectedness goes a long way towards one’s success in managing and cultivating a healthy diversity among the diverse life forms on the farm without having to deal with pests (any life form which can harm crops) by applying toxic materials (the equivalent of warfare). Likewise among the human population we are sometimes affected by pests (any fellow human being or group who offends or threatens us in any way). Our choice is to respond with force (complaining, litigation, or warfare) or something gentler like peacemaking (mediation, forgiveness, or nonexclusive defense tactics). Like the farmer who has to accept some pest damage in order to avoid spraying toxic chemicals on his farm and thus putting himself and others at risk of toxic exposures, we also are challenged to absorb some injury from other persons without striking back at them and risking our own peace of mind and soul. As a practicing organic farmer I have learned that some weeds are even more nutritious as food and possess greater healing properties than many of the crops I cultivate, and if managed appropriately, can do other beneficial things like cycling soil nutrients, and providing habitat for beneficial insects and wildlife. Some pestiferous insects are needed to support beneficial insects, bats, and birds. As we transfer this understanding to our interpersonal relationships we can then realize the extent that we need one another, need to appreciate and cultivate our diversity, be patient with our differences, and forgive when necessary. Thus an organic farm becomes a good laboratory for learning the principles of applied peacemaking needed in many of our interpersonal and international relationships.

Having learned in a new way the reality of interconnectedness of the various elements of a farm ecosystem and how that relates to how humans interconnect with each other and to the natural world, my next step has been to enter more deeply into the concept of relationship marketing and building of community. Many of the problems affecting modern agriculture and the environmental degradation so well known in our world have to do with the separation of people from their agricultural roots and indeed the natural world itself. This loss of connectedness has been hastened by widespread industrialization throughout modern civilization, especially the industrialization of agriculture. This has resulted in increasing tensions and alienation between the urban and rural elements of our society as they now increasingly encroach upon each other’s space. I now find myself seeking ways to restore that broken connectedness by building bridges of understanding and relationship to my urban and suburban customers.

This process started when I stopped letting the milk processing plant market my product and I began producing something which I could sell directly at a farmers’ market. I was now free to invite my customers to come out and visit my farm if they desired to do so and it wasn’t long until some actually did that. Later on as I began organizing the Community Supported Agriculture program, this process took on new meaning as the process of building closer relationships with my customers became a primary purpose and focus of my work. Offering some of my CSA clients the option of working on the farm for a part, or their entire share, became an essential part of making the operation of the CSA program possible. Then the Kurdish immigrants began coming. The result has been the formation of numerous new friendships, not only with neighbors from a nearby city, but also with people from the other side of the world. This has indeed become an enriching and gratifying experience to know that I am not only healing physically, emotionally and spiritually, but I am also contributing in a small way to the healing of our society and world. This is well worth the price of sore knees and worn blue jeans.

Whenever I work on my knees, my thoughts go back to the rural conservative Mennonite church my family attended years ago during my childhood. That church had a custom that would appear to many modern folks as peculiar and quaint. During the course of a typical Sunday morning worship service, when a call was made for a congregational prayer, the congregants would turn around in the pews and kneel on the floor, facing towards the back of the pews with their arms resting on the hard wooden benches as the prayer was led. I vividly remember this somewhat uncomfortable yet humbling exercise.

In a sense I had to do something similar when I transitioned from dairy farming to the kind of farming I do today. God brought circumstances into my life that made it necessary for me to turn around and to face a different direction, looking backwards and taking some cues from the wisdom of earlier generations, not only for the restoration of my health, but also for the healing of my farm. I not only had to turn around and face another direction, but I also had to get down on my prayer bones in order to see what God needed to show me and to be humbled enough to be teachable.

At a time in my life when most people are moving forwards and growing their businesses and financial investments, I had chosen to divest and to start over on a smaller farm and at a much smaller scale of operation. I had sold most of my tractors and equipment and was now preparing to set out on a new farming endeavor with little more equipment than the average suburban homeowner owns for the maintenance of his yard. Occasionally during the first years following my departure from the dairy farm, I would walk onto other farms, look at all the equipment they had, and realize how radically I had divested. Then when I would go home and go out to my field to pull some weeds I would feel small and somewhat ridiculous and wonder if I had downsized too far.

My little farm has an 8 acre field alongside an 800 foot road frontage where I planted my first market garden. From the vantage point of one driving up that road in a pickup truck, the field looks small. It was in this field that I first began kneeling on the ground to plant rows of strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, broccoli, and lettuce in little subdivided patches, making the field to appear even more diminutive. A year earlier I had traversed that same field with a 90 horsepower tractor pulling a four row corn planter. Now as I knelt on my knees in the middle of that field which looks so small from a pickup or tractor seat, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in perspective that one gains when he comes down off that tractor and sees the same field from on his prayer bones. What a difference it makes to move one’s vantage point from nearly eight feet above ground to eighteen inches above ground!

The first thing that always hits me when I set out to weed a 200 foot long by 20 foot wide strawberry patch, especially if the weather is a little hot, is how big it appears from down on the knees. Now 200 x 20 feet is hardly enough width and distance to get a tractor turned around and well revved up, but while kneeling on your prayer bones that little plot can look as big as a Texas ranch.

The other big difference a farmer experiences while looking at his land while on bended knee is what he can see, hear, and sometimes feel going on near the surface of the soil. Now he can see and hear earthworms, ladybugs, spiders, ground beetles, bees, and other interesting creatures going about their busy lives and know that their presence means that the soil ecosystem is alive and well. He can enjoy the sweet aroma of healthy soil instead of enduring the acrid smell of diesel fumes. He can be warmed by the sun shining on his back and at the same time be cooled by the dampness of the moist earth. While kneeling on his prayer bones in intimate contact with the land, he is closer to God, and in an appropriate position to communicate with Him in an attitude of humility and gratitude. In this position God can give the farmer the guidance he needs to cultivate his land in such a way that it nourishes and sustains all of the life that lives on it. The guy on a tractor easily misses much of this.

One can now ask. “What effect does farming on our prayer bones have on our lives?” It has much to do with our feeling of intimacy with the earth, our quest to understand and work with the natural realm, and our reverence for the God who created it. Like the small child who finds comfort and nurture while sitting on his mother’s lap, soothed by the sound of her voice, her breathing, and her heartbeat, the gardener can kneel on the bosom of God’s good earth and sense the vibrant pulse of life carried on by the myriad variety of microorganisms, insects, birds, and animals living there. Feeling nurtured by this good earth, he can respond by recycling organic matter, and by using discretion in decisions to do anything that might endanger the farm’s complex ecosystem. As we try to comprehend the incredible complexity and diversity of a healthy web of life in and near the soil and also throughout our farm and the universe, we are humbled to an appropriate level of smallness and honored with the awesome responsibility to treat this land and all who depend upon it for their sustenance with love and respect. It is our hope that the efforts we expend here plus our personal witness and testimony, will point others to God.

Albiolomy

2008-09-22T00:20:00.004-05:00

Out in my garage on the right end of the workbench sits one of my latest home made contraptions. It consists of a fifteen gallon plastic barrel (originally used as a container for acidic cleaner used on a local dairy farm) with part of the top cut off. Suspended inside this recycled container is a three gallon capacity bag made from a piece of plastic window screen folded and sewed along its bottom and one side and with a hem around the top threaded with a drawstring so that it can be filled with compost, drawn closed, and hung from the handle left on the top of the jug. Two aquarium pumps hang on the wall behind the apparatus, each with an air tube that snakes down through the filler hole on the back side of the top and on down to the bottom where they are threaded into quarter inch holes drilled into opposite sides of a twelve inch diameter loop of stiff garden hose which fits snugly into the inside diameter at the bottom of the jug. More and smaller holes are drilled all around this loop at approximate one inch intervals. A drain tap is fitted into the bottom of the jug.

So, what is this contraption called, what is it for, and how does it work? It is called a compost tea brewer and it is designed to make aerobic compost tea. It works by having the bag filled with freshly made compost and hung inside the jug and the jug filled with water. Several fluid ounces of unsulfured blackstrap baking molasses are added to the water and the aquarium pumps are plugged in. All of a sudden this machine starts making this delightful gurgling sound as lots of air bubbles begin rolling out through the perforated hose loop and making their way to the surface. Turning this thing on leaves one with the feeling that something good is happening.

So why do we want to make aerobic compost tea? First one needs to think of what happens when we hang a teabag inside a coffee cup filled with hot water spiked with a half teaspoon of sugar and left to steep for three to five minutes. It’s the same idea multiplied on about a 100X scale. Valuable plant nutrients and microorganisms leach out of the compost into the water which is becoming the compost tea. The purpose of the aquarium pumps is to aerate the tea in order to ensure that beneficial bacteria and micro fungi (which need an oxygen rich environment in which to thrive) are favored. The molasses of course is to feed the organisms and to help them grow and multiply. If we didn’t run the aquarium pumps there would be a greater chance of the tea becoming anaerobic (oxygen deficient) which favors the growth of pathogenic (disease causing) organisms. I let this thing run for two to three days, then shut it off and promptly drain off the approximately twelve gallons of tea into my twenty five gallon field sprayer and go straight to the garden to spray it onto my cherished plants. The theory is that beneficial micro flora sprayed onto plants colonizes leaf space and compete with pathogenic organisms to suppress various blights and mildews. Plant nutrients dissolved in the tea are absorbed through the plant foliage and help to boost stressed plants. Any of the tea which runs off the plants onto the soil adds nutrients and beneficial microbes to the soil.

The concept of making and using compost tea was not new to me. I had read about it years ago in some of the late J. I. and Robert Rodale’s writings and had always been scared of trying it, especially on tomatoes (one of my favorite and blight prone crops). Somehow the idea of making up a concoction from plant debris that had been stirred upon, mixed with, and stored on soil and then spraying it on plants that are susceptible to a variety of blights which are known to originate and move onto the plants from the soil seemed like a sure fire way to spread blight not prevent or suppress it.

Then last winter one of the more cutting edge scientists in the field of soil microbiology, Elaine Ingham from Soil Foodweb Inc., gave an informative and inspiring presentation about the making and using of aerobic compost tea at our annual Virginia Association of Biological Farmer’s conference and got me all fired up about doing it myself. Her presentation convinced me that my previous fears about using compost tea made by steeping compost in unaerated water were probably well founded.

There was a vender at the conference trade show who had set up an impressive display and demonstration about making aerated compost tea. He would have been glad to sell to me for $60 a simple compost tea brewer made with a five gallon plastic bucket and one aquarium pump.

I thought to myself, “I have plenty of those fifteen gallon acid jugs lying out behind the tool shed and a squirrel cage fan salvaged from the greenhouse destroyed in the house fire. I can use it to blow air into my tea and have a considerably more capacious brewer for almost nothing.” When I got home and started to put my tea brewer together I soon found out that the squirrel cage fan was not going to work to pump air into my tea. So I ran off to Wal Mart to buy myself an aquarium pump for about eight dollars and since I was going to be aerating 15 gallons--not 5 gallons of water I decided that it might be a good idea to get two of them. That meant that for sixteen dollars plus a few dollars more for a drain tap on the bottom of the jug I could still have my three times more capacious brewer for one third the cost of the five gallon version, well under budget.

With busy spring work coming on with the speed of an afternoon thunderstorm, I never got around to completing my compost tea brewer until mid summer. I kept putting it off partly because of all the stuff I felt I absolutely had to do and partly because I had some difficulty getting compost of the kind of quality that I felt confident would work. Meanwhile early blight was getting a head start on my early tomato crop. Finally I decided to go ahead and finish the project, use the compost I had, and hope for the best.

Once I got it all set up and running I felt so proud of myself and the sound of the water gurgling away out in the garage had a soothing and calming effect on my soul much like those artificial waterfalls one often sees in offices and hospital lobbies. As I listened to that beautiful sound I kept thinking “Alchemy!” This place sounds like an alchemist’s lab where magic is about to happen! So I dug out from underneath my office desk the old faithful Webster’s unabridged and looked up the word and discovered phrases like “form of chemistry and philosophical speculation practiced in the Middle Ages” and “search for methods of transmuting baser materials into gold” and “finding a universal solvent and an elixir of life”. I really liked that “elixir of life” part! So the concept of throwing together garden debris, lawn clippings, and kitchen slop and watching it transmute into “black gold”, (Yep, I’ve known some garden writers to use that very phrase to describe compost.) seems to fit. Somehow there has got to be a connection between what those early alchemists were doing and what I am doing messing around out in my garage! Not only that, but I am also taking my “black gold” and carrying it a step farther and turning it into something even more valuable by brewing it into “aerobic compost tea”. But this is not much chemistry but a lot more biology! I need a different word to convey that idea. “Albiolomy” is the best I can do. Nope! You won’t find that word in any dictionary!

While I was putting off completing the fabrication of my compost tea brewer I desperately mixed up and loaded my sprayer with a copper based fungicide and headed out to the tomato patch to bomb my ailing plants. After spraying the tomatoes and cucumbers a couple of times I watched the blights continue to spread, apparently unabated.

I have always hated spraying. And this includes many so called “organic” or “biological” pesticides. They all are a mess to handle and mix and they all stink! In addition to these two non endearing qualities, “organic” sprays are usually more expensive and need to be applied more often, making their “cost effectiveness” questionable. It is this disdain for using the spray materials I have been using in the past that has motivated me to play around with compost tea.

I will always remember the time I loaded my sprayer with the first batch of compost tea. It came out of the brewer the color of American coffee and it had this nice and sweet earthy smell. All I had to do was to drain it into my sprayer-- no donning of protective clothing, no calibrating, no mixing, and no triple rinsing the measuring cup I use to pour chemical into the sprayer. Why I didn’t even need to go looking for the cup! And most gratifying of all I didn’t need to panic if I accidentally spilled a little on my skin. I didn’t hate spraying this time and I was even a little surprised at how far 12 gallons went.

It is still a little too early to tell how effective this spraying of aerobic compost tea has been. I have yet to see anything dramatic happen as a result of using it. I will know more after using it over an entire season and after tweaking my compost making process and brewer operation procedures a bit. One thing is for sure. I’m going to keep trying.

There is something about this whole thing that just seems right, kind of like voting for a Republican political candidate! Well maybe I should say voting Republican feels right to some people and just leave it at that.

Oh Where Has the Summer Gone?!

2008-09-01T21:28:00.004-05:00

The reader may notice that the most recent posts, done over the past several weeks, are really stories that are months old. I seem to have been unusually busy this summer and have gotten way behind in my blogging. I like to have plenty of distraction free time when I sit down to blog. At the end of a busy day I am usually tired and if there is time to blog either my wife or my son (home from college for the summer)needs to use the computer. So it just didn't get done! Now I am still busy but not "crazy busy" like I was a few months ago so I am making a little time to blog. The posts are still in rough chronological order, just clumped together in some of my more recent "blogging frenzies". As you scroll down you will still have a sense of reading back into history.

There is something going on this summer that simply doesn't make sense! I am having as much of a struggle keeping up with the farm work this summer as I did last summer! Last summer I was living off farm and helping to build a house! I had begun the growing season having lost most of my tools and having stuff to repair and patch up. I had good excuses for not keeping up with the work as well as in previous years. So why am I having such a time this year? The only thing I can think of that is different is the indisputable fact that I am now one more year closer to that stage in every one's life called "old age", the age at which even the best of men begin to fall apart at an accelerating pace. An elderly friend of mine once stated rather succinctly, "Life goes by like unrolling toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end of the roll the faster it shrinks." Should I be depressed by this revelation? I would rather not think so!

It seems that I got a lot of stuff planted a month behind schedule just like I did last summer. I just about lost the battle to keep up with "tomato stringing" in May and June and as a result most of the early planting blighted prematurely. Winter squash plantings got done way too late and either did not come up or much of what did come up blighted and died. There was a heavy fruit set in the orchard this spring so I did have to spend some time spraying the trees and thinning fruit but the spray program didn't work well and the thinning was too late and not thorough enough. As a result I lost most of the apricots and the Asian pears have not sized up like they should have. Today I finally got most of my fall garden planted. It included some carrots which should have gone in before the end of July!

A brighter spot about this summer has been the "up and running" walk in cooler which has been a real life saver especially for the melon and berry crops. Having the cooler really gives us a lot more flexibility handling anything like left over from market like snap beans, squash and sweet corn which can be held a few more days and put into the CSA boxes in good shape.

And we have reached the lofty goal of an "over $1000 sales on market day" not once but three Saturdays in a row! If I do it again next Saturday I will have done it for a month! Wow! Part of the difference of course is that we are charging a little more for most items. I remember just a few years ago when our first daily sales topped $500 and I was thinking that once the daily sales pass that mark, the work of running the market booth starts to get tiring.

So how about it? Time to stop griping, count our blessings, and get to bed.

A Story About Four Musical Instruments

2008-08-25T23:59:00.003-05:00

The pictures show four musical instruments-two guitars and two Appalachian lap dulcimers that currently reside at our house. The guitars are nice factory made instruments. The dulcimers are hand crafted "instruments of distinction". All of these instruments are special to me and all have a story behind them.

The guitar pictured on the right side of the guitar picture is the second guitar I have owned, bought in the summer of 1969 right after I had been discharged from the hospital following surgery on my right hand. I had suffered a complicated fracture of the index finger of that hand almost two weeks before and had gone without a positive diagnosis for a week following the injury. After X-rays finally revealed the true nature of the injury, doctors failed two attempts to set the shattered finger and had scheduled me for surgery to splice the broken bone together with wire. I can vividly remember my going to the music store right after leaving the hospital out patient department on the second day the doctor had failed to set my finger, and trying out that guitar. The salesman apparently was both amused and astonished to see me trying out guitars with my right hand wrapped with bandages and a splint. I think I was at least partly trying to assuage the mix of physical and emotional pain I had been enduring and still facing right after receiving the bad news that I would have to make yet another trip to the dreaded hospital for admission and surgery. The next day I was admitted and I was operated on the following morning. I spent the remainder of that day in agonizing post operative pain and immediately after being discharged the next morning, I went straight to the music store and bought that guitar for seventy dollars.

Several months later I faced the need for extraction of two severely impacted wisdom teeth, removed in separate operations spaced about a week apart. Both times I spent the evenings following the extractions in the upstairs of the old farmhouse singing and playing my guitar to take my mind off the throbbing pain in my jaw.

The guitar on the left side of the picture is one I picked up about twelve years ago for twenty dollars at an auction. I had paid thirty dollars for my learner guitar right after graduation from high school in 1967 and as my son Hans was then beginning to show some interest in learning the guitar, I saw this one as a considerably better instrument than the one I had started with and I bought it for him. He took to guitar playing like a young duck takes to water and today is dreaming of owning a $2000(?)Martin or something similar.

As I fled my exploding house over a year ago these two guitars were lying on a sofa and easy chair in the living room and I grabbed them, one in each hand, seconds before bolting out the door. I could have grabbed more valuable things like my dulcimer(It has a story behind it too.)or the $350 digital camera I had just bought several weeks before. Hans would later tell me how grateful he was that I had saved that guitar because it was the one that got him started with a passion that will take him to much higher levels of accomplishment than I will ever attain.

The instrument on the left side of the dulcimer picture is one Hans made himself in an inter term class on instrument making he took several years ago while a student at Berea College in Kentucky. He built two dulcimers in that class-a lap dulcimer and a small hammered dulcimer, and he did a fine job on both of them. I only wish the picture would show in more detail the most interesting and original tree shaped sound holes he cut into the face board. Another interesting feature is the walnut wood grain pattern showing a graceful curve of contrasting heartwood and sapwood in the strum cradle at the lower end of the instrument. Most important of all it has a really nice mellow sound. I still regret not taking this instrument with me to show to Warren May when I went to buy my new dulcimer from him this past spring.

The other dulcimer of course is the one I recently bought from Mr. May when our family traveled to Berea to attend Hans' graduation. I had first visited his shop and showroom in downtown Berea about six years ago when there to attend my daughter Rhonda's graduation. I was so impressed by his craftsmanship with not only dulcimers but also furniture, and wowed that if I ever have a reason to buy another dulcimer, I want to get one of his.

I had decided in advance that I would probably buy one of his middle of the line instruments which would cost in the range of $450-$500 but I walked out of there with one of his top of the line instruments which set me back monetarily for about $700 including sales tax and a few amenities like a songbook and a carrying case. That's ten times what I paid for the other dulcimer during my student days at Virginia Tech way back in 1971! Several things that make it special is his signature engraved into the strum cradle, several flowers wood burned at intervals onto the fretboard, book matched face and backboards, and an inlaid strip down the middle of the backboard. All of his instruments sounded fabulous, but this one, made of walnut back and sides with a Brazilian rosewood face board, sounded just a hair more fabulous. What really made this experience special was chatting with the guy who made it and watching him put on some extra finishing touches(some of which I specially requested)like the extra fret between the sixth and seventh frets and extra grooves in the bridges on either end of the instrument which allow alternative spacing of the strings for some special tunings.

Will I care what I paid for this work of art a few years down the road when its tone will have mellowed and matured even more from long hours of being played? Nahh!!

The Craft of Grafting

2008-08-10T22:13:00.002-05:00

I have always wanted to try the art of grafting trees. The concept seems simple enough. You take a small twig from the tree you want to graft from, cut the lower end into a wedge, cut a slit into the tree you want to graft to, fit the wedge shaped twig into the slit in a way that the sap wood of the two are in contact, and cover everything up good and tight with grafting tape and wax. Should work shouldn't it.

I remember first trying it as a teenager. Somewhere I had gotten my hands on a book or magazine which featured these neat diagrams of various grafting techniques--whip grafting, cleft grafting, bridge grafting, bud grafting etc. Bud grafting looked to be the simplest of all, just peel a bud off the tree you want to graft from, cut a T shaped slit into the bark of the tree you want to graft to, lift up the bark on the vertical part of the T, fit the bud under the bark, and wrap with tape. So that is what I decided to try. I don't remember if I was ever successful.

During the ensuing years I never had a good reason to try grafting again. I went to college, got married, and became a dairy farmer. Out of sheer necessity I learned how to do such things as assisting complicated calf births, giving intravenous injections to cows down with milk fever, and doctoring foot rot or acute mastitis, but I never messed with fruit trees much. Oh I did learn how to prune trees in a "learn by the seat of your pants" sort of way, but I never needed to do any grafting.

Then about ten years ago I started planting some pear trees. Well it turned out that several of the varieties I had selected turned out to be real duds. They were susceptible to fire blight and they just wouldn't ripen right. I fooled with them for a couple of years after they reached bearing size without ever getting a decent crop and finally decided that they were not worth messing with any more. I did have one variety that I was happy about. This variety grew into a nice shaped tree that was relatively easy to prune (not true for most pear trees),resistant to fire blight, and it produced wonderful tasting and nice sized fruit that did not turn to mush as it started to ripen. In short it was everything you would ever want in a pear tree.

So last year I decided to turn all of my dud pear trees into Magness pear trees. I had also planted a bunch of Asian pear trees that, although difficult to prune, thin, and keep free of fire blight, their fruit so enamored me that I decided they were worth keeping. So I had my excuse to play with grafting again. I decided to take scions off my Magness trees and graft onto the duds on the upper end of the orchard and to graft scions off the Asian pears onto the duds on the lower end.

It was already too late to be grafting when I went out in late April to early May and sliced off some scions and stuck them into some trees. The trees were already leafing out and every one of my attempted grafts promptly wilted and died.

Last winter I decided to try again. I got on the Internet and pulled up some nice diagrams and read up on the subject. My biggest mistake had been my failure to collect my scions when the trees were still dormant and to do the grafting in early April just as the buds are beginning to swell.

I already had one strike against me. Most of the trees I wanted to graft onto were past the age for optimum grafting success and had been so damaged by fire blight and repeated hacking back that I no longer had nice rootstock to graft onto. Most would need to be cut back to a one to two inch stump and cleft grafted. One offered only a good sized water sprout that I decided might work for a whip graft. A whip graft is considered to be one of the more challenging to execute, but if successful, makes a smoother and stronger graft and is the preferred choice of professional grafters. The main thing of importance is that the scion and the rootstock needs to be approximately the same diameter, no more than one half inch.

So I bought some grafting wax, sharpened my pocket knife, cut my scions in early March, and stuck them into the ground cellar. When I brought them out to do the grafting a month later, the buds on the scions were already starting to swell despite being cut from the tree. I got along okay but found it necessary to melt down the estimated amount of wax I would need ahead of time instead of trying to soften it in my hands like the instructions said. It was a cold day and the wax incredibly sticky and difficult to work with. I ran out of melted wax when I still had a few more trees to do. I had poured the melted wax onto some waxed paper laid into a small dish. I was getting tired and frustrated and did not want to run back to the house to melt more wax so I decided to take a shortcut on the last few trees by wrapping the grafts with the sticky wax paper instead of properly sealing them with copious amounts of wax like I was supposed to. I thought to myself, "If this works I am going to be surprised!"

I eagerly watched my grafted trees daily and after about a week one or two grafted twigs began to show signs of coming to life. Meanwhile the remainder of the trees were leafing out nicely. Over half of my grafts were showing no signs of growth and appeared to not be taking. However I consider myself a patient man and thought it prudent to give them plenty of time. Every couple of days I would check again and each time I would find another twig or two beginning to bud out. It must have been about two weeks before the whip graft started to show signs of taking. I had all but given up hope and when it became clearly evident that it was going to succeed I was elated. Meanwhile I watched the trees that I had done the "quick and dirty" job of wrapping the grafts on and they too began taking. Somewhere I had read or heard that professional grafters can expect 80 to 90 percent success. I considered that if I achieve a 60 to 70 percent success rate I will be doing bloody good. I kept watching my grafts and a few finally began growing as much as a month after I had made the grafts. When it was all over every one of the eight trees I had grafted onto had succeeded and of the 15 or so twigs I had grafted only one failed to grow. Eventually I will have to prune away some of the grafted material. Not bad for an amateur eh?

You know what? I just recently read in an issue of "Growing for Market" that someone is successfully grafting heirloom tomatoes! Really?! Will I ever try it? I'll surely let the world know if it works!

What a Difference a Year Can Make!

2008-08-10T19:31:00.003-05:00

The two pictures of our house site were taken a little more than a year apart.

The first was taken in late March or early April 2007 soon after the debris was cleared and the foundation covered with tarp. It would remain looking this way for another three months as we sought to work out the details of preparing to rebuild. The winds of springtime did their best to try to take the tarp off and the site became even uglier as the tarp became increasingly tattered and we desperately tried to hold it in place by piling on dirty cinder blocks and scrap metal to hold it in place.

The second was taken in early May 2008 after the front yard landscaping was nearly completed and enough grass became established to make it possible to walk across the yard without getting muddy feet.

As I write this we are about one year removed from the time that we were finalizing the process of drawing up workable blue prints and lining up a contractor to get the rebuilding started. The actual building started in the first week of July and we were ready to move in by the end of December.

One year ago we were living in a rented house about a mile and a half away and burning $2.00/gallon gas to run 15 – 20 miles per week back and forth to tend our farm. Today we are burning $4.00/gallon gas to run our vehicles as little as possible.

For most of the past year piles of demolition and construction debris clung like scabs to the broken and scarred landscape surrounding the house and were finally sloughed off and hauled away as springtime approached. Slowly but surely the yard and our emotions are healing.

This coming weekend we are looking forward to a family trip to Berea, Kentucky to attend our son Hans’s graduation from Berea College. We have rented two cabins at Red River Gorge state park located about 50 miles from Berea where we and some church friends, who are going with us, plan to lodge for about 3 nights. Red River Gorge is a beautiful wilderness area noted for its many rock climbing sites. My son-in-law Craig Good is talking of indulging himself in some rock climbing on Saturday afternoon. I’m looking forward to visiting Warren May’s woodworking shop in downtown Berea and purchasing one of his handcrafted Appalachian dulcimers. We will be attending Baccalaureate services on Sunday morning and the graduation in the afternoon.

The busy season in the garden is hard upon us. As usual I feel about a month behind in doing everything. Right now I cannot imagine how we coped last year, but we did, and we are going to do it again this year. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, string beans, lima beans, soybeans, corn, summer squash, winter squash, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and watermelons, all ought to get into the ground this week. This may not sound like much until I tell you that at least half of all of these categories are transplants represented by an average of 500 transplants per category. In addition to all this we are harvesting strawberries, lettuce, peas, fava beans, and asparagus, spraying the pears and apricot trees for fire blight, leaf curl and brown rot, looking after a few PYO customers, going to farmers’ market and fighting weeds. It is time to make hay and the steers need to be castrated.

Hey, I think I am going to stop writing about all this busyness and talk about looking forward to sitting at dusk in the recently bought rocking chair on our nice big front porch, strumming my dulcimer, and watching the fireflies.

A Story That Needs to be Told

2008-06-22T22:02:00.003-05:00

On February 5, 2008 Christine and I were treated to a special invitation. Yunis and Jamilla, a Kurdish couple with whom we have come to know quite well in the past two years had us to their home for a meal and a most enjoyable and enlightening visit.

We were treated to a delicious meal of ethnic Kurdish cuisine including their well known “Nane-tanik (a type of pita bread) and “Dolma ”(mixture of meat, rice, and vegetables wrapped in Swiss Chard leaves, garnished with dill and baked). We finished off the meal with a relaxing cup of tea and some sweet pastry dessert.

Jamilla and Christine have become close friends in the past year. Jamilla is a deeply compassionate young woman who has lived amidst a lot of tragedy and hardship during her life. As one of the older girls in her family, she had to stay at home and help take care of the family instead of going to school, so was denied the opportunity to learn to read and write in her own language. Today she speaks with much pride about the progress she is making to learn to read and write in English. “I thank God every day for how God has spared my own and my husband’s lives and how He has brought us to America and for what your country has done to defeat Saddam.” she tells us. She fled, along with her parents and other siblings to the mountains during the “Anfal” (the genocidal reign of terror unleashed by Saddam Hussein on her home village in 1988) and, because they were able to get out in time, her immediate family was spared the loss of life suffered by tens of thousands of Kurds in their own and surrounding villages in northern Iraqi Kurdistan.

Following the meal our hosts shared with us a video which told the story of Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and the execution of the “Anfal” in which Saddam’s army systematically destroyed over 4000 Kurdish villages by mass evacuations, bombing with chemical and conventional weapons, bulldozing the ruins, and leaving their fields scorched and poisoned. It is estimated that over 100,000 Kurds died. There were scenes of Saddam Hussein barking orders, laughing devilishly, and his followers knocking people around. There were horrific scenes of devastated Kurdish villages with dead bodies lying everywhere and one scene of a blindfolded and bound prisoner having grenades taped to his body and then detonated. A second video showed Junis testifying at Saddam’s trial in Baghdad in November 2006. Jamilla had taped the trial from a televised broadcast. Now I tell Junis’ story.

Junis, then in his late teens, was a member of the Kurdish “peshmerga”, a guerrilla army of freedom fighters who were fighting to defend their homeland from the ravages of Sadaam’s Baath regime. He joined the peshmerga, not because he really wanted to be a soldier, but because, as said in his own words, “Sadaam was killing even our old men, women, and children and I had a responsibility to protect them!”

Yunis was injured by a gunshot in his arm, arrested, and along with 180 of his companions, imprisoned. About a month later they were all tied up and blindfolded, loaded onto canvas covered trucks, and told they were going to be transferred to a prison in Baghdad. Yunis remembers riding along a rough unpaved road and realizing that they were not going to Baghdad as he knew that the road to Baghdad was paved. As he rode he somehow managed to get his hands and feet free despite the as yet unhealed injury in his arm.

They arrived by night at some undisclosed desert location in Southern Iraq, unloaded from the trucks, knocked unconscious by a powerful electrical shock to the back of the head and thrown on top of one another into a long deep ditch. A bulldozer began shoving dirt over the prisoners, most of whom were still alive. Several minutes later Yunis regained consciousness to find his body half buried in loose soil and he could hear the bulldozer going to get the next bucketful. He managed to struggle free and to roll away from the spot where he was about to be entombed, and under cover of the darkness of night and the cloud of dust generated by the bulldozer now dumping its load on the spot from where he had just escaped, he jumped to his feet and fled to the other end of the ditch. Realizing that in his weakened condition he would be unable to climb out of the ditch until it was filled, he continued running from end to end of the ditch, climbing on top of the mounting piles of dirt, and taking advantage of the darkness and dust to stay out of sight of the bulldozer operator until he could escape the ditch.

Yunis managed to cross the border into Iran shortly after and lived there about two years. He then returned to Kurdistan, rejoined the peshmerga and met and married Jamilla. Following the birth of their first two children, a US based human rights organization assisted them in arranging their emigration to our country.

For much of the past year the world and national news has been dominated by the 2008 presidential campaign. In past years I have usually ignored political campaigns, particularly presidential campaigns, mostly because I view them as big games, organized and run by those with big money and media influence, and nearly as silly as the student council elections I remember in high school.

This year is different though. I have been following the political shenanigans with considerably more interest. I even voted for the first time in the Virginia primary, registered as a Democrat, and cast my vote for the person whom I thought would be the better choice for the Democratic presidential nominee. Then I will decide whether to vote Republican, Democrat, or something else in the November election. My wife Christine also registered as a Republican in the VA primary, and voted her choice for the preferred Republican nominee.

So why, may you ask, am I writing about politics? Well, there is this thing about this war in Iraq—who got our country into it—what this next presidential administration is goingto do to keep us in it or to get us out of it. Oh there are the other things of course—the economy, taxes, government spending, education, global warming, issues affecting our agricultural future, yada yada. I don’t really have strong opinions about whether Democrats or Republicans will most effectively handle these issues, but I am concerned about how this war will be resolved.

I grew up in and was nurtured by a religious community that taught that militarism and participation in war was wrong for Christians. Jesus’ teachings that we should “love our enemies” and “live as peacemakers” contradicts in spirit much of what I believe military establishments throughout the world model and teach.

Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, and Sadaam Hussein are all examples of men who became what they were largely as a result of military training. It is only such men who are capable of committing the kind of atrocities that were seen in the German Holocaust, the Bolshevik revolution, the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima, or the Iraqi Anfal. There are few people anywhere who disagree with the idea that these men were evil. There also is broad agreement in our world that men like these, when they rise to power, must be stopped by whatever means is necessary. Now comes the really big question. Is it ever justifiable to fight evil with evil?

I confess that I don’t have a good answer for this question and that if I did, many of those who read this, including myself, would not like it or agree with it. I only have an interest in the persons who are going to be positioned in the coming years to deal with that question more directly than I ever expect to.

Now my thoughts go back to the stories of Jamilla and Yunis and others among our Kurdish friends. They have given me a perspective on this whole Middle East situation that few Americans ever get. Somehow that perspective has got to be given some consideration as I contemplate how I am to exercise my right to do my little part to help choose our country’s next leaders.

Deja Vu-I've Been There Before

2008-02-25T11:44:00.004-05:00

Today is February 22, 2008, the anniversary of the devastating fire which destroyed our house and seriously damaged the infrastructure of our farm one year ago today. I’m lying in bed at around midnight, unable to sleep partly because of an incessant burning in my chest and head. One year ago tonight I was trying unsuccessfully to sleep in a neighbor’s bed and suffering from a burning sensation in the depths of my guts. Then it was the smoldering remnants of the emotional fires which had seared my inner being all of that fateful day. Tonight the burning is the remnants of an illness that hit me earlier this week, feeling like a cross between pneumonia and the flu, now morphing into a nasty sore throat and head cold.

By mid week I had a dry cough, my wind pipe felt like a sooty stove pipe, and I felt like pure crap. “What’s going on?” I thought. I’ve had this stuff before! We identified the culprit then as coming from moldy hay and diesel fumes. But we got our hay supply into storage this year cleaner than ever before and we are not feeding but half as much. This illness came on too fast and too intensely to be caused by the minuscule mold exposure I may have experienced from feeding a little hay. Then on Wednesday night I had one of those “Aha!” moments that often come to me when I am half asleep. I remembered reading something on the Internet several years ago about dust coming from bird droppings as a cause for some kinds of “farmers’ lung”. On Monday afternoon I had decided to clean up the greenhouse and get the benches set up for spring plant starting. I had kept about 20 spent hens in there for about a month and they had left a layer of fine brown dust all over everything. I had knocked around in there for about an hour, wiping the stuff off of the plant germination rack and grow lights, rubbing dried chicken poop off the bench supports, sweeping down dust sticking to the underside of the greenhouse plastic, and even digging up the soil in the center of the greenhouse floor in anticipation of setting in some lettuce plants later next month. That would have given me ample time to get my lungs full of something besides clean air capable of messing up my life for a few days.

I rolled out of bed, booted up the computer, and typed into the Google bar the word “pneumonitis”. Up came the Google page with a smorgasbord of links to websites describing various kinds of “hypersensitive pneumonitis” with scary sounding phrases like “extrinsic allergic alveolitis”. “Uh Huh!” I thought. And yes, exposure to dried chicken poop is a real source of trouble in addition to hay mold. Why don’t I have sense enough to put on a dust mask every time I get into dirty things, a common occurrence on any farm? I’ve been there before!

What a Year It Has Been!

2007-12-26T19:57:00.001-05:00

The old house (photo dated 2000-2004)

History has its pivotal dates (usually marked by cataclysmic or highly significant events) which serve as reference points used to separate one time period from another. In Biblical history it was the great flood in Noah’s time, the Babylonian captivity, and the birth of Christ. In world or national history such markers are usually major wars which change history by causing political, sociological, and economic upheaval.

On the morning of February 22, 2007
our house and most of our personal possessions were quickly destroyed by a fast moving wind driven fire storm. We now refer to our recent personal history as “before the fire” and “after the fire”. The fire occurred just as we were gearing up for another busy year of market garden farming. We lost not only the house and most of the contents, but also a market delivery van, a car, an all terrain vehicle, a greenhouse, virtually all of our shop and garden tools, and our saved and “just purchased” seed supply. A tractor and another greenhouse were damaged. We had begun construction on a new packing shed and pole barn which we were hoping to have completed by early May, the beginning of our CSA and produce marketing season. Suddenly, what had begun as a fairly normal year with daily routines of farm chores, beginning of year planning, and getting a little extra rest, had been literally blown apart.

Two days after the fire (Feb 24, 2007)

We were deeply touched and blessed by the generous response of the community around us, the extent of which we hardly realized we had. One week following the fire our son and law organized a group of about 30 carpenters, cooks, and willing workers from our local church and neighbors to do a “barn raising” to get enough of our packing shed, pole barn, and greenhouse up and under roof, allowing our growing and marketing season to proceed somewhat on schedule and the first hay cutting to be stored out of the weather. Several weeks later another group, including some EMU college students, assembled to help clean up the garden strips and help prepare for spring planting. Friends and relatives in the local Old Order Mennonite community, in addition to our local church, donated used clothing, home canned food, frozen meat, tools, and heirloom seeds, and helped us financially to purchase expensive tools like a chainsaw, weed trimmer, and even some furniture. CSA members gathered together a used computer, and a riding lawn mower in addition to money. The local Kurdish community planned a picnic and made financial contributions. Several of my seed suppliers donated some items and replaced some of my lost seed at no or reduced cost. Several of my brothers took it upon themselves to haul away the damaged tractor and to repair it. Another group organized to assist with demolition of the ruined house and a neighbor whom Christine has helped with milking chores over the years, lined up a contractor to begin the house reconstruction. To all of these people we owe a deep and heart felt “Thank you!” not once but many times over. What they all did collectively made a tremendous contribution to our recovery and reassured us that even in our time of social and economic independence, community is alive and well. We are grateful for the efforts we have made to build community in the past and somehow we will find ways to return some of this help to others in need in the future.

For weeks following the fire I would return to the farm to face the daunting task of cleaning up the mess, picking through the ruins in search of salvageable items, trying to repair damaged tools and machines with damaged tools, and trying to get some things growing. Seeing daily the piles of debris and the ugly charred and stripped foundation of my house for months afterward was tremendously depressing. We held our annual CSA kickoff and signup meeting as scheduled one week after the fire and signed up over 60 shares. At that meeting I heard that a five year old daughter of one of our members, upon learning of our disaster, had queried “Mommy! Does that mean there will be no vegetables this year?” Deep in my soul I replied “Yes Ellie, there will be vegetables this year!”

The new house near completion (Dec 18, 2007)

House reconstruction began in earnest in early July and both the sight of walls going up and harvests coming in picked up my spirits. We had our usual struggles dealing with drought, weeds, insect pests, and a new four legged pest, deer. At season’s end I sat down and evaluated results of our labors. Here is the summary:
· Crops that did well and produced abundantly—12.
· Crops that produced something but were not worth bragging about—18.
· Crops that failed—13.

Despite it all we had enough to eat, there was something to put into the CSA boxes every week, and I had something to sell at the farmers’ market until late November. It has been tough, but God is taking care of us. We are blessed!

May this letter find all of you who are receiving it also blessed this special season.

Marlin for all of us

End of Season Finale (Finally!)

2007-11-26T00:10:00.001-05:00

On October 29 we finally had a frost after most of the month had unseasonably warm summer like temperatures. I couldn’t protest much as this helped to facilitate the maturation of my fall garden which was already as much as a month behind schedule for several of the crops I normally plant for fall.

Not only was it the first frost (normal first frosts occur early October in this area), but it was a killing frost, meaning that according to local weathermen, the growing season had officially ended. I had just begun harvesting the first heads of a larger than usual cauliflower and broccoli crop (approximately 1000 plants covering more than ¼ acre). Broccoli is more hardy (can tolerate temperatures down to 20 degrees before damage occurs), but I was a little concerned that the cauliflower might be damaged some by the cold. Fortunately it came through in relatively good shape despite the fact that, following that first frost, we had about four more nights of what I would consider as killing frosts.

Ever since I first successfully grew the varieties “Cheddar” (bright orange) and “Graffiti” (brilliant purple) cauliflower several years ago I have vowed that I was going to grow in addition to these two, “Fremont” (a superb white variety) and the ever so spectacular lime green with a conical and spiraled head, “Romanesco” and have them all four, along with some broccoli, on my farmers’ market table at the same time.

The problem is that information on the seed packets show as much as a three week difference in the “days to maturity” between “Cheddar” and “Graffiti” and despite the statement that “Romanesco” is supposed to mature in about eighty five days, my own past experience with this variety has been that maturation occurred spread out all over a range of 80 to 150 days.

So the trick is to guess how far apart to seed these varieties in the early summer in order to have a decent shot at having them all ready to pile on my market table at the same time to build my spectacular display. Throw in a few more variables like some “no see um" pests that get on some of the plants before I ever get them out of the greenhouse, midsummer drought and heat as I am transplanting them to the field in mid July, two weeks of nonstop rain and an onslaught of weeds in early August, and a voracious attack of harlequin bugs and cabbage worms throughout August and September. Then one begins to see how challenging it is to even get a crop, not to mention getting it to mature when you want it to!

Well the white cauliflower was heading up nicely by mid October and in fact presented me with some 5 – 6 lb heads that brought nearly $10 each at the market, a record! The orange variety was next to come in (right along with the broccoli) a little more than a week later and also did quite well. I was able to put white in the CSA boxes on Oct 16 and orange in on Oct 23, the last CSA day. The purple variety was still looking quite puny and pathetic at this time and had not even begun to head up, leading me to think that it would probably be a complete failure. The Romanesco was just beginning to slowly develop small heads and I knew that if I was patient it would get there eventually.

Well guess what! On November 10 I finally found enough purple cauliflower to put together with a still fairly abundant amount of orange and even a few remaining heads of the white, together with some nice broccoli and the now emerging green Romanesco, to build my long dreamed of market display. I must admit that I felt really proud to have such a nice display on my final day of the 2007 farmers’ market season. When I go back and add up the tallies of farmers market and restaurant cauliflower and broccoli sales since Oct 13, and estimate in the values of these crops I put into the CSA boxes the final two weeks of the CSA season, I come up with a total value well in excess of $2000. Friday I went out right before dark in my insulated coveralls and harvested another bushel or so of a mixture of purple and green cauliflower which I still hope to sell at the upscale restaurant in town, not bad for a second crop on that little more than ¼ acre plot.

I’ve been spending much of the past few weeks laying ceramic tile in the basement of the new house and building fence connecting the packing shed and barn to the house and yard. The over winter garlic, onion, kale, and spinach crops are up near the house and the clover cover crop in the remainder of the garden field, though planted late, is up. I would like to get some hunting in before the end of this week. If I get the chance I may shoot a couple of those pesky deer that tried to fatten themselves on my edamame soybeans this past summer. The end of the growing season finale has arrived! Finally!

Venerable Patriarch of the Harrisonburg Farmers' Market

2007-11-08T00:22:00.001-05:00

It is a typical summer morning at the Harrisonburg Farmers’ Market where I go on Saturday to sell some of my farm produce. I have had a busy morning and now somewhere between 10:30 and 11.00 o’clock business has begun to slow down somewhat and I pull out from the back of the van my folding wooden chair and sit down a spell to rest my tired legs and lower back. An elderly man with a wavy grayish blond beard and hair that flows out from under his worn red farmer’s cap and reaches down over his shoulders and partially covers his faded flannel shirt and black suspenders that loosely hang his khaki trousers on his slender frame, slowly ambles over to the front of my canopy and greets me with a cheery “Hello”. “I see you still have plenty of everything.” is his quite predictable comment. To which I usually reply with a grin, “Yeah, plenty of everything but money.” “Oh I have never had much money either but the good Lord has always taken good care of me ever since He gave me my land and told me that He wanted me to grow vegetables.” he tells me once again. He usually soon gets around to telling me that it’s getting about time for him to slow down a little but that he has no intention of retiring. I always remark that “I have already been retired for fifteen years but that I keep on working in order to keep from getting bored and to earn enough money to live on.” Then follows his oft repeated story of how he came about buying his 20 acre farm in the 1940s, how the late Dan Stickley sold him at no interest the farm equipment he needed to get started, and how Earl Wetsel allowed him to purchase seed and pay him back with S&H green stamps when the harvest came in. “I was so poor I couldn’t have bought a settin hen if she was fat!” He chuckles.

At the age of 87 Clarence D is the oldest vendor regularly present at the market and quite arguably the original vendor at the market long before it came to be known as the Harrisonburg Farmers’ Market. Clarence began selling vegetables from the back end of his battered pickup in 1960 when the Harrisonburg Police Department gave him permission to set up at the upper west corner of the then Harrisonburg municipal parking lot. Sometime in the early 70s a bi-level parking deck was built on the site and Clarence joined as one of the original vendors when the HFM was organized in the summer of 79 and set up on the lower east side of the deck. Today Clarence proudly declares that he has been in business for over 45 years and that he is able to pass for organic certification because “he has never used no chemicals since he began growing vegetables”.

I first vaguely remember seeing as a kid Clarence set up at the municipal lot when I would come to town shopping with my parents in the 60s but I was not all that interested then. I really came to know Clarence when I began selling at the Harrisonburg Farmers’ Market in 1992. At that time he would wear a cone shaped hat he had made from a piece of cardboard bent and glued to an old adjustable hat band. When he wore it he looked kind of like an aged hippie crossed with a Vietnamese coolie farmer. He drove a 1958 vintage Ford Econoline pickup-van with a covered bed homemade of two by fours and weather beaten plywood. That old van finally died on him sometime in 2005. He still uses an ancient cast iron balancing scale that looks like something dragged out of the ruins when the Visagoths sacked Rome. He tells me that a friend of his was going to “haul it to the junk” when he squirreled it from him. It would really be interesting to be around to see what it brings someday when it comes up at an auction with a couple of antique dealers competitively bidding on it.

Yes, Clarence is a simple and humble gentleman who never had a lot of education but who possesses a lot of old fashioned wisdom and a heart of gold. He has never had a lot of money nor a desire to get it. He proudly tells me that he feels that he has been blessed with a good season this year on his one half acre of market garden. He started out the season with a goal of making $500 and when he reached that goal he set another one of making another $500. Then the good Lord allowed him to make that one too. His homemade coolie hat has worn out long ago, but I can still picture him in my mind wearing it and standing behind his old balancing scale with his old Ford pickup loaded with bags and boxes in the background, making quite a picturesque scene. He is almost as photogenic today with his red cap replacing the homemade one. He is a perfect picture of contentment.

He once told me that he once spent a few days in a nursing home following a brief illness. “I wanted to get out of there as quick as I could because I think that a nursing home is nothin but a place where people go to wait to die!”

I am thankful that I have had educational opportunities that Clarence never had and that I was able to take advantage of them. I am thankful that I am still relatively young, can grow vegetables on three or four acres instead of one half acre, and can take advantage of the newest technologies to work my land and run my business. But when it comes to growing old, the example that Clarence is setting is very much the one that I would like to follow.

Singers Glen, a Heritage to Treasure

2007-09-15T23:10:00.001-05:00

Joseph Funk's house in Singers Glen near the place where the Harmonia Sacra was printed and published

“Good music, like sublime scriptural poetry, is inexpressively sweet and nourishing to the soul and tastes strong of heaven”.

(Written by Joseph Funk in a letter to his married daughter, Mary Keiffer, who was living in Missouri during the 1850s, the time when Funk printed and published the earlier editions of Harmonia Sacra.)

On September 15-16, 2007 a significant community event took place in Singers Glen, the rural Virginia hamlet where I spent most of my growing up years and still live today. This event is the Singers Glen Music and Heritage Festival which has been held in Singers Glen roughly every five years since 1978. The highlight of the festival is the performance of the folk opera "Singers Glen", a theatrical performance written by Alice Parker, a well known writer, musical arranger and graduate of the Julliard School of Music in New York City. This drama celebrates the life of Joseph Funk during the early and middle years of the nineteenth century when he compiled and first published the shaped note hymnal Genuine Church Music, better known in this area as the "Harmonia Sacra", and conducted singing schools up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Christine and I were actors in this drama during the early years of its performance and it is from this experience that we deepened our familiarity with the "Harmonia Sacra" and share a passion for it today.

Mr. Funk was a well educated, deeply spiritual, and talented musician who left not only a unique collection of songs which are challenging and fun to sing, but also an enduring tradition of shaped note singing which is celebrated in Harmonia Sacra sings regularly held in churches and community centers in this area. Originally known as Mountain Valley, Singers Glen gets its name from the rich legacy left behind by Joseph Funk.

The Harmonia Sacra is but one of several shaped note hymnals which were used along with the promotion of singing schools on the advancing frontier throughout the South during the early nineteenth century. Others are Benjamen Franklen White’s Sacred Harp and Ananias Davisson’s Kentucky Harmony.

Several characteristics make the Harmonia Sacra stand out as unique when compared to other hymnals.

In most of the four part music of European origin with which most of us are familiar, the soprano voices carry the main melody. In many songs in the Harmonia Sacra these parts are reversed so that the tenor voices carry the melody. This gives the music a flavor uniquely peculiar to the Harmonia Sacra.

Second there are the robust rhythms which not only give the music life and vigor but speak eloquently to the strength and stamina that those pioneers of the early nineteenth century had to have in order to survive the rigors of life on the early American frontier.

As one sings these songs he cannot help but notice the recurrent themes which allude to the joys of heaven and the release from the pain and sufferings of earthly life. Virtually all families were touched repeatedly by death brought on by illness and other dangers of life on the frontier. In a life devoid of most of the comforts and securities which most of us take for granted in modern times, one can more easily understand our ancestors’ humble reliance on the “mercies of God” and their looking forward to a better afterlife.

And finally there is the beautiful poetry, fascinating forms of archaic expression, and the occasionally stark phrases that jump out and grab your attention. Where else but in the Harmonia Sacra will you find titles like "Divine Adoration" or "Sweet Affliction" and phrases like “Strengthened thus I still press onward, singing as I wade to Heaven” or “Oh this dreadful heart of sin, it may deceive me still, and as I strive for joys above, may plunge me down to Hell!”?

One of the more endearing Harmonia Sacra sings takes place on the first Sunday in August at the old Mauck Meeting House Church in the village of Hamburg near Luray, Virginia. The setting is a rustic and beautifully restored old log church building which has stood since the late 1700s-early 1800s. This is an all day event complete with several hours of singing in the morning, a potluck picnic (“dinner on the grounds” as the old folks would say) under the majestic old maple trees in the church yard, and several more hours of singing in the afternoon.

As folks enter the building, furnished with narrow and crude wooden benches and an ancient cast iron pot bellied stove in the center of the room, the moderator of the event greets them with a hearty handshake and asks some of them if they are able or willing to lead a few songs. If they say "Yes" they are likely to be called upon to lead several songs of their own choosing sometime during the service. The singing begins informally with the moderator leading the fist several songs and announcing a succession of several following song leaders, allowing them a little time to prepare to lead their songs. Each one typically leads about two songs, announcing the page numbers and song titles in both the old edition (the long book) and the “Legacy” edition (the new book). All singing is done “acapella” with no instrumental accompaniment. Occasionally breaks are taken to take a roll call of distant states where attendees may have traveled from to attend the singing, or they may announce the ongoing schedule of upcoming sings. This is the general pattern followed at most Harmonia Sacra sings.

The mid day picnic is an experience in itself, featuring the best of Mennonite home cooking and lots of joyful visiting.

When one considers all that makes the Harmonia Sacra unique, the robust rhythmic harmonies, the poignant imageries and sentiments, and the colorful poetry, and joins in a gathering of several hundred souls of the most experienced of four part harmony acapella singers, they can revel in the best of congregational singing and appreciate what makes the periodic Harmonia Sacra singings such an enduring tradition and the history of Singers Glen a legacy of such treasure.

Shingles on the house, Shingles on my bottom

2007-09-11T19:49:00.007-05:00

The house is definitely taking shape. They shingled the roof this past week and hung most of the drywall. From what builders tell me that means the house project is half way to completion. There still seems to be an awful lot to do yet. Just cleaning up debris still remaining in the yard (including what the builders are now adding to the piles) and relocating the fences will be a monumental task in itself. Despite the mess, we feel good about how the house is turning out.

We did most of the architectural design ourselves after being advised by one prospective builder to hire an architectural firm to draw up plans. To do so would have added about 5% to the cost of the house, something we immediately balked at. We got out a number 2 lead pencil, some graph paper, and a foot long ruler and went to work. We figured that if one has a skill worth $10,000 he had better use it.

What we came up with is basically a modified cape cod style with a one story 16' section on the south end, a one and a half story 36' mid section with an eight foot deep porch across the front and a two car sized garage-shop with a 5/12 pitch roof (same as on the south end) and one roll up door for a car entry. A walk in door was spaced between the roll up and the house so that if someone decides later that they need the second roll up, all they will need to do is to knock out a few studs. The entire east side is one open great room including a parlor with vaulted ceiling on the south east corner, family room in the middle, and dining room-kitchen next to the garage. The upstairs portion of the Cape Cod section is one long 16' x 36' room which will be used initially as a guest bedroom with ample attic storage along the sides. This room is big enough to allow a bathroom and two medium sized bedrooms to be inserted in the future if needed. An eight foot wide bay window graces the east side of the parlor. Master bedroom, master bath, steps to basement and upstairs, sewing-work room (can be used as a bedroom if needed), and laundry-half bath room occupies the entire west side.

The basement area has been rearranged and plumbed to accommodate a kitchen-dining room, bathroom, living room, and bedroom and will be usable as an apartment (Building codes do not allow us to call it this.) The painting, flooring, and kitchen will be completed as we have time and money. (Christine has already purchased used kitchen cabinets.) In the near future we will likely use this space to house exchange student-farm trainees or possibly renters who would be able (or willing) to help with farm work or do farm sitting as part of their rental arrangements. If our intentions to avoid moving to assisted living and/or nursing home when Christine and I become too decrepit to care for our selves carries through, this basement may become our dotty quarters. This will depend upon our success to attract family (our own or someone elses) to take over the rest of the house and be able to meet our needs.

Aside from mentioning on a previous post that much of my planting got into the ground as much as a month late, the growing season proceeded as normal, extreme heat and drought through July and the first half of August and monsoon like rains in the last half of August. The tomatoes took off with a bang in late June-early July and are mostly dead from blights by the end of August. The cucumbers suffered a similar fate. The melons mostly ripened within a few days and, because I didn't have the walk in refrigeration up and running yet, I lost about half of the crop because they over ripened before I could get them marketed. I fought deer, cucumber beetles, flea beetles, and harlequin bugs with varying levels of success and failure. I am experimenting with more varieties of edamame soybeans and am having a little better success marketing them this year. Three varieties of heirloom pole snap beans and one heirloom lima bean with extra long pods are maturing now and doing well. Red raspberries are coming in now and if the monsoon rains hold off and we get no hurricanes, we might have a good crop.

Last week I got the Shingles. The shingles on the house are pretty. The Shingles on my bottom are not pretty! When somebody once told me that Shingles hurt, they wudden kiddin! It began with extreme sensitivity on most of my right thigh which felt like a heat rash as I was working. I would take down my pants expecting to see a rash and see only normal healthy skin. After a few days an angry red rash of blisters finally appeared on the inside of the thigh dangerously close to the privates (definitely not a nice place to have shingles). I thought initially that I would ride this one out but more rashes erupted and intensified over the following days and by Friday my leg felt like it was scalded and every five minutes or so I would get shooting stings that felt like I was being stung by hornets. Despite the fact that Friday was a "get stuff picked for market day" I realized that this thing was getting too hot and limped off to Emergicare (my regular doctor was out) and killed most of the day fighting heavy traffic and stewing in waiting rooms.

Finally I walked into a pharmacy with two prescriptions to hear the druggist say in a halting voice with a "Are you sure you want to do this?" sound that “This is going to cost $266”. I immediately hit the roof and made a few inquiries about possible alternatives, then reluctantly began writing a check. When the druggist finished processing my bill and then told me the total would be $297 I really went ballistic! "I thought you told me it was going to be $266!" I exploded. "No! That was just for the first one" she replied. "The second one is $31." Fortunately I was within walking distance of the doctor's office and I was able to go back to talk to him personally. He apologized a bit about not being aware that I had no insurance and that he had prescribed the expensive one because it is to be taken 3 times per day and that most people find it easier to take properly. Yes, he had one that had a generic version that would be less expensive but would need to be taken at 4 hour intervals five times per day. I dug into him a little more, inquiring how the cost per day would work out considering that the cheaper medication would need to be taken more often. He spent a few minutes pecking on his calculator, and then sheepishly told me that this medicine would be considerably cheaper, about $40. "This is going to save you more than $200 on your pharmacy bill.”

So much for how the American health care system works (or not works)!

I got home around 5:30 and helped Christine pick raspberries and beans for a couple of more hours.

The medicine seems to be working as the rashes have stopped spreading but I still feel yucky. It is difficult to tell how much of the yucky is being caused by the Shingles and how much is being caused by the medicine. Now you know why I wanted to avoid going to a doctor in the first place.

The Stuff Dreams Are Made of

2007-07-22T23:14:00.001-05:00

(written on May 29, 2007)

Every once in a while I have a vivid dream.

I am getting ready to go on a big trip. I’m in process of packing my stuff in preparation for leaving and finishing up a few chores. But things keep on popping up to delay my departure. Something is wrong with the car and has got to be fixed first. The cows are out and rampaging all over the farm and there is no one around to help me get them in. I’m confused and not sure what I should be getting together and I have no idea how to go at it. All I really know is that I was supposed to be there several days ago and I have not even left yet and have no idea when we are going to be able to leave. For some strange reason I don’t even know where we are going or the routes we are going to take to get there! But there is enough of the eternal optimist in me to assure me that I will get it all figured out somehow. Though I am feeling frustrated, I realize that there is a part of me that doesn’t really care because I realize that it must be that way if I am to keep from going completely crazy.

Then there is the “going back to college” version. I have enrolled in a twenty some credit hour course load in one of our nation’s largest universities. I have signed up for a bunch of courses that are way over my head and am faced with piles of thick textbooks to read and term papers to write. I am doing all this while working at an off campus job in order to pay my expenses. I haven’t had time to go to any classes yet and in fact have never met any professors. I don’t even know where on campus the classes are meeting, not to mention knowing my class schedule. I suddenly realize that the semester is half over, I still haven’t been to class yet and I’ve only cracked a few books enough to realize that they are full of undecipherable mathematical problems and deep philosophical ramblings that run way beyond anything I can ever hope to understand. I am not even sure I care about knowing this material, only that I’ve made a commitment and somehow must get over there and pass some tests. But first I must figure out where my dorm is, remember my room number, and find the key. I don’t know how I am going to manage all of this but somehow I am going to because I have to.

Everybody has these kinds of dreams don’t they?

Now perhaps I can write the vegetable farmer’s version. Here goes. I am at the farmers market. There is a bustling crowd of customers and vendors. Several vendors have fresh summer squash and melons and there is even one with ripe tomatoes. There are none of these things on my table as I have only managed to get half of my tomatoes transplanted yet. I’m not even close to having melons or squash as I don’t even know where I will plow the ground to plant them. I am suddenly appalled to realize that this coming Tuesday is another CSA day and there is nothing to put in the boxes as I haven’t gotten around to planting anything yet. It’s not like I’ve been playing around and sleeping. I’ve been quite busy doing all sorts of things that are also important to get done, things like building and repairing the things I must have in order to get the garden stuff done and helping the neighbors with things that they need help with. Maybe this year I might have to settle for harvesting ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse because I couldn’t get them into the garden soon enough. They won’t get as big as they would in the garden because of the crowding in the greenhouse flats. Hey! Why have I been fooling with growing cherry tomatoes? I can just leave some in the greenhouse and save myself the work of transplanting them to the garden. What a great idea! Uh oh! Tomorrow night they are calling for a killing frost and my green beans are just now coming up. The problem is that this is not the last frost of spring—it is the first frost of fall! Where in the world has all the summer gone?! What am I going to do?!

OK. It’s not quite that extreme, but there might be a good explanation why I haven’t dreamed this one yet. It is uncannily close to reality. The fact is that I did have two foot tall tomato plants in my greenhouse before I could get them planted out and this year was the first year ever that I had to put up tomato trellises with posts and the first run of strings before I put in the transplants. Tomorrow is Memorial Day and I have not planted summer squash or green beans yet. If I am lucky and nothing breaks I might get the peppers, eggplants, and pole limas transplanted this coming week. Last week folks all over the county were making hay like crazy and I had no idea when I could get to making mine as I have all this other stuff pushing to be done in front of it. And I am just now realizing that the time is here to get some lettuce plants started in the greenhouse for mid July-August production (people need salad greens to eat with all those tomatoes and cucumbers during those hot weather months) and some cauliflower and broccoli seed started for fall.

Fortunately the fava beans look better than they ever have, the potatoes look good, and I have a nice crop of spring cabbage and broccoli that seem to be quite happy. The tomatoes in one of the high tunnels are hopping and ready for the third string. Most of them have up to three ping pong ball sized fruits on and if I can get the irrigation lines hooked up soon I have a decent chance of picking ripe tomatoes by the end of June. The neighbor is picking some nice strawberries and we will likely be picking peas next week. And that was some really nice lettuce that came out of the high tunnel closest to the house site the last two weeks.

Several days ago Christine and I burnt some midnight oil drawing up house floor plans and elevations. It has been exceedingly hard for me to get this done this spring due to all the other work connected with dealing with the fire aftermath. However this is something I love to do and it feels good to finally have some drawings in hand that help one to visualize what hopefully will eventually be built. Last fall I was engaged in drawing up plans and elevations for the packing shed and pole barn. That building is not yet completed but the packing shed end is mostly done and is already in use. Grounds grading is roughed in and the building is far enough along that the visions of last fall are in focus. I can already see the new house with a Cape Cod style mid section and front porch setting on the now ugly foundation. Seeing first the packing shed and now the new house plans beginning to take shape gives us new hope. Now that is the kind of stuff I wish more dreams were made of.

(addendum: The preceding blog entry was written in late May and edited in mid June. Since that time our lives have proceeded much like the dreams I described and this explains why it is now late July and is only now about to be posted.

Much has happened on the farm since this post was written. We started picking and selling ripe tomatoes by June 30th, a little later than I had originally hoped, but still sneaking just under my goal of having tomatoes before the end of June. Pole beans, okra, summer and winter squash, eggplant, and pepper transplants got into the ground three weeks to a month behind schedule but will have ample time to produce before the return of cold weather. Construction on the new house began on July 2nd and by the 20th it was framed and under tar paper covered roof. It is indeed exciting to see it taking shape day by day.

We are experiencing severe drought conditions and needing to use the drip irrigation extensively. Tomorrow I will tackle the task of setting up more header lines and drip tape on the acre or so of land I will need to set out around 1000 cauliflower, lettuce, and Chinese cabbage plants and seed fall carrots, beets, endive, turnips, arugula, mizuna, etc.

Deer are ravaging the soybeans and the sweet potatoes. I am fighting them by spraying a concoction of concentrated hot pepper extract and Basic H. I'm not sure it is working but I keep doing it if only for spite.

Life is proceeding, a bit difficult, but it is proceeding.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

2007-05-05T22:20:00.001-05:00

Last Wednesday I spent much of the day down at the farm putting on the finishing touches (taping the thing together with postal tape) on the 100’ field high tunnel frame and putting in tomato stakes. By evening I came home bone weary and depressed as I usually do after spending the day toiling at the farm and seeing once again the barren foundation walls and crumpled concrete slab that was my house and garage, covered with tattered plastic tarps, muddy concrete blocks, and rusting remains of tools and other metal objects I think may be salvageable.

I got in late as I was determined to get those tomato stakes in before dark and have every thing ready to put on plastic early the next morning before the wind gets up. Christine wanted to get away earlier to go to Wednesday evening prayer meeting at church and it was probably a good thing she did as I am usually grumpy by evening and not much fun to be with anyhow.

I got home around dark to find the house to myself. What better time to rummage a little leftover food from the fridge, turn on the old stereo I had salvaged from the fire ruins and regenerated with a repaired electrical cord and speakers I had procured at a yard sale, and find something good to read. I tuned in evening classical music on our local National Public Radio station, flopped into a Lazy Boy recliner, and flipped open the pages of a little paperback entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. What better way is there to rest a stressed body and mind?

The opening chapter began by the author describing his quest to put in simple written form his personal statement of belief or Credo. After many years of trying to get it condensed to less than one page, he finally succeeded. Here it is.

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you find them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt someone.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush when you are done. (My wife sometimes says I haven’t learned this one yet.}
• Live a balanced life—learn and think and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out into the world, look both ways when you cross the street, hold hands, and stay together.
• Remember the seed in the little paper cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the seed in the little paper cup—all die. So do we.
• Finally remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned to read—the biggest word of all—LOOK.

Need I say more?

ResurrectionPutting the Pieces Back Together

2007-04-08T19:04:00.001-05:00

Written on April 8, 2007 (Easter Sunday) 6 ½ weeks after the fire

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust (and fire) destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for your selves treasures in heaven . . . For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matt 6:19-21 “Therefore do not worry, saying ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ . . . For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Matt 6:31-34

“He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted . . . To comfort all who mourn . . . To give them beauty for ashes . . . The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness . . . the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified. And they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations. And they shall repair the (damaged farm)”. Isa 61:1-4

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, My soul shall be joyful in my God . . . For as the earth brings forth its bud, As the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, So the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” Isa 61:10-11

It seems only fitting that I write this post on Easter Sunday. Easter is a special day with a special theme—the regeneration of new life and hope out of suffering and loss, as exemplified by the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Old things have passed away and new things are taking their place. Most of the artifacts of our past life and memories are gone. We are replacing some of them with the things most essential for the continuation of a purposeful and productive life. The half finished packing shed and pole barn will be completed. Another house will be built. Five days after the fire we signed up more than 60 renewing and new CSA shares. The trials of the past weeks have undoubtedly changed us emotionally and perhaps spiritually. We have been deeply touched by the compassion and generosity of our neighbors and friends from family, church, CSA, Kurdish, and Internet communities. These communities represent broad diversity in culture, values, wealth, religion, and political orientation, yet they are united in supporting us in a time of need. It behooves us to continue supporting them (and those who have not yet helped us) with our energies and resources as God has blessed us. As God so loved us that He gave His only Son that we may have eternal life, so we must love our God with all our soul, heart, and mind and our neighbors as we love ourselves.

I now write a brief summary of what has happened over the past few weeks.

• We have procured a used Chevrolet work van, a new all terrain vehicle, and the most essential hand and power tools needed for the continuation of our farm work and business.
• Two volunteer community work days have occurred at our farm, one on Saturday March 3 to get most of the new packing shed constructed and under roof and a greenhouse rebuilt, and another on Saturday March 31 to clean up garden, dismantle trellises, do more work on the packing shed, and assemble the framework for a field high tunnel.
• A community benefit concert was held at a local Unitarian Universalist church on March 17 to raise money for our farm and for the church.
• Demolition of the house site has been completed and assessment has been made of what can and cannot be done to rebuild. We are in process of trying to decide how and what we are going to rebuild.
• Members of the Kurdish community have visited in our rented home and they organized a community potluck picnic at the Singers Glen community center on March 25.
• Peas, fava beans, onions, spinach, herbs, lettuce, kale, and broccoli have been planted in the field. The field has been limed and soil tillage has been underway in preparation for more planting in the coming weeks. Tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, and onions are thriving in the greenhouse.
• The first day of our farmers’ market was held on a very chilly, windy, and snowy April 7. The temperature didn’t get above freezing until the afternoon. I sold over wintered spinach, water cress, eggs, and bagged compost. Considering the kind of morning it was with a low turnout of customers, I couldn’t complain (much).

The Barn Raising

2007-03-14T00:06:00.001-05:00

Why did it Happen? What does it Mean?

2007-03-13T23:44:00.001-05:00

So Satan answered the Lord and said “Does (Marlin) fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord” Job 1: 9 -12
As I begin to reflect upon and try to make sense of this whole experience, the following frequent thoughts and statements from myself, my friends and my wife come to mind.

It was only stuff! Once as we were picking through the rubble, I saw the char edged page of a booklet I had brought back from a trip I had taken years ago to south Florida to help rebuild houses damaged by hurricane Andrew. The page contained a panoramic photograph of blocks of residential housing completely flattened by that terrible storm as far as the eye could see.

As I stood in the midst of the devastating wreckage of my own house, my thoughts went to the remarks of one of my brothers who has been helping rebuild in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina a little more than a year ago. “For about four blocks in from the beach front there was nothing left but bare slabs, and for another six blocks in there was nothing but heaps of rubble—and it was like that for 100 miles!!” I thought of the destruction wrought by the Tsunamis in the Indian Ocean about two years ago affecting not only single communities but multiple countries. My own disaster pales in comparison to that! Not only was there mass destruction of unimaginable scale, there was also loss of life, in some cases, whole families. I had both the assurance that we would have a bed to sleep in that night at the next door neighbor’s house, and word from another that there was a nice house available for rent about 1 ½ miles up the road—all before the firemen had left the scene.

One needs to keep in mind that his possessions really belong to God. God allows us to have things in order to be productive and to derive a certain amount of joy from life. My thoughts continually go back to those few seconds I had to decide which items to take with me as I fled the house. I grabbed the two most visible things, my own and Hans’ guitars sitting on the couch and an easy chair. Why did I grab his relatively low value guitar instead of the $300 digital camera I had just bought about two weeks ago resting on top of the china closet near the kitchen door, or my prized dulcimer resting on top of the TV cabinet? Hans would tell me later that he was glad that I saved this guitar because it was the one that he had learned on and the one that inspired him to reach for the level of accomplishment that he has today. This made me feel a lot better about this impromptu decision. The question of deciding to choose to save items on the basis of monetary value was irrelevant in this situation. This fire has been a dramatic demonstration of how quickly one’s possessions can be taken away. It also demonstrates that our real value is not measured in how much we have but what we are. Certainly there has to be more meaning and purpose to life than the quest to acquire and hold material possessions.

I won’t even begin to try to understand why God would allow such a thing to happen to me or to anyone else. I don’t feel that my wife or me deserved such a calamity. Neither do I feel that it was God’s fault that it happened. I do feel that despite all the shock and pain, God is still there, He still cares for us, and that life will still go on.

It could have been a lot worse! If I had followed my usual routine that morning, I would have parked the big tractor in its usual place beside the diesel fuel tank and the little Farmall Cub tractor would have been parked inside the woodshed by the feed bin. I would have most likely been a distance from the house when the fire really took off and not near enough to warn my wife. We could very easily have lost all of our tractors and all of our motor vehicles and possibly some one’s life.

Is there anything we can do to help? The community response has been overwhelming! And not only have people asked if they can help, they have helped. Members of our local Old Order Mennonite community, with whom I have been swapping heirloom garden seeds for several years, have come forward with seeds to replace some of what I lost, garden tools, and a variety of home canned and frozen food. Our CSA members have offered things like a computer and telephone, a bed, and other furniture. Members of our church organized a barn raising work crew to rebuild the greenhouse and to get the packing shed-pole barn I had started constructing this winter, up and under roof. The local Kurdish community is planning a gathering and meal with us. Numerous persons have given money. My wife is a deeply caring person who is constantly thinking of others and wanting to give and to help out whenever she can. Suddenly she has found herself in a position where the help is coming to her and she and I both struggle to know how to receive it. I am glad that I had spent an hour or so a week earlier running up and down the neighbor’s ice encrusted lanes with my big tractor and disc harrow in order to cut the ice up enough to remove it. I am glad for all the energy we have invested in working to cultivate friendships and community in a diversity of cultures. Now as we find our selves in need, we are grateful to find that community coming to our aid and helping to assure that we will continue to be able to keep on giving back and to keep the circle going.

We have a lot to be thankful for! My wife keeps on exclaiming, “I feel so blessed!” We have a nice house to live in with lots of basement space to clean up the things we saved! We have friends! We have food and clothes! We have enough! We have hope! Thank you God!

We could so easily complain that God or the Devil really did us in but in reality God has provided sufficiently. None of us were injured physically and the emotional injuries, though painful, will heal and probably leave us stronger. More than two weeks after the disaster I still feel burned and battered inside. Like the cold snow squalls that have periodically swept our area for the past week, waves of depression have repeatedly blown into my soul with their chilly fallout and I struggle to keep my head together. Many times I have felt perilously close to emotional breakdown but giving up will not help the situation. There are too many people who need us and too much work that needs to be done.

Fortunately the sun comes out and the sky clears after the snow shower has ended. Emotional bruises are sort of like physical injuries such as sprained joints, deeply bruised muscles, and fractured ribs (all things I have experienced). They will heal with time and they heal best when one goes ahead with purposeful but careful activity despite the pain. Lying around and bawling over emotional pain or refusing to walk with a sprained ankle will cause it to stiffen and hurt worse. I am thankful that God is giving me the strength to work through the pain.

Tomorrow I am going to plant some seeds and transplant some lettuce.

Picking Up The Pieces

2007-03-13T21:29:00.002-05:00

(Written Thursday March 1, one week after the fire)

We began assessing the damage and carrying a few things out of the basement by early afternoon. The firemen had gotten most of the fire out and were ready to begin the mop up. I consider it remarkable that the firemen would give me permission to enter the burned out ruins so soon.

The intense fire had raced through the attic and burned its way down through the upper rooms but had not reached the basement. We immediately realized that there would some furniture and clothes that could be salvaged from there before dripping water from above would take its toll. The solid preformed concrete basement walls had never felt the heat and gave every indication that they would be sound enough to rebuild upon.

My spirits lifted a little out of my state of shock when I saw some more flats of undamaged plants on the four tiered plant germinating and grow rack located just inside the sliding glass doors on the south basement wall. I added these to the dozen or so already resting safely on the other side of the yard and returned to begin dismantling the grow rack. At least there would be a few living plants to start off the new gardening season. Craig backed his pickup up to the edge of the yard as Ric, Joy, and their two children arrived and the six of us began carrying bed frames and mattresses, an antique walnut typewriter desk, and Christine’s upholstery sewing machine to the bed of his truck. The grow rack, heat mats, and florescent fixtures went to the old goat shed at the corner of the yard.

There was little we could do for the remainder of the day but to stand around in shock and watch the firemen bury the site in fire retardant foam, meet briefly with our insurance adjuster, and try to answer questions. Christine and I spent much of the next morning checking out the rental house located about a mile and a half north of us, moving some essentials in, and running into town to buy some basic supplies, a new pair of insulated coveralls, rubber boots, and a few tools. On Saturday Kerwin, Phillip, and I went to town to buy a few more tools, and a new “scratch and dent” chest freezer. Sunday brought us six-eight inches of wet snow, canceled church, and an opportunity to spend some very quality time with my three children, resting and healing. Considering the stress we had been through for the past several days, only God could have provided the strength that sustained us.

On Monday morning Christine’s brother James and wife Doris visited and the day was spent moving some stuff to the rental house and trying to recover some more items from the ruins including our computer. Our neighbor advised us that it might contain a salvageable hard drive. He would check it out. The following day he gave us the good news that the damaged computer worked when he plugged it in and that he was able to back up the hard drive onto his data retrieval system. We met with our insurance adjuster again on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a room by room inventory of our losses and to continue looking for salvageable items. Hans went shopping for a digital camera and to pick up a donated computer and printer. He was then able to reload the hard drive from the old computer onto the donated computer and by the following weeks end we had a computer back up and running.

As we took inventory of our losses we realized that we were richer than we had thought we were. As the grim awareness of what we had lost began to soak into our consciousness we had to try to focus on what we had not lost. Considering the extent of the devastation, it amazed us what was beginning to appear as salvageable. However I could not keep from thinking of the mementos from my past that were most likely gone forever. There was the little wooden box from my long deceased grandmother Burkholder that contained among other things, a magazine article written in 1948 (the year of my birth) by my namesake. Marlin S. Burkholder. There was the high school algebra test I had passed with a grade of 104 one rare day when my neurons happened to be firing in just the right order; and the Phi Theta Kappa pin I had earned in junior college. Somewhere in the rubble there might be remnants of the bowling pin table lamp and the lathe turned footstool I had made in 9th grade industrial arts class. Various books I highly treasure came to mind—the new collegiate edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (replaceable at a price), Heck’s Complete Encyclopedia of Illustration (most likely difficult to replace), and James Foster’s Bible Pictures and What They Tell Us, a personally autographed gift to me from a third grade teacher, published in 1897 and full of beautiful woodcut illustrations, (irreplaceable). Christine mentioned her grandmother’s china set, now shattered amongst the ashes on the living room floor, and her mother’s china, stored in the attic for her sister Darlene.

The main floor was a scene of sickening destruction. Broken and charred furniture lay everywhere. The remains of two china closets, magazines, and old phonograph records littered the floor. The solid walnut lathe turned floor lamp that Christine had bought for $3.00 at an auction, stripped and refinished, lay charred almost beyond recognition beside the remnants of my favorite leather covered Lazy Boy recliner. The walls and room partitions were still standing but ruined. In the library room an entire wall sized bookcase had toppled, spilling its charred contents into the ashes. The acrid stench of smoke permeated the air and everything we touched. Here and there stood a piece of scorched but otherwise not deeply burned furniture that appeared to be possibly salvageable.

The kitchen was the least damaged. In one corner stood a smoked but otherwise not apparently damaged refrigerator. Four flashlights lying on top still worked. A house broom sitting in the eight-inch space between the wall and refrigerator showed no sign of having ever been near a fire despite the fact that directly above, the ceiling was completely burnt away. Food in the refrigerator was still cold and the icemaker was still full of unmelted ice. Much of the food and utensils in the cabinets was salvageable. The smooth top electric range, though a mess, looked like it might work again. The antique buffet sitting at the end of the kitchen, though covered in wet ash, had little fire damage.

The main bedroom sustained the most damage within the house. Here were two large built in closets containing most of our clothes, a large recently built cedar closet full of woolen garments, two chest of drawers full of clothes, and our bed—plenty of food for fire. All that remained standing and recognizable was the ornate and antique chest of drawers containing my underwear and work clothes, where we would make the most amazing discovery.

The chest was deeply charred and ruined. The tight fitting drawers were apparently sealed shut from melted polyurethane varnish and impossible to open. I squirreled a pry bar from the garage area and pried them open. Inside one drawer was most of my underwear. Several new packs had never been opened and the plastic was not even melted! Another contained four pairs of “Hippo sized” chore gloves and some extra heavy insulated socks I had special ordered from Gemplars for about $6.00/pair and $12.00 a pair respectively—not the kind of things one can run to town and pick up at Wal Mart. A small coin collection in the top drawer containing a large silver piece from Spain dated 1804, four buffalo nickels, and a handful of more recent 50 cent pieces was undamaged. By now I was beginning to feel that God was going to take care of some of my most basic needs. At least I was going to have clean underwear to put on tonight and I wouldn’t have to go around with cold hands and feet for the next few days.

As we moved from the bedroom into the breezeway and garage area we entered into a zone of total destruction. Here everything was burned to the ground. Nothing stood but the hulks of burned out refrigerators, a fuel tank, and the wood furnace. A long workbench on the back wall and all of my shop and garden tools was gone. Three chest freezers containing our stored food and my entire garden seed inventory had imploded in the intense heat and appeared as if a giant hand had crushed them, much like I would crush a soda can. Nothing remained of the market van, a car, a riding lawn mower, and my four wheeler, but sagging hulks of twisted and rusting metal.

As we began digging, a few treasures reappeared. Someone had removed the drawers from the large old desk I had repaired and refinished years ago and among their contents were seed catalogs, garden records and recent purchase invoices I would need to replenish my lost seed supply and carry on my 2007 garden plans. The desk itself survived with possibly the need for another refinishing. Beside the desk I found my lathe turned footstool buried beneath a fallen slab of drywall which had protected it from serious fire and water damage. Fire and water ruined my Bible but various photos, cards, and papers I didn’t want to lose and habitually placed temporarily within its pages were not harmed. The dictionary appeared with minor water damage. The Encyclopedia of Illustration was more seriously water damaged but I am trying to restore it. The bowling pin lamp turned up in the basement and now graces the end table by the sofa in the house we are now renting. The little wooden box was burnt up almost beyond recognition but the contents inside, including the old algebra test, were still intact.

Trial By Fire!

2007-03-13T21:00:00.002-05:00

Feb 22, 2007

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though (our possessions) be removed, . . . Psalms 46: 1,2

This morning I got up around 8:00 at the usual time, a little later than I should have. The sun was up and it appeared to be a nice day in the making, the second day in a row with much warmer weather than we had been having. Much of the icy snow had melted off the fields and I was looking forward to getting back to laying up the cinder block wall on the packing shed building we had started building during the Christmas holidays. I went out to the garage to check the furnace as my first chore of the day. I had not put any logs on since around noon yesterday and the fire was out cold. I figured I could leave the furnace shut down today so I switched off the circulator pump. One partially burned piece remained in the firebox so I decided to remove it. It appeared to be completely out with no sign of smoke or glowing embers so I tossed it across the wood pile stacked along the west side of the open lean to shed attached to the garage. (I have no idea why I would have done anything so stupid!)

The chickens would need to be moved today so I had made sure to close the doors to their shelter the night before so I could do it first thing in the morning. I would need to warm the engine block on the diesel tractor in order to start it, so I plugged in the engine block heater and went inside for breakfast. I would need to give the tractor some time to warm up so I killed some time after breakfast making some phone calls and studying a supply catalog I had picked up yesterday at a soils management workshop. Around 10:00 I fired up the tractor and went out to move the chickens. This involved taking down the electronet fence surrounding the shelter, pulling the shelter with the tractor to a fresh location in the field, reassembling the fence, and moving feeders and waterers to the new location. Normally this task takes about 15-20 minutes. This morning it took me at least forty five minutes as it was difficult to push the fence stakes into the still partially frozen ground.

As I was working I noticed a small wisp of smoke in front of the hoop house. There is a 50 gallon drum sitting there which Christine often uses to burn kitchen trash. The smoke appeared to be coming from the barrel so I was not alarmed. I finished the job and came back in on the tractor. Normally I would have parked the tractor at its usual spot between the fuel tank at the northern edge of the woodshed and a small Ford tractor parked about 15 feet away. This morning I parked it behind the hoop house as I intended to carry fresh feed and water to the chickens, and then go back out on the tractor to feed hay to the cattle. The wind had picked up a lot in the previous half hour and was blowing hard from the west. As I walked around the back of the hoop house and turned the corner towards the woodshed I suddenly found myself looking with horror at a good sized fire at the base of the wood pile blowing into the pile with the force and intensity of a gigantic blowtorch!

My first impulse was to grab the garden hose, turn on the water hydrant nearby, and try to extinguish the blaze but it already was looking pretty hot so I quickly decided to dash around to the front of the house to warn Christine first. I burst through the front door and barked, “Christine, call the fire department immediately!! We’ve got a fire in the woodshed!!” I dashed back around to the woodpile to find the fire engulfing the entire pile. I turned on the water hose but quickly realized as the intense heat drove me backwards that I had already lost it. With the fire roaring into the garage attic I frantically dashed back to the front. I flew through the door and shouted to Christine (she was just getting off the phone) as I grabbed my guitar off the sofa with my right hand and Han’s guitar off the rocking chair with my left, “We don’t have much time!!” As smoke poured into the hallway, Christine dove under the desk to retrieve the safe box containing our most important papers and her pocketbook. “Let’s get out of here!!!” I shouted above the roar of the fast approaching fire storm. I threw our things into the back seat of the car as Christine jumped behind the wheel and sped down the driveway to safety. (We would later discover the tail light lenses warped and blistered from the gathering heat.)

Things were beginning to go “Boom!” in the now fully engulfed garage as I headed down to the bottom of the lane to where our next door neighbor and pastor, Ric Gullman and Christine were gathering. We looked up to see the plastic melted loose and blowing up from the house side of the hoop house and the Ford Taurus parked in front of the garage in full blaze. Christine asked with concern in her voice, “Shouldn’t you move the tractor farther away?” I took a circuitous route up the hill to move the tractor, ducking low to avoid the immense cloud of black smoke billowing a few feet above my head. As I returned I saw two more neighbors, Roberta Moore (hereafter known as “Bert”) hugging Christine, and Brandon Davis watching. Christine, Bert, and Brandon then walked up towards the burning house and began removing plants from the far end of the small greenhouse located a few feet from the south end of the house. Ric walked up and we began talking. A few minutes later Bert walked past me and I heard her say, “Dust Bunny has exploded!”

The next scene will be etched forever in my mind. I briefly shifted my gaze from the house fully engaged in fire to see Bert’s prized eight months pregnant mare lying dead in front of her barn, guts spilt out on the ground, and a trail of blood leading across the yard from the fence line and sharpened post where she had apparently disemboweled herself in her panicked flight to escape the dense billowing cloud hurtling through their pasture paddock and towards the horse barn. I would later learn that Bert had seen the stricken horse shortly after she had gotten out of her car and, realizing that there was nothing she could do for the horse, came on up to help us get the plants moved to the redbud bush on the far side of the yard. Minutes later a piece of flaming roof debris landed on the ground beside the greenhouse, buckling the bows with the heat and cooking the remaining flats of plants inside. By now the fire trucks were arriving and we had to move all of our cars farther up the road to make room for them.

News people arrived and began plying me for information. Bert returned with her digital camera and offered it to me to record the terrible scene. I was in no shape at the moment to concentrate on operating unfamiliar technical instruments so she graciously took some pictures. The fire marshal came up to interview me and the two of us walked around the rear to where the fire had started. At first I was bewildered at how the fire had started and could only offer two possible theories—spontaneous combustion or a spark from the burning trash barrel. Neither of these theories is plausible as stacked wood is generally not known to spontaneously combust in the winter time and the trash barrel was down wind and a distance from the source of the fire. Then I remembered the piece of charred wood I had chucked out. The 50 mile per hour winds that came up an hour later had evidently found a spark of life in that dead piece of charred wood. (I would later learn that Christine had not burned any house trash this morning.)

By now the community news grapevine was abuzz. Ric’s wife Joy was on the phone calling family and church friends. Craig Good, son in law to my eldest daughter Celia, was the first to arrive and help the firemen to hook up fire hoses. Celia called second daughter Rhonda and gave us the word that she and Kerwin would get here tonight. My son Hans called from Berea Kentucky that he would be here before morning. One of my brothers heard the call on his emergency scanner, came to the scene, and began calling out to my extended family on his cell phone. Joy brought a bowl of vegetable soup which I could hardly eat. Bert returned from burying her dead horse to assure us that we would have a place to sleep at her house tonight. Several other neighbors from farther down the road, some of whom I had never met, came by to offer help. One called Craig to tell us that he had an unoccupied house about a mile from us that we could rent.

Several hours later the fire was under control and firemen gave us permission to carefully enter the now gutted structure and to begin recovering a few salvageable items. One fireman handed me my soaked but otherwise undamaged wallet which he had found somewhere in the rubble. They had gotten most of the fire out before it had had time to settle into the basement so we would be able to recover some furniture, clothing, and greenhouse supplies from that area. Now the mop up phase of the operation was underway as the firemen sprayed fire retardant foam all over the burned area. As the late afternoon daylight began to wane we crept through the ankle deep foam, which lay over the charred debris like a ghostly shroud, and gazed into the familiar rooms to view the vestiges of what had been our personal possessions. Out in the garage and shop area laid the sagging hulks of the market van, a car, the four wheeler, and a riding lawn mower. Several freezers and refrigerators, the wood furnace, and a diesel fuel tank teetered like mottled blackish-gray tombstones covered with snow. The Ford tractor sat at a crazy angle just outside the perimeter of the enshrouded area with the tires burned off the rims on the side nearest the fire. It was a truly surreal scene!

One of my first cousins, Raleigh Rhodes, drove up and suggested that we find a hammer and nails and some scrap wood, to temporarily fasten down the hoop house plastic now flapping in the wind. As we worked in the deepening twilight the topic came up. “What happened to the cat and her half grown kitten?” We both agreed that since we had not heard or seen them around, that they had most likely perished. “Meow”. Was it my imagination? “Meow” No, it can’t be! “Meow” Yes, maybe it can be! “Meow” Yes, no doubt about it! But where is it coming from? Over in the calf hutch! I ran over and peered into the darkness amidst boxes, empty milk crates, and rolls of used drip tape. “Meooow” I reached with my hand like a blind man, groping with my fingers into the darkness, feeling beside and under a pallet until I touched a bundle of rough damp fur. I gently lifted it out. The little fellow had most of its hair singed off and he pulled his front feet up and down painfully under his quivering body. “Meooow!” My first thought was that Bert had a compassion for animals and would gladly nurture it back to health. But Raleigh insisted that his 12 year old daughter would be eager to do it also. I sent Smokey with him.

We have just gotten back from eating supper at Craig and Celias. I still did not feel like eating much and felt it wise not to push myself to eat. I am exhausted and feel myself at the point of collapse. Running all day on adrenaline has been a new experience and it is causing strange sensations in my body and mind. We are at Bert’s now and trying to sleep. Sleep will not come! The emotional fires that have been searing my guts all day are still smoldering deep within. If someone were to offer me a shot of valium or whisky at this moment I would almost take it. But it is much better that I don’t have this crutch to lean on. I just need to rest and heal. I try to visualize Jesus standing by the bed with his warm hand on my burning stomach and chest. Oh God! Can you reach down and touch me with some healing balm? Finally I drift into a few hours of fitful sleep.

What do you do in the winter months?

2007-02-17T12:02:00.001-05:00

I wonder how many times I have been asked this question by my farm customers and friends during the busy summer months. My standard answer is "I spend a lot of the time repairing the damage I did during the rest of the year." That may be a bit of an overstatement but, if one reflects on it, it is not that far from the truth. There really is a lot of cleanup work in the fields that needs to get done in the off season, things like cutting out and burning the old tomato, pepper, and bean vines, dismantling the trellises, and pulling up the plastic mulch and drip tape. And there is always something that needs to get fixed ranging from major mechanical repairs on a tractor to patching that slow leaking tire on a garden cart.

Most people assume that during the wintertime I can kick back and relax from all of the busy activity of the summer. If I'm really honest I will admit that I do a little of that. I regularly enjoy the luxury of getting up between 7:00 and 8:00 AM every morning. Compared to the old days when I got up between 4:30 and 5:00 AM seven days a week no matter how bad the weather, how late I had been up the night before, or how big a snoot full of snotty cold I had, getting up at 7:00 is major sleeping in. That I like! The reality is that, rather than being less busy, my busyness just changes phase. For much of the early part of this winter that wasn't a winter, I kept hoping for some bad weather so I could justify doing some of the inside things that you do when it is too bad to work outside. Choosing what to do other than the things I have to do or the things my wife is trying to get me to do, is like choosing what to eat at a church potluck. Your plate can only hold so much. So you have to do a little of this and a little of that and to leave a lot of things undone that you thought you would have time to do during the winter. The book on autobiographic writing remains half read and I have yet to begin writing any of my stories or the article for "Gardening For Market" that I intend to get done in 2007.

Well this week we finally got the bad weather I've been hoping for. One thing I didn't do was to immediately go out in the cold to chip the snice (mixture of snow and ice) off the car and make the daily commute through all that mess to a job in town. Instead I chucked another log on the fire and went inside to turn on the TV and watch the news reporters showing all those graphic scenes of intrepid travelors struggling through the storm. I didn't even try to clear the driveway until yesterday afternoon and only then because an idea had come to me in my sleep the night before that running the big tractor and disc harrow up and down the lane a few times might cut the compacted snow and ice loose. It worked like a charm! That has to be one of the greatest things I like about farming!

The other nice thing about being a farmer is that when snow and ice prevents you from
working in your fields, you can go play in it. That is a lot better than driving in it.

The pictures show me trying to ride the bump jumper I built more than 20 years ago from an article and pictures I had seen in a magazine. Riding it is sort of like riding a bull in a rodeo. The ride is sure to end with a good spill. The longer you stay up or the farther you get down the hill before dumping the better you are. The photographer had to be fairly quick to get this one of me while it looked good.

The Miracle of Seeds

2007-02-07T23:53:00.001-05:00

Seeds are wonderful things! They come in a myriad variety of size, shape, and color. However, all seeds hold two things in common. Externally they all appear to be dry and lifeless. Yet deep inside each of them is a tiny germ sized spark of life. When the right combination of light, moisture, and heat is present, that spark will cause the germ to divide and divide again and then to differentiate into root, stem, and leaf until a growing plant is formed. The emergence of life in this way is a miracle that always fascinates me.

I now share with you a bit of seed trivia. Have you ever wondered how big the world’s largest seed is? I have always thought a coconut would get that honor. The prize goes to the single seed of the “coco de mer” palm, measuring about three feet in circumference, a foot in length and weighing in at a respectable nearly 50 pounds! How about the smallest seed? It is not the mustard seed mentioned in the Bible. The smallest I have appears to be about the size of a grain of salt and numbers an average 45,000 seeds per ounce. The real winner is an orchid seed which numbers 35,000,000 to the ounce! What would be the longest time for a seed to retain its viability and be capable of sprouting? Most seed will remain viable for several years. I have some that is still fairly viable after being in storage for more than 10 years. A number of years ago I read that some amaranth seed found inside an ancient Aztec pyramid in Mexico sprouted and grew after an estimated 500 years. In 2005 some archeologists dug up some date palm seed from a Herodian temple in Masada, planted it, and watched it grow. Carbon dating estimated this seed to be about 2000 years old! What would be the greatest discrepancy between the size of a seed and the size of the plant that grows from it - an acorn sprouting to become a mighty oak tree perhaps? Are you ready? The seed of the giant sequoia measures a mere 1/16 of an inch in length, (about the thickness of a dime) and has produced a tree whose trunk is 20 feet in diameter and more than 300 feet tall, the most massive living thing known to exist! Now isn’t that something?!

I hold in my hands two containers of seeds.

In my left hand I hold seed descended from the seeds of a highly valued bean variety that was given to me by one of my farmers’ market customers about eight years ago. He told me that this bean variety had been grown by one of his aunts living in Tennessee since the days of his childhood. Because this particular variety of bean yields an abundance of long and wide superbly flavored pods, it was highly prized and saved from year to year by his family. He gave me some of these seeds because, as he said in his own words, “I think you will like them”. I have saved seeds from this variety myself for the years since he passed on to me this special gift and have given some to numerous gardening friends. I intend to continue saving these precious seeds and to pass them on to others.

In my right hand I hold some seed of one of my most noxious weeds. Most productive food plants have to be carefully planted at the proper time in the growing season into well prepared fertile soil, watered, pruned, weeded, and cultivated in order to obtain a worthy yield. When the harvest is over some of their seed needs to be properly harvested and stored in a safe cool dry place in order to be good enough to plant the following year. Weeds, on the other hand, do not need to be cultivated in order to thrive. If allowed to produce seed, weeds will pollute the field with seed that can be buried deep in the soil by the plow and lay dormant for decades until the right conditions allow it to sprout and grow uninvited in the midst of a planted crop. If the farmer neglects to remove them, they will overtake the good plants and either choke them out entirely or substantially reduce their yield potential. Many weeds are poisonous or have thorns that imbed themselves in our flesh and are painful to remove. Others produce underground roots or stems that break into pieces and are quickly spread all over the field or garden. These pieces will then sprout into more weeds wherever they fall and spread like wildfire. Weeds of some sort will grow in soil both fertile and infertile and will resist the farmer’s most persistent efforts to eradicate them. If broken off or uprooted from the soil, a crop plant will usually die. If a weed is angrily jerked up by the roots or whacked off, it will usually reroot or grow back from the stump. It takes effort to plant a crop, to keep it free of pests, and to nurture it to production. It takes effort to keep weeds from growing and spreading. Fortunately if the farmer succeeds in controlling the weed growth while the crop is young, the crop will grow big and strong enough to overcome the weeds and to grow on to a bountiful harvest.

We all are aware of the many kinds of obnoxious weeds that exist in our lives. Things like fear, worry, jealousy, greed, prejudice, hate, and anger pollute our lives, threaten to choke out our happiness, and interfere with our success if not kept under control. The seeds of these weeds can lie dormant in our subconscious minds for years to spring forth with a vengeance when circumstances favorable to their growth arise. They are the source of much pain and discord. These seeds are all around us, spread rapidly, and are difficult to get rid of. Fortunately they can be controlled.

I like to think that the positive values passed on to us by parents, teachers, and friends are like good seeds. Qualities like honesty, thriftiness, love, dedication, reverence, perseverance, loyalty, and respect, are planted into the soil of our lives to be cultivated and nurtured until they mature into the fruit of happiness and productivity. To grow a good crop a farmer needs to manage the soil in such a way as to maintain its health and fertility, and to prepare seed beds properly before planting seeds. The growing crop is cultivated, weeded, pruned, and trellised as necessary. The values we plant in to the well prepared soil of stable marriage built on Christian principles will grow and thrive if we tend that soil, remove the weeds, and apply rules and discipline as needed to control the growth of the crop, our children. As God supplies the sunshine, warmth, and rain necessary to sustain a growing crop, He will supply the blessings we are unable to provide in order to sustain our growth. The values needed to produce a crop of healthy, well adjusted, and productive God fearing persons need to be cherished and passed on from generation to generation or shared with friends just as we cherish, save, and pass on seeds of our best plant varieties.

Aren’t seeds wonderful?!

Work Versus Workout

2007-01-22T01:06:00.003-05:00

I recently read an article in our local newspaper about the growing popularity of health and fitness clubs this time of year when people need to lose weight and improve their overall physical wellness. Several times in the past several years I had occasion to visit a fitness center, and was always amazed to peek into their workout rooms to see large numbers of dedicated and highly motivated people pumping away on a broad array of exercise machines designed to help them achieve their various health improvement goals. Apparently these people shell out a range of $30-$50 per month for the privilege of working their muscles and burning off unwanted body fat in hopes of being “the better off for it”. How wonderful, I would think, if I could find a way to harness some of this energy and put it to work on my farm. Then perhaps they, and I, would end up with real benefits.

The program I would offer would be radically different from that offered by a health-fitness club. There would be perks that I doubt any of them could offer. Instead of exercising to the beat of rock music and the odor of everyone else’s sweat, participants in my program would inhale fresh outdoor air and be soothed by chirping crickets and singing birds, punctuated by an occasional crowing rooster or a barking dog. Rather than set them up on a $5000 “do nothing” machine, I would hand them a $15 hoe, shovel, or rake and teach them how to dance with it. The beauty of it all would be that they could move as slowly or as fast as they would need to in order to achieve their particular exercise goals, much like they would in any fitness program. Although on a farm there would be no fancy instruments to measure their heart and respiration rates, there would be ample opportunities for one to toil until muscles ache, the heart beats faster, or breathing begins to be deeper and faster–all things that benefit overall health if not overdone. And hopefully when they are done, they could look back and admire something they had actually accomplished.

I could offer a considerably better deal than $30-$50 per month to any one interested in joining this program. In fact it wouldn’t be a bad deal for either of us if I offered the program for free. However, even if I offered to pay them something to work out on my farm, I still doubt if I would get any takers. Isn’t it interesting the difference in the meaning between “work” and “workout”?

Seed Ordering Madness

2007-01-22T00:49:00.003-05:00

I didn't have a suitable picture to illustrate this post so I just chose one I thought everyone would think was pretty. The lovely looking lady here was one of our helpers from a few years back.

Sometime around mid December of every year beauty begins to appear in the mailbox at the end of my lane. As the days continue their steady descent towards the winter solstice, the fields exchange their vibrant green color for a bleak shade of brownish gray and occasionally glistening white, and the weather becomes less conducive to outdoor activity. Then the flow of mail order seed catalogs steadily increases to a flood and as the pile grows ever higher on the dining room table, so begins my annual ritual of delightfully perusing their colorful and enticing contents.

The best ones always put on the front cover a stunningly beautiful close up photo of one of their latest vegetable varieties such as a tomato or melon at the peak of ripeness, or perhaps a pile of assorted fruits, vegetables and flowers of varying size, shape and color lying on a table or in a wheelbarrow with an attractive young woman or a three year old child standing by it. The effect on my senses is similar to what I may experience when I see pictures of whopper burgers and submarine sandwiches on the price marquees at the fast food establishments I infrequently visit.

It begins as a flight of fancy as I leisurely browse through the pages. My favorite catalogs have rows of photos glowing in living color of all of their offerings, and scattered throughout are profound quotations by famous persons or pertinent quotations from the Bible relating to the virtues of caring for the land and working in the soil. Those that do not use color photos usually have nicely done illustrations by talented artists, and if I care to read some of the finer print, I often find delightful stories about how the seeds of some obscure heirloom varieties were meticulously saved and passed on by the immigrant ancestors of someone with whom the owners of the seed company had made contact. I think the one thing that really sets my fantasies rolling is that no where among the pictures does one see a bug or worm or the evidence that they have been there. Tomatoes always look perfect and there is never any blight on the leaves. There are not even any pictures of weeds growing healthy and defiantly. Dream on!

Sometime in early January the realization hits me that the time is at hand to seriously get down to business and get some seeds ordered. So I wander out to the back room and dive into the freezer to retrieve the boxes of old seed left over from last year. I dig the latest copy of my computer generated seed inventory out of the desk drawer, pry open the still chilly seed containers, carefully count the seeds I have on hand, and jot down on the inventory sheet how much of what I have and how much of what I need to buy. I spread out across the kitchen table a half dozen or so of my best seed catalogs and begin flipping pages, trying to decide what I should or shouldn’t grow this coming year, and I comparison shop in search of the best prices.

This is a job I can easily spend a full day working on. I have to repeatedly bite myself to keep from doing something crazy. Spread out before me are:
· 40 – 50 varieties of lettuces in varying colors and types
· More than 100 varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes in eight colors
· 40 varieties of beans of all types
· Lots and lots of oriental greens and vegetables with funky names
· Close to 100 American, Asian, and European melons in all kinds of size, shape, color and texture
· 75 varieties of squash and pumpkins
I usually trial a different tomato variety or so every year along with a few other things that I am curious about. Despite my fascination with oddball melons and squash I have to repeatedly remind myself that the soil here is not the ideal for those things and I will do best limiting my selections to the few tried and true hybrid varieties I already know will perform satisfactorily here. The bills have to be paid!

Despite all the caution I usually find myself in the growing season wondering why I didn’t plant this item and wondering “what in the world was I thinking when I ordered this much of this seed?”

After the decision making is done, I whip out the checkbook and write several hundred dollars of checks to preferably not more than three seed suppliers. Before the season is completely underway I will spend another several hundred dollars at our local garden center and greenhouses for more seeds and plants. Along the way I will also likely swap seeds (usually heirloom seeds) with friends and acquaintances.

Crossing Creeks

2007-01-21T23:50:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I took a 20 mile trip over to a farm near the town of New Market to participate in a community work day for a fledgling organization known as “Crossing Creeks”. The Crossing Creeks organization began about ten years ago as a dream of a friend of mine, Earl Martin, who I had gotten to know following my years as a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer. Though he and I served MCC in different parts of the world, we became acquainted through local MCC alumni gatherings following our service terms. Earl had a son who became mentally ill during his teenage years and benefited significantly from a year spent living and working at Gould Farm in Massachusetts, an intentional community farm founded 80 years ago for the purpose of continued rehabilitation of persons recovering from mental illness. Earl’s dream was to found an organization modeled after that of Gould Farm to serve the needs of the transitional mentally ill in our area.

I became involved with Crossing Creeks during the organization’s formative years as they were looking for a local farm to purchase. The home farm where I had grown up near Singers Glen was coming up for sale and I had tipped Crossing Creeks that they might want to consider that farm as a suitable place to locate. Though efforts to negotiate with my family for the sale of the family farm to Crossing Creeks did not work out, I continued my interest and support when they successfully closed on the farm where they are presently established.

About fifteen volunteers met at the Crossing Creeks farm house around 1:00 PM. A few people were needed to do some painting and electrical repair work in the farm house basement and the remainder were going to do some outside work in the woods clearing out an old fence, weather permitting. I was already dressed in my most worn out work wear and insulated coveralls so I joined the half dozen or so gathering outside and trekked with them up the mountain.

It was not nice work. The fence was old and rusty and overgrown with thorny briers. There were places where wire had been nailed into growing trees and the trees had overgrown the wire. The fence had been patched several times over the years with rolls of fence wire overlaid on the original fence. Tree limbs had fallen on the old fence in many places. Our job was to cut the old fence wire off the posts and trees, clear away the debris, and roll up the wire the best we could and carry it to the edge of the woods where it could be loaded with a tractor.

As we began working another four or five people joined us. We were a pretty motley crew. There was one older couple who looked to be in their seventies. There were several middle aged women and one girl of about fifteen. The rest of us were fit as a fiddle guys ranging in age from 30ish to 60ish. I found myself working along side of a guy in his thirties who I soon realized was Crossing Creek’s only current resident. There have been about three other residents in the past two years who are now out and living satisfactorily on their own. Two others had to leave because Crossing Creeks did not yet have the kind of professional support they needed. He came from a rough family background and has struggled with alcoholism, drug addiction, and schizophrenia for much of his life. As we cut and pulled wire and thorns, he talked freely of his background and current struggles and how thankful he is of being at Crossing Creeks, of the help he is getting, and of being able to attend several local churches. As we worked I began to reflect on some of my own experiences and knowledge of stories I’ve either read or heard told by family and relatives.

Several generations ago, before the time of easily available modern machinery, good roads, and easy to access stores and medical facilities, it was common practice for people in rural communities to work together. Men from several farms would get together to organize crews for making hay, threshing grain and husking corn – work that was often hot, dirty, and hard. After working at one farm, they would go to the next one, and so on down the line until all the farms in the vicinity were done. Since they were largely exchanging work they didn’t always worry about paying one another with money. Similar things were also done to take care of animal butchering. The women would gather and prepare sumptuous meals for the hard working men and share the work of tending gardens and growing children. In some communities if the work was an all day affair they might get together a square dance in the barn and have some fun. A lot of socializing went on over and around hard work. When disease epidemics struck or someone was seriously hurt in an accident neighbors would pitch in to do chores for the ones laid up.

It’s not that way any more. Everyone has insurance to take care of the major difficulties in life and some live in fear of litigation if they become involved with someone outside of themselves and something goes wrong. Fast cars, good roads, and available money take us quickly to wherever we need to go to get what we need or want. All sorts of modern machines and tools have made it possible to reduce or eliminate much of the manual work that once was done. Significant segments of our society now spend time and money for exercise to keep their bodies strong and healthy. For the past several generations we have morphed into a culture that encourages us to go our own way, do our own thing, and keep our opinions to ourselves. We live in a strange world where modern technology enables us to both communicate instantly with someone on the other side of the world and to live in total estrangement with the folks living on the other side of the fence or wall.

I like to think that little by little we can recapture some of that community spirit that once held our rural communities together and made them tick. Crossing Creeks could have hired a bull dozer that would have cleaned up that fence row in an hour or two. The alternative was for ten people to get to know each other a little better, to knock out a nasty job that nobody minded all that much, and to be a part of a healing process that no one knows how far will spread. Eighty some households in the greater Harrisonburg – Rockingham area could just as cheaply buy their summer’s supply of vegetables at the Wal Mart Supercenter. But there would be eighty some less friendships in this world and I doubt that they would be as well nourished in body, mind, or spirit.

So I am deeply thankful for CSA’s, organizations like Crossing Creeks, and who knows how many other groups out there striving to work together to meet needs and to improve our world.
And yes, I’m even thankful for some of the strange sort of community that is emerging as a result of the Internet even though it is connecting people across the far reaches of cyberspace.

Second Granddaughter!

2007-01-04T19:27:00.003-05:00

Dear Family,

Rhonda and Kerwin are the proud parents of Ana Marie. This is the sixth baby girl, within a year, to become a part of our Morning View Mennonite Church family.

Early this morning (4:18 A.M.) Kerwin telephoned to let us know that they were on the way to the hospital. Around 6:00 o’clock Kerwin phoned again. “You don’t have the baby already?” I queried. “Yes, we do.” Kerwin responded. (I guess Rhonda could easily handle a 7 pound 4 ounce baby.) About a half hour later Rhonda telephoned excitedly, “Hans is here in Harrisonburg. Kerwin went to eat breakfast with him and Brian…” About an hour later Hans telephoned us from the hospital.

When I walked into church, Heidi motioned to me to sit with her. She had photos which Dwight Heatwole had taken of Kerwin, Rhonda and Ana Marie. So what an unusual morning! Some folks congratulated me. Well, it is really easy to be a grandma. All I had to do was answer the telephone and lose a little sleep.

God has certainly blessed us/them. I keep marveling (in awe) about the timing of Ana’s birth and Hans’s driving through Harrisonburg. Unbeknown to us, Hans was driving in a U-Haul with a friend who was moving his sister’s belongings from DE to KY. About 5:30 A.M. Hans got the idea that he could stop for breakfast in Harrisonburg; so he started telephoning friends asking them if they wanted to meet him for breakfast. Kerwin’s brother was one of those friends; so when Kerwin phoned his brother about Ana, Hans was with him! Why would God care about such a small matter, but what would be the chances of it just happening?

Thanking God,
Grandma Christine

Confessions of a Procrastinating Luddite

2007-01-03T03:31:00.003-05:00

Who ever wanders onto this blog today probably has already noticed that the past two posts which were also posted on January 2, 2007 are a bit late in being posted as they are about events pertaining to the middle of the summer. That is because (You guessed it!) I do not make new years resolutions about overcoming my habit of procrastinating. How could I? I always put off until later the act of making the resolution, assuring that I am going to miss getting it done on the first day of the year sooo – What’s the point? Now if I could just get into the habit of procrastinating procrastinating – hmm! Well – back to my main point. One of the reasons why I have waited this long to get those two summer stories posted is that I actually did attempt to post the story "More Than Vegetables" two times at the proper time and failed. Both times something went wrong with the way I had set it up or the picture program crashed and because somehow I had missed something essential I had to do to save the draft, I lost it when I hit the “publish post” button and it didn’t publish.

So this brings me to the second point of this post. I reveal the fact that I am a genuine, honest to gosh, died in the wool, bona fide luddite when it comes to doing anything with most technological gadgets which have been invented in the past 20 years in general, and with virtually all techy gadgets that have been invented in the past 5 – 10 years in particular. I get along fine with things like shovels, hoes, and crowbars which are usually sure to work if I am sure to work. And anything I can’t fix with baler string or duct tape pretty much loses me. I proved my klutzy incapabilities nearly 40 years ago when I barely passed a high school typing class with a max of 30 words per minute and a minimum of 3 typos in the same time frame. I can assure you that I am no better today on a computer keyboard! Soon after I graduated from high school I quickly reverted back to the old slow but sufficient LPC keyboarding method – Look, Peck, Cuss. This gives me a good excuse for putting off my blogging until winter when I am more likely to have more time. I’m not only slow but I am usually sure to screw up somewhere every time I sit down at a computer. When I blew it two times in a row trying to post the "More Than Vegetables" story, I made one resolution – never again try to write something for the blog without writing and saving it first in MS Word. So this evening I spent well over an hour just copying and pasting two stories I had dutifully written up in “Word” into my blogger. I must have typed that d_ _ _ _ _ user name and password two dozen times before I got them published!

Why do I go to all this trouble to have a blog in the first place? The primary reason is that I feel that I have a story to tell that some one somewhere wants or needs to hear. Several times in the years since I started Glen Eco Farm I have been approached by persons wanting to do a newspaper or magazine write up about my activities and the story about my getting into market farming. Several times I have made presentations at sustainable ag conferences and church gatherings. I did not seek them out because I wanted attention and publicity. They sought me out because they were interested in what I was doing. I readily admit that my farm management style could stand a lot of improvement, so the fact that there are people out there wanting to write or read about my farm cannot be based on the fact that they are impressed with the quality of my work. It has to be that they are interested simply because there is a real need in our world for real food, for a cleaner and more natural world, and for people willing to strive to make it all happen. I did not have people seeking me out for speaking or writing when I was a commercial dairy farmer and neither do I know of anyone wanting to tour commercial poultry or hog farms or wanting to write stories about them. On the contrary I have been hearing more from the general public that they would like to be rid of this kind of farm. Unfortunately many of these same people seem to want their Wal Mart and Target stores. This all tells me something.

More Than Vegetables

2007-01-02T22:55:00.001-05:00

A familiar event regularly takes place around 3.00 PM on Saturday afternoons on our farm during the months of July, August, and into September. About two hours after I have returned from a busy morning at the Harrisonburg farmers market, grabbed a bite to eat, and (if fortunate) gotten a brief early afternoon siesta, our Kurdish friends begin pulling into our driveway for fresh “pick your own” tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, and Swiss chard. I have seen as many as three or four cars turn into our driveway at one time. Most of these cars now contain whole families and suddenly our market garden is transformed into a scene of colorfully dressed men and women happily walking up and down the rows, plastic bags in hand, chatting away in a language I’ll probably never learn to speak on a conversational level. A few minutes later they reunite in our garage and lay their bountifully laden bags on the table and floor, as they await checkout. Sometimes it gets rather hectic as we try our best to sort through their selections, making sure the right bags go to the right persons, and try not to make calculating mistakes as we tally up their purchases amidst answering queries about prices for specific items and children asking for permission to pet the cats. As children cavort in the driveway and all around our feet, the adults visit with each other in what can only be described as a joyous party atmosphere. Indeed our farm has become a regular meeting place for the rapidly growing Kurdish community of Harrisonburg, VA.

So how did this all begin? About five or six years ago we had found ourselves once again in the first week of August with the whole tomato crop ripening like a house afire. Everyone who has ever been in this kind of business knows that when the tomato glut hits one farm it hits them all. So there I was at our local farmers market with my truck loaded with beau coups of 25 pound boxes of dead ripe tomatoes, hoping to get rid of a few of them for $10 per box. All around me were other vendors trying to do the same thing. About then I began noticing men of apparent middle eastern descent walking up and down our market talking loudly. Soon they were at my booth asking me if I could sell them a box of tomatoes for $5.00. There was no way that I was going to let them have my precious “love apples” for $5.00 a box so I dickered with them and ended up letting a few go for $7.50. Knowing that there still remained bushels more still unpicked in the garden that were going to waste if not picked soon, I told some of them that if they were willing to come out to the farm and pick them themselves, they could have them for $5.00 per box.

The first to come were just men, usually several together. It wasn’t long till they noticed that I had a good supply of Swiss chard, and peppers. They especially got excited when they saw the small amount of okra and some dill growing around the house. By now I had sensed that they came from a cultural background where price dickering was a common practice (something I had gotten used to during my years of living in South America) so I was able to accommodate to that habit with a little bit of firmness. I was a little irritated when they would pull into the driveway and toot their horns (considered rude in American culture) if I was out in the field a distance from the house, but again I found it not hard to pass it off as a cultural indiscretion as it was apparent that their intentions were not to be rude. They always began with a friendly greeting and a handshake. At first their English speaking skills were weak and we both were a little nervous but those things all improved as with repeated visits we became better acquainted. Soon they began bringing their wives and along with them came the children.

As the Kurdish traffic to our farm gradually picked up and the list of sought after items grew beyond, chard, peppers, and tomatoes, we settled into a general routine of selling things that they picked themselves at 60% of what we would sell the same thing for at the market. On several occasions they brought me seeds of things they especially wanted me to grow for them that are hard to find in American stores (cutting celery and Armenian cucumbers) and once or twice their wives brought us samples of Kurdish prepared food. Though we began selling them tomatoes for 15-20 cents per pound, we have gradually gotten to the level of selling “pick your own” tomatoes for around 80 cents per pound early in the season and 50 cents per pound in tomato glut season.

In the weeks following the events of 9/11 we were glad to know that our farm had become a safe and friendly haven for a people whom we knew felt some of the animosity of Americans towards anyone of mid eastern descent or followers of the Islamic religion. By this time we were beginning to share our views and concerns of political events occurring here and in Iraq and to talk about our religious similarities and differences. We have given several of them Kurdish New Testaments and various other Christian materials written in Kurdish and have also accepted an English copy of the Quran and have looked at several Islamic websites and videos that our friends have given or told us about.

More recently we have felt honored to stand with our Kurdish friends when four men (all whom we know and trust) were investigated by the FBI, tried, and convicted of alleged illegal money transfer activities in federal court. We have visited in their homes, heard their stories, and are firmly convinced that they committed no serious crimes. We are thankful that they received relatively lenient sentences.

To bring this story to an end we know that our Kurdish friends have gotten a lot more than vegetables from us and we have gotten a lot more than money from them. Isn’t that wonderful?

The Good Stuff Is A Rollin

2007-01-02T22:33:00.001-05:00

It is now mid July and we are now entering that most delightful time of the gardening season when most of what we have been toiling for since early February is now coming to fruition. The picture says it all. Well not quite, someone missed getting a quart of those luscious blackberries in there.

The season started out discouraging enough. The first thing that happened was I screwed up by not cleaning out the poop and litter from the greenhouse after I had finished using it as a chicken brooding house during the winter. I planted onions as usual inside the house on the grow racks in mid January and had them up good. When I set them out into the greenhouse in February they just flat out died. Apparently onion seedlings are sensitive even to a little ammonia vapor in the air. I’m normally pretty sensitive to chemical smells and could easily detect the smell of ammonia in the greenhouse, but I was not alarmed if it was not strong enough to knock me flat on my butt. Instead I had some idiotic notion that a little ammonia in the air might be a good thing inside a greenhouse and would stimulate plant growth. You live and learn!

After I thoroughly cleaned the greenhouse I started over and planted a bunch of lettuce, brassicas, and early tomatoes. I was all excited as I had bought several bags of “organic” potting soil from our local gardening center and it looked like good stuff, OMRI approved and all that. It all came up good and looked good for a couple of days. Then I waited, and waited, and waited. The lettuce never got much more that ¼ inch tall. The broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower got about 1 ½ inches tall and turned purple. Two weeks from emergence the tomato plants had never shown signs of developing the first true leaves, and the baby leaves were purple on the undersides. The second planting of onions came up and went dormant. Despite all the hoopla written on the bag about how this premier organic potting soil would stimulate and sustain vigorous plant growth for nine months, nothing I had planted in it, and I mean nothing, was growing.

I had been through this scenario a couple of years before. After two to three weeks of watching my alive but dormant plants, I would pull up a few and discover virtually no roots. Now I was doing the same thing! Then I had thought the problem was caused by soaking my Winstrip planting trays too long in chlorine solution, causing a lingering chemical contamination problem. I felt by now that the Winstrips should be safe but I had planted in a bunch of them so I decided the time had come to throw them out. Meanwhile I continued watching some new conventional trays that I had planted a little later. I eventually concluded that they were doing no better. Fortunately I had planted some of my early tomatoes in some other potting soil I had left over from the previous year and they were OK. This left me with no other conclusion. Everything I had started in the new potting soil was not growing! Lesson II learned. Don’t ever buy potting soil in a pretty bag!

I salvaged about ½ of my sick plants, threw out the rest, and ran off to town to buy new potting soil similar to what I had been using before. From then on my greenhouse thrived. There was pretty obvious evidence from the appearance of my brassica and tomato plants that I had phosphorus deficiency in the organic potting soil and a tell tale sign as evidenced by a firing of leaf margins on my now month old lettuce plants that were not yet ½ inch tall, that I probably also had a soluble salt problem in the organic soil. I sent off samples to our state land grant university soil testing lab and a letter to the company that made the potting soil, explaining the problem and demanding a refund. The lab samples came back showing sufficient nutrient levels in the potting soil and no salinity. The refund came through several months later.

The dormant onion plants began growing when I slid them all over on fresh potting soil and I eventually got them transplanted to the garden, alive and healthy, but way too late for an early crop. Once again I failed to have “ready to market” lettuce by mid April and a lettuce glut in late May. June turned into a drought and I spent the last half of the month dragging drip tape and hooking up header lines instead of getting mid summer salads going. When it finally rained we got about 10 inches in three days. Now you know why I am exulting in a bountiful mid summer harvest!

The tomatoes were a little late getting started due to a cool spring and I am having to address some potassium deficiency problems (greywall) in the tomato hoophouses, but it looks like they are going to throw a decent crop (maybe the usual August glut). Peppers are loaded and have never looked better despite some dry rot in the middle of the patch. And those delightful Zephyr summer squash-they are a PITA to pick but fabulous to eat and they sell well. I pick them at 3 – 5 inches, put ½ lb in pint berry tills, and get $1.75 a pop. I planted a new and very promising muskmelon, Eclypse, which looks like it is going to mature later than my beloved Earliqueens and spread out the harvest. It looks like a very good year for melons. I’m starting to become well known for my habit of driving up the road for a mile in either direction and leaving a slightly cracked but still good enough to eat melon in everyone’s mailbox. And sweet corn! It’s much better than waiting for Christmas! Hey I’ve got to get to bed!

Did You Know That?

2006-10-05T22:27:00.001-05:00

Hello fellow CSAers,

Several weeks ago Brent Harmes was helping me pick peppers and expressed surprise when I told him that there is no such thing as a ripe green pepper. Apparently there is a sizable portion of the general public that is not aware of the fact that green peppers are indeed green peppers, that is-green as in immature or unripe peppers. I must admit that this is one thing that I have never given much thought to. I had always assumed that everyone knows that green peppers are unripe peppers. The truth is that all peppers if left on the plant long enough, are going to change to some color other than green—red, orange, yellow, even brown or purple. There is at least one variety of pepper that I know of that is a light yellow color when unripe and gradually changes to orange, then red as it ripens.

Now this is one thing that I didn’t know until after I started market gardening a little more than ten years ago. There are varieties of tomatoes that are green when ripe! Now isn’t that interesting! I haven’t grown many of them though because I like to see tomatoes change color as they ripen and I also think that there is a proportionately smaller portion of the general public that likes to eat green tomatoes, ripe or unripe.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed as I patiently watch for signs of head formation on my purple, orange, and white cauliflower as the end of the 2006 CSA season draws ever closer. I thought I had started them plenty early enough in early June in order to have them ready to cut by late September and early October so I planted a lot to make sure the needs of the CSA and farmers’ market would be covered. I admit that though I had done a good job of protecting the young plants from insect attack while in the greenhouse, they were in the greenhouse too long. However despite the fact that they should have been transplanted at 6 weeks instead of 8 weeks, I still thought that getting them into the ground by the 1st of August would give me plenty of time to have them mature before the middle of October. Then came the devastating August drought and a full scale attack by both imported cabbage worms and harlequin bugs which left me scrambling to merely get them to survive not to mention keeping them on their growing schedule. Well now you have the story. My cauliflower is looking healthy now and growing rapidly, but a good month behind schedule. A similar thing happened to the broccoli; the only difference is that it was groundhogs, not bugs that nearly did it in.

If none of you get to see broccoli and or multicolored cauliflower in your CSA boxes before Oct 17, believe me, it will probably make it barring an early killing frost. You should get an opportunity to buy it from me at the farmers’ market. I still hope to have purple, orange, and white cauliflower along with green broccoli on the table at the same time and if I am lucky, some lime green romanesco cauliflower, the kind with the fascinating spiraling cone shaped heads. It should be beautiful.

Please remember to bring back all your empty boxes by the last pickup. I hope to see many of you at the potluck. Oh that reminds me I need to get back to practicing my guitar!

Marlin

How To Make a Fabulous Tomato Sandwich

2006-08-08T08:04:00.001-05:00

The act of making a good tomato sandwich is a truly refined art, which takes at least several good gardening seasons if not a lifetime of practiced experience to get it just right. Having been a tomato connoisseur for most of my life, I still consider myself as one who could further refine my skills at making a tomato sandwich “really good”. I tend to be a somewhat sloppy person in the way I go about doing some things. Therefore I must add that at least a part of the mystique that goes into creating this absolutely ecstatic gustatory delight is to know, or at least to sense, the right combination of chaotic messiness and orderliness that needs to go into your work. Bear in mind that there are certain things that absolutely must be in your sandwich, other things that are optional or could be in varied form, and other things that definitely must be left out. It is with these thoughts in mind that I share with you a little of what I have learned over the years of making and consuming these salubrious, savorous sensations.

Before you begin, keep in mind that you will be creating much more than a simple combination or stack of food articles put together in such a way that it is possible to eat in the hands without a plate underneath. You will be creating an experience. It will be an experience that involves not only the taste buds but also your visual, olfactory, and tactile senses as well. If you happen to have a loose hinged jaw like mine, you will also be able to add an auditory dimension to this experience as your jaw makes a popping noise when you open wide to bite into your work. Also if you have done the job properly, it will most likely be impossible to eat it without having a plate underneath, unless of course you don’t care about the sticky mess you will be leaving on the table or floor, all an integral part of the whole experience.

There are seven principal ingredients that go into a tomato sandwich that I consider necessary to make it really good. Of course, I’m a bit opinionated and I am willing to admit that there are those who could omit several of them and, as long as the most important part, the tomato, is still in there, they can still call it a tomato sandwich and they may still think it is good. I just think that unless all seven things are in there, it is not quite complete. Here they are:

Bread. It is most important that it is fresh and preferably home made. I like 100% whole wheat the best and rye bread, especially if I have Swiss cheese. Don’t mess with the white stuff from the store and if you insist on using store bought bread then get whole wheat, rye, or multigrain. A good test of bread freshness is to pick up a slice by the edge. If it is soft enough that it will hardly hold together by its own weight, then it is fresh. Now a slice of fresh store bought white bread might pass this test. Don’t be fooled! They shouldn’t even call that stuff bread! If you really prefer a bread slice that has a firmer texture, there are some multigrain breads that have this quality and are very good. You will immediately recognize that this bread has some real substance. The other option of course is to toast the bread.

Cheese. Any good quality cheese is fine as long as it is real cheese. I’m assuming of course that you already know that American processed cheese like you get at the store is a poor excuse for cheese. I favor Swiss cheese but sharp Cheddar is also great as well as others. I always like to put the cheese next to the bottom slice of bread as it gives enough form to the otherwise formless mass long enough to get it close to your mouth and when moist provides a slippery base for the juicy tomato and onion slices later to come. When they go slithering out the sides as you begin to chow down your creation your experience will be further enhanced and challenging.

Meat. As a self-confessed meat junkie, I consider some kind of meat in the sandwich to be pretty essential. Vegetarians may differ with me on this point and that is OK. Hamburger or sliced roast beef from grass fed and grass finished cows is the better choice. Ham is great but it should be country ham. Store bought ham will work if that is the best you can do and still must have ham. Ditto for pasture raised chicken or turkey versus commercially produced chicken or turkey. I would stay away from most bologna or other processed meats. An exception is Lebanon bologna, which I happen to like a lot on a tomato sandwich. Fish or other seafood might be a possibility but somehow the idea doesn’t appeal to me much.

Tomato. Ah ha the most important part! Get a vine ripened one from the supermarket! Ya gotta be kidding! Don"t even think of using a store bought tomato for gosh sake! Nothing but a genuine homegrown garden tomato either ripened on the vine or finished ripening on a table on the back porch will do! Obviously the best of the best are the old time heirloom varieties like “Brandywine”, “Old German”, “Pruden’s Purple” or “Blosser” to name just a few. Hybrid varieties like “Big Beef”, “Celebrity”, or Burpee’s “Big Boy” are still very good if home grown and properly ripened. These won’t hold a candle to the heirlooms for flavor though. Generally the juicier it is the better. Choose a well ripened one big enough that when you cut a one half to three quarter inch slice about midway between the stem end and blossom end it will be more than big enough to completely cover a slice of bread.

Onions. I love them. Others may choose to skip them. Even a store bought onion can work here. Sweet ones are good. I don’t mind if they are a little raunchy though. I usually end up getting the slices wedge shaped, not necessarily on purpose. This adds to the fun of eating your creation though as you try frantically to hold the thing together as onion slices go shooting out the sides as you crunch down.

Green Stuff. Yeah, I know that it is well nigh impossible to find decent lettuce during the middle of tomato season. If you can you are plain lucky! Now is your opportunity to be creative. Don’t go to the store and buy “Iceberg” lettuce for Pete’s sake! Swiss chard grows well in mid summer and the young tender leaves work quite well on a sandwich. Also worth trying are the leaves of various herbs, especially Basil. Recently I have learned that the common midsummer weed, purslane, is good (don’t laugh) eaten raw in salads or cooked slightly. I tried it once on a sandwich and it was not bad at all. It has a mild flavor and crunchy texture. Health nuts will tell you that purslane is high in omega 3 fatty acids and among the most nutritious of the edible weeds.

Dressings. This usually goes on top so it can work its way down through the layers as you eat, or on either or both pieces of bread before you begin stacking the goodies. My choice is real mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip)! Also good is spicy brown mustard rather than yellow mustard. Another excellent choice is extra virgin olive oil. Some might want ketchup but I think it can be a bit redundant considering ketchup is mostly tomato sauce and you already have tomato as your main ingredient in your sandwich. I have used my wife’s home made ketchup (made with good tomatoes and lots of herbs and spices) quite satisfactorily though. At any rate I would never recommend that red slop that everyone buys at the grocery store! That’s the same stuff people are always slathering all over their fast food in order to cover up an already “blah” taste! To use it on a good tomato sandwich simply doesn’t make a bit of sense! Finish it off with a big slab of dill pickle on top and you are ready to go.

So, there you have it, every thing you need to know to make a super tomato sandwich. If you are truly adventurous, you might want to repeat this sequence several times before you put the final slice of bread on the top. It helps to have a big mouth and a loose jaw though. Take it from someone who has both and knows!

Now comes the final test. If made right, it will take at least both hands to cradle the sandwich together as you bring it to your mouth for the first bite. If for some reason your hands are not enough to accomplish this feat, you might want to try using one or both of your feet. This assumes of course that you have been doing your yoga. Within seconds you should have tomato juice and mayonnaise dripping off both elbows and smeared from eyebrows to chin, and you should be experiencing something close to absolute sublime orgasmic ecstasy. Only then will you know that you have made a really good tomato sandwich. :>).

We're Pickin Blosser Tomatoes!

2006-07-05T19:36:00.001-05:00

I picked my first ripe Blosser tomatoes around June 20 to the 22nd. On Saturday the 15th I had taken a watch to the dear lady who runs the jewelry store directly in front of my farmers' market stand to have the battery replaced. I couldn't get her to charge me for it. "Just bring me your first ripe tomato!" she insisted. So during the following week I picked around a half dozen of which we savored about three of them. Boy were they ever good! They were all sort of on the small side so I saved three of the nicer ones to take to the jewelry lady on my next market day on the 24th. Your should have seen her eyes when I handed them to her! "Why you weren't kidding were you!" she gushed. "I only wanted one. Give me your watch and I will put a nice new band on it for you!" Then she paraded up and down the line of venders holding them up for all to see, as proud as a 12 year old boy with a brand new fishing rod. You know I love those kind of deals.

The next Saturday, July 1, I had nearly a bread delivery tray full of them at the market and they were all snatched up in about a half hour priced at $3.00 per pound.
That added up to over $75 for the tray nearly full. So I came pretty close to my target date of June 20th for the first tomatoes to sell. It's this kind of fun that makes up for the days when you're sitting there at 12 noon on a hot day and there is still nearly a table full of unsold produce and you are racking your brain trying to figure out how to get rid of it over the weekend. Our church folks are usually the beneficiaries of these scenarios. And the chickens always eat exceedingly well come the month of August.

Remember the story about the renegade chicken I wrote about several weeks ago, the one that got my first ripening tomato around June 7th? The next day she was back up there around 9:00 and I took a crack at her with the 22 rifle and apparently missed though I think I saw feathers fly. She fled back to the pen and I didn't see her again for at least three weeks. I wondered if I might have hit her and she ran off and died somewhere, but I never found a carcass. I was a bit disappointed because I really was looking forward to some chicken potpie that evening.

Well guess what, she made the sojourn once again last Friday morning. I wasn't about to allow her another chance to sample the dozen or so of those half ripe love apples still left on the vines and I got her with one shot. Yay! I had no sooner than put the gun away and gone back out to the garage, to find three cats up on the table where I had spread out my tomatoes to finish ripening, having, you guessed it, a tomato tasting! The rouges scattered before I could start cussing! I immediately stormed back into the house and announced to my wife that I was going to start exterminating cats. I would've done it too if I hadn't have had at least five "gotta do it right now" jobs pushing at me, including butchering a chicken. Oh well, the chicken and corn soup tasted pretty good that evening. Such is the way of life on a farm.

Standing With Our Neighbors

2006-07-02T20:26:00.001-05:00

On Monday June 26, 2006 I did something I have never done before, I participated in a protest demonstration. I grew up in the 1960's in a conservative agrarian culture that generally frowned upon the idea of supporting the protest rallies and marches that were a part of the civil rights movement of that era. So why did I take a day off of work that I really needed to stay home and get done, in order to go to Harrisonburg to stand with several hundred of my friends in protest of an event that we all felt was injustice towards some of us.

The occasion was the sentencing in federal district court of three Kurdish men who were being charged for violation of the Patriot Act when they sent money back to their homeland in northern Iraq Kurdistan with the intention of helping family and friends. Apparently they had been sending money to their homeland prior to 9/11 and were unaware that the passage of the Patriot Act shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks made it illegal to transfer money overseas without a license. They continued transferring money over the next several years and became the objects of intensive investigation by the FBI. In at least one incident the FBI agents came in the early morning with search warrents and confiscated personal property and money, talked abusingly to the men, and forced the frightened wives and children to wait in an adjoining room without breakfast while they conducted the several hour's search. Despite the fact that the FBI acknowledged that they uncovered no evidence that the transferred money was going to terrorist organizations and that they knew that the charged men were not willfully breaking the law, they pressed charges anyway. The potential penalties for these felonious convictions could have included imprisonment, heavy fines, and deportation. There begs the question, why didn't the initial investigators, once they knew that their charges had no evil intentions or awareness that they were engaging in illegal activity, simply help them get the necessary licensure?

We happened to know all of these men personally as they have been coming with their families out to our farm every summer for the past five years or so to buy "pick your own" produce. We have come to know them as people of good character and they have become our friends. One thing we have learned from Kurdish culture is that they believe in and practice the mandate to "be their brother's keeper" and to stand in support of each other when someone is in trouble. This is in fact what they were doing when they were sending money back to friends and family in Kurdistan and why several of the men were channeling relatively large sums of money from numerous families thru their personal bank accounts which attracted the attention of the FBI investigators. This was also the reason why Christine and myself went to Harrisonburg last Monday when we really needed to stay home and work, to stand with our Kurdish neighbors as their sentences were being imposed.

We were fortunate and honored to be permitted entry into the courtroom with mostly their families and a few American supporters to witness the trial. No one inside or outside carried signs, attempted to block access, or shouted angry slogans. A few sang songs of praise or petition. As the judge was about to begin imposing the sentences, He asked those in support of them to stand and acknowleged that the fact that they had this much community support spoke a lot about their character and would have some influence on the severity of their sentences. One of the defendents stated that he was unaware that he was doing wrong and that he was sorry and asked the judge for forgiveness. All three of the men were sentenced to varying lengths of probation and modest fines. None were sentenced to prison or deportation. The sense of relief could be felt by everyone in the crowd as we exited the courtroom and mingled with the crowd outside.

Nothing I have ever done felt so right and so good!

Aerial View of the Main Market Garden

2006-06-07T20:25:00.001-05:00

Uh, if taking the picture from the house roof counts as an aerial photo. This shows several of the plots where I have laid plastic mulch and have transplanted cucumbers, melons, peppers, and eggplant. The middle plot shows the now expired overwintered spinach planting and the almost expired lettuce beds. Today I finished discing in the old spinach and am preparing the ground for late transplanted onions and a second planting of beets. It's been awfully dry and I am starting to get concerned. We do have some drip irrigation set up for the most critical areas. Off in the distance one can see the field hoop houses where I have my earliest tomatoes planted. The total length of the field is about 800 feet and encompasses an area of two and one half acres. I finished clipping the wire to the top of the steel t posts on the lima bean trellis this evening and plan to run the strings tomorrow. Those limas are really looking good now and looking for something to climb. Christine picked peas today and is bugging me a little to help her to shell them as I write. This morning she called my attention to the fact that a tomato was starting to ripen in the hoop house close to the house. This afternoon she called me over to show me that the vagabond chicken that insists on flying over the pasture pen fence and making the daily traverse of several hundred yard's distance to piddle around the house and garage, had also found it and eaten a big chunk out of the side. Boy was I ever ticked off! Tomorrow I'm either going to get my hands on the booger or shoot her with the 22 and we are going to have chicken soup for supper.

Plastic Mulch Laying Sequence

2006-05-18T22:20:00.004-05:00

Here you will see a sequence of photos showing my home made plastic mulch laying operation. the first picture is a close up of the apparatus holding the roll of plastic under the belly of the tractor and the way I get the plastic started under the tires. The next series shows me forming the bed in preparation for laying plastic. I no longer do the acrobatics of standing on the rear tool bar while driving the tractor. The extra weight was not necessary. I have more recently added wheels to the rod which carries the plastic roll which makes it possible to carry it higher. I was having trouble reaching the roll to foot brake it as the roll decreased in diameter. Even with the roll carried higher one still needs long legs and a good sized foot to make this work. Yesterday I designed and built a rig for marking holes in plastic for planting with a hand carried device I use to make the planting holes and slugging them with water and fertilizer. It worked well and I was able to put in around 700 pepper plants in a couple of hours.

Desiderata

2006-05-12T19:53:00.003-05:00

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

My First Granddaughter, Megan Olivia Good

2006-05-05T20:56:00.001-05:00

My oldest daughter Celia gave birth to our first granddaughter on April 28. Mother and daughter are doing great and we are all bursting with pride!

The field hoop houses are mostly full of tomato transplants by now and the ones first transplanted in the hoop house close to the house on April 15 are now a good 18 inches tall and in need of trellising. There is even an apricot sized tomato on one of the plants! Yay!

And speaking of apricots, we have a nice set of young apricots on the three trees I planted about 10 years ago in the orchard south of the house. This is only the second time I have ever seen them successfully set fruit. Our zone 6 climate here is on the fringe of cold tolerance for apricots. We usually get a freeze after the trees bloom sufficient to take them out. About three years ago they set fruit only to drop them later when some sort of "no seeum" bug got to them. I almost cut the trees down this spring but didn't partly because something down deep inside me wanted to give them yet another chance and partly because i didn't get my "round tuit" in time. Maybe global warming will work in my favor from now on. This time, by golly, I am violating my "stay organic as much as I can" rule enough to allow me a spraying or too with something capable of killing these buggers! Then I plan to follow up with "Surround" at weekly intervals or after any rain. I want some apricots!

The weather is getting dry again and we need more rain.

Hoophouse Tomatoes

2006-04-25T23:21:00.001-05:00

Saturday the 15th I transplanted the first tomatoes to the hoop house closest to the house with hopes that I will be picking the bright pink orbs by the middle of June. These are not an early variety that can be expected to produce a golf ball sized red but not particularly tasty tomato about 60 days after planting out a six week old transplant. No, these are an heirloom variety called "Blosser" that normally needs 80 to 90 days after transplant which in this area means they will start producing around mid July. These are the tomatoes that many people would almost die for and if they do succeed in getting them without dying, they will think they have indeed died and gone to heaven when they cut a slice big enough to cover a slice of fresh home made bread and begin chomping into it. I started these babies in mid January in 24 cell insert trays,(double the root ball space of tomato plants sold in most commercial greenhouses). When the plants are about 4-5 inches tall I double dirt them (pile additional potting soil on top of the flats around and between the plants),nearly doubling again the root ball space. This gives me a 10-12 week old transplant with blooms on it and a root ball the size of my fist (I have a big fist)ready to hit the ground a running. By planting them into a hoop house or high tunnel they get the additional advantage of warmer night time temperatures during the weeks of May and early June. Tomatoes need night time temperatures in the 50s in order to successfully set fruit. So it is realistic to get those salubrious Blosser tomatoes before the end of June if they are planted in a hoop house instead of out in the open.

I finished putting the plastic on the field high tunnels today with plans to get plants in them before this week is out. This is about two weeks earlier than I normally plant tomatoes outside. The picture shows a view inside one of the high tunnels last year showing both Red Suns in the foreground (a hybrid determinate variety) and the indeterminate Brandywines in the background. Near this spot I knelt one time and picked a bushel within arms reach without getting off my knees off of four or five plants.

Thank God for the rain!

2006-04-25T22:53:00.001-05:00

Friday night April 14 was a special evening. A spectacular thunderstorm rolled in around 9:00 PM with lots of lightning to light up the world outside, a fitting event for Good Friday. The dogs wanted to come into the house and the most shy one insisted on cowering beneath the computer desk. After awhile I took him back out to the front porch where I lingered awhile to watch the celestial fireworks and to commune with the forces of nature. We have had several rains since and a really nice soaker this past Saturday, a bit too ducky for a Saturday morning market day but we needed it. The lightning picture was not taken here on my farm (I'm not that good!)but it captures well the essence of the Good Friday storm and my reasons for going outside to watch it.

Early Tomatoes

2006-04-16T18:54:00.001-05:00

Friday evening we had a night time thunderstorm with spectacular fireworks-a fitting event for Good Friday. The dogs barked and banged on the front door till we let them in and the one cowered under the computer desk until the thunder stopped. Of course I had to drag him outside for awhile to sit on the front porch, watch the show, and commune with the forces of nature. I went to market the next morning with fresh eggs, spinach in prime condition, and because I have been determined to have lettuce to sell by mid April, some cutting lettuce from the field hoop house. I visited my mom in the nursing home for awhile after leaving the market and got home around mid afternoon. I then decided to transplant tomatoes into the hoop house close to the house, the one I showed in an earlier post with mid winter salad greens.

Most intrepid tomato gardeners can pot up an early tomato variety like "Early Girl", "Early Cascade", or "Quik Pic" and have ripe golf ball sized tomatoes, with a flavor that is nothing special, before the end of June.

The plants I was planting are a local heirloom called "Blosser" started from seed in late January and transferred as seedlings into 24 cell flats in early February. In mid March, about the time I normally seed my main tomato crop, I "double dirted" the then four inch tall plants by piling more potting soil on top of the flats. This gave me sturdy ten week old one foot tall plants with root balls the size of my fist (I have a big fist)with blooms on them. Blosser tomatoes normally need 80-90 days beyond a 6-8 week transplant in order to mature fruit. With a little of my neighbors horse manure in the planting holes, some tender loving care, and God's blessings, I can hope to have nice big ripe pink tomatoes by mid June. I can maintain warmer temperatures inside the hoop house for the next two months as tomatoes need night time temperatures no lower than 50 degrees in order to successfully set fruit.

These are not the so so golf ball sized pale red orbs that some early tomato fanatics like to brag about. These are big enough for a slice to cover a slice of fresh home made bread and have a flavor some people would almost kill for. If they do have the fortune to get one without killing, then when they eat it they may think they have died and gone to heaven. The picture shows some Blosser tomatoes I grew last year in a hoop house. They started producing around the first of July, about two weeks earlier than they would have in the open field

Special Morning

2006-04-16T17:16:00.003-05:00

I was hard to get out of bed this morning. We were to go to a community Easter sunrise service hosted by three community churches at the cemetery on the hill outside of Singers Glen. Finally I dragged on out and when we got there I was glad we went. The weather was beautiful and the scene breathtaking. As the sun came up I gazed at the post card scene of the village of Singers Glen lying in the valley south of the cemetery. To the north lies the now abandoned dairy farm where I grew up and farmed myself for 16 years. The recent rains have really brought out the budding trees and greened up the grass. The rising sun reflected off the tombstones, creating a beautiful glow. What a wonderful time to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus and the hopes for an abundant season that the recent refreshing rains and warmer weather are bringing forth.

My pole bean trellising system

2006-04-11T20:10:00.004-05:00

We were blessed over the weekend with nearly an inch of slow soaking rain. PTL! It had been one of the driest Marches on record here with less than 1/2 inch of rain and snow for the entire month. Things are really starting to pop now!

Yesterday I made raised beds and covered them with black, then red plastic mulch in preparation for tomato planting. Today I transplanted nearly 400 Red Cross and Red Sails lettuce plants and helped Christine haul and spread a mix of wood shavings and horse manure on the asparagus and rhubarb beds as mulch. I then ran to town to run some errands and buy lumber for building four more hoop house ends. I plan to make the two 100 foot hoop houses into four 50 foot units to simplify the logistics of moving them each season. Tomorrow I plan to work on the hoop houses and maybe put some Pemium Crop broccoli and Cheddar cauliflower plants out.

The picture is of me building a trellis for pole beans. It is relatively inexpensive and simple to build and dismantle but putting on the drop strings takes some time. I like the background because it shows the busyness of the farm in June when gardening and hay making is in full swing.

Me and my Favorite Dog

2006-04-04T00:29:00.002-05:00

My wife balked a little when she first saw an earlier version of this picture on my blog. She thought I should have her picture featured here with me like I should value her more than an old dog. She was right. I would have loved to have a picture of her here sitting on my lap in this same chair alongside of this picture with my dog. Wouldn't that have been a hoot! Oh I almost forgot! The dog's name is Booger.

Meet My Family

2006-04-04T00:15:00.002-05:00

It took awhile to find this nice picture of my family. Back row L to R- my 2nd daughter Rhonda(now married) and son Hans (a student at Berea College KY). Front row L to R-my oldest daughter Celia holding grandson Darryl, her husband Craig Good holding grandson Nevin, me, and my dear wife Christine.

Packing the CSA Boxes

2006-04-04T00:05:00.001-05:00

This is a typical scene on Tuesday mornings May - October as we pick produce and pack the CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) boxes in our garage. We will have over 60 subscribers this year.

My Homemade Plastic Mulch Layer

2006-04-03T23:38:00.001-05:00

This is one of my most prized inventions. I rigged this apparatus for my Farmall Cub tractor to lay plastic mulch for around $50. A new commercial three point hitch tractor mounted mulch layer can cost as much as $5000. It's not quite as fast as the commercial machine and I have to lay the drip tape in a separate operation but hey- it sure beats trying to lay it by hand and it gets the job done for a little guy like me.