Monitoring the Weather

Dogs Run Farm is now an official weather station on Wunderground for Dryfork, WV. I installed an Acu-Rite model 1055 weather station, powered up the Internet bridge that came with it, hooked the bridge into the router, and violá! Data from our weather station was available on the Internet via the Acu-Link website and iPhone application.

I set-up an account on Wunderground, put in the data for the weather station including map coordinates, provided a few other details, and named the weather station Dogs Run Farm. This morning when I looked at the weather for Dryfork, WV (26263) on wunderground.com, the Dogs Run Farm weather station was at the top of the list, providing temperature, wind, barometric pressure, rainfall, and humidity. That's our station: KWDRYFO3.

I’ve wanted to do this for years so that I can monitor wind, temperature, and rainfall remotely. It was an absolute breeze to set-up, and it worked the first time without any fiddling around. In one month, we have gone from waiting five minutes for the Dryfork weather to load on our iPhones while standing in front of the one window in the house where we got cell service to being a weather station on Wunderground and having access to weather data anywhere.

UPDATE 5/7/13

Rain has been falling overnight, and I've been able to monitor amounts of rain and the rate in real time. This is what it looks like on acu-link.com:

Each of the parameters can also be charted for the past day, week, or month, and the high/low readings can be reset to record new records.

Everyone is focused on weather in their daily lives. We all want to know if it's cold, hot, raining, etc. However, being on the property where one spends a great deal of time outside either working or recreating, the weather is critical to what can be done. We pay exceptionally detailed attention to the weather all year, but now that most of the garden is in and plants are growing, rain - either too little or too much - is critical. Three quarters of an inch over the past 12 hours could not be more perfect. It hasn't rained on the property for more than one week, and the soil in the garden is dry.

A New Outbuilding

I have been storing my ATV underneath the house where it could be chained to the foundation. Problematic was angling it correctly to back it into its space and the difficulty getting it out, uphill, in muddy or snowy weather. In addition, we needed the space to store wood and our new 7,000 W generator. Also problematic was the amount of space taken up by the Gravely walk-behind mower in the barn. So, I build a shed on the west side of the barn.

Framing of the Shed

The frame of the shed consisted of a treated 2"x6" header bolted to the frame of the barn, three treated 4"x4" posts about 8' from the barn, a treated 2"x8" header bolted to the posts, and 2"x6" roof joists. The dimensions were such that the ATV could be parked in one of the "stalls" and be completely out of the weather. The dimensions were about 12' wide by 8' deep. The front header was about 6' off the ground at its shortest, and the back header was bolted 8' above the foundation of the barn.

Onto this frame went the siding, 5/8" T-100 plywood, nailed to horizontal rather than vertical studs. Eventually, this will be stained to match the barn, if the weather ever warms up enough.

Siding Installation

Getting the roofing together was another story altogether. On the weekend I needed to get the roofing in Elkins, there was 10" of snow on the ground, and the Prius was stuck at the bottom of the driveway. There was no way I could get my pickup truck off the property, so no way to get the roofing. Fortunately, my friend Vern offered to drive me to Elkins in his Toyota Tundra and get the roofing. Once we got back to the property, we had to carry five sheets of 3'x8' metal roofing up the first pitch of the driveway, around the Prius, and put it into the back of my truck. This was only moderately painful. In any event, we got the roofing up to the barn, but given the presence of 20 mph winds, I decided it was better to wait for another day to install the metal sheets rather than try and handle them in the wind. The next day was calmer, and after installing furring strips that I made by ripping 2x4s, the metal roof installed easily.

I wired the shed for electricity, putting an inside light on the side of the barn, a motion-activated light on the front header, and an outlet sheltered under the roof, behind the small board at the top left of the opening. Everything fit into the shed including my Gravely, the ATV trailer, and the ATV. Instead of locking the ATV to the concrete wall of the house, I simple lock the wheels to the frame using the same cable lock. In the wintertime, when snow can blow into the shed, I'll probably rig some sort of temporary plywood doors.

Satellite Internet

On our side of the valley down which Red Creek flows, we're lucky to have electricity. We had to run a new electrical line more than 2,500' up the side of the valley and then up a hollow through a very steep clear-cut. This cost about $1K in an initial payment, and then $22.50/month/5 years. I think we could get a land-line by the same route, and DSL through the land-line, but that would be useless.

Until recently, getting internet via a satellite was expensive ($70/month) and the service was very, very slow (1 Mbps). Recently, Wild Blue, one of the major providers of satellite internet service launched a new service called Exede that is much faster (≥ 12 Mbps), about the same as our service in Columbus, and significantly less expensive ($50/month).

Up until now, our "internet" service was provided with our iPhones and the cell phone tower in nearby Harman. The phone signal was decent 3 of 5 bars and was moderately reliable, but the internet service was Edge (E). Slow. They don't measure this speed with Mbps, but rather Kbps, and even then it's fractional Kbps, as in 0.1 Kbps. Email worked, you could boot up a website to get the weather (3-10 minutes), you could get scores of football and basketball games, and the phone worked reliably and with a clear signal. The caveat, however, was that the phone had to be positioned precisely in one window to obtain a steady signal. That meant that you had to stand in front of that window to talk on the phone or read email. It worked.

Two weeks ago, we had an Exede satellite dish installed on the house. The installation took about an hour, and after a few minutes of set-up, we finally had high-speed internet access. This past weekend, I wired a permanent electrical plug, set-up my Apple Airport base-station, and we now had wireless internet. Needless to say, this was about a million-fold improvement over Edge network speeds, and best of all, the wireless signal was so strong, I could even get it in the barn (125' from the house). Nice.

Next up will be a new weather station with an internet up-link so that we can see weather at the WV house from anywhere via our iPhones. Best of all, Dogs Run Farm will become a station on Wunderground. More on that when I get it to work.

Now I can write posts for this blog sitting in the comfort of my reading chair, I can do on-line banking and pay bills, easily check the weather, text message reliably, and best of all use Face Time with Cathy when she is in Columbus. This worked surprisingly well given the significant delay in sending satellite internet signals (2-3 sec).

We are over half a mile from our nearest neighbor, but we have state-of-the-art internet via satellite. Welcome to the 20th century.

Preview of the 2013 Garden

A significant portion of the 2013 garden was planted over the April 13-14 weekend. One of the primary goals this year was to amend the soil to make it more nutrient rich. At both the OEFFA and Hobby Farm Dream conferences this past spring, I attended a number of talks about soil health, and this is clearly one of the major issues we need to deal with over the next several years.

We started this in three ways: (1) we added a high quality, organism-rich compost; (2) we added organic matter in the form of shredded leaves, straw, and wood chips; (3) we had the soil analyzed for nutrients so that we can amend imbalances. The compost and organic matter go hand-in-hand, as the organisms in the compost break-down the organic matter for use by the garden plants, releasing nutrients along the way, and the facilitate nutrient uptake by plants. Soil analysis in the garden showed a marked deficiency of phosphorous and the need for significant lime to raise the pH.

There were four permanent (perennial) plants already in the garden: asparagus (25 plants installed in 2011), raspberries  (2011), rhubarb (1 plant, 2012), and horseradish (2 plants, 2012). The perennial plantings were increased by adding three new rhubarb roots and another 25 asparagus plants (Mary Washington). Four new raspberries were also added. So now we have two 30' long asparagus beds, the first of which will produce an initial crop this year. The first rhubarb will also be ready to pick, and the raspberries.

Layout of the 2013 Garden (35' x 70')

First seeds into the ground were peas. We planted four varieties of mixed maturation times so we should have a supply over at least one month. These will grow up A-frame supports I built over the winter out of 1" x 1" lumber and garden fencing.

Second into the ground were the potatoes, this year a more modest planting of six varieties (red Pontiac, German butterball, Carola, Nicola, LaRatte, and red thumb). Hopefully, the rains will be more modest and even this year, so that the potatoes will germinate. Last year we had so much rain that the potatoes rotted in the ground before getting a chance to sprout. In addition, this year I pre-sprouted the potatoes by exposing them to warmer temps and light for a week prior to planting. Planting potatoes is hard work.

The kale and beet starts were next into the ground. We put in about 90 beets, both golden and red, and 12 plants each of Tuscan kale and blue kale. We also cleaned up the raised bed and planted arugula. We also put in half a dozen shallots, some onions and leeks, and then there is the garlic we planted in October of 2012.

Finally, and another "planting" that once again involves digging, we planted the mushroom logs that had been inoculated in the spring of 2012. This involves burying the 4' logs about 2/3 of the way into sand. The logs were soaked in the rain barrel overnight to get things going. We have two shiitake logs, two oyster mushroom logs, and one maitake log. The oyster mushroom logs have been sending out tiny little mushrooms since late winter.

Starting Seeds

This year (2013) was the year I got serious about starting seeds indoors. I found an Excel spreadsheet that calculated start and transplant dates based on the input of a "last frost date." In previous years we had planted whenever we were on the farm, rather than according to a schedule. I also did considerable research on ideal temperatures for starting seeds (80 °F) and for growing seedlings (≈ 70 °F). I bought seed tray heaters, 50 cell peat trays, special seed-starting mix, and built a shelving unit with hanging fluorescent lights on adjustable chains. The entire unit was wrapped in plastic to prevent drafts and maintain temperatures, and I found some 1" thick styrofoam sheets to help with insulation.

As it turned out, the seed tray heater kept the interior of a covered tray at ≥ 80 °F, and that heat from the fluorescent lights would keep an unheated tray at just above 70 °F in a 60 °F basement. My biggest worry at this stage was whether I was going to get a visit from the DEA on suspicion of growing weed.

First to be planted on 2/26 were nine varieties of tomatoes: Big Boy, Garden Peach, Black Krim, Orange Blossom, Roma, Black Cherry, Red Cherry, Yellow Pear, and Sungold. These were up in a few days with heat, and were thinned and fertilized with an NPK 18-18-21 tomato fertilizer. Second to be planted were the cabbages on 3/1: Early Jersey Hybrid, King Slaw, and an heirloom we got at the OEFFA conference called Copenhagen. The peppers were started 3/8: jalapeño, bell, cayenne, Padron, and ancho. Then the beets on 3/13 (Detroit Supreme and Golden, 50 each) and the kales and chard on 3/14 (Black Magic and Dwarf Blue Curled, and Bright Lights, respectively). Also on 3/14, I started basil, nasturtium and parsley, the latter of which should have been started with the tomatoes. Finally, the eggplant (Millionaire), spinach (Salad Fresh) and endive (Green Curled Ruffec) were started on 4/3 and the carrots (Scarlet Nantes heirloom we also obtained at the OEFFA conference) on 4/19. The final starts will be cucumbers on 5/1 (Homemade Pickle, Muncher, and Straight Eight).

The tomatoes were re-potted (50 to 32 plants) on 3/22 into 3.5" peat pots (18 fit in a standard tray), were moved outside under a cloche on 4/3, and were re-potted (32 to 21 plants) to into 2 gal. containers on 4/18. The cabbages were re-potted (50 to 18 plants) on 4/3, as were the majority of the remaining plants that weren't ready to go into the ground.

re-potted tomatoes on 3/27 (4 weeks)

cabbages on 3/27 (3.5 weeks)

Overall, this system of lights, temperature control, scheduling, and re-potting worked exceptionally well. Very few modifications will be made for next year, and so far we've had no knocks on the door by the DEA.

The Inevitable Demise of Chemical-Based Agriculture

The popularity of organically grown food has increased dramatically over the past decade. Growth in the sales of organic food has risen more than 10% per year recently, and now represents over 4% of total food sales. That may sound like a pretty minor fraction (4/100), but it is clear that this increase will continue. Right now, over 10% of fruit and vegetable sales are organic, and much of this increase is due to public perception that organic foods are healthier than their conventional counterparts. Although there is little to no evidence that this is the case, and also given the questionable practices allowed in certified organic farming by the government, this shift represents a major change in the manner in which an increasingly larger portion of our food is grown. As I mentioned earlier, large agribusiness firms own the majority of organic food brands. This must change to allow a shift in how sustainably our food is produced. I believe such a change is inevitable.

Agriculture in the United States is heavily dependent upon petroleum feedstocks. This dependency comes in many forms, including direct consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel on farms and in the shipping of food outputs and chemical inputs. In addition, the chemicals themselves are produced from petroleum-based starting materials, chemicals such as pesticides, fumigants, insecticides, and herbicides. Even the production of inorganic chemicals such as ammonium nitrate fertilizer consumes considerable energy, from mining, refining, packaging, through shipping and application. I am comfortable as a professional chemist with the denotation of these processes as chemical agriculture. The practice of modern agriculture is dependent upon a large input of chemicals and petroleum feedstocks.

Compare this to the manner in which sustainable farming is practiced in an integrated farming environment. Several, perhaps dozens of different crops are produced and these crops are rotated on a regular and rational basis. Fertilizer comes largely in the form of animal manure or its derivative compost, so that the soil is enriched instead of being depleted. The agricultural products are sold locally instead of being shipped thousands of miles to consumers; chemical inputs are minimal; animals are not fed a continuous stream of antibiotics; huge amounts of petroleum feedstocks are unnecessary; and, some farmers are beginning to grow seed oils to make biodiesel. Imagine a farm that produces its own fuel to run the tractors that plow and plant the land that grows the seeds that produce the fuel, etc. While this may not be a completely closed loop, it is a far cry from the chemical and petroleum dependency of most modern farms.

I believe the evidence shows that we have reached peak oil production. While estimates vary, an increasing proportion of crude oil is being produced by non-conventional means, and most analysts recognize that we have consumed about half of all available crude oil. Just as I’m not getting any younger, oil production is entering the latter half of its life. Just as it’s harder and harder to keep my body going in terms of medical care and stiff muscles and joints, it is going to be more difficult to produce the inexpensive oil necessary to fuel the world economy. Oil is not going to become less expensive.

This brings me to the thesis of this blog post: as petroleum and its products become increasingly expensive, chemical agriculture will become economically impractical. Whether this will occur in the next 25 years I cannot say: I’m a chemist, not an economist. What I can say, however, is that peak oil will force a change in the manner in which we produce food. There will be no choice. Farms of 10-100 acres – small farms – will produce food in a less expensive and more environmentally friendly manner than larger chemical-based farms, and they will begin to produce a larger proportion of our food. Disregarding the artificial government-designated label of organic, food produced on small, organic-based farms will be less dependent on fossil fuels and petroleum-based inputs, this food will be produced in an environmentally enriching manner, and the food will be healthier. In other words, the current movement towards sustainable farming will inevitably win out over chemical based agriculture.

Hidden Subsidies for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)

Various forms of agriculture in the United States receive government support or subsidies. For example, it is well established that production of ethanol from corn would not be economically feasible in the absence of government support. This used to come in the form of a subsidy of $0.45/gallon of ethanol. What is interesting, however, is that this subsidy expired in 2012. Did anyone hear a gigantic howl or protest from corn farmers in Iowa? Right, neither did I. The reason that corn lobby let this subsidy expire is because President Obama signed the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) into law. The RFS mandates that more than one third of the U.S. corn crop be converted to ethanol, which is then blended with gasoline. This mandate effectively creates an artificial demand for corn that props up the price, making it economical for farmers to grow corn for ethanol production. Now, corn is not the issue at hand. Ethanol production from corn is economical because the government mandates that it be so. However misguided, whether direct or indirect, this type of subsidy is obvious, measurable and lawful.

CAFO buildings and manure "lagoon"

Let me turn your attention to large animal feeding operations, or CAFOs as they are known. Animal production was concentrated in such a manner from smaller individual farms over the last 20-30 years, allegedly for reasons of economy. Whether this is true is doubtful, and something that can be discussed separately.

In these operations, such as the facility shown, animals are housed in large, cement-floored buildings. They are fed automatically, and their manure and urine is flushed from the floor into a holding tank below the facility, and then into a large reservoir or "lagoon." Simplistically, the economics of running a CAFO would seem to be the cost of the facility (land, buildings and infrastructure), food, animals, labor, electricity, fuel, and waste disposal, relative to the financial gains obtained from selling the animals. Sales minus costs equals profit. Business 101.

The liquid in the lagoon contains animal feces and urine, but also a large amount of bacteria, residues from feed additives, including hormones and antibiotics, and large amounts of nitrogen-based compounds including nitrate. Animals in CAFOs are fed a continuous stream of antibiotics to counteract the high rates of disease from concentrating animals in such a small space. A significant proportion of these drugs end up in the waste stream. Needless to say, bacteria growing in the presence of antibiotics is basically a Petri dish for developing antibiotic resistant bacteria.

So what happens to the contents of the manure lagoon? Here is where the problem with the CAFO model rears its head. Hogs produce about 6 lbs waste/day. Each building holds around 1,000-1,500 hogs, and hogs are raised until they are about six months old, so after a bit of simple multiplication, a facility such as that shown could produce well over two million pounds of waste per year, and this facility is relatively small. This waste is generally spread onto neighboring land, onto what is known as a sprayfield, but since CAFOs are by nature concentrated, there isn't enough land in the vicinity of the facility to safely dispose of all the waste.

Manure Cannon

So why isn't the CAFO waste sent to a sewage treatment plant for safe disposal? Manure is a valuable fertilizer, so why isn't it trucked somewhere to be processed and used? The answer to the first question is that such a plant would be enormous, both in size and cost. It isn't trucked somewhere to be used as fertilizer, to answer the second question, because the cost of removal is prohibitive. This where the Business 101 model breaks down. Paying for waste disposal leads to a negative profit. Negative profits are bad.

The waste is generally disposed of in a manner that violates either or both of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, and CAFOs fall under the jurisdiction of both of these laws. Overloading soils with liquid manure and/or dumping the waste directly into waterways has dire environmental consequences. Without going into detail, state and federal environmental protection agencies either allow these violations to occur without penalty or heavily subsidize waste disposal with taxpayer money. If our governments were to require CAFOs to follow the law and dispose of their waste in a safe manner – at their own expense – the production of meat by this method would not be economically feasible. Plain and simple, lack of enforcement of these laws is a hidden subsidy that is operationally no different than paying farmers to grow corn to produce ethanol. In one case, a cost that should be born by the corporation is passed onto the taxpayer, in the other, a direct or indirect government payment is made to the corporation.

This discussion does not even begin to discuss the myriad problems of CAFOs. Humane treatment of animals, meat quality, antibiotic use, corporate ownership, near poverty levels of income for CAFO farmers, these are completely separate topics that should, and eventually will turn the public's stomach and bankrupt CAFOs. This cannot happen too soon.

I would like to thank Nicolette Hahn Niman, whose talk at the 2013 OEFFA conference inspired this post. Her book, "The Righteous Porkchop" is an excellent read on the subject of meat production.

On the Importance of Ingredient Quality in Cooking

As a synthetic chemist, one learns that the quality of one's starting materials is directly related to both the success of a chemical reaction and to the quality of the products of that reaction. As is often said: "garbage in, garbage out." I once had a student who was struggling with a reaction involving copper. I asked him if he had dried the copper cyanide (CuCN) he used in the reaction. He asked me, "why, is it wet?" I responded that I didn't know whether or not the CuCN was wet, but that it certainly would NOT be wet if he dried it. Since the reaction he was attempting was exquisitely sensitive to water, good practice would be to ensure all reagents were scrupulously pure and dry. Not surprisingly, after he dried the CuCN, the reaction worked beautifully.

Yesterday, I cooked a big batch of salsa Bolognese (ragú alla Bolognese). This is a very simple meat-based pasta sauce, which gets all its flavor without using spices or herbs. It tastes of the ingredients from which it is made. It takes all day to prepare, but the majority of that time is waiting for liquids to evaporate from the simmering sauce. I started by dicing about 1/2 cup each of onion, celery, and carrot purchased from The Greener Grocer in the North Market. These were sauteed in 1/4 cup of homemade butter and some sea-salt until they were soft. To this, I added 1 lb. each of ground beef, pork, and veal that I had purchased from Blues Creek Meats, also in the North Market. These people raise all their own meat on their family-owned farm and butcher it themselves. You cannot find higher quality or more ethically raised meat in Columbus. I sauteed the meats together with some salt until they were no longer pink, breaking it up with a potato masher as much as possible, then added 4 cups of whole milk from Snowville Creamery. This mixture was simmered over medium low heat for about one hour until all the milk had evaporated and the white color was gone. At this point, I added a bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc (I know I should have used an Italian white wine, but I went with what I had in the cellar). The mixture was simmered until all the wine had evaporated, which took another hour. A big 100 oz. can of chopped, imported San Marzano tomatoes with their juice was added, the heat was reduced to low, and this mixture was simmered for about three hours, with occasional stirring. Part of the way through, I used an immersible blender to more finely divide the meat and tomatoes. This is ragú alla Bolognese. It was outstanding over homemade fettuccine made with our own eggs, served with grated Parmesan cheese and a Ridge Zinfandel.

As a scientist, I am going to ask you to draw a conclusion without having performed the proper control experiment, which in this case is likely unnecessary and would actually be counterproductive in many regards. The control experiment would be to go to Kroger, buy the meat, milk, wine, salt and tomatoes and make the same sauce. Factory farmed meats fed who-knows-what and raised inhumanely, factory farmed milk from cows treated with antibiotics and rBGH, a cheap Pinot Grigio, and Hunt's tomatoes, which just plain suck, as does Morton's iodized salt. Just as in the case of the copper cyanide, do you think it matters whether one uses high quality, pure ingredients in ragú alla Bolognese?

I have a chemist friend who once said "research is expensive and good research is very expensive." The same can be said about food and the ingredients in that food.

Preliminary 2013 Garden Plans

January is the month to plan your summer garden. All the seed companies send out catalogs, and looking at the pictures of the vegetables and fruit is food porn. The biggest changes I plan to make to the 2013 garden are to plant another 25 asparagus plants, expand the tomato plantings to include Roma paste tomatoes, and plant garden peas more extensively. Most of the rest of the veggies will be the same: potatoes, cabbage, beans, beets, peppers, etc. I will move the potatoes to an area less prone to flooding, plant two more rhubarb plants, start shallot bulbs alongside the garlic from last fall, and plant kale and chard with the cabbages. The raspberries will be in their third year, and should start to produce, and the first asparagus plantings will be three years old and be ready to harvest. And cucumbers, which will be trellised this year to save space. No squash, as it really isn't a very efficient use of the limited space I have (35 'x 70').

2013 Proposed Garden Layout

This is a pretty optimistic garden, but what will be dramatically different this year compared to 2012 is that I won't be teaching and have such a very limited ability to get to the farm in a timely manner. This year, I will be able to plant just at the right time, and be there to keep things in order and watered until seeds germinate. Last year, the first planting of green beans had a 0% germination rate, as did the lima beans and beet seeds. Plus, the potatoes sat in standing water until they rotted, during a two week period when we couldn't get to WVa. I guess you learn what is successful and plant that again, and figure out why unsuccessful crops failed. In the case of the 2012 green beans, they were planted too early and sat in the ground during cold rainy weather. They were replanted in the raised bed in late May, and did fine.

Another major change for 2013 is a scientifically based plan for seed start and planting dates, with dates based on a more realistic last-frost date of May 15. It just doesn't warm up that quickly at 3,000' in the mountains, and stays very cool at night all the way through the summer. With this more reasonable planting schedule, crops will be more productive.

Seed Starting System

What is also new for 2013 is a pretty serious seed starting system I build from a wire shelving unit and simple fluorescent shop lights (Lowes). This will house eight standard 10" x 20" starting trays, two/shelf, and can be covered with plastic to keep the temperature regulated. The shelves will be lined with 1" styrofoam to trap heat and reduce unwanted airflow, and I may buy a small computer fan to circulate air to even temperatures. The fluorescent lights will put out sufficient heat to keep temperatures around 70 °F. I also bought a tray heating mat to provide more controlled heat for germination. In previous years, we have set the trays with the newly planted seeds on a heat vent in our bathroom, not a very controlled system.

The seeds were ordered in mid-January from Johnny's, Jung, and Burpees, and have all arrived, except the potatoes, which will arrive in late March. The tomatoes will be grown both in Columbus and in West Virginia, and we will plant lettuces and arugula in Columbus and in the raised bed in West Virginia.

Bean - Blue Lake 274	Potato - Carola
Bean - Provider	Potato - German Butterball
Beet - Detroit Supreme	Potato - Laratte
Beet - Golden	Potato - Nicola
Cabbage - Jersey Wakefield	Potato - Red Pontiac
Cabbage - King Slaw Hybrid	Potato - Red Thumb
Cucumber - Homemade Pickles	Shallot - Golden
Cucumber - Muncher	Shallot - Holland Red
Cucumber - Straight Eight	Spinach - Salad Fresh
Eggplant - Millionaire	Swiss Chard - Bright Lights
Endive - Green Curled Ruffec	Tomato - Big Boy
Garlic	Tomato - Black Cherry
Kale - Black Magic	Tomato - Black Krim
Kale - Dwarf Blue Curled Vates	Tomato - Garden Peach
Pea - Green Arrow	Tomato - Orange Blossom
Pea - Laxton's Progress No. 9	Tomato - Roma
Pea - Little Marvel	Tomato - Sungold
Pea - Progress No. 9	Tomato - Sweet Baby Girl
Pepper - Ancho San Martin	Tomato - Yellow Pear
Pepper - Calabrese
Pepper - Mucho Nacho Jalapeño
Pepper - Padron

For the cabbage, peas and tomatoes, I will plant early and late season plants.

December Snows

I spent the period of 20-29 December on the property. In 2012, I've managed to be there on both Equinoxes and both Solstices. I don't know why that seems significant, but I did plot where the sun rises on the horizon on each of these days. Astronomical dates such as the Equinox or Solstice are important because they have occurred since the beginning of our planet and mark important annual events.

We had lots of snow and even more wind. For three or four days, winds were steady at 20-30 mph, with gusts in the 50-60 mph range. Our house is set upon a promontory and is exceptionally exposed to the elements. The wind actually twists the house noticeably, which is unnerving until you get used to it. I always expect the house to take off like a spaceship and fly away like the house in The Wizard of Oz.

We had a large snowfall on the 26th of December, and our road drifted to more than 1' of snow. My new truck was pretty good in the snow, but it is going to take me some time to learn to drive this monster. Nicely, the tire chains I had for my old 4Runner fit the Chevy 2500 perfectly, and having chains on your vehicle dramatically improves maneuverability. It powered up our steep driveway through deep drifts.  This truck will prove to be quite an asset around the property/farm.

On Round Top at White Grass

By the time we returned from West Virginia, there was more than 12" of snow at the 4000 foot measuring stake at White Grass. I managed to get four really good days of cross-country skiing on some really beautiful snow. Despite the winds, it wasn't too bad skiing in the forested areas, and we got to see all our friends from Canaan Valley. The skiing was fantastic.

On Friday evening (the 28th), we had our traditional Christmas bonfire, and burned a good portion of the wood that used to be a tent platform from when we camped on the property. As our tradition dictates, we shared a bottle of Champagne by the fire, this year with some added peach syrup from the peaches I canned in July. Sort of a Bellini, I suppose. After the fire, we had dinner at White Grass with our friends Rick and Karen, where we shared a couple of bottles of wine from the new wine list that I helped the owner Laurie to design.

Not much "farm" work got done. While winter is here, I will need to prune the fruit trees and plan where we are going to put our new raised flower bed. There is also some planning that needs to be done for the garden, and we will use our past successes and failures to plan future plantings. Much of the timber that I felled late in the fall to improve sunlight on the garden has been cut up into 3' pieces and is stacked to dry. This will be our fuel for the wood stove over the winter of 2013-2014. Thankfully I now have a farm truck to haul this wood down from the garden to the house, rather than using the ATV and a small trailer.

More on fall and winter events at Dogs Run Farm will follow soon.

Farm Truck

This past Saturday, I bought a used truck in nearby Harman. A REAL truck. I'd been looking for some time, and had very specific requirements. It absolutely had to be a 3/4 ton, so that meant either a Ford F250 or Chevy 2500, and I did not want any sort of extended cab. The truck will be for hauling wood and lumber and manure, so I wanted the full 8' bed. Obviously it had to be 4-wheel drive, and in my dreams it would also have a manual transmission, which are very hard to find these days.

Local friends suggested I go talk with Linda Teter at Midway Motors in Harman, and she listened carefully to what I said, wrote it all down, and took my phone number telling me she would find me something. This was back in September. About a month later, I stopped by to see Linda, and she told me she had just the truck I wanted. It needed some work, and so it wasn't until Saturday that it was ready for me to pick-up.

It is a 2005 Chevrolet 2500HD, 4-wheel drive, regular cab, full 8' bed, good off-road tires, 88K miles, and with a manual transmission. Best of all, it's green!

This sucker is BIG (9,200 lbs). This makes my old 4-Runners look like toys. It's got a BIG 6L V8 300 hp engine, a huge cab, and it runs great. I actually had a bit of trouble getting it up our driveway because it had too much power. It laughed at climbing 300' on a muddy road. And, it was a blast driving a manual transmission. This is how I will be able to get a load of horse manure up to the garden or how I can haul a load of 7' locust logs for fencing, or how I'll haul the Prius out of the ditch when it gets stuck in the snow.

This is my new farm truck. Now I can drive my Prius back and forth from Columbus to West Virginia ($40 in gas) rather than my old 4Runner ($100 in gas) and still have a useful vehicle when I get there.

Sandy and West Virginia

As Hurricane Sandy flooded the East Coast with boatloads of rain and an incredible storm surge, it picked a half dozen counties in eastern West Virginia onto which it dumped a bit of snow. Much of this came on Monday and Tuesday (10/29-10/30), with lesser amounts later that week. All told, in much of Tucker County, snowfall amounts were estimated between 3-4 feet. The snowfall was extremely fast and the snow was wet and heavy.

We had previously left the farm on Sunday, October 28th after a week of very warm weather, several days of which were well over 70 °F. The ground was warm and many of the leaves on the trees had yet to fall. As temperatures fell below freezing with the oncoming snowstorm, the snow stuck to trees, wires, and buildings. Most of the counties around Tucker County lost electrical power late on Monday and phone service (land and cellular) with it. Outages were nearly total in many localities. Tucker County lost about 95% of its electrical service, as did neighboring Randolph and Preston counties. Many buildings collapsed from the weight of the snow. Temperatures ranged between 25-35 °F.

Roads were completely closed because of the snow and downed trees, and it took an extraordinary effort by the governments and by citizens to get trees cleared and roads plowed. Major roads were cleared in a day or two, minor roads shortly thereafter. Some federal and interstate highways were closed for significant periods of time. Many private citizens worked on clearing public roads. A Ford F-250 with tire chains and a snowplow was plowing well in advance of county and state trucks.

West Virginians are exceptionally self-reliant and community oriented. Nearly every home has some form of fireplace or wood-stove, so heat was not an immediate issue, and many people have portable generators to help manage critical things such as freezers. The phone company hooked a generator to their system so that people regained phone service, but the cellular tower in nearby Harman was inoperable. Down at Camden's Corner Mart, they had gasoline and diesel, but no electricity to run the pumps, so somebody brought a generator and got the gas pumps operational. I was told that people limited themselves to 5 gal at a time to allow everyone at least some fuel. People there know that their own survival depends upon the survival of their neighbors.

Long about Wednesday (10/31), things looked pretty grim. The rugged terrain in the Allegheny Mountains coupled with record snowfall and its effects on trees and electrical poles made restoration of electrical power pitifully slow. Many of the main roads were traversable, but so much of the damaged electrical infrastructure was buried far from even county roads. Realize that there are just over 7,000 people in the entirety of Tucker County. Fortunately, the weather warmed and skies cleared, so repair crews at least had decent working conditions.

Now, I'm sure everyone has seen bumper stickers that exhort "Think Snow," and of course, with more than three feet of snow, there was a surge of skiers heading into the mountains. White Grass "opened" before they even had power, and when they did get power, the place was packed. What a nice early season bonus for Laurie and Chip, owners. By the end of the weekend of November 3-4, hundreds of people had managed their way to Canaan Valley to cross-country ski.

A few of our neighbors on Laneville Road had their power restored by Thursday or Friday (11/1 or 11/2), and although I had called around to others, I had little to go on as to whether we had power. Our power lines come up from Red Creek rather than down the valley like those people to the west of our property. Knowing that I could easily heat our house with our wood-stove and that there was certainly sufficient snow to melt for drinking water, I headed over to the property on Sunday morning (11/4), not wanting to miss the snow. Fortunately, we already had dog food, wine, gin, and a reasonable amount of food already at the house, so I really only packed clothes, some cigars, and a snow shovel. Unfortunately, our driveway is impassible in such heavy snow, and I had left our snowshoes behind when we came back to Columbus on 10/28.

About an hour out of Columbus, a down-the-mountain neighbor from West Virginia called to say that there was no power in the entire eastern end of the valley and that the power company was estimating it wouldn't be restored until Friday, 11/9. I hoped that was an outside estimate. In any event, the driveway wasn't too badly drifted, and I could easily shovel a spot to get the SUV off the main road. I hoofed it up the driveway, to find the eastern half of the house buried in show. Did I mention that the stairs are on the east side of the house? Snow was up to the railings, and was about 4-5' deep on the deck. Good exercise, shoveling wet snow.

Once I got into the house and got a good fire going, I put on my snowshoes and retrieved the rest of the stuff from the car. More good exercise: 0.3 miles and 300 feet vertical up and down the driveway twice. The snow was only about 2' deep at this point. Did I mention that I was doing this for fun? So that I could ski?

By the time I got settled and made a trip up to Canaan Valley to call Cathy, it was nearly dark and time for a Martini. I heated some frozen burritos on top of the wood stove, had a glass or two of wine, and went to bed to prepare for a day of skiing on Monday. It was very, very dark on Sunday night. There was no moon, and the entire hillside across from our property was dark. Amazingly, from two or three miles away, I could see small LED driveway lights shining around darkened homes.

Skiing was great on Monday. The weather was sunny and clear, and for my first outing I had fun going up Three Mile, across Blackbird's Wing, down FR80, and back to White Grass by Timberline Trail, or about five miles. Still no power at the house, and Mon Power was still estimating Friday for restoration. Tuesday was still great skiing, although the temperature was well above freezing so the snow was wet. Still no power; still a Friday estimate. Not a power company truck in sight. Melted snow doesn't taste particularly good, and yogurt with cereal for dinner is less than satisfying. On Wednesday, I skied twice, once in the morning by myself, and once in the afternoon up and down Timberline Trail with Rosso. After grabbing a shower at Laurie and Chip's house, I headed up to see our friends Ben and LE, our "nearest" neighbors with power. Ben lent me an unneeded 1 kW generator and I went back over to their home and cooked a still-frozen lasagne in their oven that evening. It was nice to have lights that evening, although listening to a generator up close is not all that pleasant.

On Thursday morning I discovered that Ben's 1,000 W generator would power my 1,100 W coffee maker, so I had good coffee for the first time in four days. Camden's Corner Mart is very convenient, and they make a decent egg and cheese biscuit, but their coffee sucks. It's brown, it's warm, and it contains caffeine, and you might as well take a No-Doze. Plus, it is a six mile round trip to get it. My neighbor Harvey had stopped by on his ATV on Tuesday and plowed a good bit of our driveway, so I could at least get the SUV up to the house.

Friday morning (11/9), the power company trucks rolled up Laneville Road by the dozen. It turns out that the main line comes down Laneville Road as far as Jake Nelson's, then heads over a cliff down to Red Creek, from whence our power line emerges to head back uphill. The problem was with the lines going over the cliff from Jake's meadow. Well, the workers managed to replace two broken poles, re-string the lines, and get trees cleared by mid-afternoon. With Cathy planning to arrive around 5 pm, and with me not having showered since Wednesday, I thought it prudent to not bet on the power company, so I headed back up to Canaan Valley for a final shower at Laurie and Chip's. On my way back down, there was one last truck by Jake's meadow waiting for the approval to connect the power, and finally, without event, the power to our house was restored at 4:45 pm on November 9th, eleven days after it went out.

In retrospect, what I missed most about not having electricity was not having running water. I could store food that needed refrigeration in the snow, I could use LED lights and candles for light, I could heat the house to over 70 °C with the wood stove, but melting snow in pots sucks, it's inefficient, and the water is lousy. That, and having no feasible method to wash dishes made cooking over even a camp stove impractical. Given that there have been two significant (> 1 week) power outages in 2012 in West Virginia, and given the likelihood that violent storms will increase in frequency, it seems prudent to look at installing a propane-powered whole-house generator so that we can keep the refrigerator running, the well pump running, lights on and phones charged, without having to rely on access to gasoline or diesel fuel. A big LPG tank will run an 8-10 kW generator for a very long time.

I do have to say, however, that I didn't have it very bad, so this isn't a complaint. It is infinitely better to be up to your neck in snow than water.

Apples

We are at the height of apple season, and Ohio grows tons of apples. You can get good local apples almost anywhere except the local food-store conglomerates. Earlier this summer, we picked peaches at Branstool Orchards in Utica, Ohio and made peach jam and canned peaches. I've already written about the peaches.

Branstool Orchards sells fruit at many of the local Farmers' Markets. It you get on their email list they will notify you each week where they will be and what they will be selling. We started the apple season with Gala, Honeycrisp, and Sweet Sixteen apples. The Gala apples went into applesauce and we ate the others. Some of the Honeycrisp were almost as big as a softball. They were all fabulously delicious. Later, we make more applesauce from Cortland,

This past weekend we bought Jonagold, Cortland, and the most beautiful deep red Jonathan apples. Following the recipe in The Locavore's Kitchen for "Mom's Apple Pie," which uses only apples, sugar, and flour for the filling, with no spices whatsoever. The Jonathan apples were crisp and sour, and the pie was the best I've ever baked. The quality of the apple pie had little to do with the cook and everything to do with the apples: they were picked late last week and we bought them on Saturday.

I should have taken a picture of the pie, but after pulling it out of the oven, that wasn't the first thing on my mind.

We Ate Very Well (and Locally) This Weekend

We picked the first beets of the season this past week along with one acorn squash, one cabbage, and two large eggplants. We also made a trip to a local Farmers' Market and bought some fabulous apples from Branstool Orchards, four quarts of nice green beans, a beautiful yellow squash, and some Russian kale.

We used the eggplants and squash to make ratatouille following a strict Niçoise recipe with the following ingredients:

eggplant (ours)
squash (local)
garlic (local)
onions (local)
peppers (ours)
tomatoes (ours)
parsley (ours)
thyme (ours)
rosemary (ours)

We had this for dinner on Saturday night with our beets and beet greens with a mustard vinaigrette, a loaf of bread from Lucky Cat Bakery (local), and an apple pie with apples from Branstool Orchards (local). Major ingredients of our dinner that were not our own or grown locally were olive oil (tough one to grow in Ohio), flour, salt and pepper, sugar, and the wine (white wine from Reuilly in Burgundy). Our chickens ate the apple cores and a lot of the vegetable trimmings.

Sunday night, we roasted a chicken (local) and had it with acorn squash (ours) stuffed with apples (local), onions (local), and raisins. We also had the Russian kale (local) braised in vegetable stock with onions and garlic, served with Tuscan white beans. This was served with a bottle of white Burgundy, and the leftover apple pie.

We blanched the green beans, vacuum sealed them, and put them in the freezer for this coming winter.

These menus were prepared simply based on the seasonal ingredients that were available in mid-September. You don't have to be a fascistic locavore to make this happen. It takes no more time to go to a Farmers' Market than to Kroger, and it is way more entertaining. And always, it supports local farmers and the people they employ.

Lots of Pickles

three quarts of bread & butter pickles

We planted four cucumber plants back in May, and they have been fairly productive. In The Locavore's Kitchen, the author has simple recipes for garlic-dill pickles and bread & butter pickles, both favorites, and both easy to make. Even without having a prolific crop of cukes, I've "put up" about 10 pints of dill pickles, a quart and a pint of spicy dill pickles, six pints and three quarts of bread & butter pickles, plus four pints of sweet pickle relish (minced cukes, onions, red and green peppers, and celery). Making pickles is not remarkable, but given this is the first year I've canned/preserved food, I have to say that it isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

garlic-dill pickles

With an experimental science such as cooking, success lies in having the best quality ingredients and the correct tools and equipment. Cucumbers picked the day before they are pickled fall into the first category and a Viking range with an 18,500 BTU burner falls into the second category.

We have to give the pickles some time to sit before they are ready to eat, but at least none of the jars have exploded or turned a funny color yet.

Making and Preserving Pesto alla Genovese

It is that time of summer when the basil is ready to be picked and when there is a new crop of garlic at the markets. That means it is time for the annual summer rite of making pesto alla Genovese (basil pesto). As with many crops, basil comes all at once and it is highly perishable. In addition to a decent basil crop, we have an excellent crop of flat leaf parsley, which can be used on its own to make pesto or can be added to the classic recipe for basil pesto. We follow the recipe for basil pesto in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. (This book is a critical resource for anyone interested in Italian cooking.) The problem always becomes how to preserve the pesto so that we can eat it year around.

fresh basil from the garden

Pesto alla Genovese is made from pine nuts, garlic, salt, basil, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Marcella recommends if you freeze the pesto for storage to wait and add the cheese until you're ready to use it, as the cheese doesn't freeze well. So, we make her recipe up to the point of stirring in the cheese, freeze it in individual portions (ca. 1/4 cup) in zip-lock bags from which all the air has been pushed out. This consumes a significant number of plastic bags, as we usually make 15-25 portions, and it's messy.

freshly picked flat-leaf parsley

This year we tried something different. We have a vacuum food sealer that has an attachment for wide-mouth Ball jars, and will suck the air right out of pint or quart jars. The jars end up with the lids very tightly sealed. We use quart jars to store arborio or carnaroli  rice for risotto so it doesn't go stale and we vacuum freeze salmon, meats, and nuts in plastic bags. The basil pesto is prepared in a food processor, doubling the recipe in the cookbook (4 cups basil, 1 cup oil). Turns out, this produces just about a pint of pesto, perfect for a wide-mouth pint jar. The jars were filled to about 1/2" of the rim, the lid was carefully placed on the jar, and the whole thing was hooked up to the machine and vacuum sealed before putting the band on the jar. (One thing I do differently from Marcella is to make a paste out of the pine nuts, garlic and salt before putting the basil in the processor, and then make a paste of that before slowly adding the olive oil.)

three pints of basil pesto and one pint of parsley pesto

Now most people know that you can't take a glass bottle or jar filled with water and freeze it, because water expands upon freezing and will shatter the container. (Don't believe me? Take a glass bottle of Coke or beer and put it in your freezer.) As it turns out, water is somewhat unique in that the solid phase is less dense than the liquid phase, whereas most other liquids contract upon freezing. Oil will contract by about 10%. Hopefully, freezing the pesto, whose components are about half oil and half water-based components, will result in little to no expansion, and the jars won't burst. Being the experimentalist that I am, I only froze one of four jars of pesto in case I'm wrong.

The plan is that when we want pesto, we open the jar, scoop out the amount we need, and re-seal the jar with the vacuum sealer and put it back in the freezer. Then we add the Parmesan cheese and toss it with pasta. The nice part is that we can re-use the jars.

Wild Blackberries

This summer the wild blackberry crop is outstanding. Even though blackberry bushes are highly invasive, in certain years they produce an unusual amount of berries. The trick is to get them before the bears do.

The berries have ripened slowly this summer, and it was possible to harvest a good portion over the period of a week. In the large meadow on the other end of the property there is a huge patch of blackberry bushes that were covered with flowers this spring and with berries in late July. It is normally difficult to get at many of the berries as one has to literally wade through the bushes as thorns rip both clothing and skin. This year, however, a bear had managed to get the first crop of ripe berries, and in doing so had made a nice set of paths through the bushes. While it was still a hazardous undertaking, we managed to pick well over one gallon of berries.

wild blackberries

Now wild blackberries are not at all like the plump, juicy things you get in the store. They are small, full of seeds, exceptionally sour, and don't have much juice. I took the berries, put them in a pot with 1/2 cup of sugar, and brought them to a simmer. This brought out a lot of the juice. The mixture was forced through an old applesauce sieve my mother had used long ago. This got most of the juice and pulp out, and left most of the seeds behind. A final pass through a fine-mesh strainer gave about ten cups of blackberry mash.

Using the standard jam-making instructions provided on the box of pectin, ten cups of wild blackberry mash translated into nine half-pints of homemade wild blackberry jam. It has a nice mild berry flavor that is quite different from jam made from farm-raised blackberries.

On a side note, our boy Doberman Rosso also likes wild blackberries, and has learned to carefully and selectively bite off the ripe berries. Luckily, he isn't very efficient, so there is no competition between him and me.

Peaches from Branstool Orchards

A trip to Branstool Orchards in Utica, Ohio to pick these:

 plus sugar, pectin, and minced ginger gave this:

 

Sorry, but it's not for sale.

Picking Blueberries at The Blueberry Patch

The latest issue of Edible Columbus (Summer 2012) has an article on a berry farm north of Columbus. It is currently blueberry season at The Blueberry Patch, which has something like 27,000 blueberry bushes. I spent an hour or so this morning picking two varieties, a gallon of each. Fifteen pounds of blueberries ripening in the hot sun. Some are going to end up as blueberry jam, the rest will emerge from the oven as blueberry pie or crisp. (Raspberries and blackberries will be in season in mid-July.)

I briefly spoke with the owner, Steve Beilstein, as I was picking. The bushes take about five years to mature, and a mature bush can provide up to six pounds of berries per season. Even cutting that estimate in half, a half dozen bushes could provide around two gallons of berries a year. The Blueberry Patch is a family-owned and family-run farm producing some of the best blueberries available.

What follows is the world's easiest recipe for fruit crisp. It requires about two quarts of fruit, which can consist of apples, peaches, blueberries, blackberries and/or raspberries, cherries, or strawberry & rhubarb, depending on what is in season. You can put it together in 10 minutes.

Mix together 3/4 cup each of flour, dark brown sugar, and oatmeal in a bowl, add some cinnamon and/or nutmeg, a little salt, and then mix in one stick of melted butter. In a separate bowl, toss the fruit with the appropriate amount of corn starch (none for apples, 1-2 tbsp. for peaches and rhubarb and blueberries, about 2 tbsp. for other berries). The more juicy the fruit, the more corn starch is needed. Add some granulated sugar to the fruit, again the amount depending on the fruit. Apples and peaches require very little, blueberries a bit more, and sour berries and cherries a lot. It's to your taste. I add a little almond extract for blueberries and cherries. Pour the fruit into a baking dish so it is at least 1" high, crumble the topping evenly over the fruit, and bake 45 min at 375 °F until the topping has darkened and the fruit is vigorously bubbling. Don't fill the baking dish too full, or it will bubble over and make a mess. Serve warm.

We have seven blueberry bushes at Dogs Run Farm. I think I will put in another seven next year. Let's see: 14 x 6 = 84 lbs. of blueberries. That should be enough to keep us in blueberry crisp and pie for the summer.

UPDATE: June 28th - One gallon of blueberries makes a whole lot of jam. Three batches made 12 half-pints and four pints. Plus one pie and I've still got over a half gallon left. Time to make room in the freezer.

Hiking in Dolly Sods Wilderness

I spent last Friday morning hiking from Red Creek into Dolly Sods Wilderness with the dogs. It was a simple seven-mile loop hike up Little Stonecoal Trail to the Dunkenbarger Trail to Big Stonecoal Trail and back down to Red Creek Trail. The change in elevation from Red Creek to the Sods is about 1,000'. The last time I made this specific hike was in late July of 2001, the day on which I "discovered" the property now known as Dogs Run Farm, where we live.

Rosso and Lucca on the Dunkenbarger Tr.

I didn't see a single person; it was as if I had the entire Wilderness to myself. The weather was perfect, and I stopped at Dunkenbarger Run and sat on a rock in the middle of the stream to have lunch. The dogs lounged along the bank. This is beautiful land, very boggy and wet, but incredibly lush. The laurel were in bloom and colors and sights were relaxing.

Amanita muscaria

I saw an interesting mushroom along the way down. Don't think I've ever seen one of these live. It is Amanita muscaria. It is halucinogenic, containing the interesting isoxazole compound called muscimol.