Hi Friends,
It was an amazing May, jammed packed with events while squeezing in all the planting for this year's summer garden. The Farm School Family Fest was delightful and attendance at the Conference on Community and Sustainability is growing larger every year. It was inspiring to connect both with
folks currently living in community and those ready to make a move. We are already making plans for both events next year. |
The Organic Gardening Intensive June 3-10 (or just the weekend June 8-10) is shaping up to be a fun week. In addition to a wide variety of hands-on activities in the garden, we'll also be visiting several permaculture based homesteads, a bamboo nursery, explore forest agriculture, plus visit our area's old order (horse and buggy/off grid) Amish farms and their extensive market garden operations.
We'll also delve into the making and benefits of biochar, expressed by many as one of the primary solutions to climate change and global warming. In addition, attendees will gain first hand experience in beekeeping, including my second honey harvest of the season.
Coming up
July 25-29 or 27-29, the 3rd Summer Retreat, where we combine all of the activities of a Farm Experience with more time to hike, swim and enjoy the fruits of summer in the country.
Too much fun! |
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Yours in community,
Douglas
Douglas@thefarmcommunity.com |
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Biochar - Carbon Farming and Climate Change
In "The Biochar Solution," a new book by Albert Bates, he explains the importance of this revolutionary new approach to soil enrichment than has the potential to radically alter agriculture throughout the world.
"While conventional agriculture leads to deserts, blowing parched dirt
across the globe and melting ice caps, this other, older style, brings
fertile soils, plant and animal diversity, and birdsong. While the
agriculture we use has been shifting Earth’s carbon balance from soil
and living vegetation to atmosphere and ocean, the agriculture that was
nearly lost moves carbon from sky to soil and crops." Albert Bates
At the Organic Gardening Intensive, we'll demonstrate simple techniques to create your own biochar and how to incorporate it into your own garden and soil.
http://www.biocharsolution.com/
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Could biochar save the world?
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2012 Honey Harvest
It has been such a great feeling to have completed my first honey harvest. With the warm weather and early spring, 2 supers, boxes with frames of honey, were ready at the beginning of May.
I set myself up by ordering the complete "kit," a 2 frame extractor, electric capping knife, a capping's collector and a honey bucket with 3 layers of fine micron screens. In the image to the right, I am using the, heated, electric knife to remove the wax caps from each honey cell in the frame. The caps and dripping honey fall into the capping's collector below.
The uncapped frames are spun in a hand cranked, centrifugal force extractor made of stainless steel. Honey is drawn through the special valve at the bottom and into the bucket below passing through the filter screens.
Having the right tools made all the difference! I experimented removing wax caps with a sharp, unheated knife and it was just short of a disaster. Removing honey without some sort of extractor is next to impossible. There is also a lot of debris the accumulates in the honey during extraction, mostly bits of wax and bits of bees. The micron filters transformed the honey from crude to pure goodness! |
Removing the wax capping's with a heated electric knife.
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Finally, I am able to remove or drain the honey through a valve in the 5 gallon bucket directly into the jars.
From the 2 supers I harvested 3 gallons of honey, 12 quart jars! It appears we will have another 2 supers ready to harvest next week and possibly a little more by the end of June.
All honey the bees produce during subsequent summer and fall months will be left for the bees to eat through the winter and early spring before the next honey flow begins.
Six gallons of honey is more than enough for my family and we'll have plenty to share as gifts during the holidays and with all of the folks who attend my retreats! |
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Ina May Gaskin and the Battle for at-Home Births - NY Times May 2012 |
| By SAMANTHA M. SHAPIRO Published: May 23, 2012 |
 One Monday morning last spring, Ina May Gaskin got into
her golf cart and drove it down
the dirt road away from her home on the
Farm, a community of 175
residents on a former commune in rural
Tennessee that her husband
started in the 1970s. She pulled up to the
community center, where she
would be teaching a class on delivering
breech babies.
The class was
part of a weeklong seminar Gaskin and her
fellow midwives were
offering to an eclectic group: nurse-midwifery
students attending for
college credit; a Boston-area family-practice
doctor; midwives from
around the country; and one, from Australia, who
went by the one-word
moniker Macca.
They had traveled to this corner of
southern Tennessee
to learn from the founding mother of the
natural-birth movement...more
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 Here, Ina May assists a woman in labor.
Credit: Elinor Carucci/Redux, for The New York Times |
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