Four farms - No.1

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Over the last 5 or 6 days we have visited 4 farms - one twice.  Each has been special in its own way.  I'll do a post on each over the next few days.

Number one was Eliot Coleman's Four Seasons Farm in  Harborside, Maine (Sic - it's Americans who can't spell harbour - not me).  This is a very special farm - growing vegetables mainly - in a quite inhospitable climate.  Coleman has made a specialty of growing vegetables using poly tunnels and a lot of smarts.   

The attention to detail was obvious.   Everything was very tidy - just sort of obsessively so perhaps.  There were so many things I was interested in - from the hand carts to his trellising system to the heating system in the poly tunnels - to the chicken tractors.  

James the Trailer Doctor is going to have some things to make for me.  The cart in particular is quite similar to one we used to have on the farm when I was growing up.  We called it the U-cart.  The American version is called a Vermont Cart.

Eliot's version was particularly stylish.  It is so much better than a wheelbarrow - for everything except concrete.  

I actually hate wheelbarrows - I've skinned my shins on on the cross bar too many times.  They all have handles too short for someone my height.

The second thing I really liked was the chicken trailer.  It's not quite so obvious that I'll get one built, but I like the lightness of it, the perches at floor height, the mesh floor and the integrated next boxes. 

Four Seasons Farm has a farm shop and also sells through farmers' markets.  People from the area say the prices are high, but the quality is brilliant.  I bought some fennel, baby leeks, white onions, carrots and zucchini and grilled them as an accompaniment to a nice piece of sirloin.  They were very good - in spite of a bit of a scorching.

Four Seasons Farm seems to employ 'interns' - who work for a period to learn - and then go off to start their own farms.  Cheap and motivated labour.  Other farms we visited seem to also use this system.  Not only is it difficult for a farmer to earn a living wage rate - it seems to be hard to pay for help.

Overall ..... very impressive!
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Rain and Cold

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It's darn cold and wet outside at present.  In spite of this, quite a lot has been achieved over the last week or two.

We followed up the planting of the apples with another 27 bare-rooted fruit and nut trees - and one flowering cherry.  Right from the start at Moora I knew where I wanted to put the main orchard.  In 2006 I planted out a good part of it with a sheltering surround of ornamental pears, about 12 fruit trees and even a couple of nut trees.

Then the cattle got in.  The first time I caught them before too much damage had been done.  The second time I was away - and I came home to a right royal mess.  It was almost too much ... and I just left it.

Now, with the help of my nephews Sam and Finnbar, we've well and truly back on track.  We have 24 fruit trees planted in the main orchard - pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots .. and a quince.

With the shelter trees - I managed to recover 10 from the 24 (expensive) trees planted in 2006 - and we filled the gaps with new (equally expensive) ones.  They are Pyrus Calleryana 'Chanticleer' and they should shelter the orchard, put on a modest show of blossom in the Spring and then some spectacular Autumn colour.

Below the orchard we have planted 6 walnuts.  All trees I plant are in honour of my grandfather Len Holdaway, but walnuts more than anything.  On the farms where I grew up there were walnut trees planted by Len and his brother Charles.  My grandfather lived long enough to see his walnut trees produce huge quantities of nuts - which his grandson had to pick up.  Uncle Charl didn't live to see his great grand-nephews earn pocket money by harvesting nuts from his trees throughout their teens, but I'm sure he got his share in earlier times.

Finally - I'm trying a couple of figs back up by the house.  We had a beautiful fig tree when we lived in Gardenvale in the 1980s.  My wife loves figs - so I'm trying them for her.

Our garlic is up and moving now.  I'm very pleased that Neil and I did the bed forming before planting.  This block of the vegetable garden is just downhill of a very wet spot.  While it's possible there is a spring I think it's more likely that there is some sort of natural underground drainage from the higher area up by the house.  In any case, the rain has left water lying in the trenches between the beds - but the beds themselves are wet but not soaked.  And they dry reasonably quickly.

On the weekend the boys and I got our potatoes in.  We have planted 12 metre rows of 7 different varieties: Pontiac, Kipfler, King Edward, Otway Red, Nicola, Desiree ..... and .... well 6 out of 7 isn't bad.  They are in a block of the garden that is not as wet - thank heavens.  At the moment we've just planted them about 4 inches deep.  We'll mound up later as the shoots appear and need frost protection.

Tonight I spoke briefly to my Uncle Barry.  He was telling me about the bullock team he has in training.  He has a couple of what I imagine must be steers - one a Simmental and the other some sort of Friesian cross.  I wasn't aware of my great grandfather and his sons having used bullocks as opposed to draught horses, but there are many, many things I don't know.  Later this month we'll be back in Blenheim for a few days - and I can't wait to see the team.

Kristina has also found a newspaper article referring to a previous owner of Moora Farm - one Willie Benson, who lived in our house for over 40 years.  The article was on standard bred horses - and Willie was a registered trainer / driver.  It also mentioned him as having Clydesdales and standing various stallions.  We certainly find plenty of horseshoes and other ironmongery whenever we move any soil around the farm yard.  I also think I've found an old stables location - which I deduce from what looks like a stable floor of rock from the paddocks.  It's an area of similar sized rocks laid out roughly flat.  It can't be natural - so why would it be there?  I think it has to be a stable or perhaps some other type of farm shed.

Economic relevance - episode 5

The episode might be entitled 'life must go on'. It appears the fire season in Victoria is winding down. A little bit of rain and some cooler weather has people hoping this is the case. It has been no fun the last few weeks!

Last Monday was said to be the second worst day in terms of risk - after the terrible Saturday when the lives were lost. In mid afternoon a fire started about 10 km to the south west of our McKerrels tree farm. It is at Grenville 20 km south of Ballarat. The fire started in the worst possible place for us - just ahead of a south westerly wind change. Within an hour or two it had been 'controlled'. Thank heavens - there were only blue gum plantations between the fire and an important component of our superannuation.

Back now to the search for economic relevance for Moora. Here is where we have got to.

The next thing to look at is the means by which most small farmers take a living from a limited land base - and that is by growing vegetables- and, in time, fruit. I approach this with some trepidation because I know, by reputation, the plain hard work involved with vegetable growing at any scale.
I've grown vegetables on a hobby or 'feed the family' basis for 35 years, but my only attempt at a commercial venture was as a 15 year old when I grew pumpkins in the Pretty Paddock at home. We got a good crop - but a good crop when everyone else had one meant low prices. We put them aside in a corner of George's Whare - where most rotted before we sold the good ones for, as I recall it, not very much.

The type of vegetable farming that interests me most is growing a wide range of vegetables to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) mode. In a CSA customers are asked to become, in effect, partners in the enterprise - by subscribing to a season's worth of vegetables in advance. The produce is then delivered in a 'box' on a weekly basis over about 30 weeks. The idea appears to have at least 2 sources - in Japan and the also in Europe tied up in some way with Rudolf Steiner.

There are some examples in Australia - but I'm still at the early stages of learning about them. Suffice for the purposes of this blog to note that we have the site(s) to grow the 30 to 50 vegetable / fruit varieties that go into a typical CSA box over the course of a season - and we have the ability to water them to keep them growing. 

The photo shows the relocated garage that will be the base from which the vegetable enterprise works.  Behind the shed is an area of over half an acre that is already laid out as a big garden.  I've planted cypress trees to shelter the area from the winds that sweep in from the right of the photo.  

At the bottom of the hill is an area where we can grow more crops - on a more extensive basis.  There is other space around to the left of this photo.  In all there is at least 4 acres that can be intensively farmed.

Labour is going to be the big issue. Commercial vegetable growing needs lots of work - and lots of bending, lifting, twisting, bumping - and then more of the same the following day. Joel Salatin points out that older farmers don't need to do everything themselves - that they can co-venture with younger people in need of access to land.

In any case, I think it's not unrealistic to say that a mature CSA enterprise could have 100 'shares' at $600 pa - that's another 10 squares.

We're getting close - at least in theory.  And there can be a lot of difference between theory and reality - let's talk about that in the next post.

The vegetable garden (to be)

This photo looks west from the laneway across the vegetable garden to the farm beyond.  

You can see a mainly empty garden here (and my 'tidy gene' on display), but also some signs of how things will be.  How I wish my dear Mum could see it - and share in the excitement of planning and then seeing through a project like this.  'Stickability' was what she thought people needed and gardening was one passionate expression of her own stickability.

In the foreground is a part of the cypress hedge that will surround the garden on 3 sides and protect me from the cold south westerly winds.  If you double click on the photo for a bigger view, you can actually see some of the trees from the western side just the other side of the cultivated area.  The hedge has only been in the ground for about 18 months - so the growth is pretty good.  It's amazing what good watering will do.

The shed in the middle of the photo is the old garage from up by the house.  A year ago we pulled it down and relocated it.  At the moment it has furniture from the house in it, but in time, it will be vegetable HQ.  Already I can sit on the bench by the door and contemplate ...

To the left of and behind the shed is the asparagus patch.  One hundred asparagus plants went in there last winter.  Barbara Kingsolver, in her wonderful book Animal Vegetable Miracle, talked about the asparagus patches she had established in gardens she was soon to leave "for no better reason than that I believe in vegetables in general, and this one in particular".  I too believe in asparagus - and know that the multi year wait to first harvest will soon pass.

To the right is the compost heap.  I built my first compost bin at the age of 21.  I've never been particularly fastidious about compost recipes - I've found patience a reasonable substitute for diligence in this regard.  Perhaps in future I'll do better, get my carbon, nitrogen and moisture right and produce compost in months rather than years.  Certainly I like the design of this heap.  Star pickets supporting a mesh wall.  In time I want to have a separate compost yard - and do it all on a much bigger scale for the garden and the farm.  But that's in the future.

To the right of the compost heap are some garden plants - transplanted while the building extension is completed.  And also son Neil's little garden.  I hope his girlfriend Lily will be impressed when she returns from Guangzhou in a few weeks.