Summerberry Organics

The hardest lessons of all to learn are usually the expensive ones.  In this next series of posts, I’m going to try to make sense out of some things, that really don’t make a lot of sense (to me, anyway).

Our tentative foray into the world of fruit production is proving to be a much slower process than initially thought.  Initially we came home with almost 300 cherry trees of the Romance varieties.  Carmine Jewels, Romeos and Juliettes.  Gorgeous little trees that filled up my poor mini van from hatch to coffee holders.  See – I want a Shrubbery!! http://summerberryorganics.com/?p=46

Since my enthusiasm tends to outweigh my common sense (99% of the time) I thought it prudent to purchase the orchard stock while we had cash in hand.  It never occurred to me that prepping the orchard areas by way of cultivation and planning should come first.  See – The Secret is in the Prep Work post….http://summerberryorganics.com/?p=86

Then comes the lesson on the native grasses…and how unbelievably thick and lush they can be!  Grass Gods 1 – http://summerberryorganics.com/?p=69   

As soon as you start maintaining grass…it seems to think that it’s an invitation to GROW!!

Since the winter of 2010 was fraught with major snow falls and unusual weather, and due to my LACK of prep work in the portions of field that were to support the Romeo and Juliet cherry trees we had little option but to store the un-planted trees in a cold room in the basement.   Although I consulted with my supplier on the best care for the dormant trees, this did not work out in our favor.  The death rate was staggering.  Almost 100 of my precious trees died!

In order to salvage what was left of the Romeo and Juliette trees I had to re-think the whole orchard idea!  I have taken four of the surviving trees (2 Romeos, 2 Juliettes) and set them in the Base Camp gardens.  The remaining survivors (4 Romeos and 5 Juliettes) I have planted near the front drive on the farm.

I would like to try to make a small “permaculture” style showcase garden right at the end of the driveway.  This way, anyone that pops by the farm, their first sight will be a lush fruit and vegetable patch.  This little space so far contains the surviving (fingers crossed they survive the 2011 winter) Juliet and Romeo cherry trees and a row of donated raspberry bushes gifted to us by a local lady. 

Our raspberry benefactor is a local gal of (get this) 92 that maintains her own home and garden.  She felt that the raspberries took up too much room so passed them along to us.  I planted 20 of the canes in the town gardens and took the rest to the farm.  The few that were in the town gardens produced about three pounds of fruit last season.  NOT BAD for plants that had been uprooted and moved TWICE in the single year!

Now that we are pretty through a very MILD winter, it’s about time to get things rolling once again.

I’m sure there will be plenty of fussing over water issues this year.  Since our ONLY water pump kicked the bucket last fall, it’s going to be an interesting adventure in irrigation!!  I’ll keep you posted.

I am a self professed, flag-waving Hippie.  Anyone who knows me personally, knows that I have rather a number of fave topics when it comes to being “green”, “natural”, and a “hippie”.  There are certain things I cave on.  Hair color for one.  I absolutely refuse to go gray.  Therefore, environmental nightmare that it is, I color my hair.  I still use store-bought conditioners (occasionally, I do make my own shampoo), I buy bar soap.  Only because I have yet to make it successfully.  I don’t purchase spiffy soaps, just Ivory.  It’s cheap, easy on the skin, and doesn’t have a lot of crap in it.

In thinking about what to touch on for topics, I was inspired by an old poster that I once had.  “How to be Happy, In Spite of Yourself” (see my personal blog at www.hippieways.com – Happy Hippies posting to read the full article).

Occasionally, I get a WHOLE day from work.  Not very often, but when I do, I like to take myself out for coffee at the local Esso (small town restaurants – sorry, no cappie machine in these parts).  I haul along my daytimer and misc. writing devices and just scratch away for a couple of hours.  There are generally two or three people to chat with and I make a few notes and contemplate life and other issues.

In this post, I would like to expound on the virtues of being a bit of a “hippie”.  No single definition really suits, but if taking life to a simple, natural, chemical free existence makes you a hippie, then so be it.  So, here goes:

HOW TO BE HIPPIE IN SPITE OF YOURSELF

1.  Choose organic.  Whenever possible, or practical – take the organic route.   It’s just plain better for you.

2.  Learn to cook!!  So many people that I come across every day have NO idea how to feed themselves.  They depend on packaged foods and in doing so are not only damaging themselves, but the environment as well.  Remember – Betty Crocker is a fictional character!  Just like Barbie.  I wish anyone luck picking Duncan or Hines out of a crowd.  Real food is fabulous!  Learn how to make it.

3.  Shop and eat local.  You not only support local businesses, you save yourself a lot of driving, fuel, stress and travel mugs full of really bad coffee.  Unless there’s no way around it, stick to your own backyard.

4.  Appreciate granola.  There has never been a single case of death by overdose of granola.  EVER!  It’s low fat, high fiber and healthy by default.  There’s no real need to wonder what’s on the label.  It’s versatile – snack on it, sprinkle it on peanut butter and toast, stir it into yogurt.

5.  Grow a few vegetables.  Could be in window boxes, patio planters, a small patch in front of your place.  You don’t need to go grand scale.  Harvesting your own snack straight from the plant has a unique way of becoming highly addictive.

6.  Buy only products that contain ZERO chemicals.  This is mostly likely the hardest one.  Read labels, understand what you’re paying for, and what the potential hazards are.  There ARE good “green” products out there, just make sure you’re not fooled by big manufacturers trying to market garbage as “green”.

7.  Recycle!  NOT a difficult concept.  Bottle depot, newspaper bins, cardboard bins.  Just about EVERY town has ‘em.  Most larger cities even have curbside collection of recycling.  When you buy something (peanut butter is a GREAT example) try to make sure you can re-purpose the packaging.  Given the choice between a clear plastic jar or an opaque one, get the clear one.  They’re more useful later on.

8.  Learn to clean without chemicals.  NOT a tough one, really.  Unless you are a total germophobe (in which case, get some help for that) you CAN have a clean house without noxious chemicals of any sort.  Your grand-parents did it!  They didn’t drop dead from NOT having scrubbing bubbles.  Baking soda, lemon juice and vinegar are GREAT cleaners.  There’s TONS of recipes out there for making your own cleaning products.  Try it – your health AND your bank account  will thank you.

9.  Mindfully part with your money.    This could be a difficult concept for some.  I too suffer an instant gratification gene that rears up from time to time.  The MUST have bug does hit all of us at one time or another.  In my case, it’s more a matter of not having a ton of cash to throw around, so my purchasing decisions are made carefully.   I see SO many that seem to have HUGE sums of money to toss away on seemingly needless things.  Prime example:  What on earth does a 5′ 6″ man, and an even smaller woman NEED an $80,000 diesel SUV for?  I’m not saying that everyone should run out an buy a hybrid vehicle with extra room for a composter, but c’mon – be reasonable.

10.  Everyday eat at least FIVE (5) things that don’t NEED labels.  A handful of almonds, a salad, grapes, asparagus.  Think about it – when’s the last time you saw a “Nutrition Facts” label stuck to an apple??

NONE of the above noted ideas have any unhealthy side effects.  You will NOT have a driving desire to run out and buy hemp rope sandals or tie-dyed T-Shirts.  You will not be attacked by flower children singing Kumbyah.  You may however, find that you have a couple of bucks to part with at the local bakery.  You could possibly develop relationships with local farmers or merchants…all sorts of strange things could happen.

Things have settled into a routine (more or less) for the winter now. So I think it’s time to really put some thought into the lessons learned this year. According to most of the local residents, this has been an EXCEPTIONAL year in terms of weather. A little research will show that the quantity of rainfall this year in Saskatchewan was not only record-breaking, but a HUGE hassle for everyone.
I do know that we did not get all 300 trees planted on the farm due to there being water where there shouldn’t be. We did manage to plant 188 Carmine Jewel cherry trees. By hand, with spades, and it was definitely an adventure. Other than trying to keep up with the grass cutting (refer to Grass Gods post…) it was a somewhat unproductive year on the farm. The other 112 trees purchased from Over the Hill Orchards are in the basement cold room at Base Camp.

Does this make Pat a hippie too??

Pat has been working ridiculous numbers of miles (he’s a long haul trucker) just to keep the payments going and the Base Camp afloat. I’m now working a regular job (plus teaching skating). The cash flow is the primary issue to the slow pace of the improvements. Needless to say, if anyone has some creative funding ideas…I’m all ears!

Primary lesson: be better organized in advance.

Hindsight being 20/20 there are rather a number of things that I would have done differently. I had the cash and decided that purchasing the orchard cherry trees would be a good idea. Little did I realize what was actually involved in planning an orchard, let alone maintaining it.

Since I am a BIG fan of Permaculture, it’s ways, methods, ideas and people, I tend to read as much as I can about the topic.  If you just Google the word Permaculture you will be inundated with information on it.  It’s a unique method of argriculture that could potentially save this planet and feed the populace in doing so.  As I come across favored links, I will post them here – but take an hour and a cup of tea, and do a little reading.  Better yet – hit YouTube, there are 100′s of videos posted by Permaculture students and professionals all over the world.

Had I the capitol to do it – I would study the subject formally.  There’s design courses, college courses and all manner of training centers being set up.   But, since I can’t afford it – I just study what I can, when I can.

Summerberry Organics will one day be a shining example of self sufficiency and human settlement.  In the mean time, we plan, we pray, we hope.  And we dig holes with shovels to plant trees.

This year (on the farm and at base camp) has been all about experimentation. Research and development, as it were. So over the next 20 or 30 posts, I’m going to be scribbling about lessons learned in the pursuit of permaculture style gardens, various varieties of produce, what do with it, and things that I’ve learned this year. If you’re not familiar with “Permaculture” here’s a terrific link to Wikipedia’s article on it.

My last post regarding the Grass Gods…I concede!! Over the winter I hope to be able to save enough cash to purchase a ride-on mower. Using a push mower in an orchard is rather like jousting a windmill. It keeps you busy, but in the end is really rather pointless.

The weather is Saskatchewan has been just beastly. According to the local coffee crowds, there hasn’t been rain (or precipitation in general) like this since 1965. Wow!

What is truly comes down to is this – there is simply too much water in the wrong places.

For those of us puttering about with town gardens this year, it caused an equal portion of grief! I will get to the part about the tomatoes.

The Base Camp gardens are serving as a testing ground for varieties and technique for eventual implementation on the farm. In plain terms – if it grows in town, it should survive on the farm. So here’s where we started…

The making of raised beds

The total area of the veggie patch (what you see) is about 20 ft. wide and 40 ft. long. The boxes are built from tumble down wind fence that we found out on the farm. The wood isn’t much for fencing anymore, but held together with a few screws makes a pretty decent raised bed. Cash outlay? $17 for the screws.

The Ditch Witch?

We decided that the tomato patch should be a bit better protected from wind, so we decided to make a bit of a runway like affair on the side where the hedges are. Two varieties of onions will form the outer lines, and three varieties of tomatoes will run down the center. Hence, the Runway…

As it turns out – the Tomato Runway sat SMACK IN a windy patch. Turns out that the winds (when coming from the west) sail between our house and the nice lady next door and blow right between the house and garage and blast the tomatoes like crazy anyway!    Permaculture Lesson:  now that the wind pattern has been established, find a different spot for the tomatoes.

The Tomato Runway

Here you can see how we managed to work a bit around the wind issues.  If you look closely you’ll see cedar shake shingles driven along the sides and the surveyor stakes that we used to tie up the plants.

Results:  Gorgeous plants!  Fabulous tomatoes!  Now for the really lousy part.  Water blight.  Due to a lack of cover, and the unusually wet weather in SK last year, the total take from all of these plants was about 10 lbs of usable fruit.  Talk about a total let down.

Conclusion: next year, we move the tomatoes! And see about getting a poly-tunnel.

I’ve decided to update the categories.  Rather than “events of the day”, I’ve decided to call this “A Day in the Life of a Wanna-be Farmer”.  Since I’m terribly lazy when it comes to posting daily events, I’ll just simplify things a bit. I the course of my day job as a grocery clerk, I tend to come across a wide variety of people.

For the most part the light chit-chat doesn’t really stick to my brain, but some things do.  One particular Saturday afternoon seems to demand that I open a dialogue on the general topic of “farming”.

Grant you this is a HUGE topic.  There are (quite literally) thousands of discussions that could be opened up on the various methods, size, organic vs. “conventional” (love that word, by the way) and so on.

The store that I work at is a typical small-town operation.  Fairly limited selections, small-ish building, the only grocery game in town.  The UPside to this is that the staff rock!  We help you carry out your groceries, take grocery orders over the phone, and we even deliver on certain days.  When is the last time that Buy-and-Large helped you with anything other than emptying your bank account?

One sunny Saturday afternoon’s carry-out is one of those moments that “stuck to my brain”.  I won’t name names here (just for the record) since everyone around here knows everyone else and so forth.

I’ve even been recognized…another post entirely.

This particular customer was making a rather large purchase of peaches and after a great deal of fiddling about with the fruit in question we managed to find some good ones.  NOT an easy feat around here, peaches don’t grown in Saskatchewan (for now…)  In any case, I was carrying the peaches out to this customer’s pick-up truck and asked if he wanted them in the front or the back.  Not an unusual question.

In the back of the truck were a number of jerry-cans, a roll of barbed wire, and an assortment of other “farm type stuff”.  He looked almost embarrassed to be caught with such items openly visible.  As I set the case of peaches on the floor of the truck cab he smiled at me and said…”don’t worry, I’m not a farmer”.  I smiled back and said “I’m trying to be!”  I wished him a good afternoon, and went back into the store.

Could someone please explain to me why this man would think that being a farmer is a BAD thing?

My absolute favorite farmer is Mr. Joel Salatin of Polyface, Inc.

With luck, I’m not stepping on copyright toes by posting the links…www.polyfacefarms.com

Mr. Joel Salatin said it best in his interview with USA Today Polyface Farms .  Pop over to YouTube and check out the video.

He makes some highly valid points.  1) do any mothers EVER beak off that their Little Joey is going to grow up to be a farmer?  No.  2) why do people simply assume that farmers are “grammar, assaulting hill-billies”.  That’s a good question.

To my mind, farmers should be THE SINGLE MOST RESPECTED PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.  Not, of course, to the point of hero-worship, but lets be rational here.  Who are the ones that feed you?  The folks at the grocery store?  Where do you really think those fine steaks, Caesar Salad and garlic bread come from?  The steak fairies?  The green fairies?  Oh, wait, I know – the BREAD fairies!!

Watch the video, and then decide whether or not you take your daily bread seriously.

I’m sooooo sick of mowing lawns I could just cry!  Lesson learned = make sure you have a ride-em mower PRIOR to planting 180 trees!

We will be back at it today.  Pushing mowers and weed-wacking until we vibrate.  My mentor (and most awesome supplier) Dean has advised that putting down landscape fabric will help out with the grass issues.  I’ve also heard that once the trees are established and much larger, I will be able to let the smaller livestock animals wander the orchards to maintain the grass.  It will be interesting to see if it works.

However, at this point, I’m not quite willing to take the chance.  The only livestock we have on site are the horses.  And frankly, if they decide to EAT my trees, that would NOT be a good thing!

I would add photos…however, I have no clue how to swipe them back from my facebook page and the data recovery from the great computer incident is still in the works…

Hopefully, I’ll have everything under control soon!   We’ve had lots of comments, but since I’m not real UP on the technorati scale, I haven’t got the spam/not spam thing figured out yet.  If you want to leave a comment, PLEASE do so – I’ll figure this out eventually!!

If you’ve noticed we haven’t been around much lately, it’s because my computers QUIT!!  Yes, both of them.  Total hard disk failure on one, and a blown mother board on the other.  A most interesting month July has been…

I’m eternally grateful it’s over!!

Since the “Great Computer Incident” and the subsequent funeral for FRED (F*king Ridiculous Electronic Device) we have managed to plant 140 Carmine Jewel cherry trees, mow the lawns in the orchard, wait for the rain to quit, mow the lawns in the orchard, wait for the rain to quit….you get the idea.

Many of the photos of the burgeoning orchard were loaded onto FRED so it will be a while before the data recovery is complete and I actually have some decent photos to post.

In the meantime…at least my cell phone still works!  This tiny little noisemaker that inhabits my pocket (most days) brought me some good news (for a change!).  Tomorrow I have an interview with the administrators of a government program that with any luck will get us rolling a little faster!  I will keep you posted on this.

I have discovered that the Contact Us e-mail forms are not working on either of my sites. SO, this frustration having been voiced, please just pop me a comment if you need to get hold of Summerberry Organics.
I am working on the issue, and once I’ve figure out what the problem is, I will get this under control!! In the meantime, we’re off to plant more trees! We have 60 in the ground….only 240 left to go

For the millions of Monty Python fans around the world, this line has comical notions.  It’s always been a favorite line of mine, and as many things tend to happen – be careful what you wish for, you may get it!!

We have SHRUBBERY!!

Today is the first day I can confidently call myself a farmer!!  Sort of.  Today we picked up the first of our Certified Organic cherry trees from Over The Hill Orchards in Lumsden, SK.  Dean and Sylvia Kreutzer are the owners of a fabulous orchard as well as the Prairie Cherry line of (to die for!!) organic products.  Their link is on the right for those that would like to surf around some more.

Dean was kind enough to take James and I on the grand tour before we got down to the business of stuffing 300 (yes, three hundred) cherry trees into a Dodge Caravan.   What a wonderful place they’ve built up in Lumsden.  A little hilly for my taste, but hey, I’m lazy.

Over the Hill wintered the trees for me at their facility because I did not have the time to get them planted last year before it got cold.  Following our tour and a few questions about the best way to plant and space, we got down to the task of loading…

The varieties that we’ve purchased as orchard stock for Summerberry Organics consist of Carmine Jewel, Romeo and Juliet.  All three types are cherries that are lightly sweet, suitable for table or preserving and VERY hardy to the harsh (and world famous) winters.

So we loaded, and we loaded and by the time we were done, there were more little trees than I’ve ever seen stuffed into a mini van. 

After a treacherous trek down Over the Hill’s nasty driveway, our new babies made their way back to Summerberry.

This weekend, we plant!!

Wow, is all I can say. I have just finished watching a couple of YouTube videos that (as far as I can tell) EVERYONE needs to watch. The first is called A Farm for the Future.

A Farm for the Future

It’s a BBC documentary on the standard agricultural methods dependence on fossil fuel, and ways that we can get around it. Well done, easy to understand and without a doubt, anyone that likes to eat needs to watch it.
The second is a USA Today segment on Polyface Farms. A US based father and son team who have become leaders in community supported, local and environmentally intelligent agriculture.

Polyface Farm

These are eye opening productions that anyone who has ever stood in the corner grocery store and complained about the price of a tomato needs to see. If you didn’t take your daily bread very seriously before, you certainly will after watching these.
It’s VERY much time to wake up, smell the chickens, and learn how small, intensive production on a local scale could potentially save the human race from disaster when oil and fossil fuels are such a rare thing that driving into the city becomes out of the question. Permaculture, traditional farming methods and soil stewardship are not new topics, but there are a lot of people that think this is a NEW thing.
The corporate giants would have you believe that you can’t live without their products. Here’s a unique idea…try it. Healthy food is grown, not manufactured (ask any Hippie…).  It is common knowledge that a healthy diet will save you a lot of health problems and so forth.  Well, take a look at this and then decide if MANUFACTURING your groceries is a really good idea?

Healthy food consequences?