After the Rain

Lodging and crop loss wasn't as bad as we thought.  Some of the varieties didn't do as well as others, as you can see with the Blue Tinge below.  We'll simply have less of some kinds of grains.  Whew!

Ethiopian Blue Tinge Emmer

Purple Prairie Barley

Impending rain

We got news on Friday that an inch of rain will fall on Monday.  Accordingly, Doug's customers called him in a panic, asking him to harvest their grains before Monday.  Doug spent 11+ hours on a combine on Saturday.  He didn't come home because the job was in Sonoma County.  He stayed overnight to begin work at 6AM the next day.  Once that job was done, he went to harvest at another farm, but found that the heads weren't easily threshed, which means that the wheat berries didn't fall out of the heads as they do when they're ripe and ready.  The third farm also had unready grains, so Doug came back to Mendocino to save his hay bales.

Hay hooks

I went with Doug to a field in Boonville where Doug created 300+ hay bales.  We needed to gather them under a tarp so that the rains wouldn't activate mold spores.  To our pleasant surprise, several people volunteered to help carry hay bales.  I used hay hooks for the first time, which are incredibly helpful for dragging hay bales.  I wasn't any good at lifting and tossing the bales, but my forearms were gladly stretching to move bales.

The whole exercise in full sun left me sore and tired, but fulfilled.  It was nice to work my body and know my strength.  After I finished the milling requests, I mostly work on website development and don't physically exert myself much.  I feel useless in harvest time because I can't drive a combine, run the seed cleaner, or operate the gravity table.  My sense of uselessness borders on guilt as I watch Doug tire himself from non-stop work.  I understand that I can't hold it against myself that I haven't learned how to use these machines, and that this time acts as a reminder of what I'd like to learn.

Stepping away from personal concerns and back to the harvest, I want to explain why this oncoming rain causes stress and anxiety among grain growers.  If there is a heavy rain, the water will accumulate in the heads of grain and cause them to tip over.  When grains bend over, or 'lodge', they are difficult to harvest, particularly in the case of fields that weren't treated with herbicides.  In our case, radish weeds and morning glory dominate the understory of our grains.  We can avoid mixing those seeds and greens with our grains if we cut the grains above the height of the weeds.  If the grains lodge, then they will become nearly inseparable from the weeds and our crop will be ruined.

For the first time in my California residency, I'm hoping rain won't come.

Rye

Rye field

Harvesting Rye

Checking rye heading to hopper

Handful of rye

Checking for loss of seed or unemptied heads

When running the combine, the settings for wind, cylinder distance, and speed must be adjusted to make sure seeds aren't blown out or heads unthreshed. 

It turns out that we harvested this rye when it was too moist, with a reading of 18%.  We sun-dried the rye on tarps when the weather was 108 degrees F and brought the moisture to 10% in two days.  We also managed to convince a local distiller to buy some rye.  Whew!

Parducci and Terra Sávia Harvest

We brought the Hege to Parducci's in the morning to harvest oats and barley between the grape vines.  Apparently I was more interested in their water system than the plantings because this is the only photo I took. 

Parducci's Water Reclamation System

From there, we went to Terra Savia to harvest their malting barley.

Barley and Hops

Little Combine or THE HEGE

Website development

What do people want to know about us?  How do they access that information?  Short of conducting market surveys, I decided to draw from existing CSA websites and personal aesthetic preferences to redesign our website.

Here are some sources of inspiration:

Butterworks Farm -- welcoming, fun, intuitive

Pioneer Valley Heritage Grains -- simple, professional, informative

Community Grains -- informative

Kootenay Grain CSA -- visually-stimulating, interactive, informative

After browsing the internet to get a sense of the information and presentation of other grain projects, I directed brainstorming for our website into three areas:

• Essential information
• Desired information
• Aesthetics

I tried to set aside my graphic design-centered past and, instead, focus on content.  If I've learned anything from working with web designers, it's that people get carried away with the newest design widgets and forget what they're trying to say, putting form before function. 

I worked with Doug and Paul, the web designer, to address these areas of consideration.  We each contributed a list of elements we'd like to have.  Once we figured out what information we wanted immediately and in the near future, I was tasked with figuring out how to organize and present that information.

To me, that's the core question behind visual communication.  How do we graphically convey information (well)?  What are the flows of thought?  What feels intuitive and navigable?  Sleek, clean lines grid many websites these days.  The three-panel picture link prevails, which reinforces our minds to think in threes.  Well-defined columns and right angles might look organized, but that doesn't reflect the work we do.  Farming is complex, detailed, macro, and dynamic. 

I decided to create a few categories that could be represented by detailed, hand-drawn images.  Photos would be lovely, but integrating them in a way that doesn't look sterile or disjointed would be time-consuming and bandwidth-taxing.  I'll start drawing some sketches and see where we end up.

Golden green

Ethiopian Blue Tinge Emmer

Ethiopian Blue Tinge Emmer

Lentil field

Lentils

Sonora field

Sonora

Marquis

Terra Sávia

Malting barley

Trellised hops

Doug and I went to Terra Sávia in Hopland at the request of Yvonne Hall, co-owner of Terra Savia and Olivino.  Friends of Yvonne began a beer-ingredient growing operation on her property, but the principle player in the project left a year  ago, thereby letting the project fall to the way-side.  Yvonne asked us to inspect the malting barley and assess its viability.  It looked ripe and ready for harvest.  Adjacent to the barley field were four types of hops: cascade, willamette, nugget, and chinook.  Yvonne expressed concern about the hops as well, since no one cared for these plants anymore.  I weighed in on the state of the hops, which unwittingly gave away my interest and experience with beer brewing.  I'll pick up on this point later. 

After assessing the barley, Yvonne gave us a tour of the tasting room and production facility.  This California Certified Organic Farm (CCOF) produces wine, olive oil, skin care products, and honey, which are displayed on reclaimed wood furniture crafted by Yvonne's friends who are part of the beer-ingredient cultivation project. 

Tasting room

Barrel turned bench

Award winning wines

We didn't taste any of their wines on site, but we bought a bottle of their Merlot.  I'm not sensitive to wines, but it had a full-bodied palate and did not leave any unpleasant lingering tastes. 

Olive oil selection

Their olive oils contained high levels of anti-oxidants, which one can feel as a zing in the back of the throat when tasting oils.

Left to right: Doug, stone olive press, Yvonne

These stone mills crush olives to press out the oil.  The stones are heavy enough to crack the seeds, so one can imagine the foundation needed to support the weight of three rotating stones.  If you can't imagine, well, the foundation consists of a six-foot deep concrete base.

Doug and steel blade olive press

Yvonne said that the steel blade olive press works as well, if not better, than the stone mill for making olive oil.  The stone mills are for aesthetics, labelling, and meeting hype, according to her.

Separator

After olives are split and crushed, they go through a separator to remove the pulp and seeds from the oil.  Those discards go into the tanks on the right of the photo.  Yvonne said that cheap "extra virgin olive oil" comes from chemically extracting oils from these discards.

Centrifuge separator

The oil goes through a final separation process.

Bottling station

...And eventually to the bottling station.

Olive and olive pit compost

The discards go to the garden to become a cushy, weed-suppressing pathway between row crops.

Hand-picked calendula

Organic calendula

Their row crops include organic calendula that are hand-picked for use in the moisturizing skin care products.  I found these golden petals drying in one of their "tiny house" tasting rooms built by Ben Frey.

Small house tasting room

Patio of tasting room

If you're ever in Hopland, I highly recommend tasting Terra Sávia's olive oil and honey.  The wildflower honey is densely laden with floral flavours that will leave you speechless.  It's like eating a meadow without dealing with pollen allergies.

Doug, Yvonne, and I went over to the Hopland Ale House for a beer club night.  Once Doug left, Yvonne propositioned me about helping out with the development of a microbrewery at Terra Sávia.  I was flattered and excited by the offer, but I feel committed to my current apprenticeship.  I said that I'd be glad to help by offering whatever hop propagation and brewing knowledge that might be relevant.  Yvonne liked the sound of that and suggested that we meet with the other beer-ingredient-growing project members.  We discussed the possibility of simply growing organic hop rhizomes to supply the growing organic beer production line.  We'll see what happens!

Another happy surprise was that the new owner of the Hopland Ale House is a former college classmate of mine.  We haven't seen each other in six years!  What an unlikely place to converge.