Dehulling workshop

I moved the fences last night and checked on them today.  Walking around with a volt meter and figuring out problem spots made me feel, perhaps unjustifiably, glad that I studied physics.  Sure, reading a volt meter doesn't require complex theory or math, but I think my methodical approach to problem-solving is informed by my training.  A rudimentary understanding of electricity is necessary to troubleshoot.  Eh? 

I thought I could nap the afternoon away, but I came home to a reminder that I signed up for an online webinar on Dehulling Ancient Grains.  This is a sign that I'm on the path to becoming a grain nerd, or at least "mining the industry". This eOrganics hosted meeting comprised of some farmers, an economist, and some agricultural researchers.  They primarily focused on spelt, emmer, and einkhorn. The take home message is that it's better to grow a lot (10 acres or more) and share equipment.  I concluded for myself that einkhorn isn't worthwhile because of its low yields and greater difficulty to dehull due its larger size and frailty. 

Presenters gave an overview of existing dehulling equipment options.  The main brands, Heger, Horn, and Codema are expensive and require multiple passes to successfully dehull a sufficient quantity.  Homemade dehullers came out as the best option, but cost $12,000 in parts alone and were made by farmers with metal-smith skills.  Some existing equipment may be repurposed to dehull, like stone mills and scarifiers, but they tend to smash and break the grains.  Even if one successfully dehulled grains, gravity tables and aspirators need to do pre- and post-clean-up. Egh, commercial grain farming requires too many machines!!  There's a reason why hulled varieties became unpopular!

Overall, I think this workshop helped me decide whether I want to plant spelt next year and how important it is that I attend the upcoming meeting of North Coast grain growers about creating a grain hub.  Also, while I think that being able to have a meeting with people from all over the country in a webinar is richly educational and reduces fuel use, a major drawback is that I'm not compelled to stay awake as I would be amidst other people.  Or, perhaps I'm not that nerdy of a grain farmer.

Blackberry Attack!

"I have a backhoe," said the voice on the other end.  I picked up the phone without looking to see who called.  I thought this was a dream.  Someone's providing me a backhoe? 

It was Mark.  He called to follow up on an offer he made last week to help me clear blackberry bushes from the field with a backhoe and to say he and another person were heading to the field.

"Sweet!  I'll be right there!" I replied as I jumped out of bed.  As I got dressed, I received a call from Sarah, a woman who regularly volunteers at CTTB and called me a few weeks ago expressing interest in helping on the farm.  Great timing!  Of all days, I was going to do something that multiple people could help with!

Sarah tossing uprooted plant

Within minutes, I had three people helping me take out blackberries.  Mark dug out the large blackberry patches while Sarah, Eli, and me followed the trail of destruction by doing the detail work.  The CTTB made aluminium handle shovels to deal with blackberries because the roots are so tough that they often crack wooden handles.  We made a great deal of progress before a hydraulic pump gave out. By the time we got out the last root, it was time to put away the sheep. 

I felt sheepish about not having anything to give as thanks for this unexpected and highly effective help, but I'm glad I facilitated Mark's first-ever encounter with sheep!

Thanks for all your work, Sarah, Mark, and Eli!

Satisfying the Sheep

Introducing Sheep

Part III: Keeping sheep happy

My eyes opened as the fog gained a light glow this morning.  The idea of needing to feed of a flock of sheep compelled me to get out of bed.  I can't disappoint so many families!  

The sheep began to voice their excitement when I stepped out of the car, and they baaaa'ed louder and louder as I neared.  I tried to keep their calls from making me anxious and hurrying me through the process of dispersing hay.  When I opened the gate, they flooded out across the field.  They sure had a heyday with the hay.

I came back in the early afternoon, before they needed to be brought back into the corral, because I had this sinking feeling that something had gone wrong.  The fence lost electricity.  A desperate coyote leaped over the fence.  The sheep wanted to taste grape vines.  I caved in after a few hours of thumb twiddling and checked on them.  As I approached, I couldn't see anything behind the grape vines.  They were gone.  They were eating neighbors' vines.  I knew it.

But, no, I made it up the hill and they were all there.  I walked up to them and they looked at me, reassuring me that they were content. 

Hello, Dolly!

Introducing Sheep

Part II: Bringing in the Sheep

I don't have photos of today's work because the crew came three hours late and we worked from dusk and to dark.  Most of this involved expanding the corral, setting up the electric fence, and feeding the sheep.  They seemed to enjoy the new pasture.  They'll have over an acre to chew on in the next few days. 

The main things to remember are:

• Let the sheep leave the corral at sunrise and bring them in well before sunset
• Spread out six flakes of hay in the area of the field that I want them to eat up before bringing them out in the morning
• Call the sheep by tapping on metal or saying, "Let's go!"
• Spread six flakes of hay in the corral to call them back
• Make sure the water tank is full
• Check that the fence voltage is 4500 or higher

While I have yet to get used to the tardiness and flakiness of rural life that resembles working with undergraduates, I appreciated the opportunity to order what turned out to be a burrito boat at the corner market.  I got a decent falafel sandwich from them yesterday and look forward to trying their dolmas.  This is the corner of Mendocino is by far the most culinarily diverse, which includes the best Mexican food I've found in Northern California, a Nepalese restaurant, and the vegetarian "Asian" restaurant.  Sheep sitting won't be so bad with hummus.

Sheep Shelter

Introducing Sheep

Part I: Build sheep shelter

Jess and Dave rolled up with a small trailer that neatly stored exactly everything we needed to make a sheep shelter -- nothing more, nothing less.  It was as though Ikea got into farming.

We set up a corral by tying fences with metal wire.  For water, a large water tank sat on three pallates outside the corral that hooks to a float.  A float is essentially a box with a hinged bottom suspended in the trough.  Its purpose is to release water when the water gets low.  We will fill the troughs and install two trailers for shelter tomorrow, at which point I can take photos of these contraptions.

The corral is a shelter that the sheep stay in after dusk and until morning.  This area provides protection from predators that will be most interested poaching sheep during the night.  During the day, the sheep will be able to roam in a designated area and eat plants in the field with a supplement of alfalfa flakes, a luxury for animals.  We confine them so they thoroughly clear the field and don't run away to other pastures.  


We demarcate the section of the field they stay in with electric fencing.  Does the electricity hurt the sheep?  Not significantly.  The voltage is low, but provides a mild yet shocking surprise to indicate to animals to stay away.  If sheep are well fed, they don't look to leave and avoid the fence.  We set up the electric fence with SmartFence, which went surprisingly smoothly.  I borrowed the SmartFences from Trevor, who in turn borrowed them from his former employer.  The condition for borrowing these fences was that we'd untangle three of the five fences.

I'm not sure it's a fair trade.  SmartFences have four cables strewn through holes along fence posts.  Each cable wraps around a spool that makes recoiling wires easy-peasy.  For some ding-dong darn reason someone wrapped the uncoiled wire around the posts.  What perplexes me the most is how they managed to wrap one wire clockwise and another counterclockwise around the posts!  I spent two hours untangling wires and, when a snip was necessary, using my knot know-how to reconnect wires that would have to pass through tiny holes.  It's a good thing I finished immediately before the rain started!

We noticed that the area unaffected by the fire had great, grassy forage whereas the burned area is dominated by a short, flat weed.  We found it surprising that the grass wouldn't be resilient to fire and wonder if it's not a native grass.  The sheep certainly like this grass, but we're not sure they'll take to this flat weed.  Pragmatically, it means I have to feed the sheep more hay bales than if there were natural forage.  Le sad.

Yummy, not fire adapted grass

Khaleesi Targaryan grass that I hope the sheep will like

Stone Mill Dressing

Monica Spiller of the Whole Grain Connection organized a workshop wherein Roger and Larry Jansen led a hands-on lesson in stone mill dressing.  Roger and Larry are a father-son duo who are among the few American custom stone mill makers.  Roger lives in North Carolina and is visiting Larry and his family this month, so Monica saw this as a good and rare time to learn from both artisans.

Mill stone diagram from stoneforest.com

A basic stone mill contraption consists of two circular grain grinding stones, often horizontally oriented.  Some stone mills have housing, a hopper to regulate inflow of grain, and sifters that separate parts of the whole grain flour.  Once metal blades and hammer mills that can break up grains with greater precision and without contributing chipped stones were introduced, stone mills became unpopular and nearly obsolete. 

This begs the question: why do we want to go back to using stone mills?  Good question that needs follow-up research.  Is it kitsch? 

In the workshop, we learned how to carve furrows into marble using air hammers and chisels.  The main areas that one needs guidance on are optimal positions for holding the the air hammer for different tasks.  Rounding the edge necessitates a different angle than creating furrows or land (see diagram).

We worked on Salisbury Pink, a granite from North Carolina.  These stones come from headstone leftovers and are recut into donuts.

Roger Jensen

Air hammer with chisel

Air hammer

Smoothing down the sides so grains can slide out

Marking furrows - odd numbered

Deepening a furrow

Adding furrows and land

Testing for evenness

Rachel's Review

You know what's great about having eclectic, curious, skilled friends?  They can do things like interpret convoluted soil tests.  The one I got from Ag Unlimited Organics doesn't give the sample volume so that I know what their percentages refer to.  Thankfully, Rachel did some interpreting and comiserating with me.  Yep, Rachel, currently a soil science PhD student at Cornell with a focus on farming fertility, previously a geographer, ship builder, and farmer.  And still one of the best cooks I've ever met.

Her comments:

General thoughts: Your soil's pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) all seem a bit low.  Adding compost and lime will help with this. I think that it's nice that you will be planting a small variety of crops in the first year--this should make it easier to assess how the soil (and its ability to support crops) varies across your land.

Lime: There are different kinds of lime that you can use.  I don't have strong recommendations about the specific kind, other than that you shouldn't use gypsum if you want to increase the pH.  (Gypsum contains sulfur, and does not increase the pH of the soil.)  If you want to increase the Mg in addition to the Ca, you can use dolomitic lime.  I am not sure what would be most cost effective.  Also, I do not recommend trying to raise the pH too much in one season.  If I have interpreted your soil test results accurately, you would need 7,200 lbs/acre of lime to bring the pH up to the "ideal" pH (probably ~6.8, although they don't specify). That is a lot of lime, and I'm not convinced that your pH really needs to be that high.  The "ideal" pH will vary to some degree based on the kind of crop you're growing and the soil's organic matter content, and plenty of crops can do alright at a pH lower than 6.8.  That said, it probably would benefit you to increase the pH and the soil Ca content.

Compost: Adding compost should increase the soil organic matter, CEC, N, and P to some extent, depending on the type of compost.  If you don't use a relatively P-rich compost, you may want to consider adding another source of P.  I think that using sheep to fertilize is a great start, but in the long run, I expect that you'll need to add larger quantities of compost/organic matter (although this also depends on your other management practices, i.e., crop rotations, cover cropping, tillage intensity, etc.).

Micronutrients: The micronutrient levels all seem pretty good (B, Cu, Zn) or high (Fe, Mn).  The high availability of Mn and Fe might be due to the low pH.  It is possible for these nutrients to be present at levels that are toxic to plants, but this is usually associated with soils that have a pH of 5.5 or lower.  I am not sure why your lab didn't test for sulfur or molybdenum.  These are both important plant nutrients.  However, it probably isn't essential that you retest the soils this year--I think that it would be more interesting/useful to test them again next year.

Mowing

Mark managed to fix up a tractor and attach a mower for me the morning after we talked.  He pulled up to the Administration Office in an orange Kubota.  "Have fun!" he said.
"Um, could you show me how this works?" I inserted.
Mark: Sure!  Of course.  How many hours of tractor experience do you have?
Me:  [held up hand connecting index and thumb to make a zero]
Mark: Zero!  [face palm] 

I instantly identified tractor parts in hopes to indicating that I had a conceptual understanding of this contraption.  This seemed to alleviate Mark's concerns, so I hopped into the seat and gave it a spin.  We practised in the CTTB field before I drove the back road to my plot.

As much as I'd like to get away from fossil fuels, without animals and the right equipment for them, it's difficult to work large fields without machines.  It took me about four hours to clear five acres.  Granted, I did some likely inefficient weaving through blackberry bushes.  I conceptualized the area like bars of a middle Reimann sum and tried to assess the most expeditious boustrophodonic path. I got the hang of it after 2.5 acres and enjoyed watching the changing light and shadow across the colorful, autumnal mountains.  The excitement of a first mow was soon replaced by a mild anxiety about how much time I had before dusk.  One can't simply speed up the tractor; it can only go so fast and the mower is sensitive to heterogeneous surfaces.  I patiently steered while watching the sun nestle behind silver-grey evening clouds.  I kept thinking I should call it a day and return the tractor.
Oh, but 3 more passes!
Oh, but the sun is setting so quickly!
TIME!!!

I took a deep breath.  Concentrating on the moment, I drove the tractor with calm and with all the appropriate considerations for speed and terrain.  There was no point rushing.  The best I could do was do this task well.  As I finished my last pass, heading southwest, I saw the sun dip behind the mountains.

Mark Wu and the CTTB Farm

Mark Wu, the principle farm volunteer at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, invited me to see the campus farm.  Most of the 10 acres had been tilled in, save a 20'x20' patch of broccoli that rose to the chest and were still being harvested by volunteers.  Densely vegetated areas alternated with expanses of fallow zones.  Rows of towering tomatoes and green beans still stood shadowing over bell peppers.  One or two peppers remained on each plant, but all the plants had scars from cut stems.  Mark told me that they harvested the leaves which are difficult to find in markets but are highly desirable for soups.

Bell peppers

When asked about how they deal with foraging animals, they said they plant more.  Matthew and Corinne of Lovin' Mama Farm told me the same thing.  Both sets of farmers said that they found that not only did the proportional loss decrease (e.g. losing 10 plants out of 100 is not as big a deal as losing 10 plants out of 20), but that the animals seemed to eat less (e.g. 10 of 100 plants were eaten but only 5 out of 200 were eaten).  Originally, a deer fence lined the perimeter of the vegetable field, but unruly blackberry bushes engulfed the posts and were difficult to remove without destroying the fence.  The fences and blackberry bushes were removed, making the farm vulnerable to deer.  Mark said that they gave up on keeping the deer out and, in turn, found that fewer insects besieged crops.  He believes that a balance is struck when everyone and everything is free to come and go.  Mark mentioned a method he uses for deterring deer to eat new transplants: to make the areas surrounding the transplants more lush than the new sprouts.  "The deer see the new transplants as appealing, bright green growth and want to eat it, so I make the weeds around them seem more appetizing.  I want the deer to think I'm poor with my meagre sprouts and that everyone else is rich, so they should rob the others!" he said.  How sensible.  There's also something novel yet obvious about this notion of creating bounty for everyone, humans and animals.

After touring the fields, Mark showed me storage barns.  One by one, each barn door opened to reveal neatly stacked shade cloth, starts trays, fence netting, etc. Mark said that most of these things were donated because the CTTB is frugal and tries to reuse as much as possible.  This mentality is pragmatic, but also means they usually get faulty equipment that requires much time to repair and maintain.  "The tractors, for example.  We have three but they have many problems such that we only use one, really."  Tractor, huh?  I told Mark about my desperate and fruitless two-month search for a flail mower.  Mark suggested that I borrow CTTB's tractor and mower if it was right for the job.  Curious about what I needed to mow, we went out to my field.

Only two or three days passed since I was last visited the field, but I was surprised by what I saw.  Blackberries came back from the fire with a vengeance!  Mark and I shook our heads at the sprawling brambles in my field and the adjacent area where all the new blackberry growth were equidistant from each other.  Blackberries are terribly difficult to rid of because of their deep root structure and rhizomatic propagation.  Cutting them up is no good because one broken branch could easily become a new plant.  Perhaps I should start a blackberry farm.

Sigh

Adjacent field

The sight of burgeoning blackberries stirred Mark to insist that I borrow the mower and make a dent in the blackberries.  We figured that afterwards we could take a back-hoe to the roots and try to get a handle on this.

Here's to mowing tomorrow!