Grape Pruning Time

February is grape vine pruning time, or so I've heard. I don't think the grapes on our trellis have ever been pruned and the trellis is a little worse for wear as the posts rot from the top down and the cross beams are dry rotting as well.

Back in early January, I got motivated to cut out all the wisteria vines that had wrapped themselves around the trellis and interwoven themselves among the grape vines. That was quite a chore. Once I chopped out all the vine pieces, I shredded them in the chipper and mixed them with a pile of horse manure to do a little bit of composting. Later in the spring, I will spread the piles out on the pasture.

This week, I pruned back the grape vines in accordance with the guidance I found in the Ison's Nursery and Vineyard website here. They provide a variety of guidance on how to care for grape vines, fruit tress and more. I also ordered my strawberry plugs from them and was very pleased with the plants I got.

Anyway, here are the before and after shots. Hopefully I didn't cut they back too much. I am looking forward to a good grape harvest this year!

Here's what the trellis and vines looked like before I pruned them. This fall, there was more wisteria than grape vine.

Here's how it looks now. I replaced a few cross boards and straightened the trellis. That big pile in the middle is grape vine trimmings.

Sustainable Williamson Project

I wanted to take a moment to share a project from a fellow Appalachian State University alum who is making a difference in the World!

From his most recent email release:

Dear Friends,

On March 1st, 2013, we are launching our campaign in an effort to raise support for making the coalfields of central Appalachia sustainable and economically diverse! 

Our hope is to start a movement to make Williamson an example to other communities in central Appalachia and across the nation, changing how we approach economic diversification and sustainable development.

We aim to create a replicable model from our existing projects that positions Williamson as a hub for sustainability throughout the central Appalachian region.

We invite you to join us, taking action in sharing this campaign with your friends, family, communities, and networks. And as we begin our Campaign Tour across the east coast, stay tuned to our upcoming event to join us the national celebration for sustainability. 

We sincerely appreciate your support, and look forward to working with all of you over the next two months and beyond! Get excited with us! 

The Sustainable Williamson website goes live on 2 March. Check it out if you have a chance.

The New Garden Update

The garden is slowly taking shape!

I added four cubic yards of mushroom compost from Allen's Market this week and mixed it in with the tiller. Then, planted two rows of potatoes (both white and red), a row and half of onions (white, yellow and red) and seven cabbage plants. We're not too fond of cabbage in our family, but we are going to try it again. Maybe it tastes better when you've grown it yourself. I sure can't wait for things to start growing!

The folks at Allen's were very helpful when it came to offering advice on planting the potato and onion sets I bought from them. As I've said before, I'm pretty inexperienced in this gardening stuff. They also have some very reasonable prices on started plants. You get a three pack of plants for $1.00 - not too bad.

As for our sustainability score, I think we get an A+ for expanding out garden area. This new garden will really expand our ability to grow our own food. We probably get a D for the addition of the mushroom compost, though. While the compost will definitely improve our growing capacity, I later learned that it was shipped from mushroom farms all the way up in Pennsylvania. That's a long way to transport compost and I'm sure required a fairly significant quantity of fuel to get it here (and all the other places it was shipped). In the future, I will have to find a more local source of compost.

Prepping a New Garden

We broke ground on a new garden this week. After all, it is the season to start planing! This brings us to two garden plots now. We started one beside the house the first summer we were here.

This particular garden is going to be a challenge. It's a 35' x 30' plot on a little bit of a slope. The area where we placed it used to be grass (kind of), and I've spent hours trying to rake out all the grass roots but they seem to keep popping up. I know I will be pulling grass out of the garden all summer long! Being on a hill, I sure hope the dirt doesn't all run out of the bottom side in a big rain storm.

I will be adding some mushroom compost to it soon because it is nothing but hard, red clay with a few rocks here and there. It definitely needs some organic material in it. It probably also needs a little lime added. We have some pretty acidic soil here.

We are going to plant some potatoes and onions in the near future. I think that's all we can plant at this time. It's not quite warm enough for anything else.

More to follow...

New Windows

There are hundreds of ways that houses waste energy. In the case of our house, I think we have thousands. Today we are taking care of one of those issues.

We are replacing the windows upstairs with new double pane, low-e energy star rated windows. The old windows original to the house were single pane wood frame windows. They had cracks, holes and the glazing was dry and cracked. It was time for them to go.

The new windows are Simonton brand windows. They're not the absolute best in the world, but they are pretty good, especially for the money we're spending. These particular windows are Energy Star rated in the south east (and other areas).

It's going to be interesting to see if these new windows make a difference in the comfort of the rooms and efficiency of the heating system. I can tell you that they look a heck of a lot better than the old windows did! 

My Hairy Ass

The Jennet hanging out with her new friends, Moe and Curly.

Yesterday we drove up to the Raeford, NC area to pick up a donkey. It is a rescue donkey that had been mistreated and abused at its former location some friends of ours had acquired and tried to keep it at their place. Unfortunately, their neighbors didn't appreciate the braying of the donkey and our friends asked us to pick her up as soon as possible.

So, how do you load a stubborn, scared donkey into a three horse, slant load, stock trailer? Very carefully! After 1.5-2 hours of coaxing, bribing with food, brute force pulling/pushing, we finally got the jennet  loaded on the trailer. Then it had to be properly restrained, which was a whole other challenge. The problem was she was just short enough that she could get herself under the dividers if she worked at it. We tried a number of different tying configurations before we found a way to restrain her that we felt comfortable with.  

The ride home was uneventful and she rode well. By the time we got home, it was dark. We considered the idea of giving her food and water and leaving her in the trailer over night, but she was eager to get out of the trailer. Rather than traumatize her further, we lead her into the pasture and put her into a paddock separate from the horses. The horses were very excited to see a new pasture-mate! I hope they get along.

So, the jennet has some issues... Her feet are overgrown and need trimming bad. I think she has thrush based on the smell I smelled as I struggled to load her. She also has a very hard fat deposit along the crest of her neck which indicates some metabolic and nutrition issues. If I can catch her this morning, I will clean and treat her hooves for thrush and we have the farrier is coming out on Thursday to fix up her feet. In the meantime, I think we're going to have to put her on a special diet to lose that fat on her neck. 

More to follow... Let the hairy ass jokes begin!

Erosion Control Success!!!

Well, after some pretty big storms and lots of rain last night, I'm please to say that the retention dams did their job well! Woo Hooo! Time to start looking at terracing for the rest of the pasture now. Hopefully I can get some grass growing on these dams to hold them in place.

From the top, looking down. You can see where Red Clay Farm gets it's name!

The water adds some definition to the size of the dams

Erosion Control

One of the challenges we have here at the Red Clay Farm is that we are on the side of a hill. The road is to our front and the land slopes away from the road toward a stream that runs along the back of the property line. In all, it's about a 50 meter vertical drop from the front to the back.

Courtesy of Google Earth

When we first moved here, we had a huge gully that ran through the middle of the property. It was terrible and in places is was at least six feet deep. One day I couldn't find our little goat, Timmy, anywhere. I walked the pasture for an hour before I heard a faint Timmy call. I had to listen for a while to figure out where he was. I finally found him at the bottom of the gully, covered in red clay from head to toe. He was so deep that all I could reach was his horns.

After saving Timmy, I decided that I had to do something about the gash that ran across our property. So, the following week, I burned all the brush we had thrown in the gully to stem the flow of water and got the tractor and box blade out. I spent the next few days using the box blade to push in the sides of the gully and fill it in. Over the next few months, the soil settled and the gully started to reappear. There were low spots developing in area where the gully was the deepest. Water was still flowing down the hill pretty fast in this area.

Today, I pulled out the box blade again. This time, my goal was to create some small retention "ponds" along the gully to keep water from flowing like a river down the hill. After about an hour and a half of work, I had created four retention dams along the area where the gully used to run.

From the top of the hill, looking down.

I put the dams on the down-hill side of the low spots that formed. The smallest dam is about 1.5 feet deep and 12 feet across. The largest is about 18 feet wide and 2.5 feet deep.

The bottom-most dam. Also the biggest. The picture doesn't show the depth very well.

So that's how I spent my day here at the Red Clay Farm. I won't have to wait long to see how these dams work. There is a big frontal system bearing down on us tonight and we are due to have strong thunderstorms and rain. I'll report on how they held tomorrow.

Not Out Of The Woods Yet!

I walked out to check on the goats this morning. It was a cool 27 degrees. Everyone appears to have made it through the night but the new guy... Just barely.

I brought him into the house to warm him up. He started shivering as he warmed. Once he got over his shivering, he got a little more active and tried to stand. He was weak and stumbly.

While he was warming I stuck my finger in molasses diluted by warm water and rubbed it in his mouth. I got very little response. We tried the bottle again with no luck. He just wouldn't take it. Several websites suggest sub-cutaneous injections of lactated-ringer's solution and tube feeding. I don't have the experience or supplies for either. I guess I'll have to figure that out and stock some supplies for the future.

So, once he was thoroughly warmed, I took him back to the herd. He started bleating and they all came running. I put him with Junie and he started nursing. Maybe getting him good and warm was the key!

UPDATE: As of last night the little goat was doing well enough to tentatively name. He was moving around and feeding on his own. We named him Petie.

For future reference, I found a link to the supplies every goat rancher needs here and another website that talked about how to manage weak and wimpy kids here. This link about warming a chilled kid was also very helpful

New Goat #4 (I hope)

Junie has always been the problem child. When she was born we only had a few days with her before we had to go on a trip to Kansas. As a result, she is completely wild and scared to death of us. It's almost impossible to catch her unless we sneak up on her while she's eating. Even then, it's tough.

So, wouldn't you know she would give birth on the one of the worst weather nights we've had! Last night it POURED as a frontal system came through. The temps dropped from the 60's down to the low 30's. Rumor is it even snowed a little.

So I came out this morning to find one very cold and wet little buck and one even colder (dead) little buck. I dried the little guy off and put some betadine on his umbilical. Naturally, June was traumatized that I was within 10 feet of her and took off. I decided to back off and try to let nature take it's course.

I learned a lot about goats today. It was touch and go all day long and the new guy seemed very weak. The day finally warmed into the 50's. We set the new baby in the sun where he started warming up. I didn't want to have to bottle feed this baby and I wanted June to accept and take care of it. I was afraid that if I did too much, she would never accept it.

We managed to catch June and calm her down with some feed. I held her while my wife tried to get the kid to nurse. He would start, and then lose interest quickly. We tried this several times with very little success. After some quick research on the Web, I decided that we were going to have to bottle feed the little guy.

I made then run in to TSC to buy the required supplies. Forty-three dollars later, I came home and mixed up some kid milk replacement with colostrum replacement and took it out to the new kid. He would not have it! He was warm enough, I think (Here's where I learned that I need a goat rectal thermometer). He just would not have the bottle. We held June again and tried to get him to nurse with some limited success. June was attentive to the baby so we decided to let her handle it herself.

As of this writing, the goats are bedded down in straw under the shed. It is a cold night and it's supposed to get colder. I have wrestled with the idea of bringing the baby in to keep him warm, but I think I will let June and nature handle it and see what happens.

If the little guy lives, I'll post a picture of him tomorrow.

New Goats 2 & 3

I came out this morning to do a head count and found that Nutter Butter gave birth to twins last night. This is her first set of twins out of five pregnancies!

NB is never too sure about us Red Clay Farmers. If we have food, she will stand by us, but otherwise, she is always out of reach. Her demeanor changes every time she kids and she becomes more friendly. This morning she seemed happy to see me as I visited with her and her babies. She was even happier when I gave her some feed without the rest of the herd swarming her.

 The brown kid is a buckling. The black one is a doe. They each have a distinct personality. The brown one is kind of bold and adventurous. The black one is a little more reserved and timid. I've named them Big Dan and Li'l Ann.

New Goat #1

I knew she was pregnant, but Chrissie surprised me this morning when I walked out to the pasture and found a baby goat by the water tank! That was the good news. The bad news was that the baby's twin sister did not survive and we found her little body a few feet away. It's too bad, too. The one that didn't make it had really unique markings.

Doe and kid appear to be doing well.

Aquaponics

I have made my New Year's resolution! I have decided to try my hand at aquaponics. For those of you who don't know what aquaponics is, it is a merging of hydroponic gardening and aquaculture (raising fish). The fish create nitrogenous waste that the plants use as fertilizer and the plants clean the water for the fish. Plants are grown in a growing media and there is no dirt used.

I am getting my inspiration from the IBCofAquaponics website. This website has some very detailed info and you can download a great PDF from their site here or on their website. The PDF shows some options on how various people set up their aquaponics systems. There are so many ways to do this! I am only limited by my imagination...

I have found a guy who is selling IBC containers nearby. He is willing to deliver and he says that the container previously held a food grade glue similar to Elmer's Glue. He wants $75. for each. He also sells 55 gal plastic drums. I may get a few of these as well for use as rain barrels or something.

More to follow....

A New Worm Bin

I had some free time today and some scrap plywood left over from a previous project so I decided to expand my worms a little.

What I made was a very simple box, about 3'x1.5'x1.5'. To increase aeration in the wormery, I cut a piece of 1" PVC pipe about 4" longer than the box and drilled holes along its length. To hold it in place and prevent worm escape (or anything else climbing in), I placed some old window screen over the end of the PVC and added a 1" coupling on each side.

Once it was done, I added some pre-composted grass and kitchen scraps from our compost bin As I cleaned out the bottom bin of my Worm Factory 360, I moved the lazy worms who had not made the pilgrimage upward to the newer bins over to my new box. I topped it all off with a large layer of dead leaves for a little bit of insulation and protection.

Strawberries

This is way too good to be something I built!

I have been wanting to plant strawberries for a while. I LOVE fresh strawberries - not including the very tasteless and sour ones you buy at the grocery store. While searching for a place to buy strawberry plugs, I saw this really cool planting tower here at this link. This seemed like a great way to plant 50 or so plants and save some space.

I thought to myself, "I can make that! It's only a strawberry tower... how hard can it be?" You'll see that "how hard can it be?" question asked often around the Red Clay Farm. Usually, I find out it's a little harder than I expected.

So I just bought a bunch of wood, garden soil and screws and I am ready to start creating.  I'll keep you informed on my progress (and how hard it really was).

The Chickens are Here!

The chickens we ordered back in October are finally here! I got a call from Monica at the Post Office at 6 am today - it sounded like she was in the hatchery. She told me I should come and get them as soon as I can. Wouldn't you know they would come on one of the coldest days, wettest days we've had all year!

When I got to the post office, all I could hear were chicks. I was amazed that my 10 chickens would make that much noise! Turns out, they didn't. My 10 chicks were barely peeping. It was the other 1500 going to another farm that were making all the noise.

I got my chicks home and into the plastic tub brooder I set up in the dining room (The wife is thrilled!) They were well packaged in a small cardboard box with a thick coconut coir liner with a heating pad underneath. Meyer Hatchery did a great job getting them to me alive and exactly on time! The rest is up to me, I guess...

Our First Compost

This is not our compost but looks very similar

Almost a year after I made our big compost corral, we finally got some good compost from it. I dug out about a cubic yard of deep, dark compost and put it in our garden today.

It was a mix of manure from our horses, our kitchen scraps and a whole bunch of bad fruits and veggies from our local grocery store (Last fall I made a deal to make a daily pick-up of the store's bad produce for about a month). The result was a deep dark compost that looked like black dirt. It had hundreds of volunteer worms in it and a few very juicy grubs. I picked all the grubs I saw out of the compost and let the worms make the short trip to the garden where I hope they'll stay.

We got enough compost out of the bin to put a 3" layer across a 4'x12' area. I didn't mix it in to the dirt, but just left in sitting on top, and planted our fall lettuce/spinach crop right in the compost.  As I think about it, that may not have been a good call. I probably should have mixed the compost into the soil a little, but now the seeds are down and I hate to waste them. We'll see what happens...

New Blood for the Herd!

Moe and Curly a few days before joining the Red Clay Farm staff

It's hard to grow the herd when it's just a pack of girls. Goats are not like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. We made the decision to take our original buck to the sale last Dec because we were having a hard time keeping him separate from his daughters. I have been looking for a good boy since I returned from overseas. The problem was every pygmy buck I found was too young. Of course, they would have matured in the time it took me to find one in the age range I was looking for.

I finally found a couple bucks in the Saluda, SC area so after some email conversations with the self-proclaimed "Goat Lady," I drove the 85 miles west to pick them up.

When I finally found the place, way out in the middle of nowhere, I met the goat lady. She was very passionate about her goats and I learned a lot from her as she prepped the boys (two brothers from the same birth) to make the trip back to the Red Clay Farm.

When I got the boys back and released them into the pasture they were completely ignored by the girls and they are keeping their distance from the girls. I wonder how long this will last?

Motivation for Sustainability

Diagram from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

So, what does a picture of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs have to do with a sustainable living blog? As it turns out, quite a lot.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory attempts to explain human motivation psychology. Maslow's theory suggests that people must meet the most basic level of needs (found at the bottom level of the pyramid) before they will focus motivation on the secondary or higher level needs (higher levels of the pyramid). As an example, most people will ensure they have food water and shelter before they worry about their own security, and before they reach out to become part of the community, they will likely focus on immediate security needs. This continues until, hopefully, a person reaches the top level of the pyramid.

While Maslow’s  model may not be perfect, it explains a lot. The ability to care about sustainable living requires that people be somewhere above the bottom two rungs of the pyramid. If a person is starving, why would he care if his actions are destroying the environment? All he is concerned with is meeting his most basic needs of having enough food and water for himself and his family. If he has not met his basic security needs, I’m sure we won’t find him setting up a compost pile or starting a recycling program. He has better things about which to worry.

I guess what I am saying is until we can get people to a particular level of basic needs, safety and security, we are never going to get everybody rowing in the same direction toward a sustainable future. In addition to getting people to a point where they care about sustainable living, there is also a HUGE education requirement. People need to know and understand the effects of their lifestyle upon the environment, and have alternatives that are not so burdensome that they are overlooked.

It’s a huge undertaking. I’m not sure how we get to a sustainable future from here. Until we come up with a plan, I’ll keep plugging along here.

Worm Farming

For years, I have wanted to do a vermiculture project - grow worms to eat our kitchen waste. I attempted a worming experiment once in Oklahoma that did not end well for the poor worms. They got too hot and the box I made did not get enough air, nor did it drain well and most of the worms perished. We held a funeral for them in the back yard garden.

Last year for Christmas, Mrs Red Clay Farmer bought me a Worm Factory 360. Because of all the traveling I was doing this year, I was not able to start it until this fall. This gave me lots of time to do some research on the proper care and feeding of worms.

I will report on my worm project in later posts. In the meantime, here are a few links to the most helpful sites I found:

http://www.wormfarmingsecrets.com/ - Duncan Carver does a great little email newsletter
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/200309/Connettts.com/ - Interesting article about a commercial grower
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic/vermicomposting/vermiculture/nc.html - NC State University Links
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/topic/vermicomposting/index.html - NC State University Links

And if I can find it again, NCSU had a great PDF file about vermiculture. Once I locate it I will post a link here.

The Red Clay Farmer