Market Farming

["Dori Green" <dorigreen00 AT hotmail.com>]

Rose Lieberman wrote:

> Hey, Dori.  Hope all is well.  (I would have e-mailed personally, >but I 
> hought the group might want to know...)
> How do you espalier tomatoes?  Also, what do you mulch with?
> Thanks, also, for giving us a sense of your companion planting.  It >gave 
> me a lot of ideas.

Everything is great here -- had to spend $300 on new brakes instead of on 
the mortgage on Tuesday but I'd much rather learn that the funny "thunk 
thunk" is my brakes dying on a hoist than coming down "The Mulholland" (you 
know a country road started life as a logging track when it is just a "The" 
without a "Street" or "Road" behind it).  Though of course I always hate 
spending $300 on a car that's worth $500 on a good day.

Saw the Podiatrist on Wednesday and got a shot of hydrocortisone into my 
classic heel bone spur.  Ouchies but I'm almost kinda sorta walking today, 
which I hadn't been doing for almost two weeks.  Next week I go back to have 
casts made so he can create shoe inserts that should make me pain-free 
within six months -- but no surgery (!!) if I'm one of the 90% of people 
this will work for.

Got crummy weather headed for us, might have another Snow Day tomorrow.  
While I breathe, I hope.

Have decided that Ash Grove's Mister Spock the teenage goat bully needs work 
so I'm putting $50 into a goat harness rather than $150 into a cord of 
firewood; Spock is going to help me clear the deadwood out of the lower 
scrub forest.  Cutting it should put me into pretty good shape for Spring 
Planting.  Meanwhile Mister PITA Spock is sporting a piece of light-weight 
firewood duct taped across the back of his horns -- no more hooking other 
goats even if he can still bash and toss them.

New baby Willow is a definite candidate for Herd Queen.  Spock bashed her 
and she yelled and bashed him right back!  All two-week-old ten pounds of 
her against his 170.  He was so surprised he backed up and left her alone.

Still pouring kero into the oil tank five gallons at a time when I can come 
up with the $10 for five gallons.  Oil company won't deliver less than 150 
gallons now that the price is doubled.  Today I picked up a price sheet for 
a new wood/coal/oil hot water furnace that I can install in the garage 
(which I don't use for cars anyway), and can be scaled to supply heat for 
the house, hot tub, and greenhouse from that location.  Cool, huh?  And 
it'll be covered by my business expansion loan and I have to replace the old 
furnace within the next few years anyway.  I love it when it starts to come 
together....

Five restaurants are interested in coming in as CSA members.  They 
especially like the winter mesclun possibilities, willing to write Letters 
of Intent To Do Business to help me get the loans I need to build the 
greenhouses.  We're talking more next week (winter recess -- big reason I 
took this teaching job).

Also talking to the folks at the Food Bank Warehouse about starting the 
regional farmer's market there in July.

Sending in my Farm Bureau membership.  Last year, I swear.  I'm finding 
other insurance.  This last bit from them supporting GE just sets my shorts 
on fire.

Re:  espaliered tomatoes -- drive fence stakes (I used green metal ones) 
along the row.  Lash poles or saplings across, like stringers for a fence.  
Tie the tomato vines up and along those stringers, prune just enough to keep 
them neat.  Air circulates well, sun gets to tomatoes, you can grow eight 
times the tomatoes possible with just putting one plant per stake.  Tah dah. 
 I've got video showing my technique, some day will get the software to 
post it on my site.  Hmm -- school might have it, I'll see what I can do in 
that direction.  For mulch I use compost and leaf mold and lower-story 
intensive plantings of carrots and basil and garlic.  Bug prevention and 
loving neighbors as well as no room for weeds!

This weekend I'm applying to be a Presenter at the NOFA conference in 
August, in Massachusetts.  What company -- Eliot Coleman is the KNS!  I'll 
just be talking about my permanent raised bed agroforestry project and $4100 
SARE grant for same.

And thinking snow.  It would be kewl to have a Snow Day right before recess 
-- they were wild today and will be worse tomorrow.  The students, I mean.  
The goats are just a little goofy because of the coming storm.  Yesterday I 
got 20 bales of beautiful mixed grass hay delivered -- had been hunting for 
hay, any hay not moldy thank you, less than $5 per bale thank you, for a 
week.  $2 per bale stacked in my barn aisle, 100 more held for me at that 
price.  Put up by a goat farmer!  Yes!  Goats are crazy with happiness 
looking at the bounty.  So were chickens until I covered it with old sheets 
so they couldn't foul on it, those foul fowl.

"Not the Momma" is very comfortable but huge.  Either she's got three or one 
is bent in half and I'm feeling a head and a butt.  Mom loves being 
pregnant, loves her babies too.  She and Buffy have been sharing the job of 
keeping Willow warm at night, she cuddles between the two of them.  Storms 
usually make goats deliver.  Go figure.  Vet charges double the usual trip 
fee.  After spending $600 on Heidi my $10 First Goat last year and ending up 
with two babies, one of whom died six months later and losing Heidi after 
all of it anyway, I have explained to Momma that it's her and me, Kid.  So 
we're Ladies In Waiting together for the nonce.  Here's hoping she pulls a 
Buffy and I find out there's a baby because there's a new voice yelling for 
supper -- no interference from me!  Of course, Buffy is half Spanish 
Tough-Girl Meat Goat and her mother is an Alpine/Nubian high-maintenance 
professional dairy doe.  Willow's daddy was my registered Alpine, she's a 
long tall carbon copy of him right down to the way she nuzzles into my 
armpit when I pick her up for a cuddle -- just like he did when I got him as 
a 3-month-old weanling.

Still working on selling the idea of sharing the goat herd in a co-op 
arrangement.  People just don't know what they're missing.  Sigh.

Hooking up the scanner on Saturday, baby pictures will be up by Sunday.

Dori Green
Ash Grove Community Farm
http://www.ic.org/agrove



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