Today, I attended a talk from Frank R. Reese Jr. of Good Sheppard Poultry Ranch  He's been breeding standard or heritage blood lines of chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese for decades.  Here's a quick summary of what I learned:

Virtually all poultry has been bred over a very short 40 year span to produce meat from corn and soy beans.  Just like seeds, they are selected for aesthetic performance at market rather than overall quality.  The current birds at hatcheries are distant hybrids of standard or heritage poultry varieties that do not live well or have the capability to reproduce on their own.  Often they are mislabled as heritage which confuses matters even further.  The handfull of companies that own the genes make their money off of volume, and have a stake in keeping reproduction out of individual farmers hands.

It was shocking to me to find out that 9 out of 10 poultry birds in the country are all owned by one corporation from Germany.  Slowly companies consolidated as genetic traits were continually selected.  Through economic pressure small farmers lost the infrastructure (butchers, drivers, farmers) to keep standard blood lines of chickens available to most of the country.  Concurrently, poultry breeding and medicine became obsolete to the world outside industrial production.

Heritage Poultry varieties are like heirloom seeds.  They have a full set of genetics which makes them capable of living and surviving disease as well as the ability to reproduce and socialize themselves.  The downside for farmers is that they take longer to mature and require different cooking methods.

For more on Heritage Poultry check out Good Sheppard Poultry.  and http://www.poultrypress.com

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Here are our notes from the Permaculture Working Group meeting on August 5th.  We took a closer look at Japenese knotweed.  A few questions were left unanswered:

1.  We know a small cutting of a root will sprout a whole new plant.  What about the stalk?  How long (and how) would it take to compost them down to the point we could use them in planting beds?

2.  We learned that if you cut them without touching the root, the sprouts will grow to a foot tall in 2-4 weeks.  If you want to wear out the root, keep cutting every 2-4 weeks throughout 3-5 growing seasons.  Does anyone have good recepies for all those knotweed stalks?

3.  We saw how knotweed plants grow from rhizomes in a lateral fashion.  They grow shallowly, but can reach and sprout from pretty far down.  What's the maximum rhizome depth that a plant can resprout from? 

4.  When composted, the knotweed plants are broken down by an unkown (to us) mixture of bacteria and fungus.  If we find out exactly how those microbes work, could this help us develop a natural herbicide for weakening knotweed roots?

Please post answers if you find them!

Sorry it took so long to post this.

Later,

JEff

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I followed wiggy's recepie for seed balls earlier this year.

My mix:  clay from the farm, finished compost, starting soil, seeds, beneficial fungus powder

I noticed that the seeds in seedballs took longer and required more water, but they seemed to sprout stronger and at a higher rate.  I will do this again for my outdoor crops in the fall.

Sprouting a whole guild in one ball seemed like a waste because I had to thin out most of the plants that sprouted.  Next time I'll make the balls, and add only a couple seeds to each.

I'm also going to experiment with indoor and low tunnel starting using seedballs to nuture my seedlings.

Lessons learned: 

1.  Don't mix the seeds in with the ball mixture.  Push them in later after you make the balls.

2.  Sifting the clay is key.  We did without this time, but I will build a sifter for next year.

3.  Soak the seeds before (the ones you can handle) in warm water.  This gives them a head start.

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I've just finished making some upgrades to our website software.  There aren't many visible changes, just cleaning out some things under the hood.  If you run into any bugs, please let me know in the comments or drop me an email.

Our website is powered by free, open-source software.  Here's a collection of logos I pulled together as a tribute to some of the projects that we use to run the site.

This website wouldn't be possible without the open nature of these projects.  For anyone interested, you can find the code that runs this website here: http://github.com/jtgeibel/communityengine/tree/pge

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Yesterday Jeff and I set up a table as part of the Blossom Tour in Lawrenceville.  It was a great opportunity to meet other local green businesses.  Thanks to everyone who stopped by and entered our free garden plot contest.

I want to give a shout out to a few of the local businesses that we met yesterday:

Fossil Free Fuel -Colin's company converts diesel vehicles to run off of veggie oil.  He also collects used oil from restaurants for re-use as fuel.

Sweet Vitriol - An excellent local garden blog (and existing PGE member).

Personal Chef Rachel Lori - Rachel is working with local CSA programs to offer prepared food shares.  An alternative for those who don't always know what to do with a box of raw veggies.

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Hey guys and girls. Great News.  This blog journal will continue!  We have found some property that we can farm on.  The owners have agreed to let us farm in exchange for a share of the harvest.  It's really the perfect set up. 

The farm's located in West End, so we've appropriately named it West End Farm.

Here's a summary of the land setup:

Our annual veggie beds will be about 30'x50' area in the back yard.  The land was not previously built on, and the soil biology is great.  We'll also have herbs out front of the house and fruit and berry plants.

There is some concern for drainage, and the closest water source is at the house.  The property is located on a hill, so I'm hoping to find a way to capture the flood water and filter it into the garden using a plant filter. 

So far we've stripped the sod and piled it for composting.  We planted some early season crops in about half of the beds.  Since my overall concern is for healthy biology and not short-term production, we will plant a number of support crops on the farm.  I want to experiment with leguminous bushes. 

Does anybody have any advice on species to incorporate into a farm for muclching and nitrogen fixing?

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Here's my approach to starting a CSA farm in Oakland. Please comment. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I started by identifying my goals with this project. I want to:

• Start a small farm as a side job (see farms vs. gardens)
• Get Hands-on experience
• Create a space to hold meetups for PGE
• Sell 10 weekly CSA shares for a short season.
• Make a positive income. Maybe enough to pay a month's rent

So first off, my money is limited, my skills are rudimentary, and I don't have any land to my name.  I'm going to have to improvise.

Here's my ten step plan to starting a farm with no land (as of now I'm on the first step):

Find unused land near you. - A quick bike ride with a map will provide me with a list of viable spaces. I'm going to look for a cluster of yards that have good looking conditions.

Approach the land owners. - This is the scary part. I'm going to draw some preliminary plans for the property and present them in person. I'll ask that the landowners meet me as a group to discuss their issues.

Agree to work together. - Basically, I will draw up a contract that says, "let me design and build a farm on your land for the next 3-5 seasons, and I'll pay you in vegetables." At the end of that contract you will be left with a low-maintenance, food producing back yard.

Develop a cropping plan: In this example, the cropping plan covers everything including labor and pricing. The first year is really experimental. So I'm going to start small and simple. I chose to work with only 4-5 vegetable varieties and some herbs. As the farm grows, so will the selection and production.

Get help. - This might have been the first step. Actually it's in all the steps. Repeat after me, "you cannot do this all by yourself." I'll ask my customers to put in a couple hours a week during the season.

Make mistakes. - I don't have a lot of farming experience, so I plan on getting it wrong a lot before I get it right. As long as I know it now, I can plan ahead.

I thought there were more, I guess it's only a six step plan for now haha.

 More to come.

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