venturing out again

Well, I had the strength to venture out into the world (well, the laundromat) today! I feel almost functional again. And boy, does the grass look green!

Dandelions have exploded into bloom everywhere I look, Maple trees are blooming red & forsythias are blooming lemon-yellow. And everything is green, so GREEN! Lilac bushes with little bunches of buds waiting for their springtime debut, and the forest underbrush is filling out in all different shades of hope & life & renewal.

Hopefully I can get back to work this week, maybe just doing light stuff, but I'm starting to get bored with lying down all the time. I did read some really interesting books, though.

A good one I recommend to anyone, it's an exciting read-- "Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm" http://www.chelseagreen.com/2006/items/madsheep

And I watched a really cute documentary "The Grange Fair: An American Tradition" about the last remaining agricultural encampment fair in the United States, in Centre County, Pennsylvania. Lots of great 4-H'er footage with their animals. I want to be a 4-H'er!

Been eating dandelions a lot. Good stuff! Raw, steamed... I'm going to try lactofermenting them (dandekraut!) and boiling the roots & buds. And who knows ,dandelion wine perhaps>?
To research: http://www.scouts.net.nz/cm/resources/programmes/R046.pdf

Some dandelion tidbits from
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/living-green/dandelions.html:

In Canada, the plant's root is registered as a drug. It treats conditions such as anemia, kidney disease, jaundice, arthritis, respiratory infections and gallstones, to name a few of many uses.

The plant's milky juices, which contain latex, help get rid of warts and can repel mosquitoes.

Dandelions are also known to reduce obesity. In scientific studies, rats and humans injected with dandelion lost up to 30 per cent of their body weight.

But the plant's most popularly known medicinal use is as a diuretic.

When eaten, dandelions can be surprisingly good for you. Half a cup of leaves has more calcium than a glass of milk. They're also an excellent source of iron, vitamin A, potassium and vitamin C.
In fact, when counting overall nutritional value, the U.S. Agriculture Department puts dandelion ahead of broccoli and spinach.

The best-tasting dandelions are the youngest spring ones, picked before they flower — usually in April or May. (But make sure you pick them from an organic lawn!)

The hardy dandelions tend to absorb toxins. And even with new pesticide bylaws, the soil containing them takes many years to replenish itself.

Harvesting non-toxic dandelions means choosing plants far from the roadside in a pesticide-free backyard or farmer's field, or in a wooded area.

How to cook them:
First, double-wash the dandelions in a sink of cold water. (They tend to be sandy.)
Cover them with water in a pot, and bring to a boil.
Much like spinach, they are ready once wilted and the water turns colour.
If using older plants, rinse and boil them again to take away excess bitterness.
Drain cooked dandelions and transfer to a pan with one to two tablespoons of olive oil and a clove of chopped garlic.
If desired, season with salt and red pepper flakes.
Then, lightly sauté on low heat for about 15 minutes.

lyme disease day 3

Well, I saw the sun for a little while today & was able to eat some food--- Not feeling nauseous anymore, just weak & sore. I switched to a stronger antibiotic, but this one requires me to "avoid excessive exposure to direct sunlight" which could be a challenge. I may have Ehrlichiosis http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/ehrlichia/Q&A/Q&A.htm, but I'll have to see what the doctor thinks on Monday. In any case, I feel on the upswing!

Hopefully we'll be back to more exciting farm-related posts than my sick stories!

lyme disease day 2

Bedridden! All day, sweating & turning in bed in my dark room, reading books about sheep farming. Everything hurts, still nauseous. Beginning to think it's not Lyme disease... maybe Erlichiosis? (At least I'm not a sheep-- they can get some pretty ugly diseases too!)

lyme disease day 1 (the local plague)

It's a hot sunny spring day. Dave & Nick are out planting. I have Lyme disease.

I suddenly came down with flu-like symptoms (you know, headache, fever, nausea, aches all over, chills, diarrea) this morning, and tried to work but felt so completely exhausted & in pain that I had to go lie down. Dave said that because I was bitten by a tick last week I probably have Lyme disease.

So I went to the doctors, and they were pretty certain that I do. I don't have insurance so I didn't get the lab tests (they take a long time & are unreliable), but they gave me a prescription for Amoxacillin, the weaker antibiotic, since the strong one they wanted to give me causes sun sensitivity. And there's no way I can avoid the sun for 3 weeks. So now I'm taking these anti-biotics 3x a day for 21 days, and along with them Probiotics, to keep my intestines from freaking out.

Here's some quick facts about Lyme disease from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease:

Lyme disease, or borreliosis, is an emerging infectious disease caused by at least three species of bacteria from the genus Borrelia.[1] The vector of infection is typically the bite of an infected black-legged or deer tick, but other carriers (including other ticks in the genus Ixodes) have been implicated.[2] Borrelia burgdorferi is the predominant cause of Lyme disease in the U.S.

The disease presentation varies widely, and may include a rash and flu-like symptoms in its initial stage, then musculoskeletal, arthritic, neurologic, psychiatric and cardiac manifestations. In a majority of cases, symptoms can be eliminated with antibiotics, especially if treatment begins early in the course of illness. Late or inadequate treatment often leads to "late stage" Lyme disease that is disabling and difficult to treat. Controversy over diagnosis, testing and treatment has led to two different standards of care.[3][4]

Lyme and all other deer-tick borne diseases can be prevented on a regional level by reducing the deer population that the ticks depend on for reproductive success. This has been effectively demonstrated in the communities of Monhegan, Maine[53] and in Mumford Cove, CT.[54]. The black-legged or deer tick (Ixodes scapularis) depends on the white-tailed deer for successful reproduction.

(So go get your guns, people! We need more hunters out there!)

By reducing the deer population back to healthy levels of 8 to 10 per square mile (from the current levels of 60 or more deer per square mile in the areas of the country with the highest Lyme disease rates) the tick numbers can be brought down to very low levels, too few to spread Lyme and other tick-borne diseases.

Urbanization and other anthropogenic factors can be implicated in the spread of the Lyme disease into the human population. In many areas, expansion of suburban neighborhoods has led to the gradual deforestation of surrounding wooded areas and increasing "border" contact between humans and tick-dense areas. Human expansion has also resulted in a gradual reduction of the predators that normally hunt deer as well as mice, chipmunks and other small rodents -- the primary reservoirs for Lyme disease. As a consequence of increased human contact with host and vector, the likelihood of transmission to Lyme residents has greatly increased.[86][87] Researchers are also investigating possible links between global warming and the spread of vector-borne diseases including Lyme disease.[88]

All love letters, support, & advice welcome!

P.S. Chickens eat ticks, too.

plowing 101

Every morning we take down this plastic divider in the greenhouse that keeps the heat in only one side. Every night we put it back up. We can change it's location so that the space becomes larger or smaller depending on how many tables we have filled with plants. It's the small things you can do every day to save energy.

In the morning we planted trays of flowers in the greenhouse.

I planted 2 more rows of peas with the Planet Jr. This is what the rows look like after rolling through with the seeder:
The peas we planted last time are germinating! Not out of the soil yet though...


We turned on the irrigation well & checked/flushed out all the valves. Dave has them spaced out at the beginning of each field, covered in these boxes, which sometimes fill with dirt or get run over by a tractor. So we repositioned some of them, adding rocks in the bottom & outsides.

Then we took all the long PVC pipes with sprinkler-heads out of the rafters of the barn & set up a few in the pea field. Dave showed us how he puts them together. And we turned on the water! We have water! Now we can put in all those plants ready in the greenhouse to transplant & be able to water them in. Rain is not on the forecast for a week, and it will be almost 80 degrees today.

And we plowed. We tore up Field Z of it's rye/vetch cover... a plow basically just flips the top part (5" or so) over. Then we leave it for a few weeks to decompose under there... with the compost that I spread. After that, we will disc it & rototill it & prepare it for potatoes!




I went to a really cool concert in someone's beautiful home: the band was Vasen, they are a folk instrumental group from Sweden, playing the 12-string guitar, viola, and the Nickelharpa, an old (700 yrs!) Swedish instrument with 15 strings & buttons you push instead of frets. They were AMAZING. Check them out: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~brash/vasen.html

throwing poop

Okay, all I did today was spread compost. For real.

About 50 yards of it. I pretty much covered Fields B-D. When you yank open the back of the manure-spreader in the field, you get a pile at the very beginning, before you start down the row, shooting compost everywhere. So these piles must be raked-out by hand. Lots of work. But it was a magnificently sunny day, and the work felt good. This is what I made of these 3 huge piles in front of the barn:

Dave made this peg-board to pop plants ready to transplant out of the 128 trays:

We are now wheeling out the tables of "ready" plants to "harden off" outside for a few days before we plant them in the field.

I went to a really good restaurant with my parents: called Luna 61 in Tivoli. They are completely organic & vegetarian. A little expensive, but really quality food.

spreading compost

Yesterday I spread compost on the fields ALL DAY. With this rig:

Okay, I got a few trays of lettuce & parsley & pac choi planted in the greenhouse too.
But mostly I was working my clutch foot & this bad-ass joystick

scooping up compost with this bucket,

dumping it into the manure-spreader,

driving down to field Z (where the potatoes will be planted in a few weeks), yanking open the back, turning on the PTO, & watching compost (& rocks) spin out crazily onto the field. While trying to keep a straight line & even distribution. And then coming back up the hill to do it again. Oh, the smell of diesel.

Last night I went to a potluck of the Mid-Hudson Valley Growers Network. It was hosted by Liberty View Farm http://libertyviewfarm.biz/ which grows 7 acres of apples "naturally grown" (organic but not certified). They have this awesome "Lease-a-Tree" program, where anyone can pay $50 and get to "lease" an apple tree for one year, and come & pick the apples of course, 80-100lbs. I think this is a great idea, a spin-off of the CSA idea.

They also have chickens. All sorts of different breeds, laying all sorts of different eggs. They even have a "Charter-a-Chicken" program! For $50, you get to "rent" a chicken for a year-- you get a photo & description, visitation rights, & 2 dozen eggs. It's apparently a hit with the city folks who want a piece of "the farm". They're even putting in a web-cam in the henhouse!

Really creative stuff they're doing with the chickens-- these nest-box towers where the eggs roll to the sides, paintings for them to look at :).... and the best was this drip-watering system which allows them to drink without getting their water all dirty!