Rafts, Roughing In and Run-off

It’s been a super busy week for us. Last Sunday we attended a workshop about 3.5 hours from us that dealt with setting up a farmer’s market stand for the best presentation. The workshop was put on by a program assistant with the Penn State Extention office out of Allentown. After going through the powerpoint program, we then split into two teams and were given veggie props and signage and competed against each other to see who could come up with the best looking table display. It was interesting to see what ideas each team came up with and how each team used the items in a little different way to give visual interest to their table. After the workshop, we went to the Emmaus farmer’s market, ten minutes away, and we each had to critique one of the vendors. While at the workshop we got to meet another aquaponic farmer who has also been to the Friendly Aquaponic training in Tennessee. What are the odds of meeting someone that specialized, with the same information that we have for doing aquaponics in Emmaus? We got to swap info with her and will continue to stay in touch with her as our project progresses.

We got all of the growing rafts painted and cut this week. Each raft needs two coats of Benjamin Moore MoorGlo. After getting the 15 sheets painted, then we were ready to move on to cutting them. First we created a template of the 32 and 55 hole rafts, using the measurements from the Friendly Aquaponic manual. Then, you used a cordless drill and hole saw to cut out the holes. The saw doesn’t go the whole way through the 2” foam board so you have to flip the board and using the drill bit hole, finish the cut. It’s really messy work and is really tedious but after “plugging” away for most of the week, we got them done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Wednesday we attended a workshop on “Raising Chickens, from birth to Processing”. This workshop was only two hours away and a day full of great info. This workshop was put on by PASA (Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture) and was held at a Mennonite farm in Mifflinburg. At the end of the day we watched him process chickens at his on-farm processing center. It was a great opportunity to learn about all things related to chickens.

This week the excavator got started correcting a lot of the drainage issues that the original excavator ignored or created. What a difference a few days, several pieces of equipment and a knowledgeable eye can do to a landscape.

		Excavation Work at New View Farm VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

He worked about three days, installing a drain tile along the length of the greenhouse, swales on contour (with berms on each swale) behind the barn and a ditch behind the barn. Once he finished the work, we went and got some old hay, that my brother had, and mulched all of the swales. This will keep them weed-free until we can get them planted. We also got the 6 mil plastic and geo-fabric down along the length of the greenhouse. It will allow water to penetrate it so it will reach the drain tile and provides a nice level area for our outside trough. We’ve already stubbed out the air line for the outside trough so that is ready to go. The outside trough will allow sprawling plants like beans, tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers to run out on the ground. The fabric will provide a weed-free environment for them to spread out and grow plus the black color will give this trough an early jump on growing, by absorbing the spring sunshine. We are so happy with the work that Rob McClure did for us. He was very willing to learn about the permaculture practices that we wanted to put in place.

I went outside a little while ago to see how all of the areas are doing, with all of the rain that we’ve had today. The swales are holding water. The top swale is holding water where it is on contour….at the point where we want excess water to drain, it runs off to the adjacent pasture or over behind another large mound that we have planted. It’s so great to see all of the systems working together.

 

 

 

 

 

With permaculture practices, you want to capture and use every drop of water before it exits your property (remember what we said about “the problem IS the solution?). These swales do exactly that while providing moisture to the items planted in the mounds. If we had any type of livestock in the fields above the plantings, that would create more “nutrient flow”. We can’t have any animals in those fields right now, since we have one more year to go in our CREP contract.

We’re now working on installing the water and air pump systems in the greenhouse for the aquaponic system. Hoping to have that complete within the next week. We will get seeds started in the sprouting table very soon so that they will be ready to go in the rafts when the whole system is ready. Lots going on….it’s getting exciting. Oh and look at our potatoes and squash go…they’re starting to blossom.

 

LiveJournal Tags: aquaponics,organic,squash,potatoes,sprouting table,air pump,permaculture,swales,Friendly Aquaponics,chickens,excavator,trough,PASA,Benjamin Moore Moorglo

Great Progress…

		Construction in Full Swing VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Wow, work is really progressing around the farm. We had been holding off starting the troughs until the new excavator could come to get the drainage issues resolved but one weekend we spent a lot of time digging three more mini swales and a small ditch out behind the greenhouse. Each of these mini swales will have a mound of dirt in front of them, planted with various berry bushes (the same way that we’ve done the blueberries). We figure that we can get at least 100 bushes on this area. We also got the rainwater collection hooked up, which captures all of the water from the barn roof. We hooked up a 300 gallon IBC tote on a Saturday afternoon and a few hours later we had a “gully-washer” of a storm hit. The storm only lasted about 20 minutes but in that short period of time, it FILLED that IBC tote. I kept going out during the storm to see the progress of it filling the tank and was amazed at the collection rate. We will use this water to flood the swales and slow soak the berry bushes. We bought a portable pump and have that hooked up to the tank, with several garden hoses on the outlet side and these can reach just about any planting area we have. We tested out the system the other day, after hooking up the pump, and it only took 5 minutes to drain 100 gallons from the tank. This was enough water to fill the top swale, near the blueberries. What an awesome resource….this is water that would otherwise run down the ditch and off the property.

Soooo, since we have the drainage issue in a good holding pattern (all of these swales and ditch out back have controlled the water flow substantially), we decided to get started with putting the troughs together. As you can see from the pictures, they are all together and the liners are in them. The liner is a 20 mil Duraskrim product which is  reinforced and waterproof. The guy from Lowes told me today that it’s commonly used on roofs for its great durability. I know there are many uses for it and we found it pretty easy to work with in lining the troughs. Friendly Aquaponics has a fantastic video on their website on how to install it in troughs, with all the tips and tricks that you need to know to create the corners, etc. and it was a huge help. We’re finishing up the trim that goes around the edge of the troughs and then we can start on the plumbing. We’ve got our air pump and water pump ordered so they should be here next week, just in time for our next steps. We have rafts to paint and lots of other things to do in the meantime.

The chickens are growing like weeds! We’ve got them fenced in with 100’ of no shock fencing and they are having a ball, exploring the yard and eating all the bugs and plants their little hearts desire. We can’t believe how fast they are growing. It won’t be long before they’ll be laying eggs. That will be a fun treat to see that next stage in their lives. They have such neat personalities and such an inquisitive nature about them. They are a pure delight to spend time with and watch. When we take a break during the day, we like to sit and watch them. While building the chicken wagon, I fell twice when the floor boards were off and I was replacing the decking. When I went through the floor joists, my feet stopped when they hit the axle under the wagon. The second fall was the worst for my left ankle (my right shin bone had a massive bruise and lots of bruising around my ankle area). I had wrapped it with an ace bandage and iced it for several weeks and thought it would be ok. After six weeks, it was feeling really ouchy on uneven ground, climbing ladders and similar tasks. I finally went to the doctor and they took x-rays and an MRI. It showed that there was a lot of swelling in my ankle and it was bruised really bad inside (the doc called it a micro fracture). He put me in a boot to restrict movement so it could heal. I’ll be in the boot for another four weeks (have had it on for two weeks so far). My ankle feels so much more comfortable in the boot except it’s very hot on really warm days. My left calf should lose at least 5 pounds over the course of these next four weeks…LOL)

Remember the China Doll pumpkins from my last post? Well, they sprouted in less than a weeks’ time and are doing great, up on Pumpkin Hill. Likewise for the 33 cages of potatoes we planted. Everything is liking the hot days we’ve been having, with the dose of thunderstorms mixed in on a pretty frequent basis. We can’t wait to get the sprouting table full of yummy veggies. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re making great progress….the finish line is looming in the distance.

LiveJournal Tags: China Doll pumpkins,red Norland. gold Yukon,Friendly Aquaponics,rafts,MRI,organic,trough,Duraskrim liner,rainwater harvesting,IBC tote

Springtime on the Farm

		New View Farm Spring-time Activities VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Since my last post, we got 12 baby chicks! They are so cute and a joy to be around. We have Rhode Island Reds and thanks to my brother, we found an old hay wagon that our neighbor was giving away and I turned it into a chicken wagon. The babies are about a month old now and so cute. We can’t believe how fast they are growing. Today, when we went in to hang out with them for a while, two of them were sitting up on the lowest roost. Mind you, this roost is about 18-24” off the floor. We can’t wait till they are old enough that we can move the chicken wagon out to the side yard so they can free range and explore their new world. Right now they are growing new feathers and still need the heat lamp on during cold spells, so that they stay warm enough.

We also got started with our berry hill, out behind the barn. We bought 10 Organic Blue Crop blueberry plants and 10 Organic Jersey blueberry plants and, with the help of my daughter, we planted them in the mound, next to the swale at the top of the hill. The grower’s recommendation was to mix peat moss with the soil, so that the blueberries would have the acid environment that they need for good growth. Peat moss is not a sustainable product and I really wrestled with whether I should buy a bag of peat moss, as the grower advised. Did you know that when a peat bog is harvested, it takes 220 years to form another one?Ugh! That was what caused my dilemma…that certainly is not a sustainable time period. I did have coconut coir on the farm (which is a sustainable product) but it has a neutral ph and while it has great moisture retention properties, it wouldn’t provide the acid-loving environment that our blueberries need. Today I researched this topic to see what I might have been able to use and it turns out that coffee grounds (not used ones) would have been an acceptable addition to the soil to get the acid ph I was looking for. Note to self…leave the peat in the bog and get some coffee for the next blueberry bush planting. How did we ever live without the internet twenty years ago?

Today we replaced the washed out areas in the greenhouse floor and our shade cloth arrived…Wahoo! Since ordering the shade cloth a couple days ago, we have debated several strategies on how to install it. Should it go inside the greenhouse? (This would be a little tricky due to the metal halide lights). If it goes on the outside of the greenhouse, how do we get it up there and how do we secure it? We decided to try putting it over the double poly so we didn’t have to deal with working around the lights inside the greenhouse. We ordered a 20’ x 48’ 40% shade cloth, which means it cuts out 40% of the light that comes in. This is the percentage shade cloth that greenhousemegastore.com recommended for vegetable plants. You can get shade cloth in almost any % of shade that you might need. We ordered the type that has grommets around the edge, at 2’ intervals. I found a large spool of heavy-duty weed whacker string down in the shed so we strung that through the grommets on the front, long side. We extended the string quite a bit past each end grommet so we’ve have something to hold on to. I then took an extension handle that I use to wax our RV and extended that to its tallest position. I put it in the top left corner and started walking to the back corner of the greenhouse, along the side wall. I climbed onto an 8’ ladder and then was able to grab the top left corner and hold it in place, where it should be located. Since we have a relatively steep slope behind the greenhouse, I took the string, protruding from the top right corner and walked up the hill, pulling it up and over the plastic roof until I had it where I wanted it. Our concern with putting in on the outside was that 1) it needed to be somewhat easy to put on and take down each year and 2) we needed a way to secure it in place. Our greenhouse is 19 x 48 but I should have ordered a 20 x 55 shade cloth because of the arch in the plastic and to allow for wiggle room in getting it on and it would allow the cloth to hang down over the sides a bit. We have a little daylight coming in on the one edge and about a foot at the very top but we can live with that.

It only took us 15-20 minutes to put the whole thing on. We left the string through the top row of grommets and tied them off on each side of the greenhouse. I also removed one of the steel siding screws, added a large washer and reinserted the screw through the grommet to hold it in place.

 

 

 

This fall, when it cools down, we’ll untie the green weed whacker string and pull the shade cloth off the roof and store it till spring. Easy peasy….Before we put the cloth on, the temp in the greenhouse was around 90 degrees. After getting it on the roof and after it being in place for a little while, the temp dropped to around 72 degrees. It will be interesting to monitor these temps in the coming weeks to see the difference with the shade cloth in place.

While we had the floor up today, to replace the washed out sand, we ran the pvc pipe for the air and water line to the area where the first trough will be. An exciting first step to getting the troughs built.

 

 

A few weeks ago some of our seeds arrived from High Mowing and Johnnie’s. We planted our organic Red Norland  and Yukon Gold potatoes and they are doing very well. We planted these in coconut coir inside of wire cages. We took one of our smaller topsoil mounds and covered it with 6 mil plastic and that will become our Pink Pumpkin Hill in a couple weeks. Around June 1st we will plant  Pumpkin Hill with China Doll pumpkin seeds that will produce beautiful pink pumpkins, once they mature. When you buy these seeds from a supplier, a large portion of the proceeds go towards cancer research. We hope to have a beautiful patch of pink pumpkins in October, just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness month. Stay tuned for more info on the progress of these unique pumpkins.

We’re glad that spring has sprung here on the farm. We’re in high gear to get veggies planted so we can bring fresh, organic produce to the local farmer’s markets.

LiveJournal Tags: China Doll pumpkins,pumpkins,Red Norland,Gold Yukon,High Mowing,Johnnie's,shade cloth,greenhouse,organic,aquaponics,trough,Blue Crop,Jersey,blueberry,peat moss,coconut coir,sustainable,ph,acid,coffee grounds