OEFFA Conference and Earthineer

A big part of settling in a new place is gathering a community for support, encouragement, and inspiration. For agriculturalists, or agrarians, that community is especially important. It means the difference between floundering on one's own and flourishing with others. While we knew a number of farmers in our area before and soon after alighting here, we soon learned that Ohio has an extended and ready-made network of organic (and beyond-organic) growers, marketers, and activists. It is OEFFA, the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association.

To learn all about what OEFFA does you can look at their "About OEFFA" page. In a nutshell, though, they are an organic certification agency, an education and support network for farmers throughout Ohio and the US (there are many members outside Ohio), and a well-organized advocate for farmers and consumers in the realm of state and national legislation. They publish a newsletter, hold farm tours and workshops across the state, and have a bumpin' annual conference featuring far too many workshops to choose from, inspiring top-notch keynote presenters, a trade show, meals from local and organic sources, and an opportunity to meet peers face-to-face.

Last year Margo went with Alten, had a great time, and made useful connections. This year it was my turn. I rode with a friend, Ben, who farms nearby at Mile Creek Farm, and that ride gave us an opportunity seldom afforded to folks in our situation (farmers with young children) to sit and have a focused conversation for hours. Soon after arriving at the site he introduced me to friends of his from our area, among them Doug and Kat of Smaller Footprint Farm and Isaac, the Food Service Coordinator at Antioch College.

I attended workshops on food preservation, defining one's vision, NRCS funding opportunities, using mushrooms in your woods and garden, companion planting, creating and maintaining native gardens to capture rainfall runoff, and what to do when you've got lead in your soil. I would have loved to attend the workshops on moving old barns, the risks of "fracking", cultivating edible mushrooms on logs, raising and selling fiber, and a number of others. I attended Woody Tasch's keynote on the Slow Money investment movement and Andrew Kimbrell's on the progress being made to keep Monsanto's (and others') aggression towards small farmers at bay.

Then, of course, there was the Saturday evening contra dance, which needs no explanation to those who know contra dancing, and of which no explanation of mine can do justice for those of you who aren't familiar with the past-time. Suffice it to say, I think you should try it if you never have before.

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I did come out of the OEFFA conference with one more potential internet habit. The one booth in the trade show that I could not resist was that with the two computers, a large flat panel tv, and a flashy red GrainMaker mill. It was the display for a new social networking site, Earthineer. The two founders, Dan and Leah, were there making their pitch, which was this: Facebook is all well and good, but for those of us who are pursuing a sustainable lifstyle a world-wide community could be an incredible asset. For any question that one might have, many are steps away from the same problem and many have already found various wonderful, creative solutions they want to share. That's the gist of it, anyway.

Leah and Dan's background is similar to many of the rest of us: they had a formative experience that sat with them for a while, and when a transition came in their lives they made some big changes based on the vision that experience left them with, and Earthineer.com is the product of those changes. I can identify with those motivations, and knowing that two of my favorite companies (GrainMaker and Countryside & Small Stock Journal) support the project makes it even more appealing. How useful I find it remains to be seen. I don't really understand how Facebook works, and for all my blogging the internet still leaves me, ironically, feeling dazed and disconnected. But I expect, as the Earthineer community grows, that I am going to find conversation and answers through a single website which would previously have taken me days of searching and many wild-goose-chases to find otherwise.

So if you have the inclination, join Earthineer and be my friend. 'Cause I only have two right now, and one was the default.

10550

The Haiku Game

We go for the cheap thrills. When we are looking for entertainment, we don't go to the cinema, the races, or skiing in the Alps. Usually not even to the bowling alley. We're game-playing people. There may be later posts dedicated to Settlers, Ticket to Ride, St. Petersburg, Scrabble, Chinese checkers, and the host of other games we love to play, but this one will sing the praises of The Haiku Game.

Haiku, as you may have learned in elementary school, is a form of poetry from the Japanese culture. It is the simplest kind I know in terms of rules, classically consisting of three lines with a reference to the natural world. The first line holds 5 syllables, the second holds 7, and the third concludes with 5 more. That's a simplified and strict definition - modern forms infrequently stick to the 17 syllables or images of nature. For example, here's one I wrote in the back of class during the poetry unit in my Elementary Education courses:

Half of my classmates
Talk too much, saying nothing.
The other half doze...

More recently we spent four years in Willits just a few miles up the 101 from Ukiah, which holds a grand Haiku festival every year. They take it pretty seriously, with judges, awards, and submissions from around the world.

Enough with the background. Now for the game. I have, sadly, not been able to figure out from whom we learned it initially; none of the people present the first time I recall playing it even remember the occasion. But since learning we have introduced it to many friends and acquaintances. It goes like this:

Each person sits with a piece of paper and writing utensil in front of them. Each person writes the first line of a haiku (5 syllables) and passes the paper to their right. Each person then takes the paper passed from their left, and writes the second line of haiku (7 syllables) to match the first line in front of them, and passes the paper to the right once more. On the sheet now in front of each person, they write the final line (5 syllables) to complete the poem, and pass it to the right once more. When all poems are complete, each persons takes a turn reading the haiku that the three people to their left wrote.

Depending on the group and the time of day, poems can be entertaining, deep, foolish, or completely unintelligible. And if the young (or syllablically-challenged) are participating, the 5-7-5 rule might end up as more of a suggestion. But it remains good wholesome fun, encourages community, and creates art.

So in honor of the past participants of Haiku Games that Margo and I have facilitated, and in honor of the 10,000-view-mark that the blog passed recently, I am instituting a "Haiku of the Week" to be featured in the sidebar. Each one will be taken from the sheets of Haiku Games past that I've kept.

Happy reading!

10090

The Perfect Shoes

I've had many different styles of shoes that I can recall in the past couple of decades. I really started caring in middle school and dove in full-tilt with L.A. Gear high-tops, using the two sets of six-foot-long laces per shoe they provided (in lieu of a photo of my shoes, this one is a good example of their version for girls). Then I moved on to Nike Air, retaining my preference for fluorescent colors with successive generations of the Agassi (at left), named for the tennis star.

But pretty soon, and before I finished high-school (though I'd have to consult my yearly photos), I moved on to Adidas Sambas. I'm not sure why, since they are about as far as I could get from my previous choices and still be in the mass-produced mainstream sportish shoe market (they're number two in this blog's list of "Four Essential Pairs of Shoes and Casual Trainers"). But I think I was growing into myself more, wanting less attention and more simplicity. These shoes have been made in the same style since the 50's - they're just black and white, have a half-inch or so of sole, are relatively cheap, and last for a good while. I would milk them for two years before they would be worn through, then I'd buy another pair. I had at least three, maybe four pairs.

Once I got a pair of Adidas' Campus shoes, which were similar in design but were suede. They tore through the toe within a month, but the store wouldn't take them back. So after I wore them long enough to feel like I'd got my money's worth I went back to the Sambas. Ironically, the defective Campus pair got a much longer second life as garden shoes after I cut the toe and heel off - as seen in EA's harvesting and threshing video at a little past the five-minute mark - nice!

During our first year at EA I got frustrated with the idea that, once my shoes were really shot, they would have to go into the trash. I decided that, from then on, I was going to buy shoes that were made of natural materials (as much as possible), looking specifically for hemp or leather. We went out to the town of Mendocino and visited a store called Mendo Twist where they specialized in "natural" things, and I settled on a pair of La Fuma shoes with hemp uppers and natural rubber soles (at right, threshing). They were on discount. While I believe in the relative strength of hemp, these shoes were not a great example. They wore through, unraveled, and shredded within a year, so I took them back and traded them in for a pair of leather Patagonias. The soles were synthetic, but Patagonia is well known for good sourcing and good treatment of their workers and the environment so I went with them anyway.

They were also more expensive, but in the years since college I have realized that cheap in the short-run can easily be pricey in the long-run. If I pay $35 for a pair of shoes, that seems great. But if they only last one year through my hard labor, I am better off buying the $80 shoes (which is what the Patagonias cost) if they are going to last 4-5 years, which they did. Then they end up costing $16-20 a year, and I save $60 or more over their life by investing up front. But like all things, they do eventually wear out, and these particular shoes were not made to be re-soled. So this fall, after stepping in puddles only to wick water through the holes in the bottom of the shoes into my socks, I started looking again.

Now I was ready to make a bigger step, beyond generally simple, natural, and environmentally thoughtful. I wanted to find something endlessly repairable and completely natural. Repairable, so the shoe doesn't need to be discarded when the sole finally wears through, and natural so that, if it ever does fall completely to pieces, it will break down and not need to be stored till the end of time in a landfill. If a shoe is natural and repairable, I came to believe that it must be leather. Achieving this conclusion, I realized I was going to need to look for the shoes they made "back in the day," when my current criteria were the only way it was done anyway.

I dug up two options. The first were modeled by a friend who does livestock on an 1880's-era working farm north of Dayton, the Carriage Hill Metropark. His shoes, he confessed, are actually the style of the 1860's, which are reproduced in large quantities for Civil War reenactment. They were Brogans, made of leather stitched together with wooden pegs to hold the soles on. Very cool looking, and very durable. He got his from C & D Jarnagin Company, if you want to see the goods.

The second were moccasins, in the general style of any native American culture. I ran into a friend who had gotten a simple pair from Minnetonka Moccasins, and she used them sock-less in all weather to great effect. The advantage of moccasin over brogans is that you can feel the ground underneath you. Alternatively, you can't do digging in them, because the shoulder of the shovel won't feel so good on your foot.

To make a long story - a few months of hemming and hawing, then another month of deciding where to get them - somewhat shorter, I decided on the moccasins. I have some old hiking boots I can use for digging. I went with the Arrow Moccasin Company and got a pair of lace boots with a double sole (at left on my feet, and at right on Alten's). They are expensive to me (having never "invested" in those $170 Nike Air Force 180 Pumps back in 1992) but they will last years before the sole wears through, and then the sole can be replaced.

Being leather, there is a little break-in time required. For the first 10 hours or so these were the most painful thing I have voluntarily done to my feet, short of removing splinters. Since then they have become the most comfortable shoes I've ever owned, and they are not even fully broken-in yet.

Of course, I intend to wear them while working, playing, and walking through mud, but like any new shoe I will be treating them very nicely till they get the first scratch. You will see them on my feet in many photos to come!

9000

The Daily Grind

Ever since our first internship on the farm of the Sonnewald Natural Foods we have been familiar with the wonderful taste and nutritional qualities of freshly ground flour. We were quite pleased, then, on arriving up at Ecology Action in early '06 to find a flour mill in the food prep space. I slowly worked up to supplying all of our flour needs with it, and we started buying so much wheat that it only made sense to get it in 25 and 50 lb bags.

That was a Country Living Grain Mill (CLGM), and I recommended it to anyone who asked. It is important to note here that we were off the grid at EA, and this was a hand-powered mill. I was certainly just a little proud of that fact. When we moved down to the Golden Rule Garden we were blessed to have access to a Miracle Mill, which had stone burrs instead of steel, and an electric motor which was masked in a nice wooden cabinet. We had great flour with the convenience of pouring in grain and letting it do its thing. The downsides? I couldn't brag any more, the thing was LOUD, and it ground fast enough to heat up the flour considerably (which takes away from the flour's nutritional value). But I always told people that I would go back to a manual mill when I got my own. It keeps me one step closer to my food.

When we moved back here the decision to buy a mill was postponed, because Mom already had one. For anyone who gets Lehman's Catalog, she has the "Our Best Grain Mill". It is difficult for me to give it any kind of negative review, simply because it served us for over 10 years. At the same time, though, it is not designed to produce the quantity (or quality) of flour that other mills can. The burrs are a little smaller, its axle doesn't use bearings, and for many other reasons I can't list (for lack of engineering knowledge) it is harder to use. After using it very intensively this year, grinding 10 cups of wheat berries (~15 cups of flour) a week for bread, I managed to break the set of stone burrs and wear away a 1/2" of the brass spacer between two washers on the axle. So we decided it was time to upgrade.

I had always counted on acquiring a CLGM of our own, since I had such good experiences with it. They are of excellent quality, and the many reviews on the web attest to their popularity. There was no reason to pursue any other, knowing what I wanted.

Then I got an email through the EA vine from Cindy Conner, a Biointensive farmer and instructor, about the new grain mill she had recently gotten. No stranger to the grain grinding (or growing) scene, she had owned a CLGM for over 10 years. Recently, though, she had the chance to see a demonstration of the GrainMaker mill, made by a family in Montana. Her glowing report of it and pronouncement that it has now replaced the CLGM on her counter inspired me to ask a lot of questions and do some more looking around.

GrainMaker has a thorough website that explains the features and history of the mill, so I'll spare you those details (and myself the charges of plagiarism). Suffice it to say that, between the testimonials, my friend's comments, the lifetime warranty, and the obvious pride the company takes in the quality of their product, I was sold. So we took the leap and ordered one.

As soon as we received it I knew the company had style: the only packaging material inside the box was a 5 lb bag of hard white spring wheat. (At left, Alten admires the mill and wonders when I'm going to bolt on the handle.)

I took our Lehman's Best off the counter and replaced it with our new GrainMaker, and we were off and grinding. To say that I am happy with it is an understatement, and I don't even know where to start lauding its excellence. It is as smooth as any good grinder should be, exudes longevity, and shines from the corner of the counter (so much so that Alten is attracted to it from across the kitchen, and will not suffer himself to be far from it). Best of all, though, is that it will grind truly fine flour on its first grind, with the effort that I am used to expending on other mills - but with the other mills I had to use that effort twice, because I needed to put the wheat through two times to get it fine enough. In fact, the GM got flour finer than I have ever ground before, short of putting it through three times on the CLGM we had used. And with only one grind! You can tell I'm in love.

I look forward to working through corn, rice, quinoa, and the grains that are small enough to have stymied the other mills we've used: amaranth and teff.

Now for a few details on our installation. The photo at the top shows our grain processing facility, complete with the Lehman's Best mill and our oat roller (which I wrote about on the Golden Rule Garden blog). At right is the GrainMaker in place. The overhang on our countertop isn't sufficient to clamp either appliance to, and Mom preferred that I not drill holes in said countertop, so I got creative with boards and c-clamps. Close inspection of the image will show that I used a lap joint to make better use of the limited number of clamps. No applause, please. Somehow I think it's funny that Mom is fine with c-clamps more or less a permanent part of the kitchen, but isn't ok drilling very permanent (but oh-so-subtle) holes in the counter.

An unintended plus is that two of the clamps are bright red - just like the GrainMaker! Notice, too, that I used some cardboard under the clamps so as not to mar the finish of the new mill. Maybe at a later date I'll get some red cardboard, too.

The final affirmation of the mill's goodness was the bread I baked and shared with everyone this morning. Delicious, as usual, but much less dense thanks to the finer flour.
Yay!

2760

The Newest and Hottest

Winter often brings with it a desire to be somewhere warm, dry, and cozy. We live in a farm house that was built sometime in the second half of the 1800's and, though its 18" thick brick walls make it far from drafty, one needs a good way to heat it.

The house was built with one big chimney through which passed the exhaust from three fireplaces, one in the basement, one on the first floor, and one on the second floor - all directly in line vertically. When Mom bought the house the second floor fireplace had been removed, leaving the lower two. And we were soon surprised by the reality that when we lit a fire in the living room the basement would get smoky. Upon professional inspection it was found that the flues had been designed to join into each other. The chimney sweep had never seen anything like it before, and subsequent professionals we've had out think we're pulling their legs when we tell them about it.

But that problem has long since been fixed, and a few years back we had a liner put up the chimney and a fireplace insert installed in the living room fireplace, which is the one that gets regular use. Those familiar with wood heat, thermodynamics, and/or general trivia know that fireplaces are pretty, but absolutely impossible to heat a house with. Almost all of the heat generated goes straight up and out the chimney via hot air, creating low pressure in the house, which in turn pulls air (that would be cold air) from the outdoors through any crack available. The result is a beautiful visual feature warming those directly beside it, paired with a constant draft in other parts of the house

A fireplace insert is a like a woodstove that only has a nice-looking front, since the rest is nestled into the fireplace cavity. The advantage over a free-standing woodstove is that it takes up less space. Both are designed as chambers that burn wood more efficiently (and distribute heat much more efficiently) than a fireplace. We got one called the Clydesdale, made by Hearthstone.

In terms of wood-burning efficiency it worked fine, but in the heating department it came up way short. Inserts depend on a fan (see the electric cord off to the right of the stove) which blows air through channels that go behind, around, and back out the front of the exterior of the stove - that's how the heat radiated by the insert gets moved from the fireplace cavity to the room you're trying to heat. The problem with the Clydesdale was that the fan didn't work very well, and was very noisy. Then the thermostat element in it broke, then the function that lets you moderate the fan's speed broke.

This year we decided that the insert just wasn't doing it for us. For all the heat it produced it could not heat the house, and for it to even work as well as possible it needed this fan on that often made listening to conversation or music difficult. We wanted something that could radiate its heat without use of any fan, and that meant a free-standing wood stove. An added bonus was a surface we could conceivably cook on, heat water on, warm socks on, etc.

We consulted a great fireplace shop in the Richmond area, actually The Fireplace Shop, and settled on a soapstone stove (for soapstone's many wonderful characteristics). While waiting for delivery, we thought maybe we'd prepare the way by getting the Clydesdale ready to depart. Inserts, it turns out, are stuck in the cavity and surrounded by insulation, then a collar is put over what remains of the gap between the fireplace front and the insert. That's so you can't see the ugly back. Once we took the collar off and the insulation out, we found that the heat truly poured forth. It was pretty amazing. To make the thing really effective the fan still needed to be on, but even without it there was A LOT of heat. If we had only known that we might not have gotten a new stove, but since it was on its way already, and because of the new stove's attributes, we stayed the course.
Because it sticks out further than the insert we needed more insulative material, so we got a piece of limestone (set on two pieces of Mycor) to match the existing hearth. So here is our beautiful new stove, the Hearthstone Heritage (my, aren't we refined?). It is a hit with the cat, the laundry, and the rest of us, and we all look forward to figuring out how to maximize its performance and charm.

The Clydesdale will find a place in the workshop, and possibly eventually in another home. I have fantasies about using it in a cob-masonry stove kind of application in the future.

To the credit of Hearthstone, this was one of the earliest versions of the Clydesdale, one with a few design flaws. When we went in to look for a new stove the folks at the Fireplace Shop asked us what we had.
"What? You have a Clydesdale? Why would you want to replace that? Oh, it's the old one. Never mind."

2387

Carrying On

Since we have the blessing of working at home most of the time, we get to be around Alten as much as we want. Which is, of course, constantly. The only downside is that, at best, you have one free hand. When holding such a young baby, though, one must support the head as well. That leaves one able to walk around freely, but not actually do anything.

Luckily, humanity solved this problem tens of thousands of years ago (if not earlier). The solution is to tie the baby to yourself! Gently, of course. We came across plenty of examples before Alten's birth, from reading Continuum Concept to talking with friends to seeing strangers in health-food stores. We were convinced even then that we were going to give it a serious go, with hopes that we would be able to work with our baby in the garden from the beginning.
The internet was, as always, our resource for what is possible. We found many examples, and put our favorites on our baby shower lists. To date we have three that we've tried and liked. And please remember when viewing the pictures: we haven't mastered them yet, so if the setup looks a little awkward it's because we're not pros. Yet.
Our first carrier was the of the "mei tai" persuasion. Its origins are Chinese, and it is basically a square piece of cloth with a fabric strip coming off each corner (here Margo is hiding the lower strap with her arm). Ours came from Mei Tai Baby, and was a gift from our former garden manager, Ellen. It was the first we tried Alten in, and it is how we found out that he reeeeally doesn't like being restrained. Initially he was fine in it while asleep, but if he awoke in it there was hell to pay. He's getting much more used to it, though. It's Margo's current favorite.
The next is a Baby Björn carrier, which was a gift from friends in Lakewood, Colorado. It's high tech, with metal and plastic and fabric and cool snapping things. It was the first one we could successfully keep him happy in, and is pretty easy to pop on and off. I have sported Alten around the grocery store a couple of times in it. I have also worn it in the woodshop, where it was comfy enough for him that he went to sleep while I was banging on the loppers that I'm trying to repair. The downsides are that it can only be worn on the front and that if you bend way over it feels like the occupant can fall right out. But it's great for walks and shopping.

Finally, my current favorite, the baby wrap. It was introduced to us by our friend Rebekah who, when we visited her family in February, gave us a complete workshop in which baby products and philosophies they found helpful. The baby wrap is a simple piece of fabric, in our case about 24" wide by 15' long, which you tie around yourself in processes reminiscent of origami. I was hooked by Rebekah's demonstration. Of further inspiration was the website WrapYourBaby.com, which gives instructions for more than 15 ways to tie your baby to you.

I like this one best at the moment because 1) Alten seems to tolerate it well, 2) it holds him very close to my own center of gravity, which is good for my back, and 3) he doesn't sway around in it as I walk.
We now feel confident in forging ahead with baby-wearing, and look forward to becoming more comfortable working in them.

You Read to Me, I'll Read to You

One of our favorite activities together, right up there with game playing, is reading to one another. It started with Harry Potter (before the series got a little too dark for Margo's enjoyment), moved on to other series books one or the other of us knew well, and grew to Lord of the Rings proportions by the time we got married. In the past four years we have begun targeting masterpieces. Ones we have never read (or read and forgot) but that we have heard of many times, and maybe feared. Like Moby Dick, which we found very entertaining. Or Don Juan, the epic poem by Lord Byron, which took a little time in getting the flow right, but which was also very enjoyable. Sometimes it's a book that one of us has read and wants to introduce to the other, like Dune or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Very infrequently we will give up in the middle of one due to one party or the other's objections. Like Mists of Avalon and Look Homeward, Angel.

You might wonder where we get so much time to read. Somehow it justs fits into spaces. Like when I am driving or doing dishes, or when Margo is cooking or knitting. And if the book is very good, we make time.

All this is to introduce our current reading, which I would like to keep updated as we go along with a reference from the sidebar. Once this post is buried under the many to come, that is.

Last month we finished Tai-Pan, by James Clavell. We read it because we liked Shogun so much. It was entertaining, even riveting at points, but not the grand read that Shogun is.

We just finished Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan. Having read a few others by her we both feel like this one is alright, is entertaining, but has not made us better people or expanded our horizons. This might sound a little foolish, but the latter two are the main characteristics of what we call a great book.

We just started The Continuum Concept, which was a baby shower gift from our friend Dawn. It has the mark of a book that will help us significantly in perspective for child-raising, and will alter the way we look at the world. Needless to say, we are very much enjoying it. Its one peculiarity is that the style is a bit text-booky, in terms of big words and long sentences. This means that I have to be the one to read, because I focus better that way.

And we have a list of all-time greats, which will hopefully grow. It is in no particular order.

Shogun, by James Clavell, was fascinating, enlightening, and held our attention for months. It really helped me understand the samurai origins of Aikido, and what bushido means. It gave us both a better understanding of life and death, and what honor is. In a way. One of the best stories I have ever read.

Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. I can't say much about it without making it sound lame. It is about saints and enlightened masters, how you get to be that way, and stresses that the capacity for love is the most powerful tool one can have. Besides that, and that it is at the top of our list, there isn't much more I can say to recommend it.

Our advice, if you want to find the best books in the library, is to talk to your librarian. We had great conversations with ours at the Willits Public Library almost every time we were there. One of the highlights was when we asked the head librarian, "Donna, we want to read some Hemingway. Which one would you start with?" Her answer was "None of them! I can't stand Hemingway!" She explained that her focus was the romantics, like Thomas Wolfe. Minimalists just weren't her cup of tea. But she did go on to consult the summer reading program's lists, and came up with The Old Man and the Sea. Which we liked just fine.