February 2009

Planting PeasWinter's fury has let up for a bit this week turning the snow to mud. The sunshine has put a spring into our step and even the birds are singing more. Certainly there will be more winter to come but it is helpful to have some reprieve from what has been the coldest winter in many years. The warmth motivated me to put the first seeds into the ground for the year. I planted my earliest tomato seeds indoors and planted a circle of sugar peas around a trellis in the greenhouse (pictured). I snipped several branches of forsythia to force into bloom indoors - hopefully in time for two speaking events I have in March. The warmer temps also let us dig into the turnip, beet and carrot beds again and we had a delicious meal of golden beets to celebrate. Another treat has been eating aged cheeses that Olin made last summer.

Yellow BeetsWinter is always a time for research and learning new things. Olin and I had the opportunity to attend the Northeast Ohio Grazing Conference for Dairy the end of January. The focus was on soil building and balancing with about 700 farmers being inspired by speakers from Wisconsin, Vermont as well as Ohio. Soil is such amazing stuff and really the basis for plant, animal and people health. The speaker that left us in awe was the Vermont grazier who shared pictures and his experience of adding 8 inches of topsoil in one year. He used a Yeoman plow (a fancy subsoiler) to aerate deeply and then grazed the grass tall with his cows. Another idea came from a grazier who foliar feeds his pastures with a concoction of skim milk and ocean minerals to get the microbial life in action. The connections we made with other farmers was also invaluable. So many things for us to learn and try! I also have had opportunity to help others learn during the Papermaking class I led at the Dalton library. It was a delightful evening with 32 people in attendance - 5 year olds up to grandmas and even a grandpa. In addition to preparing for other speaking events, I'm busy making revisions on the manuscript of the book I'm writing with a friend, One Forkful at a Time: Getting started with local foods. The goal of the book is to bring new people on board in learning how local foods can benefit their lives.

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