'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' - R. Buckminister Fuller
Here is something I am planning to do towards making explicit the 'new model' I have been building--DEVELOPING--at the farm for more than 12 years:
Sunday, June 22--the day after the Solstice--I will go out to the 'tabernacle' in the middle of the pasture at dawn, and at sunrise I will begin to mindfully read aloud the names of all the beings who are part of the Community of Life at the farm. I am inviting others to join me in person for whatever span of time they are able throughout the morning--to take turns reading and/or add names I may have forgotten--or to join me in spirit by praying for this Community of Life sometime during that time.
I have no idea how long the reading will take. It will begin with reading a list of scientific and common names of species that were keyed out by a naturalist friend in 2000--at that time, he definitively identified more than 450 species that had established themselves at Pinwheel Farm without intentional human agency, and we have added many since. Then there are ones we know only by 'farm names'--the 'green, curly earth worms' and 'fairy parasol mushrooms', and things we know only by broad category--slime molds, insects smaller than 1/4' long, etc. Then there are all the species we've deliberately planted here, and all the livestock and their parasites and disease organisms. Family members, friends, housemates, volunteers, visitors, customers, suppliers. Far-away supporters who know the farm through my writing. The elements, both chemical and weather. The machines and tools that we use, that come to life in our hands as we learn to know them. Everything that is woven into the web of life here.
I will read these names to let all these beings know that they are recognized, welcomed, and respected as equals in God's creation at the farm...a way of balancing the negation of these beings by the engineers who declare this to be 'undeveloped,' uninhabited land. To let these beings know that changes are coming, so they have time to prepare. To read to them the letter I received from the City. To ask them to share with me, in whatever way they can, their wisdom and ideas for the challenges that we will face together. I do not own this land, I only am its steward, and a spokesperson for its Community of Life: that has been my solemn understanding from the very beginning.
I will ground this reading with interspersed scripture readings, and invite those of other faiths or traditions to contribute as they wish.
I will keep these lists, and keep adding to them, and read them at each turning of the season (God willing), inviting all to share in those readings.
As I am able, I will post these lists online somewhere, to share them with others. If possible, I will have the reading recorded.
I would like to invite anyone who wishes to have their name read as part of the farm's Community of Life, please send me an email (natalyalowther@hotmail.com) and let me know. If you plan to attend in person, it would be nice to know ahead, but feel free to just drop by. The way out to the pasture will be made obvious in some manner.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
At Ease about Easements? InDeed....
Here is something that all "landowners" should be aware of, assuming this is not just a Douglas County quirk. Not all easements across your property are necessarily filed with the Register of Deeds at the County Courthouse. There may be easements that are not part of the public record at all...not accessible to your title insurance company...not easily accessible to you, unless you happen to know where to look and everyone happens to be standing around the office a little bit before quitting time.
A few days ago I emailed the City's legal staff to verify my understanding that they did not already have an easement through the farm that would have allowed them to blithely survey without permission to be there. The response was that they didn't know off the top of their head, they would have to look it up. Apparently that wasn't a high priority task.
Instead of bugging them about it (I do understand that bureaucrats are busy and their time is valuable to them), I took myself to the Register of Deeds office this afternoon to look for myself.
Probably many of you have never had occasion to do this. Perhaps you aren't even aware that you CAN. And if that is the case, you have no idea how willing and ready the good people there are to help you find the information you seek among their solemn shelves of giant volumes. Try it some rainy afternoon when you have a spare hour or two.
I learned about doing title searches when I worked at DPRA Incorporated in Manhattan, Kansas, a number of years ago. (I hope they missed any major damage by the tornado that struck very close to their offices last night. Mom and Dad's place, several miles away, was untouched. The building at KSU where Dad worked from the time I was in middle school until the time he retired was damaged.) I think that job, as strange as it seemed in context of my life before and after, was one of God's ways of preparing me for the work I am doing now, shepherding the farm through these governmental challenges.
This is how finding an easement or deed works:
You walk into the office, way up on the third floor, and people look up and move to greet you at the ancient marble counter. The sense of hush is far beyond what any modern library could imagine.
They escort you to a very impressively modern computer nearby, type in your name, and thus are able to find the Township, Range, and Section of your property's legal description. Of course, you could bring this with you (from your property tax statement or a mortgage), but they will be happy to look it up for you.
Then you are escorted to The Room. It appears to be a vault. The walls are lined with shelves of dark, worn volumes. There are cryptic labels on the shelves. Your guide refers to the scrap of paper she jotted down your legal description information on, draws out a volume, and opens it on a large table in the middle of the room.
The pages in the volume are small, about 5" x 10", and form tabs along the outer edge. They are bound to the book with rings, perhaps a dozen of them, so that new pages may be added as the decades slowly march through the turning-over of property. How easily she turns to the series of pages for your Township, Range and Section.
And here you begin. In this case, since we were concerned with easements, of which there would be few, we just started in 1912 (or so) and scanned down the column that indicated a code for the type of recording. E for easement, M for mortgage, D for Deed, various other arcane descriptors. For a title search, you would look for your name to appear about the date you bought the poperty, and note who you bought it from. Then you would look backwards in time to find when that person bought the property.
We found no easements recorded for the farm. I lingered a few minutes to note important names and dates in the farm's life: Dale Black, whom we purchased it from (11/16/95), had purchase it from a Taul Hibbard in 1950. We could find no record of it coming into Taul's hands...but some transfers of property are not recorded, if it is inherited for example. Or that deed may reside at the Jefferson County Courthouse, dating from before the Douglas County line was moved north of the river course. Niggling curiousity that might be answered by a reading of the deed transfers we did identify, but not enough to spend the time reading them, white letters on black background, on the microfiche.
"Well," I sighed a relieved sigh. So at least they don't already own an easement that I'm not aware of."
"Um, actually there could be easements that we don't have records of here," the nice lady informed me. The fellow at the microfiche reader seemed to perk up his ears a bit.
A cold feeling washed through me. We had done quite careful research into this land before purchasing it, exactly to prevent such an occurrence as this. Had we missed something major that could undo years of planning and hard work?
"Yes, the County Public Works may have Road Right of Ways that aren't recorded here."
"Where are they recorded?"
"Public Works would know. Here's the name of the guy you can call."
"Would my Title Insurance Company have known about this? How do people know where to look for all the easements?" I asked, bewildered.
The nice lady turned to the fellow at the microfiche, who was now following our conversation quite intently even as his hands nimbly handled the file reader. "You're with a Title Insurance Company," she said. "Do you have access to the Public Works files?"
"No," he replied. "They aren't a part of the public record. That's why every document has that wording on it about "subject to easements."
You think you own your land. The Register of Deeds thinks you own your land. The Title Insurance company thinks you own your land. But no one is really sure whether there is some other party that has rights to your land that you do not. Just keep that in mind when you're making plans...someone else might be making plans, too.
I called the County Public Works guy she referred me to, expecting layers of bureaucracy and frustrations. "You're just leaving the Courthouse?" (The marvel of cell phones!) "Why don't you just run over and we'll have a look."
I did. He did. We found nothing. Just to be sure, we went in search of another fellow with a faster computer and checked somewhere else. Everyone was very nice, that ready-to-go-home-but-we-have-half-an-hour-to-kill kind of nice on a day when probably there hadn't been many other visitors. They delighted in printing me out a copy of the aerial of the farm area with all the property lines in clear blue.
Interesting. Very interesting. Go do your homework! If you own property, it would behoove you to know who else is entitled to use it without your permission. If you are purchasing property, by all means wring as much information as you can (in a friendly and respectful way) from the various government agencies. Because you may actually turn up information that the Title Insurance Company can't.
A few days ago I emailed the City's legal staff to verify my understanding that they did not already have an easement through the farm that would have allowed them to blithely survey without permission to be there. The response was that they didn't know off the top of their head, they would have to look it up. Apparently that wasn't a high priority task.
Instead of bugging them about it (I do understand that bureaucrats are busy and their time is valuable to them), I took myself to the Register of Deeds office this afternoon to look for myself.
Probably many of you have never had occasion to do this. Perhaps you aren't even aware that you CAN. And if that is the case, you have no idea how willing and ready the good people there are to help you find the information you seek among their solemn shelves of giant volumes. Try it some rainy afternoon when you have a spare hour or two.
I learned about doing title searches when I worked at DPRA Incorporated in Manhattan, Kansas, a number of years ago. (I hope they missed any major damage by the tornado that struck very close to their offices last night. Mom and Dad's place, several miles away, was untouched. The building at KSU where Dad worked from the time I was in middle school until the time he retired was damaged.) I think that job, as strange as it seemed in context of my life before and after, was one of God's ways of preparing me for the work I am doing now, shepherding the farm through these governmental challenges.
This is how finding an easement or deed works:
You walk into the office, way up on the third floor, and people look up and move to greet you at the ancient marble counter. The sense of hush is far beyond what any modern library could imagine.
They escort you to a very impressively modern computer nearby, type in your name, and thus are able to find the Township, Range, and Section of your property's legal description. Of course, you could bring this with you (from your property tax statement or a mortgage), but they will be happy to look it up for you.
Then you are escorted to The Room. It appears to be a vault. The walls are lined with shelves of dark, worn volumes. There are cryptic labels on the shelves. Your guide refers to the scrap of paper she jotted down your legal description information on, draws out a volume, and opens it on a large table in the middle of the room.
The pages in the volume are small, about 5" x 10", and form tabs along the outer edge. They are bound to the book with rings, perhaps a dozen of them, so that new pages may be added as the decades slowly march through the turning-over of property. How easily she turns to the series of pages for your Township, Range and Section.
And here you begin. In this case, since we were concerned with easements, of which there would be few, we just started in 1912 (or so) and scanned down the column that indicated a code for the type of recording. E for easement, M for mortgage, D for Deed, various other arcane descriptors. For a title search, you would look for your name to appear about the date you bought the poperty, and note who you bought it from. Then you would look backwards in time to find when that person bought the property.
We found no easements recorded for the farm. I lingered a few minutes to note important names and dates in the farm's life: Dale Black, whom we purchased it from (11/16/95), had purchase it from a Taul Hibbard in 1950. We could find no record of it coming into Taul's hands...but some transfers of property are not recorded, if it is inherited for example. Or that deed may reside at the Jefferson County Courthouse, dating from before the Douglas County line was moved north of the river course. Niggling curiousity that might be answered by a reading of the deed transfers we did identify, but not enough to spend the time reading them, white letters on black background, on the microfiche.
"Well," I sighed a relieved sigh. So at least they don't already own an easement that I'm not aware of."
"Um, actually there could be easements that we don't have records of here," the nice lady informed me. The fellow at the microfiche reader seemed to perk up his ears a bit.
A cold feeling washed through me. We had done quite careful research into this land before purchasing it, exactly to prevent such an occurrence as this. Had we missed something major that could undo years of planning and hard work?
"Yes, the County Public Works may have Road Right of Ways that aren't recorded here."
"Where are they recorded?"
"Public Works would know. Here's the name of the guy you can call."
"Would my Title Insurance Company have known about this? How do people know where to look for all the easements?" I asked, bewildered.
The nice lady turned to the fellow at the microfiche, who was now following our conversation quite intently even as his hands nimbly handled the file reader. "You're with a Title Insurance Company," she said. "Do you have access to the Public Works files?"
"No," he replied. "They aren't a part of the public record. That's why every document has that wording on it about "subject to easements."
You think you own your land. The Register of Deeds thinks you own your land. The Title Insurance company thinks you own your land. But no one is really sure whether there is some other party that has rights to your land that you do not. Just keep that in mind when you're making plans...someone else might be making plans, too.
I called the County Public Works guy she referred me to, expecting layers of bureaucracy and frustrations. "You're just leaving the Courthouse?" (The marvel of cell phones!) "Why don't you just run over and we'll have a look."
I did. He did. We found nothing. Just to be sure, we went in search of another fellow with a faster computer and checked somewhere else. Everyone was very nice, that ready-to-go-home-but-we-have-half-an-hour-to-kill kind of nice on a day when probably there hadn't been many other visitors. They delighted in printing me out a copy of the aerial of the farm area with all the property lines in clear blue.
Interesting. Very interesting. Go do your homework! If you own property, it would behoove you to know who else is entitled to use it without your permission. If you are purchasing property, by all means wring as much information as you can (in a friendly and respectful way) from the various government agencies. Because you may actually turn up information that the Title Insurance Company can't.
The Neighborhood Meeting
Thank you to all who have held me and the farm and the water main in your thoughts and prayers these past few days. Just knowing you were doing that surely contributed to the sense of serenity I felt during most of the meeting...but only God could have arranged for there to be a rainbow in the sky after the meeting, reminding me that He does hear and respond to prayers, and that He look after the arks He asks His servants build for Him, even little ones like the farm that carry mainly small creepy things like ants and very few interesting things like elephants....
Put that on my gratitude list: Of all the challenges I DO have on this farm, I DON'T have elephants...or moose or bears, like my farmer friend in British Columbia who called out of the blue this evening for a nice long chat. Her computer is kaput so she had no idea all this was going on here.
It was good, at the meeting, to sit quietly and listen to my neighbors voice some of the same questions I have about the project. I know that I am not alone.
During the meeting, the presenter kept suggesting that we break up into small groups to address specific landowner questions. The crowd didn't seem to want that, and it pretty much didn't happen. We want to hear what the City says to our neighbors. We're like that in North Lawrence. We mind our own business on most little things, but when push comes to shove we mind each other's business just as well as any self-respecting small town! Lawrence, "proper"--Lawrence south of the river--may be becoming a big city, but North Lawrence is very slow to lose its collective identity of not REALLY belonging to the city. At one time the Douglas County line followed the Kansas River, and the town of North Lawrence was a separate municipality affiliated with Jefferson, not Douglas County.
A friend noted after the meeting that it appeared the City people very much wanted to address the farm as a "special" situation, one on one, away from the public meeting. It seemed as if there were issues and questions they didn't want to address publicly. However, they conceded to keep me in the public conversation, and agreed to let us have a copy of the attendee sign-in sheet so that we could report back to one another what we learn in our individual meetings with the City and engineers.
It seems as if they consider this alignment through the farm as pretty much a "done deal", though they are looking at other options. But along the way they must jump through many other hoops before committing to take my land...testing of soil and groundwater, an Environmental Impact Study, etc. I know from my work in developing our Conservation Reserve Program Riparian Buffer Strips (a.k.a. "CRP" or "Wilderness Area") that such detailed investigation can turn up surprises that change the best-laid plans. We had originally wanted to construct a wetland on the north part of the pasture, since it seemed to be wet a lot of the time anyway. Testing revealed that the soil would never hold water, no matter what we did to it...when it was wet, it was because the water table under the whole farm was that high! I was disappointed to not be able to have my own permanent "frog bog", but the qualities of highground water and excellent drainage ARE part of what makes it so valuable as crop land!
It was interesting to hear again and again the phrases "developed land" and "undeveloped land" be bandied about. Of course, by "undeveloped land" they meant no roads, buildings, utilities, or other "city" infrastructure. This is a way of thinking that I believe our culture must change if we are to feed and otherwise support ourself in a future of increasingly inadequate and more expensive fuel supplies.
Every inch of my 12+ acres is "developed", in my way of thinking. I have built fences, planted and managed pastures, planted trees to shelter the farm from city noise, light pollution, and buffeting winter winds. I am developing outstanding wildlife habitat that is home to thousands of different species from all kingdoms of life, many that we will never reasonably be able to include in a census. I have had a development plan for this farm since several years before I even bought the land: the original Pinwheel Farm was designed on paper as a final project in a KSU horticulture class.
Stay tuned for further "developments".....!
Put that on my gratitude list: Of all the challenges I DO have on this farm, I DON'T have elephants...or moose or bears, like my farmer friend in British Columbia who called out of the blue this evening for a nice long chat. Her computer is kaput so she had no idea all this was going on here.
It was good, at the meeting, to sit quietly and listen to my neighbors voice some of the same questions I have about the project. I know that I am not alone.
During the meeting, the presenter kept suggesting that we break up into small groups to address specific landowner questions. The crowd didn't seem to want that, and it pretty much didn't happen. We want to hear what the City says to our neighbors. We're like that in North Lawrence. We mind our own business on most little things, but when push comes to shove we mind each other's business just as well as any self-respecting small town! Lawrence, "proper"--Lawrence south of the river--may be becoming a big city, but North Lawrence is very slow to lose its collective identity of not REALLY belonging to the city. At one time the Douglas County line followed the Kansas River, and the town of North Lawrence was a separate municipality affiliated with Jefferson, not Douglas County.
A friend noted after the meeting that it appeared the City people very much wanted to address the farm as a "special" situation, one on one, away from the public meeting. It seemed as if there were issues and questions they didn't want to address publicly. However, they conceded to keep me in the public conversation, and agreed to let us have a copy of the attendee sign-in sheet so that we could report back to one another what we learn in our individual meetings with the City and engineers.
It seems as if they consider this alignment through the farm as pretty much a "done deal", though they are looking at other options. But along the way they must jump through many other hoops before committing to take my land...testing of soil and groundwater, an Environmental Impact Study, etc. I know from my work in developing our Conservation Reserve Program Riparian Buffer Strips (a.k.a. "CRP" or "Wilderness Area") that such detailed investigation can turn up surprises that change the best-laid plans. We had originally wanted to construct a wetland on the north part of the pasture, since it seemed to be wet a lot of the time anyway. Testing revealed that the soil would never hold water, no matter what we did to it...when it was wet, it was because the water table under the whole farm was that high! I was disappointed to not be able to have my own permanent "frog bog", but the qualities of highground water and excellent drainage ARE part of what makes it so valuable as crop land!
It was interesting to hear again and again the phrases "developed land" and "undeveloped land" be bandied about. Of course, by "undeveloped land" they meant no roads, buildings, utilities, or other "city" infrastructure. This is a way of thinking that I believe our culture must change if we are to feed and otherwise support ourself in a future of increasingly inadequate and more expensive fuel supplies.
Every inch of my 12+ acres is "developed", in my way of thinking. I have built fences, planted and managed pastures, planted trees to shelter the farm from city noise, light pollution, and buffeting winter winds. I am developing outstanding wildlife habitat that is home to thousands of different species from all kingdoms of life, many that we will never reasonably be able to include in a census. I have had a development plan for this farm since several years before I even bought the land: the original Pinwheel Farm was designed on paper as a final project in a KSU horticulture class.
Stay tuned for further "developments".....!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
And the good stuff....
I haven't written for a long time because we--a shifting, ever-changing"we"--have been so busy.
Some highlights:
Friends from Canada visited overnight. The 30-something mom and her daughter (same age as my granddaughter) made their second annual stop on their "Grand Tour" bus trip. Using the bus company's special 30-day pass, they travel at night, sleep on the bus (no hotel bills), spend the day (or overnight at a friend's or hostel) sightseeing, and then another night on the bus while they head for their next destination. In this way, they have seen FAR more of the U.S. that most citizens ever see. I really admire their stamina...esp. since the mom has mobility challenges and chronic pain. We met at a Canadian Quaker gathering while I was on sabbatical.
We have our first WWOOFer staying and working at the farm. It has been delightful! She fit right in with our household, and is a pleasant, self-starting, dependable worker on the farm, always willing to stop and attend to some little task that she notices needs done. We hope she'll come back in future years, since her current itinerary allows only a short stay. Another WWOOFer is scheduled for later this summer and fall. For those not familiar with WWOOF, it is an organization that helps connect farmers with people who want to volunteer on farms in exchange for room and board. Check out http://www.wwoofusa.org/index.html. A great way to travel (more to my taste than my friends' bus trek--I like to get to know a place and its people and critters and plants).
My daughter's 2 long-haired chihuahuas stayed at the farm for a few days....cute and SHRILL. Actually I was impressed with how quickly they settled in. I forgot to get pictures, though. Harper looks like a miniature of my older dog, Toss.
We've had rain upon rain, lots of wind and lightning, thankfully not much hail. It's a good thing we don't rely on mechanical tillage for our gardening. We've been hard at work muching our no-till beds for tomatoes and potatoes. As of today, we have about 180 plants in the ground. A crazy quilt of standard production hybrids, popular and obscure heirlooms, slicers, paste style, cherry tomatoes, you name it. Striped, red, orange, yellow, gold, purple, green. One thing they mostly share is they are indeterminate varieties. We plant them 2 feet apart with beds 10' apart (there is a non-tomato bed between each pair of tomato beds). This allows air circulation and access for picking. It looks silly at this stage...but experience proves that they WILL be 6' tall and 4' wide by the end of August.
In one block, we experimented with wheat as a fall cover crop, broadcast on a weedy fallow area that was garden a couple years ago. Where we got a good dense stand of wheat, we just mowed out the tomato beds and left the wheat to ripen in 7' x 23' bands in between. It is starting to turn color, with nice large heads! We'll harvest by hand, then mulch and plant in the wheat beds between the tomato rows. We have a small graingrinder that will allow us to make cracked wheat for cereal, or coarse flour. Other friends have better grinding equipment if we make this a habit.
Mowing around the tomato beds was an experimental thing. We "inherited" a BCS walk-behind tractor, with rototiller and sickle bar mower attachments, this winter, and have been experimenting to see how it fits into our production system. It mows wheat and tall weeds very well, turning a fallow area into a partly mulched garden in a matter of minutes. It also will cut through chainlink fence quite nicely. It does balk a bit at T-posts, though that was a stalemate--non-fatal damage to both post and mower.
We make sure the dogs are locked up in their pen before using the BCS mower.
In summary, we decided that the BCS is great for mowing large patches of tall stuff where we are certain there are no metal objects, and we don't have to be perfect. The Austrian Scythe proved to be the best tool for mowing out the narrow, precise beds for the tomatoes. So, we are working hard to be more deliberate about putting things away, and the farm is looking very much more organized and tidy than ever. This also makes things easier for our wonderful volunteers to find things.
The wheat was dense enough that we were able to mulch the tomato beds with it, after laying down a narrow band of very broken-down sheep pen waste as a "fertility mulch". This is an effort to "stretch" our waste hay mulch. A consequence of a very wet spring/early summer, combined with a late start and having the best mulch-hauling cart out of commission for awhile early in the season, is that the hay pack in the sheep pens had decomposed beyond the prime weed-control-mulching stage already. So we are making do and experimenting. Another experiment is using the new (gasoline) riding lawnmower to collect grass clippings from the yard and lanes and using those as mulch. This promises to be a great way of augmenting potato mulch as it gets scattered around during our rummaging for new potatoes.
Speaking of new potatoes, we rummaged out the very first tiny new potatoes from "Pink Wink" (the first variety we planted, one that isn't even sold in catalogs that we got as a substitute a couple years ago, and has ended up being a real favorite). The WWOOFER, the Growing Growers apprentice, and I all savored a "potato communion" when I boiled those few tubers this morning. MMMMMMM...THAT'S why we're doing all this hard work! It will be a few weeks before we have enough to take to market, but we know they're coming!
We are also using the BCS tiller for the first mechanical tillage we've done in years. Accepting the negative consequence of compacted soil structure, we're "stale bedding" a large (75' x 25') area near the garden where Sweet Annie (sweet, indeed, but invasive and not eaten by any farm animal) and Japanese Hop Vine (a.k.a. "vegetable barbed wire") were allowed to proliferate by the tenants a few years ago. We'll plant in there soon, now that we've killed 4 or 5 crops of seedlings, and then clean cultivate (no mulch, lots of hoeing) the rest of the season, in an attempt to kill as many weed seeds as we can and not produce any more.
I have mixed feelings about the new gas-powered equipment, but overall they are very helpful at this stage in the farm's life, and I'm very grateful for them and the dedicated friend who likes to run them.
Some highlights:
Friends from Canada visited overnight. The 30-something mom and her daughter (same age as my granddaughter) made their second annual stop on their "Grand Tour" bus trip. Using the bus company's special 30-day pass, they travel at night, sleep on the bus (no hotel bills), spend the day (or overnight at a friend's or hostel) sightseeing, and then another night on the bus while they head for their next destination. In this way, they have seen FAR more of the U.S. that most citizens ever see. I really admire their stamina...esp. since the mom has mobility challenges and chronic pain. We met at a Canadian Quaker gathering while I was on sabbatical.
We have our first WWOOFer staying and working at the farm. It has been delightful! She fit right in with our household, and is a pleasant, self-starting, dependable worker on the farm, always willing to stop and attend to some little task that she notices needs done. We hope she'll come back in future years, since her current itinerary allows only a short stay. Another WWOOFer is scheduled for later this summer and fall. For those not familiar with WWOOF, it is an organization that helps connect farmers with people who want to volunteer on farms in exchange for room and board. Check out http://www.wwoofusa.org/index.html. A great way to travel (more to my taste than my friends' bus trek--I like to get to know a place and its people and critters and plants).
My daughter's 2 long-haired chihuahuas stayed at the farm for a few days....cute and SHRILL. Actually I was impressed with how quickly they settled in. I forgot to get pictures, though. Harper looks like a miniature of my older dog, Toss.
We've had rain upon rain, lots of wind and lightning, thankfully not much hail. It's a good thing we don't rely on mechanical tillage for our gardening. We've been hard at work muching our no-till beds for tomatoes and potatoes. As of today, we have about 180 plants in the ground. A crazy quilt of standard production hybrids, popular and obscure heirlooms, slicers, paste style, cherry tomatoes, you name it. Striped, red, orange, yellow, gold, purple, green. One thing they mostly share is they are indeterminate varieties. We plant them 2 feet apart with beds 10' apart (there is a non-tomato bed between each pair of tomato beds). This allows air circulation and access for picking. It looks silly at this stage...but experience proves that they WILL be 6' tall and 4' wide by the end of August.
In one block, we experimented with wheat as a fall cover crop, broadcast on a weedy fallow area that was garden a couple years ago. Where we got a good dense stand of wheat, we just mowed out the tomato beds and left the wheat to ripen in 7' x 23' bands in between. It is starting to turn color, with nice large heads! We'll harvest by hand, then mulch and plant in the wheat beds between the tomato rows. We have a small graingrinder that will allow us to make cracked wheat for cereal, or coarse flour. Other friends have better grinding equipment if we make this a habit.
Mowing around the tomato beds was an experimental thing. We "inherited" a BCS walk-behind tractor, with rototiller and sickle bar mower attachments, this winter, and have been experimenting to see how it fits into our production system. It mows wheat and tall weeds very well, turning a fallow area into a partly mulched garden in a matter of minutes. It also will cut through chainlink fence quite nicely. It does balk a bit at T-posts, though that was a stalemate--non-fatal damage to both post and mower.
We make sure the dogs are locked up in their pen before using the BCS mower.
In summary, we decided that the BCS is great for mowing large patches of tall stuff where we are certain there are no metal objects, and we don't have to be perfect. The Austrian Scythe proved to be the best tool for mowing out the narrow, precise beds for the tomatoes. So, we are working hard to be more deliberate about putting things away, and the farm is looking very much more organized and tidy than ever. This also makes things easier for our wonderful volunteers to find things.
The wheat was dense enough that we were able to mulch the tomato beds with it, after laying down a narrow band of very broken-down sheep pen waste as a "fertility mulch". This is an effort to "stretch" our waste hay mulch. A consequence of a very wet spring/early summer, combined with a late start and having the best mulch-hauling cart out of commission for awhile early in the season, is that the hay pack in the sheep pens had decomposed beyond the prime weed-control-mulching stage already. So we are making do and experimenting. Another experiment is using the new (gasoline) riding lawnmower to collect grass clippings from the yard and lanes and using those as mulch. This promises to be a great way of augmenting potato mulch as it gets scattered around during our rummaging for new potatoes.
Speaking of new potatoes, we rummaged out the very first tiny new potatoes from "Pink Wink" (the first variety we planted, one that isn't even sold in catalogs that we got as a substitute a couple years ago, and has ended up being a real favorite). The WWOOFER, the Growing Growers apprentice, and I all savored a "potato communion" when I boiled those few tubers this morning. MMMMMMM...THAT'S why we're doing all this hard work! It will be a few weeks before we have enough to take to market, but we know they're coming!
We are also using the BCS tiller for the first mechanical tillage we've done in years. Accepting the negative consequence of compacted soil structure, we're "stale bedding" a large (75' x 25') area near the garden where Sweet Annie (sweet, indeed, but invasive and not eaten by any farm animal) and Japanese Hop Vine (a.k.a. "vegetable barbed wire") were allowed to proliferate by the tenants a few years ago. We'll plant in there soon, now that we've killed 4 or 5 crops of seedlings, and then clean cultivate (no mulch, lots of hoeing) the rest of the season, in an attempt to kill as many weed seeds as we can and not produce any more.
I have mixed feelings about the new gas-powered equipment, but overall they are very helpful at this stage in the farm's life, and I'm very grateful for them and the dedicated friend who likes to run them.
Water Line Meeting, June 12
Last week, I received a letter from the City of Lawrence about the "Kaw Water Treatment Plant Water Transmission Main." There will be a "Neighborhood Information Meeting" Thursday, June 12, from 6:30 to 7:30 at Woodlawn School, 508 Elm St. in North Lawrence (first street on the east, north of the Bridge)
Please attend this meeting if you are able. If not, please hold us in your thoughts and prayers.
*****
Who should be concerned about this water line project and how it is planned to be built in the backyards of people who didn't get to vote for the people who decided that it should be in their backyards?
--Anyone who pays taxes in the City of Lawrence...this is how the City is spending them.
--Anyone who owns property near the City of Lawrence...your business or back yard may be next.
--Actually, anyone who owns property, period...just as a sobering reflection that you really don't have much control over "your" land, just the obligation to pay taxes on it until some government wants to use it.
--Especially, anyone who says "But they can't DO that" when you hear that the City's contractor trespassed to do surveying on my pasture, or that the City can use Eminent Domain to forcibly TAKE my land even though it's not in the City (yet).
****
Interestingly, the letter was addressed "Dear Lawrence Resident"--as though I am already a Lawrence resident. When I noticed this, a chill went down my spine. I do not want to EVER be a Lawrence Resident. I am a Douglas County resident. That is where I bought my land, and where I want my land to stay.
Please attend this meeting if you are able. If not, please hold us in your thoughts and prayers.
*****
Who should be concerned about this water line project and how it is planned to be built in the backyards of people who didn't get to vote for the people who decided that it should be in their backyards?
--Anyone who pays taxes in the City of Lawrence...this is how the City is spending them.
--Anyone who owns property near the City of Lawrence...your business or back yard may be next.
--Actually, anyone who owns property, period...just as a sobering reflection that you really don't have much control over "your" land, just the obligation to pay taxes on it until some government wants to use it.
--Especially, anyone who says "But they can't DO that" when you hear that the City's contractor trespassed to do surveying on my pasture, or that the City can use Eminent Domain to forcibly TAKE my land even though it's not in the City (yet).
****
Interestingly, the letter was addressed "Dear Lawrence Resident"--as though I am already a Lawrence resident. When I noticed this, a chill went down my spine. I do not want to EVER be a Lawrence Resident. I am a Douglas County resident. That is where I bought my land, and where I want my land to stay.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Trojan Horses
Over the years, we have evolved an extensive written Pinwheel Farm Environmental Policy. It covers a dizzying array of environmental issues that ought to be considered whenever we undertake a project, to help ensure we are not creating future problems. When new, unforeseen problems arise, we re-read it and see if we need to add to or change the policies based on our experience. It is a "living document".
So I read through it, thinking about the proposed water main. What environmental policies might come into play?
At first, everything seemed fairly straight forward and obvious. Easy enough to insist that no chemical herbicides be used.
Then I read the section on biosecurity, and suddenly thought of the bulldozers. The surveyors' boots. The dump trucks. The hay bales for construction runoff mitigation.
Trojan horses.
As many weeds as we already have, there are some we don't. Some that we don't want because they are State noxious weeds, like Jimpson Weed. Some that we don't want because they are Pinwheel Farm noxious weeds, economically damaging to our wool crop, like Burdock. Probably hundreds of others we won't even know we don't want until they have colonized our farm unnoticed. Some we already have, but only in limited areas where we are aggressively controlling them, like bindweed.
How much dirt does it take to carry a weed seed? To see the garden spout up in the spring, you really wonder whether "dirt" is more seed than soil. Who knows what the illicit surveyors have already brought in? Their "gifts" could lie in waiting for years, taking us by surprise after a fire or a prticularly wet or dry season favors their sprouting.
How long can a noxious weed seed last in the soil, waiting to sprout up when conditions are exactly right? In the case of dodder or bindweed, 20 or 30 years.
Even sneakier, what about soil-borne micro-organisms? Many can last for decades in the soil. So far we have never had footrot or soremouth, both devastating sheep diseases that are soil-borne. But disease organisms can have more subtle effects. They can affect every member of the ecosystem: plants, trees, fungi, insects, birds, wildlife, other microorganisms.
When visitors walk in from the parking areas, we assume that any noxious weed seeds will fall out in the yard area, where we will notice alien plants promptly and prevent them from setting seed. If we know visitors are from other farms (excluding a few long-time "partner farms" with whome we share breeding stock and hence all associated parasites and diseases) we ask them to bring clean shoes or to use protective "booties" to prevent cross-contamination between our farms...for their safety as well as ours.
We feed hay in the barn, sheep pen, and garden areas only, where we are working frequently and can be aware of new weeds sprouting. Hay and straw often contain unwanted seeds. In fact, this is most likely how dodder found its way to our property. Dodder is a parasitic weed that the tenants allowed to proliferate on the pasture as well as in the garden. It's like a vegetative virus, reproducing not just from copious seeds with a 30-year life span, but also from any small fragment of stem that falls on a host plant. Parts of the pasture are saturated with dodder seed, waiting for propitious weather conditions to sprout. Do our neighbors want these infesting their soybean field? Construction equipment could be an insidious vector in spreading this virulent plant that is so economically devastating there is a zero tolerance for its seed in commercially marketed seed of any kind in all 50 states...the only such nationwide ban on any particular weed, to my knowledge.
Is this concern unrealistic? Actually, it's based on experience. We started out without ANY bindweed, "Mountain Mint", dodder, Sweet Annie, Moon Flower, or Japanese Hop Vine. These invasive plants have come in and established themselves, requiring untold amounts of labor every year to try to diminish their hold on the farm. One of these came in with dirt clinging to building stone that we purchased...many other plants came from that tiny bit of soil; some we welcomed; some we tolerated for a time and then eradicated them (though we still find seedlings now and then); one we will never be rid of. Some of these were first noticed by the tenants during my sabbatical, but they allowed them to spread unchecked so that they became well-established. A significant portion of our vegetable garden has been taken out of production for the ext couple years to try to contain and eradicate one of them.
We also purchased two insidious, economically devastating sheep diseases in our early ignorance of biosecurity. We have watched a friend go through the heartache of "depopulating" her sheep and goat farm due to a disease, having to wait several years for the soil to clean itself, and then begin again with new breeding stock. Such an outbreak would obliterate the extensive genetic improvement we've made in our flock. We've been working for twelve years to select a flock to exacting standards of performance, standards that are essential to our successful business. There are not other sheep available out there that meet all of our standards, because part of it is selection for thriving in our very specific micro-environment.
I'm having a hard time picturing the meticulous decontamination of every piece of personnel and equipment that crosses our border from neighboring properties that I KNOW harbor noxious weeds that we don't currently have on the pasture, like bindweed. And I know that sterilizing any fill dirt that's brought in won't stop every weed seed from sprouting...when I worked at a local greenhouse, Japanese Hop Vine sprouted regularly from every batch of soil we steam sterilized.
So I read through it, thinking about the proposed water main. What environmental policies might come into play?
At first, everything seemed fairly straight forward and obvious. Easy enough to insist that no chemical herbicides be used.
Then I read the section on biosecurity, and suddenly thought of the bulldozers. The surveyors' boots. The dump trucks. The hay bales for construction runoff mitigation.
Trojan horses.
As many weeds as we already have, there are some we don't. Some that we don't want because they are State noxious weeds, like Jimpson Weed. Some that we don't want because they are Pinwheel Farm noxious weeds, economically damaging to our wool crop, like Burdock. Probably hundreds of others we won't even know we don't want until they have colonized our farm unnoticed. Some we already have, but only in limited areas where we are aggressively controlling them, like bindweed.
How much dirt does it take to carry a weed seed? To see the garden spout up in the spring, you really wonder whether "dirt" is more seed than soil. Who knows what the illicit surveyors have already brought in? Their "gifts" could lie in waiting for years, taking us by surprise after a fire or a prticularly wet or dry season favors their sprouting.
How long can a noxious weed seed last in the soil, waiting to sprout up when conditions are exactly right? In the case of dodder or bindweed, 20 or 30 years.
Even sneakier, what about soil-borne micro-organisms? Many can last for decades in the soil. So far we have never had footrot or soremouth, both devastating sheep diseases that are soil-borne. But disease organisms can have more subtle effects. They can affect every member of the ecosystem: plants, trees, fungi, insects, birds, wildlife, other microorganisms.
When visitors walk in from the parking areas, we assume that any noxious weed seeds will fall out in the yard area, where we will notice alien plants promptly and prevent them from setting seed. If we know visitors are from other farms (excluding a few long-time "partner farms" with whome we share breeding stock and hence all associated parasites and diseases) we ask them to bring clean shoes or to use protective "booties" to prevent cross-contamination between our farms...for their safety as well as ours.
We feed hay in the barn, sheep pen, and garden areas only, where we are working frequently and can be aware of new weeds sprouting. Hay and straw often contain unwanted seeds. In fact, this is most likely how dodder found its way to our property. Dodder is a parasitic weed that the tenants allowed to proliferate on the pasture as well as in the garden. It's like a vegetative virus, reproducing not just from copious seeds with a 30-year life span, but also from any small fragment of stem that falls on a host plant. Parts of the pasture are saturated with dodder seed, waiting for propitious weather conditions to sprout. Do our neighbors want these infesting their soybean field? Construction equipment could be an insidious vector in spreading this virulent plant that is so economically devastating there is a zero tolerance for its seed in commercially marketed seed of any kind in all 50 states...the only such nationwide ban on any particular weed, to my knowledge.
Is this concern unrealistic? Actually, it's based on experience. We started out without ANY bindweed, "Mountain Mint", dodder, Sweet Annie, Moon Flower, or Japanese Hop Vine. These invasive plants have come in and established themselves, requiring untold amounts of labor every year to try to diminish their hold on the farm. One of these came in with dirt clinging to building stone that we purchased...many other plants came from that tiny bit of soil; some we welcomed; some we tolerated for a time and then eradicated them (though we still find seedlings now and then); one we will never be rid of. Some of these were first noticed by the tenants during my sabbatical, but they allowed them to spread unchecked so that they became well-established. A significant portion of our vegetable garden has been taken out of production for the ext couple years to try to contain and eradicate one of them.
We also purchased two insidious, economically devastating sheep diseases in our early ignorance of biosecurity. We have watched a friend go through the heartache of "depopulating" her sheep and goat farm due to a disease, having to wait several years for the soil to clean itself, and then begin again with new breeding stock. Such an outbreak would obliterate the extensive genetic improvement we've made in our flock. We've been working for twelve years to select a flock to exacting standards of performance, standards that are essential to our successful business. There are not other sheep available out there that meet all of our standards, because part of it is selection for thriving in our very specific micro-environment.
I'm having a hard time picturing the meticulous decontamination of every piece of personnel and equipment that crosses our border from neighboring properties that I KNOW harbor noxious weeds that we don't currently have on the pasture, like bindweed. And I know that sterilizing any fill dirt that's brought in won't stop every weed seed from sprouting...when I worked at a local greenhouse, Japanese Hop Vine sprouted regularly from every batch of soil we steam sterilized.
An Appeal
Please keep Pinwheel Farm in your thoughts and prayers in the weeks to come. A potentially disastrous scenario is unfolding.
The nearby City of Lawrence is proposing to run a large water main through the middle of my pasture and my CRP/wilderness area. The proposed alignment they showed me this afternoon would destroy the very fences my apprentice and I were building this afternoon, and restrict my access to half of my pasture during construction. Yes, that's a good observation. I'm not IN the City, so why do they want to put a water line here? Do they even have the right to, if I don't agree to it?
I don't have time for this. I need to be planting my crops, building my fences, managing the rotational grazing system to improve the pasture. I don't have time for meetings, phone calls, emails. Yet I've already spent fully 5 hours focused on this project that isn't mine--NOT counting the time I've spent talking to friends and family, writing this blog entry, or the other e-mails I've written tonight.
I need your help, in whatever way you can offer. Help getting my farm work done, to make up for time lost to meetings and phone calls. Someone to find me a cell phone with a good hands-free system that works well in the wind, so I can work and talk at the same time...and teach me how to use it. Expertise in various areas...legal, ag economics, fencing, rotational grazing management, business issues, the value of local food production and sustainable farming. Little stuff, like printer paper and ink and gas money, that can nickel and dime me to death. Meals. Moral support. Prayers. Ideas for how to minimize my losses if I can't get them to take their pipeline somewhere else. Networking. Letters to the editor, to City staff, etc. if this becomes necessary.
Why did they decide my farm was the ideal location for their water main? Because on the map it looks "undeveloped"--i.e., not a lot to be damaged by bringing in a bunch of heavy equipment, therefore not a lot of restoration costs. No roads. No buildings.
In reality, the farm is a 12-acre ecological "machine" or "factory". Every part is interdependent with every other part. The number of sheep that I have require the full use of the pasture. Less pasture equals less sheep, unless I feed them expensive (and less nutritious) purchased feed...and then I can't market "pasture-fed lambs" any more. Fewer sheep doesn't mean less work and less profit, it means the same work and no profit because much of the labor is "fixed costs". it takes the same time to move the fence for 10 sheep as for 20, and a minimum 21-day rotation is still required to conrol parasites. Fewer sheep mean less waste hay mulch for the garden, hence purchased inputs, more labor or fewer crops.
If the sheep don't graze an area, it reverts quickly to woodland...mostly scrub elm. I'm still struggling to revive the pasture after the tenants overgrazed it, then failed to controll the elm trees.
My sheep operation is not something that can be temporarily moved to a remote location. I need to be there every moment I can during lambing. I need to tend them several times a day. I need to hear their voices if they're in trouble. I am milking some of them right now. I need the infrastructure of the house, the garage, the old barn, the new barn, the working chute, the loading ramp, the llama, the Border Collies. It's not a laptop, it's a mainframe.
Fewer sheep means I couldn't supply all my customers. Those customers will go somewhere else for lamb, and probably not come back. So when I rebuild the flock, I'll have to rebuild the customer base. Again. I am still rebuilding it from the fiasco of the tenants during my sabbatical.
The fences aren't "legos" that can be pulled part piece by piece...the farm's whole fencing system is a single system electrically. The high-tensile wire is stretched continuously around two sides; cutting a gap for construction equipment would require rebuilding hundreds of feet. To my knowledge, this is the only green-cote high-tensile woven wire/high tensile electric sheep fence in Douglas County or maybe even Kansas. I built it painstakingly with the help of consultants in Iowa. I don't think the Yellow Pages will turn up a fencing contractor with any experience in this specialty area.
This system and I have worked together for 12 years now. I could not be doing what I am doing right now--working off the farm, rebuilding the farm, and farming--if most of what I do on the farm wasn't established procedures that require little thought. Taking away half of the pasture for a season or more (because it takes more than one season to establish good pasture) would be the farm's equivalent of a broken arm or leg. First I would have to learn to compensate for the loss of its use, and function at a much lower level for a time. Then I would have to re-learn how to use it when it became available again.
I have long envisioned the farm as an ark. Partly because it's a huge project attempted by one quirky visionary person at the direction of God! But mostly because it's envisioned as a refuge for the natural community of life in the face of a wide array of environmental challenges. These many species can shelter here, and breed, and survive to repopulate the surrounding area if folks ever stop paving things and start growing trees and grasslands. So running a pipeline through the middle of the "ark" is like, well, running a pipe through the hull of a ship. It will be awfully hard to keep it afloat and repair it at the same time, meanwhile taking care of all those animals.
It's a discouraging prospect. Especially when I was just feeling that by the end of this season I really will finally be on top of a number of things that I've struggled with for years...like the incomplete rotational grazing fences we are just now completing.
Thanks for all your support. I am creating and operating this farm for you, for our children and grandchildren and future generations. I am doing it for the wildlife that make it their home. But I can't do it alone. Your help will make it possible.
I can be contacted at natalyalowther@hotmail.com, or by phone 785-979-6786, or by U.S. Postal Service at P.O. Box 1561, Lawrence, KS 66044.
The nearby City of Lawrence is proposing to run a large water main through the middle of my pasture and my CRP/wilderness area. The proposed alignment they showed me this afternoon would destroy the very fences my apprentice and I were building this afternoon, and restrict my access to half of my pasture during construction. Yes, that's a good observation. I'm not IN the City, so why do they want to put a water line here? Do they even have the right to, if I don't agree to it?
I don't have time for this. I need to be planting my crops, building my fences, managing the rotational grazing system to improve the pasture. I don't have time for meetings, phone calls, emails. Yet I've already spent fully 5 hours focused on this project that isn't mine--NOT counting the time I've spent talking to friends and family, writing this blog entry, or the other e-mails I've written tonight.
I need your help, in whatever way you can offer. Help getting my farm work done, to make up for time lost to meetings and phone calls. Someone to find me a cell phone with a good hands-free system that works well in the wind, so I can work and talk at the same time...and teach me how to use it. Expertise in various areas...legal, ag economics, fencing, rotational grazing management, business issues, the value of local food production and sustainable farming. Little stuff, like printer paper and ink and gas money, that can nickel and dime me to death. Meals. Moral support. Prayers. Ideas for how to minimize my losses if I can't get them to take their pipeline somewhere else. Networking. Letters to the editor, to City staff, etc. if this becomes necessary.
Why did they decide my farm was the ideal location for their water main? Because on the map it looks "undeveloped"--i.e., not a lot to be damaged by bringing in a bunch of heavy equipment, therefore not a lot of restoration costs. No roads. No buildings.
In reality, the farm is a 12-acre ecological "machine" or "factory". Every part is interdependent with every other part. The number of sheep that I have require the full use of the pasture. Less pasture equals less sheep, unless I feed them expensive (and less nutritious) purchased feed...and then I can't market "pasture-fed lambs" any more. Fewer sheep doesn't mean less work and less profit, it means the same work and no profit because much of the labor is "fixed costs". it takes the same time to move the fence for 10 sheep as for 20, and a minimum 21-day rotation is still required to conrol parasites. Fewer sheep mean less waste hay mulch for the garden, hence purchased inputs, more labor or fewer crops.
If the sheep don't graze an area, it reverts quickly to woodland...mostly scrub elm. I'm still struggling to revive the pasture after the tenants overgrazed it, then failed to controll the elm trees.
My sheep operation is not something that can be temporarily moved to a remote location. I need to be there every moment I can during lambing. I need to tend them several times a day. I need to hear their voices if they're in trouble. I am milking some of them right now. I need the infrastructure of the house, the garage, the old barn, the new barn, the working chute, the loading ramp, the llama, the Border Collies. It's not a laptop, it's a mainframe.
Fewer sheep means I couldn't supply all my customers. Those customers will go somewhere else for lamb, and probably not come back. So when I rebuild the flock, I'll have to rebuild the customer base. Again. I am still rebuilding it from the fiasco of the tenants during my sabbatical.
The fences aren't "legos" that can be pulled part piece by piece...the farm's whole fencing system is a single system electrically. The high-tensile wire is stretched continuously around two sides; cutting a gap for construction equipment would require rebuilding hundreds of feet. To my knowledge, this is the only green-cote high-tensile woven wire/high tensile electric sheep fence in Douglas County or maybe even Kansas. I built it painstakingly with the help of consultants in Iowa. I don't think the Yellow Pages will turn up a fencing contractor with any experience in this specialty area.
This system and I have worked together for 12 years now. I could not be doing what I am doing right now--working off the farm, rebuilding the farm, and farming--if most of what I do on the farm wasn't established procedures that require little thought. Taking away half of the pasture for a season or more (because it takes more than one season to establish good pasture) would be the farm's equivalent of a broken arm or leg. First I would have to learn to compensate for the loss of its use, and function at a much lower level for a time. Then I would have to re-learn how to use it when it became available again.
I have long envisioned the farm as an ark. Partly because it's a huge project attempted by one quirky visionary person at the direction of God! But mostly because it's envisioned as a refuge for the natural community of life in the face of a wide array of environmental challenges. These many species can shelter here, and breed, and survive to repopulate the surrounding area if folks ever stop paving things and start growing trees and grasslands. So running a pipeline through the middle of the "ark" is like, well, running a pipe through the hull of a ship. It will be awfully hard to keep it afloat and repair it at the same time, meanwhile taking care of all those animals.
It's a discouraging prospect. Especially when I was just feeling that by the end of this season I really will finally be on top of a number of things that I've struggled with for years...like the incomplete rotational grazing fences we are just now completing.
Thanks for all your support. I am creating and operating this farm for you, for our children and grandchildren and future generations. I am doing it for the wildlife that make it their home. But I can't do it alone. Your help will make it possible.
I can be contacted at natalyalowther@hotmail.com, or by phone 785-979-6786, or by U.S. Postal Service at P.O. Box 1561, Lawrence, KS 66044.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
