back at the farm

I'm back at the farm for the first time in 6 months, and it's crazy to see how much has changed. For example, look at this before&after of the blackberry field:
We've also had a few changes in our web presence. Michelle is still doing fantastic work on the website, and Reed & Kevin have been giving regular updates on the google group. If anyone wants to join the google group, send an email to community@glasscenter.org and we'll set you up.

New Season at Glass Farm

A lot is being done to prepare for the change in seasons. The Texas summer sun is too hot for many plants currently in the greenhouse, and we're working hard to transplant them outside. Crops are starting to fruit, and we have gotten tomatoes, radishes, and the biggest zucchinis I've ever seen. Collectively, we've learned a lot this spring, and we will be better prepared to come into the fall season, Texas' second growing season.

A lot of other things have changed at the Glass community. Hugh moved to our community in Tyler, so I've taken over the greenhouse. Jeff will stay on the farm every other week, the other week out of town. We have two new members, or maybe I should say returning members, Tyler and Laura. They have been on the farm before, and they are returning to spend a while at the Glass Center.

The situations with the farm animals has changed, too. The goats now live down the street at the quonset hut. We were given 4 more hens and a rooster. The chickens have gotten out of the pen and now live free-range around the coop. The good news is that we have a hen brooding 18 eggs (!) which will surely give us a few baby chicks. The bad news is that the chickens are in danger from predators when they are outside the pen, and the goats are running out of food. The solution is to have movable fencing systems that can be put over land that we need the chickens and goats to feed off of.

Things are starting to heat up, and jumping in the lake looks like a better idea every day. Hopefully Texas summer won't be any worse than Florida summer.

Chickens

Chickens are great. I'm not sure why we didn't have these little magical egg producers before, but I'm sure glad we have them now.

Reed and I visited a local Chapel Hill farm where a nice couple, Tony and Caroline raise chickens and sheep. It was a riot to see these free range birds laying eggs in trees and even funnier when we chased them down to catch them.

I worked out a barter for some valued plants in exchange for 5 chickens and we took them home to the farm. At first they lived in the goat pin before we made a chicken coop out of recycled building material.

After taking Tony's advice of picking up the hens and throwing them into the coop every night for protection, the little obedient birds are doing it themselves automatically and are already laying eggs in the roost. We have gotten over a dozen eggs in less than a week, without even needing to feed them.

We plan on extending our operation with more hens and a rooster to hopefully maintain a sustainable population of this eggselent source of protein.

Garden and Aquaponics

Spring has come and everything at the farmer is getter greener. The water is starting to warm up, and trees are lively and awake. We’ve also had lots of rain to fill up the lake completely, causing the spillway to become a roaring waterfall gushing with foam.

Jeff and I have started to find our niche in some projects that we deem the most important – me with gardening and aquaponics, Jeff with blackberries. I’ll let him explain the blackberries sometime but now I’d like to share some information about aquaponics.

This relatively new field is based on creating a symbiotic relationship between plants and bacteria with fish. Our 1500 gallon fish tanks have been filled with lake water and 12-14 Tilapia. (We started small because once they get started, Tilapia are known to put rabbits to shame.) The water is cycled, along with all the effluent and emulsion from the fish, through this tank and into the growbeds for plants. The water then passes through a bio-filter, a fancy name for media on which bacteria is housed, to transform the nitrates and nitrites the fish produce into nitrogen for the plants to use. After the water is filtered, it is pumped back into the fish tank to aerate the water for the happy Tilapia. This recirculating aquasystem is designed for minimum input (tilapia are great protein converters), with virtually no waste, and is a great way to grow food organically without the use of chemical fertilizers. Once we can find a way to grow the fish food in the system it will truly become an integrated, sustainable approach to food production.

In addition to aquaponics, Michelle and I have made our own potting soil from decomposed pine bark mulch, decomposed manure, peat moss and some sand for the raised beds and greenhouse plants. They seem to love the concoction and have begun to flourish. Here is a link to the web album to view photos of some of the gardening progress.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HughADaniel/GlassCenterGardening
Unfortunately Michelle’s job calls her away from the farm, but she has been an inspiration for all and I am optimistic about continuing what we have started together.

We're Sailing!

My first time to blog recounts another first for me - sailing.

The story is a heroic one, involving some great cooperation at the farm. After Duel read the post about the sailboat, he became inspired. He walked down to where the boat was "sleeping" and saw an opportunity. Although a tree was literally growing through the boat trailer, plants growing inside the boat, and lichen forming on its ropes, he believed that it could be salvaged.

I watched as he grabbed an axe from the cabin and proceeded to chop down the pine tree that mysteriously grew around the metal frame holding up the boat. After the tree was felled, we counted 12 rings giving a little bit of insight to how long it had been since the boat was functional. He then proceeded, with help from Sarah, to clean out all of the pine leaves that had accumulated before bleaching its exterior. It was amazing to see the transformation that occurred in just a few hours.

The boat stayed like this for a few days until Michelle, a new Glass Center member, serendipitously found the sail inside a random closet. It was all coming together, but none of us even knew how to sail! After researching it for a few hours we got the boat in the water and I discovered one of the great joys in life - sailing. It felt exhilarating to get into open water, wind blowing through my hair, trekking speedily along without producing any pollution in the wake.

We might not have an idea which direction is starboard, but that doesn't stop us from sailing here at Glass Lake.

SAIL THIS BOAT

The Glass Center is looking for someone with an interest in wind-powered transportation, even if they can only come over on weekends to enjoy the lake.

We have a boat with a tree practically growing through it, but other than that (and its ragged sail) it should be in decent working condition... my uneducated prognosis would call for a few hundred dollars and an afternoon of enjoyable labor.

Come over and take a look. (This includes you, Mom)

Moving Right Along...

So what have we been up to lately? Plenty of things:

We've had a fun filled and eventful winter break out at the farm. Plenty of new friends have been made, new things have been created, and residents have come (and gone).

We were lucky to have two great people out for most of their break from school at Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches. Geoff, a former resident and frequent guest, and Shaina, a new friend and excellent cook. They've both gone back to school now, but will remain (hopefully) as active members of the community.

In addition to these more or less full time guests, we had several people in and out for much of December. We got a lot of things accomplished with their help. Thanks to Laura especially for helping me paint and organize the cabin a bit.

Founding Glass Center member Will has left us to continue his education. He is sorely missed out here, but I wish him the best with his studies. I suspect he'll be back out before too terribly long for a visit and an evaluation of our progress.

In other news, we have a new member, Hugh. Hugh is a recent graduate from The University of Texas and is currently preparing himself for Law School this fall. Hugh will be undertaking the task of more or less building our horticultural activities from the ground up. We're lucky to have him as he already has quite a bit of experience gardening and is passionate about learning as much as he can about it.

I've been trying to keep myself busy and motivated in the right directions. We've come along ways on the new greenhouse, which has been a great learning experience for all of us. I've never been in charge of such a large scale construction project. It's been interesting- and next time we do something like this it will be that much easier!

We've been able to make some progress with our local food usage, which is great since we aren't producing on the farm just yet. We picked up a ton of persimmons from a guy in Henderson which we've preserved and canned. No more Welch's on my PB&J's; just persimmon jam! Which brings me to another item; I picked up a good load of pecans from my grandparent's trees in Tyler. I've been trying to shell pecans anytime I've had a spare moment and will be attempting to make some pecan butter (we'll see how that turns out). Throw that onto some homemade bread (even though right now we aren't using local flour) and we've got an all natural, local meal.

A recent discovery is how delicious homemade pickles are. Thanks Shaina. We also have Shaina to thank for getting us into Kombucha, which is a fermented green tea beverage that has all kinds of health benefits such as increased immune system function. Plus, it's delicious!


Me explaining a little of the Brewing Process to Geoff.


Hugh and I have pretty much jumped head first into all-grain brewing, using crushed grains instead of malt extract. It takes a little bit more time and some more equipment, but I expect the results to be just fantastic. We'll have to wait just a bit longer before we'll know for sure. We currently have nearly 15 gallons of beer in various stages of fermenting. Some people might say we have a little bit of an obsession...

Currently fermenting:
IPA
Sam Adam's Lager Copy
Writeover Ale- this is an experiment using the second runnings from our IPA, various unused hops laying around, and some expired bread yeast. We'll see about all this...

I guess the final big thing is that I have returned to school. After a year and a half sabbatical I have decided to continue my studies, this time at SFA as an Environmental Science major. So I'll be commuting to Nacogdoches a few days a week all the while maintaining my duties around here as best I can. I think it will be an ideal situation for me. I hope my studies there will help me understand the farm a little better, and vice versa.