2010 in Review-- The Farm in Bloom

Every year the farm seems to come a little further into focus. 2010 was an especially important year for us; we reached some of our goals this year, met some amazing farmers, and learned a lot of new skills. The year is over, but we're still eating the tomatoes we canned in the August heat!



2010 began with a big seed order. We planted our own gardens and worked with our fellow farmers Grace and Allen MacNeil on their gardens this season. We also started hundreds of annual and perennial herbs and flowers which we sold as plants at local farmers markets in Spencer, Greencastle, and Bloomington. We acquired a stand-up soil blocker for starting our seeds this year, and we were very pleased with the reduction in plastic we were able to achieve by using the soil blocks.



I learned to make soap early in 2010, under Grace's knowledgeable tutelage, and we began selling soap alongside our other farm products in April. This has been a great way for Grace and I to use our love of herbs, as well as our mutual surplus of cow and goat milk, to create something beautiful and useful from our farms. It has also become one of the most enjoyable things I do with my time, and a successful side business for myself and Grace.




There were many baby animals on the farm in the spring of 2010. We had a couple litters of beautiful lionhead rabbits, which have proven to be very popular as pets. I am proud of our rabbits, and love raising them. They have lovely soft coats and mellow dispositions.




Twin goats, Peter and Paul, were born to our new Toggenburg Lori on April Fools Day. This was the first goat birth we have attended, and Bruce was an excellent midwife. He also milked all season, and began learning to make cheese.



This was the first year we really concentrated on attending farmers markets and building our customer base there. Bloom Magazine captured this image of my farmer mentor, Jeff Hartenfeld, and I shooting the breeze while setting up at the Bloomington Community Farmers Market in the fall.



We also attended the Owen County Farmers Market and the Greencastle Farmers Market this year. Silvan is growing up among the community of farmers at these markets, and has been gifted with many homemade cookies, tiger lilies, and felted animals at the 2010 markets. I was reminded of the importance of small-town farmers markets this year, and prepared myself to help run these markets by accepting the position of Market Master for the Bloomington Winter Farmers Market.

In the cold heart of January, we are still busy bustling around the farmers market, making soap, and learning new ways to prepare the produce we've preserved and stored from 2010. We are also planning our gardens for 2011, using what we've learned from the past year to guide us.

Alphonse the Billy Goat and Winter Solstice

We have acquired our first billy goat! This is Alphonse, a good-natured, handsome alpine who was given to us by a friend with a large herd. She was getting tired of having him around, apparently mostly on account of his unpleasant odor-- she suggested we keep him for a while, then eat him, which is hard for me to conceptualize. He is a very young, somewhat timid little goat, with a pointy beard and a rangy look about him. I like him a lot.

Bruce and I were becoming concerned that our mama goats were going to go through their fall cycles without being bred, mostly because we have never gone through this process before and are so unsure of when they will be in heat and how to proceed. Having a billy goat around simplifies everything. He immediately adjusted to living with the other goats:



Hagar, with the buck teeth here, regards him with her usual mellow curiosity. Hannah, our pretty alpine mama, loves an opportunity to push somebody around-- she butts him relentlessly with her horns. Alphonse, however, seems to take being butted in stride. He spends most of his day eating hay and chewing the bark off of the pine trees in the goat yard. Everything smells pretty bad since we brought him home, but, whatever.

We are staying pretty hunkered down these days. Silvan and I have a lot of time to spend together, working on our various projects inside:



We are making a big deal about Solstice this year, for Silvan's sake and because this holiday stuff makes more sense with a little one around. Our magic Christmas tree:



I like the idea of bringing a live tree inside for the darkest days of the year, when I'm missing green things the most. And it's not hard to imagine early spiritual traditions, centered around the cycles of the natural world, would have started this practice.

Being pagan in the modern world involves a lot of creative re-interpretation of Christian holidays, re-imaginings of the little we know of older traditions, and a good bit of just making up a new tradition as we go along. As we work toward a coherent Solstice narrative that makes sense to us and to Silvan, we're forging a path for ourselves. It's a difficult process, but I think we'll emerge with a set of traditions that is perfect for us.

The Farm in December

The first really cold weather of the year hit this week here in southern Indiana. I've been spending a lot of time holed up by the wood stove, and the animals have been hunkering down too. Our five most well-behaved cats stay inside with us most of the time these days, but everyone else has a den of some sort. Bruce and I have been fussing over animal shelters all month, and this week was our opportunity to test and fine-tune the efficacy of our winter shelters.



Goats, chickens, peacocks, and our lone guinea all live together in the goat shed with a heat lamp in very cold weather. I was concerned about how these very different creatures would co-exist-- the peacocks are belligerent, the chickens are totally out of it, the guinea is relentlessly aggressive, and the goats love to butt things with their heads. But they're all doing amazingly well together, and it's one of my favorite things to stand in the goat shed, drink a beer, and visit with everyone while they're roosting and curling up in the straw for the night.

As we work toward getting the animals used to bedding down for the night in the shelters we've made for them, our mother hen, Puff, has posed the biggest problem:



In addition to the chicks Puff hatched this fall, we have 13 chicks we incubated in early November:



The chicks all need a low heat lamp, so I was hoping to bed them down together in our little playhouse brooder at night. But Puff is a good mama, and is going to make sure her chicks are warm no matter what. She sometimes flies at the older chicks, clucking angrily, and chases them out of the brooder. I will find her sitting happily on the roost, her chicks peeking out from under her wings, while the 13 older chicks peep woefully in a cluster outside the door. Just when I started getting really sick of chasing them all back into the brooder and shutting them in with Puff and her wrath, they all seemed to reach some kind of agreement.

Cloud Dragon watches them hungrily during the day.



The new baby lionhead bunnies are just beginning to emerge from their fur-lined nest and hop around the rabbit hutch. This is Silkie, the loveliest and softest of them:



Their hutch is in the greenhouse for the winter, and they seem happy and warm. Pennyroyal is growing thick on the ground in there, so it smells nice and sweet and green.



I worry more about our boy rabbit, Mopsy, who is spending the winter in the enclosed hutch by the toolshed:



We keep lots of straw in the hutch with Mopsy so he can make a warm burrow.

I am getting really excited about the possibility of breeding lionhead rabbits. We have lucked into a beautiful, healthy breeding pair, and the three babies are gorgeous. I think these rabbits will make great pets.

The ducks are out and about all day, splashing in the creek and sometimes dripping icicles from their wings. They are ecstatically happy every day, same as usual:



At night they know to bed down in the duck house we made for them, and they are still laying their pretty blue eggs there. I have noticed an increase in chicken eggs, as well, since we began using the heat lamp at night.



I am finding it hard to keep up with the farm work as it get colder. Getting fresh water to all the animals in freezing weather is a lot of work, and the daylight is already gone by the time Bruce returns from work. But it is worth it to have so much life around me at a time of year when everything seems dead or dormant. And solstice is right around the corner!

starting the farm-- an overview

This is the first entry for the Fullcircle Farm blog! My partner Bruce, our baby Silvan, and I are so excited to be starting a small organic market farm in rural Indiana. This blog will be a record of our progress on the long road to becoming self-sufficient and productive farmers, with our own old-fashioned homestead-- and all the new twists our rather unconventional lifestyle brings with it. We are building, and learning, from scratch, so our progress is indeed slow. But we are having a lot of fun along the way.



Our son, Silvan, was born in June of 2008. Before his birth, I was just beginning to farm on my own for the first time after a two-year apprenticeship at a local flower farm and a couple years before that spent as a farmhand at Phoenix Rising organic farm in Florida. I have been supporting myself with my small painting business, Rogue Renovation, for several years. Bruce has been working full-time in Information Technology for almost two years now, ever since graduating from U.C. and moving out here from Cincinnati. We hope to move his computer skills towards self-employment or working from home. Silvan has become our top priority for the 16 months of his life so far, but he is becoming a person in his own right-- it's time to get back to work on the farm. We will be vending at the Owen County Farmer's Market this Spring, learning the ropes.

During the first year of Silvan's life, our garden suffered but our supply of animals proliferated. We acquired our first chickens during my pregnancy, against my better judgment, but I've never regretted the decision. After a process of trial and error, we've worked towards a flock of Araucanas and Cuckoo Marans. Beautiful eggs and beautiful birds is a big priority for us. We've begun hatching chicks in our incubator this fall, and currently have 13 baby chicks with ear puffs and yellow maran heads in the brooder. Our one broody mother hen,a pretty white bantam named Puff, just hatched out three more little ones last week. They are occupying the summer rabbit hutch, and tiny Puff pecks any invaders viciously. This is Puff with last year's chicks:




Most of the year we have a surplus of lovely terracotta and blue-green eggs from the chickens, but this fall they have tapered off already. Our black runner ducks, however, continue to lay their big blue eggs wherever they happen to be bedding down for the night. We are still working on a duck house roughly designed on Eliot Coleman's plans in Four Season Harvest, but we are having trouble modifying the bicycle wheels to fit the structure and it is so far immobile, thus not very useful. The ducks are laying their eggs wherever they happen to be hanging out, these days.



We have been delighted with these runner ducks. They are gorgeous, pleasant, low-maintenance creatures who spend their days splashing in the creek and digging in the mud with their bills, which makes a cool noise. There are five duck eggs in the incubator, and we are crossing our fingers that they will hatch next weekend.



We got our first goats last Spring; two Alpines, a young mama and her month- old baby. Hannah and Esau have grown a lot since then, and have overcome their skittishness and come to expect treats and pets. They are beautiful, healthy goats. Hannah gave us good milk for Silvan as he was first beginning to eat solid foods. We like having these two goats so much that we acquired a mama and baby Nubian over the summer. Hagar was skinny and anemic when we bought her, and has never been milked as a result. Her little son Saul was bottle-fed, and has become super cuddly. He squirms through the gates of the goat yard and wanders around with the dogs and cats, and seems to think Silvan is another baby goat. Our little goat herd is healthy and doing well, and we are watching for the mamas to go into heat.



I have wanted a flock of peacocks since I was a little girl, of course. We acquired Hera, Io, and Icarus last Spring from a local breeder. They live their own lives, strolling in the garden and roosting in the pine tree. Here they are pictured on the bunny hospital.

Bruce, Silvan and I live in a little house on River Road near Spencer, Indiana. Our house is 100 years old, and has had a hard life so far. I think it of it as a river shack, but it has a good roof, a big kitchen, and a woodburning stove that keeps us very toasty.



My brother and I bought this house together to live in and renovate while he finished his PhD and I worked on getting the farm in Greencastle to a livable state. Mike is now renovating another old farmhouse in Bloomington, and Bruce and I are finishing the job of renovating this one. We hope to finish working on the house and sell it within the next couple of years. In the meantime, it is an awesome place for us-- just getting a little crowded with all the animals. We have built a goat shed in addition to the brooder, and just erected a small greenhouse. Our good dogs Daisy and Gemini guard the farm. We are up to nine cats of all descriptions, who are the unofficial rulers of this farm; a little statue of Bast sits at the entrance to the garden.

Our larger project is the creation of Fullcircle Farm in Greencastle, Indiana, on an 80-acre piece of land that has been in my family for about 150 years. We are building from the ground up-- the original barn and farmhouse are long gone, and no one in my family has lived on this piece of land for generations.




My ex-girlfriend Kilgore and I built this cabin when we moved to Indiana from Florida in 2003. It was an arduous process; we built with hand tools in the absence of electricity, hauled water in from town, and lived in a tent for most of the first two years of my time here. We built our painting business at the same time. When Kilgore left to become a tattoo artist in Hawaii, I stayed and continued working on this project for the next few years, first alone and then with the prodigious help of my farmer friend, Grant. Now I am lucky to have Bruce; a skilled, enthusiastic, loving partner in this project. We were able to run electricity to the cabin and had a well dug over the summer. I have a small tractor, the beginnings of a barn, and some good tools.

For the past three years, I have been intensively cover-cropping a three acre piece of the larger field on this land. The rest of the 40-acres of field is being rented to a more conventional farmer, but we have applied for funding through the USDA Equip program to take over this part of the land and plant it in organic hay. The process of converting a field that has been subjected to years of industrial-style farming is time-consuming, but our efforts slowly bear fruit.



We spend as much time as we can exploring the 40 acres of amazing old-growth woods on the land; this summer we discovered a wonderful hidden pawpaw grove, with a magic tree frog living amongst the leaves. The possibilities seem endless to us. I hope you'll look in on us from time to time as we work towards our dream.

peace,
J.D.