Meet Clover, Oliver and Tennessee
Just at 8 weeks old, our pigs were rooting and making way for new crops to emerge. Meet Clover (brown and white), Oliver (blonde), and Tennessee (all brown) below as they chomp and scratch away.
First week of the CSA
Photo from Kristin
Today is the first day of our first ever Community Supported Agriculture box. Included in this week’s share – a large bunch of kale, two bunches of D’Avignon (French breakfast) radish, a selection of herbs, garlic greens, an edible wild flower mix and a dozen eggs.
Our CSA members will get to enjoy several iterations of garlic this season. First, this week is a bundle of garlic greens. These greens are harvested from the stems of the growing plant and can be used in any way that you would use the stems of leeks. The garlic greens impart a subtle garlic flavor to stir fries and soups.
Second, when the garlic begins to send up flower stalks, these “scapes” are harvested. Scapes are great in egg dishes, salads or fermentation recipes. Harvesting the flowers promotes growth of the actual garlic bulb, which is the third way that our members will get their garlic fix. We planted several different varieties this year, one of which matures early and can be harvested in late May!
New York Times “Field Report: Plow Shares”
David La Spina for The New York Times (notice Circle Acres' Noel at the front left ; )
Christine Muhlke of the New York Times Magazine spent an overcast January day at a Crop Mob event right around the corner from Circle Acres. She said the article would be out in April, but it must have gotten bumped up somewhere along the line. A few weeks ago she gave me the heads up that it would be out at the end of February. The online version is up now, but if you have access to a newsstand you can get the print version of the magazine this Sunday.
The farmer Trace Ramsey, who is part of the Mob core as well as its documentarian, has watched the young-farmer phenomenon explode. ‘People are interested in authentic work,’ he said. ‘I think they’re tired of what they’ve been told they should accomplish in their life, and they’re starting to realize that it’s not all that exciting or beneficial from a community perspective or an individual perspective.’ At 36, Ramsey joked that he’s the old man of the project — remarkable considering the average American farmer is 57. But as people of all ages become involved, he said, ‘what started as a young-farmer movement is just becoming a farmer movement.’
Full story – Field Report: Plow Shares by Christine Muhlke
CSA Spots Still Open
The greenhouse has quickly filled up with all sorts of starts for this spring – lettuce, kale, collards, culinary herbs and such – with more on the way.
If you are still interested in participating in our CSA we will continue to accept new members until all spots are full. Learn more about receiving fresh, local vegetables each week at our CSA page.
We’re Ecologists Who Leave Food in Our Wake
One of the first projects started at circle acres is the slow rehabilitation of a small strip of woods bordering the eastern side of the property. For decades it has been treated with the classic rural land management practice of pushing all your junk into the edge of the woods. This funeral procession inevitably uproots trees and scrapes away soil, leaving a clean slate for opportunist plants. Always vigilant to cover our tracks and stabilize soil, these guardians of disturbed earth have proliferated so abundantly in our footsteps to the point where people have become confused, thinking the plants are the problem rather than the disturbances we create. While I greatly appreciate the services our Eurasian friends chinese privet and tree of heaven have provided to this point, there is good reasoning behind beginning the slow process of regeneration. In Leslie Sauer’s book, The Once and Future Forest, she gives one example of the impacts changing plant communities have on wildlife, not just regarding food availability, but also food value:
The nonnative honeysuckle and multiflora rose, spread so widely by the birds and other animals that feed on their sweet fruits, are of less benefit to other species, especially those dependent on high-lipid, that is, high fat, fruits of native forest species such as dogwood or viburnum that the invaders have replaced. Migratory songbirds, for example, require lipids to sustain them on their journeys. The native spicebush berry is 35% lipids; the multiflora rosehip is 40% sugar and only 10% lipids. As nonnative species expand throughout a region replacing high-lipid native species, important food sources for migratory birds decrease- yet another reason that restoring indigenous plant species is so important.
So now what? Do we mindlessly spray herbicides because these plants aren’t supposed to be here? Or can we step back, think, and use targeted disturbances and succession to establish plants that can feed us and our non-human friends? At the same time honoring the plants we remove every step of the way. The process we’ve employed involves first cutting down the chinese privet with our crosscut saw. The big pieces get stacked to dry, and will later heat our homes. The branches then get thrown to our milking goats. They strip the leaves and bark and fill their bellies, and in return give us fresh milk for the day and manure to feed the garden. The leftover branches then get turned into biochar, a stable soil amendment that can benefit our gardens for the next 1000 years (as evidenced by the master horticulturalists of the Amazon’s terra preta). We are also experimenting with mixing the biochar into a homemade potting soil, made from local materials, further reducing our carbon footprint by decreasing our participation in the degradation of Canada’s peat bogs and in the trucking of those materials thousands of miles.
That’s why I say, “invasive species, let’s love ‘em to death”.
Madeline lovin 'em to death
If you have found uses for our abundant opportunistic friends, or would like to know more about my vision of a cross-country invasive species tour, email me at noel dot acres at gmail.
It’s a lifestyle. It’s a political statement.
photo by Trace
I’m still tired from trudging through thick mud pushing heavy loads of compost for a new greenhouse and carrying rotten logs to build hugelkultur beds at our friend Bobby’s farm, Okfuskee Farm, yesterday for the Crop Mob.
Though I’m tired, I’m also very inspired. Crop Mob’s are seriously important to me for building community and skill sharing with likeminded people. I love the DIY attitude and group enthusiasm.
There’s a cool piece about yesterday’s mob in the News & Observer where Bobby perfectly sums up this thing we do: “It’s a lifestyle. It’s a political statement. It’s trying to reconnect with your food.”
Meet Walter!
There’s a new member of the circle acres family. Meet Walter!
Walter!
A former member of the Celebrity Dairy Clan, Walter is the most recent addition to our goat family. He and Floretta have hit it off, so check back in five months for some baby milk goats!
greenhouse construction – circle acres style!
One of many projects currently underway at circle acres is the construction of a greenhouse. There are future plans for a more permanent greenhouse, possibly a combination of cob and salvaged glass, but in the meantime we need a greenhouse that will be ready to use a week from now. So we’re building one, circle acres style. Scrap wood, local bamboo, downed cedar trees, salvaged greenhouse plastic, twine saved from bales of hay. On a warm January afternoon, I was watching Noel and Gray use a two person crosscut saw to trim cedar logs from our woods, thinking about the satisfaction of not buying new materials, the satisfaction of thinking of creative ways to meet our needs with what we can gather/scavenge ourselves. It’s not just about the result, it’s the whole process, it’s how we get there…
Share in the Harvest: Join our CSA
We are currently signing people up to our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) for 2010. Our CSA season will run from April 14th to July 28th.
If you are interested in receiving s a box of fresh vegetables and other goodies each week – this is for you! Find out more and sign up on our CSA page.
We’re Looking for Work-Traders
Circle Acres is a radical living and farming collective seeking to create a self sustaining ecosystem that provides its inhabitants and community with food, fuel, housing and medicine while breaking free from mechanization, resource extraction and consumerism.
It is our first year on the land so there are lots of projects underway and lots of learning opportunities to jump headfirst into. Some of the things you can potentially learn about while here include:
Permaculture, wildcrafting, rainwater catchment, human scale food production, sheet mulching, establishing a food forest, small scale animal husbandry, goat milking, growing medicinal herbs, making tinctures, vermicomposting, charcoal production, hugelkultur, growing mushrooms, graywater systems, grafting, seed saving, scything, dumpster diving, homemade potting soil from local materials, and cob construction.
Read more at Grow Food, and contact us at circleacres at gmail with your interest or for more information.
