Week 2 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC: Seed-starting & Bees!

Forecast: Highs in the low to mid-50s. Cloudy Tuesday; sunny Wednesday.

This week on the farm we'll disassemble my parents' beehive and try to see if we can find some clues for why their bees might have died over the winter. Here are a couple of videos that will give you a little background on Colony Collapse Disorder, including one on beekeeping in cities:

Marla Spivak on Colony Collapse Disorder: http://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing

Noah Wilson-Rich on Urban Beekeeping: http://www.ted.com/talks/noah_wilson_rich_every_city_needs_healthy_honey_bees

And from PBS's Nature, a clip on the "dance-language" of bees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-8QuBDkkw

If you are interested in learning more about bees, beekeeping, and other pollinators, there are many local opportunities to do so. The Kalamazoo Bee Club meets monthly at the Kalamazoo Nature Center and hosts monthly field days at their club apiary beginning in May. John & I will be attending these events and you'd be welcome to ride with us if you are interested. Also, on April 12, Dr. Ann Fraser will be leading a native pollinators workshop at The Barn at Riverview Launch. You can find out more information about that here: http://kalamazoobeeclub.org/images/NPW_eFlyer.pdf.

Also this week, we will talk about a variety of methods for starting your own transplants from seed. And of course, you'll be checking on your worms to see how they like their new homes and the apple mash you gave them last week. Remember to bring them some fresh food! 

We'll see you soon. Amy & John

Background Material for Monday's Class (April 7)

On Monday, John & I want to share with you our philosophy and process for choosing what seeds to grow on our farm. Perhaps this will help you in your decision-making about what seeds you'd like to grow in your on-campus gardening project.

Some of the subjects we'll be covering include crop biodiversity, hybridization, genetically modified organisms, and seed ownership. I've selected a few videos which I hope will give you some context for understanding what we'll be talking about. Please watch them before class and bring us your questions about the issues they raise.

Dr. Carey Fowler, biodiversity archivist: http://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food#t-23494

Gary Hirschberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGyOwnqpCKk

Winona LaDuke, author and activist: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxTC-Winona-LaDuke-Seeds-of-O

Vandana Shiva, physicist, author, activist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsK3V04LAvw

Please bring the seed catalogs that we gave you last week to class with you. When we handed them out, we asked you to read them through with a couple of objectives. First, think about what plant varieties offered in your catalog you might like to plant for your gardening project. Second, see if you can answer the following questions about your catalog:

What is the company's seed philosophy?

What is the ratio of heirloom and/or open-pollinated varieties versus F1 hybrids that are offered?

Does the company offer plant protected varieties?

Are organic seeds offered?

Are seeds treated or untreated (with pesticides)?

Does the catalog provide growing information about each crop?

What percent of the seeds are grown by the company? If the company is purchasing seed from outside suppliers, does it list or feature any of its suppliers?

What kind of ecological footprint does this catalog represent?

Looking forward to talking with you on Monday!

Week 1 at Harvest of Joy Farm, LLC

Weather forecast: Highs around 50 degrees F. Partly cloudy, chance of wind.

I'm looking forward to introducing you all to the farm this week! We'll give you a quick farm tour when you arrive and then we're going to jump right into some of the basic elements of farming and gardening: seeds and soil. We are beginning to start transplants indoors for the farm and we'll show you a few different methods for starting your own transplants at home and talk about why you might want to do this rather than purchase your plants from a greenhouse.

Healthy soil is the key to healthy plants (and healthy food!) and so we spend a lot of time and energy working to improve the vitality of our soil. One way that we do this is by adding compost to our growing beds. This week on the farm we'll show you one of my favorite methods of composting: vermi-composting with red worms. Each lab group will set up a worm bin on the farm that they will then care for throughout the remainder of the quarter.

Here's a video that explains why vermicompost is so great for plants: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFGQR5ERaPQ. Take a look!

Learning Philosophy

Several of you expressed an interest in learning about apiculture (beekeeping) this quarter. Well, me too! John & I will be installing two new hives on the farm this spring and we've been doing a lot of research these past couple of months to try to figure out how we can best help the bees thrive once they get here. Most recently, I've been reading Michael Bush's "The Practical Beekeeper: Beekeeping Naturally." In the third chapter of this book, Bush details his philosophy of how to learn to be a good beekeeper. When I read it, I immediately thought of this class and the type of learning environment we will be creating through our various course activities, one within which I hope we will be making lots of mistakes, searching for connections within a chaotic mess of experiences and information, and practicing becoming resilient life-long learners.

Here's a link to Bush's philosophy on his website: http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslearning.htm. Check it out!

Follow the Farm

If you want to follow Harvest of Joy Farm's activities on our wordpress site or on Facebook, here are the links to do that:

http://harvestofjoyfarm.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Harvest-of-Joy-Farm-LLC/168871449887455?ref=hl

You can also find these links on the right sidebar of this blog.

Kalamazoo College CSA Course 2014!

The sun is shining on Harvest of Joy Farm, LLC today and we are excited to welcome our new group of CSA students out to the farm in just a couple of days. When we met with you, our new students, several weeks ago to determine what you most wanted to learn from the course, your learning goals fell into two categories: general knowledge of food systems and practical skills for navigating those food systems in order to find and/or produce good, healthy food. Here are some of the food-systems topics we'll be exploring during the next ten weeks:

Food Systems Knowledge
Food access, equity, sovereignty, and culture
Food access/farming in urban environments
Nutrition, health, and food
Economics of food systems
The implications of global agribusiness
Local communities & food
Climate change & agriculture
Agro-ecology

Obviously, these are big topics and we won't be able to cover every single one of them in depth over the next ten weeks. Instead, we'll try to get a big-picture view of our food system(s) as we view it through the lens of each of these issues and explore the connections between them. Each of you will take responsibility for facilitating our learning about one or more of these topics during our Monday evening on-campus class meetings. I am working to create a calendar sign-up with these weekly topics and hope to have it posted soon.

At the same time as we're constructing a big-picture view of how food is produced and consumed in this country and around the globe, we'll be exploring the ways that my farm in particular interfaces with the larger food system and culture. My business partner John Edgerton and I will teach you how and why we do what we do and in the process strive to include lessons in the following practical skills that you have included in your learning goals:

Practical Skills
Business planning
CSA & garden planning
Apiculture
Vermiculture
Fruit tree grafting
Basic gardening skills
How to find and afford good local food

You'll get to practice these skills during your weekly farm visits and then apply them to your on-campus gardening projects. We'll spend some time during this coming Monday's class making plans for these on-campus projects. We'll also decide on a grading rubric for the course and make plans for any field trips you'd like to take to other farms, events, or organizations. 

Also on Monday, John & I will talk a bit about business and farm planning. In  preparation for this, I'm going to email you our farm planning documents, including our business plan, production plan, and field maps. Please read our business plan thoroughly and glance through the production plan and field maps. You won't understand the production plan and field maps at first glance, but it will help on Monday when we go over them if you've seen them before. 

I think it might be useful for you to look at this bulletin from the North Carolina Cooperative Extension as well:  http://growingsmallfarms.ces.ncsu.edu/growingsmallfarms-csaguide/. It contains a bullet-point list of many of the logistical considerations of starting up a CSA business. Some of these items may not have occurred to you as issues to consider when starting up a business--I know that I didn't think about some of them before undertaking this endeavor myself! On Monday we can talk about what decisions I made when starting the business and how they've played out over the past three years. Looking forward to our conversation! Dewing 114, 6:30pm. See you then!