http://tdn.com/lifestyles/wwoofing-a-way-to-travel-meet-people-oh-and-learn/article_e89eea58-1e02-11e1-92ba-0019bb2963f4.html
Letter To Farm Members Nov 2011
Hi Farm Members
Not being an accountant, this ‘bill’ may bear no relation to any bill in your past, but it is serving an important purpose.
It is helping me figure out the economy of the community, the farm, and the world.
A farm is a great place to develop that kind of sense, and that’s one of the big reasons I love it when you come here, whether to rest or to work. I want to offer that place, and I want the privilege of bringing you Great Food. GF will tell you the truth. It nods to the land, the farmer, the ethic, the connection. It tastes real on the tongue.
At any rate, as farmers we decided this was the year we had to start breaking even, and we’re getting closer.
As a business model, this plan is absurd. As a community model, it rocks.
While Larry and I contribute ongoing everyday farm work and $ through workshops, portable sawmill work, selling wool, working with neighboring farms, and of course juggling (picture that) our wonderful animals, and more…our goal as a CSA is to have our member support to the tune of covering 1/2 the feed bill.
In summary:
The ten of you bought into this plan, some for $100 earlier this year, and some for lots of labor, some both.
I connect you with as much meat as possible and throw in a few extra farm products, from wool to breadboards, wine and cheese, to pickles. Your check is about feeding the animals. There are ten of you, and collectively you got about half of the meat we produced. (We ate some and bartered some.) It would be good if the fees paid for 1/2 the animal feed. But some of you only got one small load of meat, and others much more than that. That’s where I don’t want to be an accountant, but rather ask you to figure out what works for you.
Total yearly feed bill: $4,475.38.
Here are two suggested calculating algorithms:
ONE
half the feed would be $2,237.69 / so 10 people equals $22380 each
If you want to tip the farmer or extend special blessings, or
If you feel like you got way more meat than that, or
If you compared ‘real’ prices and concluded that the amount of meat AND having part of a farm is worth more…
Then adjust that $number up.
If you only got one tiny portion, or
If you had a rough year, or
if I neglected to remember your birthday, or
you came to the farm and did a bunch of work
Then adjust your $number down.
TWO
Here are some random and approximate online prices for pastured or organic meat:
Beef $8/lb
Pork $8-15
Lamb $9-16
Capons $8/lb
Prices for farm-fresh produce of course also vary according to season.
It would take me a week to conjure up how much it costs to maintain all the systems that get jobs done on the farm, or to care for the animals, or our hourly value as workers, or any other way to do an accounting short of taking on a corporate financial bean counting department.
You may have to make several trips up and down to come up with the right number. It’ll feel right. I hope you feel you are collaborating in saving the world by eating well.
Then… email me with change/addition ideas for the coming year.
and, based on your calculations, send a check or suggest a barter.
and… plan a trip to the farm.
I love you.
Sandy
Sandy Bradley
Granny’s Farm
31 Hurt Road
Raymond, WA 98577
360 942 0099
sandy@potluck.com
Hog!
Come learn more about real food. Brandon and Lauren do a magnificent job of acquainting us with the many tasty aspects of pork. Do join us for the day! This is the last pig until next winter, at least!
February 6th: Pork Butchery in Raymond
We had so much fun during our January class in Raymond at Granny’s Farm we’re doing another one! Sunday, Feb. 6th at 9 o’clock, join us for a full pig carcass breakdown, complete with sausage making and other morsels of charcuterie: bacon, pancetta, black pudding, head-cheese, the perfect stock…
Our hosts at the farm, Sandy and Larry, outdo themselves with a complete lunch, fresh from their farm. Altogether the price for a ticket is $200, including a 20 lb. share of their farm-raised pork. The class is completely hands-on; you will chop your own chops and carve your own roasts.
Email farmsteadmeatsmith@gmail.com for details and sandybradley@pacifier.com for reservations.
Lauren and Brandon at Farmstead Meatsmith.
Sandy Bradley
31 Hurt Road
Raymond, WA 98577
360 942 0099
sandy@potluck.com
Eating the Whole Hog
Class: Monday, January 17 (MLKing Holiday) from 9-5 at our farm (below).
Brandon and Lauren Sheard will share their skills and enthusiasm as abattoirs, butchers, charcutiers and local food lovers.
Larry will slaughter a few days beforehand, and you’re welcome to attend that for free. Get in touch with Larry to figure out timing. (Warnberg@pacifier.com)
The class will spend Monday taking the pig apart and learning how to make proscuitto, salami, anduille, roasts, ribs, bacom, lard, etc. Yum.
The class will be limited to 12 (including us), so you must sign up in advance. Lunch and dinner are included. $100 fee ($75 to the teachers, $25 applied to the fee we pay.)
If others would like to come and just enjoy the farm, they are welcome. Anybody want to help by taking on the kids for attending parents? Brandon and Laura have a 18 month old who’ll really enjoy the farm, I’m sure.
Do please let me know if you are interested. I’m so looking foward to it!
Sandy
sandy@potluck.com
Granny’s Farm 2010
Farm Update
Population:
- 2 donkeys
- 1 steer
- 2 pigs
- 18 laying hens
- 39 baby broilers (changes monthly)
- 3 cats
- 4 adult does expecting in April
- 6 doelings expecting in August
- 5 wethers
- 3 humans (Larry and me, and Jennifer Mellilo, treasured WWOOFer.)
Favorite new tools:
Sandy: Pioneer Maid Woodstove with warming oven, water jacket and stainless steel cook top.
Larry: Portable band saw which slices logs into lumber. No stopping him now.
Jennifer: her new Kentucky Mandolin
2009 Production:
- 125 gallons of fruit wine: black berry, blueberry, raspberry, marion berry, rhubarb, quince, apple, dandylion, wild plum, blue elderberry, pear……
- 248 meat chickens
- 450 pounds of steer meat (thanks “Bum.”)
- 60 pounds of goat meat
- 500 pounds of cheese
- 15 dozen jars of pickles, canned cherries, cranberry sauce, juice, etc.
- plenty of produce and root crops
We’ve been eating really well this winter.
Enterprises in progress, some worthy of expansion through your participation:
- Vegetable garden
- Fruit and food forest
- Timber management and sustainable harvest
- Freshened goats with lots of milk for cheese making
- Broiler chickens in 3 tractors, scheduled to slaughter 40 per month for pre-ordered sales on farm
- Green cemetery permitting process begun
- Local square dances with live music
- Honey bees
We hope to build
- A bread/pizza oven
- A sauna and deck at the pond
- Storage buildings or caves for cheese, wine and roots
- Guest cabins
- Cheese kitchen
- Kitchen remodel
If you would like to be involved in any of these, get in touch and we’ll try to schedule so you get the farm adventure you’d most enjoy. Are there other things you’d like to do here?
Proposed Calendar
April 7 onward Kidding, fresh goat milk
April 18 Community Dance
April 24 Nature walk on the farm with Naturalist Brent Naylor, followed by lunch.
May 7 Chicken slaughter. (Order in advance).
May 12 Tilth benefit chicken dinner at 42nd Street Cafe.
May 16 Community dance
June 11 Slaughter chickens again.
July 11-18 The Raspberry Jam: come visit, make jam, can cherries, have some music, — just let us know how many people and when to expect you so we can feed you well. July 16 is another chicken slaughter
August 10+ six does ready to kid
August 16-22 The Blueberry Jam: pick blueberries, make jam, pie, wine, etc. Chickens slaughtered the 20th (your participation not required)
September 24 chicken slaughter
October 9+ Cider pressing, make cranberry sauce, etc.
October 29 chicken slaughter.
November 4-7 Dare to Be Square in Seattle
November 12-14 Tilth Conference in Port Townsend
November 19 Turkey slaughter (order by June 30)
December 26-31 Sandy with Laurie and Cathie at Brasstown, NC.
Then hibernate, interrupted by good food and visits.
In between, we’ll pursue the usual canning, tanning, pruning, planting, making of wine, music and good food, gathering firewood and mushrooms, etc.
2010 Opportunities for Volunteers
2010 WWOOF Opportunities Update
We’ve been on the farm for over a year, and have learned a lot about growing food here. Last year was filled with experiments, this year we will pursue the most promising ones, and would like to add 1-2 WWOOFers for the growing season, ideally preparing you for the following year’s enterprise, either with us or elsewhere.
The average age of farmers in this valley is about 75. Many affordable farms will be coming available, and it is our hope that our valley can become a major local food provider.
We have the basic skills and equipment in place here, and hope to provide an opportunity for 1-2 WWOOFers to collaborate in several arenas:
Raising meat chickens in Salatin-style chicken tractors (Last year we qualified for the license to raise up to 1000 birds for on-farm sale. We raised, slaughtered, dressed and sold about 120 chickens in two batches, and turned a profit of about $700.) We have 3 ‘tractors,’ a ‘plucker,’ and all the necessary equipment. We have barely scratched the surface of the market.
Growing fruits and vegetables on about 2 acres of heavy rock-free soil. 2 donkeys and 18 goats provide lots of manure, which we compost. We have sold at the small farmers’ market in Raymond, and there are others in the area. We have small informal farm events, and we eagerly feed our guests from the garden.
Wine-making. (Larry made 125 gallons of very good fruit wine. It is part of our farm hospitality.)
We will freshen four goats in April, and start making ricotta, chevre, and small batches of cheddared varieties to store as hard cheese. We plan to build a Grade A creamery kitchen within the next year, which will enable us to sell cheese to the public. Currently we consume all we make. We’ll freshen 6 more yearlings in August, and will be milking through October.
We still find time for playing Old Time Music and enjoying our farm lives. A few congenial collaborators would be most welcome, allowing us to help raise the next generation of farmers and perhaps even find time to pursue our passion for bicycling through farmlands and doing some WWOOFing again ourselves.
Get in touch, and if we feel like we’re a good match, come stay for 2 weeks so we can get to know each other. (That goes both ways, of course.) We’re eager to settle in for a productive season with compatible team mates. Come for two weeks, and we’ll see after that.
The donkeys, goats, chickens and pigs are part of our efforts to improve our soil. They are a major source of nutrition here, converting the countryside foliage into many forms of protein. Therefore, vegetarians are not a good fit for us. The kitchen is part of the whole farm ecology.
Allergies and Barnyards
Science says kids who grow up around farm animals have fewer allergies as adults. I think that’s why 4-year-olds of our species are compelled to go to the barnyard and pick up poop. Their compulsion is rewarded with an allergy-free adulthood, and the gene pool prospers.
Anthony Vickerstaf and Tierney Creech’s video of the farm!
Meet the goats and chickens! Music by Jere Canote on the CD “Uke Life.”
Farm Photos
You can find pictures of the farm here.
more about “Granny’s Potluck Farm on Flickr“, posted with vodpod
And even more here.
At Peace by One’s Own Hand
Rob Girdis was full of magic! His choice leaves us deeply saddened, and plagued by questions like: “What could I have done to help him find another path to peace?”
The answer is this: You did everything you could, most of the time, and in many ways. You loved him well. You appreciated his work, and were forgiving when your dream instrument was in the pipeline longer than you had hoped. You hugged him back. You allowed him to be quiet at times, even withdrawn. And now you must forgive him for leaving us.
If genius is a blessing, it is the polar opposite of the blessing of peace. In order to work the magic as he did, I suspect he had to wait until the energy was just right and he could turn himself over to the hyper-focus demanded to produce such fine work. It’s not a simple on/off switch that you can flip at will. You have to wait for the moment to arrive, then leap on it and not allow yourself to be interrupted in your process. You can’t force yourself to be there, and when you promise that you will make a guitar for someone you love you are committing yourself to the tyranny of that hyperfocus. It’s thrilling to work that way, but it exacts a toll on your body, mind, and friendships.
So, when you can’t get to that creative place, you feel guilty about making your friends wait, and oppressed by the monumentally demanding task ahead. The flip side is the array of exhilarating rewards when the job is completed. You know the work is good, and the person receiving your gift (purchase is too crass a word) takes it personally, and that’s appropriate!
I’d like to try to explain what that roller coaster ride is like from the inside. I lay no claim to genius like Rob’s, but I know the passion and depression cycle very well. This is not a treatise on bipolar disorder, or any other clinical diagnosis, but more about what that moment is like which makes escape irresistible.
Maybe roller coaster is the wrong image. It’s upside-down. On that ride you climb slowly to the top in anticipation of the rush down the other side, which is most exciting at the bottom when you change directions and head up again. In life there is no guarantee that the climb to the top of the ride will yield the promised rewards. Sometimes that climb takes forever and has many detours. (All of my bad dreams are about the travails of ‘getting to the gig,’ and I never actually arrive before I awake.)
When you touch a hot pot, your withdrawal is immediate and involuntary. Ouch! You pull away. The urge to escape the sensation of despair is that demanding of action. It mirrors the passionate urge to complete the insistent task at hand, except the outlet for the latter urge is to keep working towards the goal, maybe the next perfect guitar. There is no similar outlet to escape despair. You’re stuck with it until it goes away. Some escapes are available at times: playing music, getting drugged or drunk, going to sleep for a few weeks maybe, but they are temporary. After a while you realize that you are always going to go back to that awful place where life is impossible.
You can’t accomplish yourself out of a depression. You can only try to hide from it.
I know many of my own friends were confused by the two of me: the one that hugged them enthusiastically one day, and the one that withdrew and couldn’t meet their eyes the next. Which reaction was ‘real?’ They both were, though I preferred to be the one who hugged.
Calling dances and doing the radio show were extra taxing in the same way. I figured out how to do those things in my hyper moments, but then had to execute them when i was ‘down’ as well. I could still remember what I used to say to make people circle to the left, so I learned to act like I meant it every time, even when I was down. Then, hopefully when I was safely alone, I’d burst into tears for a while.
You don’t get to select when you’ll be hyper/inspired/energized. It’s totally unpredictable. You may have to accept the gig while up, and accomplish it while down. Until I was 50 (!) I didn’t know there were two different conditions running my thoughts: I thought I was the same all the time, and the world just got extra irritating once in a while for no apparent reason. The actual reason? I was down.
The urge to escape the down is greater than any of our automatic inhibitors which insist we be ‘reasonable.’ It’s akin to the opposite passion for ‘real truth’ in its intensity, whether your pursuit be beauty, power or holiness.
Do we enjoy the highs more because there are lows? I don’t think so. The joy is so absolute that nothing else can possibly compare. I’m weary of the agony of the roller coaster. The perceptions of the up and the down sides are equally valid, and the conclusions equally true. It’s hard to say ‘no’ to chasing your dream, even if you are aware of your swings. It can feel like “I know how to save the world – the path is clear.” If you feel like that, wouldn’t it be dishonest to your passion and a denial of our concept of community to decide on a ‘no?’ If you know how to do it, and you think it’s important, you must do it.
I’ve wondered if a lobotomy would level things out for me, (not awfully seriously usually). What would it be like to never have to do a ‘low’ and never get a ‘high?’ For one thing, it would be very very peaceful by comparison. Urgency is not a comforting presence, and it comes with both sides of the coin.
I’m tremendously grateful to Rob for his willingness to persist with his most creative self rather than choosing some drugged version of ‘average.’ He generously dared to love us and make perfect guitars for us. It was not easy to be Rob Girdis. So, though I’ll miss him, I have a little warm comfy place in my heart that knows he decided to finally get some real peace. He trusted us to carry on with the things he knew to be important. We all know a little of his message, and in gratitude we each carry our morsel forward so his hard work is not lost.
