Monday, April 29, 2013

13APR29

Greetings from Baker Heritage Farms:

Sometimes the problems you run into are out of your control. For instance, this is a late update as we had an internet outage, something that was out of our control.

What is within our control, however, is the way we manage our time, and we have not been doing so good at managing our time this year. Hopefully we will be able to work on improving that over the next several months.

Due to off-farm commitments, we did not have the opportunity to do anything this past week, and we will be crunched for time over the next two months. Not a good time to be crunched for time if you want to be a farmer.

Note to all future backyard and small acreage farmers - try to plan your time so that you are able to dedicate the necessary amount to your farming operations during critical phases, including land preparation, seed planning and ordering, planting, and harvesting. Weather does not always cooperate (as we have learned over the past two years) and you need to be prepared to get out into the fields as soon as weather permits, or you can lose a whole season. Fortunately, we are still in our infant stages and are planning to be diversified enough to always have productive work to do.

Donald checked the seedlings yesterday and found that they were growing well, but still a little weak to be planted. In our case, that is good, as we still need to till the plots where they will be planted.

Debbie attended a Composting class yesterday at the Kerr Center, an extra class for her Beginning Farmer and Rancher program. Donald attended last year and Debbie said that she now has a better understanding of what he was talking about when he returned from his class. The purpose of this class is to learn approaches to building soil fertility for sustainable marketing farming, with a focus on compost, vermicompost (worms), compost tea, the soil food web, microbial innoculants, biochar, and discussions on cover crops, green manures, and organic systems.

Debbie enjoyed the class and found that it was very informative, interesting, and fun with good speakers that provided good information and gave her some good ideas for Baker Heritage Farms. She had a chance to meet others during the class and exchange information as well.

One of the areas we plan to concentrate on this year under our ReThinking Baker Heritage Farms will be to expand our composting operations with the hope of becoming more professional so that we can generate more compost material.

This week our concentration will be on preparing the brooders for the Turkeys, which are expected to arrive in about two weeks. We need to sanitize the tubs, get the warming lights reset, and prepare the tubs for their new occupants.

We will also be working on our compost as well as visiting the production fields (now that the sun is out) to see what damage has been done and what we need to do to get them in operation. We will be reviewing the seed we have on hand to see if any can still be planted (if not, we will store until they can) as well as preparing ground for some miscellaneous seed (such as our gourds and herbs).

In addition, we have to work on our ReThinking Baker Heritage Farms plan, as this will also fulfill Debbie's upcoming homework assignment.

It is "back-to-work" time at Baker Heritage Farms.

Until next time,

Blessings from Baker Heritage Farms

"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them." Desmond Tutu

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