Paw Paw Fest 2010!

Last weekend on September 17-19, I had the pleasure of attending my second Paw Paw Fest outside of Athens, Ohio. These trips down to Athens are becoming way ritualistic: the Skyline Chili pre-visit in Canal Winchester, Ohio, the comfortable log cabin accomodations, the mandatory purchases at the Athens Farmer's Market, the dinner trip to Casa Neuva, even seeing my buddy, Scot's mom's equestrian friend, Jane for two years in a row, and rock n roll at the Union, where coincidentally Cleveland's Self Destruct Button played this year.

So our hosts, Sarah Harter and Adam Hughes, have been a couple for a longggg time. And I'm proud to say that I was able to give them their first his and hers matching t-shirts, those being "A Farm in Cleveland?!" Adam took to his right away, wearing it to Paw Paw Fest on Saturday, where the positive re-enforcements came in the way of mega-compliments, even landing one from Warren Taylor, the Dairy Evangelist of Snowville Creamery. Sarah seems to be still warming up to hers however...

Now prior to getting down to Athens last weekend, Adam had called me and gave me the foreboding news that "his" paw paw patches were barren, and basically there were no signs of paw paws either: no flowers, no raccoon scat, no seeds, no rotting remnants.

In my quest to be the Paw Paw Ambassador of Cleveland, I've taken it upon myself to literally bring paw paws to the people in the form of education and as of this year actual paw paws. But the lack of forage-able paw paws made my task a daunting and potentially costly one. Upon midday arrival at the Fest, I immediately started scoping out paw paw prices, wondering could I get a bushel, a peck, or some other obscure large quantity. And the astounding unanimous answer to that wonderment was a definitive "NO!"

Peterson's Paw Paws and Chris Chmiel's Integration Acres were the major retailers at the Fest. Peterson's is the old man on the paw paw block. I'm not sure where they're from or how long they've been doing it, but the general consensus is longer than anybody else. Peterson's acts as both a grafted paw paw tree stock nursery with several proprietary grafted strains like the Susquehanna (my fave) and as a retailer of those high end paw paws. At $10 a pound, Peterson's looked like they were going to be sold out by Sunday. Integration Acres was selling theirs at $6 for a quart box, which was a slightly more affordable option, but still a very far cry from any kind of bulk pricing.

Last year I spent a considerable amount of time at the academic lectures. Whereas this year, I went with more of leisurely approach to hanging out at the Fest. The one presentation that did catch my undivided attention was "Sustainable Staple Foods." The presenters were the Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative and/or the Shagbark Seed and Mill Company. These folks are the same people doing several different things and most of the content last weekend was on the Shagbark Seed and Mill Company.

From what I got out of the lecture, Shagbark's main goal as a business is to provide processing infrastructure to support small-scale staple food farmers in areas like milling and threshing with ultimate ideals of creating food independence for Appalachia. One of my favorite quotes of the lecture was to the effect, "You heard of the Tea Party? Well, we're forming the opposite of that called the Eat Party with food security being our primary mission!" All this talk about food, I should probably mention the crops that Shagbark was touting. These were amaranth, heirloom corn, turtle beans, and spelt. To my surprise, there were no mention of potatoes or sunchokes.

One familiar story Shagbark told was that of "farming acres." This is an alternate reality that us, urban farmers simply don't have. I believe it adds another conundrum to at least my urban farming hypothesis. Conceptually, I want to grow staple foods and feed the world. Economically however, I have to grow what earns my best return for my amount of work. Ideally, I'd like to be a fence-walker and do a bit of both. However, this is not a blog of conceptualizations! This is a blog about about Paw Paw Fest 2010! And that brings me to the uncertainty I was feeling after the lecture, as we were going into Saturday evening without bulk paw paws on the horizon. I believe Adam sensed it.

He expressed re-assuring sentiments that he was sure there were paw paws out there, either on some nether region of his land, or elsewhere places not yet explored, and that I would go back with paw paws for the people of Cleveland.

On Sunday we opted not to go back to Paw Paw Fest, but instead to go on a Quest for El Pawpawrado, the legendary City of Lost Paw Paws to us, gringos, guarded by the voracious Pawsquatch. We loaded up the Toyota Land Cruiser with baskets, teepee, a week's worth of food, a satellite phone, and other necessary survival implements. At daybreak, we were off to find El Pawpawrado with black coffee as our fuel and visions of paw paws as our spiritual guide.

After fording the Tuscarawas, Athens, and Muskingum Rivers, we parked the Land Cruiser next to an abandoned barn and trash heap. We lost our horses in the Muskingum; so from there, we'd have to go by foot. After matchete-ing through six hours of wild roses, poison ivy, and other very burr-y wonders of nature, we found El Pawpawrado. There, we were blinded with the emerald light shining through the majestic paw paw leaves, as if we were in Tron and everything glowed highlighter green instead of highlighter blue. After a couple hours of tree climbing, tree shaking, and simple picking of the low-hanging fruit, we had filled our baskets with 23 ripe and underripe pounds of glorious, custardy, pawpawee flesh. I would not go back to Cleveland empty handed! We left all overripe and quite ripe paw paws as an offering to the woodland critters and Pawsquatch.

After dividing the bounty with my Sherpa and Junior Associate, Ryan Kennedy, I was left with 15 pounds for the retail markets of the greater Cleveland area. I sold five pounds yesterday at $8 a pound. So I'm at the break even point in terms of gas. The demand seems unreal. Here's to new rituals.

AUGUST WAS INSANE

And September continues to be the same. The last blog I went on about maggots a bit and never really got to the insanity that was August. So today, I will continue that blog (now in the past tense). But before I do, I just want to go back to the maggots for a moment. It turns out if you look really hard or increase the size of that top image, then YOU CAN SEE THE MAGGOTS IN THE BONEMEAL! YAY!

Five trips downtown to City Hall, countless hours later, fourteen bucks for parking, $150 for permit fees and associated costs, a $35 parking ticket, and a Board of Zoning Appeals hearing, I HAVE MY FENCE PERMIT! YAY! After all that, you may think that I'd be getting a 10 foot fence with barbwire and machine gun turrets, but no actually, it's five foot black vinyl mesh. I give major thanks and appreciation to City Council President Sweeney and Melissa Miller of Bellaire-Puritas Development Corporation. Both had my back at the Zoning Appeals hearing and literally went to town for me. Without them, I'd probably be a fenceless farmer exposed to the wilds of Cleveland. I give my apologies to Pete of GagePro across the street, who acted as a friend and then blindsided me with an objection letter to the Board against my fence, against my business, and against my person.

So Pete, I'm sorry. I got my fence. Considering you have literally zero green space on your completely blacktopped property and considering that preservation of green space was one of your five objection reasons, then I suggest to you that you green up your own land and property, and leave me personally be.

If there ever was a time to soapbox, for me personally, now is it. Everybody and anybody, who cares at all about urban farming in general and specifically urban farming in Cleveland, needs to call their Council Person and let them know you support the Urban Agriculture Overlay (UAO). In a nutshell, the UAO will create usage zoning that will allow us, Cleveland Urban Farmers, such farming amenities as hoophouses and fences without all of the fuss I just described. An urban farmer could farm with relative startup ease if the UAO passes. The UAO will also help to set National precedent for other cities to create similar urban farming zoning. It's easy getting a hold of City Council. Just copy and paste from below.

http://www.clevelandcitycouncil.org/Home/CouncilMembers/tabid/59/Default.aspx

Now to get off my soapbox, I'll tell you some more about August 2010. Besides melons, maggots, maneuvering, and grant writing, there was and still are tomatoes, lots and lots of them. I've taken the non-business zen approach to tomato quantity calculation, and all I can say again is there are lots and lots of them. I just filled my 100th half ounce bag of dehydrator dried sundrieds. I do know it takes a half pound of tomatoes to create a half ounce of sundrieds. So that's 50 pounds of just sundrying types of tomatoes right there. Then there's the quarts of sauce, and all the sales. I wake up in the middle of night, thinking of ways to keep the tomatoes flowing. In general, I use FIFO, an accounting acronym that means first-in, first-out. At the Market, I sell 'em individually, any tomato for a quarter, or in a brown bag bundle for $2.50 to $3.50. Some of the ultra-cool/high demand tomatoes like the Green Zebra only get brown bag bundled. Selling tomatoes in August was a difficult business challenge that I feel I ultimately won. Experimenting with pricing models was crucial and having someone like Sarah Perkins, who is literally the Cookie Monster of Tomatoes, on my side also helped tremendously.

With all those melons and tomatoes, it's no wonder my house became a fruit fly resort for a little while. Additional sweet sweet news is that Cleveland formally awarded me the Gardening for Greenbacks Grant for $3K. Thank you, Cleveland. I also gave my first urban farmer interview with Elizabeth Emery of Growhio. I will be Growhio's first featured farmer on their almost revamped website. I had my first shared farmer market stand with Central Roots selling luscious greens. In hindsight, August seems like it was an incredibly productive month. September is shaping up to be the same with the shed installation and site prep, including moving and spreading four tons of limestone later on today for the base of my shed. Then, there'll be the shed painting project...

For me, one thing at a time wins the race.

AUGUST IS INSANE

Like the title says above, August has been and is insane. Starting with some gross news. Who knew that when bone meal gets wet, it becomes rancid? All things considered bone meal being what bone meal is, I should have known. So the other day, I was about to top dress some cukes and paddy pans with said bone meal and was totally aghast-ed by the stench. I was like, "whatever," as I really wanted to fert my crops. And then when I dug my hand shovel into the meal, I had a total "Lost Boys" moment where the whole five-gallon bucket came alive with maggots. Only, I wasn't vampirically hallucinating, the entire bucket was bone meal, maggots, and wretched. I tried to take a picture, but the little buggers just blend so well with the meal, the jpeg wasn't worth publishing. I ended up dumping the bucket and its contents right into the middle of my compost, thereby making a high phos compost blend that will probably need major leaf dilution before it's safe to use. Who knew?

About two weeks back, the melon patch came in fast and hard just like my metal. Smellin' Melon Mania I was born! In one corner of the ring was the classic, four to seven pound, ultra foo-foo, French Charentais, tasting like the best cantaloupe ever plus rose water with pink-orange juicy-juice flesh. In the other corner was the somewhat scrappy, one to three pound, tag team of the Far North classic American cantaloupe, and its Armenian flashy cousin, the Tigger, looking like a Super Mario Brother's fireball and handsomely displayed in the photo above. The Tigger's aroma was somewhat intoxicating, and I was starting to feel like a bumble bee in my own home with every room smellin' of melons.

Now, this Melon Mania may have sounded like a little slice of heaven, and for the most part it was like a little slice of heaven. But when 20 ripe melons are picked in one day, the refrigeration bottleneck of my business is immediately realized. Subsequently, I learned a new kind of hustle because of my refrigeration problem. I had some knowing and unknowing participants in my quest to de-melon. On the knowing side of things, I give thanks to Rob Burgoyne and Lakewood's LEAF organization, who let me guest-vend on a 12-hour Facebook-notice in front of the Lakewood Library as part of LEAF's CSA program on Wednesday the 18th. And a week prior on the unknowing side of things, I give thanks to Lakewood's Bela Dubby coffee shop, which subsequently allowed me to visually and aromatically entice their customers with my melons, when incidentally I was bringing a Charentais to a friend during Bela's movie night, and when incidentally I had three others just sitting there on my car seat. All in all, I sold four Charentais out of the Subaru that evening.

For the sake of blog publishing, "August Is Insane" will need to continue in the near future.

Alright, I'll write already.

Borrowing and rephrasing a line from some old Lungfish, alright, I'll write already. I've been busy with non-exciting stuff, like up top there is a picture of my application for Gardening for Greenbacks plus the proprietary edits that my attorney recommended. I finally got that turned into Ifeoma at the City of Cleveland's Economic Development Department. That was like a half year's brainstorming funneled into a necessary yet punishing week of extremely formalized/organized thought and then action. I'm glad it's over with. I just need to hear the yay or nay, and move on from there.

Never thought I'd say this, but I'm starting to feel like Dwight Shrute from the Office. My first major harvest, which is totally separate from rinky-dink single pickings, is beets galore. There's Goldens, Early Wonders, Chioggias, and Crapaudines, which were no good despite the name and being the oldest root beet known in existence. The Chioggias are the Santa Claus-red ones in the picture and are also known as "candy stripe" beets to us common folk. Weird thing was, about every fortieth or fiftieth was completely white, like a slightly muddy ghost beet. And for the most part, these ghost beets tasted like earthened sugar with a mealy texture that would pair well with oatmeal.

Also, pictured up top is Green Urban Enterprises' non-patented Root Crop Rinser, which doubles as the equally non-patented Compost and Soil Sifter, made with every day farm items like 1/4 inch chicken wire, roofin nails, and re-purposed 2 by 4's from Birch's garage. That thing is going to be a lifesaver.

I swapped some fish for mineral fertilizer the other day with Eric Stoffer of Bay Branch Farm, and we got to chatting 'bout our respective farmer's markets, he at Lakewood Farmer's Market, me at Gordon Square's. We got to talking about this and that, and we got onto the dirty subject of reselling.

Reselling. It just makes my skin crawl. Reselling is the act of buying produce from a wholesaler, and then passing it off, and "reselling" it as your own. Reselling is totally different than helping a brother/sister farmer/gardener sell some produce in conjunction with your stand. This latter action is most often fully disclosed to give props to both farmers, is local, and results in real local monetary gain for both participants. Resellers, in contrast, buy bulk produce from California, China, and where ever else, and then sell it to the customer as "their own" or "local." I feel that us, Urban Farmers, need to rally against this practice.

I had some killer marketing ideas present themselves to me today over breakfast in regards to next year's plant start sales. I can't tell you the details because that would break my confidentiality agreement. I'm just saying it's kind of strange when and where inspiration hits. Be ready for it.

Well, it's a day later and I'm just looking to get this blog entry done. Today, I harvested this year's first Far North cantaloupes, five of them. I hope to get them to market on Saturday, but seeing's how cantaloupe is literally my favorite flavor in the world, it's looking doubtful for my customers, especially when my whole kitchen smells of melon for 10 minutes after opening up the fridge. Also, picked my first couple of ears of sweet corn ever today. So, I have the jitters in anticipation of my virginal kernel crunch popping sweetness. In conclusion, I've been thinking about commissioning a cement garden gnome in my likeness.

A Midsummer Night's Farmer's Thoughts

The last few weeks, I've been kicking back and just watering what will be a late summer's bounty. Nine of the 29 raspberries are showing some signs of sprouts, and six of the seven paw paws seem to be coming along. Being that it's midsummer, I thought I'd do some reflecting on the season so far.

That first picture up there highlights one of my mistakes in garden layout this year. I put the corn in the middle of the plot! Blocking the sprinkler. Shading the other the crops. I had no intentions of even growing corn, but there were so many requests, I had to comply. And with that submission came haste in my design, and hence the corn in the middle.

Even up to a week ago, I was thinking I was done with corn as a crop. But after this week's visit to Marietta, Ohio, where I bought some just picked at three o'clock in the morning, sugary Bicolor Ears; I'm starting to believe it's every Ohio citizens right to picked that day summer corn. I want to see how this year's ears fill in, and if it's halfway good, I will probably continue the pursuit next year.

Cheap soakers hoses are just that, which is mostly to say that they are cheap and aren't worth the hassle. On that note, my whole irrigation "system" needs an overhaul. Sprinklers and spray hoses are okay and definitely do the job. However, straight rows and drip tape will do it better in the future. Now anybody that knows me will tell you my lines/rows/swathes of cool beard zigzags are never straight.

In my personal garden, I have four tomatillo plants. Three are right next to each other and the fourth is about six feet away from the cluster. Now it is a given fact that it takes two tomatillos to tango. That is to say, tomatillo plants are not self-pollinating and it formally takes two separate plants for tomatillo fruits to form. And even though my lonely tomatillo is just six feet away from the other cluster, and my garden is like an epinephrine accident design lab, there are no fruits!

In other layout design news, tomato cultivars will be planted with their own kind to ensure ease of staking/weaving and flush picking next year. That means Amish Paste with the Amish Paste and Caspian Pink with Caspian Pink. The "cool" Monet-inspired color palette of random planting does not outweigh the future convenience of these necessary grow steps.

I'm growing these gnarly blue Hubbard pumpkins that will grow up to 40 pounds and will look like a giant tear drop with warts. In contrast, I'm also growing these cute lil two-pound pumpkins called the Sweet Dumpling. Regardless of size, pumpkins need a ridiculous amount of water and will suck up whatever I give them. One of the Hubbard vines is 16 feet long and seems to grow a half foot a day.

Prepaid customers. I'm looking for a few of them. I'm not talking a full blown CSA by any means. Nor am I talking about a regular "pick-up" schedule. I just need a few folks who can regularly take irregular amounts of produce at irregular intervals just like real life. This would really help me even out my production kinks because some times there's just too little to make a farmer's market worthwhile and too much to eat myself. So, I'll be looking for a few "Prepaids" soon. The means to communicate produce availability may be email, texts, tweets, or facebook announcements, whatever works best for my Prepaids. If you're out there, let me know.

Now that I'm starting to see some production out of my plot, next year's planning is starting to take hold. The number 15 has been resonating in my brain. A few weeks back I heard some SPIN Farmer mention something about 15 bundles of anything being the minimum volume to take to a farmer's market. Conceptually, I thought this was great. Though the SPIN Farmer was referring to sales displays, I feel that 15 could also be applied to number of plants in a planting. Like next year, I will do two plantings of Japanese Long Cucumbers with 15 plants each timed at a 10 day interval. This will give me an abundance of cukes throughout the season for grander displays.

Wow. That was meant to be a quick one and it's two hours later. I got to do this more often. Lastly, I'm not sure how I grew white beets, whether is was a genetic defect or a seed packing mistake, but those two white beets pictured up there tasted like pure sugar. Like, I was thinking they'd be good on oatmeal, for real. Perhaps, these were sugar beets?

Lease is signed

Back on Wednesday, I anted up on this urban farm thing when I formally signed a lease agreement with the Bellaire Puritas Development Corporation (BPDC), who owns the property next to my Cleveland Land Bank property. I've signed personal leases for apartments, but nothing in the name of a business before. Gratefully, the lease was simple enough that I could understand it without a legal background and with minimal questions.

The last time that I had spoken with BPDC it was over a complaint regarding sunflowers. So I thought the hammer may be coming down at this meeting. Instead, it felt quite the opposite. BPDC assured me that they are still all for the farm and would help block any Buddhist parking lot expansions or other pro-runoff business (or non-profit) entities. Furthermore, BPDC is committed to helping me navigate the perilous waters that are Cleveland fence and shed permitting. I also learned that my farm has inspired some others to start a community garden in the area. The final cherry was when Bryan Gillooly, Executive Director of BPDC, personally bought "A Farm in Cleveland?!" t-shirt to conclude the meeting. Thanks Bryan!

The pictures above are from Thursday, July 8th. The melons completely freaked out in this killer heatwave and almost overtook the black plastic at this point. It's hard to determine where the melons are actually planted. Also, there's a picture of the first farm picking, a jade scallop squash and a Japanese long cucumber that needs some hummus accompaniment.

If you can't tell, the t-shirts are in. However, I've yet to make a formal announcement until I get somebody with better photogenic-ness than myself as a model. I also want to see if any stores around the area will carry them. I have a quasi-appointment at 4 PM today in Coventry at one of the nicest women's clothing boutiques in town. I'll let you know how that goes.

My first farmer's market!

Took place on July 3rd at the Gordon Square Farmer's Market. I'm so glad it's over with because I had no idea what I was doing. Somehow, I walked away with exactly a dozen dollars for my less than abundant wares. So I feel good about that. Getting over that learning curve seems exponential.

Notice that picture up top, the only reason that I'm partly shaded is because of the good grace and size of Farmer Dan's pop-up tent next to me. It turns out that you need a pop-up tent for both you and your veggies if you're going to sell at farmer's markets. Check.

Because of ATMs, people have an abundance of 20-dollar bills; therefore, I will have ample amounts of one and five dollar bills. Check.

Selling veggies is not for the anti-social. I'm sure glad I like food because people ask questions, a lot of them. Check.

Binder clips are the new duct tape and proletariat-ly work as displays, holders of price tags, the cash stash, holder of table cloths, etc. Subsequently, bring binder clips next time. Check.

Besides these specifics, the learning curve got applied to even mundane tasks like loading up Subee-1 and how people would choose to take their vegetables home. For instance, when people were faced with the option of putting carrots in a plastic sandwich bag or a re-used plastic Chinese carry-out container, people simply opted to dump their carrots in their re-usable bag.

So I'm glad that's all over with! I'm at a post-Spring, early-Summer lull that has me without veggies beyond my own personal consumption. I've got melons, cukes, pumpkins, corn, and tomatoes coming, but sort of nothing right now. I'm busying myself with watering, and paw paw orchard planting. There's some other grants out there that I need to be pursuing wholeheartedly.

In the meantime, some old man complained to me the other day about my sunflowers. Something about he "now needs to inch out when he turns right on red." So I took some pictures of wildflowers for all of you to complain about.

Earlier today, I had a power meeting with Dean Santell and Jim Funai at Tri-C, regarding the development of an urban agriculture program or certificate at Tri-C. It seemed pretty promising, but still in the developmental stages. I'm just glad community colleges are starting to take an interest in our urban farming ventures. For some reason, it makes it seem more real.

Tomorrow, I finally sign a formal lease with the Bellaire-Puritas Development Corp. This has been on the back burner for months, but just never formalized. Hopefully, they don't inundate me with jargon. I don't think that will be the case. I'll keep you updated.