A Florida Weave Ain't a Haircut

It's a tomato staking/trellising method! I stumbled upon this lifesaver through my bandmate, Jessica, who used to work at Red Basket Farm. She couldn't recall the name of the technique, but gave a good 'nough description that given a little googling it was no problem to find. Eventually, I used the following website and went from there.

www.foogod.com/%7Etorquill/barefoot/weave.html

I'll admit hammering these 35 fence posts taught my right forearm a lesson, hauling around the straw bale for a stool, as these were six foot posts and even with my Chacos I'm still about a half foot short. Hindsight being what it is, next year, I'll do the post installation just after tilling. Besides this learning curve, the Florida Weave rules. I really couldn't imagine caging or staking 100+ tomato plants.

Also in the above photographs, you'll notice that some of that hardwork, me and Kuchna put in several months back with the perennial flower bed is actually paying off. There's a huge assortment of colorful legumes and a couple sunflowers in the photo. As of today, I've got some multi-colored poppies and some white starry asters springing up. When putting in a perennial flower bed for the first time, it's really difficult to discern what is and what is not a flower or weed. So, sometimes you need to let the weeds go a little extra long before you know for sure and pull them.

Ryan Kennedy and I also planted 29 raspberries along a 55 foot hedge two weeks ago. The raspberries were bare-root and have yet to break dormancy. I planted them at twice the suggested spacing. So even if I lose half of them, I'm still good. If you can't tell, I don't trust bare-root plantings.

Lastly, the weirdest thing happened to me on Friday the 25th. As a precursor to this story, I just want to clarify that when you do this urban farm thing, people stop and talk to you, like all the time, seriously. People ask what you're doing, where you selling the vegetables, do you have permission from the city, etc. And then in general, they let you know what you're doing is great.

However, Friday was a little different. I was doing an extreme morning watering, as I was about to visit Rhode Island for the weekend. Then some guy pulls up, and parks illegally on Sprecher, and is yelling something akin to an introduction. It turns out he was introducing himself as a delegate of the SGI Community Center that borders the farm. With the introduction came a booklet-the kind I thought until now that only evangelical Christians gave out to people or left in bathrooms.

Immediately there after, came the requisite, "what ya doing here?" I let him know I was putting in a farm. The reaction was a mocking scoff from this spiritual man, who still hadn't taken the time to even get out of his car. Then the tone got a little insidious, when he asked the next requisite question, "does the city know you're doing this?" Of course, and I let him know that I have a five year lease with the city.

Then his tone changed, like a complete one-eighty to overly friendly (though the dude never got out of the car), as he let me know about SGI. Apparently, they're a Buddhist group. Their spiritual leader has over 100 honorary doctorates. They believe in world peace. They want to change the name of Crossburn Park to their spiritual leader's name. AND THEY WANT MY FARM TO EXPAND THEIR ASPHALT PARKING LOT!

WTF? Really? Really.

Hopefully, SGI respects my lease and that's the end of it. We'll have to see.

Ending on a positive note, I went to Melt the other day and was more than pleased to learn that they had switched take-out containers to a 100% compostable type made from sugarcane fibers. Matt Melt pretty much does everything right, and it's great to see an example of such green leadership.

Farm Hand Profile: Michael W "Birch" Birchler

I thought I'd try to make this whole blog thing more interesting by stopping a little bit the talking about myself, and instead introducing some of my trusted, weathered farm hands that I've mentioned here or there and along the way. I intend to make this "Farm Hand Profile" into a series.

First up (appearing in chronological order as to when I actually got some physical labor and sweat units out of the them on the farm) is Michael W "Birch" Birchler. Oddly enough, I met Mike 2,200 miles away in coastal Oregon at a another best friend's wedding, whose sister just so happened to live in Lakewood, who Mike eventually married. ?

Mike's hankered down in some really crappy weather throughout this Winter and Spring. There was this time in February when the snow was a foot deep, and we had met up for a beer. Subee-1 was weighted down with several hundred pounds of coffee grinds, and I was griping about needing to get those out of the car. And no sooner had I said "I just need to go dump them on the farm," than we were off at one o'clock in the morning in that foot of snow to the farm in order to christen the grounds with the first of many formerly caffeinated amendments.

Throughout the Spring, we've gone on leaf humus runs. These "runs" tended to correspond to weekdays that we were both off, and it was raining. Our best day, we totaled 18 32-gallon garbage cans of humus. In terms of weather, it was one of the worst: a balmy 58 degrees with either drizzle, fog, rain, storms, or an in between stage. Shoveling humus in the rain is sludgingly heavy and literally brown staining. It gets on everything. And when you finally get in the car, the car immediately fogs up from the aerobic activity of the humus and the dankness of the air. Good times.

Besides these laborious duties, Mike has also contributed with other fun tasks like rock/foundation digging, sulfur spreading, trenching, mowing, and the always risky watering.

As you're starting to see, Birch is quite the asset. His up for anything personality and his zen-like in the moment-ness has allowed the farm to move forward despite the weather and regulatory hurdles. And for that I thank him. In the meantime, I'm trying to get as much sweat and backache as possible out of Mike. 'Cause come August when all those psychedelic tomatoes are coming in and needing picked, Mike is instead going to be busying himself with his very first newborn, which I guess is a fairly valid excuse to not help out on the farm for a while. Now if you ever wanted to help Mike this father-to-be, I know he'd be glad to sell you an iPhone. Just get in touch.

A Networking Week in Review

It's been a week since the Farm's been in and yet no sprouts of corn, beets, or potatoes. The starts seem to be assimilating nicely, but from what I can tell I'm mostly growing rocks. I swear that every time I water, the rocks multiply and grow in numbers. The next workday will be a "fill-a-five-gallon bucket with rocks day before you are permitted to go home". However, my immediate chore right now is watering, which takes about an hour. After last night's downpour, I have at least one day off.

Apart from the watering, last week was filled with networking, which is something that used to make me completely gag/feel sickened in the realms of corporate business/suits/golf, but has turned into quite a pleasure now that I'm dealing with grassroot non-profits, other non-profits, entrepreneurs, foodies, and farmers.

On Tuesday the 1st, Frank Skala invited me to give a 15-minute urban farm presentation at the monthly Friends of Euclid Creek (FOEC) meeting. FOEC is a watershed group trying to revitalize Euclid Creek. As a watershed group, FOEC supports things like dam deconstruction/rebouldering, rainbarrel workshops, bioswales, and rain gardens. However, FOEC also supports a much more generalized environmental view, and hence my invitation. The presentation went great and generated applause from the 25 or so people in attendance. They seemed to get a real kick out of "Old Husher" and my speech segues were smooth.

Wednesday was a power day, starting early at Cleveland State University, where I met graduate student, Keith Peppers. He sat down with me all formal-like in a music sound room complete with a drumkit and that soundproofing stuff on the walls. There was a table in the middle of the room, adorned with a huge microphone and a Marantz digital recorder and two chairs on opposite sides. And in this weirdly sterile, soundproof environment, I gave my oral history in the form of a question and answer regarding my choice to become an urban farmer with Mr. Peppers.

Immediately afterward, I went right down the street to what is probably the coolest screen printer in the U.S.A, Jakprints, to do some market research on women's t-shirt cuts. During my visit, I also learned that if I bring in five pounds of recycled paper, then I'll get 10% of my order, which is alotta mullah when you have eight screens.

In the early evening, I caught up with Jim Doughman for some beers of JumpStart Inc, which is a non-profit Northeast Ohio technology investment firm. He wanted to talk just to see if he could possibly assist in any way. Pretty early in our discussions, he came up with a couple potential funding opportunities and list of several individuals. By the end of our pitcher of Moondog ESB, Dan Young (mobile-app guru of DXY Solutions) was chatting with us about mobile-apps that could assist in picking orders.

Wednesday ended at Lakewood's Bela Dubby coffee house. Wednesday night is "Noise Night" at Bela Dubby and is quite the draw (to my surprise). Both, my friend, Chris Wood, and artist-buddy, Steve Kuchna were going up there. So I had no choice. Chris wanted to buy tomato plants, and Steve had art for me.

Saturday was another good day. It rained a boatload, thus reducing my workload. When I got to the Farm that day, my nice rake was laying there right next to the plot. Apparently, Mike and I had forgotten it the day before; and obviously, no one had stolen it either. For as many warnings as I have gotten from the multitudes of various resources, the rake should have been stolen in theory. How's that for creating vibrations?

Furthermore, it was Little League Marching Day down the street. Eventually, these little kids all marched up Sprecher in their various, green, orange, red, or blue uniforms past the Farm. I was watering while this was happening, and then all of sudden, I had a man making a beeline directly to me. I should have recognized him, but in his civilian uniform of shorts, baseball hat, and sunglasses, I had no clue. It turns out it was Cleveland City Council President, Sweeney! After quick introductions, he gave me a verbal pat-on-the-back, and I returned it with a business card, and he proceeded with the March.

Today, Kuchna and I will be making the last tweaking of the "A Farm in Cleveland?!" t-shirt artwork. Ordering will commence!

Amended, Trenched, Fenced, and Planted: Plot on!

It was a pretty intense Memorial Day weekend. I felt like it needed to be an ante-up, all-in kind of weekend, no more dilly-dallying. My 100+ heirloom tomatoes needed a place to go. I don't think I could have picked a worse weekend in terms of weather 85 degrees, overly sunny, and dankly humid. My hair didn't dry all weekend, even after showering, and it didn't seem like I could drink enough water.

So the general plan for the weekend was trench on Friday, fence on Saturday, and plant on Sunday. The whole process ended up extending one extra day into Monday. I woke up early on Friday and secured my afternoon rental of the Ditch Witch from Alternative Rental and Service. The Ditch Witch is a terrifyingly looking machine with a two-foot long chainsaw-like blade. The blade is attached to another contraption, which allows it roll. The whole purpose is to cut a two-foot deep trench so that the fencing can be buried in order to keep out the four and two legged critters. My main concern being the groundhogs.

Mike "The Foreman" Birchler helped on Friday, which without his input, none of this would have gotten done. There were times when the Ditch Witch cut like room temperature butter, and you could literally daydream of all the future produce. And then there was the other 80% of the time, when we were cutting out part of the buried asphalt driveway, or hitting large metal pipes, or clogging the blade with bricks, or getting stuck in the dirt. There were some places that I just had to compromise and go less than the ideal two feet deep. Hopefully, groundhogs can't burrow through rock. I performed most of the trenching, but Birchler kept my lines straight, dug up the nuisance rocks/bricks/pipes, hauled the kicked up rocks/bricks/pipes, and was a good general support when I was hurling f-bombs at the Ditch Witch. I think we both got a few more hairs on our chest that day.

Saturday, the work posse started late (work posse being defined here as me and Brandon Scullion). The sun was out in full force, helping to re-burn Friday's sunburn. The task at hand was to put up the critter fence. 25 fence posts and four 50-foot lengths of fence. We thought no problem. Mike and I did all the hard stuff the day earlier. Or so we thought...

It turned out that everything about the fencing besides driving the posts was difficult. One of the least joyful tasks was latching the fence to the posts in the trench. Basically, you had to lay on your chest in the piercing-sharp rocks and dirt, while plunging your hands into the trench, hoping to see what you were doing. Then there were the edges of the fence that seemed engineered to cut flesh. I'm just glad Brandon and I are up to date on our tetanus shots. The last fencing chore was to simply backfill the dirt back into the trench. It hadn't rained overnight or anything, but that dirt settled, and what was allotted an hour for backfilling ended up taking us three more sweat-soaked hours.

Sunday was the fun day with a bigger group of volunteers than ever, including mainstay, Brandon, my old lady, Sarah, her yoga partner, also named Sarah, and Cosmic Marijana (who is a real person/artist, and not a pot reference). Ryan Kennedy came through for me again with another couple bails of straw, which were slated for Scandinavian-styled potato growing. Sunday, we managed to plant 10 pounds of yukon golds, 112 tomato plants, a handful of cukes and small squashes, and thirteen melons.

The tomatoes were laid out in seven rows of sixteen tomato plants. The first three rows comprised of four cultivars (Principe Borghese, Amish Paste, Jersey Giant, and Japanese Black Trifele) in an orderly fashion. For the next four rows, order was thrown out the window, and the 20+ cultivars were planted randomly. I guarantee I will have the most psychedelic tomato patch in all of Cleveland with reds, purples, yellows, whites, and stripes. August looks to look amazing. The melons were put on 4-mil black plastic to absorb as much heat as possible. I can't wait to see how they prosper in the full sun of Old Husher's Farm.

On Monday, Brandon and I finished the plantings with four rows of corn, a row of onion and basil, blue pumpkins, and beets galore. Now we just had to name the plot itself for the sake of reference. My crew and I threw around a lot of names; some of them were generic like Plot A; others were whimsical; but eventually I settled with the obvious no-brainer, "the Old Plot." The Old Plot being the first is subsequently the oldest (duh). That evening I treated the crew to a seven pound pulled pork shoulder on the grill. I went all out for them, and besides the shoulder I grilled a cabbage stuffed with bacon and bbq sauce. There were three homemade bbq sauces on hand (North Carolina vinegar, South Carolina mustard vinegar, and classic bbq), as well as some Texas Pete's if people needed some kick. Thanks yall.

As for the soil amendments, I just want to state for the record in digital print (so that I can personally forget) the amending. We added 28 32-gallon garbage cans of leaf humus, an approximate literal ton of coffee grinds from Loop, 46 pounds of sulfur to drop the pH to a slightly acidic level, and 35 pounds of rock phosphate. I'm avoiding green sand, lime, and ash because my potassium levels are extremely high.

Looking ahead into the near future, I intend to plant my raspberry patch and paw paw orchard within the next week. Subsequent major watering will follow. And then onto new plot development.

Lessons Learned

A lesson to me is when you know something is definitive-ly a fact, but for whatever reason you don't accept it as a law of truth. The lesson part comes as an example in real life as why that something, whatever it is, is a truth.

On Tuesday, June 18th, I learned a couple of important lessons on my inaugural visit to Cleveland's hippest farmer's market: the Tremont Farmer's Market. It was a crummy day in terms of weather, but the market itself was still well-attended. There were several producers on hand that day, a few folks selling plants, lots of bakers, live music, a blade sharpener, and a cooking demonstration. I learned my lessons from Ricardo Sandoval, the cooking demonstrator, and George Remington, a fellow OSU Extension Market Gardener Training Program Graduate, who was selling his plants.

Ricardo Sandoval is a mover and a shaker in terms of Cleveland restaurateurs, owning upscale places like Fat Cat's and Felice's, as well as my favorite martini bar, the Lava Lounge. He's also firmly dedicated to buying as much food as locally as possible, even having an urban garden and water barrels at his Fat Cat's. Ricardo taught me my second lesson that day, which is listed here first because of importance.

That lesson is one that any salesperson, anywhere, selling anything, could have told me and has told me, and my dad when he reads this is going to be rolling his eyes back into his head, and that lesson is MAKE THE SALE!

Earlier that day, I had harvested a five gallon bucket's worth of bok choy and needed an outlet other than my friends to unload some. Now mind you, Mr. Sandoval had said at a lecture that I attended that he sometimes buys at the Tremont Farmer's Market. So, I thought I'd put these two concepts together and try and sell my bok choys to Mr. Sandoval, if he just happened to be there.

When I got to Tremont, I walked north along W 14th on the sidewalk into the Market. About half the vendors were located along W 14th on that strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk. After my notherly jaunt, the market makes a half circle that could be described as southeast or counterclockwise depending on your way of thinking.

One of the last farmers in the northerly row, a farmer named Floyd of Red Basket Farm, was the only the only vendor with a hint of bok choy and that came in the form of taken-down signage. When asked about the sign, Floyd advised me that he was all sold out of bok choy that day, which made me feel like I wasn't stepping on any official vendors' of the Tremont Farmer's Market toes, if I were to see Ricardo Sandoval and if he wanted to buy my bok choys.

As I arced around counterclockwise at about 4'o'clock, Ricardo Sandoval was just breaking down his cooking demonstration. After introductions and some curious small talk that included a gift to me of my first green garlic, I mustered the courage to see if he would like to see, if not, buy some of my bok choys. Somewhat amazingly and surprisingly, Ricardo was receptive, just not at the Tremont Farmer's Market, which I naively/negligently didn't even consider in my scheme of things.

And here is where the lesson was learned. Ricardo wanted to meet me back at the restaurant in 2o minutes. But I already had a group of friends waiting for me at Taco Tuesday (I know this is totally all my bad). So I countered with how about in an hour and a half? In which, Ricardo reluctantly accepted.

Making a very long story finally short, and after my full belly of tacos and Mexican beers, and friendly chit chat, I proceeded with my five gallons of bok choy over to the restaurant, where of course, Ricardo was nowhere to be found, and I, of course, lost the sale.

The lesson learned here is when in the process of making the sale, hold on to that sale by all means, until that sale has been done sold. Me having Taco Tuesday plans and countering 20 minutes with an hour and half was just stupid. In the end I left some bok choy samples, but I was still left with about three gallons worth, which eventually made it to my friends.

Now the second lesson is less dramatic, and it comes by way of George Remington and (I think) his Morningside Farm. To put it bluntly, George has the best, biggest, baddest tomato plants around at ridiculously affordable prices. These things were three foot tall with monster stalks. He had about 20 cultivars, and the purple were mostly sold out.

A few weeks back this lesson had been alluded to when Subee-1 saved my plants when it acted like a greenhouse for a week. Now, George had perfect examples of what can be done early in Northeast Ohio to tomatoes with a greenhouse. Needless to say, it was impressive; and needless to say, the lesson learned is that I need a greenhouse or similar structure, preferably, a mobile one. Now, George did you do any supplemental heating?

The picture above is of another haul of bok choys, demostrating three different sizes, including some ultra-minis, which really couldn't stand the onslaught of slugs and extreme wind/rain and won't be grown again. The other picture is of my garden a few weeks ago; however, it doesn't look like that as of now. Over and out.

Rollercoaster of Regulations and Subsequent Emotions

It's been a while and I apologize for the delay. I assure you I'm still here. But sometimes it ain't easy being a pioneer. And that's what us, Re-Imagining Grantees, are. Pioneers. You see, the Federal government gives cities money all the time for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. And from what I can tell, cities do things like deconstructing abandoned houses and creating parks with that money. Cleveland, however, is trying something wholly unique with the Re-Imagining program in that Cleveland is actually funneling money directly to its citizens (and it neighbor's citizens, like me) for the people to do their own projects. This is a very grassroots approach. And when I write "wholly unique," I mean no city in the United States has ever given this kind of Federal money directly to the people before. Hindsight being 20/20, we all should have known their were going to be some snags to work through.

You can see a picture of one such snag above. On Wednesday, I went around my farm's neighborhood, taking pictures of houses with chain-link frontages and collecting their addresses. The city wanted a total of six residential frontages to verify that chain-link is normal for the area. Lucky for me, this is Cleveland, and chain-link is everywhere. So this task only took about an hour. Other snags have included water access, zoning laws in regards to permanent improvements on Land Bank land, soil lead levels, etc. Somehow and lucky for me, my soil's lead levels are low. Otherwise, I'd have to create giant raised beds on the entire property. You see, the danger of lead is not from growing veggies in it, but rather from when it becomes airborne like when you're tilling or plowing.

Please understand, I call these examples "snags." But really, they're just real-life laws and regulations that need to be worked through and sometimes formally changed. So that's why and how us, Re-Imagining Grantees, are pioneers. As I am not an anarchist, I accept these cogs in my narrowly-focused-Western wheel. I am not complaining, just stating the facts. That was the reason for the long delay in writing, I didn't want to be reactionary and complain.

In the meantime, I've been harvesting bok choys left and right in my personal garden. Today, I just harvested three different bok choys: extra dwarf, mini, and mid size. Easy and fast, I love bok choy (as do snails, hence the holes). "Real food doesn't always look perfect" should be some kind of mantra.

I've also been out morel hunting. Being in the woods always clears my head, and finding morels pretty much makes me ecstatic. If you can't tell by the picture, Sarah and I were successful in our hunt. We made a Buffalo Morel Stroganoff that looked completely disgusting, but tasted amazing.

Subee-1's transformation into a U.A.V. (Urban Agriculture Vehicle) is nearing complete. Back on the 11th, me and my buddy Mike hauled 16 32-gallon trash cans of leaf humus over to the farm. Also, during the last week of hellacious thunder and wind, I learned Subee-1 doubles as a pretty awesome makeshift greenhouse with the storage capacity of roughly 400 plants. Giving credit its due, my dad used to use my Plymouth Colt like this in high school. The extra warmth and muted light seems perfect for plants.

Going forward, I want to be writing a lot more, perhaps even creating a regular writing schedule. I also may be revamping this blog, or starting a new more graduated version of the blog soon. I'll probably be choosing the latter option. Anyways, over and out. I got trellises to build.

Happy Birthday to Me and Tidbits

The last week and a half has been filled with tidbit types of work, nothing overly transforming in terms of property renewal. So this blog will probably go forward like a train of thought as I look at the calendar with its scrappy Sharpie-ed in reminders.

After the speaking event, there were about two or three days of correspondence coupled with some medium-core seeding and transplanting work. I built a raised bed for carrots at the house. The damn carrots still haven't sprouted yet and likely won't as they were treated to a good hot house solar oven baking when it got really sunny on the 10th and I didn't remove the glass until several hours later. At that point, there were literally voluminous amounts of steam coming off the soil when the glass was lifted. I've heard of mushroom farmers in Africa pasteurizing straw in a similar way.

On Saturday the 10th, I went to a workshop at Cleveland State that instructed us, Re-Imagining Cleveland grantees, on the reimaginingcleveland.org website. I found a level of comfort when I learned that everybody's project is moving slowly, maybe even more so than mine. However later that day, I found a great level of discomfort when I went over to Ryan Kennedy's Crop Mob at his Turning Point Farm on Barber. This dude is getting more done without grant money than the rest of us are getting done with. Hot dogs, snakes, trash, extreme sulfurous odors, big rocks, little rocks, fire, good times.

On Tuesday the 12th, me and about 20 others graduated from the OSU Extension Office's Market Gardener Training Program, but not before we passed a 300 question scantron exam. The picture above is our serious administrator/teacher, Morgan Taggart. To make matters worse, I forgot my pencil! The class itself felt like a true meeting of minds with so many future forward pro-Cleveland farmers. That Lynn Rodemann is doing amazing things at the Pear Street spot, I can't wait 'til she gets her Devil's Backbone Garden up and running (which can be subsequently said for my Old Husher's Farm). Us, OSU Market Gardener Training Program Alumni, need to stay in touch.

Tax day is technically my birthday. So a giant happy birthday to me. I'm actually excited about this one.

And on the 16th, me and my buddy, Mike, shoveled, hauled, carried, and spread a dozen 32 gallon trash cans of leaf humus onto the farm. You can see the birth of rows, as well as why Subarus completely and totally rule, holding two dudes and six Rubbermaid Brute trash cans full of humus. At 158,000 miles, Subee-1 seems to be going strong. The interior is completely beat/gross, but its soul is still there and purring. Old Husher's Farm will probably be the eventual cause of death for Subee-1, but at this point I'm still amazed at how well it has held up to my abuse.