Friday Farmer

Another busy day lined up for the Friday Farmer.

This morning we’re headed to feed the goats and then wash bins for Farmer Joe.

At home, there’s lots of milk to be processed.  I’m thinking goat’s milk ice cream and a batch of yogurt.  I’ve had great success with this recipe for Strawberry Honey Goat Milk Ice Cream.  I’ll probably use another fruit today – maybe cherries or blackberries.

Our fridge is becoming overrun with the glut of fresh produce from our garden and the CSA.  I need to put some of it up – so I’ll be blanching and freezing beans, making preserves with cherries, picking and freezing some blueberries, and maybe some carrot pickles.

The worm bins still need to be emptied and the garden could use some weeding and pruning attention.

And, then, there’s the huge mess in my living room and the pile of dirty dishes….

Wild Cherries

Near our house are three wild cherry trees.  EG and I have been enjoying picking and snacking on them.  I’m planning on making a Black Cherry Conserve with them.  We can’t get enough.

Yet every time someone sees us eating them and asks if they are edible I get quite strong reactions once they try them.  The taste is a bit on the bitter side.  Someone compared it to a chocolate stout beer, a very robust and unique flavor. Most folks, generally the American born and raised folks, scrunch up their faces and decide to pass on eating anymore.    But a fair number of folks on our neighborhood were born and raised internationally and most of them are as enchanted with the cherries as we are.  Many of them have fond memories of similar cherry trees in their home countries.  I find the contrast in reactions quite striking.  Confirms for me that Americans, in general, have far too much of a sweet tooth.  I have been working on removing the processed sugar from my family’s diet.  We don’t eat a lot of sweets, the only candy is very dark chocolate, and anything I bake I sweeten with honey rather than white sugar. We still enjoy some Ben & Jerry’s now and again.  But I am pleased that EG is able to enjoy these less than sweet cherries.  Makes me proud that she has not gone the way of the typical american sweet tooth.

Working out the kinks

The weekend has been spent trying to work out some issues with the aquaponics system.  The timer we set up seemed to be running appropriately, but we could never see the grow bed flooding.  When we examined it more closely, we found one end of the pump tubing was jammed with with rocks.  We freed it up, but then discovered that the pump is just not working.  Best we can figure is that it strained too much against the rocks and burned out the motor.  Now we need to buy another pump.

We also are still having trouble with the grow bed flooding too much.  We added one bag of pea gravel, which meant removing all the plants and replanting them.  We lost a few plants that way who couldn’t quite handle the stress.  Unfortunately, the one bag of pea gravel still didn’t get it to the right level.  So we’ll need to dig up and replant a second time.  I need to figure out how to do it better this time to stress the plants less.

At least, the fish are still very small so the amount of waste they are producing won’t over run the system while we try to figure out how to get it running appropriately.  I probably ought to start some more seeds on the chance we lose too many more plants in the next round of adding gravel.  This round with the aquaponics is most definitely about working out the kinks.  Hopefully we get to harvest at least a few fish and vegetables out of it.  Either way, it’s good learning and we’ll by pros by the end of it.

Friday Farming

In the triathlon and running communities, you often hear the term “weekend warrior” referring to someone who can’t get much training in during the week and tries to cram it all into the weekend.  I feel like a weekend warrior farmer.  I need my own name for it.  I’ll go with Friday Farmer for now, since Friday is my day off and the day I try to get a lot of my farming chores done.

So, what’s on my list today?

• dig up potatoes
• plant squash and pumpkins
• trellis cucumbers in aquaponics grow bed
• pick blueberries and cherries
• freeze blueberries
• make cherry syrup
• start seeds for fall crops
• clean out warm bins under rabbits
• visit the community garden plot I manage for the church
• gather stones to create a sun catch or the front yard
• add pea gravel to aquaponics grow bed

 

A New Arrival

Around noon on Thursday, the mailman handed this box to me as I was headed out the door.  Although I had been expecting them, I immediately freaked out.  Now what do I do with them!

I opened the box to find 25 swimming fish, all alive.  They came with an instruction sheet and some suggestions on how to help the fish adjust to the new tank.  But it felt very scary to think about releasing all these tiny and expensive fish into our huge tank.  Especially with the current, giant resident.

This goldfish has survived quite a journey.  We inherited the aquaponics system from a neighbor who had moved away.  When we picked up the system, after months of it lying unused, we found this fish in there.  He moved into a goldfish bowl in our house for close to a year.  Once we finally got the system up and running, we put him in there as a test fish.  At that time he was 1.5–2 inches long.  He is now probably close to 4 inches in just 2 months!  I decided to take him out of the tank and send him back to the goldfish bowl until our new fish reach a bigger, less appetizing size.  I don’t like him enough to give him a $100 buffet.

The first step was to float the bag in the tank and allow the fish to acclimate to the temperature.  I had to go away for a few hours, so they got a long adjustment time.  After about 4 hours, they were released into the tank.  It is quite hard to spot 25 less than an inch long silver fish in a 150 gallon tank.  Each day since, I have been scanning the water trying to catch a glimpse of them to reassure myself that they are alive.  Every now and then I see a shimmer of silver and figure it must be one of them.  I can’t wait till they get a little bigger and I can monitor their growth a little more easily.

On the grow bed side, at least one creature is enjoying the system!