We are all connected...

Linda saw this woman speak at the Mother Earth News Fair that she and Becky went to last weekend. Christy is a beekeeper with an interesting perspective (and I think a valid one) on the crisis with bees and has developed a new style of hive that more closely mimics what happens in nature. Linda also put my name into the drawing for her book and I won ! Spending this weekend reading it. Take a few minutes and watch the video to find out what has happened to the food system (and why) and the relationship to bees.

Fall is in the air….

Fall is in the Indiana air and the leaves are turning. Yesterday, in the tomato patch, it was downright chilly but not quite to the point of frost. I could see my breath as I picked tomatoes and they felt like they had been kept in a walk in refrigerator all night. They are slowing down though….only picked 274# yesterday.

I keep forgetting to tell you about the neat way that the convent creates their heat for HVAC purposes and hot water. They have a tractor trailer that picks up wood chips, that local landscapers and tree cutters have dropped off. There is a collection center across the street from Sisters of Providence and the tree trimmers just dump their waste there and the truck goes over and fills up and brings it back to campus. There is a metal shed type of building where the truck backs up and dumps the load. Inside are these conveyor tracks that very slowly pulls the wood in (they take all the wood left off and put it through a wood grinder to make sure it’s uniform in size). My understanding is that it goes into a furnace that heats the rooms and water for the whole complex. There are two huge brick chimneys coming out of the building where all this happens and the building is pretty large. Reminds me of the exterior wood stoves that homes have that can do the same thing….heat the hot water that is piped through it and also send heat to your home. This is just on a gigantic scale. I’ve been told that one tractor trailer load lasts for a typical day and 1.5 – 2 in the winter.

Here are some of things we harvested this week in the garden:

Look at all that celery….it was like loading a small tree into each bag. And it was so fragrant…Yum !

Beautiful Carmen and Bell peppers.

 

 

 

Bagged Swiss Chard…looks sort of like rhubarb but with beautiful stalks of pink, yellow, whitish.

 

 

 

On Thursday we had a potluck event for the CSA members. I finished work at 3:30 and then went to work with Sister Mo so she could teach me how to card the fiber I’ve been working on. This is the next step after skirting it. You take the tufts of fiber that are long enough and it’s laid on that ledge area so it spans the width of the carder. On the far right side is a crank that makes the drums turn and draws in the fiber. The “undesirables” are picked up on the small drum and the acceptable ones are wound around the large drum. When it gets covered to the point where you can’t see the belt seam and it seems full, the “batt” is pulled off the drum. You break the batt, with a large knitting needle type of tool, right at the belt seam. You just run the needle under the batt and pull up on it, separating it from the drum. As you turn the handle you pull gently to have the batt come off in one piece. You’re shooting for it to weigh (in its final weight) 1.0 – 1.2 oz. I had to run mine through twice to get all fibers running the same direction and looking nice and it came out at 1.1 oz…perfect ! The weight is crucial because if you use this to felt a hat, the layers have to weigh the same so it’s not lopsided when you put it together. That is what I’ll be learning next….how to make a felted hat. (This morning I finally finished skirting all the fiber on my table)….hallelujah ! So I worked on the carding till 5, went back to the dorm and showered and made my dish to pass and off to the potluck I went. Long day, beautiful night, great chats with the CSA members who came.

Friday, the new high tunnel got its’ roof installed. There was about 10-12 of us out there helping get the plastic on it. Ropes were thrown over the top of the roof and tied to the plastic. The way they did that was to wrap the plastic end around a rock or clump of dirt and then tie the rope around it. The wind came up as we started to do it and I asked Sister Mo to say a little prayer for us. She asked Saint Joseph to give us some calm so we could get this done and wouldn’t you know it, once we retrieved the end flap that had folded up over the peak of the roof, it got real calm and we were able to finish it up. We only wound up with one hole in it that was easily patched. Next week David will finish up the side and ends so we can get it planted. It’s huge inside and will hold lots of plants.

Tomorrow is Alpaca Farm Days all over the country and ours is from 1 – 4. I will bounce between the kids activity area and the tomato selling table, helping out. Should be a fun day if the weather holds out. We haven’t had much rain since I’ve been here but they are calling for about a 60% chance tomorrow. Hopefully it will rain early or hold off till afterwards.

End of First Month

Can you believe that it will be one month that I've been here at the White Violet Center for Eco Justice ? Wow, seems hard to believe but I'm finishing up my fourth week.

On Monday, we had a new little cria born (that's what the baby alpacas are called). It was a little boy, born to Dora. He's the gray and white one in this video. Dora is a first time mom and she didn't take to him right away so Tracy had to take him to the vet and they gave him plasma, by way of a tube into his stomach, which helped boost his immune system. From the looks of him in this video, he sure is perky now. The brown cria was born the next day (Tuesday) and she is a sweetie. Her mom has had a cria before so she knew what to do and she took good care of her except that her body temperature was too low so Tracy (the alpaca mgr) had to put the cria on a heated dog bed with a hot water bottle to try to raise her body temp. When I stopped down after work, her temp was coming up about a degree per half hour. She was limp as a rag doll though and in this video you can see that her legs were a little wobbly. It was so neat to stand there and watch all the other alpacas come over to meet and greet the new cria. They would nuzzle them and sniff them. It was really cute to watch their acceptance into the herd.

We picked 524 pounds of tomatoes today...a new daily high since I've been here. Holy mackerel but it's a lot of tomatoes. Rusty found this hornworm in the patch while we were picking. Isn't it weird looking ? This one was maybe three inches long but they can get as long as a hotdog. I don't think I want to see one that big. And talk about damage... They strip the leaves off the tomato plant. Look at the top of this plant. There's just twigs left on it.

Elsewhere in the patch, Rusty came across this male monarch hatching out. You can identify the male by the dot on his wings. When they are hatching out, they secrete fluid out of their abdomen. This one was latched onto Rusty's hand and it was so pretty. I hope he eats some of the garden pests.

 

 

We picked cranberry dry beans the other day and they are laid out on trays drying. Once they get dry we'll ask the sisters to shell them for us. Ann and I cut up tomatoes on Tuesday and made a big batch of salsa to give to each of the CSA members on Wednesday. All but one ingredient for the salsa came from the gardens here. We didn't have any cilantro but we had the seed heads. I didn't realize that the leaves are called cilantro but the seed heads are called coriander.I like the taste of the seed heads much better than the cilantro leaves. More of a pop of cilantro flavor than the lingering soapy taste of the leaves. We crushed the seed heads up and that seasoned the salsa.

Did you know that chickens require 14 hours of daylight to be at their peak of egg production ? We are now at 12.5 hours of sunlight so the production is starting to go down. Some chicken farmers use additional light sources to keep it at the 14 hours that is required but we don't.

This afternoon we went on a field trip to Rusty's land. His mom studied permaculture (wikipedia says that permaculture is "

Permaculture is a branch of ecological design, ecological engineering, and environmental design that develops sustainable architecture and self-maintained agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.^[1][2].

^{They have taken their land and put in 2000 trees and a one acre pond. They did a thing called keylining, which is taking a plow and running it along the various elevations to make a ditch like depression to help with erosion and runoff. Their pond has a sandy bottom to it so the water is slowly draining from the pond and into a nearby creek. Here is a picture of the erosion where the runoff from the field goes into the pond. It's pretty significant. We kicked around ideas for water retention and ways to slow the erosion they are dealing with near the pond and near the creek (they lost 25' to erosion just in the last year on the creek bank). It was really interesting to see how the laid out the trees. They have all types of nut trees, paw paw, hard woods, maple and other trees. His land is about 45 minutes from here, located in Sullivan. It was a pretty drive through the countryside to get there.}

^{Well, guess that is all the news for right now. Our alpaca open house is coming up next week and the CSA pot luck dinner. Lots going on..temps are still warm but I'll take it for as long as it wants to last. Hope everyone has an awesome weekend !}

A Felting We Will Go...

Another week done....tomatoes are still prolific. We had a U-Pick night on Thursday that I worked and sadly we only had about eight groups/families come out for it. We had gotten some much needed rain Thursday morning so it may have scared some of the CSA folks off, thinking that it would be muddy in the tomato patch but it really wasn't that bad. Not like early in the week when the drip irrigation system sprang a leak or got left on....it looked like a rice paddy that day. We were walking through several inches of water in some places. Glad I had my work boots on that day. It was pretty sloppy.

I got Friday off because I had worked last Saturday for the farmer's market so I spent the day working on fiber. I'm working on Chauncay's blanket. This fiber is from the neck and leg areas so it's not the prime stuff. It's 2nds and 3rds and needs to be skirted. The 3rds have to be sorted out and the 2nds are used to do felting with.

I'm looking for fiber that is 2" long so thumb length;otherwise it goes in the can of 3rds. There is quite a bit of stretch to alpaca fiber due to the crimp so if you pull it, you'll get a little more length out it than if you didn't pull on it. Seems this whole bag of fiber is borderline in the necessary length so I'm tugging at each tuff to see if it qualifies for the 2nds bag. I also have to check for "vegetable matter" (poop, hay, foreign objects) and pull off any frizzy hairs. See how it tapers down to a point....that's the part where it was attached to the alpaca. Thank goodness for that little "handle" to gather up tufts of it to check for length. The pile on the table probably covers a 2' x 4' area...it seems really daunting and seems like the pile never gets any smaller. After I get all of this done, then Sister Mo will show me how to card it and then it can be felted. On Friday, Sister Ruth showed me how to do dry felting (she rescued me from the skirting process because they need to stock up on some items for the upcoming Alpaca Open House). I am making ornaments that can be hung on a tree or put on a keychain or whatever. There is a machine that does felting but we do it by hand. You use a felting needle that is about 4" long and has tiny little barbs on the tip of it. The fiber that has gone through the carder is used and you just take little tufts of it and place it in a mold of sorts. They look like cookie cutters but they had these made just for doing this. We place the form that we are using on top of a piece of foam. By poking the loose fiber with the needle (short strokes that don't go into the foam padding), it starts to bind the fibers together till you finally get a densely matted object. You keep turning the form over and poking each side till the object is uniform in density. If you get a weak area (like the neck on my one alpaca needed a little shoring up), you just take a little tuft of fiber and poke it into the weak area. It's really quite fun. I'm trying to help them get a bunch made for the Open House. I brought all the supplies back to my room and I've made 6 since yesterday afternoon. I work on it a little while, do some reading and then go back to it. Sister Mo does wet felting, which is used for hats, slippers and other stuff. I will learn that at some point. Sister Ruth, who taught me to do the dry felting is really artistic. She does wall hangings with the fiber, beautiful drawings on note cards and other fancy stuff. Since I don't consider myself to be an artsy person, this is something I can do and hope that there are other things I'm able to get the hang of.

Meanwhile back in the garden: In the older high tunnel, we've planted lettuce, carrots, beets and spinach for the fall CSA program. The new high tunnel is still under construction. That will be used to plant items for the winter CSA program. Fresh, local veggies all year round....Yum ! Guess that's all the news from the farm. Cooler temps are here. It was 43 degrees when I went for my walk this morning. 70 during the day. Oh yeah, I've got a new to me computer ordered. It should be here by the end of next week. My computer is doing the same thing it did before....black screen of death. It finally started for me yesterday so I could work on my project and do this post. It has to stay open 24/7 now till the new one gets here. The new one will be a Dell Business Edition. My computer guy says that the business models are built so much better to take hard use. He's got a 6 month warranty on it so if I don't like it for any reason, I can return it to him. It's a 2011 model with Windows 7 and Excel and Word installed. He said it will be fast so hoping he is right. $280 so nothing to lose at this point. I hated the thought of paying big bucks for a new laptop. Seems the price keeps going up with all the new fandangled gadgets on them. That's it from Indiana....

Windows Live Tags: felting, fiber, CSA, White Violet Center

Daily Gifts

Even though it's only been three weeks since I arrived here, each day gets better and better. The sisters are so happy to have us interns eat with them at lunchtime and to learn about what's growing in the gardens. They almost are giddy just talking about it. It doesn't hurt that they have a plump slice of tomato on their plate that they're getting ready to sink their teeth into and they know it came from the gardens here.
The sisters are so funny and I learn so much when I sit and talk with them. They are so giving and open to any questions we have. Today I sat with some sisters I had never met before. Three of them are from a parish in Chicago and two of the three are actual blood sisters. As they said: "Sister sisters". We got to talking about the weather in the next few days which is supposed to go back into the 90's through the middle of the week. They were talking about how glad they are to not be wearing habits anymore and the following story came to light.
The oldest sister at the table, we'll call her Sister N (she's 91 and still works everyday and looks amazing !) said that their habits were made out of surge (not sure of the spelling but it's a material like wool). The material wasn't available during the war because it came from France. They wore full length skirts and the headpiece sometimes would cut into their chins and they'd develop sores on their skin. There was no air conditioning in the parishes or convents and she said they must have smelled pretty bad back then as much as they'd perspire and for as long as they wore their clothes. During the time of WWII Sister N was taking a train from Indianapolis to Chicago with a group of sisters and they all were in full habits. They had to move from the second floor of the train station to the first floor and then a short while later needed to go back to the second level. The skirts on the habits had evenly spaced pleats in the front and gathers in the back of the skirt. Her skirt was getting pretty worn and the pleats were wearing thin so she had turned her skirt around so the pleats were in the back. All of the sisters gathered their belongings and were headed up the stairs to the second level. Sister N had a suitcase in one hand and held her skirt up with the other hand. Part way up the stairs, the sister behind her fell forward and in trying to catch herself grabbed Sister N's skirt in her hand and it tore off. With the skirt in hand, the sister tumbled end over end down the stairs in the train station. Sister N stood there with just a black slip on and with all the commotion, all the soldiers hanging out in the train station came running. They rushed to the aid of the sister who was fine but laying at the bottom of the stairs, still clutching Sister N's skirt in her hand. The soldiers helped up the fallen sister and she proceeded up the stairs and handed the skirt back to Sister N, who did not have a spare skirt with her. Back then she said they all carried pin cushions with them so all the sisters circled around Sister N and they pooled all their pins so she could reattach her skirt. Only problem was that once they boarded the train, she couldn't sit down. She had to stand because the pins would poke into her if she went to sit down. Finally one of the sisters in the group offered the spare skirt that she had with her but since Sister N was so much shorter than this sister, it took a lot of "rolling down the waistband" several turns to get it so it didn't drag on the ground.
As Sister N was telling this story, our table was cracking up in the dining hall. Oh my, just when you think these ladies are straight laced and puritanical they come out with these stories that just kill me. Another sister at the table told about a sister, who was from the northeast and was shopping for a "cart" for the convent but with her accent the "T" was not pronounced....you know how those Bostonians talk. She called someone at the convent and asked who she should call about a "car" (I can hear my friend Larry saying it now). They gave her a phone number for a local dealer who she promptly called. Here's how the conversation went:
Dealer: Hello, may I help you?
Sister: Hi, I'm looking for a car(t).
Dealer: Yes, we have those.
Sister: Does it have 4 wheels?
Dealer: Yes, they all come with 4 wheels.
Sister: Does it come in white?
Dealer: Yes, we have them in white.
Sister: Does it come assembled ?
Dealer: Yes they are all ready to go.
Sister: Can I set a microwave on it ?
Dealer: I suppose you could set a microwave on it.
By this time the dealer knew that something was amiss and they got the whole thing straightened out and figured out that she wanted a "cart" and not a "car".
Too funny...once again our table was in tears and by this time all of the tables in the dining room had finished lunch and left. We were still sitting there hearing stories about smelly sisters in habits and whether cars come in white. These ladies are truly a blessing to me and so  much fun to be around. Here's a sign I walk by on the way to Sunday lunch and it cracks me up every time I see it. Who says that nuns don't have a sense of humor.

A Wrap on My Week....

I spent part of Labor Day working with Bree, feeding the caring for the alpacas. They get feed, hay and fresh water each day. Alpacas create  just a couple of spots in their pasture area where they poop so it's easy to clean up after them (they poop out little pellets). It's important to clean it up so that they don't pick up diseases. Erma Bombeck always said that the grass is always greener over the septic tank...well that's sort of close. Here it's ...The Grass is Always Greener Under the Alpaca Poop". When you have a big pasture, as some of ours our, you look for the tallest grass to find their bathroom spots. It was fun working with them...they are quite the curious creatures and they sure love the feed that they get. One came into the shed, when he heard me scooping it up, and wanted to stick his head right in the can to get some. I had to shoo him out so I could finish getting it ready for them.
With the long weekend the tomatoes were sure ripe and ready to be picked on Tuesday. We picked almost 400 pounds ! We pick into red totes and once the product is washed or prepared for CSA or market, they go into blue totes. They are washed with straight vinegar each time they are used to kill any diseases or fungus that has come in from the field. Wednesday was CSA day and I took the orders to our "South" location and handed them out to the members as they came in. When we set up the room to pack bags, here is the set up.

Ann looks at the list of CSA members , hands us a member's bag and tells us what extra items someone might get.

Starting with the heaviest items, we start filling the cloth bags. This week, these totes had onions and apples. Notice that some things are in red totes when they should be in blue. We had so many tomatoes in blue ones that we ran out of them so had to use red ones.

We work our way around the room, and the lightest items are at the end. We also put the items that not everyone is going to get, which this week was ground cherries, eggplant, swiss chard and peppers.

That's the process ! We have 62 CSA members. Some are 1/2 shares so they don't get all of the items. We usually have about 10-12 dozen eggs each week so those get distributed in some manner too. Sometimes I don't know how Ann keeps track of everything. It gets really confusing sometimes to figure out who gets what. So back to my story about being at our South pick-up: I got to talking to one of our CSA members, told him I'm a fulltime RVer and turns out he is shopping for an RV. He would like to go full-time but can't right now. He and his wife do shows (they are artists) and they bought a Smart Car so they can tow it when they buy their motorhome. They want something about 25' in length so we talked a while about that. Then somehow we got to talking about Ithaca, NY. I told him I lived there for a bit and that my son was born there. Turns out he was just there four days ago....went to the bird sanctuary on Sapsucker Woods Rd which is where I used to live. Wow, small, small world. It was fun talking to him...he found an object laying in the parking lot that he wants to incorporate into a piece called "The River" that he's working on. He uses items he has found on the river while boating or kayaking. Love these chance encounters to chat with people !

Oh, here's another neat thing that happened just yesterday. A guy named Norbert came by with this trailer to show us. It was a race car trailer and it has two entrances into it, in addition to the ramp door in the back. The side flaps go up so apparently someone used it as a concession sales trailer. It's going to be used as a mobile market for fresh produce. It will go into neighborhoods in Terra Haute, where low income folks or retirees live who may not have a car to get to the market and sell fresh produce to them. Our interns (me included) will take turns working with Norbert in nearby areas. Sorry I don't have a picture of the inside of the trailer. I was in awe of the whole thing that I forgot I had my phone with me till after he had closed it up. The outer walls of the trailer are lined with commercial storage racks, held in place by tie down straps hooked to the walls. You can see the AC unit on the roof so it can be kept cool

LiveJournal Tags: White Violet Center for Eco Justice,Terra Haute Farmer's Market,Wabash Valley Mobile Market

. There are two different refrigerated cases in the front, left corner so things like fresh cheese or whatever could be displayed there. In talking to Robyn, at White Violet Center, there is something being created called The Hub that will be a central place where farmers can bring and sell their produce so they don't have to try and find an outlet for it. This unit will hit the streets next month, I believe, to get the word out. Offerings will be light this year but once farmers hear about it, they can increase the amount of crops they grow for next year. The woman in the picture is Tracy, our alpaca manager.

Well, that's about it. Tomorrow I need to water the chickens and collect the eggs. We have basil in the food dehydrator and the trays will need flipped in the morning. I'm going to start working on my project, which involved crunching some numbers and doing some research. Hope everyone has a great weekend !

Terra Haute Farmer's Market

It's been a busy week, between the CSA on Wednesday and picking to get ready for the Farmer's Market on Saturday. It has been really  humid all week but I started wearing shorts and it has made it much more comfortable to have less fabric clinging to me when I'm hot and sweaty. I went with Rusty (another intern) to our "South" pick-up location for those CSA customers to help him hand out bags and see how things are done. It's nothing fancy...just us handing out the bags out behind Caboodles cupcake shop. Rusty bought a dozen cupcakes to take back with him and gave me one. I've seen these gourmet cupcake shops popping up all over in our travels and I must say at $2 a piece, it should be pretty profitable for them. They were way too sweet for me. This shop even has gluten free ones to choose from.

On Thursday we started out the morning by visiting the chickens. There are 24 of them and they are free range chickens, who also share the pasture with the alpacas. They are also heritage breeds which means they come from a long lineage of the old breeds that have been around a long time. Some breeds of heritage animals are also on the endangered species list since so few of them remain. There are groups that are dedicated to preserving heritage breeds of different kinds of animals, which I think is so important to do since many of these breeds are ideally suited for small farmers.
We gathered the eggs and filled the water dispensers. I got a look at the fancy timer that is connected to the little trap door on their coop. There is a string connected to a motor (see picture on the left) so that when the timer goes off it opens the door at a preset time to let the chickens out in the morning and then when you want them inside for the night, it lowers the door. They are $106 on Amazon if you want to set up a curfew for your cats on their kitty door. Pretty neat, eh ?
Thursday night there was a U-Pick tomato night for the CSA members and about 20 people showed up. They could pick all they wanted for free and they did a really great job of picking the whole area, since we hadn't picked it since Tuesday. The ones they didn't get were in the middle of the plants or down low, where it's hard to see them. We still picked 6 totes worth on Friday morning so you can imagine how many we would have had, if they hadn't come the night before.
Friday we spent the morning picking for the farmer's market booth which I worked with Ann, the assistant garden manager. After lunch, we cleaned everything and loaded the tent into the van to get ready for leaving Saturday morning. I met Ann at the office at 6:45 and we loaded all the produce we had prepared and off we went. The farmer's market is held in a parking lot across from the factory that makes Clabber Girl baking powder. I've never heard of it but it's been around for a really long time and is still produced in the plant across the street from where we were. The area where I took this picture of all the old style tins is where there is a little coffee shop and museum type of area. They've restored all the old woodwork and there are tons of displays set up. Too bad I didn't have more time to check it all out. Maybe I can take time another day to go see it. It makes a great setting for people to spend their Saturday morning's at the market and then gather for coffee and a danish in their coffee shop.
We had a busy day at the market. It reminded me of when I was 12 and had my roadside produce stand. You meet the neatest people at places like this. I spent some time talking to the vendor next to us, Jason and his wife Kathy. They have a 100 acre farm where they do grass fed milk. Kathy also makes homemade Kombucha, which is a fizzy, fermented drink. I've tried the store bought ones and didn't care for it at all. Kathy gave me a sample of her Hawaiian Tropic flavor and it was really good. She makes about five different ones and even sells the kit so you can make your own. They sold all sorts of items and I really enjoyed visiting with them. They said that the interns have come out to their farm before for a tour. I hope that we get to go while I am here. I'd be interested to see their operation. They make all sorts of products like cheese, soap and cottage cheese, plus they have an acre planted in vegetables.






At our booth, we sold all sorts of items, including a sunburn cream and bruise salve that Robyn made. We had two different types of okra and I got to cook with that when I came home from the market since Ann gave me a leftover CSA bag and there was a bag given out to each member last week. We also sold soft and hard neck garlic, which I am not familiar with. It's almost time to plant that since it gets planted in the fall and harvested in the spring. The soft neck garlic keeps longer than the hard neck.
We had some Asian pears, which were super sweet and delish. We had tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, jalapeno, bell and anaheim peppers, apples, garlic, onions, purple and green beans, eggplant and beautiful flower bouquets. It was fun and I came home with a large loaf of zucchini bread from a nearby vendor. I had to water the chickens when I got back to White Violet Center, before returning to my room to relax and do some reading. I'm reading Beekeeping for Dummies, which is an interesting book.
Last night some type of disturbance came through and the winds came up. I found a number of tree limbs down in the park this morning
where I walk and this one was pretty big. I'm hoping that no car had a close encounter of the worst kind last night when it came down on the road. The hot spell is moving out and we should have cooler temps this week. We are still off work tomorrow but I'm hoping to catch up with Tracy, the alpaca manager, who's working tomorrow and learn more about their care. Hopefully she'll let me tag along while they feed and care for them. Hope everyone is having a restful holiday weekend with family and friends. This weekend always signifies the end of summer so we need to enjoy the nice weather while it still lasts. The almanac is calling for a cold and snowy winter, here in Indiana. Wouldn't you know that the winter I come here will probably break all sorts of records. Let's hope not !