freedom farm

just placed the new beez, with their Carniolan queen, in the used and very fine looking horizontal top bar hive box. i bought this hive box from the previous owners of the place i lived on Orcas when i first moved out of Seattle. i'll get a picture of it soon.

the beez were delivered by plane and i waited there at the strip with a guy named don who had also ordered one package from this Northwest Bee Supply. he gave me some good advice based on his many years of experience.

he and everyone says we need to feed them sugar to get them started... and i don't want to! i've been reading a book called 'keeping bees with a smile' that discourages any supplemental feeding. i was already feeling this way before and the book is helping me feel confident that there could be another way. the difficulty in this case is that the bees have been delivered after recent work in california and do not have any store of honey, or more importantly it seems, any comb in which to grow brood. so they need energy to get them started making the comb, where they can both store honey and get the brood started. i caved in a bought one 'pollen patty' from the man delivering our beez in the plane. it has sugar, pollen, and a nutritional supplement called 'complete' in it. there was also some syrup left in the can, which was supposed to be empty. i don't want to feed them any more than this. we'll see...

a friend named Liz, who has been keeping bees for about ten years, came over with a veil and gloves for me to borrow, as the tools i bought are not here yet. it was so nice to have someone with me for this ritual. she also had some useful tips for me. the most important awareness she gave me is about their water source.if we don't have a water source for them nearby on our property they will use the pond of the neighbors, and that might be unwanted. so i need to talk to the neighbors and for now give them fresh water each day as i do with the chickens.

Hey folks! Davis here!

Biochar has just struck my life like lightning! Watch this video!

At the San Juan Islands Ag Summit i recently attended there was a presentation on biochar. it got me very interested in incorporating it into my farming practice. i decided that in our wood-fired outdoor kitchen we could use biochar stove technology to cook and make this valuable soil amendment at the same time!

then i found this biochar demo on a site that was recommended to me at the Ag Summit. i love the idea of making char and cooking without the need for any industry to produce the materials of a stove body. this is the perfect complement to this desire i have had for a while to do some pit cooking! i am going to try to make this happen with the 12lb salmon i have in our freezer. perfect thing for matt's birthday and homecoming party! now i just need to find a local alternative to banana leaves...

it will be kind of like this

Davis finally met Melba. she is the woman who established the garden that he is now part of restoring. renewing. she told davis in their first visit how she used to use the wood shavings from the saw mill, 'after they had sat around for a while.' for additional fertilizing she would get fresh manure in the fall and spread it over the soil to rot down over the winter. then she would dig it in before planting in the spring! brilliant! you can see from these pictures that she kept a good mix of flowers and vegetables. very tidy.

'its almost like magic makes the decisions.'

 i've not done one myself yet, but i thought of a design that might solve some of the problems i found in one i used at a farm in california. i was the one to harvest the compost and the hose was very difficult to remove. hard not to puncture the hose.

garlic planting day at freedom farm!

it was a beautiful day on Lopez Island...

first we had to sort out the cloves we would plant. of five varieties, four were from plants grown in the islands last year and one was bought at a farmer's market in seattle.  davis' younger brother learner, a major food activist who lives on orcas island, provided most of it. 

davis did some much needed competition control around the beets and radichio while luminous, a visiting superhero, and luke began to prepare the planting area.

this is where the red russian kale, which we save TONS of seed from, was grown last year.

beds were shaped

fresh horse manure was spread

garlic was laid out and poked in

soil was raked over

the compost pile is a very sacred aspect of freedom farm. one could look at it as a source freedom, of life. it is full of magic and healing. davis, pictured here with kim, began to develop his passion for careful composting while on the hoop tour that he took around the U.S. in 2011/2012. composting is a great way to give back to what feeds us! 

when the pile is first started and lots of plant materials are accumulated it is helpful to jump on it like a trampoline in order to reduce the air spaces. too much air and the pile dries out and cools down. too little and it stays cool and becomes ANAEROBIC, potentially breeding pathogenic bacteria. gotta get the right mix of materials and then keep it all 'moist as a rung out sponge'.

the series of four images of the pile shows how the material added will decrease dramatically in volume over about a week under the optimal thermophilic conditions. based on observations so far the core temperature of this pile climbs up to 120 degrees F within three days, reaches a peak of 130-150 (depends on amount and nitrogen content of materials added) and then slowly decreases after about a week. these temperatures are more than sufficient to kill all pathogens in the pile. see Joseph Jenkin's Humanure Handbook for more details.