Look at how time flies, yet time is non-existent.
(A turkey vulture basking in the sun, with its wings spread wide. This one sat there for a while in that posture. I learned that they do this to kill parasitic microbes it picks up eating dead bodies.)
I apologize for the sudden absence of my online presence. Paige and I had a very busy month. We had a lot of field trips to several different farms/businesses. We enjoy being busy even though we had little time to ourselves. I am glad the weekend has came so we can rest and collect our thoughts on everything.
There is something I would like to tell the world.. Paragon Sustainability is growing! I am announcing that we have a new member, Reid Rheinsmith. This 5th member of Paragon is a dear childhood friend of mine who happens to be deaf too. He plans to end up in North California soon to attend the Grange School of Adaptive Agriculture when the next term opens up in April 2017.
I have learned so much the past month and it would be impossible for me to type everything into one blog post. But, most of what I have learned and am learning is contributing to my big picture of the reality of farming and Life. I am taking everything I know and cramming it into my subconscious for the purpose of the development of Paragon!
We shall now go to the beginning days of August! Lets travel back into time!
Monday, August 1st, 2016, started with the usual field work for about 2-3 hours and then part of the group voluntarily went to the community kitchen to process the meat of the cow we had killed and butchered 2 weeks ago. It took about 3 hours and 7 people for the whole process. When we finished, we enjoyed the filet mignon for lunch. And it was SO deliciously good. The afternoon went on and then we had our first class on vegetable plant families. We learned specifically about Brassicaceae. Members of the Brassi family prefer to grow in cool weather(fall-winter). These plants are broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and cauliflowers. There are a few more but I don't exactly remember them because we don't eat them, haha.
Let me explain a little more about Crop Rotation and why its important to know about along with knowing vegetable plant families. Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different families in the same area in different seasons. It is done so that the soil of farms are healthier and higher quality and used to only one nutrient. It also gives that certain area time for family-specific diseases to die out. Rotating crops basically recharges the soil. When a season ends, the next season starts and you need to plant certain vegetables from another family that grows well in the next season.
Life is beautiful. It teaches that you have to work with Mother Nature.
After class, Paige had her first ram slaughter experience and it was pretty intense. Reikivik, the ram, was a wild child who had three different homes, each of which he rammed the hell out of and escaped numerous times. He was brought to the school to be put down so we could experience our first ram slaughtering process. After 45 minutes of fighting and letting the blood drain from the neck of his, he finally passed.
and Tuesday, August 2nd, 2016, did not start with the usual field work. We started with our first poultry processing experience and killed 20 chicken, scalded them, plucked their feathers, then eviscerated them. Learning about processing poultry was incredibly easy. You can disembowel them with a few precision cuts and with one pull of the hand you can take out all of their innards. After taking out their guts, we chilled them and then froze them. It is required to chill then freeze them to make their meat good. After the processing and death, we then had a simple lunch and the usual afternoon class on record keeping, which was interesting.
Record keeping is essential for maintaining a successful farm. The class pretty much outlined necessary record keeping for tracking income and expenses, assessing the profitability of crops, livestock and enterprises, assessing varieties and breeds, meeting certification and food safety requirements, doing taxes and financial planning. We also learned about a few templates and charts we could use, etc. I enjoyed the class because I liked seeing the way multiple different record keeping systems work.
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016, was an awesome day. We love field trips. We visited one of the leadership team member's farm called, Green Uprising. Michael is an admirable person with so much knowledge. He runs the farm along with his wife, Sara, who is very sweet lady and is a master with herbal knowledge/medicine.
The Green Uprising farm grows a lot of produce and is a beautiful farmstead. I believe they host a few long term interns every now and then to teach them aspects of farming. Michael also taught a little about the history of Agriculture later that afternoon. It was pretty interesting hearing it from him because he went through it all.
(A picture of Michael's hoophouse.)
We had a tour of the farm and learned a lot about why he had his structures and crops here and there. It was a very beautiful farm but I unfortunately do not have a bunch of pictures.
(A small house on the property. There were a few cute and cozy living spaces which the interns stayed in. Some bigger structures were for the permanent members of the Green Uprising farm.)
The farm was very spacious and had a good amount of acreage. There were cute goats and trees everywhere. In the late afternoon or so the group headed back to the farm to wrap up the day with a good dinner and our usual pre-market day harvest which is every Wednesday.
So, Thursday, August 4th, 2016, was a normal easy day. We had typical field work in the morning with harvesting and processing food for the farmers market later in the afternoon. But what was different is that Paige and I were assigned to the duty of handling the booth at the farmers market for the first time that day along with the market manager/field teacher, Joshua. Every week students rotate and take up some responsibilities for the market. We did very well financially that day. It was a good experience for us.
Friday, August 5th, 2016, we woke up to a pretty cool foggy sky. We were more excited that the weekend finally came by for us and we had our much needed rest after the weekly group check in that morning. The previous two weeks of that day on August 5th, were packed with lessons and classes and lectures and the Not so Simple Living fair. We were very very busy so when the weekend came by we took the time for ourselves and this is why I ended up not writing the blog post for the first week of August.
I will include a few random pictures below of the cozy weekend we had.
(Fog has descended into our area of the farm and valley but in the background you can see the blue hue of the sky showing that there is no fog in that area which is not very far from us. It played tricks on our eyes and was very cool, heh.)
(A member of our group, James, made some delicious bread along with a great dinner)
(A very beautiful light show presented by the one and only great Sol)
The coziness we had went by quickly and then we met week two of August. Before I get into week two and week three, I would like to note I did not exactly take too many pictures of the activities I did during those two weeks because my hands were quite busy and the lessons have gotten more complicated and deeper. My binder is accumulating a good amount of notes and printouts from every class/fieldtrip which is a very satisfying feeling for me because someday Paige and I can look back at all of these papers filled with good information.
Monday, August 8, 2016, In the morning we had our normal breakfast then did a little bit of fieldwork for like 2 hours then headed to our workshop for class. Our master craftsman, Takashi, introduced us to Carpentry for farmers. We learned about the nature of wood, tools and their strengths/weaknesses, and building structures.It was an interesting and inspiring class. Takashi has a bunch of information in that noggin of his, he truly can fix and build anything. Later on that day, we had our 2nd class on livelihoods and farm economics. Most farmers are not profit driven investors in land and labor. They are mostly craftsmen and women who ply their craft expecting to get a livelihood out of it. The class helped us understand what we want to become(weekend farmer or rancher or commodity crop producer or market gardner). There are different models of income producing lifestyles in agriculture.
Tuesday, August 9, 2016, we had a morning class/field trip to the Grange Commercial kitchen and had our first taste of canning goods and value added processing(turning something into something else by adding something, for instance.. applesauce, lol). We learned how to can a few stuff in a step by step manner which was pretty easy to understand. These steps are required to be followed in commercial kitchen environments. Staying clean is important, guys. Later on the day, we had our Holistic Management: Whole Farm planning class, we were mostly shown of different ways to map a farm and different templates. Zoning and categorizing stuff to be easily understood is critical to maintaining a good farming operation.
Wednesday, August 10, 2016, the day was started with field work for 2 hours then we headed to the workshop for another class led by our master craftsman, Takashi Yogi! We were introduced to the nature of electricity and as usual, we love learning from him. He also taught us a little about solar power and other tools/batteries etc. I look forward to deepening my knowledge in the field of electricity and solar energy. After the class, we had lunch then headed to the community center because it was our group's turn to cook dinner for the community.That pretty much consumed our afternoon and evening so it was a good day.
Thursday, August 11, 2016, we met the day with our 2 hour field work ops then had our 10 am class on seed saving, plant breeding and genetics for 2 hours. We talked about strategies and management for optimal seed health and plant breeding. Seed saving is a very fascinating topic to talk about. I love the science in the field of botany. It makes Life beautiful. After this class we had a fieldtrip to Bountiful Gardens a local seed business in the town of Willits. They ship seeds of all kinds around the world to customers. They collaborate with local farmers and even farmers out of the state and ask them to grow certain seeds so they can save them. It was a fun learning from an old and established business. Later on that evening, we went to the farmers market and sold a good amount of produce. We collected a good amount of money for the school and made a new record topping the previous record from the week before.
Friday, August 12, 2016, the school had a field trip to the Mendocino Grain Project. A grain collecting/cleaning/storage operation in Ukiah, CA. It is run by a lovely old guy who works very hard. The project is basically provides Mendocino and other local regions with sustainably grown grains / legumes. They also support local grain growers by helping them harvest, clean, and mill their grain. We visited the granary in town where they clean and store their stuff. Took a look at all the big machines they used to keep the Grain Project going. We came out very itchy because of all the fine grain dust that was being blown around when the machines were on. We headed back to the farm when the cleaning process was over then we met the weekend.
