PASA Conference Coming Up

Here's my annual publicity for PASA's Farming for the Future Conference.  I've been attending this conference for the last four years, and have always come away excited, energized, and having learned many useful things applicable to my homesteading endeavor.  The conference is held at the beginning of February each year in State College, Pennsylvania.  If you're interested in the sorts of topics I cover here on the blog and reasonably local to PA, I suggest you consider attending.

In the coming year I'll have the honor to be presenting with the man who first inspired me to start keeping a tiny flock of backyard chickens at the PASA conference four years ago.  Harvey Ussery will be leading an all-day pre-conference track on Integrated Homesteading.  I'll be playing backup.  Harvey is more than capable of presenting a knock-out presentation all by himself, as I have seen more than once.  He's concise, well-spoken, and his talks are carefully honed.  He does not waste the audience's time.  My hope as a novice speaker is to not look incompetent by comparison.  Frankly, I'd rather be learning than teaching, but it's hard to say no to an invitation from someone I admire so much.

From now until December 31st, you can receive an early bird registration discount, and additional family members receive discounted registration as well.  There are many ways to reduce the cost of conference registration if you want to attend but need to watch your pennies; everything from scholarships, to facilitated carpooling, to a WorkShare program.  So check it out even if you think it's not in the budget.  The next conference is going to be an even better deal than in previous years, because PASA has decided to pack an extra workshop slot into the two-day conference.  So I'll be able to attend six 80-minute talks instead of five.  I look forward to all the other wonderful extras of the conference as well: picking up free shipping coupons from Johnny's, checking out the free seed-swap table, the local cheese tasting, free live music in the evenings, a free seed packet or two from various seed vendors, the great quotation posters, a wonderful fund-raising auction with so many lovely and useful items, and all the unpredictable things I'll learn from formal presentations and conversations with other attendees.

I'd love to see some of you there, whether at the Integrated Homesteading track or the main conference.  If you plan to attend, please drop me a note.  If you can't attend, I'll most likely to a summary post after the conference, detailing some of the highlights and things I learned.

Giveaway: The Small-Scale Poultry Flock

As I mentioned in my book review of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, I received two complimentary copies of this book.  So I'm hosting a giveaway to share the bounty with my readers.  This is a fantastic book for all homesteaders, urban chicken-keepers, and those who have yet to acquire their first small flocks.  If you haven't seen my review of it from last week, you may want to check that out.  By all means, do visit the author's website, The Modern Homestead.  It's full of thoughtful insights and useful information for anyone interested in moving towards self-sufficiency on a small acreage.

I mentioned that there was other news to do with Harvey Ussery.  I was thrilled to hear that he would once again be speaking at PASA's Farming for the Future Conference, which I attend each year in early February.  Hearing Harvey's presentation at this conference  four and a half years ago was what inspired me to start my own backyard flock.  But then, to my utter amazement I got an email from him a few weeks ago asking if I would like to co-present with him during his all day pre-conference homesteading track.  I went through a rapid series of thoughts and reactions, all centering on my paltry amount of experience as a homesteader compared to his two and a half decades in this vocation.  I was floored, honored, uncertain, hesitant, and thrilled.  In the end, I provided plenty of caveats, but ultimately said yes.  So!  I'm going to be presenting at next year's conference if only as a junior member to a seasoned and top-notch speaker.

I've encouraged my local-ish readers to attend this conference before, and I've written up summaries of things I've learned from this event in past years.  Now I can say, come introduce yourself to me at the conference.  Even if you've already read (right here on the blog) much of what I'll be talking about, you will learn a lot from Harvey Ussery, and I guarantee you'll come away loaded with enthusiasm and motivation.

Onwards to the giveaway.   Up for grabs is one copy of The Small-Scale Poultry Flock.  This is not exactly a freebie giveaway; I want something in exchange for your chance to win.  I'm asking for a comment with your best frugality, homemaking or small-scale homesteading tip.  I want to see some creative ideas here, people, not the obvious beginners-level ideas you find in the most simplistic magazine articles.  Tell me your secrets for saving energy, making a delicious meal on a dime, a great gardening trick, a labor-saving tip for any part of the homestead, a special recipe you use for canning, lacto-fermenting, or curing the foods you put up,  or anything else clever you've come up with that fits in a homemaking or homesteading category. 

Tedious stuff you should read anyway:  One entry per person.  Entries for this giveaway will be accepted until Wednesday, October 19th at 6pm, Eastern time.  You must either be signed in to some account that will easily and obviously lead me to a way to contact you, or else leave a means of contact in your entry comment.  Anonymous comments that do not include an email address will not be considered as entries for the giveaway. Winner will be chosen randomly from all valid entries, which must contain the aforementioned tip.  The winner will need to disclose (privately, to me only) full name and mailing address.  I'm opening the giveaway this time to readers from overseas, so get your comment-entries in.  I'll announce the winner by Friday, October 21st.  If I can't reach the winner in a couple of days, I'll select another and try again until it all works out.

Good luck!

Edit 10/19/2011: Comments are now closed.

Agricultural Learnings of Winter for Make Benefit Glorious Urban Homestead

My writing muse mostly deserted me for a while there.  But I feel a post on the PASA conference is owing, and I also recently attended a mini-seminar on potatoes.  So I figure I can summarize useful stuff I picked up in one go.  Here's a rundown of things good things that happened at the conference and things I've learned recently.

As usual, there were free seed packets to be had at the conference.  I got some from Seed Savers Exchange but also found to my chagrin that they were giving away some I had just ordered from them.  Johnny's, also as usual, had a free shipping coupon on offer as well as their nifty 14-month calendar, which will hold me till next year's conference.  Knowing Johnny's typically gave out this coupon, I managed to hold off ordering from them until after the conference.  There were also nice coupons and useful schwag such as pencils and pens from Organic Valley. Lots of good free noshy bits were available at various times too.  I bid on a few lovely things at the auction, but didn't win, so I came home having blown less money than I did last year.  New at the conference this year was an informal seed swap table.  I picked up some cilantro and echinacea seeds.  I'll try to remember to bring some of my own seed next year to give away.

I learned about a very promising technique for trellising tomatoes that involves pretty serious pruning, which I plan to try this year.  I know my track record is execrable when it comes to delivering posts I promise to write "soon."  So I'll just say that when it's time to put my tomatoes in the ground, I'll try to get a post or two together on this trellising technique.  I should say that I put my tomatoes starts in about ten days later than most gardeners in my area, around June 1st.  Then the trellising doesn't really start until the plants have grown for 3-4 weeks.  If you want to play along with this trellising method on the strength of my non-existent description of it, I can tell you it will require very sturdy and tall metal posts; one for every ten feet or so of row.  T-posts are preferable, but the very large U-posts can work too, and that's what I'll be using.  It also calls for aluminum wire, preferably 15-, 16-, or 17-gauge.  Twine is definitely not a viable alternative to the wire for this method.  And you'll need something to clip the plants to the wire.  Twisty ties can work, but the farmer recommended the reusable, cheap, and easy-to-use tomato clips from Johnny's.  She didn't say how many per plant, but I would think 10 per plant would be in the right neighborhood.

Okay, here are a couple of bite-sized tips I can pass along from the conference.  Those posts mentioned for the tomato trellising - they're not the easiest thing for one person to pound into the ground.  Particularly if that post is 7' tall and that person is an average woman.  There's a great tool that makes the job a lot easier.  This was specifically mentioned by this female farmer, and it so happens that I already have the tool and can back up her endorsement from my personal experience.  It's a post driver, and it's basically indestructible.  Two people can work together to use it, and that makes things even easier.  But I've gotten a 7' post into the ground by myself with this tool.  Well worth having if you place posts on a regular basis.  The second tip is how to get those posts out of the ground by yourself.  The technique is simple.  Fill a bucket full of water, and pour it all out right where the post goes into the soil.  Apparently this will instantly loosen the ground up enough to pull the post out easily.

I heard about the use of horsetail (Equisetum spp.) as a natural anti-fungal compost tea spray for a variety of garden plants.  It's supposed to prevent powdery mildew on squash plants, help tomatoes and potatoes resist blight, and help fruit trees resist fungal diseases as well.  I don't know how efficacious it is, but this is the sort of remedy that can't really do harm.  So I'm definitely willing to try it and see what happens.  I'm going to hope we don't have another blight year, but I always get powdery mildew on my zucchini plants, so I should be able to test this spray this year for sure.

I attended two talks by Michael Phillips, The Apple Grower.  Both of them were excellent and a bit overwhelming.  What I learned about fruit trees, their diseases, pests, and health, would be very difficult to summarize even briefly here.  I learned a lot though, and will be reading through his book as well as his website, very carefully.  He also has another book coming out later this year.  I realize that I haven't really paid much attention to my fruit trees, or taken all that good care of them.  The intensive devotion to his trees that Phillips practices, as a professional orchardist, is something I will probably never be able to approach.  But there are plenty of things I could put into practice that would likely help the overall health of the few fruit trees on our homestead.  I'll try to write about these things as I do them.  Certainly I'll experiment with using the chickens to help break pest cycles under our mature apple tree this year.  I put in a suggestion at the conference that PASA bring Phillips back for a full day track on fruit trees.  He obviously had a lot more to say than was possible in the time allotted to his talks.

Audio recordings are available of all workshops presented at the conference.  This is some consolation for the fact that I can attend only one workshop per time slot.  If only I could find a way to be in two places at once.  I left a list of the workshops I'd like to hear audio recordings of with a friend who was staying later than we did.  So I've got those to look forward to.  Sometimes a great presentation is only a mediocre audio recording, because all the visual is lost.  But usually I can get something out of them, and sometimes speakers will agree to email their power point presentations or handouts to interested folks.

I also came back from the conference with verbal permission to nag three people by email.  The first is a woman at Rodale who responded immediately and positively to my inquiry as to whether or not Rodale might be interested in hosting a scion wood exchange and workshop on how to graft fruit trees.  (Scion wood is a small branch taken from one fruit tree and grafted onto either bare rootstock or another fruit tree.)  The Rodale Experimental Farm is not terribly far from where I live, and it has large apple orchards.  A scion wood swap fits well with the sorts of things they like to promote.  And it looks like they will; I've already gotten an email back from her that says they'll try to put on something like this next year.  Awesome!  The second person is a livestock veterinarian with a passion for raising animals on pasture.  She's not in my immediate area, but has agreed to come to my tiny homestead when she's next in the neighborhood and consult with me about the feasibility of (some day) having a few miniature dairy goats here.  This is something I would love to do, but I think it would take 2-3 years of site preparation to work the way I would want it to work.  The third person is the woman who made the mind-blowing fermented ketchup which I sampled at last year's conference.  She agreed (again) to give out the recipe.  So I definitely intend, very politely, to nag her by email until she coughs it up.  My attempts to reproduce the recipe last year were a complete failure.  If she follows through, I'll post it here.

I guess I'm learning to maximize the schmooze potential of the conference.  It really is a seething wealth of walking expertise.   And there's a lot more to tap into than just the formally scheduled talks.

As for the potato class, I learned a few useful things there too.  For one thing, the majority of potato diseases mostly cause only cosmetic defects.  Hollow heart, and scab - these affect appearance, but not safety.  We can eat tubers affected by these diseases quite safely.  In fact, the instructor said that the potato has an awfully good track record as far as food safety is concerned.  Humans don't tend to eat potatoes raw, and our cooking methods for the tuber take care of pretty much any microorganism from the field.  This is great news for gardeners and homesteaders.  We don't produce for market, so it matters very little if our potatoes aren't picture perfect.

Seed potatoes have a "clock" that determines their physiological age, as opposed to their actual age.  The clock starts ticking when the parent plant dies back, or when the potato is harvested, whichever comes first.  Temperature determines how fast the clock moves.  Seed potatoes are ideally stored at slightly colder temperatures (34-36F/1-2C) than potatoes destined to be eaten (42-44F/5-7C).  The more warmth the potato experiences, the faster it ages.  The "younger" the seed potato, the fewer stalks the plant will send up, and the larger and fewer the tubers will be.  The "older" the seed potato, the more stalks the plant will send up and the smaller and more numerous the tubers will be.  Overall, the difference in total yield by weight is insignificant from an older to a younger seed potato.  There are several other differences in the way plants from young or old seed will behave, but here's the interesting application of this knowledge... The ideal seed potato weighs 2.25-2.5 oz. (64-71g).  You can cut larger potatoes down to use for seed, but it's better to use uncut potatoes if you can.  So if you want to deliberately grow potatoes to use as seed potatoes, it pays to use "older" seed potatoes for your planting.  If you want your potatoes just for eating, "younger" seed potatoes will give you fewer spuds to scrub per serving, and fewer small potatoes that might escape your notice during harvest.  Good to know, eh?

And here's another interesting thing I learned.  When potato varieties are developed, part of the process is to grow out new strains in test fields which have been deliberately infected with various potato diseases.  This is done to observe resistances to common potato diseases, so as to decide which new varieties might be commercially viable.  As an aside the instructor mentioned that test fields infected with potato scab virus universally clear the virus spontaneously after a few years, and thereafter it's difficult to reestablish the virus in that field.  This off hand comment captured my attention quite dramatically.  It has me thinking about soil biology, and how little we really grasp what's going on in there. I guess if you've got scab on your garden potatoes, you can just cut off the superficial blemishes and count on the disease going away on its own, eventually.  That would definitely work for me.

Well, that's all I got for today.  I'll try to be better about regular updates.

Headed for the Conference

I'm off to PASA's Farming for the Future conference in a few hours.  I have two hopes.  Firstly, that winter will give us just enough of a break to make it there and back again safely.  Secondly, that I learn plenty of interesting tidbits to share with all of you, and come home with the fuel-injected sense of motivation and excitement that the conference has provided for the past four years.  Honestly, I don't know how I'd get through the impending spring busy season without this incredible boost.  It's worth every penny of the registration fee.  I'm really looking forward to the fun!

PASA Conference Coming Up

Time to put in a plug for the conference of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.  The Farming for the Future conference will meet on Friday and Saturday, February 4th and 5th, next year in State College, smack in the center of the state.  This is the 20th annual conference for PASA, and the fifth consecutive year I'll be attending.  You can register additionally for a wide selection of pre-conference mini-courses that allow you to explore a single subject in depth.  If you're in the vicinity of Pennsylvania and you eat, I would urge you to check out the conference schedule and consider attending.  I always learn a ton at the conference and come away with a stupendous dose of motivation - very timely for a gardener in early February.  It's wonderful to spend just a couple of days surrounded by people who are passionately committed to ethical, sustainable, healthy food for everyone.  Farming for the Future is a bargain as conferences go.  Register by December 31st for the early bird discount.  I'd love to see you there!

It's All So Exciting

I'm back from PASA's Farming for the Future Conference, and as usual, I learned a lot and got my winter dose of motivation and enthusiasm. I did a lot more shopping at the conference on this, my fourth year of attendance than on the previous three years combined. Partly that was because Brushy Mountain Bees had a sponsor's booth, and I was able to talk to someone to help me with my order, AND get free shipping on anything I ordered while there. I got the rest of the equipment ordered that I need to be ready for my honey bees to arrive in April. Then there were a few books and other items purchased because I really wanted them, and because the purchases helped support PASA.

Here's a laundry list of tidbits learned, things that excited me, and other lovely things that happened at the conference:

Biochar is a soil amendment, but does not itself add any fertility to the soil. In a raw state it will actually suck nutrients out of the soil and into itself. Its microstructure allows it to benefit sandy soil by improving water retention, and clay soil by improving drainage. Go figure. It's also a friendly home for soil microbes and mycorrhizae. A great use for it is to add it to animal stalls, where it can become "charged" with nutrients and microorganisms from the animal's manure so that it does not draw nutrients from soil, and where it can help control odors. The hooves of a sufficiently heavy animal will also help break down biochar into smaller pieces, which is desirable, as the animal walks on the chunks. It can also be "charged" by soaking it in urine for a few days. It's not good to breathe in charcoal dust, so you don't want to crush it too fine, and if your raw biochar is very fine, it's best to wet it or mix it into moist compost as soon as it's done cooling. The speaker referred attendees to this video for guidance on making a home scale biochar burner. The chief virtue of biochar, however, is that it sequesters carbon in the soil.

I tasted the best ketchup I've ever had in my life - by a mile. It was lacto-fermented and contained smoked chipotle peppers. The cook assured me that she would send me the recipe by email. If I do get it, you can be sure I'll try it this summer.

I heard about and saw pictures of a good root storage technique, apparently originally from Finland. A thick layer of dry fall leaves are laid down in a large bin. Then harvested and trimmed (but not washed) root vegetables are laid on top of the leaves so that none of them touch each other, and then they are covered with another thick layer of leaves. The bin is left uncovered. In a cool dark space the roots will keep very well for several months. The leaves should be fairly dry when collected and arranged. A refinement of the technique is to use a piece of row cover material (which breathes very well) folded over to contain the roots so that you don't have to search wildly for them or miss them entirely if your bin is very large. The enormous bin shown in the pictures was in a bank barn and made of cinder blocks.

I learned more about home curing meats and am now curious about attempting two versions of cured fatback: Italian lardo, and Ukrainian salo. Lardo is made with rosemary and other herbs you'd associate with Italy. Salo is seasoned with paprika. I have a tentative agreement to get together with two hog farmers I know when they hold their pork curing powwow. Paul Bertoli's Cooking by Hand, which deals with charcuterie, was lauded by the speaker. That book has been on my wish list for a while now. It just got moved to the top of the list.

I attended a humanure workshop by Joe Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook, and came away thinking that the composting of human manure not only makes sense from the perspective of soil fertility and conservation of scarce resources (drinking water being chief among them), but that it's also entirely safe if done properly. I picked up a hard copy of the book, but you can get a free copy online.

Johnny's Selected Seeds was giving away a couple of free seed packets, plus a 14-month calendar. This calendar will carry us into 2011, until we get to the next conference and scrounge a free calendar for next year. When my husband raved to them about the broadfork we got from Johnny's a few years ago, and told them how we proselytized to other gardeners and have agreed to lend it out this spring, the representative gave him a pocket knife. It looks like it's perfectly suited for grafting fruit tree seedlings.

Edited to add: I found out something totally amazing about comfrey, which is already one of my all time favorite plants. As the comfrey leaves die down in the late fall, spiders shelter under them for the winter. If you have a plant large enough to cover one square yard of earth with its dead leaves (and this is totally do-able with a single established comfrey plant), on average 240 spiders are sheltering under there. That's a lot of predator habitat! So if you have comfrey, don't clean up the leaves that die down until late spring of the following year.


I put in the winning bid on a beautiful set of hand-thrown mixing bowls at the benefit auction. They nest together perfectly, and each one has a pouring spout. We've been on a nasty streak of breaking our mixing bowls lately. So let's hope we're finished with that trend. I thought it was a great opportunity to obtain a needed item from a Pennsylvania artisan, while giving money to an organization I wholeheartedly support. Much better than buying stuff imported from China. My husband made pancakes with these bowls this morning. Yum!

Each year the halls and corridors of the conference center are adorned with fantastic quotes that make me laugh, galvanize my determination, and generally transmit optimism. Wandering around to read them is one of the highlights of the conference for me. The Mark Twain quote above is one such. Another great quote at the conference came from Thomas Edison: "Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." I've never seen a quote repeated in the four years I've been at the conference. I wonder whose job it is to find these gems.

I learned a lot about dairy goats, even though I don't have any immediate plans to get any. Like bees, goats seem to be at risk of quite a few diseases.

I talked to a sponsor who was selling shiitake logs and got his views on Fungi Perfecti and another vendor of myco-products, Field and Forest. He greatly prefers Field and Forest because, in his opinion, their various forms of spawn are much more heavily inoculated than Fungi Perfecti's products.

I learned about a Pennsylvania shoemaker that handcrafts his shoes, sells them for $300 per pair, and reportedly will resole them for about $80. That doesn't seem all that different from some pairs of Birkenstocks and their resoling costs. The guy wearing the shoes said it's like getting a reflexology treatment every time he puts on his shoes, and that it's the closest thing to walking in bare feet he's ever experienced.

A blizzard arrived while we were in State College. But on the drive home on Saturday afternoon we found the roads well cleared and we got to watch a gorgeous sunset. As we neared home, the amount of snow that had fallen seemed to lessen, until we were looking at only 6" or so of accumulation. We weren't sure whether we would be able to get up our driveway, which has a short steep section just off the road. But we found that our awesome neighbor had plowed our driveway for us in our absence. I don't know what kind of goodie to give him the next time I see him, (he's not around much) but I've got my thinking cap on.

Best of all, we got to come home to a home we love. I'd even given myself the gift of a clean kitchen to return to. Made tea this morning with our own well water and nary a tinge of chlorine. Home is best.

PASA Conference Coming Up Soon

I have no idea how many readers visit this blog from my home state of Pennsylvania, but any of you that do might want to check out the annual conference coming up soon for the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. The conference is called Farming for the Future, and it's held each year on the first Friday-Saturday in February in State College, smack in the middle of the state. This will be my fourth year attending, and I wouldn't miss it! I always come back from the conference bursting with excitement about my gardening projects for the year. I learn so much from the speakers, and my fellow attendees as well. It is both comforting and hugely energizing to be surrounded - just once in the year - by people committed to healthy food, to preserving the living soils that we depend upon utterly, to finding workable solutions to the problems agriculture is facing and will face in this century, and to teaching a new generation of farmers.

If you live in Pennsylvania and eat, you should know about PASA. If you garden or farm, or aspire to do either of these things, you'd be giving yourself a huge treat by attending this conference. The amazing selection of workshops and speakers at this year's conference is going to make it tough to choose which ones I attend. Check it out. And let me know if you'll be there!

Second Annual Grass-Fed Beef Cookoff

I've no idea how many local-ish readers I have, but I wanted to alert those of you in Pennsylvania to an upcoming event designed to showcase sustainably raised Pennsylvania beef. The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is hosting the second annual Grass-Fed Beef Cookoff in Fogelsville on Sunday, August 2nd. I volunteered at the inaugural cookoff last year and will be doing so again this year. Believe me, this is a fun event for sustainable foodie types.

This year at least fourteen Pennsylvania beef producers who raise their animals on pasture will be competing with steaks to be judged on the basis of taste, texture and appearance. Last year's winner, Harvest Home Meats, was from Northampton county, close enough to us that we got our prime rib for Christmas dinner from them, and believe me, that was a decadent piece of beef. Cookoff attendees will enjoy a sample of beef stew and a burger, all made from Pennsylvania 100% grass-fed beef. There will be live music, local beer, and the setting at the Glasbern Inn and Farm is simply gorgeous. If you can make it, keep an eye out for me and please say hello!

More info, and ticket information, here.

Things I Learned at the Conference

I'm back from the PASA conference, and feeling very happy to be home. My cat is delighted about our return too, and has been sucking up to us shamelessly since last night. I learned a lot, but being away from home takes it out of me. I missed my bed, our well water, easy control over my own diet and meal times, and hanging out in my comfy pants as long as I wish in the mornings. Home is best.

But the conference was great. I learned a lot, and felt enormously encouraged by the energy generated by 2000 other gardeners, homesteaders, sustainable farmers, ethical seed vendors, and concerned eaters. There was a palpable buzz to the assembly; I could just feel the exchange of information and ideas happening among the members during breaks between sessions. My husband attended an IPM (integrated pest management) workshop and has returned home particularly fired up about planting things to provide habitat and food for pollinating and predatory insects. There was a speech by a local level politician who seemed to get it on issues of farmland preservation and government incentives for sustainable farming practices and small scale sustainable energy production. Raj Patel gave a good keynote address, and I picked up coupons for organic foods and free shipping from Johnny's Seeds that will probably save me more than $50. We bought three sustainably produced Pennsylvania cheeses at the cheese tasting put on by PASA member farms.

The conference furthered my progress on two of my goals for 2009. I happened to meet the woman who coordinates the Master Gardener Program for our county. She gave me the skinny on when the program will start up, when the classes will meet, and how the pre-test works in terms of selecting participants. (It doesn't; it's only a tracking metric for student progress.) It was nice to get a chance to schmooze her. And I got containers of compost worms from two different members, in exchange for some of my homemade bread. Settling the worms into their new home is on the agenda for this afternoon.

Here's a representative sample of random information I picked up at the conference. Almost half of these things were learned outside of a formal session or workshop. Many of them came from networking with other members in casual conversation.

There is no inspection of and no regulation over the sale of rabbit meat in the state of Pennsylvania.

It took Joel Salatin (the "high priest of pasture" at Polyface Farm) quite a while to figure out how to raise meat rabbits on grass, but apparently he did it, recently. No, I don't have the details just yet, but I'm working on that. (Update: follow the link for the details.)

Pretty much nothing will grow with less than 10 hours of daylight. At my latitude that means no growth from November 11th to February 1st. No wonder my hayframe arugula has gone nowhere these past few months. (Run the calculations for your own latitude here. You can get your coordinates off google maps, by the way.)

Many weed seeds require a light flash to germinate, which puts the old-timer practice of tilling the fields or planting at night into a different perspective.

We're probably best off cutting down that young white pine tree in our back yard if we want to maximize our edible landscaping. Not even the blueberries (which can tolerate soil pH as low as 4.5) will do well planted as close to it as our space constraints will require.

Celery is a good crop to grow in a persistent damp spot, if you have one in your yard.

When trying to eradicate a well established but unwanted plant, cut it to the ground when the plant has set buds but not yet bloomed. The energy stored in the roots will be lowest at that point, though really tenacious plants may still require a few rounds of cutting.

"Primocane" refers to the new growth canes on berry plants which form leaves but do not fruit in their first year. "Floricanes" are canes in their second year of growth which bud and set fruit. A few blackberry (and possibly raspberry) varieties have recently been developed in which the primocanes manage to set fruit.

In favorable conditions, it will take about 15 years to produce tree canopy over a denuded stream bed in Pennsylvania. The forested border around waterways should be at least 50 feet on either side, and 100 feet when the sides are steeply sloped.

You can identify blackberry canes damaged by frost by scraping the skin of the cane. Undamaged canes will show a bright green layer around a bright white core, even in winter. Damaged canes will reveal a brownish green coloration.

CR Lawn (of Fedco Seeds) is a hoot, and wields a respectable vocabulary. He can toss off the word "chary" in extemporaneous conversation and use it correctly. He can also give a cogent presentation without Powerpoint, and he can handle lots of questions. Among his competitor seed vendors he praises Southern Exposure, Turtle Tree, High Mowing, Johnny's, Territorial, and Baker Creek.

Farms that follow organic practices and use compost often have soils with an excess of phosphorus. The longer organic practices have been in place, the higher the chance of this imbalance occurring.

Timberleaf Soil Testing provides soil tests better geared to the backyard gardener than does Penn State Extension.

Sunflowers are a great asset in a garden for attracting bees and other pollinators, but they have significant allelopathic properties, and should be planted in the same part of the garden every year so that they do not retard the growth of other crops. I've had them on the north edge of my garden, and planned to keep them there. Still, it's good to know why my plan was a good one.

It's time to give John Jeavons' writings on bio-intensive gardening a fair shake, even if I don't plan to pursue this method. Jeavons alleges that rutabaga, parsnip, and leeks can all produce more calories, acre per acre, than potatoes.

Verticillium wilt, a fungal disease of the tomato and its solanaceae relatives, can be combated by planting fava beans in the same bed, chopping the bean plants into bits, and working the residue into the soil. Severe infestations of the fungus may require several years of this treatment. Any tomato plant with this disease must be destroyed rather than composting it, or the disease will spread with the compost.

Though utility companies are required by Pennsylvania law to "buy" electricity generated by alternative energy installations at private residences, they are not required to pay the homeowner anything, only to reduce the electricity bill for the residence to $0. Thus, it is important to know our true electrical needs when sizing a solar or wind installation, as there is no financial incentive for producing more than we need.

There is a company called Cold Brand that produces sunflower oil in New Jersey from sunflowers grown in Pennsylvania. I can't find any further details on availability though. It would be nice to know more so that I could source cooking oil from relatively nearby.

In principle, it's possible to transplant fully mature asparagus plants during their fall/winter dormancy period.

Here's a list of the books we heard about at the conference that we're going to be requesting through inter-library loan:

Our Next Frontier: A Personal Guide for Tomorrow's Lifestyle, Robert Rodale
Photovoltaics: Design and Installation Manual, by Solar Energy International
The Winter Harvest Handbook, and The New Organic Grower, by Eliot Coleman
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits, by John Jeavons
Biological Control of Insects and Mites, by Daniel Mahr

And here are some few pictures from the conference.

Weed School. We were given taxonomic keys and magnifying loops, and asked to identify these twenty invasive weedy plants common to Pennsylvania.

In the second half of the day, we had a demonstration of how several different tractors and tillers can be used for weed control.

The PASA Benefit Auction. There were some lovely items donated by sponsors and members to raise money for PASA. This corner cupboard, salvaged from an old farmhouse caught my eye, though we have no room for it. And the basket of handspun yarn looked beautiful as well. But I know my habits well enough that I couldn't justify bidding on knitting supplies.

The only auction item I actually wanted was a small hod basket from Johnny's Seeds, paired with a log inoculated with shiitake plug spawn. I coveted the coated wire basket, which would be ideal for harvesting potatoes. A gentle shake, and much of the soil clinging to the spuds would fall right through. Other vegetables could be hosed down, right in the hod basket. This was a "bag" auction, which meant we couldn't bid on it, but instead had to buy raffle tickets and take our chances with everyone else who wanted it. I put all $10 worth of my tickets in that bag, but didn't win. I may succumb to temptation and add a hod basket to my forthcoming order for row covers from Johnny's, taking advantage of that free shipping.

In general, it was a nice feeling to wander among lovely products and be able to admire them without feeling any tug to acquire them. The craftsmanship was often amazing, but these items aren't needed in my life.

On the other hand, we felt good about supporting Pennsylvania dairy farmers with cold hard cash.

Pennsylvania cheeses. Wallaby, a Monterey Jack type from Keswick Creamery, Fat Cat, a "blue-less blue" from Birchrun Hills, and Mountain Valley Sharp Cheddar from Goot Essa , a co-operative of Amish dairy producers.

All in all, it was a great four days of meeting interesting people and learning. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, and plenty of contacts and resources to follow up with. Should be a good year for the garden.

Off to the Conference!

As you read this I'm in State College, attending a pre-conference, all-day workshop of PASA's Farming for the Future annual conference. Today it's Weed School: Managing Through Identification and Mechanical Methods, and tomorrow I'll have another all-day workshop on The 21st Century Victory Garden: Growing Your Food and Energizing Your Community. Meanwhile, my husband will be attending the Hands-On IPM (integrated pest management) and Bio-Controls workshop. Then on Friday and Saturday the PASA conference proper begins. (PASA: that's the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture.) One of the keynote addresses will be by Raj Patel, author of the book Stuffed and Starved, which discusses the paradox of a world with 850 million people starving alongside 1 billion overweight people. Should be infuriating, heartbreaking, and enlightening, all at the same time.

I'm looking forward to seeing people I've met at the conference in previous years. Oh! And the food at the conference is simply marvelous. I hardly need to think about packing food for the meals away from home. We get delicious breakfasts and lunches with each of our workshops, and the evening hors d'oeuvres tables, laden with products brought by member farmers, is always an incredible treat. Then there are the coupons and free samples from organic product companies that sponsor the event. I got a coupon for free shipping from Johnny's Seeds last year which I used when buying my broadfork; saved me a tidy sum. This conference has the best schwag! The benefit auction of all sorts of interesting gardening tools, and value-added products from member farms is always fun to browse through. Free live music on Thursday night. Networking opportunities with farmers and gardeners who live near me and follow sustainable crop management and humane animal husbandry. I enjoy seeing Pennsylvania's plain folk who mingle freely with us "English," but speak their Pennsylvania German among themselves. There will be a Pennsylvania cheese tasting by member farms on Friday night. Early morning yoga classes if I can get up in time for them. I'll probably meet a farmer who produces something sustainably that I'll want to start buying on a regular basis. I've arranged a meeting with an attending fellow member who will barter some of her compost worms for my bread. And these are all just the extras!

The hour-and-twenty-minute seminars of the conference itself are consistently informative and fascinating. I always play it somewhat by ear, but these are the seminars that I'm likely to attend:

Rural Pennsylvania's Energy Future
Using Organic Nutrient Sources & Interpreting Soil and Compost Analysis
How to Grow, Harvest, Manage, and Market Nut Crops
Specialized Techniques for Early Harvest of Field Grown Crops
Why and How to Create a Forest Buffer on Your Land to Protect Our Streams
Solar Electric Systems 201: Basics and Beyond
The Versatility of Small Grains: Food, Feed, Forage, Seed and Cover Crops
Pollinators, Predators & Plants: Building Landscapes to Attract Beneficial Insects
The Plight of the Honey Bees & How to Help Them Thrive
Year-Round Backyard Mini-Farming: Food with the Least Fossil Fuel and Footprint

I'll have to pick and choose among these, as some of them are scheduled concurrently. But don't these sound interesting? There are several dozen other choices that are less appealing to me that will no doubt be full of other attendees with different interests.

I always come home from the frozen wastes of State College in early February with a burning passion for the year's gardening and homesteading projects. It's like being able to swallow a motivation pill, once a year. It's all just SO exciting! Worth the money and the driving every year. This is definitely a garden-geek vacation.

I'll try to take some pictures that capture the wonderfulness of it all, to post when I return. Have a wonderful week everyone.

PASA's Farming for the Future Conference

Before getting back to our regularly scheduled content after the holiday, I'm going to make a plug for one of my favorite organizations, and a great upcoming opportunity for anyone who takes food issues seriously.

PASA is the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. They're a non-profit group of farmers, consumers, and those of us who are sort of in between, who work to address issues of sustainable farming, local food, and food quality. I don't think of PASA as a faceless group, or a non-profit entity. When I think of PASA, I think of the real people I know, small scale farmers who still give a damn about the food they produce and the people they help to feed. I think of the incredible wealth of knowledge that I have access to because of PASA, the contacts I've made, mentors I've met, and the local grass-fed and -finished prime rib of beef I'll be preparing for Christmas dinner.

Each year PASA holds its annual Farming for the Future Conference in State College, PA. It's held in chilly early February, about the only time of year farmers in these parts can reasonably be expected to get away from their farms. I've attended this conference for the last three years, and I plan to do so next year too. Every single year I've come away energized, excited, having made new contacts, and having learned invaluable things that I, a dabbling homesteader, can take home and put into practice on my 2/3 acre suburban lot. Most of the people who attend are Pennsylvania farmers, including many Amish, but I've met many plenty of non-farmers and folks from Vermont, Ohio, Maryland, New York, and Virginia too.

If your interests include high quality food, gardening, homesteading, crop or livestock farming, building local economies or viable communities, local food, organics, post petroleum age sustainability, value added farm products, community supported agriculture, or anything loosely connected to these issues, you'll find something of interest at the PASA conference this coming year. PASA always assembles a stunning roster of speakers and presenters. These are people of long experience and great vision, who know their topics intimately. At past conferences I've heard Joel Salatin and James Howard Kunstler speak, and gotten tips on growing apples from the likes of Micheal Phillips. I've heard the first hand accounts of two young entrepreneurial micro-farmers who sold more than $60,000 worth of produce grown on one acre of land on the Winooski River in Vermont, and another farmer in northern Maryland who sells fresh greens from his open fields year-round, even when he has to harvest them from under the snow.

The conference proper is always on a Friday and Saturday. But there are intensive, all-day, limited-enrollment seminars as optional add-ons before the conference itself gets underway. There are a number of tempting offerings for next year. I'm considering the Wednesday Weed School and the Thursday Hands-On IPM and Biocontrols track. I would really like to learn more about pest management, and how to distinguish the eggs of the beneficials from those of the pests.

Although this will be an expense I consider a luxury, I have no difficulty making the decision to attend. Carpooling has been easy to arrange each year, and I've yet to pay for lodging while attending the conference. PASA takes pains to keep this conference affordable, and offers many discounts that may reduce the expense of attending. Farmers are not wealthy people, sadly. Though there is an optional meal plan offered with registration, I've found that just grazing on the abundant and delicious donated snacks has been sufficient to cover my caloric needs while at the conference. In fact, I usually come home with food. In the end though, the few hundred dollars I cough up to PASA goes to a cause I firmly believe in. And I definitely get my money's worth.

If you're in or reasonably near Pennsylvania, check out PASA and their 2009 Farming for the Future Conference. If you plan to attend, please let me know in the comments. Maybe I'll see you there!