Back Issue Vol: 46-3
Ballinasloe
I’ve never been much of a traveller and in recent years I’ve been doing even less. Covid in one way has been a blessing – an excuse for me to go nowhere at all. So whatever came over me last weekend I decided to go (where in my terms is the far ends of the earth) to Ballinasloe.
Four Seasons in the Strawberry Patch
Many of my childhood memories were made in the strawberry patches that my father, Paul Edwards, was gifted at growing. Even for that, he would never eat them. The texture of their seeds was too much and for all the decades that he grew them, and grew them well, I never saw him raise a berry to his mouth. He sure loved to grow them though.
Hercules
That was my first look at Hercules, a three-month old Maremma male pup. The thick snow-white fur that covered his body stood straight up on the top of his handsome square head and down his back. His black nose was like a piece of coal in the middle of a winter field. He had almond-shaped hazel eyes. He was only a pup, but his instincts were clear to me. He would do what needed to be done to protect whatever was in his care, even if his side still hurt from the beating the buck gave him after the farmer put him in the pen.
Horsepower Units
When I wrote about Khoke’s grandfather rebuilding a 7-sweep rotary horsepower unit, I wrote briefly about some technical issues we ran into. To this, we got a response from John Brubaker, the community mechanic for the Winchester Mennonite community near Hillsboro, Ohio. John suggested we come to see the five 2-horse treadmills connected to power the silage chopper in the fall. He also suggested that it might be worth our time to check out the Scottsville Horse and Buggy Mennonite community in southern Kentucky. This community is only 50 miles west of the Vernon community near Hestand, Kentucky, where our longtime friends, the Bye family, lives. Before our travel plans were finalized, they also included a stop at the Delano Mennonite community in Tennessee as well.
Ice Well
Ice wells for cooling and storing milk and cream on the farm may be a satisfactory solution of the refrigeration problem on many dairy farms where the usual methods are too expensive or impracticable. The ice well “refrigerator” consists primarily of a pit in the ground in which a large solid cake of ice is formed by running a small quantity of water into the hole daily during freezing weather.
Inheriting Genetic Resilience in Tomatoes & Ourselves
On a purely practical level, whether you hope to harvest 10 or 10,000 tomatoes, diseases can diminish your abundance every season. Before we dive into the capacities of DNA and seeds themselves, there are four cultural keys vital to preventing tomato disease. As we hone our practices of community care and mutual flourishing, these cultural, as well as genetic practices, are the foundation of biological resilience in the garden, surrounding us all with the abundance we dream of.
Just for Kids – Winter 2023
Foxhunt • The Battering Ram
Landing on Land?
We came first without inherited money or assets. We came with experience, tools and a small earned nest egg, plus something more. We believed, and still do, that we inherited from our grandparents and parents certain values and outlooks, certain expectations and cautions. These have most always informed our choices. And knowing which way to turn and what to work on, those are the secrets to success. Knowing what to choose. We brought this knowledge with us.
McCormick-Deering Tractor Manure Spreader No. 200
The manure spreader, above all other machines used on the farm, is subject to the worst conditions. A little kerosene oil is good occasionally on the apron links and the main bearings of the machine, afterwards using a little heavy oil, as the lye and acids which come from the manure are very severe on the metal parts. Always use plenty of oil. It will increase the life of your machine.
McCormick-Deering Wagon Offset Hitch
The information in this article may appear so specific that it escapes application for most folk, but we have discovered that this sort of detail can work to spur the ingenious farmer and shade tree mechanics towards far flung remedies to seemingly unrelated applications. In this case the material is very specific to the challenge of attaching an offset wagon to the back of a pto or ground drive corn binder so that the harvested crop may be gathered in the same field pass. The geometrical solutions to the offset draft are amazing. Where else would one find such information but in your Small Farmer’s Journal?
New Citrus Creations 1904
The citrus industry in Florida has frequently suffered from severe freezes. The most disastrous of these probably were the freezes of 1835, 1886, and 1894- 95, which killed or seriously injured almost every tree in the State. Other minor freezes have occurred from time to time, which, while not so severe, have seriously damaged many orange groves. In California and Arizona, also, citrus trees are frequently injured by severe cold. It is thus clear that the most desirable improvement in the orange and other citrus fruits is the securing of varieties which can endure lower degrees of temperature and which may be grown throughout the present orange-producing sections without danger of injury by cold.
Old Threshers Reunion
Old Threshers Reunion is a 5 day Labor Day weekend event that hosts a series of horse demonstrations. Among the demonstrations were a Case thresher run off of a 6-sweep horsepower, a smaller thresher run by a 1-horse treadmill, a buck rake and Jayhawk swivel stacker, a grain auger and horse powered sawmill, and more. We were definitely interested in checking these out, so we rode along with Jordan who nabbed Ammon Weeks to ride along as well.
Review of Online Horsepower Symposium
Within the EU-funded Leader project “Horsepower – Innovation in small-scale agriculture and gardening” an online symposium took place on November 5 and 6. Hosted by Jeanette Junge, business manager of the Swedish Leader LAG PH, a total of 63 participants from 17 countries followed 14 presentations with current reports from research all-around the world, background knowledge and best-practice examples from European smallholdings.
Setting a Comb Straight
The guard is made of soft copper or brass wire of the above design. A silk twist is passed with a needle through the nostrils and the guard is tied in position. The bottom is wound with waxed string to prevent its marking the head. The hook is to keep the point of the guard from pressing into the comb.
Small-scale Peasant Farming in Transylvania
South of the impressive Magura-Codlei mountain and in the southeastern part of the Transylvanian basin lies the Romanian commune of Holbav. Although only twenty kilometers from the county capital of Brasov, traditional small-scale farming lifestyles have survived in Holbav to this day, forming living testaments to a resilient and successful circular economy of the local people. Of outstanding importance are the individual farms situated on the surrounding hills of the actual village center which is located on the valley floor. Each of the hills is farmed by one of the families – and has been for several generations.
The Seed Detective
When I was first getting started with farming and gardening someone gave me a couple of handfuls of dry beans. They were speckled in the earth tone palette of Navajo rug colors. I know now I had possession, if only for a short time, of something rare, valuable and precious. I did not have a name for the variety and cannot tell you who gave them to me. I haven’t found those exact same beans again since. All of that and more went into my absorption with Adam Alexander’s splendid ‘mystery’ and ‘travel’ book researching the origins of vegetable seeds, The Seed Detective. The author, a film maker by trade, is an avid gardener and seed collector who chronicles his travels in search of the beginnings and heritage of vegetable varieties. The travels and the history uncovered are worth the price of this gem of a book.
Titans of the Racetrack
There were times when 25,000 people showed up for the events and stayed through heavy rain, heat, and once even during the World Soccer Championship. The crowds were fascinated by the heavy horses, which despite their enormous weight of up to 2,200 pounds and their calm disposition, displayed impressive agility and speeds during the various tasks demanded of them.