The secret life of sourdough

Posted on February 20, 2011 by anthony
Tips for making your batch of organic sourdough starter: you will want to use very clean bottled water.
Start with organic rye or wheat flour. Rye contains more yeast and bacteria than other flours.
White  flour will work too but will take a little longer to grow starter.
List of tools you will need
wooden spoon
bowl or mason quart jar
measuring cup
plastic wrap
Make sure that all these utensils are spotless and clean. We don’t want any contaminents in our sourdough starter. Once the starter is growing and strong, it will be more resistent to contamination.
First day:
In a bowl combine 1 cup organic Rye flour with 1/2 cup clean water. Mix with your clean hands or your clean spoon until the flour is moistened and you have a stiff dough. Transfer the dough to your mason jar and cover it with plastic wrap. You can use a rubber band or the ring part of the lid to secure the plastic. Place the jar in a cool place for 48 hours(65degrees)
Second day:
there might not be any visible change to the starter.
Third day
The starter might resemble batter now and there might be bubbles present. with a spoon scoop out half of the starter and throw away. I give this to my chickens or put it in my compost. Add 1/2 cup of of organic wheat or white flour. and 1/4 cup clean water. I feed my starter one type of flour from start to finish but you can start on day one with organic rye and from day three and on you can use organic bread or white flour. Mix the starter, flour and water again to incorporate everything and close the jar with plastic wrap. Store it at room temp for 24 hours. Within this 24 hour period you might see your starter rise and fall and create bubbles. Don’t be alarmed. It’s alive!
Fourth day:
Repeat the same steps from day three. Discarding 1/2 starter. Then adding 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of clean water. Store at room temperature for 24 hours. It should double in size and will be emitting gases. This time don’t seal the jar tightly. Gasses need to be able to escape. Fret not if it hasn’t doubled. This doesn’t mean you or your starter failed. It just means you might need to wait a little longer. everything is fine as long as you are working with clean utensils and a clean environment.
Fifth day:
You know your sourdough starter is active when you see bubbles present and or it has grown in size. If it hasn’t doubled or tripled, keep dicarding half of the starter and adding flour and water until it grows in size.
you can keep starter alive in the fridge in a sealed container indefinately as long as you tend to it once a week by taking it out into room temp and feeding it as previously described.
On baking day start by feeding your starter 8 hours prior to baking. After 8 hours you will have fed and helped to reproduce enough yeast and bacteria in order to bake a wonderful tangy loaf of organic sourdough and without the need of comercial yeast. The starter that you will make is a direct reflection of your very own local environment. No two starters are alike. You could take a starter from Alaska and bring to your home and before long the bacterias and yeast present in your environment will take over. Every starter is unique.
To make one loaf of yummy organic sourdough bread, i use one cup of starter and two cups of organic white unbleached un bromated flour one teaspoon of table salt and enough water to make a nice not too hard and not to slack(wet sticky flowy hard to handle) dough. The amount of water to use depends on what kind of starter you make. Sponge starter or biga. Sponge being a wet batter like starter and biga contains less water and it has dough consistency. Both of these starter types are topics for another post.
Keep in touch and let me know how it goes.

some tips for making your batch of organic sourdough starter: you will want to use very clean bottled water.Start with organic rye or wheat flour. Rye contains more yeast and bacteria than other flours.White  flour will work too but will take a little longer to grow your starter.
List of tools you will needwooden spoonbowl or mason quart jarmeasuring cupplastic wrap
Make sure that all these utensils are spotless and clean. We don’t want any contaminents in our sourdough starter. Once the starter is growing and strong, it will be more resistent to contamination.First day:In a bowl combine 1 cup organic Rye flour with 1/2 cup clean water. Mix with your clean hands or your clean spoon until the flour is moistened and you have a stiff dough. Transfer the dough to your mason jar and cover it with plastic wrap. You can use a rubber band or the ring part of the lid to secure the plastic. Place the jar in a cool place for 48 hours(65degrees)Second day there might not be any visible change to the starter.Third day The starter might resemble batter now and there might be bubbles present. with a spoon scoop out half of the starter and throw away. I give this to my chickens or put it in my compost. Add 1/2 cup of of organic wheat or white flour. and 1/4 cup clean water. I feed my starter one type of flour from start to finish but you can start on day one with organic rye and from day three and on you can use organic bread or white flour. Mix the starter, flour and water again to incorporate everything and close the jar with plastic wrap. Store it at room temp for 24 hours. Within this 24 hour period you might see your starter rise and fall and create bubbles. Don’t be alarmed. It’s alive!Fourth dayRepeat the same steps from day three. Discarding 1/2 starter. Then adding 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of clean water. Store at room temperature for 24 hours. It should double in size and will be emitting gases. This time don’t seal the jar tightly. Gasses need to be able to escape. Fret not if it hasn’t doubled. This doesn’t mean you or your starter failed. It just means you might need to wait a little longer. everything is fine as long as you are working with clean utensils and a clean environment.   Fifth dayYou know your sourdough starter is active when you see bubbles present and or it has grown in size. If it hasn’t doubled or tripled, keep dicarding half of the starter and adding flour and water until it grows in size.you can keep starter alive in the fridge in a sealed container indefinately as long as you tend to it once a week by taking it out into room temp and feeding it as previously described.On baking day start by feeding your starter 8 hours prior to baking. After 8 hours you will have fed and helped to reproduce enough yeast and bacteria in order to bake a wonderful tangy loaf of organic sourdough and without the need of comercial yeast. The starter that you will make is a direct reflection of your very own local environment. No two starters are alike. You could take a starter from Alaska and bring to your home and before long the bacterias and yeast present in your environment will take over. Every starter is unique.
To make one loaf of yummy organic sourdough bread, i use one cup of starter and two cups of organic white unbleached un bromated flour one teaspoon of table salt and enough water to make a nice not too hard and not to slack(wet sticky flowy hard to handle) dough. The amount of water to use depends on what kind of starter you make. Sponge starter or biga. Sponge being a wet batter like starter and biga contains less water and it has dough consistency. Both of these starter types are topics for another post. Keep in touch and let me know how it goes.

Tags: flour, organic, Rye, sourdough, starter, wheat
Posted in Artisan bread | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Everyone’s doing the chicken! (Part I)

Posted on February 15, 2011 by anthony

part I

Raising chickens in urban areas is absolutely on the rise. I wish I had figured out how easy it was to raise my own chickens when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although we truly love our hometown,  our family, and our friends there, we decided to give it all up to farm a piece of land in Southern Oregon. Luckily we’ve found a new and vibrant community up here. The friends we’ve made since we began farming are brave and steadfast. If we’ve needed anything from fencing to moving livestock we got it done with the help of many really generous people. It baffled me to see that they would willingly volunteer for hard work, but that’s how they do it here.

Before we moved and were married, Anthony talked about getting and keeping chickens in his backyard in the suburbs of San Mateo. I thought that the idea sounded great in theory, but that it could definitely turn into a small disaster and take too much time overall.  I also felt that it seemed inappropriate for the place where we lived. Things have changed since then and I’ll admit I had it all wrong. It’s so easy you guys! The benefits of raising chickens is well worth a bit of extra work. Nothing to it, but to do it.

The value of raising chickens:

Raising chickens is very easy and cost effective. You really do get what you put into the relationships with your animals and chickens are no different in that respect. In return for a place to roost, scratch and eat you get lovely fresh eggs that cannot be beat by anything you purchase at the store. You can buy beautiful organic free range eggs at the natural food market and still taste the difference between store bought and your own. The reasons for this are hard to pin down, but from conducting some recent and informal research I would be confident in saying that the main difference is freshness. It could also, be related to the difference in feed. Some of the perceptions of difference may be psychological because knowing exactly where your food comes from and exactly what those chickens are being fed can absolutely change your relationship to your food in general. You’ll find that you want to know where everything else you’re buying at the store comes from.  That line of questioning is bound to lead you straight to the farmers Market. Imagine if you grew too many tomatoes and your neighbor grew more eggplant then she needed and the person across the street had an influx of eggs. Why not organize a grower’s market in your suburban/urban neighborhood. Now that’s local!  One misconception is that if you don’t spray a pesticide or use synthetic fertilizers your food won’t grow well or taste good. This is a falsehood. Food tastes better when grown naturally and with organic fertilizers such as fish emulsion, chicken (straight from your flock after sitting for one year) manure, and other natural substances. Again, part of the joy we get from eating organics is to know that we’re not consuming food grown with chemicals.

Okay Little Chickens, here we go:

First, do your homework on the kinds of breeds that are out there and what different breeds are good producers of. On our farm we keep Ameraucana chickens because we knew that they would lay a greenish blue egg. Our vision for the flock that we would ultimately keep was that they would produce a range of colors, such as brown, white, greenish blue, and dark brown. We felt that having a range of different eggs would spark questions from our visitors at the farmers market. We also wanted to stand out and create a niche for our new farm. Your reasons for choosing a certain kind of breed should really suit your lifestyle and make sense for the vision that you have. I do recommend going into this with a well thought through plan focused on the long term.  You really need to put some practical thought behind accommodations for your new found feathered friends and you’ll need to do some number crunching. You’ll want to project into the future the volume of your egg consumption and then choose the number of hens you’ll get to meet that goal. Typically, a hen will lay up to 300 eggs per year, but after that her production will be on a slow but steady decline. A hen won’t be ready to lay eggs until 6 months after hatching, so if you add a new chicken to your flock you must be aware of the timing of everything. Our hens are still laying eggs and they’re 3-4 years old at this point.  I don’t think we’ll slaughter them, but lots of people do because at that point it becomes less cost effective to keep them.

In part II of this story I’ll tell you all how to begin raising your own chickens, where to buy them and how to hatch them. We’ll even post some plans of chicken tractors and coops that will suite the needs of the urban farmer. I’ll also post images of our feathered friends and some solutions, tools and tips that we found were helpful in creating a nice balanced routine on the day to day when it comes to taking care of our animals and ourselves.

Please feel free to comment on anything you know about the subject. Your comments, questions, concerns and advice will add a lively layer to this blogging thing!

To be continued…

by Sandee


(Raising chickens in urban and suburban areas is becoming more widespread. Urban farming is being practiced in many metropolitan centers around the US. You can find out what your city ordinances are regarding keeping chickens in your yard by contacting your local Health Department or type this link into your address bar to find what’s on file for your city and state: urbanchickens.org)

Tags: chicken, chickens, eggs, farming, food, fresh, natural
Posted in Raising Chickens | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

the secret to successful composting

Posted on February 8, 2011 by anthony
Hi ohmygato csa farm friends, hope this post finds you all well and getting ready for the impending spring.
If you don’t already have an established compost pile you will need to pick a location where to start composting.
This will determine what type of composter  you will use.
Are you already composting?  Do you have a small yard or do you have a large garden?
If space is at a premium, vermicomposting might be  the right option for you. worm boxing doesn’t take  allot of space and will provide your garden with high value organic nutrients. I like vermicomposting because i get two great products for our farm without having to do much work. The worms do most of the work for us. All it takes is your kitchen scraps newspaper and you can get worms at the master gardener center at River Forks park in Roseburg.
These composters come in an array of sizes and shapes already assembled. Some have pedestals to prop them up to higher and easier to work heights and most come with spigots at the bottom to make collecting the worm juice easy and effecient.
Here at Ohmygato CSA Farm we use a four tiered wormbox with a bottom spigot. ours sits on level ground in a shady location.
Most of these composters are black and you don’t want to keep it in the sun as this will cook your worms.
worm boxes are a series of  interlocking rectangular containers with holes at their bootoms except for the first one which is the recipient for containing the worm juices.
All levels have open tops except for the fourth topmost one which has a lid that keeps out flys and rodents that love to eat worms.
Each  one of these containers has holes at their bottoms allowing the worms to climb up through the layers as new  food is added. Each week we add food to a higher level. This way when the worms have reached the top and thus finished eating all the food, we can collect the bottom castings easily and without having to sort through worms.
OK, let’s begin.
*You have a worm box
*five gal bucket with a lid(Both are optional/optimal)
*kitchen scraps like banana,tomato, onion and potato skins leftover pasta scrambled eggs NO Egg shells(these husrt the worms bodies), br The sky is pretty much the llimit, as long as you can chop it up fine enough for a family of worms to munch on.
*One fat newspaper shredded. Don’t include the color print adds.
*2 cups of gritty soil
Begin by chopping those kitchen scraps into half inch size pieces and store them in your bucket or if you have a substantial amount go right ahead and add them to the first level of your worm box. Fill it up half way. Add a pound or two cupped hands full of skinny energetic and hungry worms to the scraps. Next add 2 cups of your gritty soil as this is ingested by the worms and helps them with the digestion of the scraps. Lastly Place the shredded newspaper that you’ve made damp with a spritzer or spray of the garden hose. This will ensure that the environment is moist and pleasant for your working worms.
After a week of collecting your daily kitchen waste revisit your worm box and start adding the scraps, soil and damp news paper to the next level. The worms will smell the new food and travel to the top or stay below if ther is still food for them to eat. Then again, they might prefer fresher food.
So the next time you are playing around in your garden don’t forget to say hi to your wonderful working worms!
What do you think about this topic?
Do you compost? How do you compost?
How does your garden grow?
This post is the first in a series about composting ideas.
Let us know your experiences  thoughts or suggestions.
Tags: compost, composting, fertilizer, organic, vermiculture
Posted in composting | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Artisan Bread and Think Local Umpqua Get in the Guide launch

Posted on January 25, 2011 by anthony
Ohmygato Organic Family Farm CSA

Ohmygato Farm Cob oven getting warm for some baking

Ohmygato Organic Family Farm CSA

Ohmygato Organic Family Farm CSA

Hi farm friends, hope you are doing well. Tomorrow is the Think Local “Get in the guide launch” event .

As i write this i am waiting for the last pieces of wood to burn down in our cob oven and i will be baking some sourdough shortly so that tomorrow you will be able to dip my bread into some wonderful treats made by Aromaticas Feast and then you can wash that goodness down with some wine provided by Raise Your Glass. BE SURE to make it to this event which showcases our local community.
By the Way , here is a great book that i own and use allot and also recomend to any of you that like to bake bread. Lots of great diagrams for building ovens, some oven pics from around the world and useful recipes.
cheers!

Think Local Get in the Guide Post @ Think Local

Tags: artisan, bread, cob, local, oven, sourdough, think, umpqua
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ohmygato-Community-Supported-Agriculture-farm-organic-butternut-squash-soup-recipe

Posted on January 23, 2011 by anthony
Hi farm friends , hope this finds everyone healthy and happy.
This weekend marks the begining of Ohmygatos’ 2011 organic farm CSA  growing season. Sandee planted  9 trays of veggies while i went into our little forest and collected much needed fire wood. She sowed seeds of red and green cabbage, broccoli Raab, cheddar and veronica cauliflower, rainbow chard, butter crunch lettuce and red speckled lettuce. I checked on our onion sets that we started in the fall and they are vibrant and patiently awaiting there new digs. Although the new babies are in there little cell containers,  here on the gato farm we are still enjoying 2010s’ oldies but goodies like beets, collards, kale and the occasional chard that has weathered the winters frost.
Tonight we ate roasted beets with thyme from the garden, bay leaf, pepper, crushed red pepper, himalayan salt and virgen olive oil baked at 425f for 40min. Delish!
We also had a disgusting soup that i ruined by adding dehydrated zucchini.
Start with some water and onion and garlic skins. We save and freeze onion & garlic skins for later use as good soup stock starter. Boil these for a half hour and add some  bullion cubes for a little extra good flavor. this step is optional and there are some great organic alternatives to the old school variety that mamma used to use. Unfortunately we only had the old school type of bullion.
Next, add your butternut squash peeled and chopped into cubes to the broth.
Add thyme salt and pepper and boil until the squash is soft enough to blend. 20-30 min depending on your current elevation.
Don’t add zucchini!
Transfer the soft squash using a slotted spoon to a blender and add a little bit of the broth to help with the blending.
Last step involves a very hot frying pan, little or no oil  and a handful of broad leaf cullinary sage. Fry the leaves until they get krispy, dry and brittle.
Finally, plate your soup adding a little pad of butter, a spoon of sour cream or yogurt.
Add little parmesan cheese to taste, cracked pepper and crumpled sage leaves.
Buen Provecho.!

This  organic family farm that Sandee and I are building is very much loved and appreciated by us.

I just have to share this with everyone cuz right now i feel so blessed to have such a wonderful  life. i am grateful for my wife and our network of friends and supporters, encouraging us to keep on farming and living this fullfilling lifestyle.

so with that said, we would love to thank everyone that has been there via friendship, encouragement and support at the farmers market, with our CSA, with volunteering time and words and stories.

Thanks to you we have been able to keep growing  our organic farm and our lives have become richer.

Here’s  a little list that recaps Ohmygato Farm from its creation to this day:

1. first year we demolished a non functioning chicken coop. Here is a link to a job well     done….

2.That same day we carved out piece of a hill in order to create a little flat area where    our green house skeleton lives.

3.That year we built our current chicken coop.

4.that year sandee and i learned the fine art of post hole digging, using every tool under the sun and available at all the local tool rental places. We dug around 18 holes that year and put up fences around the chicken yard.  And Just  half a year earlier we were living in the suburbs of san mateo and sandee in san diego.

4.5We had some friends stay with us when they passed by on their way to live in NY. We breathed new life to our little barn which houses our goasts and llama.

5.We arrived to winston in april spring and it was too late in the season to start the CSA. This year i rototlled a piece of ground where our upper garden lives now and let this ground lay still for the remainder of the year.

6.The second spring we started our CSA and Ohmygato family farm was born with one member. Bless her heart! And what a treat to be able to grow and share and start to earn a living with our hands and the  land and the friends.

7.Third year we built our lower and biggest garden and fenced it with the help of my lover girl; mike ledbetter, mark manly and yours truly.

8.signed up  19 CSA members , packed our organic farm treats in recycled tomato boxes and deliverd them to a members house.

9.We co created the winston dillard  farmers market.

10.2010 participated in two farmers markets. We met more amazing, beautiful people in our community. Had lots of laughs and good times. Lotta waking up late and barley making it on time for the roseburg farmers market. HAHA!

11. Worked with dave and dolores and the phoenix school.

12.participated and completed the dreamsavers grant and purchased a green house.

13. built a cob oven with our very own clay and the help of sandee and a wwoofer. this oven has baked only a handful of breads and pizzas so far.

This is merley a synthesized list.

and once again, with this said. THANK YOU FRIENDS!

Tags: agriculture, community, supported
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

growing organic vegetables in our local area

Posted on January 22, 2011 by anthony

Hi farm friends , hope this finds everyone well  healthy and happy. Yesterday we started our garden work by planting  9 trays of veggies red and green cabbage, savoy leaf cabbage, cheddar and veronica(fun spiraling  cauliflower brocolli raab and we have onions sets waiting rainbow chaard i collected wood for our warm house we also planted butter crucnch heading lettuce green and red speckled for the farmers market. for the new growing season and we pulled out our trusty companion book which has helped us grow great organic food for our local community….

Tags: book, gardening, growing, organic, solomon, steve, vegetables
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

view of ohmygato organic CSA farm with bees

Posted on December 27, 2010 by anthony


Hi farm friends, hope this finds you all well and happy. Here’s the short clip of the farm and its state as of  the beginning  of december. Not much has changed here. The weather has not permitted us to get out and work for too long. We still have vegetables  growing. We are still eating our onions, beets, collards, spinach, cabbage and the list goes on. The other night we harvested some spinach and used some onions and made a saute. I fired up our cob oven and made two tasty calzones which cooked in ten minutes. It also took the oven 2 hrs to heat up. The next morning i went out to the patio where our oven lives and  stuck my hands inside and the oven was still warm.

Tags: beehives, beekeeping, bees
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

As simple as it gets Sourdough Recipe

Posted on December 13, 2010 by anthony

ohmygato farm community supported agriculture basket of bread for farmers marketHi Farm friends and lovers of everything Local, organic farming, Good for you Food, Farmers Markets & Artisan Bread.

I am posting one of my  popular sourdough bread recipes today per a readers request. I got this recipe from a book and i’ve been working with it and modifying it for the past 2 years.

Time Schedule

Sponge sourdough starter: minimum 8 hrs, maximum 24 hrs or ready to use as soon as it appears active and real bubbly. For me, it is usually  ready to use after a couple of hrs.

Minimum Rising Time: 8 hrs but i prefer over night and in the fridge as the bread will come out tangier.

Oven Temperature: 475deg F, then 450degF

Baking Time: about 30 min + or – or when center of bread reaches 209deg F.

1 cup of sponge sourdough starter

2 cups high gluten flour

1/4 tea sp sugar (makes the crust toasty brown)

1 tea sp sea salt

1 cup +or- water

Place 1 cup of starter into my kitchen-aid 600 mixing bowl and add 1 cup of high gluten flour and start mixing on setting 1 (very soft and slow) about 1 minute.

At this point the mix is dry and not all incorporated so,  add a  bit of your cup of water to help the ingredients combine and stop the mixer to add the second cup of flour. Resume mixing still on setting #1 and the ingredients are not homogeneous yet so  add the rest  of the water and once the dough is combined,  switch the mixer to setting  #2 and mix like this for 2 mins.

Then  crank the mixer speed up to #4 until the dough becomes smooth and consistent. 2 min.

Now the dough is smooth and almost hydrated.

turn the mixer off here and let the dough rest (autolyse) in the bowl for at least ten minutes. After the 10 mins  add the teaspoon of sea salt and finish the last five minutes of mixing on setting #2.

Now  take the dough out of the mixing bowl and lay it on the work bench and give it two letter folds ,turn it over, flour the top and form a boule. When the boule is formed  turn it over again and place it in an oiled 7″ glass bowl where it will sit proofing over night in the fridge with plastic wrap covering it.

In the morning  take the boule out of the fridge , preheat  the oven which has  a pizza stone on the top rack and a pan to hold water on the bottom rack. While waiting for the oven,  take the bowl with the boule in it and  invert it onto a baking sheet  lined with a parchment paper. carefully  separate the dough from the bowl trying not deflate the dough. Now put some slash marks on the dough to prevent it from tearing and at the same time allowing it to rise.

when the oven is ready to go,  open the oven ever so quickly and dump enough water into the pan on the bottom rack to make steam. Steam makes a nice crust. Now place the dough into the oven and put the timer on for 10mins and once the timer goes off,  bring down the temp to 450F. Cook for the remaining 20 or 30 minutes depending on your oven. Electric, gas or convection. Convection is by far the most efficient and bakes the quickest (24mins).

When the time is up or the bread looks so sweet and brown,  pull it out and stick a thermomeert in it and if it reads about 210F  pull it and cool on a rack.

If you don’t have a thermometer, use a large toothpick or metal skewer and insert it into the center of the bread. If it comes out wet and doughy, it is not done yet.

Another thing to remember is: say your thermometer reading  is 200F and you need it to be 210F just stick your bread back in the oven for another 10 mins. usually 10minutes= 10 deg.

with all that said if any one is confused don’t hesitate to comment and i will try to clarify.

happy baking from the gato

Tags: artisan, bread, sourdough
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Think Local Umpqua

Posted on December 8, 2010 by anthony

Our cozy warm room

Hi Farm friends, hope you are all well. Here are a couple of pictures we promised.

Here is a current pic of our soon to be completed greenhouse:

here is another update for Winston and the surrounding sleepy little burgs. As far as my last post and the description of our grey water system, i will have to finish that one some other time.

But for now i would like to share an article that i was trying to read at the think local blog but it wasn’t there.
anyway, here it is for all … The Rural Grocery Crisis

Until later, gut nacht

Tags: local, think
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Ohmygato-Farm-Update

Posted on December 5, 2010 by anthony

Hi Farm friends, from our house to yours we hope everyone is happy, healthy and warm. It’s 12:25  and i forgot to put the chickens in for the night. so, I went to the chicken house at the bottom of hill by the road and our pond and closed their door and said good night to the chickens. Now I am back and am sitting at my desk in our wonderful new warm room. Sandee and I have made the move  into our room that we’ve used in the past as our guest room. It hadn’t occurred to us to sleep in it  until a couple of days ago when i  transformed and reclaimed it as ours. I used to have my desk and computers in the living room next to the wood stove and it can get pretty hot there researching til the wee hours of the night . i just couldn’t take the heat anymore and furthermore  all that heat would just flow into our quest room. now we have a new comfy and warm room where i spend most of the day surfing the net and hanging out with the Sandee & the cat Fidel.

Lately on cold days like the ones we’ve been having recently, i haven’t been spending much time outdoors. Other than the occasional splitting of a large log or loading up our wood caddy or whatever you call that thing that sits outside on our porch which holds  our logs for the week, i’ve been happily playing with my new linux box, researching  things i find interesting and useful for and about our organic farm. Despite all this fun stuff we have going on inside, we do have plenty of farm work planned  for the upcoming months.

So here it goes: In the month of december we will be completing the construction of our greenhouse we will cover it with plastic erect the end walls. We will also be creating the beds where we will grow salad and our new babies for the 2011 CSA season. Another exciting job with our greenhouse is the building(for the third time) of the hot water radiant floor which gives us a head start on the growing season. Our greenhouse is really impressive in that it is the bigest structure i’ve ever helped to construct. We had the phoenix school bring their crew of about 20 kids to help  out with the digging of the holes for the posts and on other occasions had our dear friends mark and michael help with, fine tuning, leveling and plumbing of some of the posts and trusses. Sandee and I erected a few trusses  and I  did a few by myself.   So, now the skeleton is up and stable, just laking skin, doors beds. voilà

For the 2011 growing season we want to have our reclaimed water system to our upper garden completed. we have a cinder block raised bed that we are going to transform in to a bio swale which filters grey water, transforming it into clean usable water.

check in later for more details and the remainder of todays post.

please comment with suggestions or feedback.

ciao

anthony, sandee and fidel


Tags: agriculture, community, farm, ohmygato, supported
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments