Thing remembered

 Farmer Bill remembers a lot of thing, keeping track of a myriad of details, as do most farmers (also known as small business owners). But little things tend to escape him, such as where he left his glasses, his wallet, his keys, his phone.

Our daughter has been known to say that she spent half her childhood waiting for him to pick her up (he is also chronically late - although usually by less  than 15 minutes) and the other half looking for his glasses. 

In the early years, I jumped in to look for things quite quickly. But decades ago I gave that up and these days I let him do his own searches & wait to be asked for help. 

[He is also the epitome of the 'boy look.' That is a term I hadn't heard until very recently, but when I did, and when I looked into what it meant, it was absolutely Farmer Bill. Go ahead, search it on the interwebs, and watch one of the hilarious videos that result. I always knew I was better at looking for things than Farmer Bill, but I didn't know there was a name for his inability to see what is directly before his eyes. Everyone occasionally overlooks something that is out in the open - I definitely have to look for my phone or my purse occasionally. The difference is that I know the likely places where I've set them and usually find them quite quickly, within seconds. Someone doing a boy look will look at the surface, or what is right in front of them, without moving anything aside to check behind or underneath. And that is Farmer Bill to a T.]

The other night I drove a load of apples up to our daughter's house; our son-in-law would then drive the load to a market for selling. On my way back Farmer Bill called from our business phone and asked about my ETA. When I told him, he said he couldn't find his phone and would wait for me to get back, then drive to his employee's house to check his car. I suggested he take my car, parked in the driveway, so as not to have to wait. He did so, and when I returned, he had found his phone. But not in the employee's car. He'd driven over, thoroughly searched the car, and then driven back, thinking about where else he could look, when it hit him. Earlier that evening he had been adding coolant to his cargo van, and had used the phone's flashlight to help him see into the engine compartment. When he finished, he'd closed the engine compartment, leaving the phone inside. Since he'd driven the van from the shop building to the back of the apple shed to load, and then to the house driveway for easy access in the morning, he was fortunate that it hadn't fallen - deeper into the engine or to the ground - and been damaged. 

I can tell tales of the pairs of glasses left in the fields - he'll take them off to better see close up and forget to pick them up again. One year he lost 2 pair of prescription sunglasses and at least one, maybe two, pair of prescription glasses. After that, I began insisting he buy the cheapest glasses and frames possible. And there are at least 3 hearing aids out in the orchard, lost because he would take them out - when using a power tool or driving a tractor - put them in his pocket and then put other things in that same pocket & flip a hearing aid out when getting out the other item(s). I was not always as sanguine about the loss of a hearing aid as the loss of glasses - they are quite a bit more expensive to replace. 

As Farmer Bill turned 80 this year, I don't believe he's likely to change the behaviors of a lifetime and start remembering where he left his glasses, phone, or wallet, or remember to look behind and under when searching for something. I do hope that when he isn't farming anymore that he'll have fewer things to remember, and fewer occasions to take out his hearing aids and stuff them in a pocket. 

May 1st 2023

 It's the beginning of May. The weather has been cold and wet, keeping plant growth and tree blossoming at bay. We're hopeful that we may get through apple & strawberry blossom times without having to set up irrigation pipe and run frost protection. 

Our IPM supplies arrived today (May 3). I was planning to set out insect traps and download logger data today anyway, but would have used lures leftover from last year. I'll be curious to see how many degree days we've actually accumulated so far this year - it's definitely going to be on the low side. Nevertheless, the apples are at the tight cluster stage and we'll be watching them and the weather closely going forward. The tight clusters can take temperatures of 27 degrees F. with only moderate (10%) loss. At 21 degrees F. we can expect 90% loss. So, if the overnight lows are going to be below freezing, irrigation will have to be set up and sprinklers run to protect the blossoms. That often means staying up all night - the sprinklers have to run until the sun is up and the temperatures get above 32 degrees F. Setting up the overhead irrigation in the orchard is a big job, it generally takes at minimum a whole day with 3-5 people working on it. And hooking up the irrigation pump, priming it, and making sure that works is a part of the process. If we don't have to do it, we'll be happy not to!

May 1st is the beginning of a big push of work on our farm. Farmer Bill was out early this morning getting things ready and now his crew is redistributing the straw on the front field (in front of the house along the road) in preparation for rolling out row cover over the strawberry plants. The row cover helps keep the ground and the plants warm & encourages them to grow, blossom and produce a bit earlier than other fields. It lets Farmer Bill get a bit of a jump on the pick-your-own trade or take a load of berries to a market. Either way, it gets some cash rolling in after all of the start-up expenses of spring. When the berries under the row cover start to produce blossoms, the row cover will be taken off. 

A field had been chosen to plant the (last) strawberries of Bill's tenure and was being prepared. However, there is one person very interested in buying the business and if he does, he'll want to expand the orchard where those strawberries would have gone, so a different field had to be readied to plant berries, jic we actually get an offer!

The beginning of the farming year

In the original agreement, Farmer Bill was supposed to retired in 2020, the same year I would retire. In reality, he wasn't quite ready to give up farming. So here we are in 2023 and while the farmland & business are on the market, we haven't had a buyer make an offer yet. What happens if the business doesn't sell is still somewhat under discussion and a topic to cover for another post. This post is the first in a series that I realized needed to be written, detailing the farm year for a specialty crops grower like Farmer Bill.

Our farm year starts in late January or even February, with the annual pruning of the apple trees. The ultimate goal is to prune every tree every year, and the goal is met most years. When we first needed to do serious pruning, Farmer Bill invested in a battery-operated backpack pruner that made the job much simpler for whoever got to use it (mostly Bill himself). That original pruner has since worn out and been replaced by 2 backpack pruners, 2 handheld battery-operated pruners and 2 mini-chainsaws, along with manual pruners, loppers and full-size chainsaws. Pruning happens on 'nice' winter & early spring days when the sun is shining and the temperatures are bearable. Sessions are 2-4 hours long, depending on what staff is available. This year the main pruning crew has been teens, an especially good group of young people who work hard and willingly. They have been inspirational and exhausting for Farmer Bill. He has a hard time keeping up with them, but always welcomes the challenge.

Also during these months, on days when it's snowing or too cold to work outside, machinery is getting pulled out of winter storage and readied for the summer. 

The Reigi is a weeder/de-thatcher that is prized by produce growers in the know. It's a simple machine that attaches to the PTO with a series of pulleys & belts that turn 2 discs fitted with tines. It's super great for weeding new strawberry plantings. One person drives the tractor down the row and a second person sits on the seat of the Reigi. Two handles allow the second person to move the turning tines around new plants, tearing out small weed seedlings; it can be used as often as staff and time allows until the new berries send out runners. It is also used to uncover the straw mulch from the strawberries. In that operation, only one person needs to drive the tractor down the rows with the Reigi tines held in place close together. The turning tines flip the straw off the plants and into the aisles, leaving the emerging strawberry plants uncovered. 

The multivator is a great tool for creating a loose, even planting bed before transplanting strawberries (among other crops). It works like a powerful rototiller, powered by the PTO of a tractor. Multivators come with a varied number of heads, but our has four. The driver goes up and down a field that has been plowed, disced and/or dug and the multivator heads churn the clumps of soil into loose bits. After the strawberry harvest, the multivator is also used in the renovation process. Strawberries are cut off close to the crown of the plant and the multivator is used to turn under the straw in the aisles and narrow the rows. Left unchecked the strawberries would send out runners and fill in the aisles, making a huge matted field of strawberries rather than the orderly rows needed for a pick-your-own operation.

Straight River Farm has two John Deere gators. Ours have 6 wheels and dump beds and are used for more tasks than can be easily mentioned. However, both of them are old now and have been dinged & dented, repaired and jury-rigged until their workings hardly resemble the originals. But we are hopeful that we can keep them running yet another season - they haul people, supplies, boxes of berries & apples, brush & trash to the burn pile, and so much more that they'd have to be replaced with something.

The farm has five tractors: two John Deere 790s, two New Holland 4430s, and an International 340. The 790s are used for the multivator, Reigi, boom sprayer, and rotary cutter, among other tasks. One New Holland is used for heavier tasks, plowing, discing, digging, blast spraying, and running the irrigation pump. The second New Holland is called 'the project tractor' because it doesn't regularly run. When it does work, it gets parked down by the river to power the irrigation pump, leaving the 'good' New Holland free for other tasks. The International is our 'poor man's skid loader.' It has a lift on it, with forks like a skid loader's and is mostly used to move pallets. When supplies are delivered on pallets, we have the drivers park at the end of our driveway and use the 340 to unload the pallets to the road, because it's virtually impossible for a semi-truck to turn around in our farmyard. Farmer Bill also uses it during the winter to lift a platform to the roof of the machine & apple sheds, allowing him to rake snow off the solar panels.

We have two lawn mowers. One is a 6-foot zero-turn mower and the other is a 4-foot zero turn. The 4-foot mower has a bagger and is used in the raspberry and blueberry aisles to avoid spraying cut grass and weeds into the plant rows. It also gets used to pick up leaves in the autumn. A rotary cutter is used to do rough cutting - chopping up the small brush after pruning, and cutting grass when we, inevitably, fall behind in mowing. It's also helpful for mowing the edges of fields, which are often too rough for traditional mowing, but need to be kept mowed down.

All of the machinery needs to be greased, tightened, blades sharpened, belts, cylinders and hoses inspected, etc. so those are tasks that are done in the autumn before machinery is put away for the season, and if time doesn't before the snow falls, then done in late winter/early spring before the farming work heats up.

Bumblebees - added for the first time in 2022 - are ordered. Bumblebees will fly in colder weather than honeybees and are actually more efficient pollinators. They are scheduled to arrive in early May when we hope there will be enough weeds and wildflowers emerging to feed them while we wait for the apple trees to blossom. Last year we had a very good pollination rate and we believe the bumblebees helped with that, so we're bringing in a couple of colonies again this year. 

Our participation in an Apple IPM data group is set up. We will put out traps in the orchard to monitor for 7 insect pests and the serious fungal disease called apple scab. A data logger, with an attached leaf wetness monitor is put out on April 3. Normally it would go out on April 1, but we had a serious snowstorm on April 1. The logger tracks temperatures and degree days. The leaf wetness monitor tracks how long the orchard is wet. Scab spores are activated by warmth and wetness and the tracking information will tell Farmer Bill when it's time to spray for apple scab. That one spray may be enough to keep the disease at bay for the year, but at most he'll do two sprays. 

Future posts will detail other work and activities. This year I'm determined to get photos and videos of some of the specialized equipment and processes as they happen. I've already missed using the Reigi to uncover the strawberries, but there may be a touch up uncovering done at some point soon, so I'll try to get it then. And Farmer Bill is planting one last strawberry field this year, so the Reigi will almost certainly get used to do some initial weeding.

Rice County & Faribault

When Farmer Bill & I announced we were buying a farm outside Faribault, my mother thought that was so neat; the family circling back to Rice County. Both her parents had grown up in the countryside around Faribault, in rural Rice County. My grandfather's family, of Bohemian and Irish ancestry, had lived in the Veseli area and later moved to Richland Township. There are distant cousins from his side of the family still living in the area. My grandmother, whose family was French and had come to Minnesota via Canada, grew up on a farm in Warsaw Township. There are probably some cousins in the area from that side of the family, too, but none with my grandmother's surname. Our little farm is in Walcott Township, which is between Warsaw and Richland. 

Grandma was born in 1899. She had 9 siblings, 3 brothers and 7 sisters. She was the middle sister, with 3 older and 3 younger. I grew up hearing grandma's stories about life on the farm. She talked about milking cows twice a day, and how she hated cleaning the separator; about raising a big garden and keeping chickens for both meat and eggs, and canning everything in sight. How her parents kept the farm a showpiece, with flowers, fruit trees, and a large vegetable garden. [By the time I was born, the farm had long been sold and nothing remains of the house, buildings, or orchard.] Her father worked off the farm - at least sometimes. He apparently knew blacksmithing; his uncle had a blacksmith shop where he worked (although to hear Grandma tell it, it could have been her father's shop). She liked to suggest that it was possible her father had shoed horses for the James Gang as they came through Rice County... An uncle who was a barber in St. Paul was reported to have shaved Dillinger and/or other gangsters of the prohibition era. 

Grandma talked about boarding in town during the week while she was in high school. She said they lived far enough outside Faribault that getting in and back each day wasn't feasible. So Grandma boarded in town during the week and spent weekends at home on the farm. She talked about bringing things from the farm for the boarding house: a chicken, eggs, other produce or canned goods, and how much the town folks appreciated the good country food. 

Grandma's family attended mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the French Church in Faribault. There were 3 Catholic churches in Faribault at that time: Sacred Heart was the French church; Immaculate Conception the Irish church, and St. Lawrence was the German church. As time went on and people married into families that attended different churches, those designations became less obvious, but Grandma and her family remained strong supporters of Sacred Heart. In the early 2000s, the three churches were combined into one, Divine Mercy, which bought land and built a new church on the very southern edge of Faribault. [The Sacred Heart building was later purchased by an evangelical Protestant church.]

Beginning about the time we moved to the area in 2003, a wave of Somali immigrants came to Faribault. A previous wave of Latino immigrants, primarily from Mexico, had come before we did and were well established. As new immigrants do, the Latinos and then the Somalis took jobs in the canning factories and turkey processing plants. And as time went by, they moved into other work around the community, including setting up their own businesses, earning college degrees, becoming teachers, accountants, nurses, truck drivers, construction workers, etc. African-American and Hispanic groups make up 27% of the population according to the 2020 census (13.7% and 13.3%, respectively), with Caucasians still making up 73%. The historic downtown has numerous buildings with stores on the ground level and apartment homes above & many Somali families currently live there. Somalis tend to be social and gregarious. The women do a lot of their socializing indoors, or at playgrounds while watching the children. The men spend a lot of time on the benches downtown, talking and visiting with each other (and intimidating white folks with their very presence). Both groups operate businesses in town: a halal market, a bakery, restaurants, a Quinceañera dress store, a clothing/fabric shop featuring the bright colors & prints the Somali women wear, a gift shop, etc..

Long-established businesses still remain downtown, including sewing & vacuum shops, an independent shoe store, dry cleaners, antique stores, and more. The last drugstore downtown closed a decade ago, as did a traditional bakery. A traditional diner-style restaurant (with very average food but a counter with stools for the old guys to hang out & drink coffee) closed in the early 2000s and a Tex-Mex chain restaurant is in the space now. A group got together and reclaimed an old movie theater, turning it into an arts center, where they put on plays and host acts from music to comedians, as well as having gallery shows for local artists and art classes for adults and children. A small bakery/sandwich store operates 4 days a week (and is excellent). There is a community center with a senior center, pool, exercise equipment and classes attached to a large building that houses the public library and meeting spaces (although I could live without the 10 commandments carved in stone on the front lawn). It's a fun and fairly vibrant little downtown but not tourist-attractive in the manner of downtown Northfield.

My grandmother would be appalled at some of the changes in Faribault. But then, my grandmother was a bigot. The city is a mix of cultures that she couldn't have imagined, and there are struggles to get along and work together that occur in many places across this state and our country. When the wind is in a certain direction, and at certain times of the year, the smells from the canning factory and turkey processing plant can be strong, and unpleasant. Although two rivers converge just outside downtown - the Straight River flowing north meets the Cannon River flowing northeast, there is not much use made of the riverfronts downtown. The housing ranges stock ranges from classic painted ladies and Victorians (some in stone) to tired-looking 1890s-1930s to 1960s-1980s split levels and ranch-style to 2000s-era moderns, with several manufactured home parks scattered throughout. You can find almost everything you need for farm & home in the city, but not a wide range of items. The 'mall' is next to and overshadowed by Walmart and houses an ever-changing assortment of stores & restaurants, with plenty of empty spots.

Grandma, as I mentioned, had 9 brothers & sisters. Only 3 married and had children. But all of the girls graduated high school. Two became nurses, one a legal secretary, another worked in her husband's greenhouse business. Grandma herself went to art school - she was in the first class of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design & we have a collection of her work from that time period. Then she met Grandpa at a dance, got 'in the family way' and married. Her oldest sister was a nurse, who came back from the Twin Cities to care for her mother and never married. Her oldest brother wanted no part of farming and moved to the Twin Cities as a young man & never looked back. Another brother was drafted during World War I and was invalided out. He returned home to recuperate and went to the mailbox one day to find a letter telling his family he'd been killed in action! The Des Marais line in Faribault petered out decades ago, but there are still Payants (Great-Grandma Des Marais' maiden name) in the area.

Grandpa had 12 siblings: 5 brothers & 7 sisters. My mother remembers visiting them only once or twice, and not ever really knowing the numerous cousins - 37 by one account - on that side of the family. The most she understood was that there may have been disagreements over inheritance, and that Grandpa Neil didn't talk to his siblings. But several of the family names are still known in Faribault: Delesha, Dusbabek, and Thom among them. Grandpa's family was Bohemian (originally his name was Dolezal, changed at some point to Delesha) and Irish (his mother's surname was Gilmore).

Farmer Bill & I have now lived longer in Rice County than either of us lived in any other place. While we are trying to step back from the berry & apple farming, we would like to continue to live in our little country house just outside the Faribault city limits. How that pans out remains to be seen.

The time has come,

' the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'

My mother, 95 in June, can still recite in their entirety many poems she learned in school. I can recite 1-4 lines of maybe a dozen poems that I've read or heard along the way; we didn't memorize poetry when I was in school. The lines above are the lines I know from The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll.

I'm sitting at Bill's computer in our farm office (my computer is currently downstairs in my quilting space). The office is a former dining room, with a sliding glass door out to the deck, and a view of the farm buildings where there is a lot of activity this morning.

Last year, when we weren't sure what would be possible for selling our produce during a pandemic, Bill only planted a few melons as an additional crop. Even so, the work of taking care of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and apples was at times overwhelming. It was rewarding, though, as he had a good strawberry season and an apple crop so good that he left apples on the trees because he ran out of cooler space for them. The melon crop was fine, but each crop adds a level of complexity - as well as more work - to the growing season.

In the fall, Bill told me he was putting his remaining hoop house/high tunnel up for sale at the auction site he uses. [A larger hoop house was severely damaged several years ago by high winds and had been dismantled and stored in the machine shed.] I was surprised and not surprised. We've been talking about retiring from farming - I retired from full-time work in December 2020 - selling up and moving to a house with less work and maybe closer to our children & new grandchild. Selling the hoop house meant no tomatoes or melons since that's where the plants went to harden off when he picked them up from the greenhouse.  And then last week the remaining pieces of the larger, damaged hoop house were sold and picked up by the new owner.

Today, there has been a steady stream of machinery and other equipment being loaded onto trailers and driven off to the auction house. A machine that made raised beds (to plant annual strawberries), a plastic layer, a planter that planted through the plastic, trusses for low tunnel coverings, posts for electric fencing (used around sweet corn fields to slow down the raccoons), electric fencing wire, battery-operated current transmitters, and more have been hauled out of the buildings. A pickup loaded with apple wood cut last spring stands ready to go to the Nerstrand butcher who uses it to smoke various meats.

So far Bill says it feels freeing - he can't imagine going back to trying to juggle so much work in maintaining so many different crops. Since he's retreated from the idea of selling the farm (for now - more on that later), I'm very glad to see that he hasn't retreated from the plan to simplify the operation.

Along the trail - Part 1

As I drive to work I often cogitate about the landmarks I pass. My commute is 38 miles each way. It's about 7 miles from the farm to the freeway, 25-odd miles on the freeway, and about 5 miles from the freeway to work.  There are several routes I take to and from the freeway, but one that I use most of the time and places along that route that I look for each day.

On Tuesdays I work the evening shift, which means I come through Faribault 9:15-9:30 p.m. - in the dark except about 6 weeks in mid-summer. Quite a few years ago now, there was a house on my path where a group of musicians would be playing or practicing in the front window every Tuesday night. It was fun to check for them and guess what piece they might be playing. When they stopped appearing in that window on Tuesday nights, I missed them, with an odd sense of loss, for a long time. I didn't and don't know the family living in that house, but it felt warm and welcoming to see the group playing their instruments as I passed by.

Another house on my usual path was home to an older couple. I would often see the woman of the couple out walking in the morning, or occasionally mowing the lawn. In the late afternoons and Tuesday nights, the television would be on, visible from the big living room picture window where the drapes were rarely pulled. I rarely saw the man of the couple, except a fleeting glimpse of someone sitting in a chair watching TV. About December 1st each year, a Christmas tree still goes up, and January 1st it comes down. For more than 2 years now the television has been dark most afternoons and evenings; sporadically at first but always over the past year or two. Until this past summer I still occasionally saw the woman in the yard or walking, but no man in the chair watching television. On weekends now different cars appear in the driveway. I assume the man died, his wife is still living in their longtime home, and children/grandchildren are taking turns coming to help out and visit on weekends. I expect the next big change will be seeing a 'for sale' sign go up.

October

A couple of times this past week I was standing out on the deck, at about 10:00 p.m.  The weather was chilly, but not really cold, with just a little bit of wind. That part of the deck faces south & normally on a quiet evening I can hear the Straight River as it winds its way along the southern-most edge of the farm, along with other nighttime sounds: owls, rustling that could be raccoon, skunk, or the neighbor's half-wild cat, dogs barking, etc. But this is October. On a clear October evening what I hear from my deck is the sound of combines. It's a low roaring sound that carries a long way. And as I looked south I spotted headlights across the river. Our farm flows downward more than a quarter mile towards the river, with the house on the highest spot. Then there's the river, a small bit of flat river bank on the other side (which belongs to our farm, according to the surveyors), then a steep hill up to a large field that is planted alternately in corn and soybeans. We've had a long stretch of mostly dry weather, but rain is predicted for the end of the week, and I'm sure every farmer who is able is out in their fields hoping to get their corn picked before the rain. It's possible I'm hearing the roar of multiple combines.

Night noises are one of my favorite things about living out in the country.  In spring after the snow melts the river runs fast and loud, and the frogs peep a loud, piercing chorus. In summer, the river is slower and quieter and insects make most of the nighttime noise - and the fireflies dance across the yards and fields (they don't make much noise but are really cool to watch). By late summer or early autumn the crickets are in full throat, and depending on the amount of rain we've had, can completely drown out the river sounds. The Great Horned Owls call all year round - although you won't hear them every night - but are particularly enchanting in the cold still of a winter's night. I've only seen an owl once in all the years we've been here, but I hear them often.  I never actually hear a skunk, but know one's been around occasionally.  There are bats who've taken up residence in our soffit on the north side of the house & I hear them scrabble as they fly out to hunt in the warm months; sometime we'll have to remove them and seal up their entry, but they eat so many mosquitoes... Late this summer I started hearing a new night sound that might be a fox - we've seen foxes around over the years - but it could be something else, since my naturalist skills are limited to what I know lives in our area and can find sounds for on the internet.  Occasionally coyotes will set up a ruckus, which of course makes every dog in the neighborhood go off. Sound carries a long way in the country - the neighborhood can be dogs (and coyotes) that are well over a mile away.

I hope the farmer, working long into the night this week, got his corn picked and into bins or delivered to the elevator before the rain.

Sweet corn, melons, and tomatoes, part 1

A couple of years into the farm experiment, Farmer Bill started planting melons and sweet corn. He's also experimented with tomatoes, peas (shelling peas, peapods, and sugar snap peas), and probably a few other things I have blocked from my memory.

Our strawberry fields have a rotation. The first year is the development year. We plant the plants and tend them - weeding, pulling blossoms off so they put their energy into growing strong plants, not fruit. Years two, three, and four are picking years. We try to keep the weeds and insects and diseases at bay and pick the fruit in June. At the end of the fourth year, the plants are tilled under and weed control done for the rest of the summer.  The entire next year the ground lies fallow - maybe planted with a nutrient-rich cover crop for plow-down. OR, you can plant melons, sweet corn, tomatoes, peas, or something else in that ground instead.

One year Farmer Bill made a lot of money on tomatoes.  Several years he's done really well with melons. But he's yet to show me a profit on sweet corn.  About the only positive thing I can say about sweet corn is it makes dinner really easy: boil some water, toss in 3-5 ears of corn (1 is for me), make him a BLT and he's happy as a hog in mud.  He'd eat that meal 3 or 4 times a week with no complaints.

I grudgingly admit that the corn does give us cash flow in July & August - when we're between berry and apple crops.  And it helps us keep staff busy (and employed).  But it's a lot of work for the return. And did I mention that the return has never yet been on the positive side of the ledgers?  I've heard our farm management consultant say that he doesn't think anyone makes money on sweet corn. For a number of years I've been campaigning for Farmer Bill to quit growing sweet corn and use the time spent on it to better care for his money-making crops. So far I haven't been successful - although in recent years I have gotten acknowledgment of my reasoning - and I doubt that I will ever be successful, so I limit my comments to the very occasional & try to imbue them with some humor.

And we do get to eat some really great sweet corn, as fresh as it can possibly be.

Blueberries and raspberries at Straight River Farm

In the spring of 2010, Farmer Bill bought 22 acres that adjoins the original 30-acre farm.  That piece had been planted in a rotation of corn and soybeans for years - about 17 acres of it is tillable. We purchased the land from a family named Van Erp, so I call it the Van Erp addition.  One of the first things to move into part of the new ground was the raspberries. Raspberries have always been the neglected stepchild of our farm, but Bill is sure that they can be a good crop if he can give them some time and attention.  A fellow fruit grower - Lorence Berry Farm in Northfield - has raised strawberries and raspberries for several generations.  But 2 years ago, Sean took out his summer raspberries and committed to fall raspberries only.  [Sean and his wife have school-age children and they decided that having a break between strawberries and fall raspberries to spend some summer time together as a family was important enough to make that change.]  So Farmer Bill decided he would grow only summer raspberries and began work on rebuilding the raspberry patch.  But he didn't reckon with the Spotted Wing Drosophila.

Spotted Wing Drosophila - or SWD - is a fruit fly accidentally imported from Asia. It looks similar to the fruit flies you get around your bananas or your compost container in your house. The major difference is that SWD feeds on ripening fruit rather than overripe fruit. It burrows into a ripening raspberry and lays eggs, which hatch into tiny white larva that feed on the fruit and grow into flies and go off to repeat the process.  There are no OMRI-approved methods that effectively deal with this pest. So, in order to have any raspberry crop without fruit fly larva you must use a conventional spray. And, because the flies are not from around here, a really cold winter is good, too.  In other parts of the country the fly is even more of a problem because it gets into any soft-fleshed fruit: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and grapes to name a few. The fly has about a 3-week life cycle in which a female can lay hundreds of eggs - so in warmer climates there can be anywhere from 4-7 generations.  SWD don't get into strawberries much in Minnesota because of the timing of the strawberry season, but they are definitely a problem for other fruit.  Our 2013 raspberry crop had to be abandoned when the SWD caught up to our farm and were in every raspberry within a week.  The 2014 crop was better, because we had a harsh winter 2013-14 and many SWD didn't survive. This year the raspberries are better yet, but there are still things for Farmer Bill to learn about them - e.g., tarnished plant bugs cause strange dried-up gray-brown spots on raspberries - they need to be treated at blossom.

In 2011 Bill planted about a 1/2-acre of blueberries out on the Van Erp addition.  Blueberries are currently a popular fruit for their health benefits as well as their taste. They need acidic soil to grow, and central and southern Minnesota soil tends to be alkaline so the soil has to be amended where they are planted, and the acidity has to be maintained. Peat is  acidic, so a large load of peat was brought to the farm.  A hole was dug for each blueberry plant, peat added to the hole, the plants put in and the hole filled.  If he'd been planting more area, some mechanization of that process would have been done, but since it was only 1/2-acre, Farmer Bill & the crew just did it by hand.  The blueberries have drip irrigation (as do the raspberries now) through which we can put soil nutrients as needed.  If necessary, overhead sprinkler irrigation can be set up in the blueberries and the raspberries for frost protection. Blueberries are very slow growing plants. This 4th year after planting is the first that we've had a consistent production of blueberries and so far the interest from the consumer seems to be there.

I don't know whether Bill will ever go to pick-your-own for the raspberries or the blueberries.  You have to have a very consistent crop to do PYO, and his patches aren't there yet.  They also might not be big enough to do open PYO as we do for the strawberries.  For example, it might have to be by appointment, which adds a whole other complication to the process.  We continue to toss around ideas on how to possibly manage PYO in the raspberries and blueberries, but so far no firm conclusions.

Personally, I am excited about the 'pretty good' crops of both fruit this year.  Raspberry jam is good stuff, and blueberries both in and on our pancakes and waffles are a treat.  My favorite is a fruit compote poured over angel food or pound cake, but I also like a bowl of lightly sweetened fruit all on its own.  Farmer Bill makes himself pancakes about 5 days out of 7 during the winter months, and fruit on top is just as popular with him as maple syrup.

Strawberry season comes around again

We had a long cool, wet May. It's often been a struggle for the farmers to get field work done in between rainstorms.  But the strawberries love this kind of weather; they grow lush and the berries develop good size and flavor when they develop slowly in cooler temperatures.  The first berries were picked today while I was at work.  Some of the berries that were picked will go up the freeway to Twin Cities Local Food for drop off at 6 locations in the Twin Cities.  The rest are going to the Burnsville Farmers' Market.

As chance would have it, rain is expected for tomorrow and the next day.  Originally the weather service was predicting torrential rains, with amounts as much as 5-6 inches over 2 days.  The numbers have since been scaled back to amounts from 2-4 inches and I'm pretty happy about that. For 5 years now, we've had water seep into our basement whenever we have more than 3 inches of rain in a week.  So tonight when I got home from work, the first order of business was cleaning the gutters and clearing all the downspouts in (possibly vain) hopes of avoiding having to vacuum up water in the basement.  We've ascertained that the water comes from the raised water table during unusually high rainfall periods.  There's no water damage on the walls so it's not running down the foundation and coming in through cracks in the walls.  It's coming in where the foundation walls meet the floor. We're working through a series of possible fixes, starting with the least intrusive and least expensive.

This spring I paid the farm crew to pull out all the foundation plantings, pull up the landscape fabric and the rock the previous owner had put down. I've hated that rock from the beginning, so I'm not unhappy to lose it - and many of the plantings had reached the end of their lives, so that's not a huge loss either.  It looks pretty rough right now, though.  A landscaper has been contracted to come and grade the dirt around the foundation - a huge pile of black dirt is sitting outside the house waiting for enough dry days in a row to do the job.  Once that's done, the plan is to cover it with natural mulch, keep those gutters clear, and see whether that solves our problem.  If not, we'll have to look at some other kind of drainage project.

I'm in favor of keeping the water out of the house by putting French drains or something similar outside the house.  It's expensive because it requires excavating to the foundation base to lay drain tile. The other option is to catch the water when it comes into the house, by putting a drain system around the perimeter of the house inside. That seems harder and more expensive since the basement walls are finished.  And it just seems wrong to deal with the water once it's already inside.  We'll see. It's definitely a problem we have to solve over the next couple of years. Spending days vacuuming up water and then 2-3 weeks dealing with mold and insect hatchings isn't much fun - I'd much rather do almost anything else.

So strawberry season begins with a few rainy days, but the extended forecast is for cool daytime and overnight temperatures, which is great.  Our live-in help arrives this weekend, so it behooves me to try to bring some order to the house by then. If I'm not vacuuming up water in the basement, I'll probably be able to do that.  Right now it behooves me to take a quick shower (cleaning gutters is dirty work), and try to get some sleep since I'll be up about 6:00 a.m. to take those berries north.

1st quarter 2015

In December, our son let us know that his marriage was ending.  He was married a bit over 5 years to a woman that we all knew and liked.  About 3 years ago they moved to Portland, Maine, where Aimee had gotten a new job that she was pretty excited about.  Will was working for the St. Paul Public Library, but was willing to let the job go.  Unfortunately, the economic slump hit Portland hard and continues to impact the area. Will was unable to find permanent full-time work while he was there. The stress of chronic under-employment took its toll on their marriage.  Will has since moved back to Minnesota, where he has both family and a network of friends. So far he hasn't found permanent employment, but is actively looking. He is also applying to colleges in the Twin Cities, looking to finish his baccalaueate degree in the next year or so.

In March my sister Laura's health deteriorated again. She's been ill with depression and chemical addiction for more than a decade, but her physical health had been pretty good - despite developing breast cancer, which she successfully fought and beat.  Over the past two years, Laura battled a series of serious health issues, coming to the brink of death more than once.  The fight in March was her last.  I loved Laura.  She was the sister closest in age to me - 22 months older - and we shared a room growing up. As children we often fought, but we mostly got along and spent a lot of time together.  We had our children at the same time, my son Will, then Laura's Sam, and then my daughter Ellen.  The 3 kids spent a lot of time together when they were young, at family gatherings and at each other's homes. When the kids hit the late elementary years, they started to drift apart a bit as their interests changed and their network of friends in their home communities grew.  And Laura and I drifted apart, too. In my partial defense, Laura lost many connections with family in those years, as depression and alcoholism took over her life.  [We come from a family with addiction and depression on both parental sides. Many of my siblings struggle with this to one degree or another.  My personal struggles are with tobacco and food.]

I miss my sister, but mostly I miss the Laura we knew before she got really ill. She was smart and funny. She cared about other people. But she wasn't perfect. She could be cutting, sharp words came with her sharp mind. She was progressive in her politics, and had many a heated argument with our conservative brothers. She embarrassed and angered her son, by sometimes being a falling-down drunk, and by not being able, or seemingly willing, to kick that addiction. She was unkind to and disparaged her husband, himself a recovering alcoholic, who nevertheless stuck by her and cared for her until she died.  But still, she was a sister, mother, aunt, wife and daughter and her place, her role, in our family dynamics cannot be replaced.

Julene

My Auntie Julene is dying. She has a rare auto immune disorder with no known cause and limited treatment. The surgical treatments aren't an option because Julene's heart isn't strong enough for surgery. Other treatments have been tried, but are excruciatingly painful, and not guaranteed. Julene pulled the plug on further treatment about a week ago.  She is now in hospice care.

Julene is my mother's sister-in-law. She is the mother of 6, the grandmother of many, and recently became a great-grandmother. Her baking was famous in our family - and among everyone who knew her. She loved to cook and bake and even did catering for a while. When I was about 12 or 14, she gave me a recipe card file with a starter set of recipes; I loved it. I no longer have the box, but I still have the recipes, on 3x5 index cards, in Julene's beautiful handwriting.

When I was growing up, our family spent Christmas Day with my mother's two siblings and our cousins on that side of the family, rotating locations between the three households. Because my birth family is so large (11 children), my dad would ferry us to the festivities in 2 groups. Even in those days of no seat belt or car seat laws, we couldn't fit all of us, gifts, and food in one car. I loved going to both places, and looked forward to seeing all of the cousins. Jim & Julene had 4 boys and 2 girls. One of the boys, Jeff, is just 2 days older than I am (that age difference was a source of consternation when I was young - now I'm willing to let him be my elder), and the oldest girl, Lynn, is about 18 months younger. Jeff was a huge tease, but never really mean. Once we got over our shyness - seeing each other only a couple of times a year we had to re-introduce ourselves each time - we had a lot of fun together.

Twice when I was in elementary school, about ages 9 and 10, Auntie Julene invited me to stay with their family for a week during the summer.  We did ordinary things: baked cookies, went swimming, played outside for hours, and more.  My Uncle Jim was appalled that I didn't know how to ride a bicycle yet at age 9. At my house, there were only full size bicycles available & they belonged to my older siblings, who weren't interested in teaching us younger kids how to ride. But Jim & Julene had smaller bicycles and Uncle Jim put me on one and followed me around their large flat driveway until I was able to wobble myself around a bit.  Over the rest of that week, I spent many hours riding in circles on the driveway.  When I felt homesick, Auntie Julene would feed me cookies and talk about the family, what outings we might do, and anything else she could think of to distract me.

When my own children were young, we lived about 6 blocks from Jim & Julene's home for a couple of years.  Every 6 weeks or so, I would call Julene and the kids & I would walk over to visit her. Julene had many irons in the fire in those days, but she always made time for me; I think she remembered how hard it was to be at home all day with small children and no grownup person to talk to - even more so in the 1980s because so many moms were working outside the home and the kids were in daycare.

A thank-you card seems like the right thing to send her now.  I'll look for one tomorrow morning before I go to work.

Thanks for the memories, Auntie Julene. I love you.

Vice President in Charge of Compliance

Yup, that's my newest title at the farm.  Sunday morning I spent an hour or so looking up Worker Protection Standards (WPS) and what Farmer Bill (and I) needed to do to be in compliance with same.  WPS was set up to protect workers from contact with pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides).  Mostly common sense, there were enough non-sensible events in the past to prompt this legislation: crop dusters spraying fields filled with pickers, growers not respecting the Re-Entry Interval (REI) as listed on pesticide labels, workers being fired for not wanting to enter a recently sprayed/treated field, etc.  The libertarian in Farmer Bill sometimes get frustrated by the regulations - it's very difficult to keep up with them all - and the left-wing commie pinko in me supports them and wants us to comply.  After looking through the MN Department of Ag website, I decided to go ahead and be certified as a Trainer for WPS, which took me just over an hour to register, go through the training materials and take the exam.  I passed with 93.33% on the first try, so like I said, it's mostly common sense.

In terms of the WPS, Straight River Farm has always been essentially in compliance.  Farmer Bill totally respects the REI for his pesticides.  Ditto for the Pre-Harvest Interval.  He keeps a record of what and when he sprays, and wears appropriate safety gear when applying pesticides.  Where SRF is not in compliance is not having a training session for the employees to tell them what all the abbreviations mean, why they can't go in a field sometimes, and what/how to report any concerns they might have.  It's a simple fix, and we'll take care of it for the coming growing season. Even though the libertarian and the liberal sometimes battle a bit inside Farmer Bill, he would never knowingly put himself or his workers - or his customers! - in danger.

Who brought the rain?

The day after my last post about rain and irrigating, we got 0.94 inches of rain at the farm.  I was at work during the day - where there was no rain.  Driving home I saw no evidence of rain until I turned down the gravel road that leads to the farm.  For the past few weeks while it's been so dry, the dust from the gravel road has gotten progressively worse, covering everyone's vehicles in a layer of dust.  That morning I had run my car through a car wash, even while I thought about what a waste of time & money it was, given that I'd be covered in dust again that evening. But then as I drove down the road Monday night, I realized that there wasn't much dust.  Then I saw a place on the edge of the road that had washed slightly.  Then I saw actual puddles.  Apparently it rained steadily for about 45 minutes - that almost inch - but there was a definite line where the rain had and had not fallen. The city of Faribault hadn't gotten any rain; our farm was, apparently, just within the northern edge of the system.  This is pretty exciting stuff for a farmer.

However, there is some contention about who brought the rain.  Farmer Bill doesn't currently have any way to water his apple trees with the irrigation system.  The long dry spell - and the lack of certain rain in the forecast - had him sending one of his crew out to water the trees manually.  They use a huge tank (500 gallons I believe) mounted on a small trailer; the tank has hose outlets and a crew of 1 to 3 people can haul the trailer to water anything not accessible by the irrigation system.  One of our guys was out giving each tree a drink - parking the trailer at the end of the rows and hauling the hose up and down when he felt sprinkles.  He called Farmer Bill to ask whether he should keep watering & Farmer Bill looked at the sky, looked at the radar online, and told him to keep going - the real rain was going to miss us.  So Michael kept watering.  Just like washing your car generally brings rain that day or the next, so does watering.

So, what brought the rain - me washing my car or Michael watering the trees?  We'll never know, but we'll always take the rain!

Musings on water

Another gorgeous sunny day, with hardly a cloud in sight.  It's been that way for about 3 weeks now.  There are few people I know who don't love this weather: dry, warm but not hot (upper 70s, low 80s), sunshine.  There are some who claim to like really hot weather (we haven't had much this year), but I have no sympathy for them since I definitely don't like really hot temperatures.

But not everyone can appreciate a long dry spell.  Farmers. Urban dwellers who cherish a green lawn.  My mother, whose yard is almost all flowers, shrubbery, and trees. Gardeners in general.  When I look back at our farm records, we've had a strange pattern of rainfall the past 3 years.  Lots of rain, much more than we need, in the spring, followed by extended dry spells in the summer.

The past 2 weeks Farmer Bill & his crew have spent a lot of their time irrigating the fields.  He uses overhead sprinkler irrigation and the Straight River is his water source.  The water pump is powered by the PTO on one of the tractors.  Water is pumped through 6-inch pipe across the river field to where the pipe goes underground.  The underground pipe goes up the hill and risers come out of it at various points.  Three-inch pipe is connected to the risers and strung out along the fields.  Sprinkler heads come up out of the 3-inch pipe and spray water in 60-foot circles.  Some of the crops also have an underground trickle irrigation option: the raspberries, blueberries and many of the melons. Trickle irrigation has benefits: virtually no evaporation when watering; less disease spread by water splashing spores onto the plants; not having to move pipe.  But several of our crops blossom when there is still possibility of frost, and overhead sprinkling is the best way to save those tender blossoms.  However, as any gardener will tell you, it's better to have rain. Rainwater just makes things grow better. There's a chance for thunderstorms today - it is August after all - but it doesn't feel like rain is moving in.  So the crew will continue to move pipe and pump water.

Spring farming update

It's another late spring following a long, cold, snowy winter.  I have a memory of winter being long and cold when I was growing up - and usually snowy.  In the past decade it seemed that winters had gotten somewhat milder - sometimes snowy, sometimes not.  But this past winter felt cold and snowy.  If -15 degrees kills powdery mildew spores on the plants and in the soil, we shouldn't have much problem with that this summer - with all the nights below -15 we had over the winter.

The apple trees are just past full bloom - the early blooming varieties are at petal fall - the earliest strawberry varieties are blooming like crazy - and the tomatoes in the hoop houses are also blooming.  Of course, the dandelions, shepherd's purse, creeping charlie and other plant pests are also blooming.  Farmer Bill and his crew are working long days, when the sun shines, trying to keep up with it all.  On rainy days, they work on equipment and try to take a little time off.  [Personally, I wish they'd work more on straightening up the chaos of the equipment shed - it's a bit tricky to find things in there these days.]

Every year during this spring time, Farmer Bill insists that he's going to start dropping crops from his plans next year.  I've long suggested to him that just the strawberries and the apples would keep him plenty busy - without adding 5 other crops in as well.  Last year he swore he was dropping the sweet corn in 2014, but shortly after the first of the year, sweet corn seed appeared at the door... This spring he swore, again, that it was gone next year.  We'll see.

Raspberries may end up gone just because they may become too hard to produce, with the new fruit fly pest that has arrived.  We're setting out attractant traps to scout for the first of the SWD (spotted wing drosophila), and will have to use a spray on the raspberries when they arrive.  There is no effective organic treatment - spray or cultivation - yet.  But since this fruit fly is causing incredible damage to soft fruit crops across the country, I'm betting the chemical companies are working hard to come up with something that works and can be certified for organic production.  Another bet I'd put money on: the price of soft fruit - certified organic or not - will go up. So far, in Minnesota, the June-bearing strawberries haven't been greatly affected by SWD.  All of the other soft fruits have had problems: raspberries, blueberries, ever-bearing strawberries, etc.

We had a few blueberries last year - enough to need to pick them, not enough to make a decent display at the markets.  Farmer Bill sold a few, and I picked a couple of times for baking and freezing.

Most (maybe all? sometimes I'm the last to know) of the melons have been planted into the fields.  While we could, theoretically, have a cold snap and an overnight frost, it doesn't feel like we will.  Even better, the weather forecast from the NWS doesn't indicate anything like that for the next 10 days - which puts us squarely into June.  There were a few really early strawberry blossoms that got nipped in the last frost.  There may have been a few apple blossoms that got nipped, too, but mostly it's been an easy spring for Farmer Bill, frost-wise.  He hasn't had to set up the irrigation system yet (a several days to week-long process) and hasn't had to spend any sleepless nights monitoring the weather and the sprinklers.

At least one field of sweet corn has been planted - again maybe more.  Farmer Bill usually tries to plant sweet corn for early ripening so he doesn't have to spray for corn ear worms.  Also, he gets too busy with the melons and apples to be messing with later sweet corn.  We could quite easily plant enough for us to freeze and have corn at many meals with a bit of the time not spent working ground and planting fields would save.

That's about it. Lots of planting, weeding, mowing, repairing, sharpening, fine tuning going on.

On being everything to everyone

ALA, the American Library Association, held its annual conference in Chicago in 2013.  I am not a member of ALA, but I pay attention to who the speakers are, what the themes of the conference are, and I try to read some of the reports and reviews that come out of the conference each year.

I read this in a list of 'takeaways' from the 2013 annual conference:

‘Doing good’ is not the same thing as ‘making a difference’.” Public librarians need to find out where they can make the most difference and concentrate on those areas instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

Those of you who get email from me will see this as my signature line for a while.  I have been saying essentially this very thing for a number of years now.  No, we don't carry postage stamps, envelopes, writing paper, tag board, glue, markers or other art supplies, supply a notary, give legal or medical advice, or babysit your children (well, yes, we do babysit your children, but not intentionally & if someone flashes them - or worse- while they're here unsupervised, it's on your head).

We do supply books, DVDs, music CDs, audiobooks, free computer use with free Internet and productivity software access, newspapers, magazines, database access to materials not available on the open Internet, and electronically downloadable books, audiobooks and magazines.  We have literacy-based storytimes for parents and children, special music and art programs for all ages, author talks, tax-preparation help, and beginning computer, resume writing, and online job searching workshops.  One thing public libraries do well is provide a starting point.  Technological literacy becomes more important every year, and public libraries have the opportunity to excel at helping people gain that knowledge.

To be a Librarian in my library you must have a professional degree, which means you have advanced training on searching and sorting through sources and resources.  I can't count the number of times a patron will say "I spent an hour looking for - fill in the blank - and couldn't find anything on the internet" and I can find it in a 5-minute search using search techniques that come with my education and experience.  Need materials to support your 4th-grader's science project? Guess what, there aren't books at a 4th-grade level on the chemical composition of laundry detergent.  But there are general books on chemistry, including explaining what biodegradable means.  Need help explaining how and why a solar hotdog cooker works?  There isn't a whole book on a hotdog cooker, but let's go to the books on solar power, and camping, and voila, there's the support you need.  I help people think outside the box, more broadly, to the subject rather than the specific.  And sometimes I help people think more specifically.  Doing a high-school paper on the Holocaust?  It's a broad topic, so maybe you want to think about focusing the thesis of your paper on a specific aspect: one specific camp, or one specific survivor story, surrounded by the larger theme.

The Librarians in my branch were recently told we need to do more outreach. Outreach is not a bad thing; despite being an extreme introvert, incredibly shy, I actually enjoy going out to talk to groups about the library.  But I really think my bosses want us to do more Outreach just so they can say we've done it.  I don't believe they think much about whether the outreach we do makes any difference.  One of the suggestions made to me was to run an off-site book group, in a senior center or residence.  I currently run a book group that meets at the branch library monthly.  That entails finding discussion-worthy books - for which there must be a minimum of six copies available, compiling discussion questions, emailing the group with said discussion questions and meeting reminders, and reading the book.  The reading is done on my own uncompensated time. Adding another book group would add approximately 10 more unpaid hours to my work load every month. I asked whether I could get comp time for any additional hours and got a blank stare with an "I don't know, I don't think so..." reply.  It was apparent that my boss had never thought about the hours I spend reading as work time.  And I do, in fact, already help choose the books for a local senior book group.  The group needs 4-5 large print, 1-2 audiobooks, and 2-3 regular print copies.  Finding titles worth reading that meet those requirements can be a challenge so I asked our book selector about getting a list of large print titles being purchased and I keep a spreadsheet of possibilities.  This is a helpful thing I can do within the confines of my paid work week and the list I've generated can be used to help other book groups and other librarians.

Farmer Bill is often the sounding board for the hard parts of my job. He is always supportive, sympathetic, and on my side, for which I am truly grateful.  I'm going to end this post with two stories about the positive parts of my work, because he mentioned once that he doesn't get to hear enough of those.

On a Thursday in May 2013 a local elementary school had a literacy night at the library.  About 200 parents and children converged on the library for a 2-hour span of time. Spanish- and Somali-language translators helped us explain what the library could offer visitors.  Several dozen brand-new library card accounts were created and many lost cards were replaced (with a waiver of the normal $2 replacement card fee). As each family got cards, we explained that materials were loaned for set amounts of time. If they aren't returned or renewed on time, late fees are applied.  I helped one Latina mother and her children choose some books to read and fun movies to watch, and explained again about movies needing to come back in one week (movie overdue fees are $1/day each and add up quickly for many families).  The following Wednesday afternoon that family came into the library with all of the materials while I was on the public desk.  Recognizing them, I walked with them to the return slot, assuring them that they were completely on time with the movies - and could keep the books longer if they wished.  No, they'd read the books. We returned all the items, and I asked if they needed help choosing more materials.  No, thank you, they knew right where to go because of our session the week before.  And they have been regular visitors to the library ever since.

Just last week, an African-American mother came in with her three children.  The youngest, a 2nd-grader, needed to do a project on our solar system.  Mom applied for and got a library card, we set them up on a computer, taught Mom how to search for, copy, and paste pictures of planets into a Word document (it helped enormously that Mom was reasonably comfortable on a computer, although very shy and a bit insecure of her abilities).  Mom and daughter spent about 2 hours creating a project.  When they finished, nearly at closing time, there was a bit of a rush to get it printed before their computer time ran out.  Mom was concerned that changes would need to be made and wanted to email the project to herself so they could work on it again if necessary.  This was my chance to be a hero & I took it.  USB drives are regularly left behind at the computers.  We keep any we find, or that are turned in by patrons, for a month. Those not claimed after a month come to me.  I clean all the personal information off them, keep a batch of 12 for our computer classes, and the rest go in a drawer to be given away.  I quickly grabbed one of the drives, plugged it into the computer and saved the girl's project on it, all the while explaining what I was doing and how I was doing it. After it was saved, I showed them how to find it again.  When I unplugged the drive and handed it to her, saying she could take it home & the children could use it for future projects at home, at school, or at the library, Mom was briefly overwhelmed.  They took their printed project and the flash drive, checked out some books, and went home very happy patrons who will almost certainly come back to use the library in the future.

Those are 2 stories about what public libraries and librarians can do best: make connections and help close the digital and literacy divides that exist in this country.

Lunch in Paris

The coolers are absolutely stuffed full of apples, both the big one, and the garage. Two years ago, Farmer Bill insulated the garage walls & ceiling and installed an old air-conditioning unit that our friend Robin had laying about, and turned the garage into a temporary cooler for overflow supply. [Which means my car has to stay outdoors until the apple supply goes down far enough for everything to fit into the big cooler.]  Hundreds and hundreds of bushels of Honeycrisp, Regent, Keepsake & Honeygold.

Selling apples has gone well overall.  Most of the farmers' markets have been good to excellent this year; one of our local supermarkets has been taking a regular supply of several varieties; a produce auction in Iowa gets a delivery 3 days a week; and Twin Cities Local Food places a small order every week.  A few other sales possibilities have come up, and one of them is why Farmer Bill owes me Lunch in Paris.

Shortly after the Field Day, our apple instructor/consultant sent Farmer Bill an email.  There's a corn maze on the northern edge of the Twin Cities, run by a man who also raises a few strawberries.  He was thinking about adding apples to his concessions & wanted to try it.  Would Farmer Bill be interested?  Farmer Bill is pretty much always willing to try something new, so of course he was interested.  The next question is how to staff it.  Our current staff were pretty well booked for markets on the Saturday (and I was scheduled at my paid employment).  However, I wasn't scheduled to work the Sunday.  As I was driving home one evening from work, Farmer Bill called. That's not unusual, we often check in with each other at that time.  But when he told me to think of something really nice that he could do for me, I got suspicious.  When I got home, we did whatever farm things needed to be done, had supper, and the moment had come.  What would I have to do to earn this 'something really nice'?  Take a load of apples up to the corn maze on Sunday.  The maze is open from 10 a.m.-6 p.m.  I'd need to be there between 9 & 9:30 to get set up.  The drive is about 90 minutes or so, depending on traffic.  So up I got at 6:30 on Sunday morning, made coffee & had a quick breakfast, went out & loaded 800 lbs of apples into the van, and started north.  I found the proprietor of the maze, we found a place for me to set up, I sold apples until 6:00, then I packed up and drove back to the farm. I got back about 8:30 or so & unloaded the van; it was your basic 14-hour work day.  On my day off.

So for that Farmer Bill owes me lunch in Paris.

This Saturday is my birthday.  I was scheduled to work at the aforementioned paid employment. But being a real job, they also give me paid time off and I had asked for the day off a couple of months ago.  Early this week Farmer Bill mentions that two of his regular staff are taking Saturday off (not paid time off!), and what market would I be willing to attend?  I chose downtown, because we rarely do the downtown market solo, so I know I will be able to do a toilet run when I need to, there are good things to eat and drink: Hmong egg rolls, breakfast bagels, good coffee, pastries, etc.  I can buy a few locally grown vegetables before they disappear for the year and spend the morning with Farmer Bill.  When a co-worker asked what I was doing on my birthday and I told her, she said I should definitely hold out for a whole Weekend in Paris.

Turns out it was fortuitous that I chose to go downtown with Farmer Bill.  The son and d-i-l are doing a flying trip into the Twin Cities for a friend's wedding on Sunday.  They get in late Saturday morning and will hop a bus over to the market, hang out with us until the market ends, and then we'll all go out to brunch (which we'll make Farmer Bill buy).  If I had opted to go to another market by myself, it would have been much more difficult to organize seeing them.

For now, I'll hold Farmer Bill to Lunch in Paris, although really, he probably owes me more like a Week in Paris for all the markets I've gone to, strawberries, melons, sweet corn, and apples  I've picked, and hours I've put in weeding, pruning, mowing, managing the paperwork, doing supply and repair runs, and so much more over the past 10 years. When he's finally ready to really retire, we can talk about how long we'll stay in Paris...

Apple season 2013

It's October 1 and that means the apple harvest is in full gear.  The early apples, Zestar! and Ginger Gold, have been picked and mostly sold.  Our first year with the 'next big thing,' also known as SweeTango, has gone well.  Almost all of them are sold - they will be gone today or tomorrow.  I have had SweeTango in the past, mostly from the store - usually from Washington state - and not been terribly impressed.  But having SweeTango grown locally and picked ripe changed my mind.  It is a pretty tasty apple; a great mix of its parent apples, Zestar! and Honeycrisp.  It has the juiciness of both combined with the crisp of Honeycrisp and the zest of Zestar!  [Personally I find Honeycrisp a bit bland. Sweet & crisp, but bland.]  The Honeycrisp and Sweet Sixteen are both ready now, with the first of the Haralson coming off their trees; the Cortland are also ready & should be showing up at markets soon.  We still have SnowSweet, Regent, Honeygold, and Keepsake to finish off the season - they ripen in early October & everything seems to be about 2 weeks behind this year so we've just barely started tasting them.

Were you wondering how many Honeycrisp there  will be this year?  Well, here's the long story: Straight River Farm was home to a MFVGA Field Day in September.  About 40 fruit and vegetable growers from around the state converged on us and toured the farm to talk about soil management.  SRF was chosen for this Field Day because Farmer Bill has a lot of different soil types and is growing a lot of different crops.  Preparing the farm for visitors during apple season was a bit difficult and in the end a lot of things got shoved into buildings and the doors closed on them.  The grass was a bit longer than we wanted because the belt on the mower broke on the Saturday and couldn't be replaced in time (field day was Monday).  But the day inevitably arrived, the discussions were held, many of our fields were toured, and everyone seemed pleased with the outcome.  So, Honeycrisp.  At the end of the Field Day our apple consultant told us he thinks we have 2000 bushel of Honeycrisp to harvest!  Allowing for his enthusiastic nature, we figure we have at least 1000 to maybe 1500 bushel. Farmer Bill is working on plans to move those apples - in a somewhat flooded market.  What a change from last year, when our apple harvest and sales were over by October 15 and we harvested about 100 bushel of Honeycrisp!  It's a terrifying and exhilarating difference.  When I asked Farmer Bill about selling all of those Honeycrisp, he said "We'll just keep plugging away..."  We're both pretty tired all the time, what with long days and lots of logistics to manage, but it's made a little easier to handle with the knowledge that SRF might turn a profit this year. Farmer Bill might even be able to set aside some money for next year's start up costs.  I am trying not to count chickens until they're hatched, but it's hard to completely resist.

Next time: why Farmer Bill owes me lunch in Paris.

On being a public employee

My paid employment is in a public library, hence the librarian part of the blog title.  If you've read my other posts about the library, you know that it's not all smooth sailing these days.  My library system has become management heavy - and when you have too many managers, they tend to trip over themselves trying to find something to fill their days.  And sometimes that something is you.  We currently have 2 full time managers in our building for 3.6 full time librarians.  The circulation staff is almost the same: 2 managers for 3.8 full time staff (although they also manage the shelvers, of which there are 4 or 5, who work 14 hours/week each).

One of the edicts they passed about a year ago: no staff are to, under any circumstances, go to the back room of the library to look for a recently returned item for a patron.  WTF?  Really?  We are allowed to check the shelves in the public area, but not to check the carts/shelves in back waiting to go out.  When this was announced we were told that disciplinary action could be taken if we disregarded the policy.  We were to tell patrons that we would be happy to request the item and they could come back in a day or two to get it.  WTF?!?  Really?!?!  And they wonder why people bad-mouth public employees?

Here's the deal.  I am a professional Librarian, with a capital L, with an advanced degree in Librarianship.  While not as strenuous a degree as, say, engineering, law, or medicine, it is still a professional degree.  I am a smart, capable adult.  If an item was returned to us yesterday or today, I know that it is most likely in the back room because we are rarely caught up with re-shelving.  Our back room is very well organized and I am smart enough to gauge how long it will take me to get there & look through the particular returns for an item. In most cases it will take just as long to walk out & search the public shelves - when I know the item is not there.  From the beginning I have disregarded this policy.  I will not stand in front of a student who needs a copy of Fahrenheit 451 for school and tell them they can come back in a couple of days, when I can put it in their hands in less than 3 minutes.  I will not tell the senior citizen, who visits the library weekly, that they can have it next week but not this week.  And should I ever be disciplined for this, I will take it public & library administration will get to explain themselves to the local media.

The other side of this is that there are occasions when the item can't be found.  It isn't on the shelves where the computerized catalog thinks it should be, and because of its return date I'm pretty confident it's not in the back room.  In those cases, I must offer to request the item and have it delivered in a couple of days, or to call another branch to check their shelves and arrange for it to be held for the patron to pick up.  I am a professional.  I know how to do these things, and in which order, and what makes sense in a given situation.  And that's what I do.  Being a public employee is often hard, and often stressful.  The public tend to want what they want, now.  I have to say no to members of the public often enough that I refuse to say no when I can just as easily say yes.