Ag Meeting Notes 9/30/09

AG MEETING

Community Garden

Miller Farm currently has a Student Garden and a Community Garden with as many at 15 plots, however in recent years there have been around 4 members per summer.

On campus garden set to break ground on March 1^st.

Community Garden members have been frustrated by lack of clear management structures and exclusivity to Earlham community

Conflict between on-campus wants and off campus wants in terms of location.

Eve and Rose view make transportation less of an issue.

Making sure to have a garden manager to make sure things don’t degrade.

Working together to get funding.

Stay in Contact

CSA May-Term?

Farm Day Can Can Yes we Can Farmday

Picking Apples for Farm day – Kaitlyn and Jeffrey

Compost Turning – Aric and Miriam

Chicken Coop needs to be cleaned – Erin and Carmen

Tree-house maintenance for future—contact nathan

Garden Protection ideas

Cooking – Aaron? Miriam

Composting Orchard – Erin, Aric

Planting Front Flower Gardens – Sarah, Megan

Sarah will buy bulbs

Weed Wacking

Property Clean-up

Library

Canning Workshop – 1:30 SATURDAYZE

CLEANING PANTRY: SUNDAY MORNING STAART and TALK ABOUT ZUMMER REZERCH POSITION

Food Order

• Spinach
• Cream cheese
• Cheddar
• Soy Milk
• Bagels
• Mushroom

Receipts

Git Miriam her $$$$$$$$$

House Spraying

okay

Aric’s Fun Friday Workshop

FUUUUUNNNNN! @ 5:00

CONTACT

Hey guess what! Miller Farm has a new E-mail address:

MillerFarmers@gmail.com

Email us if you want to be on the farm-day List, the EC miller farm community list, or the alumni list! WOW!

Long Term Goals and AG meeting notes

We had a meeting and came up with some long term goals and projects for the semester:
+Work on creating a better compost system
+Get the orchard up to snuff
+Reorganize the dining room library
+Faculty led workshops
+Fix Cider press
+Seal Greenhouse
+Create a "learning wall"
+Collect seeds/ start a seed bank
+WINDMILL???
+Painting porch and mural?

EVEN LONGER TERM GOALS:
+Trail Maintenance
+Tepee mending
+Tree house mending
+Making our own charcoal
+Gray Water System mending/improvement
+Outdoor shower improvement
+Summer Stuff (internship)
+Tapping Trees
+Goats? Pigs? other livestock?
+brewing?


INVOLVEMENT IDEAS:
+IPO
+Student groups and houses
+workshops
+RA/Res Life?
+Different educational programs
+keep listserve up to date







AG MEETING 9/8/09

FARM DAY (SPACE THEMED)
Orchard-- Jeffrey
Garden -- Sarah, Erin
Greenhouse -- Miriam
Chicken Coop -- Aaron
Barn Cleanup -- Jeffrey, Aric
Cooking -- Kaitlyn
Painting?
Art?
Graywater?

AG MEETING TIME UPDATE:
AG meeting will be every Wednesday at noon outside Leeds Gallery except when Toby has a greenhouse meeting at that time, in which case AG meeting will be held TUESDAY at 10:30pm at the same place.

MIRIAM -- Morning Chores
MEGAN -- Evening Chores

ag meeting notes - august 27

(x)= discussed ( )= for next meeting

(x) farm day
theme: short shorts!
garden maintenance- carmen
weeding around fruit trees - toby
greenhouse preparations - erin and miriam
cooking - sarah (bread oven)
chicken tractor repair - jeff
mint harvesting - mica and aric

(x) involvement fair
september 3, 11:30 to 1
bring:
chips and (green tomato) salsa
a chicken
pumpkin/ other garden stuff
miller farm sign

megan and aric are in charge of set up

(x) bulk orders
sugar
white flour
wheat flour
quinoa
oats

( ) house dinners
we'll set up cooking teams and days once everyone gets their schedules worked out.
aaron proposed sunday brunch in lieu of sunday dinner

(x) chores
morning: erin
evening: aaron

2 CHORE WHEELS
monday through thursday:
trash take out
2 living room cleanups
2 sunday cleanups
upstairs bathroom
downstairs bathroom
watering houseplants
porches
ag meeting snack
empty dishrack

friday- sunday
2 living room cleanups
2 sunday cleanups
upstairs bathroom
downstairs bathroom
water houseplants
porches
2 choose your own adventure
dishrack

miriam and kaitlyn will make the chore wheels

(x) fridges
new rool: label everything with the date and your name (private fridge)

(x) cleaning
tonight!
mopping!
living room!
boxes!
yeah!

(x) couch
put it on the porch

(x) committees
this year's committees:
recycling - jeff
gardens - carmen and sarah
greenhouse - miriam
pr - aaron
saga orders - mica
animal food - aric
budget - toby
community - erin and kaitlyn
blogger - jeff
historian - megan

house co-convenors: aaron and sarah

( ) john's party - sept. 12
( ) michael pollan
(x) egg selling
mica - talk to julia about how many eggs she wants
also - possible farmer's market on the heart?

(x) composting
a girl named sara already has arranged the work study job with maintenance, talk to her about sharing it with mica/kaitlyn

( ) canning workshop
( ) u-pick
( ) garden plan

Fortified Fencing & Feathered Feet

Hey Farmers,

After a summer of prolonged and devoted farm stewardship (how thick can I pour it on?), the interns decided to go out with a bang. After suffering several early-summer chicken attacks, we gloomily realized that the chicken pen fencing needed an overhaul. In the spirit of making the farm chickens safe and happy, and securing the fence for current and future generations of chickens, we embarked on our last major summer project: coop re-fencing!

At the most compromised sections of fencing (where fencing was loose or where we'd observed predator tracks leading in and out of the pen), we bought thick, sturdy wire fencing, buried it a foot underground, and tethered it to the existing fence. For more stable areas of the fence, we used new chicken wire and buried about six inches.

The entire back half of the pen has been structurally reinforced with buried fencing.

The purpose of re-fencing was two-fold: firstly, to keep predators out, and secondly, to keep baby chicks in. It's our hope that in the near future, Miller Farm can breed its own chickens and let them freely run around the coop without fear of predator reprisals or prepubescent breakouts.

Most of the front of the pen has also been fortified. After the back fencing was reinforced, we took off old chicken wire patches and recycled it by burying it about three inches around the front. In all, we estimate that more than three-fourths of the entire fence have been reinforced with buried wire-fencing.

Sorry Moggs.

Meanwhile, the newest brood of chicks have grown up fast. Some of these teens are nearly as big as the older roosters. This is a Buff Orpington adolescent.

A Bard Rock (front) and Jersey Giants (back).

The little guys spend most of the day hiding away from the scorching sun in the high-rise weeds.

They've also taken to sleeping on the roosting hutch and the adolescent pen. Feather-footed bantham (left), a Japanese rooster (white, center), and Jersey Giants + Buff Orpingtons in the upper right. They look baby-cute, but they they're starting to act like fully-fledged chickens.

In all, the farm now has 42 chickens, 18 older and 24 younger (which includes both the very little ones plus the Polish and the stowaways Necrobutcher and King Diamond), and we have 15 older hens and 19 younger. The fall group might have to do some rooster cleaning, but otherwise the demographics look good. Come next year, Miller Farm will hopefully have enough eggs to sell them regularly.

That's all for now. We'll be planting fall crops and heading to the Saturday farmer's market soon, so stay tuned!

Luv,

Sean-bo

Extra bits

Hey farmers/friends,

Big thanks to Sarah for updating the blog (not just once, but TWICE this summer). That's dedication. But do I hear the blogosphere clamoring for yet more Miller Farm photos? I think YES! Well, luckily I've got some random Miller Farm photos sitting around from late July and August.

Hyperactive fireflies treated farmers to marathon evening light shows, even in July.

A classic Hoosier downpour catches our dinner setting unprepared.

Get out of the compost, groundhog! Actually, if you stay in there and out of our gardens, we have a deal.

Purple mashed potatoes, best served with some sauerkraut and vegan sausage. MM-MMM!

This is the last time we saw Jeff. He was incoherently mumbling something about gorp and duffing. We hope he is still alive out in the Canadian wilderness. Come home, Jeff!

Mars rising over the farm. At the end of August, Mars will be closer to Earth than at any time in recorded history. Yeah, astronomy!

Miller Farm. 1:00 A.M.

Next time: updates about baby chickens and fall crops! Until then, I'm going to go make something with one or five heads of garlic...

Luv,

Sean-bo

Update!

Hey Farmers!

Just wanted to update with some new pictures

Veggie Haul 7/15/09:



Bib lettuce, purple top turnips, beet stragglers, onions the size of grapefruits (we had about twenty pounds of them earlier this summer), a mountain of garlic, yellow crookneck squash, delicata squash, Dirt, and finally some tomatoes, so far we've got a few plum and yellow pear, with some bigger ones almost ready to be picked, plus about a million half-eaten mystery pumpkins.



Here's a photo of the potato harvest from a few weeks ago. Brown potatoes, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, even purple potatoes!



We covered the rows that were potatoes, onions and garlic with black plastic, hoping to get some fall crops planted soon. Some kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower.


In non-garden related news, Jordan and Sean are almost done fortifying the chicken fence. The baby chickens have fully adjusted to the big coop, and are doing well, and we've had no more mystery attacks since. Most summer people have moved out, leaving us with more eggs than we know what to do with. We'll be selling them at the Richmond Farmer's Market on Tuesday, along with some of our many squashes.

Hope your summer is going well, and I'll see many of you soon!

Love,
Sarah