January 1 2009

Happy New Year!
Updates and Mental Notes That I Will Forget If Not Written Down:

• 4 CSA Members Signed Up Before The New Year
• 26 More To Go
• Fig Cutting rooted in the water tables in June, is bearing fruit. What's remarkable about that? We knew not how long till fruit would form. It was less than 6 months old since cutting that it is bearing fruit. This may not be remarkable, just very pleasing!! People bought figs. All the figs we harvested for sale, sold. There are 2 more rooted cuttings to be transplanted. The first fig tree branched beautifully and produced in abundance. We presently have room for 4 more, IF we remove the Papaya Trees. We have figs year round on the mature tree, albeit less than in the waxing light.
  
• The Papaya Trees that produced fruit, failed to mature. In October last year, the fruit dropped. In October this year, the fruit that were smaller than 3 inches dropped and the fruit that are larger than 3 inches are still on the trees, but will not mature. The natural light cycle will not support papaya production. We want to install more lights in the greenhouse for lettuces anyway. Considerations are whether we will have the money to do so and how long do we wait till we have the capital for more equipment when we could be growing crops (figs) that produce and sell. hmmmm.... To Remove Papaya Trees for Figs... or not. That is the question.
• 2 weeks to begin seeding onions, new lettuce for the water tables and artichokes. Need to get the first seed order in.
• SATURDAY I TURN 39. Holy Crap. I'm getting old.
  

My father was very kind. He said,"Honey, you have a BIG birthday coming up. Huh."
I said, "It will be big when I hit 40, Pop. I'm only gonna be 39."
He responded, "Every year it just gets bigger."
And we laughed.
Kind fellow, my pop is.

• Oil supply is waning.
  

Restaurant clientele is waning. So oil use is waning. So, we get less oil. Never mind the thievery by everyone and their mother who wants to make bio-diesel. Yes, I said thievery. When we have deals with our suppliers and folks slide in and snag the cubies. That's stealing. And never mind the bigger company that sends in their sewage sucking truck with a heckofadeal that includes maintenance of the restaurants equipment AND paying them for the oil. We just cannot compete with that. Shall we get angry? Naaa. Waste of time. Solution? Grow our own oil. Co-operative enterprise with others on the purchase of harvesters and seed press etc. Grow sunflowers, mustard...Contract with farmers. The mash after mashing the seed, is a way high protein foodstuff for the cows etc. And we continue adapting.

• The actualization of distributed micro fish/produce farms powered by farm made fuel is a "localvore" solution to increased access to food, increased food security, decreased vulnerability. The need was yesterday. The crisis is tomorrow. We're trying, man. Doing everything we can. ANY INVESTORS OUT THERE? We can make good money doing a good thing. Lets do it!

I am certain there is more to update about. Another time. Another time.

Passion Fruit and Figs etc...

I think it is interesting that the figs and the date palm, which I haven't put up a picture of yet, & the tropicals and sub tropicals are all growing so well in the same environment. The date palm is growing from a seed that came from a bulk bag of dates that I bought last year at Tu B'shvat, (ט"ו בשבט ) the New Year of the Trees. So I planted 5 seeds and 1 grew. It has 5 fronds so far. I'll take a picture of that, too and put it up here, as well as the passion fruit vines that are all over the place. Man, are they vigorous! I was reading that the passion fruit will take a year or more to fruit. Come April, it will be a year. We'll see what we'll see. Something to look forward to.

Figs

1st Papaya Flower

Seasonal Observations

Good Morning.

OUR PAPAYA HAVE FRUITING STEMS GROWING!!

Why is this so wonderful?

Because it was an experiment.

Because we live in Maine.

And Lacewings have been ordered to combat the stupid spider mites.

Other thoughts:

My Beebalm, Shastas and Borage finished blooming around a month or so ago. This week the Beebalm and Borage are blooming again and the Shastas are setting up buds. My Painted Daisies are budding also. My green peppers are 3 feet tall, leafy and deep beautiful green with absolutely no signs of a bud. The tomatoes are taking forever to ripen. 2 other gardeners were telling me similar observations of their peppers and tomatoes. hmmm.