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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 23, 2013 20:06:41 GMT -5
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 23, 2013 17:36:00 GMT -5
Yes, that is 100% Oxbow Farm raised kitchen help. The noodles seem to hold up very well to boiling, I was worried that they'd just disintegrate. I followed the egg noodle recipe pretty exactly except I replaced all the flour with corn meal and used a whole egg instead of just yolks. I'm thinking I may try the same recipe minus the 10 minutes of kneading, if corn has no gluten, one needn't knead your noodles.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 23, 2013 10:26:33 GMT -5
We've been experimenting with our flint corn, trying to find or develop recipes that use it for the majority of the grain in the recipe vs a token amount and the rest wheat flour. Flint is the easiest corn to grow for us and the easiest to dodge potential crosses with GMO field corn and the lawyers that ride behind them. Still in the hunt for an accurate rendering of a recipe for true, traditional peasant-style, pure corn Portuguese yeasted cornbread (broa, Paõ de Milho). Here's a first attempt at flint corn egg noodles. There is a bit of wheat flour used in these pics to prevent the dough from sticking when I was rolling it out. The dough itself is pure flint corn meal ground on our CL mill. We had fun laying them out to dry. Used our dryer trays but they are all laying around the woodstove. We'll be using them in beef and noodles tonight, so we'll see how they hold up when they get boiled.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 22, 2013 19:08:28 GMT -5
I guess I missed out on a big opportunity to participate in a genuine agricultural bubble. Darn. Gray GAVE me some Glass Gem in 2011. I should have planted it all, gotten a big pile of seed and cashed in on ebay. Even NativeSeeds/SEARCH has gotten in on the ridiculous hype. There's this Mother Earth News article that came out last month, just in case somebody missed that picture on facebook. Glass Gem is pretty corn. If you sort through the ears and have a good camera I'm sure you can find something similar to that picture , but other pictures of multiple ears show that not every ear is that exciting . What bugs me is all the hype. Glass Gem isn't an heirloom corn, its a very recently created semi-popping flint that is still segregating for a lot of traits. I think Joseph's popcorn selection idea is the best idea for where it should go, because right now the corn is basically only good for looking pretty and scamming suckers on facebook and ebay. From reading the Mother Earth News article it sounds like Carl Barnes was a hell of a corn breeder and plant explorer. I'd love to see some of the other corns he found and worked with. I bet a lot of them were a lot more functional as corn varieties than Glass Gem. There are lots of old Native American corn varieties languishing in GRIN. NativeSeeds/SEARCH maintains a lot of such varieties. What does everybody want? "Ooh! All the pretty colors!" When I first saw the prices Glass Gem was going for on ebay for a tiny amount of seed I was a little upset. "Those people are getting ripped off!" But now that I've thought about it some more, I've realized that it doesn't really matter, and may be a good thing overall. A lot of those people will never grow that corn out anyway. They just bought it so they can say "I just got some Glass Gem seed! I'm so excited!" on facebook and link to that picture. Possibly a few of them will grow it , love the process and join the rest of us as gardeners and seed savers. So what the hell
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 22, 2013 6:10:03 GMT -5
I guess the main point I was trying to make that no one is mentioning is the labor component.
Intensive plantings require much closer maintenance. With so many plants sharing so much root space, fertility requirements are very high. Likewise water requirements. Irrigation is absolutely essential. You need people out in the growing area checking on plants every day. Labor is expensive.
Extensive plantings are much more tolerant of lower fertility and reduced watering because each individual plant has much more soil volume to itself to find fertility and water. It lends itself to much lower levels of monitoring. You plant, cultivate occasionally, and harvest.
There is no question that intensive methods yield much higher when done properly, but only if you have sufficient LABOR to maintain the system otherwise they tend to yield zero. With extensive methods you almost always get SOMETHING.
There is value in both methods for different things. I use them both.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 21, 2013 8:18:08 GMT -5
Here's my take. There are basically two systems here and they don't mix well. System 1. Intensive (Square Foot Gardening like Mel Bartholemew or Biointensive Mini-Farming like John Jeavons/Alan Chadwick/Ecology Action) System Requirements- - High Fertility input on growing area (compost and/or fertilizer)
- High Water requirement (frequent irrigation)
- Usually complex cultivation schedule, double digging, trenching etc. for deep highly porous bed soil macro structure
- High Labor requirment, low mechanization (usually)
Pros- - High Yeild per unit area
- Rapid soil improvement in growing area
- Smaller land area requirment
- Weed suppression effects due to tight spacing
- Enables complex intercropping
- Efficient resource utilization
Cons-- High Labor
- High Input cost
- Complex system must be maintained as a whole or it all falls apart
- Difficult, expensive to mechanize
- Difficult to incorporate cover crops into rotations
- Very complex rotation schedules
- Higher disease transmission, esp. fungal
System 2 Extensive (Traditional Row Crop Agriculture, Jethro Tull)
System Requirements-- Mechanical Traction, tractor or draft animal power assist.
- Large land area
Pros-- Lower Labor costs
- Easy to mechanize, cultivation, tillage, etc
- Lower inputs per unit area
- East to incorporate cover crops into rotations
- Simpler rotation schedules
- Less prone to total crop failure
- Lower disease transmission, esp fungal
Cons-- Less efficient resource utilization
- Lower yield per unit area.
- Ideal weed environment
- Often deteriorates soil structure over time (OM loss, erosion, nutrient loss, leaching, salt accumulation etc.)
These are two different systems and they don't really tolerate mixing. You can't plant at intensive spacings and then water and fertilize at extensive rates. I use both systems here. My vegetable crops for market are intensively planted and managed, my homestead crops for our own use are extensively planted and managed. Basically two totally different methods for management.
Intensive agriculture works really well for high value crops on high value land. Extensive agriculture works best for low value crops on low value land. Saying that intensive agriculture doesn't work ignores the evidence of history. Read "Farmers of Forty Centuries". The number one requirement for it to work well is lots of "boots on the ground". If you don't have the labor to maintain the intensively planted crops they will fail on you. I love Square Foot Gardening because it details an entire system for an urban/suburban gardener with little or no land can use to grow a large amount of produce. It is not geared towards anyone but a home gardener and it is meant to be used as an entire system. It is a great place to start for people in that situation because it is simple and accessible and yet covers everything a beginner would need to know to be successful. It doesn't transfer to extensive, large gardens well at all.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 21, 2013 6:39:44 GMT -5
Just watched this, pretty darned good presentation. Sounds like there might be some interesting sweetcorn germplasm to add to Joseph's Frosty also. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f-brCux67I&feature=plcpI noted how many times he emphasized how new the concepts of a "variety" is, less than 140 years! Prior to that most crops were mainly maintained as regionally adapted landrace populations.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 20, 2013 12:43:56 GMT -5
Some of the exceptions you just have to know, or get a secondary confirmation by looking at the seed. Delicata peduncles for example look very little like a standard pepo, almost no flare or ribbing, just a straight pentagonal sided dark green stem, but they are pepo. Pepo seed and moschata seed are easy to distinguish.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 17, 2013 23:02:19 GMT -5
Well, we live in a disposable society. Unfortunately that translates to a non-resilient, logistically fragile society as well. In my own experience, the seed you save is vastly superior to the seed you buy in almost every case.
And purchasing starts is the single best way to give your garden interesting new diseases. The horrific plague of late blight that destroyed the entire east coast tomato crop in 2009 was the result of contaminated starts shipped up from the southern nurseries.
I'm interested in a resilient community that can produce most or all of its own food and the infrastructure necessary to create that food. Seed saving is a vital part of that, so I am invested in seeding that as many people are empowered to save their own seed locally as can be.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 17, 2013 19:38:07 GMT -5
My what strong forearms you have!!! It amuses me that people think that anyone can simply sit down and milk a cow: giving no thought to the tremendous hand and forearm stamina that is required. I remember the struggle during that first week after the cow freshened. When she was producing abundantly, and my muscles were weak from being out of practice. I've often thought about the old time dairy farmers from before milking machines. Guys that used to milk 25-30 cows twice a day. Their forearms must have looked like Popeye.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 17, 2013 7:46:41 GMT -5
I think they've broken dormancy Mike! What kind of cherry? Did they all germ or are some of them still plantable?
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 17, 2013 7:35:00 GMT -5
I just shared the link to that article with the proto-network. I'm currently not certain at what level I will be interfacing with this new network, depending on the shape and direction that it takes. The network looks like it will be organized using a template created by something called "the Sunshine Coast Seed Saving Collective" which has a document called "How to Grow a Seed Collective: a community template for seed saving", by Robin Wheeler. Overall I have no problem with this template, it is actually less about the nuts and bolts of seed saving and more about the nuts and bolts of creating a community organization. It seems very well thought out and a great document except for a couple of glaring inclusions of the PURE SEED mindset. For example in the section titled "Growing Seed Growers" there are a couple of bullet points I find troubling. - Understanding of issues of hybrid versus open pollinated. We don’t want people to waste a season trying to grow out hybrid seeds!
- Good understanding of Isolation Distances to prevent contamination.
- Understanding of the cycles of annuals, biennials and perennials, and how this relates to
collecting seed. For instance, biennials can be planted in different years to reduce worries of crossing.
Another excerpt that bothered me..."Note that we have asked each donor to sign a pledge that they have learned seed saving basics before offering their seed. This is to slow the avalanche of well meaning people with bags full of pumpkin seeds gathered from who-knows-what mixed squash field, or the person growing the same broccoli for years without introducing new genes. Even long time seed savers might be missing a few details. We also think it is important to understand organic practices. We do not want hybrid or GMO seed sneaking in, and many want or need their seed to come from organically stewarded or Certified Organic gardens." Some of this stuff alarms me, I don't feel it is productive to focus so much on the PRODUCT. To me it is more important to get people undertaking the PROCESS. My concerns are perhaps unnecessary as the meeting was quite cordial, informative, and collaborative in feel. I brought a large amount and variety of seed to share and it seemed to be well received. I have expressed my alternative view as to how to encourage seed saving, and I certainly haven't been made to feel unwelcome, although I don't think the organizers are much in agreement.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 15, 2013 6:39:15 GMT -5
It might be worthwhile to cross some of the human consumable style sunflowers with the birdseed/oilseed types to pick up some of the nifty agronomic characteristics- branched plants, shorter stature, more uniform dry-down etc. It would make them maybe a bit more reliable and possibly easier to throw netting over if necessary.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 15, 2013 6:18:17 GMT -5
Yes, I've had them store quite a long time, but usually under much better storage conditions than what this one had. I had set it there with some tomatoes to ripen for seed saving and then processed all the tomatoes and forgot about this guy.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jan 14, 2013 18:31:58 GMT -5
Not exactly a tutorial, but I finally got around to going through my seed ears of my Oxbow Mixed Flint which is basically a Cascade Series redux. I interplanted Cascade Ruby Gold, Cascade Creamcap, Byron Yellow Flint and Abenaki. Partially because I wanted to reselect the whole shebang for my own enjoyment and partially because I wanted to see what the parent varieties were like after reading about them in the Resilient Gardener. In the spirit of a tutorial. I recommend doing this outside or putting down a lot of cloths or tarps if you must do it indoors as kernels go flying and silks and chaff get all over the place.
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