Post by Alan on Aug 24, 2008 20:22:56 GMT -5
Hello Everyone,
I've been out for a while now with a lot going on with the business and sorting out property boundaries with the neighbors, though the season is quickly winding down due to the lack of rain here in Pekin and I will be finding myself like a "wayfaring stranger" traveling home to this board more often in coming days, weeks, and months.
While I was out I have been introduced to a number of local gardeners that have moved to the Washington County Indiana area and who know of us through this web-site, many of them have plans to sell at our market next year, and all represent terrific "new blood" to the Eco-Logical movement here in my small community, I have also made headway with many old time market gardeners and home gardeners over the past months as well, giving me axcess to even more local and open pollinated seeds.
For a while I was quite down about the fate of the farm this year, it seemed like one thing after the other kept wiping out or dwindling the produce here and I began to wonder about my career choice, of course I have come back from that by putting into perspective that most of the problems I faced this year were of my own making by way of plant breeding, which is definetly not a negative. Three years of selection has yielded a number of genetic lines far superior to many commercial lines we grew in the past and as a result I have made it high priority to re-think and re-desighn my garden layouts. Many mornings have been spent with graph paper, rulers, seed lists, cofee and cigarettes and many improvements to farm infrastructure have taken place or will take place this year.
Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this letter, I hadn't been to our lovely home site here for quite a while or the blog site, ocassionally checking in to make sure things were still going well however. Today I saw that we gained our 200'th member so I thought the occasion should be celebrated!
It's definetly during strange natural and polictical weather this year that words such as "Jeffersonian", "Independent", and "Self-Sufficient", have come to mean more to me than ever before along with sometimes negatively implied labels like "Red Neck", "Ridge Runner", "Hill Billy" and "Hill Hoper", names I will forever wear with a badge of honor, particularly in honor of my appalachian roots and those whom I share them with who have brought me further along in agricultural sefl sufficiency this year.
Culture has come to mean a lot to me. Particularly the sharing and love of and between cultures. It's amazing to me how many people I have met on this little site and how many times I have met people in real life who read and or post on this site who are always more than willing to trade or to share their agricultural bounties.
Americans, Canadians, French, English, Middle Easterners, Australians. It truly is a terrific thing.
Anyhow, I just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone for all of their help and friendship and also to invite our 200'th member to the web-site! Welcome bell4562 we are glad to have you here and are very appreciative of all of your hard work, particularly the Lunéville melon!
Your Friend,
Alan Reed Bishop
I've been out for a while now with a lot going on with the business and sorting out property boundaries with the neighbors, though the season is quickly winding down due to the lack of rain here in Pekin and I will be finding myself like a "wayfaring stranger" traveling home to this board more often in coming days, weeks, and months.
While I was out I have been introduced to a number of local gardeners that have moved to the Washington County Indiana area and who know of us through this web-site, many of them have plans to sell at our market next year, and all represent terrific "new blood" to the Eco-Logical movement here in my small community, I have also made headway with many old time market gardeners and home gardeners over the past months as well, giving me axcess to even more local and open pollinated seeds.
For a while I was quite down about the fate of the farm this year, it seemed like one thing after the other kept wiping out or dwindling the produce here and I began to wonder about my career choice, of course I have come back from that by putting into perspective that most of the problems I faced this year were of my own making by way of plant breeding, which is definetly not a negative. Three years of selection has yielded a number of genetic lines far superior to many commercial lines we grew in the past and as a result I have made it high priority to re-think and re-desighn my garden layouts. Many mornings have been spent with graph paper, rulers, seed lists, cofee and cigarettes and many improvements to farm infrastructure have taken place or will take place this year.
Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this letter, I hadn't been to our lovely home site here for quite a while or the blog site, ocassionally checking in to make sure things were still going well however. Today I saw that we gained our 200'th member so I thought the occasion should be celebrated!
It's definetly during strange natural and polictical weather this year that words such as "Jeffersonian", "Independent", and "Self-Sufficient", have come to mean more to me than ever before along with sometimes negatively implied labels like "Red Neck", "Ridge Runner", "Hill Billy" and "Hill Hoper", names I will forever wear with a badge of honor, particularly in honor of my appalachian roots and those whom I share them with who have brought me further along in agricultural sefl sufficiency this year.
Culture has come to mean a lot to me. Particularly the sharing and love of and between cultures. It's amazing to me how many people I have met on this little site and how many times I have met people in real life who read and or post on this site who are always more than willing to trade or to share their agricultural bounties.
Americans, Canadians, French, English, Middle Easterners, Australians. It truly is a terrific thing.
Anyhow, I just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to everyone for all of their help and friendship and also to invite our 200'th member to the web-site! Welcome bell4562 we are glad to have you here and are very appreciative of all of your hard work, particularly the Lunéville melon!
Your Friend,
Alan Reed Bishop