Comment/Response? 
Daily activities of the owner of
a 20 acre Organic Farm plus
observations, notes, and comments on a wide variety of topics.
| 1 | Hauled bags of leaves to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 2 | Hauled bags of leaves to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 3 | Hauled bags of leaves to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 4 | Went to New Buffalo, MI and
other stores in the area to re-stock my Photographic Notecards. Bought a new Epson 4180 Photo scanner for my HP Pavilion 7850 computer. |
| 5 | Disked leaves on the Blueberry Hill Field. |
| 6 | Found out that WordPerfect no longer works on my computer. Spent the day doing various computer diagnostics and software re-loads. No luck. |
| 7 | Continued to work on computer problems. Still no luck. |
| 8 | Ordered a Dell Dimension 3000 computer. |
| 9 | Hauled bags of leaves to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 10 | Hauled bags of leaves to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 11 | Finished all hauling bags of leaves and dumping them to the open furrows in the fields. |
| 12 | Started taking down grape wires in the East Meadow Central Field that will become next year's main sunflower seed head field. I moved the wires the Tomato Field and replaced the plastic bailing twine I had been using for the lowest level of plant support with the metal grape wire. |
| 13 | Took down another row of grape wire in the East Meadow Central and added it to the Tomato Field. Had to stop from high winds and lake effect snow storms. |
| 14 | Finished taking down the
grape wire in the East Meadow Central Field and setting it as a low wire in the Tomato
Field. The new Dell Dimension 3000 computer arrived. |
| 15 | Moving computer files and software from the old computer to the new one. |
| 16 | Finished moving most computer files and software programs to the new computer. Overall the move went quite well. Since my old computer was running Windows 2000ME and the new one has Windows XP, I was expecting more problems than I got. The only program that didn't work at all was for posting my merchant credit card transactions which was a Windows 95 legacy item. I called my credit card software help line and they had me try a few things which didn't work. They said I would need to purchase a new upgrade which I wasn't quite ready to do. I'll just hang on to my old HP computer and use it for credit card posting. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Trimmed some trees around the walking paths on the farm. |
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| 21 | Based on the sales of the sunflower seed heads on the Internet, plans to expand the seed head crop even more next season, and the fact that this season's harvest filled the greenhouse to capacity - I started working on designs to expand the greenhouse before next season. Although the seed head harvest is driving the expansion, a larger greenhouse will also open some new possibilities for plants as well. I'll need to take that into consideration when ordering the seeds for next season. |
| 22 | You may have noticed that on my Web page for sunflower seed heads, I don't have any feeders for the seed heads. I have tried many ideas over the years, but I didn't like any of them enough to sell. A challenging aspect is the variable size of the seed heads. They can range from 3" in diameter to over 12". Today I got out my welding machine and welded some steel wire and made a hook style hanger. That seemed OK, except for the ugly weld I made. I next tried just bending the steel wire into a hook shape. That worked pretty good . . . right up to the point where a squirrel took the seed head (with the hook too) and just ran away. I ended with a larger size hook and a tighter eye hanger. That seems to work even better. I'll see if the squirrels run off with this one too. |
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| 27 | Ordered some seeds to start
under lights in our basement the first week in January. Worked on greenhouse expansion plans. |
| 28 | Placed another order for January seeds. |
| 29 | Trimmed trees along the farm
walking paths. In an attempt to recover the "free" greenhouse heat on sunny winter days, I found an old fan that runs inside a 4" vent duct. With the idea of blowing the 90' greenhouse air 100ft to our 55' unheated basement, I wanted to get a feel of potential air flow rates, and consequently potential heat loss. Although I still like the idea, the fan I found is far too weak - I'm sure I can break wind with a greater velocity (did I really write that?). |
| 30 | |
| 31 | I ended with a design for the greenhouse expansion that seems to be workable. The current greenhouse is 12ft wide and 16ft long. It seems best to expand to the south by adding another 8ft to the width. That will give another full 3ft deep bay for sunflower seed head storage along with a 5ft wide aisle. Although I don't need an aisle that wide, I think it will allow for some hanging baskets in the greenhouse (gotta like that!). I used some left over foundation blocks to get the general layout and started digging the foundation lines to level the foundation blocks with the existing structure. |
Comment/Response? 