CAP OP 1: Other Projects

             Love Creek Center for Permaculture (LCCP):  Entering the fourth season of market gardening here we are continually increasing production. We aim to have more food planted this year than ever before.  Vegetable production will be increased on every level to increase the consistency of food production for market.  Strawberry beds are being planted from the runners of the already 2000+ plants already planted.  More perennial herbs will be propagated this spring so we have more than enough to provide our customers, eventually supporting a viable fresh and dried herb micro-enterprise.  Mushroom cultivation will be increased with hardwood log cultivation as well as experimenting with straw log production, sawdust cultivation and on any other locally available substrate. 

            Triple Dog Ranch:  This farm is less than 1 mile away from LCCP.  We are going to plant about an acre of corn there.  A couple varieties will be planted to have both fresh sweet corn and dry storage corn, some of which will be fed to the chickens.  I plan on inoculating some of the corn with corn smut to see if I can make it grow and market it.  I have been selling some of the egg production at the Triple Dog Ranch in my CSA deliveries and hope to sell them at farmer’s markets starting in June.  

            Sierra Vista Farm:  This farm is at about 1500 feet in elevation (3000’ below LCCP).  It takes about 45 minutes to drive there from LCCP.  Being in such close proximity to LCCP with a different growing climate it will allow us to have produce more consistently for a longer period of time.  For instance, as the peas and lettuce are ending at the lower elevation the ones at higher elevation will still be productive.  This will allow for us to have consistent production of certain crops to make marketing seasonal produce a little bit easier.  During this past winter I helped put fencing up around the proposed garden site here.  I also built a greenhouse there.  You can find the article I wrote about it here. We also have about 100 oak logs and 5000 shitake dowels to inoculate them with.  So far I have started hundreds upon hundreds of vegetable starts to plant at Sierra Vista Farms, using the greenhouses at LCCP to get them started. 

            I had written the preceding paragraph in the spring of 2012.  I still want to help out with this farm but I am going to spend less time there this year.  I will however help with crop planning and marketing the produce grown there. 

            Once again I am planting up some calorie crops this summer.  Vegetables, fruits, and herbs are great to grow and have fresh but calories are what are needed to sustain us.  So I’ve been building seed stock of several legumes with the intention of producing first my own needs and then bringing them to others eventually.  Last summer I saved about 20 pounds of beans, another 20 pounds of corn and a few pounds of amaranth.  I’ve built seed stock up from several varieties of beans and one kind of pea (Cherokee trail of tears, Indian woman yellow, Ponte blue bean, and blue-podded pea) to be able to plant about 4-5 pounds of each.  Other varieties such as Anasazi, Hopi pinto, Ireland Creek Annie, and Magpie were built up to about a pound of seed.  And even more varieties from little seed packets will be planted to increase their seed stock.  Last year all of the legumes were grown at the Love Creek Center for Permaculture.  We plan to increase production here this year but I am also going to take advantage of other plots of land that I have access to.  Triple Dog ranch is where I grew the corn last year and it’s tilled and ready to plant again.  Sierra Vista Farm is a lower elevation farm that I’m helping to manage and I will incorporate bean, corn and amaranth production into the site.     

            In 2010 we built a space for an intern to live in if we came across the right applicant.  Finally two years later I’m excited to say that we had our first full time intern at the Love Creek Center for Permaculture. Brian Blount I first met in 2009 when I took Permaculture Teacher Training at CRMPI from Peter Bane, Andrew “Goodheart” Brown and Sandy Cruz.  Brian was living and working at CRMPI at the time.  We kept in touch for the past few years and he recently decided that he would like to come out to California and check out what I’ve got going. I provided him with a place to stay and food in exchange for 25-30 hours a week.  Sharing several passions it worked out pretty well. I’ve had a few volunteers show up for a couple of weeks in the past but Brian Blount stayed for 5 ½ months.  The accommodations were too cold for him to stay longer.  There were a few kinks that mostly revolved on me not being there everyday. I learned quite a bit and will work with Brian on refining the experience. My mom hooked him up with a work trade at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland, CA where the weather is milder and accommodations a bit warmer.  He is thinking of returning to the Love Creek Center for Permaculture when the weather is fair again in mid spring.

            Working on several farms myself I would like to figure out how to compensate each farm, and myself accordingly based on their production.  Fitting other employees in with LCCP seems difficult enough, but adding two other production systems to the mix makes it a bit confusing.  I also know a few other farmers that I’d rather not go into competition with but rather market produce together with a cooperative model.  I’m not sure how to go about this so much, but I’m sure I’ll learn as I go.  I’ll be looking into other working models to see what I can apply to my situation.