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3619. arkymalarky - 3/5/2006 6:39:16 PM Alistair, or anyone else here who's had experience with organic gardening, wine making, or anything else organic, if you can provide any basic info, good websites, organizations, etc, I need input.
Bob's come into some land--not to own, but to use--and he's looking into doing some organic farming with it, and also growing muscadines and making the wine himself. Since the land is rent-free and he has farming equipment, what he's looking at is materials, seed, and plant suppliers, regulations for selling organic produce, etc, and good websites with basic info that aren't hokum or trying to sell something. 3620. arkymalarky - 3/5/2006 6:40:37 PM And we have a nice big cellar for storage. 3621. arkymalarky - 3/5/2006 6:44:34 PM Hey, the pictures are loading!
Gorgeous orchids!
And cat. 3622. Magoseph - 3/5/2006 6:47:46 PM Muscadines, the bronze and purple fruit... 3623. arkymalarky - 3/5/2006 6:51:45 PM They grow wild out here, but people also grow them on frames and muscadine wine is very popular in the South. My uncle in TX makes good muscadine wine. People around here pronounce them muskeedimes. 3624. arkymalarky - 3/7/2006 1:15:52 AM Aaarrrghhh! I was expecting to get here this afternoon to piles of good organic gardening info! I'm afraid of Googling organic gardening and getting New Age wacko, planetary alignment stuff...
and if any of you happen to be into that, I mean it in the best possible way. 3625. alistairConnor - 3/7/2006 1:35:02 AM My approach to organic gardening is "live and let live"
also known as "survival of the fittest"
and as haven't got a good memory, I sometimes have difficulty distinguishing the crops from the weeds.
Seriously, I'm not a good reference for practical information.
If you want the weird stuff, look up biodynamics. Cows' horns filled with excrement and buried at full moon, that sort of stuff. Works, I'm sure, but the ritual part is surely superfluous.
Otherwise, mainstream organics is pretty unexciting. If you want to be certified, then there would generally be a couple of years' transition, where you have to use only organic methods, but you can't yet sell the produce as organic. 3626. arkymalarky - 3/7/2006 1:39:52 AM That's what he's looking at--certification. This land hasn't been farmed in years. There was a news segment on CNN or MSNBC TV some months ago about that.
I'll dig online some when I get time at work this spring. It's hopeless at home. He and his best friend are already buying a few grape vines from an organic catalog--can't remember the name of it. 3627. arkymalarky - 3/7/2006 1:41:25 AM BTW, Bob made his living as a farmer for a number of years, and both sides of his family have long traditions of farming. Still do, for that matter. 3628. alistairConnor - 3/7/2006 1:42:15 AM Choose the varieties with care, in respect of the climate and soil... I don't suppose you've got much of a winemaking tradition to guide you around there! 3629. arkymalarky - 3/7/2006 1:53:46 AM You'd be surprised! Bob's friend's cousin (and as I mentioned above, my uncle) have already been at it for quite a while, and to our crude Arky palates it's pretty good stuff.
But no moonshine. 3630. arkymalarky - 3/7/2006 2:01:21 AM Bob's main interest is really working into a second career, but not with an eye to making money as much as breaking even plus a little and benefitting from what he grows.
Bob LOVES farming, and this opportunity has fallen into his lap, with not much land but enough and enough equipment, and the means to get into something along that line that he can enjoy both before and after he retires from teaching. But it would have to be something both marketable and enjoyable--and, for that matter, something that we'd benefit from ourselves.
There are lots of nice, rather large gardens around here already. We talked about trying to do a local farmers' market co-op thing and share produce among all the participants. They have a really nice organic store and farmers' co-op in Nederland, CO, which is a very small town. Bob actually did something along that line on a much smaller scale in gardening with a friend about 30 years ago. There's still a jar of butter beans from that project in the cellar. 3631. Macnas - 3/7/2006 10:41:34 AM I cna't give you much help, but I like the plan! 3632. PelleNilsson - 3/7/2006 6:30:40 PM Wintry playground.
 3633. thoughtful - 3/7/2006 6:46:56 PM nice shot.
What is that V shaped thing? how do you play on it? 3634. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 3/7/2006 7:19:34 PM arky- You might find this place interesting.
I had a unique and wonderfully bitter salad green in Rome, called "puntarelle," which is a form of chicory root that's a perfect crop for winter gardens. The only place I could find that sold them was King's Seeds.
3635. alistairconnor - 3/7/2006 7:45:15 PM The V thing looks like a swing-around-seesaw type device, the extremities are derived from tyres. 3636. PelleNilsson - 3/7/2006 8:18:39 PM That's right. 3637. thoughtful - 3/8/2006 12:02:02 AM yes i see what it is but how does one ride it? Does it wobble or just spin? Do kids run to spin it and then hop on? Or does one ride and one push it around? 3638. jexster - 3/11/2006 6:19:03 AM Took my 17 year old Balinese to the vet today...last year's heart murmur, no different and during senior blood test and urine test, my boy Son of Thunder(CFA) took a dump on the lab techs.
"OOO he's MAD!!!"
This photo not of Sonny but of another blue point balinese
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