2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Sun Feb 09, 2014 2:38 am

This weekend I attended the 23rd annual Pennsylvania Association Sustainable Agriculture Conference at Penn State. This years motto was Letting Nature Lead. There were people there from about 1/2 the States in the USA. about 2000 people I was told. It sounds very similar to the conference you attended George. I attended 3 break out sessions each day as well a hearing a main Speaker for each day. I would rate the conference as excellent. Many great vendors, many interesting topics, I was torn for several of the time slots which one to attend. Some of the sessions were geared toward the Small Organic Farmer, some were more for the Back yard Hobbyist like me. :D Friday I attended a Straw Bale construction talk which included how to build cobb ovens. Power point show was great but the hands on experience was terrific. The fellow and his family had gone to Jamaica for a month to help them build cobb ovens. Electric is very expensive for the local people and they had no bake oven for many many years. It was heart warming to hear about their experience and what was accomplished there. The village was ably to bake bread for the 1st time in a long time. I got to talk to the fellow today for a bit of one on one. His farm is in Brookville which isn't that far from my cabin. He was very interesting and very encouraging. 2nd was a Natural Beekeeping talk. Its a kinder gentler way to keep Bees. They were not worried about what was easy for the Beekeeper, they were not worried about getting more honey, they were worried about what was best for the Bees, the rest will take care of itself. The last session for Friday was Creating Habitat for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects . A professor from Penn State, an Assistant Professor and several Graduate students gave the presentation. There was this fellow born in the 1850 and died in 1930's who must have been very wealthy, because he spent 30 years just going out into a meadow and sitting there looking at flowers and writing down what insects visited what flower. Turns out that many [ 81 % of beneficial insects ] beneficials were very loyal to only one, two or three flowers. The fact that many would only visit one plant blew me away. If your property does not have that flower, you don't have that beneficial insect. WOW, that's a useful piece of information right there. I am getting a little tired, I will type more about the conference later. It was well worth the money. 8-)
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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby DevilsBrew » Sun Feb 09, 2014 5:04 am

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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Sun Feb 09, 2014 1:39 pm

I did learn a lot. Lolly had given me some milk weed pods a year or so ago, I just spread them willy-nilly around the place. I an sure some were mowed off, some didn't sprout etc, but I got some that made it in the upper field. I did not have any on my place before that. That was one of the plants that was mentioned when they talked about the benificials. There are many other plants that I did not recognize by the names they used. Having a diversified hedge row seemed to be the key. That narrow strip between the fields can house a huge amount of bio-diversity if you plan head. There are 400 different types of Bees in Pennsylvania, the only one people think of is the Honey Bee. There are Mason Bees, Squash Bees, sweat Bees, etc, most of these are solitary Bees that need Habitat for their survival. That is where we can help them. Loss of habitat was listed as the Number one reason for many of these Beneficials being on the decline. It was an eye opener for me.
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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Mon Feb 10, 2014 3:23 pm

The 2nd day at the conference started early. I had gone to my camp to stay the night which is an hour and 1/2 from State College. The water pump had frozen solid so I wasn't able to shower or any thing. Got to the conference at about 7:30 so you know I was up before the chickens. The 1st talk I heard was on growing Organic Apples. Pennsylvania is the 2nd largest apple state behind Washington St. Washington St has about 6 times the acerage we do in apples, but oh well, we are number 2. ;) The young woman who spoke had grown up on the farm and was running it now with other family members. Her 1st advise was to pick new varietys that are resistant. I planted apples 25 to 30 years ago, so much for that advise. 2nd she felt spacing and trimming were extremally important to allow air flow and light to enter. 3rd was thinning the apples once they had set fruit, leave only one to allow air to get all around it. 4th pick up all the leaves and dead fruit that falls. Scab winters over in the leaves. 5th spray with only approved organic spays, and yes they did spray, and yes there are organic sprays. You fruit will still not look like the store bought pretty fruit that you see, but it will be pesticide free. They made apple sauce and cider out of the apples that had blemishes on them that couldn't be sold as fresh fruit. She gave us some cider, it was excillent. The next talk after the awards and the 2nd key note speaker was about growing shitauke mushrooms. The speaker who was to speak couldn't make it so a guy was found on short notice to fill in. He was a unique individual, wore a knitted skull cap, braded beard several feet long, dread locks down to the middle of his back. He and his wife and child were part of some sort of religious sect that tried to grow as much of their own food as possible, and they were vegitarians. He was about 3000 logs inoculated with mushroom spore and he was selling the tools needed to incoculate logs as well as the actual logs at the conference. He did sort of know his stuff. He recomender cutting oak logs in winter if possible. He lives in the city, so any time he can get an oak log, summer, winter, doesn't matter to him, but oak is the best. Maple will work, but oak is the best. You buy the spore mixed with saw dust for about $25 for a goodly amount. you drill small holes in your logs sort of spacing them in alternating rows 2" apart with the holes 6" apart. He goes all around the log with the holes. The logs can be any size, but smaller logs, maybe 4" to 6" produce mushrooms much quicker. It can take a years or more to get the 1st mushroom. Once the holes are drilled you take a tool [ which he sold ] that was the same size as the holes in diameter and filled it with spore and inserted it into the logs and pushed a plunger so that the spores filled the holes. Then you covered the holes with hot wax with a special dobber [ which he also sold ] Once the log starts to produce muchrooms it can produce them for a long time, maybe as much as 3 years untill the log rots way to nothing. If my math is right for about $50 you could buy the special drill bit, plunger thing to fill the holes, spores and dobber to get started. Cut your own logs and you have mushrooms apleanty for some years to come. Compare that to the $30 price tag for one log already done for you [ which he also sold :lol: ] and you can see that doing it youself was much cheaper. The last talk I picked was about growing Garlic and winter onions. I have grown garlic for many years but never tried winter onions. Turn out you treat then the same, plant them the same, winter onions can be picked earlier than garlic and you should use the larger ones with larger stems 1st because they don't keep well at all. She talked about treatments for some garlic problems [ which she never had ] showed how they store them to dry. She felt you need to get them out of the sun right away. She storted them in a shed all tied together in large bunches. They planted several types of galic because some stores better tham others. She said the soft neck white skin varietys store the best, but the hard neck are larger and easier to peel. Take your pick. Plant garlic 2" to 4" deep. The depth depends on how far north you are and how cold your winters are. The colder the winter the deeper you plant. That is about what I took away from her talk. :D
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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby DevilsBrew » Tue Feb 11, 2014 2:03 pm

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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Tue Feb 11, 2014 2:36 pm

No I didn't buy any logs. I thought it would be best to try and grow your own. :D They were $30 per log and you can make many of your own logs for a $50 investmant. The spore is $25 for a pound or two, the other tools can be used over and over, so they are a one time investment. I have been thinking about trying it in the spring, but I have not made up my mind yet. It does take time, the guy who taught the class said a year to two years depending on the size of the log, smaller logs are quicker to sprout. But then you have them for several years untill your log rots away.
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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby Lollykoko » Wed Feb 12, 2014 1:38 am

I had planned on getting fungi supplies from the fellow that was at MEN Fair, but waited too long. He was completely sold out Sunday morning. So now I suppose I'll be ordering some on-line, hoping to get things together in the spring.
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Re: 2014 SAWG Conference: How to make a living as a farmer

Postby pa_friendly_guy » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:17 am

You can order the spore from several places. There is a difference in the types, some produce early in the spring, some produce more toward the fall, some can bloom and produce most any time. The special drill bit is not needed, but it was highly recommended by people who used it as being well worth the money . I think it was $12. The tool to insert the spore into the log was fitted to the diameter of the drill bit and work as a plunger to fill the holes it was also highly recommended. Most any type of wax will work. They were using regular paraffin, but bees wax will work, as well as many other types of wax. The cost of the spore seemed to be about $25 and that would do a lot of logs. You can keep the spores for maybe 6 month, but then it starts to get old. It must be refrigerated. I never really though seriously about trying to grow mushrooms, but now I am giving it some real serious thought. The prices he was quoting were about $8 a pound wholesale, and up to $15 per pound retail. $10 to $12 seemed to be a reasonable price range if you wanted to sell them. When they produce you may get an abundance, so selling some, or drying some to use later, or giving some away to friends were all listed as possibilities.
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