En route to the farm, I drive (literally) through the of the Field of the Lost Shoes where a battle took place in 1864.

My garden is the Shenandoah Valley in the dramatized day dream resulting from the long drive.

The weeds are Sigel’s army moving in to disrupt agricultural production.

Intensive mowing efforts at the end of last year pushed Moor’s weed brigade back. Offensive efforts were subsequently launched and repulsed by both sides.

Now I am deploying my untested reserves in the form of vinegar herbicide to march through the mucky orchard and will be reinforcing them with a supply line of buckwheat and clover.

The bad news: neglect left the garden indistinguishable from the surrounding pasture. Varying shades from the asparagus and hops were the only discerning features in the mass of green.

Extensive mowing efforts over the winter have revealed the garden beds! Unfortunately it was too cold, too wet or I did not have the mindset to take any pictures during each of my winter work days.

Except for this one:

I picked up a new companion since my last regular updates!

There has been no major technological innovation in beekeeping since October 5, 1853. As a result, beekeeping still remains a very labor intensive practice where rising labor costs leave little room for profit. Thus hobbyists are responsible for a relatively large proportion of beehives in existence. Like the surging craft beer industry, the passion associated with hobbyist is yielding the first major innovations in over 160 years.

Getting the most publicity, the Flow Hive is nearly a household name. While I am very excited to see attempts at technological innovation, there are many shortcomings that will prevent me from trying these hives out in my own apiary. I’ll save that discussion for another post.

HiveHaven from New Zealand is doing amazing work to innovate beekeeping. They are turning HPDE from recycled bottles into 3-D printer feedstock (“ink”) and creating cutting edge hive designs. A major benefit of this material is that it can be washed and sterilized in the instance of foulbrood appearing in the apiary.

Have you ever wondered why bees build comb in the manner that they do? Hexagons are the most efficient pattern to fill a two dimensional space. Honeybees were able to figure out over 34 million years of evolution. Humans integrated that wisdom into products that need to maximize surface area like the catalytic converters in cars and wood stoves.

More importantly, HiveHaven also focuses on producing hives for other types of bees. Remember that New Zealand was forced to make a economics-driven decision whether to continue importing clover seed for pastures every year, or importing a bumble bee to pollinate and produce their own seed. The large mouthparts of honeybees prevent effective pollination of the tiny clover flowers. Mason, orchard and bumbles bees play a vital but largely unappreciated ecological role here in the US as well.

Now HiveHaven has completed the circle by taking the innovations bred from the geometric wisdom of bees, and applying back to those bees. In addition to the standard hexagonal comb, they provide hexagonal hives that reflect the natural tendency of bees to build upward. Finally some technology for solitary bee husbandry!

Read more about their campaign here.

I haven’t been writing much lately, but one post I have been putting together involves 3-D Printing in the apiary. However a small biotech company has plans to use 3-D printing in another way.

They plan to bioengineer synthetic rhino horns in order to flood the markets to hopefully remove economic incentive to harvest illicit animal products.

It is an interesting strategy that some argue could exacerbate the problem by creating demand for rhino horns. I’m no economist so I’ll defer that discussion to this solid piece of journalism from National Geographic.

As an avid hunter, conservationist and animal lover, I am happy to see technological innovation applied to the welfare of wildlife as well as eliminating the disgraceful practices of poachers that are all too often applied broadly to hunters.

After getting my hands dirty for a year on the farm while researching extensively, I uncovered some important information. From the anecdotal evidence found in blogs/feature articles like this one, most small farms fail because they don’t have the guidance provided by goals within an extensive plan. Both of these require immense research, calculations and planning; all things that can be completed while retaining personal financial security from unrelated employment. The reality is most farms fail because they start producing without a plan to turn that production into income. Realizing that there is either no market available or will require lots of extra work to reach a market (making the venture economically unsustainable) tends to shatter the romantic views of back-to-the-land farmers.

I’ve also been researching the sustainable farming industry as a whole and found some equally distressing issues: most of the successful farms rely on off-farm income or free labor from interns or students. These operators may reach personal success while in my opinion, fail as farmers. I want to delve deeper into how the successful ones obtain that success and conversely, why the ones relying on free labor must do so. I’ll publish my reports along the way while undergoing this big project.

Since my research contains some negative reflections on the state of an industry I am passionate about, I expect to get some equally negative reactions. I simply want to ask and follow through on the tough, soul-searching questions that only with complete intellectual honesty can significant conclusions be reached. Since I want to create a replicable sustainable farm model, profits must come directly from farm products thus I am unwilling to cheat with relying on free labor to do so. Also, what if the reason so many farms fail while successful ones are being consolidated under a few corporations is a government policy to which citizens can initiate change? Regardless, I seek to gather data first then draw conclusions later.

I accepted a job I am passionate about in the clean energy production industry. It is close to the farm allowing continuing establishment while planning out how to be a successful-stand alone business. Plus I will have no commute living downtown in a small city.

All in all, the job was too perfect to pass up!

What does this mean for the farm? Not much change! I had already decided to focus the organic garden on self-production while maybe offering some add-on offers for sales primary commercial products. Diving into both animal production and crop production is simply not feasible at the time of start-up. In the future, what I learn during my attempt to gain produce self-sufficiency will be invaluable to diversifying the farm efforts in the long run. My love of botany will certainly keep plant operations going strong thus generating fresh content for this blog.

Bottom line: the only change to the previous plan of more posts as the farm is implemented full-time farm is that there will be not much of a change relative to the current state of the blog!

I absolutely love Halloween and it is one of the many aspects of fall that makes it my favorite season.

It may come as a surprise that male fashion and style is a passion of mine. The deviation from sustainability is not as much as one might initially assume. In my thrift store hunts for 100% natural materials taught me to search for garments made in first world countries as the quality is the highest and it means the garments were made by someone who was paid a fair wage. These garments also happen to be among the most sustainably produced, although incidentally only. The best quality natural fibers are made by techniques that have been abandoned or are now cost-prohibitive to consumers like me who are not rich. So I turned to the used clothing market to fill holes in my wardrobe- mostly thrift stores.

Being 6’3, it was hard to find garments that fit me so I ran a very modest side business of selling high quality garments I found but could not be altered to fit.

Classic male fashion is where my interests lie and Steve Mcqueen is my idol in many regards, especially style.

For Halloween I was Police Detective Frank Bullitt.

I apologize for not taking any pictures myself, but if any pop up from others on social media, I will post it here.

Sadly, the costume required me to shave my beard entirely for the first time in two years! Luckily I participate in the NHL’s no shave november for charity so it will be back in due time.