Sunday 28 February 2010

Updates on Farm Blogs from Around the World.

Sorry folks for being off-line for so long, but I've been absorbed in finishing a novel which has just gone off to my agent.

Last week it was time to kill and butcher our pigs (we make mainly charcuterie) but now finally, some time for Farm Blogs from Around the World.

Firstly, my apologies to all those people who have written to me with recommendations or self-recommendations and haven't heard from me.

However in other posts I've made this morning you'll find I've got someway into doing some new profiles of new blogs and their recommendations.

I've also written to a number of self-recommenders who have asked to be included on Farm Blogs but who haven't given me more info on their blog (some text to use for a profile), permission to use some pics from their blog, and crucially, their 5 OWN RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BLOGS THAT ARE NOT YET LISTED ON THE BLOG ROLL, with the full name and url of each, and a sentence on why they like them (for examples, please see some recent posts below).

Tammy, Marie, Mike and Erin: hoping to get you and your recommendations done this coming week at the latest.

Shelly, Ken, Kendra, Donna, Kathy, Mike, Claire, John, Deborah: I've written to you explaining the way Farm Blogs works and I'm looking forward to hearing from you so that I can do a post on not only your blog but also your recommendations.

The whole idea is that this site grows organically: good bloggers recommend better ones...


P.S. If you're a fan of Farm Blogs from Around the World (www.farmblogs.blogspot.com) and you're listed on my blog roll, please would you be kind enough to put me on your blog roll?

P.P.S If you're a real big fan, please help support Farm Blogs from Around the World (a non-profit site which doesn't let commercial bloggers on) by buying, and hopefully reviewing my book A Place in My Country and this blog on your own blog. A Place in My Country is available at:






Brookfarm Alpacas Recommends...

Debbie at Brookfarm Alpacas recommends the following blogs. (Good to have some more fibre - or fiber for our American cousins - amongst our fruit.)

Very informative, frequent entries, very crafty gal with great ideas


Lovely products, colors to die (dye) for, great classes, and a friend too!


GIRL ON THE ROCKS

formerly known as Knit This… Knitting, spinning,


Clever, creative, frequent entries


DMAR Alpaca and Maremma Blog



Alpacas, maremmas, oh my. Great educational information on everything alpaca. My kinda gal!








Beesybee fiber's Blog

Life in West Marin seen through the eye of an needle


Visually beautiful blog, beautiful colors, wonderful projects


Life on My Farm (Recommended)

Thanks to Farm Blogs reader Robert for tipping me off to this one. Looks great. Well worth a visit.


'A blog of my journey from horticulturist and horse pasture keeper (aka barn queen), to organic, local produce farmer, or agriculturist to be more formal, at Eden's Garden. A new branch of my life unfolding. A new organic, local, urban CSA farm is in the making - to the delight of locavores - folks seeking healthy, fresh, natural and local eating, in DFW.'

Daylesford Organics Recommends...

Daylesford Organics Recommends...


Down to Earth 'Simple, down to earth, back to basics'. (Australia)

The Simple Green Frugal Blogspot 'Beautiful photos, good discussions on a range of topics'.

Daylesford Organics (Victoria, Australia) Self-recommender


Kate and Brendon wrote to me about their farm and blog and I'm happy to include it, not least of all because it's a fine blog, but also because they provided me with some text to use in profiling their blog, permission to use up to five photos from their blog and recommended their favourite blogs. (I usually ask for 5, they sent me 2, but who's counting? Well, me actually; I do like 5 new ones but as my wife is Australian, special dispensation.)

If you'd like to self-recommend, please do so on the above conditions. People who don't do this, I'm afraid I won't be able to profile and add to the blog roll because the whole idea of this blog is that bloggers (good ones) recommend other (hopefully better) ones.

P.S Having a problem uploading photos which I will get round to fixing sometime in this decade.

Over to Kate:

We are a Certified Organic mixed family farm in Daylesford Victoria. We focus on sustainability and biodiversity. We have orchards, market gardens, ducks and chickens. We work with the seasons and in any given year will produce up to 40 varieties of apples, hazelnuts, berries, free range eggs and up to 30 different vegetables often with several varieties of each. We enjoy growing heirloom varieties with lots of different flavours and colours as you can see by our carrots on the banner. We sell produce to local cafés and restaurants and at farmer's markets.
19 Foxs Lane
Muskvale VIC 3461
0411 040 412
daylesfordorganics.com
http://www.daylesfordorganics.blogspot.com/

Sweet Local Farm Recommends

Luciano's fiance at Sweet Local Farm spends a lot of time reading about other farms. These are her top 5 (and as ever I stress her top five because I AM NOT personally recommending Martha Stewart!).

Tiny Farm Blog -
TFB is the first farm blog I found. Since I own a tiny farm, I can relate to the day to day chores and trials at this farm. I like the photography included in each post. This farm is in Canada, so I know I'm behind schedule when they are doing things I should have done 5 weeks before.

Surviving on Massachusetts-
This little local food/garden blog is great. I relate to the writer because she lives in my state and is about my age. She also leaves me great comments!

Skippy's Vegetable Garden -
All time favorite gardening blog! Kathy updates all the time and takes great aerial shots of her home garden and community garden. I also like the radish and cucumber martinis she features.

Rachels Tiny Farm-
This is a fascinating blog for an east coast farmer to read because she is located in Arizona. She can grow citrus, she has a completely different growing season, but I can still relate to her. She is a "next generation farmer" and very talented artist.

The Martha Blog -
Although Martha Stewart blogs about many aspects of her life, she often writes about her farm in Bedford, NY. Her farm is what mine would look like if I had endless amounts of time and money. I'll keep dreaming.

Land Strategies Recommends...

Eat.Drink.Better. The World of Food From the Farm to Your Table (General Resource)

Sustainable Table. Serving Up Healthy Food Choices (General Resource)









Land Strategies (UK) Self-recommender

I don't normally profile blogs that have a fairly evident commercial angle to their activity but I thought this one was interesting and worthwhile.

http://landstrategies.blogspot.com is run by Colette Burke.

Although her company has it's own website she also runs this blog which provides a 'regular round up of news and comment about consumers, the food they buy and the places they buy from, aiming to provide British farmers with an easy way to keep up to date with consumer trends.'

After a 25 year career with Cadbury Schweppes Colette moved into the agricultural sector to see whether the marketing skills learnt at Cadbury could be applied to farming.

Following a spell at the Royal Agricultural College Cirencester, she started her own farmers marketing consultancy, Land Strategies. Her brother and she run a livestock farm together in the Scottish Borders.

Alpaca Farmgirl Recommends...

It's pretty slack I know, to receive an email from someone in February of 2009 and only dealing with it 12 months later. My only excuse is that in 2009 I completed a 200,000 word novel. Beyond that, shame on me.

Alpaca Farmgirl , long featured on this blog, has the following recommendations. Here they are. Katy - sorry for my tardiness.


The Inadvertent Farmer This is a beautiful blog written by a lady who has various farm animals and a camel. She posts recipes with gorgeous photographs on her blog

St. Fairsted Farm This blog is about farming, rural issues, and food. She gives good tips and have nice photos.

Life on a Southern Farm This is a blog that documents many farming tasks and has a real authentic quality to it.

Rooster Hill Farm This blog has introduced me to some aspects of farming. I particularly loved the visit from the AI (artificial insemination) Guy in his cow painted vehicle.

Honest Farm Inspirational blog with gorgeous photography, recipes, and great food ideas. She promotes buying your food locally.

Hope that helps grow the farmblogs around the world.

Best Regards,,
Alpaca Farmgirl
www.alpacafarmgirl.com

The Cabbage Tree Farm Recommends...

Some blog recommendations, sorry I only know of 3 at this point, most of the blogs I follow tend to be mainly foodie ones rather than people doing something similar to us.
1. Eco-Gites of Lenault in Calvados, France, /, stories from an English family in France who are setting up an eco homestay and intend to supply organic veges and local produce to their guests.

2. Farmlet A NZ family striving towards self-sufficiency, cheese making is one of their interests among other things.

3. The Cottage Smallholder. Not a farm, however this great blog is about an English couple trying to be more self sufficient with growing their own veg, keeping chickens, curing their own bacon and trying hard (succeeding too) to make gourmet meals from budget priced supermarket food.

The Cabbage Tree Farm (NZ) (Recommendation)


The Cabbage Tree Farm blog aims to describe some of the day to day happenings on their 10 acre piece of rural land in Northland, New Zealand.

Their priority is to produce for themselves as much fresh, natural food (i.e. not sprayed with pesticides) as they can.

They moved from the city onto their ‘block’ (short for lifestyle block, the common NZ description of their land) in mid 2006.

They are working on the land: establishing an orchard, trying to maintain a good year round supply of vegetables and herbs in their garden, landscape our surroundings for privacy and wind protection, and raise a small number of stock.

At present they have their own supply of fresh eggs, some meat from their chickens and 5 cows (for meat later).

They are striving towards being more self sufficient. They're interested in growing food, hunting/fishing and gathering.

Future projects could include bee keeping, cheese making, making homemade wine, various crafts such as candle making (beeswax) and weaving flax (Phormium tenax) baskets.

The majority of my posts are recipes. Also they post details of progress (and failures!) in their veg garden and orchard, and details of other projects they're doing around their farm.