A Place in the Auvergne Recommends Goodness Gracious Acres (Florida, USA; 1.5 acres; goats, Nubians, turkeys, chickens)

As a blogger of my own on Farm Blogs from Around the World (even if my own rural blog is a bit different - check it out) I'd like to recommend Goodness Gracious Acres, A.K.A jojosfarmlife.blogspot.com in West Palm Beach, Florida.

"Well sort of.. Closer to Lake Okeechobee than Donald Trump", Jojo laughs.

What I like about Goodness Gracious Acres is that it is one of best mergers between someone's non-farming professional life and their mini-farming experiences that I've come accross. Jojo is a graphic designer outside and inside her 1.5 acre "ranchette" as she terms it, although, she writes with a smile, that it seems much bigger to her.

Goodness Gracious Acres is a wonderfully ecclectic mix of material from the intersection of her professional, personal and rural life. Writing myself as someone who is an author, but who used to work in marketing, design and communications (and still reluctantly dabbles, now and again, to pay the bills) Goodness Gracious Acres also had a particular appeal to me personally.

Many of the bloggers on Farm Blogs from Around the World are not full-time farmers, that's a reality, and I would recommend anyone who wants to attempt this type of 'mixed-blog' to check it out.

Naturally, with Jojo being a graphic designer, the design values are high, and it's a little self-promoting of that side of her life - but tell me a farm blog that isn't, in some way, a little self-promoting, from produce & products to farmers markets to B&B and to bloggers 'day jobs', so I won't hold that against her!

She's the first to admit that it's not "a real big farm" but she still likes to live as rurally as possible. Jojo makes cheese and soap from her dairy goats, sells the milk and breeds and raises Nubians, turkeys and chickens.

Goodness Gracious Acres has been active for about 3 years and this is how Jojo describes it and herself:

"Animals. Animals. Animals. City girl gone slightly country. Totally, left of center. Living the simple life, on my own. With a little ranting thrown in to keep the balance. I live on a small "ranchette" with over 30 animals makes for some interesting stories. And in between mucking the stalls and milking goats I support my habit of rural living, by being a creative director, designer, art director, hack, type slave, layout artist, communicator. I blurr the lines between work and play all the time. Why wasn't it always this way?"

That's me too, and I couldn't agree more.

Some days she writes about design and artistic endeavors, some days it’s about bucks in rut.

"I’m not bipolar," Jojo wrote to me, "but my blog is".

Check it out.

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Scarecrow's Garden (South Australia; 1/2 acre; organic fruit and vegetables)

Scarecrow's Garden was recommended by Peggy at Organic Growing Pains in Ireland.

The wonderful thing for Northern Hemisphere gardeners is that when they are inside after short, cold days during winter they can be following and learning about spring and summer growing (although in different climate conditions) Down Under.

Scarecrow lives with her husband in "a quiet rural town in the Mid North of South Australia," their two children now having grown and left the region for work.

She was kind enough to drop me a line about their garden and her blog.

Their total "block" (a good Australian term) is half an acre and "most of the area is in food production"

Scarecrow is studying permaculture design so she tries "to have all elements on the property linked in some manner and multi-use."

"We keep chickens (12 at last count) not only for the eggs (not meat yet) but also for their value in the garden. They eat the weeds, keep the bugs down in the orchard area, and provide a clean source of manure where we at least know whats gone into the making of it. We also keep 'Compost Worms' that provide us with a rich compost (castings) that forms the basic growing medium for the 'Wicking Beds' we grow our food in."

The climate in their part of the world is "quite arid and I'm always willing to experiment with the latest water saving ideas to make it easier to grow our food."

"We like to eat organic food and up here that is quite difficult to achieve so we grow our own. Folks tell us that we can't grow stuff here it's too hot, over 40C in summer or too cold, down to -7C on frosty mornings or too dry with 360mm of rain in a good year."

"We eat well from our little patch. We try to grow as much food as we can on the land that we have."

"Fruit trees that were planted when we moved here 15 years ago are now either in full production or dead and haven't been replaced. I have allowed some seedling trees to grow where they have voluntarily sprouted and these are fruiting well too."

Scarecrow is "always keen to grow unusual, hardy or new crops" so she is trialling "some Australian 'Bush Foods' this year. Ones found in the arid regions mainly so hopefully these will add to our food supply."

As to the blog, Scarecrow's Garden is "basically a weekly journal of what I get up to in the garden. Planting notes, weather check, suppliers. From the comments left and emails I get, I often post with more information. I'll also make posts that I may need to refer back to later. For example testing soil pH and the moon planting notes."

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Swiss farmers keep tradition of charcoal-burning (IHT)

By Jonathan LynnReuters
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
ROMOOS, Switzerland: In the remote hills and valleys of central Switzerland, mountain farmers are still making charcoal to a centuries-old method.
Charcoal, formed by removing water and tar from wood, burns with almost the same intensity as coal, and was once the main fuel for medieval glassmakers and blacksmiths, and a source of energy for Switzerland as it industrialized in the 19th century, until imported coal became available.
Its controlled production can be traced back globally at least 3,500 years. Now mostly used by the world's poor, charcoal in Switzerland serves mainly to grill food, for instance in barbecues.
Charcoal-burning, once a major cause of deforestation in Europe, largely disappeared from Switzerland in the 20th century, but experienced a temporary revival during World War Two when neutral Switzerland was unable to import coal.
It was never interrupted in the Napf region, some 30 km (20 miles) east of the lakeside resort of Lucerne, where it dates back to the middle ages, when glassmakers practiced their craft in the 13th and 14th centuries.
But the back-breaking lonely work is far from being a quaint tradition revived for tourists. Also practiced in some remote parts of former East Germany like the Harz mountains, it is for smallholding farmers a vital source of income.
The little village of Romoos, whose name goes back to an ancient Germanic word for tree-trunk, is at the heart of the area of steep hills and valleys, where tractors crawl along the slopes as the farmers and their wives mow and rake rich mountain grass for winter hay.
In hollows in the woods, farmers build charcoal kilns, the shape and size of small igloos.
INTENSE HEAT
Willy Renggli, head of the charcoal burners' association, shows how a kiln is built up.
On a spider-web base of tree trunks, one-meter long logs are stacked up in two layers around a central shaft or flue.
The best wood for charcoal is beech, but pine and other timber will do.
The kiln is topped off with smaller pieces of timber, then covered with branches of fir needles, and finally coated with a thick paste of charcoal grindings, ash and water.
A typical kiln uses about 60 "Ster" of timber, Renggli says. A "Ster" is a Swiss measurement corresponding to one cubic meter (10 cubic feet) of wood, weighing about 600-700 kilos.
Each "Ster" of timber yields about 100 kilos of charcoal.
It takes two men about three weeks to build the kiln, which will then burn for 12-18 days.
The charcoal-burner will spend the entire time by the kiln, camping out under canvas while it burns, says Renggli, 51.
Every few hours he feeds the kiln with charcoal chips, letting in air by piercing the charcoal paste covering and regulating the heat by sealing it again.
Around 50 barrels of chips will be used up in a single kiln.
"I can sleep 2-3 hours at a time. But I sleep as well as I do when I'm in my white bed up there," he said pointing up the hill towards his flower-bedecked traditional farmhouse.
Once the kiln is burning it can generate a heat inside of up to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit).
But the charcoal-burner can walk barefoot on the kiln if the charcoal paste has been applied properly.
"I need about 500 degrees to get the charcoal process going," Renggli said.
If the charcoal-burner neglects tending the kiln every few hours, or misjudges feeding or aerating it, the fire may go out -- or the charcoal itself will catch fire, burning out with an intolerable heat.
As a result, the work is best done by a single burner who can monitor his kiln precisely.
"The charcoal burner who lights the kiln must burn it through to the end," Renggli said.
The Swiss authorities have tried to get unemployed people to work as burners in shifts, but they only produced one third of the charcoal a professional would have done, he recalled.
The work, though tough, is a useful sideline, even if it brings in only about a quarter of the earnings he gets from his farm -- a 10 hectare smallholding producing milk from nine cows and seven goats.
In addition, to make ends meet, Renggli and his wife have joined the agrotourism trend, taking in guests who want to experience life on a farm, and he helps out as the local postman.
The craft of charcoal-burning is usually passed down generations although Renggli, one of a dozen active burners in Romoos, says he learnt it from his neighbours.
But his son has already built and fired some small kilns with 5 or 6 "Ster" of timber.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/03/europe/OUKWD-UK-SWISS-CHARCOAL.php




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Wrensong Farm (WA, U.S.A)

Wrensong Farm is on 5 acres in rural Washington State in the town of Monroe, nestled up in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.

It was recommended to me by Joan at Mud Ranch's Real Dirt and thanks to Tammy at Wrensong Farm to writing to me and allowing me to feature some photos of her farm.

"My blog is about my animal "addiction"," writes Tammy. "I have sheep (Jacobs and Shetlands), a donkey, 4 dogs, 2 cats, 2 emu, 28 chickens 16 guineas, a pair of Blue India peacocks, 3 turkey poults that are a mix of Auburn, Wild and Narragansett, and 6 Call Ducks (3 Black East Indies, 3 Snowys) on my pond."

"It also about the fun and trials of raising said livestock."

Tammy has "been animal obsessed since I could crawl (to the dismay of my mother's dogs)".

After moving to their current location in the Spring of 1998 her "2 and 4 legged animal family has grown. To pay for the feed and care of this family I have worked as a 777 aircraft inspector for the Boeing Co for almost 27 years."

Wrensong Farm is a relatively new blog, but that is part of its charm - new to blogging, a relatively young smallholding, beautiful country.

P.S!:

• I am afraid that I have lost many of your recent emails, specifically any sent to me between 15th August 2008 and 26th August 2008. Obviously I am annoyed at my stupidity, but also offer my apologies for all those people who took the time to write to me at what is, for most people, a busy time of year.
• If you did write to me between the above dates, I can only apologise, and ask you to re-send your email to me.
  
  
  
  
  

http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/
http://www.ianwalthew.com/


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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIND PERMISSION OF WRENSONG FARM.

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