Concrete

Prayer Flags atop the Persimmon Saddle

Farming is very material: Wood, lumber, metal, dirt, soil and rocks, heavy by the shovelful, tin roofs torn from old houses, outbuildings, storage space, rain-soaked piles of objects, heaps and mounds of material for later use.

Consider the immensity of plant material a single bovine consumes per day: 60 to 90 pounds of grass, roughly approximate to the amount going out in urine, milk, and manure (+ the 25 gallon *slurp* of water). Miraculous! Water, sunlight, soil, thousands of pounds of grass and clover grow in a single day, one hour, one minute! Don't forget the pasture weeds, ragweed, cockleburr, pigweed, partridge pea, ironweed, asters, goldenrod, burdock, too many to count, rising soft, innocent, then popping up into hard stalks and sticky seeds, awful!

Yesterday, a concrete mixer backed up a new gravel road, slightly steep, with 14,000 pounds of concrete. Combining the weight of the truck that's 42,000 pounds coming up a hill of loose gravel--in reverse! I'm grateful the contents of the truck made it up the road and did not require a 'middle-movement' of men with shovels and wheelbarrows to pour a slab of 500 sq. ft. Now we're ready to timber frame the roof of an addition to the milk shed. After the roof, straw bales are likely candidate for walls. Keep posted.

Kevin leads Malika. It looks more like 'pull'

Farming is expensive. In my transition from college--I finished just 8 months ago--straight into 'self-employment' I've discovered there seems to be a fine, razor's edge line between investing in big stuff like buildings, barns and farm equipment, cows, ducks and chickens and making a living: the things like food, car insurance, phone + electric bills, rent. It seems, fortunate for them, that farmers often have a comparably lower cost of living than other people, considering the amount of thrift that comes with the job and the quantity of food one can produce on a small piece of land. However, without some significant financial contributions from a few people, the farm would not have been able to invest in stuff like cows, the milk parlor, a new truck, and an addition to the milk barn this first year. I would like to list those individuals and family members below followed with what their contribution made it possible to purchase.

James F. Steen

• Dana, the first milk cow
• 4/5 of a 4x4 Chevy truck
• Remesh and rebar for a slab foundation
• Lumber for the milk barn
• Blueberry plants and apple/pear rootstocks

Rene & Karen Ochoa

• 1/2 of a STIHL weedwhacker
• Attorney & surveyor fees to close on the purchase of 10 acres for the farm
• Boots

Pamalan G. Mitsch

• Steel Buckets
• 1/2 of a STIHL weedwhacker
• Assistance with the cost of concrete truck for a slab
• Books on Cattle Health

Ernest Miller

• Nearly all of the equipment needed to put a 6-strand high-tension fence around 20 acres of pasture. This fence will be started this winter and be approximately 3,800 feet in perimeter and make it possible to intensively rotate animals and improve the pasture.

Evelyn Lindenmuth

• Bulldozer work and gravel for a new road 100 ft long
• Part of the concrete cost for a slab

Sid Jordan

• Repair cost for a Poulan chainsaw and use of his Husqvarna saw

Prama Institute

• Three beautiful Locust logs, now supporting a barn roof

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A candy-roaster pumpkin grown from seed saved by Lela Davis, in Madison Co.
makes delicious pie!

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Human faces of the farm

This is Andy McFate leaning on the truck and I, Geoffrey Steen. I graduated from Warren Wilson College in December 08 and began farming on leased land in January. I am currently addicted to carving out a beautiful space on the farm for people to learn about plants, animals, and how human beings can actively improve the productive landscape of a farm for others and themselves through sustainable management.

With an immense amount of help from friends who share my dream, especially Andy McFate, a fine carpenter, a budding woodworker, and a capable farmer, this dream is taking shape(s) and the farm is moving ahead with construction projects and improvements. It feels wonderful to share a dream that began so personally with friends and watch it change organically with their spectacular energy and ideas, yet still make progress toward common goals.

Here's one of the most significant faces of the farm, Mr. Kevin Lane. He originally hails from Roanoke, VA and graduated from Warren Wilson College May 2008. After joining me milking two cows in March, we managed to jointly purchase 10 acres of land as part of Raven Ridge Farm.

Kevin enjoys fine Chinese teas, eating multi-course meals slowly in a collective setting, running very long distances over beautiful mountain terrain and meditating as much as possible. Kevin's constant friendship, silent wisdom and steady temperament have made him an integral part of building the farm. It's with great pleasure that I tell visitors how we work together at Raven Ridge Farm--it's a three-person cooperative between Kevin, Andy and I. There are no two men I would rather be working with than these two special souls.


Jeremy came from Wilmington and by chance came up to Marshall. He now plans to winter here on the farm, staying in a tent along with Andy, Kevin and I, while helping out with building projects, the perimeter fencing job, and planting trees. He tentatively plans on going west on his bike in the spring. We look forward to getting better acquainted with Jeremy and feeding him as best we can with butter and whole milk yogurt.

Lunch at the Farm Cafe with Mr. Sid Jordan, on the right. He's the executive director of the Prama Institute, a holistic retreat and conference center next door, (www.pramainstitute.org) as well as the lending hand and inspiration for me to begin the farm here. He's purchased about 140 acres as part of an intentional neighborhood that Raven Ridge Farm is a mutual neighbor and collaborator with.
Andy Duggins McFate enjoys morning coffee with whole milk and molasses, evening 'chicken chores' & 'duck duties', milking Nandi (probably our sweetest Jersey cow), and spinning beautiful & functional objects out of wood on the first try. This woodwork includes but is not limited to, the milk parlor and fine Shaker chairs of red Oak. He will begin selling handmade Shaker chairs shortly. Contact the farm phone, (828) 649-9261 for details or else digitally by his email, bicicleta@riseup.net

Maturing hens, water fowl and people, too

Here're a couple of Golden Comet rooster that showed up at the farm three weeks ago. They're real tame on account of being hand raised, held & touched daily by some friends in Asheville.

I don't know too much about chickens, besides that they're the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, in fact, the only direct descendants of the dinosaurs on Earth today.

Here're the hens, about 34 or so of them:
The breed are Barred Rocks, the black and white striped ones and New Hampshire Reds, the orange colored hens. They're all hens except two of the Hampshire Reds are roosters.

Down from 50 hens due to casualties from stray dogs, all 35 or so hens plus 4 roosters enjoy two scoops of grain/day and either starving the rest of the day or else foraging for insects, scratching in cow patties, catching flies, eating seedheads and plants. Seriously, they're quite healthy, growing into maturity and should begin laying eggs by late October/early November.


Last week, we brought 11 Muscovy ducklings onto the farm. They're now 4 weeks old.
Saved from a chance clutch of eggs on Lake Tomahawk in Black Mountain, NC, where the native geese and ducks were dying of botulism, these ducklings have found a home, are growing incredibly fast, and have high expectations to meet. The farmers at Raven Ridge are readying to release these ducks from the hen house in order to 'starve' (like the chickens) and instead of actually starving, obtain their calories from foraged bugs. Generally, ducks are far-better foragers than chickens, especially in the way of catching flies and eating mosquito larvae in ponds. These Muscovies are born fly-eaters and will soon be put on pasture with cows to eat the flies off their bodies. In exchange for flies, the cows are happy, and in exchange for a 'starvation diet', the ducks give people eggs. Wonderful how things work without chemical insecticides and chemical feed, a bit of sunlight, a thought of water, and a touch of human management!

Ducks are considered a wonderful farmstead animal. In addition to providing fly and mosquito control, ducks produce large eggs, used by bakers for their richer-taste, and will eat a massive amount of broad-leafy weeds and insect pests when let into your garden. Still experimental at Raven Ridge Farm, we're planning on releasing ducks into our summer gardens to eat the Harlequin bugs, potato beetles, and others that attack human food. Reducing feed co$ts is not only wonderful for people, it's probably tastier for the ducks (but you'll have to ask them: not an easy thing to do when they're out and about on the land, rather than cooped up inside a hot hen house, eating powdery corny feed...)

Here's the pond, a new addition to the farm since mid-July. It began filling up from the underground spring the day it was dug and filled up with the rain. The longest rain-free stretch of summer has been this week--9 days of hot, drying-out sunshine and the pond has not gone down at all. I'm confident this pond will provide a good source of splashing-around-in + food for the ducks and a cool bath for the cows in summer.

It's not the prettiest waterhole right now, but with a touch of care, and perhaps an eventual fence with 1-door entry for bovines, plus some water-loving plants, will begin it's evolution to perfection. If you're a perfectionist and like ponds please call (828) 649-9261. Be prepared to supervise 3 or 4 people in planting and protecting a waterside plantation from a farmful of cows, chickens and waterfowl.

September's second week

In cool nights and leafy breezes, autumn shows itself as summer spins downward, weed stalks harden and seedheads stick to cotton shorts.

There have been a number of improvements to the farm in the past 3 weeks.

First, here's a new road, cut and graveled 100 feet from Catawba Drive up to the back of the milk parlor and its addition still in the works. Below, Kevin rakes gravel for the pad of the addition-- a milk storage and processing room .


In preparation for our two calves this month, we've fenced in a calf pen of about 300 perimeter feet that includes an old barn for winter warmth. It's near the milk parlor, so we can bottle-feed the calves easily with fresh, warm milk. Separating the calves at 2 or 3 days from their mother is perhaps not the most natural or nicest thing to do, but it trains the calf to people, ensuring she'll be affectionate and sweet. Plus, the people get more milk, and the teats of their mothers are spared the blisters and bleeding from the calf's teeth--interestingly human hands are much gentler on cow's teats than calves.

Here's the farm cafe, an ongoing project to carve out a space to store people--in other words, a place for social things like sitting, talking, meeting, eating, all out-of-doors. From the demolition of an old house on the same site, right behind the milk parlor, we've laid down a stone courtyard from the house foundation stones, much them, beautiful Quartz in many quartzy hues. 'Smoky'-- hues of grey and black, orange sandy colors and the spectacular 'Rose quartz'--ranging from light pink to crimson or deep magenta. Quartz comes more often clear than it does opaqu, with lines of color and tone. When it does come opaque, I've named it 'Milky quartz'.
That's Andy sawing stakes to hold up the wood forms to contain the concrete slab of the parlor addition.

From the courtyard farm cafe, here's shot looking up into the pasture to the upper garden, prayer flags and the farm's centerpiece, the old persimmon tree, 13 inches across at breast height, pretty big for a slow-growing wild American persimmon. Diospyros virginiana is the only specie of Ebony tree found outside the tropics. Like all ebonies, it's wood is hard and dark. Besides producing delicious fruits (Diospyros means "food of the gods" in latin) its wood has been used to make all sorts of furniture and things like door handles. Here's a closer shot of it up on the saddle--

Looks very nice when decked with gold-ball size, orange fruits, but not this year...
Persimmons often bear fruit in alternate years like many fruiting trees. There are wonderful summer apples coming in right now, though, with a wonderful yellow-red striped skin and sweet/sour flesh, good for fresh-eating either green or striped, cooking down, and fed to cows to feel their kicking calves inside!

Here's the corn patch. We're raising an open-pollinated (true-to-type if not crossed-pollinated) heirloom type of corn called 'bloody butcher'. When it matures, e.g.- when it dries down into hard cobs & kernels, it will be ground for flour and used for next year's seed, unlike 'sweet corn' that is eaten wet or sweet & immature. Last week, Andy cut the tassels off the tops, taking much height off the crop in a bid to prevent 'lodging', when the corn topples over from hard winds and rains, and regrettably from raccoons or bears. This garden is in a bit of a wet spot, near a perennial springbed, not great for preventing lodging in corn. Andy reports that there's at least 40 pumpkins in there amongst the stalks, since he placed a board under each one to prevent rot. Gobs of beans, too.

<-- The single best improvement to the farm in recent weeks! An old chalkboard now built into the milk parlor wall, with the function of organizing the work week, planning, and sharing news. Andy, Geoffrey, and Kevin's daily schedule is written in there, with Important Neighborhood Numbers (phone #'s), who prepares Lunch and Dinner, and so on... Here's a nice thing: about 160 blueberry bushes, 250 apples, a bundle of pecan and chestnut trees. Part of the Raven Ridge Nursery stock tbp ('to be planted' or maybe 'to be purchased' -- would you like on for your homestead?) But seriously, the promise of perennial trees and vines bearing fruits and nuts years from now is positively divine! I am very happy that these trees were saved from the virulent pigweeds and crabgrasses infesting their pots and will find a nice home on the farm or in your backyard.
all for now

Second blog

The third Saturday of July, Kempo Rinpche, a Tibetan monk came to the farm to bless the land with a traditional smoke offering ceremony. The ceremony purifies the space and with the smoke that blows all 'round the world, sends blessing of peace and compassion everywhere. To finish the ceremony, the group of about 30 neighbors, friends, and family helped put up 3 large prayer flags to send out more joyful, peaceful blessings to all creatures on Earth. Thanks to all who came.

Next time there's an even like this, it will be posted beforehand as an invitation to you, reading now.

<-- That's Andy McFate, one of the three full-time farmers at Raven Ridge. Kevin Lane and myself, Geoffrey Steen, make up the rest of the crew who manage the milk herd, tend the flock of hens & ducks, grow the nursery of fruit trees, and till the gardens. Here, Andy is putting perlins on the milk parlor, an old photo from back in March. Since then, the pasture's greened up full of grass for the cows and weeds for the dreams of goats (cloven-hoofed friends that might be featured on next summer's pasture, and next year's blog, "Wild & Wily Weed Whackers") That's Kevin removing nails from salvaged wood,
again, back in March. -->

We've been able to cut costs by salvaging, re-using, cutting, and finding all sorts of materials including milled lumber, whole logs, nails, sheet metal, rocks, sand, and clay for our building projects and farm improvements.

To me, animals and plants are tremendously more wonderful to work with than wood and metal and rock, because they grow and reproduce on their own, move on their own, and do all the work without hammering, bulldozing, lifting and certainly they produce delicious cream and wild berries with a minimum of human effort. Cows, for instance, eat steep, hillside grass unsuited for me to eat, and make it into milk and cream. Those same hillsides grow wonderful bramble and tree fruit!

That's Bella and I in Late July. She's an affectionate Jersey heifer with horns hand-raised in Madison County, NC. As of this blog, she's gone on a 'Single's retreat' down east in Taylorsville, NC to meet some potential breeding partners...

If she's bred, she'll spend 9 months making a baby, and calve next year in early summer/late spring.

Malika is our oldest cow, over 8 years, from near Roan Mtn and Bakersville, NC. She's a holstein/jersey cross cow. Holsteins produce the most milk of any dairy breed and have the characteristic black/white coat of the milk cow pictured in cartoons and milk cartons. Jersey cows are smaller, and produce the least milk of any dairy breed, but compared to the watery milk of Holsteins, are loaded with cream--a richer milk better for making butter and pleasing the stomach!

Here's the herd!

from the left: that's Nandi, Dana, Malika, and Bella.

Dana and our newest cow, 'Willa'--not pictured-- are quite pregnant and will each drop a young bovine soul onto the grassy earth by the end of September.

Check back later for new photos!

The farm's first blog

<-- Kevin brings down the cows to the milk parlor as the morning mist burns off in the 7.30 sun.

It's amazing to reflect on the past 7 months at Raven Ridge Farm! Starting in January, I was milking one cow in the cold of an old 'bacco barn. More cows arrived, and do did Andy McFate and Kevin Lane, a big flock of laying hens, and just last week, Andy's first cow and 11 ducklings.

We've built a milk parlor to gather milk from the herd, destroyed an old house and built a courtyard and planted a nursery of fruit and nut trees in its place. We're working on an addition to the parlor, with insulated strawbale walls, electricity, and space for processing garden goods and milk for butter.

Andy's woodworking craftsmanship shows itself in humble hints, such as the wood hinges on the outhouse door, the nail-less pole-framed tent platform, and the patio roof of our soon-to-be, home-built, wood-fired Lorena stove (more on that later).

Kevin's devotion to the health of the herd, poultry flock and gardens, inspires we 'three farmer friends' to make improvements to the projects we've spun out with enthusiasm, but perhaps not kept up with or completed. His careful nature makes him an important asset to the farm, peacefully tending the plants and animals with a patience older than time. Leave the rushing to me, Kevin can take all the credit for making the farm run smoothly and the chores finished.

<-- the milk parlor in March, gettin' on toward completion. That house with tar-paper walls was torn down and salvaged for wood. Much of it went into the Hen House, which we built spaciously for about 70 hens & ducks for only $ 29 in nails.

More later!