Tim Ward here reporting that Boont Berry Community Farm still exists and, in fact, is doing quite well.

 



So how has it gone?  
How did we get this far?  
Who is we?

It is hard to begin writing a blog entry about this farm project after so much time having passed.  That is, what should I say about the whole 2012 farming season to date?  

First I’d need to tell you about the growth of the farm crew which has grown very quickly and organically, just as have the plants and animals.  In February I was alone, planning the season to come and having done my best to bait all of the help I was going to need.  There was nothing to do but keep moving forward with faith that this vision and this piece of incredible valley farm land would draw exactly the right people.  It worked, so who are they:

How did I bait Alice, the livestock manager, who is a strong, competent and independent farmer?  Not with a huge salary…  Instead she needed to see a position where there was a real potential to become an owner/operator.   Fortunately this is exactly what I was seeking to fill.

How did I bait Renee, our vegetable produce manager?  With love.  Renee and I started dating in August 2011 and it took until April 2012, but her vision to connect with a farm matched right up with our need for an amazing, organized, detail oriented farm worker.  She and I are living together and working hard day after day and loving it.

How about Geoff who has volunteer work traded for 6 months?  Or Tamekia or 4 months?  Or Yariv for 2 months?  Or Dominic for 6 weeks?    Or Sam, Kirsty, Ben, Chris, Justin, Will… Dumb luck… divine intervention… either way I’m grateful.

And what about the farming business? 

Another point of faith that I began this operation with, despite many warnings from area locals, was that if we created a community farm on a membership model that the members would arrive.  “CSA doesn’t work up here,” they told me.  I knew that no one else was selling shares in diverse local food production.  I knew that this farm has a magnetic attraction and that people would want to be a part of it…

Fortunately I was right.  We found people who wanted to buy a share of our local pasture-raised chickens, and lamb, and pork, and eggs.  We found local people willing to pay up front for these things that would be produced in the future.   Since May all of the vegetables we have produced have been consumed by our farm members and our farm crew.  No waste, no delivery, no sales.

I can’t say that we are making enough money yet.  I can’t say that anyone in our business is getting paid.  I can’t say that we are on top of our loan payments or our rent.  But somehow our staff, our lenders, and our landowner are all very happy that we’re doing this.  So what else could I ask for?

Well now that we are in August and all of the vegetables have come ready, it is time to plant all the fall crops, time to plan for next year, and time to celebrate the fact that we are still in this!  Even though the growing season is winding down, on a diverse farm like ours, there is no end to the farming.  Ahead we still have pumpkins, and lambs, and goat kids, and holiday turkeys…

Stay posted for updates in the future where I get some of our other amazing crew to write their own posts because clearly I’m a slacker!

A CSA in the Anderson Valley? With eggs, milk, meat and veggies!..

Boont Berry Community Farm, in downtown Boonville, seeks members in the Anderson Valley for the 2012 farm season to share in the organically raised produce and pasture-raised animal products, and the investment and fun of farming on this beautiful piece of valley farm land.

Why become a member of a local community farm? 

In order to connect to community and your own food in a deep way.

Small local farms are failing across the country because of the crushing presence of industrial agriculture on government policy and the economics of food markets. Food prices continue to rise as oil production is peaking and going to fall. The security of our community to eat becomes vested completely in the vast network of chemical production and distribution…
If we invest in food production in our valley now, we will have the infrastructure to take care of our community if we need to. Especially in these times of economic hardship we need to think of the future and start planting the seeds of the local food system of the next generation.

Join us in the creation of this exciting new project.

Contact Tim Ward, Director
(831) 332-5131
timocratical@gmail.com

 

Come to an open house at the farm for a free lunch and to learn more about the membership details and model for the upcoming season:

Sunday February 12 - Begins at 12:00 Noon with Farm tour

Open House Time, Schedule, and Directions:

Lunch at 1 PM- presentation at 1:30 PM-2:30 PM- Farm tour after

Turn down Lambert Lane in Boonville, across from the Buckhorn.
Travel ¼ mile until road turns to dirt, after the END sign turn RIGHT and cross the bridge.
Park immediately, in parking lot or side of road. Open house is in the large plywood barn.

Reaching the next level of "realness"

Wow.  I guess writer's block can definitely apply to a busy start-up farmer.  It is hard to feel okay with the realization that 2 months have gone by without note on this blog while the action on the farm has certainly continued forth at a hurried pace.  The farm business that at last writing was just a beginning vision has been more formally launched and greatly stabilized by an interest free start-up loan that was provided by a circle of local Anderson Valley people that believe in the vision and potential of Boontberry Community Farm.  The group was inspired by the farm property owner Burt Cohen's generous agreement to a low cost 3-year lease.  A new farm has been born and is now walking.   

One of the explanations for marked progress on the ground comes from a series of amazing volunteers who have lived on the farm and committed 30+ hours of work in week in exchange for camping, food, and the chance to learn about farming by helping to build a farming operation from the ground up.  While the farm has not yet formally registered as a WWOOF host farm, Korina, Julio, and Dylan were all delivered by the good fates to come and help this farm over the hump from a bumpy start-up to the full productive operation we are sighted on for next year.  I am so grateful for their hard work and good company.  Their presence really began the transformation of the farm from one man's personal project to the community building farm center that I am aiming to help develop.  

The start-up loan has already afforded the farm to invest in seed, soil amendments, infrastructure for animals on pasture, hand tools, materials to refurbish a greenhouse, and irrigation materials.  The farm is also finally coming into legitimate production with the first flock of 30 laying hens just beginning to lay incredible day-glo yellow-orange yoked eggs with rock hard shells (there will be 80 chickens laying by March, 10 beautiful healthy turkeys and 6 ducks are headed to become Holiday feasts and leftover treats for some lucky local people, and our home brewed hard apple cider and dried pears and prunes from the orchard are getting rave reviews from friends.  I am really feeling grateful for the bounty and beauty of this place in this season.

Many important seeds (literal and figurative) have been sown for the coming year.  Some highlights include:

• Garlic, Shallots, and Onions planted for harvest in Summer 2012. 
• Perennial garden for Medicinal and culinary herbs established 
• The six female alpine goats have all been bred to the study stud Elvis with kidding set from early March into April.  (I don't know if I'm more excited about fresh milk or baby goats!)
• Compost with mineral amendments has been spread on 2.5 acres

In the coming week the farm is expecting to see its major Fall transformation of the fields with the help of Doug Mosel, a very important partner to the farm.  Doug is the founder and manager of the Mendocino Grain project, the only local grain producer.  He markets the grain through a membership based "grain share" that is very similar to the membership model that our farm is planning to use.  A perfect partner for the farm, Doug cut the hay from the fields in June, and has been talking to other stakeholders in the property for years about growing grain here.  I have been excited to work with Doug since I first heard about his interest.  Together we have created a plan for the fields for the coming 3 years that include him growing hulless oats and barley in rotation with cover crop on 3 fields totaling 4 acres.  Doug will be sowing one of the fields in the coming week and will be on his way to providing real food to our local area which is central to the mission of Boont Berry Community Farm.   The farm will also benefit from a big share of the grain which will be used as livestock feed to largely supplant the feed costs.

Doug is also assisting in our planting of 1 acre of Alfalfa for hay and 1 acre of cover crop for next year's vegetable field.

It's beyond exciting right?  All of it.  So many things...

Stay tuned for a detailed description of our membership program and how the produce from the farm will be distributed next season to our members.

A Long Delayed Introduction and Vision Statement

This blog is written by Tim Ward who is the main founding energy behind this farm project incarnation. Tim’s biography and resume is included in a blog entry soon to follow, but in short words Tim is returning to a long standing  passion for farming after years of studying the environment and economics in college, educating youth outdoors about science, farming, and leadership, and as an activist trying to help save our threatened natural environment and community systems.

The Boontberry Community Farm project has had many other important contributors to its founding, early visioning and initial successes including most significantly Regina Williams, Justin Laqua, Burt Cohen the farm owner, Andrew of Pacific Wildcraft and Alex Kielty my good friend.

Boontberry Community Farm is envisioned to be a non-profit educational farm center and community gathering place on an amazing 50 acre prime agricultural property adjacent to downtown Boonville, CA.   The founding impetus for this endeavor is the belief that the modern food system is destroying the natural environmental systems, making people sick, and threatening greatly our future food security.  The mission is to create for the local community a stable, “closed system” farm that will produce food for the local foodshed and be a learning center about self-sufficient agriculture.  The project is organized by the following areas of mission focus:

• Healing and building the soil, water, and other natural systems on the farm
• Producing high quality organic food and medicine for our local community
• Creating opportunity for people to connect to nature through agriculture
• Educating about organic food and herbal medicine production, biodynamic methods and permaculture 
• Raising heritage breeds of plants and animals to help preserve their diversity

 In this time of visioning and preparation Tim is actively seeking collaborators of many types for this project.  If you have any interest in the future of the farming project please consider these needed roles:

• Experienced farmers- as partners in the farm operation.  The structure of the farm crew is still being visioned and budgeted for and there is still room for creative exploration of ways to incorporate different partners
• Farm members - who purchase  ownership of a share of the farm operation and some of the animals and receive a proportional share of the farm produce
• Investors- Who would like to support the farm through a financial investment in the initial capital campaign to cover the costs of start-up
• Consultants-  In the realms of farm management, soil science, animal husbandry, orchard management, business planning, financial planning, and marketing
• Volunteers- Who would like to help on the ground to make this farm reach its full potential.  Volunteers can choose to work through the WWOOF organization or directly through our non-profit project

Please contact Tim Ward with your interest in any of these areas, I’d love to connect: timocratical@gmail.com   (831) 332- 5131   

Arrival, Landing, Transition, and More Clean-up(!)

To encapsulate a long, difficult and sad part of the story of the first month of this new farm endeavor briefly:

Tim and Regina moved to the farm after 3 years of relationship with lots of rapidly acquired animals to pursue what had become Tim’s vision.  Then Regina left. She is supporting from afar with good feelings between us.This blog is then the account of one man attempting to launch a community farm.

While the insanely busy first two months of development were very hard on the humans, the animals have been happy as clams in a beach in Baja.  Thanks to the late spring rains and the fertile valley bottom land of the farm there has been lush forage for the goats, turkeys, chickens, ducks and pigs.  They have been so busy eating that they have not even noticed the humans struggling and toiling.  I have been bearing the hot days together with the animals, doing more water carrying than a smart person with plumbing parts in the barn should stand for, but the systems get more established every day.

The above mentioned lush forage quality also meant that in June we walked onto an abandoned 25-acre farm of head high grass.  There were many hours of tractor mowing, weed whacking, fence removal and continuous discovery (and subsequent disposal) of more debris and trash and metal wire and so on and so on.  So my earlier declaration of the slaying of the trash pile was an underestimation of the clean-up process of at least a hundred hours of labor and 10 more cubic yards of landfill and almost that much scrap metal.  Besides getting help from Regina, I received many incredible volunteer work blessings from friends and neighbors.

The lush summer pasture yielded 800 bales of hay of varying quality from high to low in early June and then re-grew to 2-6 inches of grasses, clovers, vetch, and plantain.  The focus of the farm work has been largely around the structures, fencing, and infrastructure needed to raise and pasture the animals.  Tomorrow on the second to last day of July I will be putting my first vegetable garden in the ground.  The sad starts have spent an extra month in their 4” containers because having my own tomatoes or cucumbers wasn’t the highest priority (maybe it should have been).  The plan is to do a fall garden planting in late August aiming at doing some marketing in October along with the eggs that will be coming in, in order to get out and solicit members for our CSA launch the next year.   

More chicks will be hatched this fall to have the ideal size laying flock and turkeys and ducks will be bred over winter, all with careful projection for the farm season next year.  The 5 female goats will be bred also this fall to our soon to be arriving buck, Elvis.  This should of course result in goat babies and lots of milk!   

Okay, back to work… I mean off to bed.

Construction (and De-construction) Begins

Finally.  We didn't have to spent our whirlwind weekend picking up dirty diapers, used motor oil, rotting wood, rusty metal, beer bottles and cans and PLASTIC (so much!)...  So we got busy building and demolishing.  Some of this had begun a week earlier with Tim and a new local friend Ben.

Fortunately for us, our friends stepped up and we had 15 friends come and help us over the course of our 2-day work party.  The beauty of working with people we really know and trust is that we could explain jobs to them and then walk away.   Regina and I were able to focus on some really dirty projects and logistics, and before we knew it... BAM.  Serious progress.  Unfortunately we don't have a working camera, but we will soon take some pictures so we can show some before and after shots.

It is SO exciting to us to see this quiet, and pretty much wrecked farm space come alive and start to transform into the visions, plans, and drawings that Regina and I have been working on remotely for so many months as we have prepared to begin this project.  After one more weekend of Tim finishing up some projects ahead we will have a farm that is at least ready for our 6 goats, 2 pigs, 10 laying hens, and dozens of baby chicks and turkeys.  We will be camping on the land for the first few weeks while we finish preparing the place to be suitable for us.

We hope you will come and visit soon!

Slaying the trash pile

When we first saw the farm (and everyone we took to see it in the early times) we couldn't really find words to describe the mess it was left in.  A good friend came to help me but then just walked around, mouth open, too stunned to do anything.  Fortunately we have big imaginations and Tim has a lot of stubborn energy and a few amazing friends and family really stepped up in a big way to help us slay the beastly pile.  Thank you Rachel, Justin, Matt, Alex, Nick, Ryan, Cobb, Susan, Ben and others!



So, 200 hours of labor later, how much trash was there?

Not everyone is enough of a spatial thinker to easily conceptualize what 1 cubic yard of trash looks like.  So to help you visualize this, it is about one small pick-up load.  Hopefully that will help you to understand the amount of work required to remove:

• 60 cu. yards of landfill trash
• 3 cu. yards of beer bottles and cans
• 50+ cu. yards of scrap metal
• 50+ cu. yards of scrap wood
• 8 cu. yards of recyclable black irrigation tubing

You can also probably imagine our excitement that we have finally managed to remove all of this material from this piece of earth so that we can best grow healthy clean food, and maintain an organized farm!  We can't wait to bring people to see the beautiful farm-scape to be.

We also want to take from this experience strong lessons about how we choose to use materials and resources in the future.  It's not that we don't value saving useful things (we definitely salvaged some useful materials from the chaos)... we just want to close loop on farm inputs wherever possible.  Stay tuned to see how we do at accomplishing that (HUGE) goal.