Italy, Pruning and the Chicken Chat

Spannocchia

We began our morning together going over the specifics of our up-coming trip to Italy.  We looked at the schedule of workshops, work and field trips and heard from Andrew and Sophia, who have both traveled and worked there.  Christina, the cook at Sentinel Elm, will be our staff representative.  The most amusing part of the talk was how Patrick described the morning circle--meeting with the five Italian farmers, a flurry of discussion and then finger-pointing to collect the workers and off to the tasks.   "Go with the flow" was his advice.  I look forward to it!

Group A worked with Carlen for the remainder of the morning.  We began by pruning the summer-bearing raspberries in the homestead garden.  We clipped out all the cane that bore fruit this summer--it was easy to see because they were the largest canes and the bark was peeling off.  We then clipped out the thinnest canes and finally, choose to remove cane in order to create spacing between 4 to 6 inches.  It was very satisfying work and was overseen by Clutch, the cat.

Nora listening in as Carlen offers options

When that was complete, we walked out to Long Mowing field and assessed the raspberry beds.  It was in stark contrast to the homestead garden.  It was weedy, the second year canes were easy to see as there weren't many of them and the first year cane, the ones that will produce this coming summer, were few and far between.  We discussed different options:  hand-pruning as we just did in the homestead garden, mowing the whole patch down and seeing what returns, or disking the whole patch in and starting over.  We walked the rows, seeing that there weren't many fruiting canes for this summer.  We decided to recommend mowing and fertilizing to see if the beds can be revitalized.

We finished our morning by hacking back the brambles and sumac infesting the hedgerow.  It was satisfying work--lopping, sawing, dragging and standing back to admire progress.







Our afternoon was set aside for a chicken chat with Olivier.  We looked at the numbers of our egg laying enterprise--how many eggs collected, how much feed purchased, how much scratch offered, how many chicks brought in each year.  If we were to sell our organic, free-range eggs for 2010 at $5.00 a dozen, we would have made an average of $760 some dollars a month.  If you'd like to see the exact numbers, let me know.  We discussed what it would cost to offer organic feed, how much more to charge if the girls were fed organically and how an organic system might cost more but bring in different benefits.  Now that we've all cared for these birds for several weeks, enjoyed the eggs for several months and are beginning to think about our own enterprises, the conversation was rising up to a new level.  And, of course, included lots of laughs.