From Wild to Wine

In spite of the 90+ temperatures this afternoon, more than 20 people came out to participate in Better Farm's blueberry wine workshop.

Here's the article from MyABC50.com (photos from the workshop are below!):

By Holly Boname

A group of North Country residents have learned what it takes make a batch of homemade blueberry wine.

The free workshop, put on by Better Farm located in Redwood, demonstrated how to collect wild blueberries and through the process of fermentation, turn the natural fruits into a homemade wine.

Instructor Paul Jennings says that many different fruits and vegetables can be turned into wine, and that the blueberries found locally in Northern New York lend well to a good blend of wine.

The students first learned about the basic principles of equipment sterilization, fermentation, and production. Students crushed the blueberries into a workable mixture, added the correct sugars and ingredients and tomorrow will finish the process with the addition of yeast.

Executive director of Better Farm, Nicole Caldwell, says that the workshops are designed and created to increase community involvement, fun and education.

“We have been designing an entire series of workshops for the summer, all agriculturally related,” said Caldwell. “We are trying to connect the idea of healthy local food with something recreational like wines. So we thought with all of our workshops, if we can tie something local into it, whether that is people learning how to do rainwater catchments and then being able to apply it at home, or picking blueberries from Plessis and then making your own wine to share with your family and friends, to just bring it all home and try to get people involved with what’s going on around here.”

Many workshops are held throughout the summer at Better Farm. For a listing of workshops, visit www.betterfarm.org/upcoming-workshops.

On Location: July 4th Fireworks in Alexandria Bay

From the Alexandria Bay Chamber of Commerce Website:
Wednesday, July 4, 2012 @ dusk (approx. 9:45pm)
The evening air was cool, the sky was clear and bright and the crowds came in anticipation for the annual Alexandria Bay Fireworks over Boldt Castle. Many came early for a leisurely stroll through the Village streets, shopping, eating or just enjoying the company of fellow travelers. None were disappointed.

The fireworks display performed by Pyrotechnico were the courtesy of the Alexandria Bay Chamber of Commerce and the many local businesses, individuals and the Town who donated to the cost of the display.

The magnificent display could be seen for miles away lighting up the sky with multi color facets and reflected off the calm waters of the St. Lawrence. In a tribute to our nation's independence, the sky shone bright with the red, white and blue colors of our flag. For the first-timers to the repeat display watchers, the fireworks display over Boldt Castle was truly a magnificent site.

...And a few shots from the night:

All photos and video by Nicole Caldwell

Seed Independence

Happy Fourth of July!

This year, celebrate your independence by harvesting and storing your own, non-GMO seeds for your personal and community gardens.

We found this great resource online, aptly called the Seed Saving Handbook, which covers all your bases; from seed-specific instructions to harvesting directives for heirloom seeds.

Here are a few great reasons to save your own seeds:

• Create new varieties adapted to your growing conditions, your tastes!

• Save money by saving your own seeds and/or trading with other seed-savers.

• Preserve the genetic diversity of our heirloom food plants.

• Empower your own personal breeding goals instead of the commercial goals of agribusiness seed breeders.

• Help retain plants' pest resistance.

• Feel satisfied, empowered and connected.

Click here for the full guide

.

Aquaponics Part IV: Why Aquaponics?

The aquaponic setup at Better Farm.

By Noah Bogdonoff
In case you missed it, Better Farm has been steadily working on setting up an indoor aquaponic garden. We’ve taken you through the set-up and installation of our own system, but one big question remains: Why aquaponics? What can this type of system give us that we don’t already get from our (beautiful!) garden?

Firstly, aquaponic gardening is space-efficient. This isn’t so much an issue up in the North Country, where land is easy to come by, but in urban areas aquaponic gardening could revolutionize the way people think about food. Because aquaponic systems don’t require soil, all one needs to garden is enough space for a fish tank and a growing container that can fit atop it. This is also space-efficient in that it builds vertically, preserving precious floor space! Since many residents and interns (myself included) hail from cities, this is a perfect way for them to get started with sustainability when they return to their natural habitats.

Secondly, this system provides us with food year-round. North Country winters are notoriously harsh and the availability of fresh produce could save us from a winter of frozen and canned foods. For people living far away from grocery stores or those who don’t have easy access to organic and local foods, aquaponics is a surefire way to add some fresh, healthy food to your diet without having to go on a road trip. And, speaking of road trips, aquaponic gardening is a beautiful form of “lifestyle activism”—by growing food in your own home, you can avoid wasting the energy required to transport the food as well as the energy required to drive to the store.

The third big advantage of aquaponic gardening is that, given all of the above, it actually saves you money and time. As with outdoor gardens, growing your own food can save you hundreds or thousands of dollars every year. The average payback time for an aquaponic garden has been estimated at two years, meaning that after two years, you’ll have saved the amount of money you spent on the system. After that, your average cost of living per year will decrease. Unlike traditional gardens, however, which require laborious hours of weeding, watering, and tending, aquaponic gardens are extremely low maintenance. Once the nitrogen cycle is set up and the seeds are planted, the closed-loop nature of the system allows it function mostly on its own, as long as you’re feeding your fish. Once a plant is fully grown, just pull it up and pop another seed in its place.  

There are many more reasons to go aquaponic, but it’s easy to see why the above three could completely change the landscape of food politics in cities, suburbs, and harsh climates. Stop by the farm later on in the summer to see the fruits (well, vegetables) of our labor!

Mare's Wares Arts Fest Gets Better

Better Farm and betterArts joined in on the festivities yesterday at Mare's Wares Arts Fest, an annual arts and crafts festival in Morristown, N.Y.

With art for sale, a collaborative mural for everyone to participate in, T-shirts and mugs, workshop sign-ups, and information about Redwood and its surrounding lakes, Holly Boname and I got the word out on all things Better.

We had gorgeous weather all day and got to mingle with other local artisans and business people, from Fourth Coast Inc. to Home Again Farm. 

Many thanks to Mare's Wares for hosting this festival! Here are photos from the day:

Chicken Troubleshooting: Curly toes, cannibalism, and confusing eggs

Splinted toes on a baby chicken.

There are countless benefits to having chickens, so long as you have the wherewithall, know-all, and compassion to raise them properly. And though homesteading has become fashionable (urban farming, city chickens, books on sewing at Urban Outfitters) it's important to remember that there are responsibilities and risks associated with all the fun and rewards.

We've covered chicken-rearing fairly extensively throughout this blog, but we haven't gotten into too much about trouble-shooting tips for what to do when things go wrong. In this entry we'll go over some of the most common problems we've run into, and how we set about correcting them.


Curly Toes

Every so often, a chick that hatches out of his or her egg will be afflicted by toes that, as they grow, bend and turn inward. The deformed toes left unchecked will result in your chicken eventually limping around on more of a stump than anything else. One of our recent arrivals, who we're calling Scooter, had this issue on top the fact that one of his legs was malformed from the get-go. That left only one leg to work with, the foot of which had three lame toes that started curling around on him when he hit 3 weeks old.

Worries about the implications this held for his future walking abilities, I conducted some cursory searches online to find out whether anything could be done for the little bird.

As suspected, the toes don't tend to fix themselves. Once they start bending sideways and rotating, they're likely to continue doing so until the foot is a webbed knarl of crooked toes. The solution? To make a little boot with a piece of cardboard on the bottom of the foot and the sticky parts of a Band Aid (or white adhesive tape you'd use for sports injuries) across the top to hold each toe in place. Here's a picture of a chick (barely a few days old) I found sporting the Band Aid look:

And here's a shot of our dear little Scooter:

Remember to take the brace off every day to check on the bird's progress. We're on day four of this experiment and have already noticed some improvement. Remember, you need to do this while the bird is still young! After 4 weeks, the bones may have set too much to do much to help the little bird.

Cannibalism
It's no secret that chickens have tendencies toward cannibalism. This trait is aggravated when you keep your birds in cramped conditions (hence the reason many farmers cut the ends of birds' beaks off when they're newly born), aggravated when you use a white heat lamp on chicks instead of red, and aggravated when introducing new birds into the flock.

We ran into this trouble when we got some young Ameraucana chicks and put them out with our free-range birds. Not realizing that the young birds shouldn't be added to the flock until they were making adult-bird sounds (as opposed to their cheeping), on Day 3 during the last week of May we went out to discover one of our little girls had been attacked sometime early that morning by her adoptive older sisters. The chick's head was badly injured, skull cracked and neck horribly pecked. We took her inside to wash her wounds and protect her from the other birds until she was well again. And though we prepared for the worst, Destiny's Child continued to heal. We applied peroxide and triple-antibiotic ointment every morning and night for the first three weeks, then just in the mornings. She still sleeps in a laundry basket inside at night, but during the day she's up and running around with her old friends. Warning: GRAPHIC IMAGE!!

Before

Now

We'll keep an eye on her until her scabs are 100% corrected.

Egg Laying Issues
Your chickens will lay eggs steadily for about a year, with frequency declining after year 2 or 3. Some people butcher the chickens at that time; but this crowd hasn't gone for that idea. We like the chickens to ease into a nice, free-range retirement. We keep providing food and shelter for them, and they in turn help control bugs and weeds in the garden. By rotating the chicken tractors around the gardens and fields, these birds act like little roto tillers by turning over rough earth. They also do their part to enrich the soil by eating our food scraps and fertilizing the ground. Chicken manure is also great as a natural fertilizer (see a great chicken manure tea recipe here). If you're thinking about getting chickens, be sure you have a strategy for what you want to do when the birds stop or slow down as egg-layers.

Occasionally, your chickens will lay a soft, rubbery egg. Usually just a random occurrence, sometimes this can be a sign of a larger problem. To ensure this doesn't mean your birds have a calcium deficiency, be sure to keep crumbled up eggshells available to the birds (or oyster shells, available at any feed store). Stress can also cause chickens to lay soft eggs. Remember, the birds scare easy! Moving the coop, opening the roosting box while the birds are laying, or if a predator tried to get in over night could all contribute.

Two Festival Events This Weekend

Portugal's Boom Festival, 1998. Image from tribe.net.

Better Farm and betterArts will be out in force this Saturday and Sunday, tabling at two festivals with art and food for sale, interactive art demos, sign-ups for our mailing list, information about artist residencies, and sustainability internships,  T-shirts and mugs, and the many smiling faces of this summer's cast of characters.

If you're around this weekend, these festivals are going to be great fun: tons of live music, local goods and food for sale, and art.

Third Annual Keith Brabant Music Festival: Saturday, June 30

The Keith Brabant Music Festival is scheduled from 10 a.m.-10 p.m. at Coyote Moon Vineyards in Clayton. The event is free and features local musicians performing throughout the day. Food, wine and kids crafts will also be available. Money raised at the event funds music scholarships for children. The Keith Brabant Music Scholarship was formed in remembrance of Keith Brabant, a musician and composer born in Clayton. Keith believed that all youth should have a full musical education from kindergarten through 6th grade, in order to have the basic knowledge needed to appreciate music. The Keith Brabant Music Scholarship is administered by the TI Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit organization. To learn more about the TI Foundation and to learn about their other scholarship opportunities, click here. 

Mare's Wares Arts Fest: Sunday, July 1

Mare's Wares Arts Fest is slated from 12-8 p.m. Sunday, July 1 at Mare's Wares Pottery, 3938 State Highway 37 in Morristown, N.Y. The event is free and features fabulous handcrafted items and fine artwork from artisans from all over the north country and beyond, live music all day, activities and demonstrations, wine tasting and local produce.

Check out our photo montage and betterArts info on the Mare's Wares Facebook page here.

Beer Brewing Workshop This Friday!

A beer brewing workshop is slated from 1-3 p.m. this Friday, June 29, at Better Farm in Redwood.

Those attending will learn the process of home beer brewing, from hops to fermentation. The group will start a 5-gallon batch of plain, light malt extract brew (all participants will be notified when the beer's ready!). The instructor for this course is Paul Hayes, an experienced home brewer with more than 200 micro craft brews under his belt.

There is a suggested $10 donation for any workshops scheduled at Better Farm to cover costs of basic materials, ingredients, and any associated instructor fees. Unless otherwise noted, we will provide all necessary materials at the workshop.

Pre-registration is required! Please sign up by contacting us at

info@betterfarm.org

or (315) 482-2536. Overnight accommodations are available for out-of-town guests (

click here for more information

). For a listing of arts-related events and workshops,

click here

.

The Organic Life

By Noah Bogdonoff

What does it mean to be organic? To shoppers, the word guarantees the freshness and safety of their food. To the

USDA

, it is a strict set of rules by which the organization can direct consumers to the most healthily raised food products. To farmers, its meaning is much more complex.

Better Farm

's interns on Thursday came face-to-face with some of the most inspiring and complex issues surrounding the world of organics at

Cross IslandFarms

on

Wellesley Island

.

Dani Baker and David Belding own Cross Island Farms. Though the land has been in use since the mid-1800s, the Bakers bought it seven seasons ago with no inclination to become full-time farmers. Since then, their “farming habit” has turned into a

CSA

, dozens of animals including goats, cows, pigs, ducks, and chickens, and a burgeoning foray into eco-tourism through guided tours of the land and “primitive” campsites.

Of course, these efforts feed into one another. As David explains, every animal has a job on the farm that extends beyond producing eggs, milk, or meat. The Bakers practice rotational grazing, meaning that they constantly shift their animals’ pastures in an order that promotes fertile land and high levels of biodiversity. In addition to creating prime land for vegetable gardening, this type of farming shelters the Bakers’ livelihood from typical blights such as the

previously blogged-about armyworm

. By breeding a diverse and hearty selection of plants and animals, they’ve eliminated the risk of one disaster ruining an entire crop or killing an entire herd.

Beyond the practical, however, Dani and David’s farming methods exemplify an extremely important attitude towards life. Their 100+ acres, which include many areas of Class 2 protected wetlands, grow more fertile and more diverse with each new season. The Bakers are not just living off of the land—the land is living off of them. The goal? To not just maintain the integrity of the earth they live on, but to improve it.

At Better Farm, that is what organic means—not just a certification, but rather a philosophy and methodology that ensures our presence as a boon to the land, the wildlife, and the people that surround it. 

Blueberry Winemaking Course Slated July 6

A blueberry winemaking course is being offered from 1-4 p.m. Friday, July 6, at Better Farm in Redwood.

In this workshop, students will learn how to make several different varieties of wine, then will utilize what they've learned to begin the fermentation process with wild-picked blueberries, from squishing the fruits to bottling.

Ages 21+ only, please! There is a suggested $10 donation for any workshops scheduled at Better Farm to cover costs of basic materials, ingredients, and any associated instructor fees. Unless otherwise noted, we will provide all necessary materials at the workshop.

Pre-registration is required!

 Please contact us at

info@betterfarm.org

or (315) 482-2536 with any questions, to pre-register, or to inquire about teaching for us.

The instructor for this course is Paul R. Jennings

.

Better Farm is located at 31060 Cottage Hill Road in Redwood, N.Y.

For a full listing of agricultural-related workshops at Better Farm,

click here

. For a listing of arts-related events and workshops,

click here

.

'Armyworm' Outbreak in the North Country

Reports in recent weeks of an armyworm invasion in the North Country are the talk of the town, with stories of these invasive buggers tearing through crops and leaving farmers without recourse.

The Watertown Daily Times on Sunday reported that an outbreak of army worms last week has unexpectedly spread to farms in the northern half of Jefferson County, posing a risk for all farmers with hay, grass, corn and small-grain crops. The outbreak at farms north of the Black River was caused by another wave of moths that traveled north from Western New York to hatch the destructive worms in hayfields, according to Michael E. Hunter, field crops educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County.

The worms are tricky to detect because of their brown color and small size (only about 1.5 inches long). Experts recommend that farmers carefully inspect cool, damp areas at ground level to detect the worms, which can be less than a half-inch in their early growth stage.

It’s critical to find the worms early, Mr. Hunter said, because they do the most damage during the last week of their life cycle. In worst cases, hundreds of acres of crops could be lost. Numerous crops in the southern part of the county have already been destroyed because the worms, which arrived there about two weeks ago, had enough time to grow to full size. The worms, which pupate into moths like caterpillars, seek grassy fields to feed on but avoid crops such as alfalfa and soybean.

While scouting fields in the northern part of the county last Friday, Mr. Hunter discovered that the worms are widespread.

“I’ve covered thousands of acres and have found army worms in every field,” Mr. Hunter said Friday. Farms in Clayton, Orleans and Alexandria Bay were all infested. “There’s probably a good chance that most people have them right now.”

Although farmers can kill the worms with insecticides, in most cases it would be beneficial for them to mow the fields instead, Mr. Hunter said.

“We’ve seen the amount of damage (worms) can do if fields are untreated, but right now farmers have the option to harvest their fields and not lose any yield or quality,” he said. “There’s no advantage in waiting to harvest later, so we’re advising farmers to mow their hay and bale it.”

The worms are also susceptible to spot-treatments of soapy water, for those with smaller gardens.

Mr. Hunter said the worms were detected north of the Black River on Thursday but now have spread across the county’s northern half. They’ve been spotted in parts of St. Lawrence and Lewis counties, as well.

It’s an epidemic that Mr. Hunter said is unprecedented in the north country. The worms have been spotted in hundreds of acres, but that could soon expand to thousands.

“New sightings caused by these migrations are being spotted everywhere, and we can’t rule anything out right now,” he said. “Landowners should now be monitoring their fields closely.”

Jay M. Matteson, agricultural coordinator for Jefferson County, said farmers have been caught off-guard by the outbreak. Farmers who have crop insurance protection are advised to call their agents immediately if they detect damage. In addition, golf courses and lawns located near farmland could be susceptible to the worms.

“I think the severity of this is catching everyone off-guard,” Mr. Matteson said. “Any farm that’s pasture-based should be on the lookout.”

The last outbreak in the north country occurred in 2000 at farms in Lewis County.

For more information, call Mr. Hunter from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Jefferson County at 788-8450.

Everything You Need to Raise Your Own Baby Chicks

Raising your own chickens has more benefits than we can list in a little ol' blog post; from helping your compost along, to offering you unparalleled pest control, to creating brilliant fertilizer out of chicken poop, to providing you with healthy, fresh eggs every day.

There's no limit to how creative you can get with chicken housing for every living situation (learn all about urban chicken rearing here), and certainly no shortage of spectacular coop ideas. At Better Farm, we utilize a combination chicken tractor/paddock enclosure method with our birds, which basically functions as mobile chicken tractors enclosed by larger fenced-in areas. As the chickens eat up the grass and vegetation in one area, we move them to another.

We were blessed with a bunch of baby bard rock chicks last week, and set them up in the barn across the street until they've grown in their feathers and can live outside. Here's all you need for a basic set-up for when you want to raise your own:

• Container large enough to home your baby birds (a kiddie pool will work while the birds are still tiny; a metal trough is better because it has higher side walls)
• Wood and newspaper shavings for the floor of your container
• A red heat lamp (white lamps will encourage cannibalism)
• Starter feed (check with your local feed store)
• Fresh water (when babies are young fill ice trays with water for them so they don't drown. When they're a little bigger, you can switch to a regular chicken waterer, avaialable at any local feed store)
• Food dish, to be kept stocked at all times

If you're like us and have frequent snake visitors, you'll also want a screen cover for your birds. We found a discarded screen and cut a hole out for the heat lamp, then carefully stitched a screen "cone" over the light to ensure no predators could get in:

You'll want to keep the light at least 18 inches from the bottom of the tank. If the birds are huddled directly under the light, that means they're chilly and you should lower the light. If the birds form a kind of ring around the light, you've got it right on.

When the birds grow their adult feathers, they're ready to start living outside. Just be sure if you're going to be introducing them to other members of the flock, you also wait until their voices mature. A peeping chick is just begging to be hazed by older birds.

Got a question about raising chickens? E-mail us at info@betterfarm.org. Want to learn more about chicken rearing? Click here!

Mojitos Recipe with Organic Mint

Artist-in-residence Jaime Karnes mixes up a batch of fresh mojitos!

Happy Wednesday! Here's a great happy-hour mojito recipe featuring fresh, organic mint from our garden (pick up your own at our farm stand—just $1/bundle!):

Ingredients

• Ice
• 6 ounces light rum
• 12 mint sprigs, or spearmint, 8 roughly broken apart
• 6 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• Club soda
• 4 slices lime

Directions

Place ice in beverage shaker then add in the rum, 8 broken up mint sprigs, lime juice and sugar. Shake well and serve over ice in a high ball glass. Top off each glass with a splash of club soda.

Garnish each with a slice of lime and a sprig of mint.
Recipe from the Food Network 

Got a great recipe to share? E-mail us at info@betterfarm.org.