A Free Resource of Information

Conrad home

Did the word “free” get your attention?

We all want a bargain, right?

Hop aboard my time machine and let’s go for a little trip.  I promise it won’t take long.

When I was a little kid, back in the Dark Ages, we lived next door to Sam and Delores Conrad.  They were ancient when we moved in; I was but five years of age.   As the years passed by, I would spend time with the Conrads.  They were wonderful about making a small child feel important, and they would invite me over for milk and cookies, and always story time.

They told stories of coming west on the Oregon Trail.  Fascinating stuff, mini-history lessons, guaranteed to ignite my imagination and make me thirst for more stories, and they never disappointed me.

The same was true of my grandparents with stories about farming, and my dad with stories about the Great Depression,  and my Uncle Jim with stories about dredging in the wilds of Alaska.  I loved them all, and I learned, a continual stream of free information from people who had been there, done that, and were more than willing to share their information.

They are all gone now, obviously, but an important lesson they taught me still influences me today.  If I am uncertain how to do something, I know where free information can be found: from the storytellers who have been there, done that, and are quite eager to share.

How many young people do you know who seek out free advice from those who have walked earlier paths?  Heck, how many middle-aged people do that?  We seem to be living in a time of instant information, of Wiki-truths, and it seems to me fewer and fewer people take the time to talk to the older generation for information and suggestions.

I think they are missing out!

One thing missing from Wikipedia, or any encyclopedia for that matter, is the human touch.  Humans can tell us what it was like at a certain place in a certain time. They can translate bare facts into something alive and to me, farming is alive and should always be looked at as such.

Bev and I stopped at a farm a few years back. We were fascinated by the old barn and wanted to know more about it.  Turns out the farm was owned by a family named Rutledge, and that barn was built in 1864, and that family was one of the original settlers of the Olympia area.

Fascinating stuff and it’s all free to us if we ask the right questions to the right people.

Farming does not have to be an isolated event . . . in fact, farming is, and always has been, a community event.

Just random thoughts . . .

Bill

Organic, Natural, and Other Random Thoughts About Farming

I’m learning so much, being on the Farmers Market Board of Directors.

Take food labeling, for example.

Some food is labeled “organic.” Some products say “natural.”  And some doesn’t say either of those two things, like Spam.  LOL

It gets real murky from this point on.

A product labeled “organic” means the company has followed some rather stringent, and costly, governmental guidelines to ensure that the product has been grown free of pesticides and other unnatural additives.

The label “natural,” or “all-natural,” means none of the above.  It may or may not have been grown in an organic way. It may or may not have followed any guidelines at all, but the company sure wants you to believe their product is as natural as a baby’s bottom.

And no mention of either “organic” or “natural” means good luck to the consumer!

But some companies who display “natural” labels have, in fact, grown their produce in an organic way.  Our son’s goat farm, where they make excellent goat cheese, is, in fact, organic, but they can’t afford to pay for government certification, so they can’t call their cheese “organic.”

It’s a muddled mess, quite frankly, but would you expect anything less than muddled from the government?

All of this is to explain why I think localism is so important.  Buying from local companies is one safeguard all of us can take to ensure that the food we eat is healthy.  Getting to know local farmers at places like farmers markets is a huge advantage as we walk the “healthy” path.  We may not have much influence on a national or federal level, but we can affect change at a local level.

It’s all about community!

Odd side note: I was watching the State Senate debate a couple bills last night on the local public service station, and one bill I found fascinating had to do with water rights and water availability.  I don’t want to go into the details of the bill, but after this particular bill was passed by the Senate there were, understandably, winners and losers.  Some farmers were very happy.  Some developers were ecstatic. Some residents in one particular county were heartbroken and bitter.  One of the local Native American tribes was really P.O.’ed.

I came away with this thought:  In a community it is impossible to keep everyone happy.  There will always be “winners” and “losers” when any decision is made for the “common good.” That’s how a free society works.  It is an imperfect system which has worked perfectly for over two-hundred years.

And one other random thought: being a farmer is not an easy gig.  It is long hours.  It is heartbreak.  It is a roller-coaster of highs and lows.

Support your local farmers!  Please!  They have worked their asses off and deserve your support.

Bill

Spring is Rapidly Approaching

It may be January, but things sure feel like mid-summer.

It’s time for chicks.

200 quail eggs have been ordered. They will be here by next week.  After that seventeen days of incubation, and then eight weeks of raising . . . and then eggs, just in time for the April Farmers Markets.

And then there are chickens!  We just ordered twenty-five Easter Eggers which we will raise for four months and then sell them off as pullets.  $3 per chick, turnaround $25 sale as a pullet.

We are also ordering fifty chicks to raise out on our son’s farm.  Those will be for eggs to sell at the markets this spring and summer.

All of this activity, of course, means some major projects on my plate.  I need nesting boxes and brooding poles for the fifty egg-layers.  I need to shore up the aviary  in our backyard for when the quail are put outside in four weeks (hopefully it won’t get too cold the rest of the winter), and that means mixing and pouring cement on the floor of the aviary…so my calendar is rapidly filling up.

And I love it all!

And of course I’m now the President of the Board of Directors for the Tumwater Farmers Market, and that is a challenge, a challenge I look forward to, so that adds to the to-do list.

And I love that as well.

I like staying busy!

Hopefully a protector

In a lot of ways, I’m like our new puppy Maggie.

I go and go and go and go, and then about eight o’clock at night, in front of the television, I’ll just crash.  I turn into a zombie until about eleven at which time I fall into a deep, restorative sleep, and then up at six the next morning to do it all again.

That’s how I rock and roll!

Staying busy is good for me.  It keeps me out of my head, which was once described as the most dangerous six inches of real estate on the planet.  It also keeps me in some semblance of good shape.  Since I’m never sick (never as in maybe once per decade I’ll catch a cold or the flu) I have to assume that A) my lifestyle is working and B) I have some great genes.

So that’s where I’m at as of this writing.  The rains have stopped and we have two days of pretty decent January weather ahead, so I need to go shovel dirt and pour cement.

Wishing you a productive weekend, from Olympia,

Bill

Life in the Urban Jungle

The battle continues!

Here’s something they don’t tell you when you are a kid, and your mom is reading you a book about Farmer Bob, and it’s all fun in the hay and frolic with the animals . . . there are predators out there who aim to eat your animals the moment you let down your guard.  It probably makes sense that they don’t mention that in the Farmer Bob Series.  Little kids don’t need to know about disemboweled chickens and headless quail, do they?

Winter is a particularly brutal time of year.  Raccoons and other critters are hungry in the winter, and finding food is tough for them.  Hell, we live in the middle of the city, and I’ve spotted two coyotes walking down our street.  A new neighbor lost his cat to a coyote last week.  They are out there!  I don’t blame them at all.  In fact, I applaud their ingenuity and determination in finding something to eat.  It’s my job to make sure their next meal doesn’t include Bill’s chicken & quail tortilla, minus the tortilla.

Hopefully a protector

That was quite the introduction, all leading up to the fact we have lost eight quail in the past month.  Something has dug a hole and gotten into the enclosure.  Drags the quail out one at a time.  Leaves feathers behind.  Annoys the hell out of me.  So I have work to do.

We also lost a chicken recently.  Bev had brought home four rescue chickens, and we introduced them to their own coop, did everything correctly, and the next night two of them decided they would rather roost in a nearby tree.  So we played that game for a few nights, dragging them out of the tree, putting them in their coop, until one night they were more clever in choosing a hiding place.

Well, eventually, their cleverness cost one of them their life.

Raccoons are always hungry in the winter.

So life goes on.  Winter will be over soon, and then spring chores will begin, and repairs undertaken, and the trees will bud, leaves will appear, and temperatures will signal the coming of a new season, one of promise, one of hope, and one filled with more things Farmer Bob should never speak about to little children.