January 10, 2011
Lately, wherever I go I seem to bring bad weather with me. When I was in southern California before Christmas it rained for a week straight and then when I get to North Carolina the city gets closed down for two or three days from snow and freezing rain. I don't know what it is but the angel on my shoulder must be wearing long underwear and a hooded parka. Hopefully now that I'm at Piedmont the trend has ended. Every Monday morning at 9:00 there's a full staff meeting which is followed by a production department meeting, I've been invited to attend both since I work in the production department. My schedule is Tuesday and Thursday, 10 hours per day. The first staff meeting was interesting, the environment is casual and easy going but still driven to stay on point and get things done. Everyone gets a voice and a chance to get their ideas out and also a chance to have those ideas talked down by management or anyone else. I got out of there around 11:30 and went back to Jims house. That night the storm came in and laid a nice quarter inch thick sheet of ice over everything under the sun, my car, the street, the trees, the sidewalk, nothing was spared. Since Tuesday is my first day I thought it prudent to be sure and get there. After taking 30 minutes to get the ice off the windshield and the two side windows I braved the icey roads and make the 45 minute drive in about an hour and a half, getting to the plant around 8:30, great, first day and I'm late. The place was a ghost town, not a single living soul. So I figure people are struggling to deal with the roads and settle down in the conference room with a copy from the company library of Lyle's book "Biodiesel Power" to kill some time. Lyle is Lyle Estill, the president of Piedmont Biofuels Industrial, LLC, i.e. the plant. Super nice guy, dedicated, driven, passionate about biodiesel and the not so underground movement that has come up around it and he's willing to share his knowledge and vision with anyone willing to listen, or read. Around 9:00 I email the other production department guys using my new Motorola Dick Tracey phone and learn that they aren't coming in until the roads improve, which isn't going to be happening anytime soon so I email back that I'll wait until 10:00 or so then head home. A little while later a couple of the organic farm interns drive in to check their emails from the computer in the corner of the room and then go to work to check the ice damage to their crops ... I'm thinking to myself "been there done that" as I watch them walk off toward the gardens. I sink back into the comfy sofa and go back to the book but I'm soon dozing off, in and out of a lite sleep and the book keeps falling into my lap. A little around 11:00 I call Jim and discover that they took a "ice day" and everyone's at the house, so I decide to leave. I have my own copy of the book somewhere in the car and as comfy as the conference room sofa is I figure being with Jim and his family will be much more comfy, I put the book back in it's place on the shelf and head out.
The next day, Wednesday, I meet a pleasant young woman named Jennie who is helping manage a "housing situation slash arrangement" which has been named Oilseed. The term is used because one of the lots was farmed to raise an oilseed crop which was then going to be pressed for the oil to use as a fuel, similar to what Jack is doing down at Crescent Moon Organic Farm in Sopchoppy. I'm not sure what the details are and they aren't really important at the moment, the bottom line is there is an old farmhouse and two manufactured homes on three lots back in the woods on the side of a hill, all next to each other. For a nominal rate the rooms are available to students, interns, employees, etc. Jennie helps manage the rooms but the utilities are split between the occupants. Off in the distance on the top of the hill is the farmhouse, which is called the "bighouse" where Jennie and other "young people" are living. Nothing is said but we're both thinking the same thing, the needs of the 49 year old intern and the needs of the younger interns/students etc are not the same, we'll check out the bighouse last. We proceed to the middle house which is completely empty, do a walk through and I'm thinking boy this place is cold. They have the heat turned off and the place doesn't capture much sun, giving it a very unlived in feeling. I decide against it because I don't want to foot the bill to heat the entire place when I'm just renting a single room, and just to the end of May to boot. The last house is known as the "lower house" because it's the lowest on the hillside, in a clear area with a south exposure catching lots of sun. Living there is an attractive young woman named Moya who used to work at Piedmont. Hmmm, I'm thinking .. former employee ... this could be historically interesting and enlightening at the same time. I recognize her name from looking through the Piedmont website, she used to run the collection department, driving around in a big single axle tank truck collecting the waste vegetable oil from restaurants. When I first spoke with Jennie over the phone I explained that I was 49, a bookworm, an intern at Piedmont and student at the junior college. I'm looking for a quiet environment, all I need is kitchen access, a warm room, low noise level and internet access. As we walk to the lower house Jennie explains that Moya used to work at Piedmont and since I was interning there she wanted to have a "roommate compatibility meeting" to avoid any conflicts. She knocks on the door and Moya greets us and politely invites us in. After Jennie introduces us we shake hands and give each other a "nice to meet you" and then she turns to begin the tour of the house. The first thing I notice is a wood burning stove in the living room against the outer wall near a window. The stack has been disconnected and it looks more like a part of the surroundings than a heating appliance, which I think is exactly the job of a wood burning stove. I don't mention anything but the second thing I notice is there's no TV and I'm thinking .... quiet environment, check! Moya shows us the rooms and both her and Jennie explain some history of the house, the landlord, the past lease arrangement and other pertinent details, like why there's a past roommate's belonging's piled high in the room I want. Recently, like around November the house had been filled to max capacity but the lease was scheduled to expire at the end of the year and negotiations to renew had not been completed. As a result most of the occupants made other arrangements and moved out, then at the last minute, like December 15th, the owner and the management company sign the paperwork and the next year is set in stone. After Moya explains that "so and so should be back sometime to get her stuff" we wander back to the living room where we're just standing around. Moya explains that she and Jennie have already talked and she understands pretty much what I'm looking for and that it all sounds like it could work out well between us. I agree and mention that I noticed the absence of a TV, which is ok with me and that I gave it all up years ago. She smiles and makes a comment about the lack of desire for television, something about how people need to get out more and interact with each other, not gel in front of the tube where they're exposed to all the "social suggestions" in the TV programming ... or something like that. I mention that I spend a lot of time reading and browsing the internet, which can turn a person into a conspiracy theorist ... and then look her in the eye and say, "Which I am". She smiles, says something along the line of "right on, me too" and offers up a high five. But I'm lost in space by this time, too dumbfounded by the fact we have this in common and I completely miss the wind up and the impending pitch on the high five .... swoooooosh, the whole idea goes right over my head. Moya is standing there motionless with her right hand in the air, the situation has turned awkwardly quiet, I'm standing there speechless and my mind is slowly tuning into the fact that she has dropped her hand and she's making a comment about how I won't give her a high five. My mind is still in a blurr as I start to raise my hand and blurt out some babble about being "not hip, more of a square peg". As my hand goes up she winds up for a repeat, hears what I'm saying and as the pitch is being released gets a weird confused look on her face, like "What did he just say?". Smaaackkkk, the high five is complete and we both smile, a new friendship has been formed. I'm completely self conscious about my conservative, square peggedness and remember how Dad used to say in response to someone raising their fist and shouting "right on, right on" ... he would say, "right arm, right arm", I guess his way of saying, "whatever", lol. But this is different, in my mind there's definitely a connection forming. She says something indicating her acceptance of me as a roommate and the conversation turns to the personal habits department. She heads into the kitchen and explains how she found the former roommate situation kind of frustrating when it came to the kitchen. She likes to keep a neat kitchen, but when the place was full of busy (mostly young) people it didn't turn out too well. I can imagine I tell her. I'm seeing images in my head of her being constantly pissed at her roommates for not being tidy. Since being let go from Piedmont she has been staying with her boyfriend a lot, he has a place in town, and she hasn't put any big effort into it, yet. On closer examinatin the kitchen looks neat and orderly but the trash and the recycling needs to be taken out and there are signs of abandoned kitchen wares from the former roommates. We're in the country, taking the trash out is a semi-major undertaking which consists of keeping the paper, the plastic, the different metals and the glass all segregated etc, and then bagging everything up and throwing it in the back of her truck, then driving it to the county recycling center. I'm sure all the roommates were completely tuned into that procedure .... right! She askes firmly if I can just clean up after myself, that she's isn't trying to make a big deal out of it or be the heavy but that if she doesn't mention it, well, you know how that goes. Ok I'm thinking, she wants a clean kitchen, she didn't say please and the former situation i.e. the kitchen was a real pisser for her. This is important to her. She insists she isn't trying to be an asshole about it. I tell her no problem, I was raised in a family with a bunch of strong women and I am totally dialed into what she is getting at. She has no idea how true that is. At that instant I immediately post a permanent reminder note in the back of my head. I tell her there will be no problem with the kitchen. She accepts my answer and then Jennie and I leave to take care of the final arrangements at the bighouse. Friday night I moved in. Cool.
On Thursday morning I started the internship proper. In the previous days as I was walking around the plant taking care of all the paper work details I noticed a semi trailer getting unloaded. Pallet after pallet of four 55 gallon drums each, double stacked into the trailer, all of them filled with used sunflower oil. Some food plant had flushed their system with this oil and then put it in the drums and had to get rid of it. Guess where it landed. So the plan for the day is for the forklift to bring the drums to the recieving area, which is a large tank farm of four big multi-thousand gallon vertical storage tanks and all the associated piping, pump(s) and valve assemblies, all enclosed within a three foot high concrete block wall. On the north end of the enclosure there's a large metal box, about four feet wide, eight feet long and maybe three feet deep. Inside this trough is a V shaped metal screen with a 4" reciever port on one end. This is the main recieving area for the oil from the collection truck. The truck pulls in alongside the trough, the 4" drain hose on the truck is attached to the reciever port and the truck tank, the vent on top of the truck tank is opened, the valves are set to make sure the oil is going to the proper storage tank (this is actually item one), the main reciever pump is turned on and then the drain valve on the truck tank is partially opened. The last two steps are critical because the tank on the truck will gravity drain faster than the pump can get the oil into the storage tank. Also connected to the main pump via another valve arrangement is a device nicknamed "the stinger". It's just a 5' long 2-1/2" diameter tube with a on/off valve and about 35 feet of hose. This is what we use to suck the sunflower oil out of the drums. First make sure the valve arrangement is what you want, i.e. the oil is going to go into the correct storage tank. Open the drum by removing the bung (a threaded plug in the drain hole), insert the stinger, turn on the pump and open the valve. When the oil level gets to the bottom you can hear the stinger make a loud sucking sound as it takes oil, then air, then oil ... at this point the drum is as empty as it's goiong to get. Remove the stinger and put it into the next drum and then carry the empty drum over to the trough and place it drain hole down so the last of the oil will empty into the system. When the drum is truly empty carrry it another 100 feet or so to a large pile of empties and place it on top. Return to stinger location and repeat until hundreds of drums are emptied. Welcome to the production department. So this is how I spend my Thursday, ten hours of draining sunflower oil out of say maybe 75 drums. I felt it for the next three days. Not only that, the waste veggie oil has a very distinct smell, meaning the shit stinks and the word is that the smell does NOT come out of the clothes, so some dedicated work clothes are in order and I mean right now because it won't take long for the smell to get into the car .... forever. On Sunday I found a Tractor Supply and bought two pairs of coveralls and then a Walmart for a cheap pair of work boots. I carry a large trash bag in the trunk and change at the back of the car each time, then wash the clothes in the company washing machine over the weekend.
When I started on Monday, January 10 I caught wind of a problem they had been working on for about a month. In the process of making biodiesel a large quantity of methanol is mixed with a catalyst (potassium hydroxide) and then mixed with the heated waste veggie oil. After about 24 hours the mixture separates into approximately 20% glycerol on the bottom and 80% dirty biodiesel on top. The glycerol is then pumped into a tank, heated and the methanol that's still in solution is boiled off and condensed for reuse. At Piedmont all of this is done on a large scale and the condenser water is cooled with a chiller. A chiller is an industrial machine that uses the refrigeration cycle to make cold water. An air conditioner uses the refrigeration cycle to make cool air and a refrigerator uses the cycle to keep its contents cold relative to the outside temperature. So now you know what the refrigeration cycle is, lol. Anyway, the chilled water system was down because the pump had failed. At some time in the past an employee named "bonehead" had perhaps drilled a hole in a pipe to mount a sensor and the drill bit had broke off inside the pipe ... and they didn't say anything. Then for who knows how long the bit just sat there, or moved slowly through the piping system until if found the impeller of the pump. The drill bit is small but made of very hard tool steel and the impeller is almost surely made of soft aluminum. The sound would be something like a knife in a garbage disposal full of rocks, except you can't reach in and take it out, it would go on and on. By the time someone heard the noise, then figured out where the noise was coming from and then remembered where the power switch is located and then walked over and turned the thing off, well it's all over for the pump impeller and possibly the entire pump assembly. So then you shut everything down, drain the cooling fluid from the system and filter it to get all the little impeller pieces and for sure get that drill bit out of the system. When the system is empty you can remove the bad pump assembly and replace it with a "ready to go" spare or with a new one, costing in the multiple hundreds of Federal Reserve Notes. Or you can take the only one you have and take it apart and overhaul it, replacing all the broken parts and double checking everything to make sure it will work when it goes back in. Of course you have to order the pump parts first, from a place called "far far away", and then of course they send you the replacement materials a little here, a little there, some come in on Friday, some on Saturday, some on Monday. That's how and why the system was down for a month. This is also why plant managers have gray hair, bags under their eyes and lots of medical records. On Thursday while I was dealing with the sunflower oil they were installing the overhauled pump.
The following Tuesday I figured would be spent finishing up the sunflower oil, but instead I get a new experience. I learned how to clean a device called a filter press. A filter press is an assembly of filters, think of the filter that's on your home air conditioning system, around 20 of them arranged horizontally with a cap on each end. They are placed inside a rack or press which has a hydraulic ram on one end that squeezes them all together under very high pressure. Each filter frame is a large heavy duty plastic plate around three feet square and slightly over an inch thick. The actual filter element is in the inside of the frame, about two inches in from the outside edge, that is to say the frame is about two inches wide all the way around and the middle area is open where the two filter elements are held in place. The elements are pressed into a groove around the inside perimeter of the opening, similar to a window screen in a metal frame. In addition there’s a black rubber gasket mounted in a groove in the frame wall on one face of each element. So what does the filter press do, you may ask. Well, let's back up a little. When making biodiesel the final step is called the wash cycle. After the glycerol is drained off and the methanol has been recovered, the resulting dirty biodiesel still has some free fatty acids in solution, some of the catalyst and other residue that has to be cleaned out to meet specification. To do this the fuel is pumped into a tank on the other side of the facility, one stage away from going into the fuel terminal for shipping. The small scale backyard method is to wash the fuel with water and the bubbling action from an acquarium bubbler. In this method the water is gently introduced in with the fuel and then the bubbler turned on. The bubble forms and rises and then leaves the water layer and enters the biodiesel layer. At that point the bubble is air and a very thin film of water between the air and the biodiesel. As the bubble rises through the biodiesel the water bonds to the free fatty acids in solution and then carries them to the top where they form a soapy scummy layer of wash water. Typically, to meet specification this has to be done three times which produces a lot of wash water that has to be disposed of. The filter press in conjuction with a substance called filter aid which I think is magnesium sulfate replaces the wash water method. Once the biodiesel is pumped into the new tank on the terminal side a sample is taken to determine the level of free fatty acids and this with the fuel volume is entered into an equation to calculate how much filter aid to use. We carry the bags of filter aid up to the top platform near the top of the storage tanks, open the large heavy lid and dump it all in. The filter aid is a very fine powder, like baby powder but more granular, not slippery. The valves in the piping system are set to allow the mixture to continuously recirculate to get a complete mix of the filter aid and the biodiesel. The filter aid does what the water was doing, it bonds to the free fatty acids that are floating around in solution with the biodiesel. Upon a complete mix the valves are reset to allow the mixture to run through the filter press. As the fluid flows through the many filters the filter aid and free fatty acids that are bonded to it are entrapped in the filter elements and start to clog things up in the filter bank. This is how the filter aid is designed to work, as it clogs the filter press the filter aid itself becomes a filter agent catching ever more of the stuff. After a certain time interval another sample is taken to measure the ffa (free fatty acid) level. If the level is too high we simply wait while more of the filter aid reacts with more of the ffa's. When the ffa level is comfortably within specification then the finished biodiesel is pumped into a second storage tank where it is held before going to the terminal for delivery. When all the biodiesel is in the second tank the inlet to the filter press is isolated from the piping system via the valve arrangement and then compressed air is fed into the inlet of the filter press pushing the last remaining biodiesel out of it and into the waiting second tank. This last procedure also dries the filter aid which is like a fine powder cake between each filter section. The filter aid goes in white and comes out brown. The filter press is pulled apart and the filter aid cake is removed from between each section and dumped into a mobile trough that is parked below it. The cake still has a trace amount of biodiesel and methanol which will combust if the temperature gets above the flashpoint of around 300 degrees F., a very real possibility in the summer, so I’m told. So, as a fire preventative we add water to the trough and turn the cake into a wet mud, then it's carried by the fork lift and emptied into the dumpster out back. The residual cake then has to be wiped away from the face of each filter element before it can be used again on the next batch. Working at a relaxed leisurely pace it takes me about three hours to completely clean the filter press.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Friday, February 12, 2010
Crescent Moon Organic Farm - February 12, 2010
Wow, time flies when your having fun! I've been coming down to Jack's farm for a month now. Since I started we have been working on 19 new rows on the north end of the farm. First he tilled the ground with the tractor and then as we had time we applied the fertilizer amendments and covered that with mushroom compost, which is chicken guano and wheat stalk. Dave and I would do two or three rows per day on the days we could work it into the schedule. A typical week here starts with something like preparing these rows on Monday, then uncovering the crop and start the picking for the market on Tuesday (the market is on Wednesday). On Wednesday we finish up the picking and get everything ready to load onto the truck. Thursday is a repeat of Tuesday for the Friday market. So you can see that everything revolves around getting to the market. We finished up these 19 rows and last week planted one row with lettuce and another with arugula. This week we planted eight rows of potatoes, which are kind of easy to plant. We started with five bags of seed potatoes from Canada, seed potatoes haven't been sprayed with any chemicals to inhibit the sprouting, like the potatoes at your local market. Think about it, that's one more "who knows what the side effects are" chemical going into your body, the more I learn the more I'm convinced that organics are the only way to go. So, we take the seed potato and cut them into two or three pieces, so long as each piece has an eye, or sprout and some of the meat. We cut all five bags up and put the wedges into a wheel barrel. Jack uses the small tractor with a single plow fixture and takes two passes at each row, opening up the ground about a foot deep so we can throw in the wedges, with the sprout facing up. Then we use a hoe to cover the wedges with about two or three inches of soil. Later, when the sprout pops through the surface of the garden we will go back and cover them some more. The potatoes grow radially outward from the central root of the plant, when we cover the leafy part with more soil the root will grow longer and more potatoes will grow out from the center. This planting has been the focus of the new work for a couple of weeks now. Other than this we have been busy protecting the crop from the cold weather by using freeze cloth, but you have to cover the crop at the end of the day and then uncover in the morning for picking and when there are spells of good weather we uncover the entire garden. Then more cold weather moves in, like this week and we have to go back and re-cover everything. It's like making a bed that's three or more acres in size. Other than that I've learned more about biodiesel and using wvo (waste vegetable oil) as a fuel and why Jack uses an open system when he makes his biodiesel. It's been very fruitful on the knowledge end of things and I'm looking forward to learning more in the weeks ahead.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Crescent Moon Organic Farm - January 17
Monday, Jan. 11, 2010 - The drive to Jack's place takes about an hour from Tallahassee, it's due south and then west to get to Sopchoppy, then further west outside of town to an unpaved county road. Then north for a couple of twisting turning miles until you get to his driveway ... then the fun begins. The driveway is eight tenths of a mile long per the odometer in my truck, twisting like a bowl of spaghetti, driving over live tree roots and assorted plant life brushing up against the side of the truck, there's even a wet muddy stretch that goes over an underground creek ... this place is waaaaay out there. On arrival I'm introduced to Dave, the single permanent intern and the three of us sit down for dinner. After a good meal and some good discussion we all three go our separate ways, we'll start the next day at 9:00 am at breakfast.
Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010 - This farm is an old place, the bathtub in the main bath is an original claw foot type so I'm thinking the main house was built in the twenties or thirties, and it's all original. There are three other structures, the woofer housing which is on the second level over the biodiesel lab, a large covered work shed which is about 50' square and the cutting shed where the veggies are cleaned, weighed, bagged and put on ice in preparation for the market. Today Jack is driving to Tallahassee to meet with someone at FAMU about a proposal and before leaving describes to Dave and I what he wants done for the day. On the north side of the farm are nine new garden rows that are being prepared for seeding. In the morning we will spread amendments, which is another word for fertilizers over two of these rows. This doesn't sound like much but when you're doing everything by hand things add up quickly. There are four types of fertilizers and they are each in large bags, about 40 or 50 pounds each. We wheel these over to the rows with two wheel barrels and then scoop the material into a large round tin about six inches deep. Then you just walk along each row and spread the fertilizer out by hand with a scoop or plastic bowl. After all four treatments are down then we load up the wheel barrels with a concoction of manure and wheat stalks and spread that over each row using a shovel. Later, and I mean much later when all the rows are treated Jack will till the mixtures into the soil with one of the tractors and they will be ready for planting. There's a small greenhouse on the south side of the cutting shed where the seedlings are already growing in advance. While we're busy with that Carmen shows up and let's us know she is in the main house making soup and it will be ready shortly. It takes the two of us about three hours to finish the two rows then we break for lunch. Salad, soup, buttered homemade bread and cranberry juice are the menu for the day and it's all good. Both Jack and Carmen are vegetarian, so while I'm here that makes me a vegetarian as well, and I'm already feeling the pounds melt away even more. After lunch we pre-pick crops for Wednesday's farmer market at Lake Ella in Tallahassee. Florida has been having an incredible freeze this year, so for protection Jack has covered the entire crop with a translucent, permeable plastic cover that breaths well and keeps the temperature about nine degrees warmer. First thing is to remove this cover from the rows we will be picking from, then I need to pick four pounds of arugula. On top of the freeze damage we find that some kind of worm has been eating on some of the rows of chinese lettuce and there's a virus in some of the savanna mustard. The arugula just has some damage from the cold, some of the leaves on the outside of the row are wilted and won't be usable. So I go through carefully and I start picking one leaf at a time thinking this is going to take a lifetime, but Carmen tells me to just grab the entire bunch of each plant and cut with a pair of scissors and they will sort the good stuff out in the cutting shed. This will speed things up a bit. I'm using a pair of scissors and a large oval tin about two feet long and one foot wide and ten inches deep and when it's full I will have about a pound and a half. We finish out the early afternoon with the picking, using the warmest part of the day and then return to spreading the amendments until five.
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 - Today is hurried in the morning, we have to finish picking and get everything weighed, bagged and put on ice in the coolers for the trip to the market. A new helper shows up for this effort, her name is Mary and I learn that she works part time for Jack, on the days he goes to market. We have a quick breakfast of oatmeal and coffee prepared on the wood burning stove in the cutting shed then we're off to work. It's Dave, Mary and myself picking and then Carmen and Jack in the cutting shed doing the sorting, weighing and bagging. In addition to the farmers market Jack has started a CSA and he sells to a restaurant, so all the produce has to be bagged and packed accordingly. Things go smoothly and around 1:00 he and Mary leave, he drives straight to the Tallahassee market and Mary delivers the CSA bags first on her way in. Dave, Carmen and I break for lunch, we have leftover soup and bread that Carmen made the night before and we top that with some salad fresh from the garden. After lunch we spend the rest of the day removing the damaged crop from the areas we uncovered. I put three or four heaping wheel barrels full on the compost piles, the same for Dave.
Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 - This morning we have a new weather forecast, there's rain expected on Saturday and it's bringing warmer air into the area. There's no freezing temperatures expected tonight so Jack decides to uncover the entire crop and review the damage. This takes Dave and I about an hour, we aren't removing the cover material from the garden, we're just uncovering the crop and laying the material in the walkway between each row. Between the freeze, the worms and the virus about a third of the crop is bad and will have to be removed. All morning we're stooping and bending over, move a couple of feet and stoop and bend over. On top of the damage some of the crop has flowered, which means the stalk in the middle has grown pretty thick and Jack considers this too old, he says it gives the leaf a woody taste so he wants us to pull any of those plants. I'm standing in the garden looking at what is left of the crop and I'm astonished at all the obstacles in the way of getting a crop to the market. All considered we have easily thrown three times or more as much produce on the compost piles than went to market. Is there anything else that can get in the way? Now I'm really interested to see how the spring and summer will be when the days will be almost twice the length and no freezing temperatures. In the afternoon we break things up and change from picking bad produce to spreading another row of amendments.
Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 - There's a new farmers market on Friday evenings at a store called Bread and Roses and Jacks sources in the information grapevine say that a television crew will be there tonight, so we change our plans for the day and do more picking this morning. This is a small market so Jack and Mary do the picking and get everything ready while Dave and I continue cleaning out all the bad produce. With that almost out of the way Jack prepares a new amendment to be applied to the crops. This is a liquid application, he has a separate irrigation system that consists of a large water tank, a pump and some piping and then enough green garden hose to spray it on every corner of the gardens. Into the large water tank we mix together a gallon of liquid kelp and a gallon of liquid fish guts and then let the pump run to mix it completely. The difficult part is handling the miles of hose, it has to be arranged so you can walk between two rows and then moved to the next pair and so on. After the initial demonstration Jack and Mary leave for the market and then we finish out the day between removing the last of the bad crop and spraying the liquid amendments.
Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2010 - This farm is an old place, the bathtub in the main bath is an original claw foot type so I'm thinking the main house was built in the twenties or thirties, and it's all original. There are three other structures, the woofer housing which is on the second level over the biodiesel lab, a large covered work shed which is about 50' square and the cutting shed where the veggies are cleaned, weighed, bagged and put on ice in preparation for the market. Today Jack is driving to Tallahassee to meet with someone at FAMU about a proposal and before leaving describes to Dave and I what he wants done for the day. On the north side of the farm are nine new garden rows that are being prepared for seeding. In the morning we will spread amendments, which is another word for fertilizers over two of these rows. This doesn't sound like much but when you're doing everything by hand things add up quickly. There are four types of fertilizers and they are each in large bags, about 40 or 50 pounds each. We wheel these over to the rows with two wheel barrels and then scoop the material into a large round tin about six inches deep. Then you just walk along each row and spread the fertilizer out by hand with a scoop or plastic bowl. After all four treatments are down then we load up the wheel barrels with a concoction of manure and wheat stalks and spread that over each row using a shovel. Later, and I mean much later when all the rows are treated Jack will till the mixtures into the soil with one of the tractors and they will be ready for planting. There's a small greenhouse on the south side of the cutting shed where the seedlings are already growing in advance. While we're busy with that Carmen shows up and let's us know she is in the main house making soup and it will be ready shortly. It takes the two of us about three hours to finish the two rows then we break for lunch. Salad, soup, buttered homemade bread and cranberry juice are the menu for the day and it's all good. Both Jack and Carmen are vegetarian, so while I'm here that makes me a vegetarian as well, and I'm already feeling the pounds melt away even more. After lunch we pre-pick crops for Wednesday's farmer market at Lake Ella in Tallahassee. Florida has been having an incredible freeze this year, so for protection Jack has covered the entire crop with a translucent, permeable plastic cover that breaths well and keeps the temperature about nine degrees warmer. First thing is to remove this cover from the rows we will be picking from, then I need to pick four pounds of arugula. On top of the freeze damage we find that some kind of worm has been eating on some of the rows of chinese lettuce and there's a virus in some of the savanna mustard. The arugula just has some damage from the cold, some of the leaves on the outside of the row are wilted and won't be usable. So I go through carefully and I start picking one leaf at a time thinking this is going to take a lifetime, but Carmen tells me to just grab the entire bunch of each plant and cut with a pair of scissors and they will sort the good stuff out in the cutting shed. This will speed things up a bit. I'm using a pair of scissors and a large oval tin about two feet long and one foot wide and ten inches deep and when it's full I will have about a pound and a half. We finish out the early afternoon with the picking, using the warmest part of the day and then return to spreading the amendments until five.
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010 - Today is hurried in the morning, we have to finish picking and get everything weighed, bagged and put on ice in the coolers for the trip to the market. A new helper shows up for this effort, her name is Mary and I learn that she works part time for Jack, on the days he goes to market. We have a quick breakfast of oatmeal and coffee prepared on the wood burning stove in the cutting shed then we're off to work. It's Dave, Mary and myself picking and then Carmen and Jack in the cutting shed doing the sorting, weighing and bagging. In addition to the farmers market Jack has started a CSA and he sells to a restaurant, so all the produce has to be bagged and packed accordingly. Things go smoothly and around 1:00 he and Mary leave, he drives straight to the Tallahassee market and Mary delivers the CSA bags first on her way in. Dave, Carmen and I break for lunch, we have leftover soup and bread that Carmen made the night before and we top that with some salad fresh from the garden. After lunch we spend the rest of the day removing the damaged crop from the areas we uncovered. I put three or four heaping wheel barrels full on the compost piles, the same for Dave.
Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 - This morning we have a new weather forecast, there's rain expected on Saturday and it's bringing warmer air into the area. There's no freezing temperatures expected tonight so Jack decides to uncover the entire crop and review the damage. This takes Dave and I about an hour, we aren't removing the cover material from the garden, we're just uncovering the crop and laying the material in the walkway between each row. Between the freeze, the worms and the virus about a third of the crop is bad and will have to be removed. All morning we're stooping and bending over, move a couple of feet and stoop and bend over. On top of the damage some of the crop has flowered, which means the stalk in the middle has grown pretty thick and Jack considers this too old, he says it gives the leaf a woody taste so he wants us to pull any of those plants. I'm standing in the garden looking at what is left of the crop and I'm astonished at all the obstacles in the way of getting a crop to the market. All considered we have easily thrown three times or more as much produce on the compost piles than went to market. Is there anything else that can get in the way? Now I'm really interested to see how the spring and summer will be when the days will be almost twice the length and no freezing temperatures. In the afternoon we break things up and change from picking bad produce to spreading another row of amendments.
Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 - There's a new farmers market on Friday evenings at a store called Bread and Roses and Jacks sources in the information grapevine say that a television crew will be there tonight, so we change our plans for the day and do more picking this morning. This is a small market so Jack and Mary do the picking and get everything ready while Dave and I continue cleaning out all the bad produce. With that almost out of the way Jack prepares a new amendment to be applied to the crops. This is a liquid application, he has a separate irrigation system that consists of a large water tank, a pump and some piping and then enough green garden hose to spray it on every corner of the gardens. Into the large water tank we mix together a gallon of liquid kelp and a gallon of liquid fish guts and then let the pump run to mix it completely. The difficult part is handling the miles of hose, it has to be arranged so you can walk between two rows and then moved to the next pair and so on. After the initial demonstration Jack and Mary leave for the market and then we finish out the day between removing the last of the bad crop and spraying the liquid amendments.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Changes
Well, things are slow right now and Renee has let me know she won't be needing any help for a while. I was fully expecting to go back for another two or three weeks to see the new chicks and ducklings and learn what it takes to get them from little chickies to say a teenage hen, but that's not to be. But I did get to see them, I went out to the farm to pick up the rest of my stuff and the chicks are in a small pen which consists of a small wading pool bordered by a cardboard fence with two heat lamps hanging above them to keep things comfortable. It's hard to imagine that these little chicks will go from two or three in the palm of your hand to fully grown and weighing three to five pounds in around eleven short weeks. Maybe Renee will need some help in the future and I'll get to see the full cycle.
Now, it's on to the next adventure. Today is Saturday, Jan. 10, 2010 and I drove down to Sopchoppy, Florida and met Jack Simmons of Crescent Moon Farm, you can check out his website at http://www.crescentmoonorganicfarm.com Jack has a permanent intern and in two more weeks another permanent intern will arrive, but he can use some help for these two weeks, so I will start on Monday around 11:00 am. The really cool thing about his place is he makes biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, and he makes it in 150 gallon batches!! This is something I've been interested in for some time and I'm really looking forward to it. The down side is that he uses a dial up connection so for me there's no internet. So I'll be doing my posts on the weekend when I come into Tallahassee.
Now, it's on to the next adventure. Today is Saturday, Jan. 10, 2010 and I drove down to Sopchoppy, Florida and met Jack Simmons of Crescent Moon Farm, you can check out his website at http://www.crescentmoonorganicfarm.com Jack has a permanent intern and in two more weeks another permanent intern will arrive, but he can use some help for these two weeks, so I will start on Monday around 11:00 am. The really cool thing about his place is he makes biodiesel from waste vegetable oil, and he makes it in 150 gallon batches!! This is something I've been interested in for some time and I'm really looking forward to it. The down side is that he uses a dial up connection so for me there's no internet. So I'll be doing my posts on the weekend when I come into Tallahassee.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Twin Oaks Farm - Dec 20, 2009
Monday Dec. 14, 2009 - Today was warmer but still cool, overcast and gray all day. The big activity for today is to move the square where the chicken and duck coups are located. That means we have to leave the birds in their coups while we take down the portable electric fence, set up the fence posts in the new locations then disconnect all the automatic watering devices to all the coups and move the coups and all the watering hoses. Then we reconnect everything and run the wire around the new fence and then let the birds out. Like a lot of things on the farm it's a simple enough task but it takes the two of us about two hours to complete. I should take some pictures of the old squares so you can see how the chicken fertilizer helps the pasture. There are 8' x 12' rectangles of green, green grass in the pasture of brown winter grass, and in the summer when the grass is growing so much faster it will be about a foot tall, so it's definitely worth it. The next task for the day is to pick mandarin. There is some kind of wild critter visiting the mandarin trees, probably at night and eating too much of the fruit, so Renee has decided to pick the crop clean. Today we will pick two of the four trees complete of their fruit for preserves, the other two trees will wait until later in the week and that fruit will be sold at the market. After picking the two trees clean we spend the rest of the day in the commercial kitchen peeling and cooking the fruit, this is the priority for the day and so today's eggs and those from the weekend have to wait. In the late morning we notice the walk-in fridge is acting up again and make the call to the AC repairman. Renee tells them she wants to process chicken this Thursday and she really needs the thing to be reliable. This time it's a different technician, the company is actually two brothers that took over from the father and this one is the namesake of the company. He dives into it and takes the freezer door off the hinge so he can get in and out easily while he is isolating the refrigerant leak. It takes him a couple of hours and he even takes the time to clean the door hinge so it works better, noticing also that the nylon bushing in the bottom hinge is mushroomed and probably needs to be replaced to get the door to close with less effort. Hopefully this is the permanent fix for the thing.
Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009 - This morning is warmer and it's raining. All day long we get a on and off drizzling, just enough to keep things wet and slippery. During the morning feeding we move all the coups forward by one length to new grass, the coups will remain there for a day or two and then we'll move them again. For the rest of the day Renee has to go to Panama City to get canning and labeling supplies and a new propane bottle from Home Depot. There's a boat load of eggs in the walk-in fridge so the mp3 player is a must. Before starting I get it all loaded up with the usual news and interviews to get me through the day. From around 10:00 to 5:00 I'm in the kitchen looking out the window at the chickens, an incredible seven hours at the sink in the commercial kitchen cleaning three buckets of duck and four buckets of chicken eggs, taking a break every two hours or so for lunch or a cup of tea. I can feel it in my back but the aches are getting smaller and you'll be happy to know that the pounds are dropping off. Two weeks ago I went to the storage unit and dug out some old pants that were down a size and now they're already starting to feel loose. That's the real good news.
Wednesday Dec. 16, - 2009 In the morning the weather is slightly overcast and cold, but the sun comes out mid morning and it turns into a really nice day. Today we have to get ready for processing 61 broiler hens tomorrow. Step one is to move the broilers from the pasture up to the side yard next to the commercial kitchen. In preparation I clean the tarp we use beneath the coup and Renee uses the riding lawnmower to move a small coup into position. Then she spreads the tarp out inside the coup and I pick up the corners so she can get it into final position. This is one of the really small coups, no laying house or stooping rail, it's really light weight, in fact in a high wind it could be a kite. The chickens aren't fed after 6:00 pm the night before and the tarp is to prevent them from scratching the grass and feeding on insects, this insures an empty gizzard. With the coup ready the task now is to move the hens around ten at a time using the modified plastic storage container. It's just a plastic box with a snap on lid, but the lid has two large square holes cut out of it. We place the hens into the box and then put a perforated cloth over the top so they can't see out and get all worked into a panic, then put the lid on top and snap it into place. Place the box in the trailer behind the riding lawnmower and transport the hens from the pasture to the side yard and make sure they have adequate water for the next 24 hours. Next is to get out all the processing equipment from the barn and set it up on the sidewalk next to the commercial kitchen. If you want more details about this you can read a older post from day 5 describing the various workstations for this process. All the equipment is out from the barn and set up, we have a partial bottle of propane and the new full one, the only thing left is to move the stainless steel tables from the kitchen to the sidewalk and then setup the 10' x 10' tent over them. We use two tables this time because we will have a total of five people working which is one more than the first time. Next is to clean some organic lemons and oranges that Renee bought by the pound for her preserves but is going to sell at a markup. Each piece of fruit has to be cleaned with a small plastic brush the size of a large toothbrush, like the size for a cow or horse. The bristles of the brush get into the pores of the fruit and clean out all the dust and dirt which makes for a very cosmetically appealing piece of fruit, then they are hand dried and placed in plastic containers for display. Item last for the day is the evening feeding and then clean the chicken eggs to keep ahead of things.
Thursday Dec. 17, 2009 - Cold morning and gray all day with the threat of rain but no rain. Today will be a record setting day, we will process 61 chickens with the help of five people. Paula and Renee will take the hens from the coup and slay them in the cones, then dip them in the hot water pot one at a time until four of them are ready to be placed in the de-feathering machine. Then Paula will cut off the heads and feet and place them under running water in the outdoor sink on the deck near the kitchen. The three eviscerators, Tony, Mary and Ann will then take the birds one at a time and remove the hearts, livers and gizzards and then put the remaining guts in a single bucket so they can be spread over the compost pile later. The third person doing eviscerating makes a big difference, it really speeds things along and we finish up the last bird around 1:30, then break for lunch. It's only appropriate that we should have chicken for lunch today, with black beans over white rice and more boiled vegetables. Before lunch Mary tells us she is getting the last of her processing equipment from the shipper this week and will be ready to process her first group of birds on Sunday and asks if we can help her out. Both Renee and I agree to meet her at her farm in Tallahassee on Sunday morning at 9:00. After lunch the cleanup effort starts, everything has to be cleaned with warm soapy water and then sanitized with chlorine solution, then put away in the garage or barn. This takes the rest of the day and I'm happy to say that it's easy to put away the processing equipment in the new streamlined barn, CONTROL is slowly overtaking KAOS. After the evening feeding I clean the days chicken eggs because tomorrow will be spent getting ready for the farmers market on Saturday and we need to stay ahead of the game as much as we can. Dinner is leftovers from lunch.
Friday Dec. 18, 2009 - Today the weather is still cold but with a drizzling rain added just to make things exciting in a boring kind of way. I take care of the morning feeding while Renee gets more preserves ready. The next task for me is to pick about half the remaining mandarin crop and clean them for the market. Now we have to start getting the van ready but there are two garbage cans of compost from the Hilton. Renee picked these up on Tuesday when she was in Panama City to get supplies and they have been in the van since then, getting very ripe if you know what I mean. So I get the riding lawnmower w/ trailer, a pitchfork and a shovel, then load the compost into the trailer and head out to the compost pile in a light drizzling rain. Yuck, this weather is terrible, I mean it really sucks and it's cold to boot! Spreading the compost doesn't take hardly any time at all but then cleaning the garbage cans thoroughly well in the rain is a really choice activity but it has to be done because the restaurant wants their cans back and we want more composting material ... oh how the world turns. I feel like the postman, delivery come rain or shine but in my case it's "must be cleaned". The clean cans are loaded into the van first, up near the front behind the drivers seat so the tent/awning can go in next and then two portable tables behind the passenger seat towards the rear. Directly behind the passenger seat, through the side doors will be all the preserves and fresh fruit. From the rear doors all the igloo coolers go in one at a time on top of the two tables. When it's finished the van is just about filled to capacity and it's packed nice and tight so nothing really moves around in transit. With that done I'm just about ready to leave for Tallahassee and then I remember I have to pack my things since I'm going to be off for Christmas for the next two weeks. Back in my room I start to look around at all the stuff I have brought out to the farm, two bags of clothes, a full book bag that I haven't had time to even think about and my laptop with all it's accessories. Ok I think, about a half hour to pack and then I remember Renee asked me to clean my bathroom because she will have company over the holiday. So there's another 45 minutes. Finally around 7:00 I'm on the road.
Sunday Dec. 20, 2009 - This morning is very cold, when I get to my truck the dew from last night has frozen on the windshield ... burrr ... this brings back memories of cold Indiana winters when I was in high school. But those memories include snow on the ground and I'm glad I don't have to deal with any of that! Mary of OrchardPond Organics (here's the link http://www.orchardpondorganics.com )is processing her first batch of chickens and I agreed to come out at 9:00 to help out. Her farm is on the outskirts of Tallahassee and it takes about fifteen minutes to get there. On arrival I see that Renee is already there, her and Mary are setting up a large hot water heating tub to dunk the chickens prior to being de-feathered. This tub is about 30 inches square and about 24 inches tall which is a lot larger than the 5 gallon pot we used at Renee's, plus it has a monitoring system built in to keep the water temperature at 150 degrees and it comes with an accessory that allows us to dunk four hens at a time which just happens to be the number the de-feathering machine will hold, and guess what, they are made by the same company. Hmmm, note to self, this looks like a good combination. Other than that one piece of equipment the setup is the same. Also, Mary has a large three compartment sink in the middle of the yard that she uses to clean veggies and there are two stainless steel tables set up, one off of each side, for the evicserating and then behind the sink are five pails with ice water and a table for labeling the birds once they have been bagged and weighed. A nice orderly setup, things should go pretty smooth. After another half hour the water temperature is ready and more volunteers have shown up to help. There's Mary and Renee, myself, Mina and Lydia who work for Mary, Jenny, an intern from Minnesota and Dick who is a friend. This is quite a work force except for one thing, no one else except Mary, Renee and myself have any experience, so first there has to be some quick training. The first batch of four birds come out of the defeathering drum and Renee does a demo on each of them. She explains what she is going to do and then starts the process and before finishing hands the bird off to one of the volunteers who then ask questions while they finish it up. After the second batch of four the wheels are rolling. In a few short hours we are finished with all the birds. After a short break for coffee and bread we start the cleanup phase and I jump straight to one of the nastiest jobs because I know I'm going to end up there in the end anyway so why not just start there and skip all the little stuff. The slaying station, or throat cutting station is the messiest if the messy. It consists of the eight stainless steel cones, their stand and the plastic three segment bucket below that catches all the blood. One of the other volunteers had cleaned all the cones while we were having coffee but then had to leave for another engagement, so only the stand and the bucket are left. I think the girls won't want to deal with this so I just go for it. I round up some warm soapy water from Jenny the intern and use an abrasive backed sponge to get it all spic-n-span clean, it takes about 30 minutes for both items. Then Mina shows up in an electric golf cart and we load up the equipment and take it all to the storage area. At this point all the big stuff is put away and I see that only Mary and Mina are left and they are putting hoses away and other odd chores. I offer to stay if they have other heavy work and Mary says that's ok and thanks me for helping out, then offers me my choice of the birds in the fridge. I comment something about one of my sacred tenets in life being to never turn down free food and that something in the four pound area would work just great for me. While I'm selecting my future dinner we have a short conversation about how to keep in touch through her website so if I'm able to I can help her out the next time she's ready to process. Ten minutes later my boots are in the back of my truck, tomorrow's dinner is on the passenger seat and I'm on the way home.
I'm taking a Christmas break from interning but I'll be back after the New Year. Soon after Jan. 1 Renee is going to order new broiler chicks so this will bring the entire chicken experience full circle, I don't want to miss that!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Tuesday Dec. 15, 2009 - This morning is warmer and it's raining. All day long we get a on and off drizzling, just enough to keep things wet and slippery. During the morning feeding we move all the coups forward by one length to new grass, the coups will remain there for a day or two and then we'll move them again. For the rest of the day Renee has to go to Panama City to get canning and labeling supplies and a new propane bottle from Home Depot. There's a boat load of eggs in the walk-in fridge so the mp3 player is a must. Before starting I get it all loaded up with the usual news and interviews to get me through the day. From around 10:00 to 5:00 I'm in the kitchen looking out the window at the chickens, an incredible seven hours at the sink in the commercial kitchen cleaning three buckets of duck and four buckets of chicken eggs, taking a break every two hours or so for lunch or a cup of tea. I can feel it in my back but the aches are getting smaller and you'll be happy to know that the pounds are dropping off. Two weeks ago I went to the storage unit and dug out some old pants that were down a size and now they're already starting to feel loose. That's the real good news.
Wednesday Dec. 16, - 2009 In the morning the weather is slightly overcast and cold, but the sun comes out mid morning and it turns into a really nice day. Today we have to get ready for processing 61 broiler hens tomorrow. Step one is to move the broilers from the pasture up to the side yard next to the commercial kitchen. In preparation I clean the tarp we use beneath the coup and Renee uses the riding lawnmower to move a small coup into position. Then she spreads the tarp out inside the coup and I pick up the corners so she can get it into final position. This is one of the really small coups, no laying house or stooping rail, it's really light weight, in fact in a high wind it could be a kite. The chickens aren't fed after 6:00 pm the night before and the tarp is to prevent them from scratching the grass and feeding on insects, this insures an empty gizzard. With the coup ready the task now is to move the hens around ten at a time using the modified plastic storage container. It's just a plastic box with a snap on lid, but the lid has two large square holes cut out of it. We place the hens into the box and then put a perforated cloth over the top so they can't see out and get all worked into a panic, then put the lid on top and snap it into place. Place the box in the trailer behind the riding lawnmower and transport the hens from the pasture to the side yard and make sure they have adequate water for the next 24 hours. Next is to get out all the processing equipment from the barn and set it up on the sidewalk next to the commercial kitchen. If you want more details about this you can read a older post from day 5 describing the various workstations for this process. All the equipment is out from the barn and set up, we have a partial bottle of propane and the new full one, the only thing left is to move the stainless steel tables from the kitchen to the sidewalk and then setup the 10' x 10' tent over them. We use two tables this time because we will have a total of five people working which is one more than the first time. Next is to clean some organic lemons and oranges that Renee bought by the pound for her preserves but is going to sell at a markup. Each piece of fruit has to be cleaned with a small plastic brush the size of a large toothbrush, like the size for a cow or horse. The bristles of the brush get into the pores of the fruit and clean out all the dust and dirt which makes for a very cosmetically appealing piece of fruit, then they are hand dried and placed in plastic containers for display. Item last for the day is the evening feeding and then clean the chicken eggs to keep ahead of things.
Thursday Dec. 17, 2009 - Cold morning and gray all day with the threat of rain but no rain. Today will be a record setting day, we will process 61 chickens with the help of five people. Paula and Renee will take the hens from the coup and slay them in the cones, then dip them in the hot water pot one at a time until four of them are ready to be placed in the de-feathering machine. Then Paula will cut off the heads and feet and place them under running water in the outdoor sink on the deck near the kitchen. The three eviscerators, Tony, Mary and Ann will then take the birds one at a time and remove the hearts, livers and gizzards and then put the remaining guts in a single bucket so they can be spread over the compost pile later. The third person doing eviscerating makes a big difference, it really speeds things along and we finish up the last bird around 1:30, then break for lunch. It's only appropriate that we should have chicken for lunch today, with black beans over white rice and more boiled vegetables. Before lunch Mary tells us she is getting the last of her processing equipment from the shipper this week and will be ready to process her first group of birds on Sunday and asks if we can help her out. Both Renee and I agree to meet her at her farm in Tallahassee on Sunday morning at 9:00. After lunch the cleanup effort starts, everything has to be cleaned with warm soapy water and then sanitized with chlorine solution, then put away in the garage or barn. This takes the rest of the day and I'm happy to say that it's easy to put away the processing equipment in the new streamlined barn, CONTROL is slowly overtaking KAOS. After the evening feeding I clean the days chicken eggs because tomorrow will be spent getting ready for the farmers market on Saturday and we need to stay ahead of the game as much as we can. Dinner is leftovers from lunch.
Friday Dec. 18, 2009 - Today the weather is still cold but with a drizzling rain added just to make things exciting in a boring kind of way. I take care of the morning feeding while Renee gets more preserves ready. The next task for me is to pick about half the remaining mandarin crop and clean them for the market. Now we have to start getting the van ready but there are two garbage cans of compost from the Hilton. Renee picked these up on Tuesday when she was in Panama City to get supplies and they have been in the van since then, getting very ripe if you know what I mean. So I get the riding lawnmower w/ trailer, a pitchfork and a shovel, then load the compost into the trailer and head out to the compost pile in a light drizzling rain. Yuck, this weather is terrible, I mean it really sucks and it's cold to boot! Spreading the compost doesn't take hardly any time at all but then cleaning the garbage cans thoroughly well in the rain is a really choice activity but it has to be done because the restaurant wants their cans back and we want more composting material ... oh how the world turns. I feel like the postman, delivery come rain or shine but in my case it's "must be cleaned". The clean cans are loaded into the van first, up near the front behind the drivers seat so the tent/awning can go in next and then two portable tables behind the passenger seat towards the rear. Directly behind the passenger seat, through the side doors will be all the preserves and fresh fruit. From the rear doors all the igloo coolers go in one at a time on top of the two tables. When it's finished the van is just about filled to capacity and it's packed nice and tight so nothing really moves around in transit. With that done I'm just about ready to leave for Tallahassee and then I remember I have to pack my things since I'm going to be off for Christmas for the next two weeks. Back in my room I start to look around at all the stuff I have brought out to the farm, two bags of clothes, a full book bag that I haven't had time to even think about and my laptop with all it's accessories. Ok I think, about a half hour to pack and then I remember Renee asked me to clean my bathroom because she will have company over the holiday. So there's another 45 minutes. Finally around 7:00 I'm on the road.
Sunday Dec. 20, 2009 - This morning is very cold, when I get to my truck the dew from last night has frozen on the windshield ... burrr ... this brings back memories of cold Indiana winters when I was in high school. But those memories include snow on the ground and I'm glad I don't have to deal with any of that! Mary of OrchardPond Organics (here's the link http://www.orchardpondorganics.com )is processing her first batch of chickens and I agreed to come out at 9:00 to help out. Her farm is on the outskirts of Tallahassee and it takes about fifteen minutes to get there. On arrival I see that Renee is already there, her and Mary are setting up a large hot water heating tub to dunk the chickens prior to being de-feathered. This tub is about 30 inches square and about 24 inches tall which is a lot larger than the 5 gallon pot we used at Renee's, plus it has a monitoring system built in to keep the water temperature at 150 degrees and it comes with an accessory that allows us to dunk four hens at a time which just happens to be the number the de-feathering machine will hold, and guess what, they are made by the same company. Hmmm, note to self, this looks like a good combination. Other than that one piece of equipment the setup is the same. Also, Mary has a large three compartment sink in the middle of the yard that she uses to clean veggies and there are two stainless steel tables set up, one off of each side, for the evicserating and then behind the sink are five pails with ice water and a table for labeling the birds once they have been bagged and weighed. A nice orderly setup, things should go pretty smooth. After another half hour the water temperature is ready and more volunteers have shown up to help. There's Mary and Renee, myself, Mina and Lydia who work for Mary, Jenny, an intern from Minnesota and Dick who is a friend. This is quite a work force except for one thing, no one else except Mary, Renee and myself have any experience, so first there has to be some quick training. The first batch of four birds come out of the defeathering drum and Renee does a demo on each of them. She explains what she is going to do and then starts the process and before finishing hands the bird off to one of the volunteers who then ask questions while they finish it up. After the second batch of four the wheels are rolling. In a few short hours we are finished with all the birds. After a short break for coffee and bread we start the cleanup phase and I jump straight to one of the nastiest jobs because I know I'm going to end up there in the end anyway so why not just start there and skip all the little stuff. The slaying station, or throat cutting station is the messiest if the messy. It consists of the eight stainless steel cones, their stand and the plastic three segment bucket below that catches all the blood. One of the other volunteers had cleaned all the cones while we were having coffee but then had to leave for another engagement, so only the stand and the bucket are left. I think the girls won't want to deal with this so I just go for it. I round up some warm soapy water from Jenny the intern and use an abrasive backed sponge to get it all spic-n-span clean, it takes about 30 minutes for both items. Then Mina shows up in an electric golf cart and we load up the equipment and take it all to the storage area. At this point all the big stuff is put away and I see that only Mary and Mina are left and they are putting hoses away and other odd chores. I offer to stay if they have other heavy work and Mary says that's ok and thanks me for helping out, then offers me my choice of the birds in the fridge. I comment something about one of my sacred tenets in life being to never turn down free food and that something in the four pound area would work just great for me. While I'm selecting my future dinner we have a short conversation about how to keep in touch through her website so if I'm able to I can help her out the next time she's ready to process. Ten minutes later my boots are in the back of my truck, tomorrow's dinner is on the passenger seat and I'm on the way home.
I'm taking a Christmas break from interning but I'll be back after the New Year. Soon after Jan. 1 Renee is going to order new broiler chicks so this will bring the entire chicken experience full circle, I don't want to miss that!
Merry Christmas everyone!
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Twin Oaks Farm - Dec 12, 2009
Thursday Dec. 10, 2009 - This morning is cold and gray but the heavy weather has cleared out, around mid morning the clouds break up and the rest of the day is nice, cool and sunny. The first new task after breakfast is to spread another layer of compost material. Since last weeks processing we have been storing the chicken remains and the veggie clippings from the kitchen have been accumulating, plus we have the peelings from all the mandarin and about two gallons of chicken guano. All need to be added to the compost pile. I pile everything into the trailer of the riding lawnmower, grab two pitch forks and a shovel (just one shovel Richard) and we head out to the compost piles. Since we don't have that much material to add we will just work with the larger of the piles. When we arrive I notice that the pile has shrunk, the decomposition has resulted in the pile shrinking a good 6 inches ... where does it all go I think to myself? We remove the plastic cover and uncover what looks like just a pile of wet leaves which I think is normal since we have been getting so much rain lately. A closer look reveals some mold in one area and a hole with a small burrow next to it. Some small creature has been visiting the pile for some reason, perhaps to eat or to keep warm down within the pile, but they are long gone at this point. We spread out all the various material over the pile, again we don't have that much and it doesn't take long, then replace the cover and move on.
I fill out the remainder of the morning by cleaning eggs, then the noon feeding and we are ready for lunch. All morning Renee has been thawing out large amounts of frozen fruit to make preserves, peach, blueberries, fig, pear and of course we have the mandarin. For the rest of the afternoon she will be busy working inside while I clean out all the buckets and pails that had been holding the chicken remains and other compost material. All the containers need to be cleaned thoroughly with warm soapy water and then sanitized with a 2% chlorine solution, yuck I think, more cleaning, but at least the sun is out to keep me somewhat warm. After a couple of hours everything is cleaned and put away. Now it's 3:00 and time for the afternoon feeding. We had been feeding in the evening at 5:00 but this is right at sunset and the birds stop eating when the sun goes down, so we have moved up the afternoon feeding from 5:00 to 3:00 in an attempt to give them more daylight to eat. Hopefully this will result in heavier broilers and more eggs from the layers. I also collect the chicken eggs for the day and clean them when I get back to the kitchen, we want to get ahead of the game as much as possible because Friday is usually rushed to get everything done and get the van set up for the market on Saturday. Around 5:30 Renee notices that the commercial fridge in the garage isn't keeping temperature so I go outside and stand near the compressor to see what is happening. Sure enough the compressor comes on for about ten seconds and then goes off for about 20 seconds and keeps repeating this cycle continuously. She calls the AC repair company and they are tied up on some emergency for the night and agree to come by in the morning to take a look. Renee moves all the chicken from that fridge to other freezers in the house. I'm thinking this is a big deal but she doesn't seem very worried. I ask her why she even uses the big one since we only have about half of it full at any given time and a couple of good energy star domestic fridges would result in a huge savings in electricity. She agrees but says the problem is a domestic fridge won't hold a temperature down to 34 degrees, that they are only good for around 40 degrees and the difference is very important when keeping the chickens fresh without actually freezing them. I'm scratching my head thinking I should look into this but she assures me she has considered it in depth and if it was possible she would have done it already. Dinner is vegetable soup and a frittata with left over veggies from the other night and duck eggs.
Friday Dec. 11, 2009 - Overnight I peek out the window and see there's not a cloud in the sky, stars everywhere, but when I wake up in the morning the clouds have returned and again it's overall gray and very cold. Like, is this Florida? I feel somewhat closer to the arctic circle than I need to be but I can see all the green trees, so apparently the arctic circle has come to Florida. After breakfast we do the morning feeding and then move each of the coups to their new positions on fresh pasture which will be good until Monday when we move the square. The rest of the day is easy and indoors. Renee has canned an incredible amount of preserves and is behind on the labels, plus she has a special feature for the holidays. She has a simple folded gift tag with the Twin Oaks Farm logo and inside it shows Santa pulling a little sleigh. A cute little extra that she hopes her clients will love. My job is to cut out the printed tags with a cutting knife, fold and then punch a hole in the upper left corner so she can tie each one to a jar of preserves. So that's how I fill my morning and afternoon on top of the feedings. Around 10:00 the AC repairman shows up and takes a quick look at the cooler. It turns out this is a recurring problem in the refrigerant lines connecting the compressor to the evaporator, there's a small pinhole size leak or crack or something .. somewhere .. and ultimately the copper lines will have to be replaced, but that will take down the refrigerator for a day or so which requires the stars to align in a certain way which is yet to happen. The work around is to recharge the system with refrigerant and get it back in service for a couple more weeks or months and work on getting those stars to align. Ten minutes later the fridge is back in service. After lunch I just have to load the van with all the stuff needed for the farmers market so in the morning all Renee has to do is load up the coolers and head out. Short day. After everything is set I'm loaded up and on my way to Tallahassee.
I fill out the remainder of the morning by cleaning eggs, then the noon feeding and we are ready for lunch. All morning Renee has been thawing out large amounts of frozen fruit to make preserves, peach, blueberries, fig, pear and of course we have the mandarin. For the rest of the afternoon she will be busy working inside while I clean out all the buckets and pails that had been holding the chicken remains and other compost material. All the containers need to be cleaned thoroughly with warm soapy water and then sanitized with a 2% chlorine solution, yuck I think, more cleaning, but at least the sun is out to keep me somewhat warm. After a couple of hours everything is cleaned and put away. Now it's 3:00 and time for the afternoon feeding. We had been feeding in the evening at 5:00 but this is right at sunset and the birds stop eating when the sun goes down, so we have moved up the afternoon feeding from 5:00 to 3:00 in an attempt to give them more daylight to eat. Hopefully this will result in heavier broilers and more eggs from the layers. I also collect the chicken eggs for the day and clean them when I get back to the kitchen, we want to get ahead of the game as much as possible because Friday is usually rushed to get everything done and get the van set up for the market on Saturday. Around 5:30 Renee notices that the commercial fridge in the garage isn't keeping temperature so I go outside and stand near the compressor to see what is happening. Sure enough the compressor comes on for about ten seconds and then goes off for about 20 seconds and keeps repeating this cycle continuously. She calls the AC repair company and they are tied up on some emergency for the night and agree to come by in the morning to take a look. Renee moves all the chicken from that fridge to other freezers in the house. I'm thinking this is a big deal but she doesn't seem very worried. I ask her why she even uses the big one since we only have about half of it full at any given time and a couple of good energy star domestic fridges would result in a huge savings in electricity. She agrees but says the problem is a domestic fridge won't hold a temperature down to 34 degrees, that they are only good for around 40 degrees and the difference is very important when keeping the chickens fresh without actually freezing them. I'm scratching my head thinking I should look into this but she assures me she has considered it in depth and if it was possible she would have done it already. Dinner is vegetable soup and a frittata with left over veggies from the other night and duck eggs.
Friday Dec. 11, 2009 - Overnight I peek out the window and see there's not a cloud in the sky, stars everywhere, but when I wake up in the morning the clouds have returned and again it's overall gray and very cold. Like, is this Florida? I feel somewhat closer to the arctic circle than I need to be but I can see all the green trees, so apparently the arctic circle has come to Florida. After breakfast we do the morning feeding and then move each of the coups to their new positions on fresh pasture which will be good until Monday when we move the square. The rest of the day is easy and indoors. Renee has canned an incredible amount of preserves and is behind on the labels, plus she has a special feature for the holidays. She has a simple folded gift tag with the Twin Oaks Farm logo and inside it shows Santa pulling a little sleigh. A cute little extra that she hopes her clients will love. My job is to cut out the printed tags with a cutting knife, fold and then punch a hole in the upper left corner so she can tie each one to a jar of preserves. So that's how I fill my morning and afternoon on top of the feedings. Around 10:00 the AC repairman shows up and takes a quick look at the cooler. It turns out this is a recurring problem in the refrigerant lines connecting the compressor to the evaporator, there's a small pinhole size leak or crack or something .. somewhere .. and ultimately the copper lines will have to be replaced, but that will take down the refrigerator for a day or so which requires the stars to align in a certain way which is yet to happen. The work around is to recharge the system with refrigerant and get it back in service for a couple more weeks or months and work on getting those stars to align. Ten minutes later the fridge is back in service. After lunch I just have to load the van with all the stuff needed for the farmers market so in the morning all Renee has to do is load up the coolers and head out. Short day. After everything is set I'm loaded up and on my way to Tallahassee.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Twin Oaks Farm - Dec 9, 2009
Tuesday Dec. 8, 2009 - The same modified routine this morning, straight away get up and take care of the morning feeding and then clean the duck eggs and then have breakfast. After a shower and playing on the internet for a while I finish off cleaning last nights chicken eggs and settle in on some reading material about organic gardening, a magazine of that title to be specific. The weather was nice in the morning, blue skies and temperature right on the border, too cool to be called warm and too warm to be called cool, just very nice. But around noon the clouds roll in and it starts raining a light drizzle, just enough to keep everything wet and turn off outdoor activities for a while. So I go through and clean up both kitchens, nothing major just organizing, except the domestic kitchen which had a big pile of dishes accumulating on the counter, which I had added to by the way. Renee gets back around 3:00 and her Explorer is filled to the brim with supplies and new kitchen utensils, etc, etc. The rain has stopped but could return any minute so we get everything unloaded while we have the chance and then I take care of the evening feeding and chicken egg collection. See what I mean about the egg work being "never done". Renee tells me about her weekend while we are having our dinner of assorted vegetables in a mild curry sauce over brown rice, which is very good. The usual cleanup and I'm off to bed by 7:30.
Wednesday Dec. 9, 2009 - This morning the weather situation has made a considerable change, the temperature is much warmer, so warm that it feels like a spring day and the wind has picked up. Renee gets a phone call from her friend Mary who had helped us with the chicken processing a few weeks back, a Tornado touched down a couple of miles from her farm near Tallahassee and we hear from the tv morning news there is a tornado watch for our area. During the morning feeding it starts to rain, but not anything heavy, just a drizzling. It breaks up after about an hour and I move on to my next task which is to clean 8 coolers that Renee uses to transport the various products to the market. She has five large igloos that have a hinged top and then three normal size that have a removable top. They all need to be scrubbed with warm soapy water, especially the large ones since they are white overall and are starting to show signs of wear. I take my time and do a thorough job which takes about fifteen minutes per cooler, what the plastic scrub brush doesn't get I use a kitchen scrub pad and then rinse with the hose .... they all look brand new to me! After finishing I'm completely soaked from the tops of my boots to my neck and my fingers are all wrinkled. Luckily it's time for the noon feeding and then I change into some clean, dry clothes before sitting down for lunch. Renee is busy in the commercial kitchen all day making preserves and apparently doesn't need any help, or isn't asking for any, so I move on to the barn to make some more progress on the reorganization. I want to move all the plastic fencing material out and re-stack a pile of cardboard that is in the way of the riding lawnmower. There isn't enough room to keep things semi organized and keep the plastic fencing in the barn so we have decided to use another storage shed which is behind the barn. So, the first new sub-task to my new barn-organizing-task is to clean out the small storage shed. I open the large double doors and I'm greeted with the same cluttered mess that used to live in the barn. Crap everywhere. Particle board signs that have been left in the rain, painted trim boards, unpainted trim boards, hardibacker pieces that are too small to have a function, a small piece of greenboard, some of this and that and all of it just thrown in a big pile just far enough inside the shed to allow the doors to close. Everything must come out so I can put it all back in a more organized way. About a third of the way into it I start to move the particle board signs, there are five or six of them and they are about four feet square and piled one on top of another. I pick up the first one and roaches go running in every direction, then the next board and it's the same thing. Under each board is a little village and all together the roaches have themselves a megatropolis going. Where are those chickens when you need them anyway? After everything is back in I have about 50% of the floor area freed up for the plastic fencing, which isn't going to take nearly that much room. The plastic fencing comes in pieces about four feet high by about six feet long and each one has been zip tied to one of the plastic posts for the portable electric fence, some of them three or four segments long. Then they were rolled up and set aside. So, one by one I carry them to the small storage shed and finally get things opened up so I can re-arrange the pile of cardboard against the wall and out of the way of the riding lawnmower. I look at the final arrangement and I think that it was a lot of work for a small reward, but it does open up more floor space and it will make things easier when we are moving the processing equipment in and out next Thursday. I guess I can count that as a gain. I see the sun is getting low on the horizon but I have about an hour to kill before it will be time for the evening feeding so I get my camera and take some pictures of the property. I haven't figured out how to post pictures on this blog so I'll post them on my facebook page with the others. Tonight's dinner is veggies and then chicken gizzards cooked in a burgandy wine sauce, Mmmmm. Then the usual after dinner clean up and I'm off to bed.
Wednesday Dec. 9, 2009 - This morning the weather situation has made a considerable change, the temperature is much warmer, so warm that it feels like a spring day and the wind has picked up. Renee gets a phone call from her friend Mary who had helped us with the chicken processing a few weeks back, a Tornado touched down a couple of miles from her farm near Tallahassee and we hear from the tv morning news there is a tornado watch for our area. During the morning feeding it starts to rain, but not anything heavy, just a drizzling. It breaks up after about an hour and I move on to my next task which is to clean 8 coolers that Renee uses to transport the various products to the market. She has five large igloos that have a hinged top and then three normal size that have a removable top. They all need to be scrubbed with warm soapy water, especially the large ones since they are white overall and are starting to show signs of wear. I take my time and do a thorough job which takes about fifteen minutes per cooler, what the plastic scrub brush doesn't get I use a kitchen scrub pad and then rinse with the hose .... they all look brand new to me! After finishing I'm completely soaked from the tops of my boots to my neck and my fingers are all wrinkled. Luckily it's time for the noon feeding and then I change into some clean, dry clothes before sitting down for lunch. Renee is busy in the commercial kitchen all day making preserves and apparently doesn't need any help, or isn't asking for any, so I move on to the barn to make some more progress on the reorganization. I want to move all the plastic fencing material out and re-stack a pile of cardboard that is in the way of the riding lawnmower. There isn't enough room to keep things semi organized and keep the plastic fencing in the barn so we have decided to use another storage shed which is behind the barn. So, the first new sub-task to my new barn-organizing-task is to clean out the small storage shed. I open the large double doors and I'm greeted with the same cluttered mess that used to live in the barn. Crap everywhere. Particle board signs that have been left in the rain, painted trim boards, unpainted trim boards, hardibacker pieces that are too small to have a function, a small piece of greenboard, some of this and that and all of it just thrown in a big pile just far enough inside the shed to allow the doors to close. Everything must come out so I can put it all back in a more organized way. About a third of the way into it I start to move the particle board signs, there are five or six of them and they are about four feet square and piled one on top of another. I pick up the first one and roaches go running in every direction, then the next board and it's the same thing. Under each board is a little village and all together the roaches have themselves a megatropolis going. Where are those chickens when you need them anyway? After everything is back in I have about 50% of the floor area freed up for the plastic fencing, which isn't going to take nearly that much room. The plastic fencing comes in pieces about four feet high by about six feet long and each one has been zip tied to one of the plastic posts for the portable electric fence, some of them three or four segments long. Then they were rolled up and set aside. So, one by one I carry them to the small storage shed and finally get things opened up so I can re-arrange the pile of cardboard against the wall and out of the way of the riding lawnmower. I look at the final arrangement and I think that it was a lot of work for a small reward, but it does open up more floor space and it will make things easier when we are moving the processing equipment in and out next Thursday. I guess I can count that as a gain. I see the sun is getting low on the horizon but I have about an hour to kill before it will be time for the evening feeding so I get my camera and take some pictures of the property. I haven't figured out how to post pictures on this blog so I'll post them on my facebook page with the others. Tonight's dinner is veggies and then chicken gizzards cooked in a burgandy wine sauce, Mmmmm. Then the usual after dinner clean up and I'm off to bed.
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