Gearing up for a Great Season!

We have been busy Big Lickers here trying to get a head start on everything while the rain has been kept at bay for the time being. With the help of our great friend and neighbor Buck we have been able to install the wood stove inside our greenhouse (see Asinete above putting on the finishing touches and Buck and Eugene contemplating using a coffee can as the top of the stove pipe). Now that the wood stove is completed we will fire it up in a few weeks when our tiny tomatoes, eggplants and peppers (above) get bigger and need to be moved out of the protection of the hotframe that they are in now.
We also have been chipping tree trimmings and using the mulch to put around our baby peach trees like the red haven peach above. The mulch helps keep the weeds out and holds the moisture during the summer months... peach trees like lots of water!
In other exciting farm news we have decided to enlist the help of four pigs this spring to help us uproot our newly acquired pastures. We have made a hefty investment into hog panels and will section off our pasture in increments. The pigs love to dig up everything and turn up the soil finding the roots of the grass and eating them meaning less work for us in weeding later on! Also they will fertilize the ground with their rich manure as we will follow behind them planting gardens as they move down the next section. I think the pigs will turn out to be one of our most useful farm animals (certainly more than the geese which prevent even us from getting down to our greenhouse when they are testy). In summer we will be offering our pasture raised pork! Hopefully our next farm blog will contain photos of our new pigs hard at work tilling with their powerful snouts!

Be well!

Spring is Coming!

Good Day Everyone! We are trying to keep careful documentation through photos of the events on the farm. You can see from these photos how we prepare the seedling mix using coco peat (substitute for peat moss) peat moss works well too but unfortunately peat bogs are being destroyed to harvest it. Coco peat is a by product of the coconut shell (the hair).

We have two more bundles of fruit trees (apples and persimmons) that need to be planted, some of which are pictured here patiently waiting for us to get them planted- today!

Our sungold cherry tomatoes are the first seeds to sprout as you can see.. their long slumber is over.

Also for any of you interested to see some traditional dancing from Kiribati (Asinete's homeland) click on the following links. Beautiful place, beautiful people!

Be well!

Suzie & Asinete

links to Kiribati music/dancing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hd9PrYbGDQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8FmChuGo2w

Sowing the Seeds of 2009!

Happy February Farm Friends! As you can see things at Big Lick are going ahead full steam. First off we wanted to introduce the newest member of the farm. That is "Tautia" (sounds like Tulsa) which means soldier in Asinete's language. He is a 9 week old yellow lab puppy. Asinete named him Tautia as when he grows larger the puppy will be the soldier patrolling the farm from any deer. At the farm he seems most interested in wanting to chase the chickens (a big no no) or else finding a nice pile of goose droppings to munch on (yuck!) and people always say how sweet puppy breath is! Our older golden retriever Kestrel is the perfect babysitter.

In the other pictures you can see the heating table that Asinete designed and did a great job on. This table is layered with sand, chicken wire and heating cables. The cables are tied down on the chicken wire to keep it in place. Then we put another layer of sand on top of the cables and on that put our seed trays that need that extra bottom heat (peppers, eggplant and tomatoes). In the background you can see as I started the first few seed trays to go on the inside of the heating table. Today I started Mucho Nacho peppers, sweet cluster tomatoes, green zebra tomatoes, black beauty eggplant, sungold cherry tomatoes, ancho peppers, and black krim tomatoes. This is just the beginning as tomorrow we can start going full force with seed sowing. Seed sowing is one of my favorite parts of farming. Every step from mixing together the seedling mix (coco peat, vermiculite, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, fish bone meal, lime, and blood meal). All of these mixed together make for a nutritionally complete environment for a seed to flourish in!

We spent Saturday planting 44 fruit trees on our back pasture. We planted 4 varieties of peaches for a total of 42 trees. We stuck with 3 old time favorites which are Suncrest, Rio Oso Gem, and Red Haven as well as the Frost peach trees which are said to be resistant to peach leaf curl. Sadly I was not able to get pictures of us planting the trees as both of our hands were covered in mud! In the next two days we will plant the remaining 23 trees. These include some great apple varieties as well as some persimmon trees (hachiya and fuyu). Nothing more beautiful to me than a persimmon tree in the fall... the naked trees strewn with bright orange fruits.

Our next project is to get the wood stove connected into our greenhouse for heating the entire structure. That's the thing with farming.. there's always something new to learn!

The hour is late now for this farmer as the dawdling days of winter seem to be over.

Be well!

Suzie, Asinete, Tautia and Kestrel

Meet Your Big Lick Farmers!

Good day new and returning farm friends! We wanted to introduce ourselves to some of you for the first time! We are a husband and wife team farming 5 acres on the beautiful Umpqua floodplain! Here is our story......(or kinda my story since Asinete is shy and wants to remain mysterious!)

Suzie's story.....2009 will be my 6th year of organic farming. I was born into a rural lifestyle in Orange County, Ca. in the beautiful coastal sage scrub hills and canyons of Trabuco. I grew up without electricity (home was too far away from town at the edge of Cleveland National Forest). While my parents had jobs away from "the ranch" there were always plenty of horses, pigs, chickens and goats to contend with, hills to climb, streams to forge and snakes to catch! Growing up surrounded by nature was a tremendous influence early on that directed my lifestyle and career choices. While away at college in the Monterey Bay I became involved in environmental restoration using Ca. native plants. I became an AmeriCorps intern and helped many other interns and volunteers to restore the former army base of Fort Ord back to it's native state (replanting old fire roads and abandoned artillery ranges with native plant species to increase biological diversity and prevent erosion). While in Monterey I also became involved in an organic educational farm in Salinas called ALBA. ALBA consists of more than 100 acres and is used as a school to help teach migrant farm laborers how to become independent business people, teaching students how to grow using organic methods and how to successfully market their products. I began to volunteer my extra time here helping students with their CSA programs. At ALBA while harvesting and working with the land I found my calling~ organic farming! I received my Bachelors of Science in environmental studies but did not know what I would do with it until my days at ALBA. From Monterey Bay I took a job as a school farm manager in a small town in South Monterey County called San Ardo. Here with the help of the community and school we were able to turn an abandoned 1 1/2 acres into a certified organic school/community farm. The students from K-8th attended weekly classes held at the farm in our outdoor classroom. Some classes were spent digging in the compost pile to learn about decomposing, other days measuring plant growth, some harvesting all the ingredients needed to make some salsa! It was a great place to learn more about organic farming and share the beauty of nature with children. In 2002 I decided to take a year trip overseas.. this led me to New Zealand (picking and packing kiwi fruit), into Australia (just a tourist), Fiji and then to the remote country of Kiribati where I was teaching English for nearly two years and where I happened to meet my future husband and business partner Asinete Tibwe! We married in his country and arrived in Oregon together in the summer of 2007. My mom and dad live in Myrtle Creek and told us what an amazing place Douglas County was... they were right!

More CSA Members Needed for 2009!

Hi Everyone! As the new year approaches we are looking forward to our second season of growing in the Umpqua Valley! Asinete and I would be very grateful if you could help to spread the word about Big Lick Farm! Currently we have space for full share and 1/2 share CSA members. For folks interested in the CSA program please refer them to our listing at localharvest.org We are listed under Big Lick Farm. This site has our harvest schedule, prices and all the other important things!
Asinete and I have been busy preparing holes on our new land for 42 peach trees that will be arriving next month! We will also be planting 20 apple trees (Graventstein, Spitzenburg, Golden Russet and Hudson's Golden Gem among others). So our future CSA shares will be even more bountiful!

Be well!!

Winter Wonderland

Happy Holidays Everyone! Here are some winter images that we were greeted with this morning! First time our geese and chickens have ever seen the snow! Our garlic is still pushing through! Check out Asinete trying to build a snowman!

Enjoy the winter landscape!

Wendell Berry Poem

......So friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace the flag.
Hope to live in that free republic
for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot understand.
Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered
he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop in the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under your trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion-- put your ear close,
and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap for power,
please women more than men.
Ask yourself: will this satisfy a woman
satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep of a woman
near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade.
Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is highest in your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.