Farm Journal

The Farm Journal Page is intended for quick comments or reports of activities past, present or future.  This will give some idea of our activities or thoughts.  Detailed discussions of topics will appear on the Home Page as Articles.

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May 28-30, 2011 -Faced with the reality of work to be completed before receiving plants and beginning to plant, we moved the big planting event to Memorial Day weekend.  One week reprieve and 3 day weekend for extra help (we hope).

May 20 – 21, 2011 – Need to mobilize workforce to plant approximately 900 plants.  Hope we are ready! (Moved to May 28 -30)

May 19, 2011 – Estimated arrival of the lavender plants.  (Moved to May 26)

May 7, 2011 -  Bees are scheduled to arrive.  Only one hive to start.  Amy and Dennis plan to be the “Bee Keepers“.  Delivery has been delayed due to weather, but we should be able to give the bees a good chance to build a strong hive for next year’s peak season.  NOTE:  Bees arrived in fine form and have been installed at the top of the hill!

May 2, 2011 - Attending Placer Grown Annual Meeting and Pot Luck.  Looking forward to meeting other local farmers and setting up new networks.

April 30 – May 20, 2011 – BUSY! In this time frame we need to install the weed cloth; install waterlines to the lavender field; design and install the drip irrigation; till the garden; repair / install garden fence; haul away residue from the fall barn demolition; more mowing.  Those are just the highlights!

April 30, 2011 - Time to pay attention to the Kitchen Garden.   (Yes, we are late!)  We have mowed and pulled weeds and removed previous years’ protective netting.  Plan to till this weekend and begin repairing fence.  We have our own resident deer on the property and need to find a better method of keeping them out of the garden.  While doing that we need to find a better way of controlling the “underground pests” as well.

April 28, 2011 - Update Blog and photo pages.  Have been to distracted to keep entries current!

April 27, 2011 – Field Preparation – Hired a neighbor to bring over a tractor and rototill the primary lavender planting field.  Field is now ready for weed cloth and drip irrigation.  Still need to extend water lines to convenient locations around the field.  Mowing continues!  Many areas are receiving a second mowing to remove more recent growth and to cut right to the ground.  Unless we get more rain this should be the last mowing for most field areas.

April 10, 2011 - Time to get going again.  The Family met again to finalize the lavender field layout and to consider the needed materials to prepare the field.  Late and wet rains have limited “weed control”.  The weeds are at least two feet tall in most places.  Spent the better part of the day mowing weeds around the buildings and close in fields.

Feb 5, 2011 -  Placer Grown Food and Farm Conference, Lincoln, CA. – An ag conference focusing on the network of small farms and farm products in our county.  We believe that it is important for us to support the local network as consumers, but also to become involved as farmers.  The event was well attended and very educational.  Great networking opportunity.  It was a little overwhelming as we explored the many layers of regulations and restrictions that apply to a simple Family Farm.  Lots to learn yet!

Jan 9, 2011 -  Planning Meeting- We met as a group to formally discuss the spring planting plans.  There have been several other meetings/discussions, but this meeting was intended to pull loose ends together.  We selected a number of varieties of Lavender to order; discussed the planting plan, and drip irrigation.  Given the lack of full time, everyday labor, we are trying to design for as much limitation on labor as possible.  We also planned a garden that will provide food for all family members.  The biggest challenge being the control of “varmits” especially deer.  We are exploring deer fence to limit their access to the garden area.  We will also reestablish the electric fence that was initially installed to control sheep.

Nov 26, 2010 - Grade out Barn and front pasture -The area of the demolished barn section was covered in as much as 18 inches of compacted straw and sheep manure, from days gone by.  Too difficult to hand dig!  We hired a neighbor with a tractor to remove everything above natural grade, and to spread it in the 1/3 acre pasture area just North of the barn area.  Once it was spread out, he ran an old disc through to break things up and to prepare it for spring planting.  We have decided to use this area as a test plot for multiple varieties of Lavender, our first future “cash crop”.

Nov 20, 2010 – New Media Seminar; UC Davis;  We attended a seminar focused on the use of new media to communicate about and to promote agriculture activities.  There were some very interesting presentations on how Facebook, Twitter, Webpages and Blogs could all be used to facilitate our agricultural business.  Of particular interest were the suggestions of how to use one medium to steer folks into another more intensive and detailed medium.  As a group The Lamm Farm is pretty computer savvy, and collectively we have experience in many of the different forms of “rapid communication”—AND STILL it has taken us over two months to post this note, and to add material to this BLOG!  It seems talent and skill have less to do with this than commitment and dedication!  We will need more of the later!

October 9, 2010-  Tear Barn Down - The old Turkey barn was leaning at a precarious angle, especially at the east end.  That end was mostly empty, providing shelter for the neighborhood deer.  Rather than to wait for a storm to blow the building down we opted to remove half (60 feet).  The remaining 60 feet is mostly storage.  The plan is to replace that part with half of a new barn, and move the stored items in there and then tear down the remainder.  In typical Lamm fashion, this may take a while.