Energy Farms Feed

The First Farm Blog

tara — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:07:37 -0700

Greetings,

This is to be the first of what will become a weekly blog, generally posted on Thursday or Friday. The purpose of this blog posting will be multifaceted. Firstly, the blog will let everyone interested in the Local Energy Demonstration project know what we have been up to on a weekly basis. Secondly, the blog will help us to better track and document progress and challenges out on the farm. Finally, the hope is that the blog can become an interactive space wherein we can talk about issues related to the farm, local and alternative energy, and the larger ideas of relocalization and energy self sufficiency.

So, please make use of this space by contributing thoughts or comments!

A summary of progress...and challenges

tara — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:59:20 -0700

It might be difficult to summarize what has now been approximately 2 months of being out on the farm, this will be a condensed version so as to not to publish an essay.

There have certainly been some challenges in and roadblocks in our attempt to plant energy crops without carbon inputs. After some discussion we decided to go ahead with using a tractor to plough the fields before planting, instead of our original plan to prepare all the beds by hand. At this point the following experimental energy crops have been planted are:

Canola
Switchgrass
Jerusalem Artichoke
Corn
Soybean
Sudan Grass
Flaxseed
Still to be planted: Kenaf

The food section of the demonstration has been fully prepared by hand, and thanks to the work of many volunteers is starting to grow into a garden. However the last few weeks have been a race against the weeds, which double digging method of preparation, did not prove thorough enough to bury the weeds, specifically the smart grass!

Presently we are working on getting irrigation set up and over the next week we will be getting started on the construction of a mini biogas digester. We’ll keep you posted!

This week on the farm

tara — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:59:46 -0700

We had two great days so far out on the farm on Tuesday and Thursday, seeming to spend the majority of our time trying to catch up with the weeds. Off the farm, we have managed to find all the parts we need to start the construction of our small scale biogas digester.

The plans for this digester can be viewed at http://www.biorealis.com/digester/construction.html.

Please stay tuned for more updates soon!

Week one (May 8-13)

keithhoon — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:31:51 -0700

My first week at the UBC farm. Getting into the flow of things, developing relationships with the farm folk. Had a meeting with Tara and Celine to develop a long range outlook of our project. Dug and prepared beds at our garden plot for new transplants.

Week Two (May 16-20)

keithhoon — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:47:31 -0700

Already the weeds are making their presence felt. The 'smart weed' is everywhere. Laid down saw dust on the pathways. Prepared beds for Miscanthus plants. Ordered potatoes from Discovery Organics. Prepared beds for potatoes. Planted 40 Miscanthus plants in three and a half beds. Each bed is fifty feet long and two feet wide.

A visit to the farm

tara — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:54:14 -0700

On Wedensday of this week we had our first official visit/tour of the farm. Californian Congressional Candidate (for the Green Party) Byron DeLear stopped by to check out what is happening on the farm and enjoyed a quick tour of the project. In other news the Kenaf is starting to sprout and we know have peas ready for munching!

Weeds weeds everywhere...

tara — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 13:40:33 -0700

The latest from the farm is that the weeds in our the field where the majority of the energy crops have been planted are taking over! The canola, switchgrass, sudan grass and flax are putting up a fight, but it is seeming more and more like they might be outcompeted. This has been a recurrent problem, and brings up interesting questions of what we could do differently in the future to control weeds, without of course resorting to the use of pesticides. In the short term we will start looking at options, weeding may still be possible but the manner in which the energy crops have been planted, by broadcasting the seeds, makes this difficult. We'll keep you posted!

A day in the flax

tara — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 13:46:29 -0700

Yesterday, Keith and I and three very hardworking volunteers launched a counter attack, and made pretty good progress, in the flax plot. It is incredible the sheer amount of plant mass that has managed to grow in the time since planting, if nothing else it shows that the soil is very fertile! Weeding will be an ongoing saga, and we'll keep you posted!

July 10 - 15

keithhoon — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:05:10 -0700

We are on a weeding blitz this entire week, last week we managed to weed through the Flax plot, which was much easier because we planted them in rows. However the canola, following seeding instructions, were broadcast with a manual belly seeder. The canola plot covers six thousand square feet. The weeding so far has been progressive and today we managed to get almost a third of it weeded at about eighty percent. We have a few different types of weeds growing on the energy farm. They are: smart weed, lamb's quaters and bind weed. The one thats giving us the most resistance as well was being the most time consuming is the bind weed. Which has wound its way about the canola plant in such a way that pulling them out by hand can be quite destructive to the canola leaf...Hence the 80%... Please feel to drop by the farm this week (or anytime for that matter) and give us a hand, everyone at Post Carbon would be most grateful. I'll be putting in long days so that we can get as much of it done as possible. Stay tuned for futher updates...

The "weed blitz" continues

tara — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 23:38:20 -0700

We continue to make progress weeding, but it is a slow job. The flax area has been completely weeded and we've moved onto the canola area. Everyone helping out is becoming much more familiar with the local weeds, and while I am sure we all have our favorites, our least favorite seems to unanimously be bindweed. Bindweed is a plant that acts like a vine, climbing and often "choking" or "swamping" the desired plant, which in our case is canola. Although frustrating to remove it is quite an amazing plant! Bindweed can grow between 1-5 meters and its roots can reach depths of 5 meters. Enough weed talk for now though, we'll keep you posted on the situation at the farm!