Ananda Harvest Summit from Seema Shah on Vimeo.

Please note that I did not capture the educational sessions that were taking place during the weekend. I can share with you the relaxing and beautiful moments from the weekend with my first time video editing skillz off of iMovie.

USDA TO LAUNCH HIGH TUNNEL PILOT STUDY TO INCREASE AVAILABILITY OF LOCALLY GROWN FOODS

3-Year Project To Verify Effectiveness Of High Tunnels In Natural Resource Conservation

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2009 – Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new pilot project under the ‘Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food’ initiative for farmers to establish high tunnels – also known as hoop houses – to increase the availability of locally grown produce in a conservation-friendly way. Merrigan and other Obama administration officials highlighted opportunities available for producers in a video posted on USDA’s YouTube channel, which shows high tunnels recently installed in the White House garden.

Perhaps this might add validity for some of you to the notion of setting up quick hoops. Me, I’m starting to reconsidor. I wonder if Michelle Obama had to fight as hard to bury the EMT hoops in the ground. This shit is driving me bananas. I’m starting to think cold frames was a better idea. Anyone know where we can get old sliding glass doors from? That would be an ideal size pane to use for a coldframe. How bout 3/4″ to 1″ diameter footing pins 3 ‘ or more? The wider diameter footing pins might make it easier to bury the 3/4″ EMT. Currently I’m using 1/2″ to 3/4″ pins, pounded in to the ground, and then yanked out to create the hole.

We had our first real snow of the season at Ananda. While most of us in the city dread the cloudy skies, this one was a sight for sore eyes. Gleaming white, fluffy — it was the perfect snow. A group of us worked through the actual storm moving rocks and gravel to build the access road for the new cabins to be built. (Though there was joking about escaping from the gulag, I don’t know another bunch of folks that’s has had that much actually working in the snow).

We talked in the one cabin already there about future plans for the garden over hot cups of tea. Then down to the cafeteria for an amazing macrobiotic meal and to warmed up some more to tea and soup — getting us warm enough for a post-meal snow ball fight!

The snow lightened up for a beautifully bright evening of meditation (Joan, one of the oldest women at Ananda who helped start the ashram said it was the most beautiful she has ever seen the place).

After a bit of banjo playing and merry making with new and old friends over a roaring fire, the guys went out to clear the snow off the makeshift hoop houses we have up to protect the still baby veggies (Matt and Dave are going to Maine next weekend to learn a little more about winter gardening. Serendipitously, our friends Jose, Seth and Stephanie stayed with the expert on the stuff while they were up in Maine last year!)

In the morning, we woke up to the above scene. The kind of quiet where you can hear the snow fall and your foot steps crunch. The veggies looked a little cold this morning but the snow might actually help keep them warm and by 11 am the sun was going strong and melting much of the snow.

All in all, a pretty beautiful weekend.

A group of Brooklynites is getting back to the land in a way that goes beyond rooftops, fire escapes and community gardens, and they want to bring you with them. Ananda Ashram, just an hour out of the city in Monroe, NY, had an operational farm in the 1970s, and started cultivating the earth again this summer after a long fallow period. A crew of self-described urban hippies from Brooklyn, including Matteo Bueno, Jerri Chou, Wendell Davis, Dave Gottlieb, and Stephanie Redlenner (who is from Brooklyn in spirit) organized an agricultural revitalization this summer. Jerri Chou answers some questions for us about Ananda Harvest.

Read the rest on brooklynbased.net!

This leaves us with a couple odds and ends for the fence. Putting taller corner braces in so that the corner posts are not under so much stress, bending so heavily. This will also help tighten up the fence. Getting or designing a slightly more user friendly lock on the gates that will keep the deer from nudging the door open and not require us lifting up two 10 foot long boards, and untying rope to get in. Finding all the gaps between the skirt and the fence and closing them up. Installing the 1″ by 4″ on the gate posts so that the gates sit flush when they are closed. Clean up the edges of the fencing, without cutting back the fencing too far so as to make re-tightening the fence difficult, so that jagged, contorted pieces of fencing aren’t hanging out of the fence,.

Although these things should get done, what I’d really like see done first is finish transplanting the rest of the kale and set small hoop houses (row covers) over the beds, using the design that my father already came up with, (see the two beds closest to the north corner of the garden), then cover them with a water permeable row cover material. George has some insights into this one, perhaps some type of Agribon. Which reminds me, I think George could use some help pruning those apple trees. It’s a great opportunity to learn some things too. He’s a real knowledgeable fellow. Could teach anyone a bit about pruning and a bunch of other stuff as well. It’s a good opportunity to glean some good gardening knowledge as well.

I’ve also been thinking about building a larger scale hoop house. A sturdy structure that could handle some snow. I’ve been reading Eliot Coleman’s The Winter Harvest Handbook and would like to copy some of his designs in there. I think they are extremely elegant–movable hoop houses set up on skis.

There’s a pretty nice series of videos by Daniel Botkin about hoop houses over here at ehow

This weekend, we would like to get another set of beds tilled, soil prepared, and boxes built for in the garden. We’d also like to prepare the soil behind the Panini house. I’ve already started tilling the soil and plan on planting the 900 or so cloves of garlic that my father and I picked up from Ed Fraser’s garlic farm between there and the available spaces in the front garden. We’d also like to transplant and row cover some kale behind the Panini House, and mulch some of the weedy areas over there with leaves, as well as start clearing some of the area on the edge of the rear Panini property boundary and the neighbouring vacant lot.

… footage of the falling tree to come!

Ananda Lesson 1 from Jerri Chou on Vimeo.

Michael Judd and his team seem to be doing some truly incredible work over at Project Bona Fide, and we certainly hope to have him as a guest lecturer this coming year at Ananda. From their website:

Project Bona Fide is a non-profit organization working toward sustaining culture through organic agriculture, community correlated outreach, and re-forestation projects in Nicaragua. Project Bona Fide has been created out of a need to support rural Nicaraguan farming communities so that they may gain self-empowerment and economic stability. In addition to offering farmers financial and technical support toward gaining international organic certification, Project Bona Fide focuses on establishing much needed fair trade export market* opportunities, preserving natural environments, and focusing on local health and nutrition projects.

Michael and his team also teach Permaculture PDC courses in both Nicaragua and New York. Thanks once again to Janaka for pointing all of this out!

It’s early November and it’s officially fall. The trees are dropping their final leaves and the cold is creeping in. That means frost! We had our first big freeze the other night and we had no idea what was going to become of our baby greens. Dave W stopped by to check on them at 6am and, as suspected, the little guys were frozen stifff. Were they going to be little piles of much come morning thaw like the many wilted frozen bags of spinach we’ve left in ice boxes turned up too high?

When we went back, we found the little guys were A OK! But why?!  Typically, when you have greens in the fridge, there’s a lot of water in the leaves. When it gets to freezing, the water expands and bursts the cells, making for the green mush you didn’t get to turning into a salad. The thought is that with the hearty greens, the moisture goes into the roots when it gets too cold so that the cells don’t burst… fact of fiction, only the internet will tell. (Here’s at least why buds don’t freeze.. plant anti-freeze?!)  All we know is that we harvested some arugula that day which we shared with the Ashram lunch crew and it was DELICIOUS. (Janka couldn’t wait that long).

Full coverage by Winnie Au here.

]]> http://blog.anandaharvest.org/2009/11/265/feed/ 1 http://blog.anandaharvest.org/2009/10/a-photographer-friend-pays-a-visit/ http://blog.anandaharvest.org/2009/10/a-photographer-friend-pays-a-visit/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:22:12 +0000 jchou http://blog.anandaharvest.org/?p=159 Will Winnie Au be our new farm photographer? Will we finish weaving the Fence!? All questions to be answered, but one that’s sure is that Winnie is yet another city lady who might be in love with the Ananda Harvest. Everyone who comes gets their hands dirty, but it’s always interesting to see how they use their skills to help the farm along. In this case, it’s creating beautiful images. Thanks Winnie!! Come back soon!

Full post and slideshow on Tumblr here winnieau.tumblr.com

The Ashram recently had the Panini House septic redone. This has left a patch of exposed earth slightly bigger than the Ashram Front Garden behind the Panini House. The soil looks to be of good quality and because it has already been turned it might be easier to start planting there (see One-Straw Revolution) . The area gets decent sun. The neighbor, Ward, grows Christmas trees in roughly the same spot, minus a few trees on the East/East-Southeast side.

We’ll be putting together a plan for this area which can be executed upon in the springtime. Comments and edits welcome.

Big shout out to the group hope everyone is alive and well, I know we have some busy folks out there working hard……………

This past weekend at the Harvest Garden we introduced our long anticipated family members Seth y Jose, ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) who just got back from there incredible month long tour, and it was great to have them up there  with Benita, Dave Watson, and Wendell for some ditch digging, meditation, water coloring, and philisophical conversations over  tea.   Thank you guys for making the journey up to work on the farm.  We finished all sides of the ditch and we are ready to tackle the fence when it arrives this week.   Matt W after spending a few days researching fences ordered a high tech deer fence that will be delivered soon.( Thanks Matty)

So for the next couple weeks the projects will include:

-Designing and Installing the Fence Gates
-Pouring Gravel and Hanging the Deer Fence.
-Painting the Fence Posts
-Creating a Beautiful Entrance Sign to the Garden

Another Big Announcement:

Our Fundraiser will be on Thursday Evening, October 15th at Jade’s Loft Space:  We will be sending out the invitation and save the date over the next few days.

If you like to take on a role in helping with the fundraiser please contact me or comment here.

- We need help in finding music options
- Silent Auction Items
-Donations from Food Venders
-Wine and Beer connections
-Pictures for the Slide Show

Last but not least I wanted to let you know that the energy this project is bringing to Ananda is huge, and Joan Suvel gave us all a great shout out during meditation, mentioning that this project is amazing.

Much Love

Dave G

This coming weekend we will be digging the fence border and laying in gravel to keep out the bunnies and gofers.  As well as continuing on the raised beds, and doing some light tree trimming.    So far I have 2-3 people from our group coming up and would like to have another 3 people join them.   Let me know if you can make it up this weekend.   The tents and cabins are all set up for you.

In addition we are working on our fundraiser party and have a special guest TBA!    Keep up the great work!

- Dave G.