2009 Year End Summary
for our friends and family
written by Apple, late December.
The current members of Sandhill
are: Laird, Stan, Gigi, Renay,
Apple, and Emily. Our biggest
membership news this year was the departure of Michael and Kathe, members of
Sandhill for the last seven years.
They decided to move to their property in Southern Missouri, and make a
life living off the land there, growing food for market. KatheÕs son Andrew built a new home for
them on the property, in exchange for part of the land, and he will eventually
be their neighbor. Michael and
Kathe gave the community plenty of notice, and a good amount of training to
cover the jobs that had been theirs.
We have a great appreciation for all they did for the community in their
time here, and since they left (in mid-October), weÕve certainly missed their
work and their company.
Another change in membership is that Emily has become a
member. Emily is an ex-member of
Twin Oaks Community in Virginia, had spent a couple large chunks of time at
Sandhill last year, and was an intern here this summer. She is very agriculturally inclined,
spending most of her time in the gardens and with the chickens, and is just
starting to learn how to run the tractors. SheÕs hard working and funny and smart, and great to have
around.
This yearÕs weather was wet and cool again. Very wet, and very cool. This was true of 2008 as well and weÕre
all curious to see in this upcoming year if this is a trend, or an anomaly, or
what. The weather was a challenge
for us in the gardens and fields:
planting was late, and less sun and heat meant that some things didnÕt
want to grow very fast. And a few
of our fields and garden beds will be fallow for the winter, because we werenÕt
able to get them seeded in cover crop before the real cold hit us. WeÕve all been glad that Gigi decided
to start all the gardens in raised-beds last year, because many of the garden
crops would have suffered much more if they hadnÕt had the ability to drain so
easily. I think our soilÕs been
saturated 90% of the last two years!
Even with the wet weather, we still had a decent crop
year. Excepting sweet peppers, we
ate and put by plenty of all of the staple garden produce, including record
amounts of greens. Michael was
especially proud of his giant ÒCostata RomanescoÓ zucchini. We ate a lot of them, and once we
convinced others that this variety still tastes great, even at the size of
baseball bats, we were able to sell some too. We had a pretty consistent supply of salads, starting in
early spring with chickweed and violet leaves, and continuing through the
present with oriental greens and young kale.
The gardens brought us some income: we grew seed for Southern Exposure Seed
Exchange (Acorn CommunityÕs business), as well as another seed company here in
Missouri (One Garden Heirloom Seeds). We sold produce at the local farmersÕ
market, a local restaurant, and for a couple different local agriculture
events.
Planting-out and bringing-in some of the field crops this
year was hard on the fields.
There were sometimes just short windows of time when the fields were dry
enough to get the equipment out, and sometimes we were pushing it. We worried about our wheat
harvest: the wheat was just barely
dry enough to store, and we discovered that it had vomitoxin (a fungus-produced
toxin thatÕs a health risk if ingested in large amounts). But we had it lab-tested by the state,
and found our levels were safe for eating, and we sighed with relief. Our field beans (black, pinto, red)
werenÕt looking too good around harvest time- more like a deer feeding station
than anything else. We harvested
the beans by hand, which isnÕt something weÕd normally choose to do, but it
worked out to be a nice all-in-it-together kind of activity, and we got more
beans than we thought we might. We
had failures in our popcorn and mustard, due to wet and weeds, but our milling
corn and sweet corn did all right.
As did lots of green manure!
We planted less sorghum than usual this year: itÕs much
easier for us to grow it than to sell it, and we had some back stock that we
hope to clear out. It was a good
crop, with average per-acre yield, and we harvested and processed it with the
help of lots of friends and fellow communitarians. We also had our sort-of-annual Sorghum Fest, showing our
fields, gardens and facilities to folks from the area, selling our products,
making cider and candles and such.
The sorghum syrup is some of the best yet, as Stan and Kris Eastwind
refine the cooking process a little more each year. And I donÕt want to jinx us, but weÕve made a change that we
think might mean less sorghum crystallizing in the future.
It was a fine orchard year, with plenty of peaches for
fresh-eating and freezing (even though we lost a lot to Brown Rot fungus). The apples were great, and Laird picked
8 gallons of Damson Plums off the tree by the garden shed (mostly from a
sitting position on the shed roof), and stocked us with jam. We also had our first hazelnuts off the
trees that we planted a couple years ago.
It was a hard year for the bees. Wet and cool is not good weather for them. The hives grew
slowly, and once they got to a good size, they often swarmed. Swarming is good for the bees in general-
it lets them start new colonies- but not great for beekeepers- we lose a lot of
bees and honey. Between the wet
weather, the swarming, and trying to increase our colony numbers, we had a
small harvest this year- not much more than we might want for home use. But we have more hives than we started
the season with, and hopefully will come out on the other side of winter with
most of them still healthy.
The poultry sceneÕs been lively. Emily has taken over its management from Michael, after
working with him a lot this summer.
The poultry crew (which also included a couple of interns) kept the
chickens happy and healthy enough to provide us with plenty of eggs through the
fall (including some to sell to friends at Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth
Farms). There were a couple broods
of turkeys (though only 2 of the turkey poults made it to adulthood). Emily led a chicken culling this fall,
with LairdÕs major assistance (and a couple othersÕ minor assistance), and we
now have canned chicken in the root cellar, and got to share a big plateful of
turkey at the Thanksgiving potluck feast.
Other agricultural tidbits: we inoculated more shiitake logs this spring, and had lots
of good flushes this year from the older logs. We ate lots fresh, and both dried and froze the excess. We also had a huge maple year- so much
syrup that we sold a lot of it (we usually just make it for home use). And Gigi continues to make the greenhouse
better fit Sandhill needs. She
spent a good chunk of the fall installing a new heating system- an outdoor
furnace with a blower. SheÕs not
perfected the system yet, but she no longer has to get up in the middle of the
night to stoke a small-fireboxed wood stove.
WeÕve been doing a lot of regional food networking. Gigi, Kathe, and others from the area
planned and started two farmersÕ markets this year- one in Rutledge, and one in
Memphis. The Rutledge market
proved to be very slow, but the Memphis market seemed to do well for its first
year, and might hold promise for the future. Gigi and Stan have attended and presented at some different
conferences and events centered on heightening awareness of the local foods
movement. GigiÕs been putting in
efforts to get more fresh foods into public schools, as well as putting her
SELF in public schools by substitute teaching sometimes.
Stan and Gigi also were involved this year in trying to keep
CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) from overrunning our
county. CAFOs here are usually
expansive pig farms, which smell pretty bad for miles around, and can also have
a big impact on local waterways through their runoff. The anti-CAFO group that Gigi and Stan are involved with is
working to make sure Scotland county has strong public health ordinances. The county commissioners had earlier lifted
our health ordinance, and this group brought it to the publicÕs attention and
got it on the local ballot: an
initiative to reinstate the ordinance. This work involved negotiating with the
commissioners, doing radio interviews, writing Letters to the Editor, writing
articles, meeting with other groups, lobbying, leading rallies. And they were successful: we have an ordinance now that makes
sure CAFOÕs are run more responsibly, and doesnÕt make our county stand out as
an easy place for lots more CAFOs to move into.
Some other of our outreach work comes, as usual, through our
connection with the FIC. Laird put
a lot of energy this year into getting out the second part of Geoff KozneyÕs
video: Visions of Utopia. HeÕs also been spreading the good word
of community at such events as the national cohousing conference, and annual
NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation) Institute. Emily has joined the FIC set, spending
a few hours each week working with Laird on development. There are also a couple new FIC workers
(BJ and Nani) that come over from Dancing Rabbit once or twice a week, trying
their best to cover the work Kathe was doing, and visiting with us a little
sometimes. And Kim from Red Earth
Farms eats lunch with us on some of her FIC workdays.
Laird has also been doing plenty of consulting work,
sometimes by himself, sometimes with MaÕikwe. He has also become a builder again, spending some of his
home-time in Missouri helping MaÕikwe to build her/their house over at Dancing
Rabbit. It is looking good,
finished enough to live in- though with no interior walls yet, it is proving
hard to heat. Sometimes lately,
MaÕikwe and Jibran are in the cozier locale of Sandhill kitchen (couch, by the
stove).
Renay continues public school in Memphis, and she does it
with zest! She is on the Quizbowl
team, in the band, and on the basketball team. She won more school awards this year than anyone else in her
class. She spent the summer on the
Memphis swim team, with lots of practices and competitions, and she also spent
nine days at horseriding camp.
Renay turned 13 this year. She bought herself a laptop for her birthday,
and spends some of her time chatting with friends and surfing on the internet. She still spends half-time staying a
few miles down the road with her dad. For those of you that knew her as a
little girl, know that she has now definitely become a young woman.
This has been a bigger traveling year than usual for Stan
with organic inspections. HeÕs
been doing a lot of them, traveling as far as Michigan and Nebraska, and
inspecting as close to home as next door.
Stan enjoys the work, itÕs good income for Sandhill, and it allows Apple
a chance to practice a little more at being a farmer and beekeeper. Every year, Stan says, there are more
and more people farming organically.
And the last of the work-ish news for Sandhill is that the
tempeh business is done, at least for a while. Some of you know about our problems last year with batches
failing- incomplete fermentation that made the tempeh unsellable. After lots of research and
experimentation, and not completely understanding the cause or solution, weÕve
given up for a bit. Not to say we
wonÕt try again in the future, but for now, thereÕs no one cooking soybeans in
Karma kitchen, no one doing hourly checks on the incubator.
Besides our relationships to the land, and to the various
work we do, it is the people in our lives that give us all richness and
meaning. We hosted lots of
long-term guests this year- Jacob (Red Earth Farms), Otto (Eastwind), and Kris
(Eastwind) (and his doggie Russell!) each stayed for a few weeks or more and
helped us a lot with our work. We
also had visits from lots of individuals and a few families, some of them just
wanting to check out our lifestyle, some exploring possibilities of
membership. Trish, Joe and Emery
from St. Louis have come up for several long weekends, and are still on the
fence about whether they are ready to leave their friends and family there, to
pursue at Sandhill the rural lifestyle they crave. And lots of our Virginia friends stopped by at different
times.
We started the season with five interns: Ali (ex-Twin Oaks, now at Dancing
Rabbit), Emily (now a member), Tony (a newly inspired agriculturalist from the
St. Louis area), Keren (a gardener and co-op activist, on the track to starting
a community with her friends), and Hannah (just out of college locally,
involved in lots of local food networking). It was a treat to have interns with so much experience
gardening and living in community.
And they were FUN! We had a
(short-lived) band:
CastIronSkillet- with Apple and Ali on guitar and vocals, Hannah on
accordion, Keren on violin.
Porch conversations during meals were always lively, and Keren and
Hannah had the motivation to get lots of fun things happening: a Rosh Hashanah dinner/celebration, a
party for Lammas day (I canÕt even remember what that IS, but it was a good
excuse for an outdoor party). And
Emily, Hannah and Apple went over to Dancing Rabbit bi-weekly to play Ultimate
Frisbee, which constitutes something like a religion to some of us.
We had a few big celebrations this year: our annual MayDay/Anniversary (35th!)
party, with a Maypole and contradance, the Lammas party with a bonfire and
BEAUTIFUL luminaria set up on the paths and in the pond orchard (by our friends
Glenn and Dan from Madison), a small but special surprise party for Michael and
Kathe to say goodbye, a BIG and special surprise party for LairdÕs birthday
(thrown by MaÕikwe, a split-venue between Sandhill and Dancing Rabbit, with
some of LairdÕs siblings that havenÕt been here for 20 years). Thanksgiving was also especially big
and festive due to family being around-
Jo brought her partner Peter and their puppy, and Ceilee and Tosca
brought their daughter Taivyn for her second visit to Sandhill.
Strong connections with all our friends, old and new, have
been a big part of this year:
weekly potlucks with Dancing Rabbit and Red Earth Farms; celebrations
with our friends from the Sanctuary; visits from and to Twin Oaks, Acorn,
EastWind; potlucks and visits with the political activists from the CAFO group;
visits from ex-members; lots of people working with us, and playing with
us. It seems like we make more and
more connections- our web of friends and family continues to grow.
And while we are joyful within this web, we also share the
hard times of our friends and families.
Another theme of this year, sadly, has been many people we love having
health problems that interrupt their lives. Michael spent the early part of the year here struggling,
trying to heal from pleurisy.
MaÕikwe was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and is sorting through
how that will affect her upcoming year.
GigiÕs mom passed away unexpectedly this year (in February), and StanÕs
long-time friend Everett spent many months feeling discontented in his body,
before dying this past month. Our
young, vibrant friend Tamar from Dancing Rabbit has been diagnosed with a very
fast-growing cancer. SheÕs moved
back East to be with her family, but we all keep up with her treatments and
thoughts through her blog, and try to stay in touch. Stan went for an extended visit to Arizona earlier this
fall, to visit his old friend Sandy, who is also living with cancer. And hearing about the deaths in other
communitiesÉsometimes it feels a little overwhelming. WeÕre glad, at least, to be able to support each other some
in these times, and share sorrows.
And, finally: The other Sandhillians will laugh and roll
their eyes at me for ending this way, but all I can think of left to mention is
our pets. SandhillÕs had lots of
cats since I came here a few years ago (cat numbers have actually dropped from
seven to five in that time). The cats, for the most part, float in and out of
our vision and attention. But this
year, thereÕs no ignoring our dogs.
This past winter, Sandhill adopted yet another stray dog that wandered
in. Which means we now have three
dogs (sometimes, in this winter season, more than there are people on the
farm). They can be loud and
boisterous, are just tolerated by a few of us, and doted on by others. We are often discussing different
challenges they bring us, and sometimes discussing this or that cute thing they
did. Personally, I find them
grounding and joy-making. And, in
fact, I think itÕs time to stop writing, and go play out in the snow with
them.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for being part of our network. Much love from all of Sandhill.
