Memphis Democrat Column from September 14, 2008

It's been three weeks since I wrote a column, but it has been a busy time for me and everyone else here on the farm. I'm finally getting a chance on this cool Sunday to sit down at the computer and catch everyone up on our news. The biggest swirl at the moment is the deluge of rain yesterday. We could hear the Middle Fabius roaring from yesterday afternoon through last night. Jacob and Nick dropped a visitor off in Kirksville yesterday morning and ended up driving 85 miles to get back home due to all the road closures. Things are calmer today and what was left of Hurricane Ike didn't add too much to our total rainfall. Michael reported 6 plus inches of rain to the weather bureau in Burlington, Iowa for yesterday and today. We talked to Michael's uncle and aunt who live just north of Houston, Texas this afternoon. We naturally were wanting to make sure they and their daughter's family, who live next door, were all right. Fortunately, their houses did not sustain any damage. However, there are lots of trees down and they have no electric power. They have been told it will take them two to four weeks to get their electricity restored. Their son-in-law has a generator and it is being used to keep a refrigerator and freezer going. The passage of the huge storm gave them some pretty scary moments but they are grateful that no one was hurt. Stan and Gigi took a mini-vacation in the Ozarks this week. They had great weather for most of the trip while they camped out and canoed on the North Fork of the White River. They then went to East Wind Community yesterday to pick up Kris in advance of the sorghum harvest. Ike came through there last night with some punch still left in it, although there was no significant damage. The three of them arrived in time for supper this evening even though they ran into some detours during the drive back from southern Missouri. We have been very busy with the late summer food processing the past few weeks. The kitchen in Karma has been in steady use. In addition to tomatoes, we have been putting up green beans, sauerkraut, pickles, peaches and grapes among other things. Laird spent some time this past week making a big load of salsa for sale. We also have made large batches of mustard and horseradish recently. We are still having ups and downs in the garden. My fall lettuce is enjoying the cooler weather and Michael says we are going to have some really nice Chinese cabbage this time around. The winter squash is being invaded by squash bugs. Our Tahitian Melon squash seems to be fending them off better than the Butternuts. We are getting another round of cucumbers but we are not sure how long they will last. The hot and sweet peppers are finally starting to produce. We picked three 35 gallon buckets of hot peppers for the salsa.

We did our annual honey harvest earlier in the month. At 125 gallons it was a bit better than last year's. Afterwards, the crew spent a few days working with the bees in preparation for getting them through the colder months. Stan's latest blog entry is about the honey harvest and has great information for those of you who might be curious about how it is done (see the link below). Michael and I finally got to do a fair last weekend. We went over to Chillicothe for the Chautauqua, which is held at Simpson Park. Despite a cool, rainy day on Saturday, we did land-office business. The weather was nicer on Sunday, which gave us a chance to dry out a bit. We stayed in a campground Friday and Saturday nights and it was definitely on the damp side. Kevin and Ann went down to Bethel the previous weekend for the Sheep Festival. They did good business and Ann, who is an avid knitter, enjoyed getting to see all the fiber arts displays. There were meetings last weekend at Dancing Rabbit for the production team from Communities Magazine and some of the Fellowship for Intentional Communties folks. We hosted them for supper on Saturday night. Chris, who is the new editor of Communities, is a former member of Sandhill and stayed with us during the meetings and for a few days afterwards. We had a visit this afternoon from Traci, who has been staying at Dancing Rabbit. She is a friend of our former intern Susie. She will be returning to the area soon to help Ziggy with the construction of his house and plans to spend some time with us during the sorghum harvest. Jibran's dad, Marquis, also came by today with his friend Tim. It turns out that Tim knows my daughter Melina. I'm always amazed by all the interconnections among community folks. I want to remind everyone that we will be having our Sorghum Festival on Saturday, September 27 from 1pm to 4pm. We will be featuring demonstrations of sorghum cooking using a circa 1957 steam boiler with a duplex steam pump. There will also be hay-ride field tours, a garden tour and live music. You can call us at 660-883-5543 or email sorghumfest@sandhillfarm.org for directions.

www.sandhillfarm.org

Laird's blog

http://communityandconsensus.blogspot.com_

Stan's blog

http://sorghumco.wordpress.com/