Farming in Appalachian Mountains Week 9

Week 9

This week marks the ninth week of the semester. Fall is here, the weather is cool and the air is crisp. To me, this is one of the best seasons on the farm, at least up here in the high country. Farming is generally pretty labor intensive and can be challenging by yourself. For instance digging the pit for the outdoor seed stratification bed would have been more time consuming and taken a lot more energy by yourself. What helps in this situation is the season as doing hard labor intensive things should be saved for the cooler seasons instead of summer. This would make more of a difference in hotter climates. With that being said Im glad chip left this off until it started getting cooler. We started off with our tradition of chip laying out a blueprint for the day ahead and telling what's expected of us for the day. Chip always comes up with fun tasks like building an outdoor seed stratification bed. I think that is another thing I enjoy about farming is the freedom it provides to you. Thoreau says that farmers aren’t free and are hooked to their gardens by a ball and chain. While I get what he is saying and he does have a point, I attribute that to more industrialized farming and less to sustainable agriculture. Deciphering when and what to do seems to be 80% of the job, the last 20 is getting it done. I think that's why farming is so rewarding to me, starting from a blank page we think and design and craft this beautiful creation. I have always been into arts but never drawing or painting. The arts I love are the ones that require dedication and have a massive ceiling for mastering your art. For me, I can spend the rest of my life farming, surfing, snowboarding and never fully master or know everything. This is something I love and appreciate about our work. Digging into the resources chip provided helped clarify some questions I had on cold stratification. It seems some plants have adapted to the winter by having the seeds needing to undergo a cold period prior to germination. This allows for the seedlings to get a full growing season in before the next winter to prepare themselves. This was really interesting and shows how awesome nature is, it really doesn’t need humans, but we need it. Reading into Michael Dirr I can see the similarities in his work with chips. Ive said it before but this is such a big component to sustainable development and one we incorporate on the farm which is cool. Essentially we are taking ancestral knowledge and its being passed down from michael to chip to us students and to my generations after. It's cool to think my kids may never know chip but they'll know him through me and through the skills and traits i've taken from him.

Jordan Palmer

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