Hiram Farm has begun construction on a new barn—the first permanent building to be built on the site. A grant of $20,000 was given by the First Christian Church in Wausean, Ohio to fund most of the construction costs. This group will also be sending a crew of skilled workers to Hiram later this month to work on the framing.

In addition, Hiram Farm is participating in Chase Community Giving which is a competition in which Facebook users can vote for up to twenty different non-profit organizations from a field of several hundred, with the organizations that receive the top 200 vote totals to receive grants of from $20,000 to $200,000. It sounds like it would be easy to organize five or six hundred Facebook users who are already members of the Hiram Farm Group and Hiram Farm Page on Facebook, to vote for the chance to raise that kind of money. It isn’t.

I’m not one who likes to hound people to get them to do what I want. You can see how infrequently I post to my own web-log. Turns out that’s what you have to do. So, in case any of you Hiram Farmers are reading this, consider it one more reminder to vote in Chase Community Giving. And, if you’re not familiar with Hiram Farm, you’re invited to join our Facebook Group—and vote for Hiram Farm in Chase Community Giving!

Hiram Farm Facebook Group:

Hiram Farm Facebook Page:

Chase Community Giving:

As all of my family and close friends are aware, my younger son, Vincent, has autism. Over the years we’ve learned that he is most happy and productive when working with animals and doing other work related to farming and gardening. He has worked at a horse boarding stable for the past 12 years.

A little over a year ago we became involved with the Hiram Farm Living and Learning Community, a non-profit organization that is developing an employment program for adults with autism based on an organic farm in Hiram, Ohio, just 12 miles from where we live. We’ve been really excited about this project because the organization was founded by a very energetic group of families of people with autism who seem to have no end of creative ideas on how to build a concept into a living and working program that is already having an impact. After less than two years of fund-raising, the program opened on a 120-acre organic farm last June. At the time there were six people being served and in the first year, the program has grown to serving 13 participants. Vincent began working at the farm one day a week in February of this year. Our hope is that he will increase his participation in the coming years so that Carol and I will have some peace of mind that Vincent will have a source of steady employment as well as the therapy programs that he needs for years to come.

Recently I assisted Hiram Farm in producing a video and submitting a grant application to the Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsico is awarding 1.3 million dollars a month to projects submitted to a special web site that allows the public to choose the proposals that they feel are most deserving of support. The site requires you to register in order to vote so you will need to submit your e-mail address, but it’s easy to opt out of any e-mail lists or other annoying promotional mailings, so it’s perfectly painless. Our proposal is for a grant to fund the construction of a building on the farm that will serve as program space and administrative offices.

If you’d like to support this effort, use the link below to go to the Hiram Farm proposal on the Pepsi Refresh site and vote for our proposal. Oh, and it’s free!

http://www.refresheverything.com/hiramfarm

The above page contains the video presentation that I produced as part of the grant application.

The latest poster promoting the Panoramic Photography course at Lakeland Community College features a remarkable photograph by Karen Zamiska. The class will again be scheduled for Tuesday evening at 6:00 pm in the Imaging Lab (room H-32) in the Fall Semester. Register early because there are only twelve seats available in the class.

About this time last year we put up some bee houses in the hopes of attracting some Orchard Mason Bees to our cherry trees (see Bee Condos below). There was some immediate success as the native bees did come to nest in the bee houses and I felt the pollination rate of our trees was better than in past years. By mid-summer nearly all the holes in the bee houses were packed with mud, an indication that the mason bees had deposited egg chambers in the holes.

The results this spring have been great. The cherry trees began to blossom last week and at exactly the same time I noticed that all the mud-packed holes in the bee houses had tiny openings in them. Every cherry tree in the yard now has hundreds of mason bees buzzing around from early in the morning to late afternoon when the shadows of the woods behind the barn begin to creep into the yard. The Compact Stella trees are already showing signs of swelling at the base of their blossoms as the petals begin to wilt and blow away in the breeze. The Stark Gold, Emperor Francis and Dwarf North Star trees are about a week behind the Stellas which is fine because there’s still a high probability that we’ll get another frost.

Now if we can just fight off the birds long enough to actually get a harvest….

To all the Rhubarbarians out there, as well as their friends and fans (you know who you are), I’ve set up a special page (see the link in the left sidebar) with pictures of the 20th Anniversary Dance from March 20. Enjoy the memories and feel free to pass them along.

We were blessed with a beautiful snowfall the day after Christmas followed by a wet lake-effect covering the morning of New Year’s Eve. The trees in the back yard are candy-coated. Happy New Year!