After a short experimental run with the tiller the tractor is now set up for winter. Bring on the snow!

All in all, though, it was an enjoyable weekend with Nathan and Scott and we were able to toss some symbolic support to the Occupy Movement.

Yesterday, White’s Farm Supply delivered our new Massey-Ferguson tractor. What a beast it is! Along with the tractor we have a front-end loader, a snow blade, and a 66-inch rototiller. I’ve been asked why we invested in this machine since we’ve lived on our 10-acre property here for almost eight years without a large tractor. Well, if you’ve seen our driveway, you can image that it might be a real chore to clear it of snow and ice in the winter here in the snowbelt. Using our little John Deere lawn tractor with a 44-inch blade to do this has at times taken up to 6 hours to make the driveway passable—and then the county snowplow will come by and close the last 10 feet with about 18 inches of ice, snow and road crud.

When a little sunshine or warm temperatures follow a major snowfall, the foot or so of snow that has built up on the barn roof will come sliding down and leave a 3-foot pile of snow that’s 10 feet wide and forty feet long lying in front of the barn. This blocks access to the barn (where Carol parks her car) and prevents use of the turn-around loop. Needless to say, the John Deere is no match for the job of clearing this pile. So the combination of the 72-inch snow blade and the front-end loader on the new tractor will handle this task safely and in a reasonable length of time.

There are also many tasks around the property that we simply have had to ignore because there was no practical way of getting them accomplished. The previous owner cleared many trees and left the stumps in place which are obstacles to almost anything we would want to do in the yard. Some of those are going to be gone in short order. We also need to remove several trees each year that fall from high winds or excessive snow loads. Up to now we’ve had to pull these out with a hand-powered winch—a laborious and very time-consuming task that you don’t want to have to do on a hot summer day. So we do hope to catch up to some of these tasks that have been put off or simply ignored for a long time.

But a more important reason for having this equipment comes from our involvement with Hiram Farm—a not-for-profit organization that has established an employment and therapeutic program for people with autism. Hiram Farm is located on a 120-acre organic farm in Hiram, Ohio. The land is leased from the Trust of the late Al Couch who was one of the first organic farmers in the nation. You can get the full story of Hiram Farm at the Hiram Farm website.

One of their most pressing needs right now is to develop the capability to use more of the land to produce income for the organization through farming. The program at Hiram Farm is now supported almost entirely by donations and Medicaid reimbursements. While it has been remarkably successful up to now in starting and expanding the program, this is not a funding model that will work over the long haul. They currently have no equipment available to do more than till about one acre for planting vegetables which they sell at a road-side stand. We intend to make this tractor available for Hiram Farm to use to expand their farming operation and, hopefully, develop the farming activities into a significant revenue stream. So it will be spending an extended period of time at Hiram Farm tilling the garden for a fall cover crop and, next spring, perhaps putting in a hay crop or whatever they decide to do.

So, I downloaded their “BookSmart” composition software complete with the notebook template, and in a matter of a few hours developed a finished layout for the book. While the BookSmart software doesn’t give one the kind of flexibility and control I’m used to with applications like InDesign, it was adequate for this simple project. In less than a day’s time I was able to complete the layout, make a few revisions and finally publish the book which is now available for purchase on the Blurb website. Hiram Farm will also have a few copies for sale at their upcoming fall festival.

Over the past few years, photographers have begun to use Blurb, or any of several other self-publishing services, to make promotional books as well as wedding albums, portrait albums and other products that expand the income potential of their core business. One of the best features of these online publishing services is that you do not have to purchase large numbers of books up front. Just make it available online and customers can order as many as they want. No extra work for the photographer, just collect your [small] royalty from each sale.

http://www.blurb.com/books/2452519

This week the Trout Lillies appeared from out of nowhere and began to blossom. This is the first sign that Spring is here for real in northeast Ohio. Yesterday I heard an Eastern Phoebee calling from the woods and almost stepped on a garter snake while walking the dogs. I think it’s finally safe to remove the snow blade from the tractor.

The framework for the barn at Hiram Farm is now in progress. You’d think that building a relatively small barn would be simpler and faster than building a house or a commercial building, but when you’re trying to do it on a very limited budget using mostly volunteer labor, progress can be pretty slow. Everything has to be checked over by the construction manager and sometimes re-done. The methods used have to be somewhat accommodating to the limited experience and physical abilities of the volunteers who show up on any given day.

Despite all this, the progress has been steady and the quality of the work has been high. Kudos to everyone who’s jumped in and swung a hammer!

For more photographs of this project, visit the Hiram Farm website and “Like” the Hiram Farm Page on Facebook.

After weeks of digging, pouring concrete, building forms, pouring more concrete, more digging, more…, the big day finally arrived when the floor of the new barn at Hiram Farm was finally poured. Yesterday a large contingent of workers from Cement Mason’s Local 404 (IAOPCM) arrived at the farm and supplied most of the muscle and all of the skill to pour nine inches of concrete over the 32×48 foot floor area.

The end result is a level, flat concrete slab that will be the base for the barn and will provide a low-maintenance, durable floor area that will last for more than a century.

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.