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Email: akhalife@gmail.com Call 971-388-7185
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Watch the Akha Farm Progress
More Potatoes and Onions
May 4, 2012 We got a bit of rot on the weird three weeks of rain after St. Patrick's day when we planted, so I picked up another hundred pounds of potatoes and 32 lbs of yellow onions plus some elephant garlic and a few sweet potatoes. Lets see how May works out. We have to have everything we are going to plant in the ground by end of the month or first week in June. Corn, cucumbers, eggplant starts and squash starts all roll out then. This week end is planting and clearing and finishing the chicken house. Lots to do, but no disruptions.
Farm is underway
May 2, 2012 The Akha Farm is underway. Place is well cleaned up, more tires to move, more branches to drag out, but things are really progressing. The greenhouse is rolling out plants, tray after tray for planting. Michu works on that almost full time. I rototill, she chops berry vine root to clear more area for the tiller, and I do the heavy chopping on the section left in back with so many branches. But we are getting there. The greenhouse has a good 15,000 plants in it, and that will increase, because now I'm building two more tiers of shelving for trays. There are a few thousand plants in trays outside the greenhouse and then a large area is already planted. Month of May, the heat is on. All the planting has got to get done and we have more specialty seeds to buy, varieties we don't have yet. Did a presentation at the Falls City Garden Club, then a few of the ladies came out yesterday and toured the farm. They said they had a really good time.
Greenhouse Full
April 19, 2012 Well, the greenhouse has been finished for some time, and now it is full of trays sprouting every kind of vegetable. We want to build a smaller sprouting room that we heat better for starting seeds, then move them into the bigger greenhouse. But that will get done with time. Right now we are getting our chicken house finished, maybe this week end. More work on the roof to do etc. Something finished off one of our favorite chickens, a cripple, but good layer. She slept under the horse trailer but something went in there and wrestled with her. I think it was a cat. We've already turned some of the plants out. We have some rhubarb started, asparagus, lemon grass, snow peas, mustard, lots of strawberries, potatoes, onions of a number of different kinds, and lots of other vegies. We are now turning out more lettuce also. Hard to say when the deer are first going to hit us. (Speaking of deer its time the veggie type people band together and get the same protection for their gardens and valuable vegetables from deer that sheep farmers get for their sheep in the case of dogs. One to two deer can do thousands of dollars of damage in one night.) I've got to finish placing deer fence poles and get it rigged with what ever barrier I can afford. So we have a good part of the 3 acres cleared and planted already, more brush to drag and stack. Thousands of plants now going in the green house. Stop by.
Greenhouse Finished
Feb 15, 2012 
Got the greenhouse covered in poly today. Still need to frame in more boards inside, but the planting won't wait says the Akha woman, so its mostly done. 24x36 feet. 8 feet tall on sides, 10 feet tall in center.
Was immediately ten degrees warmer inside. Time to plant tomatoes and other veggies inside, onions, peas, and lots more outside. We already have grapes of different varieties planted, gold raspberries and a lot of soil rototilled ready for plants when it warms up. We'd like to copy a friend who is making a 100 long hoop greenhouse and add that to our inventory for salad plants. The potatos go in soon too. Right now we have lots more branches to drag in the back acre and still plenty of berry vine roots to dig out, a plot at a time. But where it was an overgrown jungle, now its got light, visible fruit trees from fifty years ago or longer, and nice firs. I was showing the kids one of the old growth cedar 6x6 posts I got, that when I trimmed the end, had more than 150 growth rings in just those six inches. Been in the ground a long time as a sign post and still hadn't rotted.
Great Soil
Feb 7, 2012 
The soil here is really great. That is why we aren't packing it down by running a small tractor over it. (And we don't have one) but Michu and I dig out roots, small stumps, stones that get revealed and replant the volunteer concord grapes near the fence line.
The first 150 feet from the road we will want to build up the height a bit. The soil is low there where the old house used to be and the lawn. Another foot would be good. The kids love the place and have lots of room to run and play and herd their chickens. Hampton has his own area and a good supply of hay, and next after the green house I will build his stall, now that we have a pretty good idea where we want it, but still need a bit of wood. Lots of mulch piles getting built, and we are also progressing on the deer fence around the property, an entanglement that deer will not enjoy.
Greenhouse Framed
Feb 7, 2012 
Here is a picture of the greenhouse. A good friend gave me the posts, and we built the rest. Still need to cover the whole thing with plastic. Size is 24x36. Posts are 3 feet deep in middle row, 2 feet deep on sides. Post height then is 8 and 10 feet above ground. 2x6's salvaged from an old house hold it together. Plastic for the whole thing will cost about $200. So soon it is done.
Michu is already planting seeds in the field. I borrowed a rototiller after tilling a lady's field for her, and did a bit of mechanical tweek on it too. We clear black berry vine and stick debri that is small into piles that we will also plant in. We are now building home made deer fence with saved limbs and branches. The deer act like they own the place. We have a good acre and a half close to being ready to rototill. Some areas still quite wet. We want to collect a lot more grass, leaves, mulch and build that area up. But it's all a good start. I have to build Hamptons stall and hay storage next. Got to replace a bolt on the post hole digger that I use by hand, yes the old fashioned kind. Some metal guys are hauling away scrap we don't want to be troubled with. I could have done it but I don't have a trailer for that. There are a lot of tires with wheels still in them too, but I'm not sure these guys are going to carry through. Later we get rid of tires.
Posts for the Greenhouse
Jan 9, 2012 
A friend donated these posts to our effort to get a greenhouse built and a horse stall built. Now we just need a few more boards and we will need to be getting topsoil and planting trays.
Things on the farm are pulling together pretty fast. I have to clear the last of the downed thorn trees and other brush while I still have a borrowed chain saw. Michu has been digging out berry vine roots and burning thorn branches, getting the place cleaned up. We only have about an acre left to clean up of the three acres. Not bad for only being here three months. I have to cut steel wheels out of old tires to save the scrap and haul it in. Our scrap pile is pretty big to say the least. Then a load of gravel, plastic for the green house, yes lots to do and very satisfying.
The "Scream"
Jan 2, 2012 
I thought this was sort of funny, like nature's version of the painting, "The Scream". It is a wasp nest that I found in the fall, figured it was worth saving. Nature has tons of great stuff.
Reminds me of the day when I was a bit younger and I saw one of these things way up in a dead tree. I wondered if I could get the dead tree to push over? The nest was about the size of a basketball. I gave the tree a push, didn't really budge, so I looked around me. Then with a whoosh, this large wasp nest landed right at my feet. I FROZE! But nothing happened, was already too late in the year and they were all gone. I breathed a sigh of relief. And there was that other time, when the cluster of Oregon "grapes" was growing out of this embankment, and I grabbed a handful and yanked, to my great surpirse ripping it nearly out of the embankment, where it was growing right through the middle of a yellow jacket nest nearly this big, at which point they greatly motivated me to move on up the road as it were.
Water Control and Happy New Year
Jan 2, 2012 
Its a new year, and if you farm it doesn't feel like there was any time off at all. Saturday I cut posts for the green house, 24' wide by 36' long. Got to haul those, get some 2x6's 12 feet long and get it wrapped in plastic.
Saturday and part of Sunday were spent clearing more limbs, cleaning soil, cutting a brush and dicing firewood for the wood pile, which is quite extensive now. The water table is like 1/4 inch under the surface about now. The neighbor told us the place would flood, would all be under water, course he didn't know we were rice farmers, we know how to move water. So the bunch of us got to work during and after the storm steering water towards the ditch. We've had a really amazing winter so far, not much rain and a bit of cold, but its going to have to rain a bunch now or there is going to be a water shortage in some areas, though I think we will be ok. Water table is never very far in Falls City, Oregon where we are at. Haven't seen the turkeys in a few days, the chickens are having fun, they get put to bed about 4-5pm, or the kids spend like thirty minutes up in a tree after dark, pretending its hard work, getting them down, joking, one working, two laughing, or something like that. To me its like "why didn't you do this earlier?" To them I think its just fun, another reason to be up in a tree barking at the moon. Generator pooped out, I dug into the control box, didn't see anything wrong, wiggled it all around, hit the bypass switch, started her up and she was fine. Went to warm the suburban to take the kids to the grocery, and the alternator light was on. Now don't tell me that the wicked witch of electricity error that crippled the generator didn't go out of the one and into the "pigs" so to speak. So that is another $70 I'll have to find somewhere.
Christmas on the Akha Farm 2011
Dec 25, 2011 
We are wrapping up our first few months on the Akha farm. The scrap metal and pieces of debri are dropping in number, moving towards the front gate as we get ready to pull out weeds, stumps and lots and lots of thorny berry vine roots. The leaves and debri are happily rotting into the black black soil, tossed up by the frost, then settling softly back down again. We can now see from the front to the back of the property and the many apple trees we have cleared around. We'll scatter the ash of the burned brush around where we plant. Now we need to get on with building our green house. We have lots of nice weather, not just rain, bright sunny mornings. Moved Hampton's paddock so that he could churn up a new area for us, exposing rocks we want to pull out, and fertilizing of course. We have blue jays, big wood peckers, wild turkeys, deer, squirrels and a few gophers. Looking forward to when the whole place breaks out in bloom this coming spring 2012.
Come Visit the Akha Farm, Falls City, Oregon
Nov. 11, 2011 We are nearly a month into cleaning up the land at the Akha Farm in Falls City, Oregon. Metal, tires and berry vines keep getting towed out of the brush, clearing way for tomatoes and other edibles like chili peppers. We invite you to stop by and tell your Akha friends. Drop us an email for directions. The coffee is on. |
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