The Sound of the Lawn Mower

Its almost time here in Maine. These warm days will eventually cause people's lawns to grow and then: roaring, clattering, flying stuff as one walks or drives by --- more pleasantly, the smell of new cut grass, the good times in the yard, the control of mosquitoes.

I grew up in a house where the lawn, and lawn care, were a revered passtime. My dad mowed, watered, studied, fertilized, pulled weeds, sprayed for weeds, spread stuff for weeds, and even installed underground irrigation and a special well so the lawn could thrive. It was His matter of pride, and the neighborhood apreciated it, often stopping to talk about lawn care. My Dad was the local expert!

I was more interested in the mechanics of growing: I played with starting shrubs, understanding effects of fertilizer, and the garden that was hidden out back.

Recently, I participated in the "White House Garden" project: I signed a petition, blogged in the NY Times "Well" section, forwarded articles and petitions to friends etc. I was pleased when the Obama's decided to tear up some lawn for a garden.

There have been some things written about the amount of pesticides used on the White House lawn. So, as I was catching up on Email I thought this was worthy of consideration: something from a publication I receive twice a month.
"Big green: Lawns in the U.S. cover 40 million acres, making them the largest agricultural sector in America.

And paying to keep it that way: Americans shell out $40 billion annually for seed, sod, and chemicals to keep their lawns green.

Chemical hogs: Lawns use ten times as many chemicals per acre as industrial agribusiness farmland.

With an insatiable thirst: Lawn watering consumes 270 billion gallons of water a week.

More than its share: One-third of all residential water use in the U.S. goes for landscaping.

Food not lawns: The land and water used for lawns could instead produce over 80 million acres of organic vegetables."
The publication is called "FoodLinks America" and it can be found at this web site, along with an Email address for subscription. http://www.tefapalliance.org/
There are often things worth reading in Foodlinks.
And, back to the lawn of my youth? My Dad died after a long battle with Parkinson's Disease. Research has shown that exposure to pesticides is a cause that often leads to Parkinsons. I think the lawn is kind of nice with dandelions...

Firsts of the Spring!

I noticed in one of today's papers that there is an "ozone alert" posted for this weekend. It seems early for this but I guess the warm air flowing in is bringing with it something we don't really want.
And then: the native variety of black flies have made their appearance here in Windsor. We were just speaking of them the other day: I decided long ago that I'd rather have black flies than a dry spring. Black flies need running water to breed so --- let's keep the water running so we'll have green and lush gardens.

A Satisfied Customer

At the farm, in the spring, when purchases far exceed sales in monetary value, we're offering a few extra things for sale:
pullets, adult guinea fowl, bags of rabbit manure, and, of course, the best fresh eggs for eating, and some fertile eggs for hatching. This is a time when we can connect with other farmers, gardeners, hobbyists and talk about our favorite growing things.
This morning a man visited us to buy the one guinea hen we have left. We have lots more males, but only one hen.
Sometimes the guinea fowl are hard for us to tell apart, male from female. We were sure this one was a hen and maybe, just maybe, there's another...
I received this Email this afternoon:
"good afternoon steve,
i wanted to thankyou for allowing me to come out today, 4 of my guinea cocks are very happy, they have taken to the hen already.
again, if and when you identify some more hens i would be happy to purchase 3-4 more. as well if you do get some turkey eggs ( fertile of course) i would
be more than happy to purchase 6 from you.
pls thank your daughters for me they were very kind. i look forward to hearing from you sometime in the future.
enjoy the beautiful day and wknd
wayne"
Thanks Wayne, we enjoyed meeting you too!

Beautiful! Time to Grow!

It seems to me as though evrything to do with technical stuff -- opening accounts, filling out profiles, creating carefully crafted postings, cleaning up the computer -- and all other things like these take longer than they really should. Maybe its me but there's got to be an easier way.
Operating from one central resource doesn't seem to be possible. Some places have differences such as functionality and/or audiences, and these differences make a "one size fits all" approach tough.

Here at the Farm, its important to be able to market. In order to market, its important to be able to communicate. And, in order to communicate in today's world, its important to be kind of "web savvy" and the learning curve is steep.
After all, in terms of my life, computers and the web are young! And me? Well then, I must be "old". But that, as they say, is no excuse.

One of the toughest marketing dilemmas of farmers is reaching the generations that are keeping up with the latest web stuff. Suffice it to say that means the farmers have to keep up: and that appears to be my job.
So, I do it in the winter and early spring and always seem to be leaving some loose end dangling.

You'll see a long gap in the post dates for this blog. I started it and just wasn't ready to go on. When I got started, for some reason, I couldn't get Blogger to accept posts from my Hotmail account so I gave up. Now they work, so sometimes I'll post directly onto the blog, and sometimes I'll send them into the blog. That will depend on how much time I really have.

I'll apologize, in advance, for the ads at the bottoms of my Email posts. Microsoft really wants you to know just how great their services are at Windows Live. I'm not sure they're great, but I've had a Hotmail address since 1999 so I hate to abandon it --- but sometimes it seems like a habit I'd love to quit.

The marketing thing allows me to have a bit of personal life, and some of that, as it relates to Emma's Family Farm will be related here.

Hope you find it interesting!

And you see? It does work!

Obvious by the ad at the end, I am posting from a Hotmail account.  I know this is mixing messages, but its an easy way to update the blog here.
For some reason: it could be my software, it could be my ignorance of how to operate my software, or it could be that I must spend many dollars to upgrade but; I can not seem to make Gmail work well for me.  I had such High Hopes for it.
 
Nonetheless, here we are, and I'll really try now to update this blog.  Earlier Email issues seem to be gone so on we go!
Henceforth, I'll attempt to keep on the farm track --- and if you don't see recent updates try our Twitter page as shown in the signature below.


posting from Emma's Family Farm,
 Windsor Maine;
 Steve Hoad
See what we're doing on the Farm at
http://twitter.com/TheHoads
 

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Windows Live™ SkyDrive™: Get 25 GB of free online storage. Check it out.

Just Another Test?

So what happens when I send this?  Does it work?

posting from Emma's Family Farm,
 Windsor Maine;
 Steve Hoad
See what we're doing on the Farm at
http://twitter.com/TheHoads
 

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Windows Live™ Hotmail®:…more than just e-mail. Check it out.