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Last update: 12:54 p.m. EDT Aug. 5, 2008

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August is here!

The bees are still busy, with the rain we have been receiving. What a blessing - even today, August 4th, we are getting an abundance of rain!

We Have Lots of Honey For Sale

There is a lot of clover honey and some small containers of black locust honey. Black locust honey is a rarity. It comes once every 3 - 5 years. The conditions must be just right - lots of blossoms on the black locust trees, which occur around the 1st week of May for two weeks. In addition to the amount of blossoms, there should be no, or little, rain while the trees are in blossom, so that the bees can get the nectar from the blossoms. Also, the bee hives need to have a large number of bees by the first of May so that there are enough workers to carry it to the hive and put it up as honey.
And this was one of those years!

Tomatoes are ripening, chickens are still laying and the goats are still in milk.

We are busy preparing products for the upcoming craft shows in the fall. They start in September and run through the first week of December, so we will be busy, busy, busy!

Cheese Making Class in September
Mark your calender!
When: Saturday, September 6; 10AM - 2PM
Where: Weber Farms - 15503 Glencoe Verona Road, Verona, KY 41092
Cost: $25 per person
Number of participants: 8
Only 3 seats left!

Description:
This class will focus on making “soft” cheeses.

Cheese that we will make in class may include:
• Panir
• Chevre
• Feta
• Possibly Mascarpone

There will be samples of various soft cheeses to take home.

What to Bring:
• 1 pair of new,yellow Playtex gloves
• A small plastic container and a few small ziplock bags for taking home your samples of the cheeses.

Registration closes August 23rd. Remember, space will be limited to 8 people!

Hope to see you at the class!

To your health,

P & M Weber
Weber Farms

Truly, we live in the land of Milk and Honey…

It’s July - time to bottle honey!
With the black locust bloom, I extracted gallons of pure, clear, black locust honey about 3 weeks ago (sorry, it’s not for sale).
I have since extracted twice, and have several more gallons of honey.
I have probably another 2 - 3 gallons of honey to pull off of the hives in 2 weeks, and will have to extract and bottle it. We may have honey put up by the bees all summer, if the wet season continues!

We are eating fresh blueberries! We intend to take cuttings and root them for an increase in blueberry plants this summer. We want to increase the number of plants we have to over 300.

The garden is doing well, and we have 4 rows of tomatoes, 2 rows of peppers, some zucchini, lettuce, spinach, peas (many in the freezer now), beans, squash, melons, and corn coming in. Now, we are starting our fall garden crops.
We intend to use the greenhouse for a season extender, growing many things into winter, and getting an early start with flowers and veggies for next spring!

The goats are in milk, the chickens are laying and the strawberries are through for the spring. We got about about a pint of strawberries every night for 2 - 3 weeks from all of the plants - and will get more in fall, with the 100 plants that are ever bearing.
We will be rooting the runners this next month, and putting the strawberry starts in their own beds for next year.

We have about 30 turkey eggs in the incubator, and hope that they will hatch.
The first batch of broiler chicks arrived yesterday, and will be ready to butcher by the middle of September. I will be ordering another batch around the middle of August, and they will be ready to butcher (and in the freezer) around the first of November.

We will have Northwest Farm Terrier puppies born around September 1st. There will be photos available, and we will be taking deposits as early as October 8th. Great farm dogs and all-round pets!

Marilyn may be selling her value-added products at the Tusculum Trading Company store in Milford, Ohio, soon. It is in a very good location.
We are making products for her upcoming shows, which start around the first weekend of October.

To Your health,

P & M Weber

It’s almost July, can you believe it????

Last year at this time we were taking 3 steps backward for every step we took forward. There were a lot of distractions and being at the wonderful Covington Farmer’s market didn’t help. We just weren’t getting anything done. The market was fabulous and we made a lot of friends but the farm really suffered.

This year it looks like some progress is being made. We’re still not “there”, but some things are staying done. Now, if the weather would stay in the 75-82 range with a light breeze and no humidity for the most part - including weekends without the thundershowers (why do those only happen on the weekend when we could be WORKING???).

At any rate, we’ve pulled broccoli, kohlrabi, shelling peas and sugar peas from the garden. The strawberries are done for a time* and the asparagus/rhubarb is done for the year.

We are awaiting the blueberries to fully ripen and then we start a plan to triple the amount of bushes we have next year**.

We are going to start planting for fall next month. We will start everything in the basement. The best part of fall cabbage type plants? There are no cabbage worms and other pests to bother it!!! We used pepper spray this year for the first time that we made out of onions, garlic, cayenne and soap to get rid of the worms.

We got BLACK LOCUST HONEY! It is crystal clear and wonderful. Right now we’re working on harvesting the regular spring honey and keeping the bees from swarming - what a year for swarming this has been.
(We do not sell the BL Honey - it’s so rare that it’s hard to price it - but we have been known to give it away for Christmas to great customers and friends).

Right now we’d ask that you go visit Sugar Bay Day Lily Farm. It is awesome! The set up, the flowers, the people running it - Dana and Dan - and the store . . .   It is set up so that you can go on a small “hike” around the farm and look at all the different day lilies. July 4th is supposed to be the peak week for them.   http://www.sugarbaylily.com/page/page/406025.htm
It’s off of KY HWY 42 south and beautiful. I ask that you visit and please mention Weber Farms sent you. You won’t regret a Friday, Saturday or Sunday visit to this beautiful farm. (And you’ll get to see a selection of our stuff there for sale and several other fine artisans’ things on display also).

* We are looking forward to setting up the greenhouse for Christmas strawberries - full flavor, organically grown, ever-bearing strawberries.

**We will be doing some “air-layering” of our blueberries to try to get new plants that are identical to their parents that have done so well for us.

Our focus for next year will be: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and the orchard (which is doing GREAT!).  We are praying thru changing over to just having fruit and berries for our customers along with our farm-fresh eggs and sundries made from goat’s milk and beeswax.  We will also be looking for a bigger piece of property to grow our own hay and produce by-request for friends and family. We want to use it to grow dent corn for the animals and corn burning stove. We will also be looking to put hundreds of blueberry & strawberry plants for a u-pick and we-pick. Two locations - but close in to town so you can all come visit.

You dictate what we sell and how we grow it - so let us know what you’d like to see this little farm grow, and we will if we can.

Considering the sky-rocketing costs of fuel and food, one should consider how to reduce the use of fuel, and the most cost-effective way to reduce the food budget - without starving.

And what if the economy collapses??? What will corn cost, or a loaf of bread? What can I do???

Learn how to garden!

Just about 50 years ago, nearly everyone had a garden in their backyard. Many of the gardening methods used prior to the 1940’sare actually considered ‘organic’, ‘eco-friendly’ and ’sustainable’ by today’s definitions.

So why not start learning what has been passed down for centuries???

Even if you live in an apartment or condominium with little or no growing area, if you have a small patio or sunny window, you can grow your own groceries in containers!

We will be offering some advice on these subjects and more - there are a lot of innovative ways to produce large amounts of food in a small area, so keep posted for low-tech, high-tech and no-tech solutions!

The FDA has approved meat and milk from cloned animals. Although this change will not take place for up to 2 years, I find it frightening that they would go ahead without adequate testing. Another Vioxx disaster in the making, there is a further downside to this one. While Vioxx, when recalled could be pulled from the shelves because of required labeling, there will be no such chance with cloned meats and milk products - there will be no labeling indicating that the products come from cloned animals.

With the onset of NAIS occurring in the same time frame, it appears that the small farmers will not be there to come to our aid, when a virus wipes out the entire cloned herd - NAIS will force burdensome expenditures for implementation and maintenance that will break the financial backs of the small farmers.

Bottom line: We will not have a choice between cloned or natural meat/milk, because the labeling will not reflect th origin of the product. And we will not have the choice to raise our own meat/milk products anymore because of the prohibitive nature of NAIS.
Heaven help us… Read more

Marilyn called me at work to tell me we lost 3 chickens this AM.

It seems mr. skunk arrived and beheaded 3 chickens.

2 were known layers and one was a retiree.

We do not use prophylactic antibiotics, accept if needed to save the life of an extremely sick, or distressed animal.

We use natural herbs for de-worming, table salt or apple cider vinegar as the antibiotic of choice.

We have no issues, really, with our stock - the hens are healthy and happy, running all over the farm in search of their daily intake of grass, bugs and other items they find. The goats are content foraging on the pastures we have and eating the hay we give them.

A recent article, written by investigative reporter Michael Pollan (author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, and soon to be released “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”) tells us of the super-strains of disease that not only survive antibiotics, but attack humans and animals and cause high death rates and how new strains are appearing in the feedlots for pigs.

MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans each year than AIDS — 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in 2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Now, a new and even more virulent strain — called “community-acquired MRSA” — is now killing young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital. it is, however in the pigs at the overpopulated feedlots - where they use the same antibiotics to control outbreaks of disease due to the filthy conditions in the confined area.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms.

Read more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magazine/16wwln-lede-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin

Well, we have a New Year starting next week.

What does that mean to a farm?

The new year starts in the dead of winter, but there is still a lot to do!

If the temperature is above 50, I will refill feeders and put them on the bee hives so that they can replenish their “winter stores”.

I will continue to “dress” the growing beds from last year, and new beds for this year, with manure. As long as the ground is not frozen, the manure can leech into the ground, providing the nourishment that the soil desperately needs.

The chickens are still active, so I will continue to move their poultry netting, so that they have clean, fresh ground to forage on. It amazes me that, even in winter, when I give additional natural feed, they still manage to find bugs, grass, leaves and other “critters” to eat - and leave some of the feed untouched!

I still need to split wood for the wood stove, work on the inside of the house, repair and build new bee equipment, and work on other projects.

We are planning the beds for the coming spring, ordering seeds, fruit trees, berry bushes, flowers, herbs, spices for the garden beds and starting seeds for planting in the ground. We are also taking extra care of our pregnant animals (goats and dog) to make sure that the little ones coming will be healthy and strong.

There is an organization — “The Center for Food Safety” - that has done some great work on the behalf of all those that want natural, wholesome foods to eat.
In the past year alone, they have:

• Won a major federal court victory that stopped the planting of a new genetically engineered crop - Roundup Ready alfalfa - for the first time in history;
• Halted risky field tests growing experimental drug crops (pharmacrops) in open fields through other federal court victories;
• Defended the organic standards from numerous threats by agribusiness to weaken them;
• Generated over 145,000 comments to FDA from people opposing milk and meat from cloned animals in our food supply;
• Won the passage of the Mikulski-Specter amendment in the Senate version of the Farm Bill demanding further testing of food from cloned animals before FDA allows such products on the market;
• Fought for and won a ban on animal cloning in organic production;
• Successfully pressured Congress to remove language in the Farm Bill that would have eliminated the rights of states and local governments to regulate genetically engineered crops;
• Pressured FDA to maintain strong and accurate labels on irradiated foods.

You can keep abreast of all food safety issues, or support this great organization by going to their website:

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/index.cfm

The Farm bill passed in the Senate -

The good news:
An amendment was attached that required the FDA to postpone the OK for using cloned animals for meat/dairy.

The bad news:

Funding for NAIS is included, approval for the NAIS is included.

All we can hope for now is a veto by President Bush, and the ability of the people to convince the USDA that we DO NOT WANT a National Animal IDentification system because it would be the death-knell for the small farmers.

Only 90 people total ( reps. and senators combined) were present for the vote on the farm bill - where were the other 3/4 of the congress???