Friday, May 4, 2018

spring break

Hi, I am a bit slow on the blogging currently. I am quite busy with some consultancy and it is slowly warming up here on the farm. They call it spring, when the temperature is above freezing....Anyway, it is time to sow, cultivate, weed, harvest at the same time. We started harvesting aspargus in the polytunnel already weeks ago and now, finally, I think I can have a go at the drier fields with the cultivator. The cows are moved to the "summer pasture", but there is still no grass there for them, so we feed them hay yet another week. They got their calves in February. The new bull came a few days ago.

The consultancies I work with are a concept of "biodiversity farming", a desk study on how to develop a regenerative farming system that optimise biological, ecological and gastronomic diversity, kind of. As it is for commercial clients I can't, unfortunately, share the results. Another one is a comprehensive assessment of health and environmental perspectives on milk and vegetable milk replacements (such as soy, almond and oat milk).  That is for a municipality and the results will be published, in Swedish. I will make some posts about it also in English. 

We, me and my wife Ann-Helen, recently shook hands with a publisher for a new book. Will let you know more later on. 

I will try to reorganize the blog and make an index of the main posts as they are now more than 400 over 10 years of time.  Perhaps I delete those that I consider dated. I did an index for my Swedish blog and it was appreciated by myself at least. Now I finally find my own posts easily. Btw, I do run a Garden Earht facebook page, where I do post som smaller items and links to interesting things I read. https://www.facebook.com/Garden-Earth-140220962713887/

Meanwhile, not many new posts from me for a while. But as a distraction I post some photos from the farm. 






5 comments:

  1. Nice squash. Surely the photo was taken last fall.

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  2. Joe, I have solved the "how to grow squash and pumpkins under the snow"-problem, so we plant them at Christmas and harvest Easter-time.

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    1. Great idea! I'm sure that the snow is a great mulch and keeps the weeds well under control.

      Those squash must be special hybrids though to be able to grow with only 6 hours daylight, with even that dim light filtered through the snow. Or perhaps you augment the sun with LED rope lights on the ground? :)

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  3. Just found you... really enjoying your unbiased research (in the face of so much 'plant-based', i.e., vegan propaganda). BTW, I'm also enjoying the YouTube vlog, 'The Swedish Homestead'. My appreciation of my Scandinavian heritage grows :)

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  4. Thanks Nancy, I will be back with more soon. I think Nitrous oxide will be my next topic.

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