On going research and development:

In liu of having the time to actually write a "priori proof" here are some notes regarding the ongoing work here on the farm in regards to Bishop's Homegrown/Hip-Gnosis Seed Development and also a peek at what you can expect over the next few months and years, as we evolve with the economy and the state of our country from day to day most of this will apply specifically to local and regional residents of Washington County Indiana but we are also in the process of designing a much more efficient and informative web-site to host our information and future products which will be up for interest to a much more diverse segment of the self-sustainable and eco-logical community.

R and D bulletins

- Compost Teas: Recipies, Methods, Forumlas, and bottled for sale. Over the years we have worked with a number of different compost teas and have created several formulas and methods which work well for us, this year we will be bottling and selling many of these in concentrate form to the local area via our farm, roadside farmstands, crossroads store, and the Washington County Farmers Market. Ironically some of the information I have been reading lately when I have a moment or two independently of our message board is currently being discussed at The Homegrown Goodness Messageboard regarding lactic bacteria and collecting local and woodland microbes.

-Hatching Eggs, Chicks, Keets, Poults for sale. We were recently given a very nice incubator and are hatching a number of varieties of poultry for sale this season to the local area. Hopefully by next spring we will be able to ship hatching eggs as well.

-Worm castings, fishing worms, and bulk worms, we are getting close to have enough breeding stock to greatly expand our efficiency in this area, in time we will offer castings, fishing worms and bulk composting worms both locally and on the net

-Poultry breeding, we recently aqired our first stock of heritage turkeys including bourban reds, black spanish, blue slate, nargansette, Rio Grande wild, and Royal Palms, we plan to enter into some breeding projects selecting for large size meat birds in new colors and patterns and to also be able to slaughter our own birds as well as offer poults for sale and meat for sale along with Guinea and Chicken meat to the local area in the near future.

-Feed Production, currently we are working on refining a new feed corn variety from our own stock grown on our own farm, the corn is very high protein and we plan to be able to produce all of our own feed and to offer some for sale in the fall in 10 and 15 lb bags. We have recently entered into a co-operative venture with a couple of friends which will see us release a circular quarterly which will contain a list of our products, prices, information, availabilty dates and more including our own feed, poults, chicks, keets, produce, seeds, plants, fruit trees, eggs and more.

-Hip-Gnosis and the new co-operative will most likely release this first circular to the local area sometime this summer or early fall.

-Bishop's Homegrown will all issue a quarterly circular to the local area detailing all of our available products as well.

-This fall we plan to have a more permanent, secure, and organized web-site for ordering our seeds from Hip-Gnosis

-A vast majority of the plant breeding we started five years ago will be finished this year and bulked for sale, many of these varieties will have quite a bit of genetic diversity left in them for the home gardener to make selections from, this fall we will once again have a larger seed selection available via mail order.

-Alan