Some Interesting Observations as of 7/5/07

-OSU purple tomatoes are producing fairly prolifically in some 5 gallon trade nursery pots providing ample opporotunities for crosses between them and the ever popular Sungold F1 tomato.

-Astronomy Domine is about 1 week from being ready for table for the most part. Since there are so many cultivars in the heritage of Astronomy Domine the harvest is in an extended window of nearly three weeks difference. Always interesting. This year nearly 50 new cultivars have been added to the mix. The next several years will see selections of segragates and isolation in order to "perfect" new lines of open pollinated and mostly sugar enhanced sweet corn lines. There is a lot of potential here.

-10,000 B.C. is the name of a new Grex of sweet corns we are working with. The intention being a multi-colored and multi-purpose normal suguary sweet corn variety which can also be used as an animal feed or for other uses. 50 varieties, many which were accessed via seed banks the world over but which were far to degraded in terms of inbreding depression to warrant growout and issolation have now been merged. Tassling and silking at the moment.

-The tomato patch is growing along nicely. Not as many varieties in the past, trying to focus in more on varieties I have developed and creating a market for those varieties locally while also increasing seed to send out all over the world to be selected for localities outside of the Ohio Valley. Apparently Jack White and Absinthe both have quite the fanfare in France and elsewhere. Very happy about that.

-Working deeply with soil fertility theories. Found a couple good sources of bat guano that was sustainably and responsibly harvested. Working with both Guano and Worm castings in fertilizing fruit trees and alpine strawberries and both will play a large part this fall in the greenhouse in which we will use rotten sawdust and good quality manure and topsoil to make the floor of the greenhouse into a raised bed. More to come then.

-Growing out and selecting from a massive number of Alpine Strawberry cultivars to find the very best of them and select for a larger size. Also obtained some seed of several F. Chilonese varieties which have germinated well and will be potted up this week. Must still track down the ever elusive Musk Strawberry that I hear so much about! Got any? Want to share? Shoot me an e-mail at bishopshomegrown@gmail.com

-Our orchard is growing well, the grafted pear trees from this past spring are growing rather quickly, some more or less open pollinated tart cherries started from pits are now nearly eight inches tall in their first season and we had a lot of luck with germinating some local persimmon population seeds!

-The poultry is coming along nicely. We just used a couple bantams to hatch out a fairly large nest of guinea keets which we are selling to some good friends of ours. The turkeys are still young but some of the Toms are growing very quickly and learning to strut already. Our goal is to keep larger type heritage turkeys that are good for meat but to breed in some new color combinations. At the moment we have Black Spanish, Bourbon Red, Blue Slate, Naraganset, and Standard Bronze. A lot of fun to watch and beautiful to boot.

Updates and the such.

Making an effort to find the time to update the blog and Homegrown Goodness with the minimum of information during the busy growing season. I was digging around looking for information on Thomas Jefferson's growouts at Monticello and came across his "garden journal" which to say the least is very intriguing to read. Basic information, not a whole lot of description or detail, but very interesting.


Anyhow, that gave me some inspiration to start updating this thing over the growing season even though with limited time it will prove quite a bit difficult. You can check out the garden journal here.


So much is going on in regard to plant breeding and development here on the farm, lots and lots of exciting experiments and growouts! It's such a beautiful experience to explore the farm and the diversity planted here. The poulty breeding is going great as well with the new turkeys coming along nicely.

Kim and I have been taking many pictures of projects and making notes regarding our growouts like crazy, all will find their way online in the near future, sometimes there just isn't enough time in a day for all we would like to do or say, but soon enough my friends......

Anyhow, expect short updates and descriptive posts soon. Sorry for the absence but you must make hay while the sun in shining!

-Alan

A few items I am currently looking for.....and yes I know one sounds extremely weird!

-Red Okra, a good productive strain.
-A corn sheller, would most certainly help in working up livestock feed this fall and winter!

and to top off the list!

BAT GUANO - preferably harvested in a responisable way or from an area such as an attic or a barn or garage where no damage is done to the colony, or a bat house. We recently put up two but they have yet to be inhabited. Will take as much as you can send and will pay for shipping plus trade you out a lifetime supply of seed!

Will gladly trade seeds for all other items.

As another quick update, we will be at the Washington County Farmers Market in Salem Indiana at the fairgrounds again on Saturday from 8:30 A.M. until 12:30 P.M. and will have a terrific selection of our "eco-Logically" grown (read organic) produce on hand including the following:

-Red Chiefton potatoes harvested as New Potatoes. Absolutely delicious anyway you want to cook them! 3.00 a quart
-Leaf Lettuce Mix: Red types, Green Types, Purple, Red Edged in an efficient and beautiful mix for 2.50 a gallon bag
-Broccoli-an assortment of types. Small heads 1.50 large 2.00-2.50
-Cabbage, early Jersey Wakefield, Early Round Dutch, Early Golden Acre. 2.00 a small Head, 2.50-3.00 a large head
-Sugar Snap and snow peas. 3.50 a quart bag. Delicious, especially when mixed with the red potatoes cubed up in a skillet!
-Farm Fresh, Free Range, "Eco-Logically" grown Green and Blue eggs!
-Yellow Cabbage Collards. Beautiful yellow-green and large leaved collards, better than any you have ever tasted. A terrific strain we sourced through a friend via "the collard shack" (google that one).
-Alpine Strawberry Plants. Mostly white fruited, non-runnering type plants, prolific and everbearing. Deliciously sweet without the "tart" of modern berries. Several strains, many most likely grown by Thomas Jefferson himself. Small pots 4.00 and large pots 8.00
-Yellow Transparent apple trees. Smallish summer cooking apple. Great for pies. 5.00 one gallon nursery pots.
-Compost tea concentrate. All the nutrient you need to make 15-20 gallons of great compost tea, inoculated with benificial microbes and mychorizial fungi.

We are also taking orders on Amaracauna Chicks in both large fowl and bantam size as well as pearl/pied guineas.

Mr. Obama, you are complicit in the war crimes carried out at Abu Ghirab!

Your complacency and refusal to release the torture photos depicting the rape of women, men, and children, in the hell hole known as Abu Ghirab speaks highly of your true "cult of personality", that with which you sold yourself to the American "Republic". Your denial of and subsequent "nothing to see here" statements reek of the protectionism of those who made these orders within the Bush administration as well as those who carried out these heinous violations of human rights. You sir are complacent and actively seeking to cover up crimes against humanity, and as such there is no difference between yourself and a Nazi sympathizer! You sir are actively seeking to cover up a crime and allow the perpetrators of said crime to run free, this sir makes you a criminal.

Perhaps it is because you have no real power? Perhaps is is because you are afraid of what your puppet masters may have carried out in retribution, either way there is not now and nor will there be in the future any amount of "change" as long as a charlatan such as yourself sits in the highest office of the United States, a disgrace to our country, some may even say a traitor to the people. Who can fault you however? With everyone parading you around as a messiah I would hate to be called a heretic, but it is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't, so I won't make it what it isn't. It's not as though you have ever had a choice is it? You were groomed to be our alchemical king just as the fool king before you was placed in power as well.

Alaster Crowley would most certainly be proud of such tactics.

How far off do you think this country is from revolution?

Demand the truth!

Bishop's Homegrown/Hip-Gnosis Seed Circular summer 2009

Here is the first edition of our new produce circular of products that we expect to have available this summer with approximate dates and prices. This is of concern mostly to local consumers, feel free to pass this around friends, we will have this in hardcopy at next Saturdays Washington County Farmers Market as well.

Produce:

Free Range Chicken Eggs - Mostly Amaracauna and some Browns. Available all season long. 2.00 a dozen.

Onions, Lettuce, Kale, Collards, Raddishes - May-June
lettuce 2.00 gallon bag, onions six for 1.50, raddishes 6 for 1.50, collards and kale in large bunches for 3.50. Special Option: lettuce, 6 onions, 6 raddishes for 3.50

New Potatoes - June-July. Red and White. Strawberry basket 3.00

Cabbage, Broccoli - June-August. 3.00 a head

Sweet Corn - July-September. 3 for 1.00

Tomatoes and Peppers July-October. Various Pricing.

Greenhouse "Have You Got It Yet" tomatoes - strawberry basket for 4.00

More to come later!!! Updated Often

Plants:

White Alpine Strawberries in four gallon pots. 8.00 available all summer
Grafted apple and pear trees - Limited availabilty, multiple varieties, one gallon pots- 15.00

Poulty:
Amaracauna chicks, available in June, July, August, and September for 2.50
Guinea Keets, Available June, July, August, September for 4.00

Bishop's Homegrown/Hip-Gnosis Seed Development
5604 S. State Rd. 60
Pekin Indiana 47165

1-812-967-2073.


And just as an aside, here is a short list of things we plant to have available, minus dates over the next 365 days:

-eggs
-chicks
-hatching eggs
-meat chickens
-turkeys for meat
-poults, keets
-mapple syrup
-ginseng
-composting worms
-fishing worms
-worm castings
-compost teas
-orchard fruits
-grafted trees
-potted plants
-seeds
-seedlings
-summer produce
-winter produce
-poultry feeds
-consulting and information
-research and development
-plant breeding
-poultry breeding
-soap
-candles

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

Around the farm.

All the initial planting and replanting/replacing is finished, now it's all about maintenance, in that spirit I bring some photos of the ongoings of the farm.


Amongst the following photos you'll see images of what used to be the chicken coop, torn down to it's basic framework with the doors and several posts left in place, part of my absence as of late from the net has been due to a restructuring of my poultry program including donating my bantam flock to a good friend, honestly I was just tired of spending so much time working with birds that give such little eggs and which literally will allow themselves to be mated so brutally that it would put them on their death bed. I was also dealing with a minx issue which is now under control, but more importantly I created a brand new chicken/turkey/guinea coop out of the original worm house, it's much safer and sturdy than the old coop and also has electricity and plenty of room for a relatively large stock of Ameracauna, Marans, Polish, Guineas, and Heritage Turkeys, all of which we will be working with in the near future in breeding lines, hatching chicks for sale, selling hatching eggs, and slaughtering meat both for our own consumption and for sale.

The old coop will be allowed to sit and "mellow" for a year whereupon I will add some posts and some hog panels and plant pole beans in that area, I will also plant sunflowers along the borders to create a "natural room" area for family and visitors enjoyment. The new coop was basically already setup and what wasn't ready to go was more or less lying around the farm anyways including the rough cut lumber type roosts, the eggboxes came from the old coop, the little "window-doors" you see were given to me by a friend and were actually out of an old school bus, heck we even had the chicken wire and nails laying around, so essentially minus labor (which was enough with having to catch all the chickens and move them, catch all the banties and relocate them, and tear down the original coop) the coop was free.

You will also see pics of our new bean trellis system and many of the crops including greenhouse tomatoes which are blooming, lettuce, onions, peas, heelless oats and potatoes. More pics to follow in the coming weeks and months including photos of our breeding projects and new heritage poultry as they grow.

I have yet to take a photo of the "Wyrm House" and it's new set up which is working out nicely, our breeding stock bins are getting up to size and filling up nicely and providing use with some beautiful looking castings, they are moving along at such a pace that we plan to be able to start the second set of three bins sometime within the next month or so! We also purchased two bathouses from The Organization for Bat Conservation, they have not been inhabited yet and probably won't be this year, however the bats have been flying around and checking them out and we have high hopes that they will indeed inhabit their new castles next spring.

Lots of experimenting and planning going on right now at Bishop's Homegrown/Hip-Gnosis seed development including the breeding and production of our own on farm poultry feeds for our flock and also for sale in the coming years. I'll update some new stuff shortly including our new quarterly circular of available products and services and our new "priori proof" paper as well as discuss some of the ideas we are tossing around aimed at making our farm more self sustainable and more profitable, Lot's of cool things going on right now and over the next few years.

Follow This Link for the images!