Hi Folks,
I haven't written in a while. I have a lot of friends on graze-l ... I least
I hope that I still have those friends. Anyway here's some news.
As you know, the last cows left here in April. They were 3 old teen-agers all
classified Excellent. I bitterly regreted selling them and didn't even look
at that darn check for 4 months. I still feel very mixed about selling them.
Our produce auction business is booming along. We just had two back-to-back
years with over 40% increase in gross sales of local grown produce. You can
check that out here: <www.homerproduceauction.com>.
It's getting very big both in dollars and physical volume. We have built on
to the building and loading dock 19 times so far, so it's well over 300 feet
long. But we sell more outside in a two lane drive-through than we sell off
the floor. It's like a county fair midway.
We now have over 400 growers selling produce here.
The auctions, of course, are April through November but activity here is at a
very high level right now.
We have a huge pile of produce growing supplies dumped on the auction floor.
It's five+ semi loads. I got the money from the growers, pooled it, and
bought in the stuff. Right now, we are trying to sort out all that stuff
into 79 piles for 79 growers who participated.
What that stuff is: It's drip tape, plastic mulch, seeds, chemicals, organic
chemical-like stuff, fertilizer, transplanters, raised bed plastic layers,
cultivators, pumps, plastic pots, potting soil, and plastic for 18 new
greenhouses (all in Homerville). We have enough drip tape and plastic mulch
here right now to lay plastic to Columbus and back (200 miles).
Last fall, I bought four old rusty Allis-Chalmers tractors. I'm working on
them day to day.
They are a B, a D-12, a D-14, and a WD-45. I intend to get them painted and
farm with them in 2007. I already have a CA and a AC180 as well as 2 Allis
forklifts.
We lit up the first greenhouse last week and are filling hanging baskets. I
now have 5 greenhouses here in Owenlea Farm. I hope to have 5000 hanging
baskets to sell as well as 1000-2000 flats of flowers and veg transplants.
<http://www.bright.net/fwo/greenhouse/greenhouse.html>
The greenhouse heat is very expensive. Of course my goal is just 33F rather
than the 65F min that commercial growers feel they must have. I can sell a
hanging basket for far less than their cost of production and still make a
big profit. Much like grazing and conventional.
I use only those round 23,000 btu, kerosene convective heaters. I have quite
a few of them now and am getting pretty good at repairing and rebuilding
them. I buy all of those that come up on ebay that sell for less than $80.00
including shipping.
I'm finally resigned to pulling out the high tensile fence. I need the land
to grow peppers, watermelons, and pumpkins but the wire is a major inhibition
to that. For several years, kept thinking that I would be milking again soon
and delayed pulling out the fence.
I had over 60 permanent paddocks and lots of lane. There was over a mile of
lane and there is miles and miles of wire out there like maybe 10 miles. I'm
rolling that up. I work a little bit on that every day and am making some
progress.
I have a system that's kinda working. I have a hook on the 4-wheeler hitch.
I drive to the end of a stretch of wire and make a loop with a crimping
sleeve. I just drop that on the hook and tow the wire end up to the
buildings.
That way, I can get the wire broken loose from the snow and ice and I can
stand in a barn out of the wind, and wind up the wire. It's still a really
hard, cold job. It's also a wet job. As cold as it's been I wouldn't think
I would be wet winding up 10F wire but I get soaked every day.
There was a lot of snow here since Valentines Day. We got 30 inches in 30
hours. I plowed that snow off the driveway on both sides so that the
driveway was between two 4-5 foot high banks. Then that blew levelfull.
I had to abandon the driveway and plowed out across the fields. That was also
kind of useless, as the temporary driveway I plowed across the fields was in
far better shape than the state highway. We were snowbound, on and off, for
about 5 days.
I'm sure glad I didn't have to get the milktruck into here.
Years ago, in a big storm (when we were milking 300 cows), the State highway
dept gave up clearing roads claiming they were all too tired and all their
equipment was busted anyway.
That time, We ended up plowing open over 10 miles of state highway with farm
tractors just to get the milk truck in.
This go-around wasn't that bad but it wasn't good either.
--
Kindest regards,
=======================
F. W. Owen
Owenlea Holsteins
9430 Spencer Road
Homerville, Ohio 44235
e-mail fwo@bright.net
home page http://www.bright.net/~fwo
cell 330/635-2287 (best)
office 330/625-2369
fax 330/625-2620
=======================
