Woody Agriculture Weblog
The Future of The World Is Nuts!(TM)

Posted by Phil Rutter, 5/15/08 at 12:43:32 PM.

Quick update- it's been a VERY cool spring, which does slow us in the solar greenhouse; we're short a lot of heat. Not just us: http://www.startribune.com/local/18969734.html?location_refer=Homepage

But- we did start decapitating hazels yesterday- which means the first standard tubelings will start shipping in about 2 weeks. Given normalish weather.

Don't worry that this will make your planting "too late" - we're still well within the good planting windows for standard tubelings.

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The info @ badgersett email service will be significantly slower than usual until mid- to late June, both due to the season and to worker (my) availability. Philip and Meg are both being kept more than completely occupied with the spring planting, both in the greenhouse and in the field. I am buckling down here in Cleveland to get my M.S. project finished up and out of the way, in order to set the stage for finishing my Ph.D. within a year from now. Yes, I know it's silly to be working on both at the same time (and have them be different projects). The circumstances that led to it being that way are silly too; I'll tell you about it if you're interested.

Anyway, I might as well take this opportunity to point out that yes, really, I'm going to be going full-time with Badgersett next June/July, when I finish up my life as a biorobotics engineer here in Cleveland. Though I know from experience that "full-time" is kind of a silly term to use when a farm is involved. "100% effort" is probably more reasonable.

Whatever you call it, I'm looking forward to tackling my real life's work. For those of you who haven't found it, and are interested, I did write a little treatise on why it is that I'll be doing this; you can find a link to it on the personnel page.

In short what I think this means for the company and what we offer, though, is that although our responsiveness will remain slow for about another year, both that and the company in general will be picking up seriously at that time. Of course, with sufficient capital investment it would be possible for us to pick up before then, but in our current severely undercapitalized state, limping along until then is more or less the way it goes. I have to say, our customers tend to understand this and put up with it pretty well. Thanks, guys.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A good part of the roaring silence you hear from me/us here is the nature of the year- it's cold and wet. According to today's Star-Tribune, as of Sunday, 1% of Minnesota's corn crop has been planted- normal for the date is 27%.

http://www.startribune.com/business/18351594.html

That does affect us, and the growth of the tubelings in the greenhouse. It's slow- and you need to know that your plants are GOING to be later than normal- that's not a probability, it's a fact. Plant growth is well behind normal this year.

One possible help- we do have some unsold Bare-Root Dormant tubelings available; and for folks with orders already in, we'll swap you, if you want. That means- you'd be getting more expensive, older plants, for no extra charge- and you could have them right now.

Email us or call if you're interested!

Another reason for the quiet- we had to let our one remaining employee go- hard times. So it's just the Meg and I doing the work here these days- which was being done by 4 people a few years go. So be patient.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

We've posted a rough outline of this year's short course on the 2008 Short Course page. I'm here holding down the fort while Dad is away for a couple of days finalizing this year's material. This year we're also having the first invited talk; Norm Erickson will be giving a presentation on his planting. It's not on the official schedule, but he's also planning to give a talk on the energy scene Saturday evening.

We are still accepting late registration; if you're thinking you might make it check out Short Course testimonials.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Just to let you know; I'll be talking on the radio with the folks at:

Local Food Hero, Saturdays 1:00-2:00pm on AM 950 KTNF in the Twin Cities

or streaming online at www.airamericaminnesota.com http://www.airamericaminnesota.com/listen

This Saturday (tomorrow) Feb. 23.

The show has its own website, too: http://localfoodhero.com/ which has info on past and future broadcasts.

Quite a lot of the conversation will focus on chestnuts- which we would like folks to get in the habit of considering "LOCAL", and "IN SEASON" - up through March, at least. Not just for the Holidays, anymore!

And, our revolutionary brand new hand peeling process for chestnuts- invented yesterday!

Meanwhile, back at the farm- we're actually still under the gun from the floods/rain last fall. Because of that, we weren't able to do normal wood cutting; and the wood already stacked got soaked. So we're having to cut firewood, about every other day; in the snow. It's still winter; we hit -18°F a couple nights ago...