tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81022360279366624962024-02-07T07:14:56.450-06:00Broadfork Blogand other affairs of daily livingGullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.comBlogger43125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-10021558913511486872014-01-23T18:32:00.000-06:002014-01-23T18:32:41.628-06:00I'd Like a Vowel, Please<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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SLT BF is shorthand for 'Select Broadfork'. Mike the Handleman packages these beautiful handles and ships them to me a hundred pairs at a time. Select grade wood handles are the best that money can buy. In select grain wood, the grain is straight for the entire 4 feet of length with no runouts. What that means is that I get only about 8 handles for every 100 he makes. When he told me that it was going to be expensive to buy the select grade wood, I told him that I don't care what it costs, I just want the best. This is an heirloom tool.<br />
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This is a bird's eye view of a box of handles showing the end grain of the wood. I don't randomly ship the handles as they come out of the box. I set the bar high and I go to the trouble of finding matched pairs of handles to go on your broadfork.<br />
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Look at the growth rings on these two handles. The ones on the left are fine grained and tight; on the right, much farther apart.<br />
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This is an even more radical difference. The wide grain handles have a bit stiffer feel and the tighter grain gives a more supple touch, a bit more dynamic feel. To make a broadfork with these two handles would mean that one would feel quite a bit different from the other in use.<br />
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This is a matched pair; I select mirror image grain pairs and number them in the fitting process. Many times your handles will look like they came off the same plank at Mike's HandleWorld. I drill a pilot hole for the heavy duty 3/8" stainless steel lag screw that holds everything together and it is in line with the grain in the wood, making the handle as strong as it can possibly be.<br />
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After matching and sizing the handles to whisper perfectly into the handle sockets, the bottom end is soaked for a couple of days in a 50/50 mixture of boiled linseed oil and turpentine. The wood actually drinks this mixture about a foot up the handle, gets saturated and it starts seeping out. The result is that it stabilizes the wood and helps to prevent the wood from checking (cracking) and dry rotting over many years of use.<br />
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You won't find varnish on these handles, they're just finished with the same mixture. Varnish seals the wood with and can cause sensitive hands to get friction blisters more easily as sweat is trapped between skin and varnish. I learned that fact many years ago as a beginning blacksmith. The result is a tool that is treated much the same way as it would have been a hundred years ago using distilled pine tree sap (turpentine) and linseed oil, which is pressed from flax seed. If you read your Foxfire Books, you'll find that both linseed oil and turpentine have been used for centuries in folk medicine.<br />
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The same mix is used on the metal part of the broadfork because I don't think it's a good idea to be painting a tool you're going to shove into your nice organic soil. The paint wears off immediately and gets into the soil where your plant roots pull out their nutrients.<br />
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It's important to me to think about these details to provide you with a tool that is as good as it can be. I make every one of these myself; no one else touches them before they arrive at your garden. Quality is the name of the game here at Gulland Forge.<br />
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Good soil to you.<br />
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<br />Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-41906574863275372062014-01-19T17:41:00.000-06:002014-01-19T17:41:07.727-06:00Meeting Customers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In an internet based business, without an actual storefront, it's possible to go a long time and never meet a customer face to face. Mostly I get emails, the occasional phone call and I meet people all the time at Sustainable Agriculture conferences, but this week has been hopping with face to face meetings.<br />
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Gayle wrote to me a few weeks ago and wanted to pick up a broadfork. She lives in a nearby town, Durham, NC, just far enough away to make it possibly less expensive to drive than to pay UPS to bring it. I agreed to meet her half way where she worked part time at a church.<br />
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We met at the appointed time and place late on a sunny and chilly afternoon. She brought along photos of her best garden year and they were amazing. Her family had worked the suburban soil there for 20 years and the photos looked like an ad for Miracle Gro; but they didn't grow that way. One look at her and I knew she knew better.<br />
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She had never used a broadfork and wanted to try it as soon as she got home. I said, "We could fork up a bit of that (dormant) landscaped and mulched area," and we did.<br />
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Afterwards, we had a wonderful chat and she made all the appropriate notes to relay to her husband on how to make the handles last forever and she was very glad to not have to use a roto tiller any more.<br />
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I had business at the<a href="https://www.folkschool.org/" target="_blank"> John C Campbell Folk School</a> today and met a couple here that drove up from Gainesville, GA for a Bertha Broadfork. They ordered it the day it was launched on our new website and they got the first production Bertha Broadfork, #01B. <br />
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The Folk School has a beautiful garden and all of the vegetables that are grown there are served to the students and staff. Hildreth and Ron got to try out some broadforks today in that stunning setting on a perfect sunny Southern January day.<br />
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Ron is shown here using my personal prototype Big Bertha and Hildreth has her Bertha in the soil.<br />
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Here she is in a fresh bed of mulched soil using the diagonal side step technique to keep from stepping in the bed. You progress with a broadfork by walking backward as you go, in the same manner you progress in a rowboat. If you don't want to put your feet in the beds, you simply walk beside it. If one person is on each side, you can fork a lot of soil very quickly that way. It leaves kind of a herringbone pattern in the soil.<br />
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The folk school has several of my broadforks and has been using them in that garden for years now. It's always fun to travel there and in fact, the <a href="http://gullandforge.com/" target="_blank">new website</a> photos were shot in their garden and the surrounding buildings. There's a lot of history at this 90 year old school and the broadforks in their tool shed will be working the soil for the next 90 plus years. That feels so good to me.<br />
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I have made over 900 broadforks now and am looking forward to many more. Thanks to Gayle, Hildreth and Ron for making this week a very special one for me. I look forward to meeting a lot more of you at the <a href="http://mosesorganic.org/conference/" target="_blank">MOSES Conference</a> in February in LaCrosse, WI and at the <a href="http://organicgrowersschool.org/" target="_blank">Organic Growers School</a> in Asheville, NC in March. Look for me at the <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/" target="_blank">Earth Tools</a> booth in the trade show area.<br />
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Good soil to you,<br />
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Gulland<br />
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<br />Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-7331554331678503422013-06-04T16:00:00.000-05:002013-06-04T16:00:52.061-05:00Scythes and Oxen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's TILLERS TIME!<br />
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Every June for several years, I have made my way to <a href="http://www.tillersinternational.org/" target="_blank">Tillers International</a> near the tiny town of Scotts, Michigan for what I call 'Ox Week.' Tillers is an amazing place to learn to do all the really important stuff you need to know to participate in the lifestyle that brought you to the Broadfork Blog in the first place.<br />
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I like to go there for the oxen basics class and I hang around for the <a href="http://www.midwestoxdrovers.com/index.html" target="_blank">MODA Gathering</a> the weekend after that. MODA is the Midwest Ox Drovers Association and the Gathering this year is June 21-23.<br />
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This June is going to be extra special to me in that I will be teaching a scythe class for the first time at Tillers. It's called 'Everything About Scythes' and you can <a href="http://www.tillersinternational.org/farming/classes_274_scythes.html" target="_blank">find the link here.</a> June 14th and 15th there will be a class in traditional <a href="http://www.tillersinternational.org/woodworking/classes_468_rakes_forks.html" target="_blank">hay rake and pitchfork making</a> and I get to follow that class with my hands-on scythe class the 16th.<br />
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Take a look at the <a href="http://www.tillersinternational.org/index.html" target="_blank">Tillers site </a>and sign up for a class or two this year.<br />
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Gulland Forge is expanding its line of tools to include the scythe. We are making our own snaths right here in Siler City, NC and we will have them on the market this summer. We'll also be making peening tools, hammers and all the other goodies for the amazing scythe. Keep up with what's happening on our other website, <a href="http://toolingtherevolution.com/index.html" target="_blank">Tooling the Revolution</a><br />
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I hope your summer is going well and that everything is planted and growing.Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-12727191240972544602013-05-04T19:31:00.000-05:002013-05-04T19:31:45.589-05:00Snow Forking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hopefully, this is the last of the snow for all you folks that are eager to do some broadforking and have been, ahem, held up from doing so. Nature has been cruel to my old neighborhood in Wisconsin and Winter has dragged on and on until you thought it would never end. Good news; it will end.<br />
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It will end and the Earth will again come to life with an explosion of green and blooms and soil yearning to be loved and poked with a broadfork. My friend Terry, in the photo above, posed for this forlorn shot in his garden when I was visiting with his family a few weeks ago. In our minds we knew it was too soon to work the soil, but the heart must try.<br />
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I hope it's getting close to planting time for you up there in the midwest. This ought to be morel season, yet you've been forced to shovel snow again and again as the shy Spring weather has toyed with you once more.<br />
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Be strong, as I know you are. Your suffering will end soon and you'll be reminded of the reason you love it where you are so much.Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-52969081311630301342013-03-29T16:08:00.000-05:002013-03-29T16:08:10.509-05:00The Human Pace<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It occurred to me many years ago that we are living at too fast a pace. Just a few human generations ago, the fastest person on Earth rode a horse.<br />
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We count our travel time coast to coast in hours now, not months. We 'run to the store' to grab ingredients for dinner and often are able to return in time to add them in just a few minutes, really. If there's no cream for coffee, we can set the brewer to make a pot and by the time it's done, we're back with a carton of half and half.<br />
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My wife and I have lived remotely for many years and with $4/gallon fuel, each trip to the store costs $10 extra. There's no way we're going to do that, so we plan ahead and don't make 'quick trips' to the store.<br />
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A while back, our friend Kaitlyn gave us this amazing World War 1 vintage waffle iron and we made waffles last weekend with it. Karen dug up her recipe and set out to assemble the ingredients while I heated up and oiled the very well seasoned, heavy cast iron kitchen appliance. We keep a full pantry (very full, actually) so there is no running quickly to the store necessary for us.<br />
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Our meals proceed at the human pace and are usually begun by prepping with a good sharp knife, then stirred by wooden spoons and usually cooked in a cast iron vessel of some sort. Old ones. We have an enviable collection of beautiful cast iron skillets, Dutch ovens, cornbread and muffin pans, griddles and this incredible waffle iron.<br />
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It takes about 5 minutes to cook a waffle and just a moment to pick it off the perfect non-stick finish, created over decades of use and love. Then the waffle is placed into the oven to stay warm until they're all done and it's time to eat.<br />
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One at a time, it would have taken a long time to cook enough waffles for a working family on a cold morning a hundred years ago on a wood heated cook stove. It also took a lot of skill to keep the heat just right and the batter just right so that things wouldn't stick or burn. Folks took the time to learn the skills then because they couldn't just go out and buy a plug in electric teflon waffle iron.<br />
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When I am dust, my waffle iron will still work and that feels good to me. I hope the people that end up with it when we're gone appreciate it as much as we have. Would you feel good with a Mickey Mouse waffle iron, really? I don't think this one would last through 2 World Wars, a couple of Depressions, the Model T and the Moon Landing. It's pace is wrong. In a few of years it'll likely be at Goodwill or the landfill.<br />
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When are we going to find out that it's OK to move more slowly? Why can't we take more care of the details as we go along and appreciate the Human Pace of living?<br />
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Try to learn to understand and accept the pace of a hand plane, a chisel, a waffle, a broadfork, or a scythe.<br />
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Learn to build your soil slowly and carefully and let the worms and cover crops do the work for you as you sleep. Develop the skills of those long gone and find the beautiful rhythm of tool in hand and "The grip on Earth of outspread feet, The life of muscles rocking soft And smooth and moist in vernal heat"*<br />
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Good soil to you all.<br />
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*from the poem Two Tramps in Mudtime by Robert Frost<br />
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<br />Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-73578313110055726022013-03-27T17:39:00.001-05:002013-03-29T15:39:34.238-05:00The New Gulland Forge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a new building going up in Siler City, North Carolina. It's the first building that's been built in downtown since the police station, so I have been told. It's being built right, using century old bricks reclaimed from an old factory that was taken down a block away. These hand made bricks were built of clay dug from the Earth in this county and were actually fired on the building site. It was different then.<br />
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In a few days, the walls are getting taller as 2 pairs of hands painstakingly stack brick upon brick, mix mortar, and stack some more. The sun is brilliant today in a Carolina Blue sky. Eric and Victor took on this task and they are true tradesmen, very talented at their craft.<br />
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This is the new home for Gulland Forge Broadforks. The last year has been one of great transition as we searched for a place to call home. Moving a blacksmith shop is tough on a good day and a smith has to be careful when choosing a stopping place. We found this town, or it found us... not sure which, actually. Either way, I'll post more on the adventure as we go along.<br />
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The broadforks are being made in a temporary shop right now, thus the low profile I have been keeping for many months. I'll let you know when I am back in full production with a line of other fine tools that I'll be making in the new shop.<br />
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Good soil to you.<br />
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Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-63426309702080034892012-03-15T21:46:00.000-05:002012-03-15T21:46:30.845-05:00Crazy Weather<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I took the above photograph in Iowa County, in south central Wisconsin on a perfect day in July of 2008. Today, the Ides of March, 2012, it was the same temperature there. It was the same temperature here at my new home in Pittsboro, North Carolina, as well.<br />
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This photo was taken on March 28th, 2008 in Iowa county, Wisconsin. I was taking my old BMW out of the barn to do a preseason tune-up on it and wanted to note the irony of the moment. (it's a 1983 model with 'snowflake' wheels)<br />
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The crazy 'winter that never was' could throw us a major curve ball at any moment. The last frost date for my old Wisconsin home is late May. I don't think there was a day in Pittsboro this year that stayed below freezing and the lowest temperature we had here was in the low 20s.<br />
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This evening I read in the news that a tornado touched down in Ann Arbor, Michigan earlier today. That's just crazy.<br />
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I wonder what's going to happen with gardening this year? Do we wait until it's "time" to plant or do we just go ahead and plant now and risk the possibility of losing the early crops? Do we keep the row covers waiting at the back door just in case we have to run out and cover our spinach? Do you have a plan yet?<br />
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<br />Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-13443018395265728592012-02-27T22:33:00.000-06:002012-02-27T22:59:27.328-06:00One Scythe RevolutionFollow <a href="http://www.onescytherevolution.com/blog.html" target="_blank">Botan Anderson</a> into the <a href="http://www.onescytherevolution.com/" target="_blank">One Scythe Revolution</a>!<br />
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The <a href="http://www.onescytherevolution.com/index.html" target="_blank">One Scythe Revolution</a> is a peaceful movement, kind of like the <a href="http://gullandforge.com/" target="_blank">Broadfork</a> Revolution. I'm a player in both. This is a picture of Botan with an enormous competition scythe blade. (He's 6'5" tall, by the way)<br />
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I started using a scythe when my beloved 1996 model weed munching Stihl line trimmer died in 2005. At the time, we lived on the prairie of southern Wisconsin and I had to keep an acre of grass surrounding the house cleared for fire protection reasons. I didn't want to have another internal combustion engine in my life, so I opted for the Austrian scythe as a petroleum free alternative.<br />
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I immediately fell in love with the tool and soon thereafter met Botan. After spending a day with him mowing, I realized how important it was to have someone teach the basics of the scythe to a beginner. At first, there's something unnatural about swinging the scythe, but by watching an experienced scythesman, the pieces to the puzzle just fall together and the tool becomes a part of the body.<br />
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This weekend, I have the pleasure of teaching my first scythe class at the <a href="http://organicgrowersschool.org/" target="_blank">Organic Growers School</a> in Asheville, North Carolina. There, I will find a group of people interested in learning about one of the most amazingly efficient tools ever conceived; the Austrian scythe. It's not the tool you find at flea markets and adorning the walls of Cracker Barrel restaurants across the US. The Austrian scythe is different in a lot of ways.<br />
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This tool is like a razor blade on a five foot handle. Nothing can compete with the efficiency of a well peened and honed scythe for taking down tall grass.<br />
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The reason I felt I needed to teach this class is the fact that most people have no idea that a scythe is sharpened with a hammer. Well, it is. The hammered edge is then polished with a stone and the blade becomes shaving sharp.<br />
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Scythe mowing is best done in the morning when the shadows are still long and the dew is still on the grass. A well peened and honed blade makes the mowing effortless and the experience of the world awakening to the swish of blade on grass in the long slanting light of dawn is priceless.<br />
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I became so passionate about the scythe that I sought to <a href="http://www.onescytherevolution.com/1sr-scythe-instructors.html" target="_blank">teach others the lessons</a> I had learned along the way. There are some skills that we must continue to share if we want to make the most of the troubled times we are facing.<br />
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When I am out in the field mowing in the earliest light of the day, I carry on fearlessly, effortlessly; body swaying rhythmically in the tall grass heavy and wet with dew. As I progress a few inches at a time, using a tool perfected 5 centuries ago, I am overcome with hope that we can still do the right thing... like we used to.<br />
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Get to know the scythe. Along with the <a href="http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Tool+Use.html" target="_blank">broadfork and a good garden cart</a>, it is among the most important tools you can own.<br />
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The scythe and the broadfork were perfected in a time when the human body was the only machine available for powering gardening tools. With half a millennium of field testing, both tools still work just fine, thank you.<br />
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If you're a customer of mine, make sure you find me in Asheville this weekend if you're in the neighborhood. When I am not teaching, I'll be at the <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/" target="_blank">Earth Tools</a> booth at the trade show/exhibit area.<br />
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As always, good soil to you.<br />
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GullandGullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-57422999800251085932012-02-19T10:07:00.000-06:002012-02-19T16:06:50.875-06:00Food by Committee: Prepackaged Beef Stew<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A group of great minds at Tyson declared that there would be enough people that did not own a knife and cutting board to support this really crazy idea. A task force was created and during a breakout session, the ideation team interfaced with stakeholders to achieve consensus to determine the market viability of said deliverables.<br />
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"They may have a knife, but they don't have the skills to sharpen it and they're afraid to use it," stated task force member #11. "They are afraid of getting cut and they don't have time in their schedules for an emergency room visit," interjected an ideation team member.<br />
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A stakeholder added, "They'll be afraid of bacterial contamination on their cutting board! Perfect!"<br />
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The Suit at the head of the table said to his administrative assistant, "Contact the antibacterial cleanser division and have them saturate the target market for 6 weeks before this one launches! This could be BIG!"<br />
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A marketing department committee was formed and they sat at a long boardroom table and ran some numbers back and forth; someone made notes and a barrage of emails got cc'd, forwarded and replied to, tallied and analyzed. After passing it through Legal, by the end of the week, a new marketing concept was launched. I wonder how sales are going.<br />
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For 11 bucks, you can open a couple of bags of raw ingredients and drop them into a slow cooker in the morning on your way out the door, then return after work to a nice meal. Look, you don't even have to go to any other aisles in the store. We gotcha onion, ya potatoes, ya carrots and ya meat right here at the end cap. We even enclosed a seasonings bag of pre-measured salt, pepper, guar gum, etc in the package.<br />
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Don't get me wrong, I love a slow cooker and I love beef stew. What bothers me about this is the fact that with each passing day, someone falls victim to this corporate marketing ploy and is further disconnecting themselves from their food.<br />
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We need to get back in touch with one of the most important elements in our lives. If you found this blog, you understand. Try helping someone start a garden this year. Anything will do; a tomato plant, a window box with spinach planted in it, a container garden or a little raised bed.<br />
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Please help to get the word out: We don't want to eat what they are feeding us.<br />
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Remind folks that food does not come from the grocery store. Learn how to sharpen your knives and don't fall for the marketing tricks the Corporations throw at you. You found this blog and I trust you to promote healthy and real food choices. Be a good example for those that need one. Some people don't know that there is another way to think about what they eat.<br />
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We just relocated our little business to the Piedmont of North Carolina, in Chatham County, just west of Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, an area which is known as the Research Triangle. This area was chosen by us for many good reasons.<br />
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Yesterday, we went to our first big farmer's market and came home with a bag of wonderful local fare including some local pecans, which I was surprised to find here.<br />
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It's warm enough here in the winter to grow things and that's a big attraction. The fact that so many people are doing it here is really important as well. We like living around those kinds of folks and we wanted to situate our business in an area that was loaded with people like us. We'll start growing again this year after a year away from gardening due to the move. It's OK; we're still eating from our garden of 2010 and honestly, a little is left from '09.<br />
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We are at the edge of the small scale agricultural revolution. Young farmers are everywhere now, despite the news lately that farming jobs are in a severe decline. You and I are among the uncountable individuals that are taking matters into our own hands and feeding ourselves from our own yards.<br />
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This is nothing new; as a society, we just quit doing it for long enough to get out of the habit of providing some of our most basic needs for ourselves. We got lured into having someone else to take care of the most important things. It doesn't have to be that way.<br />
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Get busy and arm yourself with the tools and the skills you need to get some food production happening in your yard, or get with some friends and put together a community garden. Make it fun.<br />
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It's getting into our busy season in the broadfork business. I'd like to thank all of you who have bought broadforks from us. I never thought it would be this big; before long, Gulland Broadfork #700 will go out the door and find it's way to someone's garden patch.<br />
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We are grateful.<br />
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Good soil to you,<br />
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GullandGullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-3935111434056412652011-11-30T10:22:00.001-06:002011-11-30T12:47:53.708-06:00600 Broadforks!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I guess it's been a while since I posted. It's a long story I'll post soon. We have been setting up for a little growth spurt and we've been developing some new tools for you.<br />
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We have been making broadforks steadily, though and we have come to another milestone here at Gulland Goods and Services, LLC. As of today, broadfork # 600 will be the next one to ship. A little over 2 years ago I noted the building of broadfork #100 in a blog post. <a href="http://broadforkblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/milestone-has-been-reached.html" target="_blank">(click here)</a> <br />
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I believe that this is the way to grow a company. We carefully make a very finely crafted tool and have a $15 per month advertising budget. The rest has been up to you. Thank you for doing such a fine job in selling broadforks for us.<br />
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Thanks to the Gulland Broadfork owners in Coralville, Iowa. There are 6-8 friends out there who all have our forks.<br />
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Thanks to Fairbanks, Alaska. For a while, we had more forks there than our former hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.<br />
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We have new customers in Sweden and Tunisia and I am about to ship one to New Zealand. I am deeply appreciative of the people around the world that are dedicated to purchasing high quality, hand made tools. This is what we do and we do it very well.<br />
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I got a note this week from Richard in upstate New York who had this to say:<br />
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"Your broadfork arrived yesterday. What a piece of art and craftsmanship! The internet pictures don't do it justice. I don't know whether to hang it on my wall or use it in the garden next year."<br />
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Richard, You should buy a second one for your wall!<br />
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As you can see from the picture above, as they are made, each tool is set up in a jig and into it, I hand stamp my initials, the year it was built and it's serial number. Yours is just like everyone else's and they are all as good as they can be before they leave my shop. I do all the metal work myself, from sawing, drilling, forging, assembling and cleaning. My wife does the finishing work and is the elf in the woodworking shop. She fine tunes the fit of the handles and pairs them all according to weight and grain density. When you have such a production team, you get good quality and good looks.<br />
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For those of you that do not know, we are a very environmentally conscious company. The broadfork is designed carefully and thoughtfully to eliminate waste material. We cut everything with blades, which cuts out consumable products like grinding and sanding abrasive products. I hate metal abrasives; they are terrible for the environment.<br />
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I developed our broadfork to be very cleanly finished. All the parts are cut with a bandsaw and the waste 'saw dust' is recycled. I then de-burr the edges in a tumbler to eliminate the need to grind the sharp edges. Welding is done in such a way that there is no need for grinding because there is no welding spatter. The welds are perfect and don't need to be hidden under a coat of paint. The broadfork is then finished by wire brushing it to a high lustre.<br />
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Why would someone paint a garden tool anyway? Why would you work for years to get good clean soil, then press painted tools into it, ultimately depositing those chemicals in your food supply? We hand-apply a coating of linseed oil and turpentine to your broadfork and handles; it's the same stuff your great-grandparents used and it still works fine.<br />
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You folks out there keep up the good work with your broadforks. Every time you use one, your soil will respond favorably. Thank you for your support of a small family business that is trying to make a difference.<br />
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Good soil to you,<br />
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Gulland<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-72660637999013130582011-03-06T21:36:00.000-06:002011-03-06T21:36:25.732-06:00It's all about the little things<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOdzfPJ-ItgqsuyBZBne3bzo06DkUC07hs27q6V3EhbESju_qhuLjDaBfY1x34ZtnQH-Dn2fhAF-8Qhw1a_R4seXkqEHffjkL77Zk9X0-6LGxl0IgPQvPvlhsHrcP7Vddu-qiBQzSU1-4/s1600/IMG_0330.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOdzfPJ-ItgqsuyBZBne3bzo06DkUC07hs27q6V3EhbESju_qhuLjDaBfY1x34ZtnQH-Dn2fhAF-8Qhw1a_R4seXkqEHffjkL77Zk9X0-6LGxl0IgPQvPvlhsHrcP7Vddu-qiBQzSU1-4/s320/IMG_0330.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I grew up without a lot of extras. We got by with very little and I guess I learned some very good lessons from that experience. I have lived my life trying to be as practical and frugal as I could be, but I never cut corners on quality, because quality always matters.<br />
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This little broadfork company prides itself in being mindful of the details in manufacturing that really matter and the people I work with have gotten into the spirit with me.<br />
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I buy my steel from a family owned steel company in Madison, Wisconsin. <a href="http://www.wiedenbeck.com/company_profile.asp">Wiedenbeck Steel</a> has been run by the Wiedenbeck family since 1894 and there's a good reason why they've been around for so long. Their commitment to quality is as high as my own and I rarely use that metric. I have been a customer there since I got to Wisconsin in 2000 and I will continue working with them as long as I am able.<br />
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Josh is my usual load out guy at Wiedenbeck and since I always buy the same material for broadforks, I just tell him how many to pick on my way in and when I get back with my paperwork, he's usually at the saw, cutting the 20-24 foot lengths into sizes I can haul in my truck. Steel comes in what is known as 'random lengths.' A 20 foot piece might be 20 feet and a half inch or 20 feet and 2 1/2 inches.<br />
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Josh knows the dimensions of all the parts of my broadforks and he cares enough to measure out each bar of steel and makes a decision as to where they will be cut to make the least waste once I get them home and start sawing them to precise lengths. Remember, he just cuts the long bars in half for me.<br />
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I just finished cutting enough steel to make tines for almost 40 broadforks and the photo shows all the steel that I consider 'waste.' There are 16 nubs of steel there ranging in size from about 2 inches to less than a quarter of an inch. The rest of the waste consists of a handful of saw 'dust' from my bandsaw kerf. This time it was as good as it gets; I used every bar I cut to it's maximum.<br />
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Josh understands what I want and he's glad to take the couple of extra minutes to give me that level of service. I appreciate him more than he would ever believe.<br />
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My wife and I work very hard to provide you with a level of care and craftsmanship that is rare in the world today. When you receive your broadfork you will know the minute that the box is opened that it was made by people that are trying to make a difference in their little corner of the world. Karen hand fits and finishes every handle and my hands are the only two that ever touch your broadfork head before it gets into your hands.<br />
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Well, Josh cut the bars in half... gotta give credit where it's due.Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-70114843361365387472011-02-01T22:37:00.002-06:002011-02-01T23:31:14.176-06:00MEGABLIZZARDSNOWMAGEDDONENDOFTHEWORLD!Well, it's not quite THAT bad, but it's not that good, either.<div><br /></div><div>I'm watching out the window tonight as the snow piles up outside here in southern Wisconsin and I am thinking of the people a hundred years ago that didn't have the benefit of the internet or the Weather Channel to watch the blow by blow account of the misery that has been dealt out to them. Did we come from the same place they did? How did we get so wimpy?</div><div><br /></div><div>They got up in the morning and split wood and milked cows and carried on. The kids went to school and Mom made dinner on the wood stove. Things were different then.</div><div><br /></div><div>I talked to an old friend in Birmingham tonight and I told her that I just wanted to be as prepared for such an event as my grandparents were. They would have had plenty of food on hand to deal with such an occurrence and it would have been written off as "just a bad stretch of weather."</div><div><br /></div><div>The local mantra tonight is "Travel is not advised." People still feel like they have to go out in this weather. They feel like somebody will take care of them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Stay home. Why do we think it is imperative to defy Nature? </div><div><br /></div><div>Let this storm pass and be content with what you have at home. Don't feel so self important as to have the need to overpower nature tonight. Let it be.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're watching as the storm flies over us and we're seeing the drifts pile up. The woodstove is keeping us warm and tomorrow is going to bring a lot of shoveling. That's OK, it's Wisconsin, after all. </div><div><br /></div><div>We won't be going to PASA in Pennsylvania this week with Earth Tools. The weather just didn't cooperate. I'm sorry that we won't get a chance to meet some new customers. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that our environment owns us. It's time to learn to accept that fact.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-36298330354536195162011-01-10T20:34:00.007-06:002011-01-12T12:32:14.207-06:00Sometimes you feel pretty small<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA6mrFffRUkOxFuP2Ik7THRPO3CHqm9zXoG83SNNKhXe8BmYVcQUdyO5iOB7pk_XpIdMZyuZQFlP8bmGNujrT0A0QvBKUZkiOFMXTgxZGJkyxguA75Pt0KXdCLQQkzYVTDrxV4_mMhiYY/s1600/IMG_0789.JPG"><br /><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA6mrFffRUkOxFuP2Ik7THRPO3CHqm9zXoG83SNNKhXe8BmYVcQUdyO5iOB7pk_XpIdMZyuZQFlP8bmGNujrT0A0QvBKUZkiOFMXTgxZGJkyxguA75Pt0KXdCLQQkzYVTDrxV4_mMhiYY/s400/IMG_0789.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560751537628342322" /></a>In my life, I have had opportunities to be in some of the most majestic places in the United States. I have stood before mountain peaks and deep within their crags. I have paddled beautiful lakes and rivers. I have witnessed musical virtuosities and have experienced great art and have stood breathless in the midst some of the most awesome displays of Nature's angry and wrathful weather. <div><br /></div><div>I sought those things my whole life, not because they made me feel powerful, but because they made me feel humble and connected to them in a very deep and spiritual way. </div><div><br /></div><div>A couple of days ago in Tucson, Arizona, there was an event that made me freeze in my tracks. The tragic shooting event there shook me to my bones and made me feel helpless and numb in a way I cannot ever remember feeling. I have always been the kind of guy that wanted to do something, <i>anything</i> that would make a bad situation better, but I saw clearly that there was absolutely nothing that I could do that would help to heal the heart of a wounded nation. </div><div><br /></div><div>I felt helpless until tonight. Let me give you a little background.</div><div><br /></div><div>Late last August, I got an order for a broadfork from The Community Food Bank. I looked them up on the internet to see what kind of organization they were. Because I am such a small business, I don't have money to give to non-profit groups regularly, but I figured that if they ordered a broadfork from me, I would do something for them.</div><div><br /></div><div>I looked up the extension of the person whose name was on the order and called him, out of the blue. We had a great talk and he told me about all the ways they worked in the community to teach people how to raise their own food in one of the harshest places in the world, deep southern Arizona. </div><div><br /></div><div>They have a big community outreach, a farmer's market and they organize and maintain a food bank for those in need. In addition to that, they have a Youth Farm Project where "young people are given the opportunity to develop a relationship with the food they eat... learn about food systems, contribute to the community, and of course, have some fun!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Their mission statement is: Through education, advocacy and the acquisition, storage and distribution of food, we will anticipate and meet the food needs of the hungry in our community.</div><div><br /></div><div>It just so happened that the guy whose name was on the order was the the CEO of the Community Food Bank, Bill Carnegie. We had a wonderful conversation and at the end, I asked him if he would have a use for a second broadfork; I wanted to make a donation to his program out there. He said he would be delighted to have a second broadfork and was very thankful for my gift.</div><div><br /></div><div>The following is an excerpt of the note I got from them a week later:</div><div><br /></div><div>"We do a lot of hand digging in our 1/3 of an acre youth garden, and are working to build our desert soils and to create the rich organic matter and diverse soil communities we lack here naturally. Your broadforks are key to helping facilitate this process."</div><div><br /></div><div>It felt great to know that I had done something that really mattered and that extra broadfork was stationed in their youth garden, working in the hands of the people that can really make changes in our world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, that's the background and this is the rest of the story. </div><div><br /></div><div>As I was reading the news tonight, I came across an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/10/mark-kelly-statement-giffords-husband_n_806649.html">article on Huffington Post</a>; a statement from the husband of Gabrielle Giffords, Mark Kelly. In his closing line he says, " Many of you have offered help. There is little that we can do but pray for those who are struggling. If you are inspired to make a positive gesture, consider two organizations that Gabby has long valued and supported: Tucson's Community Food Bank and the American Red Cross."</div><div><br /></div><div>I know The Community Food Bank of Tucson would be as appreciative of your contributions as they were of mine. It's a group that is doing really good work in southern Arizona and here is how you can get in touch with them:</div><div><br /></div><div>Community Food Bank</div><div>3003 S Country Club Rd #221</div><div>Tucson, AZ 85713-4084</div><div>(520)622-0525</div><div><a href="http://communityfoodbank.com/">communityfoodbank.com</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes when I feel small, helpless and insignificant, I reach out and touch something bigger than I am. Try it for yourself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div><div><br /></div><div>By the way, that incredible photo above will enlarge if you click on it and you should. It's Leigh Lake in Grand Teton National Park, with Mt. Moran in the background. The water was that perfect ALL DAY!</div><div><br /></div><div>Photo by Karen Stack</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"> </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; font-family:Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-74764286024832797442011-01-10T16:45:00.004-06:002011-01-10T17:34:19.614-06:00We're Making Tracks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZwimdXxoWWHNOLSoMVR8ME4PLe12VTtnnua6WZXYSiyQm23jUIBbdCvotOxtiLkohbUCEjNaB21Jx0yDV1wfeUN2VCZfZ33snj6dOgLBobVYQ0_oxKvYeDQe6Nd7DmYjj_QngbkDPP8/s1600/IMG_1873.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTZwimdXxoWWHNOLSoMVR8ME4PLe12VTtnnua6WZXYSiyQm23jUIBbdCvotOxtiLkohbUCEjNaB21Jx0yDV1wfeUN2VCZfZ33snj6dOgLBobVYQ0_oxKvYeDQe6Nd7DmYjj_QngbkDPP8/s400/IMG_1873.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560695424276445010" /></a>It's time to leave all this Wisconsin fun to head down South again. <div><br /></div><div>Our first stop will be the <a href="http://ssawg.org/conference-.html">Southern Sustainable Agriculture Work Group Conference</a> in Chattanooga, TN. You can meet the folks that make the Gulland Broadfork at the <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/">Earth Tools BCS</a> booth at the trade show there on January 21st and 22nd. The Southern SAWG Conference is always a wonderful place to get great information and the Earth Tools booth is always a hot spot to get your hands on the finest hand tools available, brought to you by the people that know them the best.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you're going to be at the conference, please stop by and say hello. I met several of our customers last year and it's always good to see you again. </div><div><br /></div><div>Next on the conference schedule this year is the<a href="http://www.pasafarming.org/conference2011/"> Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture</a> 20th Annual Conference February 2nd-5th. We'll be there at the trade show with <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/">Earth Tools</a> as well. It'll be our first PASA Conference, and we can't wait to get there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our last show of the season will be <a href="http://www.mosesorganic.org/conference.html">Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service</a> Conference in LaCrosse, Wisconsin on February 24th-26th. MOSES is a biggie, and it's also our first time to attend. We'll be at the <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/">Earth Tools BCS</a> booth there, as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being an internet based business, my wife and I seldom get to meet our customers face to face, but we love to when we can. Please come by and introduce yourselves if you are attending one of these events.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's been a brutal winter so far in southern Wisconsin, and Nature has shared the Love with the rest of the country, it appears. Now is the time to gather with those like yourselves at one of the conferences I have mentioned so that you can learn as much as can while you can't break into the soil.</div><div><br /></div><div>We hope to see you there!</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-80063510919581301672010-12-21T10:05:00.004-06:002010-12-21T20:53:21.879-06:00Solstice Greetings from Planet Earth!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWumxrmETNQDizx8NIJ5chnV50frg07yjPm6zaqBwRHVhyphenhyphen2nsrVqRaN1Z-rjYhXTDVi7Ajid5Ic5Lfn2zHtBIvU-YSGPXEe_lyNph09WMxbydX-GyprvW1if-zmQxu9dMjM2jwKM9Og9Y/s1600/earth.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWumxrmETNQDizx8NIJ5chnV50frg07yjPm6zaqBwRHVhyphenhyphen2nsrVqRaN1Z-rjYhXTDVi7Ajid5Ic5Lfn2zHtBIvU-YSGPXEe_lyNph09WMxbydX-GyprvW1if-zmQxu9dMjM2jwKM9Og9Y/s400/earth.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553173045009715794" /></a>Hello Resident Earthlings,<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>This is your planet writing here... Today's the day all of you in the northern hemisphere have been waiting for; the Winter Solstice! This is a perfect day for you to consider your place in this celestial party that I throw each year. I've done another lap around the Sun now, doing the same thing I have been doing since... well, for a really long time, let's say. You have trusted me to give you pretty much the same old stuff forever and for the most part I do that. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The shortest day and the longest night will be a memory tomorrow as the shadows will be shortening, imperceptibly at first, but cumulatively, as the weeks roll past, there will be a big difference.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Now is the time you'll be getting your seed catalogs in the mail and you will begin to count the days until you can get your hands back into the soil you have been nurturing in your garden beds.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Plant your gardens this year like it really matters, because it does. It matters now more than ever. I see more and more people are converting their suburban lawns to growing beds and adding chickens to their list of pets. There's nothing as good as having pets whose poop you can love. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>That's a great step in the right direction to living a more sustainable life. So many of you are beginning to see the importance of adding high quality, home grown produce to your tables and understanding that it's your own responsibility to begin to take on your food security issues with your own two hands, quite literally.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Throughout human existence, there has been an effort put forth by most individuals to create their own food supply. In the last few generations, however, most people have begun to rely more and more on available and relatively cheap factory farmed foods to feed themselves. In that relatively short time, a lot of common knowledge about gardening has been placed in the dust bin of history as people got complacent about their food supplies and put a lot of faith in Governments and big corporations to make sure everything would be OK.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Well, things aren't really working out that well, are they? </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Sometimes it seems daunting to take on a challenge like gardening. It's pretty simple, really and it's something you are capable of doing more easily than you might think. The residents of Catal Huyuk and Mesopotamia grew gardens and they were successful about 8000 years before the internet was invented. There's no reason you can't get started now.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Check out a few books from your library and pick up a few important tools that work well for you and get busy this spring.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Your Planet doesn't need you to survive, but you need me. Be good to me and I will return the kindness.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Earth</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-84037175942515389802010-12-01T07:56:00.002-06:002010-12-01T08:13:37.099-06:00We're heading South!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdQijYN7Ip8McJzqx_6sSY7dnlx-y2j_cINV7NkfVzn-oMsqFotxnEXLKQcf0BuODTcD054ErbqHb8pHRd1YDFtMlcrm9iusxI6rTfHTUKxm3k9MmvgxBumFGyZQiNC4XskRkzSho7C9k/s1600/IMG_2170.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdQijYN7Ip8McJzqx_6sSY7dnlx-y2j_cINV7NkfVzn-oMsqFotxnEXLKQcf0BuODTcD054ErbqHb8pHRd1YDFtMlcrm9iusxI6rTfHTUKxm3k9MmvgxBumFGyZQiNC4XskRkzSho7C9k/s400/IMG_2170.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545712777210386322" /></a>Sometimes you just have to flee the frozen North. Sometimes it's even a business trip!<div><br /></div><div>We are heading to Winston Salem, North Carolina to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association's 25th annual <a href="http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/">Sustainable Agriculture Conference. </a></div><div><br /></div><div>We'll be at the trade show booth with our friends at <a href="http://earthtoolsbcs.com/">Earth Tools BCS</a>. If you are planning on attending, please stop by and take a look at our broadforks and meet the people that made them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, you'll want to take a look at the Earth Tools collection as well. They have searched the world to bring you the best quality and most diverse selection of hand tools and walk-behind tractors available anywhere. </div><div><br /></div><div>We hope to see you on the road!</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-21171761248121501622010-08-19T08:13:00.004-05:002010-08-19T09:30:25.664-05:00It's that time of year...<div>August is the beginning of the "BIG REWARD" time. The Gulland Garden occupies almost 4000 square feet in 3 planting beds around the house. We're starting to pull produce out now by the wagonload instead of the handful.</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv3Je8ivVjwwGT3NtgpssAqbCoUN3weSAF896Tl39KIX0-v89_fMVRWMTiJtJovCNbNkyK5qpwsVfRabAtUWHKHyUy0BY19NRlX2ear-g-zl8wG15E5chy7nNy5X60Ed4pgDIfuoHqtQY/s1600/Peppers&Tomatoes.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv3Je8ivVjwwGT3NtgpssAqbCoUN3weSAF896Tl39KIX0-v89_fMVRWMTiJtJovCNbNkyK5qpwsVfRabAtUWHKHyUy0BY19NRlX2ear-g-zl8wG15E5chy7nNy5X60Ed4pgDIfuoHqtQY/s400/Peppers&Tomatoes.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507111200315910290" /></a>Those tomatoes and peppers are being transformed into salsa right now. We're putting it into jars on the shelves down in the cellar to the right of the 6 pints left over from last season. Hmmm... I guess we should have given more away. (Note to self; be more generous this year.)<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_AtRqCk_SwlfVzDMO1bTi22JFp5rKB-_t08liY6uX4j9Onos-BtkwBOp_8a9U6v47VgLA5U5YMhV7gpEEwOm6RsyLiba116cFCi_DnR1zs1x7MF-sj2AP3HPUobOskhnx1Cumsrtf7Z8/s1600/Pickled+Beets.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_AtRqCk_SwlfVzDMO1bTi22JFp5rKB-_t08liY6uX4j9Onos-BtkwBOp_8a9U6v47VgLA5U5YMhV7gpEEwOm6RsyLiba116cFCi_DnR1zs1x7MF-sj2AP3HPUobOskhnx1Cumsrtf7Z8/s400/Pickled+Beets.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507111063097479170" /></a>The early beets were beautiful this year. Our neighbors Harald and Jeff got this batch. They like them pickled; I prefer them roasted with onion, carrots, sweet potatoes, turnips and the rest of the 'roasted roots' as we call them.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6H8w5mpUAWE1gqbPLtETSl5QVeBS6eQRSdEgvgES48QOUwCC6z3yFOtaELPLjRuRRj3XGAr8aDY29oVZxm7aXFBz8-daY1tDuL6ttIIqtk2tY7f33G7qVpB5p6RwXS6hMQxoe3THhMVI/s1600/IMG_0076.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6H8w5mpUAWE1gqbPLtETSl5QVeBS6eQRSdEgvgES48QOUwCC6z3yFOtaELPLjRuRRj3XGAr8aDY29oVZxm7aXFBz8-daY1tDuL6ttIIqtk2tY7f33G7qVpB5p6RwXS6hMQxoe3THhMVI/s400/IMG_0076.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507109121733334370" /></a>This year we went heavy on the fingerling potatoes. They are my absolute favorites. My wife makes a roasted fingerling potato salad that is the best I ever had. We'll have a few hundred pounds of them on hand this year from the most ambitious potato planting we have ever done.<div><br /></div><div>Our onions are all done for the year now and the first carrots are close to ready. </div><div><br /></div><div>We had a total crop failure on early spinach this year, likely because of the record heat, humidity, and rain in the region. The lettuce, however, did very well and we enjoyed quite a wide variety.</div><div><br /></div><div>The weather was probably a factor in our pale green bean harvest, and the snow peas and sugar snaps performed unremarkably. We're replanting to give them one more chance to redeem themselves.</div><div><br /></div><div>One stellar performer this season has been the okra. As a Southern guy, I do love my okra, and this year, it loved me. It seems the brutal heat and humidity of south central Wisconsin made our okra think it was in Alabama; the place it grows the best. We'll have lots of okra to fry this winter, and the unmistakable scent of gumbo will fill the brittle January air as we take our cold weather comfort foods to new levels.</div><div><br /></div><div>As I sit here surrounded by piles of fresh produce overrunning our tiny kitchen, I begin to look ahead to the time when all this work really pays off. When the roads are buried in snow, a trip to the cellar brings back all the summer goodness. I'll remember probing the rich soil of Black Earth, Wisconsin with my fingers, searching for the fingerling potatoes in all their comical shapes and sizes. The scent of open soil and vine will be missed, but the goodness of the potato will be right there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thinking about the next season is a good practice for those who grow their own food. The jars of food in the cellar are just a few feet away from the seeds that the plants produced for the next season's garden. The stable atmosphere of the cellar can hold an eternity of food, one season to the next, if we do our part. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's what it's all about: We have to do our part. Get busy out there. There's still plenty of time to plant again in most of the country. Greenhouses and simple row covers can greatly extend the growing season. We're trying spinach again, and maybe this time we'll be eating it fresh, deep into winter. We'll see. That's part of the fun.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-8301116547336568942010-07-08T21:21:00.005-05:002010-07-08T22:03:58.071-05:00More Ox Talk<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYJa5A4GBdjsQvNSVF_egoPk2bVi53SKQwkpWYIwjIqWLsXqDy1845jaMFXE4cm8ItMMPtmuUwlrqHV6xW5uJuZUuZLebfo2QEGpE6I36HHA0PM1IrtTYZn4bDtLbiWlz_Z2WCsAFy3q4/s1600/web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYJa5A4GBdjsQvNSVF_egoPk2bVi53SKQwkpWYIwjIqWLsXqDy1845jaMFXE4cm8ItMMPtmuUwlrqHV6xW5uJuZUuZLebfo2QEGpE6I36HHA0PM1IrtTYZn4bDtLbiWlz_Z2WCsAFy3q4/s400/web.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491727624831603634" /></a><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Gulland and Marco (photo by Karen Stack)<div><br /></div><div><div>I had a comment on the last post, and I thought I should answer it in a separate post.</div><div><br /></div><div>Barb said she'd mention to Steve that they should consider the possibility of getting a pair of oxen instead of buying an old tractor for their new farm/home. Following are my thoughts on the subject.</div><div><br /></div><div>You know, an old tractor will never come up to the fence to meet you. We're opting for the long term thing with the oxen. It'll be a few years before they're full grown, but at the scale we'll be operating, I think it's the best way to go. We'll grow our production as the animals grow in ability; slowly and steadily. It makes sense to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's something more about draft cattle than just production. The teamster creates a working relationship with the animals and finds that they are curious and always interested in what you're doing. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mostly they take care of themselves with grass and water and sunshine. The largest proportion of cattle are just kept for slaughter or for milking, and they never get a chance to get to know their owner. The relationship between ox and handler is very unique.</div><div><br /></div><div>The biggest difference, I believe, is the impact on the Earth. The manufacturing process involved with the ox is as old as time itself. Boy meets girl in the pasture... well...</div><div><br /></div><div>The line of transportation can be as limited as your own back yard. The training will teach you as much about yourself as the ox learns in the process. There are no repair parts made of (think carbon) cast iron, steel or rubber to send around the globe to an implement dealer to be distributed. Your local veterinarian should be able to do any repairs needed, and that vet may very well be a neighbor. There are no petroleum products required at all. </div><div><br /></div><div>An ox requires no mortgage, and the monthly payments are worked out in pasture grass and true human labor. As far as equipment goes, a chain or two should last the rest of your life. You can learn make a new yoke to fit the animals as they grow, and you should learn how to work with wood at least that well. Other than that, you can buy a 100 year old sickle bar mower that will last another 100 years after you're done with it, and other implements as you need them.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ox works at a human pace and puts life into work, changing it from a chore to a social event. He puts you in touch with blood and sweat, muscle and bone, and wood and steel; one can never be in touch with those elemental things enough, I believe. You work with him, tire with him, and rest with him; the connection is indescribable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Draft oxen aren't for everyone, and not every day is going to be as romantic as I have described. They grow to be great big animals and have their own personalities and moods that can be challenging if they aren't worked properly and often. So many times the problems actually lie in the human, and that can be difficult for us to deal with. I have always walked away from a team of oxen with a deep abiding respect for them at their trust and willingness to work for me. They tolerate my uncertainty and lack of depth of understanding of them and still do what I ask them to do. I don't know how else to say it, but it's really a sweet deal for me. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>As we begin to try to increase our food production on a very necessary personal level, I believe the ox will become important again for the small scale grower. Even if you don't have your own team, you'll be able to call me in a couple of years and I can bring my team over for the day and work with you. It's something to consider that you have most likely not considered before. </div><div><br /></div><div>This crazy world is throwing things at us daily that we never had to think of before. For generations before us people thought nothing of using what was at the time, 'the latest technologies'. It worked then, and we have to remember that.</div><div><br /></div><div>My friend Royce, a dairy farmer, half laughs when he says, "We always go to town for lunch so we can pick up parts we broke before lunch." </div><div><br /></div><div>What's gotten into us?</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-72080443814356221382010-06-29T11:51:00.011-05:002010-06-29T13:19:39.953-05:00Things I Like<div>This is Marco the ox in the blacksmith shop at Tillers International in Scotts, Michigan.</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyzphCNV97gaRET8hxgXMdz_KoaiQMy1CgRkO8qavZsajHLJyhTojxb9De54EgNbLIbXSoFmYZdWVpmHKN59kKWRAzou2kTYgEPhuTUxm0Ww8b3F9ByI0Ee6ICe1CWxfIzRp8VIep554/s1600/web.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyzphCNV97gaRET8hxgXMdz_KoaiQMy1CgRkO8qavZsajHLJyhTojxb9De54EgNbLIbXSoFmYZdWVpmHKN59kKWRAzou2kTYgEPhuTUxm0Ww8b3F9ByI0Ee6ICe1CWxfIzRp8VIep554/s400/web.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488240690092116914" /></a>There's just something right about anvils and oxen being in the same room. They are both symbols of things that have ultimate utility, yet there are very few people that understand them and their place in the modern world. After spending 25 years around anvils, I feel I understand blacksmithing pretty well. I only began studying draft animal power 4-5 years ago when I started to consider options for working larger and larger gardens for more food production.<div><br /></div><div>I wondered how much land would need to be cultivated to feed a family or a small group of neighbors. An acre is essentially the size of an American football field, and I thought I would choose that as an approximation of my needs. Working by hand is slow and brutally labor intensive. Often there is a week of soil work to do, and just 2 days of good weather, so something has to be added to the equation to make it work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, the first thought goes to tractors. Common 21st century thinking offers that nothing can make things go more smoothly than the addition of petro-energy to a project. The energy density in tractor fuel provides more work per pound than anything this side of a nuclear reactor, and it's no wonder that the ox has pretty much been swept into the dustbin of farming artifacts.</div><div><br /></div><div>Part of the attraction I found in oxen was the fact that they were around long before the use of petro-energy came onto the scene. There was a lot of work done with draft animals prior to the availability of tractors, and they still can work today. Oxen were everywhere 150 years ago, and now there are only a relative handful of people that have ever seen a working team; far fewer have actually worked with draft cattle.</div><div><br /></div><div>The ox is not a separate breed or species of cattle; it is simply a castrated bull that has been trained to work. Training begins as soon as possible, but the young team must develop their bodies before any real work can be done with them. This young team below is only a couple of months old, and with a week of training by a beginning class at Tillers International, they were already responding well enough with commands that they were able to complete the obstacle course pulling a light wheeled wagon at the Midwest Ox Drovers Association (MODA) meeting last weekend at Tillers in Michigan. Each year, a pair of calves is trained by the Tillers Oxen Basics class the week prior to the MODA meeting, and the trained calves are raffled into the oxen community as a fundraiser for MODA. This year's team are named Thomas and Jefferson, or Tom and Jeff. They were the nicest team of calves I have seen in my 3 year association with the event, and they will find their new home in North Carolina.</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8rSMwTFvB1cTDROvXxUEFKg5fZ5u-bl6AIXBCMENenbXFtGCrH2h0IW-mDUzwhrlHR2sCr4PWU3pWUcIKeIacKHIRH_HyLPc-v5P_hsWlFzR4bbggYbVpsh1SFdhFAM3vQPUdq1bJYLs/s1600/web-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8rSMwTFvB1cTDROvXxUEFKg5fZ5u-bl6AIXBCMENenbXFtGCrH2h0IW-mDUzwhrlHR2sCr4PWU3pWUcIKeIacKHIRH_HyLPc-v5P_hsWlFzR4bbggYbVpsh1SFdhFAM3vQPUdq1bJYLs/s400/web-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488240404032200306" /></a>A solo ox can be used for lighter tasks, or for more delicate jobs like pulling a weeding cultivator through corn rows. A single yoke is attached to the implement by way of chains on either side of the ox. This is Will, a Dutch Belted ox about 10 years old weighing in at about a ton. Will's partner, Abe, couldn't make it to the event due to a leg injury, but Will seemed to enjoy himself pulling the weeding cultivator through the corn and sorghum fields.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ilHXPFuoRgeYq3SOfskGsaMn1loUdu9Dvx1gt_jkEd_TI_FHj5IEizJ3txRJ5o-xvvxs9Q21Lz9SyA_pLCXe2dFj1HcF1KeW2whWD0X0b5y_SJWGryOECl4D7qK31vcj9KB5P8v99Q0/s1600/web-3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ilHXPFuoRgeYq3SOfskGsaMn1loUdu9Dvx1gt_jkEd_TI_FHj5IEizJ3txRJ5o-xvvxs9Q21Lz9SyA_pLCXe2dFj1HcF1KeW2whWD0X0b5y_SJWGryOECl4D7qK31vcj9KB5P8v99Q0/s400/web-3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488239790282275410" /></a>This team is being led by a Tillers intern from Mozambique. Zacharias is learning the draft oxen techniques from Tillers so he can go home and teach new ways of making agriculture more efficient. He is driving Herschel and Walker and pulling a disc cultivator through a freshly plowed field. A pair of oxen can pull a tremendous load and do a lot of field work in a day. The heavy double yoke is attached to a chain that pulls the implement as Zacharias leads the team with verbal commands and taps from the goad. This team has been working the fields at Tillers for a long time, and seem to know what is expected of them. Watching them cooperate through the universal language of the ox drover is magic. 'Gee' and 'haw' are 'right' and 'left' around the world, and the oxen know their names, regardless of the accent the drover might have. I hope Herschel and Walker enjoyed working with Zacharias as much as I did. His enthusiasm was contagious, and his love and understanding of the animals was strong.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_tuUWyfAuO4AlPSCLJpd6UdiS0RFqhwyNt3ip8E20QD8j5y0MJxfuu1XNWK7SlLFQZ-1VW_HYEUbo-EtXbQUyxyDkpWUUNCeAnUvcherFnyKM7C85azHXVC_UGM_f9mKhScJq8bFidlc/s1600/web-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_tuUWyfAuO4AlPSCLJpd6UdiS0RFqhwyNt3ip8E20QD8j5y0MJxfuu1XNWK7SlLFQZ-1VW_HYEUbo-EtXbQUyxyDkpWUUNCeAnUvcherFnyKM7C85azHXVC_UGM_f9mKhScJq8bFidlc/s400/web-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488239683443129698" /></a>My wife and I had a great time at Tillers last week, and hope to be adding a couple of young calves to the yard next month. If you're interested in finding out more about oxen, here are the links to <a href="http://www.tillersinternational.org/">Tillers</a> and <a href="http://www.midwestoxdrovers.com/Home.html">MODA</a>.<div><br /></div><div>As we reach a place in time when we must all begin to be more mindful of the delicacy of our balance in the availability and consumption of petro-energy, we should consider options to the sources of power and energy we have taken advantage of for so long now. The broadfork business has introduced me to so many people that see the writing on the wall that the days of cheap and easy petro-energy are in their twilight times. If you believe in the broadfork, you believe in a very old concept that still works as well today as it ever did before. Oxen fall into the same category, and I believe it was my attraction to them at first. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is a link to some more photos from our time at Tillers last week. <a href="http://gallery.me.com/karenstack#100084&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=108">Click here</a>. All photos by Karen Stack.</div><div><br /></div><div>"The ox is slow, but the Earth is patient."</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-83265817459820402462010-06-16T22:20:00.003-05:002010-06-16T23:40:32.919-05:00Hi There<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>It's been a long time since I have posted anything here, and I would like to thank you for making that happen. You see, if I am busy making broadforks, I have no time to do this.<div><br /></div><div>In fact, I have been very busy making broadforks, and I would like to thank all of you that have put me in that very enviable situation in recent months. I have even sent a couple of broadforks to Fairbanks, Alaska this spring. When I started this little business, I never would have thought I would be shipping broadforks to the permafrost zone, but I did.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>A wonderful customer in California sent me a picture of a garden 'bed' he did with his broadfork this year.</div><div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyhmPpW5SjFh0hTYNNorzGYxthlR5SVsogEav53uccg_PyyqAOn9KfHYD54ZSZhJC5Y02GgcsLNwxo0krPXIS8O_U_4SscWA0VN-54bmekwY7FamoR9dql8t_Yxi6XppmzTkmXVWASN2Q/s400/DSCF2387.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5483581240716259250" /></div><div>Tom told me that he never even cranked his rototiller this year; he did it all with the broadfork he got last year. He also said that he would never have to use the rototiller in any of those beds again.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's heavy stuff to me; I have created a business that provides an implement that allows people to step back from the use of fossil fuels to do the 'heavy lifting' in their gardens. Because of my broadfork, there is one less rototiller running in California this year!</div><div><br /></div><div>Tom, I have to say that your email and photos have made me know that I am doing the right thing. Thank you for turning the lights on for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am an Alabama native, and lived my first 42 years there. The Gulf of Mexico was in my backyard, and I loved visiting that coast. </div><div><br /></div><div>The point of this blog was to inform people about the utility of the broadfork and give some insight into the man that makes them. I never wanted to be political, or controversial. I must say, however, that the disaster that has occurred with the deep water drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico has made me feel that any time I can steer someone away from the use of fossil fuels to good old fashioned hand labor, I have done a good thing. The reason you are reading this is that you believe the same thing that I do.</div><div><br /></div><div>We need to lessen our need to use petroleum products. The low hanging fruit has all been picked, and the rest of the crude oil that is available is in the inhospitable places where it is probably best to just leave it alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Step by step we can lessen our need, and step by step we should. </div><div><br /></div><div>The news from my beloved Gulf is dark. It has a deep effect on all of us, and should. We are all responsible for the need to stretch our luck in the drive to fill our need and desire for the most dense form of energy the world has ever known.</div><div><br /></div><div>By picking up your broadfork and using it in your garden, you have made a choice to lessen your impact on this ever more vulnerable planet. The impact of your actions will be felt by future generations, perhaps even your own children, as you teach them the importance of doing the right thing, right now.</div><div><br /></div><div>We all weep for the environmental maelstrom in our Southern Coastal Waters. We can begin to repair the damage when begin to lessen our need for fossil fuels.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's time to take that step. </div><div><br /></div><div>Press that broadfork into your soil again and again. Get in touch with the way your body works with a good hand tool and let that be enough. Put matters in your own hands and become the difference you want to see in the world.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-54464485787552577112010-03-25T09:57:00.004-05:002010-03-25T10:54:13.776-05:00The sun is setting on an old friend<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPu1Mt9KobGaGSNN9EQIc8JbeezybO-jHb-UGWMGqu66IN7mHBo20XeadmtVmTAb5Peel_nJlkG14bcTNKI_cQdeuKb458_sPObeMfjnf56TW4LO3yuwfu0esFhsqFGoGhnFJiIMdl9Hs/s1600/IMG_2069.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPu1Mt9KobGaGSNN9EQIc8JbeezybO-jHb-UGWMGqu66IN7mHBo20XeadmtVmTAb5Peel_nJlkG14bcTNKI_cQdeuKb458_sPObeMfjnf56TW4LO3yuwfu0esFhsqFGoGhnFJiIMdl9Hs/s400/IMG_2069.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5452586259577684082" /></a>In October 2008, I had the need for a website to let the world know that I had broadforks for sale. Knowing nothing about the 'World of Websites,' I called in a pro.<div><br /></div><div>Tashai Lovington got that call and designed the website that I have used since then. My instructions were simple; I wanted a single page website linked to paypal, and I wanted it to be as simple as a kid's lemonade stand. We sat down at a table at Sjolinds in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, had coffee and chocolate, and hashed out the details.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tashai is an independent filmmaker, partnered with Robert Lughai, and their company is called <a href="http://tarazod.com/index.html">Tarazod Films</a>. We met several year ago when they were filming <a href="http://www.tarazod.com/filmsmadchicks.html">Mad City Chickens</a>. Our chicken story was featured in their film, and in that process, I got to know an amazingly talented and artistic couple. </div><div><br /></div><div>The first call I made when I figured out I needed a website was to Tashai. I told her that I trusted her implicitly, and that she could do anything artistically that she wanted to with the website. If you have seen the original website, you know I did the right thing. Her artwork was wonderful, and that little website impressed a lot of you enough to purchase a broadfork from me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you, Tashai. It worked. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's a new site coming, Broadforkers! It'll be up and running in a day or so, and like our gardens, it'll be continually growing and changing, and providing us with more than we would have ever dreamed. I'll miss the old one and it's simplicity, but I am finding that I have a lot more to say, and I need more room to say it. </div><div><br /></div><div>From very humble beginnings, this little company has begun to take root in the rocky soil of the stormy US economy. It's working out because I have chosen to give you your money's worth, and you have chosen to shop for the best. It's the way business ought to be done, and it's the way it will always happen here. </div><div><br /></div><div>I am deeply grateful for each of you. Without you none of this would have been possible. The business has grown to the point that I needed a second pair of hands to help me with production. I chose the most capable hands I knew, and they happened to be attached to my wife, Karen. She has built the new website, and is the 'soil scientist' on staff. She now does all the handle work, fitting and finishing each and every select ash handle that goes out the door.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I have to say that four hands touch your broadfork before yours touch it. Four very grateful hands.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-75992356843774045442010-02-10T22:20:00.002-06:002010-02-10T23:11:36.995-06:00ThanksgivingI know the official holiday is long past, but tonight I wanted to talk about a day I set aside each year as my personal day of Thanksgiving.<div><br /></div><div>In the winter of 1979, I was in Worland, in northern Wyoming, living with a cousin there, working, traveling, skiing, and checking out my boundaries. On the 10th of February, I set out from the end of the plowed road in Grand Teton National Park at Colter Bay. I parked my car, shouldered my pack, and set out on a solo cross country ski camping trip for the night.</div><div><br /></div><div>By 9PM I had set up the tent, had eaten, and had written a letter to a girlfriend back in Alabama by candle lamp light at 20 below zero. Content, full, and warm, I zipped up tight in my bag and enjoyed the quiet; the light of stars on snow was illuminating the tent after a while like daylight. My thoughts were on the day ahead and what the mountains would look like at sunrise.</div><div><br /></div><div>The quiet changed into an otherworldly wump, wump, wump WUMPWUMP!!</div><div><br /></div><div>I sat up, and the hoof of a moose tore through the tent wall and to the floor, right where I had been. It went left and ran through the guy lines I had secured the tent with, tied to a ski. With a crack and a shrill ripping sound, another wall of the tent disappeared, and in the starlight a silhouette of the moose was unmistakable, just 6 feet away. </div><div><br /></div><div>There I was, zipped in a sleeping bag, trying to open the zipper and assess the damages to my all of a sudden, tiny, tiny world. I had gone from blissful slumber to terror in 2 seconds flat.</div><div><br /></div><div>The wump, wump, wump had faded, and there was a ringing sound in my ears and a deep pounding in my chest. </div><div><br /></div><div>The line from the tent to the ski had gotten tangled in the moose's feet, and the ski was gone. I fashioned a snowshoe out of my pack, put on the other ski and followed the trail of the moose to try to find the lost ski, knowing that if I wanted to survive, I had to leave, and soon.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the darkness of the night, with the thought that someone might eventually find my bones and get my letter off to Maria, I made a promise to myself that if I survived, I would forever proclaim February 10th as my personal day of Thanksgiving; it would be my Celebration of Life Day.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's been a long time since that night, but I still celebrate. I always try to find something for which I am thankful, and this year it was easy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Broadfork #176 shipped today, and will soon be working the soil for many years after I am gone. </div><div><br /></div><div>My wife is incredible, and every day is an adventure with her.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sun was out on fresh snow today, and nothing is as beautiful as that.</div><div><br /></div><div>Spring is coming, and the promise of the soil thawing comes again this year. The sun is stronger every day, and winter is heading for the history books, like the story of the moose in Colter Bay, Wyoming.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hope you all had a good February 10th. </div><div><br /></div><div>Celebrate Life.</div><div><br /></div><div>All good things,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-6987780951510303662009-12-29T22:50:00.003-06:002009-12-29T23:19:53.509-06:00Wisconsin Winter<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVfWE5C_t90Hi94jrFia_nKwAIWgw1F-1N5Mi4N8QZc024AmQ-OyIQl92hOhoy9UiX8EOmrywXKTvNnnwM7lY634653w6AjedBwe1tnnZB-tSXRnS9cNHrWbCiYccyy2KyDNo6-5ABCo/s1600-h/IMG_1954.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxVfWE5C_t90Hi94jrFia_nKwAIWgw1F-1N5Mi4N8QZc024AmQ-OyIQl92hOhoy9UiX8EOmrywXKTvNnnwM7lY634653w6AjedBwe1tnnZB-tSXRnS9cNHrWbCiYccyy2KyDNo6-5ABCo/s400/IMG_1954.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420888400795412354" /></a>It's very bleak.<div><br /></div><div>This photo was taken on a simple trip to the mailbox. The wind chill was 80 below zero and my nose fell off about half way back to the house. I am only exaggerating a little.<div><br /></div><div>I make a garden tool. I live in a place that is frozen for more months than I care to count. The funny thing is that you folks are buying them now. I keep getting orders from places where I know it's much worse than it is here. Sunday night I got an order from Dysart, Iowa. It's a town almost small enough to be "misplaced" under the blanket of snow that fell on it last week, but one optimistic Midwesterner with his eye on the future and his heart set on Spring ordered a broadfork.<div><br /></div><div>Thanks, Ryan. I share your pain. Your broadfork will lean against the wall for at least 3 more months while the Earth will successfully repel any attempt to penetrate it. Your spirit rides the wave of seed catalogs that will arrive in your mailbox in the next 30 days, and I ride with it.</div><div><br /></div><div>We have gotten past the longest night of the year, and in 6 months, we'll be at Summer Solstice; the beginning of the return to darkness in the night. It's hard to imagine that between now and then, we will have planted seeds in the (presently frozen) soil and they will have produced auxins, germinated, and will begin to provide us with a food supply if we have done our part.</div><div><br /></div><div>We're all so anxious to do our part, but most of us must wait. We wait while the mercury heads down, down to the places where it's just not fun to be.<br /><div><br /></div></div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ_CS_gEf-UbjBWANRbuAHrFh3-OeZVEi2IY_V64QsQLodEmqvB8GhpOL26LLxrN6jNP13lSoiHbiLvbokez-P5P83qLqNpnEpVrWSXizB4IQFBm0Dg7ehQbwJ3MeHIQIB9-Q_GFOlS0U/s1600-h/IMG_2148.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 211px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ_CS_gEf-UbjBWANRbuAHrFh3-OeZVEi2IY_V64QsQLodEmqvB8GhpOL26LLxrN6jNP13lSoiHbiLvbokez-P5P83qLqNpnEpVrWSXizB4IQFBm0Dg7ehQbwJ3MeHIQIB9-Q_GFOlS0U/s400/IMG_2148.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420887336056313266" /></a>Let's embrace this season. We must have it to have the rest of them. Our Spring must endure our Winter to fully form herself. </div><div><br /></div><div>Look ahead to a time when we can reach into the soil and place our seeds in it. </div><div><br /></div><div>Remember how that feels? After a few days the spinach will reach up to the Sun for life and all the other seeds will follow as they have since the beginning of time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's look forward to the rhythm of nature. Let's synch again with the Earth and become part of it. Get those seeds ordered and hold them dearly until you can reunite them with the soil from whence they came. If we do our part, Nature will do Hers.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the cusp of a new decade and it's time to seek a new direction. Let's head back to a time when it was important to look ahead. Let's be as good as our grandparents were about planning for our future. Let's be the change we want to see in the world ahead.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-10241948917577302872009-09-15T20:31:00.004-05:002009-09-16T14:24:33.974-05:00Back to the Grind<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsBsxQk9TkkrRrll9DDJ6pReX3vANyzJ3z9xaiYmKFRtag4QMFUzJlKrTuXFr6Y11X0yeEQ8Qdyd-QTHlhzMZo2Orz8W2giuTAOhXAZI0pE6_TNNHoMNYsKwxrq4gQMBu26i1qCRPXJA/s1600-h/IMG_4094.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQsBsxQk9TkkrRrll9DDJ6pReX3vANyzJ3z9xaiYmKFRtag4QMFUzJlKrTuXFr6Y11X0yeEQ8Qdyd-QTHlhzMZo2Orz8W2giuTAOhXAZI0pE6_TNNHoMNYsKwxrq4gQMBu26i1qCRPXJA/s400/IMG_4094.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381871934334724114" /></a>I'd like to introduce to you to the newest member of the Gulland household, with Karen taking it out for a spin. It's our grain grinder. A friend had it and wasn't using it enough to want to keep it, so she called me and asked if we'd be interested in being it's next owners. Of course we said yes.<div><br /></div><div>In the past 5 years or so, we have concentrated on learning how to live our lives very differently. We live in a cold place where nothing can be grown in the winter, so we are learning how to preserve our food by traditional means as well as by freezing. We're finding out that the shelf life of certain things is many years in some cases, and we are beginning to look ahead that far with many of our pantry items.</div><div><br /></div><div>Grinding fresh flour (from local organically grown wheat berries) for bread produces a quality of loaf that has, until now, been unattainable. We make bread once a week now most of the time. Today, Karen made 2 whole wheat loaves for the week and 2 hamburger buns, which we just enjoyed for dinner.</div><div><br /></div><div>Karen has been making bread for years, and I have been lucky enough to sit back and enjoy it from time to time when she would whip up a loaf for a special occasion. About a year and a half ago, we quit buying bread all together and began making all our bread from scratch. She taught me how to do it, and I taught a few others along the way. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now we produce our own pizza crusts, sandwich bread, sourdough loaves, cornbread, biscuits, and we even make flour tortillas and corn tortillas as well as specialty items like foccacia and calzones. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think that the monster grinder will take it well. It's built to outlive us all. I cannot believe a better quality grinder exists than the Diamant. If you can't find a used one, it's worth saving for and buying it at full price. It's the Gulland Broadfork of grain mills.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's nice to walk out in the yard and pick up a few things to throw on a pizza for dinner, and when we can't do that any longer and the ground turns to stone, we'll have a stack of jars in the basement with all our favorite ingredients in them. When we filled the freezer, we opted to not buy another one, but began to can more, dehydrate more, and designed a root cellar to share with neighbor Harald. We'll have about a thousand butternut squashes to store this winter.</div><div><br /></div><div>The tomatoes are still producing well, as are the broccoli (Harald's favorite), celery, and bush beans. The late planted stuff is doing very well, particularly the carrots, beets and radishes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I named this blog the 'Broadfork Blog, and Other Affairs of Daily Living'. People are beginning to do things differently everywhere these days, and I have been a student of the changes that are taking place. I like what I see a lot of the time, but I know that this is a hard time for a lot of people. </div><div><br /></div><div>Part of my 'affairs of daily living' has been to accept that life is hard work and it takes a lot of time and energy to get things done using older techniques and machinery. Karen and I spent about 10 minutes grinding wheat by hand today, switching back and forth and turning the handle face to face, one hand each on the crank. When you're doing something like that, 10 minutes can seem like a really long time. It's always faster to open a bag and dip in a measuring cup and dump it in a bowl, but bags of flour only stay fresh for a period of months, not years in storage. </div><div><br /></div><div>The extra effort we put into our food is time well spent, we believe. What's an extra 10 minutes a week to grind flour if you're already spending the time to make the bread in the first place?</div><div><br /></div><div>These are the little things we do that take up the time that many people would spend in front of the television or commuting or grocery shopping. We've not been cursed with a TV in years now. We work at home for the most part, and our grocery shopping is getting less every year.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hear from my customers from time to time and garden vicariously through them. Some of you folks have wonderful gardens! I wonder how many of you prepare and preserve a lot of what you eat during the year?</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you all,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8102236027936662496.post-75526001493154541122009-09-04T15:20:00.004-05:002009-09-04T17:00:09.622-05:00A Milestone Has Been Reached!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTp2CI_3mfNElqYPbviKjk2xaBEbuPVGlfuJB9xQra3bzSTl5AluBJho05PIx9bDsGiRdqbNyScylZGRG7c2TAKwTwuzVXR_4BYZMDxlnrRwurbZTetK135ysLwuX_IN8_pJGF9Djswo/s1600-h/IMG_4081.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTp2CI_3mfNElqYPbviKjk2xaBEbuPVGlfuJB9xQra3bzSTl5AluBJho05PIx9bDsGiRdqbNyScylZGRG7c2TAKwTwuzVXR_4BYZMDxlnrRwurbZTetK135ysLwuX_IN8_pJGF9Djswo/s400/IMG_4081.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377711636808715810" /></a>To some, it's just a number, but to me it's a moment of triumph! This is Gulland Broadfork frame #100, awaiting it's tines. It's not sold yet, but it will be soon. I make these in small batches at home in my shop, doing every step by hand with absolute quality control my number one priority. If they aren't perfect, they don't get sold.<div><br /></div><div>I started this little business about a year ago and I had no idea if anyone would ever buy one of these tools. I wanted to see if a tiny manufacturing shop could support itself by offering very high quality tools at honest, fair prices. I won't get rich this way; quick math will tell you that 100 broadforks at $185 each is not enough to live on these days, but it's a great start. Pretty soon I'll have 100 happy customers that will tell their friends about this tool and it'll go from there. I didn't do this to get rich quick.</div><div><br /></div><div>I took out an ad in Countryside Magazine that hit the stands on October 15th 2008. That day, my phone rang with the first customer that had not bought one from me face to face. He was in New Mexico, and thus began this very rewarding little business.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a Chinese saying, "The ox is slow, but the Earth is patient."<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiNoSi8WaKMNM10zhjxDNnr6UQjHQvV16tjDyAecaa3174wPIxpBc-1L0j0Y2j4BehNWaNXmYYfhq2gLMbbohIa1oEr1XlL5Yvd4weEM0RgbHZ4tuU7rFXYVmEvtGENmlqqvk86BJD6r0/s1600-h/Gulland-broadfork-Handle2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiNoSi8WaKMNM10zhjxDNnr6UQjHQvV16tjDyAecaa3174wPIxpBc-1L0j0Y2j4BehNWaNXmYYfhq2gLMbbohIa1oEr1XlL5Yvd4weEM0RgbHZ4tuU7rFXYVmEvtGENmlqqvk86BJD6r0/s400/Gulland-broadfork-Handle2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377711295894084930" /></a>I'll continue to patiently make each and every broadfork with painstaking care using my own hands to do all the work. Even the apparent drudgery of handle fitting is joyous on a beautiful Wisconsin afternoon in the dappled sunlight beneath the birch tree by my back porch.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH60R7q4AP4xoDT8bDnMjmZ_DvdYDBP77hyHjwqlllehulkSrOvrw7OQn0Wra2kgrvvmX_zMb34977Al1tLsxT3ln_TeQOfClnfdivV9xsmOKZCN4kloTtL_k6pjFLTG4icOSR_VZjGaU/s1600-h/Gulland-Broadfork-Handle1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH60R7q4AP4xoDT8bDnMjmZ_DvdYDBP77hyHjwqlllehulkSrOvrw7OQn0Wra2kgrvvmX_zMb34977Al1tLsxT3ln_TeQOfClnfdivV9xsmOKZCN4kloTtL_k6pjFLTG4icOSR_VZjGaU/s400/Gulland-Broadfork-Handle1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377711189953977762" /></a>Each handle is fitted this way to insure a good tight fit when you get it. Nothing is worse than a handle that rattles around in the socket, and the only way to achieve the proper fit at this scale is the way I am doing it. Depending on the humidity when you get your fork, it may be a little tight or a little loose, but the 3/8" stainless steel lag screw that comes with the broadfork WILL hold it together tightly. Sometimes the handles might need a little help slipping into the sockets. You can tap the handle into place with the aid of a wooden or rubber mallet or just a piece of 2x4.</div><div><br /></div><div>Make sure you don't leave this nice tool out in the weather, and a couple of times a year, rub the wood down with a 50/50 mixture of linseed oil and turpentine and some steel wool. It's a way of preserving wood that has been used for centuries, and it still works fine.</div><div><br /></div><div>A note to the person that gets Gulland Broadfork #100: </div><div><br /></div><div>You have made me believe that there is a great deal of hope for our future. You are the kind of person that takes care of your own responsibility to feed yourself and take care of your soil, because you know how important it is to have some control over your most elemental needs. The purchase of this human powered tool shows your commitment to the environment, to your physical health, and consequently, your mental well being. Producing your own food IS good for your head. </div><div><br /></div><div>By purchasing your Broadfork from me, you are saying that you believe in the small business man, and you have 'put your money where your mouth is.' </div><div><br /></div><div>A note to the 99 before you and to #101 and beyond:</div><div><br /></div><div>We're all in this together. We're a small tribe of self reliant persons doing what we can in these crazy times to take care of business for ourselves and our loved ones. We're teaching ourselves how to raise food, preserve it for the months ahead when we can no longer pluck it from the Earth, and share our excess with our friends and neighbors. We're teaching what we know along the way and we are all doing a very good thing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you to all my previous customers. Your gardens are in the farthest reaches of this country and beyond. Gulland Broadforks are in Hawaii, Canada, and Mexico. They are in the good soil of Nebraska and New Mexico, of Florida, Maryland, Washington, Maine, Texas, the Carolinas, Idaho, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, and my home state of Alabama. California has many, Idaho, a few. I won't list them all, but most states now have a Gulland Broadfork serving in a resident's garden. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's getting close to the end of the season, and it's time to start to consider what to do with the garden over winter. I'll be reporting back as we start to close down sections that are out of production and I'll show you how I prep my garden beds for their winter rest.</div><div><br /></div><div>Good soil to you all,</div><div><br /></div><div>Gulland</div>Gullandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10692487413041337435noreply@blogger.com4