Fast Food Local, Local Food Fast

We live about 10 miles from the nearest fast food blight, and refuse to eat that way anyhow. Within 2-3 miles we have a few locally owned taverns that I would feel better about supporting, but there's an issue with my arteries and a threatened early shut-down if I eat in such a way. That leaves me with a do it yourself attitude about food.

I went to the garden a little bit ago and picked a couple of squashes, a pepper, and onion and a hand full of beans for lunch. Prep time was minimal because I never even wash anything unless it has soil on it. In a couple of minutes the skillet was hot, and the saute was over in 5. I added some bread we made yesterday from a sourdough starter from Neighbor Harald, (with a touch of real butter) an old fork from my wife's grandmother's collection and a handmade napkin, and the feast was on.
Since the world headquarters of Gulland Forge Broadforks is located here at home, we eat in a lot. In fact, we rarely eat anywhere but here, and especially this time of year. It's so easy to go and pick up our meals in the yard.

I have been working on the garden in the last few days getting things ready to receive the fall plantings. Yep, it's the middle of August, and time to plant again in south central Wisconsin where fall comes very early.

There are a lot of great things left to plant this season that are willing to put on a jacket and cap, so to speak, and come out of the ground in cooler weather. Now is the time to plant more lettuce, spinach, turnips, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, mache, chard, carrots, parsnips, mustard greens, and peas.

So get up off the couch and get something planted in the garden. I am working on some new video this week for the Gulland youtube site, so make sure you take a look over there and watch me make it look easy.

Good soil to you,

Gulland

Questions, questions.

A couple of weeks ago, I received a call from a man in north central Pennsylvania who was interested in purchasing a broadfork. He said that he and his girlfriend had recently moved to some rural land and that they wanted to garden and would go into a small production situation. We talked for a while about the broadfork and he told me that the broadfork would be the largest expense so far for the garden, and that he would have to consider it. I had a feeling I'd hear from him again. 

Last weekend his order showed up in my email along with a note reminding me of our previous phone conversation. He ended his note with this: 

"This is our single biggest cost investment thus far, but we decided to go for it because it seems like it'll last a lifetime at least. We look forward to using your fork this season and passing it on to future generations."

Wow. 

Given the state of things in the world these days, sometimes I feel like asking someone to send their money to me is like taking food out of their hands... No, wait a minute... its like putting food into their hands! 

Something occurred to me after I got that note. Each time the broadfork is used, it's cost per use goes down. There are no yearly tune ups, no broken springs or cables, no flat tires, and no gas tank. 

You buy it once, you pay for it once. Your pocketbook wins, your soil wins. 

After I had that realization, I wanted to know a little more about this customer that had only been a voice on the phone and an email correspondent. I had this short list of simple questions I sent to my him after I got his note:

What inspired you to want to produce food?
How much experience have you had with gardening before you went 'pro'?
What will you be planting?
Will you be selling roadside, at a local market, or to friends, etc?
If you have time and would like to share that info, I'd love to share it with people out there that need inspiration.

I got his answers and his permission to post them. I hope these words mean as much to you as they did to me:

What inspired you to want to produce food?

A:  My girlfriend and I were living and working in New York City for a few years after college, and doing 'well.' It took a while for it to dawn on us that, despite our successes, we were actually becoming increasingly disempowered. We had less time to ourselves and we were reliant on a vast series of bureaucracies for our most basic needs, including, but not limited to, our housing and food. Meanwhile, we'd been spending summers out on a piece of land in North Central PA owned by my family -- a farm that burned down in the 60s and has since been owned by weekenders. We were living outside, fixing things up, and building a little house. When summer was over, we'd go back to 'real' life. It occurred to us that we could switch the whole thing around and make our time here our real life.

 

Food production, especially, is meaningful to us. It's the most basic human activity, and we know nothing about it. In our ignorance, we've let huge corporations set the terms for the quality and price of what goes in our bodies, and the way our food is grown. For us to grow and preserve our own food is the single most important part of taking control of, and responsibility for, our own sustenance.

 

How much experience have you had with gardening before you went 'pro'?

 

A:  We have almost no experience. I've worked at a plant nursery, and grew up with a very small garden in the backyard. We spend a couple months working on two farms in Argentina. We've got very helpful and supportive neighbors.

 

What will you be planting?

A:  We're doing a little of a lot, in terms of vegetables and herbs, about half an acre altogether, although a bit more counting experiments with various grains. Everything that we like to eat, and extra of things we think other people will want. It will take a few years before we have fruits.

 

Will you be selling roadside, at a local market, or to friends, etc?

 

A:  We'll be selling at a stand in a nearby town, and possibly at a couple farmers' markets. We also bring our stuff into New York, where our chef friend makes incredible, gourmet meals and we explain where the food was from and how it was grown. 

Hope this helps. Looking forward to the fork!

I hope I don't wear my readers out by repeating this over and over, but you folks are wonderful and an inspiration to me. Thanks to you all.

Gulland

 

Making the Gulland Broadfork

When I started this blog, I really wanted it to be about the broadfork. So far it's been about pears, intermodal logistics, chickens, and Chernobyl. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about the broadfork.

I want you to know that I make each one by hand, one at a time in my shop. I pay attention to details during this process to make sure that each tool is as good as it can be. I go to great lengths to insure that things are done the right way, ultimately for you, but also for me and for all of us. By that I mean that I am very careful in the manufacturing process to think about the details that will make this tool useful, durable, repairable, environmentally reasonable to produce, and actually profitable, so that I can make a living by doing this. With proper care, the Gulland Broadfork should never get to the point to where it should end up in a landfill.

First, I want to introduce the process of fitting the handles to my broadfork. The select ash handles are really half the tool and deserve to be treated as such.  My handles come from a small producer located about 30 miles from me in Tennessee who gives me the best he has to offer. He uses ash that is native to the Tennessee Valley, and the wood travels very minimally from where it is harvested to my shop. Mike runs a 4 person operation, and most of his employees are family members. I consider him a partner in my business, and I have the utmost respect for what he does. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with him.

I start by matching each pair of handles by grain density so both will have about the same amount of 'spring' which is what gives my broadfork such a great feel when in use. Some handled tools feel like pry bars, but these contoured ash handles have a dynamic feel when in use. All the handles are straight grained, and the grain runs the full length of the handle with no run-outs.  I drill each one with the hole in line with the strongest orientation of the grain. 

The drilled hole is carefully whittled out before the final handle sizing is done.

The steel handle sockets are seamless DOM tubing, and are sized just a bit smaller than the handles I get from Mike. The wood comes to me at 1.5" diameter, and the tube is 1.482" inside diameter. That leaves me with a little fitting to do as you can see from the scratches on the end of the wood handle shown here. I choose to do it this way to insure that the handle and socket are fitted very closely to each other. The wood changes size ever so slightly with changes in moisture, so it can never be perfect, but I like it to be as close as possible when it leaves my shop. The first step in sizing the handle is to see approximately how much wood needs to be removed. The handle is pressed by hand into the socket, and the resulting line gives me the exact depth of cut I need.

The sizing process is one I have decided to do the hard way. In the first few broadforks I made, I used a sander to size the handles to fit the sockets. For production, I wanted to minimize the amount of 'consumables' I had to purchase and throw away. Sanding discs wear out quickly on the rock-hard ash wood, and all that sandpaper would just go to the landfill, so I decided to buy a hand tool to do the job. I went straight to the top, and bought a bronze Lie-Neilsen low angle block plane. I'd like to thank my brother for turning me on to this exceptional tool. After I borrowed his, I went out and got one for myself. It is a joy to use, and though it may be a bit slower to use than a power sander, it works beautifully, and at a human pace. It's silent, doesn't create that fine dust that gets everywhere, and has no throw away 'consumables'. By doing it this way, I don't have to use electricity for a sander or for a vacuum system. Clean up is simple with a broom and a dustpan and I use the shavings to make fire starters and garden mulch. 

I set up a simple jig to rotate the handle as I size it to fit, from time to time checking the handle socket as I slide the razor sharp blade through the wood pulling off paper thin curls. Doing this for an hour or two is quite relaxing, really, and I am always amazed at how much time passes while I am doing this very pleasant task. Yesterday I enjoyed Holst's 'Hammersmith' while I fitted a couple dozen handles. You can get much worse work.

The last step in fitting is to actually line up the holes in the wood with the holes in the metal. This is a nice, tight fit and everything lines up perfectly. The square punched hole in the handle socket is another detail I add. The handle is attached to the broadfork with a single stainless steel carriage bolt with a thin locking jam nut. The square hot punched hole holds the square shank of the carriage bolt making the fit-up as neat and clean as possible. 

We're not through with the handles yet. Next time we'll take a look at the last step in making the handles as good as they can be. If you couldn't tell, I just love these tool handles. Having been a blacksmith for all these years, I feel like I am learning something new with this exposure to woodworking, and I'm looking forward to doing more of it.

Thanks for reading along, and check back soon for more broadfork information.

Gulland