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CURRENT HAPPENINGS
AT THE DESK
Finishing touches are being put to Loving Allis Chalmers: Reflections From Agraria. Scheduled release date is December 2007.
Purchase a copy.
See the Table of Contents.
No Sage: Essays From the Margin appeared in its second edition and includes two new essays, Mangoes and The Abstract Land. The book is availabe through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.
Leaving the Bucket: Searching for the Sacred in Addiction, essays on addiction and rural life, was released October 2005.
(Click on the image for a better view of the cover)
buy a copy
Through the 2006-2007 winter, Ralph worked on Open Range: on the Ineffable, four essays on music, grief, and Being, foraying through the musical works of Neil Young in the 1970's and the eighteenth century philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (a not so unlikely pair), Bergson's notion of duration, Whitehead's concept of occasions, collections, souvenirs, hesuchia, bullfighting (not necessarily in that order), and the inspirational sources of music, art and mathematics. Expect the work to be published in 2009.
2008 is devoted to "sensitivity" and "the trouble with normal"--a look at the weaknesses of statistics.
ON THE FARM
June 2007: The Northwest Regional Meeting was held at Bindweed Farm, with attendees coming from as far as Nebraska and Washington State. Gary Pellett of Newflora (Kordes rose breeder in Oregon) sponsored the lunch, Dr. Steve Love of The University of Idaho Research Center spoke on rose pests, Paul Muirbrook gave an interesting talk on weeds, and Erin Benzakein, Jeriann and Ralph gave a rundown on growing specialty roses in the US.
Members gather for the Bindweed Farm tour (as seen through a willow fence)
Bingham County Weed Superintendent Paul Muirbrook speaks on invasive species.
June 2007: The Northwest Regional Meeting will be held the 14th at Bindweed Farm. Click on the link for info!
May 5 2007: we start harvesting hoophouse peonies today, a minimum of three weeks before outside peonies will begin to bloom.
April 2007: The trialled roses made it through a zone 5 winter, where temps dipped to fifteen below for several winter nights. We've pulled away the protective bark to reveal green canes with, in some cases, nearly fully developed leaves. Most, if not all, the roses survived. Next: pruning and a dose of dormant oil that we hope limits aphid problems in the coming season.
The first ten thousand tulips are harvested, and the daffodils have begun. It's our first year with daffies, and we've learned a few things already. Varieties: Bridal Crown has a wonderful, strong scent with multiple tiny blooms, but has the drawback of short stems. Ice Follies sells well, but has a fainter scent. Tahiti has a large bloom with a very good stem length, but its scent is light.
Hyacinths are also another first for us. We find they are so short that we must dig them from the ground and sell them bulb and all--if we grow them again, it will be in crates. And grow them we probably will, as designer reception seems positive.
Our first trial at successive phlox crops appears (at first glance) to be promising. The heated greenhouse crop has reached the support netting, being over a foot tall. We hope to see it bloom in May or early June. If it does, we may plant another crop in another, unheated house, in order to grow it as we do tulips--in three successive seasons, one immediately following the one prior. We'll keep you posted.
March 2007: French tulips are starting to bloom; the "lupine experiment" in the hoophouse appears successful, with the non-heated lupine emerging. Phlox in the greenhouses has emerged, as well, with our hopes that we will be harvesting it earlier than the outside phlox by a couple months. Bleeding hearts, another new species on Bindweed, appears healthy in the greenhouse--we've tried to grow it outside before, but the area has so many late frosts we were never able to harvest saleable stems.
The Northwest Regional Meeting will be held at Bindweed June 14. Seminars on outdoor rose production, two season peony production, sweet peas inside and out, and radiant heated cool weather crops will be presented, as well as a special session of instruction on color. Be there!
December 2006: The ranunculus experiment continues: hoping to get larger blooms, we left corms from the prior year in the ground, thinking that second year plants would throw more massive blossoms. Ninety percent of the ranunculus made it through the dormant period of summer, and will be blooming in February. Stay tuned to see if the blooms are indeed larger on second year corms.
November 2006: Jeriann was voted in as Northwest Regional Director for The Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers, and will serve from 2007 to 2009 in that position. A Regional Meeting is tentatively planned for Summer 2007 at Bindweed Farm.
May 2006: A genetic oddity appears in the icelandic poppy crop: a "bi-color".
April 2006: Despite a heater failure in early March when outside temps reached fifteen below and inside hoophouse temps fell to 15 for several hours, the ranunculus survived. Below see them as they stand now, five thousand stems already harvested from about twelve hundred plants. Freesia doesn't take such extreme cold and burned to the ground, but it still is throwing a few blooms. Both crops will be left in the ground for next year's harvest, to see if second year blooms gain in size and make it feasible to grow ranunculus and freesia as winter crops.
Despite what must be a record wet year (Blackfoot has received ten inches of moisture already--its average for the year), we've made it into the field (just barely). Below is the setup for irrigation at Bindweed.
This drip tape layer was manufactured by a local implement dealer, and is comprised of a simple shank with tubing formed on its backside, through which drip tape feeds under the ground, behind the shank.
When tape laying begins, the end of the tape is tied to a stake (in this case, a discarded potato digger link) to keep it in place.
To see earlier goings-on at Bindweed, visit the archives.
AT THE PALETTE
Winter 2006-7 was spent on a number of large works, including this iris:
For a larger view, click on the pic.
Jeriann's work will be shown in a Hailey, Idaho venue, Petals and Stems, in early May. The opening is schedules for the evening of May 11. The above piece, as well as a number of smaller works, can be seen at that time.
One of Jeriann's most recent artistic forays was into the realm of book arts. "Dharma", a twelve frame folding book based on the Buddhist Eightfold Path, is shown here. The piece was recently shown in the juried exhibition "West of 105", which included book art from the best of artists to the left of the 105th parallel.
 
 Click on the images for larger views.
Continuing in a similar, Buddhistic vein, Jeriann's triptych Mind, Body, Spirit was shown at The Walrus and the Carpenter Bookstore in Pocatello, Idaho , along with work from fellow artists Paula Jull, Margot Proksa, Jessie Proksa, Sarah Joyce, Cathy Sher and Kaye Turner. (click on images for a better view)
  
A companion piece of Jeriann's, On Reflection, was also hung at the show.
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