Getting The Tomato Seeds Ready For Planting Next Year

Today we were preparing the farm's tomato seeds for planting next year.about two weeks ago we picked the tomatoes, about ten of each variety and left them in the window to make sure they were fully ripe. And then, after three or four days we took out all the mushy stuff with all the seeds in it and put in to jars with the same amount again of water and left it to ferment for around a week, we did this because on the seeds there is a gelatinous coating to stop the seeds sprouting inside the tomatoes which is gotten rid of with fermentation.

after the week they looked like this

we washed out all the mold

and spread them out to dry. Once they are dry we will store them away till we are ready to plant them.

More Speed Measurements

Today we got some traffic cones and we put them 40 meters apart. I got on my unicycle and dad got out his stopwatch when I past the starting cone at normal unicycling speed he started it and when I past the finishing cone he stopped it. We did the same with dad on a normal bike, me walking, dad walking, me running as fast as I could, and dad running as fast as he could. Here is a commentary of the speeds we were going at.
And we're of, with dad running in the lead going at 22.5 kilometers per hour with a time of 6.4 seconds he looks like a clear winner, but who knows, someone else might catch up, and coming along in second place with a speed of 21.3 kilometers per hour with a time of 6.75 seconds is Leontien running, and here comes dad cycling and oh gosh, just look at him go, he's got a time of 6.65 going at a speed of 21.7 kilometers per hour. and now bring up 4th place is leontien unicycling with a speed of 7.2 kilometers an hour and with a fabulous time of 20 seconds, and here comes dad walking in fifth and just look at him walking at a speed of 6.7 kilometers an hour and with a time of 21.4 seconds and bringing up the rear is leontien walking, and I am sure that she is going to be upset about losing so can everyone in the stadium give her a big round of applause for trying!!!!!! This is Leontien commentating for the weird and random race!!!!

our version of an anemometer (aka toilet paper, a stopwatch and some long legs)

Today, the winds were so strong, that we decided to figure exactly how strong and how fast they actually were, so we built an anemometer (pronounced an-e-mom-e-ter) using a few pieces of tissue paper, a stopwatch, and my dad's long legs. We went on to the mound and dad stood at one end, me at the other and making sure the wind was blowing from him to me. He threw the tissue into the air and at the same time I started the stopwatch. As soon as the tissue was level with me, I stopped the stopwatch and dad counted how many of his meter long steps it took to reach me. It took 3.1 seconds to reach me and it was 39 meters from dad to me.
We need to convert 39 meters in 3.1 seconds into something more useful like how many kilometers per hour.
39 meters per 3.1 seconds
39 ÷  3.1 =12.5
12.5 meters per 1 second
This can be written as 12.5 m/s 
There are 3600 seconds in an hour
12.5 x 3,600 = 45,000meters per hour
45,000 ÷ 1000 = 45

So that means that the wind is going at a speed of 45 km/h.
We looked at the met.ie website predicted that we would be getting winds of of around 45 km/h but would also be getting gust of 90 to 130 km/h.

That is the weather for today, this is Leontien reporting from cloughjordan, have a nice day.

Wwoofers

Wwoofers ( WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) are people who volunteer on farms around the world. They help the farmers and the growers do work in return for food and accommodation. In Cloughjordan Community Farm we take Wwoofers on to help with planting, weeding and harvesting of vegetables. They also help in areas of the ecovillage land doing jobs like moving topsoil and trampling weeds in the forestry area.

We have Wwoofers from April til  the end of October. They work with our two veg growers, Bruce and Pat, generally doing jobs that take a long time and lots of team work to do; they seem to be doing a lot of weeding!!!

Most of our Wwoofers are aged from 18-27 and are a mixture of men and women. Some of them come on their own and some come with friends, some come to improve their English, some of them because they want to travel, but most of them come to learn about growing and to experience the community we have here.

The majority of them come from France, but some come from Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. At the moment we even have a family who live in the United Arab Emirates.

Wwoofers stay with us from about 2 weeks to a month. Normally they would stay with the farmer and the farmer's family, but here they stay at the Eco-village hostel. During the week members of the farm and the Eco-village sign up to cook them lunch and dinner (they make their own breakfast) and on Saturday and Sunday they cook for themselves.

I think Wwoofers are a great help and I like meeting them and working with them as they are very interesting people.

Book Review: The Bread Winner

This book is about an 11 year old girl called Parvana. She lives in Kabul in Afghanistan in a one roomed apartment. She lives there with her family; her father, her mother, her older sister Nooria, her younger sister Maryam and her little brother Ali.

When her father is put into prison by the Taliban, Parvana must become a "boy" and take up her father's job as a letter reader to earn money and by food for her family. Under the rule of the taliban, women have no rights and must always be accompanied by a male when going out.

Parvana's mother and the rest of the family, exept for her father who is still in prison, go away for Nooria's wedding. Warvana stays behind with a neighbour, Mrs Weera, to wait for her father, in case he gets let out of prison while they are away. Parvana finds a girl called Homa in an empty building and brings her home. Homa tells them that her city, where the rest of the family have gone for Nooria's wedding, has been taken over by the taliban.

Shortly afterwards her father is let out of prison. They set out on a journey to find the rest of the family, and they hope very much that they are alive. Her father dies shortly after starting their journey and Parvana must go on alone.
This story is exiting and sad at the same time , I enjoyed reading it very much and I think it its for readers aged 10-14.

The Trees Have All Been Planted In The Woodland

crab apple tree(fully grown, fruit and leaves)

 These are the different types of trees that have been planted in the  These are the different types of trees that have been planted in the woodland, we found some pictures of the trees when they are fully grown on the internet:

hawthorn blossom

hazel tree (fully grown with leaves and fruit)

cherry tree(flower)

downy birch(full grown and seeds)

oak tree(fully grown)

sweet chestnut(edible)

rowan tree or mountain ash(fully grown)

alder (tree and leaves)

holly bush (fully grown, ever green)

How Many Potatoes Are We Going To Get?

Problem:
We planted loads of potatoes at the community farm. How many potatoes are there going to be per family?

What we know:

• There are 20 beds of potatoes with two rows in each bed
• Each bed is about 125 metres long
• The potatoes where dropped by the planter around  35 centimetres apart

Solution:
How much was planted?

• There are 40 rows in total, each 125 metres long
• 40 x 125m = 5000m
• since there is 1000m in a km, we planted 5km of potatoes.

• the distance between potatoes is .35 metres
• 5000m ÷ .35 = 14285
• therefore we planted about 14285 seed potatoes.

Expected crop:
We looked it up and we found the average is 10 potatoes for every seed potato you plant, that means if we plant 14285 seed potatoes then we could expect a crop of 142850 potatoes.

In a book, my dad found that for every metre of seed potatoes you plant you get a crop of 2.5 kg of potatoes.

• 5000m x 2.5kg per metre = 12500kg of potatoes

How many per household:
At the moment there are 50 households but we hope that by harvest time we will have 75 households.

• 12500kg ÷ 75 = 166kg of potatoes
• 142850 ÷ 75 = 1905 potatoes

Conclusion:
If everything works out as we hope, each houshold will get about 1900 potatoes which should weigh about 166kg.

Planting Potatoes At The Farm On The Eco-village Land

I went to the farm on the eco-village land to plant potatoes. My job was to walk along behind and make sure that all of the potatoes got covered in soil because they sometimes don't. We planted at least 6 long beds the length of the field I was very tired!!!

 Suzanne and Mary sat on the back and filled the planter, while Pat drove the tractor

My Dad's Compost Pile

While we were at the allotments today dad stuck a thermometer in his compost pile and when he took it out the temperature was 68 degrees Celsius. That is very hot! We just checked our hot water and that is only 47 degrees. Dad says this is because all the bacteria inside the compost are eating everything and they give off heat.

Weeding The Garlic At The Garraun Lane Farm

 Today we went to the farm at garraun lane and weeded all the garlic. Suzanne, thomas, una, my dad and me did it, it took us 2 and a half hours start to finish.The reason we are weeding the garlic at this time of year is because it was planted in the autumn and the reason it took so long to weed is because it probably has not been weeded since it was planted and because most of the weeds were grass which is hard to get out with a hoe. Here are some photos:

Life On Top of The Mound

 We were on top of the mound today and we were looking in lots of the puddles to see if we could find any living things, and we did, and this is what we found:

The Hares

We saw a hare in the future woodland today, we were told that there are two of them so we went to have a look (don't worry, some one is coming to catch them and put them outside the fence). Here is a shot we got of one of them:

Continuation On Our Comunity Woodland

Planting the trees

They have started to put in the trees for our community woodland. Here are some pictures:
 

There are hundreds of theses bags full of trees in the education cabin.

That is one tall thin tree

Update On Sowing Lettuce Seeds In Trays

Remember when I sowed all the different types of lettuce seeds for the cloughjordan community farm at the allotments. Here they are.

They look like an army of lettuce seedlings that are going to take over the world.

My dad pulled out some to make sure that there was only one seedling per module.

My Lettuce Plants

I planted some lettuce seeds for our front garden today. Soon I will also plant some herbs and flowers along with some more vegetables.

We Found Frog Spawn

When we were collecting water for our ecosystem jars, we found some frogs spawn in the pond!!! Or we think it is frog spawn.

Ecosytem Jars

 

My dad  and I have started an experiment. We collected water from the stream in front of our house and from the pond that has formed near where the woodland is being planted, and put it in jars. In the photo above, the jar on the left is water from the stream, and the jar on the right is water from the pond. We put the jars upside down so that no air can get in, and we are going to leave them on the windowsill to see what happens. Dad says that it will turn into a miniature ecosystem, depending on what tiny creatures, plants and and other things that are in the water. I will keep you updated.

Sowing Lettuce Seeds In Trays

Dad and I went to the allotments today and we sowed lettuce seeds in seed trays, there are 150 cells in each tray, we planted 6 different varieties, one per tray. There will be around 900 lettuce plants. They are for our community farm. Here are some pictures of the different varieties:

Suzan Butter Head Lettuce
Merveille Des Quatre Saisons (Marvel of Four Seasons) Butter Head Lettuce

Lollo Rossa Loose Leaf Lettuce

Little Gem Cos Lettuce

May Queen Butter Head Lettuce

We sowed another variety called Till Loose Leaf but we could not find an image of it. It is like a dense rosette with arrow head shaped leaves.

Measuring The Electricity We Use In Our House

Run For Your Lives The Aliens Are Attacking Us, oops, heh heh, wrong post. Anyway, this chart is for electricity. Some of the days we use a lot more electricity than others because our bathroom was very damp (due to a leak that is now fixed) so we used a dehumidifier which uses a lot of electricity. Here is the chart.

Measuring The Water We Use In Our House

I have been measuring water and electricity as well as heat that we use in our house and have made charts of the readings. The average amount of water we use is 276 litres. Some days we have used more water than other days and that is because we do things like have baths and showers or wash a big load of dishes. Here is the chart.

Measuring The Heat We Use In Our House

I have been checking the heat meter every day. The meter measures how much heat we use, dad showed me how to put all my numbers that I got from the meter every day into a chart.

The average amount of heat we used is 47 kWh(kilowatt-hours) and in the past week we have used an average of 38.5.

As you may notice from the chart, some days we used a lot more heat than others, the reason is that we have not yet hooked up the thermostats so we just turn the pump on and off by hand, which means that if we forget, it stays on and we use more heat. On the first reading I took we were trying to heat up and dry out the house. Here is the chart.

Planting Onions At The Allotments

Today we went to the polytunnel by the allotments and planted onion seeds in small pots. When they are big enough they will be transplanted to the community farm and the allotments. We planted seven different types of onions in fourteen pots. There are between 100 and 150 seeds per pot.