First of The Year
04/16/2024
Team Blue,
Welcome to 2024.
There's a lot coming down the pike this year, but we don't have time to discuss it all. This email is far too long already; settle in with a cup of coffee for a five minute read. I want to get a few things on your radar for the year ahead: three happenings and two opportunities.
But first, there is now a website: twincrix.com. Make it your homepage and default search engine so you never miss a thing. There's also various social media things, likewise @twincrix. It's like nobody has ever thought to use this name before - the fools! I'll keep the Blueberry Updates going through the season, but for more regular glimpses and reminders, go there.
HAPPENINGS
Back Four Tour and Graftology 101
April 21, 10am-2pm
Back in 2023, I planted the first acre of the Back Four. Apples, pears, peaches, plums, and cherries, two hundred sapling rootstocks to be grafted later. Later, in the summer, I acquired twigs of new growth from desired fruit varieties to use as scion, and set to grafting.
I approached a sapling rootstock, now settled from several months under the good sun in its permanent home in the Back Four, and cut a small, T-shaped incision through the bark. I then cut a single bud off the tender new growth of the scion twig, and carefully slid it into the incision. Working quickly, lest the flowing plumbing of the plant cells dry out, I tied on tension with rubber and wrapped tightly with impermeable tape. The deed was done.
Sealed under the tape were two separate genetic individuals. Their boundaries, built for flowing water, were now open and leaking, and now pressed into contact with each other. Hopefully, from my perspective, they would each engage in extreme efforts to Heal This Wound, repairing the contiguous cellular connection flowing through and within themselves, making themselves entire once more, making themselves into itself.
So let's go see if that actually happened!
Meet at the barn at 10am. We'll talk about grafting and learn a thing or two from a self-styled modestly informed amateur. Then we'll take a walk out to the Back Four (half a mile, mostly flat and drivable) and inspect the trees. We'll take some notes, and perhaps try out some spring grafting techniques with new scion to get more of the trees started on their compound journey.
Also:
May I suggest pairing this with a visit to Phoebe Point at Taliesin, the newly opened segment of the Driftless Trail? The organizations responsible for the trail are having an opening celebration on Sunday afternoon. If you've volunteered on the trail building efforts thus far, as I have, or if you plan to volunteer on any of the regular Driftless Trail work days coming up this summer, as I do, then come celebrate this opening at 2pm! We can carpool over (parking is limited) or heck, you can walk - it's only a little over a mile to the trailhead.
The Big Day at Twin Crix
May 11, 5am-11:55pm
This is it - the Big Day. Birding's Super Bowl. This is why we do it! This is why we watch the birds. This is why we get out of bed in the morning.
OK maybe not, but the Big Day is scheduled at the peak of bird migration, which is exciting. Anyone could be here, flaunting their exuberance, cacophonous in dawn chorus. This year's activity: try to identify all the birds on the farm on the Big Day. We'll start the day before the day starts, when the birds are just brewing up the beginnings of their feverish crescendo and dawn approaches. A great time to engage in birding by ear! Then, throughout the day, we'll go on loops through portions of the farm and see what we see and hear what we hear. Come out for a scheduled loop or for a free range walk of your own.
New to birding? That's even better! You get the opportunity to learn a thing or two from enthusiasts, including how to find a bird in binoculars and how to onomatopoeize bird sounds into memorable and inane quips.
So, to recap: Come at 5am if you are so bold, or at several scheduled walking times throughout the day, or at any other time during the Big Day if you'd like to go for a birding walk by yourself.
The Big Day: A great day to celebrate the birds.
2x2 Fest
July 28, 3pm-10pm
A new music fest for the Greater Spring Green Metropolitan Area. Four famous musicians to choose from in a participatory music making experience. Perform with your friends, or put your name in the hat to play a song with the house band, or make a request as a listener. More information to come. I'm thinking Paul Simon should be one of the four...
Reek Sunday 2024 - mark your calendars.
OPPORTUNITIES
Personal Utopia
A rare and ephemeral opportunity to decide How It Should Be, to make manifest upon the Earth your aesthetic and pragmatic vision, and to inscribe, in the future arrangement of atoms and historically embedded ecological inertia, the fact that you were here.
The offer: Rent a fortieth of an acre for $100. Specifically, one of several dozen long, thin strips of farmland between the tree rows of the Back Four. Approximate dimensions: ten feet by a hundred feet. Rent it yourself or split it with some fellow utopians, and make something happen.
Want to try a teaspoon of farming by planting a bed of garlic or a whole bunch of sweet corn? Please do. Want to plant a patch of sunflowers so you can take one nice photo this summer? Nobody's stopping you. Want to throw down a blend of flowers and grass, bring out a chair and umbrella, and read a book on a couple afternoons? Sounds positively utopic.
You can come out and tend your Personal Utopia whenever you'd like. It's pretty easy to drive your car to. The water wagon will be stationed out there fairly consistently with hose if drought develops, and there'll be a few hand tools available, along with plenty of straw mulch. The only rule is that it has to be wiped clean by next spring. The Personal Utopia is temporary.
I hope to encounter you out in the Back Four this year. I'll be fussing over the trees, and tending my Personal Utopia as well.
Space is limited, possibilities unlimited. Inquire within.
CIA Plot
You've heard of Community Supported Agriculture - welcome to Community Invested Agriculture. I won't go into details in writing just yet, for fear that imprecise language could anger the gods of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but I'm fairly certain there's a legal way to do this. I'm working with the lawyers.
Just want to get it on your radar.
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More and more and more to come,
Twin Crix
