Runamuk Acres Conservation Farm
Soil-first farming, building health from the ground up!
If you’ve been following along with my story you’ve likely already heard about the situation with our local skunk. He─or she─took out a clutch of half a dozen chicks a couple of months ago, and since then he’s been terrorizing the beehives and digging up the lawn all around the farmhouse in search of grubs….
Yesterday marked the start of the fall session of my bee-school. I loaded my laptop, and a variety of beekeeping gear and equipment into the back of my Subaru Outback and drove to Skowhegan and to it’s high school where I was scheduled to teach more than 20 peoples about the basics of beekeeping here…
Next Saturday’s salve-making workshop has been moved to Saturday November 7th and has now become a soap/salve-making combo workshop. With the holiday season just around the corner, it’s a great time to learn these skills and still have time to make some fantastic gifts for family and friends. Participants will learn the art of soap-making…
After a number of mornings last week up at 4am to work on a new power-point presentation for soap-making, Saturday’s workshop went off without a hitch. I am relieved and ecstatic. 2 women came to the farm Saturday morning to learn a new skill. We began with a tour of the farm and apiary, I…
I excused myself from the farmers’ market yesterday to spend some quality time with the farm. Perhaps that sounds funny, but to this farmer there is a very real need to spend time outside in nature, working the land that I have devoted myself to. Having to work off the farm means that there are…
Imagine that you’ve finally settled down on the couch for the evening after a long day─I’ve been getting up at 4am to work on presentations for upcoming workshops before I head to the orchard. When I get home from work I usually try to spend another 2-3 hours working for Runamuk, so by 7pm I’m…
A peeping, cheeping box addressed to Runamuk Acres came to the post office in Madison early Wednesday morning, and the postal worker called at quarter after six to let me know that my chicks had arrived. Twenty-six birds total: 7 silver laced wyandottes, 7 speckled sussex, 6 delawares, 5 barred rocks and 1 free exotic…
Fall is here and I love it. I love all of the seasons as part of the wheel of the year. Each season brings something new and different, changing the landscape as only Mother Nature can. But I admit, I have a special affinity for Fall. For the cooler nights, the colorful spectacle that the…
Saturday’s “Beekeeping 101” workshop was a success and I am enamored–ecstatic–and relieved, lol. Okay, so there was only one student–but she was a very important guest on the farm. This woman traded me the new group of birds–the 18 laying hens, 4 heritage breed turkeys, and a goose named Michael–for 2 spots in Runamuk workshops….
It’s a fact that many farmers need to work off the farm to cover their living expenses or to have access to health insurance or other sorts of benefits otherwise not available to them. And while I strive to reach a point where Runamuk is infact a self-sustaining business that pays its farmers’ living expenses,…