[dominiquer60]

That may depend on the yoke and bows that you are using. I broke a yoke plowing last fall, I heard a weird noise and then we hit a rock, snap. It makes sense that the yoke is the weak point, the bows are only supposed to hold the yoke in place. Mine broke between the staple and the inside near bow. The guy on the plow panicked because my steer was loose, I retrieved him from the 10′ that he walked forward and hitched my belt between his bow and the ring and they walked back to the trailer unscathed. I like horses but moments like that make me appreciate cattle more.

[dominiquer60]

It may be Andy’s fault, but you are an enabler Tim:)
I follow the ideas just fine, but the math makes my head spin, if I had not been dating Good Will Hunting when I was at college I would have never made it through the course that they made me take. My comfort level doesn’t go past the Pythagorean theorem at this point, it is good to know people that exceed my meager skills. Like I said, I am enjoying every bit of nerdiness. Rock on!

[dominiquer60]

This is the nerdiest thread yet, I can’t follow the details, but I like it:)

[dominiquer60]

I think setting up a store or selling through paypal would be a good thing, I imagine that we will sell more at the event, but this could be a good way to slowly make our money back. $20 seems a little steep for a T-shirt, I would go along with something in the $15 to $20 range, and maybe $1.50 or $2 for the stickers. The stickers may be a small item, but we should be able to make a few pennies off of them.

[dominiquer60]

Jen
They look great, it is nice that you had a more reasonable situation available to you. Rip looks great, it is hard to tell from the angle but just by his neck it looks like he has come a long way since you got him. They seem quite at ease together. Best of luck with any future events.
I am looking forward to our little parade at our fair. There is hope there that some day when the farm museum guys restore the antique steam fire engine and Abe & Will get big enough, they will some day pull it in our parade around the grounds. None of the horse people are interested and the boys are already so immune to all of our noisy farm equipment here, I don’t think they will mind one bit.

[dominiquer60]

Great job Tim.
It is nice to see that the method of least force is also the better way to keep a saw log clean.
Erika

[dominiquer60]

Geoff would this thread fit in the Financial/treasurer category better? I can see why you put it in organizational, but when we leave it an look for it later it may be easier to find in the finacial area.

[dominiquer60]

Here is the message that Jen sent about http://www.draftanimalpowernetwork.org. DAP.com is separate, hopefully Geoff will have those numbers soon. I am still waiting for numbers for the recent newsletter/insert and will post them when available.

The DAPNet website maintenance fee is 39.00/month. Chris Hill charges 45.00 an hour for any other work done, ie Training, website design, templates, etc. I think a ballpark figure for the extras would be 15 hours a year max. So that is: 39 x 12 = 468 and 15 x 45 = 675 with a total of 1143 for the year. I think this total is generous and you could pare it back to 800 or 1000 (keeping in mind the first number is a fixed fee) and force us to work in a tighter budget. Up to you all.

Also remember the domain registrations. There is a number in the original budget…I think 50.00 a year. Jean can go to godaddy.com and verify what the annual fees are for our domains and whether that fee will go up next year as we have 5 domains to maintain.

[dominiquer60]

I am leaving to work in the Adirondacks for the rest of the week(end). I will try to find a free Wifi spot, but no guarantees. I can be reached at (518)441-9870 from 10pm to 2pm daily. It will be the same next week too Tues-Sun.

[dominiquer60]

My smoke signal is a little rough but feel free to try:)

To add to what Geoff wrote above, serving on the board involves one in person meeting a year. We mostly use email, phone and the BOD forum to communicate with each other, after all we are all over the country. This first year there has been a lot to hash out. Now that we have a couple newsletters under our belt, Bylaws have been accepted and we now have Jean as our wonderful part time Administrator, the work load has lighten enormously.

I know there were many people at the NEAPFD meeting last year that wanted to help get DAPNet going, we would love to have you aboard. Even if you can’t commit to a board position please consider joining one of our committees. There are many small but important tasks that we could use a hand with. Here is a link to the list of Directors that serve on our board, while you are visiting our DAPNet site please take a look around and see all the wonderful things that we are involved with.

http://www.draftanimalpowernetwork.org/board_of_directors.html

Thanks for your support!

[dominiquer60]

I got the test via the new posts, not email though. Not sure what you were testing.
Erika

Correction, I checked new posts before my new email loaded. It came through just fine.

[dominiquer60]

Thanks Jim,
It was a fun one to work on, the only real challenge was trying to do it around planting crops and baling hay. It was worth it though:)
Erika

[dominiquer60]

Robin,
Great question. The board is working on membership details, we will certainly have an answer by the Annual Meeting and will alert current members when to renew once we make some decisions.
Thanks,
Erika

[dominiquer60]

After some other local vegetable farmers recommended it we have tried Plantskydd this season. It is jut basically dried pigs blood. We use the powder form and spray it around the perimeter of our individual fields. It is a little tricky because it needs to be mixed with a paint mixer on the end of a drill gun, and you have to use it right away and clean the sprayer out quick because it will gel right up on you. The first field we sprayed around is right next to a major deer highway. We did not cross their path with the Plantskydd, but we went around the field (kale, chard, broc, lettuce, scallions) once and we applied it across the road where they would have to cross to go directly into the field instead of their path. So far so good and it was a wet spring too. We finally planted out our cucs, zucs, sweet potatoes in one field and tomatoes, eggs, and pepper in another, both in similar situations, right next to major deer paths using Plantskydd around the perimeter.

The key to this stuff is to apply it before they know what is in the field. Ideally we would have sprayed it before we laid mulch down, instead we did it the same day we planted. In both fields we saw no deer track across the mulch before planting, so they don’t seem to be taking short cuts across these fields at the moment which is a good thing.

Good luck with it all,

Erika

[dominiquer60]

“This that started out as a simple day of play for a few of us might just be more than what I thought. “

Funny how these things happen Robert, just ask Carl about his “little” on farm workshops, I think that they kinda took him a little further than he thought too.

Looks like you all have yourselves quite the event shaping up, have fun and enjoy it, there is nothing like good folks getting together to have a heck of a time.

Erika

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