| Wildlife Study Facility & Data Center |
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At the facility in Cloudland, GA we stay busy building a Backup Data Center and our 'Family Headquarters'. Situated on 160 acres of land with wildlife, fresh mountain air & natural spring water. We love having freinds over to the farm for fellowship and healthy outdoor activites. |
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Field Stemma | |||
| A site for researching the Field Family genealogy. That includes Field, Fields, Delafeld and other variations. The Field Stemma team is developing a place where all Field Family Genealogists can post articles on their research, share information and stay connected. Take a look at the archives at fieldstemma.com | ||||
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| Mary's Wine Works |
Cloudland Media |
Mary's Threadworks |
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Our winery started off as a homeschool project and also a way of saving money by producing wine in house. Read More... |
Video productions and sound recording for events, family archives, nature, and music. Read More...
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Custom tailored clothing using natural fibers, long lasting & compliments the wearer. Also Sewing quality and long lasting linens & draperies,
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July 2022 Update |
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| Home Enjoying new rugs from Stroud :) Mary has also been sewing new curtains througout and "Pineapple Flags", these are Nylon window flags to block sunlight for energy efficiancy in the building, she has done an excellent job with the Pineapple applique! CSA produce has been abundent this year from one of our favorite farmers Circle S Farms. Learning to flash freeze,  can and preserve as much as we can.This year I have planted tommatos and cucumbers with the cucumbers showing most success. This years climbing trellis was built by Dad and Kyle and working out fantastic. Building Today was PLANK DAY!!! Building B now has planks and is almost officially "dried in". An upgraded Crane taller than the treetops and wider than our building installed over 24 planks for the main section and tower. High pro job! Orchard Have has much damage by deer and lost a few trees. Working on installing new fencing around each one on the mountain. This spring we had blooms on both the Bosc Pear and Alberta peaches. With the late spring freeze we succesfully saved some using the bulap bag over tree method, though some trees were too small to support the burlap with the weight of the snow. Should go even better next year. Had a few small fruit on one tree ( a first for up there ). Quickly eaten by widlife - guess we'll have to learn to share :) Family News Wedding of Sarah Field and Brandon Weatherly October 1st! More details on that coming later (: |
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| Home We have been working on buying more direct and Made in the USA, from good people and family run operations. Here are some great stores we have found recently: Stroud Braided Rugs A family-owned business that has been making braided rugs for generations. They have 100% wool rugs that are made to last AmishBaskets.com An online market for three Old Order Amish families who make high-quality hand woven baskets in their community. Catskill Craftsman They focus on high quality sustainably made kitchen wood products, we found some awesome cutting boards here. Building Learning about the fantastic properties of White Oak A closed grain hardwood, white oak is almost impervious to water. The pores of the heartwood of white oaks are typically plugged with tyloses, which is a membranous growth. Tyloses makes the white oak impenetrable to liquids and particularly suited for use in the boat industry. Because of its resistance to moisture, white oak is also widely used to construct outdoor furniture. White oak is fairly straight-grained and is a favorite material used in many types of fine furniture. It’s usually available quarter sawn. The grain in quarter sawn white oak has a striking ray flake pattern. The coloring in white oak is varied. Separate boards of white oak lumber may be dark brown, light brown, or brown with yellow tones. Stain and wood sealer tend to beautifully enhance the appearance of white oak. Orchard Just pruned the trees for the first time! Also about to try the "frost seeding" method to spread red clover in the lawn and orchard area. Have some animals chewing my tree bark, after some research I found you can wrap the base in burlap for protection, love it, natural and low profile :) Hobbies Mary is collecting natural pigments and minerals to make her own non-toxic traditional paint set, which is a joy to discuss with her talking about the chemical makeup of white clay, titianium dioxide, sodium bicarmonate etc. :D Susan is brushing up on her Irish Dance skills and about to take a few lessons! I (Sarah) have been praticing guitar quite a bit and nearly have a second song mastered. Video coming later. |
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Susan and I recorded 3 new songs this month from one of our favorite shows the original Riverdance! Check out these songs and others on our Youtube Channel. Enjoy! -Sarah
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Building News Building B foundation complete. Just had the last pour for the foundation, board formed by Dad, Mary and Kyle. No blowouts! And Standan Hall (previously known as Building A) continues to improve with running hot water and Billiards Room furnishings :D
Orchard News Learning about the Hugelkultur compost method (pronounced Hoo-gul-culture, means hill culture or hill mound)
"Instead of putting branches, leaves and grass clippings in bags by the curbside for the bin men... build a hugel bed. Simply mound logs, branches, leaves, grass clippings, straw, cardboard, petroleum-free newspaper, manure, compost or whatever other biomass you have available, top with soil and plant your veggies.
The advantages of a hugel bed are many, including:
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Fruits we are growing: There are hundreds of native blueberry bushes on the 160 acres - some low bush and some high bush. Some producing and some not. By clearing a few trees for sunlight, and mulching, more and more will flower / produce. Blueberries like especially acidic soil (around 5.0 PH) so we will also be using ammonium sulfate, a fairly benign fertilizer (it contains 21% (w/w) nitrogen and 24% (w/w) sulfur) to lower the PH. Just as abundant as the blueberries we have blackberries - pruning is very important for these to shorten the stalks and help them put more energy into the fruit. Hickory nuts are abundant as well - we do not know as of yet how many of these are sweet or bitter varieties. The fruit trees we chose to plant are Elberta Peaches, a variety first grown in the GA area. And Asian pears - obviously not native but adds interest.
Soil Acidification and Nutrients: Our soil leans toward alkaline so right off we will acidify the soil using packaged fertilizer, then we will work on building up organic matter / brown compost to maintain a PH around 6.0. Next we'll focus on Nitrogen. This fall we will plant a cover crop of crimson clover which collects nitrogen in the root system and disperses it into the soil when the roots die off. Then we will do a soil test to determine how much Phosphorus, Postasium and other nutrients are needed.
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