Unity Farm Journal - Second week of April 2015

Now that most days are above freezing and the mud is drying up, the cadence of the farm has returned to its usual pace.  

The hoop house is filled with winter/spring vegetables and all the beds have been planted.  The garlic planted before winter is sending out shoots.   The wood piles are unfrozen and woodlot management is now easier.  

This kind of flexibility means that the infrastructure work for the upcoming growing seasons can finally be done.   I’ve installed the hoses and irrigation tools we’ll need for Summer.   On the farm we use over 600 feet of hoses to bring water to the plants and animals.

I’ve done prosaic work like filling every tire on all farm equipment - mowers, wagons, wheelbarrows, pressure washer etc.   That’s a lot of tires.

April is cider bottling month and now that we have the infrastructure to carbonate and bottle sediment -free cider, we’re busy moving the cider from fermenters to Cornelius kegs inside the farm’s walk-in produce storage refrigerator.    It required significant plumbing expertise to ensure the CO2 tank is connected without leaking to 4 carbonation kegs and a bottling tool.    We’ll bottle the first 15 cases on the weekend of April 18, then let it bottle age for another 3 months before selling it, now that Unity Farm is a bonded winery.

On Sunday night, the Great Pyrenees were barking more than usual.   The warm spring weather means that animals are foraging freely every night, so I expected the usual - a coyote, a fisher cat, or raccoons.    I frequently check on the animals in the middle of the night when the barking alarm goes off.    At 3am, I opened the front door and knew in an instant what had happened.   The dogs had been playing with a skunk.    Needless to say, I’m not going to hug them for a few days.

Kathy is busy preparing new hives.    A full 10 frame deep hive can weigh 90 pounds and she often works with the bees while I’m working or traveling.   We’re shifting to 8 frame medium hives, which weigh less than 50 pounds when full.

We'll finally have a sunny weekend ahead so Kathy will do a deep dive in the hives, ensuring the bees are well fed and healthy.

It's great to be outside again without a winter coat.   Soon the trees will leaf out and we'll plant our permaculture trees - pawpaw and chestnut - as part of our plan to develop Unity Farm for the next generation of people and animals living there.

More Argonaut Deliverables

Micky Tripathi sent this update last evening.

Dear Argonaut Steering Committee Member,

I’m writing with a quick project update for your information.

FHIR DSTU2 Ballot.  The effort to keep the Argonaut-relevant components of FHIR on schedule was successful.  The FHIR DSTU2 ballot was opened on April 3, 2015.  All of the Argonaut-relevant FHIR Resources and associated DAF Profiles are complete and on the ballot.

·         Grahame’s description of the ballot decision is here:  http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=2332

·         A list of all of the FHIR DSTU2 implementation guides is here:  http://hl7.org/fhir/2015May/iglist.html

·         The current version of the Argonaut Implementation Guide is here:  http://hl7-fhir.github.io/argonauts.html

·         The complete FHIR DSTU2 version for ballot is here:  http://hl7.org/fhir/2015May/

·         A list of all published versions of FHIR is here:  http://hl7.org/fhir/directory.html

Argonaut Testing and Implementation.  Implementation and testing efforts are picking up steam, though with everyone’s immediate focus on preparing for and attending HIMSS, we don’t expect to see intensive testing until after HIMSS, when attention will turn from FHIR DSTU1 demonstrations to Argonaut FHIR DSTU2 implementations.

·         Over 30 organizations are now registered on the testing tracking document:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JAVbVh_8M6e6amNh-btVMC114zBlJe4XytDNKIOMyZM/edit#gid=2060997323

·         The Argonaut reference implementation server will be updated after the HIMSS conference to include the full set of Argonaut Resources and Profiles and the first version of the Argonaut OAuth/OIDC security implementation guide.

·         After the HIMSS conference we will increase our reach out to motivate testing activities by implementation partners, who will at that point be prepared to focus their energies on Argonaut FHIR DSTU2 implementation.

The First Argonaut Deliverable

The HL7 Ballot for the Argonaut-related FHIR specifications opens today as promised.

Here's an overview with a list of the structured data elements to be exchanged through query/retrieve application program interfaces.    This approach will usher in a new era of interoperability.

Comments are welcome!

A Meaningful Use/Certification Crosswalk

Thank you to Steve Posnack and Mike Lipinski at ONC for producing a very valuable crosswalk between the CMS Meaningful Use Rule and the ONC Certification rule.  This is not an official document and it is open for discussion.

This summary document enumerates the relationship of the proposed 2015 Edition certification criteria in three general categories:
1)      ONC’s certification program requirements (i.e., criteria a product would also need to meet to get issued a certification);
2)      the criteria proposed by CMS as applicable to EHR Incentive Programs and criteria to meet certain statutory requirements;
3)      “available” certification criteria that are neither conditions of product certification nor referenced by CMS for the EHR Incentive Programs, but could be referenced by other programs/leveraged by others if they were finalized.

Unity Farm Journal - First Week of April 2015

March has been “in like a Lion, out like a lamb”.  The snow is melted and 50 degree days mean that the growing season on the farm has started.   We’re already harvesting fresh greens from the hoop house, the peas are a foot high, and our spring transplants - cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, etc. will soon go into the hoop house.    All of the animals are in a better mood now that the snow/ice has transformed into moist warm soil.

This week the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has granted Unity Farm a permit as Bonded Winery BWN-MA-21027. Can we begin selling our hard cider?  Not quite.  Now the State wants their licensure and I’ve completed a “State Farmer Winery and Farmer’s Market license” application.  It takes real resilience to survive the multi-step process of getting every government stakeholder and regulatory body to allow a simple bottle of 5% hard cider to be sold.

As we’re preparing for commercialization, I’ve had to think about packaging and presentation.   All of our ciders to date have been carbonated naturally, which leaves a layer of sediment on the bottom of the bottle.   The first pour of the cider is clear, but the second pour is cloudy with disturbed sediment.    Given that our ciders will be moved/transported and consumed by a variety of people used to the more sanitized commercial variety, it’s time to produce cider without sediment.   There are three ways to do that

1.  Serve the cider from kegs instead of bottles so the sediment rests on the bottom of the keg and is not disturbed

2.  Carbonate the cider using a Cornelius keg and CO2, so that the process is sediment free.   Then bottling is done from the key using the Counter Pressure method which results in a clean, carbonated bottle.

3. Methode Champenoise - invert the bottle and “riddle” the yeast to the bottle neck where it can be expelled using the pressure in the bottle and flash freezing in a brine solution.

#3 is very labor intensive and #1 works for filling growlers at the farm.   I’ve decided to use #1 and #2, with bottling to be done over the next month.    Of course I will pay federal alcohol taxes (17 cents per gallon) and await state licensure before selling the cider.   Here’s a great overview of the cider laws.   

Farming requires constant learning.    Some of our fences were damaged by the tons of snow that fell over the past 3 months.    I had to learn about stringing 12.5 gauge wire, using crimp sleeves,  a crimp tool, and tighteners.     Now with the right tools and supplies I can repair any fence line.

This weekend will be spent carbonating cider, planting our broccoli seedings and planting carrots, beets, chard by seed.   I’m following our yearly calendar, anticipating the weather and doing the right activity at nature’s right time.    My September fermentations are becoming April’s carbonation and May’s bottling, a total of 8 months from apple to packaging, then additional bottle aging until Fall, selling the Fall flavors of 2014 in Fall 2015.