Craig Nabors

Aaron,

Welcome to Oklahoma. What brings you south?

There are many publications dealing with agriculture here in Oklahoma but they are all directed toward big ag. I am still new to this field so there is surely more out there that I am not aware of. Check out thislandpress.com. They also do a radio show on Sundays on KOSU, our local NPR radio station out of Stillwater. I am not sure if you will be able to pick up KOSU in Cyril. Other than that I would look into Transition OKC and the Oklahoma Food COOP. I hope that helps get you started. Look me up when you get to Oklahoma.

I have just finished up a small cob cottage and I used a mortar mixer and thought it worked pretty well. In the beginning I mixed the clay and sand in the mortar mixer then dumped it out onto the tarp and used my feet to mix in the straw. I was really worried that the straw would bind up my mixer but I found that if I made my batches a little smaller the mixer did just fine. If you have access to a mixer it will save you a lot of time and energy but I must say that mixing with your feet is also really fun.

I have 30 acres in Stillwater and hope to start a small scale farm this coming year. This has been a dream of mine for years and it is finally coming to fruition. I have been really impressed with Allan Savory's Holistic Management and I am now getting turned onto permaculture design as I try to set up a production system on my land. Currently I am reading Dave Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens. My wife and I are also building a small cob cottage now as an experiment and we hope to eventually build a larger home in the next few years. I would love to share ideas with anyone here in Oklahoma and see if we can't come up with better ways to produce food.