Thursday, June 23, 2016

Unity Farm Journal - Fourth Week of June 2016

Unity Farm is now an organic certified producer of vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, nuts, fruits and seedlings!   Here’s our official designation


As I mentioned last week, I’m now doing increased documentation - daily logs of compost temperature and comprehensive recordkeeping about mushroom innoculation dates.

Yearly inspection for organic certification compliance is just one of our regulatoryequirements.    At the moment we also have

*Commercial kitchen designation with yearly health department inspection (including refrigeration facility review)

Massachusetts 61A working farming designation with specific documentation of cultivation and produce sales.

Bonded winery/cidery with monthly filings to state and federal entities. Labels must follow specfic guidelines including 8 different elements.  Here’s what our cider label looks like


Our next regulatory adventure will be designation of Unity Farm as a charitable farm sanctuary for rescue animals.    There is a process for everything and persevence is generally successful when seeking government approval.

Speaking of regulations, who knew that ICD-10 could help with farm documentation?

Our pigs are remarkable companions and every night I offer them sweet grapes before tucking them in.   Sometimes they get a bit over excited by their treats and Hazel Marie jumped for grapes, chomping my thumb slightly.    The photo is below.   The great news is that ICD-10 completely covers this situation.


This was professionally coded as 2016 ICD-10-CM Diagnosis Code W55.41XA : Bitten by pig, initial encounter

Luckily, no infection set in, but if it did, that would be W55.41XS  Bitten by pig, sequela

If she would have been excited enough to knock me over, that would be  W55.42XA
Struck by pig, initial encounter.  

Isn’t ICD-10 grand!

This weekend I'll be maintaining trails, planting scallions, moving chickens from the brooder to the coop, packaging manure (Unity Farm Llama Beans!), and building bee standards for our expanding hive collection, now up to 30 hives in production.    It's Summer and the living is easy.




5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!

Can you compare and contrast certification efforts for your Health IT vs. your organic farm? Which one was more meaningful? :)

John Halamka said...

The Organic certfiication was done with the same rigor as the HIT certification, but in the case of Organic certification, I can eat the result!

Claudia said...

That is great, you and your wife have done so much work. I often thought that farming would be personally satisfying for the farmer.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully you will never encounter my favorite ICD-10 codes:

V91.07XA Burn due to water-skis on fire, initial encounter

V90.27XA Drowning and submersion due to falling or jumping from burning water-skis, initial encounter

Anonymous said...

Such a wonderful break in a very busy day to read about the farm! Experiencing it vicariously through you and your family - very gratifying and I thank you for sharing it all with us.