Big Weekend: Fire & a Fair!

This past Saturday, we had a great bonfire and party with friends and other farmers from the area. For the occasion, we cooked up a picnic shoulder from one of the pigs that we slaughtered two weeks ago. I decided I wanted to try a twist on an underground cooking method used in Hawaii and the Yucatan with the Chubby Bunny twist. After 7+ hours underground, the results were amazingly delicious. Possibly the best bbq-ed pork I've had in my life.  

On Sunday, sufficiently recovered from Saturday night's festivities, we managed to sneak in an afternoon at the Goshen Fair in between thunderstorms. We perused the livestock and veggie tents, ate the fair food (hand-dipped corn dog! sour dill pickle!), and I even made a spur-of-the-moment decision to compete in the skillet toss!

Farm Week: August 26-30, 2013


Barring one unexpected development, this week chugged along as normal. Besides our normal harvests, we seeded still more salad mix, arugula, and spinach. We transplanted a last round of chard, and we have just one last round of flats awaiting transplanting this fall. We finally harvested some outdoor tomatoes and a ton of zucchini, so it felt for awhile that July arrived in late August. That month of rain really set us back, and we still haven't left the repercussions behind. Our late-planted eggplant don't look like they're going to produce much - we've only harvested about one fruit per plant. We only were able to save about 20% of our sweet potato crop from the weeds, and I grudgingly tilled under the weed-choked beds this week.

The big news this week was that Farmer Dan has thrown out his arm from an old recurring injury, and he was in a sling all week. The good news is that it's not his strong arm, but he will be a bit incapacitated for the near future. Not one to take illness or disability lying down, we spent much of the week tssk-ing his insistence on continuing to use his arm against all protestations.

This week also brought a midweek birthday celebration for Ham (apprentice Dan) - highlights included a delicious peach pie from Tracy and a very rousing two-stringed uke performance from Baxter. We marked the holiday weekend last night with a great bonfire, which I'm going to devote a whole post to later this week. First, I have to recover from said bonfire in time to go to the fair! The tilt-a-whirl is out of the question, but I think I might be able to muster the strength for the mandatory corn dog!

Thinking about: impending cold, later sunrises, tradition

Reading: Therese Anne Fowler's Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Michael Pollan's Second Nature, David Rakoff's Love Dishonor Marry Die Cherish Perish A Novel

Eating: tacos with homemade refried black beans and grassfed local beef, homegrown ground pork with carmelized fennel and wilted greens, freshest ripest peaches

Farm Week: August 19-23, 2013

The week on the farm chugged along like normal this week, after a rocky start in which I chose to mow a whole field full of chest-high ragweed (achoo! covered in yellow dust!). We feel almost caught up on the weeds these days, and we're on time transplanting and direct-seeding more greens for the fall. The boxes lately have been heavy but not quite as full. The only green we've been able to harvest consistently is the old stand-by, kale. The chard is recovering from some weedy weeks and heavy picking, and we haven't had salad mix in weeks because of the weeks of bad weather and fieldwork backups. Next week though, we should be back to bagging up salad mix. In the meantime, we've starting harvesting our potatoes for the shares, and we harvested our entire onion storage crop and stacked them up in the barn. We've also been harvesting fennel for the past few weeks, and the wonderful anise smell just brings my right back to Tuscany, where I spent a few afternoons harvesting seeds from dried wild fennel.

The biggest event this week was the inevitable but still momentous chopping off of all of my hair. For years, I'd been telling myself that long hair was easier to take care of than short hair, because you could always just pull it back. But one day last week, I woke up and just knew in my gut that it was time to cut all of my hair off again. No more long hairs on my pillow and tangled up in my brush! Hair that air dries in minutes! Fits in a hat and stays off my neck at the same time! I'm still getting used to it, but I definitely don't regret it.

Last weekend, I took the trip down to Red Hook, NY to stock up on some brewing supplies. I bought the ingredients for two beers: an IPA using our homegrown hops, and a faux-sour peach ale using beaches from a loaded tree on the farm. I harvested a whole grocery bag full of hops that I'll dry in my trailer before brewing with them tomorrow afternoon. The beautiful weather also means that besides homebrewing adventures, my weekends are full of outdoor activities this month. Two weekends ago, it was a hike up the neighboring mountain to a lake, where I paddled around, read a book, and ate wildblueberries off the shore. Last weekend, I went on a 3-hour hilly bike ride through a few of the neighboring towns and farming valleys. Tomorrow, I plan on hiking a small piece of the Appalachian Trail, which passes through town here. Never a shortage of fun!

Thinking about: comfort, flexibility, self-discipline

Reading: Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller's Live from New York, Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, James Beard's Beard on Pasta

Eating: Chicken and zucchini soup over sourdough croutons, sharp cheddar and green apples, fresh popcorn and homebrewed ginger saison

Farm Week: August 12-16, 2013

It was a beautiful week here on the farm, with nights cold enough to snuggle deep under your covers, mornings cool enough for down vests, and days warming to the gradual shedding of layers. The crops, however, don't seem to have received the memo. Our harvests this week really scraped bottom; we cleared out the beet crop halfway through the week, and Friday's replacement was bunches of fennel that we cobbled from a crop we had written off because of all the weeds. Our greenhouse tomatoes are slow producers this year, and the outdoor crop, 400 plants instead of the normal 2000 planted late due to early season losses, have yet to show us a ripe red fruit. Even zucchini, a crop so prolific it's regarded as something even the faintest of green thumbs could manage, is barely producing this year. Our first planting was so swamped the plants never got big enough to really start producing. The second planting did noticeably better, with only about one third of the plants unhappily wet. Even with the weather as beautiful as it's been this week, we're still feeling the repercussions of an immoderate June. We harvested the onion this week as well, wind-rowing them on top of the black plastic rows to cure. When they're nice and dry, we'll load them into plastic bins and stack them in a nice dry place.

The most momentous event this week was the departure of two seasonal guests, Biscuit and Gravy. In other words, our pigs were slaughtered. Early Friday morning, we gathered by the pigs' enclosure with Joe, a man who has been performing this service all over the area since he was a young man. He used to keep animals himself, and he still makes and sells hay, but now he gets calls year round for his skills as a tidy dispatcher of farm animals medium, large, and extra-large (he's done buffalo!). We were his fifth appointment this week! When Joe does a slaughter on the farm, there's no stress about getting the animals packed in crates or trailers; he just goes right into the field with his gun and waits for the animal to come up to him before he shoots it squarely between the eyes. He bleeds it out with a cut to the neck right after the shot, then hoists the carcasses up on the tractor to move them to a more convenient place. He lays them on the ground to take off the head and feet and skin the underside of the animal. He then opens the cavity with a knife and then cuts the sternum with a bone-saw. He then hoists them up once again on the tractor, this time by the rear legs. In this position, he finishes skinning them, empties the body cavity, then fires up the bone saw again to complete the bisection. With that, we transfer them to the bed of a pickup truck lined with a plastic sheet for transport to the semi-local meat-locker, where they charge by the pound to process and freeze them in serving sizes. The meat will come back to the farm freezer next week for sale to the CSA members and our own consumption. I took one of the jowls to dry-cure into guanciale, and we're planning on slow-roasting a shoulder in a wood fire/coals for a get-together on Labor Day weekend. The bull is supposed to meet the same fate within a month or two, and I plan on more hands-on involvement with the slaughter process that time (minus the gun part at the beginning). Once again, I've come a long way from vegetarian in under five years

Thinking about: life cycles, temperate bike rides, flavor

Reading: Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, Terry Ryan's The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Willa Cather's My Antonia (again), The Best American Essays 2008

Eating: homemade Indian eggplant, lentils, and cucumber-yogurt sauce over basmati rice; roasted chicken with homemade bbq sauce; chicken salad on sourdough

Farm Week: August 5-9, 2013

This week brought seasonally apt weather, another CRAFT visit, chickens coming in and chickens going out, and some seasonal sneezing. A nice week, weather-wise, ended with a Friday wet enough to preclude most farm work. So today we finished harvesting some tomatoes from the greenhouse and setting up the CSA pickup room for our members before calling it a day.

Last weekend, we did our second chicken harvest. It went much better than the first, largely because it was much cooler than the first time around, and we also had enough helpers to get an efficient flow going. With the last of the birds in the freezer for sale, I made a trip to the post office on Thursday night to pick up a box of peepers. Fifty-one tiny day-old chickens can sure make more noise than you'd expect. They're the fourth batch out of five, and it seems every time we get new chicks in the mail we're surprised at just how small they are. After making sure the new guys were all cozy in their brooder, I went to a barbecue where we grilled up some of last weekend's chicken in some of my homemade (farm grown) bbq sauce. Since the juxtaposition caused me no lack of appetite, I think it's safe to say I've made the transition from vegetarian to farmer-omnivore pretty completely.

In other news, I've finally looked up what ragweed looks like, but I'm not sure it will help me avoid it. It's all over the farm, and it's not really in full bloom yet. Already, my sneezes are echoing through the valley, so I better stock up on antihistamines before next week!

Thinking about: counter space, histamines, post-season plans

Reading: Melissa Bank's Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Augusten Burrough's Magical Thinking, Michael Pollan's Cooked

Eating: polenta with gorgonzola cremificata; polenta with chicken neck, tomatoes, jalapenos, and homemade farmers cheese; rigatoni with homemade sausage and chard ragu

A Postcard from Agricultural 1951

Last weekend when I was visiting a friend near Syracuse, an afternoon stroll in a small town resulted in yet another irresistible library book sale. I don't know what it is about these tiny libraries (not to mention the town dump's boxes and boxes of free books), but they just keep turning up the most amazing treasures. So not only do I have my usual tall stack of library books awaiting me, but a bulging shelf of books I now own, if only temporarily. Not having internet access in my trailer, and the slowly but increasingly noticeable longer and colder nights means that I am spending more time than ever with my nose in a book. If you've spent any length of time around me, you know that's saying something. Anyway, back in upstate NY, the roses and lawn maintenance guides of the gardening section gave way to a gem: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Farmer, by Herbert Jacobs, sold in 1951 by Harper & Brothers for three dollars. Marked down to $2 in 2013 money, it was really a steal!

Later, when I flipped to the back leaf to learn just who this Mr. Jacobs was, I discovered that he was a farmer and journalist, and native of Southwestern Wisconsin who attended Harvard. What are the chances?! (Higher in 1951 than today, I suppose...). Well, I've read the book cover to cover and I think in 1951 it was most definitely a good buy. In 2013, it's more an exercise in perspective: 1951 was smack in the middle of the beginning of the end, so to speak. Chemical and munitions companies that converted to agricultural "advancement" in the years following the Second World War were captivating farmers with promises of higher yields and bigger farms with less work. I can't blame farmers for going along with it - farming was indeed back-breaking work. Jacobs' repeated reference to the joys of the newly-improved wheelbarrow (pneumatic tire instead of iron wheel) are a vivid illustration of how much farmers in the beginning of the last century were doing with so little.

But not all of the great new innovations Jacobs' describes for the aspirant farmer are as beneficial as the easy-rolling wheelbarrow:

"One further method of raising chickens for meat has become popular in recent years, and that is the 'battery' way. The battery consists of four tiers of cages, one above the other. Because they live on wire entirely, the chickens are remarkably free from disease, are easy to keep clean, and are very tender because they don't get much exercise. The battery can also be used as a brooder, and should be considered by anyone wishing to raise birds for meat or market with a minimum of care, dirt, and space." (pp 86)

Anyone paying attention to the food industry today knows what this exciting new method turned into, and with what results for the small farmers that Jacobs is advising. Similarly, he heralds the invention of new hybrid and crossbred animals that fatten faster, produce more milk, or fit the tastes of meat-packers. New hybrid strains of corn, oats, and other forage promise higher yields, disease resistance, and almost fool-proof farming. The new tool called a "combine" will save the farmer even from the vagaries of weather! It is not hard to put yourself back in time sixty years and regard this agricultural revolution with the excitement of a man soon to be unburdened. Science won the war, and now science will deliver even the hardest-working farmer into a life of leisure and prosperity. From today's perspective, it is hard to look back and regard these farmers as anything but shortsighted. But how could they have known that the very tools they heralded as a new dawn in farming would instead result in the death knell of the human-scale family farm?

Jacobs' was indeed writing at the beginning of the end of successful family farms, and the book is full of both gleeful descriptions of the newest cure-all sprays and tools and old-fashioned injunctions to thrift. A family should be able to grow the majority of its food in the kitchen garden, put up supplies for winter, and run one or two profitable enterprises. Pigs, he informs us, will make good use of the 10% of grain that passes through a cow undigested. One of the most striking examples of this thrifty mentality seems out of place, either coming 20 years too late or 50 years too early:

"Grassland farming, in fact, could be describes as a greatly simplified, prosperous and permanent type of agriculture. Because it involves much use of machinery and elimination of drudgery, it is the type of agriculture that should attract and keep youths on the farm. Instead of relying heavily on corn and oats for his feeding ration, the grassland farmer emphasizes hay and pasture - in fact, he expects to get fully 80 per cent of his feed requirements from hay and pasture. This means more land in grasses more of the time, and some land in grass all of the time... One of the great beauties of grassland farming is that the agriculturalist is devoting himself to basically good farming practice. He uses longer crop rotations, and practices manuring, liming, fertilizing, strip cropping, and contour plowing. He uses cultivation and drainage only where necessary. Instead of considering pasture and forage as something reserved for marginal or poor lands, he recognizes that the best land is none too good for hay and pasture." (pp 136)

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Reading A Practical Guide for the Beginning Farmer as just that over sixty years later was anachronistic in some ways and highly instructive in others. Thrift always has a place on the farm, as does the "good farming practices" described above. His advice on searching for the right land in the right community rings true as ever, as does his recommendation to avoid over-capitalization. But reading this book as a young farmer is a bit like watching a Hitchcock movie from the same era - you know the murderous madman is lurking behind the shower curtain, but no amount of screaming at the screen - or the page - will make anyone heed your warnings.

Herbert Jacobs, A Practical Guide for the Beginning Farmer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951)

Farm Week: July 29 - August 2, 2013

I traveled quite a bit this week! I spent a delightful weekend visiting my friend Bianca at her parent's house  outside of Syracuse, NY. Besides seeing where she grew up and visiting some delightful little towns in the area, it was nice to be in a home and take a real shower. I got back Sunday night super refreshed and ready for another week of work.

Besides crossing state lines this week, we've crossed some calendar lines as well - August seems to have snuck up on us somehow! July somehow felt like it was still early in the season, but August seems to fall on the other end. Summer is winding down. The weather this week even seemed to tip a bit in an autumnal direction. The nights are getting cooler, and the daily dip in the stream isn't as eagerly awaited. We're only about halfway done growing vegetables, however, and the work continued this week in the fields. Besides our usual harvests, we're steadily uncovering more of our weedy crops, sometimes just in the nick of time, it seems. Our celeriac is saved, and the weeds are slowly dying in the wheeltrakcks. Where on Monday there was allegedly kale and chard, by Friday was a rainforest of leafy greens once again. Our backs might be sore from that battle, but we'll be very glad on Monday when we start the harvest cycle anew.

Thinking about: bellwethers, predators, free/cheap book addiction

Reading: Herbert Jacob's Practical Guide for Beginning Farmers (1951), Michael Pollan's Cooked, Fireside Feasts and Snow Day Treats (can't resist a cookbook)

Eating: delicious leftover homemade Indian food, grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, new potato pancakes, wilted chard and eggs

Farm Week: July 22-26, 2013

This week was a return to normalcy, as much as anything can be normal this season. With some cooler days, and some much cooler nights, we re-started our regular harvest schedule. Our boxes were nice and heavy this week with some early onions, carrots, the first of the tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans. Hopefully, this relative bounty will cushion the no-harvest blow of last week. We sped through our harvests this week, making time to chip away at the still-mounting fieldwork. We let up on our ongoing weed battles long enough to put in the very large crop of fall beets. Since we lost the first round of spring beets in the rainy weeks, it was nice to see the red polka-dotted fruits of an afternoon's labor.

After a grueling few weeks on the farm, I'm looking forward to a little mini-vacation up in Syracuse this weekend, visiting my favorite future doctor and her family. As much as I am loving and working on the farm this season, sometimes a few days away just makes returning to our little green valley that much sweeter.

Thinking about: limiting factors, generalists, mobility

Reading: Michael Pollan's Cooked, The Greenhorns' 2013 New Farmers Almanac, Selected Letters of Willa Cather

Eating: tomatoes and cucumbers, penne with kale and last year's tomato sauce, rye toast with eggs and kale tomato sauce