Farm Week: July 14, 2014

Another busy, productive week on the farm. Summer had a bit of a mood swing, and I wore a sweatshirt and jeans for a whole day, which was a bit disconcerting. The cool weather doesn’t seem to have hampered our greenhouse tomatoes too much, and we picked enough cherry tomatoes and little striped tigerellas to sell a few pints at the markets this weekend. We have also been able to start our much-anticipated BLT Wednesdays, which we’ve been talking about for weeks, if not months. We happen to get fresh artisan bread delivered every Wednesday, have a chest freezer full of bacon, a field full of lettuce, and a greenhouse (and eventually a field) full of tomatoes. If I ever get tired of a homegrown BLT, someone slap me. 

I’ve been going to the market in Princeton on Wednesday afternoons for the last few weeks, and that’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s a new market, and so has very few vendors right now, but I’m pleasantly surprised that by the third week, I already have what seem to be regular customers, some of whom actually remember my name. I’m hoping to keep increasing my sales and getting more and more people to come out on a regular basis. 

After last weekend’s visit to see my aunt and uncle and parents at my future farm, I’ve spent the week showing people pictures of the site and trying to articulate my plans. It has been a useful exercise to organize my thoughts a bit, and I’ve been doing lots of thinking about what my startup year is going to look like. I’m still at the pen and paper stage these days, but at over a year out, I’m starting to think about ways to prepare in advance and from a  distance. If I can swing it, I might try to start breaking sod on an acre or two this fall and plant some cover crops. Newly broken sod is not hospitable to most plants, so the more in advance I can get the process underway the better the first season will look. Some days I want to jump right in, and some days I want to keep my farm at the hypothetical level for a little longer. I often marvel at how long and hard Mat and Danielle work, and Danielle has said that when it’s your farm, that’s all you want to do. It’s not that I feel like this is “just another job,” but there is a limit to my investment, emotionally, personally, financially. It’s an odd thing to be looking forward to working the hardest I’ve ever worked, but that’s the strange part about wanting to run your own farm.

Thinking about: income streams, person scale, harvest frequency

Eating: aforementioned BLT, green beans, new potatoes, zucchini, fancy goat cheese

Reading: Roberto Bolano’s 2666, Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard, Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardens, Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic

Farm Week: July 7, 2014

This week felt a little like the real beginning of summer, for a few reasons: zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes. The tomatoes have been a bit of a selfish secret so far, enough for a little taste at lunch, but not enough to bring to market, much less put in the boxes. People have been asking for tomatoes for weeks, understandably impatient, but seemingly ignorant of the climate of Wisconsin. Memory can be funny that way - it’s hot, where’s my sweet corn and tomatoes? But while we think of these as “summer crops,” they’re not really ready outdoors until almost mid-August, depending on the season, and the unheated hoop house only gives a few weeks head start. Tomatoes are such a milestone crop that I had to look back to my blog posts from last year to see whether we’d had our hoop house tomatoes already by this time. What I found really brought me back to the crazy season we had last year. In Connecticut last year, it rained almost non-stop from the end of May through late June, and in fact the weather spurred a latent poetic urge in me, the results of which I’ve attached below. This year in central Wisconsin, we did have a few wet weeks in June, in which the lower ends of the field were underwater, but since then it has dried out, and while there is some stunted growth in the lowest points of the field, what we see these days is mostly lush growth, happy plants, and happy farmers. This week last year, we took an unplanned week off of our CSA boxes to attack the weeds full time. This week, decided to keep going to the third weekly farmers market. For me, this look back was a great reminder of just how dependent we are on the vagaries of the weather, which are only getting more unpredictable with every passing year. In the meantime, I sure savored that first tomato, thanking my lucky stars that the beginning of this season did not mirror last season.

Thinking about: machinery, neighbors, La Copa Mundial

Eating: the first red tomatoes, summer squash, carrots, beets, scallions, and more

Reading: Roberto Bolano’s 2666, Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard, Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardens, Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic

From July 2013:

It started with the rhythmic patter,
on wood, on canvas, on plastic and fiberglass.
Faint, then constant, then pounding.
It started then it stayed,
at last coming up to a roar
eventually receding in the mind
like so much white noise.
Hours became days became weeks, 
the roar ceasing for few precious hours,
supplanted by the resulting rumble of the brook, 
near breaching its brown banks, 
with bated breath you awaited the flood.

And in and around the rain 
you worked, layers of cotton
mouldering under layers of rubber, 
hair curling under the humid hood,
toes, soles, souls soggy in your socks.
Staggering through kale,
mud covered the tops of your feet,
passive, feigning innocence,
then violently  grasping your boot, 
relenting with an obscene SHLOOP!
Bent scythe-like, you filled your bins,
willing the clouds to part.

And then one day, at last, the heat came.
Your bodies from soggy to sweating and burnt,
your fields from grey to green.
But the relief was fleeting, for bending closer
to the earth, you saw the green not of
nightshades or cucurbits, but of
noxious weeds, galinsoga and sedge,
waging a battle you hadn't time to fight.
You peeled off socks, and sank 
to your shins in soaked soil, 
clawing to save your precious plants,
each day closer, yet farther from victory.

And on you worked, falling into rhythms:
harvest, hoe, sow, muster for battle.
Hundreds of row-feet planted,
thousands of plants saved. And yet,
another menace emerged, at first invisible.
From the tire-tracks of tractors,
from the lowest fields and pastures,
the winged militia took flight, evoking in you
a arhythmic dance, a slap, a flick,
an equine swing of the mane,
the perfumed attempt at evasion,
And finally, the itch, the scratch, the rub.

And as battle raged in you and around you,
you came upon treasures, buried and not.
The faint pip! of a root pulled from the ground,
the sweet smell when you pop off the carrot-top,
the small snap of the pea as you bite,
the mint and parsley and dill and cilantro,
that force the deep breathing of calm.
And finally, when the memory has all but gone,
you spy that glint of deep red in the greenhouse.
You pluck it, you smell it, your mouth waters.
Bacon sizzling, you reach for the toothy knife,
and at last you remember why you farm.

Farm Week: June 30, 2014

After a full weekend event like the Permaculture Convergence, there is an odd thing that happens on a Monday morning. On the one hand, you’re exhausted from the constant engagement required for learning new skills and information, meeting people, hearing their stories, and telling your own. On the other hand, you’re completely energized and ready to apply some of the things you’ve learned to your daily work. This week seemed to fly by, and didn’t deviate too drastically from the established patterns of cultivation, harvest, washing and packing. Our brassicas, summer squash, cucumbers, and melons have responded very quickly to last week’s “crop mob” and I think we’ll be seeing our first zucchini very soon. Our greenhouse tomatoes have been heavy with green fruit for weeks, teasing us. Our first cherry tomatoes are so close we can almost taste them, but we’re still holding out for that first glint of red. Our lettuce, on the old hand, has just exploded all at once. We had far more lettuce this week that we could reasonably give our CSA members, so we sold some to a few restaurants, went to our usual markets, and I even went to a brand new market this week in an attempt to get some of these greens off our hands. Princeton is the closest town to the farm, and while its flea market has been running for forty years now, this is the first year that they’ve had a separate farmers market. It is still small and still getting established, but I think if we establish a strong presence over the rest of the season it can be a great market for us. It fits well in our established harvest schedule, Wednesday being the same day we deliver our boxes every week. Especially once we start getting into the hot and heavy summer crops that you really have to pick every day, I think it will be a great outlet for produce that won’t quite make it to the weekend markets. I’m looking forward to building our most local customer base!

Thinking about: precision, patience, priorities

Eating: cripsy, crunchy, curly, etc. salads, fried cheese curds in the park (Happy 4th!), lots of sandwich and salad combos

Reading: Roberto Bolano’s 2666, The Fedco Seed Catalog, Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardens, Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic

Farm Week: June 23, 2014 & Permaculture Convergence

This was a busy week on the farm, with the fields finally drying up enough to get some major cultivation done. We started on the upper half of the fields, covering as much ground as possible in the time we had between more planting and harvesting, as usual. Staring down more rain this coming week, we decided that we had better complete the catchup on the cultivation before we were forced out of the field again. So we put the call out to our trusty crew and to the 300+ people who follow us on Facebook, promising a delicious lunch in exchange for three hours of hard labor. Our call was answered, and on Thursday morning, there were nine people, two horses, and a tractor in our two acres of vegetables. Before everyone showed up, we went through the field and made an improbably long list of things we would like to accomplish with our augmented field crew. Lo and behold, we crossed every single thing off that list by the time we stopped working for a generous portion or pulled pork, Asian cole slaw, and brownies with super-ripe strawberries. Danielle and I were in agreement that the extra time spent cooking, prepping, and organizing people more than paid off in how much we accomplished with so many people making a continuous concerted effort. Now the rains can come as they please and we won’t have to worry about huge weeds, and can focus on the fresh flush of weeds that will follow.

Thinking about: many hands, vigor, aeration

Eating: see above, plus lots of salads, and a local vegan feast (see below)

Reading: Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard, Dave Jacke & Eric Toensmeier’s Edible Forest Gardens, Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic

This weekend, I attended a permaculture convergence put on by the Madison-area Permaculture Guild. Unfortunately, I had to skip the first night of the conference, which featured a potluck and a talk from the very inspiring Peter Allen of Savanna Gardens and  Mastadon Valley Farm. Better late than never, of course, and when I arrived nice and early on Saturday morning, I was met with a very interesting, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and friendly group of people. We ranged from people who had just encountered permaculture and were curious to learn more to experienced permaculture teachers to permaculture practitioners on urban lots to young farmers incorporating permaculture practices into their farm designs. Like all of the conferences and meet-ups I’ve attended, there was an undercurrent of excitement to be around people who shared some of the same interests and enthusiasms. Especially for the rural among us, it seemed like this feeling was coupled with a relief not to be the odd one in the neighborhood for a weekend. The convergence took place on a farmstead where permaculture practices have been incorporated, and where we were able to put some more into practice over the course of the weekend’s hands-on workshops. Most notably, the first workshop that I attended on Saturday morning involved mapping out a key line swale with a laser lever and watching as a backhoe dug the swale that we had envisioned. Keyline design started (like permaculture) in Australia, its goal being the non-erosive movement of water from valleys to ridges using a 1% downward sloping scale. My Saturday also included an edible and medicinal plant walk, led by a super-knowledgeable forager named Little John. In the afternoon, some of us went to visit a local farm that’s put lots of permaculture into practice. Strause family farm most notably grows wine and table grapes, but is also unique because it’s composed entirely of sand and limestone. In order to increase the organic matter and be able to grow anything, they invite the local crews to dump for free things like branches, wood chips, leaves, etc, which they use to construct massive Hugelkulture beds. The Strause farm looks like a very fun, interesting, and interactive never-ending project. Saturday afternoon and evening were rounded out with an organized large group discussion, a delicious local dinner, informal smaller discussions about any number of topics, a great musical performance, and a bonfire. Sunday, I started out my day with an early morning wet-booted walk around the meadows and forests of the farm, stopping to check how the new swale performed in the rain overnight. The first workshop I attended was with master tinkerer and idea man Greg David, who brought some examples of rocket stoves and highly efficient gassifiers he had fabricated. His talk was fascinating, and I’m intrigued by the possibility of using a rocket stove to heat greenhouse beds for starting seeds. The last workshop of the weekend was a talk on animal husbandry and forest management with grazing animals from a young couple who farm in Stoughton, WI. Emancipation Acres, among many other things, raises stock for other homesteaders and permaculture enthusiasts, focusing on small heritage breeds of pigs build to forage and grow slowly. They had some great tips on general stockmanship, plus some very interesting ideas on how to use animals in a longer-term plan to improve your land. Besides the workshops I attended, there were others going on at the same time where other attendees learned to make yogurt, construct a small aquaponics setup, design and install a pond, and improve damaged soils, among others. The workshops were all interesting and informative, but as usual it was the conversations with others that stood out as the unrepeatable magic of such a gathering. The weekend ended with promises to stay in touch, plans of visits to be made, resources to be shared, and a resounding affirmation that this “first annual” is definitely deserving of a second!

Farm Week: June 16, 2014

Well, no sooner had I waxed poetic about the joys of good weather and weeding than a rainy rainy week pushed us out of the fields altogether. While the weeds grow like, well, weeds, we busy ourselves with other things. When you have CSA boxes to deliver, you have to get the food in on a deadline, so harvest happens even in the rain. The lower portions of the field are either standing water or boot-sucking mud, and even the higher parts of the fields are pretty saturated. The soil is pretty sandy here, which usually means it dries pretty fast. Unfortunately in wet seasons, however, we’re not very high above the water table, so the water doesn’t really have anywhere to go. If this weather continues, we’ll run the risk of losing some of the plants at the lower end. As it is, we’re probably looking at some stunted growth. The good news is that all of the crops have a higher end of the field, so as long as we can keep them weeded (eventually) and keep the bugs at bay, we should end up with some food. When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound that hard, does it?

With the rains comes humidity and puddles, which means we’re knee-deep in the first flush of sticky mosquito weather, which for me is a much harder battle to fight than the weeds or the rain.  I found myself pruning and trellising tomatoes in the hot greenhouse in long pants, long sleeves, and my collar pulled up over my face and ears. I’ll tell you, it really does motivate you to move faster! 

This past weekend, I drove down to surprise my dad on Father’s Day and watch Argentina’s first game in the World Cup. It was great to be home even for about 36 hours, and was worth the drive. This coming weekend, I’m looking forward to attending a permaculture meet-up on a farm down towards Madison. It’s a whole weekend, full of workshops and potlucks and good music, and I’m anticipating meeting lots of cool people. 

Thinking about: buzzzzzzing, pest control, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!

Eating: stir-fry with Chinese cabbage, garlic scapes, ground pork and rice noodles; crunchy juicy delicious sugar snap peas; salad salad salad

Reading: Atina Diffley’s Turn Here Sweet Corn, Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard, Christopher Shein’s The Vegetable Gardener’s Guide to Permaculture

Farm Week: June 9, 2014

Sometimes a beautiful week makes a load of difference, in lots of ways. It certainly helps the plants, which is great. It also gives the weeds a boost, which is less than ideal, but it also provides us with ample time out in the field to fight the good fight. Though we’ve been harvesting for CSA boxes and market on a regular basis, my focus these past few weeks has been cultivation. We have a few big crops that were a bit choked with weeds while we had to devote large amounts of time to continuing to transplant. This week, however, we finished cultivating our onions and put a big dent in our potatoes, carrots, and beets. 

This is a unique part of the season, when we are simultaneously trying to accomplish everything all at once. We still have a good bit of planting to do, we have food to harvest, but we also have to play catchup on weeding so that we can make our harvests more secure in the middle term. I might be alone in this feeling, but I find that cultivation is actually the most gratifying task of all. Sure, when you plant, you get to look out in the field to perfect rows of new plants, and when you harvest you get to wash and pack and share your bounty, but cultivation carries with it a whole range of, well, feelings. When you zip up and down rows with a razor hoe killing weeds in the thread stage, you congratulate yourself on your impeccable timing, knowing how much work you saved your two-weeks-from-now self. Conversely, when you’re in “save the crop” mode, you curse your month-ago self for letting it slide, but the feeling of accomplishment when you reach the end of a task is commensurately more gratifying. More than any other task on the farm, weeding is a mental game. You psych yourself up, you set yourself goals, you push yourself physically, and sometimes you find yourself hoping that your enthusiasm becomes infectious. It might seem like an odd thing to feel passionately about, but if anyone wants to catch the weeding fever, I know where you can get your fix!

Thinking about: surprise visits, stitches in time, connectivity

Eating: homemade pizza with Italian sausage and creamy spinach sauce, homemade pulled pork on ciabatta rolls, delicious, crisp, buttery head lettuce salads

Reading: fine print, Plutarch’s Selected Essays on Love, the Family, and the Good Life

Farm Week: June 2, 2014

Another busy week here on the farm. Some heavy downpours last weekend pushed back our plans for planting our outdoor tomatoes, but our greenhouse tomatoes are pruned and trellised and well on their way to production. Even with a soggy field, we kept filling up the field with food. As the field fills and the weather keeps up, we find ourselves staring down the start of a long and ongoing battle against the weeds. Now is the part of the season where we have to split our attention between finishing our seeding and transplanting, weeding the crops that are getting established, and harvesting for the CSA and markets. Complicating matters as always is the weather, which can alternately keep us out of the fields, fry us while we’re in the fields, or give the weeds a head start. As always, there is plenty to be done. 

We also made our first cutting of hay on about five acres this week, and Mat used the horses for most of the process. I was only involved at the last minute (or last few hours, I guess). I drove the old Allis-Chalmers tractor around in concentric circles, pulling a baler and a hay wagon. Mat stacked the bales, and we ended up finishing in plenty of time before the rain started on Saturday afternoon. Sometimes I look at farm equipment and marvel at the ingenuity. Whoever thought of a way to pick up hay off the ground, arrange it in tight bales, and tie it off with twine was imaginative, to say the least. The machine seems to be the  definition of a contraption, with its rhythmic clanking metal and constantly moving parts. Fascinating.

Thinking about: ingenuity, time management, rhythm

Eating: spaghetti with homemade cream sauce with ham, broccoli, and spring onions; arugula salads; french toast made with Renard’s buckwheat pear and hazelnut bread

Reading: Steven Apfelbaum’s Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm, Susan Bourette’s Meat: A Love Story, Plutarch’s Selected Essays on Love, the Family, and the Good Life

Farm Week: May 26, 2014

This week was an intense week on the farm, in a few different ways. On the one hand, we got quite a bit done. Our greenhouse tomatoes are pruned and trellised! Our fields keep filling up with transplants! We are (so far) keeping up with the cultivation! The sun came on strong and hot this week—we are apparently skipping spring for the most part this year. Our first CSA boxes went out this week, which included over-wintered leeks, pea shoots, asparagus, rhubarb, and mint. The relative scarcity this early in the season will be compensated for with some very heavy, full boxes later in the season. For now, though, we have a few spring delicacies to offer. 

The other thing that made this week intense was that we lost the family milk cow, Frida, very suddenly to bloat. Bloat usually occurs in the spring when cows return to the pasture after eating hay all winter. You can mitigate the risk of bloat by not putting cows out onto wet grass and by limiting access to very rich or high-nitrogen pasture until they become slowly accustomed to fresh pasture again. We did both of these things, and we still weren’t able to prevent it. It happened the same day that we had to deliver CSA boxes and drive feeder pigs to another farmer a few hours away, so we were all pretty busy. We brought the cows in after less than two hours on pasture, and there were no warning signs. Hours later, when we went to do the evening barn chores, we was gone. Once a cow is bloated there are a few last-ditch things farmers can try to save them. A risky approach is to use a needle or a thin knife to puncture between the ribs and let the air out. This comes with quite a risk of infection. Another option is to lubricate a length of garden hose and force it down the cow’s throat until it hits the rumen and expels the gas. Not a pleasant task, but you’d be willing to try it if it might save the family cow. But it’s a moot point, as we missed any window for action. It’s a sad thing to lose any animal, but a family milk cow is closer to a pet than any other livestock on the farm. Looking for that silver lining, we did just gain a milk cow in Redtop, so we won’t be without milk. Also, Frida’s calf from last year is a young heifer, almost ready to be bred. By this time next year, she’ll have a calf of her own, and Frida’s legacy will continue on the farm.

Thinking about: constant vigilance, setbacks, progress

Eating: asparagus, ramp, and morel omelets; homemade oatmeal and flax seed cookies

Reading: Steven Apfelbaum’s Nature’s Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic