Farm Week: September 8, 2014

It's a race against frost here in Central Wisconsin, and so far we seem to be winning. I've finally gotten around to real preservation, and the weekend was spent roasting and saucing and filling jars, and by Sunday night my hair was standing straight up from hovering over a steaming vat of boiling water all weekend. I ended up with quite a stockpile of food at the end of the weekend, though I didn't quite get to everything I had planned. My roasted tomatillo salsa verde comes in mild and med-hot, my roasted eggplant and hot pepper dip will be good on pita bread, my roasted Hungarian hot pepper paste will add a little heat to winter chiles and stews. So far my tomatoes come in plain seedless unseasoned, smooth roasted Amish Paste with herbs, chunky roasted tomatoes with garlic, onions, and herbs, and chunky roasted tomatoes with roasted bell peppers, garlic, and onions. I have two quarts of pesto sitting in the fridge under oil waiting for a transfer to small but heavy-duty freezer bags. During the whole weekend of kitchen takeover, I had some very confused international students asking what I was making, and more often WHY I was making it. My simple English explanation was "Well, when you grow your own vegetables on a farm, it's hard to go to the grocery store in the winter and pay money for vegetables that are not as good as the ones you grow. So I make things that will keep through the winter so I can eat well even when it's freezing outside." It's as good an explanation as any, I suppose. It's been years since I bought a tomato, in season or out, and I don't intend to start now!

Thinking about: frost blankets, darning socks, borrowed plows

Eating: Mat's amazing stuffed poblanos, lots of tastes of lots of sauces, homemade lasagne, baked mac and cheese, garlic roasted tiny potatoes

Reading:  David James Duncan's The Brothers K, Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You, Ron Macher’s Making Your Small Farm Profitable

Farm Week: September 1, 2014

Well, my favorite month is here, and not just because it brings my birthday! September means crisper days and cooler nights, the return of jeans, sweaters, and even wool socks. September means apples, campfires, and the return of roasting weather! Pretty soon, I’ll be able to turn the oven on without dooming myself to a stifling house! On the farm front, we’ve just finished up seeding the last of the fall greens - direct-seeded spinach and arugula, plus the last round of transplanted lettuce. We’re starting to talk about the fall plan to transition the hoop house from tropical tomato heaven to a stash of slowly growing greens for the middle of the winter. We still have a few weeks worth of tomatoes in the hoop house, but we have to make sure the greens get a good start before the winter cold slows their growth altogether. We also harvested some carrots this week, which was more exciting than it should have been. Our spring carrot crop was engulfed in weeds, so we harvested for only a few weeks before we had to mow and till in the weeds. So right now we’re harvesting the first good crop of carrots this year, with two other seedings following behind. The middle seeding needs to be “saved” from weeds, but the last seeding is currently clean. Carrots are tricky, because they take cannot be transplanted and take quite a long time to germinate. That means that weeds have a head start, because they are usually fast to germinate, quick to grow, and set seeds before you even realize they’re there. Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. It always strikes me as odd that some of the crops that are the hardest to grow under weed pressure, like carrots and onions, are usually some of the cheapest to buy conventionally in the supermarket. If you priced your carrots reflecting the amount of work it took to get them all the way to market, people would look at you like you had a carrot for a head. There are, of course, always ways to improve your systems, but that assumes you’ll have the time to devote to weeding right when the weeds demand it. These are the things I think about!

If anyone is wondering how my new adventures in babysitting are going, I’m not really going to dwell on that job too much on the blog - minors, privacy, etc. I’ll just say that things are settling down in the house, and I’m sure we’ll be falling into a rhythm as the school year and the fall progress. I’m constantly reminded of things I’d forgotten about being a teenager, and suddenly the last ten years seems like an eternity. I don’t think about my current self and my 17-year-old self as too dissimilar, but from this vantage point, the gulf seems very wide indeed. This year will be an adventure, one way or another, and in the meantime, you can picture me driving a motley crew of kids around in a minivan, lamenting their long showers, and buying ungodly amounts of bananas, peanut butter, and orange juice. 

Thinking about: cycles, language barriers, timing

Eating: homemade tomato sauces all over everything, roots roots roots

Reading: Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You, Ron Macher’s Making Your Small Farm Profitable

Farm Week: August 25, 2014

This week on the farm found me recovering from last week’s farm feast, moving into a new house, preparing for a new job, and driving to and from the Twin Cities to celebrate the marriage of a good friend from college. It was great to see some great friends I haven’t seen in a long time (plus some I’d seen quite recently), and the wedding was the classiest wedding I’ve ever been to. From the dress to the drinks to the venue to the swing band, every detail was simple and perfectly reflective of the happy couple. I didn’t get to spend too much time poking around Minneapolis, nor did I have the energy to make it to the State Fair, but what I did get a chance to see while riding a rented bike around on Sunday morning made me want to come back to keep exploring. As for the international students, more on that next week, and in the meantime, I’m about to send them off on their first day of school!

Thinking about: first impressions, second first impressions, culture shock

Eating: leftover roast pork, delicious wedding food

Reading: Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things

Farm Week: August 18, 2014 & Farm Feast

This week’s post is another tale of survival, which I expect must be getting old by now. We had our Farm Feast this weekend, which meant that added to our weekly mix of markets, harvest, weeding, and general chaos was a special mix of anxiety, preparation, and finally, adrenaline. We started cooking on Thursday, chopping and dicing and slicing. All day Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent preparing for the event, and when people actually started to arrive, I was almost too tired to enjoy the night as much as I should have. All of the hard stuff was over, and all I had to do was smile and make sure everything was running smoothly. Mostly, it did just that. Dinner started a little later than planned because everyone seemed to be having a good time on the hayrides and in conversation over drinks and appetizers, so by the time the last few tables were finishing up it was getting quite dark. But we had enough food and enough seats for everybody, nobody was stung by our bees, the horses cooperated, the children (mostly) cooperated, the weather cooperated, and everyone seemed to have a great time and really enjoy the food. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and I think people would have paid double for the experience. Maybe with a similar amount of work, we could make it an actual fundraiser in the future, if that’s something Mat and Danielle are considering.

 

So with the successful completion of the farm feast, I only have one week left in the crazy whirlwind month that has been August. Judging by my Facebook feed, this seems to be a very popular time to move. I helped two friends with some very heavy hobbies move up some stairs today, and I’m also moving this Tuesday, though my continued vagabond existence means that I don’t have more than a carload of stuff to cart over. My international charges arrive on Saturday, which just happens to also be the day that a very good friend and former roommate is getting married in the Twin Cities, so I won’t be around for their first day in the States. But in the meantime, I have to get myself moved, the house prepared, the kitchen stocked, meet the teachers, see off a friend, and get myself to and from Minneapolis. I still have all of my farm duties this week, but after a few crazy weeks I’ve earned a bit of leeway, and I should be able to work around it. Even though I’ll be starting a new job and be pulling double duty, I think September might be a little easier than August has been. (Also, maybe the ragweed with stop blooming at some point.)

Thinking about: lifting with the legs, time management, accumulation

Eating: see farm feast menu picture

Reading: Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, Mildred Armstrong Kalish’s Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression

Farm Week: August 11, 2014

Well, I survived my five days in charge of the farm. The animals were fed, watered, moved, and milked as necessary, the veg was weeded, watered, harvested, delivered, and sold, and I came out the other end relatively unscathed, if with a bit of a summer cold. I can’t blame the farm for that, but I have two small suspects in the hunt for patient zero. It was actually quite nice to be on the farm all day - I’m up early no matter how hard I try to sleep past 6, and I’m usually asleep by 10, but that leaves a quite a bit of time outside my usual “business hours.” I went out early to start the morning chores, attempting to finish them by the time the vegetable helpers arrived at 8:30 or 9. Most days, I was mostly successful. It was also nice to be able to work in the evenings, when the sun wasn’t so strong. I picked tomatoes in the greenhouse, weeded the celeriac and the carrots, added another super to the beehives, all under a much gentler sun. As much as I enjoyed the experience, I kept remembering that while I could keep the farm running, it was on a very basic level, pared down, well-prepared, and well-assisted. I didn’t have to keep track of two young boys or do any caretaking work for the landlord. As smoothly as it went, it actually deepened my respect for how hard and how long Mat and Danielle work on a daily basis. I certainly hope they actually relaxed on their trip, though I doubt they are capable of complete relaxation.

In other news, August continues racing by at a record-breaking clip. I can’t really tell whether we’re still in the throes of summer or whether fall has come early. Our field tomatoes are stalwartly green, and we’re hoping that the weather cooperates enough to give us a pretty good yield. After last year’s near crop failure, I’m looking forward to stocking up on tomato sauces for the winter. We have a few varieties of paste tomato out in the field, and I’m looking forward to canning as much as possible when they finally start ripening (knock on wood). Though I have no basis for this hunch, I have a feeling we’re in for a bit of an Indian Summer. It’s been a bit of an odd year, weather-wise, and I’m just hoping it cooperates long enough for at least a good portion of the ton of green fruit to turn red (and yellow and orange and stripedy). I’m trying not to think about how busy the next two weeks are going to be, and spent a good portion of the morning (dis)engaged in some classic nothing-doing while I have the chance. The next two weeks bring a big event on the farm, a parental visit, a going away party, helping friends move, moving myself, starting a second job, and a trip to the twin cities for a wedding. Oh yeah, and I’m really hoping for some ripening tomatoes, as if I needed something else to fill my time!

Thinking about: coordination, cooperation, condensation

Eating: broccoli-based stir-fries, tomatoes and basil, garlicky eggs, locally (in)famous spaghetti and meatball pizza

Reading: Michael Perry's Truck: A Love Story, Best Management Practices for Log-Based Shiitake Cultivation in the Northeastern United States

Farm Week: August 4, 2014

August just seems to be speeding by, and this week was also a blur of activity and decisions. We had the usual amount of harvest, CSA delivery, and farmers market activity. Adding to the flurry were the preparations for the Boersons to leave for their annual family camping trip up to Superior, leaving me in charge of the farm for a couple days. So this weekend and the beginning of next week finds me feeding, watering, harvesting, and delegating. We'll be harvesting for and delivering our CSA boxes as usual, so I'll have our usual stream of weekly helpers, plus a few extra hands on deck to help with the steady stream of chores. So far, so good (knock on wood for me, would you?).

Also lots of life decisions happening this week. One of my good friends here just got a really awesome job that will take her to Seattle before the end of the month. It's an awesome opportunity, and I think she'll love living in Seattle, but I'll certainly miss having her around here. At the same time, I applied for and then quickly accepted a job that will keep me here for another year. The local high school hosts about half a dozen international students from all over the world who come for the IB (International Baccalaureate) program. They're usually coming as a stepping stone to attending college in the States, so they're a very responsible, driven bunch. Anyways, the school is renting a house in downtown Green Lake for the school year, and they needed an RA/house mother. Luckily for them, there happens to be a well-traveled, multi-lingual, over-educated itinerant living just down the street. So I'll also be moving by the end of the month, to a cute little house in town. Though they're working with me to make sure I'll be able to fulfill my obligations at the farm through September, after that I'll be free to come to the farm during the school day, when I don't have any obligations to the program. Next summer, school will end just when the market and CSA season starts to ramp up, and I'll work another season here at the farm. Over the school year, I'll have one weekend off every month, and in the summer I'm going to make it a priority to go out to the Future Farm at least once a month. I'm planning on moving out there full time next fall, so right now I'm about 14 months from Startup. Lots of things just fell into place this month, and I'm excited to see what the next year will bring. Watch this space!

Thinking about: transitions, timelines, tinkerers

Eating: salads, tomatoes, broccoli, variations on zucchini and eggs, another pulled pork crop mob lunch, celebratory crispy pork belly and fondue

Reading: Michael Perry's Truck: A Love Story

Farm Week: July 28, 2014

This week on the farm found me dragging a bit. You know how sometimes you have so much fun activity on a weekend that you need another weekend right afterwards? Well, that was this week, but instead of another weekend, I had a very taxing week. Monday was filled with garlic, cleaning, bunching, and hanging the garlic that we harvested last week. Knowing how full the rest of the week was going to be, I pushed Danielle to finish the job with me before I left after an eleven hour day. Tuesday brought a film crew to the farm - Inga Witscher’s show Around the Farm Table filmed an episode that will be airing this fall on Wisconsin public television. Inga is a dairy farmer that goes around the state learning about other family farms and local food businesses, and she came across the Boersons at a library panel over the winter. Though the filming didn’t take overly long, it did take time to prepare and was maybe more mentally exhausting than anything. Wednesday is CSA day as always, and we had quite a busy morning harvesting, packing boxes, and preparing for the Princeton market. Last week’s market was very very underwhelming, with record poor sales due to low customer attendance and a new vendor with piles of cheap conventional vegetables. Apparently, they didn’t think the market was worth it, because they weren’t back this week and I had a great market. Thursday brought some extra livestock chores, followed by some welcome weeding and cultivation time. We rubbed down the sows with some lice soap, and then castrated the four male pigs out of the eight that were born a few weeks ago. Friday is another market and harvest day, and this week there were some complications that made the harvest a bit more harried than usual. Phoebe, Danielle’s 14-year-old dog, has had bone cancer for the past few months, and it became clear that her quality of life had rapidly deteriorated over the past two days. So Danielle spent the morning going back and forth to the vet and burying her. That left harvest to me and our three usual Friday helpers. I must have really kicked it into high gear, because by the time Danielle joined us just before lunch, we were bagging, quart-ing, and bunching the last few things for market. On the lighter side, we had another new little fuzzball arrive first thing in the morning. It’s another little heifer calf, almost identical to little Tootsie. We’re thinking they’re both half Highland half Devon, but we’ll see just how fuzzy they get as they get a bit older. So that was my week. It flew by, and boy was it exhausting. This weekend, I’m going to try to start a big batch of fermented pickles with the bumper crop of cucumbers we’ve been blessed/cursed with, read a bunch, and basically relax. Next weekend, the Boersons leave for a few days vacation up in the Apostle Islands on Lake Superior. That leaves me to hold down the fort, with the help of the small army of hardworking volunteers and loyal friends. So this will be my only chance to relax for awhile. 

Thinking about: farm dogs past and future, speed, motivation

Eating: heirloom tomatoes and crunchy dukes in creamy pesto, homemade pizza, deliciously tart lemon bars, various zucchini and egg combinations, Official Once Annual Hand-Dipped and Fresh Fried County Fair Corn Dog

Reading: Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard, Michael Perry’s Truck: A Love Story, Business Planning for Dummies

Farm Week: July 21, 2014

Besides our usual pattern of harvests, and a brief heat wave, the big story this week is that we harvested our garlic. There’s something very gratifying about harvesting a crop that’s been in the ground since last year. Those little cloves were in the ground starting to grow last October, so they’ve survived from lots of degrees below zero during a very cold winter and mercury approaching 100 just earlier this week. I’ve been slowly making my way through Ron L Engeland’s Growing Great Garlic, and I was insufferable all week quoting “that dude.” Garlic just out of the ground is green garlic, but has to be cured in a warm, dry, airy place for a few weeks before it’s the garlic we know and love. We haven’t quite gotten to the stage where we hang all the thousands of heads of garlic up to cure, but we did take the time to choose the heads to hold back for next year’s seed. “That dude” says that using the very biggest bulbs for seed results in an inconsistent harvest - some very large bulbs and some very small ones. He recommends planting bulbs averaging 2-2.5 inches, which results in a more uniform bulb size at harvest. Mat and I spent about an hour selecting, bunching, and hanging up the seed, which according to him is the most intentional they’ve ever been about it. This time next year we’ll see whether “that dude’s” advice worked in our case.

This week also brought a bumper crop of basil, which when combined with the garlic we just harvested screams out for some pesto-making. Perhaps because our tomatoes haven’t been coming in strong yet, we hadn’t really been selling much basil at the markets, which didn’t really make us eager to harvest all of the basil we needed to to keep the plants from flowering too early. So I had the idea that we sell pesto-making kits with a recipe included. We packed large bags of basil, banded them and attached a head of garlic and the rolled-up recipe. We ended up selling much more basil at the market than we otherwise would have, and I think our customers really got excited about it. It’s this kind of never-ending problem-solving that keeps farming interesting season after season, I think. 

Thinking about: old friends, different paths, the right tool for the job

Eating:  green garlic, homemade pesto, new potatoes, zucchini, wedding cake!

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, RJ Garner’s The Grafter’s Handbook