Down on the Farm

Spring

I know that for most of the northern hemisphere it has been spring for some time now, but we are just getting the news up here in northern Vermont. The last few days have been beautiful, and green is sprouting everywhere.

Today is a big day. We are getting some tractor implements delivered, which I suspect will warrant its own blog entry if my phone conversation with the guy who currently has them is any indication. He sounds like a little bit of a nut, but not necessarily a bad nut. Also, our first order from the greenhouse supply people should be showing up as well.

I seeded some lettuce this morning, which means that the seedling schedule has transitioned from long term seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, onions) to short term stuff that can go in the ground in 3-4 weeks. Very exciting! After the long winters we have here, there really is something very liberating about spring.

Not much to report today

Maryellen thinks I put up too many pictures of her, so here is one of me attempting to plow one of our fields yesterday afternoon/evening.

It is a beautiful spring day up here today. I hope it is nice where you are!

To freak out or not to freak out

This is kind of a tense time in our first farm year. We built that little greenhouse for our delicate and heating loving seedlings (mostly tomatoes and peppers). But there is no heating unit in it at all -- it is all solar power.

What that means is that it will get up to 90 degrees in there when the sun is out, but it will cool right off at night. It won't get as cold in the greenhouse at night as it is outside because the structure will retain some heat, but it doesn't retain much. And exposing those seedlings to any kind of frost is really bad news.

Last night the forecast was for 35 degrees in St. Johnsbury, which means it will be a couple of degrees colder at our place, but on the other hand, the greenhouse will retain some warmth. But how much warmth? So we have to make some calcuations/guesses. Do we go out and bring all the seedlings in for the night (about an hour's worth of work), and then put them back out in the morning (another hour's worth of work), or do we chance it? We chanced it last night.

It was 32 degrees at our place this morning at 5:30am. I think we made the right decision. But I won't really know if there was any plant damage until later today.

Of course, the solution to the problem is to get a small heating unit for our seedling house. But that costs money. We may get one down the line, but this is our first year, and we are trying to get by on as little as possible.

As I told the farmer I worked for last summer on the phone yesterday, "We are just making this up as we go along." And he said, "That's the only way to do it."

Farm Geeks

No one can say we don't know how to party around here. Here we are hanging in the studio/loft over the woodshed, which we have converted into a staging area for some farming stuff. It's 9:00pm on a Saturday night and we are transplanting seedlings!

Are we doing this because we are way behind and stressed out about catching up? Oddly, the answer is not really. It was just after dinner on Saturday, and we didn't have any plans. After weighing our options we decided that we just wanted to do some transplanting.

The idea of doing something that you would want to do anyway, and getting paid for it, is new to me. Of course, we haven't exactly worked out the "getting paid" part yet, but we are working on it . . .

Going going gone

We went to our first farm equipment auction today. We could not believe how many people turned out on a rainy Saturday.

There really wasn't anything that we were that interested in, except a set of disc harrows that we ended up not buying. Our neighbor Allen later told me the discs went for about $550, which struck me as a little high, but I actually only have the most rudimentary knowledge about these matters.

It was more an atmosphere thing for us today. Plus, I am starting to realize that farming tends to be a fairly solitary enterprise. So this auction was also a major start of the season social scene. And sure enough, our neighbors George and Allen were in attendance, as was this guy Bart I know.

Have a good season everyone!

Ta-Daa!!

We own a tractor!! A modestly old Ford 3000 with a bucket loader!! Here are the views, plus the last one is the tractor in its new home under our high drive.

After my bitter disappointment the other day, this tractor almost literally fell into my lap. (Ouch!) A beef cattle farmer and part time tractor mechanic from Danville (the next town over) sort of brokered the deal. He knew I was looking for a tractor like this, and he saw this one for sale on the side of the road in Barre on Wednesday. He called me Thursday, and now Friday it is ours!! We have some implements coming as well, but they probably won't arrive at the farm until next week. Some details still need to get hammered out.

The tractor had one owner who bought it new in 1972 to use on his dairy farm. It is very well cared for, and for the last 10 years it has only been used for bush hogging and light chores. This tractor was usually only driven by the dairy farmer's wife, who passed away about 8 months ago. So it was literally only driven by a little old lady!!

Anyway, we are pretty psyched!! Now the fun begins!!

Please Stand By

We have a fairly significant and potentially positive news story breaking here at Down on the Farm this morning. Things are close, but still in flux, and we are awaiting confirmation. We should have more news around early afternoon EDT today. Please stand by . . .

Shout out to the west

This entry is dedicated to all our west coast and southwest readers.

That's right, baby! It snowed out here last night! After two weeks of 60 degree weather and sun, it snowed. Sure, it was just a dusting, it was the big wet snow, and sure it will be gone tomorrow when it gets back up into the 60s with sun. But right now we got white stuff. Unbelievable. Good thing I didn't plant the peas yet.

I got nothing today

It is raining up here. And cold. A perfect morning for some disappointment.

I really thought I had found us a good tractor. Good size, good model, good condition, good price, with a bucket loader. But with all those good things I should have realized it wouldn't last long. I was planning to go look at it this morning, and when I called to confirm the directions, he said someone showed up last night and bought it. I don't blame the seller -- he had only committed to show it to me. But now it is gone.

Oh well, back to the drawing board. It's not like that was the only tractor in northern New England for sale.

Farming can stink

One of the nice things about Vermont is that there is a farm infrastructure up here. When we were trying to figure out a way to make Connecticut work, we really could not find any agricultural services or expertise to help us find our way. Even though it is heavily slanted toward dairy up here, there is a farm economy and farm infrastructure, and that makes our life a lot easier.

One of my favorite things to do to is to check out the AGRIVIEW classifieds. Sometimes the articles are pretty good too.

When we were at Maryellen's parent's house in Boston this past weekend, someone was asking me how cow manure, being used as a natural fertilizer, is distributed to the field on a large scale. One option is to load it into a manure spreader, hitch the spreader up to your tractor, and off you go. That is what we would do on the scale we are operating on.

However, if you really have a lot of ground to cover, the manure can actually be liquefied and sprayed from a truck. Dairy farmers will hire truck crews to come around once a year to spray their manure for them. Returning to those Agriview ads, now you too have an opportunity to get into this extremely stinky and at best marginally lucrative business:

"1988 Mack model R688ST manure truck with 3600gal. Houle tank: 100,000 miles, air, excellent shape. $36,000. Richmond 434-3565. (4/15)"

It really is old

I was goofing around on EBay a week or two ago, and I made a very modest bid on a replica of a map of Peacham, Vermont from 1875. Well apparently there wasn't a lot of competition, because I won. The map arrived in the mail yesterday, and sure enough, right where we are it says "R.B. Shaw". And a couple of houses down it says "J. Shaw". It may be time to pay a visit to the Town Clerk's office or the historical association in town to see how far back these Shaws go.

Busy Busy

Alright. So much to catch up on, and so little time.

First of all, we got the little greenhouse finished.

Boy, is it hot in here. The tomatoes and peppers will love it.

Second, we went to visit Maryellen's parents for Easter, and we had a great time and a lot to eat. Here are all the kids streaming out of the house to kick off the Easter egg hunt.

And here is Maryellen, holding her brand new niece Marie, and her sister Martha. Maryellen, Marie, Martha. Try saying that ten times fast.

Now, we have so much to do farm-wise, work-wise, moving-in-and-house-fixing-up-wise, I break out in hives just thinking about it. So I will stop thinking and get back to work!

WELCOME MARIE!!!!!

Maryellen's sister Martha had a baby girl this morning at about 4:30 a.m. WELCOME TO THE WORLD MARIE!!!!! WE ARE EXCITED YOU ARE HERE!!!!

Tractor shopping ramble

We went tractor shopping a couple of weeks ago at Nash's up in Colebrook, New Hampshire. It was raining wicked hard.

The place smelled like the forklift scrap yard I used to work at in Minnesota. That oily, not entirely unpleasant, smell.

Most vegetable farms on our scale will have at least two tractors: a utility tractor with a bucket loader, and a smaller tractor used to cultivate (weed) crops. Maryellen has a soft spot in her heart for the Farmall Cub which is a classic cultivating tractor. And it is hard to blame her really.

But we both seem to agree that getting a utility tractor is the right move in this first year. We have a couple of good leads on tractors that will work for us. But it is getting to be crunch time -- the ground is warming up!

The funny thing is that United States vegetable industry has consolidated to such a point over the last 30 years that no one is really making tractors for small scale agriculture anymore. Most new tractors are either big rigs for industrial sized farms out in the mid-west and west, or for dairy farms that need more horse power. Then all of a sudden the market shrinks down to the weekend warrior landscape scale tractor. There is a gap in the machinery business where the small family farm used to be.

But organic agriculture is the classic example of a niche market. There is a demographic willing to pay a premium for organic produce, for a variety of reasons ranging from environmental concerns, to taste, to food safety, to supporting smaller farms. And since the market that responds to organics also seems to respond to buying local and buying fresh, smaller scale vegetable farms have been able to carve out a successful market niche in the Northeast.

The problem is that the niche isn't really big enough for John Deere to make a 40-50 horsepower row cropping tractor sized for a 10 acre operation. For example, New Holland made what would be a perfect vegetable tractor for us. But this tractor is too small for the California farmer with 10,000 acres, and it is too expensive for people like us. So New Holland discontinued this tractor this year, after only four years of production. No one was buying.

Instead, organic farmers tend to rely on equipment that was made 40+ years ago, back when there were more small scale family farms, and when farmers used agricultural practices that did not rely so much on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Not only was older equipment designed for our scale and agricultural methods, but 40 year old equipment is relatively cheap, which is also an advantage. After all, no one but a crazy organic farmer would want an Allis Chamlers G.

Which leads us back to our problem. That 1954 Farmall in the dealer's lot may look great, and it may sound great, and it may actually be in great shape, but then you say to yourself, whoa, that thing is almost 50 years old! Even the Ford 5000 we are thinking about is about 30 years old.

Having said that, they made things to last 50 years ago, and they also made things so that someone like me could figure out how to work on it without a master's degree. So while you need to be a little careful, you should be Ok if you have a full ratchet set when you get the thing home (and, in our case, you also have a local tractor mechanic with a good reputation). Plus, Maryellen knows how to rebuild a diesel engine in her sleep, so we have that going for us.

Anyway, we'll let you know when we find our special machine!

Updates

The unheated greenhouse we are building is coming along. We should be ready to put plastic on it tonight or tomorrow.

Which is good because the seedling room inside the house is starting to fill up.

Yum, tomatoes . . .

Smalltown USA

I think I like living in a small town (Peacham, VT = Pop. 650). At least so far that is -- I guess it has only been a few months.

But one of the things I didn't anticipate was the people stopping by thing. Since we have been in our house, we have had at least a half dozen neighbors just stop by unannounced to say Hi, and that is with the terrible winter weather we have had. I suspect more people will come by as the weather gets nicer.

Last night the guy whose dairy farm is right up the road stopped by. For the past several years, he had rented our land from the previous owner to grow corn and hay for silage. Since I am trying to get certified as an organic farm, and he is not an organic dairy farmer, he and I have worked out an alternative arrangement for this year that seems to work for both of us. He stopped by to drop off a bunch of oat seed that he is going to sow on parts of our land this year. After helping him unload the truck in the barn, he came in and we sat around the kitchen eating Maryellen's yummy carrot cake and yaking for about an hour.

Anyway, I guess I have spent so much time bouncing around the last 15 years or so, that it is nice to have finally committed to living somewhere and to feel a little like a part of a community.

Sigh

I am just a PTO-driven manure spreader kind of guy on a ground-driven budget.

Spring has really sprung

It will be hard to stick with my day job today -- it is supposed to be 75 degrees this afternoon! Our latest project is building a small hoophouse for our late seedlings.

I cut some posts the other day, and Maryellen and I put up one wall yesterday. Hopefully another one goes up today. Have fun outside today!

Thanks Mark

To continue the Mark is great/hair issues theme, the above is me trying to sit on my friend Mark's lap at a birthday party circa. 1989 or 90. He might take this site down after he sees this post, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

I have known Mark for an embarrassingly long time -- 15-16 years or so. In that time he has gone from being a smart-ass punk from Long Island to being a smart-ass punk from Brooklyn. When we were both bouncing around Minnesota in our early twenties trying to figure out what to do, Mark transformed himself almost overnight from being the Mario Carts (TM) king, to being a major computer techie guru master. He presently works on Einstein-like top secret projects for a major new media conglomerate in NYC.

I recently expressed interest in doing this blog, and as a farm-warming present he offered to help set up this site/debacle/time drain. Even though the folks at places like Moveable Type and Blogspot make getting a blog up pretty easy, I know I couldn't have done it without Mark. He has really gone above and beyond the call of duty in helping me with this site, and I appreciate it.

So Mark, next time you are up here, the tofu and kale are on us! Thanks!

Nip in the rafters

Looks like Maryellen has been hitting the sauce again. I found this up in the rafters of the barn the other day.

It says, "Mount Vernon/Pure Rye Whiskey", and on the other side, "The Cook & Bernheimer Company/Full Quart/Refilling of this Bottle Prohibited."

My first reaction was that I had unearthed a rare treasure worth millions. But alas, some guy named Wayne is selling one for $20.

On the other hand, our friend Hilary was over at the house last night for dinner, and he said $20 is pretty good for an old bottle. Now if I could only find 49,999 more out there in the barn, I'd have my million bucks.

The Week in Review

A couple of house cleaning notes.

First, I think I figured out how to shrink my image size on embedded photos so that it won't take so long for all the images to come up when you first come to this site. However, these new, speedier images will only be incorporated from this point forward, so it still may be a little clunky until the older entries drop of the scroll. A tip of the hat to Mark Wilkie for that one. There will be more on the greatness of Mark in another entry at some point.

Second, again thanks to Mark, we now have registered a domain name as www.oldshawfarm.com. Before we go totally public with that as our farm name, I need to check with the last remaining Shaw descendent to see if it is Ok with her. But "Old Shaw Farm" has developed a certain momentum in the last few weeks as our farm/business name, so I think that is where we are heading. Anyway, you can now get to this site from www.oldshawfarm.com, or you can use whatever you already had bookmarked.

Third, I am sorry I didn't follow up on one issue, but I did in fact get my haircut.

So it is back to the Marine Corps doo for the summer.

Lastly, I have had a blast doing this. Thanks for reading and commenting.

I probably shouldn't do this, but we never win at football.

After that last fairly serious entry, I thought I would include this link for all the Big Ten people out there. Woohoo!!

The House

Like the barn, the house is also big and old. Depending on who you ask, it was built between 1840 and 1875. I think the original family that built the place was named Shaw, and it remained in their family until 1976, when it was bought by the Seidens. We bought it from the Seidens in December, 2002.

Even if the Shaws were not the original homesteaders on this land, they certainly were here for a long time because when we tell people that we bought the Seiden place, we are met with blank stares. But if we say we bought the old Shaw place, they light up and know exactly what we are talking about.

A neighbor in town who is active in the Peacham Historical Association gave us an article about the Shaws written in 1997. It was an interview with the two remaining Shaw descendents, and the theme of the article was the years from 1925 to 1951 when the family ran the house as a boarding house/B&B, in addition to their dairy operation.

The B&B mostly catered to summer people, plus a few year-round boarders. Peacham has several small lakes, rolling hills, and plenty of fresh air, so for some time now it has been (and still is) a place where people from Hanover, Concord, Boston, and beyond, come for the summer.

My favorite tidbit from the article though, is that a Nobel Prize winner stayed at the farm in 1941. Ms. Emily Greene Balch was a Quaker peace activist during both World Wars. She and Thomas R. Mott shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for their efforts to bring war to an end.

She was born into an old Boston family and began her life as an economics professor. But she was inspired by the outbreak of World War I to devote her life to the advocacy of peace. From her Nobel presentation speech:

"And then came the First World War, putting an end to her university career, for she was dismissed from her post in 1918 because of her pacifist activities. But the war also brought a fresh challenge, giving her life a new goal. Like so many others, she saw the war as a futile interruption to the construction of a better world.

To use her own words: 'My reaction was above all a feeling that this was a tragic break in the work which to me appeared to be the real task of our time: to construct a more satisfying economic order.' But the impact upon her must have been more powerful than she herself cared to admit, for from the outbreak of the war she devoted all her strength to the work for peace. Or, as Professor Simkhovitch of Columbia says: 'I have never met anyone who has, as she has done, for decade after decade given every minute of her life to the work for peace between nations.'"

I guess it goes to show you that even if you set off in one direction, you never really know where you are going to end up in life. Anyway, it is exciting and humbling to be a part of the history of this place.

Farm flicks

So I was very excited yesterday because I received two videos in the mail from the NOFA lending library (thanks Richard!). One is "Vegetable Farmers and their Weed Control Machines" and the other is "Farmers and their Diversified Horticultural Marketing Strategies". They both look awesome. But if you have already seen them, please don't give away the endings.

Springtime

I woke up this morning and it was white everywhere.

Ahhhh. . . . springtime in Vermont.

At least the peppers and onions and arugula are starting to come up.

The Barn

This is our barn. It is huge -- at least 40'x120'. It has three stories. On the bottom are horse stalls, an old manure pit, and some storage space. The second story is the milking parlor and hay lofts. The third story is the high drive, which is a huge open space where they used to drive tractors into the barn to dump hay into the lofts, which in turn open up down on the second floor across from the milking parlor. The picture is looking up at the entrance to the high drive.

The question is what do we do with this barn? It is an old dairy barn that hasn't seen a cow in probably 30 years. It is obsolete by today's dairy standards. Plus, it has some problems. One of the hay lofts has a collapsed floor, the north foundation buckles out some, there is some damage from an area where the roof used to be missing, and the roof needs a new ridge covering.

On the other hand, it is beautiful, and has a lot of character and history. Like the house, the barn is probably 120-150 years old. Walking through the barn you can find calving records with dates scribbled in chalk and charcoal from 1943, 1939, 1936. There are all kinds of old feed bags, feed barrels, hand tools, and frayed leather harnesses. Plus, the two seater outhouse must have been pretty deluxe in its day.

And there is help available.

Francis, the retired dairy farmer who lives across the road, thinks it should come down. Our friend Eliza thinks we should turn it into a convention center or a dance hall or something.

Richard, my friend, mentor, and sometime employer, is one of the more accomplished organic vegetable growers in Vermont. He thinks the barn is a wonderful resource for our farm. Its lines are straight, the roof is in order (more or less), there are no immediate maintenance problems, there appears to be a water line coming into (or at least near) the barn, and it wouldn't be that hard to wire an electrical box out from the house. So he sees a washing station, a packing line, cold storage areas, etc., and he has these visions because he largely did the same at his place. His converted dairy barn looks great now, but he acknowledges that we have a bit of work in front of us.

We are fortunate that these questions do not have to be answered today. We have time to grow into this place, and we have plenty of place to grow into.