Down on the Farm

Late Afternoon revelations

Here is a bit of farm wisdom from yesterday's chores after market -- be careful operating heavy machinery, particularly tractors. I don't want to go into much more detail for fear of some close questioning from someone else around here at Old Shaw Farm, but suffice it to say that if you are on the tractor at a dead stop, but the thing is in gear with your foot on the clutch, and you reach around behind your seat to adjust the implement you are carrying, it is possible for your foot to slip off the clutch, and to have the whole thing lurch forward quite abruptly, which could result in startling you a bit. Not that anything like that happened. I am just speaking hypothetically here.

Early morning revelations

As I was harvesting for market early yesterday morning, I was listening to the BBC World Service on my handy-dandy hand crank radio. They had an interview with a French farmer, because apparently there has been a tremendous drought in France this year. As the farmer spoke in half-way decent broken English, it occurred to me that he sounded like one of the McKenzie brothers. I guess it makes sense, but until that moment, I hadn't really appreciated how much a Canadian accent sounds like a French person trying to speak English.

Market was down a little yesterday

Yesterday was the first inexplicably slow day at market. It was beautiful. 85 degrees, clear, slight breeze. But not too many people showed. I reached my modest sales goal for the day, but that was about it. So we had broccoli, and peppers, and onions, and snap peas in our pasta last night for dinner. Just goes to show why one of the things some growers don't like about farmer's markets is their unpredictability.

Warning -- more politics

Ok. I feel like my last foray into politics on this site generate more controversy than it was worth, so I am going to try a less direct approach here.

I have been genuinely excited about Howard Dean's candidacy for President, and I have added a little Howard Dean for President icon on the left. He is our former governor, and an excellent politician. He often appeared on VPR's Switchboard program (a VT call in talk show) when he was governor, and he seems like a decent egg. While I have been pretty cynical about electoral politics for a long time, he is the first candidate to get me enthused about participating in the political process. In fact, if you hit the "Help out" link, you will also see that I have signed up to help him raise money. Since we don't have much of our own dough to give (although we have given a little -- every bit counts), I figured this was the least I could do. His campaign has made extensive use of the internet, and making it easy for people to make their own little pages like I have done is just one example of how on the ball this guy seems to be, at least internet-wise.

Well, I won't go into anymore about Howard, but, if you are interested, the link to his site on the left will give you more info than you can shake a stick at.

To every season turn turn turn

Already, we are looking ahead to the change of seasons. Yesterday I direct seeded my last planting of string beans, which take about sixty days to mature. Sixty days will push us up against the average September 20 frost date for our area, so that was the last planting of string beans to go in.

Starting to pull back on our direct seedings means that my time will start freeing up for more long term projects and planning for next year. Which is good, because I was just starting to get bored of doing the same plantings each week. Now I am thinking about building more hoophouse space for next year, how the barn can be re-configured, how to improve my efficiency at starting seedlings for next year, what crops I want to keep or drop, etc. Another example of the changes -- instead of starting broccoli seedlings yesterday, I seeded a couple of trays of kale.

So at the same time the tomatoes and melons are starting to come in (yay!), we are already beginning to think fall.

Ode to my wife

Maryellen pretty much rocks the house. For my b-day last week, one of the other things she got me was a Grundig hand-crank radio.

What is so great about this little baby? Well, in addition to batteries and an AC adapter, it also can be powered by cranking a little handle on the side. You crank it about 60 times (takes about 30-45 secs) and you are good to go for about 45 minutes to an hour.

This means that I can listen to tunes while I am up in the field, and I don't have to worry about running down the truck battery by listening to the car radio, and I don't have to worry about going through a b-gilliion little triple A batteries. Plus, it has shortwave frequencies, so I can listen to my favorite Albanian news station, or some Taiwanese soft rock favorites. Pretty spiffy. Thanks Maryel!

ODE TO MY WIFE PART II:

Yesterday was market day. Market starts at 9 a.m., so I need to be there about 8:15 to set up. The market is about 20 minutes away, so I usually leave a little before 8 a.m.

For some reason, it didn't quite work out that way yesterday. At about 7:50 a.m., I was still washing and bunching onions, and I still had to pack the truck, eat breakfast, change clothes, count out change, and edit and print out a price list. Basically, I was totally freaking out.

Maryellen to the rescue! My seven month pregnant wife jumped in and helped me pack vegetables and get on the road. Then she came to market, helped me unpack the truck, set up, and she stayed through the first rush of the morning. Thanks Maryel! All would have been seriously lost without your help!

Cleaning house

The other day I did the field equivalent of picking up my socks or straightening out my desk. I knocked down a bunch of weeds that had been growing up in one section, and I plowed down two strips of oats that we plan to use in future years, and which had been going to seed. I have a very high tolerance for clutter, but it is nice every now and then to clean everything up a bit. It makes things seem a little more manageable somehow.

Rain forest

You may not believe this, but yesterday I was rooting for it to stop raining. We have had so much rain in the last two days that things are now a little too wet. Such is life on the farm. Fortunately, plants are somehow designed to handle a pretty wide variation in natural conditions. At least I won't have to water for a while.

Welcome to Ag 101

Two items for today's column.

First, last night we got a great soaking rain, which was wonderful because it has still been a little dry. Unfortunately, it is supposed to continue raining for the next two days. Now, that is going to be a little too much rain, especially on Wednesday's market day. What I would like to do is save these next two days of rain for later, when we may really need them again. I guess I want to take a rain check on the rain. But I suppose it doesn't really work that way.

Second, I was down at Paul's Tractor Service yesterday because I was having a minor tractor problem (basically an oil leak with a complication or two). After having had some earlier tractor problems that Paul also recently helped me with, I commented that I have had some bad tractor mojo lately. He looked at me like I was a little crazy and said, "You don't have bad tractor luck, this is just your welcome to agriculture with older equipment." In other words, he basically he said, "Get used to it, pal."

Ah, here comes the rain again.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday. Just one of the many wonderful presents Maryellen got me was a videocassette copy of the movie Big Daddy. In the movie, Adam Sandler plays an emotionally stunted 30-something whose girlfriend leaves him because she thinks he will never grow up. To show her how mature he is, Sandler decides to adopt a 5 year old boy. When the girlfriend is not impressive with this half baked plan, he is left to try to figure out how to raise this boy by himself.

Hmmmm . . . I wonder if Maryellen is trying to say something?

The highest praise

I got an email the other day from my mother. She said that my grandmother (Babi) said that if my grandfather (Pop) were alive he would have sold the house in New Jersey and moved to Vermont. That he would love the farm. My mom thought Pop "would have been intrigued for many months/years with all the problem solving issues that go on and on with any adventure like yours."

I've read that email many times, and it still makes me cry. I know how silly that sounds. But sometimes I think, what on earth do we think we're doing? So it's really nice to feel like we have the support of our family, maybe even the support of some of those members who are no longer with us.

Q & A

I have received some questions to answer from various readers.

1. Do I actually sleep? The answer is "yes", I do sleep, but not as much as I probably should. I am planning on catching up on my sleep this fall, after the baby arrives. What? Did I say something funny?

2. What are we growing right now? These days I am bringing the following veggies to market: green and yellow string beans, beets and beet greens, cucumbers, broccoli raab, green and red leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, sugarsnap peas (the kind you eat whole), yellow snap peas (whole pod for salad or stir fry), salad turnips, green bell peppers, yellow hot banana peppers, onions, new potatoes.

Coming soon: carrots, cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, regular red tomatoes, 6 varieties of cantaloupes, watermelons. Coming a little less soon: 5 varieties of winter squash.

Maybe I will put this info on a separate page somewhere.

3. Do we have any idea what we are doing? If the question is in regard to starting the farm, the answer is "not really". If the question is in regard to having a kid, the answer is "not really". But we are very, very, very, excited to be trying both projects.

Farm consulting works

My friend/mentor/occasional employer Richard has been farming vegetables organically for 20+ years. He runs a very successful farm, and is pretty well known nationally for his ideas about how to manage a successful farm business.

He has recently received some sort of grant (I suspect through NOFA) to basically offer consulting services to new farmers. After market today, he came over and we spent 2+ hours discussing how we could implement a real irrigation system at our farm, and discussing how we could increase our labor efficiency through mechanization.

I cannot tell you how helpful his input was. I have very little experience with irrigation systems and larger scale mechanization, and there is only so much you can learn from a book. Having someone help walk me through how certain ideas could be put into action on our actual farm was invaluable.

Plus, he said our veggies (in the field) looked good, and he oooh'ed and ahhh'ed a little over the hoophouse I built. It made me realize how fortunate we were to find a place with such good soil, and how crazy and exciting it is that we are actually starting a farm. And it was very encouraging to have someone with so much more experience say it looked like we were on the right track. Today was one of those days (that are increasing in number) when I felt less like a lawyer and more like a farmer.

Thanks Richard! Thanks NOFA!

Go figure

After all that complaining this morning, it turned out to be a decent sales day at market. Not great, but totally respectable. I couldn't believe the number of people who turned out in the rain to buy their veggies. Who'd a thunk it?

Slow day?

Well this should be interesting. I have been blessed with decent weather for most market days so far. But the forecast and radar for today show consistent light rain all morning. Maybe I'll bring a raincoat, a chair, and a good book today.

UPDATE: I am back in from harvesting. At 7:15 a.m. it is dark out and rainy semi-hard and steadily. I suspect that no matter what the weather does from here on out, people will wake up, see the rain, and the last thing they will think about is going to an outdoor market today. Oh well. On the other hand, we still really need this rain, so you win some, you lose some.

Market psychology

I have never been much of a capitalist, but starting a small business has tended to focus my attention on things like money and sales. The most interesting part is watching people at market make decisions about what to buy. Here are some observations that are probably obvious to anyone who has experience in sales or marketing, but are new to me:

A. No one will ever buy the last anything. I could have the most beautiful head of lettuce sitting there, but if it is the last one in the lettuce tray, everyone passes it over, subconsciously thinking there must be something wrong with the one head no one else wanted.

B. If you can get two people, or better yet two groups of people, to stop at your stand, other people start to think a crowd is forming, and they come over to see what people are buying. From there, the crowd kind of builds on itself, until you have people waiting in line. Once you have a line formed, people get real interested, and they all want to come over. But you need to be careful -- if the line gets too long, people will stop coming over, and they will peel away from the line, and pretty soon you are all by yourself again, trying to get two people, or better yet two groups of people, to stop.

C. One of the most surprising things I have noticed is that if a total stranger is buying something, people will consider buying that same item, even if they hadn't really considered buying it before. For example, on Saturday a lady stopped and was asking about the salad turnips. My sale radar predicted that she was not going to buy anything, but as I was explaining to her about the salad turnips, I saw one of my regular turnip customers enter the market and make a bee line for my stand. Once he got there, I announced him as a regular turnip purchaser to the potential turnip customer. He liked being remembered as a regular, and she became convinced that there must be something to these turnips if this total stranger liked them. They both bought two bunches. Damn, but I am good sometimes!

But I guess my point is what does it matter what a total stranger thinks? Why does a line attract people? You would think no one would like to wait in line. And who cares if it is the last one -- it is still a perfectly good head of lettuce? Yet I am sure I behave in exactly the same way when I am a consumer. It is just that I don't see these dynamics at work until I am trying to do the selling.

Fall's a comin'

Well, not really. But it is amazing the difference three weeks makes. Since the solistice, the days really are getting a little shorter already. I noticed it for the first time tonight -- sun went down about 8:45. This is an amazing orb we live on.

This Old House

Wow. I don't know how to describe what happened around here this weekend, except to say that we got hit by a whole team of human dynamos. Maryellen's Aunt Sam, her cousin Winnie, her Grandma, and her mother, all came up, and they kicked some major house butt. They completely prepped and wallpapered the soon-to-be baby's room, they scraped all the wallpaper off of Maryellen's soon-to-be office, they filled our fridge with tons of food, and we all had a good time.

Here they are going at it!!

Here is Sam and Win putting on the last piece of wallpaper!

This is Maryellen supervising.

Scooter getting used to her or his new room.

And the switch cover from Aunt Jess goes up in Scooter's new room.

Seriously, thank you guys sooooooooo much!!! I can't tell you how much we appreciate your work!!!

Rain

I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning and heard that glorious sound. Rain, rain, rain. I was so excited that I slept in until 5:15 a.m. And it is still coming down. This was so absolutely necessary. We aren't totally out of the woods yet -- this rain will basically get us back to normal plus a little bit. But right now, I am very happy.

Dare I Hope

This morning on Vermont Public Radio, the Eye on the Sky guy said we are expecting a "broad band" of showers and possible thunderstorms tonight into tomorrow. He said it was "the best chance for a soaking rain that we have had in quite some time." I'll believe it when I see it, but send out your rain vibes everyone!

Farmer's markets

The market was good today. It is funny, because some growers swear by farmer's markets (more info here, and way, way more info here) and make them their entire marketing strategy, doing up to five markets a week. Other growers think they are a waste of time.

The upside is that the grower usually can get bust out retail for her or his goods -- no wholesale middleman. And the farmer's market crowd is usually self-selected to include people who value fresh, local, organic produce -- so besides showing up, the farmer doesn't have to do much marketing.

The downside is that the weather can be unpredictable. You can have a day where you harvest for a regular market and a thunderstorm sends you home with a truck load of useless produce. It is also a lot of work to pack up, travel to the market, set up at market, break down after market, travel home, and unpack back at the farm. And it is almost impossible to accurately estimate how much you have to harvest for each market -- you either sell out early, or have excess to bring home that it turns out you didn't need to harvest. In contrast, to fill a wholesale order, you know you only have to pick 20 heads of lettuce, etc.

But in the end, I think the scale tips on whether the farmer likes dealing with people. I think I like it. I have some regular customers already, some friends regularly buy from us (thanks Zoe and Tracy!), and most people say wicked nice stuff about our produce. It is fun when someone comes back each week and says, "Good, you still have those salad turnips -- those were good" -- or anything like that. Of course, I had one person complain about my prices today, but other growers say that if no one ever complains about your prices, they are too low. (And it is not like I am getting rich this year at the prices I am asking).

It is all part of the learning curve, and we are learning a lot this year.

Ahhh, Vermont

Last week it was in the high 90s and muggy as all get out. Today the moisture and clouds cleared out and the lows tonight are going to be in the mid 40s. Atleast it will be good sleeping weather.

Long time, no blog

Wow. The posts have been scant lately. This dry weather has really forced all my spare time into running around with water tanks and garden hoses. Lesson: get a real irrigation system in place -- soon.

We did get a little rain last night, but not enough to really make a significant difference. It only means I don't have to water as much today. But by tomorrow night I will need to be back at it. So in this respite, I can get to the chores I should have been doing while watering. I thought this farming stuff was supposed to be a breeze! No one told me it would be hard work sometimes.

The good news is that I continue to sell out at market -- marketing does not seem to be the problem. Our friends Ben and Neera were in town this weekend, with their very cute daughter Ilina. Here I am talking to them at the end of the market on Saturday in front of our sold out stand.

Ben and Neera and Ilina pics

Vrooooom!

Our tractor is in the shop right now (it was inexplicably running a little hot, especially under a load), and the guy has been super duper slow to get it back to us. In the meantime, I have had some chores stack up that really need to be addressed. These chores require a tractor.

[Farm geek elaboration: Basically I have two open strips in the field that we aren't using this year, but that we want to use in future years. The best way to hold the soil, and to add organic matter as well, is to plant a cover crop in the interim. The key is you have to till the cover crop in before it goes to seed, otherwise your cover crop distributes its seeds and it just becomes a weed in future years. So, on these open strips we seeded oats this spring, but now the oats (and the weeds, including a wild mustard) are developing seed heads and they really needed to get turned under. If those seeds mature it exponentially increase the amount of attention these strips will need down the road. Now back to our normal post.]

So I borrowed/rented our neighbors beautiful John Deere. (John Deere tractors are considered the Mercedes of the tractor world, at least they are up here in Vermont).

I'll tell you, this tractor probably cost 8 times what our tractor is worth, but boy, is it nice.

I am not losing my mind

Maryellen was at a town planning meeting recently and she chatted with a neighbor of ours who mentioned that another neighbor had a son who was learning to play the bagpipes. He sounds pretty good to me already.