Down on the Farm

Been busy

Even with two feet of snow on the ground, things are starting to heat up around here.

Lots of farm planning. The organic regulations require that we have detailed maps and plans showing exactly what has gone into, and has been harvested from, each field each year. Plus they want to see projected plans for this year. So I have been drawing little maps, plotting crop rotations, and trying to see how these plans might possibly jive with our projected marketing needs.

Lots of ordering. Seeds, seedling supplies, growing supplies. Within the next week I will make a trip down to Vermont Compost to pick up a yard or two of potting soil.

Lots of building. I need to cut more cedars for our new hoophouse this year. Plus the two little greenhouses we already have up need some work. Plus the barn needs some work. Plus the farmstand too.

Lots of marketing. I met this week with a printer about a logo for some labels and calling cards. I want to build a topper for the truck with our logo on it. We also need a new sign for the farmer's markets, and a sign for the road by the farmstand.

Sometimes this part of the year is exciting because of all there is to do, and sometimes it is terrifying. This morning it seems exciting. But I will keep you posted on the terror.

Reading time

We went to the NOFA winter conference this weekend, and we had a great time. I am very excited because I picked up two new books at the conference -- Steel in the Field and The Hoophouse Handbook (scroll down a little for the latter). Both look like great reading.

Also, we hit some helpful workshops, got some t-shirts and such, and had a yummy lunch. I had to help present at one workshop, and facilitate another one, and both those went well. Plus, we knew so many more people this year that it made me feel like we are really starting to become part of the farm community up here. And Waverly made some new baby friends. All in all a successful day.

Farms farms farms!

Look at all these beautiful small farms!!! On the internet, no less.

Late night coversations down on the farm

Lying in bed at night. Nothing but stars and moon in the background.

ME: What's the thing about being a parent that has been most surprising to you?

P: How much fun it's been.

ME: Yeah, me too!

Silence

P: Imagine if we ever had to give up the farm for some reason and move back to the real world?

ME: Oh, don't even say that.

P: I know. What a freaky thought.

Silence.

P: Did we ever turn off the coffeemaker?

ME: I can't remember.

P: I'll go check.

ME: Could you get me some water?

P: Sure.

Big weekend

One of the things it seems organic farmers do in the winter is go to conferences. This weekend is the NOFA-VT annual winter conference, held at the Vermont Technical College in Randolph. The conference is all day Saturday, it includes three workshop sessions, a keynote, a huge potluck lunch, and an all day (indoor) farmer's market. At the end of the day, there is usually some music and an ice cream social with really yummy ice cream from the Stratford Creamery. It is quite a show, attracting several hundred people from all over the place (which, by the way, makes for one heck of a potluck lunch).

The annual dilemma is which workshops to attend. I will be helping my friend Richard put on his workshop about farm profitability and mentorship in the first session. I am also committed to serve as a facilitator for the Specialty Potatoes workshop in the third session. And for the second session I may go to the Growing Organic Berries workshop. Or maybe the one on seedling production.

The thing about NOFA, however, is that it is really not only for farmers. There are tons of workshops for consumers as well, including a cooking workshop, a how to make lip balm and salves workshop, some energy efficient home building type workshops, there is one session with a film about farming stories, some on non-commercial gardening ideas, some political workshops, this year there seem to be a few new workshops dealing with historical topics, so on and so forth.

Anyway, this will be Waverly's first NOFA conference, and I think she is ready. She almost fits into the Carhart overalls she received from our friend Karen. Plus, she has her workboots from cousins Joey and Ro-Ro.

If you are even slightly inclined to, you should join us and check out the show. Maybe we will see you there!

Old stuff

Our tractor was built in 1972. According to these folks, that makes it an antique. Oh well. Good thing there are so many resources out there for older tractors.

New stuff

Just FYI, some new links below, including this one, which talks a little about some of the things we are trying to do here on the farm.

Pop's shop

My grandfather, Pop, had an amazing shop. He built a paddleboat, fixed clocks, and generally was a genius tinkerer out there. He died eight years ago.

Peter, Waverly and I went down this weekend to visit my grandmother

and to take a bunch of tools from Pop's shop.

There were all kinds of treasures,

big,

and small.

We're standing on the shoulders of giants.

How do they do it?

I am not sure how toy manufacturers stay in business. So far, Waverly's two favorite toys are a wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer, and a pair of old cow bells we have had for years. And it is not because she doesn't have other stuff. Oh well.

Woohoo!!!

Help us welcome the newest member of the farm crew!

After a couple of months of looking, we bought a 1996 Ford F-250 this morning. It has an extended cab, a V8 diesel engine, a full 8 foot bed, and four wheel drive. It is an absolute beast of a vehicle. As our mechanic Gary said, "You should be able to drive straight up a tree with that thing."

We needed this truck to replace our 1988 Ford F-150 that kind of died this fall. I guess it didn't really die as much as it ran out of useful life. It had some problems that we ended up deciding were not really cost effective to address.

Why such a monster truck? Well, it was cheap. Really cheap. Why so cheap? It has lots and lots of miles on it. I mean, lots. Like an amount of miles that makes you stop and think hard before handing over a check for any amount.

But the miles are (hopefully) not bad miles. The guy we bought it from had a house in Mass. and a house in VT, and he was an electrical contractor for Wal Mart. So he spent his weekends driving back and forth between MA and VT, and he spent his weekdays driving to different Wal Marts all over New England. He needed a F-250 because he had this small to medium-ish size cart of electrical gear that he towed behind the truck for work.

The truck is presently in excellent shape. The guy took care of it, and there really isn't a thing wrong with it, at least not right now. We didn't have much money to spend, so we decided to take a calculated risk on the mileage. It is conceivable that everything falls apart on it tomorrow, but for today, it is great!

CDC support for theory on blog

Two days ago, Peter posted about an interview he heard with author Michael Pollin in which Michael Pollin explains his theory that the overproduction of corn in this country over the past 30 years has contributed to the rise in obesity as well as other problems.

Today the CDC released a report that we are getting fatter because we're eating more, particularly high carbohydrate foods such as soda, which, of course is generally sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

Here's a link to the CDC report or you can read a summary in the NY Times (or other papers probably).

Worms

I am happy to report that the worms are doing much better this winter!! As Mark alluded to earlier, we have composting worms in a box in our basement. Last winter they really were in a downward spiral. I'm not sure how it started, maybe moving them from Danville to Peacham in the middle of winter? Overwatering? Anyway, once the downward spiral starts it seems to feeds on itself, because fewer worms take longer to eat the compost, so the whole system starts tilting toward more anaerobic, which makes the worms unhappy so they eat less, not to mention turns the worm box into a stinky mess of rotting garbage.

But this year I started by giving them lots of melon scraps at the end of last summer. Melons are their favorite food. I bought a shredder for the newspaper that they use as bedding, and I was careful not to overfeed them, and now we have lots of very healthy and hungry worms as you can see in the above photo. And even though it looks gross, it doesn't smell or anything and produces beautiful and very rich compost. Save the earth one worm at a time!!!

Family farms, biodiversity, and deep farm thoughts

I don't have time to tackle a lot of huge issues this morning, but I thought I would pass along some thought provoking stuff I have come across lately.

First, I was driving around somewhere on Monday night, which means that Living on Earth was on Vermont Public Radio. The particular show I was listening to had a fascinating interview with Michael Pollan, a New York Times writer and author of the Botany of Desire. Two basic points he made: (1) we can track a lot of our country's agricultural and health problems to a deliberate decision to encourage the over production of corn in the 1970s, and our deliberate over production since then, and (2) big factory farms don't work for farmers and aren't necessary to feed the world. If you have a chance, I would really encourage you to listen to the interview (or read the transcript, which is also up on the LOE link above). And also listen to the later story in the same show titled "Grazing in the Grass". Even though the latter story is about a cattle rancher, we are, at least in spirit, trying to do a lot of the same things on our farm.

The second item is a link about kale. Well, not so much about kale, as it is about the wonder of plants, biodiversity, and open source software. Just something to think about.

Turning the corner . . . ?

I think every season has a day or two when you first sense the next season coming along. A cool night in August can smell like fall, or today for instance, is a bright, sunny, 35 degree February day with the first whiff of spring in the air. In a month or so the sap will be running, and after that (hopefully) spring will be here.

Technical notice

This site has recently been bombed by drug ad spam. What happens is some spammer is posting the same ad in the comments section of each post on this site. Obviously, they have some evil auto-posting device that allows them to commit this terrible act. Please be assured that we have our best minds working on the problem. (In other words, I basically sent Mark an email asking him what to do.) If any tech-oriented people out there have any ideas on how to prevent this, we would sure appreciate any input.