Down on the Farm

Seedlings

Two kinds of lettuce

First planting of beets

Second planting of beets

Onions (turnips look pretty similar right now)

Sun gold tomatoes

This is how Heike rides

Heike, our neighbor, often rides her beautiful horse down the road on which Waverly and I like to walk.

In like a lamb, out like a lamb

March has been pretty kind to us. On the radio this morning the weather guy was saying how in March, 2001, this area had over five feet of snowfall. This year, March started out warm, got a little cold and snowy, and now the last few days have been sunny, in the 50s during the day, and in the 20s at night. Most of the snowpack is gone, and we may even plant some early lettuce seedlings out in the hoophouse this weekend.

[My little secret goal/experiment this year is to see how hard it would be to get full head lettuce by May 1. So far, it hasn't been that hard -- we have three to four inch lettuce plants in the seedling house ready to plant out. If this experiment goes well without a huge need for more infrastructure, then next year we can really make a bigger push for an early market niche.]

I also think this year will be all about trying to save labor. For example, the $100 I spent on a little propane heater for the seedling house has already paid for itself in two ways: (1) it has allowed us to get seedlings up and going a month earlier (not to mention producing better quality seedlings), and (2) it has saved me time bringing seedlings inside when we are expecting really cold weather. I mean, last night it was in the low 20s here, and I don't think it got below 44 degrees in the seedling house -- nice and toasty (at least relatively speaking).

THE Farm

I don't come from a farm background. I grew up in the suburbs. So sometimes people ask me how I came to a farming life.

The answer to that question, as with most big questions like that, is not entirely straightforward. But I know at least one part of the answer starts with THE Farm.

The Farm was a place where my brothers and I spent a number of our summers growing up. It was in Connecticut, not far from where my parents grew up. Our family rented/care-took the place for the Katz family, who would spend each of their summers in Ireland.

The Farm was old -- built in 1790. And there were donkeys and horses and chickens and geese and bees and a goat and even some turkeys (before the foxes ate them). Plus a big garden. Plus a lot of Tintin and Asterix books. And the beach and fishing in Long Island Sound were not far away.

Here I am riding a young donkey in my typical summer attire.

My brother with a friendly chicken.

Me and my Dad cleaning out stalls.

My younger brother Geoff and I goofing around with our uncle Dave.

Here's my Mom, her mother (my Gram), and her brother, playing some backgammon under a shady tree.

A lot of crazy things happened on the Farm. My Dad almost burned the place down once. There were these white turtle doves that lived in the barn, but would come waddle into the house the during the day to just hang out with the humans, mostly in the living room. Ashby the goat was absolutely uncontrolable. We would eat the world's best fried dough my Mom made. My folks would throw big summer parties. A donkey had a baby donkey one summer. My older brother ran over my younger brother once on his bike and broke his leg (in my older brother's defense, we were throwing dirt bombs/rocks at him, and I don't think he meant to actually run us over).

But the best part was my Mom would send me and Geoff to go get eggs from the chickens in the morning, and we wouldn't come back until about noon -- there were just too many adventures on the way. It was a good start for a farming life -- clean air, clean living, and a fair amount of work and fun. But mostly fun.

Who are you?

I checked out the statistics for this site this morning. So far in March we are averaging 200 unique "visits" everyday, and for the month of March there have been over 500 unique visitors. I know these numbers are tiny for most real websites, but they kind of blow me away for our little operation! Imagine if everyone who came here each day bought 14 heads of lettuce each time they visited. Whoa. Maybe we should start taking advertising, have an IPO, and then do things like "phase out the virtual focus of your innovative planning processes". In any event, thanks for stopping by!

Seedling move

Peter moved the seedlings out to the seedling house this morning.

It was lovely inside there. This is at 10:00 a.m., with nothing but solar heat going.

The question is whether it will stay warm enough in there at night for the little darlings. Wait and see . . . .

Spectacular day

After days of down dragging gray, cold weather, today was amazing. A dusting of fresh snow last night to make everything look clean and pretty, brilliant blue sky, and warm spring sun.

Waverly, our friend Dana, and I went snowshoeing this morning and there were fresh animal tracks everywhere. Plus all kinds of birds singing and flying. The world is waking up!!

I think these are rabbit or hare tracks.

Happy Birthday Geoff!!!

Today is my little brother's birthday. I guess he isn't so little anymore -- today he is thirty something years old. But I hope he is able to have this many gumdrops again this year!! Happy Birthday Geoff!!!

Slightly bitter sarcasm alert

It was six degrees above zero this morning on the porch at 6am. Tonight, the low is supposed to be two. Happy Spring everyone!

The shop

Peter's converted a room above the woodshed into a shop. The previous owners' sons had used that room as a place to play electric guitar and hangout, so it's insulated and has lots of electric outlets.

Anyway, here's a panoramic shot of the seedling starting operation currently underway in the shop. Thanks to Corny for showing me this feature of our camera!!

Self cleaning baby

Sheri, my sister in law, asked recently where were the photos of Waverly covered in rice cereal. These are sweet potatoes, but you get the idea.

Waverly is amazingly good at wiping her own face.

I think she just likes playing with and chewing on the napkin, but hey it works!

Seedling house

The seedling house is just about ready.

It's doubled in size since last year, and it's ready a month earlier. How's that for progress!

Animal party

Animal tracks all over the fresh snow on the hilltop. Waverly and I didn't go up to see whose tracks they are, but I'm hoping it's coyotes to scare away all the deer.

Wavo

Everyone is asking for pictures of Waverly.

She is doing pretty good these days. She was pretty wicked sick last week -- plus teething, plus two earaches! But this week she is much better. Just growing along and being a good kid. Lots of goofing around!

New tools

Peter's got a few fun new tools over the past few months. My favorite is the post hole digger.

When you have a post hole digger, that really opens up your options. A nice solid shelter for the bees? A fence for Cornelia's goats or Karen's sheep? More realistically another hothouse or two.

Also a bigger and sturdier water tank.

And some refrigerators for the farm stand.

We got the fridges at this cool recycled building materials store called ReCover. If the farm stand works out, I think we are planning to get a nicer deli style refrigerator -- with the sliding glass doors. But those are expensive -- $600-800 used. So these used refrigerators will give us a chance to try out the farm stand to see how we like it and to see if it is worth it moneywise first.

Critters

I saw a coyote the other day, which was kind of unusual. We hear them all the time at night, but I seldom see them. And I almost never see them out in the open during the day. This one was on the edge of the big field, just standing there. I don't think she/he saw me, so I just stood there too. Eventually, she/he turned and went back into the woods. I guess after a long winter food is hard to come by, and the animals start moving about more and more in seach of something to eat.

Which reminds me -- I was working on our small greenhouse down by the barn, and I noticed mouse tunnels in the crusty snow. The mice and voles are usually kept in check by the foxes that live in the woods near the barn, but these guys figured out how to use the structure of the greenhouse to make a safer home. I am afraid all our stomping around will force them out soon. We have seedlings we have started in the house that will need to go out into the greenhouse soon.

And as I was working on the greenhouse, Maryellen and Waverly came out for a bit. Maryellen and I discussed what we need to do with the bees, which currently live on the second floor of the barn, which is a little too close to the farmstand for my comfort. Plus, bees give me the willies. We are thinking of moving the hive up into the field, but that would be quite a project because the hive is so heavy, so alive, and so potentially volatile. So we need to mull that one over a bit.

Our neighbor is also selling lambs this spring. I am generally against getting animals as pets, but I have to admit I am tempted to get two sheep just to have them around the farm. Maryellen was a bit surprised when I suggested we get some. Who knows if we will? At this time of year, when the spring holds so much promise, it is easy to get carried away.

Sounds of spring

As Waverly and I were walking to church this morning, we walked past this one field where the wind and plows had created this big snowbank. I kept hearing a little pitter pat along the snowbank, like a little animal running across it, but when I would look, nothing. Finally, I realized it was the sound of the snowbank melting in the warm sun and collapsing in on itself. Spring's coming!

Mad River Green Farmers Market

We got in to the Mad River Green Farmers Market!!! Woohoo!! This farmers market has a good reputation among customers and farmers alike, so we are wicked psyched to be a part of it.

What does it mean that "we got in"? Well there is a sort of chicken and egg phenomenon with farmers markets. Customers won't come unless farmers do, and farmers won't come unless customers do. So the well established markets, like Mad River Green, are so popular with farmers that they can afford to be choosy about who they let in. We are glad they chose us!!

We're also going to do the Danville Farmers Market, which is smaller and mellower, but it is close by our farm and a fun chance to visit with neighbors and friends while selling our veggies.

Come by and see us!!

Taking stock

Waverly and I walked up to and around the farm field to see how things are up there.

There was a lot of bare ground on the south side of the main field, but it was still covered on the north side.

The greenhouse Peter built last year seems to have weathered the winter well.

The cover crop of oats was winter killed, as it should have been, but looks like it did a good job of protecting the soil and adding structure to it.

There were some brassica stalks -- broccoli or kale maybe -- that looked like maybe the deer had been gnawing them.

Someone has been snacking on last year's melons.

Turkeys maybe?

Hard to say with the tracks mostly melted.

Signs of spring

I know its not daffodils, but I was very excited to see something, anything green! Oh ya and that white stuff is snow, sigh.

Winter on its way out

So this picture about sums it up -- the seedling trays got delivered on the porch, where the sleds and snowshoes still reside, and it is sleeting in the background.

And what do we have here? Has Maryellen been out off-roading again?

Nope. Just our "driveway" at the beginning of mud season.

Bees in winter

So the bees are still alive! I checked them today, and they're still buzzing. It's still real cold for them, so I didn't open them all the way up, just enough to determine that some are still alive. They've still got a good two months to go, I think, before things will start to bloom, so they're not out of the woods yet. I thought about trying to feed them sugar water, but the hive seemed still heavy with honey, and I don't really know what I'm doing with feeding them. So I decided to leave well enough alone. They have mites, bad. I need to do something about that once it warms up.

You can see above my attempts to keep them warm this winter. An old down comforter, some eggcrate foam, and lots of hay. It looks silly, but so far so good!

Vermont rocks, part 143

Baby Waverly has a cold and we didn't get much sleep last night, there are like a million things to do around here, panic about the season is slowing beginning to build below the surface, sometimes I wonder what the hell we are doing . . .

But this totally brought a smile to my face this morning. Here is an excerpt from an email I received from a Vermonter-in-exile who stumbled across our site:

I enjoyed your Website. I’d just like to say HI ...and tell you ...you have the best life up there and never leave thinking there are better places because Vermont is the very best!!! Take care and good luck to you all!!

I guess I couldn't have said it better myself.

Crank it up

Sorry about the light posting lately. The weather has been good so I have been trying to get out and cut some cedar posts that we hope to use for building some hoophouse frames this year. We also picked up a used post hole digger the other day to help with the homemade hoophouses. I actually bargained the guy down a little when I went to look at it, which I am usually not very good at. But, by negotiating a little I managed to save some money for the farm, which is a good incentive.

On the weather front, by "good" I mean it has been in the 40s. It really seems that all of a sudden winter's back has been broken in the last week. We still have plenty of snow around, but now there are bare patches. And while it may get cold again, it won't be thirty degrees below zero. So with the shift in weather comes lots of prep for the season.

Which reminds me, I should post a help-wanted-on-the-farm page, with a full description and everything. We could use one of two things -- either a full-time apprentice, who could room and board with us for the summer, or a part-time hourly employee for about 20 hours a week. I think we are going to need some help this year.

Also, if there are any house painters, carpenters, excavators/foundation people, road-rebuilders, roofers, or baby sitters out there, drop us an email. I am serious!

Wow

It is raining out this morning. Rain. I can't believe it. And the weather guys used the "F" word this morning -- fifty. Temperatures are supposed to hit 50 degrees today.

Suffice it to say, Maryellen and I have broken out our shorts and t-shirts.