Down on the Farm

Tulips

The tulips are pushing their noses through the warming spring soil.

Greenhouse #2!!

Wavy and I spent some time planting sungold cherry tomatoes in our new greenhouse #2 the other day. We have dumped a lot of time, sweat, and dough into this second house over the last six months, so this is a very satisfying day. Very exciting stuff!

And then Wavy went on patrol in greenhouse #1 to inspect the earlier tomatoes and peppers in there.

Seedlings

Spinach

White salad turnips

When we start the second greenhouse, we are going to plant these between the tomatoes. They'll be done and out by the time the tomatoes grow big enough to need the space, and we'll have fun stuff to bring to the first May markets in Waitsfield.

Spring sun

It is awesome out. So sunny and warm that Henry and I had to roll up a side on the greenhouse this morning for the first time this season.

Henry's still getting used to the idea of sun! Definitely appreciated my shade.

CSA Information 2006

Here is a reprint of our CSA flyer. Our CSA is our weekly basket service (more information below).

For a printable registration form, click here.

To see what folks in the CSA got in their baskets each week last season, click here.

Let us grow a summer’s worth of great tasting vegetables for you. Join the Old Shaw Farm CSA!

Rich soil

For more than 75 years, the Shaw family farmed this land, raising cows and chickens. The natural fertilizer from their animals enriches our soil.

Also, the glaciers were very good to us. They left us great soil without many of the rocks and boulders you find in much of Vermont. It gently sloped our land to create natural drainage, with a small pond for water during dry spells.

Finally, our land faces south. This gives us abundant sunshine. And the hot houses gather in the spring sunshine, so we can get our tomatoes and peppers to you earlier in the summer.

Best seed varieties

We choose our seed varieties based on best taste. Some are heirlooms, some are new. We don't have to make trade-offs for vegetables that ship well or look fresher than they are. We pick turnips for salad that are crunchy and crisp, and charentais melons that are fragrant and complexly sweet.

We pick our produce at peak for the best flavor possible.

Wicked fresh

It's usually less than a day from our field to your kitchen. Vegetables taste best when they are fresh. Kids love our veggies. Kids will eat our broccoli when they won’t touch regular broccoli. And kids eat our cherry tomatoes like candy!

Our vegetables taste better because you get them faster. It takes ten days or more for many of the vegetables that you find in the supermarket to get to you. They start in California, or Texas, or even another country. From the field they are flown to an importer, and then are trucked to a wholesaler, and then to a distributor, and finally they end up in the supermarket. Then the store leaves them out until you buy them. They are tired and have lost half their taste when they get to you!

Lots of love

We love our farm! We care about our land! And the people who work for us love the farm too!

Our baskets

Every week we pack a basket for you full of great tasting vegetables. Last year's baskets included (in rough order of the season) mesclun, peas, lettuce, salad turnips, arugula, sun gold cherry tomatoes, broccoli, basil, red slicing tomatoes, zucchini, garlic scapes, yellow summer squash, strawberries, sweet peppers, hot peppers, new potatoes, baby chard and beet greens, fresh garlic, cucumbers, beets, green beans, yellow beans, carrots, yellow onions, eggplants, dried garlic, charentais melons, watermelons, corn, cauliflower, red onions, kale, collard greens, leeks, winter squash, spinach.

People often ask how much is in the basket. It’s about $21 worth of vegetables, in farmer’s market prices. (The price for the season breaks down to about $18 per week.) You get a lot for your money. Most of our subscribers are households with two adults, sometimes with kids, though all kinds of households subscribe.

Community Supported Agriculture

Our weekly basket service is a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. The name CSA comes from the idea of linking local residents with nearby farmers. Eliminating middlemen reduces costs. Consumers get fresh, healthy products at a good price. CSAs also help sustain local farms by getting revenue to farmers early in the season.

Price

The price is $325 for the 18 week season, which breaks down to $18 a week. It’s a 15% savings over farmer's market prices, 20% or more over store prices. We also have a large basket available for $475.

The season runs from the week of June 14 through the week of October 18. The deadline to sign up is June 1.

Pickup options

Wednesdays Danville Farmer’s Market 9am-1pm
Fridays At the farm in South Peacham, 4-7pm
Saturdays Waitsfield Farmer’s Market, 9am- 1pm

To order

Call Maryellen at 592-3349
Email Maryellen@oldshawfarm.com
Mail your check to Old Shaw Farm, Box 181, Peacham 05862
Click here for order form

Who We Are

We are the Griffins - Maryellen, Peter, Waverly and Henry. We had been looking for good soil and a good home for about four years when we finally found our home in Peacham. It was more land and more house than we had planned on, but it has beautiful, fertile, well-drained soil, and a great history. Since most people know our house as the old Shaw place, we decided to stick with the name.

So far, things are working out. We’ve expanded the amount of land we farm each year. We have built two greenhouses. We do two farmers’ markets a week - Danville and Waitsfield - and sell from a farmstand at our farm.

Farm Share Program

Please consider including a $10 donation to the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-VT)'s Farm Share Program when you sign up. We will gather all the donations from our members and send them to NOFA, who will match the money and use it to make a share in our CSA available to a low-income family at half price. More information about the Farm Share Program is at nofavt.org. Thank you!!

Comments from last year's CSAers

“Your produce is beautiful, the price is extremely reasonable, and your friendliness made it all even more worthwhile. I'll be back next year!”
Nichole Ruggles - W. Burke

“We enjoy the produce knowing that it is grown locally. We also like supporting local farmers.”
Gib Parrish - Peacham

“We ate so well all summer with Old Shaw Farm. The only downside is now we have to face supermarket lettuce again”
Tom Forster - Danville

For a printable registration form, click here.

Henry

Henry is four months old today! Happy birthday Henry!!!

Sigh

As I walked out to the greenhouse this morning to check on things, the ground was frozen solid and it was snowing. Not a lot of snow, just flurries really, but enough to be depressing on the third day of spring. I am looking forward to summer.

Getting started

This weekend we transplanted out the peppers and tomatoes into the containers we are using as part of our container culture experiment.

The peppers are above, and these are the tomatoes.

And as long as the greenhouse is on, we are filling it up with other seedlings that will get transplanted either into the second greenhouse, or one of the hoophouses.

I was saying to Maryellen yesterday that once stuff gets started in the greenhouse, it is hard not to get excited about the upcoming year! But there is still a lot to do. This week's goal: get greenhouse #2 up and running.

Greenhouse #1 is on!

Peppers!

The new container culture system (plus Wavy's tractor).

Mud season is here a little early this year.

Weekend update

Waverly, Henry and I watched a moose.

Aleda came to work. All the new pots are filled with potting soil and in the greenhouse, and we are on the verge of being ready to turn it on. It was awesome to see Aleda. We are hopeful to have Aleda, Kat and Laura back working for us this year!!

Peter built and installed a vent for the new greenhouse.

Is that organic?

Here is another article that raises the old, "How organic is that . . . ?" question. Wal-Mart is planning to double its organic product sales. In some ways, this is great -- Wal Mart is obviously responding to a genuine demand for organic products, and if they want to sell an organic twinkie, that is better than selling a non-organic twinkie. On the other hand, Wal Mart will probably not buy much stuff from small farms like us. They are so huge and national that the only organic farms or producers that can sell to them are huge corporate farms in California and Mexico, or corporate grocery divisions of companies like Kellogg and General Mills. That means that Wal Mart's move into organics is not really doing much to shift the world to a more local and sustainable food system, or to more quality food products. And some folks argue these types of developments tend to dilute the meaning of organic by simply using it as a marketing tool, instead of as a springborad for real agricultural, dietary, or social change. We report, you decide.

In my opinion, this is the question in the organic movement today, as it probably has been for the last 5 to 10 years or so. As organic food goes mainstream, there is definitely something that is lost or changed in translation. I am not prepared to say such change is wholly good or bad -- I think it is some of both -- but it is change that seems somewhat inevitable. Having said that, I have very grave concerns about Wal Mart being the face of organics for many people -- I would much rather have your local farmer/food producer be the embodiment of organic instead.

Follow up to last night's post

As Maryellen mentioned last night, there is an actual reason why we are tacking old greenhouse plastic to the floor of one of our greenhouses. Last year we had disease problem in that house -- bacterial canker. One of the plant experts from the University of Vermont extension office, Ann Hazelrigg, explained that bacterial canker is a soil and seed borne problem -- it most likely got into that greenhouse from some infected tomato seeds from last year. Normally, we plant tomatoes in the ground in our greenhouses, but in an effort to avoid the canker this year, we are experimenting with a container culture. Growing in a container culture means growing each plant in a pot with soil that you import into the greenhouse. So the first step for us is to lay down an impermeable barrier on the greenhouse soil that is most likely infected with the canker. We will then put big pots on top of the plastic, fill them with a growing mix, and see what happens. Obviously, importing the soil adds to the expense, but we should also see increased production from less disease, and from a warmer starting point for our tomatoes.

We aren't really breaking any new ground here. This container culture is actually how a lot of bigger tomato growers do their greenhouse tomatoes. Up in our area, Long Wind Farm grows a ton of tomatoes, and they do all their houses in a container culture. And Karl from Vermont Compost Company was invaluable in advising us on how to think about setting up a container culture on our scale.

The problem is that tomatoes are the most profitable greenhouse crop up here, but if you grow anything year after year in the same soil (at least if you grow organically), you are bound to develop some disease problems. So we will see how this works this year.

Some people may think we are a little plastic happy around here, and perhaps we are. But in this climate, you need to extend the season somehow, and greenhouse plastic is the best option to do it. Elliot Coleman, in his book Four Season Harvest, has extensive calculations showing that growing a head of lettuce in Maine under plastic in the winter only uses about one twelfth to one third of the energy required to truck it in from California, depending on how you do the math. So while plastic may not be the absolute ideal, it may be the best we have if humans want to keep living up here all year long.

Two birds with one stone

In the super strong winds a few weeks ago, a piece of greenhouse plastic came loose from one of the hoophouses. (That hoophouse seems to be cursed, which is a story for another post.) Anyway, yesterday, Cornelia and I cut off the plastic which had been flapping since then and tacked it down inside the first greenhouse. Henry's squirming and is not enjoying sitting on my lap so I won't try to explain now why we're tacking it to the floor of the greenhouse - hopefully later.

Peter was with the kids, mostly inside, and we were communicating via walkie talkie. At one point I called him to say, hey look out the window I think the plastic is about to go sailing into the road. Just as we had gotten about 90% of it cut off, the wind really picked up and I thought it would get away from us. Thanks to Cornelia's quick thinking and hustle though, it didn't actually sail away.

Sledding with the cousins

Also I hope this photo helps explain the location of the second greenhouse. The barn and the house lie to left of the picture (they're not in the photo.) You can see the dark red farmstand shed in the distance at the left of the photo. The small wooden shed is the biodiesel shed. Then moving left to right, is the first greenhouse then the second greenhouse. The house you see in the distance is the Berwick's, across the street. This view is facing east, from the eastern edge of the farm field.

This photo was taken at about 9:00 a.m. Even though the second greenhouse is much closer to the tree line, it gets plenty of sun.

CSA Week Eighteen

We have been working on our CSA flyer for this year, and I was looking back through the blog so I could write on the flyer the list of veggies that CSAers got in their baskets last year. Anyway, I realized I never posted the basket info for the last week of the season! So that people who might be considering signing up for this year have the whole list of baskets, here it is. This was for baskets picked up on October 12 or October 15.

Looking at it, I realize I was right about one thing -- come February we too are aching for real fresh veggies. I bought some organic mesclun at Price Chopper last week, and though it looked good, it was wicked expensive and it tasted like cardboard.

News from the field:

This is it - the end - the last basket! Thank you for being a part of our CSA!!! It has been a great season for us, and we have enjoyed the CSA a tremendous amount. But all good things must end, and, as we finally start getting some cold weather, we have completed our final harvest of 2005. Our two farmer’s markets are ending, the CSA is over, and our few wholesale accounts are at an end as well.

For us, it this is a bittersweet time of year - we love doing this work, so we will miss it this winter, but at the same time, we are looking forward to a little down time. Of course, when February rolls around, we will be looking forward to fresh veggies as much as everyone, so everything has its season.

In this last basket we have included some items that you should be able to store for at least a little while. The winter squash and onions should keep if they are stored in a cool, dry place, and the carrots will last quite a while in the fridge.

Enjoy the off-season!!

In the Basket:

Broccoli - In their survey, one CSA family requested more broccoli next year. So we thought we’d get started toward that a little early. Thank you very much to all who filled out surveys!! We are definitely interested in your feedback, so if you haven’t had a chance to fill out a survey, please let us know your thoughts by mail or by email - maryellen@oldshawfarm.com

Carrots, onions, and squash- A whole bunch to hopefully last you a bit.

Tomatoes - A last taste of summer.

Spinach - Spinach was first cultivated in Iran, almost 2,000 years ago. The Arabs aptly named it ‘‘the prince of vegetables’’.

Thank you!!!

Hi NPR listeners

Wow. The National Public Radio story that I was interviewd for aired this morning, and I think it sounded Ok. I didn't realize my voice was so nasal-ly. And I kind of wish they had made it more clear that getting back to farm work was a big part of what motivated my decision. Oh well. In any event, welcome to our blog NPR listeners. If you got here because of the recent story about my back surgery, there are entries on the surgery, and how it has affected our lives, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Otherwise, the About Us page linked in the left column, or any of the categories are good places to start poking around here. Welcome!

UPDATE: Here is a link to the story on the NPR website.

Almost famous

One side story to the whole back surgery episode was that right around the time of my surgery the surgeon who operated on me was being interviewed by Joanne Silberner of National Public Radio. Joanne's news story is on back pain and why people make the choices they do for treatment. She wanted to follow the stories of a couple of patients, and my surgeon gave her my name. She interviewed me right before the surgery and again last Friday, and now the story is supposed to run tomorrow morning on NPR's Morning Edition! I don't have an exact time yet, and there is still a chance that my interview will end up on the cutting room floor, but when/if I get more info, I will post it here. God, I hope I don't sound like a dork on national radio.

UPDATE 3/1 3:30pm: The word I got from Joanne this afternoon is that the piece will be a part of NPR's feeds at 5:40am, 7:40am, and 9:40am (all EST), with the caveat that the story may get bumped if some dramatic breaking news bursts on the scene. Her email also said that I am definitely still in the story, although it sounded like she may have shaved my segment down a bit. After noon tomorrow, the story will be available on NPR's website, and when I figure out what that means, I will post a link.