Down on the Farm

Snow

Beautiful snow today. Fluffy, light, plentiful. Mark and Tamara came to visit with baby Josie.

Holiday housekeeping

Hi everyone. We had a great Christmas, and are looking forward to the New Year.

We are really grateful for everyone who sent us a Christmas card this year. If you are wondering why you didn't get one from us, it is because nobody did. We just didn't get to it this year. I'd say we are currently doing cards about two out of every three years. We thought about doing New Year's cards, or even Martin Luther King Jr. Day cards, but then we figured we were better off just letting go of the whole thing, and trying to regroup next December. So look out next year -- maybe we will send out two cards to make up for this year.

Also, if you just can't get enough Old Shaw Farm photos, I have added a Flickr account botton on the left hand column. These will probably be more family related photos, and not so much farm related. But they are there for you to enjoy. Once you click through, I think you can hit the Turnipboy's photostream link to see the whole set.

Green Christmas

Maryellen in front of one of the hoophouses. Note the sides are rolled up because the chicken manure compost stinks so much.

It has been such a mild winter that the ground inside our hoophouses hasn't froze yet. As a result, we were able to go up there yesterday and spread very stinky composted chicken manure and some lime, and rototill it all in. When you add some rock picking and general clean up, the whole project took about the equivalent of a day. Which is now one less day of work we will have to do in the spring, when we are always really pressed for time.

If I were a plant, I would think this would be a good place to grow.

But enough work -- today we began our Christmas break!

Happy Solstice everyone!

Today is the day that the tide turns!

The seed catalogs are stacked on my desk, greenhouse #1 is still a mess from last year, the winter tractor repairs/maintenance are almost done, I have put on my 5-10 extra winter pounds, the new hoophouses are pretty much done, there is a list of about a dozen other miscellaneous repair/fix up tasks to get to -- in other words, right about where we should be in late December.

Embrace the non-sunlight today! This is our best chance to act like hibernating bears.

The beginning of the beginning?

We think of the solstice, when the days start to lengthen, as the start of the new growing season. But the solstice isn't for a couple of days yet, and today we got a load of potting soil delivered for the 2007 season, so perhaps we can kick things off a couple of days early this year.

Dennis the Vermont Compost Company trucker guy getting the truck ready to dump.

We get our potting soil from the Vermont Compost Company. Their stuff is always great, always consistent, and they go out of their way to take care of local growers, even people on our scale. A real first class operation.

We use thier stuff to raise our seedlings before transplanting out in the field. As we have grown, we have needed to get more potting soil each year, and this year we are up to 6 yards. Dennis comes and can dump it in the barn, where is stores fine for winter. We get the off-season discount, and Karl at Vermont Compost gets to keep his crew working year 'round.

It will be time to plant soon!

Growing up on a Vermot veggie farm

This morning Waverly and I were discussing the order of the seasons. When I was a kid, I learned about winter, spring, summer, and fall. However, the seasonal clock being constructed in Waverly's head seems to have a different look.

W: So after Christmas and all-the-fun-stuff season, does greenhouse season come next?

P: Well, yeah, I guess so . . .

W: And after greenhouse season comes mud season.

P: Actually, that's right, mud season is after we turn on the greenhouses, but . . .

W: I love mud season. Is it going to be mud season soon?

'Tis the season

Yesterday, Wavy and I went and cut down a Christmas tree. After we got it back to the house, she proclaimed that its name was "Lemon".

Earlier that day, Wavy starred as an angel in the annual kid's service at the Peacham Congregational Church.

She was a little nervous about being an angel, but she did great. (Sorry the photo is a little blurry, but it is the only one we got of the kids actually singing.)

And then last night when I was reading her a book before bed, she asked, "How much longer until Christmas?" So the countdown begins! I remember making that same countdown when I was a kid!

Winter

After a beautifully long and mild fall, winter has arrived with a thud this past week. It was 9 degrees out on the porch this morning. In a funny way, I like this time of year. Living this far north, the days are so insanely short that it is almost comical. The sun starts going down about 3 p.m. in the afternoon, and it is dark by 4:30 p.m. And if it is a cloudy day, the sunlit hours are even shorter. But I like the change of pace brought by the snow and dark. And tonight we have a full moon with a coating of snow on the ground, and there really isn't anything like the moonlight in Vermont.

One of the other fun things about this time of year is that soon, very soon, the tide will turn. The winter solistice will usher in the 2007 growing season. And after the holidays we will take stock and get back down to the veggie business in earnest -- starting seedlings, ordering supplies, drawing up field plans, etc.

But while there is still a little clean up from the 2006 season, this time between Thanksgiving and the New Year is the off-season for us. It is a time to rest up a bit (especialy my back which has been on the fritz lately), it is time to goof around even more than usual, and it is a chance to miss the hectic pace of the veggie season for a couple of months. It is nice.

Checking out the competition

The kids and I went to Washington DC this past weekend to visit good friends from school.

While we were there, we checked out the farmer's market. We were excited to look at other people's setups, especially their labeling systems. We have a system where we painted some wooden shims with blackboard paint, and then write the item and price in chalk and stick the board in or near the basket of veggies. Which works pretty well, but could stand some improvement. For one thing, it would be good to convey more information about the veggies, like the variety names, and for another thing I think it would be good if our signs were more legible.

We didn't get good sign ideas, but it was nice to see a market as an outsider and be reminded of how buying produce is just one small part of a farmer's market. It's really much more about community, in a very pleasant and mellow way. We sat for a while on the grass and ate apples and a croissant, and watched customers chatting with farmers, neighbors greeting neighbors, kids and parents out on a Saturday morning adventure, met a nice man with a basset hound and chatted with him for a bit about how Peter wants to get one.

So while yes, we can and will improve our signage, it was good to remember that the farm is about more than selling veggies.