Down on the Farm

The poop is here!

Wavy standing in front of 25 tons of composted chicken manure

Anything we can do this time of year is one less thing we need to worry about between April and October. So today we had some composted chicken manure delivered. There is a big poultry farm in New York, across Lake Champlain, and all their chicken poop is a disposal problem. A number of years ago they started composting their chicken manure and selling it. Then, a few years ago when the new federal rules made it harder for small farms to make their own manure based compost, they got their composting process certified as organic, and now instead of a disposal problem, they have a product they can sell to crazy vegetable farmers. Plus, they sell it cheap since they have a lot of it and are always looking to get rid of it. The catch? They only have one size truck -- so you can buy 25 tons at a time, or zero.

Last year we had to wait until late spring to get our chicken compost because they had so many other regular customers to satisfy within the small timeframe of early spring. So this year, we cleared a part of our field from snow now, let it freeze solid for a few weeks, and then had the chicken people deliver early. We will now transport it up to the fields and put it in piles, ready to be spread and incorporated in the spring. If we put the piles in relatively dry spots and cover them, we shouldn't lose too many nutrients to leaching. So, I think this should work. Plus, now I don't have to worry about coordinating our field prep with a late spring compost delivery.

Memories

Employee taxes, income taxes, opeational budgets, capital budgets, market projections, planting charts, field maps. Who knew running an organic vegetable farm really meant running a small business? I figured it would just be sitting around in a sunny field all day, picking daisies, and listening to the crickets. Oh well, back to work.

It can be hard to remember summer this time of year, but here is a link to my brother and sister-in-law's flickr account to help. This is from a visit in the summer of '05.

Sunday walk

Cornelia came for a walk on Sunday. She carried Henry on her back, and I carried Wavy on mine, at least most of the way.

It was a perfect afternoon for a walk. Warm enough to be comfortable but cold enough to keep the snow dry and fluffy. Lots of interesting tracks.

Someone's back and front door?

A bird landing or taking off here?

Maybe an owl snatching up a mouse?

Both kids slept parts of the way. We straightened Henry out after this.

Dried sun golds

We're down to our last jar of dried sun golds. Only six months till the next harvest begins!!

Cold

We've gotten a blast of real winter. The ground is snow covered, though not deep, but the temperature has been around zero for a few days now.

Waverly discovered that the velcro on the Old Shaw Farm hat could be adjusted to make it small enough to fit her and now she wears it everywhere. Luckily she thinks wearing two hats (the underneath one was knit by our friend Maya -- thanks Maya!!) is also fun, so she is staying warm.

Eating seasonally

Zoë’s Carrot Souffle

My folks came to visit yesterday and with the windy cold weather ended up spending the night, unexpectedly. We threw together dinner at the last minute of pork chops, cauliflower, leftover carrot soup from lunch, and popovers. It was unintentionally a very farm-y dinner even in January. The carrots, onions, garlic, cauliflower, tomatoes, and hot pepper, were all Old Shaw Farm and the pork was from the half pig that we trade a CSA share to our friends the Zschaus for and which is at least partly fed on Old Shaw veggie scraps.

We're still eating tons of farm produce. Carrots, we still have lots of carrots in our walk in cooler. And we all really love carrots. I once ate so many carrots that I turned orange!! I finally tried Zoë’s Carrot Souffle, and it is truly awesome. Souffle makes me think fancy, elegant, puffy. But Zoe's carrot souffle is denser, softer, almost pudding like. It is so good. Carrot soup, grated carrot salad, carrot cake, raw carrots, cooked carrots, I love them. I guess because we eat so much mesclun and other summery things in season, that I am not actually missing them, at least not yet.

And I've gotten better at filling the freezer with stuff we will actually want to eat in midwinter. Frozen collard greens are awesome. Just reheated in a pan with some butter, so good. And I have yet to find the upper limit on how much tomatoes I should put up. I mean our family can always eat as many tomatoes as I can put up. Since we have to turn on the big freezer anyway for the pig, I just freeze the tomato puree (rather than can). Also salsa.

And this year I did four big jars of dried sun golds. So good. Like candy good. When I was doing them last summer, Waverly would always ask to eat them then, and I would say well, you can have a few, but these are for the winter. Eat the fresh ones. It was so great a few weeks ago when I found them in the closet and gave some to Waverly. I said "Now it's winter. You can eat as many as you want!!" She eats them every day!!

Velvety carrot and ginger soup

We had this for lunch yesterday, with sandwiches, when my folks came to visit. Everyone loved it, especially Henry!! It is adapted from a recipe in the Candle Cafe Cookbook.

1 tablespoon butter
3 red onions, coarsely chopped
5 cups chicken broth
6 large carrots, diced
3 tablespoons grated fresh ginger root
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
a pinch hot pepper (I used 1/2 tsp on frozen hot pepper puree I had left over from salsa making last summer, but cayenne would work or whatever)
1/2 cup tomato puree
sour cream for garnish
parsley (I used because the store was out of cilantro, which I think would've been better)

Saute the onions in the butter for about 5 minutes, until softened. Add 2 cups of the broth, the carrots, the tomato puree, hot pepper, and 2 tablespoons of the ginger. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the carrots are tender. Let soup cool for about an hour.

Blend the soup with the remaining ginger, cinnamon, coriander, and broth until very smooth. I just added enough broth to be able to blend it and then added the rest to the blended soup until I had the consistency I liked. This also meant less volume to actually blend.

Reheat gently, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve with sour cream and parsley.

Hmmmm

So, we haven't posted in a while. We started this blog about 4 years ago, and this is probably the longest we have ever gone without posting. Of course, we aren't as bad as some people. But there isn't really a conscious reason for this hiatus -- we just haven't gotten around to it, and now we are getting to it.

It has been a good winter -- no new children and no back surgery, like we had last year. My back was bothering me this fall, but seems to be on mend now.

These days, I am working on the field plan for 2007. Parsnips, pumpkins, gourds, and new tomato, beet, onion, asian greens, and melon varieties are on tap. And more corn, corn, corn and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. It is an exciting time of year. Plus, this year, we are going to try [warning: pdf] to graft our greenhouse tomatoes for more vigor and disease protection.

It is also farm conference season. We went to NOFA's Direct Marketing Conference last weekend, and it was great. Plus, NOFA-VT's Winter Conference is coming up, and it is always a blast.

Have fun enjoying the winter that finally decided to show up!

P.S. We are taking down the comments temporarily. The software platform we use, Moveable Type, is good, but it is vunerable to comment spam attacks that can substantially slow the server that hosts us. A fix to this problem is in the works, and when the fix is up and going, we will bring the comments back.

Good links

CSAer Susan Houle sent me information about the USDA stacking federal Organic Standards Board with all industry reps instead of the diversity of viewpoints required by law. I sent an email through the link on Organic Consumer's Association website, I figure some blog readers may want to too.

My sister Jess sent me a website of a cool urban organic farm near her in California. Very slick website, but it looks like they are doing good work out there!

Work in progress

My New Year's resolution is to be more tolerant of disorder around here.

Order makes our farm more efficient and attractive, both of which make the farm more financially viable. And order in the household prevents frustrations and promotes harmony. So we do intend to keep pushing the ball forward in terms of organization around here, definitely.

But disorder is valuable too. Disorder is a necessary part of living with others, and I like living with other people. We are actively searching for interns for this season, and we expect probably two of them to live with us, at least partly. Kat living here last season was totally awesome, it worked great, and I am pretty optimistic that the new people will be fun, too.

Disorder is also important to the farm. It is part of the creativity and growth that the farm needs. Just last weekend, we were walking through what I would call a messy part of the farm, and I was feeling down about all the unfinished work, and Peter, not knowing what I was thinking, turned to me and said, "We are so lucky to get to live here. It is so beautiful." He is right. Totally right. Not just the beauty of the barn, the mountains, the snow, the earth. But the beauty of a life's work in progress.

Maybe I just need to recognize that mess is not failure, nor are mistakes or unfinishedness. It's just part of the process, and this is a process I am very happy to be in.

Finally

It has been a freakishly mild winter (so far). But we finally got some snow the other day and Wavy and I went out to do a little plowing.

But tomorrow it is suppose to be pushing 50! That is just not right. We tend to shy away from overtly non-farm political stuff on this blog because other blogs do politics better, and the last time we got into political stuff, my older brother and I just ended up bickering in the comments. But global warming sure seems real to me, and it looks like it is going to impact our business in the coming decades.