Oh Deer! Farming and the Forever Fence

Here on our vegetable farm, we like deer.  Mostly.  At least we like them when they’re outside the vegetable garden. Over our ten years here, we’ve used various techniques to discourage the deer from relishing our produce so fully.

We’ve cobbled together the old and the new to make fences: six-foot metal posts and rusted old rolls of sheep wire wrested from the hedgerow, all inherited from the previous owners; tangled metal electric line from our horse pastures; a thick black and white rope of poly and metal electric line; scare balloons.  All of them worked.  For a while. 

But the lure of chard and beet greens is strong, and every deer that learns the secret of garden produce whispers it to the next deer.  Last fall, our chard was chewed down to the ground, followed by the beet greens and the carrot tops, the deer harvesting our vegetables faster than we could.  That winter, we discovered that the deer were, in fact, bedding down right in the garden.  Sigh.

Time for a new trick.  This time a two thousand dollar trick.

Five big boxes arrived in the spring, each one holding 300 feet of nylon mesh fence.  We had some misgivings about both the money and the materials—gosh, that’s a lot o’ plastic -- but we were also feeling desperate.  We opened the first box, and read the directions about our brand new $2000 fence very carefully.

“Be sure to completely enclose the area to be protected,” it said, with “completely enclose” in bold letters.  Well, of course, we thought, that seems pretty obvious. 

We were also advised that “To prevent deer from pushing under the fence, stake bottom edge of the fence to the ground every 3 to 4 feet.”  “Every three to four feet” also happened to be in bold.  Well, that seemed unlikely, deer pushing under the fence.  But we would do it.  Of course we would.

We got four-fifths of the fence up that very day, despite the fact that our trusty rusty six-foot posts weren’t tall enough to support an 8-foot high fence.  First we had to screw broken wooden garden stakes to the top of each post.  But we were amazed at how light and easy and fast the brand new mesh was to work with, compared to our other deer fences.  We crawled into bed late that night, sure that we would finish the fence up properly the very next morning.

But a miracle happened!  No deer got in the garden!  No produce was eaten!  The four-fifths of the new fence had done it!  We were delighted, and it was right in the middle of our spring push, and we had lots of ground to work up, and lots of transplants to get in . . . and then of course the summer work came on, and then the fall work  . . .

Four months later, in early autumn, I was harvesting Swiss chard, the number one choice of deer on this farm.  Alas, I had to bring the dreaded news back to my fellow farmer: “Somebody’s eating it again. It doesn’t look like woodchucks.  It’s more spaced out, a nibble here and a nibble there.”

The next harvest day, he brings the dreaded news back to me: “The lettuce.  Hoof prints.”

I groan. “They must be getting through the open part.” 

But later that day, my fellow comes running to tell me: “I saw them!  They’re going right underneath!”

“You’re kidding!  I can’t believe they’re so clever.  Even though the directions said so!”

We vacillate between awe for the general cleverness of deer, foaming at the mouth over the produce that is disappearing, and despair that we did not follow the very clear directions.  We stake down the fence.  And it works! 

For a while. 

Then: More hoof prints.  More nibbles.  Early one morning, from a window in the house, I see a deer slipping through the hedgerow, suspiciously close to the one-fifth absent fence.  We scrounge around for some more broken wooden stakes, and finish our deer fence.  Almost.  We are ten feet short.  Ten lousy feet.  But even so, the fence works!

For a while.

A few days later, my farming fellow’s head is hanging low again.  “Something’s eating the beet greens.”  

Sure enough, we find a trail in the early morning dew, yes, right through that ten- foot gap, to the beet greens.  Oh those clever, clever, blasted deer.  Oh those foolish, foolish, non-direction-following farmers.

But now I have a brilliant idea: we’ll weave the last ten feet using every farmer’s friend: baling twine.  It works beautifully.  And it’s kind of fun, weaving under and over, under and over. 

“Well, this fits in well with the rest of the farm,” my fellow says, as we close the gap with our goofy use-what-you-got fence fix.

I am very pleased.  “Just look at that!  We could have saved $2000 dollars and made this whole fence out of baling twine!”

“Now there’s an idea,” says my fellow, “that wouldn’t have taken us any time at all . . .”

“Maybe we could do that after this fence quits working?” I joke.

My fellow gives me a long, sad, deer-beleaguered farmer look.

“Just kidding,” I say, I taking his arm.  “This fence is going to work forever!”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2013

Pressing Tasks: Cider on the Farm

One of our favorite autumn jobs on the farm is bringing out the cider press.  We set it up a few weeks ahead of pressing time, so that our CSA members can get a jump on remembering to bring their own cider jugs on vegetable pick-up days.

People get excited when they see the press.  “Oh, is it time for cider?  Boy, I missed it last year.  I love your cider!”

We missed it last year, too, because on all sixteen of our big old apple trees there was only one apple.  And it wasn’t even one of the yummy Northern Spy or Golden Delicious apples, or even the pretty good Cortland or McIntosh.  It was a Red Delicious, that tough-skinned old not much of an apple variety.  But we kept our eye on it, because we were determined to eat the one apple we had that year. 

Well, it was just ready to pick, and we went out to pick it . . . you know that story . . . someone else had picked it first.  Some lucky duck, or lucky deer or squirrel, more likely.

But this year the orchard is bursting with apples, and it is cider time.  We make about thirty gallons a week for six weeks, and it all begins with gathering buckets and buckets of apples and hauling them to the press.

We always make our cider on CSA pick-up days, so that people can see and join in the process.  It’s a nice community builder, especially on a beautiful autumn day.  Folks exchange apple recipes and cider press stories, while mothers nurse their babies on the nearby bench.  The older crowd (four or five or six years old, or ten years old or 70 years old) crank and press.

“Now how does this work?” a new member might ask.  “I’ve never seen this done before.”

“You put the apples in the hopper to grind them up, by turning the crank here.  Then you put this wooden lid on, and turn the handle on top, which squeezes the apple mash and presses out the cider,” we explain.

“Like this!” says one of our helpers, today a six-year old boy with boundless pressing enthusiasm.  He cranks like the devil, as I throw one apple in the hopper at a time, so as not to discourage his enthusiasm or his muscle.

Then my fellow farmer steps up to the crank.  He cranks like the devil too, and my six-year old pal and I are hard-pressed, so to speak, to keep up.  We both throw apples in the press six or seven at a time, but the crank is whirling so fast that the juice flies up in our faces. 

“Faster, faster!” my pal and I encourage each other, laughing.

But now my fellow is laughing too, and he can’t laugh and crank at the same time -- he is out of breath.  We all stop and grin at each other. 

Then we give another person a chance to try the crank, and we haul out some good old cranking jokes.  “Step right up if you’re feeling cranky,” and “You too can be as cranky as the farmers are!”

It’s a good feeling, all of us gathered around the press.  It’s good to use this old, relatively simple tool (an old design, anyway -- we bought the press new only six years ago-- they’re still making ‘em!).   It’s good to use our muscles to bring forth all of this sweetness, sweetness of cider, of harvest, of autumn, of knowing each other, and knowing this farm where our food is grown.  This is the Community in Community Supported Agriculture.

And by the way, it’s not just a human community gathered around: the yellow jacket, hornet, and wasp communities are in full force, loving the sweetness too.  Mostly they’re pretty intent on the “nectar from heaven”, as one of our CSA members called the cider, but if a farmer accidentally puts a hand right on a wasp as the apple leavings are dumped out of the press, that farmer might just get stung. 

Which is certainly good for another cranky joke, and a sympathetic community chuckle.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 2 – Oct 8, 2013

Food Fit on the Farm

September, on a vegetable farm, is all about food.  Though we farmers are certainly grateful for the abundance of the harvest, we are also a bit daunted by the effect it has on our farm kitchen.

Every surface is covered with food.  There are freezing projects, canning projects, drying projects, and pickling projects, all happening at once.  Or more accurately, not happening, all at once. 

The idea of squeezing time out of a full farming schedule to put food by for the winter is crazy, yet it seems crazier not to.  After all, we’ve nurtured and labored over this beautiful, local, healthy produce for months; now we just need to labor over it all a little more so it will nurture us this winter.

“This is just important as weeding the cabbage, or putting in the cover crops, ” I announce, surveying the kitchen, trying to bolster myself for the task.

“That’s right,” agrees my fellow farmer.

But I am unbolstered.  I hold my head and moan.  “I don’t even know where to start.” 

The five-gallon bucket of paste tomatoes?  The several trays of zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers?  The mountain of basil?  The heap of peppers?  The mound of beans?  The limp pile of Swiss chard?

I want to give up, and try to put my head in my arms on the table.  But the table is completely covered in heirloom tomatoes, waiting to become sauce and salsa.

Luckily, my fellow farmer is a man of decision and action in both field and kitchen, and he steps boldly up.

“All right!” he says, “This chard is too tired to freeze.  Let’s compost that.”        “But we could have it for supper?” I suggest.

“Nah,” he says, “We’ll go get fresh chard if we want if for supper.  This is from last week.  And these cucumbers are dried out.  Let’s compost these.”

“But we could have them for supper?” I repeat.

“Nah,” he says, tossing the sad little cucumbers in the compost bucket.  “And this basil?  This is too far gone.” 

“Supper?” I say.  “I hate to waste perfectly good food.”

“But it’s not perfectly good food,” my fellow says reasonably.  “It was perfectly good food.  Now it’s tired, dried out old food, that would be really good for the compost.  We want to preserve the best, freshest produce, so it keeps. The farmers are supposed to eat well, remember?”

“Yeah.  But the farmers are supposed to eat or preserve all this best, freshest produce before it gets tired and old.”

My fellow pats me sympathetically on the back.  “The farmers can’t do everything.  They’re doing the best that they can.”

“They are?” I say doubtfully.

“Yes!” my fellow answers firmly.  “Now let’s work on this together.  I’ll get these paste tomatoes on the dryer, and maybe you could cut those others up for sauce.”

I edge out a tiny space to work and start cutting, repeating soothing mantras to myself:  We’re doing the best that we can.  We can’t do everything. We hardly waste anything.  It will be good for the compost.  We should eat well.  And, my best mantra: it’s mighty nice to have food in the winter.

My fellow and I make tremendous progress, clearing out the old and putting by the new.  The sink reappears.  Counters reappear.  Even the table reappears. 

It has taken far more hours than we imagined, like most things on a farm, but now we admire our beautiful jars of sauce and pickles, our drying herbs and tomatoes, our frozen beans.

We are caught up until the next flood of food.  We sit down, and admire our clear and clean table.

Our clear table.  Completely clear.  Breathtakingly clear.  And here it is, supper time.  We’ve got lots of room to eat our nice supper.

Except.  Nobody’s planned supper.  Nobody’s made supper.  

There’s no supper.

We farmers look pathetically at each other.  We groan. 

September.  It’s all about food.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 4 – Sept 10, 2013

Tomato Time: Swooning on the Farm

August, on our CSA farm, is the month of tomato. 

Of course, we’ve been harvesting tomatoes from the greenhouses for weeks now, but August is True Tomato Time.

Long, long ago, in early July, we yearned for the first ripe tomato.  We checked the top contenders daily: growing bigger and bigger, changing from firm, certain green to paler and paler to almost white-green.  And then at last the first blush.  The deepening of the blush.  And then: the swoon.

We pick our very first fresh tomato of the year, round, ripe, red, juicy.  We consider bearing it to the kitchen on a silver platter, but compromise by bringing it in with calloused farmer hands.  We inhale its spicy-sweet aroma deeply, set it on the cutting board, admire its perfection.

Then we take the special tomato knife—the-do-not-use-this-for-anything-else-no-matter-how-much-it-resembles-a-ripe-tomato-or-there-will-be-big- trouble-knife—and we cut thick slices. 

The first tomato.  We eat.  We swoon.

But all that happened in July.  Now it’s August, and we’re harvesting 500 or more tomatoes a week, both standard red greenhouse varieties and heirloom tomatoes.  The standard varieties are the sturdy, dependable, delicious hybrids that caused the earlier swoon. 

In August, we’re way beyond hybrids. 

Now we are eating Big Rainbow, a yellow beauty delicately streaked with pink.  We’re eating Black Brandywine and Paul Robeson, two purply-black tomatoes that are a current favorite, lush and full, almost salty.  We’re eating Hungarian Heart, rich, sweet, smooth.

We’re also considering becoming wine tasters, as we string out our adjectives over supper: “A complex, full flavored tomato, with a hint of dried peach and cinnamon, wouldn’t you say?” I ask my fellow.

“Oh yes,” he replies,  “and with the slightest undertone of bologna.”  We snort and giggle.  We decide to stick to tomato tasting rather than wine tasting, as we revel in the tomato abundance of August.

Our CSA members revel too.

In the harvest shed, a member exclaims: “Beautiful!”

“They’re like jewels!” says another, admiring the perfect red globes of the standard tomatoes, in orderly rows, against the dark green tomato trays.

“Yes, yes,” we say, “but look at these!” and we proudly show the heirlooms.

“Wow,” the members say, noting the strange colors and sizes and shapes.  There are no tidy rows here.  There are single tomatoes that could make a potluck dish for ten; there are petite tomatoes that are perfect for a single sandwich. There are pink, purple, black, brown, green, yellow, orange, white, and yes! even red! tomatoes.  There are cracks and crevices and odd lumps and bulges. 

“Wow,” say the members, and then turn ever so slightly back to the symmetry and familiarity of the red jewels.  We heave a little heirloom tomato farmer sigh, but are reassured by the clever heirloom distribution system we’ve developed over the years.

When we first started farming, we used to mix the standards and heirlooms in the trays, thinking the heirlooms would disappear in a flash.  But at the end of the day, any lone tomato left would always be an heirloom.  We learned to divide up the standards and heirlooms, and on our harvest chalkboard, we write “Tomatoes: Standard- eight, Heirloom- two.” 

The harvest chalkboard is mighty and indisputable, and people comply: they go home with eight standards, and two heirlooms, tucked in their bags.  They come back raving: “It’s the best tomato I ever had!”  “It tasted just like the tomatoes my grandmother grew!” 

We beam.

The tenderness and flavor of the heirlooms quickly convince CSA members to look for more, but we farmers never have to worry about not getting enough for the farm kitchen.  Along with the fantastic taste and colors, heirlooms are also very thin skinned, prone to cracking and other troubles.  There are always some heirlooms that don’t make the CSA grade, and we have to make the sacrifice of not only eating exclusively heirlooms, but also of making all heirloom salsas and all heirloom tomato sauces. 

Of course, our near-constant August tomato swoon makes it a little tricky to get any farm work done, but who better than a sustainable farmer to model the beauties of eating locally and seasonally?  Not to mention celebrating the beauties of diversity, of sizes, shapes, colors, flavors? 

And by golly, it is abundance time, cup running over time, go a little heirloom wild time, swooning time: it’s Tomato Time! 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 7 – Aug 13, 2013