Giddy on the Farm

December is a most agreeable time on a New Hampshire vegetable farm.  We farmers feel cheerful, lighthearted, yes, almost giddy! at the end of the season.  Whether it has been a tough farming year, or a pretty good one, we’ve made it through, and we feel exceedingly grateful.

Not only have our CSA members given us lovely gifts and treats at the end of the garden year, but many of them have chosen early CSA sign up for 2014.  Having any number of commitment forms and deposits in hand is as close to a sure thing as we get in farming, considering all the variables of weather, crops, and income. 

We love when people say “See you in the spring!” as they leave the farm on the last day of vegetable pick-up.  It is a most heartening vote of confidence, in our farm, in our farming, in our efforts to consider the health of the land and the air and the animals and the water and the food and the community as a fundamental part of living well.

But all of that is a bit too serious for this cheerful time of year!  The time between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays opens up whole vistas of wonderful things for farmers to contemplate: bright and shiny garden catalogs, bright and shiny new farm machinery, bright and shiny thoughts of next years’ fabulous farming season.

The feeling here in winter is probably most akin to the feeling many people --especially of school age -- have about summer.  I just read, in a children’s book (The Alley by Eleanor Estes, who published in the forties and fifties and is more well known for her “Moffat” family books, and Ginger Pye, a Newberry Medal Winner), a perfect description of how this time of year feels for us:  “Oh the long and wonderful days of summer!  Just to hold a whole day in your hand and have it and think that it was empty to begin with but that each moment could, would contain so much” (280).

Oh the long and wonderful days of winter!  It’s enough to inspire a farmer to compose silly verses about the wonderful winter things to contemplate.

(Do not attempt to sing this, as you may strain yourself.)

On the last day of the CSA season, the winter brought to us:

Twelve dozen pleasant pastimes to imagine (oh, the things we’ll be able to do these next few months! writing things, family and friend visiting things, reading children’s books by the woodstove things!)

Eleven farm implements, put away snugly for the winter (well, six of ‘em fit snugly in the barn; the rest have to brave the not so snug elements)

Ten (times three) boxes of canned and frozen garden goodies

Nine hours of sleep at night

Eight garden sections (including two greenhouses) resting for the season

Seven food gifts from our nice members (cheese, caramels, homemade toffee and cookies, and made-from-our-own-garden-produce chutney, salsa, tomato paste)

Six months before harvest and vegetable distribution comes around again

Five warming gifts (yes, from our nice members: firewood, hats, blankets, gloves, a hand-knitted shawl)

Four healthy horses, staying in the fences

Three warm, well-fed people

Two hearthrug cats (one who maintains his prime woodstove position by hissing, spitting, and a show of claws, while the other maintains hers by purring, chirruping, rolling her head to look upside down at you, and generally being too fetching to dislodge)

And . . . a bright red felt tomato with a propeller on a stick (our funniest gift from one of our nice tomato-lovin’ members)

In our lighthearted December state, this last gift leads to both catchy holiday tunes (much like the one above) and to further contemplation of silly things, such as possible new names for our farm:  Flying High Tomatoes?   No!  Flying High Farm!  Yes!  Flying High Farm!

As I say, the farmers are feeling a bit giddy this time of year . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 25 – Dec 31, 2013

Irrigation Irritation: Rolling it All Up on the Farm

There are lots of things to celebrate on a New England vegetable farm in November.

First and foremost, there’s already been a killing frost, and the garden plants are all dead.  Hooray!

Secondly, since there’s been that frost, most of the root vegetables-- carrots, beets, daikon radishes, purple top turnips, rutabagas-- have already been dug.  Hooray!

Thirdly, by now, in November, all the bags and boxes and bins have been properly stored in the root cellar, rather than heaped and piled all over the living room and kitchen, leaving only narrow winding paths through the house.  Now we can walk from our front door to the couch to the kitchen stove without stumbling over a thing.  Hooray!

Fourthly, our draft horses, who have had a merry the-pasture’s-getting-short-let’s-break-out-and-visit-the-neighbors’-fields time of it, are now happily in their winter paddock, gobbling down all that good hay we put up last summer.

Fifthly, we are nearing the end of our vegetable distribution season, which runs from early June to the week before Thanksgiving.  We love our CSA members; we love to have them come to the farm; and we also love the rhythm of six months of farm pick-ups and six months of no farm pick-ups.  It gives us a good solid opportunity to miss our nice members.

Sixthly, in November, we can take a bit more cavalier approach to our work: Hmm, shall I roll up the irrigation today . . . or tomorrow?

In this particular farmer’s case, when it comes to irrigation, I would like to say “tomorrow” indefinitely.  Though my fellow farmer seems to have no difficulty dealing with our drip (also called “trickle” irrigation, as we’ve heard some folks say around here) irrigation, I find it maddening, to say the least.

In fact, the first time I had to roll irrigation lines, almost twenty years ago, as an intern on a biodynamic farm near Philadelphia, I couldn’t quite believe how onerous I found the task.  Though I am normally a patient, non-cussing sort of person, I had to bite my tongue.

The other interns were chatting, rolling their irrigation lines into easy symmetrical loops.  My line was thrashing and kicking, kinking and screaming.  I too wanted to thrash and scream, but I was fairly new at the farm, not quite comfortable rolling out a seldom-used line of cuss words as I attempted to roll my drip line.

As the other interns walked away smiling, with their quiet, co-operative loops of line tucked cozily under their arms, the head farmer approached, watching my lack of progress closely.

“How’s it going here?” he asked.         

I breathed deeply, searching for an appropriate, non-expletive answer.  Finally I said, “I’m finding it . . . soul-strengthening.”

The farmer, bless his heart, laughed.  And twenty years later, my fellow farmer, once my former fellow intern, is still laughing, in the nicest way possible.

“How’s it going?” he says, loping down the beds towards me and my tangle of irrigation line.  “Is your soul really strong yet?  Here, pal, let me finish that up for you.”

I’m not sure if his offer is motivated more by sympathy for me, or by sympathy for the mangled irrigation line (which really is a wonderful line, very efficient, water-saving, and all that good stuff), but I don’t care. 

I am only happy to hand it over.  And happy that is wonderful November, when even the irrigation is rolled up and quietly resting for the winter.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2013

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