Slow Farming

You might call us slow farmers here on our draft horse powered vegetable farm. 

Of course, farming by its nature is a slow process, and we help slow it down even more with our teams of horses and our hoes and shovels and our heirloom vegetables.  We like the “Slow Food” and the “Slow Money” movements, and we also like slow farming.  We like it that farming takes its own good time.

Even our fastest seeds -- cutting greens and pac choi -- take two days to germinate, and our slowest -- carrots in the cold spring soil -- might take three weeks to sprout.  Red peppers are pokey too, despite being coddled in our propane heated greenhouse, with an electric heat mat running twenty four hours a day under each flat.  They can also take up to three weeks to show their green.

Then there is the harvest wait.  Our fastest harvestable item is those same cutting greens, and they take a month to get ready.  The red papers are slow here as well, taking three months to ripen.  But the onions grow for five months, followed by a curing period, and the potatoes win the slow prize, as they are in the ground from May first to October first.

There’s not much happening quickly in the farm kitchen either.  First we thaw the marinara sauce (from tomatoes that we that we grew, harvested, cooked, and froze last summer) for three days in the fridge.  Then we dump the sauce into a pot, along with the beans we grew, picked, shelled, dried, and then undried by soaking overnight, followed by an hour or more of cooking before they are ready to join the sauce. 

Next we venture to the root cellar for carrots, realizing on the way that in fact we need to sort through all the carrots, which precipitates a three hour project kneeling on the kitchen floor with mesh bags, carrots in all conditions, and the dirt that attends them. 

First we snap off any sprouts from the tops of the carrots, and compost any carrots that need it.  Then we divide the rest into good-for-people carrots and good-for-horses carrots.  We bag the carrots back up, return them to the root cellar, sweep up all the dirt on the floor, and only then remember what it was we wanted in the first place: two carrots for supper.

Happily, we began this supper project three days ago, and it was only lunchtime when we started with the carrots.  Now we head back down to the root cellar, open the bag, extract the two carrots, wash them, chop them, and throw them in the pot.  The herbs are next, herbs we grew, cut, dried, and jarred, and now we take a pinch, strip the tiny thyme leaves and bigger oregano leaves off the stems, and grind the herbs in a mortar and pestle with salt. 

Then, as it approaches the true supper hour, we add some pasta (now that’s fast food -- in a package straight from the store!) and voila!  Minestrone soup!  Our slow food supper!

But we have to admit there is a moment on our farm around this time of year when we experience instant gratification.  (Well, instant in the sense of a matter of hours, rather than days or months).  That is the moment when our transplants, flourishing in the greenhouse for six to eight weeks, then hardened off outside for a week, are ready to go into the ground. 

We (and our horses) have spent some time, of course, preparing that ground: plowing in the cover crop, loading the spreader with compost with our two shovels and our four hands while the horses wait patiently for the next load to be ready to spread, discing in the compost, then harrowing, and finally making the garden beds.  Two people, two horses, five pieces of equipment, and many hours.

But at last we are at the moment: ground ready, transplants ready.  We go!  We plant 320 cabbages, 320 kohlrabi, 250 scallion plugs, 200 lettuce, 200 pac choi, 30 endive, 30 escarole. 

And there it is: Instagarden!

We go from bare ground to 280 foot rows of gently meandering, sweetly growing beds of beautiful green plants.  We have a garden!  It is so sudden (sort of), so tangible, so satisfying!

Now there is no turning back!  We are truly vegetable farmers once again, now that we have plants in the ground.  And from now on, as the slow food crops creep along from leaf to flower to fruit (and seed), and the weeds gallop through the same process, we slow farmers are transformed: we are nimble, we are agile, we are deft! 

We too gallop, from one patch of weeds to the next!  We are swift, we are speedy, yes, we are fast (slow) farmers!  Look at us go!

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 14 – May 20, 2014

A'Tremble on the Farm in April

In April we New Hampshire farmers are all a’tremble.  Actually, everything on the farm in April is all a’tremble, with eagerness, especially after a winter as long as this last one has been.

There is the garden soil, trembling and ready.  In the soil we’ve planted the cold tolerant crops, peas and beets and carrots and salad greens, the seeds trembling and ready to sprout. 

There are the transplants too, vibrantly green and ready, cabbage and broccoli and scallions, kohlrabi and lettuce and onions, nurtured for six weeks in the greenhouse.  In April we harden off the little green babies, putting them out in their basinets for a nap in the afternoon sunshine, progressing to an entire day cavorting in the fresh outside air, and finally trusting them out for the night, albeit tucked into a mini-greenhouse, a knee-high version of our larger hoop house.

We harden the transplants off for a week, in the hope that they are sturdy and hearty enough to stay at the trembling and ready stage when we finally plant them out in the April garden.  In April, there is still a fine line between shiver and shrivel, and trembling and ready.  We cross our fingers and look all around us for the signs of April hope.

Yes, the trees are a’trembling too, with that exquisite faint green of new leaves uncurling.  And the grass, that green trembling haze.  And then of course there are the draft horses, trembling at the gate, longing to make the earth tremble as they gallop to the green grass. 

Sadly, that grass is a month or more shy of being ready for grazing.

We commiserate with our nice horses, tucking tired old wrinkled old dried up carrots from last fall’s harvest into the horses’ hay as a treat.

We too are still eating those tired carrots, and some sprouting potatoes, as we’ve already eaten all the rutabagas and turnips and beets from the root cellar.  We’ve also already eaten all the yummiest things from the freezer: broccoli and beans and greens, pesto and salsa and red peppers.

Now we have to invoke the mighty kitchen ingenuity spirits, to help with what’s left: the eggplant, the baked-and-frozen-before-it-goes-bad winter squash, the jars and jars of marinara sauce.  All delicious in their own right, of course, but we are challenged by eggplant, squash, and tomato: how to make yet one more inspiring (or at least edible) vegetarian meal?

Happily, our canned fruit and jams are still going strong, and our pickles and cider.  Not quite a meal, but at least it peps up the rest, just as we hope the carrots pep up our horses’ hay meals.

Because, we have to admit, we farmers do have the pleasure of a little April grazing.  Not in the garden or fields, but in the greenhouse, which has doors flung open and sides rolled up and fans running, lest, even in April, the temperature soar above the ideal seventy to eighty degree range.

There in the greenhouse, my farming fellow and I stand a’trembling, before the altar of lettuce, lettuce that is bursting out of its one-inch space, lettuce which needs to be “singled,” as we say.  In each little space there may be two or even three lettuce plants, two inches high, because we’ve sowed seed enough to ensure good germination.  Now we want just one lettuce in each spot, so it will grow straight and broad and strong.

We are at that wonderful April moment: clipping out the extra lettuce!  Clipping out every tiny, sweet, tender extra bouquet of leaves, and popping every one into our mouths.  Yum. Yum. Yum.

It’s been a long winter.  It’s been a long time since fresh greens, of any kind.  It’s been a long wait.  And it’s worth it.  Oh, we tremble, with that wonderful eagerness of spring, and the lovely exultation of lettuce, all at once!

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Apr 16 – Apr 22, 2014

Middling, Muddling March

March is a middling, muddling month on a New Hampshire vegetable farm.  It’s not quite winter; it’s not quite spring.  It’s snowy mud, or muddy snow; it’s icy rain or rainy ice.  The barnyard is mucky, the path to the woodshed is sticky, the track to the greenhouse is sloppy and slippery.

Of course, once we get into the greenhouse, we are delighted.  It’s not March at all!  It’s July, in our propane-heated greenhouse, with the rich smells of warm dirt and green onions and tomato and basil seedlings.  We throw off coats and hats, and revel a while.

But as soon as we step back outside, we remember that it’s not quite time to cast off our long underwear.  Yet it’s also not quite time to fit into those trim high summer season workpants, since middling March also means a difference for our middles, which are a little more middly after a few months closer to the wood stove and the cook stove.

In fact, even in high summer, when my farming fellow is at his fittest, there is one particular pair of summer season pants that are a little snug. 

“I thought those were your new pants,” I said, the first time I saw him trying to stuff in his shirt and zip those pants up.

“They are,” he answered, resting a moment from his labors.

“They seem a little tight.”

“They are,” he held his breath and zipped.

“But why did you buy the wrong size?”

“Well . . . that was the size that was on sale.” 

This made me laugh, and also sigh a little.  Surely we must have ordered those pants in March, the month of middle and muddle, the month of hoping for the best.

In March we are also faced again with that small mistake we made, lo! so many long years ago, when we first moved to New Hampshire, and needed to buy more three inch pots for transplanting seedlings.

We didn’t have quite enough of our old, sturdy, lovely, plastic pots, which we bought in central New York State, where a body could go right to the greenhouse store and point to just what kind of pots the body wanted.  But here in New Hampshire, we had to start ordering from catalogs, which entice you with sales, and also confuse you with their almost-sounds-right sizes.  Plus we had to order in a hurry, because we needed the pots.  Right away!

Thus we got ourselves in a muddle worthy of March.

When the new pots arrived, they were a far cry from our old pots.  The new ones were flimsy, meant for one season of use, and they were all hooked together to make an instant “flat” of pots.  We were in such a rush that we started using the new pots right away, snapping them apart to make them more like our old pots, and hoping for the best.

Alas, we soon discovered that the new pots were horrible, dreadful, miserable pots, and we’d gone too far in the box to return them.  And worst of all, we had 2,500 of the new pots.  Two thousand, five hundred. 

We moaned and groaned.  “We’re going to have to use those horrible pots for the next ten years,” I said, “before they wear out.”

“Maybe they won’t last that long?  They’re only meant for one season,” my fellow tried to sound encouraging,

But on a farm with a tight budget and a green sensibility, things must, should, do last much longer.  From hoping for the best we muddled on to making the best of it.

And yes, more than ten years later, we are still making the best of it, using the flimsy, the tippy-overy, the dreadful pots of March.  By last count, we still have 1,200 never yet been used “new” pots. We muddle through, looking ahead to the day, oh ten or more years from now, when we can get new sturdy, lovely pots. 

Meanwhile, in the here and now, we will very soon have muddled right through the beginning, and the middle, and the end of March. And then it will be Ah!  April!

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Mar 19 – Mar 25, 2014

The February Farm Dawdle

Here it is, February on our vegetable farm, and we have had a lovely December and January, enjoying the easier pace of this time of year.  But now it is February, and after February comes March, and March means the garden season has officially begun.

The season starts slowly, by firing up the propane heated greenhouse, and sowing flats of onions, leeks, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil, a cheerful and promising activity.  But the season definitely starts, and it won’t be long before we’re full steam ahead.

Yet February isn’t quite March, and the burning question is: how much does a February farmer push her or himself to accomplish?

There are some things we must do in the winter, such as feeding the horses, and carrying in the stove wood, and eating lots of root vegetables from the root cellar, but there’s a lot we don’t absolutely have to do.  Still, there’s that list of winter projects on the fridge, numbering not less than 52 items.

We could pick nearly anything any day off our list, and it would be a good project well done, but it doesn’t have the urgency of the garden season work: getting those flats watered before the seedlings give up life, or getting those transplants in the ground before they give up hope, or getting those carrots weeded before they give up the struggle.

Heck, in February, without that urgency, why not really luxuriate in having a cold, for example, and just lie on the couch with a blanket and a book and drink hot tea and blow your nose with leisure and abandon?

Or why not engage in the delightful activity of productive procrastination, ignoring your long list of winter projects entirely, and instead sort out twenty years of old valentines?  (It is February, after all.)

Or why not update your web listings, which actually is on the list, but update them by simultaneously checking out all the new horse drawn farm machinery that’s out there on the Web, or reading a few farmer blogs?

Or, gosh, we could revel in going to the eye doctor, the back doctor, the tooth doctor, and the all-over doctor in just one month, since it is the perfect time of the year to sit around in waiting rooms.  And we could also revel in actually being able to go to the eye doctor, the back doctor, the tooth doctor, and the all-over doctor, since we now have health insurance, thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

Another pleasant February occupation is playing with the new kitty, who was a kitten last summer and is still wont to race around the house at top speed, and then duck between the two layers of our winter keep-the-heat-in front door curtain, a perfect place for crazy kitties to hide.  When we poke the curtain high up, the invisible kitty leaps! attacks!  This is highly entertaining, as you can imagine.

Of course, it really would be good for us to cross a few more things off our winter list – it would make the farming season a little easier maybe, or then again, maybe not.  Once the season’s rolling, it’s rolling and rolling, and likely rolling all over a farmer’s hopeful lists and plans.

Maybe February really is the time to go visit your longtime pen pal, or knit that snood you’ve been meaning to for years, or glue that wind chime back together.  Maybe it is good to rest and dawdle a little when you still can rest and dawdle a little. 

Maybe it’s that very resting and dawdling that will make the season to come a little easier.  Let’s hope so, as our winter list sure is long . . . why, a farmer might need to rest just from reading the whole thing at one go.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 19 – Feb 25, 2014