Farm Rebels

Here on our new Hampshire vegetable farm, we look forward to the cool, invigorating autumn weather.  It might start early in September or late in September, but either way, we're glad to have it- especially the invigorating part.  We're feeling kind of weary this time of year, what with the summer crops- tomato, zucchini, yellow squash, basil- giving a last hurrah, and the fall crops- potatoes and winter squash and broccoli and more- all clamoring for our attention.

The vegetables want weeding, and they want harvesting, and they want putting by for the winter.  And the farmers?  We're thinking more of sleeping, followed by a little nap, and then sleeping, followed by a little rest.  It gets harder and harder to get up early in the morning, and the couch and the bed and even the floor look more and more inviting.

Sometimes those beautiful autumn days- crisp, misty air in the morning, warm sun in the afternoon, heavy golden light over the fields in the evening- aren't enough to entice a farmer out to the field.  Sometimes a farmer is tired of going out to the field.  Sometimes a farmer even takes a little perverse pleasure in not going out to the field first thing on a beautiful day. 

Hah!  Beautiful day!  Take that!  You can't make me come out there!  Even if  you are bathed in beautiful light, or bursting with color, or sonorous with crickets and autumn breeze and rustle and snap!

I will stay inside and can tomato sauce instead!  I will stay inside and wash some dishes!  I won't go out into that great big messy gloriously full of food and work garden.  I will stay right here, in the messy gloriously full of food and dirty dishes house!  Freezing peppers!  Freezing kale!  Freezing chard!  Freezing salsa and squash and pesto! 

Oh, it's a  funny thing, this farming, how it brings out the rebel in a body.  And it's even funnier what a body might rebel against: crisp, invigorating air, beautiful light?  Good weather?  Good grief.    

But hey, maybe that's how we got to be farmers in the first place: that spark of rebellion.  We are rebelling against something, against lots of things, not least of which is somebody else's agenda or idea of a work schedule.  As we like to say, in league with many a self-employed person: “We never get any time off, but, hey, we can take it any time we want to!”

We are also rebelling against some societal and cultural ideas of what constitutes a useful, meaningful way to spend a workday, or a worklife.  Small-scale sustainable farming isn't so much a norm any more; now it is in itself a rebellion, against the industrial, the massive, the impersonal, the uncaring.            

And, heck, we care, we care a lot, we keep caring, even when it's hard and painful and wearying, when there's hail or floods or droughts or locusts.  We want to do work that feels right and good, that sustains us and helps sustain others too: the land and air and water and wildlife, and all the people that eat our vegetables and enjoy our farm. 

We enjoy our farm too, of course, and we also feel a little weary . .  a little rebellious. . .  No, I won't take advantage of this exquisite weather and go out and weed those carrots!  I'm going to get some work done inside, even if the rainy days won't cooperate with meals and laundry and writing columns, all necessary and important items in a full, balanced life, and all so blessedly close to the couch . . . the bed . . . even the floor . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 3 – Sept 9, 2014

Garden-Dirty Secret

August means harvest on a New Hampshire vegetable farm.  We’ve been picking crops since late May, but in August it is harvest and harvest and harvest, part or all of every day.  It is glorious, of course: summertime, when the living is easy! when the food falls from the plant into the mouth! when most of that food hardly even needs to stop and be attended to in the farm kitchen first!

And what food . . .  tomatoes and basil, beans and lettuce, carrots and cucumbers, zucchini and sweet red peppers, all full of flavor and nutrients and tenderness and freshness.  Yes, harvesting is where it all happens, harvesting is what we’re all working towards, harvesting is the culmination and climax of the garden! 

And yet.  Here is my deep and garden-dirty secret:  I’d rather be weeding. 

Shocking, isn’t it?  My fellow farmer alternately shakes his head at such blasphemy, and then rejoices that he is farming with a weeding-lover.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate the variety that harvesting brings to our farm work; it’s certainly not that I don’t appreciate the delicious food. 

It’s just . . . weeding!  Wonderful weeding!  So satisfying!  So orderly!  So tangible!  So clear that you are doing good in the world, as you look back at your long beautiful slightly curving tidy green rows against the rich dark soil!

Of course, some weedings are more equal than others (hey, how about that clever Animal Farm reference in a farming column!)  There are all kinds of weedings on our farm, and we’ve tried many methods over the years (excluding weeding by herbicides, which doesn‘t fit into our sustainable-organic-biodynamic sensibilities).  There is weeding by hoe, which can be nice, if it’s early on in the season, with a light hoe and light weeds, but the heavier the weeds and the heavier the hoe, the harder it is.

Then there’s weeding with the horses and the cultivator, which is fast and efficient, and enjoyable for the teamster in the family, but requires a little more driving skill and patience with banging on various pieces of machinery and various pieces of machinery banging back at you than I possess.  However, my fellow enjoys the whole process, and I do like to watch and laud the results of this fast efficient weeding.

My fellow is also the scythe weeder in the family.  Scything isn’t technically weeding, but more of a last ditch effort to keep the weeds from going to flower and seed in a section that has somehow gotten away from us.  First we carefully extract the crop from beneath and among the towering weeds, then my fellow merrily swings his scythe, singing scything songs as he goes (such as “Why the heck didn‘t we weed this earrrrlllier?  This is riddddiiiculloouss . . .).

In the same vein, there’s also the weeding by lawnmower method, which is another talent of my fellow’s.  He keeps all the walkways shorn so all those grassy-weedy plants don’t have a chance to flower and seed themselves into our nice weed-freeish  garden sections.  My fellow farmer also uses a weed eater to keep the weeds trimmed under the electric fence.

But finally we come to my secret love:  hand weeding.  I don’t need any banging machinery or loud mowers or heavy hoes or even lovely horses.  I just need my hands and my knees, which I take everywhere with me. 

I plop down in a pathway, and I weed.  Little tiny weeds that take a delicate hand, or bigger tougher weeds that take a firm grip.  I am fast.  I am efficient.  I can even hand weed faster and better than my fellow, and there’s not very many things I can say that about on the farm, as he is twice as peppy and twice as dauntless as I am.

But when it comes to hand weeding, I am a superstar  I can do it all:  I am Wonderweeder!  Which is a mighty good thing in August, since harvesting and eating, no matter how many hours they take this time of year, never seem to surpass the number of weeds in a summer garden . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 6 – Aug 12, 2014

Summer Farm Visitors

On our New Hampshire vegetable farm, we have lots of summer company:  CSA members, woodchucks, relatives, bugs, deer, friends.  Of course, we greet some of our visitors with more enthusiasm than others.  But it’s always interesting to see what farm life brings out in a personality. 

The Easy-Going Admirer:  “Look at those beautiful flowers!  Wow, those tomatoes are huge!  And the Swiss chard!  The cabbage!  The horses!  The trees!  the sky!  I love it here!  It is gorgeous!  It is fantastic!” 

These fine and relaxed visitors remind us how lucky we are, and how beautiful it is here, just at the time when we farmers most need it, when the work is full-on, and we can’t see the forest for the trees, or rather, the rest of the world for the garden.  These visitors have a magical, delightful ability not to see things, too: the weeds, the chomped-on-by-woodchucks broccoli, the fall transplants begging to go into the ground.

The Guilty Admirer:  “Gosh, it’s fantastic!  Wonderful!  The carrots!  The basil!  The peppers!  And wow, what a lot of work!  Gosh, I feel like I should lend a hand!  What should I do?  Oh, I don’t know where to start!” this visitor might say, as he or she trails along the garden pathways, admiration and worry in such keen balance that a certain paralysis sets in. 

In one of our funniest-after-the fact-visits, when we were desperately haying before a rainstorm, the farmers frantically pitching hay and the draft horses hurriedly hauling hay, our visitors admired us from the edge of the field.  They kept far enough away to avoid the flying sweat, the biting bugs, and the flying and biting curses of any hard-pressed haying operation.  The Easy-Going Admirer was content and appreciative; the Guilty Admirer whimpered,  “Oh, it’s so beautiful!  So idyllic!  Oh, I should help!  Oh, it looks so hard!  Look at those dark clouds coming so quickly!  Oh, wow, do I have to help?”

The Cheerful Pitcher-Inner:  These visitors are gleeful when they see a hayloader and dark clouds coming.  They grab pitchforks, jump up on the haywagon.  After the haying, they rub their hands eagerly together when they see the weedy garden.  “Okay, show me what to weed,” they say.  “Let’s just finish weeding this entire quarter-acre garden section; we can go to the lake later, when we’re good and hot and ready for a swim.  All right, everybody, let’s get at it!”

Ah, now this is a visitor after our own farming hearts!

The Reluctant Pitcher-Inner:  “Do we havvvvveee to?” is the distinctive call of these fine people.  Often the children of a friend, relative, or even a resident farmer, these folks seem more attracted by the lake and the ice cream shop than the weeds in the garden.  And yet somehow they find themselves weeding, weeding, weeding, following in the roundabout, annoying path of Cheerful Pitcher-Inner adults who can’t seem to see the clear and direct route to the cool water and the even cooler ice cream.

The Panicking Pitcher-Inner:  Closely related to the Guilty Admirer, but given to nervous fits of unfocused activity, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work to be done.  One farmer might send this visitor to help pick the zucchini and yellow squash with the other farmer at the far end of the field, for example.

“Oh, oh, here’s some ripe peppers!  Shall I pick them?” the visitor calls.  “No, no, keep going,” the farmers encourage.  “Oh, oh, here’s some lettuce that needs weeding!  I should weed it!”  “No, no, keep going, it’s all right!”  “Oh, oh, oh, I see tomatoes ready!  Shall I just get them first?  Oh, oh, oh, these beans are so ripe, oh, oh, oh.  . .”

By this time, and after all these oh-oh-ohs, both farmers are weak with laughter.  ”Keep going, keep going,” we say, “You’re almost to the squash!  It really needs picking!  You’re almost there!”

We farmers are almost there too, and we’re there, and we’re everyplace in between.  Full-time farming is a committed relationship, and we go through the whole range of emotions that characterize such a rich, full relationship: love, anger, despair, frustration, fear, grief, boredom, ecstasy, rage, affection, excitement, satisfaction, a sense of the sacred, a sense of the ridiculous.  We cycle and recycle through it all, from easy-going to guilty, from cheerful to reluctant to panicking, and we sure are glad to have our summer company, to help us admire and work and sympathize and laugh our way through.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jul 9 – Jul 15, 2014

Draft Horse Dream

June on our vegetable farm is when this farmer fantasizes.  About what, you may wonder?  Resting on a beach, swimming in the ocean, summering in France, taking a nap?  No, it is none of these.

In June I fantasize about being a draft horse.  What an exquisite thing to be!  First of all our draft horses are gorgeous, strong and sleek and elegant.  Everyone admires them.  All the nice people who come to the farm in June to start picking up their CSA shares say hello to the red-faced, sweaty farmers, but what the people really want is to linger with the draft horses.  Everyone wants to pet the horses, feed them, say sweet words to them.

Of course the size and the beauty and the good nature of the horses can’t help but attract such kind attention, but there’s more.  People are awed, intrigued, fascinated, by the very manure a draft horse produces. 

Yes, the red-faced sweaty farmers certainly prize the poop, shoveling it up and making big shrines of it, covering it with a heavy cloth to protect it, checking it periodically and oohhing and ahhing over its transformation into rich black compost.

Then there are children of a certain age, and of a certain relaxed, liberal parentage, who revel in horse manure as well.  Those adventurous, happy children take enormous pleasure in removing socks and shoes and then walking barefoot repeatedly through the freshest, squishiest pile of horse manure available.  It’s hard to resist, and enormously satisfying, particularly when one watches the faces of any nearby adult.

In June, the horse manure is especially nice and squishy, since another draft horse delight this time of year is green grass.  The horses are out on pasture, and that makes for happy horses.  They buck, they kick, they run, they snort.  They’ve got lots of room, and they’ve got lots to eat.  They can doze in the shady woods, and then eat.  They can gallop around and then eat.  They can rest from galloping and eating, and then eat.  Oh, what a life!

In the pasture there’s no halter, no lead ropes, no harness!  And yet in June the horses are in fine shape, muscled from the spring plowing and compost-spreading, discing and harrowing.  They are in fine shape, feeling good, feeling fit, but there is a lovely lull now in draft horse duties, before haying season and fall preparation of the garden come on strong.  A horse can feel wild and free, on the plains or the steppes, living out an unfettered wild horse life!

Then of course, there are the times in June when a draft horse welcomes a halter, demands a halter, or at least demands a person come open the gate and give access to the cool, fly-free, dark stable.  June can be hot and buggy, and at five or six in the morning the horses come galloping to the gate.  Let us in! 

And what do we obedient farmers do?  We let them in.  We scratch their itchy chins and bellies.  We feed them tasty scraps from our harvesting: outside leaves of lettuce, already blooming pac choi, wilted greens, carrot tops, just in case the horses work up a hunger loafing in the stable.

We also admire their calm and beauty and good nature as we race around sweaty and red-faced all day, saying hello, how are you back to our nice CSA members, and weeding and planting and planning and harvesting and keeping the accounts and making lists and feeding ourselves and washing the dishes and fixing the fence and and and  . . . 

Oh to be a draft horse!  In June!

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jun 11 – Jun 17, 2014