The Gift of One Not-So-Wise Farmer

We farmers give funny presents.  Once, when a friend was celebrating a birthday in a big way, we brought a five gallon bucket of paste tomatoes and a monster zucchini as gifts. To our friend's credit, he received this gift fully and laughingly.

At Christmas and the winter holidays, we keep it up, giving jars of home-grown and home-canned pickles and tomato sauce and relishes and applesauce and jams and jellies, and pretty baskets of potatoes and onions and beets.  Mostly people seem pleased by our practical farmy presents, and mostly we are very pleased to give them.  But there is one Christmas present that at least one of us farmers has lived to regret.

It sure seemed like a great idea at the time: a wonderful gift for my wonderful farming fellow!  I wrote a note on a piece of paper, decorated it with hammers and drills, nails and screws and wrenches, all festively twined around with wire.  Then I cut up the piece of paper, making a puzzle.  I wrapped it up, and give it to my fellow for Christmas.

It was a tricky puzzle; it took a long time to solve.  But imagine my fellow's delight when he finally read the note: “I will help you solve the puzzle of your tool area!”

The tool area is in a corner of our barn, and it is also where my marginally organized, marginally tidy, highly tolerant of clutter and junk fellow has soared to new heights.

The place is about five by ten feet, with shelves and a bins and a tool bench.  It used to be a jumble of junk, but then a CSA member bartered carpentry for vegetables, and made a lovely new tool area.  I was delighted.  Finally a solution to never being able to find the wire cutters! the locking pliers!  the chisel!  I hung up hammers and screwdrivers and saws in perfect rows.  I made bin labels, in bright colors:  House.  Fence.  Car.  Irrigation.  Plow.  Greenhouse.  Wood screws.  Giant Bolts.  Nuts.  Washers.

Now, five years after the new tool area was built and beautifully organized, it looks like this: a jumble of junk. 

My fine fellow comes home from the dump, thrilled with the metal buckets of loose screws, nuts, bolts, nails, hinges, latches, and who knows what else, that the nice man at the dump saved especially for us.  Or it's time to get the hay in the barn, and the incredible crammer and jammer farmer picks up every vital project he's strewn around the barn floor, and tosses it all into the tool area.  Wooden apple crates to be fixed, bags of torn row cover, cultivator discs needing repair, empty cardboard boxes, broken chairs. 

Thus the tool area is knee-deep, and, driven mad by the disaster, I now refuse to enter its bowels.  I have learned to give my fellow a good amount of lead time when we work on a project requiring tools together.  It takes him a long time to find that hammer and nails, that saw and chisel, those fence tools and staples. 

Even he, generally unbothered by such minor details of disorder, has been known to swear and groan at the tool area.  He asks for me for advice.  I just shake my head and laugh.  He asks a friend for advice.  The friend looks at the tool area, shakes his head and laughs.  “You've got to take it all out, and start over again.”

Now that's the very phrase that got me into present-giving trouble.  It sounded so promising, so perfect for the the more spacious winter months of a vegetable farmer and the winter holidays and New Year's resolutions and the like. 

So I made the puzzle.  I gave my fellow the gift, such a nice practical sustainable you-won't- have-to-spend-three-hours-looking-for-a-certain-size-drill-bit-and-then-drive-off-to-the-hardware-store-in-a-fit-of-despair-to-buy-another-one present. 

But that was two years ago, and the truth is I haven't put a foot into that dreadful tool area since.  I want to do it.  I mean to do it, to give such a nice gift to my nice fellow, even with the full knowledge that the tool area would revert back to a jumble of junk with in a matter of years, or weeks, or maybe even days.

But I stand at the threshold of the tool area, and I tremble. 

No, I haven't yet made good on my present.  But I have given my farming fellow the gift of the perfect non-organizing jumble of junk excuse: “But you said you'd help me!”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 24 – Dec 30, 2014

Funny Farmers and Turnip Tricks

Early winter is an excellent time for reflection on a New England vegetable farm.  The garden season is still fresh in a farmer's mind, and also just far enough in the past that a farmer can begin to see the humor in it.

This season, for example, we sowed three two-hundred foot beds of fall carrots, with two rows to a bed, as we normally do, to feed our nearly 100 CSA members for two or three months.  We always “mark” the carrot rows by mixing in radish seed, as radishes are such fast germinators that we can weed the rows before the carrots even come up.  Sometimes we harvest the radishes; sometimes we just weed them out.

But this year we didn't have any radish seed hanging around, so we used purple-top turnip seed instead.  Lo and behold, the darned carrots didn't germinate, but the turnips did.  Instead of lots of carrots, which most everybody loves, we had mountains of fall turnips, which most everybody  . . .  doesn't love.

We would have been happy with 250 turnips total for the CSA garden, but instead we found ourselves with over 1200 turnips.  Luckily, we do have some diehard turnip fans that were delighted with the crop, but we must admit that the first purple-top turnip does not usually bring about the same elation, as, say, the first ripe tomato of the season. 

Even the farmers have been a little daunted by the sheer number and size of the turnips this fall.  We have been searching out turnip recipes: mashed, roasted, and the favorite-lots-of-heavy-cream-and-onions-plus-a-few-token-turnips casserole.  It is our New England duty, we used to say, to eat our one purple-top turnip a year.  But now we are leaning to love our many turnips.  Or at least feel some fondness, and a good deal of familiarity, with our many turnips.

We did find a wonderful use for one of our biggest, human head-sized turnips.  Since we don't grow pumpkins, as one farmer here has a strong philosophical stance against growing decorations and not food, we found that a big ol' turnip was almost as nice as a big ol' pumpkin.  We couldn't carve it, of course, because then we would have decoration, and not food, but we made purple construction paper eyes, to match its purple top, and, the turnip had its own naturally-occurring jack-o-lanternish mouth. 

Perfect!           

And perfect for the 2014 season, too, because for years we've been waiting for Halloween to fall on one of our CSA pick-up days.  At last, to our great glee, it happened!  On Halloween, we featured our turnip jack-o-lantern, along with a fierce fanged green pepper.  We put rocks in the taters, and we switched all our vegetable labels around.  Green peppers were cabbage, tomatoes were Swiss chard, rutabagas were leeks.  Oh, we are very very funny farmers.

We had one last great trick for Halloween.  On the harvest chalkboard, we list the vegetables ready for our CSA members for the day:  Potatoes - Two lbs, Lettuce - One head, Brussels Sprouts - One stalk, Green Pepper- One, and the like. 

On Halloween we wrote “Purple-Top Turnips – Thirty.”  Oh  ha ha ha!  We farmers were rolling around on the ground with laughter, anticipating our CSA members' reactions.  Then we added in a little asterisk, referring to a note below:  “Trick or treat -- you only get three turnips!”  (Note that we didn't write: “You only have to take three turnips.”  Instead it was the enticing: “You only get three turnips!”  Subliminal message: You lucky people you!)

So very funny, so very tricky.  Plus the thought of loading thirty purple-top turnips into a bag and hauling them home was so enervating that people were relieved, delighted, jubilant, yes, celebratory about taking only three turnips home! 

And, even funnier, the next few weeks we gave out six purple top turnips per person, along with some “specialty turnips.” For some reason the turnip spirits gave us the idea that this was the perfect year to trial black, red, and yellow turnips too.

But the turnip tricks didn't end there.  We wrote it on the harvest chalkboard: “Specialty Turnips - Two.”  But guess what?  The black, red, and yellow turnips were not turnips at all.  They were really radishes! 

Oh, golly.  You'd think after close to twenty years in as vegetable farmers, we might know a turnip from a radish.  It seems like the mischievous turnip and the mischievous radish spirits were having a mighty fine time this year.

And the farmers were too, for the most part, which is a fine thing in itself, and most encouraging in a time of farm reflection.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2014

Farmers Tell All: How To Beat Those Winter Blues

Here on our New Hampshire vegetable farm, we fling our arms open wide for winter.  We know many people who dread the cold season in the Northeast, or at least require a considerable bracing to meet the blast.  We farmers have a fantastic idea to beat those winter's-on-its-way blues: you too can become a vegetable farmer!

First of all, as the cold weather gains strength and promise, you will revel in the fact that you get to be indoors.  You will have spent so much time outside all spring, summer, and fall, in every conceivable type of pleasant and unpleasant spring, summer, and fall weather, that you will be eager to go in your house and stay in your house, snugly protected from the elements.  Nor more harvesting for hours in the driving rain; no more sweating in the blazing sun as you put up loose hay with and for the draft horses that help you farm.

Secondly, as a vegetable farmer,  you will positively look forward to winter's decay and death.  The first frost?  Fantastic!  Maybe it will stop those oh-so-productive zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers, which you've been bound to pick every other day for the last four months, whether it interferes with all your exciting farmerly social and travel plans (oh ha ha ha!) or not.

Coming close after the first frost is the first hard freeze, which is even better.  All kind of garden plants will die!  Sure, there might be a frantic morning, afternoon, and night of harvesting everything that won't survive the freeze, and your house will be stock full of buckets, crates, and trays of produce, but at least the plants are dead!  They can produce no more!  Hooray!

Not only that, in the winter, the bugs are good and dead.  All that brain power you've been using to keep track of the bugs on the potatoes and the bugs on the tomatoes and the bugs on the brassicas and the bugs on the squashes will now be freed up for other noble pursuits.  Imagine, not having to think about bugs and how to get rid of bugs all day!  No more squishing bugs between rocks, or your two fingers, if you're feeling hardy and not-too-squeamish; no more swatting at black flies and mosquitoes; no more whacking the gigantic horse and deer flies feeding on your hardworking draft horses' sweaty flanks.

Of course, and fourthly, winter does bring those very draft horses into their off-season paddock, and they require feeding three times a day.  But the horses are invariably glad to see you, because you're bringing breakfast, lunch, and supper, and you can cozy up to those big warm bodies with their furry winter coats and enjoy the the steam puffing from their nostrils and the munching and munching of all that hay you all worked together to gather.

And in the house, you can enjoy all the produce you've canned, frozen, dried, and root-cellared to last you the winter.  It's quite nice to have spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove or potatoes roasting in the oven, those long slow cooking dishes filling your house with good smells, and your belly with good feelings.  What's so great about lettuce and salad greens anyway?

Fifthly, winter is wonderful for the vegetable farmer because of all that marvelous snow, floating lightly down from the generous sky.  That snow covers up all your pressing outside projects, and it also covers up all the season's mishaps or even mistakes in a most pleasing manner.  What a beautiful farm, you might think, what a lovely life: why, I don't see a single weed; I don't see any busted up machinery, I don't see anything but a smooth forgiving blanket of snow.

And now, vegetable farmer in the winter that you are, you will go get under your cozy forgiving blankets, and have a long winter's nap.  Ah . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2014

Read This Before You Buy That Team of Horses of Plow Up Your Garden

We recently hosted a draft horse workshop on our vegetable farm.  Seven good people, hailing from Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York, came to us on a Sunday afternoon to learn about vegetable production with draft power. 

We enjoyed talking to these budding horse farmers, who ranged from a couple who already has a garden, a team of horses, and full time jobs as teachers and/or guidance counselors (a perfect set-up for a successful vegetable farm-- two outside sources of income!) to a Dutch fellow that had come along as company with a friend.  “I'm not a farmer,” he said, and the friend answered “Yet,” smiling at him. 

The workshop went well, with a practical demonstration of readying a field for garlic and fall cover crops, as well as a chance to drive Molly and Ben, two of our horses.  We also had lots of conversation about the various implements we have and use here, and the various implements we have and don't use here (generally wrested rusty and busted up from an old hedgerow and donated by kind, well-meaning folks), and the various implements we don't have and would like to use here (all eloquently described by my farmer fellow, who generally has some wonderful horse drawn implement in mind that cost only $2000! and would greatly benefit the farm, if not the farm budget).

We ended the workshop with good-byes and good lucks,  and with a reminder to check the recent article on the NOFA-NH (who sponsored the event, along with the National Center for Appropriate Technology) website for more of our words of horse-farming wisdom. 

Now these words of wisdom come to all of you budding vegetable- and horse- farmers, so that you can contemplate your next glamorous career change, and so that you don't feel too sad about missing our nice workshop.

Three Basic Tips (with notes) for Starting in with Draft Animal Power on the Farm

Love your draft animals.

            1.  Think marriage, not summer romance.  Working with draft animals is a relationship, and if you want to be in it for the long haul, you're going to be ecstatic, enraged, bored, happy, frustrated, sad, content, joyful, ready to quit, ready to keep on, and everything in between.  A good teamster thinks of the animals first, even when everything else on the farm might be going wrong.

            2.  Consider temperaments, both your own and your draft animals.  Do you enjoy the slow, steady pace of oxen, or the peppier step of a team of horses?  Or do you have no idea?  Find out.  First.  Before you buy any.   Once you buy, you're going to be housing, feeding, and tending your hungry big critters, and all that housing, feeding and tending has to happen whether you ever get your garden plowed or not.

Find good mentors.

            1.  Find a friendly, experienced draft horse or oxen farmer (or two or three), preferably living next door, and with ample time and abundant energy to spend with a teamster-wanna-be.  In lieu of that, you may have to travel a little.  Expect to pay for the privilege of  learning from all that experience and friendliness, either through formal workshops costing money or through less formal barters of your time and labor and your unfailing good will and respect for a busy farmer's help.

            2.  Find a friendly, experienced pair of horses or oxen for a first team.  They will teach you as much as your farmer-mentor.  That beautiful matched team of snorting high headed high steppers may be fantastic for a long-time teamster, but not for a beginner.   And that adorable pair of fuzzy foals or calves will not learn with you; they will walk all over you, and you will all end up sadder and perhaps no wiser.

Think in pairs.

            1.  There's nothing cuter than a draft pony on a cart, but single horse machinery is a lot harder to find than double.  (We don't claim to know much about oxen - except we've only seen them driven in pairs at the county fair.)   And horses and oxen, working or not, tend to like company of their own kind.

            2.  Any draft animal, of course, has to be paired with an implement in order to get any farm work done.  There are farm auctions and machinery dealers, and there are lots of busted up old plows and rakes and cultivators and hayloaders in hedges.  Do your research before you haul out your wallet: how much should a plow of this age and condition go for?  Do I have the skills and tools to patch it up when it breaks?  Or do I have the money to pay someone else to patch it up?  And by the way, do I even know how to use the thing?

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 1– Oct 7, 2014