Big Day on the Farm

June is the great month of arrangements: graduations and parties, vacations and weddings . . . vegetables and CSA harvest pick-ups. Of course, months of preparation have gone into these grand events.

There's preparing the ground, weeding and watering, organizing days and times budgets and guests, all in anticipation of the big flourish. It is exciting, and the final details can also be a bit stressful. This last was especially true in the early years of our CSA farming.

“All right,” a farmer might say, one fine June morning, “Who's ready for our first CSA pick-up today?”

A hundred heads of greenhouse-raised lettuce clamor for attention: “I'm ready! I'm ready! Pick me! Pick me! Me me me!”

The farmer backs up a step. “But I only need twenty head of lettuce today. I've only got twenty families coming to the farm today.”

“Pick me,” holler all hundred head. “I''m sick of this boring old hothouse! I'm ready to graduate into the world! Otherwise I'm going to bolt! See, here I go, I'm out of here, I'm bolting!”

The farmer covers his ears. “Ai-yi,” he says, “Okay, two heads per CSA share, that's 40 heads of lettuce, oh gosh, all this beautiful lettuce! All ready at once! Let's see, three heads per share . . . ?”

Meanwhile, the fellow farmer is optimistically striding out to the kohlrabi patch in the field. “Okay, kohlrabi, who's ready for the big day?” the farmer calls enthusiastically.

The kohlrabi shrinks back in alarm. “Oh, no, it's been too dry. It's been too hot, it's been too cold, it's been too wet, it's been too everything and anything. We're too young, we're much too young, oh let us alone.” The kohlrabi begins to looks a little teary; the kohlrabi has cold feet. The kohlrabi is not ready for the big day.

“Well,” says the farmer, “Huh. Jilted at the altar.” But she goes on to the bok choy, which is looking bold and vigorous under its protective row cover. The farmer flings off the cover, and the bok choy bursts out into the air.. .. bolted, reeling.

“Oh-oh,” says the farmer, “What's this?”

“Oh ha ha ha,” laughs the bok choy helplessly, “We had such a good time at the party, oh ha ha ha . .” The gone-to-flower central stalks lean drunkenly one way and then the other.

“Oh no no no,” says the farmer, “The party hasn't even started, what have you been doing, we need you today, fresh and bright and ready for harvest!”

“Oh ha ha ha,” says the bok choy, falling over, “Ha-ha-ha-harvest. Don't you know it's been too dry? It's been too hot, it's been too cold, it's been too wet, it's been too everything and anything!”

“Oh, gees,” says the farmer, stepping over the ridiculous bok choy, to check the salad greens. The farmer lifts the row cover tentatively, peeking under: is this promising green a sign of beautiful mizuna and arugula and tatsoi and other delicious mixed greens? Or is this green a promise of a fine mix of weeds?

“Hello?” says the farmer. “Salad greens? Are you under there?”

“Oh hi!” comes a perky answer. “Are we glad to see you! Everything's going great here, we 're all so relaxed and easy-going, life is wonderful, it's like a vacation, we haven't done a thing! We just let the weeds do all the growing!”

“Don't say that,” says the farmer, “This is the first CSA pick-up day. We need you!”

“Yawn,” say the salad greens, “I guess we're ready for another nap on the beach . . . why don't you check the salad turnips instead?”

“All right,” sighs the farmer. “Salad turnips, here I come.” Another hopeful look under another row cover: “Aww, what happened here? You're still tiny!”

The turnips start up a familiar refrain, the spring, summer, and fall farming song: “Oh, it's been too dry! It's been too hot, it's been too cold, it's been too wet, it's been too everything and anything!”

“Oh, gees,” moans the farmer, going back to the greenhouse with the morose field report for the fellow harvester.

The fellow harvester is awash in lovely heads of lettuce. “Look at this!” he says, holding one up. “Isn't this beautiful?”

It is beautiful, crisp and fresh, brilliant green with red speckles. “Yeah, wow! But gees, everything is supposed to look that good, and be perfectly ready by now. Maybe we should put everything in the greenhouse from now on.”

“Yeah! Let's cover the entire farm with a giant sheet of plastic!” says the happy lettuce man. “Here, help me pick some more lettuce! This is going to be the biggest best lettuce salad the people have ever had!”

“Maybe all the people can serve their giant lettuce salads at their graduation and weddings and vacations and parties?”

“All right!” The farmers join in a sort-of-victory high five. Everything might not be perfectly ready for the grand event, but everything's perfectly all right.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 10-June 16, 2015

The Honey Wagon, Or Romance on the Farm

We New Hampshire vegetable farmers spend a lot of our time these fine spring days with our beloved honey wagon. A honey wagon conjures up visions of flowers and sunshine and sweetness and abundance, does it not? Yet the honey wagon, should your farm-implements-knowledge need refreshing, is also known as a manure spreader.

And manure, should your farm-products-knowledge need refreshing as well, is also called stinky, icky, yukky, gross, and other choice words by some of our younger farm visitors. However, we do have some adventurous young souls who delight in walking barefoot in horse manure of any vintage, equally pleased with the feel on the child's foot and the look on the parent's face.

But happily, no matter how a person feels about manure, sustainable farming practices mean that the stinky, the icky, the yukky and the gross miraculously turn into sweetness and abundance: the honey of compost. It tales a year to happen, but it's amazing to see the beautiful result.

So, hey, it's not so bad when my farmer fellow invites me, one lovely spring day, to fill the honey wagon. We take our forks and our shovels, and we fill up the spreader with rich, dark, handsome compost. It takes the two of us about twenty minutes of steady work to fill up the spreader with a thousand lbs of compost, and then it takes about twenty seconds for two of our horses to empty the spreader on a garden section. This doesn't give the shoveling farmers much of a break, but the pulling horses enjoy their twenty minute rest while the shovelers get back to work.

Luckily, now that we've incorporated “green manuring” (a strange term that means plowing cover crops under for soil fertility) into our system, we don't have to fill the honey wagon quite so many times in one day. We need less total compost to prepare each garden section for planting, thanks to the cover cropping.

But our top record, our all-time high, back in the days of our farming youth and of our lack of sufficient garden space to cover crop and green manure, was ten spreader loads in one day. We started early, we sweated hard, and we wore our youthful selves out by mid-afternoon, when we were considerably slower than twenty minutes a pop in filling our loads.

Of course, this record doesn't include the halcyon days when our neighbor used to own a little tractor with a bucket loader, which we oh-so-gratefully borrowed on spreader filling days. Alas, when our nice neighbors realized we were using the tractor more than they were, they sold it.

We were back to forks and shovels, which our horses were happy about: more rest, and something about that roaring noise as the bucket lifted high above made our horses decidedly anxious. I would “head” the horses, standing next to their heads to provide gentle reassurance and certain proof that standing still was exactly the right thing to do at that moment, while my fellow loaded the spreader with the tractor. Certainly this was easier on the shovelers' bodies, but it was harder on their spirits: smelly from the exhaust fumes, noisy, and stressful.

In any case, once the spreader is full, either by means of tractor or muscle, it's time to spread the load in the garden. This is a rather clankety-clunkety, rattly, jostly, jouncy affair. The horses move right along, the spreader bounces right along, the farmer on the seat jounces right along, and the compost is flung into the air and plummets to the ground. The jostlier, jouncier of the farmers doesn't mind all this, and in fact seems to enjoy it.

However, the serene and peaceful farmer does not. Recently, though, the serene and peaceful farmer forgot how much she doesn't like to ride on the spreader. The jouncy farmer invited her so sweetly to join him, taking a turn around the field on the honey wagon, that she momentarily lost her good, serene, peaceful sense and agreed.

“Here we go,” said the honey-wagon driver, “Hold on!”

I lurched and bounced, gripping the seat, as we crossed the field, and then suddenly I bellowed

“Ow!” Instead of the seat, I gripped the back of my head, which a flying rock, hiding in the compost, had just struck.

“I swear,” said my sweet-talkin' fellow, “that hasn’t happened to me ever, in all the fourteen years I’ve been using this spreader! I swear!”

Ah, romance on the farm . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 13-19, 2015

Visiting Auntie Hoophouse

If the earth is our Mother, then surely our heated hoop house is a Beloved Old Auntie. She is a warm and welcoming Auntie, and we farmers spend lots of time with her in early spring, helping her dig her garden beds, helping her get her seeds started, helping her stay just the right temperature.

Warmth. Auntie Hoop House likes to be just the right temperature. She basks between 70 and 80 degrees, and it is especially nice to visit her in March, or even April, when it can still be mighty cold outside (as well as a little cold in the farmers' house, because the farmers can't decide if it's chilly enough to start a fire in the wood stove, and thus use up the dwindling wood supply.) Whatever the weather, Auntie insists on being warm (and she has the propane bill to show for it!).

But Auntie doesn't like to get too hot, either. On a sunny day, she can heat up ten degrees in a matter of minutes, and she begins to feel faint. She needs a lot of attention in early spring, because her circumstances have to be adjusted frequently during the day: one front door open, two front doors open, inner plastic door cover rolled up, inner plastic wall hauled up in degrees by ropes, back door blanket taken down, back inner plastic door cover rolled up, back door open, one fan on, two fans on, three fans on. And then there's reversing all that, depending on the sun and the wind and the outside temperature.

Food. Auntie Hoop House knows how to provide for her guests. In summer, of course, there are the luscious early tomatoes, the fragrant basil bouquets, the sweet red peppers, and the glossy eggplants. But even in March and April, our Auntie wants to feed us. If she can't find any spinach overwintering from the last garden season, she will gladly produce delicious wild dandelion greens. This will please her guests no end, as they dine on dandelion quiche and sauteed dandelions and the ever-popular dandelion dal. (As our then 6th-grader moaned a few years ago, “Oh geesh. I'm going to ask everybody else in my class if they're having dandelion dal for lunch.” Strangely enough, no one else was.)

Ambiance. Auntie makes her house inviting. There is the pleasant sound of gentle rain plopping on her plastic top. There is the wild mint not yet weeded out of the beds, blooming tiny purple flowers. There is the comfortable furniture, two weather beaten wooden and canvas chairs, one of which periodically and unexpectedly collapses when a guest is relaxing on it, chatting perhaps, or finishing a good novel, and maybe feeling reluctant to get up and get moving. (“Whump!” says the collapsing chair. “Oof!” says the collapsing farmer. “Yes!” says wise old Auntie. “It's time to get up and get moving!”)

Taking Care of the Babies. Surely this is Auntie Hoop House's most endearing quality. She nurtures our tiny little seeds into seedlings, and then into plants, and then into delicious food. She takes care of our yogurt babies and our bread dough babies, providing a steady warm temperature for yogging and rising. She nurtured our little human baby too, who slept in the bassinet, played in the dirt as a toddler, learned to plant and pot up and water and weed and harvest, and now frequents the collapsing chair, which adds a little zest to her high school homework.

Even though our dear Auntie can be a little forgetful sometimes – for example, she (or perhaps someone closely related to her . . . ) forgot to check and make sure the propane people really did fill up the tank when we thought they would, and the propane people didn't, which meant the propane ran out, which meant Auntie got the shivers, which meant the farmers brought 30 flats of seedlings into their house, which meant all the floor space in two rooms, and baby gates to keep the kitty out, and quite a challenge getting to the phone and the bathroom for two days and nights – still we love our Auntie Hoop House. Such a kind, good Auntie, helping us extend the garden season and strengthen the local food system. We couldn't get along without her.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 15-21, 2015

Ragtag March on the Farm

 

We're a ragtag bunch on the farm this time of year. In the winter the farm horses (and the farmers!) are fuzzy and round, and by the summer we''re all sleek and trim. But in March?

In March our horses are patchy and scratchy, shedding clumps of hair, rolling in the muddy-slushy barnyard, itching on the stalls and the posts in the barn, and itching on the farmers too, if the farmers are handy.

We are often handy, in March, since there's not much more satisfying than helping an itchy horse shed. The horses swoon with pleasure when we start brushing; in fact, Molly, our lovey-dovey Belgian mare, follows us around the barnyard, nudging us with her nose. Brush me! Brush me! she says, even if we're merely passing though on another errand, and have no brush available.

But Molly doesn't need a brush for happiness. Itch me, itch me instead! she says. We scratch her chin; we scratch her neck. Nudge, nudge, she pushes with her nose, You've got two hands, why aren't you using both of them?

“Molly's so funny,” I say to my fellow farmer. “she's just like you. So friendly and enthusiastic.”

“And such a hard worker, too,” my fellow adds, brushing Molly's back.

“Oh, indeed.” I scratch Molly under her mane, and she arches her neck, entirely pleased with this double attention.

Moon, Molly's Belgian brother, is standing nearby, and he is another critter entirely. He's a fine horse, too, if not exactly eager for work, and rather reserved. Even in the itchy days of March, Moon is not generally receptive to a free-standing grooming session, though once he's haltered and tied, he relaxes a bit, even allowing that a brushing on a certain spot near his front leg might feel kind of good. Even so, it takes a little while in the spring to get Moon used to the whole idea of being groomed regularly again, as a prelude to working regularly again. Luckily, it is only March, and we have time to take it slowly with him.

“Moon's so funny,” my fellow says, ”isn't he? Kind of reserved, kind of easily offended, kind of hangs back with the work, you know, kind of like . . . ahem . . . kind of like . . .”

“Now listen, my friend,” I look askance at my fellow. “Is that a sustainable, productive way to address one's beloved partner in life and in work?”

“Hee hee hee,” answers my fellow devilishly, and heads toward another itchy horse with the currycomb.

Ben, our black Percheron gelding, is our biggest, goofiest, itchy horse, and he has a funny backward flop to his ears on occasion. Sometimes I am not so sure of big ol' Benny: Is he unhappy? Is he pinning his ears back? Does he like this? Does he not want anything to do with it?

“Let me watch you groom him,” I say to my fellow, “I want to see what he does. I don't know how to read him, exactly.”

My fellow starts a vigorous brushing. Benny stands stock still, with the backward flop with his ears.

“You know, he's so big and goofy, I try not to read him too much,” my fellow remarks, which makes me laugh. And look at that, Benny has his eyes closed, and his back leg flopped out, in the bliss of having his inner leg brushed. His funny black flop ear is perfectly matched by his funny back flop leg.

“Well, he does seem pretty happy about that,” I say, going to Betsy, our black Percheron mare, sway-backed and retired, who is waiting sleepily in the sun for me. Along with the wisdom and calming presence that Betsey has acquired in her old age, she's also developed the incredibly thick and long coat of an older horse.

Betsey is our March poster horse, our most stunning equine example of ragtag March (and April, and even May and June, as she takes ages now to shed out). She has gobs of loose hair hanging all over her body. When she walks, a shower of hair attends her. She itches herself fiercely on manger and post, leaving clumps and mats and entire carpets of hair behind. This is all despite our grooming, which we soon finish for the day with a hairy flourish.

Pleased, we look around at our slightly tidier, for a few minutes at least, herd of four fine work horses. As soon as we leave the barnyard, of course, they will start rolling and itching again. But for now they look lovely, and we farmers?

We farmers are ragtag March all over: muddy and slushy, friendly and reserved, patchy and scratchy, hardworking and sleepy, and, oh yes, covered head to toe with horse hair. My fellow looks me over, and takes a currycomb to my coat, brushing gently in circles.

“There now,” he says, “Isn't this a nice, sustainable, productive way to treat one's beloved partner in life and work?”

“Hee hee hee,” I say. It tickles.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 18- 24, 2015