The Good Taste of No Waste

It's potato season here on our New Hampshire vegetable farm. Most everybody loves potatoes, and our CSA members are no exception. They head for the potato crate with glee. Members study the contents of the crate, finding the perfect potato size for the menu that week – big bakers, medium or small size boilers.

“Look at this,” a member might laugh, holding up a potato the size of a marble between two fingers. “You don't waste anything!”

We farmers laugh too. Heck, no, we don't want to waste a thing, especially the produce that we've labored over these many months. And if no CSA member is energized by the idea of picking out, weighing, and cooking up their weekly fall potato share in the form of marble size potatoes, why, the marbles will find their way into the farm kitchen, and the farmers will cook them up. Potatoes are so darned good, why waste one?

Of course, the same holds true for the many other vegetables we grow. We can't bear to waste any, whether they are perfect specimens or a little troubled. There's always a few tomatoes with small troubles or the odd squash that's grown too large, so we pile them up in our Surplus and Sharing Tray.

The tray is primarily for CSA members to trade vegetables and customize their shares. But we also put our troubled vegetables there, and any member with time or inclination is welcome to scoop up some and take 'em home, along with the regular share of trouble-free vegetables. And if any vegetables are left at the end of the CSA pick-up? There's always the farm kitchen, and hungry farmers to feed.

Recently, the hungry farmers took a break from the farm and the farm kitchen to visit another farm, one of the largest retail and wholesale fruit and vegetable growers in New Hampshire. While not a huge farm by national standards, the place was giant compared to our little acreage. As we drove around (drove, not walked!) the fields, we were taken aback, for example, by the “finished” squash and cucumber section. To our tiny-farm eyes, there were mountains of vegetables still left in the beds, sadly overripe by then. We asked the farmer, and he told us that at some point, when a crop has passed its peak, it's no longer efficient to send in the labor to harvest the rest.

Huh. We mulled that over. It makes sense on one level, but all that wasted food! It was painful to see. We came away from our visit and the extensive acres, irrigation, buildings, machinery, and many employees, feeling very clear indeed that our tiny farm was just what we wanted.

We like our little walkable fields. We like our four draft horses. We like the fellow farmers on our Mom and Pop farm. We like our CSA members, and knowing their names and where they live and if their grandchildren are visiting or their toddler just sampled her first winter squash, grown on our farm. And we love not wasting food, and harvesting every possible edible vegetable from a crop.

This year, though the summer drought gave us beautiful and abundant broccoli and beet greens, it also meant we couldn't germinate the fall turnips, carrots, and rutabagas, despite valiant attempts at irrigation. We are also theorizing that the drought, followed at last by rain, caused many of our fall cabbages to split. What does a non-wasting, use everything, eat everything tiny-farm farmer do with twenty or thirty split cabbages?

Well, we dithered. We like to give out the loveliest of vegetables to our CSA members. But we might not have enough heads of cabbage for everyone without the split heads. And even an ambitious farm kitchen can't absorb that much cabbage, despite how well cabbage pairs with marble size potatoes. Plus the cabbage is perfectly delicious, even though it won't store well.

In the end we decided to give out the split cabbage heads to our fine, flexible, good-natured CSA members. We couldn't stand the thought all of that fresh, local, sustainably raised food going to waste. Our members took up the split cabbage challenge willingly, entering fully into the spirit of non-wasteful farming. No waste here: just good food, gobbled up. Now that leaves a good taste in a vegetable farmer's mouth.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2016

Farmers Have So Much Fun

How do New Hampshire farmers amuse themselves? Oh, many ways. We might stand a while watching our draft horses kick and gallop and buck in the new pasture, wishing that we too had the pep to kick and gallop and buck in the fall, when we are still in high production season.

Or we might sit a while, which is more fitting to our autumnal energy level, watching the wild turkeys out the kitchen window. We have a picnic table down by our pond, and one day not long ago there were five big turkeys sitting, lying, grooming, and chatting there in the sunshine. This was quite amusing: turkeys on the picnic table! “It's a good thing we're vegetarian!” we called to those big old turkeys.

We farmers also amuse ourselves by paying the farm bills. “Oh ha ha!” we say, “Look at this enormous bill! Ha ha ha!” Sometimes we are having such a good time paying the bills that we invite our kitty to help. We wad up various pieces of bills and throw them around the room, and our kitty has a fine time chasing them down. It sure is nice to see the kitty attacking the bills, and it brings a whole new spirit of joie de vivre to the process.

Of course, as New Hampshire vegetable farmers, we also amuse ourselves with vegetables, and all the interesting ways vegetables can grow: the conjoined-twins summer squash, the mother-and-child eggplant, the monster-from-the-deep-sea green pepper.

We are not the only ones who find vegetables entertaining. Over at the Guilford Fair in Vermont, there is the Richard D. Blazej Humorous Vegetable Contest. I did not know Mr. Blazej, but he must have been a fine fellow. Even the name of his contest is funny: What is a Humorous Vegetable? Why, it must be one that tells jokes.

Thus our country-fair-farmer-amusement began. Our first humorous vegetable was a tomato, a fine ripe plump tomato, with a fine ripe bulbous nose. That year we were also growing wonderberries, a tiny odd purple fruit in the same family as tomatoes, and we used the wonderberries to make eyes for our tomato. Two green beans for arms, a toothpick and cardboard sign, and voila! Our humorous vegetable told a funny joke: “Why did the tomato blush?” “Because it saw the Russian dressing!” (Thanks to Sandwichery: Sandwich Recipes and Riddles, a very silly book by Patricia and Talivaldis Stubbles.)

The next year we were equally amused by a lovely little leek with seed eyes, reclining in a tiny wooden canoe, about ten inches long, and two inches wide, perfect for a seafaring leek. Of course, the leek had a sign: “What's the only vegetable you don't want to take in a boat?” “A leek!” (A leak! Get it? Thanks to our funny six year old friend Charlie.)

This year we outdid ourselves. We had a tomato drawstring purse, with carrot top handles, and carrot coins. We had a little white cucumber that looked just like an egg, in a cabbage leaf nest. But our piece de resistance was composed of carrots. Carrots are also very humorous vegetables, in case you didn't know.

First there were two carrot children, with their own naturally (organically!) grown legs, and with carved eyes and happy smiles, added by the farmers. The children rested on a pillow, with a sign: “Tell us a story, Grandmaw!”

Nearby was a rocking chair, made of clothespins, and there sat Grandmaw, a grandmother carrot perfectly folded in her growing to sit in a rocking chair. Her sign read: “Once upon a time there was a pair of sweethearts . . . ”

Then there were two more carrots, passionately entwined (well, actually one was passionately entwined, with carrot arms clasping for all it was worth; the other carrot looked a little startled by all that passion.) Their sign read, “Do you carrot all for me?”

But this is not all. There was a fourth sign, identifying the fair exhibit: "The Carrot Tableau." The farmers looked up the word tableau beforehand just to make sure they were using it correctly. “A striking incidental scene, as of a picturesque group of people [or carrots],” is the American Heritage Dictionary definition (parenthetical remark added).

Have you ever heard anything so absolutely perfect? So very amusing? The Carrot Tableau? Oh ha ha ha! We might also mention here the equally absolute perfection of the dictionary definition of piece de resistance: “1.The principal dish of a meal. 2. An outstanding accomplishment.”

Yes indeed, an outstanding accomplishment, stunning in its humor! Farmers have so much fun.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 19 - Oct 25, 2016

The Tomato Grafting Revolution

One day several years ago my farming fellow came back from his seed-saving group, saying, “Yeah, it was great! There were all these people growing their great great great grandmothers' heirloom open pollinated really rare varieties of corn and beans!”

“What did you say you were growing?” I asked him.

“I said I was grafting tomatoes! They all looked at me like I'm nuts!”

I thought my fellow was a little nuts myself, when he first talked about grafting tomatoes. People graft fruit trees, I said knowingly, not tomatoes.

“Look at this! It's fantastic!” was his answer. He showed a me a video clip of a hand, a razor blade, and two innocent tomato plants, each being sliced in half. Then the bottom of one was stuck to the top of the other, with the help of a silicone clip.

“Isn't that great?” he said. “I can't wait to try this!”

“But why?” I said. “It's so artificial, it's so forced, it's so not sustainable. And it's so not groovy!”

“I know,” he said enthusiastically, “but it doubles production, and the whole greenhouse is full of propane heaters and miles of plastic and irrigation and fans and everything else. It's all crazy and non-groovy. But since we have all these resources concentrated in this one area, we might as well get good production. That's a kind of sustainibility, too. And it's fantaaaastic production! Look at this! The plants are twice as big! Twice as many tomatoes!”

“But do we want twice as many tomatoes?”

“Yes!” said my fellow farmer.

Oh, he does love tomatoes, my fellow. Every year he grows a trillion different varieties, pink, yellow, white, purple, green, black, orange, and even red. He was ecstatic the year we were finally able to put all our tomatoes under cover, thanks to the addition of two new hoophouses. The outside, or “field” tomatoes, tasted mighty good, but they didn't always look so pretty. Now our tomatoes taste and look good, in the highly protected hoophouse environment.

The next big tomato step, after the hoophouse revolution, was the grafting revolution. My fellow plunged in, armed with a razor blade and a little pair of scissors. He sliced and trimmed and clipped, joining a sturdy Central American tomato root, highly tolerant of greenhouse conditions, to whatever heirloom or hybrid variety he was most enamored with at the moment. He tucked the tender grafties into the hospital, a darkened area under one of our propagation tables, for three days, misting them carefully twice a day. Then voila! There emerged the first batch of grafted tomatoes, each little plant either thoroughly dead or amazingly alive.

We transplanted the grafties carefully into our hoophouse beds, and soon they took off, and off, and off. They burst out of their silicone clips and grew and grew, twice the size of their non-grafted neighbors. We were in awe. We gazed high, at the hoophouse trusses, where the tomatoes were curling their leaves and twining their stems. That year was the first that my fellow had to start climbing a ladder to harvest tomatoes.

Ever since, my fellow has grafted, gazed in awe, and climbed the ladder. Over the years, he's worked his way through various grafting errors: plants too little, plants too big, plants in hospital too long, plants in hospital not long enough, plants too wet, plants too dry. Then one year my fellow had another brilliant idea: “Hey! How about grafting some cherry tomatoes?”

“Gee, I don't know,” I answered. “We've got an awful lot of cherry tomatoes already. It takes us three hours at a time, the two of us, just to pick them.”

“I'm going to try, just a couple. It'll be great. The plants will be huge!”

My fellow was right again. The plants were huge. They were monstrous. They were impenetrable. We would tunnel in, trying to reach the trillion before the overripening, the splitting, and then the rotting. We would tunnel in, and come out gasping for air.

“Never again,” I said. “Never again.”

“Never again,” agreed my fellow, “Never again.”

Now we laugh about it, as we spend our companionable three hours picking the lovely non-grafted cherry tomatoes twice a week together.

“Remember that year you grafted the cherry tomatoes?” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “Hee hee hee. That was a big mistake.”

“Hee hee hee,” I say. “That was funny. Remember how mad I used to get? I'd come out of there with all these leaves and cherry tomatoes caught on my head. I hated wasting all those tomatoes we couldn't reach.”

“Yeah,” he says again. “That makes this kind of picking seem easy, doesn't it?”

“It sure does,” I say.

“But it's a good thing I graft the big tomatoes,” he adds quickly. “Don't you think?”

“I sure do, “ I say. “I guess you're not completely nuts after all. You're more like completely tomatoes!”
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 31 -- Sept 6, 2016

Words for the Workhorse

Here on our New Hampshire vegetable farm, we've been farming with draft horses since the beginning. We've worked with several teams, in various combinations, and each team, and each horse, has its own charms and quirks. Mostly we say nice things to our charming, quirky horses. Sometimes we say other things.  Take Ben, for example, one of our black Percherons, who is our biggest, youngest, goofiest horse, born here on the farm in 2002. He likes to drink from the end of the water hose, and he likes to flip the hose right out of the trough. “Oh, Benny!” we moan, “For crying out loud, how are you going to get water to drink if it's all running down the driveway?” We might also say to Benny, on a fine spring morning,“Oh, you big, beautiful shiny horse, I bet you're ready to plow!” And he is. He is a fine, strong, steady horse, and we tell him so. He is also a fine, strong, steady horse with mighty big feet. When it's time to cultivate the narrow pathways of the garden, we are more likely to say, “Gees, Benny, every time you wiggle your big fat foot, you step on a plant!” Benny is pretty unconcerned about our little lettuce or broccoli transplants; in fact, he has finally trained the people around here to choose a different horse to cultivate, a horse with nice little feet. A horse with nice little feet comes walking right over in the barnyard. It is Molly, our lovebug, a sweet Belgian looking for someone to scratch her chin. She is a dear to work around in the stable, and we croon in her ears: “What a good horse, oh, what a nice good lovey-dovey horse.” Molly is also a hard worker. She is quite the peppy stepper in harness, instantly ready for anything, quite often more than even the teamster is ready for. “Easy, Molly,” we say. “Walk. Easy. Walk. Easy,” in slighter louder and more convincing tones each repetition. Molly is also not fond of big branches catching on the machinery she's hauling, which puts even more spring into her step. “Holy smokes,” we might say, “What are you trying to do, Molly? Win the race? Or just lose the hayloader, haywagon, and haypeople?” Molly likes to work best with her Belgian brother Moon, though we sometimes wonder why this is so. Moon has learned all the tricks of the draft horse trade, including lagging behind when there's a hard pull up a slope, and tucking ahead when there's a long downhill, which is the very time he's supposed to be helping hold the machinery from careening forward. “Step up, Moon, step up!” we encourage. Moon flicks his ears at us, and sometimes his tail: oh these pesky humans, always yakking about something. Moon is our most elegant horse, with his flowing blonde mane and tail, and his long neck. He also has the unusual and marvelous habit of stopping short when he is alarmed in harness, rather than galloping away. “Good boy,” we say, “Good good good wonderful marvelous fantastic horse,” we say, as we work out whatever noisy machinery disaster has befallen. Betsy, our other black Percheron, is our retired mare, and was known in her younger years for her snorting, wiggling ways, which occasionally actively contributed to one of those machinery disasters. We said a few stern words to her in her time, such as, “Betsey! What the heck are you doing! Whoa means Whoa! Not lurch ahead and break the mowing machine on a big rock!” Now Betsy has mellowed into the unflappable auntie. Mostly these days we say “Wow, Betsey!” instead of “Whoa, Betsey!” Two by fours falling from a great height directly in front of her? No worries. Betsey keeps drinking from the trough. Sapling catches under the saddle as we take a little ride through the woods? No problem. She keeps trotting along as the sapling rips out from under the saddle. Other three horses racing around the paddock in horror at an approaching front-end loader? No big deal. Betsy chews hay, unperturbed, at the manger. “Wow, Betsey,” we say. “You are some horse.” Betsy nods her head agreeably as she chews. She is some horse. And so are the rest of' 'em. We sure like to tell 'em so.   Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 3-9, 2016