Sew? Sow? Hmm

March may be the strangest month of all on our New Hampshire vegetable farm. We never quite know where we are in March: rain or sleet? mud or snow? The work horses start shedding their winter coats, but then the snow flies again. As for the farmers, our March question is always: to wool or not to wool?

We’ve been wearing our woolies for months: woolen long underwear, woolen socks, woolen shirts, woolen pants, woolen hats, woolen mittens. Dare we take off a woolen layer or two? Dare we bare a head, a hand, even, gasp, a wrist?

Luckily, March also means the greenhouse is up and running, and we dash across the driveway, into the tropical greenhouse, and unlayer all our woolens. (Well, we leave the long underwear and socks on. Our daughter, when she was small, solved the March problem by leaving all the woolens on except the socks, and then going barefoot in the snow. Wool hat on the top … bare feet on the bottom.)

Then there is the sketchiest March proposition: dare we take the woolen blankets off the bed?

When we first moved to New Hampshire, twenty years ago, we had the winter woolen blankets, plus two heavy comforters. Then we had the summer white cotton bedspread. It only took us one round of seasons to give up the foolish notion of seasonally changing bedcovers.

Firstly, we spend far too much time in the summer dirt for a white bedspread. Secondly, as soon as we took off the woolen blankets and the heavy comforters, gleefully welcoming spring and summer, winter came visiting again. Now our bed looks the same all year long, though we often take off one comforter in the hottest minutes of the summer.

This March, we are in an even bigger wool quandary. For years I have been saving all the woolen shirts that are too far gone to wear. Some wonderful sustainable idea was surely going to come to me. The germ of an idea finally did come, last winter, when I gave my fellow farmer a homemade gift certificate for Christmas. We’re big on gift certificates: everything from homemade bread or brownies to my very dear fellow’s offer to fill a hot water bottle for me every night in the winter. (That gift I now request every year.)

But last winter’s certificate for my fellow was the funniest one of all: “What? A secret project. When? I haven’t started it yet. Where? Right here in the house. How? I’m still figuring it out.” It took a year for me to sort out all those small details, and now the old woolen shirts are turning into a woolen quilt for my fellow.

First I cut all the non-holey parts of the shirts into seven inch squares, and then my daughter and I spent a lovely afternoon on her college vacation making up the design. We spread out all the squares and shuffled and shuffled for hours until we found our favorite pattern. Then my daughter made a map of the design, which was wise, as our projects tend to take years to complete. (Plus, one of the kitties loved this project, and contributed greatly to the design shuffling.) 

Now I am actively sewing the quilt together, after we got our 1932 Singer fixed (by the nice people at the tiny Moses House in Keene, which is both a quilting and a sewing machine repair shop, in case you need either).

Here I am, solidly in my March farmer woolen muddle: do I hurry up and sew the woolen quilt together, so my fellow can enjoy it in the snow/rain/sleet/mud time of the year, or do I hurry up out to the nice warm greenhouse, forget the wool, and sow onions and tomatoes and eggplant and peppers? 

Sew? Sow? Hmm. March. None of us can ever decide what to do.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, March 9th - 15th, 2022

Farm Valentines

We farmers are neither subtle nor abashed when it comes to Valentine’s Day. In fact, we write to our CSA members every year around this time, saying “Gee, we love valentines, and wouldn’t you like to send us a valentine, and by the way, you could sign up for a CSA membership for the coming year, and send us a first payment at the same time, because pretty soon we’re going to be cranking up the propane heater in the greenhouse, on March 1st, and the heat will come pouring in, and the bills will come pouring in too, and gee, we love valentines!”

This clever method has always resulted in at least one valentine, which warms our ever-lovin’ farmer hearts. Sometimes the valentine plea brings in several valentines in one season, from store-bought fancy valentines to hearts cut out of flower catalogs and pasted on construction paper. “We love the farm!” says one, and “Oh beautiful curly kale, will you be mine?” says another.

Sometimes a CSA member simplifies the process and writes a cheerful Happy Valentine’s Day! right on the CSA membership form, which we also count as a valentine. We feel the love. (Things got even simpler when one long-time, very busy yet very affectionate member had the bank send a check with “Vegetable Valentine” right in the memo line. Honestly, we must have the cleverest, kindest CSA members in the universe.)

But our shining moment came on the Valentine’s Day when we had a hand-delivered valentine, in a paper bag painted red, with hearts, feathers, and sparkly jewels attached. The bag was filled with homemade cookies, sweet red pepper dip (made with our own sweet red peppers, and incredibly delicious, and just the right color for Valentines’ Day), chocolate, and farmer-loving limericks. We were in valentine bliss.

Now, lest you think we depend on our CSA members to fulfill all our valentine desires, and thus neglect our romantic farmer lives, I will tell you what we do for Valentine’s Day. 

This is what we do for Valentine’s Day: we build up a warm fire in the woodstove. We close the curtains against the draft. We spread out a beautiful velvet red cloth. 

Then we lay out every single valentine we’ve ever received, and admire them, one by one. (Well, we put the check in the bank, and we have the CSA forms in the CSA folder.)

Our valentine display also includes a little golden and white wooden box with a heart on top, a heart shaped trivet, a red glass heart, a red beeswax heart, a red felted heart, a tiny red bird, and two red and white handkerchiefs with many many hearts.

We also have a lot of valentine constructions that involve copious amounts of glue, string, paper doilies, and tape, with “Happy Valentine’s Day Mommy and Papa, I love you!” in crayon. Then there are the funny valentines we’ve made for each other over the years: “Don’t squash my hopes, be my valentine,” complete with garden catalog pictures of winter squash varieties, or a “Cheerfulword puzzle” with valentine clues (as opposed to a crossword puzzle, get it?). There are also many charming valentine rhymes, as in “Don’t gallop away, be my valentine today,” featuring drawings of our four horses.

 Then, if we have any chocolate, we eat it, and if we don’t, we make cookies. We give our valentine kitties a little cream, and we give our valentine horses, who are not galloping away, a few carrots. We end our Valentine’s Day with a kiss, of course, and a surge of valentine love: wow, do we love that Valentine’s Day comes in the cold season, and not the garden season, so that we can lovingly make, open, display, and admire.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 9-15, 2022

The Holiday Farm Hustle: Yogurt and Unicorns

Around the winter holidays, we New Hampshire farmers have to hustle. Well, not exactly hustle. We have to get off the couch.

We want to go visit our human relatives, which means we have to set up our cat and draft horse relatives for a few days on their own. The list is always the same. Horses: food, water, fence. Cats: food, water, litter. The cats are easy; it only takes minutes to fill the food bowl and check the various sources of water. First is the actual water bowl, scrubbed and refilled.

Second is the small plastic cooler where we make yogurt once a week. The cats don’t like it when we make yogurt. They like it when the cooler is open, the jars are gone, and the water, which has kept the milk warm enough to yog, is available to drink. 

They are also fond of the leaking tap in the bathtub, a leak which drives a thrifty farmer who wants to practice sustainable water use crazy, and which now has a bucket under it, for watering houseplants. The kitties think the bucket is a perfect drinking vessel.

The litter takes longer, as we lecture the cats on how a proper sturdy farm cat wouldn’t need a litter box at all. Our long-time kitty Cricket finds this no problem, as she is fuzzy and happy to be outside. She says she is only using the litter box because we won’t be here to let her out. 

But our new kitty, who is sleek and not fuzzy, and therefore cold, says I never meant to be a sturdy farm cat. You’re the one who brought me here.

But you didn’t use a litter box at your last house, I say.

I had a cat door, he replies. Make me a cat door.

What if skunks get in, I say.

I will curl up with them, he says. They are warm.

Hmm, I say, as I put fresh litter in the box. At least we use softwood pellets, meant for a pellet stove, which means it is kind of sustainable.

Now for the horses: checking the electric fence is easy. Filling the water trough is easy. Then there’s food: seven meals worth, for four horses, which is a lot of hay, especially when it is in the form of our own loose hay, and not tidy bales. 

One of us forks the hay down from the mow. The other weighs it out on a platform scale, and tosses it into the mangers, which are actually sheep panels tied into a circle, handy for hay when we are away. 

Then the farm daughter gets in the manger too, tromping down the hay, and as the stack gets taller, so does the daughter, until she finds herself looking down at our big horse Clyde, who is helpfully eating out of the manger as we try to stuff it full.

“Look at your daughter,” laughs my farmer fellow, and I stop flinging hay around to look. There she is, standing high above Clyde, braiding his abundant forelock into three braids, and then the three into one, which is so thick it sticks out like a unicorn. 

We all find this most amusing, which will give you the sense of the fun you can have on a vegetable farm while hustling for the holidays. Now all we have to do, before we go, is visit our nice neighbors, and ask them to keep an eye on things for us, bringing them a basket of root veggies as thanks. Plus we have to pet the horses and kitties a while, and wish them a happy holiday, with a little help from more root veggies, and a spoonful of yogurt.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 12-18, 2022

New Fellow around the Farmhouse

We have a new fellow around the farmhouse. He spent his first three days here under the couch. He was so quiet we were afraid he had disappeared.

It became clear, however, the very first night, that he was still present. There was an ear-splitting screech, followed by thuds, growls, and hisses, in the hallway outside our bedroom.

My farmer fellow and I were on the verge of sleep, and we woke right back up. “It seems like Cricket met the new kitty,” I said, over the pounding of my heart.

“Mmm,” said my fellow, over the pounding of his.

Nothing else happened, and we fell asleep. Then we woke up again, for a second set-to in the hallway. “This must be where people get their terrifying descriptions of the shrieks of hell,” I said to my fellow, over the pounding of my heart.

“Mmm,” said my fellow, over the pounding of his.

Then all was quiet. We fell asleep, again. We woke up, again. This time the shrieks of hell were right in the bedroom.

I sat up in bed. “Holy moly,” I said to my fellow, over the pounding of my heart.

“Holy moly,” he agreed, over the pounding of his.

Then the new kitty must have taken up residence under the couch. The next day, Cricket made it clear she wanted to go outside, and fast, and we worried about her, and about the new kitty. After a night like that, maybe he really had disappeared.

But that evening, we had another hallway concert, just one, thankfully. For three nights in a row, we had single hallway episodes, which let us know that our new fellow was still about the house.

Then we began to get glimpses: a dart, a dash, a flash, a streak. A crunching noise in the kitchen. Very welcome evidence, after the first 24 hours, that the fellow was doing his duty, in the appropriate facilities. 

Finally I shone a flashlight under the couch. He was in the back corner, huddled up against the wall.

“Oh, kitty,” said I, which was probably not all that comforting, as I was shining a huge light in his face. I left him some butter on a plate, under the edge of the couch. He didn’t eat it.

But a few days later, we saw him sitting on a chair, right out in the open. We crooned to him, and he listened. If we came too near, whisk! he was gone.

When our daughter came home from college, we had a breakthrough. She sat on the floor, and sweet-talked him, and finally he came creeping over, and she petted him, and he even purred.

After that, he got friendlier and friendlier. Since Cricket was outside during the day, he would come visit us, in the kitchen, or at my writing desk. He learned the kitty call for treats, too, and we finally got a good look at him.

He is a sleek and slinky fellow, mostly black, with white paws, chest, and belly. He also has a white goatee, and a single sophisticated white eye whisker among all the black, and a white lightning bolt on his ankle. Despite being quite a gentleman, friendly and polite, he matches his lightning bolt with a thunderous voice, meowing urgently at the food dish, and the people. 

We, of course, have been entirely charmed by this new fellow.

Cricket, of course, has not. 

Just lately, Cricket looked up at me on the stairs. “Prrt?” she said “Pet me?” and immediately swiveled her head to growl at wherever the new cat might be.

"Prrt? Growl! Prrt? Growl! Prrt? Growl!” she said some more.

I sure do sympathize with our nice kitty Cricket, who did not choose to have this interloper join us on the farm. But it was awfully hard not to laugh.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 15- Dec 21, 2021