The Farmer, the Urologist, and the Teacher

Twenty some years ago, when we farmers were young and foolish, our farm fantasies mainly revolved around finding a farm of our own. We had apprenticed for five years on several vegetable farms in the Northeast, and we had all kinds of opinions on how we would go about things on our own farm.

Our opinions were quickly humbled, pretty much the moment we stepped onto our new place. Not quite as easy as it looks, this vegetable farming.

Now, as older, humbler, if not less foolish farmers, we find that our farm fantasies are mainly about other people’s farms.

Wouldn’t it be fun, we say, to join someone else’s CSA garden? Imagine being a CSA member, and going once a week to pick up your freshly harvested and washed produce, and not having done a lick of work?

Oh hee, hee, hee. This kind of thinking helps us get through one of our most intense times of year, during the end of May and early June. Not only do we need to transplant every crop that is not yet in the ground, from winter squash to leeks to tomatillos, but the haying weather begins. Though we are not ready yet to hay, we worry steadily about not haying. Plus the weeds are coming on strong, and our lofty goal of having not a single weed in the garden by June 1st seems rather laughable. 

But the biggest effort is the start of CSA vegetable distribution. First there are the hours organizing pick-up schedules, and clearing out the vegetable distribution shed from a winter’s worth of projects. 

Then there is the actual harvest: suddenly it is as if two whole days have disappeared from our week. Instead of transplanting and weeding and worrying about not haying, we are swallowed up in harvesting for our CSA members, from 4:45 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by warmly welcoming said members, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., two days a week.

Oh, those 14 hour days: fourteen hours of transplants languishing in their pots, wanting to be in the ground, and of weeds growing into trees, perfectly happy to stay in the ground, and of hay going to seed. All that work we’re not getting done!

But then there’s the bright side: oh, yes, the first harvests! Oh, right, this is what all this work is for: the delicious produce! Oh, the lettuce, oh, the bok choy, the salad turnips and salad greens, the beets and basil and kohlrabi! The kale! The chard! The peas! The strawberries! 

Wow, we say, we are lucky to have all these delicious strawberries coming so early out of the greenhouse. And wow, we say, the spinach! So very much spinach! In fact, it has been taking three farmers three hours (5 a.m. to 8 a.m., to be precise) to harvest, process, and wash all that spinach, which is a perfect time to indulge in farm fantasies.

Wouldn’t it be fun, we say, to join someone else’s CSA garden? Imagine being a CSA member, and going once a week to pick up your freshly harvested and washed produce, and not having done a lick of work? Doesn’t that sound great?

It must sound pretty good, at least, since when our CSA members come they say wow, too. The spinach! The strawberries! The everything else! 

So much work! they say. 

Then, “I feel kind of guilty!” one even says.

“No, no,” says another member, “The farmers don’t feel guilty about you being a urologist, or me being a teacher.”

“No, I sure don’t,” this farmer answers. I am delighted not to be a urologist; in fact, I am so delighted not to be a urologist that being a CSA farmer on my own farm seems like quite a fine thing. What could be nicer than growing good produce for all the good urologists and teachers of the world?

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 29th - July 5th, 2022

The Auction, the Market, and the Big Nap

My fellow farmer has been wanting to go to the Green Mountain Draft Horse Association auction for years. Unfortunately, the auction is always held on a Saturday morning in May, which is exactly when our Farmers’ Market happens. 

Also unfortunately for my fellow farmer, his fellow farmer, i.e., me, finds the market both highly stimulating and exhausting, so I rarely go, which means he never gets to the auction.

But this year? This year I came up with a great idea to improve our farm efficiency. Since every horse-drawn implement requires both a neck yoke and an evener, and since we’ve never had enough of either, we are always running up to the hayfield to get the neck yoke and evener from the hay rake to use on the disc, or vice-versa, times ten implements. It is a lot of running back and forth, just getting ready to accomplish the thing you are trying to accomplish.

“What if,” I said to my fellow last winter, “we had a neck yoke and an evener for every single implement? We wouldn’t have to chase any down, or find the wrench to loosen the bolt to switch them from one implement to another. Think of all the time and energy that would save.”

My fellow loved the idea. “I’ll go to the auction!” he said enthusiastically.

“But the market,” I said. “Suppose we ask around first, see if we can find any around here.” Well, we did ask around, and had no luck. 

Oh, I didn’t want to go to the market. But, oh, I love being more efficient. 

“I could go, I suppose . . .” I said reluctantly. Then I had another brilliant idea. Our daughter would be finished with her college classes and senior project, and would be free as a bird, in my estimation at least, until graduation day. Plus she likes to go out in the world, just as her father does.

“Sure!” my dear daughter said right away. Thus we all got up at five a.m. on auction day. 

One of us headed gleefully to northern Vermont. Another one of us, who had gone to bed after midnight, said, groaning, “What do we have to harvest?”

“Everything!” I answered.

Another, longer groan. “You mean I have to get up?”

My daughter and I harvested, washed, and bagged the vegetables, packed the car, and raced into town. We got our tent and table set up, thanks to the help of our nice neighboring vendor, who sells maple syrup and maple-lots-of-other-things. She surprised us with some maple cotton candy, which can cheer up even a worn-out imminently graduating college kid.

Our neighbor vendor has known my enthusiastic fellow farmer for several years now, and she said to me, laughing, “You’re brave to send him off to the auction by himself!” 

I laughed too. “Well, he’s mostly excited about buying a bag of potato chips for lunch, so that seems like a nice low bar.”

Then the market started, and I went around to say hello to all the other nice vendors, whom I hadn’t seen for ages, while my daughter did all the work selling the vegetables. 

Then I talked to our neighboring vendor on the other side, another vegetable farmer, and commiserated about growing vegetables, while my daughter did all the work selling the vegetables. 

Then I had the pleasure of several market-goers saying how much they loved to read my Shopper articles, while my daughter did all the work selling the vegetables. 

Pretty soon the market was over. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” I said to my daughter, as we packed things up.

“That’s because you didn’t do anything!” she said.

I laughed some more. “I’m going to have to take a big nap after all that talking. It might be years before I can manage another market.”

My dear daughter rolled her eyes.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 1- June 7, 2022

Sometimes It's Good to Fall Down

Our friend Don, who has helped us with a million projects around the farm, including projects that knock him off his feet, said a few years ago to my fellow farmer, “It’s good to fall down once in a while.”

“What did he mean by that?’ I asked.

“I’m not sure exactly,” my fellow replied, but we both kind of knew what Don meant.

It’s good to fall down once in a while, so you remember what it’s like. Also, it’s good to make a foolish mistake once in a while, as we recently did, getting ready to plant the onions.

First, of course, we sowed the onions, March 1st, and watered them and warmed them in the greenhouse, until they were big enough to come out to the fields, about mid-April. They looked beautiful.

“These are the best-looking onions we’ve ever had,” said my fellow, pleased.

“They sure are,” I agreed, caressing the pretty onions.

Then we composted, disced, and harrowed a garden section, with the help of the horses. We marked the beds, also with the horses, and then the horses rested while we raked out the three onion beds. Actually, I rested then too, as I don’t like raking out beds, and my fellow does. Or probably I was working hard at some other important farming task.

Then we put out the irrigation lines, and finally laid what is called “plastic mulch.” It’s a big roll of plastic, which I stretch out along the bed, and hold taut, while my fellow shovels dirt on the sides to hold it.

For many years, the plastic we used really was plastic, and we had to roll it up and throw it away at the end of the season, which was painful. But onions do not tolerate the kind of weed pressure that some of our crops are sometimes asked to tolerate. We were having a hard time getting any onions, so we gave in to using plastic as a weed barrier.

Happily, a few years ago, we switched to a compostable “plastic,” made of corn or potato starch, that smells much nicer, and keeps the weeds at bay. The mulch gradually breaks down, and when the onions are harvested, we can just pull out the irrigation, and disc the mulch into the ground, which is very satisfying, and which brings me back to our foolish mistake.

Despite the fact that we have been 1) growing onions, 2) laying irrigation, and 3) rolling out the plastic, for nigh on twenty years, this year we forgot to lay the irrigation first. We had the plastic all taut and well-anchored, and were standing back admiring it. Then my fellow looked at me.

“We forgot the irrigation,” he said.

I looked back at him, somewhat confused. “How is that possible?”

“And there’s two of us,” he answered. “We both forgot.”

At least our mistake wasn’t impossible to fix, though a bit tedious, as we fished the irrigation line under the plastic, on our knees, reaching between the shovelfuls of dirt, and tugging the line along.

“That could have been a lot worse,” I said cheerfully, which would be a nice place to end this foolish mistake story.

But when we brought the flats of beautiful onions out, the wheelbarrow was not on level ground. I took off one flat of onions, and the whole shebang tipped over, flipping the other two flats completely on their heads onto the ground, crushing the plants. Then we swore, a lot, because this is a mistake we’ve definitely made before.

We swore, and then we got planting, and hoped for the best. “Sometimes it’s good to fall down,” we bolstered the onions, though falling down is considerably different than being crushed by a large foolish someone else. Still, maybe we’ll all be stronger for it? Or we’ll be wishing for onions come fall, one or the other.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 4-10, 2022

Hollering on the Hill

Not long ago, I was standing at the top of our hill, hollering. I could see the long stretch of hayfield, just beginning to think of greening up. I could see the stream rushing at the bottom of the hill, still flush with snowmelt. I could see our barn, and the four shaggy horses, shedding for the spring, and I could see our greenhouse, burgeoning with vegetable seedlings. I could see our house, too, and the New Hampshire hills, and the Vermont mountains beyond that, and then the blue blue sky.

I could have been hollering happily for any of those things: Spring! Fields! Horses! Seedlings! Home! 

But what I was hollering for was our dear friend, SuSu, who died unexpectedly this past January.

“Hey, SuSu,” I belted out, “How are you doing?” Three times I called for her, because I wanted her; because we didn’t expect to lose her so soon; because we are all grieving, from so many losses: pandemics, wars, poverty, racism, environmental devastation, to name a few.

Up on the hill, I remembered the first time SuSu came to our farm, years ago now. She wore bright red stiletto heels, and walked around laughing, as her heels sank into the garden ground. The last time she was here, she wore a handmade, matching headscarf and pandemic mask, and she walked around laughing.

She was a great laugher, despite struggling with chronic health troubles. She was a great whooper too, because when that first ripe tomato appeared in the shed, she couldn’t help herself. She was our most avid heirloom tomato lover, the person that always wanted to have a tomato parade for us, with acrobats and music and tomato costumes.

As a friend, long-time CSA member, and auntie of our daughter’s school classmate, SuSu has been a steady presence in our lives, and we didn’t realize how much we counted on her until now. I want to wish her light and love, and also I want to hear her laugh and whoop.

But all I can do is holler, it seems like. (Well, I pray and chant for SuSu too, as she always did for us, and also we have established the Susan Gadbois Memorial CSA Garden Scholarship Fund, and we feel honored that her family has asked to have SuSu’s ashes here. Plus we really want to develop a tomato variety for her, and call it the SuSu!) 

If you'd like to donate to the SuSu Farm Fund, please send a check payable to Hillside Springs Farm, with "SuSu" in the notation, to Hillside Springs Farm, PO Box 233, Westmoreland NH 03467.

Meanwhile, here is another holler, for our dear SuSu, along with a hope that all of us have a chance to holler, and laugh, and whoop.

Baby Arm

In memoriam Susan Gadbois, 1966-2022

My baby arm, you said,
stroking the tiny arm
stunted by childhood cancer.
You were a fierce mother,
working that arm,
wrenching your body to shift gears
in your race-red car.
Ten years, fifteen, we knew you,
and never heard you complain, 
never knew what it cost
to coax that arm into picking beans, 
peeling tomatoes, sewing clothes,
knocking on doors in the toughest 
of neighborhoods, offering all you could,
nursing, teaching, floristing-- 
all those wedding flowers, funeral flowers,
dazzling arrangements, ahead of your time-- 
oh, such tending of altars,
prayer and chanting,
and the feeding of us all:
roasted red peppers, mango ice cream,
a tomato sauce so lush
it brought tears to the eyes.
From that baby arm 
came an exquisite hand, 
a vigorous swirling penmanship, 
and from that baby arm
came your love for all the babies – 
flowers, nephews, nieces, the children 
trailing after you like ducklings, 
following that bright energy born out in 
the work of your life: felted tapestries, 
green fields blooming sheep,
blue skies bouncing clouds,
gravity and levity tenderly balanced:
felted tomatoes with propellers, 
felted jumping tomatoes, 
felted farmers dancing, tomatoes aloft, 
and the merpeople, mermothers, 
fathers, merbabies in merlaps, 
loving this watery and earthy world.
Then the severe and beautiful labyrinth-
those muted colors, stark, stunning,
working the maze of your life, of all our lives,
finding yourself at the periphery 
over and over again,
yet returning, returning,
daunted and dauntless,
to loss, to fierce, fiery love.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 6-12, 2022