If Wishes Were Horses . . .

We’d have plenty to drive.

Wish it Didn’t Happen, #1: In a classic example of farmer exhaustion bordering on farmer foolishness falling into farmer-causing-harm, we accidentally dropped our barbed wire gate too close to the pathway. When my fellow farmer brought all four horses to the pasture at once, which he often does, one horse got caught in the wire. This was very bad, and this is exactly the reason you should not use barbed wire with horses.

I heard the ruckus and went running. Clyde and Moon, still tied together by the halters, were galloping in a panic. My fellow farmer, also panicked, was trying to untie Ben from Molly, who was caught in the wire. I unhaltered Clyde and Moon, and my fellow got Ben free, and the three settled down to graze nearby. Then I held Molly’s halter, and my fellow worked the wire cutters. We were very lucky, as Molly only had surface scratches on one leg.

Wish it Didn’t Happen, #2: Ben, our big black Percheron, made some strange loud breathing noises twice last year as he was working. Maybe it was because both days were hot, the hay loads were heavy, and Ben was working with Clyde, not his favorite partner in harness. But it didn’t happen again, and this spring Benny did some heavy work without incident. 

Then came the incident: a hot haying day, with Ben and Clyde. Ben started making the big noise when they were in the barnyard, pulling the wagon. 

“I don’t know what to do,” said my fellow, as we hitched the hay wagon to the hayloader.

“I don’t either,” I said. “Let’s just see how Ben’s doing at the top of the hill.” 

Well, Benny didn’t make it to the top of the hill. He hardly made it to the start of the hill. He made the noise, and then he staggered, and then he collapsed in a ditch. He tried to get up. He couldn’t get up. It was dreadful.

We managed to unhook Ben from the wagon and from Clyde (who stood like a dream, when he could have easily panicked). We thought Ben was going to die right there, in the ditch. But all of a sudden he heaved himself to his feet. He stood there a moment. Then he put his head down to grab a bite of grass. We were dumbfounded.

We took Ben slowly back to the barn – by then his nose was bleeding – but he drank water and ate hay, and the bleeding stopped. We headed back to the hayfield with Clyde and Molly. After haying, Ben still seemed fine, so we led all four horses to pasture, figuring if Benny was going to die in the night, he’d rather do it in the green grass with his herd near him. But the next morning, there he was, big as life, grazing along, and wondering why we were making such a fuss over him. 

We did a little research, later confirmed by the vet. Turns out Benny is a roarer. His larynx is paralyzed on one side; he couldn’t get enough air during heavy exercise and passed out. This happens mostly in racehorses, and a nosebleed often follows. (Surgery is possible, but not always successful.) Benny is twenty years old, and doesn’t have any roaring problems at leisure: thus he is officially retired. 

Wish it Didn’t Happen, #3: Molly’s other leg is swollen. She is lame. We call the vet. Apparently we missed something from the barbed wire episode. With antibiotics, she comes through fine. But she can’t work. So we prevail on Moon, her brother, who has been fully retired for three years, to do a little raking and tedding of the hay. Though he is willing, he gets a sore shoulder.  

We now have three out of four work horses that can’t work.

We also have a lot of hay to get in, and a lot of garden tasks. As crazy as it sounds, we are able to borrow a draft horse. If wishes were horses . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 20 - 26, 2023

Large, Lush Weeds

Recently I was standing at the garden gate with one of our CSA members. Mostly we saw large, lush weeds.

“How do you even decide what to do next?” the person asked.

I laughed. “This is the time of year when I have to block out 98% of the farm in order to get anything done.” This is especially true on harvest day, and especially true in a year that has been so soggy that sowing, transplanting, and weeding are sketchy at best.

Earlier that very harvest day, I picked the salad turnips out of our little greenhouse, trying not to worry about the lettuce in the next beds. Given that we just lost two plantings of outside lettuce to the rain, we thought we’d better put this lettuce under cover. That meant the lettuce lingered in the flats far too long, as we gradually harvested the previous greenhouse crop.

The lettuce has taken pretty well, and it needs weeding already. But I can’t think about that right now. I hurry back to the shed with my turnips, to hear the Swiss chard harvest report from my sighing fellow: “I had to toss half the leaves. They were all shot from the rain.” 

For his part, my fellow had to block out the leeks, right next to the chard. It was probably pretty easy to block them out, as they are so weedy you might not even know they were there. My fellow went on to pick the broccoli, ignoring the nearly invisible-for-the-weeds carrots in the next bed. 

Meanwhile, I had the happy task of harvesting the scallions, which were undaunted by all the rain. The cabbage seemed to be all right too. If only we had planted nothing but cabbage and scallions this year! Wouldn’t our CSA members have been surprised - there must be lots of interesting ways to fix cabbage and scallions for supper.

My fellow farmer and I had to gird our loins to pick the next crop – yellow squash, zucchini, and cucumbers, if you could call them a crop. Normally this time of year we are harvesting six five-gallon buckets of cucurbits. But with the unhappy circumstance of squash bugs overwintering in the greenhouse, carrying the virus that kills the plants, followed by an aphid infestation the likes of which we’ve never seen, and hardly any sunshine, we came away with a half-bucket total of cukes, 4 yellow squash, and zero zucchini.

But we had to keep going. It was harvest day, after all. The shiitake mushrooms have done pretty well, though the rain-loving slugs are enjoying more mushrooms than we’d like. The tomatoes taste particularly good this year, perhaps because vegetables grown under tougher circumstances tend to taste sweeter, but there aren’t nearly as many as usual. Same with the eggplant and sweet peppers and basil, all greenhouse crops: they’ve been getting less rain directly on their heads, but the lack of sunshine hasn’t helped them at all. 

But hey, the kale looks great, inside and outside the greenhouse! Our CSA members could add kale to their lovely cabbage and scallion salads. The cutting flowers look good too: maybe next year we should grow all edible flowers, instead of decorative ones. (Of course, next year there could be drought instead of flood.)

Back in the shed, harvest done for one more day: 98% of the garden sort of successfully blocked out, so we can get out our 2% accomplished. 

“Look at this abundance!” says our nice CSA member, gesturing to all the freshly harvested and washed vegetables.

We do look, and are pleasantly surprised. We’ve got some veggies for the people. Maybe not as much as usual, but still there is quite a lot, despite the rain and the weeds and the worry. We may be sodden here, but we haven’t lost everything to floods, as some farmers have. Plus the large lush weeds sure help keep the soil in place.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 23 - Aug 29, 2023

Growing Potatoes Instead of Potato Bugs

Last year our potato patch produced a whole lot of Colorado potato beetles, and not many potatoes. This year we are trying to grow potatoes instead of potato bugs.

At first, on the newly sprouted potatoes, we found adult beetles, heavy-bodied, black and yellow striped, kind of nice-looking bugs, who don’t bite or sting. They overwintered in the soil, and then travelled gleefully to the new potato plants. 

Despite picking off as many bugs as we could find, pretty soon there were the beautiful golden-orange eggs, adhered to the underside of the leaves. We took off the eggs, too, but we clearly missed quite a few in our six 200-foot long beds of potatoes. Next came the red larva, in all sizes, growing rapidly from pencil point to fingernail. 

Now we’re onto a new wave of adults, and I sighed to my fellow farmer, “How long do we have to keep those potato plants alive?” 

“Three months,” he answered, sighing too. 

Defoliation by the beetles seems to happen in the blink of an eye, but we know that is not true. We just have to keep picking those bugs regularly. At first I squished them between my fingers, but when we got to the larval stage, I was feeling iffier about the whole squishing project. 

My fellow was brushing the beetles into a yogurt tub instead, which is a lot easier. Then we put a little water in the tub. I don’t suppose it makes much difference to the beetles, but it is more pleasant for the bug-picker.

There are days I envision myself as a clever bird, picking bugs with my beak-hand. There are days when I envision myself as a clever lady bug or squash bug, both of which eat potato bug eggs. (If only the squash bugs would stay in the potatoes and leave the squash alone!) There are days when I envision myself as a clever farmer, saving my potato crop without using pesticides.

Then there are other days, such as the one when I had gone up and down the potato beds three times already that morning. Every time there were more and more bugs. 

“I’m going to patrol those potatoes all day,” I said to my daughter, who laughed, and said “What’s that short story about the crazy woman walking around and around her room all day? You’re the crazy potato lady.”

I felt a little crazy, picking my bugs, when so much else was pressing in the garden: from transplanting to weeding to harvesting. Yet I had already spent so much time on the potatoes, I hated to give up. So I kept picking, and I did some research.

A female can lay up to 500 eggs in batches of 10-30, which can take 3 or more days to hatch, depending on how hot it is. A potato plant can withstand 30% defoliation at leaf-growing stage, but only 10% defoliation at tuber-growing stage. The stage four larva, the biggest ones, do the most damage.

But the most interesting thing I learned was that potatoes are native to the Andes, and the Colorado potato beetle is not a crop pest there, because of the different climate. The beetle was identified in Nevada and Colorado, on potatoes, which the bug much prefers to its native host weed. Ah-hah! I thought, it is we humans who have upset the balance, by bringing the potatoes to the bugs.

In any case, I am in my potato patch, every three days, picking bugs, feeling a little crazy, reminded of the contemporary Syrian/Lebanese poet Hoda al-Namani’s haunting verse: “I have not withdrawn into despair, / I did not go mad in gathering honey, / I did not go mad, / I did not go mad, / I did not go mad.” 

No indeed. I did not go mad in gathering bugs. I am gathering honey, I am gathering mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, baked potatoes.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, July 26 - Aug 1, 2023 

Two of Everything on the Farm

In theory, having a thrifty, sustainable farm budget can simplify things. We buy less stuff, and therefore have less stuff, which should lead to blissful feelings of peace and order. In reality, it means two of everything, in case one breaks down, or in case we can cobble two together to make one working item. Take the case of haying, for example, which is weighing heavily on our minds this time of year, as the rain keeps coming and coming. 

Two mowing machines: these are both horse-drawn sickle bar mowers, with different bar lengths, one rebuilt and one recently purchased from a farmer in Massachusetts who thought better of farming with horses and bought a tractor. 

For many years we only had one mower, which was simple and sensible, except when it broke down in the only decent stretch of haying weather we’d had that year. It also meant we could never clip the pastures, because the nervous farmer couldn’t stand to have the mower broken down from pasture-clipping when it was needed for haying. 

Now, the first mower can be used for haying, and when it breaks down, the pasture-clipping mower can step up. (Now, the nervous farmer, me, is trying not to think about what will happen if both mowers are broken down at once.)

Two hay rakes: well, three. There’s the pinwheel rake that we’re using. There’s the spare pinwheel rake. Then there’s the side delivery rake, wrested out of a neighbor’s hedgerow, which we had considered taking to the scrap yard, but it’s not in that bad of a shape, and might come in handy one desperate haying day. 

Two hay loaders: we didn’t really mean to have more than one, but through a complicated series of barter agreements with a farrier, we ended up with two. They are big hulking implements, and take up a lot of room in the barn, where they are stored for the winter. They also take up a fair amount in our dooryard, where they hang out in spring, summer, and fall, ready for action at any moment. 

In the interests of simplicity, we decided to sell one hay loader at an auction. We even took it to the auction, and someone bid on it, but the bid didn’t make the minimum price we had set. So we brought the hay loader home again, and that was the very summer that the first hay loader broke down in a critical haying moment (the storm is coming! the hay is dry! the farmers are frantic!), so we were mighty glad for the second hay loader. Now we can appreciate them both, just by looking out the kitchen window.

Two hay forks: no, no, many hay forks. The one we discovered here in the barn rafters when we moved to the farm. The one that came from my dairy farming parents. The one that came from my fellow’s mother’s neighbor’s garage. The one we can’t remember where it came from. The one a teacher at our daughter’s school found in his garden shed. The one that broke in half and makes for a handy short-handled fork when we’re stuffing hay into those rafters.  

Two teams of horses: we didn’t mean to have these either. One team would seem like plenty for a little vegetable farm like ours. But if one horse goes lame in the middle of the season, it’s great to have a third horse. Plus if our three nice old horses are getting overtired in the middle of a hot haying day in July, our fourth nice old horse means we can give everybody a break. Every horse at least. Which leads to:

Two farmers: in case one breaks down, or in case you can cobble two together to make one working item . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 28 - July 4, 2023