Workhorses Give a Little Extra Work

Back in November, our work horses gave us a little extra work to do. Two out of three of the rascals found every bit of burdock in the pasture and came into the barn with manes and tails full of burrs. We sighed and put burr removal on the list.

Since it was both the first two weeks of horses-in-their-winter-paddock and the last two weeks of CSA distribution, the horses were close by for our CSA members to see. As we were thanking everyone for their support of small farms, farmers, and farm horses, the members could visit and admire the horses.

On the first of four harvest days in that two weeks, we told our members that we were a little embarrassed to have our horses looking so unkempt. On the second day, we were a little more embarrassed. By the third and fourth, we wondered if we should try to hide our burdocky horses behind the barn.

It wasn't until a week after harvest days ended that we had time to tackle the burdock. We were cleaning the manure out of the paddock, and I haltered the horses and took breaks from shoveling to work on the burrs. My fellow took a break from shoveling too, to walk with the pooch, who was tired of behaving nicely around the horses. 

Then I quit shoveling altogether and worked on the burdock. Fern, who is an easy-going gelding, didn't mind at all. Willow, a high-strung mare, wasn't so sure about it. Once she figured out what I was doing and that I was going to be doing it for a long, long time, she relaxed. She dropped her head. She closed her eyes. I sang to her. She leaned her head towards me, happy to have that annoying burdock by her ear removed. 

It was getting later and later and darker and darker, and I got the last burdock bits out by feel. After three weeks and three plus hours of concentrated work, we had two burr-free horses. Actually, we had three, because Molly, our wise old retired horse, never got into the burdock at all.

Instead, wise old Molly, on a very windy day in December, was happy to discover that the paddock gate had blown open. She is a most excellent tip-toer through slightly open gates or tiny holes in the fence.

Some time later, my fellow and I came outside to work in the greenhouses. The paddock was empty.

“Where are the horses?” I said. 

He checked the barn. No horses. 

Then we noticed the gate swinging in the wind and followed the tracks. Wise old Molly had led the herd out of the paddock, skirted around the end of the first greenhouse, and squeezed along the narrow walkway between the greenhouse and the garden fence. We found all three of them in the tiny patch of land between the first and second greenhouses, happily pawing through the snow to find a bite of grass. Such clever naughty horses!

While I was holding the dog so he wouldn't overexcite any horses in tight quarters, my fellow led Molly back, then Fern and Willow. It was still windy, and the gate almost immediately blew open again while my fellow was checking the rest of the fence.

“Here she comes!” I hollered,  meaning Molly, who was gleefully racing right back to the open gate. My fellow darted over to stop Molly while Willow and Fern raced around the paddock in all the excitement. The dog barked by my side. He wanted to join the fun too. 

This time we tied the gate shut. We admired all our burr-free, high-headed horses high-stepping it around the paddock, kicking and bucking. 

“Glad that didn't happen next to the greenhouses,” said my fellow. 

“Or in the dark,” I added. 

“Let's take a long walk to celebrate!” said the dog. So we did. 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 7 - Jan 13, 2025

Heaving A Sigh of Relief

In the last two weeks of our harvesting season, my fellow farmer and I are always heaving things around: first heaving ourselves out of bed at 4:45 a.m., then heaving around 40 lb bags of carrots or crates of rutabagas and daikon radishes. 

But once the CSA season is over, all the heaving we do is heaving a sigh of relief. Now we are in our easy-going time, our clean-up time, our odds and ends time. 

1. The first easy-going project is an irrigation task. All summer and fall we'd been wishing our irrigation line for the fall carrots was in better shape. Carrots are slow to germinate, and want to be moist for three weeks before they poke their green heads up.

When we ran the irrigation, half of the bed that had nice red sprinklers got watered, and half of the bed that had yukky red sprinklers didn't. Thus I had several five-gallon buckets at the far end of the garden, and every time we irrigated I would take off the end cap of one irrigation line and fill the buckets. Then I would dip out a yogurt container full and water down the track where the carrots had been sown. Did the carrots germinate? Yes. Was this an efficient use of a farmer's time? No.

One morning after harvest was over, my fellow and I spent four hours replacing the yukky red sprinklers with the nice red sprinklers. We untangled lines, found enough good sprinklers, found the special tool to make the holes in the line to plug in the sprinklers, and got the line all fixed before realizing the line was way too long. 

But we were in no hurry; we did it all over again to the right length. We also had to reorganize the piles of irrigation lines, after tossing everything around trying to find the right stuff. Now our piles are tidy and our carrot line is ready for another year.  

2. The second easy-going project is for Thanksgiving. My sisters and I divide up making the Thanksgiving dishes, and my little family of three is responsible for mashed potatoes, winter squash, creamed onions, pumpkin pie, and gluten-free dressing. 

“Wow,” I said, by the third sort-of-easy-going day in the kitchen. “This is a lot of work. I don't know how my mother ever got a whole Thanksgiving meal together by herself.”

My daughter, who was making the pumpkin pie, said, “Did you count the four hours freezing the last of the spinach? Did you count the nine hours baking all the seconds and not quite ripe squash, and then adding maple syrup and cooking them down more so they would taste better?”

“Did you count sorting through all the boxes of onions to get the littlest ones for the creamed onions, and peeling the celeriac that were too tiny to give out to CSA members? It takes a long time to peel this celeriac. And you don't get much when you do,” added my celeriac-peeling fellow.

“Oh, yeah!” I said, relieved that I wasn't completely failing my mother, and that I have two sisters with families that were also busily cooking and baking. Plus I was relieved that Thanksgiving happens in the easy-going, clean-up, odds and ends season.

3. The third easy-going project: we are shoveling dirt from underneath one of our vegetable tables to fill in the holes in front of the tables and in front of the woodshed. Where did all these holes come from?

This is what our daughter said over the summer when she was visiting, kindly helping us on harvest day and marveling as we stumbled into the holes: “Isn't this the definition of comedy? You watch the dog dig holes. You don't fill in the holes. Then you fall in the holes.” 

Oh ha ha ha! Everything seems funnier in easy-going, clean-up odds and ends season. 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 10 - Dec 16, 2025

Clove of Garlic, Clove of Hope

Our farmer friends moved away some time ago, to a new farm in Maine. We hated to see them go, but wished them well in a new chapter of their lives. We were also wishing them well because they gave us some good farm stuff before they left. 

We were glad for a batch of nearly new wooden stakes, as our originally seven-foot stakes have deteriorated into 3 or 4 footers after many seasons of use. We were glad too for some second-hand landscape fabric, which we've been wanting to try for years. We've used all kinds of weeding methods – from straw mulch to hoes to cultivators to compostable plastics. But we still can't keep up.

Last spring, we laid the fabric out in one of our greenhouses, with the encouragement of our faithful volunteer, who has valiantly tackled many garden beds overrun by weeds. She is also a good worrier, and emailed us in the middle of the night: “I was doing some research and maybe it'll be too hot and what if it kills all your tomatoes!”

We laughed blithely, and transplanted the tomatoes and peppers. A few weeks later, when our farmer group came to our place, we proudly showed off our landscape fabric. “We've never used it before,” we said.

When they got done laughing, as in “Ba ha ha! You've never used it before?” we told them we did something else new: “We usually plant the slicing tomatoes 18 inches apart, but we tried a foot apart for the first time. What do you think?”

“How come?” someone asked, probably thinking we had made some great new discovery about tomato productivity.

“Because that's where the holes were in our new used fabric,” we answered, and then we had another round of laughter.

Happily the tomatoes and peppers did not die from overheating. In fact, they thrived. There was nary a weed in sight, except, of course, in the last quarter of one bed, because the fabric wasn't long enough. There the weeds were impressively large and the peppers were impressively spindly.  

We were stunned by the difference. Suddenly we had new hope: a possibility for two mid- to late-50s farmers to keep on farming. “Let's cover the whole farm in plastic!” enthused my fellow. 

“Yes,” I agreed, “Let's cover as many of the garden beds and pathways as we can in woven polymer! It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. It lasts for years, and it means we might be able to handle the work without collapsing!”

We went right out and bought ourselves a 15 foot wide roll of fabric, to get us started on next year's weed-free garden. We rolled it out along our dirt road, a project the farm pooch found pretty exciting. He roared down the 200 feet length of fabric and leapt over the rest of the roll at the far end, over and over again, until he was puffing hard. 

Meanwhile I set to marking the spacing. I crawled along with a yardstick and a piece of chalk, while my fellow followed with the propane-powered tool we'd borrowed from our other farmer friends, which makes the holes for the transplants.

Now this looks interesting, said the farm pooch. Well, maybe not that flaming tool, but this farmer crawling along sure is. 

Since I wouldn't let the pooch chew on my yardstick, he got nosy with my chalk. Luckily I had an extra piece, which I gave to him. Then he spent the next half hour throwing the chalk in the air, chasing and pouncing on it, which gave us more time to work. We ended up with holey chalk, and holey fabric.

The next day my fellow and I laid the fabric out in the garden, stapled it down, and planted a clove of garlic into each hole. A clove of garlic, and a clove of hope that we can manage to keep on farming.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 12 - Nov 18, 2025

Ask a Farmer to Write, or Is It Ask a Writer to Farm?

I've been writing my farming column for nine years, and for the first time I have three columns due in one month, as I'm a substitute columnist for this week. Perhaps you are so fond of my regular column that you will be delighted to read the first bit of my yet-to-be-published middle grade novel (about a farm girl)!

Thistle was standing at the top of the world. It was the first day of summer and she was ten years old, and from the top of Apple Hill where she was whistling cheerfully she could see everything all at once: sky, farm, road.

In the sky swallows wheeled and darted and plummeted, catching their supper. In the farm lane, her brothers pushed the cows along to the barn for evening milking. On the road, just coming around the bend, someone was slowly riding a goldy-brown pony.

Thistle started and leaned forward, frowning now, watching. The someone was a stranger, but the pony was not. Thistle saw the pony give a funny half skip before it trotted, just like her pony did. She put her hands on her hips. The pony shook its forelock; there was a white star underneath. Why, it was her pony! Her pony Tug! and some strange boy riding him!

Thistle turned and pelted down the hill.

She was halfway to the road when she remembered that her mother had told her to be gone not one minute longer than it took the boys to bring the cows in; Thistle was supposed to help milk. The path she was following would take her right by the house and her mother, who would surely see her.

Thistle stopped and scrambled backwards and took the long way around instead, hoping her pony would buck the boy off and then stand innocently and happily nearby eating the grass on the side of the dirt road. That would serve the boy right for taking her pony. Besides, she'd never catch up to them otherwise.

Thistle jumped the creek and crashed through the alders to the cow lane, landing just in front of one of the cows. It was Red, with her nervous ears, her quick hooves, skittish and worried. Now she threw up her head violently, and twisted back around in the narrow lane. 

Thistle twisted too, out of Red's way and then by her, by and through the eight cows, who were all in a panic now. Some kept moving forward, some stopped, some turned around with Red, back the way they’d just come, while Thistle’s twin brothers waved and hollered, at the cows, at Thistle.

Thistle was still running, yelling, “Somebody’s got my pony!” back to her brothers, and her brothers yelled too. “He’s not yours! He’s not your pony! Thistle! Thistle! Get back here!”

Thistle rounded the corner, blocking out everything behind her, the sounds of the cows, her older brothers. Her heart was like a drum in her, enormous and loud, her ears bursting with it. Tug! Tug! Tug! Her pony!

Thistle ran through the pasture, her calloused dirty feet dodging the pats of cow manure, or almost dodging them. The manure was wet and new, but it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter – 

There was the one fence to cross, tight, shiny, new barbed wire, and Thistle flung herself on the ground and rolled underneath and then she was almost there, the road, the road – and then she burst out into the middle of it.

The road was empty. It was absolutely quiet. There was no one there, in either direction. No round brown pony streaking away with somebody strange riding him, no round brown pony chewing on the roadside grass, waiting for the somebody to get up warily from the ground and try to catch him again. 

Thistle was too late.

She stamped her foot. She blew her hair up off her forehead. Not even a bird squawked. There was no sound except for Thistle’s heart drumming. Thistle stood there in the road, furious, getting her breath back. Then she wheeled around and ran all the way back home. The cows had been in such a tangle in the lane she might beat them all back again, and not be late at all for milking. Her feet beat a rhythm as her heart cried out. Tug! Tug! Tug!

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 22 - 28, 2025