the body of the Lord:

2012-01-22T17:42:00.002-05:00

snow at the farm, yesterday:

shortest day of the year

2011-12-23T16:25:00.005-05:00

Winter is here! The seed catalogs are already piling up for next year's planning, it's hard to believe. I've sent my end-of-season letter and the barn and greenhouse are all closed up. The farm is put to bed for the year and it feels great.

summer is over.

2011-10-02T20:22:00.001-04:00

Some photos of our produce at the farmers' market in the past month or two. Now we're in fall foods - winter squash, and lots of roots and greens. But August & September were pretty great too.

July!

2011-07-11T21:41:00.006-04:00

So busy at the farm these days. Harvesting four mornings a week, trying to get the tomatoes tied up and pruned and mulched, weeding like crazy, going to the farmers' market, staffing the CSA, delivering to the restaurants. Every day goes by so fast. Our lists for what needs to be done each week are NEVER finished. But it's a delight. And things are growing!

seedling sale

2011-05-29T16:44:00.003-04:00

...was/is this weekend. here's some of what we grew for people's gardens, in little pots:

more of the latest

2011-04-05T00:15:00.002-04:00

micro greens in pots!
and in a box!
fennel seed. crazy-looking.
onions. still growing.
spinach, just getting started.

well, this happened.

2011-03-31T09:17:00.004-04:00

I had a great day yesterday, spreading compost with our super-neighbor's manure spreader and borrowed tractor. And then I somehow got into this situation:

Not the best moment so far this spring. There was a lot of driving forward and back, 3 feet at a time. And then it was clear nobody was moving. But no worries, anxious readers - the super-neighbor pulled us out:
And now the tractor looks less shiny and more well-used. Which is just fine.

things are sprouting!

2011-03-24T14:37:00.002-04:00

March 17.

2011-03-17T14:05:00.002-04:00

The greenhouse is so on the way. All the snow has melted inside, heat is hooked up, the second layer of plastic is on, blower is inflating between the layers, our friend Paul built 9 nice tables (11 more to go!) and lots of trays started. Some seeds have even germinated and started their little lives. I tried to take photos of that but they're a little too small, yet, to look like much. Trays are exciting, though:

Wendell gets a pat on the head

2011-03-07T17:28:00.005-05:00

Continuing the Wendell Berry, theme, here's a sad article from great Tom Philpott over at Grist, about the Obama administration doing some double talk about sustainable food: greasing the wheels (tractor tires?) of industrial agriculture while giving a medal to Mr. Berry! Sad sad sad. Tom P. says we should be handing out copies of Berry's books to the USDA folks. Great idea.

plastic!!

2011-02-24T19:38:00.002-05:00

Yes, it is made of petroleum and will last forever somewhere on the planet. But this particular plastic is pretty thrilling. We did it today with some awesome neighbor-farmers and friends. Get in there, plants!

greenhouse updates

2011-02-21T13:23:00.004-05:00

I have been interviewing apprentices and ordering things for the season - potting soil, greenhouse trays and supplies, equipment, harvest bins, etc. And some other hardworking folks have been doing this in the meantime - greenhouse end walls and doors! We are putting the plastic on this week, if all goes well...

"he is the bald eagle in the coal mine"

2011-02-16T07:22:00.003-05:00

"We came because the land, its forests and its streams are being destroyed by the surface mining of coal; because the people are suffering intolerable harm to their homes, their health and their communities; and because all the people downstream are threatened by the degradation and contamination of the rivers."

Wendell Berry (writer, farmer - all over this blog, you might have noticed) just got out of four days of a sit-in in his Kentucky governor's office, protesting the destructive practices of the coal industry in his state. After an initial meeting where the gov. professed love for coal and all it brings to the state, the group just stayed around all weekend, for 3 nights.They emerged on Monday this week, with the governor agreeing to visit sites of concern to them, in eastern Kentucky.

Writer Rick Bass:
"A country in which a patriot like Wendell Berry must step outside the law is a nation in uprising indeed. He is not the canary in the coal mine, the canaries have all died. He is the bald eagle in the coal mine. Our country is burning and his love for it--and for us--has no bounds. What an amazing American he is, to believe that words and actions still matter, and that we might yet all escape our corporate and political captors, and cool the inferno of our hastening destruction. It is a hastening destruction—a delamination—that we can all sense and can see the tips of, now, but which—unless we heed the leadership of men and women like Berry—our children will have to inhabit fully."

February.

2011-02-14T13:56:00.002-05:00

So, here north of Boston, we've had about 30 inches of snow on the ground since December. Our greenhouse has no skin on (2 plastic sheets for a roof) and so there is -- you are doing a great job putting this together -- 30 inches of snow on the greenhouse floor.

(Not sure if it can really be called a floor, since there's no ceiling. But it's not really the ground either.)

By March 1, the greenhouse needs end walls and doors, skin on, and heat and fans hooked up & running so we can start all of the onions/leeks/shallots. WILL THIS HAPPEN?? is a question I have asked myself about 8x a day in the past weeks. It's hard to put skin on in wet snow. It's hard to do much of anything, really.

However. Today it is 52 degrees! Things are melting. The rest of the week looks great, according to the almighty National Weather Service, so I'm thrilled. And look at the rest of the week:

Tuesday

Blustery

Hi 22 °F

Wednesday

Mostly
Sunny
Hi 43 °F

Thursday

Mostly
Sunny
Hi 51 °F

Friday

Partly
Sunny
Hi 54 °F

$28,000

2011-02-08T19:27:00.003-05:00

I went at looked at this tractor today, and took it for a test drive. A test roll, really. I think we're going to buy it.

It's the first green tractor I've ever been on, which is odd since they're everywhere. (And the particular shade of green is trademarked, so watch out that you're not using it on any of your marketing materials, people.)

THIS IS REALLY EXCITING!

plans

2011-02-08T19:24:00.001-05:00

Attempts at a field map, not to scale:

buying things

2011-02-02T15:47:00.003-05:00

I just bought $2700 worth of seeds. They are coming in the mail from Maine.

When your farm is making an attempt at organic certification, one of the requirements is that you buy organic seeds whenever possible - conventional seeds are not as good; treated seeds, no good at all. However, in the seed catalogues (I like an old spelling, sorry) often organic seed is unbelievably more expensive than conventional seed.

Say I need to buy a packet of cauliflower seed (approx. 500 seeds, for a 250-foot bed of cauliflower). Organic seeds is $23. Conventional seed is $6.50.

This kind of thing leads me away from wanting to pursue organic certification. It also leads me to want to charge higher prices for certain vegetables we grow, like cauliflower.

beans, 2010

2011-01-20T18:00:00.007-05:00

These were some dry beans we grew this year - varieties are Jacob's Cattle, Autumn Harvest, Hutterite, and Black Turtle. Gave some away for Christmas presents. Aren't they beautiful?

We planted them in the late summer. They grow just like fresh green beans, on a bush, but you let them die on the plant and then clip the whole thing and let it dry. We put them in the upstairs of the barn for a couple months. Takes a while to shell each pod (this is why people have threshing machines), but then, there they are. Ready for the soup.

2011

2010-12-13T09:13:00.005-05:00

I'll be at a new farm this coming season, my first year as a farm manager. This is thrilling, especially after three years of apprenticing - I'll have a real salary, and this winter I'm getting to buy tractors and set up the whole operation. We're working on a new greenhouse, and we had a new field plowed so it will be ready for spring. Things are looking beautiful:

2010-12-13T09:06:00.004-05:00

lots of goodies given out in the winter share last week, including bunches of popcorn (and some blue popcorn!) and winter squash:

making it big

2010-10-11T20:52:00.004-04:00

Since last season, I had an idea of making a comic with the funny carrots we find in the wash station. Occasionally I would save the extra-weird ones, with a dream of them making it big as a character in the comic. Like these:

and the whole family:

But I never got around to it. Winter project?

october

2010-10-11T18:58:00.002-04:00

Hard to feel like blogging at the end of the days, this season. I was looking back over things and realizing I haven't posted much of anything. There's been plenty going on, but less energy to write or even post photos of fields or vegetables (plus I feel like my photos are now repeating themselves. This week's farm share! Piles of things! Rows of more things!).
But what a lovely season, looking back. We have two weeks left of CSA distribution, and a winter share going out in mid-November and early December - root vegetables, onions and garlic, winter squash, leeks, winter greens. And then about 5 months before anything is growing again, unless we plant under plastic.

august

2010-08-25T16:21:00.003-04:00

it's been such a busy season - not much time to post things. Finally some rain this week after almost none at all since May; we've become real pros with irrigation. Moving hoses, drip tape, connecting 2 inch to 1&1/2 inch pipe, etc.

And we got tomatoes! Lots of them. Garlic and onions have been drying nicely, too.

tomates

2010-07-21T17:28:00.003-04:00

Late blight, the tomato & potato fungus that killed all of our tomatoes last season, is back.
It was spotted at a farm in western Massachusetts this week - email alerts went out from the agriculture people at UMass. We have lots of issues in the tomatoes this year, even though most of the plants are looking beautiful - there are so many tomato diseases out there, it's practically impossible not to get any during the course of a season. But how to tell one spot, bullseye or stem lesion from another?
This nerdy website from Cornell Ag. is one great way to spend some time. Nice zoomy photos of all your blight possibilities.

We've been trying not to freak out. We have lots of fruit on the vines so we're hoping to get some ripe ones before the blight makes it out here. Spraying preventative copper (on the organically-approved list, you naysayers); trying to water enough, i.e. at all, and talking about it all the time. Helps a lot.

2010-07-02T16:00:00.003-04:00

So much going on! We seeded our fall & winter storage beets this week in the greenhouse, which seems crazy. We've been irrigating every day, different fields, because we haven't had rain in weeks. About half of our winter squash is planted, and the other half goes in tomorrow - pumpkins, butternut and acorn, delicata, and kabocha. Fava beans are almost ready for picking, and the spring peas are almost done. Last of the strawberries this weekend. All the tomatoes are staked and have a first twine on them. All the plantings of spring broccoli and cauliflower are turned under. Our 5th planting of carrots is coming up. And the flower garden is almost ready for pick-your-own.

June

2010-06-14T21:25:00.005-04:00

2nd week of CSA harvesting & distribution is over - 3rd week starts tomorrow. Awesome Katie Paarlberg came & helped harvest on Saturday and took some nice photos.

Scallions and radishes.

Red oakleaf lettuce.

The farm!

Bringing lettuce mix to the truck.

Harvest notebook - recording what's coming out of the field.

Haiti

2010-05-19T17:19:00.003-04:00

Monsanto sends seeds to Haiti, to "help" - they are GMOs & treated with highly dangerous chemicals, the norm in agriculture today. Haitian farmers are burning the seeds in protest.

things are growing!

2010-04-29T20:01:00.004-04:00

chard seedlings in the greenhouse

cabbage plant in the field

get mad, then feel better

2010-04-29T19:41:00.004-04:00

Here's an inflammatory & bogus article in Foreign Policy on why organic food is elitist, contributes to world hunger, and generally ridiculous and a waste of your dollars.

And a nice rebuttal from Anna Lappe of the Small Planet Institute (her mother, Francis Moore Lappe, wrote Diet for a Small Planet in the 1971 - very important book in the food movement that connected eating to sustainability. AND she was a shareholder at the first farm where I apprenticed!).

Both are worth a read - checking up on the conversation people are having out there.

greenhouse work

2010-04-20T20:06:00.002-04:00

Lots of time in the greenhouse in April. We planted flat trays of parsley in March, and now are transplanting them out into larger cell trays, so they can develop more roots before we put them in the field. Long process:

second week!

2010-04-13T20:13:00.003-04:00

Lots going on - planting cabbage & beets this week, so I got to plow up some of the fields we'll be using. We put up the electric fence around the smaller field, and started baiting with peanut butter (delicious to the deer, we hope - sorry, animal lovers). Attended CPR & first aid training. In case. And working on putting up a hoop house to act as a cold frame for all the seedlings getting ready to be transplanted. Hoops are in the ground, doors are framed, and the plastic will go on tomorrow. These things come in a kit, it turns out. Neat-o.

Today's plowed field:

and the first spring greens!

spring

2010-04-07T17:51:00.003-04:00

First day of the season today, and 86 degrees in Boston. Very odd for early April. Great day on the farm though! The greenhouse is full of seedlings, irrigation pipe is being installed, and we're plowing up some new land. We planted the spring peas in the pick-your-own section. Delightful.

rock stars of farming

2010-03-27T14:55:00.002-04:00

I am visiting a friend in Vancouver, British Columbia this weekend, and it's spring here. Everything is green and flowering. Boston is still a grey & brown blah, with sand all over the roads still, from winter snow plowing and general grossness. So nice out here!

And just as exciting, I realized at the end of my flight that I was sitting next to Joel Salatin! Hero of the CSA/local farm/sustainable food movement. He was coming out here to speak at a poultry conference. We had a nice chat about how to access farmland in New England and what I want to do with my life. Super nice guy. (If only I was a chatty person who starts off the flight by saying hello to my neighbor, instead of waiting til we were at the gate. Boo.)

brit chef

2010-03-02T18:15:00.003-05:00

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver takes on bad American food and promotes health, nutrition, family cooking, and organics. Nice site with lots of recipes and campaign links. It's also going to be a TV show somehow.

2010 season

2010-02-24T16:21:00.002-05:00

We start seeding in the greenhouse next week!! Potting soil arrives tomorrow.

school food

2010-02-24T15:39:00.005-05:00

Let's not work to lessen kids' diabetes and obesity by changing the system subsidizing bad farming that produces processed foods; let's ban homemade baked goods!
The city of New York says packaged foods like low-fat Doritos are okay to sell at school fundraisers, but not any homemade treats without a calorie count.

This is old news, but "food companies" like Coke and McDonald's spend tons of money marketing directly to children: $1.6 billion in 2006 (with some estimating as much as $10 billion that year alone). Washington Post says McDonald's spent $1 million a day on advertising to kids in 2006, all tax-deductible.

Admirable that New York City is trying to work on the problem of childhood obesity and diabetes, but is limiting a small thing like homemade bake sale goods the right solution? They should take a page from Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign and promote healthier school lunches, school gardens, and exercise for kids. And try to pull out of the extreme grip of the food companies' advertising.

winter markets

2010-02-22T08:31:00.003-05:00

Sleet/snow predicted for most of the rest of the week. In case anyone was at all thinking that spring was coming. But at least we still have root vegetables!
A post on the Boston Globe's "green blog" today about options for eating local food this winter - several winter farmers' markets in the area. And the localvores have a map of winter markets with comments.

USDA & black farmers

2010-02-19T11:08:00.003-05:00

NPR has been following a story about black farmers collecting a long-overdue settlement from the USDA. The farmers had been denied loans and access to supports given to white farmers for decades.

To learn more, there's a helpful page on Environmental Working Group about black farmers in the US - statistics, reports on this settlement process, and links to recent media coverage.

cars eating 1/4 of US grain

2010-02-01T21:49:00.005-05:00

UK's Guardian (in their farming section!) points out a new report from the US Department of Agriculture, showing that a quarter of US grain is now grown for biofuel.

clarity on food labels

2010-01-29T13:23:00.004-05:00

Helpful post from the NY Times health blog Well: pointing out 6 food labels that don't mean anything (like "made with whole grains").

school gardens blow up

2010-01-12T14:31:00.003-05:00

A disdainful article in the Atlantic Jan/Feb issue about school gardens here.
It's titled "Cultivating Failure", which gives you an idea of the point of view - mostly that immigrant students shouldn't be laboring outdoors for food (isn't that what they left behind?) and that school gardens take time away from learning. How are students going to pass their classes when they are out digging in the dirt?

Nice response on Civil Eats that points out how working outdoors and learning where your food comes from is invaluable, and how the curriculum from Alice Waters and others in the Slow Food movement connects the garden work to science, math, history, and more. And since 1 in 3 kids born after 2000 are likely to develop juvenile diabetes, it might be a lifesaver.

more on bees

2009-12-04T12:12:00.002-05:00

Nice video about the bees in residence on the White House lawn.

pollinators!

2009-12-03T11:02:00.004-05:00

Nice little advocacy opportunity from Down to Earth, one of the programs connected with Science Friday, the NPR show: email the Post Office in a campaign to get a commemorative stamp made for L.L. Langstroth, "the father of American beekeeping." No bees, no food, right?

Also, bees are dying in huge numbers all over, for no known reason. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about it two years ago in the New Yorker - the situation is pretty much the same now, if not worse.

local = elitist?

2009-12-02T11:47:00.002-05:00

Long article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about how out of reach the sustainable food movement can be to anyone without lots of money. Opens with a story about a homeless couple coming to a Slow Food lunch that was a demo of food for low-income kids in public school lunches:

In a flash, an event volunteer was on the case, nervous in an endearingly liberal manner. “Sir,” she began. “This food is for the Child Nutrition Act.” And then she paused, searching for what to say next. I imagined her thinking: “Sir, this food is to raise awareness about the availability of sustainable food to the lower classes, not to be eaten by them,” or, “Sir, this good, healthy, local food is not for you.”

2009-11-16T18:08:00.002-05:00

A new report from the USDA shows the highest numbers for hunger in America households in 14 years. NY Times summary article here; USDA full report here.

season extension

2009-11-16T17:46:00.000-05:00

Winter food production at Michigan State - under hoop houses. Looks neat.

winter share

2009-11-16T09:18:00.004-05:00

First winter share distribution was this weekend!
Green napa cabbage & red cabbage.

last of the lettuce

cilantro & parsley bunches

bagged spinach & leeks

delicata winter squash & brussel sprouts

raw milk

2009-11-04T17:46:00.002-05:00

Nice article from Joel Salatin, crazy Christian libertarian super organic farmer in Virginia, about his views on raw milk. (It's currently illegal to sell raw milk to the public, which some groups get around by setting up a co-op type of model so the customers are officially/legally also the owners of the milk.) Interesting stuff on the right & wrong kinds of regulation in our food system that we need from the government.

the fall

2009-11-02T10:27:00.002-05:00

Our winter share is happening - 2 distributions of food in November & December. Sweet potatoes, onions, shallots, winter squash, popcorn, leeks, turnips, beets, etc. Woo! And this week we're planting the garlic. Lots still happening, even though it's chilly.

2009-10-25T20:49:00.002-04:00

marriedtothesea.com has some funny comics sometimes. like this one.

MEAT.

2009-10-12T21:12:00.001-04:00

Ben Ali died this week -- the owner of Ben's Chili Bowl, a greasy spoon in Washington DC that's one of the more historic and amazing black-owned restaurants in the east coast, serving food guaranteed to make you a little sick. With joy. I was first introduced to it by this guy, when I was a lowly DC intern in 2004. Beef & pork sausage! With more meat on top!
In other news, our farm piglets we raised since the spring were "taken to market" a few weeks ago, and just returned to us for selling to our CSA members and to the public. Some tasty local meat, that only recently we were saying hello to on our way out to the fields. A little sad, but in all seriousness, quite amazing to see this process up close that most Americans were a part of in generations past - raising and caring for your food of all kinds, with thanks.

poem - Wendell B. in the New Yorker

2009-10-08T14:51:00.003-04:00

A Speech to the Garden Club of America
by Wendell Berry. September 28, 2009.
(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;
There are so many outcomes that are worse.
But I must add I’m sorry for getting here
By a sustained explosion through the air,
Burning the world in fact to rise much higher
Than we should go. The world may end in fire
As prophesied—our world! We speak of it
As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit
Of temporary progress, digging up
An antique dark-held luster to corrupt
The present light with smokes and smudges, poison
To outlast time and shatter comprehension.
Burning the world to live in it is wrong,
As wrong as to make war to get along
And be at peace, to falsify the land
By sciences of greed, or by demand
For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify
The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.
But why not play it cool? Why not survive
By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?
Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens
By going back to school, this time in gardens
That burn no hotter than the summer day.
By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,
By goods that bind us to all living things,
Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.
The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,
Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger
Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.
A creature of the surface, like ourselves,
The garden lives by the immortal Wheel
That turns in place, year after year, to heal
It whole. Unlike our economic pyre
That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,
An anti-life of radiance and fume
That burns as power and remains as doom,
The garden delves no deeper than its roots
And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

ew

2009-10-08T14:32:00.002-04:00

Sliced/whacked my thumb this morning harvesting turnips, and had my first farm-related trip to the emergency room (and first that I remember, except a time falling off a jungle gym when I was 4).
3 stitches and a tetanus shot. Turns out I'm not that good with pain and blood!

2009-09-30T17:38:00.002-04:00

okay, fine.
So things at the farm lately have been super. We're taking all the big stuff out of the ground this month - winter squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes. Also working on cleaning up the 4,000+ pounds of onions we harvested in August that have been drying on screens in the greenhouse and the barn, so they can go in the share in the coming weeks. Last distribution on October 24!

2009-09-30T17:37:00.000-04:00

who wants to blog when you're harvesting sweet potatoes??

fast food

2009-09-22T21:58:00.001-04:00

This is cool, a photo thing from the Guardian on fast food advertising vs. reality. Almost funny, if it wasn't so gross.

Mayor of New York City

2009-09-22T21:39:00.002-04:00

Needs an article written about his snacking habits? You can be an advocate for good food & still have a pretzel from a sidewalk cart every once in while.
So silly how the focus is away from the messed up wreck of our food system and on the choices of a really wealthy and powerful person (who can afford to eat whatever he wants & pay for the best health care there is). What about all the people who don't have food choices and can only afford the cheapest, and worst, meals? And the cost to their health?

new england props

2009-09-17T16:20:00.002-04:00

Portland, Maine, is awesome! and they love local foods.

fixing the food system so health care reform has a chance

2009-09-16T18:30:00.004-04:00

I feel sort of silly posting everything that Michael Pollan every writes. But this is a good one.

September

2009-09-06T12:36:00.002-04:00

Peak season at the farm these days - this week in the share we had bok choi, lettuce, kale & swiss chard, carrots, potatoes, scallions, beets, cucumbers & summer squash, and corn, and in the pick-your-own sections we had hot peppers, herbs, and husk cherries (a #1 hit, it turns out). Lots of the fall things in the ground are coming up nicely, like the pumpkins & winter squash, turnips, parsnips, etc. Looking forward to those things!
We had a crew member hurt her back & she's been out for about a week; realizing how much of the work is shared & what a huge difference one person is. Yikes.

women on farms

2009-08-28T20:58:00.002-04:00

The Smithsonian magazine has a history piece about city women recruited to rural America to work on farms, during World War I. (Makes you wonder where the rural women were - doing factory assembly lines in the cities?) Very military-like rah rah set up, it sounds like. They had some nice cheers:

Don’t be a slacker

Be a picker or a packer

WLA, Rah, rah, rah!

It's fascinating how much surprise gets expressed by the public, according to the article, from the folks receiving the women workers. They can use tools! They wear pants! In my short time farming here, women are all over the place -- most apprentices I see at our eastern Mass. farmer gatherings are women, and some of the best farms in this area are managed & staffed by women. Not a shock anymore, at least in our small-scale organic circles.

(From Kendra, who was in my Lazarus group. Check out her book reviews!)

2009-08-26T21:57:00.002-04:00

Or you could do this with all your excess tomatoes.

Maine

2009-08-25T21:33:00.002-04:00

Has really great farmer support systems, including an organic farm association that does amazing things. Like this journeyperson/Farmer-in-Residence program that mentors new farmers & helps them find land.

the latest

2009-08-24T21:37:00.004-04:00

Some tough days at the farm recently - very hot (over 95 3 or 4 days in a row last week) and we've been short crew members and looking at more projects than we can think of starting, let alone finishing. But some great moments in all of the challenges - harvesting over 600 pounds of summer squash & zucchini this week, every other day; rescuing a carrot planting from death by weeds; swimming in the pond around the corner after a hot day; showing King Corn outside on the wall of the barn with friends. And I finally got a handle on the seeder and planted about 10 beds of crops!

2009-08-09T17:08:00.002-04:00

last things, I hope, that I'm going to post on the tomato blight.
- op-ed in the NYT from a New York chef who works with a local farm, explaining some things about why the blight was so bad & what some solutions could be ("A tomato plant that travels 2,000 miles is no different from a tomato that has traveled 2,000 miles to your plate.").
- piece from a farm intern in Western Mass. on the death of her farm's tomato plants.
"Now more than ever, Northeastern farmers need the support of their customers. They need CSA members with the grace to accept why their tomatoes are missing this year and market-goers who understand the devil’s bargain many farmers were forced to make. This is a year that can teach young agrarians humility and restraint and gratitude, if we can bring ourselves to seek it."

late blight, again.

2009-08-03T15:33:00.002-04:00

Another article about the tomato blight in the Boston papers, this time in the Herald. The farm mentioned is just a few miles from ours, and run by some great people.

It looks like we will lose our entire tomato crop for the year.

nest

2009-08-03T15:31:00.002-04:00

This was in the peas about a month ago, abandoned (probably because it was in the pick-your-own section and the birds were too crowded with people).

favas!

2009-07-29T19:46:00.005-04:00

Fava beans! They have been ready for a couple weeks now. Last week I picked a million, and made a nice little saute with our leeks and garlic scapes, over pasta.
And this is not a foodie blog, let it be said. No one make fun of my camera phone photos.

The pods

beans out of the pod, steamed

the dinner!

signs

2009-07-27T11:38:00.003-04:00

We love signs at our farm. In the flower garden:

the pick-your-own section of the field:

the share instructions:

disease

2009-07-17T20:22:00.002-04:00

Another story on late blight, the tomato & potato fungus, in the regular newspapers. Yikes.

We took 4 harvest bins full of diseased plants out of the field last week, but it was another tomato disease (there are many). No sign of the late blight yet, but we're trying to be vigilant.

IT WAS HOT TODAY!

2009-07-16T20:28:00.001-04:00

let me bribe you to see this eco-local-sustainy movie with a slave-grown chemical tomato burrito!

2009-07-16T20:13:00.003-04:00

Food Inc. & Chipotle update. A piece from a ranty/bloggy-type person at the Nation, pointing out some action from the film's producers against the fast-food chain. Apparently they signed on to a letter protesting some of Chipotle's policies, like not paying farm workers enough for tomatoes.

What's crazy is that the columnist has lots of praise for these letter-writers/filmmakers and plenty of protest against Chipotle's business practices, but then he thinks C.'s sponsorship of the film is really okay after all, since it got lots of people to see it in theaters!

Probably the main thing should be the farm workers' campaign against the slave-like conditions in the tomato fields in Florida, and not what a bunch of bloggers think.

gov.

2009-07-06T19:30:00.001-04:00

The USDA is doing some cool stuff at their building in Washington! Farm & garden workshops for the public.

foods, fast

2009-07-06T15:10:00.002-04:00

According to the Boston Globe, the film Food, Inc. has a corporate sponsor for free screenings at the hipster theater in Cambridge: Chipotle, the fast-food burrito joint.
I always thought Chipotle was owned by McDonald's, & had a pretty negative impression because of that. But the piece on the film sponsorship talks up their environmental woohoos, like how their stores are green and they are trying to use naturally raised meats (whatever that means). So I scouted around online; apparently McDonald's had a fairly large investment stake in them but no more (yes, that's a link to Wikipedia). And their meat and dairy does seem much more sustainably sourced than other fast food, by a long way.

Is this a better-than-nothing? Or a making-it-worse? Really great, that their food sources are better than most, but does the super mass-produced and meat-centered eating still do more damage in the long run? Always hard to know when to support good incremental steps, and this is a good step. At least I'll go see the film for free.

another take

2009-07-06T15:04:00.002-04:00

A cool piece from NY Times on another interesting slice of the local farming scene, this time about an African American grower in urban Wisconsin.

"late blight"

2009-07-03T16:36:00.002-04:00

Tomato and potato disease is a huge concern for many growers, and this year's wet weather makes for even more worry. On top of that, we're learning that many tomato seedlings from big box stores from New Jersey up to Maine were sold already carrying the blight, which spreads like crazy. Now it's even in the regular news, not just the nerdy farmer newsletters: today's Boston Globe.

weather update - pretend you were waiting for one

2009-07-01T19:14:00.002-04:00

It has been cloudy or rainy for FIVE WEEKS, with only a few hours of that time in full sun. Our strawberries are moldy and the soil in several fields has a greenish cast. Weeds, not that I even need to mention them, tower over tiny peppers and eggplants. Apparently this is the cloudiest June in Massachusetts since 1903.

some difficulties

2009-06-18T20:15:00.005-04:00

This week, an article about our farm ran in the local town paper. It also had a piece about the town itself, and how great it is, including this nice little statistic: the median home price there is $945,000.

Tonight at the grocery store in my neighborhood in Boston, the youngish man in front of me in line had lots of food, almost all of it processed, full of corn syrup and sodium and chemicals and all the things that make farmers crazy. An older man behind me was buying a very few staples - potatoes, eggs, tortillas, beans. He counted change in his hand; it was heartbreaking.

A few decades ago in America, it might well have been possible for an older person on a fixed small income to grow their own food in their own space, or live by a farming community with food available and not exist on the very edge of poverty. More likely, too, that the food available at markets and stores was actually food. And that the wealth divide between rich and poor was less stark, and that open space -- land to farm -- would not be limited to unaffordable communities. Unaffordable by a MILE.

the QUEEN!

2009-06-15T14:17:00.002-04:00

The Guardian food page reports Queen Elizabeth & Prince Philip returning use of some of their grounds to vegetable growing!

As a 14-year-old, she picked up a spade and joined with the rest of wartime Britain in the Dig for Victory campaign. Seven decades later, though no longer wielding the spade herself, the Queen, 83, has again embraced the "grow your own" movement.

The Guardian, and the UK and Europe in general, are way ahead of the US on lots of food policy and farm issues, from the much greater availability of locally grown food and the value placed on it, and on farmers, to a higher awareness in the public about how health and the environment are impacted by what we eat, where it comes from, and how we grow and produce it. In the US, lots of these issues are just catching on in the mainstream.
IN FACT, The UK is so up on their food awareness that some of features on the Guardian's food page are about how annoying it is to be bombarded with sustainable/green/organic/local campaigns, especially from celebrities. This guy has a nice post about a sustainable fish advert - some nakedish folks holding a huge cod - and how it makes caring about where your food comes from A Hip Elite Fad rather than a nice, basic, how-grandma-used-to-do-it kind of thing.

others

2009-06-14T07:39:00.004-04:00

We have some really super volunteers at the farm. Several of them came out yesterday - a great kid and his mom, and an older man who lives in town. They helped us mulch the early tomatoes, plant 2 beds of hot peppers in the pick-your-own section and thin more carrots, yesterday.
Saturdays whiz by, on the farm, with these great folks pitching in. (Open volunteer hours 1-5pm, for any of you locals!)

blah

2009-06-12T08:55:00.002-04:00

Home sick from the farm yesterday & today. Slept in this morning til 7:45, which is 2 hours later than I usually get up, and I'm realizing I have a whole day to do not much.

This week has been very rainy & overcast. Everyone else is putting in the eggplant and the hot peppers. And there's a ton of weeding and tractor cultivation to do.

This morning on our local NPR I heard a brief story on local farms in Massachusetts - pretty nice, although not much to it. (You can sell produce direct to the customer and that's a better model! People are into local food!) The station's weekly hour-long piece on Boston-area news, Radio Boston, is also about CSA farms, and looks interesting. They're asking if sustainable farming is sustainable economically, which is a tough question.

rampages, etc.

2009-06-11T14:38:00.007-04:00

This is looking down into a jar of dead bugs - the ones with the stripes.

Once a week or so, we scoot down the 35 beds of potato plants to kill all the Colorado potato beetles we can see. A fairly gross task, if you squish them (orange goo) but I choose the jar method: soapy water in the jar and dropping them in. There's usually at least 100 each, with 4 or 5 of us hunting.

The beetles look cute, as you can see, but they would destroy our potato crop if we didn't STAY VIGILANT!

2009-06-05T22:12:00.002-04:00

This week - the first 7am-5pm we'll do, starting now til September or so:
Put in all the middle planting of tomatoes (30 beds) and planted the sweet potatoes (15 beds). Spent a couple hours squishing potato beetles on the regular potatoes. Weeded onions, beans, and strawberries. Ate a few strawberries! Planted celery root, basil, and all the pick-your-own tomatoes and tomatillos. First week of harvesting and CSA distribution (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday), and we had bok choi, spinach, arugula, red & green lettuce, broccoli, radishes, and salad turnips, for 250 people. Schmoozed with families at the distribution area, and met new volunteers. Watched the kildeer in the herb garden sit on her nest. Found a dead frog feet first in the bed where we were planting tomatoes, and got really grossed out. Saw where the deer are nibbling things. Saw a snake in the grass! Took row cover off the broccoli/cabbage/cauliflower field. Bruised knees on many rocks. Shooed birds out of the greenhouse. Spread fertilzer. Put gas in the farm truck. Ordered farm gloves, and returned them when they came (wrong size). Hoed lettuce. Drank coffee. Made lists...

Weeds, thanks

2009-05-30T23:17:00.003-04:00

Handweeding and thinning carrots today - usually necessary, no matter what you do - and handweeding onions - not the greatest. One hopes for a hoe and an upright back at the end of an 8-hour day on hands and knees! Great day, though, especially after a cold and rainy week.

flowering strawberries!

2009-05-26T21:16:00.002-04:00

husbandry update

2009-05-21T22:31:00.005-04:00

All of our 19 chickens are Bard Rocks, except for one Rhode Island Red. We call her Pretty, which is short for Pretty Pretty Hen. No point in not having favorites.
Her latest thing is flying/flopping over the chicken fence, which is something like a flimsy soccer net, to explore the rest of the world. But she can't get back in, no step to jump off, and so she runs herself into the net over and over, trying to get through. 1. This is funny. 2. We are even funnier, because one of us always runs over, doing baby voice ("what a pretty girl!") to throw her back over. 3. Chickens have brains the size of what, raisins? We're clearly LOSING.

machines, the earth

2009-05-21T21:51:00.002-04:00

I spent almost all of Tuesday and Wednesday on one of the tractors, plowing two fields. (Or ploughing?) Anyway, quite a time. All of it was new to me; the tractor we had at the farm last year didn't have a plow, so I'd never used one.
It's a neat experience, but terrifying in the beginning. You estimate the midpoint of the field and then drive your first furrow right there, as straight as possible, and then turn around and make another one next to it coming back the other direction. So you have two parallel deep lines in the field, and the continued furrow-making brings them further and further apart until you reach the opposite edge of the field with each line.
Making any new furrow means putting two wheels in the deep ditch of the previous furrow, so I spent both days sitting at a crazy angle on the tractor, one side way down in the ground - very scary at first, but you get used to it. Feels like any second the machine's tipping over and burying you, but really it's all fine.
It works about 12 inches at a time; we have is a double-bottom plow, so two blades - one digs down a little deeper than the other, turning over the earth, and overlapping one blade's work with the previous furrow. This takes FOREVER.
To make sure things are going okay, you generally do a lot of checking behind you (hello, sore neck): is the plow at the right depth in the soil, did a huge rock knock the blade out, am I driving straight and in the right place, etc. And it looks amazing - the blades dig quite deeply into the soil and flip it, in huge pieces at a time. It almost looks like the front of a ship in the water, slicing through so cleanly. You could get quite poetic sitting up there, looking at the action.
The birds immediately settle into the newest piece to find treats, so even while driving a loud machine with ear protection on, I could hear chirping all day, both days. I was thinking of a couple songs about plowing - Godspell, maybe? and some hymns, so I did a little singing with my ears covered and raging engine noise in the background, which feels a little silly, but it's a long time sitting and there's a lot of nice songs out there.
And the field looks so different afterwards, so much closer to planting, so ready for growing. The plow erases the dormancy of the winter and the cover crops of the spring, as important as they are - making way for the real thing. Farming is so full of accomplishments. Birds! Poetry! Worms! Dirt! A new field!

Today was 90 degrees, and we all went for ice cream after the day ended. Not bad either.

locals

2009-05-17T21:15:00.003-04:00

A couple years ago when I was living in DC, I went to a lunch that was part of a book tour; Anna Lappe was promoting the cookbook/food manifesto she co-wrote with African American chef Bryant Terry.
Terry was in Boston recently pitching his new project, Vegan Soul Kitchen, and came through one of Boston's great institutions, Haley House - low-income housing/soup kitchen/cooking school/urban farm/caterer/bakery/Catholic Worker-ish place. Terry's thing seems to be showing his community new ways to cook, using local and sustainable food for healthy and tasty meals. More of that, please.

new things

2009-05-13T18:25:00.005-04:00

so, here's some things at the new farm this year that we didn't have at my farm last year. very fun.

chickens!

and a chicken house!

also, an electric fence to keep the deer out. Not really doing a great job at the moment; we're noticing they are snacking on the peas like crazy. oh well.

and here's the board in the greenhouse where we write the to-do list. if you want to come visit and just start doing a job, say, you should check this board.

2009-05-13T18:05:00.002-04:00

Today I was on the tractor all morning, tilling new beds for beans, cucumbers, greens, roots, and more. Finally driving in straight-ish lines! In the afternoon it was back to hoeing. The weeds are starting to really take off.

today

2009-05-12T18:14:00.003-04:00

Worked in the greenhouse in the morning, planting new trays of cucumbers and squash, and moving tomatoes from little trays to bigger ones. In the afternoon, we hoed the strawberries, some onions, and the carrots. Woo!

fish CSA

2009-05-11T19:07:00.001-04:00

A Community Supported Fishery just started on Cape Ann, north of Boston. Such a great idea.

new job!

2009-05-11T19:02:00.002-04:00

This year I'm working at a new CSA - 250 shares growing on 10 acres, on a really beautiful & scenic 125-acre parcel. We've been mostly planting, but this past week I learned how to drive the 2 different cultivating tractors! lots of fun.

slouching towards vegetarianism

2009-04-26T21:45:00.002-04:00

Saw this on Bittman's blog, and yikes! a graph of animal slaughter in the US that is not all that pleasant to look at, or think about. One of a number of things lately stacking up in the vegetarian pile.

I'm still eating meat - calm down out there, folks - but it's getting harder and harder. Even my really cool middle-aged elementary-school-teacher aunt just became a vegetarian! I'm surrounded.

Also surrounded by small-sized vegetables, these days. Spent yesterday morning planting onions: quite nice.

goats

2009-04-16T22:29:00.002-04:00

The winter is mostly over, so I can finally stop writing about other farms, farmers, agriculture policy, food, etc. and write about what I'm doing, myself!

As in yesterday: duck-taped goat horns.

farm valentine

2009-04-08T16:23:00.002-04:00

About 2 months too late, but it's pretty great. Showering the farm with love.

things to read

2009-04-06T18:13:00.000-04:00

New food section on Grist!

Bees

2009-03-22T10:32:00.001-04:00

Also on the do-it-yourself front, I went to a workshop in my neighborhood on Friday night on URBAN BEEKEEPING. Anyone can do it!

more on the WH garden/farm

2009-03-22T10:08:00.002-04:00

First, a fun video on the history of White House residents growing their own food. This was from an 8-person chat session the New York Times held on the subject of the Obama's new garden, with each person submitting their comments, especially historical tidbits about which vegetables the different presidents have hated (I guess those are the fun parts).
(And who knew it was O Magazine that first announced Michelle Obama's farm-garden news?)
Then, a summary piece, also from the Times, on food activists. Apparently Michael Pollan thinks the movement doesn't yet have much "political savvy." But Grist writer Tom Philpott (a super-farmer in North Carolina) thinks that Michelle Obama's influence is what will change White House eating, and maybe our national food policy.
And this guy thinks Michelle is growing weed, like she needs a little cash crop to keep buying those cute outfits.
Last, something on the booming trend of backyard gardens among regular folks in the US, as a result of the recession. And there are even some guys in my neighborhood who will build and plant raised beds for you, if you don't know how.

veg

2009-03-16T19:39:00.005-04:00

Maybe a farm on the White House lawn! Article in Good about how that's great, but it would also be nice to have some real substantive change in food & farm policy.