Tag Archives: farming

A Farmer’s Hands

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Wildness

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Soil has worked itself deep into the crevices of my skin, along the outside edges of my forefingers, where I grab at knotweed and plantain, twist the roots of grass and pull them from beds.

It colors the half-moons of my fingernails and stains beneath the tips.

On my palms, three callouses rise on each hand, trailing from the base of the middle fingers in a slant to my pinkies.  I didn’t notice their summer return until a chef-friend (with impeccably clean hands) pointed them out as he looked at the engraving of the arctic landscape on my wedding ring.

That was a month ago.  Now they rise from soft valleys, blunt peaks born from hoe and shovel.

Enough scrubbing could clean my fingernails for one night, though the next day the soil would again find its place on my body.

And the callouses–what else is there to do but celebrate the mirror of mountains on my palms.

Creatures of Habit

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Morning Inspiration

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Morning clouds Monday whispered thoughts of rain all morning and afternoon, with undulating gray clouds stretching across the sky.  I was beneath them broad forking the lower field and feeling anxious about money, as so happens from time to time.  As I worked, I listened to an episode of Redefined Life, a podcast my friend Aaron Mead recently began.

The conversation between Aaron and Jeff Shapiro, a wing-suit BASE jumper, played in my ears as I pushed the tines of the broad fork down into soil and pulled back, loosening the bed.  The rhythm of the work slowly eased its fingers into the jumbled knot in my stomach, and as it loosened, the conversation turned to happiness when Shapiro said that happiness is a choice, and that nothing outside of us can give or take away happiness.

The warm air and cloudy sky afforded the perfect temperature to be working outside; the trees in full green framed the field and rose across the hillside into the mountains; my body was moving, and I felt that choice to be happy.

The antidote to anxiousness is presence.  Out in the field, working with soil and plants, I fall into rhythm and it leads me to presence, which in turn opens my body to choices beyond anxiety.  Like happiness, presence and awareness of the now is a choice, and like anything else, the more you practice making that choice, the more you say “yes” to it, the more natural it becomes.

We are creatures of habit.  I’d like my habit to be happiness.

Aaron also interviewed me for Redefined Life.  We spoke about writing, farming, and creating a business.  I was nervous to hear the episode,not quite remembering all that I said, but it served as a reminder to me why I do all that I do.  To hear it, visit Redefined Life online.

Farmer Wordplay

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Farming

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The words we use as farmers and eaters has a real impact on how we view our food.  This summer I started thinking more about the words harvest and slaughter when it comes to chickens, and my musings turned into an article in the latest edition of Vermont’s Local Banquet.  Read an excerpt below:

With both hands, I reach into the crate of chickens.

“I’m sorry!” I say to the chicken as it flaps in my less-than-confident grasp. The butcher just showed me how to properly handle a bird: two hands on their legs, chest down, and pick up. They won’t flap this way. I put the bird’s chest on the ground until it calms and pashand it to the butcher.

“No need to apologize to them for that,” he says, easily putting the bird upside-down into the cone and, with a sharp knife, cutting its head off in a blink.

“I hate picking up chickens,” I tell him. “I like eating and raising them, but I’m not good at this part.”

“Eating is the easy part.”

To read the full article, visit Vermont’s Local Banquet

The Pre-Winter Flurry

06 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by in Family, Seasons

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in the woodsFall harvests, building projects, writing projects, a toddler. I’ve been away from the blog lately, but have not been idle. Snow is forecasted again, and another night of temps in the low 20s, and so the last of the storage roots call for harvesting, the high tunnels ask for plastic on their end-walls, and the carrots and kale under low-tunnels wait to be tucked in once more (those winds that whip across this hillside are a mean contender against our sandbags and row-cover).

Still, we find a few hours here and there to walk in the woods. In the midst of this pre-winter flurry, it’s quieting to feel the slight spring of layered leaves underfoot, to stop and lean in close enough to see the buds at the end of bare limbs. Come spring they’ll unfurl in a bright green splash, but for now they are wrapped tight and ready for winter. Soon, we will be, too.

in the woods

Snow is Coming: Winter Preparations

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Seasons

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fire woodThe first chance of snow is forecasted for Sunday.  It’s due to come with a mix of rain, and so it’s doubtful anything will stick for long, but the winter is whistling in, and we still have preparations to make.

Today we’ll harvest the last of the parsley and make one more round of pesto.  My goals is 15 more 8-ounce containers worth.  (Yes, we have nearly 40 already, enough for the CSA, but we need some of that green to get our own family through the winter, too).  Our late season pesto is more creative than the classic basil.  It’s base is parsley, plus the last of the basil in the greenhouse, and perhaps some cilantro, too, and then, for a little twist we add kale, giving the pesto a deep green color.

Of course, there is still firewood to chop and stack, and a hole under the sink that needs to be fixed, but right now my mind is first on food preservation, pulling what can still be pulled from the field and transforming it into pesto, or sauerkraut, or a salt-vegetable preserve we use as a soup starter.  The bulk of preservation is already complete, but as nearby farmer said to me the other day, “This time of year people get serious about eating.”

It’s true.  I feel an urge to squirrel away all that I can for the coming cold months, and suddenly everything is precious.  Winter has a way of putting things in perspective, and though there is a flurry of action to get ready for it, there is something grounding about all these preparations–food preservation, chopping and stacking wood, tightening up the yurt, cleaning up the farm fields and tucking in the remaining crops with remay and plastic.  All of this work grounds me to the ancient rhythm of seasonal transition; it brings me to the base of life’s work, which beyond staying warm and sheltered, is feeding oneself.

So today: harvest the parsley and kale.  Chop and stack more wood.  And of course, explore outside and read books with Waylon.  After all, we need to teach our little ones the transition of seasons, too.

What are your winter preparations?

Garlic is Magic

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Farming

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July: Bringing in the garlic harvest

July: Bringing in the garlic harvest

July: Bringing the garlic harvest in to cure

July: Bringing the garlic harvest in to cure

October: Seed Garlic

October: Seed Garlic

October: Prepping garlic beds with the broadfork

October: Prepping garlic beds with the broadfork

Garlic is magic.  Plant it two inches deep, then cover it with compost and straw; do this in autumn, just before the ground freezes, and it will set roots and then go dormant for the winter.  Like bears, it needs this cold dark period.  Perhaps it is dreaming as the moist soil holds it in darkness as it sleeps until spring.  Perhaps it is meditating, breathing with the frost heaves and tunneling mice.

Was it Einstein who said, “There are two ways to live: one is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

As we plant garlic on a cold fall day, leaves drop from trees to reveal naked branches before the winter; our own movement warms us more than the sun as chilling winds blow across the field; we push the cloves into soil, setting this cycle of rooting and hibernation into effect once more; this little bulb will sprout come spring, and I am sure once more that everything is a miracle.

The Weight of Water

10 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Nature/Environment

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RWS_0055The weight of water.  How heavy it feels when I lug it up the hill.  And how heavy it feels when it’s gone–the sinking realization that the well has run dry.  Two years ago when we moved onto this land, we found a spring and developed it as a shallow well–10 feet down was all we dug and it has kept our thirst (and the animals and vegetables) quenched.  But when the overflow stopped a few weeks ago, Edge forgot about it and I didn’t even notice.  And we’ve had just enough single days of rain sprinkled through the last few weeks to disguise the dryness of late summer.  And then there’s this fact: we use up to 400 gallons of water per harvest day to wash the vegetables, though our well’s storage is 300 gallons.  And so we look to ourselves, at the ways we could have conserved if only we had thought to have foresight.

There have been countless times I’ve been thankful for our water, for the fact that it is gravity fed to the barn and that we don’t rely on electricity to run a pump.  I once moved into a house during a wind storm that caused a three-day power outage, and aside from what we bought, we had no water until the electricity came back on.  This kind of system has always seemed so fragile to me.  I’ve laughed with a friend who also hauls water at the reactions we get from those that can simply turn a faucet–how we each think the other is crazy.  You mean you carry all your water?!  You mean your water source is gone if the power goes out?  Now I wish for a deep well and a pump, when simplicity and a shallow well feels fragile.

I am kicking myself that we hadn’t thought of this possibility and made plans for it sooner.  If we didn’t need potable water to wash our vegetables with tomorrow, we might mull over the solution a bit longer–the animals can drink the pond water, and we have enough water reserved from Monday’s harvest to water the seedlings–but the fact is we need more than a few 5-gallon buckets of potable water by tomorrow.  So today: buy a 1000 gallon tank, pay for a bulk water delivery.

We live in a state where floods have filled the disaster headlines, where the word drought brings up images of California, not our own farms, and so perhaps I have taken it for granted that water will always flow out of the well.  For all the inconvenience of the situation, though, I am grateful that we can buy water, that the restrictions we face are nothing compared to seriously drought-stricken areas of the world.  Given the forecast is accurate, tomorrow it will rain, with a chance for more on Saturday and Sunday.  With the rain, and with patience, comes replenishment.  Until then, I’ll feel the weight of water that’s run dry.

 

 

Live Your Romantic Life

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Nature/Environment

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“It’s beautiful up here.  This is my dream: to buy a little piece of land in Worcester, put up a yurt, and raise my family,” she said.  I smiled, allowing the romance of it all to stay in her mind.  And why not?  It is romantic, isn’t it–to live up here on this hillside, sheep and chickens grazing in the pasture, an acre of food growing in the garden, our family held each night in the circle of the yurt.  It’s all so lovely.  I say this to remind myself that we are here because it was our dream, too, though truthfully, the thought that shot through my head at her declaration was the ease of a house with running water, well-insulated walls, and hard-wired electricity.  I pictured her turning on the faucet at night to make a bath for her son, then pictured myself hauling two 5-gallon buckets up the hill to the yurt, pouring water in a pot and waiting for it to heat up on the stove before pouring it again into the sink.  This is why Waylon doesn’t get daily baths–I know the weight of water.

Just as I let her, I let myself dream up a romantic picture of life in town: living in a house with big windows and light streaming through in the morning, having a clean kitchen with matching dish clothes and bowls that don’t chip from being piled on the floor of the yurt when we’ve run out of water and can’t seem to find the time to run down and refill the buckets in the greenhouse, tight walls that hold warmth, doors that keep the wind outside instead of offering cracks for it to whistle in, a small garden just for the family, the ease of keeping the car parked and walking everywhere.

But then I think, what kind of job would I have to do to have that life?  Where would the dogs run?  What about the noise of traffic?  I think about the weight of water, how I stop to rest a few times as I carry the jugs uphill, how those moments of rest are filled with breath and a view of the mountains.  I think of Waylon and the amount of dirt he eats, and the strength of his immune system thanks to it.  I think of the word easy and wonder what it really means, because I tried the life of 9:00-5:00 inside at a desk with a salary and benefits, and you know what?  It didn’t make my life easier.

What’s easy is to romanticize what we don’t have.

It’s worth remembering that we are here because we chose it.  We are here because we strive to create a life of balance, substance, and joy.  It’s worth remembering that the most challenging times are also the pivotal ones that determine our path.  It’s also worth remembering that there is actually nothing stopping me from having matching dish clothes.

I let my town-living daydream drift off in the wind and come back to this life in our yurt, with unfinished projects and sheep that escape their fence and 50 families to grow food for.  I come back to it because it brings me alive.  After all, romance is not always easy or without conflict, but it is nourishing.  And though she drove back to her home in town, to our visitor, and to you all, I say this:

Choose your path, and live your romantic life.

Waylon and Mama scything

Zucchini and Egg Season

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Farming

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We’ve entered zucchini and egg season, by which I mean we only eat zucchinis and eggs due to lack of time to make any other meal.  What else could be so fast as summer squash sauteed in butter, eggs cracked in the pan and yolks broken with a spatula, a sprinkling of salt and pepper, a quick chop of parsley, folding in of some thinly sliced cheddar, and an easy transfer from pan to tortilla?  It takes maybe five minutes.  And we’ve got a lot of zucchini.  The eggs, not as many (60 layers and only our 8 oldest are laying…oh chickens, how much longer can you hold out?), but plenty for the two of us and Waylon, who has also recently discovered scrambled eggs.

I think we had the same meal three times in the same day last week, with perhaps a slight variation from rice tortilla to a romaine leaf wrap when we ran out of the real thing.  It’s high time for succession pulling and planting: the first round of kale, out.  Two rows of lettuce mix and two rows of Asian greens, gone.  Broadfork, compost, rake.  Seed, transplant.  Last night the dill finally went in, though the cilantro still waits in its trays, catching my eyes each time I walk by it, as does the next succession of summer squash.  Soon.  Soon.  If we don’t get it in, what will our quick scrambles turn into?

Despite all the work there is to be done, there are moments of reprieve: a coffee gelato cone, a dunk in the reservoir, a quiet hour after the babe and papa have gone to sleep.  I sink into these moments, these quiet breaths scattered like a trail through the day: this way now, there will be rest soon enough.

In another 6 hours the sun will rise, and we will, too.  Edge will make chai, Waylon will eat a banana, and I’ll turn on the stove to make breakfast of golden yolked eggs and zucchini.

zucchini and summer squash