We're here!

Welcome to Farming with Ravi! This blog will be documenting our journey as beginning farmers over the next year. Ravi, the llama, will have a formal introduction in our next post.

Last week we arrived at a beautiful farm in southwestern Connecticut. We will be apprentices here for about 10 months.  During this time we will be learning about livestock management, growing produce fit for the finest restaurants, and the business and marketing side of farming. We’ll also be learning how farming can be a vehicle for social change through the farm’s gleaning project, which we’ll talk more about later. 

One of the animal chores we do every day is to check the chickens. We have been letting them out of the coop in the mornings and closing them back in at night so the predators don’t get them. We also ensure they have food and water. This pretty little chicken coop can be moved from pasture to pasture so that the chickens always have fresh ground to roam on and find bugs to eat. 

Everything has to be timed for maximum productivity. Derek is “renovating” this raised garden bed. Lettuce had been harvested from this garden bed the day before and so Derek and I helped to prepare the bed for the next planting, which happened the very next day. 

 

I learned how to transplant young lettuce plants into the greenhouse beds. It took a couple of hours to transplant everything, but it was a great time to chat and gossip with my coworkers.