A Romance with Weeding

You don’t see many swimming pools on farms. Even though I’ve visited fewer than a dozen farms, I hardly feel like I’m going out on a limb by saying that. The farm we’re working on has one, and it even has a cute little pool house to go with it. I’m guessing the dairy farmer who owned the property in the 1950s wasn’t the one who had it built. The current owners didn’t have it installed either. After all, putting in a swimming pool usually isn’t the first thing you do when you are creating a highly diversified small farm. 

So what do you do when you buy a farm that has a swimming pool? You fill it in with dirt and make it a garden, of course! While I’m sure there will be days this summer when I will be wishing I could turn back the hands of time and talk them out of it, right now I have to say I think it was a brilliant idea. And because I spent almost a full week weeding the entire pool so we could start planting, I’ve thought about it a lot. On Saturday, when the Master Farmer was giving a tour of the farm to a group of people, she came to the swimming pool and said, “Swimming pools are frivolous; gardens are practical.” Well said, Annie. I will keep telling myself that in August!

Most people would probably think that a week of weeding would be torturous. I know I kind of expected it to be. On the first day, I stared out at the pool of weeds and tried desperately to think of any other jobs I had forgotten about that I could use as a means of escape. But somewhere along the way, boredom turned to satisfaction which eventually turned to a strange kind of pleasure. Sure, it might not have been as much fun as watching newborn lambs learning how to walk, but it was still weirdly enjoyable.

Even though the weeding is done for now, there is still plenty of work to be done in the pool garden. We will be building garden beds for the next week or so, and then we can begin planting. Over the course of the year, we’ll be harvesting some delicious pumpkins, potatoes, leeks, and squash. Before that happens, though, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of chances to become reacquainted with my newfound love of weeding.  

The Season has Begun!

Before March 15th there was plenty of work to do, but there was no real sense of urgency about it.  Annie, the Master Farmer, kept referring to the change that would take place around that day, but it always seemed so far away. So I was caught a little by surprise when Annie began running around maniacally, in an excited panic saying, “Lesley, it’s March 14^th!” And for a split second I wondered why she was so worked up, and then I remembered that the busy season was now upon us.

There are so many tasks written on each of the daily squares now that the mind boggles a little to look at it. They are written very very tiny, so that all of them can fit, and so that it gives you a little head ache to try and decipher all the work that will be happening each day.  We are seeding so many new vegetables that it is hard to believe that we will have space for them all.  We are building garden beds only slightly faster than we transplant veggies into them. Building and shaping garden beds is no easy task. I have shed that winter layer of pounds and added some biceps in only the last week or so I think.   

But don’t think that I’m complaining. I absolutely love running to each new task and then having such a sense of accomplishment at the end of each day when we can walk around and actually see all of the work that we did. And, as most of you know, I also find a lot of joy in physical exhaustion.

While all of this is going on, the land is waking up. So as I run from the green house to the lower garden to the barn and back to the greenhouse I get to watch everything around the farm begin to grow.

These asparagus are a perennial plant and come back every spring. These are the first to poke their heads through the dirt.

And the above are the apple trees that Derek and I spent so much time pruning. We didn’t kill them!! I might just call that our first great accomplishment here.

What to Expect When Your Sheep are Expecting

Unlike the chicks, our impending little lambs will not picked up with the mail. They will be arriving to the farm via the birth canal.  All farm hands must be at the ready to meet this precious cargo.  To that end, Derek and I are reading up on the signs we should watch for in order to tell that the sheep are going into labor. As on-farm staff, we will also be responsible for checking on the sheep during the off-hours and responding if help is needed with the labor process, even in the middle of the night.  At this point, a 2am call to go catch some lambs seems pretty wonderful. But I’ll admit, as a newbie farmer, I may be romanticizing this a bit. 

The Ewes (mother sheep) have been pregnant for almost 5 months now. We are expecting them to start lambing sometime between the 15^th of March and the beginning of April.  Here’s what we are looking for:

• Sunken appearance in hips

This one certainly doesn't look sunken.

• Full udders

This is a hard one with no experience. We think they look a little more pronounced than they did before, but that they will get larger before it's time.

• Pawing at the ground before lying down. 

• A change in feeding habits

Still hungry as always! No change here.

• Standing or lying apart from the group

These Ewes haven't left each others' sides all day, and I was never able to catch them lying down. I guess we have nothing to worry about today.

As you can see, the signs are not all that clear to those of us who have never seen them. I can imagine that, beginning the 15^th, I will be running to the livestock manager every hour or so claiming that I’ve seen “the signs!” Hopefully I can reign myself in so that I don’t become The-Girl-Who-Cried-Lamb.

By the way, thanks to our fellow apprentice Katie, for inspiring the title of this blog post.

A Box of Chicks and a Bag of 'Bugs

Everywhere on the farm, there are signs that spring is rapidly approaching. The taps on the maple trees are drying up. The days are getting longer. The greenhouses are exploding with growth. The shipments of chicks have started arriving in the mail.

On Thursday, we got word that a box of 100 chicks was waiting for us at the post office. I’m guessing that postal workers don’t handle much cargo this cute.

The thought of chicks being sent through the mail seems a little strange at first, but most farms these days (both organic and conventional) buy their chicks from a hatchery. It’s incredibly easy: you choose the breeds you are looking for, the number of chicks you want, and, for a small fee, you can select the sex of the birds that you want sent to you as well.

Since these chickens will be used as egg layers, paying the fee makes sense. A flock of mostly hens means more eggs for the farm. It also means the hens can lay their eggs in peace. If you’ve ever seen chickens mate, you can understand the problems that would arise in a flock with too many roosters.

After the chicks made it home from the post office, they were taken straight to the brooding room which was already nice and toasty in anticipation of their arrival. We took them out of the box one by one, dipped their beaks into the waterer so they would know where to get a drink, and stood back to watch the chicks explore their new home for awhile.

A box of chicks wasn’t the only interesting package to arrive in the mail this week. We also received a bag full of ladybugs for the greenhouses that one of the farmers ordered to take care of a few aphids that were spotted last week. While ladybugs might not be as cute and fluffy as the chicks, it still feels pretty wonderful to walk around the greenhouse, sprinkling them onto the beds, knowing that pests are being taken care of without having to pick up a spray bottle filled with something scary. 

Chickens and Roosters

I have a guilty pleasure. It's like a soap opera. I call it "The Chicken Yard". After letting the chickens out of their roost and into the sunlight in the morning I can't tear myself away to finish the other chores. I just have to watch the daily dramas unfold. There is always something going on, never a dull moment. Just take one look at either of our two flocks and you’ll see bosom buddies, fights, sexual liaisons, outcasts, beauty, fear, bravery, and contentedness. The roosters' antics are some of the easiest to capture on film.

The chickens here are important for more reasons than pure entertainment. The farmers here have chosen to raise “Heritage” breeds of hens. Heritage breeds, as their name suggests, have a historic significance because they have been used since the days when small family farms were the norm and every household raised a few pigs, or chickens, or a cow. These breeds are very hardy, and they usually feed on pasture alone, or other natural resources like acorns, roots, bugs and berries. And this actually makes them tastier for us! Heritage breeds are able to express their natural animal instincts by foraging on feed they find for themselves, rather than being fed corn, by having space to roam, and by living in animal communities that mimic those in the wild. Basically, they have the ability to live out a more natural existence, which we think makes them happier.

Happier than who, you ask? Happier than mainstream agriculture’s hybrid farm animals. Hybrids have genetic traits selected specifically for large growth. Their natural instincts have been bred out of them and they typically live in factory like settings where they are confined in small spaces and fed a diet consisting only of corn. Unfortunately, the existence of these breeds puts the Heritage breeds in danger of being lost. So farmers like us need to preserve Heritage breeds in order to preserve the small farming way of life. 

So, after that big rant…take a look at some of the beautiful chickens we get to raise around here:

 

We call the above chicken Napoleon. She's not much of a dictator, but she does love to pose! See the resemblance? 

I love her fuzzy feet!

On the End of Days, GMOs, and Small-Scale Grain

After we made the decision to try to become farmers, it took months of planning to figure out how we were going to make this transition. Because we knew we had so much to learn, we would spend a lot of time reading books written by small farmers and watching every documentary about farming that we came across. This helped keep us excited about our decision, but, in a way, it also served as a reminder of how far we were from our goal of farming. Reading a book about cows as the apartment shakes from traffic on the nearby expressway has a way of doing that.

Yesterday, we attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Connecticut (CT NOFA) Winter conference, our first ever conference where we were rubbing shoulders with actual farmers who make an actual living from the land. Even though we’re still a long way off from that, it still felt good to walk around knowing that we’ve started our journey.

There were over forty different workshops throughout the day as well as a keynote address by Jeffrey Smith, who is an expert on the health and environmental dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). If you are wondering what, exactly, a GMO is, you are not alone. Smith started his presentation by surveying the audience’s understanding of the topic. Even in an auditorium packed with organic food enthusiasts, very few people seemed to know much about GMOs.

A GMO is born when a scientist takes genes from one species and artificially forces them into the genes of an unrelated plant or animal. For example, inserting genes from a fish into a plant to make it more resistant to cold. That probably doesn’t capture the horror of the consequences of eating a diet containing GMOs: organ damage, gastrointestinal disorders, accelerated aging, infertility, and other delightful ailments.

Damn, Jeffrey! I haven’t been so afraid since Sunday school, when every other week we were treated to videos about the rapture!

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. He was excited about a bill currently being considered by the Connecticut General Assembly that would require all products containing GMOs to be labeled. If the bill passes, it could completely transform the food industry because, all of a sudden, Kraft Foods, among others, would be looking to buy massive amounts of non-GMO crops.

Jeffrey has created a shopping guide to help people avoid GMO foods. If you are interested in learning more about it, go to www.nongmoshoppingguide.com.

The best part of the day, though, had to be the workshops. We heard from farmers, scientists, and doctors on a wide range of topics including: growing nuts in the northeast, root cellaring, naturopathic remedies, small-scale grain production, and a history of the Connecticut forest.

Rodger Phillips, who runs Grow Hartford, an urban farm that also has youth internships in the summer, gave the small-scale grain production talk. He concluded the talk by giving everyone in attendance some seeds for spring wheat. 

There has been a lot of talk on the farm of growing some feed for the pigs and chickens this year to create more of a closed-loop system, so it’s possible these seeds will come in handy!