Sunday, August 15, 2010

NOFA'd Out

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending the annual gathering of the agriculturally minded in Amherst, MA where I attended some wonderful workshops and chatting with some amazing farmers and farmers to be.

I love going to conferences because it helps me put my everyday experiences into perspective. Immersing myself in that kind of environment reminds me that there are such incredible diversity in organic agriculture. Although I've observed this just from comparing my first internship in the hill-towns of Western Mass with this summer in Poultney, it's remarkable to go to a gathering like NOFA and see 200 different workshops, all with a slightly different approach to farming organically in the Northeast. I love that there are so few universals in farming. It makes things so much more exciting.

One workshop that I attended was "Starting a Farm" with Elizabeth Henderson, author of Sharing the Harvest (a great book and an awesome speaker). She encouraged us beginning farmers to "get as big a bag of tricks as you possibly assemble" before starting out, and I feel that my experiences on the farm this summer have certainly added a number of awesome new tools and tricks that I will be using for the rest of my career. Not only have I developed my human-powered and draft-powered vegetable growing skills, but I've worked on managing a CSA, maintaining a farm property, caring for a flock of animals, and working with an unusual crew of laborers. Several of my workshops this weekend encouraged farmers to think about diversifying their skills and their businesses in order to ensure economic viability and personal fullfillment, and I think that this farm has been well a good place for me to begin that process. This summer I have been pushed to multi-task and explore new opportunities, rely on my community and find creative solutions to the many problems one is bound to encounter as an organic, small-scale grower.

After this weekend I'm totally exhausted, but I feel ready to go back to the farm tomorrow with fresh energy lent to me by the vibrant community I had the privilege of being a part of this weekend.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A Busy Few Weeks

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity both on the farm and in my personal life... leaving little time for blogging. However, often while I'm weeding or harvesting in the fields, I'm brooding about all the things I should be writing down to convey what I'm learning this summer about farming, living in a community, and myself.

First off, I'd like to say that the concept of having time off in the middle of the season somehow seems wrong to me. I've taken most of my mandatory 10 days off in the last couple weeks and although I thoroughly enjoyed my week hiking in the Adirondacks and a long weekend in Maine, I felt very non-farmerly taking off while the weeds were growing and crops ripening. The time off was wonderful for both my sanity and my body, but I can't imagine making mid-summer vacations a lifelong habit. I guess I'll just have to get used to taking time off in the winter and change hiking out for cross-country skiing and get better at pacing myself so a season doesn't wear me out so much.

We've had some very interesting discussions on the farm recently about the work we've been doing, especially related to our human powered agriculture system. Kenneth asked all us farm hands what we thought of the efficiency and practicality of using very little fossil fuel, and only some animal power, to get things done on the farm, and I must say that I am a little surprised at how much I've taken to the idea of human powered agriculture. I came into this internship with a very strong desire to learn how to work with the oxen and thought that that would be my main area of focus for the summer, but I've found myself much preferring our handy human powered tools and intrigued by bicycle tractors and lasagna beds. I feel as though, if done right, human powered agriculture can be a highly efficient system. I have found that when I'm planting, cultivating, and harvesting by hand (with the aid of well designed tools) we can plant more intensively and more precisely and better monitor what's going on at a much deeper ecological level.

This is not to say that I've lost interest in other kinds of power, such as oxen, horse, or tractor, just that I have a much greater appreciation of what can be accomplished by human strength, ingenuity, and perseverance alone.

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about these past few weeks is my own personal efficiency. I'm always so impressed by Tasha, the super-hero farmer who moves four times as fast as I can even think. I've been trying to work on my speed all summer because I want to feel confident in my ability to earn my keep as a farm worker/intern/whatever on the next farm I end up at. It's been a tough battle balancing my obsessive need to do things thoroughly and my desire to move quicker and accomplish more in my 7 short hours of work each day. I definitely think I'm making progress, but I've still got a long way to go before I reach Tasha speed.

I suppose that's all for now. Tomorrow I get my second turn at market and I can't wait.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

A Tuesday Hay Day

Ah... there's something so satisfying about cutting hay. Tonight I sit here tonight thinking about all that beautiful lush clover wilting and hopefully *fingers crossed* drying in the field, waiting to be raked tomorrow. Haying is one of those things that makes me feel like a real farmer. It's the kind of farming tasks that makes me feel connected to thousands of years of agricultural traditions. The only comparable experience that I've had has probably been digging potatoes in the rain. Even though I know potatoes didn't make it into my ancestral agricultural traditions until after Columbus, it still makes me feel transported to a time when a successful potato crop meant the world to a small farmer.

Haying is a tricky thing. You have to find a window of three days where the sun shines hot and bright enough to cure your fresh grass into dried hay that won't spoil in your barn. This is not an easy thing to find in the Northeast, where the weather changes at the drop of a hat. Even if your weather forecast says sunny and hot, a quick rainstorm at just the wrong moment can ruin your whole cutting. Not only will damp hay grow mold that will make your animals sick if you feed it to them, it's also said that hay that is too wet will decompose and produce methane, causing barn fires... although there has been some speculation among our staff that this old farming wisdom might just be a rumor started by irresponsible farm hands. "What? I don't know how the barn lit on fire! I bet the hay was just too wet... (I mean, it couldn't have anything to do that cigarette I lost while I was giving your daughter a tumble in the hay... what?)..."

Already once this summer we've lost our hay to mold. Our first batch of hay got drizzled on as we were raking it up onto the wagon. About a week after we triumphantly unloaded all that hay into the barn, the sweet, fresh smell suddenly turned musty and we ended up dumping it all outside in a sad pile to make room for our next cutting. Fortunately, it's being put to good use in our lower acre, keeping the weeds down in our beds of winter squash... my favorite vegetable.

I'm optimistic about this batch of hay however. Today, the farming gods seemed to be on our side. Bill and Lou were beautifully behaved all day, performing tight turns with ease. Except for a brief but exciting ride on a runaway mowing machine, the day went off without a hitch and we managed to cut the last of our "first cutting."

Monday, June 28, 2010

The July "Catch-Up"

I started off my season at Cerridwen Farm with so many plans. Back in May I remember professing that I would make cheese every other day, learn to spin, stay on top of all the weeding, read a hundred different books on sheep health and plant breeding, create an experimental garden, go contra dancing every other weekend... and of course, write this blog. Now it's nearly July and except for a few chapters of Gary Paul Nabhan's Coming Home to Eat and three batches of mozzarella, I've checked none of those lofty goals off my summer to-do list.

But hope is not lost, for the month of July is the ideal "catch-up" time in farming. Sandwiched between the rush of spring and early summer planting and the explosion of produce in August, it's the perfect time for building bunny hutches, mending hoses, and other non-urgent projects (as well as some much needed off-farm diversions). It should be interesting to see how many of those July plans turn into winter projects or things to shoot for next season. Is the idea of staying on top of things on the farm really such an impossible dream?

Today seems like a fitting day to start my sojourn into the blogging world. I spent the majority of my day sitting inside on the computer instead of outside in the drizzly muggy mess because I managed to pull a very important muscle pretty badly over the weekend. This experience definitely taught me that I should be a bit more careful with myself. If I want to be doing this long term, I've got to take care of the body I've got. I only get one. The day of office work also reminded me that there's quite a lot more to running a farm besides the obvious planting, cultivating, and harvesting. There's marketing, managing, researching, organizing, recording... it's these things that make a farm into a business. And you know what, today I even learned that I'm okay with that. Who would have though office work could feel like a nice little break?