Dear readers. I believe there are 8 of you...
It's time to bring this blog to a close.
I've been thinking about the farm at Anahata and the blog and I fear that as a farmer I did a piss-poor job of blogging about farming. And as I end this blog I don't much feel like writing about farming. What it comes down to is this: I'm not a farmer.
I was a commercial grower but the farming was just a small part of a project that will someday grow up to be larger than the sum of its parts. Seven Crows Garden operated under the umbrella of Anahata.
My relationship with my farming partner did not work out. In the end I accept the responsibility for not being able to communicate with him clearly. And of course money played a big part in our failure.
Money. Egads. This proved to be just about the most toxic aspect of farmlife. I didn't farm to make money. The farm was meant to be a weapon in an arsenal. Organic farming was meant to be kind to pollinators (honey bees, humming birds, insects, birds). Organic farming was meant to produce the best f*cking vegetables ever. Organic farming was meant to bring great food to the marketplace without destroying the environment.
Money was not the point. If I had farmed to make money I would have felt dirty. Actually I would have felt cheated. Making money was somewhere on my list of things to do, somewhere at the bottom. At the top of the list: wake up and feel immensely grateful I have another day to live. Second on the list: live to my highest good. Third on the list: feed the bunnies and eat breakfast. Fourth on the list: go outside and work my ass off and when a cool breeze comes through the fabric of my t-shirt feel relieved and be ridiculously happy that I get to stand in the field, surrounded by my vegetables. Fifth on the list: take a moment to note how the clouds are moving across the sky and that I don't have to listen to the blaring of sirens. And so on. By the time I think about making money I've usually had a thousand other thoughts. Doing anything just to make money is what I consider soul-sapping.
I knew that communication and money were the weak points and it comes as no surprise to me that we failed. This is not to say that the farm was a failure. Hardly. We grew (and sold) a ton of delicious, organic vegetables. Our CSA members and our customers at farmers markets raved about our veggies all season long. I was pretty darn happy with most of the crops we grew and I can't believe I have to go back to shopping in a supermarket; paying top dollar for sub-par produce. It's enough to give me an eating disorder. And I'm not kidding. When I think of the bitter broccoli and bitter kale that awaits me in the produce section of Whole Foods I want to curl up in the fetal position and wait it out until next summer when I can eat real food.
For a long time I had some very odd eating habits. I don't like meals per se. I prefer to graze throughout the day. There were many afternoons this past growing season when I walked into the field and pulled: potato, scallion, radish, bok choi, peas, chard, green beans, wax beans, carrots, lettuce, turnip, broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, my choice of three varieties of kale and then I'd cook and eat my face off.
I know that I'm going to have to buck up. But ugh. Who wants to? I'm not going to bother to psyche myself up. I'm going to have to get creative here. Casserole?
One thing that bums me out is that we didn't grow enough food to set aside anything for the winter. At the outset I didn't have a clue as to how to conceptualize "yield." Well. Now I know.
Next year I hope to grow -- at the very least -- enough winter squash to get me and Carly through the winter. And onions. And garlic.
I do know this. If I were given the opportunity to grow vegetables on a commercial scale, I would take it. But I'd want more land, more help, and I wouldn't do it without having a written agreement.
In parting I'd like to say this: avoid dollar menus. Go into your kitchen and cook. Make mistakes. Toss out all the burned or bland stuff that you make on our way to becoming a good cook. Experiment. Have fun. Don't settle for lame veggies. And if possible support your local farmers.
Better living through good eating. That folks -- not making money -- is the point.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
The footwell on the passenger side of my car
(clockwise)
Tori Amos (Strange Little Girl)
Off (unscented)
2 organic onions (from the farm)
tomato twine
buttercup squash (from the farm)
peel from an organic banana
Jay Z (The Black Album)
Buttercup squash (from the farm)
Eggplant (from the farm)
The buttercup squash did not remain in the footwell for long. I rushed home and baked them. They were f*cking amazing. Nutty and sweet. Exactly what winter squash should be. They required no seasoning whatsoever, as soon as they were cooked (30 minutes at 350 degrees) they were eaten straight out of their skins.
Tori Amos (Strange Little Girl)
Off (unscented)
2 organic onions (from the farm)
tomato twine
buttercup squash (from the farm)
peel from an organic banana
Jay Z (The Black Album)
Buttercup squash (from the farm)
Eggplant (from the farm)
The buttercup squash did not remain in the footwell for long. I rushed home and baked them. They were f*cking amazing. Nutty and sweet. Exactly what winter squash should be. They required no seasoning whatsoever, as soon as they were cooked (30 minutes at 350 degrees) they were eaten straight out of their skins.
Wild. Mushrooms. Finally!
There’s a plenty of lore surrounding Anahata. Carly told me of an Italian man who used to ask her father's permission to take the mushrooms that grew on the trees along the main road. Each year the guy showed up with a ladder and harvested the mushrooms.
I’ve been observing those trees wondering if/when mushrooms would appear and what sort they would be. Carly mentioned that they were large and white.
Lately in the local papers there have been articles about chefs collecting chanterelle and black trumpet mushrooms. (How I would dearly love to find the nooks where those mushrooms thrive!) I think I came across a chanterelle a few weeks back but it’s got a poisonous look-alike so until I go ‘shrooming with a more experienced mushroom hunter, I'm keeping chanterelles pull from the forest floor, or a possible deadly look-alike, off my dinner plate.
About a week or so ago I noticed some large, white mushrooms protruding from the side of one of the old sugar maples along our road. I wondered if this was the type of mushroom the Italian man from days gone by had harvested.
Two days ago I removed one of these shelf-like fungi and consulted the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. I was pretty sure I had Northern Tooth on my hands. And they were listed as EDIBLE.
Today -- after I cleaned: my car, the bunny cages, and the house -- it was time to stop procrastinating. Time to harvest some Northern Tooth.
Here’s some of what the Audubon Feild Guide has to say on the subject:
Northern Tooth. Climacodon septentrionale. Large, overlapping, yellowish-white caps with toothed undersides; stalkless. Cap: 4 – 6” wide, in clusters 6 – 12” high, 1 – 2” thick near the base, thinning toward margin; shelflike, growing in overlapping, horizontal clusters from solid base, …densely hairy to rough. Flesh 2 – 4 cm thick; white, zoned, fibrous, tough, elastic. Odor mild when fresh, become rank and hamlike on drying, taste mild when fresh, bitter with age…Season: July --- October. Habitat: high up on living sugar maples; also reported on beeches. Range: NE. North America. Comments: This large tooth mushroom looks like a polypore but for its teeth. It grows in the wounds of living deciduous trees and rots the heartwood.
When I pulled the mushroom from the tree I sniffed it and found that it had almost no odor. I thought this was weird as most mushrooms have a somewhat musty smell. Once in my kitchen I removed the obviously tough bits, shook off the bugs, and then cut it into pieces about 1” x 1/2”. As soon as they hit the skillet and started sizzling in the butter -- the familiar aroma of mushrooms filled the kitchen. “Now we’re cooking,” I thought.
One batch was sautéed in butter, the second batch was sautéed in butter and red wine. I thought I’d prefer the mushrooms in wine but it turned out that the plain mushrooms tasted better.
The taste is difficult to describe. Very mild but pleasant. Almost sweet. The “teeth” are soft and that texture off them play off the firmness of the flesh. The next batch is going to be sautéed in butter and then drizzled with fresh lemon juice. Norhtern Tooth would complement a white fish (sole) or chicken.
Now I’ll sit back for a day and see if I get an upset stomach. Or get violently ill. Or slip into a coma and die. (I know! Wild mushrooms can be very scary.)
If all goes well, I’ll be having more sautéed Northern Tooth in the coming weeks. Fingers crossed.
I’ve been observing those trees wondering if/when mushrooms would appear and what sort they would be. Carly mentioned that they were large and white.
Lately in the local papers there have been articles about chefs collecting chanterelle and black trumpet mushrooms. (How I would dearly love to find the nooks where those mushrooms thrive!) I think I came across a chanterelle a few weeks back but it’s got a poisonous look-alike so until I go ‘shrooming with a more experienced mushroom hunter, I'm keeping chanterelles pull from the forest floor, or a possible deadly look-alike, off my dinner plate.
About a week or so ago I noticed some large, white mushrooms protruding from the side of one of the old sugar maples along our road. I wondered if this was the type of mushroom the Italian man from days gone by had harvested.
Two days ago I removed one of these shelf-like fungi and consulted the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. I was pretty sure I had Northern Tooth on my hands. And they were listed as EDIBLE.
Today -- after I cleaned: my car, the bunny cages, and the house -- it was time to stop procrastinating. Time to harvest some Northern Tooth.
Here’s some of what the Audubon Feild Guide has to say on the subject:
Northern Tooth. Climacodon septentrionale. Large, overlapping, yellowish-white caps with toothed undersides; stalkless. Cap: 4 – 6” wide, in clusters 6 – 12” high, 1 – 2” thick near the base, thinning toward margin; shelflike, growing in overlapping, horizontal clusters from solid base, …densely hairy to rough. Flesh 2 – 4 cm thick; white, zoned, fibrous, tough, elastic. Odor mild when fresh, become rank and hamlike on drying, taste mild when fresh, bitter with age…Season: July --- October. Habitat: high up on living sugar maples; also reported on beeches. Range: NE. North America. Comments: This large tooth mushroom looks like a polypore but for its teeth. It grows in the wounds of living deciduous trees and rots the heartwood.
When I pulled the mushroom from the tree I sniffed it and found that it had almost no odor. I thought this was weird as most mushrooms have a somewhat musty smell. Once in my kitchen I removed the obviously tough bits, shook off the bugs, and then cut it into pieces about 1” x 1/2”. As soon as they hit the skillet and started sizzling in the butter -- the familiar aroma of mushrooms filled the kitchen. “Now we’re cooking,” I thought.
One batch was sautéed in butter, the second batch was sautéed in butter and red wine. I thought I’d prefer the mushrooms in wine but it turned out that the plain mushrooms tasted better.
The taste is difficult to describe. Very mild but pleasant. Almost sweet. The “teeth” are soft and that texture off them play off the firmness of the flesh. The next batch is going to be sautéed in butter and then drizzled with fresh lemon juice. Norhtern Tooth would complement a white fish (sole) or chicken.
Now I’ll sit back for a day and see if I get an upset stomach. Or get violently ill. Or slip into a coma and die. (I know! Wild mushrooms can be very scary.)
If all goes well, I’ll be having more sautéed Northern Tooth in the coming weeks. Fingers crossed.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
July 27, 2009
Today was the most peaceful day of my life.
It only took 22 years to accomplish but who’s counting?
I’m not entirely sure why I’ve become obsessed with peace. I knew that farming was going to bring about changes in my mindset but this? This obsession with peace I was not expecting.
I’ve been wondering about the genesis of the day of peace that I’ve just lived and perhaps it wasn’t 22 years in the making. Perhaps it was only 6 weeks in the making. But when I search my memory I must include many dark and dismal days as part of the genesis process because it was my resolve to move away from my shadow and into the light that brought me to this time.
When I moved to the farm I wasn’t looking to be city-Ilsa living in the country. I wanted to become a brand-new-kind of Ilsa. This meant that the first few weeks living here took their toll on me. I had nightmares and I felt like crap. I anchored myself in getting the farm up and running. I kept to the same time of rising and going to bed. I kept to a decent diet of slow cooked, organic food. And I prayed. A lot. I asked the Universe (or God if you prefer) to give me the strength and the insight to move beyond who I was. I knew that the farming and vegetables and market days and CSA deliveries were all fated to come into existence but my new-self. I wasn’t so sure about that.
I’ve done battle with myself before. I’ve fought all kinds of habits and demons and patterns. I knew what I was in for. But I wanted to write a letter to my self (which was then my current-self) and say, “Self. You’re done for. I’m going to prevail. I’ve kicked your ass in the past and I plan to kick it again in the very near future.”
Nightmares.
Part of my process -- my unconscious -- is so incredibly strong. When Mark Simmons and I were doing Jungian dream work a couple of years back, after a particularly intense session Mark said, “Your old self will try to take you back.” He meant that while we had brought some great stuff out of the Shadow and into consciousness, my old self was going to do her darnedest to make sure that work didn’t stick.
And while I’ve never been too keen on mantras, these past 3 months I’ve turned to them as the newest weapon in my arsenal. I needed to create my own mantras that suited me to a tee. As far as I can tell mantras are a great tool to use when doing tricky, tough heartwork. I felt that there were a ton of unconscious “things” at work and instead of going in search of the yucky, sticky stuff in my unconscious I would use every second of my waking-life to interrupt those well-worn cycles.
It was in the early part of May when Ben and I were working on Dedie King’s land that I hit on the best way to use mantras – while I was hard at work farming. One day we were taking truck loads of wood chips from one field to another, to use as mulch. With each shovelful I said, “I am peaceful.” Then when we dropped mulch near the field with each step I took to distribute the mulch, I said, “I am peaceful.”
I’ve got to tell you, after 8 hours of shoveling and employing mantras I was freaking beat. But I didn’t care. Tough titty. I decided to run my then-self ragged in the hopes that the new-self would emerge. (Admittedly odd logic but I had nothing else to work with.)
Then I started to use mantras all the time. When I weeded. Each time I pulled a weed, “I am peaceful.” Any repetitive, dull task was infused with mantras.
I know that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. 21 days seemed like an awfully short time to take a self that was in turmoil and convert it into a peaceful self.
Then the nightmares started to subside. The internal struggle and self-torment started to lessen.
Then there was today.
A sunny day. A cool breeze. I began the day harvesting for the Harvard Forest order. Delivered that. Then moved onto the CSA harvest. Then moved onto field work.
It was during the early afternoon when I realized that something in me had shifted. In a way being peaceful had a slightly exciting aspect to it. A small shiver or a slightly elevated feeling was moving through me. Unlike the past when I’ve waited to watch a mood move past, this feeling of being at peace lingered. It’s a subtle feeling.
I want to get back to the Genesis of this, the most peaceful day of my life.
Back in April on a gray, rainy, cold day I went for a walk in the forest. I started to think about people around the world who were, had been, or will be -- raped, tortured, or murdered. When I was young I was physically and sexually abused. I don’t let those instances of violence define me. Although I do think they had something to do with my being homeless (as a teenager) and alcoholic (into my late 20s). I’m certain that there are thousands of people who’ve been treated far worse than I was.
What I’ve got control over is the way I chose to deal with the way things had an impact on me. I feel that life is way too short for bitterness. I was bitter for a time in my 20s but then I just couldn’t feature bitterness in my life any longer.
Anyway. I was emerging from the forest on the cold, wet, day in April when I realized that if I wanted people to treat each other more peacefully I had better start with myself and I had better stop tormenting myself. I’m not sure I was doing any sort of world-class treatment on myself. I was probably being overly critical in a way that I know accomplishes nothing.
I don’t know if I employed a mantra at that time. Instead I told myself that it was time to be nicer and gentler with myself. I spent a lot of time telling myself to get over myself. I spent a lot of time reminding myself that I was pretty f*cking lucky to have this opportunity to farm and that I should focus on the good in that.
It bowled me over how much negativity there was in my daily sub-routine. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. Sometimes I just have to push through a feeling if I’m not going to turn to drugs/sex/alcohol (you know the Rock ‘n’ Roll treatment) then I’ve got to do what I call the “hard, heartwork.” I’ve got to face up to who I am and then do whatever it takes to undo that.
It would be hard for me to define who I was a few months ago. Mostly I was run down. But I said, “Too bad. Pick yourself up and make something new of yourself. Otherwise you might as well go back to Manhattan, sit in your apartment (or at a desk job) and just rot.” The idea of rotting away, really more like not wanting to rot, is what motivated me.
And when I found myself doing anything vaguely self-tormenting, I brought my focus back to the farm. Break new ground. Add amendments. Propagate seeds. Build beds. Mulch. Transplant seedlings. And eventually the new-self took over.
Per haps, you the reader can see the Genesis point. For me there’s nothing to be gained in looking any further. I found what I was looking for. O\r rather I fashioned myself into a newer, more peaceful Ilsa.
And in a couple of months I’ll learn it it’s the real deal when I head back to Manhattan. It’s one thing to feel at peace on a beautiful day in the country. If I can maintain this peace in the Big Apple I should be all set.
It only took 22 years to accomplish but who’s counting?
I’m not entirely sure why I’ve become obsessed with peace. I knew that farming was going to bring about changes in my mindset but this? This obsession with peace I was not expecting.
I’ve been wondering about the genesis of the day of peace that I’ve just lived and perhaps it wasn’t 22 years in the making. Perhaps it was only 6 weeks in the making. But when I search my memory I must include many dark and dismal days as part of the genesis process because it was my resolve to move away from my shadow and into the light that brought me to this time.
When I moved to the farm I wasn’t looking to be city-Ilsa living in the country. I wanted to become a brand-new-kind of Ilsa. This meant that the first few weeks living here took their toll on me. I had nightmares and I felt like crap. I anchored myself in getting the farm up and running. I kept to the same time of rising and going to bed. I kept to a decent diet of slow cooked, organic food. And I prayed. A lot. I asked the Universe (or God if you prefer) to give me the strength and the insight to move beyond who I was. I knew that the farming and vegetables and market days and CSA deliveries were all fated to come into existence but my new-self. I wasn’t so sure about that.
I’ve done battle with myself before. I’ve fought all kinds of habits and demons and patterns. I knew what I was in for. But I wanted to write a letter to my self (which was then my current-self) and say, “Self. You’re done for. I’m going to prevail. I’ve kicked your ass in the past and I plan to kick it again in the very near future.”
Nightmares.
Part of my process -- my unconscious -- is so incredibly strong. When Mark Simmons and I were doing Jungian dream work a couple of years back, after a particularly intense session Mark said, “Your old self will try to take you back.” He meant that while we had brought some great stuff out of the Shadow and into consciousness, my old self was going to do her darnedest to make sure that work didn’t stick.
And while I’ve never been too keen on mantras, these past 3 months I’ve turned to them as the newest weapon in my arsenal. I needed to create my own mantras that suited me to a tee. As far as I can tell mantras are a great tool to use when doing tricky, tough heartwork. I felt that there were a ton of unconscious “things” at work and instead of going in search of the yucky, sticky stuff in my unconscious I would use every second of my waking-life to interrupt those well-worn cycles.
It was in the early part of May when Ben and I were working on Dedie King’s land that I hit on the best way to use mantras – while I was hard at work farming. One day we were taking truck loads of wood chips from one field to another, to use as mulch. With each shovelful I said, “I am peaceful.” Then when we dropped mulch near the field with each step I took to distribute the mulch, I said, “I am peaceful.”
I’ve got to tell you, after 8 hours of shoveling and employing mantras I was freaking beat. But I didn’t care. Tough titty. I decided to run my then-self ragged in the hopes that the new-self would emerge. (Admittedly odd logic but I had nothing else to work with.)
Then I started to use mantras all the time. When I weeded. Each time I pulled a weed, “I am peaceful.” Any repetitive, dull task was infused with mantras.
I know that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. 21 days seemed like an awfully short time to take a self that was in turmoil and convert it into a peaceful self.
Then the nightmares started to subside. The internal struggle and self-torment started to lessen.
Then there was today.
A sunny day. A cool breeze. I began the day harvesting for the Harvard Forest order. Delivered that. Then moved onto the CSA harvest. Then moved onto field work.
It was during the early afternoon when I realized that something in me had shifted. In a way being peaceful had a slightly exciting aspect to it. A small shiver or a slightly elevated feeling was moving through me. Unlike the past when I’ve waited to watch a mood move past, this feeling of being at peace lingered. It’s a subtle feeling.
I want to get back to the Genesis of this, the most peaceful day of my life.
Back in April on a gray, rainy, cold day I went for a walk in the forest. I started to think about people around the world who were, had been, or will be -- raped, tortured, or murdered. When I was young I was physically and sexually abused. I don’t let those instances of violence define me. Although I do think they had something to do with my being homeless (as a teenager) and alcoholic (into my late 20s). I’m certain that there are thousands of people who’ve been treated far worse than I was.
What I’ve got control over is the way I chose to deal with the way things had an impact on me. I feel that life is way too short for bitterness. I was bitter for a time in my 20s but then I just couldn’t feature bitterness in my life any longer.
Anyway. I was emerging from the forest on the cold, wet, day in April when I realized that if I wanted people to treat each other more peacefully I had better start with myself and I had better stop tormenting myself. I’m not sure I was doing any sort of world-class treatment on myself. I was probably being overly critical in a way that I know accomplishes nothing.
I don’t know if I employed a mantra at that time. Instead I told myself that it was time to be nicer and gentler with myself. I spent a lot of time telling myself to get over myself. I spent a lot of time reminding myself that I was pretty f*cking lucky to have this opportunity to farm and that I should focus on the good in that.
It bowled me over how much negativity there was in my daily sub-routine. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. Sometimes I just have to push through a feeling if I’m not going to turn to drugs/sex/alcohol (you know the Rock ‘n’ Roll treatment) then I’ve got to do what I call the “hard, heartwork.” I’ve got to face up to who I am and then do whatever it takes to undo that.
It would be hard for me to define who I was a few months ago. Mostly I was run down. But I said, “Too bad. Pick yourself up and make something new of yourself. Otherwise you might as well go back to Manhattan, sit in your apartment (or at a desk job) and just rot.” The idea of rotting away, really more like not wanting to rot, is what motivated me.
And when I found myself doing anything vaguely self-tormenting, I brought my focus back to the farm. Break new ground. Add amendments. Propagate seeds. Build beds. Mulch. Transplant seedlings. And eventually the new-self took over.
Per haps, you the reader can see the Genesis point. For me there’s nothing to be gained in looking any further. I found what I was looking for. O\r rather I fashioned myself into a newer, more peaceful Ilsa.
And in a couple of months I’ll learn it it’s the real deal when I head back to Manhattan. It’s one thing to feel at peace on a beautiful day in the country. If I can maintain this peace in the Big Apple I should be all set.
Baby potatoes!
These are Red Norland and Yukon Gold -- a couple weeks before the late blight hit.
So yeah. Then the late blight hit. This means that the potatoes have got to be eaten within a couple of days of harvest. This also means that next year it's going to be a lot harder to come by seed-potato.
One day I was in the field and I looked at the potato plants, the foliage was green. Literally 2 days later I looked into the same field and every single plant had died and turned brown and I noticed the smell of rot.
It's all kind of sad. But that's farming. Nothing much I can do about it now.
I've been eating and selling the Red Norland at a fast clip. They're effing tasty and while I'm bummed out they won't keep... like I said before, that's farming.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
I ate the whole thing.
Meet Hon Tsai Tai. A flowering brassica. You eat the flowers, the leaves, the stems. As my mother put it, "I didn't know if I should eat it or put it in a vase."
I say, "Put it in skillet, saute it, and eat it. Damn good eats!"
A classic car kind of day.
This was the second consecutive day of sun. After 3 weeks of nothing but gray and rain, I have to say I was feeling a bit Novemberish. I'm old enough that the weather doesn't effect my moods. But the vegetables -- well, warm weather crops such as eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes, they require a bit of sun. Our plants are suffering from arrested development. I'm a novice farmer (to say the least) but I'm hoping that my peppers and eggplants are as eager to emerge as I am eager to see them emerge. But I fear that if they have to take their course they'll be a long time in coming.
I've seen summer squash offered at other farmers' stands and I'm thinking, "How did they do that?" I can't even guess at when I'll have squash ready for market.
The forecast looks good for the next couple of days and after three weeks of rain, with a couple of flash floods, and last Friday, lightning storms that set three buildings on fire in the town next to mine -- yeah, a couple of days of sun is going to do wonders for my soul.
I have a feeling that a lot of other people around these parts feel the same. This was the first Sunday all season where dudes took their classic cars out of the garage for a Sunday afternoon drive.
While I was driving around today, in my 1999 Volvo that needs about $2000.00 in repairs (gulp)I had a sudden bout of melancholy. About 10 years ago my life was filled with sudden deaths. A co-worker died from acute lukemia, a former co-worker was murdered, and a young guy who washed windows in the building where I worked fell 12 stories to his instantaneous death. This all happened within the span of 3 months. At that time I turned to The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I wasn't looking for anwers. I was looking for coping mechanisms. One of the concepts that I explored was that of "attachment." While I was bummed-out or grieving, it was suggested that I let go of that. The idea is that everything is impermanent and to hang on to things (to be attached to them) is about choice.
There is a corollary to letting go of when things don't feel so good. In my daily practice I let go of the things that do feel good.
But what I've really done, after I read Thich Nhat Hanh, is that I've learned to finesse things a bit. When I'm in a really bad mood and I can't just let go, I give my mood the royal treatment. I take it to lunch or a movie, or I carry it around like a new born baby and I mother it. Eventually it gets the attention it needs and abates.
Today, in all that glorious, blissfull, much-needed sunshine, I had to say, "This too shall pass." I let the sun soak into my skin, observed a wonderfully blue sky, perfectly populated with white fluffy clouds, felt the cool breeze on my skin and I thought, "This is one of the most beautiful days I have ever lived." Then I said, "Let it go."
I don't mind feeling melancholy. In fact I think I'm a better mood on gray days, because I'm a bit of a contrarian. While everyone is lamenting the rain, "I'm thinking, it's no big deal. It'll be sunny soon enough." On sunny days there seems to be an expectation that folks should be in a great mood. Today I liked having a mellow, enjoy-it-while-it's-here kind of mood. I watered the greenhouse. Drove Carly to the bus. Took the weekly CSA share to my mother. (See photos for some of our awesome veggies.) And just let it roll.
And for anyone who's interested in buying some of our veggies, you can find us on Saturdays at the Barre Farmer's Market and the Shutesbury Farmer's Market. We haven't settled on our weekday markets mostly becasue it's been raining for the past month. Did I mention that it just rained for the past 3 weeks?
And the kids who are enrolled in the Harvard Forest summer program have been eating our prouduce for the past 3 weeks.
And now I've got to get back outside to enjoy some of that yummy sunshine.
Here's wishing all of you a few sunny days, some slow cooked food, and access to fresh, locally grown produce your heart desires.
I've seen summer squash offered at other farmers' stands and I'm thinking, "How did they do that?" I can't even guess at when I'll have squash ready for market.
The forecast looks good for the next couple of days and after three weeks of rain, with a couple of flash floods, and last Friday, lightning storms that set three buildings on fire in the town next to mine -- yeah, a couple of days of sun is going to do wonders for my soul.
I have a feeling that a lot of other people around these parts feel the same. This was the first Sunday all season where dudes took their classic cars out of the garage for a Sunday afternoon drive.
While I was driving around today, in my 1999 Volvo that needs about $2000.00 in repairs (gulp)I had a sudden bout of melancholy. About 10 years ago my life was filled with sudden deaths. A co-worker died from acute lukemia, a former co-worker was murdered, and a young guy who washed windows in the building where I worked fell 12 stories to his instantaneous death. This all happened within the span of 3 months. At that time I turned to The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I wasn't looking for anwers. I was looking for coping mechanisms. One of the concepts that I explored was that of "attachment." While I was bummed-out or grieving, it was suggested that I let go of that. The idea is that everything is impermanent and to hang on to things (to be attached to them) is about choice.
There is a corollary to letting go of when things don't feel so good. In my daily practice I let go of the things that do feel good.
But what I've really done, after I read Thich Nhat Hanh, is that I've learned to finesse things a bit. When I'm in a really bad mood and I can't just let go, I give my mood the royal treatment. I take it to lunch or a movie, or I carry it around like a new born baby and I mother it. Eventually it gets the attention it needs and abates.
Today, in all that glorious, blissfull, much-needed sunshine, I had to say, "This too shall pass." I let the sun soak into my skin, observed a wonderfully blue sky, perfectly populated with white fluffy clouds, felt the cool breeze on my skin and I thought, "This is one of the most beautiful days I have ever lived." Then I said, "Let it go."
I don't mind feeling melancholy. In fact I think I'm a better mood on gray days, because I'm a bit of a contrarian. While everyone is lamenting the rain, "I'm thinking, it's no big deal. It'll be sunny soon enough." On sunny days there seems to be an expectation that folks should be in a great mood. Today I liked having a mellow, enjoy-it-while-it's-here kind of mood. I watered the greenhouse. Drove Carly to the bus. Took the weekly CSA share to my mother. (See photos for some of our awesome veggies.) And just let it roll.
And for anyone who's interested in buying some of our veggies, you can find us on Saturdays at the Barre Farmer's Market and the Shutesbury Farmer's Market. We haven't settled on our weekday markets mostly becasue it's been raining for the past month. Did I mention that it just rained for the past 3 weeks?
And the kids who are enrolled in the Harvard Forest summer program have been eating our prouduce for the past 3 weeks.
And now I've got to get back outside to enjoy some of that yummy sunshine.
Here's wishing all of you a few sunny days, some slow cooked food, and access to fresh, locally grown produce your heart desires.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Farm to Table
Normally I don’t shy away from being verbose but lately I’ve had to make a choice between farming or talking. And farming is winning this battle.
Last week was a great week. A nice mix of rain and sun. And as our farm is taking a low-irrigation approach, rain is a welcome event.
On a gray Wednesday Ben and I headed to Hardwick to transplant eggplant and pepper plants. Late in the afternoon we were joined by Clara, Ben’s high school friend, and Mandy, Clara’s co-worker.
Clara and Mandy both work at the Green Bean.
As the day progressed -- transplanting, mulching, and praying for rain, the conversation with Mandy turned towards cooking, eating, farm and food politics, and whatnot.
It dawned on me that Mandy just might be the person to cook our Farm to Table meals. When I asked her about this, her eyes lit up.
Mandy is, in my opinion, very lucky. She’s figured out that she loves to cook and she’s turned that into her revenue stream.
I asked Mandy if she wanted to visit Anahata and cook dinner that night. She could wander into the field, pick what suited her taste, then cook it to her liking. She agreed and I dashed off to Hannaford to pick up the 3 ingredients she requested: scallions, peanut oil, and sprouts.
Well. This wasn’t just any-old meal. Mandy busted out a ton of damn good eats.
Stir fry: chicken, carrots, scallions, bok choy, onion, fennel, chili sauce
Coleslaw: carrot, Bilko cabbage (from the field), vinaigrette
White Russian kale (from our field) and egg, cooked on the stove top in a cast iron skillet. (This was a dish with no-name.)
Arugula and radish (both from our field), with a fresh cranberry-lemon vinaigrette.
Mandy used fennel, cilantro, and parsley -- all from our field.
Beyond the fact that Mandy cooked us an amazing meal using produce from our fields, the evening was alive with possibility. It’s going to take a few strategy sessions to get this process sorted out but it seems very likely that we will serve more Farm to Table meals during this growing season.
Last week was a great week. A nice mix of rain and sun. And as our farm is taking a low-irrigation approach, rain is a welcome event.
On a gray Wednesday Ben and I headed to Hardwick to transplant eggplant and pepper plants. Late in the afternoon we were joined by Clara, Ben’s high school friend, and Mandy, Clara’s co-worker.
Clara and Mandy both work at the Green Bean.
As the day progressed -- transplanting, mulching, and praying for rain, the conversation with Mandy turned towards cooking, eating, farm and food politics, and whatnot.
It dawned on me that Mandy just might be the person to cook our Farm to Table meals. When I asked her about this, her eyes lit up.
Mandy is, in my opinion, very lucky. She’s figured out that she loves to cook and she’s turned that into her revenue stream.
I asked Mandy if she wanted to visit Anahata and cook dinner that night. She could wander into the field, pick what suited her taste, then cook it to her liking. She agreed and I dashed off to Hannaford to pick up the 3 ingredients she requested: scallions, peanut oil, and sprouts.
Well. This wasn’t just any-old meal. Mandy busted out a ton of damn good eats.
Stir fry: chicken, carrots, scallions, bok choy, onion, fennel, chili sauce
Coleslaw: carrot, Bilko cabbage (from the field), vinaigrette
White Russian kale (from our field) and egg, cooked on the stove top in a cast iron skillet. (This was a dish with no-name.)
Arugula and radish (both from our field), with a fresh cranberry-lemon vinaigrette.
Mandy used fennel, cilantro, and parsley -- all from our field.
Beyond the fact that Mandy cooked us an amazing meal using produce from our fields, the evening was alive with possibility. It’s going to take a few strategy sessions to get this process sorted out but it seems very likely that we will serve more Farm to Table meals during this growing season.
My fridge
This is the current state of my fridge.
The right side
The top two shelves are jammed with bags filled with seed packets. All of our seeds were purchased through Johnny’s Selected Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, and/or Fed Co.
The 3rd shelf has got a half gallon jar of raw milk. (This is a Ben purchase at $9.00 per gallon.)
Next to the 1/2 gallon of raw milk is a bag with some bok choy peeking out. & yes that is bok choy from our fields, and yes, sautéed that bok choy is some damn good eats.
In the crisper drawer, more kale and mesclun. Both from our fields.
The left side
The rear of the top shelf, a bottle of champagne that’s been sitting there for over 6 weeks, when Ben and popped the cork to celebrate that the greenhouse was operational and the first wave of cold season transplants were well on their way.
In front of that a paper bag containing a roasted chicken from Whole Foods.
A dozen eggs from Crabapple Farm, at $5.00 per dozen.
The 2nd shelf:
Left overs. But not just any-old leftovers. Leftovers from the first Farm to Table experience. (More on that later.)
All other bags contain arugula, bok choy, and that small bag with carrots at the bottom, sadly not ours. But our carrots are well on their way. Yesterday I weeded in an effort to aid their growth. A day or two of rain and the poor carrot seedlings are dwarfed by weeds.
The right side
The top two shelves are jammed with bags filled with seed packets. All of our seeds were purchased through Johnny’s Selected Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, and/or Fed Co.
The 3rd shelf has got a half gallon jar of raw milk. (This is a Ben purchase at $9.00 per gallon.)
Next to the 1/2 gallon of raw milk is a bag with some bok choy peeking out. & yes that is bok choy from our fields, and yes, sautéed that bok choy is some damn good eats.
In the crisper drawer, more kale and mesclun. Both from our fields.
The left side
The rear of the top shelf, a bottle of champagne that’s been sitting there for over 6 weeks, when Ben and popped the cork to celebrate that the greenhouse was operational and the first wave of cold season transplants were well on their way.
In front of that a paper bag containing a roasted chicken from Whole Foods.
A dozen eggs from Crabapple Farm, at $5.00 per dozen.
The 2nd shelf:
Left overs. But not just any-old leftovers. Leftovers from the first Farm to Table experience. (More on that later.)
All other bags contain arugula, bok choy, and that small bag with carrots at the bottom, sadly not ours. But our carrots are well on their way. Yesterday I weeded in an effort to aid their growth. A day or two of rain and the poor carrot seedlings are dwarfed by weeds.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
“Kill. Kill. Kill. Worry about evisceration later.” Jennifer Hashely
During the summer of 2006 I received a certificate in nutrition counseling through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and Teachers College. Shortly thereafter I decided to challenge as many beliefs and push as many of my boundaries as possible. I was dumpster diving and building bikes with the Freegans in New York City. I was staying up late and going into work in-time. I was trying as many new things as possible. This included pushing my consciousness as well as changing the way I ate and consumed.
One Saturday as I made my way to the Freegan Bike Workshop in Bushwick I passed by a slaughter house and thought, “I’d like to buy something from there.” The following week I selected 2 guinea hens then Katie Gilligan cooked them to perfection and Lukas Volger, Peter Joseph, Katie, and I ate them for dinner. And I can tell you those birds did not come cheap. They were $3.50 per pound.
I’d hoped to cut down on the food-miles traveled in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint. At the time of the guinea hen meal, I closed the food gap in terms of fewest miles traveled and fewest number of people who intervened in the production of the food. At that time that was the best I could do.
Then yesterday I set a new personal best: I killed my first chicken, one that had been pasture-raised less than 20 miles from the slaughter site.
For years I have been unable to find the appropriate word to describe myself as a food consumer. I might possess a slightly higher level of awareness than most eaters but no matter what I always feel like vegans kick my ass when it comes to food dogma and I always feel a little bit wimpy in comparison. But I’m not making any apologies here. I have yet to figure out how to live in the absence of a couple of servings of chicken per week. When it comes to chicken I’ve thought of myself as something of a hypocrite. I can waltz into any old super market or butcher shop and say, “Give me a bird. And make it snappy.” And then I fork over however many dollars per pound, head home, cook it, eat it and life, for the most part, goes on. The question (ok, the one of many questions) that has loomed large on my inner horizon: Can I kill a chicken?
Ever since I made the decision to own/operate a farm I wanted meat birds and laying hens to fill out the portrait of my farm. For the growing season of 2009 I thought the wisest course of action was to focus on growing vegetables (the best damn vegetables!) and then perhaps in 2010 add birds and change up the veggie segment of the business.
“What sort of lives will my meat birds live?” They’ll be pasture raised. They’ll walk around clucking and nibbling on insects and grass, have access to clean water and perhaps some feed (preferably organic). I’m thinking broilers: they’re ready to make the journey from the pasture to your dinner plate (ok, MY dinner plate) in 8 weeks.
When I looked into the broiler venture in earnest last November I came upon a giant stumbling block -- there was no legal slaughter facility for chickens in the state of Massachusetts. Hmmm. Sounds pretty freaking stupid to me. “You mean that the Commonwealth of Massacusetts wants grower/processors to raise their birds, truck them out of state (Um. Can we say loss of revenue?) and then they have to drive the birds back to Massachusetts and take them to market?” This made no sense to me. On my list of things to do, somewhere in the middle of the list, after I was situated as a vegetable grower was to complain (or appeal) to the DOH. What I had in mind was a face-to-face meeting with someone in office who could perhaps explain to me if there was any sense in this.
Luckily. (Have I mentioned that I’m very lucky?) Luckily, there were plenty of other people, growers/processors and people in government approaching this problem. As the result of a rare instance of communication between state governmental agencies—DOH, DEP, EPA, USDA, DAR a pilot program was created and called the MPPU – Mobile Poultry Processing Unit. (Please note: currently there are other mobile poultry processing units in operation throughout the US.)
Judy Gillan of NESFI has been a major player in this endeavor. She’s partnered with (among others) meat bird grower/processors Jennifer Hashley, Pete Lowy, Mark Cesario and on the state and local level with Rick Chandler, Kim Foley, and Catherine Skiba, and received grants from Northeast SARE.
I have to make a small food digression here: one of the things I adore about going to these types of events is that I get to eat junk food. I’m living on a pretty tight budget and beyond that I can’t feature spending 95 cents on one Dunkin donut. Paying that much money for all those empty calories doesn’t sit well with my stomach or my wallet. But when I head to one of these outings -- I ALWAYS bring an empty stomach. “What was there to eat?” you ask. For starters, biscotti, donuts, and munchkins. I don’t care for biscotti but I broke into those donuts and munchkins. There was fruit (snore – although I did eat a golden delicious apple in the afternoon, hoping to offset some of the effects of all the donuts in the morning. I’m not convinced this sort of food math works but I like to tell myself otherwise.) There was apple cider and lemonade and bottled water. (Bottled water is such a no-no. Ugh.) We were given menus from which to choose a sandwich for lunch that was prepared at The Black Sheep in Belchertown. As I was heading into my first chicken kill, something new for me I thought I should try something new for lunch. I ordered Southern Comfort. Buffalo Chicken, Bacon, Pepper Jack Cheese, spicy mayo, lettuce, tomato, and red onion on a baguette. The sandwich was ok, I’m not one for spicy foods and the bacon was rather weak although the baguette was very fresh. In the end I’d grade this sandwich: B. For dessert there were cookies. (Hot damn!) My favorite: chocolate with macadamia nuts. I find that dessert can either uplift a lame meal or condemn one to total and complete misery. (I will save regaling you with tales of dessert disappointment for another time or perhaps another blog altogether.) The cookie carried out its dessert duty wonderfully. It was a tiny bit stale (which I prefer) and the flavors were well-balanced. The cookie receives a grade of: A-.
…The training in the morning covered a wide range of topics: Federal, State, and local poultry processing regulations; Sanitation and food-safety regulations; solid and waste water regulations; and the MPPU license application process.
After lunch we were trained as to how to use the actual MPPU and then it was time: time to kill some chickens.
I’d been waiting a long time for this moment and as I stood in line I started to go through my process.
The first question I asked: How do I feel?
The answer: A bit queasy.
Then I segued into my usual “You’re a hypocrite” dialog. Then I watched a couple of people kill a few chickens and I created a new association in my head. I started to think about fishing and killing fish. Then I thought about pigs and cows and I was more or less where I always am: I eat very little pork or beef (because they’re warm blooded mammals).
I want you to understand that I was not looking to justify my actions, I was looking to see where my head and heart were at.
As I prepared myself to kill a chicken, I said my meat mantra: Thank you for giving your life and I’m sorry for any suffering that has been caused.
Then I stepped onto the platform, pulled a chicken out of the crate, held it upside down, pulled the head through the cone, applied the stun knife to the throat, counted “one two” and then made a small slit in the chickens throat. She bled out.
When it came time to eviscerate the chicken I found that I was quite good at it. My bird looked as good as anything you’d find in the store. (Actually I think my bird looked better than what I usually find in the store.)
I walked away with 2 birds, individually bagged. Yes I was altered but only in so far as I was going to eat the bird I killed. There was no huge awakening and rightfully so, I’ve been eating chickens for years. I guess if anything, once again I’ve been struck by the simplicity of it all. I don’t understand the food crisis. Now that I’m a food producer it comes down to this: Just do it. And do it right.
Stop thinking that food should come cheap.
Seriously. The dollar menu at McDonald’s is nowhere. Not even once a month. Not even once per year. Stop eating garbage. (I hope I didn’t just commit food disparagement…)
What it boils down to is this: Buy local. Buy what's in season. Eat intelligently.
One Saturday as I made my way to the Freegan Bike Workshop in Bushwick I passed by a slaughter house and thought, “I’d like to buy something from there.” The following week I selected 2 guinea hens then Katie Gilligan cooked them to perfection and Lukas Volger, Peter Joseph, Katie, and I ate them for dinner. And I can tell you those birds did not come cheap. They were $3.50 per pound.
I’d hoped to cut down on the food-miles traveled in an effort to reduce my carbon footprint. At the time of the guinea hen meal, I closed the food gap in terms of fewest miles traveled and fewest number of people who intervened in the production of the food. At that time that was the best I could do.
Then yesterday I set a new personal best: I killed my first chicken, one that had been pasture-raised less than 20 miles from the slaughter site.
For years I have been unable to find the appropriate word to describe myself as a food consumer. I might possess a slightly higher level of awareness than most eaters but no matter what I always feel like vegans kick my ass when it comes to food dogma and I always feel a little bit wimpy in comparison. But I’m not making any apologies here. I have yet to figure out how to live in the absence of a couple of servings of chicken per week. When it comes to chicken I’ve thought of myself as something of a hypocrite. I can waltz into any old super market or butcher shop and say, “Give me a bird. And make it snappy.” And then I fork over however many dollars per pound, head home, cook it, eat it and life, for the most part, goes on. The question (ok, the one of many questions) that has loomed large on my inner horizon: Can I kill a chicken?
Ever since I made the decision to own/operate a farm I wanted meat birds and laying hens to fill out the portrait of my farm. For the growing season of 2009 I thought the wisest course of action was to focus on growing vegetables (the best damn vegetables!) and then perhaps in 2010 add birds and change up the veggie segment of the business.
“What sort of lives will my meat birds live?” They’ll be pasture raised. They’ll walk around clucking and nibbling on insects and grass, have access to clean water and perhaps some feed (preferably organic). I’m thinking broilers: they’re ready to make the journey from the pasture to your dinner plate (ok, MY dinner plate) in 8 weeks.
When I looked into the broiler venture in earnest last November I came upon a giant stumbling block -- there was no legal slaughter facility for chickens in the state of Massachusetts. Hmmm. Sounds pretty freaking stupid to me. “You mean that the Commonwealth of Massacusetts wants grower/processors to raise their birds, truck them out of state (Um. Can we say loss of revenue?) and then they have to drive the birds back to Massachusetts and take them to market?” This made no sense to me. On my list of things to do, somewhere in the middle of the list, after I was situated as a vegetable grower was to complain (or appeal) to the DOH. What I had in mind was a face-to-face meeting with someone in office who could perhaps explain to me if there was any sense in this.
Luckily. (Have I mentioned that I’m very lucky?) Luckily, there were plenty of other people, growers/processors and people in government approaching this problem. As the result of a rare instance of communication between state governmental agencies—DOH, DEP, EPA, USDA, DAR a pilot program was created and called the MPPU – Mobile Poultry Processing Unit. (Please note: currently there are other mobile poultry processing units in operation throughout the US.)
Judy Gillan of NESFI has been a major player in this endeavor. She’s partnered with (among others) meat bird grower/processors Jennifer Hashley, Pete Lowy, Mark Cesario and on the state and local level with Rick Chandler, Kim Foley, and Catherine Skiba, and received grants from Northeast SARE.
I have to make a small food digression here: one of the things I adore about going to these types of events is that I get to eat junk food. I’m living on a pretty tight budget and beyond that I can’t feature spending 95 cents on one Dunkin donut. Paying that much money for all those empty calories doesn’t sit well with my stomach or my wallet. But when I head to one of these outings -- I ALWAYS bring an empty stomach. “What was there to eat?” you ask. For starters, biscotti, donuts, and munchkins. I don’t care for biscotti but I broke into those donuts and munchkins. There was fruit (snore – although I did eat a golden delicious apple in the afternoon, hoping to offset some of the effects of all the donuts in the morning. I’m not convinced this sort of food math works but I like to tell myself otherwise.) There was apple cider and lemonade and bottled water. (Bottled water is such a no-no. Ugh.) We were given menus from which to choose a sandwich for lunch that was prepared at The Black Sheep in Belchertown. As I was heading into my first chicken kill, something new for me I thought I should try something new for lunch. I ordered Southern Comfort. Buffalo Chicken, Bacon, Pepper Jack Cheese, spicy mayo, lettuce, tomato, and red onion on a baguette. The sandwich was ok, I’m not one for spicy foods and the bacon was rather weak although the baguette was very fresh. In the end I’d grade this sandwich: B. For dessert there were cookies. (Hot damn!) My favorite: chocolate with macadamia nuts. I find that dessert can either uplift a lame meal or condemn one to total and complete misery. (I will save regaling you with tales of dessert disappointment for another time or perhaps another blog altogether.) The cookie carried out its dessert duty wonderfully. It was a tiny bit stale (which I prefer) and the flavors were well-balanced. The cookie receives a grade of: A-.
…The training in the morning covered a wide range of topics: Federal, State, and local poultry processing regulations; Sanitation and food-safety regulations; solid and waste water regulations; and the MPPU license application process.
After lunch we were trained as to how to use the actual MPPU and then it was time: time to kill some chickens.
I’d been waiting a long time for this moment and as I stood in line I started to go through my process.
The first question I asked: How do I feel?
The answer: A bit queasy.
Then I segued into my usual “You’re a hypocrite” dialog. Then I watched a couple of people kill a few chickens and I created a new association in my head. I started to think about fishing and killing fish. Then I thought about pigs and cows and I was more or less where I always am: I eat very little pork or beef (because they’re warm blooded mammals).
I want you to understand that I was not looking to justify my actions, I was looking to see where my head and heart were at.
As I prepared myself to kill a chicken, I said my meat mantra: Thank you for giving your life and I’m sorry for any suffering that has been caused.
Then I stepped onto the platform, pulled a chicken out of the crate, held it upside down, pulled the head through the cone, applied the stun knife to the throat, counted “one two” and then made a small slit in the chickens throat. She bled out.
When it came time to eviscerate the chicken I found that I was quite good at it. My bird looked as good as anything you’d find in the store. (Actually I think my bird looked better than what I usually find in the store.)
I walked away with 2 birds, individually bagged. Yes I was altered but only in so far as I was going to eat the bird I killed. There was no huge awakening and rightfully so, I’ve been eating chickens for years. I guess if anything, once again I’ve been struck by the simplicity of it all. I don’t understand the food crisis. Now that I’m a food producer it comes down to this: Just do it. And do it right.
Stop thinking that food should come cheap.
Seriously. The dollar menu at McDonald’s is nowhere. Not even once a month. Not even once per year. Stop eating garbage. (I hope I didn’t just commit food disparagement…)
What it boils down to is this: Buy local. Buy what's in season. Eat intelligently.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Put down your guns and pick up your garden hoes
As this is a blog about organic farming I s’pose I should write about organic farming once in a while…
Hardwick update:
The field was amended (with cow manure)
The field was plowed
The field was harrowed
The field was tilled (we broke down and paid a guy to till)
Beds were made
Onions and leeks (Walla Walla and Varna/Bandit respectively) were transplanted
Potatoes (Red Norland, Yukon Gold, and All Blue) were direct seeded
Beets and Swiss Chard were direct seeded
Petersham update:
(Petersham is brimming with vegetable life)
People driving past slow down to admire (?) the rows and rows of vegetables
In the ground --
Transplanted:
Lettuce (Rouge D’Hiver, Parris Island Cob), kale (White Russian, Dinosaur), cabbage (Red Express, Bilko), Broccoli, collard greens, bok choi, fennel, parsley (Italian Flat Leaf, Moss Curled), onions (Walla Walla), leeks (Varna, Bandit)
Direct Seeded:
Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Red Norland, All Blue), radishes, carrots, mustard greens, arugula, spinach, gourmet lettuce mix
In the Greenhouse:
Tomato seedlings (Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Black Cherry, Silvetz, Scotia, Matt’s Wild, San Marzano, Toma Verde, Prudens), peppers (King of the North, Orion, Sweet Chocolate), bok choi, lettuce (Rouge D’Hiver, Parris Island Cob, Optima), parsley (Italian Flat Leaf, Moss Curled), basil (Lemon, Sweet)
In the Seed Pod:
Lettuce (Magenta, ), squash (butternut, acorn, zucchini, summer (straightneck and crookneck), kabucha),
Yikes.
Funny story about germinating squash seeds. Stayed up late one night, seeded the squash, put the trays on the floor, headed up stairs, and fell into a deep sleep. (Working 12 hours a day in the field does have that effect on a person.) Woke up the next morning, looked at the trays -- which would best be described as “disheveled” and thought, “Ben must’ve been in a weird mood [to do that].” My next thought was, “Mice!!!” I called out to Ben, “The f*cking mice ate the seeds out of the seed trays.” The industrious little sh*ts neatly dug the seeds out of several cells – about ten per tray -- and as far as I can tell; once they gorged themselves they crawled back into their stinking mice holes and passed out, their bellies round, large grins on their tiny mice faces. Sated on my seeds. Grrrrr.
As you can well imagine the practice of leaving seed trays on the floor (as far as squash propagation goes) has been brought to a swift end. Those trays are on a table. Thus far the mice have not figured out how to get at them.
Of course, the next stop for these trays is the green house and there are plenty of chipmunks in the yard. Well, there’s one less chipmunk in the yard as someone ran over it the other day. Truth be told this event pissed me off and saddened me. Is it really that hard to slow down and avoid running over a chipmunk?
It bummed me out only because I think this was the chipmunk I was talking to earlier in the day. Of course, I was saying, “Dude, don’t even think of eating my squash seeds.” He (or she?) flitted past the door to the greenhouse and I couldn’t tell if he (or she) was taunting me.
It’s weird how I get attached to some of the smallish creatures that live around the yard. There is the cutest red squirrel that lives in the attic. She (or maybe he) has deep brown eyes, long black eyelashes, and a small body -- about half the size of a grey squirrel. And don’t ask me why but I like seeing her (or is it him) making her way along the stone wall. She has intelligent energy.
Luckily the Little Red Squirrel heads into the woods to spend her days foraging and living out her small life. I’m not sure if this squirrel is actually smarter than the chipmunks or if it’s just not her habit to dash across the road.
I will be extremely bummed out if I come up the road and find her killed. I think she’s too cool to meet such a mundane fate.
In any event. What of these 14-hour days?
Well they’ve finally caught up with me. In a good way. I’m no longer that neurotic office worker who spends hours obsessing over the meaning of her dreams, surfing the internet, and hating being behind a desk.
The past couple of days -- once the heat has broken and I’m standing in the fields watering the plants – a gentle breeze will pass through the fabric of my t-shirt cool the sweat off my back and I think -- “Wow! In a couple of weeks I’m going to be at market.” At night I fall into bed and fall asleep, a couple times fully dressed, too tired to bother getting undressed and I sleep undisturbed by my dreams until around 5 am.
What else?
We learned the hard way that plants really do need to be hardened off. Some of the Rouge D’Hiver took a pounding after being transplanted and it ain’t coming back. Unfortunately there have also been a couple of days where the mercury hit 90 and some lettuce has been cooked in the fields. Yes, we’ll be offering this as cut greens (removing the scalded leaves) and soon, very soon, we’re placing an order for shade cloth so we can bring “head lettuce” to our customers as “head lettuce.”
I feel encouraged by garlic and radishes. They’re polar opposites. Not by design but our plants happen to be at opposite ends of the fields. Garlic, as many of you know, goes into the ground in October, winters over, and is harvested in July. Radishes can be harvested in 20 days. Radishes can grow in poor soil and as we’ve got some sandy patches (Cat box as we refer to these bits) were direct seeded with radish.
The garlic patch reminds me that last year I was ambitious enough (or is it crazy enough) to purchase organic garlic seed from Johnny’s.
Tomorrow I’ll go take a peek at the radishes because they match my spirit: they’re impatient. No other plant that we’ll plant will be ready to be harvested in such short period of time. The cotyledons are the size of dimes and teeny tiny true leaves have sprouted. The stems are what I’d call, “Terrific red.” Almost a blood red -- foretelling the pinkish reddish skin. I can hear the crunch of taking a bite, taste the slight heat. Radishes are a bit peppery.
The garlic and the radish are at extremes and here I am in the midst of that. Which is no kind of segue but it’s late and I’m tired so deal with it…
Farming has put me in the Present. Full on. Stubbing your toe or getting a paper cut can bring you back to the present. Ouch. Time to wake up and pay attention.
A few weeks back I realized that I was a chronic escapist. That I’d spent a great deal of my life wishing I were in other places. Even if I was somewhere totally lovely, with someone I wanted to be with, I would wander away. Once I realized that I was a chronic escapist I started to reel myself in. I started to put myself into the moment as deeply as I could. Bed making was a great way to be present. Instead of resenting it and wishing I were doing something else, I started to just make a bed. I watched my breath, I observed the way the muscles in my body moved as I dragged a hoe back and forth, as I raked the dirt to shape the bed. I was in the deadly dull grunt work of bed making. I was looking neither to escape nor to be gratified. I was looking to just be. And when my mind wandered I’d fetch myself and put myself back in the moment of bed making.
I told myself: This is it. This is all there is.
Of course there was much more than just bed making going on. The hawks screeched in the nest. The sun bore down on me. The black flies buzzed about my face. The breeze (when it arrived) cooled me off. The scent of lilacs wafted across the yard.
What was fascinating about all of this is it awakened something in me about how I value my time and my efforts and myself. I know that I’m not a farmer. The problem is I don’t know what I am. (Luckily I do know WHO I am. phew.) What’s more interesting is that I can’t think of any other way to spend my time right now. I know that being a farmer is exactly where I’m supposed to be. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.
To say I’m not a farmer isn’t entirely accurate. I think what I want is a more diversified operation. I want some chickens and a couple of goats. (I saw the cutest goat today at Misty Brook Farm. She’d totally managed to get past the fence and was front of a shed nibbling on an extension cord. I was going to alert the kid in the barn but then a woman who was feeding the chickens noticed the goat. The woman addressed the goat in a tone – the way any of us who spend more than a couple of days on the farm do -- “Goatie. How did you get out?” As if she were talking to a person and expected the goat to answer. So the vernacular with animals is always rhetorical questions.
Tonight Ben served the first serving of Seven Crows Garden kale. This was comprised of baby leaves plucked off and steamed. My taste buds will smile more broadly when I cut off a few leaves of mature Dinosaur kale, chop it up and sauté it in some butter. (Hot damn! Those will be some freaking good eats.)
And that’s all I’ve got right now.
Tomorrow is my day off. Yes, I do believe in the Sabbath (way more than ever before). I’m gonna sleep until 8 am. Yeah. That’s sleeping in.
Oh, my dearly departed city life. Will I there ever come a night when stay up dancing at Pyramid Club ‘til dawn? I do hope so. But that’ll be something to think about during the off-season.
Right now it’s lights out.
Sweet dreams dear readers.
Hardwick update:
The field was amended (with cow manure)
The field was plowed
The field was harrowed
The field was tilled (we broke down and paid a guy to till)
Beds were made
Onions and leeks (Walla Walla and Varna/Bandit respectively) were transplanted
Potatoes (Red Norland, Yukon Gold, and All Blue) were direct seeded
Beets and Swiss Chard were direct seeded
Petersham update:
(Petersham is brimming with vegetable life)
People driving past slow down to admire (?) the rows and rows of vegetables
In the ground --
Transplanted:
Lettuce (Rouge D’Hiver, Parris Island Cob), kale (White Russian, Dinosaur), cabbage (Red Express, Bilko), Broccoli, collard greens, bok choi, fennel, parsley (Italian Flat Leaf, Moss Curled), onions (Walla Walla), leeks (Varna, Bandit)
Direct Seeded:
Potatoes (Yukon Gold, Red Norland, All Blue), radishes, carrots, mustard greens, arugula, spinach, gourmet lettuce mix
In the Greenhouse:
Tomato seedlings (Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Black Cherry, Silvetz, Scotia, Matt’s Wild, San Marzano, Toma Verde, Prudens), peppers (King of the North, Orion, Sweet Chocolate), bok choi, lettuce (Rouge D’Hiver, Parris Island Cob, Optima), parsley (Italian Flat Leaf, Moss Curled), basil (Lemon, Sweet)
In the Seed Pod:
Lettuce (Magenta, ), squash (butternut, acorn, zucchini, summer (straightneck and crookneck), kabucha),
Yikes.
Funny story about germinating squash seeds. Stayed up late one night, seeded the squash, put the trays on the floor, headed up stairs, and fell into a deep sleep. (Working 12 hours a day in the field does have that effect on a person.) Woke up the next morning, looked at the trays -- which would best be described as “disheveled” and thought, “Ben must’ve been in a weird mood [to do that].” My next thought was, “Mice!!!” I called out to Ben, “The f*cking mice ate the seeds out of the seed trays.” The industrious little sh*ts neatly dug the seeds out of several cells – about ten per tray -- and as far as I can tell; once they gorged themselves they crawled back into their stinking mice holes and passed out, their bellies round, large grins on their tiny mice faces. Sated on my seeds. Grrrrr.
As you can well imagine the practice of leaving seed trays on the floor (as far as squash propagation goes) has been brought to a swift end. Those trays are on a table. Thus far the mice have not figured out how to get at them.
Of course, the next stop for these trays is the green house and there are plenty of chipmunks in the yard. Well, there’s one less chipmunk in the yard as someone ran over it the other day. Truth be told this event pissed me off and saddened me. Is it really that hard to slow down and avoid running over a chipmunk?
It bummed me out only because I think this was the chipmunk I was talking to earlier in the day. Of course, I was saying, “Dude, don’t even think of eating my squash seeds.” He (or she?) flitted past the door to the greenhouse and I couldn’t tell if he (or she) was taunting me.
It’s weird how I get attached to some of the smallish creatures that live around the yard. There is the cutest red squirrel that lives in the attic. She (or maybe he) has deep brown eyes, long black eyelashes, and a small body -- about half the size of a grey squirrel. And don’t ask me why but I like seeing her (or is it him) making her way along the stone wall. She has intelligent energy.
Luckily the Little Red Squirrel heads into the woods to spend her days foraging and living out her small life. I’m not sure if this squirrel is actually smarter than the chipmunks or if it’s just not her habit to dash across the road.
I will be extremely bummed out if I come up the road and find her killed. I think she’s too cool to meet such a mundane fate.
In any event. What of these 14-hour days?
Well they’ve finally caught up with me. In a good way. I’m no longer that neurotic office worker who spends hours obsessing over the meaning of her dreams, surfing the internet, and hating being behind a desk.
The past couple of days -- once the heat has broken and I’m standing in the fields watering the plants – a gentle breeze will pass through the fabric of my t-shirt cool the sweat off my back and I think -- “Wow! In a couple of weeks I’m going to be at market.” At night I fall into bed and fall asleep, a couple times fully dressed, too tired to bother getting undressed and I sleep undisturbed by my dreams until around 5 am.
What else?
We learned the hard way that plants really do need to be hardened off. Some of the Rouge D’Hiver took a pounding after being transplanted and it ain’t coming back. Unfortunately there have also been a couple of days where the mercury hit 90 and some lettuce has been cooked in the fields. Yes, we’ll be offering this as cut greens (removing the scalded leaves) and soon, very soon, we’re placing an order for shade cloth so we can bring “head lettuce” to our customers as “head lettuce.”
I feel encouraged by garlic and radishes. They’re polar opposites. Not by design but our plants happen to be at opposite ends of the fields. Garlic, as many of you know, goes into the ground in October, winters over, and is harvested in July. Radishes can be harvested in 20 days. Radishes can grow in poor soil and as we’ve got some sandy patches (Cat box as we refer to these bits) were direct seeded with radish.
The garlic patch reminds me that last year I was ambitious enough (or is it crazy enough) to purchase organic garlic seed from Johnny’s.
Tomorrow I’ll go take a peek at the radishes because they match my spirit: they’re impatient. No other plant that we’ll plant will be ready to be harvested in such short period of time. The cotyledons are the size of dimes and teeny tiny true leaves have sprouted. The stems are what I’d call, “Terrific red.” Almost a blood red -- foretelling the pinkish reddish skin. I can hear the crunch of taking a bite, taste the slight heat. Radishes are a bit peppery.
The garlic and the radish are at extremes and here I am in the midst of that. Which is no kind of segue but it’s late and I’m tired so deal with it…
Farming has put me in the Present. Full on. Stubbing your toe or getting a paper cut can bring you back to the present. Ouch. Time to wake up and pay attention.
A few weeks back I realized that I was a chronic escapist. That I’d spent a great deal of my life wishing I were in other places. Even if I was somewhere totally lovely, with someone I wanted to be with, I would wander away. Once I realized that I was a chronic escapist I started to reel myself in. I started to put myself into the moment as deeply as I could. Bed making was a great way to be present. Instead of resenting it and wishing I were doing something else, I started to just make a bed. I watched my breath, I observed the way the muscles in my body moved as I dragged a hoe back and forth, as I raked the dirt to shape the bed. I was in the deadly dull grunt work of bed making. I was looking neither to escape nor to be gratified. I was looking to just be. And when my mind wandered I’d fetch myself and put myself back in the moment of bed making.
I told myself: This is it. This is all there is.
Of course there was much more than just bed making going on. The hawks screeched in the nest. The sun bore down on me. The black flies buzzed about my face. The breeze (when it arrived) cooled me off. The scent of lilacs wafted across the yard.
What was fascinating about all of this is it awakened something in me about how I value my time and my efforts and myself. I know that I’m not a farmer. The problem is I don’t know what I am. (Luckily I do know WHO I am. phew.) What’s more interesting is that I can’t think of any other way to spend my time right now. I know that being a farmer is exactly where I’m supposed to be. This is the beginning of the rest of my life.
To say I’m not a farmer isn’t entirely accurate. I think what I want is a more diversified operation. I want some chickens and a couple of goats. (I saw the cutest goat today at Misty Brook Farm. She’d totally managed to get past the fence and was front of a shed nibbling on an extension cord. I was going to alert the kid in the barn but then a woman who was feeding the chickens noticed the goat. The woman addressed the goat in a tone – the way any of us who spend more than a couple of days on the farm do -- “Goatie. How did you get out?” As if she were talking to a person and expected the goat to answer. So the vernacular with animals is always rhetorical questions.
Tonight Ben served the first serving of Seven Crows Garden kale. This was comprised of baby leaves plucked off and steamed. My taste buds will smile more broadly when I cut off a few leaves of mature Dinosaur kale, chop it up and sauté it in some butter. (Hot damn! Those will be some freaking good eats.)
And that’s all I’ve got right now.
Tomorrow is my day off. Yes, I do believe in the Sabbath (way more than ever before). I’m gonna sleep until 8 am. Yeah. That’s sleeping in.
Oh, my dearly departed city life. Will I there ever come a night when stay up dancing at Pyramid Club ‘til dawn? I do hope so. But that’ll be something to think about during the off-season.
Right now it’s lights out.
Sweet dreams dear readers.
Fire Pit field comments
In the early spring we amended the ground with composted cow and horse manure. Then tilled that under.
Each bed was built after amending the soil with Cheep Cheep (North Country Organics 4 3 3 fertilizer made from dehydrated chicken litter) and lime. The ground was broad forked, then using a hoe we pulled the soil into mounds, then using rakes we shaped the beds. To build one bed took about 3 hours from start to finish.
Each bed has between 2 to three rows of transplants, and up to 5 rows where direct seed was applied.
(see photos below)
Each bed was built after amending the soil with Cheep Cheep (North Country Organics 4 3 3 fertilizer made from dehydrated chicken litter) and lime. The ground was broad forked, then using a hoe we pulled the soil into mounds, then using rakes we shaped the beds. To build one bed took about 3 hours from start to finish.
Each bed has between 2 to three rows of transplants, and up to 5 rows where direct seed was applied.
(see photos below)
Friday, May 8, 2009
Is there a connection between bandit leeks and world peace?
When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually respond, “World peace.” This answer often elicits a groan.
But it’s true – I’m not into celebrating my birthday, I don’t want anymore stuff, and if you want to give me something that I’ll truly appreciate then bring world peace, or at least contribute something towards achieving it.
In the meantime, we can all go about our regularly scheduled lives: worrying about how we’re going to pay the bills, wondering about the next time we’ll get laid, day dream about: getting a better job, owning a newer car, going on a nicer vacation, etc etc.
Today was another one of those in-between days at Anahata. It’s been raining (a good thing) but as we’re in the process of working the soil and building beds, a lot of rain hampers our abilities to do this. It’s not good to apply lime to wet soil and it’s a heck of a lot harder to move wet soil (much harder in fact) than it is to hoe and rake dry soil.
This means that today:
1. I went for a walk and took note of the trees the forester has marked for cutting.
2. Ben and I cut row cover to fit our beds
3. I attempted to mow the lawn only to find that the lawn mower needs to be charged before I can start it. (It’s being charged as I write this.)
4. A small discussion about which crops to plant over the next couple of days took place. The outcome – onions and potatoes are ready to go. Tonight we’ll cut up the potatoes, let ‘em dry, and then Saturday they’ll go into the ground. Yukon Gold, Norland Red, All Blue
5. I re-organized a portion the workspace in the basement
There aren’t anymore seeds to germinate, all the varieties for transplanting (TP) have been germinated and are either in the green house awaiting transplanting or for the lucky ones such as Bilko, Ripbor, White Russian, and Rouge D’Hiver (to name only a few) they’ve been transplanted. From here on out it’s direct seeding (DS). There was one tray of leeks in the green house that required attention -- trimming of the tips – to prevent the seedlings from desiccating after they’ve been transplanted.
I volunteered to trim the leeks and while I was engaged in this rather tedious task, I entered “the zone.” The zone is that yummy meditative state where goodness reigns.
As I sat on the floor of the greenhouse I noticed that I’m not as high strung as I used to be. Today I would have preferred to have been in the fields making beds and that means that I was craving activity.
On a side note -- if you had any idea what building raised beds entails you’d think, “She prefers that?”
Ben and I are running a human-powered market garden – on occasion we use a chain saw or a roto tiller, otherwise everything has been done by hand. This means that we amend fields using shovels and a cart to spread manure, when we build beds we use rakes and hoes. Lately it takes Ben and me about two and a half hours to build one bed that’s 50 feet by 5 feet. Yesterday while we were shaping a bed with rakes I started laughing. Ben asked, “What?” I said, “Dude, we spend all day outdoors moving tons of dirt with rakes.” He smiled and shouted, “Living the dream!”
Are you wondering if my back is broken or whether I’m in the best physical shape I’ve ever been in?” The answer -- “My back is nowhere near broken and my body is fit – fit in that lean, farmer kind of way.” Ben and I take a few breaks here and there but mainly we’re outdoors working the land for 12 hours per day.
-- A word to the wise: anyone out there who’s contemplating running an organic vegetable garden around 1 acre in size and doesn’t plan to use a tractor: give this a proposition a considerable amount of thought. The work is rewarding and interesting and you’ll be jacked into a Life of Ag but it requires a tremendous amount of physical labor. The physical labor can be almost mind-numbing. Of course when you look back at your beds and see them bursting with kale and lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower you’ll feel connected to the earth in way that’s would be impossible to imagine. (My vegetables will be damn good eats and there’ll be a hint of blood, sweat, and tears in each and every bite of them. Perhaps that’s the difference in taste between conventional produce and organic produce.)
I moved out of the city to strengthen my connection to the land and the food system, and I hoped to earn a living as an organic farmer. The “earning a living” bit has yet to emerge but I think it’s on its way.
…Now I find that I’ve digressed, where was I? …oh right, in the greenhouse trimming leeks.
I was seated in the greenhouse and I started to think about world peace. “Can it be achieved?” “What needs to happen to achieve it?” The first-grader in me said, “Stop dropping bombs.” But we all know how unrealistic and simple-minded that is. (Aren’t there entire departments in universities devoted to political science? I wonder what Christopher Hitchens would do in a world where there was peace, everywhere. Sadly war isn’t going away anytime soon.) Then when I leapt a few decades ahead in my consciousness and wondered if by sitting in a greenhouse, in the country, and being kind to myself was in fact a valid contribution towards attaining world peace. My new life style might not be a tax deductible contribution but it seems to count towards something. During the workweek I rode the C train in the mornings to give myself a few extra minutes to meditate before I entered the workplace where I was sure to be immersed in light pollution, noise pollution, poor indoor air quality, a lot of nasty office politics, and surrounded by several extremely toxic people.
Six years ago I started to have debilitating panic attacks at work. I told my GP that I wasn’t interested in taking a pill and asked him if I could try biofeedback. He said sure and referred me to a woman who offered biofeedback training. In many ways I think that those biofeedback sessions contributed to my being able to sit in the greenhouse and trim leeks and be at peace.
The biofeedback sessions comprised of me sitting in a comfy chair, in a dimly lit room, with a woman who would talk to me about “fight or flight” and then hook me up to a monitor and have me do breathing exercises. This woman also told me the lovely tale of my panic attack, it’s all about “fight or flight.” Something triggered the attack and then my brain would take over and send my body into flight mode. This meant that I was blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide and my boy was getting ready to fight to save its life. The standard line is that back in the day you’d see a lion and want to run for your life, blah blah blah.
Of course I hadn’t seen a lion, I’d been in New York City, on the 15th floor, seated at my desk. (The nearest lion possibly in an enclosure at the Bronx Zoo?)
This meant that something in the office was the equivalent of seeing a lion.
But the key to unraveling my panic attacks didn’t have anything to do with changing personnel it was a phrase the practitioner used, “You have to reset your baseline.” And when she put it like that I thought, “This I can do.”
In the years since the biofeedback I’ve deepened my meditation practice which means that I’ve turned to my breath as a way to re-set my baseline.
While I trimmed leeks I watched my breath and swatted away black flies and handled the plants and thought, “Inner peace is connected to world peace and we should promote peace on the level of the individual.”
As I sit here in the seedling pod, outside a strong wind has gathered force as a weather system moves in. Looking to the South I see large gray clouds heading my way.
Today Ben and I are awaiting several deliveries: “Cheep Cheep” (organic fertilizer), and row cover and hoops. I don’t hold out much hope that the deliveries are going to be made this afternoon. This means that tomorrow might be another day of not being able to build beds -- thanks to more rain and no fertilizer. Getting through yet another in-between day at this stage of the game will probably require yet another level of Zen because 2 consecutive days of not being able to build beds is almost maddening and I trimmed that one little tray of leeks.
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll clean the entire house? Peacefully.
But it’s true – I’m not into celebrating my birthday, I don’t want anymore stuff, and if you want to give me something that I’ll truly appreciate then bring world peace, or at least contribute something towards achieving it.
In the meantime, we can all go about our regularly scheduled lives: worrying about how we’re going to pay the bills, wondering about the next time we’ll get laid, day dream about: getting a better job, owning a newer car, going on a nicer vacation, etc etc.
Today was another one of those in-between days at Anahata. It’s been raining (a good thing) but as we’re in the process of working the soil and building beds, a lot of rain hampers our abilities to do this. It’s not good to apply lime to wet soil and it’s a heck of a lot harder to move wet soil (much harder in fact) than it is to hoe and rake dry soil.
This means that today:
1. I went for a walk and took note of the trees the forester has marked for cutting.
2. Ben and I cut row cover to fit our beds
3. I attempted to mow the lawn only to find that the lawn mower needs to be charged before I can start it. (It’s being charged as I write this.)
4. A small discussion about which crops to plant over the next couple of days took place. The outcome – onions and potatoes are ready to go. Tonight we’ll cut up the potatoes, let ‘em dry, and then Saturday they’ll go into the ground. Yukon Gold, Norland Red, All Blue
5. I re-organized a portion the workspace in the basement
There aren’t anymore seeds to germinate, all the varieties for transplanting (TP) have been germinated and are either in the green house awaiting transplanting or for the lucky ones such as Bilko, Ripbor, White Russian, and Rouge D’Hiver (to name only a few) they’ve been transplanted. From here on out it’s direct seeding (DS). There was one tray of leeks in the green house that required attention -- trimming of the tips – to prevent the seedlings from desiccating after they’ve been transplanted.
I volunteered to trim the leeks and while I was engaged in this rather tedious task, I entered “the zone.” The zone is that yummy meditative state where goodness reigns.
As I sat on the floor of the greenhouse I noticed that I’m not as high strung as I used to be. Today I would have preferred to have been in the fields making beds and that means that I was craving activity.
On a side note -- if you had any idea what building raised beds entails you’d think, “She prefers that?”
Ben and I are running a human-powered market garden – on occasion we use a chain saw or a roto tiller, otherwise everything has been done by hand. This means that we amend fields using shovels and a cart to spread manure, when we build beds we use rakes and hoes. Lately it takes Ben and me about two and a half hours to build one bed that’s 50 feet by 5 feet. Yesterday while we were shaping a bed with rakes I started laughing. Ben asked, “What?” I said, “Dude, we spend all day outdoors moving tons of dirt with rakes.” He smiled and shouted, “Living the dream!”
Are you wondering if my back is broken or whether I’m in the best physical shape I’ve ever been in?” The answer -- “My back is nowhere near broken and my body is fit – fit in that lean, farmer kind of way.” Ben and I take a few breaks here and there but mainly we’re outdoors working the land for 12 hours per day.
-- A word to the wise: anyone out there who’s contemplating running an organic vegetable garden around 1 acre in size and doesn’t plan to use a tractor: give this a proposition a considerable amount of thought. The work is rewarding and interesting and you’ll be jacked into a Life of Ag but it requires a tremendous amount of physical labor. The physical labor can be almost mind-numbing. Of course when you look back at your beds and see them bursting with kale and lettuce and broccoli and cauliflower you’ll feel connected to the earth in way that’s would be impossible to imagine. (My vegetables will be damn good eats and there’ll be a hint of blood, sweat, and tears in each and every bite of them. Perhaps that’s the difference in taste between conventional produce and organic produce.)
I moved out of the city to strengthen my connection to the land and the food system, and I hoped to earn a living as an organic farmer. The “earning a living” bit has yet to emerge but I think it’s on its way.
…Now I find that I’ve digressed, where was I? …oh right, in the greenhouse trimming leeks.
I was seated in the greenhouse and I started to think about world peace. “Can it be achieved?” “What needs to happen to achieve it?” The first-grader in me said, “Stop dropping bombs.” But we all know how unrealistic and simple-minded that is. (Aren’t there entire departments in universities devoted to political science? I wonder what Christopher Hitchens would do in a world where there was peace, everywhere. Sadly war isn’t going away anytime soon.) Then when I leapt a few decades ahead in my consciousness and wondered if by sitting in a greenhouse, in the country, and being kind to myself was in fact a valid contribution towards attaining world peace. My new life style might not be a tax deductible contribution but it seems to count towards something. During the workweek I rode the C train in the mornings to give myself a few extra minutes to meditate before I entered the workplace where I was sure to be immersed in light pollution, noise pollution, poor indoor air quality, a lot of nasty office politics, and surrounded by several extremely toxic people.
Six years ago I started to have debilitating panic attacks at work. I told my GP that I wasn’t interested in taking a pill and asked him if I could try biofeedback. He said sure and referred me to a woman who offered biofeedback training. In many ways I think that those biofeedback sessions contributed to my being able to sit in the greenhouse and trim leeks and be at peace.
The biofeedback sessions comprised of me sitting in a comfy chair, in a dimly lit room, with a woman who would talk to me about “fight or flight” and then hook me up to a monitor and have me do breathing exercises. This woman also told me the lovely tale of my panic attack, it’s all about “fight or flight.” Something triggered the attack and then my brain would take over and send my body into flight mode. This meant that I was blowing off a lot of carbon dioxide and my boy was getting ready to fight to save its life. The standard line is that back in the day you’d see a lion and want to run for your life, blah blah blah.
Of course I hadn’t seen a lion, I’d been in New York City, on the 15th floor, seated at my desk. (The nearest lion possibly in an enclosure at the Bronx Zoo?)
This meant that something in the office was the equivalent of seeing a lion.
But the key to unraveling my panic attacks didn’t have anything to do with changing personnel it was a phrase the practitioner used, “You have to reset your baseline.” And when she put it like that I thought, “This I can do.”
In the years since the biofeedback I’ve deepened my meditation practice which means that I’ve turned to my breath as a way to re-set my baseline.
While I trimmed leeks I watched my breath and swatted away black flies and handled the plants and thought, “Inner peace is connected to world peace and we should promote peace on the level of the individual.”
As I sit here in the seedling pod, outside a strong wind has gathered force as a weather system moves in. Looking to the South I see large gray clouds heading my way.
Today Ben and I are awaiting several deliveries: “Cheep Cheep” (organic fertilizer), and row cover and hoops. I don’t hold out much hope that the deliveries are going to be made this afternoon. This means that tomorrow might be another day of not being able to build beds -- thanks to more rain and no fertilizer. Getting through yet another in-between day at this stage of the game will probably require yet another level of Zen because 2 consecutive days of not being able to build beds is almost maddening and I trimmed that one little tray of leeks.
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll clean the entire house? Peacefully.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Easter Sunday with my family had an interesting effect on me. I've realized that a Sunday spent with family can in no way shape or form be considered a day off. I thought things went well and it wasn't until the next day when I woke up and my body ached in an odd way that I realized I had been holding myself tight, much as one might clench a fist. I felt emotionally exhausted from the experience but I give myself credit for going to these things. For close to 18 years I avoided my family and family holidays. Since 2006 I've been to 3 Thanksgivings and 3 Easters. (I don't do Christmas.)
Sunday morning I had this really intense dream with Anita Baker, an R & B singer whose music I adore. The dream was really long. In the first part of the dream she and I were hanging out at a museum. We were in a grassy courtyard, on a sunny day, talking. Then her driver drove us to the shore. We we walking along the beach the talking. Then we went to climb some dunes and we were supposed to cross the dunes and I'm not sure where we were going to emerge. Anita took a few steps and I said, "Anita, I don't think I can follow you." She came back to me and said, "All you have to do is let go." In the dream she was a great listener and a wonderful conversationalist and she was very kind and sweet.
When I woke up from the dream I thought, "Wow! Anita Baker is so cool." My next thought was, "I think I'll follow her advice."
For the past 2 days I have been letting go. I'm not even quite sure how this works. When I have a negative or annoying thought I think, "Let it go." I'm going to keep at this for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Already I feel much less burdened -- which is a nice feeling.
Things on the farm are progressing. We've got trays of seedlings in the green house and trays of seedlings germinating in the downstairs bathroom. We had an "issue" a couple of weeks back. We emailed a scan of some leaves that had yellowed, fearing a mold or pathogen. Rob Wick at Umass who specializes in plant disease thinks that we had an issue that arose from the environment and that the cuticle was separating from the leaf. Needless to say, this "issue" struck the Fear of G-d into us. We quickly quarantined all the effected plants, dropped the temperature in the seed pod, and increased the ventilation. This brought about an end to the syndrome. Luckily the issue seems to have effected only the cotyledons and the seedlings became more hardy.
We've manured and plowed Hardwick. Petersham is soon to be amended and tilled up.
Funny thing is our first market days in May might be us sitting with baskets filled with fiddle head ferns that we harvest from teh forest. So much for farming when Mother Nature produces food without even batting an eyelash.
Sunday morning I had this really intense dream with Anita Baker, an R & B singer whose music I adore. The dream was really long. In the first part of the dream she and I were hanging out at a museum. We were in a grassy courtyard, on a sunny day, talking. Then her driver drove us to the shore. We we walking along the beach the talking. Then we went to climb some dunes and we were supposed to cross the dunes and I'm not sure where we were going to emerge. Anita took a few steps and I said, "Anita, I don't think I can follow you." She came back to me and said, "All you have to do is let go." In the dream she was a great listener and a wonderful conversationalist and she was very kind and sweet.
When I woke up from the dream I thought, "Wow! Anita Baker is so cool." My next thought was, "I think I'll follow her advice."
For the past 2 days I have been letting go. I'm not even quite sure how this works. When I have a negative or annoying thought I think, "Let it go." I'm going to keep at this for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Already I feel much less burdened -- which is a nice feeling.
Things on the farm are progressing. We've got trays of seedlings in the green house and trays of seedlings germinating in the downstairs bathroom. We had an "issue" a couple of weeks back. We emailed a scan of some leaves that had yellowed, fearing a mold or pathogen. Rob Wick at Umass who specializes in plant disease thinks that we had an issue that arose from the environment and that the cuticle was separating from the leaf. Needless to say, this "issue" struck the Fear of G-d into us. We quickly quarantined all the effected plants, dropped the temperature in the seed pod, and increased the ventilation. This brought about an end to the syndrome. Luckily the issue seems to have effected only the cotyledons and the seedlings became more hardy.
We've manured and plowed Hardwick. Petersham is soon to be amended and tilled up.
Funny thing is our first market days in May might be us sitting with baskets filled with fiddle head ferns that we harvest from teh forest. So much for farming when Mother Nature produces food without even batting an eyelash.
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