Pigs are Cool

Don't mind the cute pig.  If you didn't know, Kate and I are raising 8 pigs and selling them by the half.  They will be custom butchered so that you can have as little or as much sausage you want, the off cuts and organ meats if you want them, and the option of smoking them.

We have 2 and a half pigs left to sell so let us know if you are excited to be part of our pig CSA!

Updates on our New Beat Farm experience:

We have been plenty busy planting summer squash, hand weeding, cultivating with the horses, and harvesting lots of lettuce, beet greens, salad turnip greens, mesclun/mustard mixes, kale, and chard.  Between working 4 days at New Beat and doing various projects involving the pigs, Kate and I have been super busy.

We assembled an automatic watering system using a 300 gallon tank we bought, PVC fittings, garden hose, and nipples that go on the end of 4 hoses split off from one.  The nipples are stood on a little stand that I made with some scrap wood and stood up by two pieces of rebar pounded into the ground through two drilled holes in the top.  This type of watering system eliminates several issues; the pigs walking in their water troughs (making it less palatable and risking carrying disease on their feet into their water), reducing the need to haul 5 gallon buckets (~40 lbs. of water per bucket), eliminating the need for troughs, spending less time dealing with their water supply, significantly reducing water waste.  Our water tank is set and bolted onto a snowmobile trailer (courtesy of Kate's dad, John) and filled from a spring until it is about half full.  Any heavier, and the trailer might not be able to handle the weight.  Then we haul the trailer to an area uphill from the pigs with the horses hooked to the forecart; uphill so that the water will gravity feed down the hose to the nipples with enough pressure.

We'd also like to thank our friend Jessie for supplying us with whey, which the pigs looooove drinking.  They're gaining weight everyday due to the extra protein.

We love whey!

Other than that, we're both happy living in our wall tent and working with the crew and horses at New Beat Farm.  If any of you have the inclination, please come visit!  E-mail us when you're coming and we'll be glad to have you over!  The pigs would love it too!

“But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

China now consumes double the meat that the US does

I just read a study by the Earth Policy Institute (via grist.org) that reveals China consumes approximately 70 million tons of meat per year, double what the USA eats.  What is amazing about that is that we don't have one fifth of the earth's population like China does, yet we still consume the most meat on a per capita basis AND are the second biggest meat eaters in the world.

Horses, Grease, and Sweat

It’s the first week at New Beat and what a week it was!  Kate and I arrived Monday morning and helped repair a greenhouse and spread manure in it in preparation for growing tomatoes and lettuce.  We also started work on the wall tent. 

Tuesday we were familiarized with the horse chores, which include feeding hay, cleaning their water buckets and refilling them, mucking out their stalls and putting down more bedding/sawdust, and harnessing the horses.  We also both learned to pick out the horses’ feet.  This involves picking up their feet and using a hoof pick, which is a curled piece of metal on a handle which allows you to pick any debris and gravel out of their hooves.  It is a very important piece of horse health maintenance because leaving debris in their feet can lead to infections and poor conformation/stride; there’s an old saying “no foot, no horse.”

Afterwards we got to ground drive horses; which is to say we each had a single horse and drove them around to accommodate them to us and vice versa and as a warmup to the rest of the season when we will be driving them with great frequency.  I got to drive Pete, the new black Percheron, while Kate drove Jewel (a blonde Belgian), Ken and Adrienne’s lead horse.  Pete is still becoming a member of the herd and apparently had been kicked around, literally, by both Jewel and Molly.  He has started to stick up for himself lately but as a logging horse, is very unfamiliar with most of the farm operations he’s been involved in so far.  Jewel and Pete were then hooked up to the spring tooth harrow to smooth out a field that Ken plowed last week with Jewel on the left and Pete on the right.  Both Kate and I got some basic experience driving them around and harrowing the field.  When we completed that task, we brought two walking plows down to Lauren’s field, where we would eventually be plowing to prepare the soil for her nursery and cover crops.  To end Tuesday we worked more on setting up the tent platform for our wall tent

We all started off Wednesday with hooking up the horses in order to plow.  At first Adrienne and Ken demonstrated the Pioneer walking plow that they bought from an Amish family.  It is huge, heavy, and in almost new shape.  Watching a plow turn over soil is mesmerizing; akin to watching waves on the ocean.  The driver’s, Ken’s, job is to make sure the horses walk straight and to keep the furrow horse (the right or off horse and in this case Pete) right on the land side of the furrow.  Ken describes this as keeping the furrow horse’s left feet on the left edge of the soil of the last furrow.

On my first few passes, I felt like I had just sprinted a mile.  When you watch a walking plow work, it looks as if you have to keep the tip of the plow pointed into the ground when in reality the plow, if set correctly and in good shape, will suck itself into the ground and the horses do most of the work.  Your job as the plowman is to make small adjustments if the horses begin to veer off course and to keep the plow in the ground if the plow hits a rock.  Hindsight is 20/20 and my hindsight didn’t kick in until the next day.  Both Kate and I had struggled a lot this first day of plowing.

As I alluded before, Pete is unfamiliar with farm work, which is steady work with breaks once in a while.  He was mainly used for logging and when logging, the horses pull some really heavy loads and therefore must really jolt the load to get it going initially.  Jolting is not good for things like plowing, harrowing, and cultivating around valuable plants.  The hope is that Pete will become familiar enough with the work that he will be a steady worker by the time we have to start cultivating.  He had taken all of us by surprise by taking off for 20 feet or more and nearly ripping the plow out of the plowman’s hands several times.  The plow even almost hit Ken, which could have been really bad.

Eventually he settled down and Ken and I did a lot of plowing while Adrienne and Kate cut some poles for the wall tent.  By then I was extremely tired despite feeling comfortable and relatively relaxed behind the plow.  At morning’s end I was starving and bushed.  The rest of the day we spent prepping soil blocks for seedlings and working on the tent platform.

Thursday morning we planted a whole bunch of cauliflower, peppers, and flowers in the greenhouse.  Before lunch we readied the horses for work.  That afternoon we finished the last third of the 1/3 acre we needed to plow.  When I came back to the plow, it felt as if it was an action I performed hundreds of times before.  There is something to be said about how your body learns even when you sleep, imprinting what you learned into muscle memory.  I was better able to help Kate become comfortable on the plow because I was able to describe the feel of the plow when it’s going well and I had just undergone that learning process.  She was also a very good observer, and took note of how my body was positioned and how I stood holding the plow in relation to myself.

We felt extremely accomplished to say the least.  It’s probably more accurate to say we were blissed out.  There is a feeling that is hard to put into words, but it is quite magical when the partnership between the team, the driver, and the plowman work together well to turn over a whole lot of sod or cover crop so that you can plant into it in the next few weeks.  Just magic.  The rest of the day we thinned seedlings happily to end a great week.

 Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

-Thomas Jefferson 

Once Upon a Time There Was a Winter

My name is Millie.  Pay attention to me!  All the time. Now.

It has been a strange winter so far in Maine.  There was not too much snow, only one really cold stretch, and quite a bit of mud.  Many farmers I have talked to have expressed some concern about the coming season and how it may be dry because the snow cover, and thus water, will evaporate early, requiring more irrigation this summer.  Most people probably have already dismissed winter as over and done with, and are happy to look forward to warmer weather.  I admit that in the past I would have felt the same way.

Millie: This is what it should look like in Maine in March.  Now let me smell you.

However, with nature (and everything in life) balance is essential.  We continue to see extremes in weather and climate because we are testing the earth's limits as a closed system.  Like a drop in a bucket of water, our energy use a.k.a. release of energy in the form of heat, our use of fossil fuels has caused a spike in average temperature causing the water's surface to move down.  In an attempt to restore equilibrium, the earth's atmosphere is trying to rebound in the other direction, then the other, then the other until it is almost at rest.

The warm weather is messing with farmers and it's messing with maple sugaring.  There has not been a consistent flow of sap from the trees at Mitchell and Savage Farm.  The sap has also been darker than in the past from what Mitch tells me.  The cutting short of the season by warm weather has significantly reduced the amount of syrup that can be made considering that 40 gallons of sap on average are needed to boil down to one gallon of syrup and a tree can produce at least a half gallon of syrup on a good day (20 at night and 40 high during the day).

Sap season is likely coming to a close if it hasn't already.  On the bright side, I have had a wonderful experience with Mitch and Penny helping collect sap with Dick, Dock, and sometimes Belle.  I also learned a lot about boiling sap and a bit of the science behind it.  They were gracious enough to let me drive the horses many times while collecting sap from stop to stop in their sugar bush.  I recognize the trust it takes to let another person drive your draft animals; especially large, 1700 pound beasts that can easily pull a tank/wagon that easily weighs a ton altogether.  It's hard to resist emphasizing the power of a pair of horses and the thrill and beauty of working together to harness their abilities and mesh their personalities with yours in the process.  I truly want to thank Mitch and Penny for the opportunity to work with them and their "haases."

These, however, are Jeff and Amy's horses.

I also happened to show up at Buckwheat Blossom Farm to drop a few things off after an invigorating bike ride and ended up helping them with the sheep shearing process which included keeping track of all the little lambs and giving the adults booster vaccines.  I'll be working at New Beat Farm in a week helping with seedling work, making soil blocks, moving the wall tent platform, and when the soil is drier, plowing with the horses!  My excitement can hardly be contained.  I am, pun intended, chomping at the bit to work with Ken, Adrienne, Lauren, Rachel, Kate, and the horses Molly, Jewel, and Pete this season.  Time for some good, ol' fashioned faahm building!

Peace, Love, and Head Cheese!

Hi! I'm a lamb!

He's only 7.5 pounds!

"Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato"
-Wendell Berry

Futurizing

I am officially not an apprentice for a month.  Then I will be again in April.  The yurt was cleaned and moved out of by Monday afternoon, ending my first apprenticeship.  For a glimpse of it, you need only read any of my past updates.  In an attempt to avoid a year-end summary, I will look to the future.  I've learned so much and cannot properly address my gratitude to Buckwheat Blossom Farm for taking me on for the year.  The opportunity to learn so much, from logging and tillage with horses and growing vegetables, to raising pastured and woods-raised chickens, cattle, sheep, and pigs, was a proverbial alignment of the stars.

Throughout my time here I've had the chance to meet tons of new, cool people related to agriculture and the variously related craftspeople that a farmer/grower depend on to keep their farm running.  I've found, at least personally, that the more people you know in the field, the better.  You don't know what might come up, what kind of equipment might need repair and the skills you might have to trade for in order to get them repaired.  I've been feebly attempting to improve and diversify my skill-set, and therefore, my opportunities for energy and economic self-sufficiency by participating in as many things as I can while apprenticing and in the coming month.

Yesterday I began sugaring at Mitchell and Savage Maple Farm where they use horses to haul a BIG 200 gallon tank around their woodlot to collect buckets of sap.  We were hoping it would be a good sap day because the temperature was close to the ideal range of 20 degrees at night and 40 degrees daytime.  It turns out it wasn't really, but that the sap was about three times sweeter than it typically would be.  This was probably due to Mitch having dumped the ice that froze in the buckets, thereby concentrating the sap that remained.  

Though we only got 50 gallons of sap that was the equivalent of almost 150 gallons of "regular" sap, it was a beautiful day to be out with the horses in the woods.  I worked up a bit of a sweat walking around in the snow with buckets and got to see part of the sap-making process.  It involved a lot of tubes, gravity feeding, and water.  I spent about 4 hours chatting and helping boil sap even though Mitch didn't need the help.  We (including Penny) got to know each other a little bit better talking about everything and anything from politics to horse equipment to the show "Breaking Bad." I easily could have spent the whole night there hanging out, talking, feeding the wood fire, pouring sap, drinking a few beers, and eating popcorn.  In the future I just may do that.  I'm blessed to have met Mitch and Penny and eagerly look forward to the rest of the sugaring season and meeting their son Caleb later this week.

In a month, I'll be heading over to New Beat Farm learning to do lots of new stuff that are almost too numerous to count.  I'll be learning to hay, grow some small grains and beans, do some more walking plowing, single horse work in general, and of course lots of other horse tillage.  Ken and Adrienne also have a different growing system which will be a whole new thing to learn as well.  I'll hopefully also learn a thing or two about repairing horse equipment.  They just got a new horse to make 3 total and his name is Pete.  He's in great shape and I'll be excited to get to know all the horses.

Oh, yeah!  Kate and I will also be raising 8 pigs this summer and marketing them by the half.  I know some of my New York friends are interested and if we have trouble selling them, I will let you know.  Our hope is to try to remain as local as possible.  For those of you in NYC that really want to participate in this kind of meat purchase, visit your local farmers market (there are tons in NYC) and get to know the farmers there.  Otherwise I can help you try to find a person selling pigs by the half or whole.  We have 3.5 pigs left to sell as of today so let me know if you have any interest.  The pigs will be ready at the beginning of October.   Everyone needs to bother me about pictures so I'll be better at including things I'm doing.  Anyways, more sugaring (after a mini-vacation to Portsmouth) is at hand in the coming weeks.  Thank you everyone for reading!

"We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing."

-Wendell Berry

If you don't think the meat you typically eat is bad...

read this article from Grist about how a study has connected the dots between how disease-resistant staph jumped from human to pig to human.  Factory farmed meat is cheap, but also uses more than half the antibiotics used in the US.  The result of this abuse is poor animal health, poor animals living terrible lives, and poor human health via transmissible disease and lower nutrient density in the meat we do eat.

If you're thinking, "Well I can't afford to pay for the expensive, locally grown meat they sell at the farmers' market," you can make the decision to eat less meat.  We eat more meat than we need to and it is taking a toll on our environment and health.  I urge people to consider the impact of what they have on their plate.

Time to put on the big boy suspenders

My last day running the farm with Kate's help.  Tomorrow the Burchsteads will be returning from Hotlanta and with them comes some welcome pressure relief.  I'm not any less convinced I want to farm, but whew! keeping all sorts of animals while thinking about the future and making time management decisions in tandem with the predicted weather is draining.  As each day since Wednesday has passed, I have gained more respect and empathy for Jeff and Amy, as well as every other farmer out there.

Throw in the constant worrying of whether a ewe is going to give birth and my hands felt quite full.  Wednesday and Thursday of last week went smoothly as I mostly took care of projects like wrapping and freezing the rest of the two lambs we butchered, making a ginger carrot ferment, moving, cutting, and covering firewood, and preparing for market.  Then came Friday...

I was merrily doing chores and going about my rainy, farm business when I saw that a ewe was beginning to give birth.  Earlier I had noticed the ewe was standing off by herself for most of the morning, a probable sign that she was beginning to go into labor.  The amniotic sac was coming out and immediately I went to trap the rest of the flock so that I could eventually extract the mom and her lambs.  I went to prepare some warm molasses water to put in the greenhouse where she would eventually end up.

The first lamb was born and the ewe did not immediately start licking it to clear the mucus on its face so it could breathe.  I went to clear its nostrils and the ewe ran as far as she could.  I started to worry that it wouldn't bond with its baby; an important aspect of lambing and ensuring the survival of the lamb.  Eventually the ewe would pass its second lamb stillborn.  I tried to get it to bond with the live lamb by bringing it to her nose but she kept running away.  Trying not to get frustrated, I called it with a sheep call and lured it with grain into the greenhouse.

I spent the next two hours drying the lamb to prevent hypothermia and trying to get it to nurse despite the ewe's refusal to stand and the lamb's being so weak it couldn't figure out how to nurse when I put the teat in its mouth.  In between all this, I called Amy on the cell phone and got her guidance.  Eventually I got the lamb to nurse after cutting away some wool for easier access and Kate would subsequently come to help me get it to nurse while I held the ewe still.

We still had to pick up apples, do chores, and prepare for market before Saturday morning.  All told, we didn't finish working until 9 PM; managing to get the truck mostly packed so we could get up at 5 AM to do chores and pack the rest of the market items.  Oh yeah, we also had Kate's parents over for dinner for her mom's birthday.  They were gracious enough to bring some Thai takeout and ease a bit of our burden for the night.  Thankfully, the lamb was at least able to nurse with our assistance several times before we went to sleep and eventually would nurse on its own as its mom began to grow closer to its baby.

The next day would be rough for both Kate and I due to relative lack of sleep and a very long day lasting 12 hours.  She went to the Portland winter market while I ran the booth in Brunswick.  After the evening chores, we relaxed for a little while until we took Kate's mom out for dinner for her birthday; this time our treat.  That night we both slept deeply.

Sunday afternoon I was able to drive a different team of horses at Mitch and Penny's.  Their horses, Dick and Dock, are used to collect sap which they collect using buckets hanging from spiles tapped into sugar maples.  I got a tour of their sap trails and had a wonderful afternoon chatting with Mitch and driving his horses for a little while out in their hay fields.  All in all it was a long week with little much of a weekend, but I enjoyed it all.  I hope you all enjoyed reading this update and enjoy the lengthening days!

“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

- William Jennings Bryan