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

Lambs in January!

There's so much to talk about between participating in my first chicken and pig processing sessions, to moving a 32 by 14 foot long hoophouse full of chickens 200 feet uphill.  It's definitely winter now in Maine as last night was a few degrees below zero and the yurt was about 45 degrees warmer than that despite our waking up three times in the middle of the night to stoke the fire.

There was an unexpected lambing last the Tuesday after New Years.  We expect most of the ewes to give birth in March; hence the "unexpected."  I showed up at the pasture that the ewes and ram were on at about 7:30 AM expecting to just feed them some hay and call it good for sheep chores.  As I approached their paddock, I saw two small, dark shapes on the ground in the distance.  At first I thought they were cats or racoons or some other small mammal.  While carrying a bale of hay towards them, I slowly realized that they were two lambs.  This was not such a big deal except it was about 20 degrees outside with a wind chill of probably 5-10 degrees less.  I quickly covered them up in my sweater and tried to encourage their mama, who was nearby, to continue to lick them dry and nurse them.  Unfortunately they were quickly approaching hypothermia, especially a very cute grey and white one.  I called Jeff and he came down and quickly made the decision to get the ewe and her two lambs over to the greenhouse.

Moving them to the greenhouse proved to be much more difficult than it sounds.  The ram decided it would be great to try to either mount the ewe again or try to ram Jeff and I while one of us were carrying the two lambs to the truck while the other was dragging the ewe along towards the truck.  I quickly put the lambs in the truck with the heat running while I helped Jeff fend off the ram while simultaneously dragging the ewe towards the truck.  Jeff lifted the ewe over the now turned off fence while I kept fending off the ram with kicks in the face.

When we arrived at the greenhouse, we set up a pen for the ewe and her lambs with some mulch hay as bedding.  The black lamb, which was stronger in the first place, seemed to warm up and after a lot of coercion and stripping the ewe's udder, we got it to nurse while we had the grey lamb in hot water to try to get its body temperature up to the average 101 degrees F.  Amy continued to direct Jeff and I on what to do and when the lamb's temperature was finally close to normal, we got it to nurse after Jeff trimmed the wool around the ewe's udder.  They two lambs are now healthy and happy; the grey one likes to make a little nest on top of its mom's back when she's lying down.

So other than that, Kate and I are slowly planning our move to my next farm up north in Knox.  Part of our plans are to raise pigs on Ken and Adrienne's land to till up some marginal land and land that they plan on turning into gardens.  We will be marketing them by the half or quarter animal with customers paying a deposit ahead of time.  Right now Kate and I are planning out a budget to figure out some numbers for customers.  Let me know if you're interested!  We plan on having pigs ready by September or so.  I can't promise updates more regularly, as some may have noticed, but I will try my best as always...  Stay warm, eat well, and love the special people in your life!

Don't Pee on the Electric Fence

Well.  As my friend Broder politely pointed out on my fantasy football league (yes, even though I don’t have regular access to the internet and haven’t watched a football game yet this season I still do fantasy football), I haven’t updated this blog in two months.  It hasn’t seemed like it since life has been so busy.  Such is farm life I suppose.

Seeing as it is almost November and it was 30 degrees this morning when I woke up, it seems that winter is near.  The lead up to today was quite a whirlwind of activity.  Harvesting and harvesting and harvesting we have been.  My left index finger has a crack in it that won’t go away do to continued hard use and drier weather.  My lower back has seen better days but has been feeling better now that I pay attention to my ergonomics some more and get very nice back massages from Kate.

What have we harvested you might ask?  We brought in all the rest of the tomatoes about a month ago as well as winter squash, sweet potatoes, and tomatillos (to make salsa) before the first frost of the year in October.  We have also harvested all the delicious potatoes and have begun to be able to harvest parsnips.  Of course there are still leeks (my favorite) and carrots.  Most of the rest of the time I have spent is dealing with various animal chores, setting up animal pens, and as our friend Ross says farming is, “Moving shit around.” 

As you can imagine, I spend most of the rest of my time trying to do nothing, but end up doing more food preservation with Kate, going out somewhere nice like Monhegan Island (a beautiful place to visit by boat from nearby Boothbay), or having to do chores for myself that I have put off all week.  Well, I’m off to make winter squash burritos with guacamole, salad greens, and sour cream.  I will update again soon since the winter comes and things are calmer.  Go Giants!

Oh yeah, photo below and more coming from this fall.

What it is

Not much time for introspection lately.  Most of my free time lately has been thinking about what is next for the future.  I am going to work on another farm next year.  Where I will be is still up in the air and depends on a few factors.  Continuing work on a horse-powered farm is my priority as well as being able to work together with Kate.  I would like to continue working for Jeff and Amy and am strongly considering it.  There are, however, other possibilities and what will be best for my development as a competent farmer in terms of education and experience play a strong role in my decision.

Despite my recent ruminations on the state of my future, I still love what I am doing and will continue doing it.  The constant drive for creativity, resourcefulness, deep knowledge, integrity, and ingenuity with a flair for the funky in farming keep pulling me deeper into sustainable agriculture.  My understanding and empathy for the tenacity of the small business owner has grown as I realize how a successful small business owner literally lives and breathes the ins and outs of their daily work.  There's nothing quite like putting hours of hard work into producing food and seeing people at market and CSA pickups enjoy and discover food with all of their senses.

If you don't have food, I don't know what you have.  Next time you cook a meal, take your time and enjoy the sight, smell, and texture of it as it gradually transforms from simple compounds borne from the soil, fungi, and bacteria to an amalgamation of subtle chemical reactions sending signals to your brain saying "Damn, this is good."  I truly believe that 95% of the meal happens before you actually eat it.  If you haven't yet experienced that first 95%, you should; it'll change the way you look at food.