We’ve been faithfully bringing the matching pair of chalkboards to the farmers’ market since we bought them at an office supply box store in mid-summer, but it’s what to put on ’em that’s the puzzle. Today’s new message: “Eat good food”! The other one (out of sight on the left) has been a standing quote from Will Allen: “We need 50 million more people growing food, on porches, in pots, in side yards.” A little odd, perhaps, for the market? Maybe, but there they are. Promotional words on chalkboards is the plan. It’s a work in progress!
Autumn
Fresh new garlic ARRIVES!
There’s almost no describing how pleased this morning’s delivery made me. Pretty happy! In two sturdy cartons, by FedEx Ground, 80 lbs of certified organic Music garlic, looking so fine! :) This shipment comes from a farmer named Warren, who grows a huge amount of garlic about 200 miles (320 km) from here—I’ve chatted with him about garlic, read his garlic literature, bought garlic from him before, a quirky and fun garlic grower indeed! And you certainly can’t have enough garlic… Possibly the WORST part of this mildly crazy tiny farm transition (moving farms from last year to this) was not being able to plant garlic last fall. On EVERY LEVEL, good garlic is GREAT…and if AT ALL POSSIBLE (it’s easy to grow!), you must have it around at all times! This season’s spring-planted garlic experiment did work out OK, but there wasn’t much of it, in number or in size. Now, we get to go again… Cool!
(By the way, if you’re really into garlic, this is the, um, BEST GARLIC SITE EVER: Gourmet Garlic Gardens! It has everything…)
Demo to go
The plan was to spend tomorrow at a nearby, soon-to-be tiny farm, helping build a winterized seedling room in the barn. Day 1: a little demolition and clean-up. This didn’t work out because of a snow storm warning, so after an overnight visit to a nearby town, we returned and I unpacked. False start. Still, this was another mini milestone for me, a first, loading up my tools for an off-farm job! This is all gear assembled bit by bit while working on projects here on the farm, guided by the tools I’d borrowed from Bob. Every purchase, I knew exactly what it was for and how it would come in handy again. Although I’m far from an experienced rough carpenter/farm fixer, choosing tools yesterday made me realize how much I’ve learned. The feeling of place and context really struck me, how the little memories of using each tool tied into the overall tiny farming fabric. It may seem ODD to be celebrating such basic stuff, but it reminded me how unsettlingly disconnected things can get: the job you go to every day, the weekend shop project at home, the weekly grocery run, endless other routines that have no real connection to each other, except in your head. Not like on the tiny farm, where one thing leads another… Hmm. :)
Snow days
Another day, another 6″ (15cm) of snow. This time, it came down in a proper, visibility-reducing mini-blizzard for just a while. I haven’t been listening to the news, which includes weather news, so I’m not sure whether we’re setting any records for early, wintry behavior, but compared to the last five-six years, this is something different. White Christmas, coming up!
Barn shortcut
A rear-end view of the cows leaving the barn has become a familiar every-morning sight. For the last few weeks, since the weather took a turn for the freezing, I’ve been walking through the dim lower barn, toting buckets of warm water and feed, on the way to the chickenhouse. In nice weather, it’s easier and more pleasant to walk outside through the barnyard. This route has the advantage of no wind and no icy patches. It’s a bit of a winding road: into the minimally heated well pump room (heated so the pipes don’t freeze) where the 40kg (88lb) sacks of feed are stored, out the inner door into the dark and chilly lower barn, head down past the empty milking stalls (from dairy farm days), straight towards the window into the loafing barn where the cows come in at night, hard left, down another stretch between pens, unlatch a side door, head outside for a short walk, and it’s in with the chickens… A new daily routine for my first winter with the birds.
Visiting down the road
Ryan, Corrie and their girls moved onto their farm this summer, new to the experience, and they’re already eating their own chickens, turkey, lamb and eggs, and managed to get some veggies out of a late-planted garden. CSA members last year, next year, they’ll be growing their own. Pretty cool! Yesterday, Lynn came by, and we dropped in for a visit that included home-baked muffins and bread, pots of coffee and tea, seed catalogs and my first encounter with The Lorax. Hmm… A lot different than the usually high-octane “visiting” from big-city-living days not so long ago. More and more over the last couple of years, I’ve realized how much tiny farming is actually about people, and simply farming a piece of land is only the half of it (of course, the all-important “we need to eat” half!). It’s exciting. Change is in the air. Something is happening… :) (I forgot to take photos, so today, Ryan sent along one of his.)
All-weather chickens
A weird, one-day break from the cold, fully forecast a few days back, that came to pass. It was a little milder yesterday, and this morning, the temperature jumped, hitting somewhere around 10°C (50°F). Pretty tricky trying to walk around on the treacherous wet ice, but the chickens seemed to love it, charging right in! And then, by late afternoon, the heat was gone. Personally, I choose warmth, even for a few slippery hours…!