Look Who Arrived in the Mail...

Fifty-two baby chicks!

Thanks to the nor'easter last week that cancelled all the Steamship Authority ferries, these little ladies were stuck on the mainland for an extra day. They were only a day old, had traveled all the way from Iowa and required heat, food, and water, none of which were available to them in the Wareham post office. We were very worried.

Only one died on the journey over, but we lost three more little ones the first few days. Now it has been a week, and the remaining 48 chicks seem healthy and strong, running speedily around their brood box in our basement. They are eating a ton, growing rapidly, and will soon be too big for their current home. We'll then move them into the chicken coop, and be enjoying (and selling) their eggs come April.

Something I love about ordering chicks is that for every order of 25, Murray McMurray-- the hatchery we ordered them from-- adds one rare breed mystery chick. We can only distinguish one of the mysteries from the others right now, and she looks like a little owl. Possibly one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

In other chicken news, our rooster has disappeared. The other day, the small flock was out roaming around when Christian heard a cacophony of screeches and squawks. Later that afternoon, the ladies returned to the coop without their king, so we can only assume it was a hawk or raccoon attack that took him down. The good news is, the rooster did his job: farms keep roosters around just for predator protection, because they sacrifice themselves for the sake of the flock. Way to go Rooster, and so long!

The Way Things Used to Be

A post by my mom, Jan Pogue, today on her Vineyard Stories blog... 

Jason, on a borrowed tractor and with a borrowed truck, loading in seaweed.

When you stand on either side of the 527 feet separating Chappaquiddick from Edgartown, you have to believe life is pretty much the same on both sides.

Five hundred twenty seven feet – the distance the Chappy ferry plies over and over every day – doesn’t seem that far.

True, it’s longer than a regulation football field at 360 feet; and true, no one has ever thrown a baseball further than 445 feet, 10 inches.

But is 527 feet really wide enough to change the way people live, to give a place for a hardier, more self-sufficient people? To provide a community where people really do help each other for no better reason than that it’s the right thing to do? To create an atmosphere that mirrors quintessential small town life from a century ago, the life that Vineyarders always describe as “the way things used to be”?

I don’t live on Chappy. Two of my children, Lily and Christian, and their friends, Jason and Collins, have only lived there since September 1. So everything I am seeing is coming through their interactions with Chappy residents and Slip Away Farm, which has been established by Lily with the help of the other three farmers.

But it is a striking vision.

When Lily’s truck broke down a few weeks ago, Gerry Jeffers, who runs the seasonal Chappy store, hitched the truck to his own and towed it across to Edgartown so Lily wouldn’t have to pay the $40 Triple A fee. When neighbor Tom Osborne came by the first time to the weekly farm stand at Slip Away and heard about the farmers’ need for a tractor, he rode up on one the next day and has now loaned it to them for several weeks.

When ferry owner Peter Wells got stuck with an unwanted and dangerous accumulation of seaweed under his dock during last week’s no’easter, he called Lily at 7 am on the second day of the storm to see if the farmers might give him a hand raking out the weed. The seaweed had already fouled one of his ferry propellers, and he knew Slip Away was collecting seaweed from all over the island to use for fertilizer.

Lily, Jason, and his sister, Kaitlin (trapped for three days on Chappy because of the storm), spent a couple of hours using clamming rakes to pull the seaweed out of the water and into two huge piles.

When Dick Knight heard they needed a dump truck to make it easier to get the seaweed to Slip Away, he left a bright red truck in their driveway on Saturday. Lily, Jason, and Collins – using the borrowed truck and the borrowed tractor – made two dump truck runs to collect the seaweed, to the delight of Chappy residents who watched from the ferry line.

There have been gifts of coffee mugs for the coffee and hot cider Lily served at the farm stand each week. Chappy residents, hearing that furniture is needed for the historic home owned by the Preservation Trust that houses the farmers, call her with offers – lamps, an ironing board, two stools for the bar, a dining room table and chairs.

Scalloping season has brought them free sea scallops. Bundles of thyme arrived from a neighbor for the front walkway that leads to the door of the house – the giver says she has tons of honey bees around her own thyme, and she wanted to make sure Lily gets the benefit. (Another neighbor, who loves honey, offered a donation to help ensure Lily establishes hives so she can sell honey next year.) Sidney Morris and his wife, Margaret Knight, knowing the Slip Away land is loaded with poison ivy, walk their goats to the farm for munching sessions. Goats eat poison ivy; one of the Morris-Knight goats is even called Ivy.

The farmers of Slip Away are working their way into the Chappy society and are learning the benefits of living in a close-knit, caring environment.

I’m a bystander in all of this, but it makes me envious. Life on a place like Chappy is clearly not wine and roses. But it has welcomed my farmers in a unique and beautiful way – just the way things used to be.

Come visit our farm stand and say hello to the pigs, chickens, rabbits, and Baxley the pup on Wednesdays afternoons 4-6 or Saturday mornings 9-11. Vegetables, Chilmark Coffee (brewed and beans) and hot apple cider for sale. Enjoy it all while catching up with neighbors and friends around a cozy fire. See you there!

Animals

So much has happened at Slip Away Farm the past few weeks.

In addition to settling ourselves into our new home, we have moved in some of our first farm animals: pigs, chickens, and rabbits, oh my.

We have two pigs on loan to us from the Farm Institute. It is the ideal situation, because the Farm Institue pays for the grain, and we put in the labor of feeding and caring for them and get to have the benefit of pigs on our land. They act like little rototillers, pulling up poison ivy and briars with their sturdy noses. I love pigs. They have huge personalities and are constantly amusing, particularly when they are feeling enthusiastic and psyched on life. They leap and twist in the air, kick their heals up, and bound and skip across their pen. It is endlessly entertaining, and I am always left smiling and wondering how such heavy animals can find the energy to bound so effortlessly.

We also bought ten two-year-old hens, a mix of Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons, with the hope that they would keep our household well supplied in eggs. Despite a luxurious and cushy chicken home, however, these hens seem to have decided against laying. Usually every two or three days we find an egg or two. I always praise the ladies heavily, but no amount of kind words has yet encouraged them to lay more.

In order to boost up the flock, we ordered fifty chicks that will arrive in the mail in two weeks. We will brood them in the basement and then move them in with the other chickens in a few months. If all goes as planned and the old hens don't teach the new hens their bad laying habits, they should be laying come April. Once that happens, we will hopefully have plenty of eggs for ourselves and to sell at our farm stand.

Old Evil Eye

Our friend Meg gave us a rooster and he struts around proudly and tries to look menacing to all who enter his chicken castle. Despite his small size, I have to admit that I am sometimes a little bit intimidated by him, and he knows it and plays me for the wimp I am. I swear he gives me the evil eye, so I am always careful to keep a good distance between us. I just hope the hawks feel intimidated too.

And finally, we have three sliver-fox rabbits given to us by our friend Taz. As some of you may remember from a post early in the summer, I have already tried and failed at rabbit raising for Slip Away Farm. After much encouragement from Taz (who also gave me that first rabbit, Harvey aka Cottontail), we decided to try again. These three ladies are pretty adorable. Almost too cute to eat. But the plan is to raise them for a few months, breed them with another silver fox, and then have their babies for meat next fall.

The other news this week is: Jason caught a fish! When we moved to Chappy, Jason-- who used to fish as a kid on the Vineyard-- started fishing frequently. After many trips without a bite, I learned that the point of fishing is not necessarily to catch a fish. Apparently, it is sometimes more about being out in a beautiful spot at a beautiful time of the day and enjoying the act of fishing rather than being about bringing home the big one. Actually hooking a fish is an added bonus. I stopped hopefully asking each time Jason returned: "Did you catch one??" And just when I was forgetting altogether that sometimes the result of fishing is an actual fish, Jason returned home on Monday night with a beautiful, foot and a half long bluefish. We grilled him whole and had him for supper. So good!

Many thanks to Alan Muney for the chicken and rooster photos.

Farm Stand

On Wednesdays from 4-6:30, starting this week, we will have a stand set up at the farm on Chappy. We'll have plenty of fresh vegetables as well as locally roasted Chilmark Coffee for sale both as beans and brewed. The farm is located just across the street from Brine's Pond and the Chappy Community Center. Hope to see you there!

The Chicken Coop

I have a great family friend, John Pratt, who has been a remarkable resource over the last year. My family has know the Pratt family since I was in the first grade with their daughter, Caroline in Georgia. Remarkably, the Pratt family is a mirror image of my family: an older boy, a middle girl, and a younger boy, all of us the same ages. We all grew up together and even now manage to see each other every so-often, mainly on Martha's Vineyard where the Pratt's come to vacation every summer.

John is a  lawyer in Atlanta who offered me pro bono lawyer work when I first started Slip Away. He helped me establish the farm as a LLC, saved a website address for us, organized business matters with my investors, and tightened up my business plan and budgets. His help navigating the confusing business/legal world while also providing general enthusiasm and advice was a tremendous gift in itself.

And then he offered an even bigger gift. In addition to being a lawyer, John is also a skilled carpenter. He builds beautiful things, and decided he wanted to build Slip Away Farm a chicken coop. He decided to use his one-week vacation in August on Martha's Vineyard as the time to build it. Collins was able to help him, and together they planned and began the building. They put it together it in pieces on the Vineyard, which we then loaded on to a dump truck and brought over to assemble on Chappy.

John's vacation ended two weeks ago and he headed home, leaving Collins in charge. He and Jason have been working diligently on it, and it is now recognizable as a chicken house. They have some of the shingles up, the four big windows will be going in shortly, along with the nest boxes and the most beautiful door a chicken house has ever seen.

The whole thing is on skids, so we will be able to move it around the farm, relocating the chickens to peck at and fertilize new sections of ground. The house has enough room for roughly 60 chickens, which will provide us with a steady supply of fresh eggs to sell. Can't wait.

A Little Bit Distracted

I admit I have been neglecting the blog for the past few weeks. I do have what I consider to be two good excuses, however: 1) The end of August was insanely busy and 2) I now live in a house with no internet (or consistent cell phone service).

The end of August is a tough time on the Island: the summer crowds are at their max, and there is a desperate feeling in the air as tourists try to cram in the last of their summer vacation, and many Island business owners try to make their money, knowing that the demand for their product or service is about to drop dramatically. These last few weeks of summer, we increased the produce we brought to Farmer's Market significantly, finishing plantings of vegetables at a remarkable rate.

While trying to meet the summertime Market demand, we also worked to prepare our field for fall crops, planting the broccoli, cauliflower, kale, lettuce, carrots, beets, spinach, radishes, arugula, etc. that will see us through to the first heavy frost. Our successful summer CSA encouraged us to try a five-week fall CSA, so we scrambled to get the cool weather crops in on-time.

In addition to working full-force in our Katama field, we prepared to move ourselves and the farm (bit by bit) over to our new property on Chappaquiddick. We spent one Sunday brush mowing until it was so dark that we could no longer see where we were running our mowers, excited to clear out some of the poison ivy and brambles in areas that will eventually become our vegetable fields.

We borrowed a dump truck from Beetlebung Tree Care and moved furniture, boats, and a chicken coop (more on that later) over to Chappy, three roundtrip rides on the Chappy ferry. We unpacked all of our boxes and settled in to our new farm and our new farmhouse, which I still have a hard time believing is ours. I keep reminding myself that this is our land, our house (at least for the next five years, anyway), finding it difficult to grasp the enormity of it all. We are just so lucky.

Last night, a double rainbow filled the sky over the farmhouse, and Jason and I walked our fields in awe of the beauty of the place. It almost felt as if the sky was welcoming in fall, saying goodbye to summertime in a spectacular array of colors.

Mid August

A quick update from Slip Away Farm: 

This is the week of the Agricultural Fair in West Tisbury and we got a little carried away and entered 14 different vegetables into the commercial grower's categories. We won some ribbons, and Christian and I are already planning for next years competition: anyone have any good ideas for the "Vegetable Sculpture" category? Never to early to plan ahead...

Some of my favorite entries at the fair were a coffin brimming with vegetables submitted by Ghost Island Farm and the best in show prize winner by our friend Ellie who made a chicken entirely out of flowers. I love the fair. 

Market has been busy, busy, busy. August is really a bustling month on the Island and we have been attempting to fill some of the demand for local veggies. We are so fortunate to be starting the farm at a time when local produce is such a hot commodity; it seems like most of the vegetable farmers are doing good business at the West Tis Market and pretty much selling out of produce every week. 

The really big news this week is that we are officially moving the farm to Chappaquiddick in two weeks, a plan that has been in the works for awhile and is now finally happening. We have been granted an affordable lease for a three bedroom farmhouse from the 1700's and seven acres of land. It is a five year lease, and an incredible opportunity for a farmer on Martha's Vineyard where land is expensive and limited and year-round housing difficult to find. Christian, Collins, Jason, and myself will all be living in the house and working the land together. Very, very exciting. 

And for my friend Annie, lots of photos in this week's post: 

Green Apple Eggplant

Blue ribbon carrots, waiting to go to the Fair

Okra

Newly planted baby lettuce

Sunrise on Market Morning

Purple Kolrabi

Tomatoes

Heirlooms

Our tomatoes are in! Nothing beats the flavor of a summertime field tomato, and I have been eating tomato sandwiches non-stop, picking up a loaf of bread and some cheese or mayonnaise for lunchtime.

Unfortunately the birds like them too: just as the fruits begin to turn red, the birds, thirsty from all the dry weather this season, peck at them to get to the juices inside, ruining the tomato. In order to prevent this at Slip Away, we strung colorful, reflective string throughout the field to spook them away from the plants. We also pick the tomatoes a day or two early and allow them to fully ripen off the vine, safely away from the thirsty birds. 

We will have plenty of 'maters at the West Tisbury Market tomorrow, so come stop by and pick up a few for lunch. 

Bike Deliveries

In addition to selling our produce at the West Tisbury Farmer's Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, we have sixteen CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members who receive vegetables from us on a weekly basis for ten weeks during the summer.

Most of our members live on Chappaquiddick, the little island separated from Martha's Vineyard by a two-minute ferry ride, where we will be moving the farm in September. There are currently no vegetable production farms on Chappy, so residents in search of local veggies (who do not already have their own gardens) must take the ferry over to the Vineyard.


All except for our shareholders. For the eleven members we have on Chappy, we deliver vegetables weekly right to their doorsteps. Our delivery systems is pretty unique: Collins, a bike enthusiast, built us insulated bike trailers made out of plywood, old bed frames and insulation foam. We load all of our vegetables into re-usable bags, place the bags inside the cooler, and then pedal from Katama to the Chappy ferry, and over to our shareholders' homes. 


Although we use only one trailer for each delivery, two people are required for every trip. Most of the roads on Chappy are dirt. And in all this dry weather, dirt means sand. So at some points, it is as if the road has turned into the beach. With his hefty, fat tires and mad biking skills, Collins pulls the trailer the entire ride, which takes a couple hours. Then at the sandiest sections, the second person (usually Christian) is needed: he hops off his bike and pushes the trailer from behind. 


The road gets tough and the deliverers work hard, but the veggies stay cool and crisp inside their insulated cooler. 

July 17

Missing Rain

I took this photo at the farm several weeks ago and we have not had rain since. The farm is so dusty that every day I come home covered in an even layer of Katama dirt.

Our irrigation system is sadly inadequate, and we are constantly having to decide which area of the bone-dry field is most desperate for water. We shuffle our sprinklers and hoses around multiple times a day, running them all day and all night long. We water one area for eight hours and by the next day, all the water has already leached out of the sandy soil or evaporated into the air. 

Luckily all of our mulched beds containing tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, melons, onions, and leeks are retaining moisture a little bit longer than our un-mulched beds; All that hard work mulching our field with cardboard, seaweed and grass clipping this spring is now paying off.

We have a small chance of thunderstorms this weekend. Fingers are crossed.

The 4th of July

Our Fourth started early. Christian, Collins, and I met at 5:30 to begin harvesting for Farmer's Market. The field is particularly gorgeous at that hour. The light highlights perfectly the wide range of colors in the field, and the plants have not yet taken on their wilted appearance that happens later in the heat of the day. At that early hour, all our vegetables and flowers seem particularly robust, vibrant and healthy. 


This day, it was tricky to determine the amounts to bring with us to West Tisbury: we had all agreed that because of the holiday, the market was either going to be slammed or completely dead, no telling which. We erred on the optimistic side and decided to harvest fairly heavily in hopeful anticipation of a crowded market. 


We picked: two brimming boxes of huge broccoli crowns; 27 bunches of our sweet sugar beets (we sell out of them every market); 3 dozen heads of lettuce; many bunches of chard, kale, mizuna, and arugula; 15 bunches of scallions and spring onions; a bushel of new potatoes and one of shelling peas; and just a few bunches of our new baby carrots. 


Around 6:30 it started to rain. Rain on market day causes a farmer's heart to sink. It creates a nervous, nauseous feeling for all growers who are dependent on a market for their week's income. Rain means customers stay home, choosing to hole up with take-out pizza or leftovers rather then adventure out into bad weather to buy local produce. For us (and many farmer's) rain means we end up composting a majority of our early morning harvest.

As we drove to West Tisbury, I just kept thinking "Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no," my hopes of a busy market being pushed down by a continuous drizzle. We could see the same disappointment on the faces of other vendors as some chose to set up inside the Grange Hall, protected from the rain. On a friend's iphone, we watched the radar as a swirl of green and yellow patches representing rain moved rapidly across the image of Martha's Vineyard. Oh no oh no oh no oh no.


We set up the stand on the porch of the Grange, hopeful that we would have a good spot for the few customers who showed up that day. Our table looked the best it has ever looked, with all our veggies piled up high.

The bell rang, signifying the beginning of market....

... fifteen minutes went by and, despite the rain letting up, hardly a customer wondered over to our table....

... and then.....

we were suddenly SLAMMED! The Market was packed with people picking up produce, flowers, jams, meats, and shellfish for the holiday. We watched as our piles of produce quickly diminished and then entirely disappeared. We sold out of everything. All those beets. All those potatoes. All that broccoli. All those peas. Gone! Just a very few heads of lettuce left at the end of the day.

So this post serves as a big thank you to all those customers who, despite a little drizzle, made it to market and made our day.

Robbing the Crop

Despite relentless potato beetle attacks all spring, our first plantings of potatoes are thriving, and some of them just started flowering this weekend. The purple and yellow blossoms are a welcome sign: they tell us that little baby spring potatoes are waiting just below the soil. Farmers can harvest the crop at flowering for "new" potatoes; otherwise, we wait for the plant tops to wither, and harvest full size, mature potatoes later in the season.

Although I want to wait for the potatoes to get at least a little bit bigger before we harvest them, I couldn't resist taking a few home for lunch. While ominous clouds gathered overhead, and Christian worked to finish some weeding, I reached my hands under the lush potato plants and dug my fingers into the cool soil, searching out the little pink orbs. I "robbed" just a few from several plants, allowing them to continue living so the potatoes I left behind will reach full size later this summer.

As big raindrops, thunderclaps and lightening moved in, Christian and I quickly gathered some broccoli and spring onions and put everything away.

Our potatoes, onions, Beetlebung Farm's carrots and rosemary are now roasting together in the oven, and in a few minutes, we'll lightly cook some broccoli and sugar snap peas to complete the meal. We'll invite our Mom to join us and together the three of us will enjoy a rainy day, summertime treat.

Brother and Sister

Christian and Lily at the end of the day. 

Farmer's Market

Come find us and our delicious vegetables at the West Tisbury Farmer's Market, every Wednesday and Saturday 9-12. Hope to see you there!

Lucky

The other day Collins turned to me and said, "Lily.... how did you get so lucky?"

After thinking on it for a few days, I still can't figure out how I got so lucky, but I sure am feeling it these days...

The field is filling up, and everything is looking beautiful, strong, and healthy. I have Collins, Christian, Jason, or volunteer friends out there with me every day, and we have been able to stay on top of all our seeding, planting, weeding, harvesting, and mowing.

Farmer's Market started last week and I have been overwhelmed by all the positive energy and good purchasing from customers, friends, family (my mom is our #1 fan), and other farmers.

The Scottish Bakehouse has allowed us to sell a few six-pack plants on a self-serve stand in their parking lot, and already many of our extra vegetables have found their way to gardens all over the Island.

And get this stroke of luck: Our Farm Institute field neighbor, the Pig, escaped from her pen the other day, ran all the way across our field, and somehow managed to not stomp on a single vegetable or flower while on her mad dash. Lucky us!

I am doing what I love to do, in a place I truely love, with the people I love most. Lucky, indeed.

Compost

Farmer minds think alike.

We weren't together all day. I don't even think we talked on the phone. And yet Collins and I both ended up with the same reminder scratched on our hands:

Clouds

The weather has been so variable this spring. Last week, it was close to seventy degrees and sunny every day. I was working in shorts and bare feet. We were so hot one afternoon that we went straight to South Beach after work for a quick dip in the still cold ocean. Summertime had arrived.

Until this week. Cold, rainy, windy. Instead of shorts, we've been fully suited up in layers of sweaters and rain gear. The wind in Katama is absolutely ferocious and I was worried as I watched all our broccoli and kale bending dramatically until they were horizontal on the soil. Our sunflowers and tomatoes, waiting to be planted, took a beating in their seed trays, the edges of their leaves turning black from wind burn.

But, the worst of the bad weather for the week is over, and we seem to have come out alright. Today, our vegetables could stand up straight again. And we could breath a little easier while taking in the spectacular sight of the clouds rolling over the Katama plains.

So Long Harvey

Harvey arrives at Slip Away Farm

I was so excited three weeks ago when my friend Taz gave me a bunny, my first farm animal. The little guy (pre-named Cottontail and re-named Henry and then re-re-named Harvey) went to work every day, busily mowing and fertilizing the grass pathways between some of our beds. Collins and I built him a rabbit run with wheels and a wire bottom so we could scoot him around the field easily multiple times a day.

Among the Kale

On the days that I was at the farm alone, Harvey kept me in quiet company.

We were even working up to a real bunny/owner relationship: he was just starting to let me scratch him lightly behind his ears without running to the corner of his cage where I couldn't reach him.

And then.... a few days ago I noticed Harvey's munching was slowing down. He didn't eat all the pelleted rabbit food I left for him that night, and his fertilization came to almost a complete halt. By Thursday night, he looked really really sick. I'm pretty sure he was pale under all that white fur. His eyes looked a little off. He was squeaking. And he let me hold him. That never, never would of happened unless he felt completely rotten.

I knew things were not looking good. I called Taz-- a rabbit connoisseur of sorts-- and we talked through a few rabbit symptoms.

Were his ears hot? Rabbits regulate their body temperature through their ears, so if he was overheating, we would have felt it there. They didn't seem particularly hot.

Was he crouched up really tight? This would signal gastro-intestinal issues. But he didn't seem any more crouched than usual.

Was he grinding his teeth? Its a signal of rabbit pain. No teeth grinding in Harvey.

Turns out it is difficult to diagnose rabbit illnesses. I made a nest of tall grass for him to curl up on, gave him a bowl of fresh water, and left him for the night, only mildly encouraged by his feeble attempts at eating and drinking.

And in the morning, our little mowing machine and first farm animal died. Poor guy. I buried him in our field, and planted a few sunflowers on the spot.

Goodbye Harvey Henry Cottontail!

What's for Dinner?

D'avignon Radishes....

.... plus Trout Back Speckled Romaine Lettuce...

.... and Mermaid Farm's Feta

Seaweed

Walla Walla onions mulched with seaweed

Seaweed bed waiting for tomatoes

   

We are so lucky to live in a place with access to seaweed. Seaweed is full of micronutrients that benefit the soil and vegetables. We have been mulching some of our beds with cardboard, seaweed and grass clippings in order to keep the weeds down and to boost the health of our vegetables. In addition to reducing the weed pressure, mulching helps lock in soil moisture, prevents erosion, and maintains soil structure which encourages healthy bug habitats. Usually farmers mulch with expensive and labor intensive straw or use black plastic which shreds at the end of the season when you try to remove it, leaving bits of plastic in the soil.  Seaweed, although labor intensive, is free and has the double bonus of composting into the soil, leaving lush, healthy topsoil. 

A Day Of Gifts

One day last week was a day of gifts. First, my friend Mackenzie called to say that she had found an old wheel-hoe at the thrift store, purchased it, and left it there for me to pick up (since she was on her bike and  the bus and couldn't bring it to me herself). Excited, I went right over to Chicken Alley to retrieve it and found out to my dismay that it is an old Earthway tool-- definitely worth over 50 bucks, most likely closer to 100, that Mac purchased for TEN dollars! It has three different cultivating tools that can be attached to it. That Earthway will make managing our weeds at Slip Away significantly easier. Thanks to whoever left that at Chicken Alley and thanks to Mac for finding it!

Later in the day, Jason came for a visit and a little bit of work. He is always pretty busy farming up at Beetlebung Farm these days, but slips away to Slip Away whenever he can. Always nice to have him. And this time he brought the another gift of the day: a beautiful table Collins made for us to bring to Farmer's Market. Our friend Greg gave us a whole bunch of scrap mahogany decking to use for the project, and its sturdy and seems like it will last forever.

The wheel hoe and our new table

Finally, Collins showed up with the last gift of the day... my weakness... a snickers. Yes, I'm a farmer who loves snickers. No ones perfect, right?

Farm Visits

Jason and I spent the weekend off-Island, for a combination farm visit & vacation getaway. The vacation getaway was to a family friend's house in Vermont. We only spent two days there but left feeling relaxed and happy.

We visited two farms while off-island. The first one was Vanguarden Farm, a CSA in the suburbs of Boston run by Chris Yoder. Chris has some incredible systems down pat... we were particularly impressed by his smooth "remaying" skills. Remay-- a light, white cloth that is put over row crops in order to protect the veggies from pests, wind, and cold temperatures-- is notoriously difficult to put on a field. I prefer to put remay on with four people: two people unrolling the remay and two people with wide hoes burying the edges heavily to anchor it down. It kills your back if you are burying for too long and takes forever. If a wind comes up (as it always does out at Katama), the job gets infinitely more difficult. I have never even attempted to put remay on a bed by myself.

Not Chris. He grows year round and gets crops started early by using remay on a lot of his field. I got the sense that he frequently remays by himself-- he has a wheel hoe with an implement attached that digs a little trench and tosses dirt evenly on the remay edge while the operator walks along quickly. He also uses his cultivating tractor to bury the edges: the wheel of the tractor pulls the remay tight and the tines kick dirt on the remay, weighing it down evenly. Compared to the system I've always known, it takes Chris half the time and half the people to remay beds.  Impressive. And easy.

The second farm we visited was Natural Roots Farm in Conway, Massachusetts. Natural roots-- owned by David Fisher and his wife Anna-- is a horse powered CSA. No tractors anywhere on the farm. When you arrive at the farm, you park near their farmstand and then walk over the river to the field on a swinging bridge. David, like Chris, also has his systems all figured out perfectly. His fields are precisely   squared and his rows of crops straight as a pin. Hard to do, but necessary in order to be able to cultivate accurately with horses and to utilize every inch of space.

This was my second visit to Natural Roots and I was as impressed as my first. David has such an intensive system of weed control through cover cropping and stale bedding (leaving a field unplanted and lightly tilling every time weeds germinate in order to flush out multiple generations of weeds) that it is realistic that one day he will have no weeds at all. NO weeds!

The swinging bridge leading to Natural Roots Farm

I never want to be stagnant as a farmer or stuck in my ways. I want to be continually evolving and adapting and changing and the best way to do this, I believe, is by talking with other farmers and seeing other systems that work. Something I like about farming is that you can constantly do something better or different. Learned a lot from seeing Chris and David's farms, and I hope to put some of that good info to use at Slip Away.

Remay on our field at Slip Away.
And thats our mowing bunny in the center. 

Apollo and Zeus

These boys belong to the Farm Institute and we are lucky enough to work with them this season. They are still pretty young but are proving to be handy to have around. In an ideal world, Slip Away Farm would be a completely animal-powered operation some day, so it is nice for us to gain some experience as oxen teamsters. I've always dreamed of using horses on my farm, but oxen might just win me over.

Both oxen act like teenagers who want to be treated as adults but who just can't quite control themselves all the time. Thats Apollo on the left. He is generally pretty sweet and easy going and eager to please. Zeus, on the other hand, is obstinate as they come, slightly lazy and often overly dramatic. If he gets it in his head to act up, poor Apollo-- who wants nothing but to do what we humans ask of him-- gets dragged along by Zeus' bad manners. They are quite the pair.

Pulling flats to the field

Christian, the oxen, and the tine harrow