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| D'avignon Radishes.... |
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| .... plus Trout Back Speckled Romaine Lettuce... |
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| .... and Mermaid Farm's Feta |
Monday, May 28, 2012
What's for Dinner?
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Seaweed
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| Walla Walla onions mulched with seaweed |
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| 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.
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?
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!
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.
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!
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| The swinging bridge leading to Natural Roots Farm |
Remay on our field at Slip Away.
And thats our mowing bunny in the center.
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.
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
Welcome to Slip Away Farm
Hello, all, and welcome to the Slip Away Farm blog!
We are going to try our best to keep this site updated with farm notes and photos on a regular basis to keep you all informed on the happenings at Slip Away. We hope you enjoy the posts...
We are going to try our best to keep this site updated with farm notes and photos on a regular basis to keep you all informed on the happenings at Slip Away. We hope you enjoy the posts...
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