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.