Turtle Herding

A story from Jason: 

Yesterday while pulling out of our driveway to run an errand, I noticed two cars pulled over on the side of the road. The drivers, with sticks in hand, were bent over the road tapping the pavement enthusiastically.

Now, stranger things have happened on Chappy, so I briefly considered continuing on my way, but at the last moment decided that this particular incident begged for further investigation.

I got out of the truck and walked across the road to find that the stick tapping was an attempt to herd a huge snapping turtle, about the size of one my truck tires, across the road.

Despite their best efforts and all that tapping, neither driver could get the turtle to safety. It seemed to me that the main problem arose from a communication breakdown between the turtle and the drivers: The turtle appeared to be fairly determined to make it to the Slip Away side of the road, and the good sized pond that lay beyond; the drivers, however, were resolved to herd him to the opposite side of the road and into Brine’s pond. But since I am not well versed in turtle habits and mannerisms, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself.

Eventually one of the drivers got a shovel from the back of his car. After several attempts to slide the shovel underneath the turtle, he stepped back and commented that the turtle was too soft on his underside and might get hurt.  

The other driver, seeming much more adept and experienced at turtle herding, formulated a plan. If she tapped the backside of the turtle with her stick, she predicted that the turtle would jump into the air, giving the second driver enough time to slide the shovel underneath him without hurting it.

Sure enough, with one single tap, just above the tail, the turtle leapt into the air and landed neatly on the second driver’s shovel.

With a swift, yet gentle precision, the turtle was whisked across the road and laid down on the grassy banks of Brine’s pond.

Hours later, while celebrating the end of the day with a game of disc golf, Christian and I noticed a strange zig-zag trail in the sand crisscrossing our driveway. At first glance we thought it must have been a snake track. But on closer inspection, we realized it was the unmistakable trail of a giant snapping turtle, making its way steadily up our driveway, away from Brine’s pond and towards the Slip Away pond. 

I’d like to think that this snapping turtle made it to its destination, and that it didn’t mind the hold up too much. 

The winter has felt long to nearly everyone on the island… I have heard (and given) lots of grumbling and muttering about the cold and the snow and the delayed warm weather. Last years unusually early spring seems to have spoiled most of us. Now, the more normal start to the growing season with its cold nights and windy mornings seems unreasonably long. But warm weather is coming! It really is.... right?

All winter we have been making moves at our new farm on Chappaquiddick with a wide range of projects in preparation of the season.

We installed a new greenhouse, which provided some much-needed summer therapy in February and March. The greenhouse is nearly full with baby plants at this point. I have found myself telling the plants to slow down just a bit since we do not yet have good warm soil to plant them out in.

 Our chickens grew up and now strut confidently around their yard and provide us with beautiful brown eggs that we have just started selling.  Their shells are nice and tough and their yolks creamy and bright yellow. I am constantly in awe of how beautiful the ladies (and one gent too) are… their feathers are vibrant and shimmer in the sunlight. The Barred Rocks are my favorite, their black feathers turning to green in different light.

We feel fortunate to have completely sold out of our CSA shares this spring. We have fifty members on-board who will receive vegetables from us on a weekly basis throughout the summer. We have also decided to run a farm stand on the weekends, selling Chilmark Coffee beans, Mermaid Farm yogurt and feta, and a few baked goods by our friend Jean Cleary, in addition to our own produce. We hope to open the stand for the season Memorial Day weekend. Maybe you will come by for a visit? 

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!