change of season

And so summer has turned into fall. I was not the least bit sad to see it go.

I've never had any particular affection for fall, even though my birthday is in October. This year, though, I am relishing the change of season. The cooler weather means I can wear scarves and sweaters and boots, and sip warm tea in the afternoon, and the world is tinted gold. But it also seems like a mimicking of my feelings right now - I feel happy caught up in shifting seasons.

I am one month into the first semester of my second year at university. People ask if I still love it. Absolutely. More so than I ever did before. I love it when my head bubbles over with ideas and new information. (And, I must admit, I love the independence I have too.)

One of these new ideas: For a project recently, I've been interviewing local farmers. In my second interview with one farmer, I asked him why he got into farming. His reply stopped me in my tracks:

"I got into farming because there weren't too many things I could do for work that I thought could contribute to the kind of world that I wanted to exist in. And I couldn't find anything with farming that was compromising with what I thought was right. So. I got into farming. I was inspired by people who were self-sufficient and could grow their own food, you know, build their own buildings, fix their own stuff, and generate their own energy, and didn't rely on other people, didn't rely on institutions. Um...that's why I got into farm. I wanted to live close to the land and interact with the land. Because we live on a planet, and I wanted to take full advantage of getting to live on a planet. Like Earth – where you can grow stuff. And then, you know, reading different people, books, talking with different people. That's how I got into it. And I just thought: if you can grow your own food you don't really have to worry about anything. And if you're not worried about starving then you don't have to worry about anything, really. Course, there's always things to worry about – like, whatever. But I thought on a basic level if I could grow my own food I'd feel really secure. And it would be really empowering. And it is. I was right. It is really empowering."

My favorite line: "...we live on a planet, and I wanted to take full advantage of getting to live on a planet."

There will be more posts coming. In the month following the end of my internship I wasn't sure how to approach blogging in this space. Now I know. This my journal and in it I will explore living on a planet. I will take full advantage of getting to live on a planet.

the last day

My internship at Side by Side Farm is finished.

And how is that? How is it that it all happened so quickly? Didn't I just learn how to transplant things? Or what harvest days are like? Or starting seeds? Wasn't that all yesterday?

First thing this morning, Devin and I harvested the revived kale. I flicked and squished Harlequin beetles as I went along breaking off the leaves. Then we went on to the chard and Devin had already gotten the basil. He also cut open a cantaloupe he'd just snatched off the vine. It was unlike any other I've ever had - milky, creamy. We set up shade cloth over some radishes before heading down the hill. Jean had tanks of water ready for cooling and cleaning the greens. I'm familiar now with the process - pour them in, press them down into the water gently, let soak, bunch and shake dry.

This week in the share we had: basil, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants or sweet peppers, hot peppers, baby fennel, okra, garlic, shallots, and the the greens were up for grabs.

I wrote up the chalkboard sign and the notes attached to the CSA member checklist. After picking some flowers for the spring house, we tidied up the wash station a little. "Mission accomplished," Devin said. "You have completed a farm internship." And so I said my goodbyes and headed out. I was a walking feast, with my share, a brown bag of shiitake mushrooms (fresh off the log), goat cheese and eggs. In the full, glorious sun I backed my car up the narrow gravel driveway and was gone.

starting seeds for winter

Yesterday morning, with the sun to our backs and the frame of an ironing board as our table, Devin and I started seeds for the winter CSA.

We started lettuce, leeks, kale, komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach), napa cabbage, bok choi and radicchio. They will begin their life in these containers. We filled the containers with potting soil, created little indentations with our fingers or the back end of a pen, watered the soil, dropped in the seeds, covered them and re-watered. Each flat is then labeled and transfered to some place that will best suit the seed's needs. When they've germinated and become hardy enough, they'll be transplanted into the greenhouse.

And so I got to play some part in the makings of a winter CSA, though I'll be away at school when these seeds turn into edible things.

shift and change

Since coming home from Maine and returning to my mornings on the farm, I've found myself taking less photographs. I think this is because I'm more involved in the work we're doing. Now I have my bearings. 

So I have no images to offer you today, only words. 

We got a good bit done. We harvested the last of the summer beets and carrots. Devin will now be able to mow down those beds and possibly prepare them for fall and winter crops. Then we cultivated the fall brassicas planted a little over a month ago. It's really not strenuous work - gently cutting away weeds with well sharpened gooseneck hoes - but it makes a difference. Far better to do it now, before everything triples in size. Once that field was done we moved on to several others, put shade cloth over the fall chinese cabbages, picked cucumbers, surveyed the frustratingly unproductive eggplants, then washed the beets and carrots. After a brief discussion over how to organize the explosive yield of heirloom tomatoes, Devin and I sorted through them, making boxes of large, medium, and little ones. (I'm rather proud of the fact that I'm learning to identify varieties of tomatoes: the cherokee purple and pineapple are probably my favorite two.) 

When I come home from the farm (around 11:00 or 12:00) I am, without exception, filthy dirty. I shed my red wellies at the door, and my socks too. It takes days of washing to clean all the soil out from under my fingernails and I currently have poison ivy on all of my limbs. 

But Devin asked me today what I thought of my internship so far. I have loved it - all of it, every part. Working on the farm has been like being exposed to a new culture. Which is fitting, as I am an anthropology major. It has been eye opening. It has stretched my body: all the weeding, cultivating, carrying large crates of heavy vegetables, all the bending and lifting. It has stretched my mind: Devin is constantly teaching me. Like today while we were putting the shade cloth over the chinese cabbages, he explained to me why he does this, how it effects the overall crop growth, how much the cloth cost per foot, how that differs from the price of row cover, etc. When we weed he'll tell me what the weeds are that we're pulling out: purslane, lambsquarters, nightshade. 

I am not the same person for having spent my summer in this way. 

schools with farms

Now that I am home again and all our holidays are behind me, my mind has shifted to thinking about school - which I'll be returning to in twenty-five days. But I am still working at Side by Side, so I started wondering about a coming together of farming and academics.

Bennington College's Sustainable Food Project was the first thing of this sort I ever came across. In 2010, students put in a proposal (read it here) to create a new student garden that would benefit everyone on campus: the students themselves, the faculty and the staff. The plot they wished to use was part of the already existing community garden. The proposal was accepted, two student interns were hired to tend the garden in the summer and the project took off. They now call their spot of ground Purple Carrot Farm.

Further North, the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine has a sustainable organic farm that is managed by COA students, staff, faculty and farm managers. Beech Hill Farm is an outlet for the students to conduct projects, designs, studies or participate in work-study time but it also serves the community. Produce is sold on site and to several eateries on Mount Desert Island, it's served in one of the college's cafes, and they also have a CSA. The seventy-three acres were donated to the college in 1999 by two alumni.

Devin worked on Fulton Farm at Wilson College and, from what I hear, gained a wealth of knowledge and experience there. (And that is, oddly enough, him in the image above. The fellow to the right.)

Most recently, my one friend who has been touring colleges in preparation for applying told me about the farm at Dickinson College. It's sixty acres several miles off campus. A large part of the (certified organic) harvest is served in the dinning halls, but they also have a CSA (Campus Supported Agriculture) that has over a hundred and thirty members in the community and they sell their produce at local markets and restaurants, plus they donate some to Project SHARE. Beyond the veggies, they also have animal life: sheep, cattle, and hens. The students are a major part of this operation; they can work, intern, volunteer, or incorporate it into their academic work.

This is by no means an exhaustive list; these are merely the farms at schools I've come across. There are many, many more all over the country. And that's encouraging, really.



images: one/two/three/four

planting fall crops

What we did yesterday was real farming.
That's what Devin said. By which I think he means the work we did was pretty intense.
I hope that's what he means, at least. Because it was.

We planted a couple fall crops - broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce - in a field Devin let lie fallow for a year or two. The very first time I came to the farm, back in March (when I was considering doing my internship there), the chickens were situated on this very spot. Tuesday the grasses and weeds were mowed down and soil was prepared with Jean's David Bradley. 

Devin ran the roto tiller down the field, creating a furrow. Into that furrow we sprinkled alfalfa meal and crushed mollusk shells, which are high in calcium. It gives the plants an extra boost, since they take so much calcium from the soil (hence why brassicas, the family broccoli and cauliflower are in, are so rich in calcium). Then the plants were dropped in, pre-watered, covered up, and water again. And we watered downhill, starting at the steepest point so that it naturally ran down the trench.

As the sun rose over the trees, the temperature climbed. It wasn't nearly so hot as last week - that would have been brutal. It was just in the upper eighties, I believe.

I got to run the roto tiller for the first time. It's a beast of a machine that lurches when you run over a large rock and is tricky to turn around. But I got a feel for all the levers and switches. I prepped a section of the field; I couldn't yet manage to dig a furrow (not a straight one, anyway).

We planted six very long rows.

Around nine or nine thirty, a mass of dragonflies came out. Looking up now and then, I watched them crazily buzzing about. And the blue bird came by too. Ruby was our companion in the morning; she rode in the truck with us up to the field and took to standing in the furrows Devin made.

on diversity and preservation

Exactly a year ago, I came across this image in the July 2011 issue of National Geographic: 

It's a comparison of the varieties of seeds available a century ago versus those found in the National Seed Laboratory in 1983. The change eighty years had is shocking and I think after read the article I told people about it for days. 288 of beets! Now we have seventeen. The diagram shows 554 varieties of cabbage. Now a mere twenty eight are left. Charles Seibert writes in the article that "In the United States an estimated 90 percent of our historic fruit and vegetable varieties have vanished."

One of the first things I did at the farm was start seeds with Devin. On a rainy day, we went into the house, sat on the floor and he showed me his collection of seed packets; so many kinds of melons, of tomatoes, of greens. Now, as we're harvesting them, I'm learning some of their names. The other day we harvested a type of garlic called "music." There are tomatoes called "pineapple" and "noir." When we shop solely at the grocery store I don't think we get the whole picture. For all the choices we have there and the bounty we seem to have access to, we've lost the diversity our ancestors took for granted just a few decades ago.

The importance of having a diversity of plant varieties isn't all about aesthetics (as in a honey colored variegated tomato v. a plain red one) or even taste. Certain varieties developed and were bred so they would be adapted to a specific environment; the local environment. But in an attempt to produce the greatest yields, farmers began and now continue to favor plants that are meant to adapt to many kinds of environments. These plants are genetically engineered and biologically less stable than the heirloom varieties.

And it isn't just seeds. There are heritage breeds of livestock; chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs.

Though the biodiversity side of this issue is widely important, I feel the cultural impact is critical as well. An extinct breed or variety is a cultural artifact that has been lost. The result is generalization. Societies shift and change, true, but we need to remember that the story of people cannot be separated from the story of the land.


I highly recommend reading the article from National Geographic. And also this post from RAFI-USA.
For heirloom seeds, I suggest taking a look at Baker Creek.

on my own

Today I was on my own.


Jean and Ruby greeted me when I arrived at 7:00am and Ray was around for a while, mending the greenhouse. But usually I work with Devin the whole time I'm there. Today I had to go along and work on my own. I wheel hoed. I weeded. I picked Colorado Potato Beetles off the potatoes, dropped them in a dish of water to make most of the drown, and then buried them in a mass grave (Devin I joke about this being genocide; but I feel no remorse because they really are nasty little things). I weeded and weeded and weeded some more. 

packing the shares

Wednesday was the day of the second share. It included: lettuce, chard, spring garlic, basil, beets, celery, and sugar snap peas.

The process of packing the boxes for the CSA members starts early in the morning. Devin and a helper from down the road, Bryce, were already harvesting when I arrived. They had three crates of lettuce which Jean (the owner of the farm) and I soaked and cleaned.

This is the washing station. It's somewhat strange and makeshift but it does the trick.

We picked the peas, harvested the basil and garlic and returned to the wash station. Leafy things like lettuce and basil are soaked in cold water before they're packed. Peas are rinsed and run through the salad spinner. Beets are hosed off and bunched.

As we go, we snack. Yesterday we ate sugar snaps peas while we picked and later Devin wrapped slices of tomato in a pieces of lettuce with a leaves of basil.

When there is minimal dirt left on everything, it's all carefully put into the boxes, which are then transfered to the spring house. CSA members arrive throughout the day and following days to pick up their share. Each arrival is marked by Ruby's high pitched yap.

I enjoy harvest days. I like seeing everything come together. 

moving the chickens

There are two broods of chickens on the farm: one affectionally called Guantanamo and another whose area is moved around the fields. Nomad chickens who prepare the ground and eat wild things. Today, Devin and I shifted the nomads several yards over, to a new patch of turf.

At night, the chickens are tucked up in house carts (above). So transporting them was fairly straight forward. We took down the temporary fencing, moved it, and then moved the two carts. But in the process, four little brand-spanking new peeps escaped. We gathered them up in Devin's hat while the momma hen went berzerk. 

Everything was put back in order, the chickens were let out, and the peeps reunited with their mother. 

Along with dreaming of a garden, I dream of having a brood of my own chickens. Just a couple, enough for eggs for myself and my family. Already I have a few names picked out: Penelope, Odetta, Maude, Scarlett, Honoria...

week three

This week, my third week interning, started out atrociously hot. But we got so much done.

Transplanted salad mix, scallions, sweet potatoes, squash, lettuce. Moved basil from the green house to spaces around the tomatoes. Transported a tower of cages across the field on the back of a truck. Tied up peas. Took down peas. Started the Pick-Your-Own garden.  Ran the wheel hole down aisles of beans. Found and killed Colorado Potato beetles (nasty little things). Mulched. Caged tomatoes. Weeded.

And my zeal is only growing. I feel that I'm now really getting into the rhythm of things. I'm certainly  more comfortable with all the tools we're using (not quite ready for the rototiller yet, but we're getting there) and the kinds of weeds and where to step v. where not to step. My pasty pale white skin is showing signs of darkening.

This past school semester left me rather worn out. Now, I am feeling so much more alive.