Brian Boucheron Stuff and Also Things

First Market

Last Friday was our first harvest day, in preparation for the Ashfield Farmer’s Market Saturday morning. It was pretty exciting to finally be able to snip some edible bits off of some of the plants we’ve been staring at for more than a month now. We mostly had salad mix and spinach from the beds in the greenhouse. I remember preparing some of those beds my first weekend here, back in April. It feels like everything is growing sooooo slooooowly, but I think I just have unrealistic expectations. It sure is nice though, to sit up in the barn loft and look at the fields, with rows upon rows of thin green lines (some red and purple)… I can’t wait until they’re all thick green lines.

We also pulled up some onions that had overwintered in the field across the road. Their existence wasn’t really intentional: it was a bed that had been lost to weeds last year and mowed down to nothing before winter. But they came back, and upon pulling them up they had some nice white bulbs attached. So we made up about 35 bunches of those, which involved cleaning off the gunky layers, snipping the roots, bunching them up, and washing them off in a bucket. A lot of labor, but worth it because nobody else had fresh onions at the market. Rounding out the selection was bunches of chives, a few bunches of tarragon, and that’s it. All of this was packed up and ready for the CSA members to pick up at the market. We don’t divvy things out into boxes and drop them off anywhere, instead our members get a canvas bag with a pretty Sangha Farm logo on it, and they just come to the market and fill it up. It certainly makes things easier on us, and I think is good for the customer, as they can pick and choose only the things they want (although there is something to be said for being forced to try the new fruits and vegetables you find in your CSA share).

In addition to our meager selection of produce, we had a ton of vegetable starts to bring to the market. The van was quite full, with multiple tiers of precariously stacked flats of delicate plants. Luckily the market is only about one mile away. We got there at seven and were just finishing setup by eight thirty when the market opens. As of right now us interns don’t really have to work the market, so after hanging around and helping out a little bit, I wandered off and sat under a tree to write letters. It was a beautiful day, and tons of people came out. The market is much smaller than Rochester’s main public market, and much more social. In the center of all the tents was a constant four hour meeting of neighbors and friends (and dogs). A man in a bowler hat and bow tie came and played cello for a bit. Another man brought two tiny donkeys and walked them around while being followed by eager donkey-petters (they were amazingly soft (the donkeys)).

After writing letters for a while, I wandered to the post office and the hardware store, and got back in time to see the ice cream truck pull up in front of the town green where the market is held. It’s an old converted school bus, out of which is served locally made organic ice cream. Of course I had to sample some, and indeed the butter pecan was quite delicious.

Ooh! I forgot about the cheese. We finally got our license to make and sell cheese. What an amazingly bureaucratic process that is. I’m sure I didn’t even really hear about half of it, but from what I did hear it’s no wonder there are very few small-time dairies around.

But, we made it through all the hoops, and Maribeth cranked out as much cheese as possible before the market. She had a sample tray all set up and received many complements and sold out of everything she made. That means there will be two more does joining us, and the two does with kids still nursing will be separated at night so we can steal the morning milk at least. More milk! Unfamiliar teats! Yikes!

Visitor From Another World

Ack! It’s already Wednesday night and I haven’t written about last week or this past weekend even! Even now, at nine o’clock, I feel bad because my typing is probably keeping Adam up, and really I would enjoy sleeping very much. We’ve shifted our schedule around, so now I’m getting up at five thirty, eating breakfast and attempting to slowly start the day, and then out and working by seven. I guess that’s not crazy early. It feels it though, especially when you have to milk in the evening and aren’t really done working until eight thirty. I’ve taken to making lunch a quick sandwich, so that I can sneak off and catch a little nap before we get back to work.

We’ve been planting like mad for the past week, and all of this week. Onions onions onions leeks cabbage cabbage cabbage broccoli and other stuff I readily forget. We had a little frost scare a few nights ago, but it never materialized. The only vulnerable thing in the fields was the zucchini, so those got covered up for the night.

Most of the things we’re planting were started in the greenhouse last month. Radishes, beets, carrots, lettuce mixes, and a few other things are all that have been directly sown. The seeder is a mildly amusing little device that is filled with seed and run down the beds as its wheels churn and it digs a trench, meters out seed, fills the trench, and tamps it down. All of the rows I’ve done are far from straight. Nobody else does much better, actually. The only reason it matters is that it stinks when a hoe wont fit between the two rows due to somebody’s sloppy driving.

I had a visitor last weekend. Rachel came out from Rochester Thursday night via train. It was a rather nice visit, which we started out by hand-weeding a bed of mesclun mix. That took most of Friday actually. I milked Friday morning, just so my personal photographer could record the event and prove that I’m on a farm and learning things.

We’re finally settling into a semi-routine as far as moving all of the animals is concerned. We moved the chicken coop a few days ago, and for two or three days the hens weren’t really able to find their way back at night. So that was a chore… waiting until they were sleeping on a fence somewhere before grabbing them and putting them into the coop. That has finally stopped. The girl goats are being moved to new pasture every day… boy goats every few days. The sheep are finally out for almost a week at a time. The oxen are chewing on possibly five days of pasture per move, but are still being punks and getting out of their fence too often. Time to up the voltage.

Oh! I almost forgot… we got llamas last Sunday! Llamas have a funny looking name, and are funny looking creatures. Everything about them is weird and they scare me and they smell and I really really dislike them. Llamas sure do spit when agitated. And perhaps you think “Gee Brian. Getting spit on isn’t too terrible, is it?”… and I say yes. Yes it is, because this is llama spit and LLAMAS DON’T BRUSH THEIR TEETH, OK? It is a foul substance that you could only simulate by fermenting the essence of dog breath with a touch of vomit and moldy sock.

I’d have photos here of said llamas, but I really don’t feel like getting my camera all smelled up. Maybe I’ll risk it soon, just so you can see the freak show yourselves. Until then… I require slumber.

Lawnmunchers

Back when I was a youngster, I was forced to spend many hours upon a tractor, mowing acres upon acres of foolish lawn, huffing exhaust and damaging my hearing all the while (thanks parents!). As I sat on my buttocks for extended periods of time, I would often set my mind to thinking upon different fantastical technologies one could use to trim grass with less pain and more ease. Most of what I came up with was nebulously defined at best, but it usually involved laser beams.

Yes indeed. Obviously laser beams would, at the push of a button (perhaps after turning a key or some other nuclear launch button safety device), shoot out over your lawn at the specified height, neatly snipping the tips of every blade in sight, perhaps even incinerating the trimmings (if you’re the bag-em-up type). I envisioned this system as one you would install once, with the beams and mirrors placed in all the right spots to get behind every tree and down into every contour of the lawn. Ever afterwards, your juvenile life would be free of toil and full of recreation and joy.

I am now reminded of this technology every time we move the animals and their portable electric fences. They each have their own munching styles, but in general the combination of energized fences and hungry hungry animals ensures a laser-like cut of grass… every single blade right up to the fence line. When I move fence I feel like I am setting up my childhood Lazer-Mow system, defining the boundaries and coordinates within which the grass shall be trimmed to my specifications. Up and down hills, over gullies, around trees and rocks. Nothing fazes the herbivorous lawnmowing machine.

Best of all, it’s also fertilizing the soil, reseeding the pasture, generating meat or milk or wool or oxen-power, the only noise is some cute bleating or the occasional moo, and it’s much less odiferous than a tractor. It feels like a much better use of technology, to gently guide nature with some solar powered fence chargers and a roll of fence, instead of trying to dominate it completely with hundreds of pounds of iron and gasoline and hours of someone’s precious time.

Rainy Days

I seem to keep getting yelled at for my blog inaction. I guess my five readers are desperate for farm-based updates. This past weekend was a rainy and semi-lazy one. It actually started on Thursday with a rainy and cold day, which kept us inside for most everything but the chores. It felt like a weird day of waiting to work but not doing anything, and I got a little screwed up. It really wasn’t a day off in my brain, but I tried to make that mental transition, knowing that we’d have to make up time on Saturday or Sunday.

Friday was equally cold and rainy. We had a mob of children come visit the farm, which was… entertaining. I took some photos and then ran and hid in the barn. They appeared to enjoy seeing all of the animals and petting lambs and whatnot. If I recall my field-trip days though, they were probably just happy to be outside, roughhousing and doing nothing constructive.

Saturday and Sunday continued the trend of cold and rain. We moved animals on Sunday, just so we could say we got some durn work done for once. Oh, and also because the oxen kept getting out of their fence, due to the fact that they had eaten up all their pasture, and oh look, there’s green grass right over there!

Oh! So that’s a good story, I suppose. One of the goats was due to kid on Friday. So after the kids (human) all left and Derek and Maribeth left the farm to go do something, I go outside to check on the goat and make sure there’s no signs of labor yet. But there was a rather prominent sign, that being a baby goat on the ground, covered in goo. Yikes! So I ran inside to tell Adam (the other intern) and we went out and started pretending to know what we were doing. Meanwhile Gregory from up the hill pulls into the driveway, honking and carrying on. This is when we were notified that the oxen were out and heading towards the garden. (!)

So somehow it was decided that Adam would take care of the midwifery and I would go pretend to be a teamster and get the oxen back where they belong. I ran and got their leads and lickin’ stick and set off hoping for the best. I guess it’d be a better story if there was any difficulty, but it was really absurdly easy. I’m not sure if they’re like dogs, in that you have to sound dominant or wrassle them and win before they listen to you… but once I got their leads on (which is really the hardest part, but a bowl of grain helps keep them from running away) they seemed to accept fate and do as they were told. Luckily, I had just worked out a mnemonic to remember the commands… gee, haw, hip, woah are the basics. Gee means go right, and I remember that because it sounds like “get” in the redneck accent used to yell at Rachel’s dogs, and since you lead from the left it works out, spatially speaking. Haw is for going left, and it reminds me of southpaw, so that’s pretty easy. Hip is the opposite of woah, and if you don’t know woah then you’ve never had your mom pour milk for you.

Also, I found a Guinea egg over the weekend. Guinea Fowl are terrible poultry-like-objects that I’ve probably complained about before. They make lots of noise and seem even dumber than chickens. They hang out in the yak pen alot, and indeed that is where I found the farm’s first Guinea Fowl egg. It’s a bit squatter and smaller than your normal chicken egg, with a rougher shell. I failed to photograph it whilst frying, but it had a larger yolk than one would expect, with very little white. The yolk was very orange, almost reddish inside, no doubt from all the god-knows-what they’re eating out on the farm every day.

It tasted like any ol’ egg. I found two more yesterday, and ate those too.