Going to the Groovy Fair

Sometime in crazy July, a vegetable farmer gets to thinking about how free and easy she will be in September, conveniently forgetting that September is all about harvesting, and still means weeding and a little transplanting. In July, September seems like an excellent time to take a little break from farming, so much so that we bought tickets to the Common Ground Fair in Maine.

The fair is run by the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association, and is pretty groovy, with draft horse and oxen and sheepdog and sled dog demonstrations. It has interesting talks all day long, about pack goats and permaculture and identifying apples. My fellow farmer and I had been wanting to go for years.

We made various efforts to plan ahead, chiefly consisting of telling people we were excited about going. One of our CSA members grew up near the fair, and she laughed a little when we said how nice it would be with no noisy mid-way and rides. She answered, “Well, when I was a kid, we wanted the midway and the rides! But my parents, who were homesteaders, loved it. You probably will too.”

As the date came closer, we remembered just how much there was to do on a vegetable farm in late September. We got a little nervous about how we were going to pull off both a CSA harvest day and a farmer's market day. Luckily, our faithful long-time volunteer, who hadn't been feeling well, got better, and said yes to staffing our market booth. That was on Wednesday.

On Thursday, our daughter, who was planning to carpool from Boston and meet us at the fair, called with a dreadful weather report: a nor'easter with drenching rain on Saturday and Sunday. Friday was still supposed to be sunny; any chance we could come on Friday?

We groaned. But we were determined, and made plans to bring two complete sets of wool clothes. We would be warm even if wet. We would also have a dry house at night, as we were staying with friends. We decided to try to leave at ten a.m. on Friday, instead of four p.m., so that we could get a few hours of clement weather at the fair.

We harvested everything we could on Thursday, from digging carrots to counting out the onions. It was a long day. “I sure hope all this is worth it!” we gasped to each other as we scrambled around the farm. 

We set our alarm for 5:30 on Friday morning. It's pretty dark at 5:30 at the end of September, and it's even darker at 4:45, which is when I woke up worrying about the alarm. I got up quietly and crept downstairs. It was dark and it was cold. I put on my snow pants, giggling a little. Snow pants in September! 

I was setting out vegetables in the CSA shed when my fellow farmer staggered out, shivering. “It's kind of dark to pick the kale and chard,” he said, by way of greeting. “Hey, nice snow pants.”

“Thanks! Let's make the cider first. We don't need much light for that.”

“Wow,” he yawned, “Look at the stars. We don't usually get to see Orion this time of year.”

“We don't usually get up this early this time of year.” In July we are often working by five, but September is more of a seven o'clock luxury. 

Then we were treated to an owl concert, the who-cooks-for-you kind of owl. It was pretty nice out there in the dark making cider with my fellow and the stars, listening to the owls call back and forth. Plus we got to the wonderful fair on time, and there wasn't a drop of rain the whole weekend. We were two lucky farmers.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 14 - Oct 20, 2026

The Strange Way Humans Have

I was crawling along the garden beds, accomplishing two tasks at once: moving little rocks out of the newly cultivated area so I could sow the fall carrots, and securing the edge of the landscape fabric where the lettuce was growing. I had run out of the ground staples we usually use for the fabric, so the little rocks came in handy.

The farm pooch came to visit. “What'cha doing?” he asked.

I stopped my tasks long enough for a petting session. “Oh, just moving rocks from one place to another, in the strange way humans have,” I answered.

“Oh,” said the pooch, yawning, and going to take a nap in the shade.

Another day I was hauling five-gallon buckets of water for the beet and rutabaga transplants when the pooch came to visit again. “What'cha doing?” he asked.

“Oh, just moving water from one place to another, in the strange way humans have,” I said with a sigh. The sigh was because the irrigation wasn't working in that section, and it would require a day or more of hard hand-digging and pipe-fixing to repair it. So my hour-long watering with a yogurt tub dipped in the buckets of water was less efficient in the long run, but a lot faster in the short run, especially since my little transplants were looking pretty sad.

“Oh,” said the pooch, taking a drink from my bucket of water and then going to take a nap in the shade.

A third day I was pulling out old cabbage and broccoli stalks from the early planting when the pooch visited. “What'cha doing now?” he asked.

“Well,” I said, “I'm pulling out these plants and moving them to another place, in the strange way humans have.”

“Oh,” he said, as he took a cabbage stalk to the shade to chew on before taking a nap.  

Then came a day when the pooch was lying in the shade and my home-for-the-weekend daughter came to visit me. I could see her coming down the edge of the garden. I started laughing to myself, waiting for her to say 'What'cha doing?'

Instead she said, “What are you laughing about?”

“I'm waiting for you to ask me what I'm doing, and then I'm going to say I'm watering in the carrot seed.”

“But you're weeding the scallions,” she said.

I laughed some more. “Right, this is a little side job, a fast little side job, but really I'm watering in the carrots.”

“And what about this hoe?” she asked.

“That's another little side job. I'm weeding the carrots, too, but really I'm just watering them in.”

“This sounds exactly like my whole childhood,” said my daughter. “One job turns into ten little side jobs that will only take a minute. But really they take hours.”

“Yeah!” I agreed happily. “Look how much I'm getting done while I'm watering in the carrots!”

“But isn't the dog lying on them?” she asked. There was a nice shady spot on the far edge of the yet-to-sprout carrot bed.

“Maybe's he's pressing in the seed? So they have nice firm contact with the soil.”

“Huh,” said my daughter. “You were really mad at him the other day when he ran through this very bed.”

“I know, I know, because his feet made huge gouges. But now he's distributing his weight evenly over the seeds. Don't you think?”

“You're kind of strange,” said my daughter, in the friendliest of ways..

“That's what the pooch thinks too,” I answered. “Hey, you want to help me move some rocks or some water or some plants from one place to another?”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 16 - Sept 22, 2026

Grumpy, Not Gracious

The haying season didn't start out too well. First of all, we missed two stretches of haying weather in June, because we were overwhelmed by the garden and the beginning of CSA season. Then we took a chance on a less than stellar weather report, and our first batch of hay got wet – twice. 

The hay was finally dry again on one of our harvest days. We harvested from five in the morning until after one. By three, we had already made not one but two separate trips to Jack's Hardware for the right size spring for the hayloader. 

It was an easy fix with the right spring, but we were in the delicate process of moving the too large hayloader out of our too small barn, which requires some finesse and sturdy chucks, when two perfectly innocent young people, there to arrange a visit from a wilderness education camp, came up the driveway.

Instead of “Hello! Welcome!” I hollered, “Will you move your car so our CSA members can park?” The two quickly complied and rushed over to the barn, offering help. “No,” I said ungraciously, “We've been doing this together a long time and help only makes it worse.” They stepped back a little, probably wondering if this farm visit with 11-13 year old girls was a good idea. 

We got the hayloader out, and I tried to be more congenial, along the lines of, “We have a very full day, but we can answer a few questions. If you talk fast.” Did I mention that this was a nearly 99 degree day? We rapidly and sweatily figured out visit details, and then my fellow and I slowly and sweatily picked up our crummy hay until dark, with our working hayloader and our wonderful horses, Willow and Fern, the best hay horses we've ever had.

“Sorry you have to eat this crummy hay next February,” we said to the horses, who are much more gracious than I. In fact, it was the horses' charming natures that made the girls' farm visit the next day worthwhile. (Along with our charming farm pooch, who raced to have his belly rubbed by eleven girls and three counselors.)

My next gracious comment, as I was setting the girls up for some weeding, was “You're all doing it wrong.” Happily, they seemed undaunted by the worn-out, grumpy farmer. Plus they loved unloading the crummy hay: lots of delighted yelling, and “Jump! It's really fun!”

All of which brings us to the perfect part of the haying season. No machinery breakdowns, the wonderful horses, a stretch of ten days of exquisite haying weather, all in the eighty degree range.

My fellow kept checking the weather, and he and Willow and Fern would mow, ted, and rake the successive batches, and then we would all pick up. Meanwhile I kept the rest of the farm together, harvesting, watering flats, transplanting, making an occasional meal.

By day seven, when I had been up gasping in the night with leg cramps from loading hay, and my fellow started antibiotics for Lyme Disease, we were losing our haying fire. Thank goodness our daughter came home to help at the beginning, and two farmer friends came to help toward the end.

By Friday, the third of the 5 a.m. harvest days to coincide with haying, we were moving pretty slowly. So were Willow and Fern. But we did it. We pulled the last load into the barn at six p.m. Then we went to get ice cream. Then we came home and picked beans until ten with a flashlight. Then we collapsed into bed, dreaming of a barn full of (mostly) beautiful hay.  

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 19 - Aug 25, 2026

Molly, Our Beloved Apple-Eater

A few months ago, we had to bury our beloved apple-eater Molly, the last of our four retired horses. Molly was everybody's favorite, horse and human alike.

When Molly first came to our farm with her brother Moon, she was so worried about all the new sights and sounds that she could hardly cope. In fact, the first time my fellow hitched the team to the forecart for a drive, wild-eyed Molly galloped away with Moon at her side. My fellow slowed them down by steering into a tree. It was kind of hard on the harness, but effective.

Our draft horse mentors came to assess the team and suggested that calm Moon work with our experienced farm horse Ben. Then I led Molly ahead, behind, left, and right of the implements as they were operating, so that she could see what was making all the scary noises. It seemed to work, though the project wore me out a lot faster than it did Molly.

Molly was just the kind of horse my farmer fellow likes, a real worker, so peppy she seemed to be saying, “Can't we do this a little faster? Walking's all right, but trotting's better, and cantering's the best!” She was lots of fun to ride and to drive, but haying with Molly was another matter.

Molly never liked the first pass around the hayfield, because the hayloader would catch on the overhanging tree branches. Her natural hurry-up turned into even more hurry-up. Moon went right along with her. Since haying with horses is smoothest at a funeral pace, my fellow worked to slow everyone. Meanwhile I spent more time falling down than building the load on the lurching haywagon. 

But it was hard to be mad at Molly. She was the lovey-doviest horse we've ever had, nickering at us, following us around the paddock, nudging us with her nose for scratches. “You've got two hands, why aren't you petting me with both of them?” said Molly. Molly was our most talkative horse, between nickers and squeals, which were reserved for any horse except Moon getting too close, either to her hay or to her person. We called it her Squeal-o-meter. 

One of our smaller draft horses, Molly was short-coupled, strong and balanced, with the pleasing roundness of a pony, and the occasional naughtiness too. She was a top-notch wiggler out of fences, leading Moon and Ben astray many a time. 

Molly was always 24 hours ahead of us. We'd just be saying, “Looks like we'd better change the horses' pasture tomorrow,” and that would be the night the neighbors would call about the horses on their lawn. Happily for us, Molly was perfectly willing to be rounded up again, even without the lure of a bucket of grain.

During Molly's last summer, when the new team, Willow and Fern, hadn't learned yet that following Molly led to greener pastures, Molly escaped by herself. She would call for the others, but they couldn't seem to figure out how she was making her break for the fly-free barn. Nor could we. 

Morning after morning we heard her calling, then giving up and trotting into the barn by herself. We wanted a little more say in when horses came hot-footing down the lane, so we kept tightening up the gate. Finally we realized that clever Molly had found the never-used flimsy gate tucked in a corner.

Molly was the horse we introduced first to our CSA members and their children, especially if any of those people were nervous around horses. Molly was the one we'd pop a four year old on to have a ramble around the paddock. Molly was the one we counted on to get the work done, and counted on to cheer us up when we were discouraged about never getting the work done.

Aw, Molly. Come on back and and get through the fences. Come on back and work too fast. Come on back and eat apples. Come on back and we'll scratch you with both hands.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, July 22 - July 28, 2026