Farmers Get a Grip

It was our chiropractor who first told us farmers to get a grip. One of us would mince along the ice, going out to feed the horses or bring in wood for the stove, tensing her muscles and getting her neck out of whack. The other farmer would stride out boldly on the ice, and then wham! fall right down, getting everything out of whack. Despite our differing temperaments and techniques, our chiropractor assured us that all we needed was to get a grip.

One day, a few winters ago, after mincing and falling yet again, we went looking. We found a pair of Vermont-made ice grippers, which pleased our buying-locally selves, and we invested in one pair, to see if we liked them. Well, we did like them, and we wore them all the time, taking turns going out on the icy paths around the farmyard.

Then, when we took walks together through the slippery fields, we had a dilemma, with only one pair of grippers. But did we really need another pair? Why, winter was practically over, and the budget is always a consideration. Couldn't we make do?

Thus the thrifty famers went for walks holding hands, with one farmer sporting a left-foot gripper, and the other a right-foot gripper, which made us fifty percent less prone to mincing or falling. Over the ensuing spring, summer, and fall, the budget committee had time to think it all over, and Yes! was the conclusion. We would buy another set of grippers. We happily reported this to our chiropractor, who heartily approved.

Now that we have had our Vermont grippers here in New Hampshire for a few winters, we decided to take them on a holiday, to Acadia Park in Maine. Originally, the holiday in Maine was intended to coincide with our 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, that fell in August, which coincides with high season in the garden. Could we afford to take a week off when the tomato plants were lush with fruit, not to mention the other vegetables flourishing all over the garden? Alas, we could not, we groaned, wondering why we ever decided to be vegetable farmers in the first place.

But then, just recently, our daughter wanted to visit College of the Atlantic, which is right next to Yes! Acadia Park in Maine! Allllll right! we said. What could be more fun than Maine mountains and ocean in January?

We stuffed our horses' mangers full of three days worth of hay, and filled our kitty's bowl. We rented the cheapest room we could find in our first AirBnB, and we got free meals through the college's dining hall, both of which fit nicely in a vegetable farmer's budget. We were off, and we were entirely blessed by the Maine spirits: we had two days of brisk but manageable winter weather, with virtually no snow and no wind, and even some sunshine. Of course, there was plenty of ice on the mountain path, but we had our grippers.

We got a grip, hiking for two lovely days, around Jordan Pond and up South Bubble Mountain, as well as climbing Cadillac Mountain, highest point along the North Atlantic seaboard. We climbed in the fog and frost and ice and deep stillness, and our spirits were refreshed. Of course, it was a bit of a letdown to come off the trail to a parking lot on the top of the mountain, as there is a seasonal paved road to the summit. Happily, there were no cars, and we didn't see a soul on either hike, which is another advantage of hiking mountains in Maine in January.

There, on the top of Cadillac, as the fog lifted briefly for a view to the south of islands and ocean, my fellow farmer said, “So, are you happy that you married me?”

“What?” I was confused, blissed out by the physically demanding and spiritually uplifting hike.

“Isn't this supposed to be for our anniversary?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, laughing, and gave him a kiss. “Actually, I thought being married to you would be more like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know, more hiking, and less farming . . .”

Now we were both laughing. “Aww,” my fellow said, “what are we going to do about that?”

Well, come to think of it, this is the year 2020, and we have been married twenty years, and we could take 20 hikes in 2020. That would surely give us a grip, a darned good grip, all year long, on farming and relationships, on work and love, on all those demanding, refreshing questions . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 12 - Feb 18, 2020

Foolish and Annoying on the Farm

November on our New Hampshire vegetable farm means clearing out greenhouse beds, rolling up irrigation, storing crates and buckets, repairing tools, and, of course, celebrating. We did it again! We made it through another round of vegetables, and now we can both glory in the garden's goodness and revel that the season is over!

Ah, but wait: we still have to review the year and plan for next season. We need to do it right now, before the revels, and much, much before March or April, when we are giddy with warm weather and the fresh green of the world, and when we think we can do everything, twice over.

Yes, right now, when we are tired, and a little cranky, and the memories of the year have not yet faded into funny stories. All season we groaned to each other about everything annoying and foolish we did or didn't do this year, and with both farmers now hitting our fifties, we are considering our knees and our backs and our energies and next year's work more than ever.

We have to be realistic, we say firmly to one another, and plunge into the depths of foolish and annoying: why, for example, did we not get nearly as many potatoes as usual this year? Well, because we are planting more than we can look after.

“Let's plant less, and take care of them better,” my fellow suggests.

“I like that,” I say, writing it down. “So simple, yet so elegant.”

“We'll get just as many potatoes with less work, I bet,” says my fellow farmer. “Less work! More money!”

I laugh. “Don't you mean 'Less work! Better crops!' ”

“Yes! Less work! More money! Better crops! Write that down!”

I write it down, still laughing, and go on to our second question. Why was our eggplant crop so pathetic? Well, because the eggplant was to be planted in the old strawberry beds in the greenhouse, but the old strawberries were so prolific that we kept picking and picking, and didn't dig the plants up until much later than we planned, which meant the eggplant got in really late, after being in pots too long, and after the tomatoes in the nearby rows had gotten big enough to shade their small new neighbors.

“Let's not do that again,” I say.

“We won't need to dig up the new planting of strawberries for a couple years, anyway,” says my fellow.

“Let's figure out a plan before we have that crisis again, in a couple of years. I'd like to use our greenhouse space much more efficiently, anyway. I want to plant all the cutting greens inside, so that the weed pressure isn't so high, and the greens will be easier to harvest.”

“Maybe we could devote a whole greenhouse bed to greens. And then, with the strawbs, we can just plan on digging them up when they're done, and then put in a later-season crop, something for the fall istead.”

“Good, good,” I say, scribbling away. “Why didn't we think of this before?”

“Because we didn't have time to think!” says my fellow farmer. “What's next?'

“Well, dill and cilantro, which we knew were a problem right when we sowed them. We put in way too much and then of course they got totally overrun with weeds, which goes back to . . .”

“Less work! More money! Better crops!”

“But here's a different question: why were the cherry tomatoes so hard to pick this year?” “Because one of the posts broke, and the whole fence sagged over to the side of the greenhouse, and we didn't have room to pick easily.”

“We could put the cherry tomatoes in a bed closer to the center of the greenhouse,” I say.

“Or we could have fixed the post,” my fellow suggests.

I look askance at him. “I want bigger solutions,” I say, “more far-reaching ones.”

“Less work! More money! Better crops!” hollers my fellow farmer gleefully.

“But we don't need a better crop. We had a fantastic cherry tomato year.”

“We need more money and less work then!” says my fellow. “And we had great sweet red and green peppers, and onions, and a ton of winter squash. And lots of other good things. Nice, huh?”

“Yeah, but we're supposed to be focusing on the bad.”

“We are. We're going to fix it all! Ready? Ready?” I give in to my fellow's irrepressible good cheer, and we both holler it out: “Less work! More money! Better crops!”

Thus, our realistic review session dissolves into general end-of-season hilarity. Ah, November on the farm . . .

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 20- Nov 27, 2019

A Long Winter's Nap

Ah, December . . . that delightful month on our New Hampshire vegetable farm. The garden-free vistas are glorious, the haying-free horizons are endless, the worry-free couch and the bed are sumptuous. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve hours of sleep? It feels so good.

By now, we have finished our CSA produce distribution for the year, and we are nearly done with our Farmers' Market sales for the year. We've got little projects to do outside, from feeding the draft horses three times a day to clearing out all the frosted tomato, pepper, and basil plants from the greenhouses, from rolling up irrigation to reorganizing the tool area. But none of these are desperately urgent. (Well, feeding the horses is pretty important. They do like a timely meal.)

And, of course, there is letting our kitty in and out the front door. This is an important job, as is cleaning up the dead mice from our kitty's work in the night. In fact, the other night, there was a dead mouse on the bedroom floor, along with a dead mouse in a trap in the kitchen, and a dead rat in the trap in the living room.

Happily, my nice fellow farmer generally does the cleaning up of dead animals duty, by tossing them outside for some clever larger animal to discover. We think it might be a fox on her rounds, but it could be any number of critters looking for a nice meal. At least it feels like we are contributing to the cycle of sustenance and sustainability on the farm.

Occasionally, I pitch in to the dead rodent clean-up. For example, not long ago, I was taking wet laundry out of the washing machine, and felt something squishier than a sock. But soft and soggy, like a wet sock. I pulled it out. I looked at it, uncomprehending, for rather a long time. Yes, it was a dead mouse, in the washing machine.

“Oh!” I said. “Oh, oh, oh! I am sorry, mouse, that you had to die by washing machine! I can not imagine how this happened!”

Of course, dying by washing machine is probably not that much worse than dying by trap or by cat. Best for the humans in the household is when the cat eats the entire mouse, rather than leaving it whole and dead on the bedroom rug. But even that is better than leaving it dead in pieces on the bedroom rug. Especially when it is in the middle of the night, and it is dark, and a person is stumbling to the bathroom, and has forgotten the cat-mouse episode earlier in the night. It is rather daunting to step on a dead mouse, in one's bare feet, in the night. But it is even more daunting to step on the sticky intestines of a dead mouse.

It turns out that there is an enormous number of small critters about this year, from mice and rats and voles to squirrels and chipmunks. Apparently this is due to the heavy acorn drop last year, which prompts lots of begetting in the small animal world, and then a lot of chewing on tomatoes, zucchini, and sweet peppers in the garden. Even the hot peppers were not immune to nibbling. The chipmunks had several nice dens right in our greenhouses, and the voles simply sucked our greenhouse eggplant under the earth. The plants and fruit just disappeared.

Our kitty caught a fair number of voles and chipmunks and mice outside too, but it has all been more than a one-cat rodent control program can manage. Cats and traps and washing machines have not been enough in the house this season, either. We already have a rodent-proof storage area in our basement for potatoes, carrots, and other root crops. (Sometimes we tell our visitors that if they misbehave we'll put them in the cage in the basement. So far no one has done anything bad enough.) 

But this year, for our winter squash, which doesn't like the damp conditions of the basement for storage, we had to build another cage, out of two by fours and hardware cloth. This fine cage stands in our living room, full of wooden crates of winter squash, and a few last tomatoes on trays. As you can imagine, this is not the most beauteous element of our living room. But at least it appears to be working, especially since farmers all over the region are reporting heavy damage to winter squash, both before harvest and after harvest, in storage.

Now, you might be wondering how this all leads to the wonderful times of December on the farm. Well. Outside, and in the house, there are many creatures stirring, including the cat and the rats and the mice. But still, we rest easy, with our squash and our root crops gathered in, and nestled all snug in their cages. Why, now we have visions of feasts, rather than rages! And my fellow farmer in his kerchief, and I in my cap, can settle our brains for a long winter's nap.

 Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 19 - Dec 25, 2018

Farm Entertainment and The Winter Workhorse

Here on our New Hampshire vegetable farm, our workhorses have a nice long lull in the winter. There is a little bringing in of firewood, and a little sap-gathering, but for about two months, our three horses get to loll about in their winter paddock.

They have plenty to eat, with three meals a day, and they have each other as company, and they can go in and out of shelter at will. But in the slow time, our horses seem to like a little something fun to do.

For example, when our kitty comes into the paddock, the horses think of a fine activity: Let's chase the kitty around! Luckily the kitty is fast, agile, and small: she ducks under the barn doors to safety, and peers at the horses' big feet.

Then again, when our nice relatives come visit us just before the New Year, the horses get the treat of a highly alarmed young Border collie on a leash. Who is this tiny shivering barking creature? The horses are not at all alarmed, and since our relatives also have two young children, along with their young dog, we put halters on the horses and give the children a ride around the paddock.

The five and three year old love it, and Molly, who is a very friendly horse, seems pretty happy too. Moon, however, is a little shyer, and wonders what exactly is happening, as the three year old is stretched flat out, in a most unriderly fashion. Moon flicks his ears back and forth nervously.

“He wants to know who's on his back,” I say to my little niece. “Will you say hello to him?” My niece is a very friendly, cheerful, even boisterous little being, usually perfectly willing to let out a good holler, but now she looks at me big-eyed and silent. Her mother, who is walking beside the horse, with a firm grip on her girl's leg, says, “Can you say hi to Moon, honey?”

In the smallest voice I have ever heard from her, my niece says,“Hi.” Not even “Hi, Moon.” Just a tiny little squeak of “Hi.”

Happily, this whisper seems to reassure that Moon that he does not have a panther on his back ready to devour him, and he relaxes a little. Then my fellow farmer and I, who are leading the horses, indulge in some fancy synchronized riding. We make diagonals, and circles, keeping pace with one another, and meeting in the middle. The horses are standing next to each other, and the little boy and the little girl reach way way way out over the big hairy horse bellies and hold hands, in a grand finale.

We pet our nice horses. “Wasn't that some good winter fun?” we say. They hang around until the petting peters out, and then go work on the hay in the mangers.

Of course, the horses' favorite winter fun activities always involve food. There are the Brussels sprouts and cababage and broccoli stalks we pull up in December, and dump in the paddock. The horses come right over to investigate, loving any little bit of fresh green during the hay season. They work all the stalks over with their teeth, and then they work them over with their feet, which is exactly what we were hoping would happen, since it breaks the stalks down for the compost pile.

As the snow gets deeper, we work in the greenhouses, pulling out dead basil and tomato vines. But the best is when we pull out the old pepper plants. There is so much snow that we can't use a wheelbarrow anymore, so we pile the dead plants on a length of plastic and slide them across the snow to the horses' paddock. This is highly exciting, as you can imagine.

The horses prance, they snort, they arch their necks, they prick their ears. This despite the fact that their paddock is right next door to the flopping, snapping in the wind plastic greenhouse, at which they normally don't bat an eye, and despite the fact that they see us work with heaps of dead plants all winter long.

But dead plants on a sheet of plastic! Coming right into the paddock! Now this is some fun! Everybody's got a fine excuse to run around in high spirits. When we dump the plants off the plastic, the horses converge. Let's see, what yummy little bits of fresh grass or weeds are all tangled up in these dead plants? What a great project!

Best of all is when the farmers start sorting their food stored in the root cellar along about February. All kinds of yummy things make it to the paddock: wrinkled carrots, brown apples, tired turnips. The farmers tuck them into odd places, for a curious horse to find. It doesn't take long. But then again, the time for lolling doesn't take long, either, and soon we'll all be back to work, horses and farmers both, instead of making up fun, highly sustainable ways to entertain each other.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 14- Feb 20, 2018