Sad Veggie Stories

Sad Story #1: We have had some sad pea times on our farm. It seems like five out of six years, our pea germination is terrible. First we do a lot of work: plowing, discing, spreading compost, harrowing, and making and raking out beds.Then we sow the snap and snow peas, with great hopes. We wait, and wait. But the peas don't come up.

Sad Story #2: We have had some sad spinach times on our farm. It seems like five out of six years, our spinach germination is terrible. First we do a lot of work: plowing, discing, spreading compost, harrowing, and making and raking out beds.

Then we sow the spinach, with great hopes. We wait, and wait. But the spinach doesn't come up.

Sad Story #3: We have had some sad beet times on our farm. It seems like five out of six years, our beet germination is . . . fantastic! First we do a lot of work: plowing, discing, spreading compost, harrowing, and making and raking out beds.

Then we sow the beets, with great hopes. We wait, and wait. The beets sprout, and sprout, and sprout.

But how can this be a sad story? Well, our nice little hand-push seeder has a constitutional problem with beet seeds. None of the seed plates work well with beets, and when we called the seeder company, many years ago now, they suggested sticking some beeswax in the holes. We stuck some beeswax in. It fell out. Then they suggested we spend a lot of money on a custom-built seed plate. This, however, did not pass the budget committee.

Basically, the beets seeds clump out of the seeder, and when it comes time to thin the beets, there might be a hundred where a farmer would want two. I spend a lot of time thinning, and feeling as if I am wasting everything: my time, the seed, and a delicious beet that could grow, given enough room.

But the winter before last, I read a book called The Lean Farm, by Ben Hartman, which put me in ecstasies, as it was all about getting rid of stuff on the farm, which is what I have been trying to do for years, as my fine fellow trundles home more useful looking things from the free store at the dump, among other places.

Now I am a zealous convert to “leaning,” meaning looking carefully at your systems to see where you can eliminate waste. My fellow, on the other hand, is slightly wary of my evangelism, as I try to clear out everything everywhere.

When I read about leaning methods for sowing and planting, I got even more excited. For example, Hartman claims that thinning beets takes far longer than sowing beets in flats and transplanting them. I blinked my eyes rapidly at this revelation. Why, we've been direct-sowing and thinning our beets forever!

I told my fellow all about it. He reluctantly agreed to try, after I reminded him of all the beets that were a) thinned and thus composted or b) not thinned, and thus never grew. On that very first transplanting, faced with 400 feet of beet plugs spaced four inches apart, my fellow was a bit daunted. But soon we were both very pleased to have such lovely beets and beet greens, so beautifully spaced, so fully grown.

I kept reading my book. Now my guru Hartman said I could seed spinach in flats, and transplant them too. Exuberantly, I suggested this to my fellow, reminding him of all the wasted work on non-germinating spinach. Once again, my fellow was daunted by the now 800 feet of spinach plugs spaced four inches apart. But he, and I, persevered.

What satisfaction to see full rows of spinach instead of enormous gaps full of weeds! What a pleasure to harvest 6 pounds of spinach times 30 CSA shares on just one day!

As for the sad pea story: my fellow recently reported that the peas had germinated terribly. This was especially discouraging, because just the year before we had switched from our direct seeder, which also seems to have a pea problem, to planting every single pea (at one inch apart for 800 feet) by hand, on our knees. We had fantastic germination! We did it again this year, with great confidence.

Alas, hardly any peas came up.

“Now what?” groaned my fellow.

“You might not want to hear this . . “ I began.

“What?” said my fellow suspiciously.

“I just read it,” I said, “in my book.”

“Uh-oh,” said my fellow.

“Yes!” I said. “Sowing peas in flats and transplanting them works great! You want to try it?”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 30 - July 6, 2021

Farm Horses Love Local, Grassroots Investing

First I watched the trailer. Then I read the book. Then I saw the movie. The super star: Michael Shuman. The hot plot: local investing.

The trailer was a talk on local and grass roots investing by Shuman last fall, hosted by The Local Crowd Monadnock. Inspired, I read Shuman's recent book Put Your Money Where Your Life Is.

This spring, I attended Shuman's first “movie,” a four-week workshop. My experience only got better and better, especially since I started out with a level of interest in investing comparable to, say, gathering information for my taxes. Necessary, but painful.

Then, as my level of knowledge about investing was even more pitiful than my level of interest, I braced myself for some good old patronizing disbelief from the experts: You don't understand how stocks and bonds work? You don't automatically compute rates of return? You've never heard of a solo 401 K or a self-directed IRA? You don't even get the big deal about retirement funds? What planet do you live on?

I live on a farm planet. A small farm planet.

My fellow and I farm here in southwestern NH, growing three acres of vegetables biodynamically, working with draft horses, for our 60-member CSA garden. We also sell produce at a local farmers' market. We have been making our living as farmers for over twenty years, not an easy task, but one made possible in part by a thrifty budget and by friends, neighbors, and local vegetable- lovers.

Maybe someone loans us a truck, or barters plumbing or farrier work, or helps us set up our website. Someone helps us get the hay in before the rain, or helps us get our naughty horses back in the pasture after a jaunt around the neighborhood. Someone picks up our daughter after school, or makes us a surprise meal. Lots of someones sign up for shares of produce, or buy vegetables at our market stand. Both our farm economics and our quality of life depend on the community.

But now that we two farmers and our four workhorses are nearing our mid-fifties, we notice that a hard day in the field is a little more daunting than it used to be. How can we continue to live and work on a tight budget, on our farm, before and during retirement, and do it with care for our local community, which also cares for us?

Enter Michael Shuman. His dry wit and kind, down-to-earth manner, combined with his expertise in local investing, made for a pleasant surprise. (Turns out investing talk isn't nearly as painful as the taxes. It can actually be kind of interesting!)

Shuman gave an entirely digestible overview of investing in general, followed by a picture of the giant corporate investing world. Next was the welcome news of the range of possible local, grassroots investments: from paying off your credit cards to installing energy-saving devices in your home, from crowdfunding to municipal bonds, from helping friends or family expand a small business to investing in a company such as Equal Exchange, with its fair trade coffee and chocolate, which assists the small farmers who are our global neighbors.

My favorite part of the workshop was learning about people all over the country who are investing in their communities in all kinds of ways, from small farms and solar panels and affordable housing to co-ops and local restaurants and community loan funds.

In Port Townsend, Washington, there's the community-owned Quimper Mercantile, a department store started by community members because there was no place in town to shop.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, there's Zingerman's Deli, whose owners wanted to expand, but not become a chain. Instead of going wide, they went deep, by looking closely at what came into and out of the deli. Now there are around a dozen small businesses in Ann Arbor connected with the deli, including a bakehouse, a coffee roasting company, a creamery, a restaurant, and a fancy cake business.

In my own state of New Hampshire, there's the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund (homes, farms, food, small businesses!). People all over are investing in local economies, ecologies, and racial and social equity, all of which builds stronger, healthier, and more secure and vibrant communities.

Gee, it's enough to make a farmer want to save a little money and make a local, grass roots investment (even if it's at the hundred dollar level!). After all, we love community. We love small. We love local. We love sustainable. We love grass, and we love roots.

Our four work horses agree completely. In fact, they may be wondering right now why a farmer is writing about local investing this time of year. Shouldn't you be fixing the fence? So we can go out to pasture? And eat the local grass? Come on now, farmer.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 2 - June 8, 2021

Wet and Frustrated Farmers

Come April, there are likely to be two wet and frustrated farmers around here. Come April, it's time to set up the irrigation.

If we are lucky, a dry spell in April, which activates the irrigation panic, will coincide with a warm spell, which means that the farmers won't be shivering as they are soaked from the knee down, or alternatively, soaked from the knee up, depending on what type of irrigation we're using.

Happily, we have never suffered a complete immersion, meaning, we've never fallen into the irrigation pond. It is a lovely little pond, with pollywogs and salamanders, turtles and visiting ducks and herons. It is also home to leeches, which my fellow farmer finds daunting, and it is home to a lot of wet cold water, which I find daunting.

Granted, it is a pretty shallow pond, and we have a wide sturdy blue rowboat, so there's not much fear of real trouble, but let's just say I would rather look at the pretty water than get any of it on me.

This year, my fellow tried his usual method, of going out in the boat and tipping the five gallon bucket-siphon hose-cement block tied together with baling twine rig over the edge of the boat into the middle of the pond. But it didn't work. The bucket, which is there to prevent the hose from sucking muck off the bottom of the pond and clogging up all our irrigation, came floating back up.

My fellow paddled back, we hauled the hose out, and tried again. This time, not only did the bucket float to the top, but the boat floated too close to shore during the hose-bucket-block tipping process.

More paddling, more hauling, and then my fellow had a new idea, involving me and the boat. I agreed. Then I took a closer look at the boat. “Why is there all that water in it?”

“There's a little leak,” he said casually. “I've got a bucket, so we can bail it out.”

“Oh, no,” I said worriedly, getting in the boat. My fellow and the hose-bucket-block got in the boat.

“I'm getting wet,” I said right away, feeling the panic rise, even though it was a slow leak, and just a general mucking around in the pond wetness that was getting me. Still I bailed furiously, while my fellow paddled.

But then I had to stop bailing and anchor the paddle in the muck to keep the boat still, not an easy task, and my fellow, who loves water and swimming, if not leeches, was standing up in the boat, causing it to rock dangerously close to the surface of the water on either side

I squawked, “Where is your daughter? Where is your daughter?” meaning our daughter now in college, who also loves swimming and water.

My fellow laughed. I was not laughing.

My fellow splashed the block in. Once again, the hose floated right out of the bucket.

My fellow looked gloomily at the rising bucket. “Well, that didn't work.”

“Will you sit down?” I said tightly, gripping the sides of the boat.

He sighed. He sat down. “I guess this isn't a good project for you.”

“It sure isn't,” I said, grabbing the bail bucket. “We need a new idea.”

Our new idea was two-fold. We would cut off the cinder block, and hope the weight of the water in the bucket would cleverly sink the hose. We would also tie a rope onto the boat, and my fellow would paddle out, throw me the rope on the other shore, and I would hold the boat steady in the middle of the pond.

Well, it took some throwing to get that baling twine rope to reach me. Finally the rope caught on a branch, and I got hold, and kept the boat in place. My fellow eased the bucket and hose in the water. Up came that blasted bucket.

“How about half a cement block, right in the bucket? How about bricks?” I called.

“Or a stone right from the edge of the pond,” my fellow answered. “Which I could get if you gave me a little more slack.”

I gave my fellow lots of slack. We were both feeling wet, frustrated, and downright grumpy by then.

My fellow got a rock. Then he eased the rock, the bucket, and the hose in the water.

Hallelujah! It worked! Plus the irrigation pump started right up! We were very pleased.

Then we spent the next several hours figuring out where the irrigation hoses, headers, and connections were leaking, thus getting soaked from the knee down.

But our just transplanted beets and greens and kohlrabi, and our just sown carrots and salad turnips, were beautifully watered in. And not only that, it was a nice warm day for two wet and frustrated farmers.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 5 - May 11, 2021

Farmer Stone Wall and Farmer Creek

The farm budget committee is giggling these days. The budget committee, ostensibly made up of two amiable, cooperative farmers, is essentially stonewalled by one farmer, the no-budge budget farmer. Yes, I admit it; I am the beautiful, practical stone wall, crafted by hundreds of thrifty New England farmers, the wall whose job is to keep some things on the farm, and some things off the farm.

This, not surprisingly, has resulted in various impassioned proposals brought before the stone wall by the budget committee's more flexible, excitable, passionate farmer, the beautiful, life-giving New England creek, we might call him, whose job is to keep things flowing, on and off the farm.

Early on in our farming years together, the stone wall and the creek agreed that they had to agree on the budget. However, the stone wall was much more easily persuaded in those days to invest in sundry impassioned proposals by the creek. Unfortunately, this easy acquiescence meant that we two were stuck with some farm items that proved less than necessary. But those mistakes did give the stone wall a lot more defense.

“This would be really great, we really need this, this would help the farm a lot,” the passionate creek might say.

“That's what you said about the bigger fuel tank on the irrigation pump, and it's still sitting in the box, after ten years. Or is it fifteen?” the stone wall answers.

After many years of the fuel pump, the creek suggested that the stone wall needed a new line of defense.

The stone wall chuckled. “A new one? How about the fly net for our horse Benny, because he was so bothered by flies that he couldn't work, and it's never been on his head yet?”

“Yeah, that's a good one,” the creek answers. “Use that one for a while.”

Over the years, several other stock phrases have evolved, designed to lift the spirits of the budget committee, who also comprise every other committee on this small vegetable farm: the irrigation committee, the draft horse committee, the advertising committee, the weeding committee, the transplanting committee, the making supper committee, and so on. All these committees must work together, in close proximity, which is where amiability and cooperation, civility and kindness, come in.

Thus, when the creek bubbles over with a new idea, the stone wall now chirps, “Gee, I wonder how we can do that and still fit it in our budget?”

“Nice,” says the creek. “I like that a lot better.” It makes for a much more pleasant budget committee meeting, with less flooding of the stone wall, and less damming of the creek.

Over the years, the creek has also changed its course somewhat, providing more research, comparing prices, testing new products by borrowing them first, and etc. (Plus, there is a ground rule here: anything that really costs a lot has to be entirely approved by both of us, so that if we buy a $1000 truck that we then take to the scrapyard in two weeks, we can freely grouse about it together.)

Now, after all this, you might wonder why the budget committee is giggling lately. This is why: the stone wall wants to purchase something! Something really great, something that we really need, something that will really help the farm a lot! The something is a new bigger greenhouse tub, to fill flats with soil mix, and to soak flats full of transplants before they move out into the garden.

For years we have been fiddling around with a too-small tub, tipping the flats one way and another, getting soil mix in places where we didn't want it, and not in places we did want it, i.e., in the flats. For years, we have been watering our transplants with the overhead wand, which just wasn't thorough enough for the big shock of transplanting.

“Ohhhh,” the stone wall moaned in the spring, as she tried yet again to fill a flat evenly with soil mix in the too-small tub, “I really want a bigger tub.”

And what did the kind creek do?

He researched tub sizes on-line. He ordered a bigger tub from Jack's Hardware store. He picked it up. He brought it home.

Then he offered to let me use the new tub first. Such a lovely creek is he.

I, the stone wall, am in ecstasy. The new tub! So big! So easy to fill the flats! So easy to soak flats! Oh, the tub! the tub! the tub! “We should have done this years ago!” I say. “It's fantastic! What were we thinking?'

The lovely creek says nothing. He just smiles. Maybe he has a new idea for the budget committee too. A new idea, with a new passionate, persuasive phrase: “We should have done this years ago! What were we thinking? We'd better do it right now!”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, April 7 --April 13, 2021