Farmer Astonishment: New Good Things Can Happen

  Sometimes we farmers astonish ourselves. 

For example, we’ve been putting our horse-drawn machinery away in the barn for the winter for twenty-plus years. It’s always a chore, partly because we have to clear out all the junk that has filled up the barn floor during the gardening season first. 

This year, we had our regular junk, plus a large collection of political signs that my fellow farmer had kindly volunteered to store for the next election. 

“Don’t these politicians have offices? We don’t need any more junk around here,” I grumbled, as we hauled the signs up to the barn rafters. 

Wisely, my fellow said nothing, only smiling encouragingly, hopefully, don’t-you-love-me-even-though-I-am-adding-more-junk, until my fit passed.

Then we started the real work of pushing and pulling and jiggling and coaxing the machinery into the barn. 

Every implement has its own idiosyncrasy. One is really heavy. One pinches our fingers if we’re not careful. One refuses to go in the direction we steer it. The worst are the two hay loaders, which are too tall for the barn door. 

We maneuver a hay loader as close as possible, then heave the bottom up until the hay loader reaches its balance point. One farmer holds the bottom edge, keeping the balance, and the other farmer pushes one wheel ahead, chucks it, hurries to the other wheel, pushes that ahead, chucks it, and repeat.

Once we are through the doorway, things don’t get much better, because the rafters are also too low. So we wobble and push and chuck our way along, and then rest the edge of the hay loader on two stumps stacked up.

Then we do it all over again, with the second hay loader.

But the hardest part of putting machinery away is leaving a narrow alley on one side so that we can get through to feed hay to the horses all winter.

Some years we have to hold our breath to get through our alley. Some years we bark our shins daily on the hub of the wheel that sticks out at just the wrong place. One year we had to clamber over the plow, the disc, and the cultivator, because we had no alley at all. That gets a little wearying, considering that hay-feeding happens three times a day.

Plus there is always at least one pole, if not two, that sticks out under the barn door, because we can’t jam the implement in far enough. Then we trip over the pole, as we lug our forkfuls of hay out to the mangers.

But this year! This year we astonished ourselves, entirely by accident! Normally the machinery is lined up on the barnyard side, ready to be put away. But this year my fellow lined them all up on the other side of the barn, and voila! it turned out that putting the machinery away in reverse was the perfect solution. Not only do we have a nice clear alley, but there are no poles sticking out to trip us up.

“Why didn’t we try this years ago?” I said to my fellow farmer.

“Because you don’t like to do anything new?” he ventured.

“Hardy har har,” I answered, feeling mightily pleased with our project. Even after twenty-plus years, new good things can happen!

“If only we could fit the spreader in the barn, too,” my fellow said wistfully. “Especially since we just had the spreader rebuilt. How about we build a nice machinery shed, and then we could line everything up, and it would be so easy and roomy?”

“How about if we take a nice tarp,” I answer, “And put it over the spreader? Or hey, how about covering it with all those political signs? It would be perfect! You know, manure, compost, political signs.”

“Hardy har har,’” said my fellow, as I grinned at him.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jan 11- Jan 17, 2023

From the Zoo to the Farm

Not long ago, during this slower season on the vegetable farm, I visited the zoo in Syracuse with my sisters. The three of us grew up on a family dairy farm in New York State, and we are pretty familiar with cows.

So when we came into the zoo, and caught our first glimpse of a furry black animal, and my middle sister said excitedly: “Look! There’s a … cow,” we all had a big laugh. It was a nice little black cow, and had alpaca, sheep, and goat companions. 

We also saw some beautiful birds, from flamingoes to blue cranes. We visited the penguins, the primates, the red pandas, the tiger, the snow leopard. The gray wolves and the red wolves were holed up for the day, but we saw camels and mountain goats, tiny deer and great big lizards. We admired each one, and worried a little too – zoos certainly bring on mixed feelings about our relationships with animals, even as we admire them.

The reason we had ventured to the zoo at all, despite our worries, was because of my middle sister’s love for elephants. She has read many elephant books, and watched many elephant documentaries, and dreams of working at the elephant sanctuary in Tennessee. 

The Syracuse zoo has a small herd of Asian elephants, which my sister had visited before, but the big news was that a mama elephant had just delivered twins, which only happens in less than 1% of elephant births. It is also rare that both elephant calves survive. Much to the delighted surprise of the zookeepers, the two brothers are thriving, at a month old.

The public is allowed two viewing times during the day, a half hour in the morning and afternoon. First we watched three big elephants come out of the barn, going straight to their hay. Two started munching, and the third picked up a whole pile of the hay in her trunk, and moved it a good distance away. Apparently she wanted to lunch alone.

It was too cold and wet for the little ones to be outside, so they came into the barn’s viewing area instead. There was the mama, and the grandma, and there were the two tiny elephants! Of course, they might not have seemed tiny if we were standing right next to them, as they each weighed over 200 pounds at birth (and the placentas together weighed 90 pounds). But they sure looked little next to the adults.

The mama and grandma spent the half hour reaching up their trunks to pull out hay from an overhead feeder, and then cleverly sweeping up the bits on the floor with their trunks into little piles, and eating them too. 

One little calf amused himself by peeking out from under the mama’s back leg. Once he tried to catch the mama’s tail in his trunk. The other calf was a little bolder, and would periodically dash away from his mother, run a circle, play in the sand, and dash back. It was funny to see how much his trunk flopped around in his dashes. Trunk skills come gradually, and we were impressed when he wrapped his tiny trunk around his mama’s big one. 

It was wonderful to see the elephants, and the zoo is well-maintained and helping with larger animal and habitat conservation projects, which is heartening. It made me think about animals everywhere, wild and domestic, in zoos and on farms, in forests and on plains, and about my hope that we can more fully recognize and respect our kinship.

Then, when I got home, ready to recognize and respect my kinship with our draft horses, they seemed more interested in their fresh piles of hay than in me, just like the elephants. But maybe that’s the point: it’s not all about me, but all about all of us, human and more-than-human. 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Dec 14 - Dec 2o, 2022

Coming Down the Vegetable Mountain

There are many pleasures on a New Hampshire vegetable-growing farm. One of the best, this farmer must admit, is not the vegetable growing, but the end of the vegetable growing, along in October and November. As our farming friends and colleagues said, way back in March: “It’s a big mountain to climb.”

The growing season sure is a big mountain, and not the kind of mountain that lets you linger at the summit for hours, enjoying the view. It’s more like the kind of mountain where you eat your trail mix lunch standing up, chewing rapidly at the view, and then hurry down the other side so you’re not caught falling over precipices in the dark on the way back down.

But then when you do get back down, in November, you can look up at the summit and sigh happily: “Look! We climbed the mountain! We did it again this year! We made it through another growing season!”

Now is the time when we vegetable farmers can take it a little easy at our tasks. We might roll up four lazy lines of irrigation rather than unrolling the daunting twelve that make up a section in the spring. We might clear dead pepper and tomato plants from one or two greenhouse beds rather than desperately planting entire greenhouses. We might spread only three loads of compost in a day for fall crops, rather than the frantic eight or ten of spring days. 

Also, at the end of the season, we might dawdle a bit as we walk our four horses back over to munch on the nice neighbor’s pasture after our little bit of work. We might even feel like making up a poem about the beautiful swinging black tails of the two horses in front, being led by a daughter with a long dark braid swinging in the middle too.

The daughter and I each lead a pair of horses, while my fellow wheels a rickety wheelbarrow ahead, full of carrot and rutabaga tops. The greens are a treat for the horses, but one horse is a little uneasy about the wheelbarrow, shying away when my fellow stops for a breather. 

The daughter stops and murmurs reassurances, and encourages her two horses to go closer to sniff the wheelbarrow. They do so, cautiously, and then they chomp! incautiously at the greens, realizing what they are, which nearly knocks over the greens and the rickety wheelbarrow. We all think this is very funny, or most of us do. The two horses I am with think they are being slighted, and paw the ground, wanting greens too.

Finally we get going again, this time with the wheelbarrow behind us, and the horses stopping to look back longingly, which makes us laugh some more. Oh, everything is so much funnier when you are not frantic with vegetables!

At the pasture, the daughter and I let the horses loose, and they go hustling over to the wheelbarrow, which my fellow is unloading from the other side of the fence. 

“Oh, aren’t they cute,” we croon, as the four horses pose in various groupings: the two golden Belgians, side by side, munching happily on greens, or the black Percheron and the bay gelding drinking from the pond, though they are not side by side, because they don’t like each other much. But at least they are drinking from the same pond at the same moment, and looking very picturesque to boot.

We sigh, happily, and walk slowly back home. Gee, this is a nice time of year. Gee, that mountain was big. Gee, we’re glad to be down before dark.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Nov 16 - Nov 22, 2022

Once

Once I was harvesting beets, and a katydid landed on my glasses. The katydid was pretty happy there, but it was hard to see the beets.

Once at lunchtime my daughter was looking out the screen door, and she said “Hurry! Hurry! There’s a moose!” There it was, walking down the dirt road, in broad daylight, not the least bit worried about us, standing amazed behind the screen door.

Once I picked a raspberry and found I had a honeybee in my hand. The nice bee righted itself and flew away, without stinging me. I ate the raspberry.

Once we were bringing our four big horses in from the field, and my daughter was ahead, with two horses. I heard her calling “Wait! Wait!” I stopped with my two horses, wondering. My daughter led her two to the barn and ran back. There was a painted turtle making its slow way across the grass. We had never seen one before. The horses thought the grass was more interesting than the turtle.

Once my fellow was coming back down from the hay field, and he saw a mama weasel and five little ones, all vibrating with excitement about their adventure along the stone wall. My fellow was vibrating with excitement too. Five tiny weasels! And their mama!

Once we caught a porcupine in our Havahart trap. As we got closer, the porcupine swelled up bigger and bigger, slowly and impressively. My fellow opened the trap, and the porcupine waddled out, in a very dignified manner, and disappeared into the shrubbery.

Once I was picking beans in the farthest corner of the garden, and I saw a tiny bright green jewel of a frog on a bean leaf, and went running to the house for my fellow and our daughter. They ran back with me, and my little frog friend was still there. 

Once my daughter came running from the mushroom yard, where she was picking shiitake mushrooms with her father, to find me. When we got back to the yard, they both said, “Look at the lichen on the log.” I looked at the lichen on the log. “Look a little closer,” they said. I looked a little closer. It was a lichen frog, flat and scaly and pale green. Even its eyelids were flat and scaly and pale green. We are glad that frogs stay still for long periods while we race around gathering people to admire the frogs.

Once we were picking cabbage, and a garter snake wiggled out in a hurry from underneath a head. We are used to seeing them under the compost cover, where it’s nice and warm. Maybe cabbage is nice and warm too.

Once my daughter was soaking her sprained ankle in the pond, keeping us company while we wrestled with our irrigation system. She kept watching a little bird, flying in and out of a bush. It had a bright yellow spot on its behind. I brought my daughter the bird book, and the bird was one we’d never seen before: a yellow-rumped warbler, making a nest in the bush. You don’t see a new bird every day, especially when you are soaking your ankle in a pond.

Once we planted cabbage, and it turned into Brussels Sprouts. The seed company sent a note later on saying they had mixed up the seeds.

Once a cricket went up my shirt. Even more stimulating was when a wasp went up my shirt. Again it was my lucky day; despite my writhing about in a panic, the wasp didn’t sting me.

Once I went into our backroom, to put some scraps in the compost bucket, and someone was there before me. It was a possum, who had ambled in through the open door (whoops), nudged off the unsecured compost lid (whoops), and was enjoying it all until I arrived (whoops). “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, “But I am going to shut my backroom door next time!”

Originally published in The Monadnock Shopper News, Oct 19 -- Oct 25, 2022