The Hens are Laying

In the early morning...I walked down to the chickens...the sky blue..my mind wandering...the air clean and crisp...the day promising to be new and good...my mind full of the wonderful movie i saw last night, The Visitor, (i highly recommend this film...it was wonderful in all sorts of ways) and I stepped into the chicken pen....chickens running everywhere....they do a funny run right at you...and then veer off as soon as they get within a foot of your body...they seem a bit like kamikazi pilots...diving into my shins and then loosing their nerve at the last minute. So as I made my way through the 90 or so chickens....almost stepping on at least 5...I made my way over to their nesting box...expecting to change the hay and find nothing in the box...but there in the corner was one tiny brown egg...what joy...the first egg of the season...more lovely then any colorful easter egg hunt...today spring is coming...and fresh eggs will soon be on our table.

Hope

After a week of rain

The Red Succulent Fruit of Summer

Tomatoes, the symbol of warmer weather....of hot summer days and too many to know what to do with...we have been nursing ours in the green house for the past few weeks...and finally, trusting that the weather will stay warmer...we have planted them in the ground...their earthy smell filling my lungs...we have out in the field, Big Beef, Oregon Spring, Brandy wine, Sun cherry, Sun gold, San Marzano, and in the hoop house...New Girl. Not to mention Ground cherries and Tomatillos. Our labor is beginning to pay off...after many holes, dug with a post pole digger...our tomatoes are in...and soon there will be incredible abundance.

The Wonders of Bees

On this cloudy Sunday, I got to learn about the wonderful creatures which provide us with golden honey. Jeff the Bee Keeper arrived today at 11:00 while i was chatting outside on the phone...his red truck pulled into the farm and i knew this was my chance to learn about these fuzzy creatures...and so i quickly left a delightful conversation to learn about the magnificent bees. Jeff has been working with bees since he was 14. And he loves them...he has the glow of a person who loves is filled by their work. He gently picks them up avoiding stings and can look down at a swarming bit of cone and find the queen in seconds. Here is what i learned about bees:
1. Young worker bees build honeycomb like crazy...to the point that is a bit annoying and needs to be scraped away.
2. If a queen is not producing enough eggs...the bees will begin building special casings for a new queen. Basically, they get their unwanted queen to lay an egg in the special casing raise up a new queen and kill the old...there is bee mutiny.

3. When the bees become too many for the hive they swarm....

This is a swarm of bees....

(I thought a swarm would be flying bees but they gather...hanging from branches...they send a scout bee out and it is looking for a good hole in a tree....once that is found it comes back and the bees take to the woods for their new home....)
As you can imagine this is problematic for a bee keeper trying to gather honey...because he will loose half his hive...so

The bee keeper must find the swarm and give it a new hive...as you see in this picture....

This is the bees new home...

4. The best thing i learned about bees is they are wonderful...and no matter where i farm...in a city or country...bees are allowed everywhere....and are easily ordered on line:) bees may be my next project....Hopefully i will soon have more adventures in the world of bees!

In Praise of Manure

We spent the morning shoveling out the pig pen, which was the cow pen for the winter... and was filled 3 feet deep with manure. It was 4 hours of close, personal interaction with this fine substance. ...it is gold here. The manure dust would drift up, filling our noses and hair with it's rich scent reminding us of vegetables yet to come. There is great beauty in taking the waste from our animals and knowing that it will turn our soil into fertile ground. It reminds me of how simply our world is set up. That our waste gives back...there is an elegant balance and rhythm to our world...and daily I am reminded of how far away we have gotten to following the patterns set up for us in this life. So today I am grateful to have gotten so close to the earth...I am now intimately connected to the waste of the animals here...and will soon eat the food that is produced from it...and the cycle will begin again...

In Search of Wild Edibles

These are Ramps. The sweet garlicy onions of the forest. Today I went for a hike up the pasture behind the farm to the woods and found my first ramps. They cover the forest floor. Their lush leaves are easy to spot and they are a tasty bit of wild spring.

A week in review

I had animal duty this week.

And the pigs were happy,

the cows out to pasture
The chickens, Rhode Island Reds, keep sleeping next to the electric fence...and are moved back 2 by 2

to the chicken tractors...
to have a good nights sleep.


On another note we had a composting toilet workshop. I learned extensive information about the benefits of urine for crops. if we all saved our urine farmers would probably not have to put nitrogen on their fields, they could just use our urine...an interesting concept...I have not yet taken on this challenge...maybe next year:)


Our peas are coming up in abundance!


I learned to drive a tractor!

Got my hands dirty!


And finished the week with the realization that i work on the best farm in MA...Don and Bridget provided us with oatmeal bars and ice cream for our 1 month anniversary here..
This is the best farm in Massachusetts:)

Row Cover: Trials and Tribulations

Row cover is an organic farmers greatest friend. It keeps flea beetles off your baby radishes, turnips and brassicas(kale, collards, brussel sprouts). It keeps our seedlings warm as we fluctuate between 20 and 50 degree nights acting as a warm blanket. But row cover is hard to keep down. There are a few methods...we choose to fill up black bags with soil, plopping them down and tightening the cover to create a strong and secure blanket over our plants. But today the winds picked up. It was one of those gorgeous days, moving between clouds and sunny skies in seconds, moody in temperment....but a day when the world is alive. And the wind was. It was not stopped by our sturdy bags. She ripped them off and took the row cover in hand...twirling it about in the dancing branches of the tree. We played tug of war, hoping to get it back, we found long branches(none ever long enough) we climbed over potentially electric fences, but to no avail she would not give it up...so we made the choice to give a piece over to the wind...I hope it will appease her.

Good Food:)

Greetings from Lena and Lucy our White Galloway Cows

Tonight we ate corn fritters...the most wonderful food i have had since I have been here. There is something exquisite about a fried food when you have spent the day outside working. It was such a beautiful change from the beans which have consumed out diets here. This has been a week where I am trully delighting in the work. The rains came giving us days in the greenhouse, potting tomatoes, listening to Madonna and trying to come up with songs to sing that we all know. Yesterday, the skies cleared and we made raised beds by hand in falling snow...I suppose that is spring in New England. And the pigs today surprised us by escaping from their new pen back into their old one. The pigs have grown and are now quite taken with nibbling on boots and pants..which at times can be a bit disconcerting. So ankle deep in Manure Monica and I attempted to usher them back to their home...and the beasts would not go...even when they had food in their pen. I suppose even pigs will choose freedom over food...we tried luring them with corn, which is like candy and they turned up their noses...so we sat, contemplating them...watching them run in circles, almost barking...thrilled by what they had accomplished. So we got the farmer...and the three of us...with Don, doing a lot of shoving, managed to push our not so wee little piggies back into their rightful pen. Pigs really keep you on your toes.
On another note...I challenge all of you to embark upon the world of Dandelion Greens. We were weeding and I managed to collect quite a few of these lovely greens and yesterday made a salad with them. Oh they were wonderful...for people who have been deprived of greens for almost a solid month my body was thrilled to have them.
And that is life here...Micah the 2 year old, keeps all of us rolling...he is full of joy and giggles and Gabriella will come down to the fields and sing to the strawberries as we are planting them...the sun rises and sets everyday and i get to witness it...the stars come out faithfully everynight...I am in a good place amongst good people...doing work I really love.

While hiking I found some lost agricultural artifacts....

Ostrich Fiddleheads, a wild edible plant

Preparing to plant Blueberry bushes, gooseberries and currants

A view from my room

Me on a Sunday Hike

Our first storm to roll in

May 1st, early morning...24 degrees

Wonderful Dandelion Greens

Another gorgeous beginning to the day...

Melissa and Geoff at Farm Girl Farm...a small 2 acre farm started by a women 4 years ago. It was very inspiring...it made farming seem possible...

Curious Chole:)