Life on an organic farm is... being dug up!

Just like Ireland in the 1840’s, a potato blight has struck on the field of Maplewood. Fortunately though, unlike the Guinness drinkers, we caught the blight before it ruined the crop. For a greater part of the afternoon, all six rows of the potatoes had their dying above ground plant chopped off with the help of some machinery run by Eric; then Ellyn, Susie and I cut the outside rows by hand. All the leaves and stems were then raked up. Reminding me of an old gold mining town after the rush, I racked up the remaining potato beetles, trying to survive off of the dying leaves, through the dirt. The mounds of blight infected potato plants will be burned, in order to completely get rid of the blight. The potatoes in the ground will be fine, the longer we waited before cutting off the plants however, would have increased the chances of the blight traveling down the stem into the ground, infecting the potatoes. Eric the intern has already proven that the potatoes aren’t infected, as he ate one raw off his pitchfork today; yeah... needless to say he’s defiantly embracing the farming life and we’re a bit nervous about his release back to his “normal life.” We’ll wait awhile before digging up the rest of the potatoes, so that the skin grows thicker!

As the potato duties called us to the field, Ellyn and I left Eric to pulling out the rest of the garlic bulbs this afternoon. All hundreds of them it seems (though I may be exaggerating a bit...) are out now, beginning their process of curing in the greenhouse. The garlic grown in the garden this season is hard neck garlic, which means, unlike soft neck garlic, it won’t be braided, so we began cutting the necks off, since they aren’t needed. The aroma of garlic overwhelmingly takes over the senses when you walk through that section of the greenhouse!

Life on an organic farm is...tough, but worth it, especially after watching Food Inc :)

Flocks of cars traveled down the gravel driveway to Maplewood this evening for “NOFA-vore.” NOFA (North Eastern Organic Farming Association) of VT hosts these get-togethers every so often in the summer, at different organic farms throughout the state. So this evening, Maplewood got its chance to shine. NOFA sent its portable pizza oven ahead of time, as we finished up washing vegetables that we harvested this morning for pizza toppings. A mix of our CSA members, Hannah’s relatives, and NOFA members attended the event to eat the mouthwatering pizza (with toppings including beets, yellow squash, ground beef, broccoli and green onions, all from the farm) and receive a tour of Maplewood conducted by Hannah and Eric, all before the rain came! Susie made scrumptious cupcakes, and fun time was had by all. :)

The hot, muggy days of summer we’ve been longing for, have hit us fast these past couple of days. Weeding out in the field, with the sun beating down on our backs leaves us all just lookin’ and smellin’ somethin’ wonderful, not that any of us are taking more showers, ha ha…..We worked hard at finishing up weeding the cabbage rows in the field, so that they looked presentable for tonight’s big event; hopefully it didn't go unnoticed! We dreaded going out to pull out all those awful ragweeds...

Our potatoes unfortunately have been struck with some type of blight. Over night it seems, dozens of plants dwindled, leaves have shriveled up and their green colors have quickly turned to a distasteful brown. Hannah’s sister, Heather, who owns H&B, a nursery in Highgate, said that her potato’s experienced the same blow at the same time. Something’s in the air...

Yesterday, after a quick wash off in the pond, Ellyn, Eric and I headed down to the “Big City” of Burlington to watch Food Inc. at the theater. Not surprising, I highly recommend going to see this movie! The documentary didn’t touch base on all effects of the industrialized food system, but it defiantly informed viewers on the corrupt ways of factory farms and corporate control over our meals. Factory raised meat chickens, for example, grown in CAFO’s (contained animal feeding operations), never see the light of day. They live jammed packed in these facilities and the growth hormones they’re given cause their breasts, for instance, to rapidly expand, for more meat, while their bone growth can’t keep up. This leaves chickens falling down after a couple steps because they can’t walk. The health impacts to consumers, and factory workers, as well as the damaging environmental impacts of these factory farms are so dense it would take too long to go into on this blog! So I would suggest seeing the movie, as the documentary makers can explain it better than me!

One part I found interesting though, which I’ll share to you all, is people not wanting to spend a lot of money on food. Organic food, inevitably is going to be more expensive at the grocery store; as the labor put into growing organic food exceeds that of conventional food, not too mention it takes more time to grow. We’ve all been raised in a culture that wants food cheap and fast, but why? It doesn’t make sense that we don’t want to spend a lot of money on the one thing, besides water and shelter, that our bodies needs to survive! We buy the nicest cars our budgets allow, the best running shoes, granite countertops; so why be frugal with the food you’re putting into your body to sustain your life? I’m not saying that all conventionally grown food is horrible and going to kill you, we’re all going to still want to order a greasy pizza every so often and get an ice cream. But I can testify, and Ellyn as well, that after eating an entirely organic diet here on the farm, when we eat non organic food off the farm, we defiantly feel the difference in our stomachs afterwards! Well that’s my rant for the day….just think about it if expensive organic food is turning you away.

Life on an organic farm is... up to the interns when the family's away!

Nothing beats the smells and sounds of sizzling sausage in the morning, and as the Noel’s were away this weekend for a family camping trip, us interns were able to take our time in the morning and prepare ourselves a true country breakfast. :) Taking a stab at other cooking endeavors we’ve been talking up for quite some time, Ellyn fried up some green tomatoes and as I whipped up some Swiss chard wraps. Swiss chard, a leafy vegetable I was unfamiliar with upon my arrival at Maplewood, has quickly become a favorite of mine. Some plants out in the field have yielded such enormous leaves, so I headed out to pick the big ones yesterday afternoon for my lunch, and pulled up an onion on my way out. The Swiss chard leaf is used as the wrap, add some shreaded cheese and onions, fold it up, and fry it up in some olive oil on the stove, and wha-la, you’ve got yourself a tasty little melted wonderland of a snack.

Yesterday, as I plucked plump and ready green beans off their stems out in the field, I stupidly let my eye wander across to the potato plants. To my displeasure, I spotted a group of potato beetle larva having a fiesta on a potato plant. Not being able to see them and not destroy them, Ellyn and I began our mission of what we called a massive genocide. The next hour or so, we weaved throughout all six rows of potatoes, picking the fat red larva off the plants they were eating as well as demolishing. The fat ones are easy to get off the leaf; they roll up and fake dead when you pick them off. The smaller ones however, prove to be more difficult, so it’s best to just squash them right on the plant, leaving a string of orange guts to project out of their bodies. We filled a bucket full of them, dropping in handfuls of the bugs in ever so often, before they started crawling too much up our hands! I’m not a girlie girl afraid of bugs by any means, but that feeling of all their little legs swarming around in your palm really isn’t the best feeling...

Today as we harvested, a warm summer breeze brushed across our faces, foreshadowing a storm ahead, which we’re in the middle of now. :)

Meet Maplewood!

This is probably about two months too late, but I’ve decided to introduce you to the people I spend practically all hours of the day with! You have briefly been introduced to throughout this blog, so why not go a little deeper.

We’ll start with the one and only, Hannah Noel, who runs Maplewood with her husband, Eric. I don’t know how she always has energy and a smile on her face after all the work she does, but it never fails. An expert in gardening, she teaches us the ways of the land, and the delicious food it helps produce. Her dinners from scratch that she whips up after hours of farm and child duties, continue to amaze us. She’s been such a wonderful mentor to us all this summer, loves her sauerkraut, feeds her family a completely organic diet, and makes the most amazing chicken and biscuit meal any of us interns have ever had, sorry mom…. Eric Noel, or Eric the farmer, grew up on the farm, and tends to the cows of Maplewood, rotating them to different pastures on a daily basis. Along with being a cowboy, he operates his own auto shop right here on the farm. Eric knows cows, but he probably knows cars even better. When he’s not doing the odd and end jobs that farming inevitably entails, he enjoys watching Indie car racing.

Richard and Maggie Noel, Eric’s parents, live next door and own the property, which they ran it as a dairy farm until 1999. Richard owns an impressive amount of farm equipment and trucks, loves mowing the lawn, and is never short on words, giving us interesting historical facts about the farm, his life, Vermont, French culture and so much more! Maggie quietly weeds away during her spare hours of the day, when she’s not working in St. Albans. After dreading the weeding ahead of us as we enter the field, we always appreciate finding rows completed by her!

Maddy and Calvin Noel. Oh so much to say. Most of the time these cuties are a delight to have around, others… ha ha well, they’re little and love to scream. One of the friendliest five year olds I’ve ever met, Maddy loves asking questions, ballet and identifying weeds. Calvin, Maplewood’s youngest member, is two and a half. I don’t know any other two year old farm boys, but I’d be surprised if they knew more about tractors and farm equipment than this one! He loves taking rides with Richard, his “Pepe”, on the 4wheeler, and always reminds his parents that he wants his own. :)

The other Eric Noel, or Eric the Intern, comes from Connecticut. A recent graduate of Colgate University, he plans on going into the Peace Corps when he leaves Maplewood in December. Eric amuses us with his country slang, “Shoot, dang, nab!”, whatever that means…. And is hell bent on killing Stewy and eating her before he leaves. Probably the hardest working intern, no offence Ellyn ;) … Eric helps Eric move the cattle every day along with the vegetable gardening. Ellyn Gaydos, my trailormate and banjo pickin’ buddy, is a Vermonter from Essex Junction. Although she’s not always thrilled about it, she’ll be heading off to her first year at Hampshire College next fall. Ellyn loves traditional folk life, and reading more than five obscure books at a time. She’s the one intern most likely to remember to feed the calf, and like a true Vermonter, rides a Subaru. Brian Herbst, Maplewood’s newest addition, started today! A fellow New Yorker, he graduated from Cornell in ’08 and like Eric, plans to attend the Peace Corps after his life here on the farm. Since were tight for space at the moment, he’s ruffin’ it out in a tent next to the greenhouse, until Ellyn and I have left our warm and welcoming home of a trailor to him, when we head to school in August.

For an honorable mention, Susie. Susie’s a CSA member who works for her share, from St. Albans. She’s hardworking and a pleasure to have around on our crazy harvesting days. :) I enjoy talking to her about why we both love Under the Tuscan Sun, while cleaning her favorite vegetable, Kale together. :) She’ll be joining us when we head to Massachusetts for the NOFA (Northeastern Organic Farming Association) conference in two weeks!

Some of you might not know me, but hopefully through this blog you’ve gotten a sense of who I am! But for technical information, I’ll be a senior at SUNY ESF (college of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse University) next year, and am interested in environmental protection, advocacy and sustainable agriculture. Hopefully I’ll be able to tie them into an awesome job next year, so if you have any ideas, let me know! ;)

Hopefully this helps give you a little inside scoop to the people that make this place what it is! :)

Life on an organic farm is... more generous to weeds than vegetables it seems!

When weeds overwhelmingly take over the field, it’s up to three semi-willing interns to plunge into the dirt! Rows of lettuce heads and cabbage that we haven’t had time for during the past several weeks, desperately call for our labor now! So the past two days have mostly consisted of us down on our knees pulling out primarily ragweed, which my sister got to experience when she came up to visit and spend a day working on the farm.

Heart/91 or now just “Calfy”, has been tied up outside, spending her days laying in the tall grass, chompin’ away by the field and mooing at us when we pass by. She’ll eat grass and wildflowers out of our hands, as dozens of flies annoyingly hover around her body. This lil heifer has become much more tame compared to the slightly wild youngin’ she was straight out of pasture.

Stewy, with her life hanging on a string with the men of Maplewood, started a habit of jumping up and pecking at the raspberries and blueberries. It’s hilarious to watch a chicken literally just jump up to pick raspberries off the bush. :) At first, it was mostly the Erics who wanted to finish her off, but yesterday she tampered with Richard’s blueberries, so now it’s getting’ serious! Today, as Ellyn and I weeded the compost piles, Eric the intern practiced his rock skipping skills in a not so accidental direction towards our chicken friend. Her days may be numbered, but I still enjoy her company!

Life on an organic farm is...diverse as always.

Before I get into today’s blog, I forgot to mention another farm treasure! :) Looking for chicken eggs, none the less. After collecting the eggs from the sections of the coop where the chickens lay, you have to climb your way up into the coop and check behind boards. Some chickens will go behind these boards to lay their eggs, so you always have to check! On a typical day, you’ll find 2 or 3 eggs behind these boards, and it’s always worth the lovely smell of being inside the coop....

Yesterday and early this morning, we continued to harvest and prepare our veggies for the CSA farm pick up and St. Albans drop off. (On Monday’s we drop some members shares off at the St. Albans hospital, and on Thursday’s half of the rest of the members pick up here, and the other half pick up in St. Albans.) Some vegetables continue to appear each week, like Prize Choi, both green and red head lettuce, radishes and beat greens. This week we added garlic, snap and shell peas, raspberries and potatoes, which Eric and I dug for about 60 pounds of for a good portion of yesterday morning! With some potato plants you’ll get maybe 4 good size new potatoes, others, you’ll just dig and dig and unfortunately not find one, or if you do, it’ll be too tiny too take. This week with the garlic, after we dug up these intoxicatingly delicious smelling bulbs, we dried them off, only so the mud would turn to dirt and brush off easier, and then we cut off most of the stem and roots. This week however, will be the only we week give out fresh garlic, the rest awaiting in the garden will be pick and dried up to be cured.

Yesterday afternoon, the interns took a break from harvesting, washing and weeding, and traveled to Applecheek Farm in Hyde Park, Vermont. This diverse family run organic farm contains llamas, emu, tons and tons of chickens and turkeys, miniature horses, ducks, goats, and cows for dairy. It’s quite the operation, but holds the same core values as Maplewood, producing good, natural food, and caring for the lives of the animals, which results in higher quality food. Meat from grass fed cattle for instance contains more omega 3 fatty acids which can reduce chances of heart related issues, cancer and lower blood pressure. Grass fed, compared to grain fed cattle, will also produce a meat with less fat. Beef from a less stressed cow, living in it's natural, pasture environment, can only have a advantages on those living their lives inside, cramped and pumped with unnatural elements, forcing them to grow faster.

Applecheek’s chickens, like ours, are free range, and walked all around the property, living a very content life. Our chickens mostly stay in their fenced in area by the coop, but a handful will get out, only to rush back and try to fight their way through the fence when it’s feeding time! Our chicken friend, who permanently lives outside the coop and feeds on whatever she can around the farm, still lingers around us when we work. We’ve given her the name, “Stewy”, as the Eric’s joke they’re going to make stew chicken out of her! Only time will tell what the fait of Stewy will be, but for now she’s enjoying her nomadic life.

Life on an organic farm is...like looking for treasure.

I decided today that in many ways, farming parallels a treasure hunt. After hours of weeding peas, I became sick of calling the act I was partaking in by it's common name, weeding. The peas, trapped under huge weeds 3 or 4 times their size, needed to be see the light of day. So instead of weeding, I "uncovered their general splendor". This new name makes it a little more bearable to carry out for a day. This is the first treasure hunt.

Yesterday, we dug in the dirt for potatoes! Now, that's an obvious treasure, and you're literally digging for it. Instead of an X marking the spot, we looked for the biggest greens above the ground, that had already blossomed. This lets us know that a potential potato could lay under the ground, just waiting to be fried, baked or mashed. This is the second treasure hunt.

Lastly, raspberries!! Each day, new perfectly colored raspberries appear on the bush. Today, I was on the hunt for the best ones, and plucked them off. Weaving my body towards the middle of the raspberry bush is difficult when trying to avoid getting pricked, but it's worth it for the find. The trick to finding the ripe raspberries is too look underneath some of the leaves, where some hide. Once again, discovering a treasure.

Life on an organic farm is... growing up poles and growing on ropes.

The unfortunate break down of the rototiller has left us to vigurously weed down the rows of tomatoes with action hoes. The weeds had overstayed their welcome and grown beyond the size of the tomato plants. Since those plants have begun to start popping out little green tomatoes, it's time to twine a rope close to the plant, through the poles (which we posted shortly after we transplanted, one pole after every three tomatoes). Two or three more rope layers will be added ontop of these new ones as the season continues, before the tomatoes can be harvested, giving them a place to rest their stems and leaves on.

Before the rope was weaved through the poles down the row, the "suckers" needed to be cut off of each plant. Suckers are stems growing out of the lower section of the main stem. They won't produce fruit and need to be cut out so that air flow increases to the upper section of the plant, and so that the tomato can put more energy into it's fruit than extra stems.

Pole beans have begun to wrap around their poles, rightfully representing their name, and nicely decorate the large stick supporting them.

It's both exciting and rewarding to witness the fruits of your labor, so to speak. It's interesting for me now, to go into a grocery store, especially large chain stores, and look at the vegetables. Tomatoes flock the shelves all year round, even though they're not in bloom yet, at least anywhere around here. Asparagus looks like it's been harvested too late (their crowns are too big). There are so many things I'm noticing now that I normally wouldn't have paid attention too. I'm realizing more and more how important it is to truly live in the season your in; fully appericate what's grown in your region, and eat it when it's fresh and thriving. Try focusing on what's in season now, try to buy what's growing by your area, say within 100 miles or so, and I garuentee you'll love the taste. :) It's hard too all the time of course, I'd die having to wait all winter for a piece of fruit. But I got a taste of a raspberry today as we began to pick them, and boy did it taste good, and I can't wait til the rest are ready!

Life on an organic farm is... smelling less like manure and more like flowers.

Smells, having a sneaky knack to trigger memories, instantly taking you back. One day weeding in the greenhouse, a whiff of a certain weed flooded through my nose, immediately taking me back to summers at my grandparent’s cottage on Conesus Lake, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. That same weed must have grown around their house and I would come across it daily. Today, as I arranged bouquets of flowers for our CSA members with Hannah, I smelled a Yarrow flower. It was the same smell of the same tall yellow flower that my sisters and I picked at my aunts house one day when I was probably seven, and dried to hang in our rooms. The scent just me think of playing with my American Girl doll....

So back to summer ’09. Today, like Dwight Schurte, I experienced the joy of beets, as I picked them out of the ground, 420 of them to be exact. Thankfully, Suzie, a CSA member who comes to work with us on the farm, joined me to help the beet picking go by faster! We mostly were attempting to pick beets that we could thin. Thinning is picking out plants, (mostly when they're still small seedlings) when they're growing in clumps, so that the remaining plants will have enough room to grow. When you plant vegetables like carrots, celery, radishes and beets, you don't transplant them, you just put the seed right it's designated row in the field. We've been using a planter, which plops the lil guys onto the ground as you wheel it down the row. The planter doesn't always evenly distribute the seeds, so you're left with clumps of them in certain spots. So thinning becomes a necessary procedure.

Along with the beets, we harvested head lettuce, prize choi, dill, green onions, radishes, kale, chard and beautiful bouquets of mixed flowers this morning for our CSA customers to pick up tomorrow. The damp, cold and wet day brought us with a down pour late morning into the afternoon, as we washed, bundled and bagged the vegetables in the milk room of the barn. The dreary afternoon saw us cleaning the bathroom and organizing plant labels, two tasks ever so deeply needing attention...

Yesterday, we filled in where head lettuces used to grow in the field, with flowers and picked sugar snap peas (trying hard not to eat more than we picked!) In the afternoon, the three of us interns and Hannah attended a workshop on gardening with plastic. The farm that held the workshop, but more like walk through, grows mainly strawberries. The rows of strawberries are covered in long bands of plastic, kept close to the grow, to prevent weeds from growing. The only holes in the plastic allow the plants to grow up through. After hours, days and weeks of weeding in all types of weather conditions, it’s easy to see why a farmer would want to invest in this type of farming! No weeding sounds pretty good to me! However, it comes at the price of using a significant amount of plastic; which most organic farmers tend to try to steer away from. For the strawberries though, the plastic could last about 2 or 3 growing seasons. It is kept on in the snow, and a drip irrigation system, like we use, is set up, where long flat tubes, placed close to the base of the plant, drips water to the soil, underneath the plastic. Never a bunch to say no to free fresh and delicious food, the four of us ventured down the many rows in search of strawberries to pick and devour. :)

Life on an organic farm is... Snappy:)

After some days up in the Adirondack with my family, I jumped back into farm life yesterday afternoon. So I'll sum up this past weeks happenin's, as the storm's a brewin' outside. Last week, before I left, we unfortunately lost a calf, #97, that had been sick :( Eric brought him inside the barn with him mother, who he was still nursing from, to keep an eye on him as she recovered. He was a runt to begin with, had maggots, and could have possibly had phenomena. He stopped feeding from his mother once the two were brought into the barn. Unfortunately the lil guy just didn't have the strength to survive his odds, and now is decomposing in the compost pile...
Fortunately though, our other calf, 91 or Heart, has been recovering well, and is currently acquiring a taste for grass as we ween her off the bottled milk.

We've been spending much of our time weeding, of course, and searching the many potato rows for Colorado Potato Beetles. This morning, we ventured into the field with our old yogurt containers filled with warm soapy water, to catch the bugs. We slowly walk down the rows, carefully look through the leaves, occasionally turn over leaves, and once we find them, pick them off the leaves and plop the lil moochers into our soapy water, which instantly kills them. Now, along with the adult bugs and the eggs, growing larva grace the leaves with their presence. Some larva are real tiny, but some have quite plump bodies from all the leaves they've been munchin' on. But no matter what their sizes are, they munch together, so once you see one, you're bound to see about 10 to 20 more on the same plant.

Today, Hannah, Maddy (I've been spelling her name wrong this whole time!), Calvin and I headed into St. Albans for our Monday CSA delivery to the Hospital. I conducted a survey for our customers, mainly to find out the main reason why they chose to participate in a CSA. I asked them to rank three main reasons for joining, environmental (wanting to limit their ecological footprint, ect...), Health (wanting to improve their own personal health by going organic), and supporting local their economy (since their money goes directly, and fully to the Noels). To my surprise, only one person ranked environmental as their top reason, it mostly got the second reason. Supporting the local economy and health were pretty evenly split as being people's main reason for joining the CSA. We dropped off our extra vegetables at the food shelter in St. Albans before heading back to Highgate.

As I'm writing this now, the rain brought a snapping turtle to the front yard! I wish I had my camera on me, as Richard picked it up by it's back leg, but the down pour wasn't the most enticing weather to run back to the trailor for it! It wander over from the ditch across the road, so Richard put the huge snapper in the back of his truck and returned it to it's ditch home. Ya never know what the rain might bring in...