Life on an organic farm is...for me, soon and strangely coming to an end

As my days living and working at Maplewood come to an end, I surprisingly spent the afternoon of my last full day at Maplewood, not at Maplewood. Ellyn and I traveled down the road in her trusty old Subaru Legacy, to Guy’s Dairy farm, for four hours of working with some lovely Holsteins. Guy and one of his hired hands, twelve year, Caleb, showed us the ropes, where to shovel old hay, where to shovel lots and lots of cow poop, how to lead the cows into the barn from the pasture, clean their tits with diluted iodine, hook up the milking machines to the pipes running up through the barn and hook the suckers on to their tits. Extremely educational to say the least, we jumped right in and learned the only way we’ve been learning all summer, hands on.

The odor of the shit, as they all kept referring to it as, fills most of the barn, as expected. Pre-milking chores include racking the poop from under the cows in their stalls, onto the indented track behind where they stand, which pushes all the cow waste, for a better term, into a 12 foot deep storing well, that Guy has admitted to climbing down to save a kitten! Farm cats and kittens walk everywhere around the barn, weaving in and out through the cows, and Guy’s trusty black lab, Scout, trailed right behind us almost everywhere we went. The farm had a strong family feeling to it, as his son and daughter help with chores, and neighbors know to come in during the milking hour to catch up with Guy.

It’s defiantly a different type of farming, from the vegetable tending we’ve become accustomed to these past three months, but enjoyable known the less! Guy, who’s so connected to his cows, recognizes their needs, would tell me their names, if they had them, and which ones where stubborn, which ones would need a push out, or which one would be easiest on my first try at milking. We reeked of the barn and cows at dinner, and heard it from the Noel’s as we sat down to eat our stew, which was made with cow heart! :0 Talk about being resourceful!

In the morning, Ellyn and I planted some more beets, to fill in where other beets failed to grow, started catching up on some much needed weeding in the onion row, and prepared for the CSA farm pick up. One of my favorites, green peppers, finally have started to grow large enough that we can begin to harvest them! They smell as lovely as they look, but a large portion of them will be left on the plant until they turn red. I’m loving beans more than I ever would have imagined! If I could suggest a list of vegetables to grow in a home garden, beans would be top of the list. Provider bush beans, Rattlesnake pole beans (which produce an amazing tie-dyed like coloring) and Gold Rush bush beans all have grown amazingly and taste delicious. Pole beans have the advantage of not having to weed either. :)

Tomorrow morning, Eric the intern, Hannah, Ellyn, Susie and I all hit the road for our NOFA conference in Massachusetts for a weekend of expanding our organic farming minds. :) Then I hit the road on Monday, leaving the farm, and returning to my other life; meaning, among other things, no more blog. :( I’ll have one last post after the conference, but would love to ask something of, hopefully, all you readers out there! I’ve been hearing from different people, that so and so has been reading the blog, and would love for some feed back from you! I don’t care if I know you, if we’re best friends or just acquaintances, if you know me through Hannah, even if I have no idea who you are! I’d love to hear if you’ve enjoyed following this experience, if you’ve learned anything, used any of the information I’ve given, changed the way you’ve looked at your food, maybe even if I convinced you to buy more organic food. :) I’d really appreciate it, and the more elaborate you are the better! Even include what I could have done differently, or what else you would have liked too see. You can email me at hmgibbon@syr.edu with your “evaluation” so to speak. Thanks in advance, and again, I would really, really like to hear what you have to say about it! Don’t be shy now!