adventures in apprenticeship farming

and here we are!

2008-06-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

All is busy, busy here, but everything here is going really well. I have an extraordinary farmer's tan and much more knowledge about growing food than I did three months ago.

We harvest food three days a week, the more of distributions, so when folks get their food its as fresh as possible. Harvesting usually takes the whole morning and we spend the rest of the day tending to the fields: a lot of weeding, transplanting and maintenance of the projects we did in the spring.

I have spent the weekend on the farm and had some time today for my first food preservation activities. Our stipend may be small, but we have access to an abundance of food, so it is my plan to save some for the winter. Today I blanched some greens for freezing and pickled radish. Mmmm......

going and going

2008-06-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am hotter, dirtier, smellier and more tired than I have been for this entire adventure thus far. We have been pushing this past couple of weeks to get as much as we can done before we start harvesting food. Because once we start harvesting, there won't be as much time to get plants in the ground, weed, hoe, fertilize and water...

This week's focus has been on tomatoes (and not getting heat rash in weird places)...we have planted at least 500. For each plant we dig a hole (shovel-deep), plant, then cover with straw mulch (it keeps the heat and water in and weeds out. that and tomatoes are susceptible to soil-born funk and the mulch protects them from that), add stakes in the ground and then trellis them.

We seeded all the winter squash and pumpkins today...and are busy trying to keep weeds out of everywhere. Our first distribution is next week! I am quite ready to begin feeding people and seeing results from all of our work...

much better

2008-05-26T12:16:00.001-07:00

there are new pictures of the farmers on the website....much more attractive and less wintery:
http://www.wolfpinefarm.com/farmers.html

guess

2008-05-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

so, in an attempt to engage my readers (and to see if there are any readers), I present you with an opportunity to win internet prestige and possibly a fabulous prize (it might depend on if the winner lives nearby...) to the first person to correctly answer the following question:

What is the first trouble-shooting method used by myself and other wolf pine farmers when an implement will not come off (or go on) to the tractor?

(Our tractor has a three-point hitch and all the different tools we have to till the soil have to be put on the tractor to be used...you are welcome to do research...)

You can answer in the comment section....

resting

2008-05-26T05:56:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day is a farm holiday (one of two for the season), so I have the day off and my body is pleased about that. The weeks of bending over to transplant have finally taken a toll on my back and my chest. The work no longer wears me out, we have fewer and fewer meals at the cabin full of exhaustion and just staring at one another, but I am aware that I need to be taking care of my aches more.

This week tomatoes went into the ground...they are also planted on black plastic. Next week will be potatoes, so we spent a couple of quiet afternoons cutting seed potatoes into pieces the size of 'a hen's egg' so they would be ready to be planted. I also had asparagus fresh out of the garden for the first time in my life. It was amazing, amazing and entirely worth the effort it takes to grow asparagus. It was a glimpse into the fresh, delicious food to come.

a place for you...

2008-05-25T21:09:00.000-07:00

we built a tent platform outside of the cabin....ready and waiting for guests.

what a cucumber is worth

2008-05-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

I worked my first Saturday yesterday, Saturdays will always be half days, making the idea of working on the weekend significantly more bearable. We spend the whole morning on one project: cukes and zukes.

And as it turns out, a lot of work goes into growing any organic food, but your cucumbers and squash are especially spoiled. The tractor pulls an implement which lays down a bed of black plastic. So, picture a whole 180 foot bed with a path of any black plastic bag. Then we poke a hole in the plastic every 18 inches, and plant the cuke or zuke inside the whole. After being transplanted, all the beds have wire hoops placed over the beds every 5 feet or so and then we cover the beds with floating row cover (remay, as its called).

The black plastic is to keep the soil warm and the weeds out. Since plants in the cucurbit family don't grow straight up, but wander and spread out on the ground, they are much harder to weed by hand or with tractor implements. The remay and hoops are there to protect the young plant from the cucumber beetle (beasts that would be fought with pesticides on a conventional farm). The cucumber beetles eat the plants (no good) and sometimes infect the plants with a funky bacteria (also no good). So the remay stays on until the plants flowers, and then the remay comes off so the plant can be pollinated by insects (yay bees!)

got one

2008-05-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Things going through my head during the three hours I was on a tractor, rototilling:

2008-05-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

Lyrics to "Through the Dark" by KT Tunstall
Lyrics to "I'm Gettin' Married in the Morning" from My Fair Lady
Rototilling
What to write on my blog
Lunch
Chips
Whether or not there are contests at country fairs for who can make the most perfect crop bed with a tractor
That I'm pretty sure that I drive a tractor straighter then the other apprentice and would win a country fair contest of that sort
Hoping that because I was on the tractor so long someone else set up the irrigation for the Far Barn Field
How tan my arms are. Or is that dirt?
Lunch

a first

2008-05-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last night we had our first river swim of the season. Well, it wasn't so much a swim as a dip with a bit of cleaning (we all brought down soap and wash clothes.) The water was cold, cold, but welcome after a long day of sun and dirt.

All the onions are in the ground...we planted two beds of spring onions (the wee green ones, scallions if you will) and eleven beds of storage onions and leeks. The beds are about 230 feet long with two or three rows in each bed. Its amazing to think all the onions for the season are all planted.

A lot of the food for the season is already growing, either in the ground or the greenhouse, now its just a matter of taking care of the soil and waiting. In her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kinsolver imagines a season of vegetables as one large plant, the vegetannual. Once she pictured a growing season as one growing entity, it was easier for her to understand why we don't have tomatoes in April. When a plant first begins to grow, it is all greens, hence, collards, kale, lettuce, cabbage and chard in the spring. Next grow the young fruits (summer sqush, beans, peas), followed by more mature fruits (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers) which is the height of summer. After the soft flesh fruits, things harden and in the fall we harvest pumpkins, butternut squash and gords. After a full fruit, the plant can put the rest of its energy back into the roots...and that gets you all the beets, carrots, potatoes and onions. I liked her image and I think its a good tool for people to use when they begin to learn what it means to eat seasonally.

We are still busy getting all the fields ready for planting, and today I took a break from tractor work. Not willingly, mind you, but I had a system full of benedryl, trying to cope with the black fly bites that I have acquired. I've always reacted badly to any insect bites, but there is something about my west coast blood that cannot handle the black flies. My left ear is swolllen to about twice the size of my right. Not very cute.

oh the things to plant

2008-05-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

plow. rototill. fluff. dibble. transplant. cover. repeat.

This is my past week (and this week) in a nutshell. We are working around the bit of rain we've had to get more plants into the ground. Some fields were almost dry and ready to till, but we had rain over the weekend so they are wet again. So in the meantime, we are working non-stop in the fields that are dry.

Happy plants in the ground are:
leeks
storage onions
lettuce
hard cabbage
napa cabbage
chard

There are still seeds being sewn in the greenhouse, most recently cucumbers, summer squash, basil and more lettuce...it is packed!

Our days go by so fast and there is beginning to be much more work than there is time in the day. We will be starting working Saturdays (half days) in a couple of weeks. I really enjoy my time on the weekends in Portland, it will be hard not to be there for a full two days. It seems like right now my weekends are just long enough for any achy muscles to rest, for all the nicks on my hands to heal and to actually get clean again.

its official

2008-04-26T07:18:00.001-07:00

a girl and her vest. check it out:
http://www.wolfpinefarm.com/farmers.html

my goodness!

2008-04-26T06:28:00.001-07:00

Plants are in the ground!

While transplanting kale, collards and cabbage yesterday afternoon, it amazed me how much work went into the very simple act of getting plants to grow in the field. It was wonderful to see beds of plants, it felt like a tremendous amount of progress and like we've shifted gears into actually growing food.

That said, my body is aching for the first time since my apprenticeship began. I had been tired and worn out, but after an afternoon of bending over and transplanting, my legs and back are sore, sore, sore. After planting we also covered the plants with floating row cover to protect it from flea beetles and little beasts (voles in the greenhouse, woodchucks in the field.) The edges of the row cover has to be covered with dirt all the way around to not let creatures in, which meant ending the day with an hour and a half of shoveling.

I'm looking forward to a quiet weekend with lots of coffee and a bit of laundry.

in short

2008-04-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

This week has been really tiring. We spent last night's dinner just staring at each other, that hasn't happened since my first week here. Everything we're doing is about getting the fields ready for plants...I thought rather than using my energy to be clever, I would give the run down on my day today in schedule form.

7:00 morning meeting. learn how to drive the Ford 4000. open up the greenhouse.
8:00 work on getting the spader implement onto the tractor. grease the joints of the disc harrow.
9:00 water greenhouse and cold frame plants. move bags of fertilizer around the barn. rearrange greenhouse plants after taking a bunch outside to the cold frame.
11:00 spade the woodside one field on the kubota tractor.
12:00 lunch. mmm.
1:00 fertilizer and cover crop is delivered, move palettes and bags of it around.
2:00 second round of watering of the greenhouse.
3:00 use the truck to help pull a stuck tractor out of the soil. begin transplant cherry tomato seedlings into larger pots.
4:00 more planting
5:00 close up the greenhouse, cover the cold frames.

plus a hundred other little things that I can't even recall right now because I'm pooped. and filthy, I had to be doing something amazing to get this dirty.

not as cute as you'd think

2008-04-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

The tractor tan has begun. Well, as of right now it's a tractor burn. A very bright pink running down both my forearms. Also, learning how to use and fix tractors means I've added the element of grease to my already filthy day.

an update and a list

2008-04-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

Reasons I know I'm farming for real:

1. I'm sunburned and its April in Maine
2. I wear work gloves daily, for at least 30 min
3. I wear Carhartts in earnest
4. I have blisters from my boots, on my heels and calves
5. I'm thinking about getting a straw hat
6. A guy at the gas station looked at my work outfit and said, "Earned your keep today, eh?"
7. I go to bed at 9:15. and fall asleep.
8. I use hand salve 8 times a day and not just because it smells good
9. My hands are really clean about once a week
10. I know what a mold board plow, a harrow discer and a spader do
11. I know where to find free hay

lifting heavy things and placing them somewhere else

2008-04-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today seemed to be a day of getting ready. We moved large bags of soil, fertilizer and cover crop seed around in the barn in order to make room for more seed and for the farm store. This task involved a lot of productive heavy lifting and then so some not so productive moments with the hand palette jack.

(p.s. for those who didn't know, anytime there is a word in my blog that's a different color, you can click on that word and it takes you to an explanation or an image. This save us both time, so I don't have to write in detail about things like hand palette jacks, or voles and you don't have to read about it...)

Also, the fence started to go up. Its a fence designed to keep deer out and broccoli in. Since it is electric fencing, it is put up and taken down each season. So we spent a nice part of the day putting stakes in the ground 20 feet apart around five fields and each stake has three clips where we attach electical tape. So when the current is running through the tape, it borders each field.

And anytime I am not getting fields ready, I am in the greenhouse getting plants ready. I've seeded heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, basil, parsley, eggplant, sweet and hot peppers. The cold frame is up, which means some plants have left the greenhouse and are closer to being in the ground (the cold frame isn't heated, but it protects the plants from the cold at night a little more than if they were outside). It sounds like we get to plow and disc some fields next week! There will be food growing anytime now...

picture time

2008-04-13T08:19:00.000-07:00

Barrett brought me my camera when she came to visit Thursday (she made us all pizza, it was delicious), so I was able to take some pictures of the greenhouse, our little plants and some of the farm. Enjoy.

the cabin

the greenhouse

kohlrabi

cabbage and kale

farmers vs. voles

2008-04-12T05:35:00.001-07:00

Now we think they're voles. and we caught another one, but now they're into the kale and collards. This is why you sew 20% extra of everything.

cabbage eating bastards

2008-04-10T14:08:00.001-07:00

There are mice in the greenhouse. And they are eating the cabbage. As a result, the new task added to greenhouse chores is setting and checking mouse traps.

I am on greenhouse duty this week which means I make sure everything gets watered, the temperture stays regulated and mice get killed.

So far, we've caught four. gross.

machines can be our friends

2008-04-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

The chickens are in! Coop construction is finished, their little home was done on Monday afternoon, and by Monday evening, all the chickens were moved out of the greenhouse and into their coop. Then we disassembled their temporary brooder and put away for next year's little chicks.

After a construction project that lasted three days, I was definitely ready for some low key labor that did not involve insulation or chicken wire. I was rewarded with a full day of greenhouse work and an introduction to the tractor.

The plants we eat in Maine during July and August (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant) are heat loving plants. And heat loving plants want things warm from the beginning. So even though the greenhouse stays between 60-80 degrees (70-75 with moving air being ideal), these little seeds need to be warmer in order to germinate. They are put in little slot trays, close together and then put on a warmed germination table until they sprout. Once they sprout, we transplant them into either single cell trays or their own 4 inch pots (aptly called "potting up") and they grow in those pots until being put into the ground. So today was all about taking tomatoes and celeriac out of their germination trays and putting them into individual trays. It was great, I was warm all day and listened to crappy pop music.

There is heartier stuff in the greenhouse, too. Chard, kale, lettuce, cabbage, onions and kohlrabi for example. These plants that can go into the ground as soon as the ground is ready. Which is not yet. Even though a couple of fields are no longer snow covered, all that melted snow makes the ground too wet for the tractor. If a tractor is used on a field that is too wet, it can compact the soil in a way the makes it unusable for a long time. There are couple of ways to check the soil to see if its tractor and planting ready, the one I liked was simple: squeeze the soil in your hand, if you can get water to come out, its too wet.

Our tractor introduction was brief and there will be more to come, but my comprehension of how we use machines to make the work more is efficint is much better already. So the tractor below is the one we'll be using and I have no idea who that guy is.
Some things planned for the rest of this week: putting up electric fences, tractor lessons, potting up more celeriac, de-green onions, learn how to take care of the chickens and de-rope the spreader.

Off to the cabin for dinner...

back in Portland

2008-04-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

After a day of cold, rainy and grey weather, coming into Portland to take a hot shower with water I didn't have to pump was amazing (and really, I was filthy, so being clean was amazing as well.)

Yesterday was a two pants day. We spent the entire day (and a nice chunk of Thursday) putting up a winter chicken coop in what was once a tractor garage. I am now intimately familiar with chicken wire, staple guns, staple hammers, electric drills, insulation and how to attach things to rotting boards.

This is the first year the farm is raising chickens. They arrived in the mail, little, peeping, balls of fuzz and they are currently living in the barn and in the greenhouse. As we prepare for the melting of snow, seedlings are taking up more and more space in the greenhouse and the chickens need to move into new housing to free up space for plants.

We took a tour of the fields this week, and though they are still under snow it was nice to get an idea of what food will be grow where. Crops are rotated to different fields each year, because different plants take different amounts of nutrients from the soil, therefore, moving crops around helps to preserve the soil. Some fields are also fallow, they take a rest, get a cover crop and gather strength for another season. There are eleven fields on the farm, all different sizes. Should be no surprise then, that the farm manager spends the winter planning out how to grow food for 230 families over 20 weeks.

I drove back to town yesterday afternoon, exhausted and looking forward to a weekend of rest, food and time with my darling. I'm looking forward to next week, ready for our next tasks, see how much the little greenhouse plants have grown and hopefully watch more snow melt.

day two

2008-04-02T14:03:00.000-07:00

Turns out that when there is snow on the ground, there is still plenty of things needing to be done on a farm. The list posted on the white board in the farm office for this week is as follows:

Things to do:
seed: kohlrabi, peppers, eggplant
pot up tomatoes
fish alliums
dig out implements
move chickens/help with construction
check hoses
wash greenhouse trays
inventory slot trays
write bios

A lot of time is spent in the greenhouse, so if your food comes from a local farm in the northeast, the tomatoes you eat in late July are beginning their lives in a greenhouse somewhere now. Time is also spent cleaning things out in preparation for the season, or cleaning things out in preparation for creating a new indoor chicken coop.

My day seems to be filled with a combination of big, heavy, loud, dirty tasks and delicate, quiet, detailed, dirty tasks.

my commute

2008-04-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

is now five minutes long.

the things to bring

2008-03-31T05:18:00.000-07:00

Much of my stuff has made its way to the farm, and among it are items recommended by one of the farm managers. I believe a number of people compared this 'what to bring' list to the list one gets when going to camp and though I can see the similarity....this list is much, much cooler.

Recommended for the growing season:
1. Carharts or other sturdy working pants
2. Long underwear, it's cold here
3. High Rubber boots for mud season
4. Rain Gear - The classic sort of fisherman type of get-up. You'll need both a jacket and pants.
5. Sturdy shoes in general. You must wear closed toe shoes on the tractor.
6. Shorts and tee-shirts etc for when the sun shines.
7. Also good to have a small pocket knife
8. Work gloves, a watch and sometype of hat to keep the sun off.

so it begins

2008-03-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

The work pants, rain gear, bedding and sun screen have all been hauled out to the farm. My mom and my darling helped me move in on Friday. Moving in involved dragging a bedroom's worth of stuff on an L.L. Bean toboggan from the car to the cabin, as the entire farm (and much of Maine) is still covered in snow.

I will officially move to the farm tomorrow and have spent today gathering last minute items: cookbooks, flashlight, dried beans and a plant or two. I will be spending my weekdays at the farm, living in a small, beautiful three-room cabin. The cabin will be a practice in low-impact living: the electricity is solar, the heat is a wood stove, the water is from the well and the toilet is a compost one (more info on composting toilets here.)

I am excited beyond words. I feel like I did right before moving to Maine, I know I will feel at home in the dirt and am looking forward to following the seasons and growing beautiful food.