"its the most wonderful time of the year..."

Andy Williams was wrong when he said Christmas was “the most wonderful time of the year…”

It really isn’t.

Mud season on the farm is!

Spreading compost down at Putnams on February 25. Certainly an unusual and early activity for this time of the year…

What are we to make of the weather thus far in 2024?  I am personally torn. I feel for my skiing buddies, but as a person whom is no longer skiing, I have enjoyed the relatively ice free footing and the temperatures that have allowed me to cut brush and indulge in an occasional bike ride, say nothing about economizing on the firewood.

Spring fast approaches, maybe a little too fast. There is a palpable level of tension in the Macs Maple Sugarhouse as to the uncertainty of the weather and that its impacts could spell a very short sugaring season. Climate change  has wrought some real havoc with the trees as we lost not only the tree fruit in most of New England in 2023 but most of the leaves on the hardwoods got burned off as well. This is abnormal stress that they can once endure, but they wont do well if it becomes a normal event.

Let’s shift to to greenhouse season and early considerations about vegetable growing.

We pretty much adhere to a chronological schedule for doing things in the greenhouse. Things are timed as best we can to provide flower and vegetable starts for our farm and customers in May. This plant material is all grown in a controlled environment, so it is a mostly weather independent schedule. However, what we do in the field and gardens out in the real weather and the timing of when we do it becomes a whole other bucket of fish. We time the first plantings of our spring vegetables starts for early to mid May, especially the field crops that take a long time like peppers and tomatoes. The first part is easy: seed and grow in the greenhouse. Then there is a general planting date (mid May) that is adjusted and affected by temperature and moisture. You can’t keep transplants in the greenhouse forever until all threat of frost has gone, because the quality of the transplant diminishes. Maybe you cant (or dare) plant because it looks like a cold front coming at you in 3 days. Or perhaps the ground is too dry and the supplemental irrigation has not been set up.  After planting, the frost sensitive crops will need protection in the manner of row covers….and a bit of weather related luck by avoiding late frosts. Weather can affect the successive planting of vegetables. In 2023 we had all manner of vegetables backed up waiting for transplant, couldn’t get them planted in a timely manner because we couldn’t get into flooded areas or the ground was just too saturated.

Lets forget about last year….not a minute too soon…

The question in my mind (and every other farmer) is this : Are we to expect a drought like in 2022, or a wet year like 2023? From what I am seeing today, I put my money on a drought this summer. Loggers are complaining about the water running in the woods, but down here on these well drained sandy soils I fully expect dust clouds in May when we go to work up planting ground. There is no snow pack to keep the brooks and streams flowing full bank into May. There is no ice in the brooks and rivers and I would say by the lack of fishing huts on area ponds is that there isn’t much ice there either. That is not to say we could not have a wet spring. We certainly could, after all, don’t we live in New England? The Connecticut River across the road looks navigable in a kayak today (March 3, 2024) without much water in it. Thirty years ago (back in the Old Days…) we worried about “ice out” in the river resulting in ice dams and flooding. The river rarely skim coats ice now, and didn’t at all this year.  So it will be pretty easy to get things pretty dry around here pretty quickly with a strong spring sun and some breezy April days.

Other than the regular weather concerns we think we are ready (mostly) to hit the ground running. We will put in our first two houses of tomatoes by the end of this month. Jenny and Ray are busily grafting the later plantings of tomatoes and seeding vegetables and herbs for later vegetable tunnels and outdoor planting. Ali, Aly, Sarah, Holly and Anne are already cranking out hanging baskets and transplanting seedlings. We have passed the annual housing inspections by NHDOL for the H2A crew, and we have a good start on family firewood for the upcoming winter.  Youth hockey season is wrapping up and winter vacations are over so there are a lot of bodies here working already. With Jenny and Ray busy grafting tomatoes, Steve is seeding onions and I am seeding annuals and tying up the latter part of vegetative propagation of ornamentals. The warmth and relative dryness has been very nice to work in,  a silver lining to all that is  potentially dangerous about a warming climate. By week’s end we will have 8 greenhouses up and running.

Game on.

And finally we should mention the turnover in some of the farm team members. During the 2023 season we lost two of our favorite team players. Ray and Jenny lost Sugar, the benevolent dog beast with a sweet disposition and a firm advocate at Edgewater for a Woodchuck Free Zone. Anne and I saw our old pal Dixie leave the building. She too had a nice disposition, an un paralleled love of riding in a car and intently scrutinizing my cooking at dinner time. But there are a few new recruits that have come with the advent of the new growing season, With Walter and Mina the senior dogs, the new trainees are getting acquainted and we are learning names. There also seems to be a new breed of farm dogs showing up. They are very nimble, quick and are small. They look a lot like small goats, but I am assured they are not…….

 

 

 

 

 

The Hits of the Summer of 2023 Keep on Coming

We are sitting in the middle of a summer so very different from last year where everything languished in a never ending seasonal drought that effected  crop productivity and wore  everybody down. It was tough to deal with dust and heat and try to farm in a climate that then was more suited to dryland grain farming and felt like eastern Colorado. Fast forward to this year and the lushness and soggy conditions have fostered epic weed growth, leached nutrition from the cultivated soils and brought every vegetable disease in the book up on these wet southern storms. I may be singing a different tune by the weeks (note: I am now singing a bit of a different  tune. On Friday July 21 we got an additional 3” of rain in our town. Local  Blow Me Down Brook blew out of its channel wiping our two acres of corn and eroding gullys in the field in an effort to create a new, more efficient channel.  Elsewhwere at Ray and Jenny we lost 30 to 40% of a three acre planting of fall  crops that were just  transplanted earlier in the week to pounding rain and rushing water. The resulting addition of water front  property was unwarranted and unwanted. On the home farm we additionally had invest in two truckloads of aggregate to put our  farm roads and driveways in order.)

A new brook bed in the making where a field of sweet corn used to be

It actually is much worse for some of my  farmer friends and colleagues. The recent flooding has left us at  Edgewater relatively unscathed compared to those whom  lost total crops, top soil and is some cases whole farms, buildings and machinery. We see dramatic pictures of the dam in Quechee with the river at full tilt flood stage, yet we don’t see the photos of the dairy farms in Colchester with standing water slowly rotting the corn in their fields. You are not hearing the  full stories of the many orchards whom are trying to balance  their farm workforce and annual cultural responsibilities with no future income to offset their daily expenses. Small  start up farmers are struggling to determine whether  to marshal on with loss and increasing debt when they have not been in operation long enough to have developed any measurable equity in their enterprises.  Should  they just throw in the towel, and start paying back the operational loans by getting  a job driving trucks for UPS or go further into debt to continue their dream?  These are stories of a slower, less dramatic war of attrition that is being fought by  many new  England farmers.

It has been a difficult year for all farmers, regardless of their commodity. Early freezes, extreme moisture and heat have made it a very different kind of season than the 2022 season. But climate change has proven that we will have to learn to adapt to these extremes,  and the general  public  will begin to learn how fragile their food system is with the continuance of these  climate extremes. The cost of  food at the store will reflect the cost and difficulty of producing that food. The general public would be wise to begin to re engage in participating in producing their own food through gardening, canning and preserving as well as learning what it is to eat sustainably.

Despite the weather there have been some surprisingly high points in the 2023 growing season thus far for Edgewater. Despite the early freezes and  lousy picking weather, the strawberries  did reasonably well with good size and pretty good flavor.   The blueberry crop has sized  up well (no doubt from abundant rain) , and we have a solid line of vegetables on the stand now (not guaranteeing the future)  with good succession planting lined up.  We have lost  culinary herbs, several acres of sweet corn and some cucurbits to date,  along with topsoil and time……again nothing compared to the devastation many  have experienced.  The challenge going forward-especially if the weather continues in the wet pattern- will be disease pressure on the vegetables. Many of the later season pests-both insect and disease- have already arrived and settled in. And we are very concerned that the May freezes that damaged the nut trees in area forests will have the bear, birds and deer coming out of the woodwork to feast in our fields for lack of food in the woods. Currently deer are feeding on  peppers, tomato plants, and nibbling on potato vines and it’s very early to see this level of animal intrusion.  Large flocks of geese whom are struggling to stay in  the surging  river have taken tenancy in our lower meadow and are raising havoc with the carrots. There is yet  a long growing season ahead of us… lots can go wrong or go well…..we shall see.

We have a pretty good crew on board. We have a delightful farmstand crew out front and in the kitchen, with a lot of experience, again overseen by our pal Alli Boeri from Hartland.  The returning  guys from Jamaica have a lot of  historical experience on the farm so that relatively little oversight is needed for the tasks at hand once the days goals are outlined.  It is a much   an older crew in the field. A couple of youngsters in their forties and a young woman in forestry school, but 8 of us are over 60.  The senior member of the field crew just had  his 92 birthday. That is not a typo.  George Cilley drives up from  Bradford  NH four days a week and works about  a 7-8 hour day. He is point man on spring tillage, doing a lot of the field prep; plowing, harrowing, field  cultivation and during the season he  does a lot of mowing around the fields and buildings. He also supervises and does any number of different carpentry projects that crop up on the farm. I first met George as a five year old when he came to work at my family’s dairy farm.  We have a mutual agreement not to reveal any sordid details about each other’s past.  If he has one character flaw, I would say that he is opiniated about his choice of ice cream and wont keep anything but chocolate or vanilla in his freezer.

Steve Maguire and George Cilley hard at building reparations

So once again the main story on the farm has been one of weather and climate change and how we are doing whatever we can do to cope with, deal with and  and farm within it. Though last year was a perfect year to make hay and go to the beach, it actually was harder for us  to function with the extended drought  and we lost a great deal of crop income because of it. In our particular little corner of the world this wet weather has -in a very  few ways- been an easier year to cope with. That said, the flooding and weather patterns have us walking on broken glass in a what seems like a war of attrition with Mother Nature, knowing that a couple of gully washers in the White River Valley could really inflict some hurt on our  farm.

 

Skid steer view of July 10th flooding in lower meadow strawberry bed

All That Glitters….

March is greenhouse season. We go full bore towards Memorial Day to get garden starts, ornamentals a and container material grown up and healthy. My responsibilities lean more towards the propagation and seeding  part, so I am busy in  January with daily trips or days in the greenhouse. (So named by my neighbor as the “nuclear greenhouse” because of the warm evening glow of additional lighting we provide the seedlings.)

I will often spend hours at a potting bench either  seeding a bazillion different flowers and herbs that Anne and Sarah order or I am  taking cuttings and propagating non hardy plants and perennials to be grown and used as  annuals up here in the frozen north. Salvias, fuchsias, brugmansias all have to be cut, stuck in the soil  and rooted. It’s a nice job in the winter. It’s essentially a desk job  at a cold and often crappy time of year to be outside. It’s  quite pleasant , especially when the sun is out.

I have a radio next to the potting bench, and I use it this time of year to listen to music, interviews, podcasts, and in-depth news. Today there was an interesting hour on Public Radio  devoted to  the explanation of the  importance of the federal organic certification and the labeling laws concerning  organic produce. The discussion centered around proposed changes in  laws and protocols and how some  unscrupulous producers are claiming through their packaging that they are USDA certified organic when in fact they have been cited for  violating or incorporating questionable organic production protocols. The first part of the program had callers explaining why they chose to purchase certified organic products over conventionally grown. The testimonials  ran the gamut from “I buy organic products because it’s good for the earth…”  to others who presented very interesting   and compelling reasons.   Suffice to say, consumers  depend on the USDA label to help them with their choices at the store.  

We at Edgewater Farm are not a certified USDA Organic Farm selling USDA certified organic fruit and produce. We are, by definition, a conventional farm.   So we don’t have a dog in this labeling fight. However, I am very am skeptical and disturbed at the current trajectory  of the current  federal certification process. There are inconsistencies in the   Federal oversight  that  annoy me and how it affects some of my upper valley  organic farming colleagues.

Originally organic farm certification was overseen by state governments or the independent state organic farmer organizations. They developed localized production guidelines, by laws and oversaw the certification  of farms within their boundaries or purview.  They developed these guidelines based on sound organic principles as set down by the “founding fathers” of the  organic movement (Albrecht, JI Rodale and others)  and proven science of the time.  Vermont historically has  had a very  robust association of organic farmers in NOFA VT for over 50 years, ( if my memory serves me..) . The certification was not a giveaway marketing tool. You had to adhere to some very strict production guidelines, record keeping and inspections. Over time  Vermont Organic certification was a standard that elicited buyer confidence and meant something for a farm to achieve. It was arguably a template that was used elsewhere in America.

Enter the federal government. USDA  (the US Department of Agriculture)   felt that the standardization of a nationwide set of regulations  and guidelines was  more appropriate to regulating, standardizing and promoting organic agriculture, to which I would agree. However, all the small statewide organic associations and organizations  had to surrendered their autonomy to the federal government. The result was a greater impact in the marketplace, and marketing strategies coalesced around the federal government’s efforts to promote the benefits of small scale organic agriculture. It initially also served  to give a leg up to the small family farms that were using organics to find  a market niche, especially at a time when corporate farming  was flourishing.  

So whence the term “organic farmer” had once been synonymous with “hippy” or  “counter culture”, the federal labeling and attendant marketing and certification process gave the term “certified organic” credibility, and an increase in market share  was a result. It became trendy and desirable.  It was successful in carving out a bigger piece of the produce gross sales “pie”  nationally.  Organic farming began to look profitable.   That spike in growth of the demand for organics on a national level caught the eyes and interest of some very large farming conglomerates, (like General Foods). They became interested and ultimately wanted to get into that growth index, and to get  a piece of that pie.

It is an undisputable  fact that farming organically is harder, more expensive, and more complicated  to produce food strictly organically than it is with  conventional agriculture. If it’s more  expensive to produce, its going to cost the consumer  more , hence the  general price disparity at the cash register.  Large or corporate sized farms transitioned from conventional agricultural production to organic agriculture. Some moved because of philosophical beliefs but mainly they were profit motivated. Some made the transition, did it by the books, and were successful.   Others jumped in and did well but only because they  found ways to cut a few corners.  How and why are the corners smoothed over ? As Killdeer Farm’s  Jake Guest always  says:  “Just follow the money, you will find the players…”  

Every USDA Organically certified commodity has a specific set of production guidelines to be followed. They are not always easy to follow. For example, in vegetable production you are not allowed to use fertilizers that are produced through chemical synthesis. The guideline is cut and dried.  No synthetic pesticides and no synthetic herbicides. Organic farmers can use certain organically derived in insecticides, a very few herbicides  and  some fungicides (elemental metals like copper, sulfur) for fungicides.   They may use only these  products which are allowed and approved by USDA Organics Standards. You must demonstrate meaningful soil stewardship and rotation. as stipulated by USDA. If you fail on guidelines, you fail and don’t get Organic Certification. Nor the label.

At this point of in the blog I am providing a link that you should take a moment to visit. There is a splinter organic movement developing called the Real Organic Project.  On the home page there are three interesting videos that may give pause for trusting  the USDA organic  labeling on the produce that  you buy at the supermarket. The short videos will help some of the terms going forward that you may have heard being bantered about.  

https://www.realorganicproject.org/

So if you are Big Ag, some of these additional production steps to achieve certification  can trip you up and be  very  expensive or impossible  to incorporate or to get around .  An area of concern is in the meat production area. CAFOs (Corporate Agriculture Feedlot Operation) are the conventional models for meat production in the west  and are used in pork, beef, dairy  and poultry  production. Sometimes there are thousands of animals in these feedlot operations. Manure management and herd health can be a problem  in these congested environments. The organic regs say that each cow   needs approximately 4 acres of “loafing area” or pasture to be certifiably organic. Let’s say you are a conventional beef producer in the Midwest and you have a feedlot operation with 3000 animals on 500 acres, all animals fed  and grown   in one location. I you wish to transition to certifiable organic production with those 3 thousand beef cows and  you want to get your meat certified USDA Organic, fattening up and finishing 3000 beef cows gets  much more difficult. You will need to acquire an additional 11,500 acres for them to frolic on. Plus you would have to break up the feedlot to many small outlying feedlots so the animals could travel to pasture  daily  from those feeding stations.  Its going to cost you a bundle to meet the organics guidelines. Seems financially impossible.  Your next solution is to simply lobby for a change in USDA organic production guidelines, so the guidelines are less stringent and less expensive.   Bingo.  That’s where lobbying and influence comes in.

The overseers of the  USDA National Organics Program  must believe some of its own regulations are exclusionary.  So they modify them in favor of corporate agriculture. (Think of Jake’s “follow the money..”)  There are stories abound with the National Organic Standards Board playing pretty loose with guidelines and making exceptions to accommodate corporate agriculture. I heard of blueberry operations in the south and mid-Atlantic that were allowed to use glyphosate (Roundup) in their production strategies. CAFOs have been under fire for playing loose with the animal loafing regs. Some years back the Upper Valley’s own Long Wind Farm suffered an account loss to a certified organic facility that was growing hydroponic tomatoes!  (The very definition of organic specifically mentions growing, use, and   care of the  soil,  not liquid mediums infused with nutrients.)  The National Organic Standards Board thought it better to usurp the definition of organics than to deny some  mega greenhouse operation across the country the USDA Certification Seal.

 

The point of all of this being that you should be a bit skeptical about “the little  green sticker”. It might well not be as ”good for  the planet” as the woman on the radio promoted .  If you are thinking about the environment and your own health you should not necessarily assume that the sticker means the product is better for you or better for the planet   Are  Mr. Driscoll’s  organic strawberries from Mexico really better for  your health  or the earth than Edgewater or 4 Corners Farms  conventionally grown strawberries? Did you consider carbon footprint in your choice of the organic Mexican strawberries or do you just buy into what the green sticker implies? I am a conventional grower by definition whom  belongs to Vermont NOFA, and I feel that their old  label was meaningful and a label  in which you could invest your trust and faith. Do you really think the pork in the store is   necessarily better than a “conventional” farm because the Organic label issued by the USDA makes you feel secure? I am not sure it should. On our farm  we are incorporating and trying to apply  a lot of soil biodynamic principles; not because we hope to get certified,  but because we just think its good farming and good stewardship.  Going forward, there are going to be different labels, you should not blindly  ”buy into” the veracity that the USDA Certified Organic is  best for the planet, your health or the future of the family farm.   Where at one time that may have been the case, I am don’t think that is the case today.  More to the point that  your concern should compel you learn more  about the American food system.

 

 

 

A Simple Gift of Thanks

Here it is, the Holidays are upon us and the CD player is awash with the likes of the Cambridge Choir, Dean Martin and Tommy Emmanuel regaling with seasonal hits. The winter wonderland we hoped for came, and with a vengeance last Friday and everybody in a 10-mile radius of the farm was without power for 2 days. As luck would have it, the farm survived without ever a flicker or power surge. The propagation house motored along quite comfortably through the storm. Mother and I were pleased to be holed up in the house with lights and a woodstove, and never even had to consider firing up the generators. Perhaps it’s time to buy a lottery ticket…

Despite the recent weather, there was plenty to do this fall, and it was a long fall. We are about finishing up packing out the root crops this month before we will begin to eyeball the upcoming greenhouse season. We had a very benevolent fall (thank you, climate change) that allowed us to get things cleaned up, serviced, and put away before the snow came. All in very comfortable temperatures. That said, the summer was made very difficult by a drought that went unabated from the time the snow went away in the spring until mid-September. (No thank you, climate change!) This resulted in some serious crop shortfalls where we were unable to move water around. The other most challenging part of the year was a shortage of help, we were off by a man and a half for the whole growing season. The upside was the crew we had were champs, worked steadily and in in harmony. A benchmark of any good season is the workplace being drama free, and our field crew was a mix of men and women of varying ages. Sarah and Anne had pretty much a returning greenhouse crew although a round of illness went through them in the later spring. Allie anchored the farmstand with some returnees with experience and some great kids. The kitchen crew always seemed pretty happy the few times I went in there, but I need to retrain them to save the broken cookies and scones for me, as I came up empty handed….

As we have all became a little bit more comfortable with the pandemic, it became easier for customers and our retail folks to interact with customers  and get the products and information they needed. It also helped reestablish a community connection as the comfort level increased. Jenny continued to deftly engage the CSA community, and we found folks more comfortable shooting the s…t with one another at the greenhouses and farmstand . Many of us traveled to Manchester for the Biennial NE Fruit and Vegetable Conference last week and all of us are entertaining a notion of traveling somewhere in January and February before we ramp up greenhouse operations. Probably the biggest news from the farm is that by the time you read this blog is that we are well along our journey of turning over Edgewater Farm LLC to Ray and Jenny. What does this mean in terms of you and the farm? Nothing you will notice. It’s a legal measure that just makes sense because neither Anne and I are not getting any younger. You know, the age old plan for when the elders kick the bucket?  Ray will continue to manage the vegetable production and wholesale and day to day field operations, Anne and Sarah will continue to manage and grow the greenhouses and plants, Jenny will remain the face of the CSA and our social media efforts.  Alle will remain in control of  the stand. Mike will continue to  be fixing our messes and broken toys and there to stare us down and keep us in line when we need adult supervision.   George, at 92 years of age, will still drive up from Bradford 4 days a week to operate tractors, do land prep and mowing. Roy will continue to  arrive from Jamaica wanting to know how we are coming  on the plans for his retirement party two years ago and I will still be found sleeping on a bench up in the greenhouse or in a truck somewhere. Same as it ever was, only a year later. If you are still looking for me, call my cell. Leave a message. I will call you when I wake up…

 In no time we will all be at it. But its nice to take a deep breath this time of year and reflect on the accomplishment of just getting through it. Anne and I started our joint foray in growing vegetables in 1973. We didn’t know enough about it to fill a thimble. Thankfully we were resilient and had other forms of income. But here we are, and not going anywhere soon. We are grateful to all of you and have you been a supportive community that keeps the farm up and running. We thank you and wish you the very best Holiday Season with family about , good food, good music and good health.

The Beginning of the New Year Starts Now

Some societies operate on different calendar years. Lunar, Gregorian, solar….even fiscal. We have just entered a new year here on the farm. The farmstand closed Sunday past at 4:30, replete with pizza and beverage for the farmstand and kitchen help. There were a few extras and stragglers to soak up any extra libation or pizza. The mood was joyful, and  the atmosphere was infused with questions about  what our next moves may be. Everything we do  (with the exception of the fall CSA and wholesaling out the remainder of the root and field crops)  from this day forward is geared towards the 2023 season and preparing for it.

The first step is to clean out the farmstand and ready it for fall CSA. Produce gets hauled back to the big coolers here in the  farm pack barn.  Benches and baskets are washed and sanitized, stacked and stored. The plant barn will be cleaned out and many of the plants will be hauled over to the propagation house to winter over for vegetative propagation purposes. Some plants get donated, some plants are disposed of unceremoniously over the banks and some plants end up as pets for friends and relatives. When the plants are removed, the benches and cement blocks are removed and stacked aside so tractor and machine storage will be available for the winter. Eventually all water sources will be shut down to avoid freeze damage. The kitchen will remain somewhat functional to bake and cook for the fall CSA, but the help will also be looking at spreadsheets, taking inventory and  having meetings  concerning strategy for the upcoming yea, finally winding down operations with a deep clean and complete shut down sometime after Thanksgiving.  Most of the farmstand employees will be re-tasked into cleaning and preparing the greenhouses for the 2023  growing and retail season. We will maintain 1 propagation house through the middle of February, when we transplanting and more space is needed. Those greenhouses need to be ready to go with clean functioning heaters, solid greenhouse benches and doors working on all hinges. Some will need new plastic coverings and that will happen this fall before Christmas. Much planning and ordering of what we will actually plant in them in 2023 has been done by Sarah at home during the late summer, but ornamental (as well as vegetable) seed orders have to be generated.  As of this writing, we still have carrots and potatoes in the field along with cole crops for wholesale. We have been short of help this year, and that is reflected in the tasks that should have been accomplished in the fields (raspberry and blueberry pruning) and were not. There will be a hustle as the potatoes and carrots represent 7 acres of crop yet to deal with. 700 pounds of garlic seed will have to be planted.  We will still need to pull stakes from the tomatoes, rebar from the raspberries and drip tape from the fields. Most of the cover crops are planted, and we are getting the strawberries cleaned up as they will need to  sprayed and mulched with protective straw prior to the Christmas. season. As weather dictates the success/failure ratio of the growing season, the same can be said of the late fall season. As layers of clothing are added to the laborers, efficiency falters. Cooler days give way to cold, daylight shrinks at either end of the day, and fall rains dictate a shuffling of tasks so that employees are not unduly exposed to the elements. And there is a rush to accomplish as much as possible while our Jamaican gents are here. Contracts expire and they will be heading home soon, some in a couple of weeks with the balance going home in a month. Yet  the general mood is upbeat and eager. Talk is about how things can be achieved or done differently. What  tools or methods can we  adopt  or acquire that will enable us to do our jobs with more ease and efficiency? The  daily  summer pressure seems to be turned down as the leaves fall from the trees.

There a ton of stuff to do it, but the feeling here and now is that if we made it this far, we are over the hump. Despite what we did or did not accomplish, we made it into a new year with much to look froward to and plan for. The old Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball franchise never won a World Series, but we ascribe to their motto with the same enthusiasm they did back then…”Wait until NEXT year!”

Summertime Blues. Bluesberries?

We have been in a drought this summer, and its been a struggle. It  is coupled with the fact that our field crew is understaffed as our Jamaican H2A workers have  all been delayed by at least a week. One gent whom was suppose to be here on June 5th still hasn’t gotten his “ok” to come up. This is due to politics, bureaucratic turf wars in both Jamaica and the US. The end result is a very tedious and expensive SNAFU for us.

But despite these challenges we really haven’t lost much in the way of crops.  No yet.  On occasion the chips do fall our way.  We are experiencing a very nice blueberry crop this year. Sweetness is up, as well as the size and plant production. We would like to take the credit as farmers, but the sorry truth is that we can’t honestly assign it to our cultural wizardry or management practices. It just… is.     Alternately a confluence of weather events and oversights on our part resulted in a mediocre strawberry crop, a crop in which we invested a lot time and money. But the sun has produced the sweetest corn, tomatoes and melon is many years.    Our potato crop this year  has had tough sledding,  however we are  looking a potential bumper crop of other fall vegetables.

A summer drought such as this years’ seems to defy and thwart our best efforts.  Why does Dave Pierson tell me the storm front produced 1.65” inches of water on his farm and we don’t get a drop?  Closer to home Ray will report 3/4” of rain when we only have .2” in our rain gauge.  I have used an expression when  explaining  to lay people that it takes a bit of Zen temperament to accept all the things in agriculture that are out of reach or control. It is simply   that we farmers are not    “ in the driver’s seat.”

We all think that technology will solve all our problems. And technology has given us some great achievements. But I think the climate change and the pandemic have amply demonstrated that we are often wrestling with natural forces that may well exceed our ability to cope with or begin to control. Forces natural as well as unnatural forces:  politics, supply, input costs.   There is  the issue of invasive species. There may have been some slowing down the advancement of invasive species by identifying them and trying to contain them, but so far as I can see garlic buckwheat, purple loosestrife, Japanese knotweed and Norway Maples have clearly settled in among us along with the northward march of ticks. I don’t believe we have the ability, technology or fortitude to stop them.  Covid…There maybe periods where we have lesser rates of infection, and periods of mask free socializing. But  the simple virus Covid is  quicker, more persistent and adaptable than our medical technology, so it is probably a good idea to accept it for what it will apparently be.

 

Farming is all about coping and accepting the march of natural forces, and trying to adapt to them, all while trying to earn a living. There could be an upside resulting from all these natural forces. There are always hidden benefit to counter the down side. Today’s invasive species could well be tomorrow’s beneficial pollinator, tomorrow’s new food group, raw material or hot new ornamental.  Today the Norway Maple is maligned, but in an era of warming climate when the northern limits of the sugar maple are advancing ever northward, we may be welcoming the ornamental and perhaps economic  products of the Norway Maple. As hated as Japanese knotweed is, it is a tremendous late season source of nectar and   pollen for pollinator and beneficial insects, especially honeybees, whom never had a good late season nectar and pollen source before knotweed arrived. I guess we will have to develop the right perspective and attitudes. But I still wish we could have a rainy day that leaves us with  two inches in the rain gauge.

 

The 7th Inning Stretch

We are approaching mid September here. School is back in session and as if that weren’t a wake-up call, we are staring down the ultimate harbinger of fall with the arrival of the World’s Fair in Tunbridge, VT. Surely the days will start getting much shorter now, and we often remark about it. We will see the breaking out of sweatshirts, neoprene picking gloves, rain gear and wool toques. In their orange rain pants the crew looks like they just came off the boat from the TV series “Deadliest Catch.” As the season winds down, many farmers are licking their seasonal wounds. We are -in farmer terms- “just past the 7th inning stretch” in our seasons, and there is still much to accomplish. This includes a lot of planting and seeding within the greenhouses to serve the late fall CSA. Our onions are gathered up, the first of three plantings of carrots up and in the cooler, and if Mike can find enough parts between our two old potato harvesters to make one functional harvester, we will soon be digging our 6 acres of potatoes. Once that crop is all graded, sized and stored in our barn, we can start washing and shipping them. We can then turn our attention to: cleaning up the place; planting next year’s garlic; readying the strawberries with sprays and mulching for next spring; fixing broken doors and sills in our funky collection of old greenhouses. Then the contracts will expire on the Jamaican crew, and they will head home to tend their own farms by early November. Plenty to do, and seemingly insufficient time and bodies to make it through the list. I have heard the muttering of “I wouldn’t mind a good frost now….” and this time it didn’t come from my lips first. On many farms, the wet July here in the Twin States brought forth an epic surge of weed germination and growth…and Edgewater was no exception. We daily watched the galinsoga engulf the strawberries, with no spare hours available to get in there and clean it out. We are looking for a good frost to freeze it down, leaving the strawberries to bask in the filtering fall sunlight without competition. Fortunately, the strawberry plants are in very good shape, and we are (perhaps foolishly) getting optimistic about our spring prospects. But everyone is busy harvesting and packing out 10 hours a day, and soon the light levels will dictate just how long we will be able to work in the fields. Despite a crop failure with pumpkins and winter squash, we have an almost epic fall raspberries crop. Trying to harvest and move that crop is mopping up a lot of extra hours. In the farmstand we have had to close down on Mondays for the rest of the season, because of a labor shortage, and we have had to reschedule the help we have. Labor shortage or not, our melons,tomatoes, pepper, cut flowers, leeks will be out there for another 4 weeks unless a frost stops them in their steps. Weather continues to be the biggest challenge and unknown for farmers, along with a dearth of local labor. Our season started hot and droughty from the end of March until the end of June. It was abnormally hot for so early in the growing season, and that created some minor problems in the greenhouses, but there was a non-stop 10-15 mph breeze or wind that just never abated. I felt like we were trying to farm in Pueblo, Colorado. The lack of rain was tough enough, but the constant wind withered and devastated transplanted crops. Then, the weather changed, and in 20 minutes we got an inch of rain, and it then continued to rain off and on for a month. A lot of disease showed up, so we were confronted with trading one extreme problem for another. However, August turned up benignly normal, and with adequate moisture the potatoes sized up and the field tomatoes and melons kicked into gear. We have been challenged, but thus far undamaged, by hurricanes. Many of my seacoast friends prepared for the worst wind event they hoped never to see. Weather models were in constant flux for us here in the Upper Valley. On the Saturday that Hurricane Ida was making landfall on Long Island, the forecast for us from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was calling for a range of 2-12” of rain. I understand that weather forecasting is not an exact science, but for me there is a big difference in the amount that 2” dumps and what 12 “ would look like. At two inches I would get the tractor bucket out after the storm passes, and do a little touch-up work on our gravel roads and driveways. After twelve inches in so few hours I would be knee-deep in insurance claims, as well as sleeping and cooking meals in our farmstand….for a long time, too. What did we really get in the end? In what was forecast to be the middle of the storm, I went out and mowed my lawn. And I could not have been happier to be doing so. Fall will always be a great season to me. There is plenty of natural color in the pumpkins, ornamental corn, and chrysanthemums as well as on the trees in the woods. The warmth in this season is welcome, as opposed to the intense sun and heat of summer. Fall crops roll into the pack house: beets, potatoes, turnip, carrots. Onions, garlic, leeks and cabbage. When it's cold, we can add a couple of thin layers of clothes to keep warm until the sun burns through the fall fogs and warms us. Migratory birds come and go, and soon we will start to lure the songbirds to the birdfeeders. In deep fall, the woodstove starts to operate with greater frequency. Then one day in November, it will start its full time nonstop operation until late April, when the sun once more strengthens its grip on us all.

Reflections on a Late November Day; 11/19/2020

The ambient noise level of the farm has continued to diminish as the last of  our Jamaican Farmers have headed  home. All of them are looking forward to the warmth ,especially after yesterday which  broke mean with snow on the ground and a high of 34 degrees…..an a breeze.  They are  welcoming the 14 days of Covid quarantine when they  get home. Roy says it’ s is the beer, Netflix, a sofa and not getting up early that looks so inviting. But at the end of that they will all be busy getting crops in the ground for their 2nd season. Roy has grown peanuts for his  coop,  along with  tomatoes, melon, cassava  and recently  he has been doing well with  plum tomatoes and okra.  The  concept of  seeding tomatoes now for transplanting by Christmas sounds otherworldly to me..


We have had a good fall in terms of sales and getting things done that  pile up  all spring and summer before this time of year.      Before surgery I did a pretty good job of getting a lot of the fall servicing of tractors and machinery out of the way  Greenhouse skins were changed out  during the warm  spell we  had the 1st week of November, and the remaining high tunnels have the skins rolled up to the ridge pole on the houses as the greenhouse vegetables have been taken out  for he fall, only a few remain with herbs, lettuce and kale.  The  coming week will be extremely busy  for wholesale (Thanksgiving is much bigger for us than Christmas)  and Jenny will finish up the fall CSA. We are down to some part time greenhouse help, and a skeletal crew of Ray, Peter Jaarsma, Jenny, Anne and Mike. I had shoulder surgery a couple of weeks ago, so that doesn’t really make  me  much more than useless, so I am trying to stay out of the way . The strawberries were weeded, sprayed and ready for mulching. Mike dealt with repair and rehabbing of greenhouses and cleaned up  the woodline, organizing pallet boxes or row cover,  machinery, irrigation accessories  into some semblance of order. Greenhouse supplies have started to roll in for spring 2021 and they have been inventoried and put away.  I  am encouraged that  it looks as though the next 10 days will be snow free, and that we will accomplish more things before the seasonal lockdown we call winter. Again, my  axiom remains that a man in insulated coveralls, a wool  hat , bulky boots and gloves is about 35-40% as effective at accomplishing the same tasks as the guy in shorts and a sweatshirt..  In other words,  it takes  twice as long to do anything in snow and ice. So if you can work on bare ground- even if that  ground is frozen—we view it as a gift. 


Recovering from surgery has me on a diet of reduced activity. It doesn’t take long to embrace that lifestyle for me. Surgeons encourage you to walk to get blood flowing, and I have be doing some very leisurely walking around the home farm. I have always been a fan of November. Most folks are not,,  The pace of things drops a couple of notches. The days shorten, and your energy level is abundant enough to see you through an 8 hour day instead of the 12 hour commitment you  are faced with in July. There is usually very little snow, so  foot travel remains safe and easy. The weeds have  been banished, and the farm gets a positively tidy appearance, pleasing to the  eye  even while disguising the chaotic nature of what we do. We renew a love affair with the wood stove in our kitchen, and  at some point in  November we marvel at the just how much comfort an electric blanket affords us. After sweating it out with  fans, hydration, and bug bitten appendages, we kind of enjoy the encroaching winter and coldness. The November sky   can be clear with spectacular  sunsets  (that you actually have a minute to  stop and look at) or the steel grey clouds can threaten and  chill you. The skeletal remains of basswoods and oaks stand  devoid  of any evidence of green life, and with the exception of very warm days, the squirrels, opossums, and skunks are now spending noticeably more time in their hideouts. The crows move up and down the river in large flocks  traveling from farms to landfills to parking lots. Songbirds and woodpeckers  appear at the birdfeeders in an endless stream of industry, only to fly off to a chosen perch with their lunch. With the leaves off the silver maples along the river we now can see the eagles soaring down the river in search of unsuspecting fish.  When the sun is out the shadows are stunning in the weak light. 


The upside of shoulder surgery this year is that I have  had the time to notice, focus on and acknowledge the beauty of  what surrounds my life. I know that if I was out in the  barn washing russets and packing carrots I wouldn’t rhapsodize about the beauty of November. I would be looking forward to a shower, dry socks , a good stout drink and dinner. But given all we have been through in 2020 to get  this far  without crisis in as good as shape as we are in, I am feeling like I still love November.