Essex Farm Note

Week 24, 2013

I have said before that a farm is like a slot machine: taking taking taking until you forswear the whole game, and then, on the last dime, jackpot. This week the spin kept coming up lemons. Three inches of rain in 30 hours, on top of too much rain last week. The fields too wet to walk on, let along work, and the unplanted seed corn – 50 acres worth – sitting in the granary, a silent reprimand for decisions made and bets placed that cannot now be undone. The price of organic corn is running $650 a ton. I woke up several times in the middle of the night to the sound of the rain and the weight of unwieldy numbers in my head. Then today came, with sun, and a cheery cool drying wind. Mark and I set out for the drained fields after lunch, to see what the plants have done. Suddenly, the world didn’t look so bad. In the drained fields, we have a lot of food coming. The soybeans, five acres worth, are up and lovely, without that poor, yellow cast they always had when we tried to grow them in undrained ground. The potatoes that Liam and Jenny and Cory and Matt planted have breasted the surface of the soil, ten thousand dark green rosettes that are full of health and vigor. The transplants – the peppers, tomatoes, the eggplants – are the best I’ve seen on our place, ever. And the fifteen acres of field corn that we managed to plant, thanks to Cory’s and Liam’s near all-nighters, is three inches tall, looking happy to be here. We have rye that is heading out, too, and dry beans sprouted. Before hurrying back to write this note, Mark and I cruised the strawberries, and found one fat ripe one each. I hope everyone gets a good taste of them in the coming weeks.

We are rich in greens now, and should be for the foreseeable future. Lettuce will be available every week until fall, barring bad luck. If you get sick of fresh salad you can always sauté them gently for a warm wilted side. Garlic scapes will be in the share next week. They are good fresh but even more valuable to me for the freezer: I am using last year’s on a daily basis now, since we are out of head garlic. I blend them up with oil and a little salt and freeze them in ice cube trays, then store them in zip lock bags. Swiss chard and beet greens will be available from now until frost. If you want quantities for your freezer, please order them in advance. This week we have a windfall harvest of spinach. Check the board to see if there is enough for your freezer. The spinach will probably bolt in the next week or two so this is your chance until the fall planting comes in. We are close to the end of asparagus, which needs to begin storing its energy now for next year. And we don’t have chickens this week. The wet cool weather has slowed this batch way down. Hopefully they’ll be big enough to harvest by next week.

I feel a shout out to the whole team is necessary this week. It’s not easy to keep up morale when the rain is falling. Thank you Barbara, Jenny, Amy, Kelsie, Matt, Aubrey, Liam, Cory, Travis, Luke, Isabel, Brandon, Gwen, Jori, Andy, and this week’s volunteers, Leslie and Jared. Thank you too to all who have helped with our marketing effort. It’s working! And that is the news from Essex Farm for this jewel of a day in the swamp of the 24^th week of 2013.                                                                            -Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 23, 2013

Rain, rain, it’s quite enough already. The undrained fields remained too wet to plant this week. Just before this latest rain started we were so optimistic! Cory checked the fields every 6 hours, hoping for a small window, which never opened. But let’s focus on the positive. The drained fields are planted from hedgerow to hedgerow. The last crops to go in were popcorn, soybeans, field corn and mangel beets.

I think it’s safe to say that Jet enjoyed this week more than anyone else on the farm. He had a two-day courting visit from a lovely and accomplished English Shepherd named Rosie, who came from Pennsylvania with her owner and handler, Heather Houlahan. Rosie lives on a farm with chickens, turkeys, and goats, but she has an off-farm job as a search and rescue dog.  (You can read about her and her work on Heather’s blog, http://cynography.blogspot.com/). Heather, who trains dogs professionally, describes Rosie like a canine Ferrari – an awesome animal to own and work, but too much dog for most people. She thinks Jet will add some size to the pups (he’s big for an English Shepherd, with heavy bone) and make them more user-friendly.

We had a bout with bloat in the dairy herd this week. They were grazing the clover/rye field, and clover, like some other legumes, can cause this potentially fatal condition. When the feed hits the rumen, it begins to ferment, and gas is produced. Normally, the gas is released through burping, but in bloat conditions, the gas is trapped and pressure builds up in the rumen. It can happen very quickly. The left side puffs up, the cow looks uncomfortable, and if it progresses, she dies. Luckily Amy and Kelsie were keeping a close eye on the girls, and caught it quickly. We drenched them with vegetable oil, which helps settle the foam in the rumen so the air can come out in the form of large, stinky burps. It goes away as quickly as it comes on, and within an hour everyone looked comfortable again. We’ll have to be careful to get the cows full of grass or grass hay before putting them on the clover field. It is also more dangerous in the morning, and when the weather is cool and wet, like it is now.

We bought the skid steer I wrote about last week. Travis has already used it to turn all the compost, and to clean the winter’s bedding out of the heifer barn. That’s a job that would have taken a crew of humans with shovels most of the week. Thanks to Jonathan Pribble for selling it to us, and to Peter Gucker for loaning us his gravel bucket, which made the compost turning so much easier.  Welcome to Isabelle, who is back with us for another summer, and to Scott, who worked with us this week, as he made his way between farm jobs in central New York and Vermont. And that is the news from Essex Farm for this drippy 23^rd week of 2013. -Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 22, 2013

I zipped around the farm by bicycle with Mark yesterday afternoon. This is news because it was his first spin since he broke his leg the first week in February. It was a cautious ride, but enough to qualify as a zip. His leg is sore and weak, but his internal radio is tuned once again to WFRM, all farming, all the time. This is a good thing, considering the season. The drained fields are ready, despite this week’s hard, heavy rain, and the next three days are our window for the biggest planting push of the year. Yesterday, the whole team focused on potatoes, first cutting the oversize Kennebec seed potatoes into golf ball sized pieces, then hauling them to Monument field, where Jenny and Liam had Jake and Abby hooked to the potato planter. Watching Jenny and Liam work together reminded me of our first years, when Mark and I were a team of two. I am not nostalgic for the brutal hours nor the stress of startup, but watching them reminded me there is something precious about working hard together as a couple. It’s a facet of a relationship not many people get to explore. Like taking an arduous trip together, it pulls the shield of romance off of a relationship, and reveals its strengths and weaknesses. My friend Cydni, who grew up on a ranch and married a cowboy, says you should make sure you work a cattle chute together before you say I do. I think you should plant potatoes.

There is a real mix of diesel and horse sweat in the field today. Out the window I see two horses and two tractors at work in Pine Field, cultivating, harrowing, and plowing. In the barnyard, I hear Jonathon Pribble’s skid steer, which we are renting for the week, as we contemplate buying it. Travis used it yesterday to move a mountain of compost, which he is now spreading on the field. Everyone is moving quickly, despite the 90 degree heat. There is the annual feeling in the air that everything must be done right now. Tomorrow is June, and June, to us, is like April to an accountant or December to the elves. Full on, all out hustle.

What else? We took out a $30,000 line of credit with Yankee Farm Credit yesterday. Much as I hate owing, Farm Credit is a great company to work with. They take livestock as collateral!  It was a bad week for chickens. Something got into one of the broiler coops and killed 80 half-grown chicks in one night. All but two were uneaten. Ron Bigelow, who is an expert in these things, says it was a raccoon, or possibly a mink, but either way, it was probably a mama with babies to feed. That’s what makes an animal kill so many at once. Cory spent nights on stake-out duty in the field, but so far, no luck. And the best news for last. We have the greens in the share today. We had our first meal of them last night – butter lettuce and spinach and a little chard – and we ate so much we hardly needed anything else. We can expect another two or three weeks of asparagus. We also have the year’s first fresh chickens in the share today. A common sense food safety reminder: keep chicken cold until ready to cook, and cook it thoroughly. And that is the news from Essex Farm for this hot 22^nd week of 2013.  -Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 21, 2013

We are becoming so high tech around here, in an old-fashioned kind of way. We have a large screen TV in the office trailer now, where Mark projects the day’s objectives during morning team meeting. He is using a program called Trello to organize the farm and his brain – no small tasks, those. And we have a splash page up at our future web site, featuring our new marketing poster. Check it out at www.essexfarmcsa.com. Note that we are eagerly seeking new members right now! If you love the share, please tell your friends. We’d like to add 30 more families by the peak of the season. While you’re at it, take a look at the slideshow posted at www.essexfarminstitute.org, which introduces our very exciting new venture. Essex Farm Institute will train farmers to build resilient, diversified farms that are economically viable, socially responsible and environmentally beneficial. Essex Farm Institute is fiscally sponsored by the Open Space Institute, and we aim to enroll our first students in the fall of 2014. Special thanks to Terri Jamison and Ben Stechschulte for the design and photography on both those sites. Let us know what you think, everyone.

Speaking of economic viability, the big debate on the farm this week is whether or not to buy a used skid steer that’s for sale in our neighborhood– a compact, almost petite piece of heavy equipment with a bucket loader on front. We’ve dreamed of one for years. It is very maneuverable, and ideal for turning compost, fixing farm roads, and lifting all sorts of heavy things. It would save us money and time in the long run, but cash flow is tight.

Now a few housekeeping items. Please be sure to bring back your glass jars spanking clean. That means without anything stuck to them. We rewash and sanitize all the glass before filling it, but jars with stuff stuck to them slow us way down. The best way to wash them at home is with a cold rinse, then a hot soapy scrub, and a hot rinse. Dishwashers do a good job but not if there is stuck-on stuff around the threads. And before you put lids in the dishwasher be sure to check their threads and rub off any grease pencil marks on top. Otherwise they get cooked on and are difficult to remove. Also, we really need the jars to stay in circulation. Bring them back every week. If you need jars for other uses, we are selling them by the case at a very good price. See Amy at distro. Finally, as veteran members know, milk must be kept cold and clean. We recommend bringing coolers and ice to the farm to keep your milk chilled on the way home. If your milk is going sour too quickly, check your fridge temperature – between 35 and 38 degrees is ideal. Note that the door shelf is the warmest part of the fridge, so don’t store your milk there. Milk can be frozen for longer storage.  And that is the news from Essex Farm for this mad-transplanting 21^st week of 2013.  - Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 20, 2013

A quick note today, as the girls and I are off to central New York to pick up a load of seed potatoes – a job that offers a nice excuse to spend the weekend with my parents. Here, asparagus harvest is in full swing. What a strange plant. It is like a priapic alien, prodding its way out of the cold ground before the earthling plants are awake. The stalks we eat are the plants’ first shoots. After a few weeks we stop harvesting and let the plants grow up into their adult selves, which are just as strange but very different from the shoots: enormous frondy things that grow and grow until you think they can’t get any bigger. They bear little poisonous red berries, but their main job is to gather energy underground for next spring. In the kitchen, I love asparagus simply steamed or sautéed in butter. If we have an abundance I like to puree it with olive oil, garlic and herbs and use it as a topping for crostini. I’m also a sucker for asparagus soup, an easy luxury. My simple method is to sauté an onion in butter, add asparagus, salt and pepper, and chicken stock. Simmer until the asparagus is very tender, then hit it with an immersion blender until it is smooth. To finish, stir in cream or yogurt (or the creamy top of a yogurt, mmmm). That plus good bread and voila, you’ve got a meal.

The cows are binging on the lush spring grass. The quality of the milk is at its annual peak. Quantity is up too, by about 30% since they went outside. The biggest gainer is a nervous little cow called Juniper, daughter of June, granddaughter of our original Delia. This winter I would have voted to cull Juniper – she was a poor producer, didn’t hold her condition well, and got horned by other cows. Now I see that all those things were a consequence of her shy nature; when the cows were housed in the covered barnyard eating hay and haylage, she wasn’t assertive enough push her way past other cows to get her belly full of feed. Not that it’s crowded. She’s just very timid. On grass, she has as much chance as the rest of them. One afternoon this week I took Miranda with me to move the herd to fresh pasture. Then we sat and watched Juniper eat, filling her mouth again and again with mouthfuls of succulent clover. I could almost feel the pleasure rising from her. You are welcome to watch the herd graze too, members, but do not go inside their pasture. There is a bull in the herd, and he is the most dangerous animal on the farm.

What else? We decided to put the potatoes to rest today. They are getting soft and sprouty, and those that remain are, well, small potatoes, and not worth the peeling. We will miss them until new potatoes come in July. The Grange is hosting a community supper and a “Get to know the Grange” presentation this coming Tuesday at 6pm. Among other things you will hear about the new community canning center (!), opening soon. Details at www.thegrangehall.org. Brandy (the big Belgian) and Abby Belle (the little white pony) came home this week. They have been at Reber Rock, being trained by Chad and Nathan. Can’t say enough good things about the work they did. Brandy is field-ready. Abby Belle pulls a cart now. The fat pony can move, too. We made it to town yesterday in eight minutes flat. Welcome home, Luke Barns! He has returned from his travels, hooray. And that’s the news from Essex Farm for this last frost? 20^th week of 2013.   –Kristin & Mark Kimball

Lunch Break. Four horses and Cory. Believe it or not Cory is a normal sized person.  

Essex Farm Note

Week 11, 2013

The first seeds went into soil this week. We have onions and shallots in the germination chamber, and leeks in the greenhouse. So begins the cycle of seasons. We use soil blocks to start our seeds. They are made out of potting mix with a tool that presses the soil into little 1 1/2” cubes, and then spits out the cubes as a block of 20, into a flat, which can hold 160 cubes. The advantage of the soil blocker is that there are no pots to buy or store or dispose of, and when done correctly, the soil blocker leaves a little space between each cube, so the plants air prune themselves, keeping their roots to their own cube, which leads to less shock when they are transplanted to the field. But soil blocking is an art. The potting soil must be neither too dry nor too wet, and the blocker must be slammed down just right so that the soil packs the block completely, then pressed out carefully so the blocks are uniform and the cubes are separate and whole. The soil blocker was popularlized by Eliot Coleman, and Matt and Aubrey have both worked at his farm, so they are accomplished soil block artists. The seeds go into a divot on top of each cube, and are covered over with a little more sifted potting soil, and then watered in. Jane seeded a whole flat of shallots by herself this year – a fine job for little fingers.

Marco came by on Tuesday to help us work the beef herd. Gwen and Cory set up the corral panels and the head gate in the covered barnyard. We sent the young stock through first so they wouldn’t get crushed in the chute by bigger animals, and in separating them from their mamas, things got a little wild. Cory got kicked hard in the thigh, which put him out of service for the day. He sat on a bucket and manned the clipboard while Gwen worked the head gate. Marco preg checked the cows (mostly pregnant to the angus bull, hooray) and castrated any young stock that we missed last time. We made notes on each animal’s condition, and decided which animals to keep and which to cull. A few of the yearlings were inexplicably thin, so we sent their fecal samples out for testing. One steer and several heifers and cows had horning injuries. I am thoroughly sick of horns! If we continue to breed to polled bulls, the herd will eventually be polled, but I’m ready to consider removing horns from the adult brood cows as well. The horns are not an issue on pasture, and pasture is a mere six weeks off, so this is a decision that can be put off until fall. We will work the whole herd again in a month, to recheck for pregnancy, and vaccinate for rabies, blackleg, and pinkeye.

We have a new Essex Farm sign. I think it’s the classiest thing on the farm. Don Hollingsworth made it for us, with his characteristic care and craftsmanship. It makes me smile when I pull into the driveway. Thanks, Don! Mark’s got another month without weight on his broken leg. Enforced rest gets harder as the days grow longer. Gwen and Stephen moved all three pig families out of the barn to the run-in this week. Kelsie, Amy and Barbara got to watch Bun the Jersey heifer calve this week –  a bull calf. Bun’s friend Stevie is due any second. Travis put his jackhammer skills to use, tearing out concrete to fix the barn cleaner.  Jenny returns next week, hooray. And that is the news from Essex Farm for this hustling 11^th week of 2013.     -Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 10, 2013

Can you feel the sap rising in the trees? It’s the source of that hopeful itch that makes you want to pull on your mud boots and dance in puddles. Most years, this energy goes to good use, as we stomp snowshoe trails in the woods, and collect the heavy buckets of sap. This year, with no sugaring, it is a frustrated joy. The animals seem to feel it too, cooped up in the barn. Yesterday, Jane and Miranda and I went out to the barn to watch David Goldwasser drain the abscessed hematoma on Juniper’s side. (This sort of thing is Jane’s favorite farm work. Despite the heavy and penetrating smell of infection she got in close and watched David with grown-up stillness.) Gem the orphaned lamb followed us into the barn, and the eight yearling heifers, who have yet to meet any sheep, stared at him through their gate with their heads low, a new creature, a new smell, an alien. They are penned in the northwest quarter of the barn and they used Gem as an excuse for a contained stampede. They galloped the length of their enclosure, bucking, executed synchronized sliding turns, and galloped back. I bet they dream of grass and sun, and a pasture big enough for all the life in their gangly limbs.

The best news of the week has been Donn Hewes. He was here from Sunday through Thursday, giving our farmers their first lessons in being teamsters. It was good to see horses at work after a long winter off, and to witness that look of awakening that comes when people take lines into their hands for the first time. Donn likes to start people in the woods, pulling logs with a single horse, because it offers opportunity for starting, stopping, standing, and reading a horse, so we got some firewood in the deal, as a bonus. We are so grateful to Donn for coming, and hope we can lure him back again before his own farm, Northland Sheep Dairy, gets too busy.

Mark is slowly returning to the world after last week’s surgery. He is down to Tylenol, which gives him a clearer head, and he’s being diligent about his physical therapy. It is disconcerting to watch his leg muscles shrink. He crutched his way out to the office yesterday for the morning meeting, the first step back to regular work. The team has done a wonderful job in his absence.

In the midst of this family crisis, I’ve been looking for ways to economize my time in the kitchen, without skimping on satisfaction. The stocked chest freezer is my best friend right now. I am calling on my cases of frozen squash soup, pozole, pork and beans, my bags of frozen kale and edamame, and this week I made three meatloaves – one for the table, and two for the freezer. I will never again make a single batch of pancakes, because I’ve learned my family will gladly eat them twice a week: once fresh off the griddle, and once a couple days later, heated up in the oven until they are hot and crisp. It is lovely to serve a delicious homemade meal that gives the feeling of normalcy but doesn’t generate a sink full of dishes.

This Saturday, March 9^th, is the first farm tour of the year. Please come! It is free for members, with a suggested donation of $25/$5 for non-member adults/children. Details are on the events page. And that is the news from Essex Farm for this muddy-sweet 10^th week of 2013.

-Kristin & Mark Kimball

Essex Farm Note

Week 9, 2013

Mark had surgery to fix his knee on Tuesday. The top of his tibia got crushed by his femur when he fell, and the tibia was also cracked. Fourteen screws, a plate, several pins, and one big bone graft later, we’re home. The operation took somewhere between four and five hours, and Mark came out of it in full Markian form. Turns out narcotics make him more hyper rather than less.

I can’t say enough good things about his surgeon, Dr. Bullock, nor about the nurses and support staff at Adirondack Medical Center in Saranac Lake who took care of Mark for the two days he spent in the hospital. Now the long road of rehab begins. I am sending deep, heartfelt thanks to the many people who helped us this week, from the farmers who kept the farm running to the friends who took care of the girls and cooked for our family. What would we do without you?

Two more sows farrowed this week. Nine surviving piglets in one batch, twelve in the other. The mamas are doing well and the babies are growing so fast you can almost see it happen in real time. Pig milk is rich. Watching them, it occurred to me that each species has its own distinct mothering style. The ewes are sweet and nurturing, nickering and nuzzling endlessly with their lambs. They are the attachment parenting moms of the animal world. Sows are more like the overburdened mothers you see in the grocery store who offer to show their kids the back of their hand if they misbehave. Big, scary, tough-love mamas. I suppose I might be like that, too, if I had twelve squealing babies attached to my nipples for hours on end.

Jane’s cosset lamb, Gem, has moved to the barn, where he is getting free choice cold milk and a little bit of hay and grain. He is with his own kind, but lonely for his young human caretakers. Jane likes to carry him from his pen out to the barnyard, where he follows her around like a puppy.

We had the vet out on Tuesday, to see a dairy cow, Juniper, who got horned in both sides by one of the bossy cows (I suspect Connie, though I have no proof). Juniper’s organs were protected by her ribs but she developed the most enormous hematomas I have ever seen. They looked like overstuffed saddle bags. The vet drained the fluid out of them and declared her good as new. The replacement bull, Chris, seems to be getting a very good workout, which suggests his crooked predecessor lacked the ability to get the job done. We have two springing heifers due to calve in the next couple weeks. It will be nice to have new babies in the nursery again, now that the fall calves are getting so big.

Spring work has officially begun. We are moving the chickens out of the greenhouse in preparation for seeding, and the arrival of the first batch of chicks. Matt and Jenny have done fine work on the seed order. We finalized our seed potato decisions today. I’m ready for longer days, warmer sun and green green grass.

I’m off to speak at the Northeast Organic Farming Association New Hampshire conference. More thanks are due Ronnie, Don and Donna for caring for the kids and Mark while I’m away. And that is the news for this rough 9^th week of 2013.

-Kristin & Mark Kimball

I’m going to be giving a keynote at the NOFA New Hampshire conference on Saturday morning. Looking forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting some new friends.

Essex Farm Note, Week 8

I’m writing this from the MRI place in town, where Mark is in the big machine, getting some expensive portraits of his knee, two weeks after his accident. The wheels of health insurance grind slowly. We’re rolling now, and looking forward to getting seen by an orthopedic surgeon.

Lots of baby news on the farm this week. The first sow had her littler last night. We went to check her just before supper, Miranda in the backpack, Mark on the crutches, Jane trotting alongside. The pig was up, grunting, looking fine, and her feed and water looked good, but just as I turned to leave I saw a tiny wet something in the straw. It was struggling to get out of the pig-shaped caldera that the sow had made for a nest. The piglet kept slipping down the sides of it, into the zone where its fridge-sized mama was about to lie down. It looked destined to be one flat little piglet. There ensued a several-person mad scramble to move most of the bedding out of the stall to give the newborns some advantage, during which the sow’s labor seemed to stop, and who could blame her? We left her with her one baby and a heat lamp, and when I checked her at bedtime, and she had produced one more live piglet, and a stillborn. At midnight, there was a small squealing heap, clustered together on the floor in front of her generous udder. By morning, a nice litter of nine.

On Wednesday morning, Eric Sherman knocked on the door, carrying what I took at first glace to be a skunk. Why is he bringing a skunk into my house? I thought as I invited him in. It wasn’t a skunk, of course, but a three day old black-and-white orphaned lamb. It was a twin, and the mama had rejected him in favor of his stronger sister. “Looks like you have a bottle baby on your hands,” I said. “Actually, I was hoping someone here would take it,” he said. He had to work and couldn’t keep up with the feeding schedule for a newborn. Who could hold a little baby that needs mothering and milk, and say no? Jane is on school vacation and has spent the last two days with Gem on her lap. He follows her everywhere. It’s a love relationship on both sides. I hate to break it to Jane that Gem can’t live in the house forever.

Kelsie, Amy and I disbudded the dairy calves this week. I injected the lidocaine into the divot upskull from the corner of the calf’s eye, which houses the nerve that serves the horns. Kelsie manned the disbudder, which looks like a souped-up version of the decorative wood burner I used to have when I was a little kid. It gets hot enough to ignite a test-patch of wood, and when applied to the numbed horn buds, it cauterizes the surrounding tissue so that the horns will not grow. Amy’s job was to hold the calf still in front, and so for most of the hour, she and Kelsie had their faces stuck in a cloud of hair smoke. I held the back end, but still came inside smelling like a barbeque gone terribly wrong. By the time all eight were done, we were a crack disbudding team.

Big thanks and love to all the farmers who have been shouldering a lot of responsibility since Mark has been out of commission. He just came out of the MRI to report he has a rather severe fracture. I guess that explains why he was moaning so much! And that is the news from Essex Farm for this never-dull 8^th week of 2013.

-Kristin & Mark Kimball