May became June!!

Greetings from Village Farm.

( I began this post nearly a month ago and true to May-form, I am posting it, finally-- on June 4th!!)

Boy, is it ever May! This is the month when it ALL lines up in front of us: all the rows to be plowed and amended, all the seedlings to be planted, all the seedlings to be sold, all the animals to be fenced. And on and on.

We are getting the proverbial "job done" . . .as all jobs are ever done: day by day, row by row, and seedling by seedling.

These are our Chinese Weeder Geese. Actually, they are Andy Smith's. Andy was a 2009 apprentice who will be returning for another year with us in 2010. And Andy is into projects and experiments. So--There are a lot of high hopes for these big-little goslings. We plan to fence them in our tree nursery and never have to weed a single sprout. Technically, they are totally herbivorous and supposedly stick to green things growing from the ground, not from trees (good for our trees and shrubs in the nursery). Un-technically, they are cute, hilarious and easy keepers. We will report back.

Work in the greenhouse continues. This picture is from Early April. We have been very fortunate to have Alicia Billman working with us for the last week or so. She just graduated from Unity College. We are so enjoying her company and fine work. We are sad that she is only available to work with us for a few weeks!! She will be here for another week before heading off to new adventures, like getting married. Thank you and best wishes to Alicia!

Hannah and Andy both returned to the farm this week and have made quick work of the backlog of transplanting, seeding and greenhouse work. I hesitate to say "caught up" , but there, I said it. . .we are feeling caught up.

Now I am writing on June 4th:

Ha Ha Ha Ha!! "Caught up?!?!?" It really was early May when I wrote all that. We are up to our eyeballs in transplants that need planting and are trying to keep up with all the direct seeded crops like carrots, greens, sunflowers and cilantro that need planting every 10-14 days.

The rain, gentle and fine, has been wonderful for all the gardens and resident plants. The crew got the irrigation pump and pipe working last week so we are equipped to irrigate if need be in the future.

Last year, we posted a few videos that became cult favorites amongst some relatives and CSA members. Prentice has been up to some more video-ing tricks and he is quite fond of this one.

Prentice and Joseph have a project this year: Bees. I have witnessed Prentice reading from "Beekeeping for Dummies", aloud, to Joseph, in some unlikely spots over the last few months. They have been studying up: in the hammock , the tub, at the breakfast table. Ten years ago, some generous and thoughtful family members gave Prentice and me a whole bee set up, "soup to nuts." Everything except the bees, right? Well, we FINALLY ordered some bees! They arrived a couple of weeks ago and are doing great at the Village Farm!! Neighbor and great bee guy, Brian Jones has been of enormous assistance and encouragement, so thank you, Brian!!

The CSA will be starting up in a couple of weeks. Exact dates still need to be nailed down. Hard to know when that spinach and beet greens, cilantro and broccoli will be ready! We will contact all CSA members very soon with a first distributuion date. I know you all must be getting very hungry.

All the best from here,

Polly for all at Village Farm

Spring spring spring!

Spring greetings to one and all!

The Village Farm people have been busy these
days of early spring. Joseph, Ben and Prentice collected some sap from the maples across the street in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery and boiled it down outside. It is dark and delicious. As you can see, Joseph was amply prepared for anything that might happen while tending the sap.


Sorry about the funky formatting in this blog. It seems to be beyond me to get the pictures and text exactly where I want them.



In March, Prentice and I took an excellent workshop on farm business management with Richard Wiswall of Cate Farm in Vermont. We got a lot of gems from Richard and from his new book including a renewed appreciation for
1. A clean office and desk (not perfected--yet!)
2. Dropping low-profit ventures (pork) and picking up high(er) profit ventures (seedlings)
3. THE FAMILY FARM. We are the real deal. Here is a picture of Prentice filling out our MOFGA organic certification paperwork. (It seemed like 200 pages of it.) Oh, and Ben is by his feet but not in the picture.


Our (new) greenhouse is up and going and I will have some luscious green seedling pictures to share soon. The morning we put the plastic on got a tad windy as we were buttoning up the sides. Some great neighbors helped lay the two layers of plastic on and Andy Smith even came out from Colby. Did we tell you that he will be joining our farm crew for a second season? We could not be happier about that!

We are still enjoying many fruits and roots of

last year's harvest. I put parsnips and peas in the red lentil curry this evening. The freezer is still green with spinach, broccoli, beans and peas frozen last summer and there are still carrots, beets, potatoes, cabbage and bottled kim chi coming out of our root cellar = the cemetery's crypt/tomb.

Word is getting out that we are using the crypt as a

root cellar. A fellow called this week to come photograph our vegetables in there! Sure!!

I am reading Michael Pollan's newest book,

Food Rules, in preparation for a talk I am giving on being an organic farmer and the environmental attributes of local food. What a great hero for the good food/real food/local food movement he is!
Three cheers for Michael!!

Many CSA members have signed up or let us know that they will be signing up for 2010. As always, your recommendations to your friends, family and coworkers are the best publicity for our farm. We are aiming for 50 households this year, so point folks to our website or call for a brochure. We are looking forward to growing food for our community for another season.

All the best from Village Farm,
Polly

Sunday's Winter Sleigh Ride Event and other Freedom activities CANCELLED.
We will hope that 2011 brings us more **SNOW**!


March 1st, 2010.

We had a great day Sunday, meeting people at two CSA +CSF Fairs: Rockland and Belfast. There was music by Dog Wants Out in Belfast--100% fun, that band! And they have a mission to support agriculture and food security. Thank you DWO!!
I am guessing 100 or more fair goers attended the Belfast fair. It was hoppin'.

News from the Farm: It can be pretty windy out here in the winter. Without much snow, we haven't had to contend with the drifts this year. We break out the kites often in the springtime and this sunny day last week seemed like a good first kite day for 2010.

We have onions, celery, parsley and celeriac and various flowers seeded. Work on the heated greenhouse will be happening this weekend. We settled on a two phase heating system: this year we will install a propane fired heater and build benches. Next year we will outfit those benches with tubing that will circulate wood-heated water beneath the seedling trays. Sounds cozy, doesn't it?

Most days Jip is "just" a pet (and a nuisance when he takes off!) but we have been putting him to work lately. He has been guarding the laying hens. We took down the flexible net fencing for the winter (to lengthen its life) and when we started seeing fox prints in the snow, we decided that our hens needed to have a body guard while they roamed and scratched about. So Jip has been spending some time with the layers. He seems to be enjoying the new responsibility and we are grateful for his contribution.

CSA sign ups are coming in. Let us know if you think of a place where a poster would be good.

All the best from here,
Polly

Winter Fun in Freedom POSTPONED.

Please join the fun in bustling downtown Freedom on March 7th.


Here is what will be happening:

• The Dirigo Grange will host a pancake breakfast with coffee, juice and sausage from 8:30-10:30.


• Village Farm will host local teamsters for FREE sleigh rides from 10-2.


• The Freedom Volunteer Fire Department will sell hotdogs, cocoa, coffee and sweets at the Village Farm during the sleigh rides. Proceeds will benefit the Department.

Let's all hope the farm fields look like this by March 7th!
Let it snow!!

Hello out there!!
It is winter on the farm.
King Winter keeps it interesting around here.

Current winter activities:
Keeping a hole in the ice open for hauling water for the cows and calves.
Listening to the cows munch their hay in a quiet barn.
Collecting frozen eggs from in the coop but only on the coldest days.
Ordering seeds, amendments, soil mix, tractor parts, and more seeds.
Selling organic eggs to the Belfast Coop
Getting our CSA brochures printed and distributed.
Planning for the CSA + CSF Fair on Feb 28 (1-4 at the UU Church.)
Planning for the Sleigh Rides!! (See below)
Enjoying our new logo (artwork by Siri Beckman of Stonington)
Updating our website.
Eating root vegetables from the cemetary's crypt (our root cellar!).

FEB 21st --Winter Fun in Downtown Freedom!!!

Dirigo Grange will host Pancake Breakfast 830-1030

Village Farm from 10-2. Free Sleigh Rides with local teamsters.

Freedom Fire Department will be selling hotdogs, cocoa, cookies and coffee at the farm during the sleigh rides.

Spread the word!

Hope to see you all soon!!
Polly and Prentice

Happy New Year!

January 1st, 2010. . . The snow is coming down every-which-a way out there. The cows are in the barn, the chickens in the coop and the farmers in the house. At the moment, I should say.

We have been busily tying up the loose ends of 2009 in this last week. Figuring, tallying, and analyzing all the many sets of numbers of the past year. Not only dollars and cents but pounds, bunches and yields, row feet and amounts of seeds. We are turning the corner into 2010 informed by the 2009 records. As seed ordering deadlines (for discounts) loom, we need to know now how many seeds we will drop into the soil nearly a half a year from now.

News from November and December: Before Prentice returned to his off-farm/winter work as a cabinetmaker, he and his father, Tony, spent several days erecting a used hoophouse frame that will hopefully house our seedlings come spring. We really would like to burn farm-raised fuel to grow our seedlings. That sounds simple but it is not. He has been trying to figure out the thermodynamics of heating such a structure with firewood and the various boilers and storage tanks needed to do so. Stoneset Farm of Brooklin loaned us one of their farmers, Nathan, for a day of greenhouse construction this November. I guess he loaned himself to us. . . Thank you, Stoneset!

This trench that Nathan hand-dug (just kidding!) will bring power to the new structure for fans and thermostats, and of course, the radio.

Hannah Converse worked with us for six weeks this fall and it looks like she will be returning for the 2010 season. We are really happy to have one piece of the apprentice puzzle figured out for the coming season and even happier that that piece is Hannah!! Digging trees from the nursery in mid-November can be an arduous task but the digging proceeded at a great clip and nearly 1000 trees and shrubs were delivered to FEDCO Trees of Waterville. The dormant "whips" will hang out in bundles with their roots in moist sawdust until spring when FEDCO will send them to mailorder customers and sell them from their sub-terranean warehouse. We are proud to be members of the FEDCO Trees Growers Cooperative. Their spring sale in Clinton, Maine each spring is a bookend to the summer for me. See their website for ordering info and sale dates.

These are red maples dug, bundled and "heeled-in" to the garden until delivery day.

Another November event, popular with the little boys around here was when Joe Fortin, a dairy farmer from Albion, used a deep tillage plow on our new vegetable ground. After plunging a penetrometer into the new plots on the west side of the driveway, it seemed clear that there was significant sub-surface compaction (leftover from pre-2001, when 25 of our 40 tillable acres were cropped to corn) and that using this "paraplow" could fracture the hardpan. Though farmers everywhere saw their fields fill with puddles this past spring, we speculated that our drainage problems in 2009 may have been due in part to this layer of hardpan that acts as an obstacle and catchment for rainwater between the soil surface and the subsoil. The results of this tillage action, of course, will be hard to measure but we will be watching how these fields dry out in the early spring and we will again test with the penetrometer. We will wait and see.

2009 CSA Members will receive a letter from us in the next few weeks with some specific year-end details from 2009 and an invitation to purchase a farm share again in 2010. We are in the process of doing some website and brochure updates but please direct any interested friends to our website's CSA page for prices and details. The price of the shares will remain the same in 2010.

We will be attending a CSA-CSF Fair in Belfast on February 28th from 1-4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 37 Miller Street (right behind the Library). Farmers and fisherpeople will be promoting their offerings and answering questions. It's a great event that we will be publicizing widely in the weeks ahead.

Best wishes to one and all in the new year ahead.

For all of us,

Polly

Garlic planting tomorrow and an ode to brussel sprouts

Greetings,

Did you think we'd forgotten you for the shifting of the season? No! We miss you! Things here are good. The season is certainly shifting. We're cleaning up the gardens and organizing the outbuildings. Harvesting some for various wholesale accounts and wrapping our heads around the possibility of putting up a seedling greenhouse to go online this Spring. We also need to plant roughly 2400 garlic seeds (cloves) for 2010, and we plan to start

THIS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, AROUND 10 AM.

Please come and join us if you are able and so inclined. We would be happy to have you.

Also, we have brussel sprouts. We planted nearly 400 plants this Spring and intended to have them for everyone in the CSA with some additional for wholesale. They, however, were among the crops (also, notably, sweet corn, peppers, eggplant, and winter squash) which really suffered for the cold, wet early summer. However. . . .we did save a few plants and they have matured respectably. If anyone is a brussel sprout fan (I am!) and would like to come by the farm for some, please do. (Belfast and Camden sproutheads, we could make arrangements).

Here's the ode, as promised:

Oh fine, tender sprout

for our pleasure you unfold

in dappled light

resist temptation to overwhelm

You are no tomato! No!

we worship your humility and

prepare you with heavy cream (and nutmeg)

Take care, Prentice (and co.)

***************************************

And some new pictures. . .

Hannah driving Allis Chalmers G in from prepping garlic beds. Late October. Picture by Joseph.

Joseph took this picture of Hannah peeking out from behind the bolted parsley.

This is Hannah incorporating compost and amendments in next year's garlic beds.

The chickens have been helping with the garden cleanup. Their eggs will be showing up at the Belfast Coop and at Farmers Fare (Rockport) soon. They are always available from the green dairy fridge in the shop, too!