Good Sports

The hours and days and weeks go by at a good clip, don't they? No faster at Village Farm than anywhere else, I guess, but the non-stop action of May and June, the sprint that starts the already short Maine Summer.. . breathless we are not, but tired every night, yes.

Here are a few pictures taken about the place. 

 Our second batch of 200 'Red Bros', a red feathered, bred for grazing meat chicken, has arrived. When they arrive at the Post Office, we unpack them immediately and give each a drink. Benny says the holes in the packing box are so they can whisper to each other en route.

 They learn with that one dip and then are ready to help themselves.

And the following picture is just a gift from the camera gods. Neither chick nor boy posed for this. I just love it: a captured vision of two small beings having a moment together. 

It is really not cliche or an overstatement to say that we care for every one of our animals, even the ones that we raise for meat.

 

 We ask our farm crew to start work at 6 every morning. Sights like this are common and welcome.

 And then there is mid-morning and high clouds.

 And then there are broken down tractors and multiple calls to mechanic friends.

 Muffin tins full of bolts. And reconstruction. A fixed tractor.

 There are snail trails on the hoophouse endwalls and turtle trails in the driveway. Killdeer making a loud living in the gardens and an elusive snipe circling, circling. When I called it "an unremarkable bird" (not a bad thing in my book!!) today, Eliot thought that the snipe was trying its best to be quite remarkable. Such are the conversations, at times.

 Prentice was a good sport to let me clean off and dress up his barn workbench for the on-farm dinner by Chef Frank Giglio a few weeks ago. It was a lovely evening. Great great food. Lovely company. (I don't have any pictures.)

 Prentice is also a good sport about the state of his farm bike seat. 

 And boy, is he a good sport about machinery breakdowns.This is the irrigation pump and in the background the fuel tank to the John Deere. The Allis Chalmers cultivating tractor was also giving him grief this week.

 Luckily, there are large beds of gorgeous spinach

 and broccoli coming along to cheer him up when the grease is too much for him.

And small victories when machinery gets fixed, and crops get much needed water.

And sweet Sundays on Freedom Pond in a new to us sailboat.

And of course, it is all relative, right? This Village Farm resident has her own problems and joys. 

It was our joy to cross her path on our way to the pond.

All our best wishes for a lovely end of June-early July to one and all!

Polly and Prentice, boys and crew..

You are invited to a

Farm to Table Dinner at Village Farm

Friday, June 13, 2014 6:00pm – 10:00pm

Village Farm 122 Belfast Rd. Freedom, ME 04941

The Waldo County Open Space Festival will kick off Father's Day weekend with a delicious farm-to-table dinner at Village Farm in Freedom, Maine. With the full moon rising up above us, chef Frank Giglio will craft and prepare a 3 course meal utilizing the beloved Maine bounty. 

Menu

Snacks and Beverages

Flatbreads from the Cob Oven
Seasonal treats
Herbal Infusions

First Course

Tender Greens
Strawberries & Feta
Toasted Walnut Vinaigrette

Second Course

Herb-Roasted Chicken
Turnips
Rhubarb Gastrique

Third Course

Flourless Chocolate Cake
 Apple Minted Strawberries
Spruce infused Whipped Cream

Vegan Option

Crisp Local Tempeh
 Mushroom Ragu
Spring Garlicky Greens

**Please Take Notice**

Menu is subject to change based on seasonal availability of ingredients

This is a BYOB event. No alcohol will be served as a part of this dinner. You are welcome to bring your favorite alcoholic beverage and drink responsibly.

This dinner is by reservation only. No walk-ins accepted the night of the dinner.

For vegan or vegetarian options, please send a message to frank@threelilyfarm.com before June 11th.

To reserve your spot, click here for the online sign up or email Frank, email above. 

Hope to see you!!

Polly and Prentice

Beyond Words. . .May 10, 2014

Comparing

When we begin marketing our CSA shares each spring, we re-evaluate pricing by calculating the real value of our CSA (what we actually distributed the year before); We set target membership numbers for Summer and Fall shares; we contact our collaborators, Appleton Creamery and Out on a Limb to make sure they are on board for another year of offering their cheese and apple shares to our membership; we fluff the website, make a new brochure, get out and hang posters.

This spring, we are adding a new piece of data to our marketing pitch. (I am only sorry I didn't include it in our brochure!) Let me tell you more about the who and how of this data before giving you the juicy nugget of a finding.

Prentice's parents, Sally and Tony, have been CSA shareholders since our very first year. We have put up with their compliments and gratitude for the food because we thought it was just because they were relatives, you know? Well, they are that, and they are also smart consumers. Sally and Tony have been saying for at least a few years that they thought our CSA shares seemed like "great deals."

And so last year, in 2013, they decided to put some data behind their hunch. Each week of our 17 week Summer CSA share season, these two intrepid Village Farm lovers traipsed into Hannaford's (one of the China, Camden or Belfast stores) and recorded prices for the "same" produce they received in their Village Farm CSA share that week. The thing is, the only thing that was the "same" was the name of the vegetable. The vegetables in Hannaford were:

• not organic,
• not looking too good (droopy and bruised, not handled carefully),
• not likely as fresh (3 days old, at least?)
• not likely as nutritious (see this article)

Sally and Tony kept track all season long and in the end. . .
. . .Drumroll. . .
The Village Farm, organic, local, picked that day, fresh as a mountain mist, carefully handled and flavorful vegetables cost (only) 7% more than the "same" Hannaford's non-organic, tired, traveled, dehydrated and none-too-pretty vegetables.

This is something to talk about!
Thank you, of course, goes to Sally and Tony, authors of this small but specific study comparing cost and quality of our fresh vegetables vs. the supermarket options.

We grow vegetables because we love good and fresh food. We love to be outside. We love working with plants, animals and the living soil.

We don't exactly love marketing our vegetables. You know, making the pitch, the sales pitch. It is the car salesman stereotype. . .we don't want to be pushy. But with this new data bit, selling CSA shares seems a whole lot easier all of a sudden!

So come on, folks, step right up and get your 2014 CSA shares!!! (Details and link to sign up form here.) Call or email us if you have questions. We would love to hear from you.

Our best wishes from around the sap fire,
Polly, Prentice and the boys.

Winter Retrospective

Spring is right around the corner by the calendar, but wow! we are still knee deep in winter cold here at Village Farm! In early December we moved the laying flock into its winter abode, one of the hoophouses.


Prentice suffered a serious shiner after tripping over some fence and landing face first in a frozen kale stalk. How is that for a farm injury? At first we thought he needed a more 'colorful' story to go with the shiner but then quickly realized that the frozen kale stalk was actually just the thing.

The ice storm of December 2013 was certainly remarkable in its beauty and its harsh reality.

We were lucky enough to have only last power for a few hours (I know!) but we made up for that luck by the near constant work of freeing the many hoophouses from the weight of the snow and ice.I only punched one hole in the plastic "skin" of one of the houses and felt like Rocky Balboa away at arctic training camp as I punched and slammed a janitor's broom into the frozen plastic (overhead).

Village Farm sprouted yet another building this fall in the form of a barn for the cows. When we bought the land in 2001, the only building on the place was a (then) dilapidated pole barn south of where our house now sits. (I petitioned the town in that first year of paying taxes to value the building at $0 and was successful.)
We moved our herd of cows in there and for 12 years spent every winter morning chopping a hole in a nearby pond's ice to water the animals. The barn was sub-rustic. It was scary, but it served us well. This new barn has a frost free hydrant for watering, electricity (for a radio) and tons of space for hay storage, hay fort building and calving stalls for spring's bounty of wee bovine folk.

An awesome crew of carpenters built it with Prentice pitching in as the farm responsibilities would allow. Prentice has built doors and stalls, stairs to the loft and readied the building for shingles this winter. It is by no means complete but it is so delightful. We love our new barn. It will be treasured for many, many years of morning chores, and hopefully generations, to come.

I will have more to say about spring, seeds and the CSA soon, I promise.
Our best to one and all,
Polly and Prentice.

Rewind to Summer

Alas, a whole darn summer has slipped through my blogging fingers! Do you want to know why?
Or maybe you didn't notice the silent VF bloggity blog blog. That is fine, too!
I will tell you.
One part technological frustration (weird assortment of cranky cameras), one part old fashioned busy, and one part giving myself a break. The first two you get, the last one is, of course, the story of our business and life here. 'Giving myself a break' stems from the crazy winter of hospitals we had last winter and the promise to myself somewhere in one of those corridors that I would, well, give myself a break whenever and however I could for the next year. So I let the 'you should write a blog entry' voices go right out of my brain. All summer!
Here are a few summer shots I did manage to capture.  The above one is Joseph walking Lucky, our spring born steer, in the Freedom Bicentennial Parade. It was a highlight of my summer. That boy walked and talked to that calf all spring to ready themselves for the parade. Good to have a goal. And a pal.

And this is farmer Prentice, driving our Allis Chalmers G cultivating tractor in the same parade. I think that is an American flag stuck in the back toolbar there.

And below, Brownie, who seemed to be in this state quite a bit this summer. A few weeks ago, Prentice had the boys rolling in laughter as he sang to the tune of any-old-tune, "Someone has busted brownie's door. It won't shut. The poor old door." Prentice thought there was a barnyard collision, perhaps--a tractor back-up into the door or something like that. But, no.
No collision. No errant motorist.
Just sag.
The frame is so rusted, the driver side door just won't shut anymore.
This will not make Brownie weather-tight.
This is yet another of Brownie's many problems.

The To Do List as of July 10 or so. You see all the gaps where things done got erased? The crew and Prentice make a To Do List every Monday morning together as they think about the week. Any one of us can make an addition as new jobs are noted.

We grew some beautiful ginger in Hoophouse 1 this summer. This is about half sized, I would say. It was a trial for us. We have sold all of it to our wholesale accounts. We did not give any to the CSA members but plan to next year. Much more to come next year, for sure. What a delight! The hoophouse smelled like warm ginger tea all summer.

The flower and pepper house--Hoophouse 2.

The newly expanded Hoophouse 3. This year it was full of tomatoes. Next year we will expand hoophouse 2 to 100ft long and fill that space with tomatoes. The winter brings the laying hens to the barnyard and they get moved into one of the hoophouses.  This year they will inhabit Hoophouse 2 for the deep winter months, feast on dropped peppers, bugs, worms and grubs and soak in the sunlight. We love that our animals are part of our farm system. As with any interconnectedness we allow or cultivate, mutual benefits abound.

One last summer shot before we fast forward to Fall with the next post. Travel safely, be well and our very best to one and all,
Polly and co.

6 a.m. May 31st, 2013

The photos above record an hour or so of this morning's adventure. The crew and Prentice have been erecting the ribs of this hoop house all week. This morning's weather was warm and still, so we all got to it bright and early. The boys trickled out one by one as they woke, with Big Brother Joseph shepherding them from pillow to worksite.

Seems that many people ask us "Do your kids help out on the farm?"
And we answer, "Yes and no."

We seldom ask them to show up while we hustle through a project or double-check an order heading to town. . . That approach has proved very difficult for all. But a nice and easy "many hands on deck" job like this one, good weather, no bugs.  . .Yes. Harvesting pumpkins? Washing many cases of cucumbers? Yes. These are all good jobs to involve the children.

We want our children to enjoy the farm. It is about all we do from March to November!! So at their ages, we encourage but do not demand participation in the work around the place. We don't expect any of them to grow up and take VF over but if one, two or all three of them like this farming life enough to continue it . . . great,. They will have a good piece of land and a bunch of infrastructure like the hoophouse "skinned" this morning to work with.

Top of the mornin' to you.
Polly and co.