Checking in, 2016

As 2015 was closing its doors forever, the boys and Prentice and I got to talking, over the course of many days, about highlights of the year. Joseph and Ben saw three otters and three water snakes in the same summer day. While hiking in Acadia, we came upon a convention of ravens.
 

We had wonderful times with family and friends. Our farming season was both successful and really fun. Prentice got a new guitar and played it almost daily. I danced a lot.

We did get sued. Prentice did blow out his knee. A family of foxes made off with many a chicken. There were family health events.
Those were the lowlights.

We didn't take many pictures. I notice that as I review the photo files. Actually, Prentice and I didn't take many photos. Ben took a LOT of photos. There are Lego scenes, slow-motion domino detonations, marble runs and lots of cats sleeping photos. This one cracked me up. We are a game playing bunch, so it shouldn't be surprising that someone felt the need to document the vintage Master Mind box. But still.

 

 

The major highlight of 2015 for all five of us was the chance to spend 6 months with our farm crew. Laura, Chris, Rose and Sam were here April-November. This picture was snapped on the last day of work. We look pretty happy. I felt very happy . . .and very grateful.

Since Prentice's knee surgery in December, I have been doing all the animal chores. Winters often find me out there as Prentice and I split up the rounds. But during the growing season, with the crew living on site, I seldom feed or water any animals but my own kin. So it has been a special treat to be the sole provider for all of our creatures all winter long. I do so love feeding other beings.

Each morning now, as I choose the haybales from the hayloft to drop down to the barn floor, I am washed with memories of stacking those bales back in July. Somehow the body's memory of stacking, the heat, the CLANG!CLANG! clatter of the hay elevator, really is triggered by handling the bales again. I wonder who stacked this one. I know that Laura probably dropped it from the wagon and that Joseph probably loaded it on the elevator. There were favorite stations for some of us. There is half a mountain of hay now. We have worked through a lot. I am halfway through the remembering, I guess.

The chickens are in their winter digs = one of the hoophouses. They line up against the north wall in the morning, waiting for the very southerly sun to rise. They know where it hits ground first. They wait there for it.

Up until last week, I had been picking spinach weekly for the Coop and The Lost Kitchen. This week looks warmer, so perhaps I will get out in that hoophouse again and make another harvest.

Prentice's father built these wood storage bins in November. They are filled with firewood/fodder for our wood boiler in the big heated greenhouse. Kind of like canning tomatoes for winter, these honies are capped and ready for spring.

Salvatore and Pepe are having a winter holiday, or more like working visit, to a friend's in Unity. With Prentice's knee mending this winter, there was no hope for getting them yoked up (they are waaaaay too strong and frisky for me!) and in the woodlot so we trailered them over the hill with the idea that they might come back better trained and that our friend would enjoy the time with them.

So many of you friends of our farm loved the ginger in CSA shares or at the Belfast Coop. We sold a large portion of the harvest to Crown o' Maine this fall. We haven't seen the final product but we hear they froze a huge amount and are selling it to restaurants and institutions.

Our friend Joanna took this picture of me as I gathered some fall kale. My face doesn't really show how happy I am to be knee deep in that bounty.

Ah yes, the new name. I won't write much about the lawsuit and settlement other than we are through it. It wasn't bad. We had some good, good people helping us figure it out. It was fun to gather ideas for new names. We waited and waited for the right name to come along. Prentice saw the word "trackside" and then thought "Villageside" and it was an instant "YES."

We like the word "side" and all the side-y words: bedside, oceanside, poolside, mountainside, sidle up, sideways, sidelong, and now, villageside.

You will see a re-worked label and logo this spring. Gotta repaint the driveway sign. That'll do it!

The view of Jordan Pond from Sargeant Mountain in Acadia. October. A hiking trip with the children has been our fall exhale for the past few years. I wonder what it is like today up there. Sunny and white and glorious, certainly.

And on a commercial note:
We tweaked our CSA a bit this year. Always trying to simplify. Sign ups are happening at this link.
And we have a good many radically well-raised (pastured and organically fed) chickens in the freezer if you want to buy one or a dozen, be in touch. They are $4.75/lb with most of them around 5lbs.

From here, the farm by the village in a town called Freedom, we send our best,
Polly and co.

Greenhouse Groovin'

Yep, we made a little video to promote our upcoming Seedling Sale Days. One take. 59 seconds of goofery. That is all you get for this year!!
(Technical note: I cannot seem to get the full video to load to this blog page. So just click on the link and that will take you to our public facebook page where you can see it.)

See if you can spot the product placement for Vermont Compost Company, an "I biked to the [Common Ground] Fair!" sticker and American Farmland Trust's "It isn't farmland without farmers" bumper sticker. And yes, that is real dirt on the stereo. I think it spent some time on the concrete slab.

The seedlings look great. We can't wait for the on farm sale days where we get to see so many of our gardening friends and neighbors.

May 9, 16, 23 and 30 right here at Village Farm

8 am-12 pm

Hope to see you soon! Like tomorrow at the orchard planting party?!?!?

Polly and co.

Minga!

Though this picture was taken last Spring, we are not far from this degree of green. Just a few more weeks, I would guess.


Back in late March, I (Polly) took the boys on a road trip to Vermont. Abe asked if they would have different fruit available there. Ben asked if he should pack his shorts and crocs. No, no and no, boys. Vermont certainly was no respite from the late, cold and windy Spring we had in Maine, but it was a break from the ordinary days here at home. We had a blast visiting friends.

We stayed in Richmond with a family that had recently returned from a 8 month trip to Bolivia. Wow, did we soak up the stories and pictures and admired their Bolivian duds that they wore home as they left all their American clothes there with new friends.

One concept that I think of often as I plug away at all of the farm tasks that have me working a desk job, by myself, is the Bolivian word for work party: minga.

Our Vermont hosts spoke of the townspeople in Samaipata getting together regularly to do a job that benefited the community or just one household. They would call a minga, gather and get a job done. Together.

So won't you come by this weekend for a community effort right here in Freedom? Our dear friends, Rebecca and Matt Stauffer are planting an heirloom apple orchard in our eastern pasture.

Orchard Planting Party

Saturday, May 1 (and possibly Sunday May 2)

9am-4pm. Lunch provided. Bring a shovel and a bucket.

We hope to see you! 

And I have a list of VF news pieces that need sharing here on this blog, so stay tuned!

Best wishes from all of us, Polly and co.

Community Muscles

If there is such a thing as high summer, then mustn't there be a high winter? This week feels like it. With two whopper snowstorms behind us and another one before us, we Village Farmers are knee deep in seed catalogs and crop planning spreadsheets between plowing and shoveling events.

The barnyard report is blissfully uneventful. The cows grunch-grunch their hay in a most satisfying way and the hens are happily ensconced in their hoophouse turned chicken house. That is about it. Well, I guess we did find out this week, in a most embarrassing way, that Miss Meow, a recent addition to the barnyard menagerie, is actually a male. Oh well, leave it to the farmers to skip looking for the identifying parts.

There was a solid turnout Thursday night at a community meeting here in Freedom. I don't get out much, as they say, but as the children were off for a weekend with their grandparents, it was a pleasure to sit with other Freedomites for a few hours of mid-winter scheming. The scheming at hand was regarding a building that the Historical Society acquired this past fall. The Society paid back taxes to the town to take ownership of "Keen Hall," the yellow house on the western edge of our village. Most people remember it as the principal's house. Clayton Larrabee remembers taking his senior finals in it in the 50's. 

Chris Glass, an expert on historical preservation was in attendance and he spoke eloquently to the value, both economic and cultural, of historical preservation of significant buildings. He brought some drawings of possible renovation scenarios for the 18x36 original building, the 18x18 original ell and also recommended that the existing, decrepit garage be torn down.

The Historical Society asked for ideas from the gathered citizens. There were words of encouragement and support and, of course, words of doubt.

Not everyone agreed that this building was a worthy project but in the speaking and listening, a few key misconceptions were cleared up.
1. This is not a town project. There will be no additional tax burden to Freedom residents. This is a project of a newly incorporated 501(c)3 non-profit (The Freedom Community Historical Society).
2. Though non-profits do not pay taxes to the town, some choose to give a "payment in lieu of taxes" to acknowledge the use of town services and the fact that a property in town is no longer on the tax rolls.

What I witnessed was a room full of people who were interested enough in the project to leave their woodstoves and comfy chairs and show up to a meeting. I heard people speaking up in support and others speaking up in dissent. To me, this all adds up to the good news that people care. And since change comes only through our active participation in our places, our towns, our waterways, I think that those who want to work together should work together.
Working together builds our community muscles.
And working together feels good.
There are certainly many ways to improve and give back to our town. (Cleaning up falling down houses was one that came up quite a few times last night.) Through the initiative of the Historical Society, the one before us last eve was a "bold," (to quote Mr. Freedom General) suggestion that instead of tearing down an eyesore, we fix it up. This house stands at the western gateway to our village. The questions on the table were "Does this part of our history have a future? Should we work together to save it?"

I do hope so. I look forward to lending my hands to its restoration but mostly I look forward to having a project to work on with my neighbors.

Want to get involved? Next meeting of the Freedom Historical Society is Wednesday, Feb 11 at the Town Office Annex. 7pm.
 

With all our best, The Village Farmers

Wood

It seems to be the appropriate time of year to write about wood.
Wood. (Singular or plural? I love this word.)

Sugar Maple bark.

We burn it all day long in our home stove. We build with it: benches for the new greenhouse, a pine floor for my studio, a pencil holder for Prentice's birthday (shhh! Don't tell! It is Benny's secret project!). We think about it and plan it into our future: what part of the woodlot next year's firewood will come from, how much wood our new greenhouse will need to grow rockin' good seedlings, what trees we will grow out for FEDCO Trees. And we dream about it: I want to plant raspberry canes, American Plum seedlings, more elderberries, build a grape arbor and  on and on.

We just got an email from a beginning farmer in Vermont who is starting a medicinal forest orchard. I tell you, I love to grow vegetables but my heart sings when I think of a "medicinal forest orchard." Wow. I want to plant one, too! Let me on that train!

This farmer was seeking rootstock for an elderberry variety that we "introduced" a few years ago. I say "introduce" as that is plant world lingo for bringing a new variety into the world--of commerce, yes, but also because they are plants, I think of it as spreading the genetic material. In this case, an old variety, probably a chance seedling gets to become a "new" variety. Anyways, enough with the "quotation marks!" We took cuttings, propagated them, grew them out here in our nursery, dug them and sold the young plants to FEDCO Trees. I, quite literally, grew up under this elder. It is the elderberry that grows from the place where my parents' 200 year old barn and the earth meet. It grows from the foundation, it seems, but I know it's roots are in the earth. We called it 'Meadowview' after my parents' farm.

Some cuttings of cornus rugosa.

Before I can commit to sending elderberry wood or young plants to this inspiring, forward thinking farmer in Vermont, we shall have to wait and see how many cuttings I can humanely take from my parents' planting this spring. We have established our own 'Meadowview' elderberry orchard here at Village Farm but the plants are still too small to take cuttings. And somehow, without that barn looming overhead and those granite foundation stones, I am somehow in doubt that it will be the same variety.

A sculpture carved into a stump in Belfast, Maine. Photo by Joseph.

Perhaps you will plant a tree this spring. Perhaps I will, too!
More, soon. A new website is on its way.
All the best from here,
Polly and co.

In Between

Happy Holidays from all of us at Village Farm! Sure hope that you have enjoyed the season's mellower notes as well as just as much cheer and partying and mirth as you can handle.

We won't go into this in-between weather other than to say we are hoping for ICE (to skate upon!) and then lots of SNOW. Winter sporting type activities, or shall I say, winter frolicking activities of all sorts are big in our house, so we all get kind of obsessed with the NOAA forecast. Hoping for perfect ice and then a dumping of "snowball snow."

This picture is from early December. I tend to take lots of pictures like this from the porch. I see something out the window that looks good enough to photograph, which for me is a combination of beauty and story and I grab the camera. Click. There you go. Pretty, snowy dusty fields with my dear Prentice biking to check on some very late cauliflower in the far field. Beautiful and story-rich.

Another few pictures taken from the dooryard: Prentice walking Sal and Pep, the 18 month old steers, and  father and son in matching insulated suits, heading to the barn for chores. If you look to Benny's right, you can see our new barn kitten, Miss Meow, there by the hayrack.

Today we were outside all day long taking advantage of the spring-like day to tidy up the woodshed, move a lot of potting soil, replenish the hens' straw bedding pack and the like. It felt to both of us like a day out of the ordinary. There was a leisureliness to it. These days before 2014 shuts down and 2015 revs up are sweet in their special kind of in-between feel.

We have a lot ahead of us before the first seeds of 2015 hit the soil. Our new greenhouse needs a heat plant and benches. We need to T-up the CSA and fluff the website with new pictures and offerings for 2015.
We need to sign on a couple more apprentices and of course order seeds. For now, though, we are tending the children, hearth and animals as we breathe deeply into our blessings.

With love and gratitude from here, 

(Lovely little vessel by a wonderful friend and CSA member. Thanks, Liz!)

More gratitude to add to your pie.

And a note about schedule: Fall CSA members, remember no pickup next Tuesday. 

Last distribution Dec 9.

With all warm tidings for a lovely, warm and cozy weekend.

Polly and Prentice, Joseph, Ben and Abe and all the critters