It is hard to believe the season is over already. Just a few weeks ago we had 50 20-bushel vegetable bins full to the bursting with root vegetables. Now, most of those bins are empty and stored away until next fall. We are pleased with the amount of storage vegetables we grew this season; we're still filling up the truck, while in past seasons the truck was only half full at this time of year. With the vegetable deliveries ending, we reflect on this season as we plan for the 2008 season. We're fortunate that John Middleton and Justin Wilder and his family are staying on the farm.We wouldn’t want to be going into next season without them. Their skills and enthusiasm lighten our load and allow the farm to run more efficiently. We hope that together we can develop niches on the farm for John and Justin so they can stay on the farm long-term. This season was a success in large part because the crew had the farm in their consciousness at every moment. In return, the fields amazed us with bountiful crops.
Two members of this great crew are moving on next season. After two years at Roxbury,
Paul Hess and Kelly O’Hearn (accompanied by their woodchuck-hunting dogs) will be the farmers at the Brothers of the Holy Cross Community Supported Garden just down the road. They started the garden this year and will be expanding it next season to serve a small CSA. We'll miss them, but with them so close by, we hope to still see them often.
Since Paul and Kelly are leaving, we have decided to host apprentices again for the 2008 season. We will be interviewing for three apprenticeship positions during the next couple of weeks. We didn’t have apprentices this year for a number of reasons. Mostly we just didn’t feel we had the time to devote to training and education. With John and Justin on board, we'll be able to share the tasks of training and educating, which will make it a better experience for everyone.
As Jean-Paul wrote two weeks ago, we hope to expand the animal aspect of the farm. The sheep and sows are in breeding season right now. We will have lamb available for sale in June and the pork again in the fall. Jean-Paul and John need their cow fix, so we hope to have a few steers on pasture to provide beef, and hopefully the turkeys in the fall, too. The animal equation is a difficult one to balance. We hoped that by offering the pork in individual cuts this season we would make a little bit of profit. In the past the pork shares paid for the butchering cost and the feed but not our labor or time. This season the feed costs doubled (we think ethanol has something to do with this, but that is a whole other newsletter). The money from the pork sales this year will cover the feed, butchering costs, and our labor, but doesn’t get anywhere near to covering the costs of the greenhouse or fencing. Our goal is to eventually figure out the right mix of animals in order for this part of the operation to be self sustaining.
As for the vegetables… We have been reading the results of the end-of-the-year surveys as they come in. It seems that just as many people want less greens as people who want more. So, we think we'll keep the amounts the same. We are going to try out a few different mixes that Johnny’s Selected Seed Company has developed for salad and braising greens. There were many requests for more variety in the salad mix and braising greens so we will give it a shot.
In past surveys, people said they really enjoyed the all-blue and all-red potatoes. We tried them this season but found it wasn’t very successful. The brown flaky spots you had on many of your potatoes this year are called scab. Scab is in our soil and we can’t do anything about it. Different varieties have different thresholds of susceptibility to scab. We found that the more unique varieties that you enjoy were very susceptible to scab. We will try a few different potato varieties next season to keep the variety in your share, but we'll still grow a large amount of the Keuka Golds (which aren’t sensitive to scab or other problems we have with potatoes).
We noticed that the sweet potatoes weren’t holding up in storage as well as they have in the past. Usually, we wait until the first frost to harvest them. The strong vines of the sweet potatoes die with the frost; otherwise the vines clog up our digging equipment. The frost came so late this season that the ground was too cold for the sweet potatoes. We e-mailed the company we buy the sweet potato slips from to ask for advice about harvesting. They told us to harvest the sweet potatoes in September before the frost and gave us tips about how to deal with the vines. Next season we will harvest them before the ground gets too cold. We apologize for shortchanging some of you this year on sweet potatoes, but lots of them went bad in storage.
We're looking forward to a few months of taking things a bit more slowly and to some rest. By March we'll itch to work in the soil again. While we may follow a similar cycle every season, working with nature always keeps us on our toes and keeps things interesting. Check in with the Roxbury Farm blog to see what we're up to on the Farm during the next few months. Thank you for your support this season! We wish you a restful winter and we will see you again in June, 2008.
~Jean-Paul and Jody
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Happy New Year!
We wish you blessings for the New Year!
We are spending the last few days of 2007 ordering seeds and supplies for next season. We are adding popcorn, snow peas, some new greens mixes, red bok choi, and green cauliflower to the 2008 shares. The Mirai sweet corn will return again as it received rave reviews the last two seasons. Next week we will be working on the apartment and repairing equipment. We will also begin to process the 2008 enrollments from present members. New members can begin signing up in late January/early February by downloading the enrollment forms from our website, http://www.roxburyfarm.com/.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday's Delivery Postponed
The CSA deliveries for the New York City sites scheduled for today, Thursday, Dec. 13th are postponed until next Thursday, Dec. 20th. We are expecting a large snow storm upstate that will make traveling to NYC dangerous. The delivery next week will be the last CSA delivery for the 2007 season. If you ordered pork or a storage vegetable box you can pick that up on the 20th, also.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Preparing For Winter
During the last week we spent much of our time preparing the farm for winter. We put new plastic covers on both of our greenhouses. We also constructed new housing for the sheep and pigs in one of the greenhouses. The animals still have access to pasture but can get in out of cold and snow whenever they want. The pigs spend much of their day buried in the straw bedding sleeping. The boar is in with the sows and the ram is in with the ewes. We expect piglets to arrive in late March and lambs in early April.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Newsletter 24
My work on the farm has transformed somewhat over the past few years. Now that our crew has more experience, the farm cycle seems to revolve on its own. This is good, as my body does not always cooperate the same way it did 10 years ago, and you won’t see me these days involved with all the aspects of the farm. Building this farm has left quite a few scars on my body. I don’t regret it, but it certainly is inconvenient when you need to ask the young guns (or Dave) to help you lift something heavy. Farming is hard on your body, and I serve as a living warning to everyone else on the farm. “Hey, if you don’t want to turn deaf by your forties you better wear these earmuffs,” which prompts anyone to carefully wear them. Actually, though the farm equipment is loud, it has saved me from wearing myself out completely. After I got my knee replaced, it was a godsend to be able to mechanically cut the lettuce and greens this year. But equipment can be dangerous – I almost cut my finger off when I simply stroked the band-saw of that same salad harvester by accident. Fortunately, I have never been in a serious farming accident – we are obsessive about farm safety – but equipment is still dangerous, and the only way to be completely safe is simply not to use it at all.
Having a worn-out body and being almost deaf comes with a few perks. You tend to turn more inwards, and your eyes largely compensate for what your ears lack in function. Also, when you can’t throw yourself into the physical aspects of the work, you have more time to reflect on what we do and when we do it. I have learned to see fields within a five-year context: three years back and two years ahead. What has happened in a field for the last three years determines what will happen to it in the following two years. Busy farmers can get too much in the moment, and are happy when they have just enough land available to get their crops planted. Whatever happens to sit idle might get treated to a green manure crop. As a result of being focused on just one aspect, those farms start showing signs of stress: A farm's predominantly breathing-out process – the produce and meat that leaves the farm gate and the cash coming back in to do it all over again – is affecting the overall health of the farm. Signs of this kind of stress include excessive weed problems, impoverished or abundant soil fertility, diseased plants and animals, decrease in habitat for beneficial organisms, etc. The farm is like an organism: It needs to be seen in its totality as one complex system whereby all the living components are tuned in to provide a balance in its metabolic and respiratory systems. The farm as a whole needs to breathe in and out, produce and consume in some form of equilibrium. You need time and experience to do this work; every farm needs a worn-out, almost deaf farmer like me to make sure this is given its due attention.
From the farm as an organism, we know that we have reached our limit on the amount of land dedicated to vegetable-crop production. No, we will not allow any more members to share into the bounty of this farm; there is a cap on our capacity. But the farm includes 285 acres, so there is plenty of room to become more productive in other areas. These days, we sell our hay and it leaves the farm. We would love to recycle more of it through our own four-legged animals.
With my focus on finding the balance on the farm, we have been making many adjustments. In my meditation on certain fields, I can imagine a certain crop to be grown that involves plowing, harrowing and seeding; but many of our fields are asking to be left alone, as in permanent sod. We could make hay on these fields or we could choose to pasture them. Once you put animals in a field, you need to observe how well the animal interacts with that field. The reason we purchased sheep was a result of those observations. The characteristics of most fields on the North farm make them unsuitable for large animals (with the exception of the hayfield on the further north side of this farm). The sheep proved to be a good choice, as they are thriving and the pasture has generally improved, due to the rigorous management-intensive grazing system that Jody employs. But as I looked closer, I realized that the sheep do have a one-sided impact on the land. If we do not want to run into long-term problems with either the sheep or the fields, we will need to balance the impact of the sheep with some other creatures. The sheep are spoiled animals and leave a lot of the taller grasses to be mowed by us. Over time, this leaves a layer of dead organic material on the surface of the soil which will make it less productive. Some kind of fowl needs to be introduced to these fields to scratch the dead grass out of the sod. This scratching allows new seeds to emerge, and the new plants will make for a more productive pasture. Also, sheep are notorious for having parasite problems. While rotational grazing is the best tool we have available against this problem, fowl eating the eggs of the parasites out of the sod will also be a great help. Jody and I have been toying with the idea of chickens, but neither of us is too excited about killing meat birds every six weeks, or being stuck with egg production after the vegetable season is over.
And then, there we were on Thanksgiving, sitting around the table eating our organic turkey from the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store. Eureka! Why hadn’t we thought of this before? Who says good ideas only happen when you meditate (I thought as I was stuffing my mouth with another bite of delicious sweet potato)? Turkeys follow the same cycle as our vegetables. You start the chicks in the spring to be harvested in the fall. As this is a relatively new idea, we will need to work out the details, but you can look forward to hearing from us on this: We are about to find a new avenue in linking you as the consumer to the health of the land by simply ordering your Thanksgiving turkey from the farm. We can solve many problems at once: We will improve the land and the health of the sheep, and have great turkeys to eat, while staying away from dangerous farm equipment. Oh, and as far as the turkeys purring, yelping, clucking, gobbling, and cackling – my hearing problem might come in handy again.
~Jean-Paul
Having a worn-out body and being almost deaf comes with a few perks. You tend to turn more inwards, and your eyes largely compensate for what your ears lack in function. Also, when you can’t throw yourself into the physical aspects of the work, you have more time to reflect on what we do and when we do it. I have learned to see fields within a five-year context: three years back and two years ahead. What has happened in a field for the last three years determines what will happen to it in the following two years. Busy farmers can get too much in the moment, and are happy when they have just enough land available to get their crops planted. Whatever happens to sit idle might get treated to a green manure crop. As a result of being focused on just one aspect, those farms start showing signs of stress: A farm's predominantly breathing-out process – the produce and meat that leaves the farm gate and the cash coming back in to do it all over again – is affecting the overall health of the farm. Signs of this kind of stress include excessive weed problems, impoverished or abundant soil fertility, diseased plants and animals, decrease in habitat for beneficial organisms, etc. The farm is like an organism: It needs to be seen in its totality as one complex system whereby all the living components are tuned in to provide a balance in its metabolic and respiratory systems. The farm as a whole needs to breathe in and out, produce and consume in some form of equilibrium. You need time and experience to do this work; every farm needs a worn-out, almost deaf farmer like me to make sure this is given its due attention.
From the farm as an organism, we know that we have reached our limit on the amount of land dedicated to vegetable-crop production. No, we will not allow any more members to share into the bounty of this farm; there is a cap on our capacity. But the farm includes 285 acres, so there is plenty of room to become more productive in other areas. These days, we sell our hay and it leaves the farm. We would love to recycle more of it through our own four-legged animals.
With my focus on finding the balance on the farm, we have been making many adjustments. In my meditation on certain fields, I can imagine a certain crop to be grown that involves plowing, harrowing and seeding; but many of our fields are asking to be left alone, as in permanent sod. We could make hay on these fields or we could choose to pasture them. Once you put animals in a field, you need to observe how well the animal interacts with that field. The reason we purchased sheep was a result of those observations. The characteristics of most fields on the North farm make them unsuitable for large animals (with the exception of the hayfield on the further north side of this farm). The sheep proved to be a good choice, as they are thriving and the pasture has generally improved, due to the rigorous management-intensive grazing system that Jody employs. But as I looked closer, I realized that the sheep do have a one-sided impact on the land. If we do not want to run into long-term problems with either the sheep or the fields, we will need to balance the impact of the sheep with some other creatures. The sheep are spoiled animals and leave a lot of the taller grasses to be mowed by us. Over time, this leaves a layer of dead organic material on the surface of the soil which will make it less productive. Some kind of fowl needs to be introduced to these fields to scratch the dead grass out of the sod. This scratching allows new seeds to emerge, and the new plants will make for a more productive pasture. Also, sheep are notorious for having parasite problems. While rotational grazing is the best tool we have available against this problem, fowl eating the eggs of the parasites out of the sod will also be a great help. Jody and I have been toying with the idea of chickens, but neither of us is too excited about killing meat birds every six weeks, or being stuck with egg production after the vegetable season is over.
And then, there we were on Thanksgiving, sitting around the table eating our organic turkey from the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store. Eureka! Why hadn’t we thought of this before? Who says good ideas only happen when you meditate (I thought as I was stuffing my mouth with another bite of delicious sweet potato)? Turkeys follow the same cycle as our vegetables. You start the chicks in the spring to be harvested in the fall. As this is a relatively new idea, we will need to work out the details, but you can look forward to hearing from us on this: We are about to find a new avenue in linking you as the consumer to the health of the land by simply ordering your Thanksgiving turkey from the farm. We can solve many problems at once: We will improve the land and the health of the sheep, and have great turkeys to eat, while staying away from dangerous farm equipment. Oh, and as far as the turkeys purring, yelping, clucking, gobbling, and cackling – my hearing problem might come in handy again.
~Jean-Paul
Friday, November 23, 2007
Greetings
Hi, I'm Dave, Jody's dad. I do the construction work on the farm (2 days a week). Plumbing, wiring, carpentry, concrete work, whatever is needed. I used to teach (35 years), but no more! I'll keep you posted on what is going on with respect to construction on the farm. We just finished framing in doorways on the greenhouses and machine shed for new garage doors. We'll move to the CSA barn apartment next for inside framing, then wiring, plumbing, insulation, then drywalling. Then John can move in!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Welcome
Welcome to the Roxbury Farm blog page. With this page we can update you about the happenings on the farm. You will be able to hear from other voices on the farm like Johnny, Justin, Dave, and Linda.
We just finished the indoor housing for the pigs. They are happily settling into their deep bed of straw. Soon the housing for the sheep will be finished, too. Then it is on to the apartment for Johnny.
We just finished the indoor housing for the pigs. They are happily settling into their deep bed of straw. Soon the housing for the sheep will be finished, too. Then it is on to the apartment for Johnny.
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