ROXBURY FARM

Jean-Paul in the news

2009-12-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

For link to video:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/two-dutch-farmers-new-york

Adrian Ooms and Jean-Paul Courtens are Dutch farmers who left home as young men to start a new life in America. By coincidence, they both ended up in Kinderhook, New York -a place where Dutch farmers were already tilling the soil 400 years ago.

These days Ooms and Courtens are known as exemplary farmers, each in their own specialist field. Dairy farmer Adrian Ooms (pictured in lead photo), born and raised in Schiedam near Rotterdam, has kept his farm small, with about 450 milk cows. This is uncommon in the USA, where most milk is produced on very large dairies. But in a recent trend to reintroduce smaller-scale agriculture in New York state, the Ooms Dairy Farm is often upheld as a model. One of Adrian's sons has even been appointed Vice President of the powerful New York State Farm Bureau, the most important agricultural body in the state.

On nearby Roxbury Farm, run by Jean-Paul Courtens, we find a whole different type of agriculture. Mr Courtens, originally from Amsterdam, sells his biodynamic produce by means of Community Supported Agriculture. In other words, the customer pays an annual sum for a weekly delivery of organically-grown fruit and vegetables. But included in the fee is the right to vote on what crops should be grown on the farm - and the customers can come help out during the harvest too. That's easier said then done, since most of the customers live on Manhattan: four hours by car from this beautiful farm in the Hudson Valley.

Robert Chesal of Radio Netherlands Worldwide

For link to video:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/video/two-dutch-farmers-new-york

Celeriac Recipes

2009-11-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

Celeriac and Butternut Squash Soup
3 TBS butter
1 onion, chopped
1 apple, peeled and chopped
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
Sage and Thyme to taste
1 quart cooked and pureed butternut squash
1 large tomato, chopped or ½ can canned chopped tomatoes
2-4 cups of your favorite stock
½ cup lentils cooked
Salt and Pepper to taste

Saute onions, apple, celeriac, garlic, and herbs in butter until soft. Puree the mixture. Put the pureed celeriac mixture in a soup pot and add pureed butternut squash, tomatoes, stock, and lentils. Heat. Salt and pepper to taste.
from One United Harvest Cookbook on the Winter Green Community Farm website

Mashed Celeriac
1 celeriac, peeled
olive oil
handful of fresh thyme, leaves picked
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3–4 tablespoons water or stock

Slice about ½ inch off the bottom of your celeriac and roll it on to that flat edge, so it's nice and safe to slice. Slice and dice it all up into ½ inch-ish cubes. Don't get your ruler out – they don't have to be perfect. Put a casserole-type pot on a high heat, add 3 good lugs of olive oil, then add the celeriac, thyme and garlic, with a little seasoning. Stir around to coat and fry quite fast, giving a little colour, for 5 minutes. Turn the heat down to a simmer, add the water or stock, place a lid on top and cook for around 25 minutes, until tender. Season carefully to taste and stir around with a spoon to smash up the celeriac. Some people like to keep it in cubes, some like to mash it, but I think it looks and tastes much better if you smash it, which is somewhere in the middle. You can serve this with just about any meat you can think of.
from Chef Jamie Oliver at www.jamieoliver.com

Week 15 Newsletter

2009-09-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

As most of the crops have been planted or harvested, we are entering a new stage on the farm. While summer is not officially over, we have fully embraced the fall. Last week, we spread compost on next year’s vegetable fields and seeded them down with oats and field peas. This is also a time (while the season is still fresh in our minds) to review what worked well and what didn’t this year. There is always a lot that doesn’t work well and I fully understand that while any new solution could create new problems, we always live with the hope (even after 20 years of trying) to perfect what we do by incorporating necessary changes.

Running a farm is a combination of working with nature, people, and technology. The challenge is to properly address the needs of each component. We have become pretty decent at solving our technological challenges by having kept pace with the 21st century in accessing information and using equipment. As opposed to technology, interacting with nature and people requires an open mind and an open heart, as both are never constant. All you can do is create an environment whereby you foster stability as best you can. And herein lays the challenge.

Jody and I are under no illusion that we have the intellect or the wisdom to create that environment by ourselves, nor should we. The acceptance of our limitations led us to become a CSA farm and immerse ourselves in its underlying philosophy of community. It was the input from and insights of many members that helped bring about the farm as it is today. Very early on, the members understood that in order for a farmer to produce high quality food, the farmer needs to stay on the farm. This was one of the founding principles of Roxbury as a CSA farm. In the early 1990s, the most plausible way to make a farm work economically was to spend three days a week at a farmers market (rather than taking care of the farm). Another small example is that when we expressed the difficulty of growing garlic due to the high labor input at the wrong time of year, the members committed themselves to taking on an important roll in the planting and harvesting of garlic. In short, our relationship has always been about dialogue to find solutions to challenges.

The largest accomplishment of this dialogue is, of course, the purchase and preservation of farmland. The members recognized that we were not in the position to take on a huge debt load to purchase farmland. Members, with the help of the Open Space Institute and Equity Trust, completed a successful fundraising effort in 2002, securing 150 acres, barns, and housing for farmers in perpetuity.

When we say “members” we recognize that it is rather difficult to be in dialogue with all members or that we have a system in place for getting input from you through democratically elected representatives. The members that participate in running the sites, the ones that come to the summits for visioning and budgeting and to the member workdays have always been self-selected. We are deeply grateful for the enormous amount of effort, energy, and goodwill that has poured into the farm since 1990.

Since 2003 I have been concerned that we have started to live under the delusion that Roxbury Farm has everything figured out. So, why hold a summit if we have it all figured out? We admit, we are not a struggling operation and we are not operating in a crisis mode. But, we recognize it to be an oversight to discontinue a platform for dialogue. Of course dialogue continues informally and we appreciate the many e-mails we receive, the feedback on the annual surveys, and the discussions during workdays and CSA pickups. But, when you create a space like we have in our past summits, those types of conversations develop much deeper qualities as we all make a commitment to implement proposed changes.

This fall, we are seeking members to participate in a summit at the farm again. We want to exchange thoughts and ideas for the long-term future of Roxbury Farm. A diverse perspective from members, farm coworkers, and us will make for a fuller picture of the past, present, and future. In the end aren’t we all blind men describing different parts of the same elephant? Together we create a better picture of the whole animal.

We plan on having this meeting in early November. If you are interested in participating, please e-mail the farm at info@roxburyfarm.com. This will not be a forum for individual wishes to be discussed; instead, participants are asked to come as if one is a members’ representative. At the summit, we will discuss the present and future challenges that will impact the success of Roxbury Farm in the future. We need your help to find creative solutions to some challenges we are already aware of. There might be many we are not even aware of and, therefore, even if you can’t participate in person, we would like to know what you think are possible challenges (and possibly any ideas you might have for solutions).

Over the past couple of years we may have lulled you – and ourselves – into the idea that it is just us and the site coordinators who are providing you with a service (and we enjoy doing so). Members can, and are, providing a mutually important service back to the farm. Members provide us not only with the financial resources but also with an energy that is clearly felt by the farmers – and it exudes further into the farm, providing the basis for it to become a living organism. This energy is especially important and appreciated in a year like this one. Your connection is the lifeline that keeps this phenomenon moving into the future. While it sounds appealing, it is really an awe-inspiring responsibility.
~Jean-Paul

Saturday's Workday Postponed

2009-09-11T11:26:00.000-07:00

The workday scheduled for tomorrow, Sept. 12 is postponed until Saturday, Sept. 26. Unfortunately it is raining this afternoon and will rain again tomorrow. The field conditions will be too wet for the potato harvest.

On Saturday, Sept. 26 we will be harvesting sweet potatoes. We are hoping for dry weather and to see you there!

Week 13 Notes for Members

2009-09-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

ROXBURY FARM WINS AWARD FROM JUST FOOD: Each year Just Food gives out the McKinley Hightower-Beyah awards to groups or individuals who carry on the work of McKinley Hightower-Beyan. He was a City Farms Trainer, an advocate for food security and food justice, a leader in his community, and a dear friend to Just Food. This year Roxbury Farm will be given one of the five awards. The awards will be given at the Let us Eat Local event to benefit the work of Just Food.

MEMBER WORKDAY: Join us for a member workday on Saturday, September 12. Meet us at the North Farm at 10:00. We will have a potluck lunch around 12:30 p.m., so bring a dish to share and your place setting. Hope to see you there!

Week 13 Newsletter

2009-09-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

Jody wrote last week about the products we use as plant protectants because we believe that good communication is a prerequisite of any successful relationship. While you might not like everything you hear or read, we think having honest and solid information available develops a sense of trust. In the marketplace, trust is replaced by a quality assurance label – like certified organic or certified humanely raised, etc. Ultimately, we are at your service and what we do is based on our assumptions of how our time is best spent raising crops without clearly written guidelines. For clarification, we stay within the certification requirements of organic agriculture by looking not only at the United States standards but also at those of the European Union. For example, while the BioTelo plastic mulch used on the farm is not included on the OMRI list, it is certified to be used in Canada by Ecocert and in the EU under the IFOAM standards – and is therefore good enough for us to accept it as a practice. While I personally have distaste for using copper as a plant protectant (it goes against everything I believe in, but it is an approved substance within organic standards), I was compelled to use it. The alternative was disheartening both for our crew – they had worked very hard getting the crop to where it was by carefully seeding, planting, and trellising it – and for you: we would have delivered a far less interesting share this time of the year. After all, what is a season without tomatoes?

In the spirit of sharing information with you, I report that this year we worked harder than usual while experiencing unfortunately lower returns to you. It is a hard year for CSAs, as members do not always realize that a difficult season is especially hard on farmers. It takes extra effort to deliver the same product, if that product is even yielding anything to begin with. One local CSA farmer came to us with tears in his eyes, telling us about the difficulty of his season and the anger he had to deal with from his membership. As the Roxbury Farm membership has a reputation of being most supportive in times of trouble, he asked what our secret is. We honestly couldn’t tell him, except to say that we let everyone know how things are going on the farm. Yes, it took a long time to develop the trust that we feel you endow us with. Thank you for that, and for all your supportive letters and emails.

It is hard to believe that we still have 12 deliveries left after this week. Nonetheless, we are still planting greens and lettuce: in all, another three acres’ worth to add fresh greens and salad mix to the late September and October deliveries. For all other vegetables, it has already been determined as to how they will yield for the remainder of the season.

We have three corn plantings left, with the last two plantings most likely yielding relatively small ears and some worms (although Lydia and Mike spent almost a whole day squirting a few drops of BT in the silk of each ear of the corn). The popcorn looks good, except that the steers left a few footprints in it lowering the yield a little bit. Generally, as it was a very, very good year for sweet corn because our fields drain relatively well, the losses in the corn from the flooding have gone largely unnoticed at the pickup site – everyone received the promised six ears a week for most deliveries. Still, the corn that had been submersed was mostly left in the field.

All the winter squash is harvested and now sits either in the barn or the greenhouse to cure. The total yield is smaller than usual. Because of quality concerns, we have already given out the Sunshine and Delicata Squash. We won’t wait too long to give you the Buttercup, and we will only hold on to the Acorn and Butternut squash until October. We figure that this squash will store much better in your dry kitchen than in our moist barn. The sweet potatoes look good, but we expect the yield to be smaller than usual, as we only had a few days of real summer. They like it hot and dry, two conditions we haven’t seen much of.

The potatoes have been a trial, and took a lot of our effort to protect, as the weather has been hard on them, in addition to the blight they suffered from the excess of water. Once we start digging, we’ll see how large the losses are. Potatoes are not the only crop that suffered from standing water. While the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale on the higher ground all look good, the plants in the low spots are miniature and might just give up altogether.

The cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant have been yielding well, despite the cool summer. They greatly benefited from the favorable conditions provided by the high raised beds and the mulch provided by plastic and shredded hay. We had good control of the European corn borer through weekly releases of parasitic wasps. We still have some melons in the fields that have not matured yet, so please look out for some juicy fruit coming your way.

While most salad mix looks fantastic and relatively weed-free, the last few plantings suffered from a self seeding of barley and oats. This farmer could not get in the field in time where we had planned to seed lettuce to work in the green manure crop. When we did have a window of opportunity it didn’t seem that the seed in the barley and oats was viable; nevertheless, some of the viable seed created an interesting mix of lettuce with grain. We figured that you prefer salad without “wheat” grass, unless you were planning on juicing it all. We ended up missing quite a few weeks of greens and lettuce, as either the weeds or the grain shoots made for an unacceptable product.

The beets, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, and fennel that did make it through the wetness look good, but again we will be looking at lower than usual quantities to distribute, as we weren’t able to weed some of them in time to provide a satisfactory yield.

We brought seven butcher hogs to the Hill Town Pork slaughterhouse this past Thursday. The hogs were tame, well-fed, and content. In my opinion, they were some of the best hogs we have raised so far. In two weeks, we will deliver the other seven and pick up the non-smoked portion of the first batch of pork.

As the days begin to shorten, we now turn our attention to next year, to what we can do differently, what worked well, and what we need to improve upon. We invite you to let us know how the season went for you and what you feel we could do better or differently next season. Your feedback will help us to serve you better and to meet your needs. In lieu of being certified, this is what helps keep us on the right track.
~Jean-Paul

Week 12 newsletter

2009-08-25T07:07:00.000-07:00

Since we wrote to you about spraying the tomatoes with copper to save them from the late blight, we have received quite a few emails asking us about what that means and if we spray other crops with other products. We also had a visit from a French agriculturalist who asked about the American organic certification and whether we participate. We explained that, because of the CSA relationship of trust and open communication about our farming practices, we don’t feel the need to be certified. In addition, certification would cost us quite a bit of money and it doesn’t make sense to pass that cost on to the CSA members. In order for you to feel comfortable with our farming practices, we thought we should share with you the products we spray, what crops we spray, and why we spray.

Copper: One of the products that organic growers can use is NuCop 50 WP. It is a blue powder that we mix with water and spray on the tomatoes as a fungicide. The copper is absorbed by the spore of the oomycete pathogen and kills the spore. The oomycete that has already developed on the plant cannot be killed. Organic growers have to use the spray as a protectant and apply it before the pathogen appears on the crop. Once the oomycete has established itself on the crop, the copper can be sprayed to control the spread of the spores, but the copper will not destroy the pathogen itself. We use copper to control early and late blight in the tomatoes. For early blight, we spray when the plants are young and, once they begin to have fruit, we quit spraying. The late blight infection we have now requires that we spray until the end of the harvest. If we quit spraying copper, you would have only one or two more weeks of tomatoes at best.

We handle this product carefully and we do not go into the tomatoes for 24 hours after copper is applied. As we stated before, you should wash your tomatoes before you eat them. The copper product is only on the surface of the tomato and easily washes off. Copper is a trace mineral in the soil and, because we rotate our crops every year, this one season of a heavier-than-normal use of copper will not affect the soil life or soil health. Copper does not leach into ground water. We are careful to spray only when there is no wind so that the copper does not drift into other areas of the farm or into other crops.

Entrust: This is a product we use to control European Corn Borer in sweet corn and peppers. We also use it when the flea beetle infestation is especially heavy in greens like arugula or in eggplant. With the addition of the parasitic wasps (trichogramma ostrinae) we also use to control the corn borer, we have almost no worm damage in the corn. We have more damage in the peppers this year because we didn’t control the worms early enough. The larvae from the corn borer moth eat holes in the tops of the peppers. Then, when it rains, the peppers fill with water and rot on the plant. If not controlled, the larvae can do a lot of damage very quickly in a pepper crop. We spray the corn because most people do not enjoy finding worms in their corn ears.

Enrust is created from bacteria called spinosa that are found in the soil. It works best on pests that eat the sprayed leaves. Entrust can have some effect on the pests and beneficial insects when it has just been sprayed. Once the product dries, it is not harmful to insects that are not ingesting the sprayed leaves. It is not considered to be toxic to humans. We are careful to spray so that it does not drift (blow in the wind to places we do not want it). Insects can build up a resistance to Entrust, so we do not spray it more than two or three times on a crop per season. We use about two ounces per acre per application and the product is broken down in the soil.

Bt: This product comes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis. We use the product called DiPel DF. There are many different strains of Bt, but we use this one to control cabbage loopers (the worms found in your cabbage and broccoli). It works only by digestion and causes the larvae of the looper moth to quit eating. We sometimes use it to control corn earworm in the corn by spraying it directly on the silks of the ears. We only do this if our scouting (carefully surveying the crop for evidence of a pest) shows that we have a high level of corn earworm moths in the corn field. DiPel DF is not toxic to humans or other animals. It only affects the larvae that eat the plant leaves.

All three products are aided by what is called a spreader sticker and, in our case, that is Nu-Film P, another OMRI approved material. Nu-Film improves the material’s effectiveness by protecting it against early UV degradation, by making it stick to the leaves of the plant, and by lowering the surface tension of the water which creates a smaller droplet and therefore better coverage.

Biodynamic Preparations: The biodynamic preparations are used in addition to good farming practices to increase the health of the soil and plants on the farm. They are similar to the homeopathic remedies we use to benefit human and animal health. We use horn-manure preparation to increase the humus formation in the soil (the stable soil aggregates that increase organic matter) and to increase the rooting of the plants. Horn manure is made by filling cow horns with cow manure from animals raised on grass. The filled horns are then buried in the ground over the winter. When the horns are dug up in the spring the manure has fermented into a compost-like substance. After we dig it up we insert the six compost preparations and store it in a stone urn immersed in peat moss to maintain its freshness. The compost preparations are made from fermented medicinal herbs: dandelion, chamomile, valerian, yarrow, stinging nettle, and oak bark. We also put very small quantities of each in the compost piles. We also apply both horn-silica and (on a trial basis) the horn-clay preparation, which are both made in a way similar to the horn-manure. We use very small amounts of these preparations and stir them in warm water for one hour. Horn-manure and horn clay are sprayed on the soil and horn silica is sprayed on the leaves of the plants.

When we are making a decision about whether or not to use a certain product, we carefully weigh the pros and cons. We have increased the use of spraying because we felt that you wanted a less damaged product. We heard from you that you don’t want to find worms in your broccoli or corn. We understand, and we do our best to deliver that. We do not use products that are not on the OMRI list (OMRI is the organization that decides if a product can be used in certified organic production). If you have further questions about what we use to protect the crops so that we can deliver a better product to you, please send us an email at info@roxburyfarm.com. This continued discussion is how we determine your needs and how to best meet them. It is important that, even though we have had this relationship for almost 20 years, the lines of communication stay open. We thank you for your questions and input.
~Jody

MORE INFORMATION:
For more information on Entrust, DiPel DF, and NuCop WP50 we recommend that you read the Resource Guide for Organic Insect and Disease Management published by Cornell University. You can find it on their website: http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/pp/resourceguide/index.php

For an article on the Biodynamic Preparations we suggest the article on the ATTRA (The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service) website: http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/biodynam.pdf and at the Biodynamic Association’s website: http://biodynamics.com/node/111

Week 11 Newsletter

2009-08-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

This week, we received a visit from the widely respected professor Tom Zitter, along with Cornell Cooperative Extension agents John Mishanec, Laura McDermott, and Chuck Bornt. Tom is a researcher at Cornell University, where he heads the Zitter Lab and Field Program, which deals with the biology and management of pathogens of fresh market vegetables, with emphasis on potatoes, tomatoes, and cucurbits. As I have written to you before, we have been working with Cornell for many years conducting tomato, potato, and cucurbit trials, as well as soil management. For three years we participated in a trial to help assess the quality of late blight-resistant tomato varieties.

Their visit was a good opportunity to check up on the health of our tomato plants. Unfortunately, due to the misconception that hot and dry weather doesn’t favor late blight, this farmer had slacked off on the spraying of copper in the last two weeks. It did not take Tom very long to discover the first lesions indicating that late blight has started to fester on our late planting of tomatoes. It was a blessing to have him and Chuck visit us that day, as we think we might still be in time to lessen the infection by going back to a more careful spraying regime.

Four years ago, our local extension agent, Chuck Bornt, asked us if we had some space in our tomato section to add about 400 plants of about 50 different late blight-resistant tomato varieties. They had no funding at the time but, with the cooperation of growers like Roxbury Farm, and the ongoing concern that late blight would one day have a catastrophic impact on tomato production (well, that proved to be a foresight!), we went ahead. Those 50 different varieties were trialed at Roxbury Farm; by one other grower in the western part of the state; and at the Thompson Vegetable Research Farm at Freeville, N.Y.

I remember Chuck telling me that he was biased against one variety and he was hesitant to include it in the mix, as it produced a strong indeterminate tomato plant. Tomatoes are classified as determinate, semi determinate, and indeterminate. This terminology applies to how the tomatoes ripen on the vine. Indeterminate tomatoes ripen one cluster at a time. The Juliet and Golden Rave tomatoes you receive are both indeterminate, making for a very tall tomato plant. As you can imagine, trellising such plants is not without difficulty. The earlier planted Juliets have reached well above their six-foot trellis, with the latest vine growth falling over the last strings. The weight of such plants, in combination with strong winds, can cause the trellis to collapse, which occurred in one section last Saturday with some of the Golden Raves. Needless to say, commercial growers demand determinate lines from their breeders. These plants are usually around four feet tall and the tomatoes ripen almost simultaneously on the whole plant.
We told Chuck we are not afraid of some tall plants if we think the flavor and quality are worth it, so he included it.

At such a stage in variety trials, crops have just a number; only when they are released on a commercial basis do they get a proper name. As we always look for the latest improvement of disease and insect control in seed stock, our current red potato is still named NY 129. Many of the late blight- (Phytophthora) tolerant tomatoes in the trial of 2005 were bred by Prof. Randy Gardner of NCSU. He created the well-known Mountain series that have good tolerance against Alternaria (early blight) and Fusarium. We have grown the Mountain Fresh and Mountain Pride, which are large beefsteak types, but many of you preferred a less firm and sweeter tomato.

Once the 50 varieties matured, we looked for combined disease resistance, flavor, earliness, fruit size, firmness, color, smoothness, and crack resistance. A tomato can be late blight-resistant, but if it is very sensitive to Septoria (which was not part of the research until recently) or without good flavor, we still have little interest in growing it. One variety stood out from the pack, literally, as it grew to six feet tall. The vigorous plant produced a small round tomato – due to the size and shape of the tomato, it was named Ping Pong by our own Johannes (coming out of the always creative and imaginative mind of a then 15-year-old). Best of all, according to other trials, it is virtually resistant to late blight. We were very excited about it, and asked Chuck if he could secure 100 seeds of the Ping Pong variety so we could start delivering those tomatoes to the membership. Every year since then we have had to pull some strings, as there wasn’t much of a seed supply available. Word got out that Ping Pong was a winner; maybe not for large commercial growers, but certainly for specialty crop farmers like ourselves, and possibly for home gardeners, too, as its flavor is fantastic. Nevertheless, we have been able to add a small supply of Ping Pong tomatoes to your share each year by securing about 200 seeds from Cornell.

Last year, we wrote a letter of support to help Tom apply for a large grant to develop Septoria-, early blight-, and late blight-resistant tomato varieties. Though the money granted to Cornell is much less than requested, we will still hold the first trial by next season. This kind of work is greatly underappreciated by the scientific world, and therefore hugely underfunded. Rumor has it that North Carolina State University is pressuring Randy to spend less time on developing new varieties and more on molecular marking (researching what gene is responsible for what trait).
This winter Ping Pong received its commercial name: Mountain Magic. We were disappointed, but we understood – it is Randy’s creation after all. We can still call it Ping Pong, and so does Tom. On the Zitter Lab website homepage you’ll find a picture of Mountain Magic, with the caption “a.k.a. Ping Pong.” Thanks, Tom, and thanks to all the folks at the extension service for providing farmers with the latest developments and innovations in agriculture.

Jean-Paul

Week 10 Newsletter

2009-08-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

When I arrived at Roxbury Farm on a June morning ten years ago, I had no inkling of what a profound role Roxbury would play in my life – that my life would be forever entwined with the life of the farm.

Over the last ten years, the farm has changed dramatically. In 2000, we moved to new land and formed partnerships with Equity Trust and the Open Space Institute to preserve and protect the farm for agriculture in perpetuity. With the support of the membership, the farm has grown to 300 acres of protected prime agricultural land. When we moved to the farm, the land was starved and lifeless. Over the years, through the proper use of green manure crops, careful cultivation, application of compost and lime, diligent pasturing of cows and sheep, and the use of the biodynamic preparations, vitality and structure have returned to the soil. As we spend so much time and energy on caring for the soil, it was especially painful to watch 100 acres of it covered with the flood waters from the Kinderhook Creek two Thursdays ago. To be honest with you, in the thick of the moment questions arose with possible answers that would force us to make some radical changes should we ever continue to farm that land again. Now, after six days of sun and dry weather, the fields look better, and, with the help of many uplifting emails, we are able to put it behind us.

Thinking over the last ten years, I don’t really remember the crops we grew as much as I remember the people who grew the crops with us. The relationships we have formed because of the farm are among the most rewarding aspects of the work we do. We have been blessed by the talents of many people who come to the farm for a season or two to learn while they work, and work hard. Each of them has left their mark on the farm. Many of them have gone on to be farmers. Some don’t farm, but bring their experiences from the farm into their world by how they eat and how they educate others about agriculture and food. The farm has now grown to a size and level of complexity that means we need to share the management with others. Creating a space for other people to feel that the farm is theirs is a challenging exercise in creativity and patience on all sides, but it’s a challenge we gladly embrace.

The many members who support the farm every season with their share dollars, their volunteer labor at the sites or on the farm, and their encouraging notes and emails changed my idea about the future of agriculture. The relationship of trust between us, as your farmers, and you, as our customers, is quite remarkable. Your outpouring of support since the flood kept us going.
The last devastating flood I remember was in 1993, when I lived in Iowa. It felt like the whole state flooded, taking many of the corn and soybean fields away with the flood waters.
Those farmers had only the government to depend on for relief and support. Trying to negotiate the maze of government disaster relief forms and regulations is not something I would want to entrust my future to. Columbia County has been declared an agricultural disaster area this year, but there may never be any monetary support behind that disaster declaration. While about 65 acres of the second cut of our hayfields, an acre of broccoli, some lettuce and greens, some radish for seed, and about an acre of sweet corn were completely lost to the flooding, much of the yield of many of our fall crops will also be reduced due to the wet weather and diseases that came with it. The monetary damage to crops and equipment is close to $25,000; but knowing that you will continue to support us through this difficult year means that we have much less to worry about than many of the other farmers in our area.

There were only a few organic farms in Columbia County ten years ago; now there are many. Our Columbia County “farmers club” has grown and is another source of support and advice during all types of weather. On Saturday night, many of us gathered at Katchkie Farm, right across the road from Roxbury Farm, to enjoy a beautiful dinner at a Farm to Table event sponsored by Great Performances from New York City and the Red Barn restaurant here in Kinderhook. More than 100 people, farmers, chefs, and eaters gathered at linen-covered tables in the middle of the vegetable fields and dined on all-local produce, meat, cheese, and spirits. It was quite an experience to taste our vegetables prepared by expert chefs. It was amazing to see so many people come out to support local agriculture.

This is what I think has changed the most over the ten years I have been a part of Roxbury Farm: the ever-expanding interest and support for local food production by you, the eaters and customers. So, while the farm needs to change and adapt over the next ten years, knowing that we have your support will keep us going to 2019 and beyond.

Flood 2009

2009-08-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, July 30th, we received over 4 inches of rain. This in combination with 6 inches of rain from towns upstream from us on the Kinderhook Creek resulted in flooding that hasn't been seen since 1948. The lower fields on both farms were completely covered in water. Fortunately we weren't growing very many crops on the fields this season. The creek receded the fields are drying out. It will be quite awhile before we can work the soil again.

See the flood in photos below. From top to bottom:
Seven foot tall sorghum-sudan grass under water; Our tractor stuck on high ground in the cow pasture, it drove right out after the water receded: Our cows stranded in the pasture. The next morning the crew herded them out by land and by canoe; The row of equipment under water; The back of the sweet corn field in the flood water; Dave and Linda canoeing the cover crop on the field we grew our fall crops in last year; Two plantings of broccoli flooded out; The next three are different views of our vegetable fields under 3-7 ft of water.

Week 9

2009-08-03T17:28:00.001-07:00

Garlic Workday this Saturday

2009-07-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

We will have a member workday this Saturday, July 11th to harvest the 2009 garlic crop. Please join us at the North Farm/CSA Barn location around 10:00 am. If you arrive later look for signs to tell you where to find us. We will have a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm so please bring a dish to share, your plates, and utensils. Wear old clothes and shoes that can get dirty and bring your sunscreen, water bottle, and gloves. Members of all ages are welcome for an hour or the whole day. Hope to see you there!

Photos from the farm

2009-07-09T07:38:00.001-07:00

This is the new corral and handling system to help us move the cows with less stress on both the animals and the humans.

Week 5 Newsletter

2009-07-09T07:36:00.000-07:00

This season we are managing more animals than in past years. We will be finishing eight steers on pasture at the South Farm. Jody’s 50 ewes produced about 80 lambs that are pastured on the North Farm. The two sows had large litters but, unfortunately, one of the sows wasn’t too careful and stepped on quite a few, reducing the number of butcher hogs this year to 15. That sow was brought to the butcher a few months ago (we constantly cull animals with bad mothering instincts or ones that are mean). The butcher hogs and the single sow live in a seven-acre forest at the North Farm. The sheep and pigs are kept in by a high-tensile, 13-strand, woven-wire fence; it keeps both the predators out and the farm animals in.

With the increase in the number of animals comes the need for good handling systems. When the steers are ready for slaughter, we need to maintain a stress-free environment (for both people and animals). Getting an animal into a small trailer in the middle of a field without a handling system is hard on the animal and frustrating for the people trying to chase it. Unless you are a hunter, there is little point in chasing animals.

Our steers have a 30-by-36-foot corral that moves with the pasture. It consists of a bunch of interlocking gates that are easily taken apart and put together again. They have grown accustomed to this place, as we have placed the water tub and salt box in the corral. During the extreme weather of the past few weeks, the steers have come to view the corral as a sort of barn they can use as a refuge. If we need to move the steers to another pasture, we first lock them inside the corral. In the beginning, they freaked out when we locked the gate behind them. But, despite their thick brains, they have realized that the reward of this temporary restraint is new lush grass - lately they passively wait until Mike and I have set up a new fence.

If we want to load them onto a trailer, we have another setup that moves the steers through a crowding tube and alley, which allows us to sort them. For some reason I don’t understand, cows and other animals are less frightened when they are forced to move through a curving aisle with walls that restrain them on both sides. Giving the animals too much space allows them to hurt themselves, as they respond to the illusion that they can flee; restraining them has a calming effect.

We have a similar sorting system for the sheep - the trick here is to get them all in the barn. Sheep have a strong herd mentality and, unlike the steers, the sheep stick together. That gives a sheepherding dog a great advantage, as he/she can move the herd as one flock. Once inside the barn, it has been a challenge to get the first sheep to move through the sorting chute, but when you get one in (sometimes with a little encouragement) the rest are more likely to follow.

The nice advantage of sheep and steers over pigs is that they make us completely self-sustainable in our food supply; they eat grass, which especially after all this rain has been in plentiful supply. For the pigs, we used to buy in pig feed from a local grain dealer that purchases his grain from local farmers. That has changed; this year he couldn’t guarantee that the grains he purchased were GMO-free. As a result, we have secured another source of pig feed from Green Mountain Organics that will guarantee the feed to be free from any GMOs. Unfortunately, the cost of certified organic feed is much higher - the cost per ton went from $310 to $590. So, my dear pork lovers, you will notice an increase in the cost of pork this fall. If that means that we have priced ourselves out of the market due to our set of high standards on both animal ethics and feed source, we will be happy to give the forest back to the gnomes.

On ethics: We are expecting a visit this month from the Animal Welfare Approved organization to label our meat as certified humanely raised and handled. Our main obstacle to certification had been that our butchers were initially a bit shy in getting certified (it takes both the farm and the processor to obtain the label) but, after their facilities and handling systems were approved, we were able to complete the process. The requirements for certification are reasonable and greatly consider the welfare of an animal from the animal’s perspective. Good pig, cow, or sheep farmers should be able to get into the psyche of the animals they raise; once you do, you can’t do a fraction of the things we typically expose our domestic animals to these days.

Not everyone enjoys eating meat, and neither should we consume a lot of it; but when we do, it’s great to know that the animal made a contribution to the environment by keeping more land in grass (a very good remedy against global warming) and that we did everything to assure you it led a stress-free life. ~Jean-Paul

Garlic Harvest Workday and Farm Update

2009-07-02T07:25:00.001-07:00

Dear Roxbury Farm Members,
The Garlic Harvest Workday will be on Saturday, July 11th from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Members of all ages are welcome for the whole day or a few hours. Please meet us at the North Farm/CSA Barn Location. We will share a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm. Please bring a dish to share, a plate, and utensils. The farm will supply beverages. We also recommend you bring work gloves, a water bottle, and sunscreen. Wear clothes and shoes that can get dirty. We hope to see you there!

On another note we have experienced another week of rainy weather. Fortunately the fields were dry on Monday so the crew worked until 8:00 pm to get all of the transplants and seeds in the ground that needed to be planted last week and this week. Monday night it started to rain again and hasn't stopped since. After three weeks of this weather the crops are beginning to suffer. You may notice that over the next two or three weeks the shares may be lacking a few items because of the weather. Over the last week we have only harvested about 1000 summer squash and zucchini. Usually by this time of year we are harvesting over 4000 summer squash and zucchini a week. The squash and zucchini need lots of sun and warm temperatures. The peppers and tomatoes are starting to fruit so we are hoping for some hot, dry weather to ripen them for your shares.

Week 4 Newsletter

2009-06-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

The wet weather has caused the vegetable farmers in the Northeast to go on a late blight alert. Late blight is the disease that caused the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s. We experienced it firsthand in 2000 on our tomatoes. After the spores arrived (with a thunderstorm), it blackened the plants in a matter of days, transforming them into slimy, moldy skeletons as the mold consumed all the tissue. It is a disease feared by both organic and conventional farmers, because there is no cure once it has been detected. The only thing a grower can do is preventative treatment. We have been advised to spray moderate amounts of copper, though it is generally considered too mild of a treatment when the infestation level is high.

In last week’s letter I stated that many crop failures are human failures. In the spirit of that I will quote a variation on this by John Mitchell, an Irish political writer of the 1840s: “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.” His observations were considered treason by the English and he was exiled to Bermuda. Two and a half million people starved to death because the landlords regarded the land as a source of income from which to extract as much money as possible. During the late 1840s, peasants were evicted from their properties and landlords burned down their modest cabins (shacks, really), to use the land for grazing and grains. While millions of people starved to death, food continued to be exported to England.

There are some lessons to be learned from this experience. Not unlike the new wave of young farmers, born and bred in the city, who venture into agriculture these days, the average Irish farmer leased a farm of one to five acres in size. We are in the middle of an enormous land transfer from active multi-generational farmers to wealthy landowners. Organizations like the Columbia Land Conservancy and the Open Space Institute recognize the need to create a link between these new landowners and farmers, understanding that there will only be a fruitful relationship when the two parties get along and there is an ironclad agreement describing mutually agreed-upon terms. There is an influx of city folks in the Hudson Valley in love with land, both rich and poor, and not only around here. A while ago, a young farmer in California wrote on a blog:

“Then there is the issue of land access. There is no doubt that the owner of our ranch is doing the best that she can, with what she has. But why are we still in a situation where the rich get to decide the best uses for land, while hard working, intelligent, compassionate, humble workers just do what we’re told? Most opportunities that I hear about for young farmers in this area involve farming for someone with land, and that someone is no doubt rich, and almost as likely, they KNOW NOTHING ABOUT FARMING. We get told to mow the lawn with a fossil-fueled machine, instead of having it grazed by sheep. We are told that floating row cover looks tacky, ‘can we not use it?’ ‘Well, maybe not, if you don’t mind grubs in your radishes’.
My point is this: the sustainable food system will never truly exist under the currently existing conditions around land ownership. It’s not just enough to create local markets for organic food. If we truly need 20,000,000 new small-scale farmers to make this thing work, then those millions of farmers need secure access to land. No matter how many well-intentioned ‘progressive’ rich people there are in the Bay Area who want to see a farm on their land, tenant farming, sharecropping, or—as they used to call it—‘serfdom’ isn’t going to cut it.” (By Antonio Roman-Alcalá of San Francisco)

While the land-loving city folks have little in common with the greedy English Counts of the 1840s, we need to encourage thinking outside the box. Antonio’s writing underscores the need for new ideas regarding land ownership. While Roxbury Farm served as a model in 2000 when we moved to new land, few have followed our lead. Our transition was largely made possible by charitable gifts from the CSA members and the Open Space Institute. Simply stating that every farm needs 1,200 members and an Open Space Institute isn’t going to cut it; there isn’t enough gift money earmarked for land preservation. Something fundamental has to change in our approach to land ownership, something far more radical than philanthropy. We sympathize with Antonio in his hope that something better is still to come. ~Jean-Paul

Week 3 Newsletter

2009-06-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

The weather appears to form a pattern. Reviewing last year’s newsletter by Jody was titled; ”Gone to Hail”. The hail hit again, except this time it spared Roxbury Farm. Little Seed Gardens, Golden Harvest, and Yonder Farm (only a few miles north of us) were hit hard, losing a majority of their crops. Yonder Farms supplies the farm with fruit and this is the fourth year that they will apply for crop insurance for their apples. There is a bittersweet side to this as one consequence is a drastic reduction of their spraying regime. Damage from hail is mostly cosmetic but the global market excludes any fruit that shows a blemish. For four years we have been able to purchase “low spray” fruit not by design but by default.

The sudden wet weather has changed everything on the farm. While only a few weeks ago we were occupied with irrigation and haymaking; now we deal with muddy harvest conditions, and the challenge of staying on schedule with the succession plantings. Each vegetable is seeded in successions to ensure a steady supply and optimum quality. Some folks believe that having a CSA is less demanding as it reduces the risk to the farmer. I don’t agree; we feel a tremendous pressure to ensure that every week we have a great share to deliver. Once we have the down payment in our hands we have made a promise to you. If your main outlet is a farmers’ market and you lose a lettuce planting or two, you miss a few sales. But as a CSA you can’t afford to miss any succession or experience any crop failures because your members put their trust in you.

We all understand that the members share in the risk of any possible catastrophe like hail, flooding, or windstorm. But notwithstanding those acts of God, farmers have a lot of influence in the outcome of a crop. Most crop failures on farms are still human failures. Sometimes it is a matter of poor planning; planting parsnips in a weedy field whereby the weeds become twice as tall as the seeded down parsnips, or planting a crop like broccoli that requires a lot of nitrogen in a low fertility field. The other most common mistake was pointed out to me many years ago by my friend and colleague, John Peterson of Angelic Organics.

The irony of it all is that I was confronted by John during a session I taught to other CSA farmers about equipment. I explained to the group the methodology of properly sizing your equipment to the scale of your operation. This can be a relatively academic exercise. John became very agitated with the exercise and at the peak of his frustration screamed out: “This is wrong, you need to take these numbers and multiply them by at least two”. “But John, not too many people can afford that” I replied. “It is more expensive to undersize your equipment” was his final word on it as he continued to sulk during the remainder of my presentation. While John has a real love relationship with his farm equipment (read: Farmer John on: “Glitter and Grease”) he is also rational and in retrospect I had to admit he was correct. The crop losses that were due to equipment breakdown or inability to get the work done during small windows of opportunity changed my perspective. Collecting the many pieces of highly specialized equipment (you won’t find many pieces of our equipment on the local equipment dealer’s lot) took many years and a lot of research to collect. When John visited Roxbury Farm last year I accomplished something I never dreamt would happen; he not only approved our choice of equipment, he was almost envious.

Last week was one of those weeks where this foresight paid off. We only had one day to put all our plants and seed for the week in the ground and to plow up ground for future succession plantings. Unfortunately that day was on a Wednesday; our busiest harvest day of the week. That day showed us that people are still the most important resource as the majority of the harvesting (even on a large scale) is done by hand. Our crew of nine, with exceptional focus harvested and washed 400 bunches each of turnips, radishes, broccoli rabe, and scallions, 400 lbs each of salad mix and braising mix, 400 heads each of lettuce and bok choi, 2400 scapes, several boxes each of cilantro, parsley and sorrel, and they were able to harvest the daily picking of summer squash and zucchini. In addition to that, we were able to mulch about two acres of plasti-culture, stale seed bed 2 acres of raised beds, plant 6000 sweet corn plants, 3000 broccoli plants, 3000 Brussels sprouts plants, seed down 7000 row foot each of salad and braising mix, cultivate two acres of potatoes, four acres of sweet corn, and work up about four acres of new vegetable land. Yes, it was kind of late when we were done that day but when it poured buckets of rain again the following morning we knew none of our efforts had been in vain.

The common mistake most CSA farmers make is that they penny-pinch when purchasing equipment. While equipment is very costly, a breakdown can be far costlier as a farmer potentially loses the opportunity to get his crops in the ground. What I learned from Farmer John is that it is better to oversize your equipment as it allows you to take advantage of small windows of opportunity. One of those small windows was last Wednesday. With John Middleton keeping the equipment in tip top shape, with a harvest crew moving in high gear, and the foresight that you can hardly have too many pieces of equipment around, we have a little more peace of mind. That, and headlights on the tractors. ~Jean-Paul

Pick Your Own Strawberry Farms

2009-06-16T12:58:00.000-07:00

Thompson Finch Farm: Ancram, NY (southern Columbia County) Organic Pick Your Own Strawberries and Raspberries and a Farm Stand. Always call ahead to check on picking conditions at 518-329-7578. For directions visit their website at http://www.thompsonfinch.com/.

Indian Ladder Farms: Altamont, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead at (866) 640-PICK. For directions visit their website at http://www.indianladderfarms.com/.

Stone Ridge Orchard, near New Paltz, NY Sustainably Grown Pick Your Own Strawberries, Pear, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead 845-687-4379 or visit their website at http://www.stoneridgeorchard.com/

Samascott Orchards, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, and Sour Cherries. Call ahead at 518-758-7224 or visit their website at http://www.samascott.com/.

Yonder Farms, Valatie, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries. Open most weekends during strawberry season. Roadside stand is on Route 9 just north of Valatie.

The Berry Farm, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries and Blueberries and a Farm Store. Call for information at 518-392-4609

Week 2 Newsletter

2009-06-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

So far, the weather has been great. Temperatures have been balmy and we’ve only had a few days that reached into the upper eighties or lower nineties. While April was an extremely dry month for us (hardly any precipitation) and May moderately dry, June has brought quite a few welcome showers. The dry weather in late May and early June allowed for great field conditions to plow and plant and to bale up most of our straw and first cutting of hay. Finishing the first cutting before the first vegetable delivery greatly reduces the stress on the farm. Most of the hay is sold to a local beef farm, some of it is stored for winter use for our sheep, and the rest is saved to use as mulch in the vegetable fields. We grow hay not only for the animals: it is an integral part of the farm.

The farm is about 300 acres, about 90 of which are devoted to vegetable crop production, 100 to hay, and about 50 to permanent pasture. To maintain fertility on the vegetable land, we import compost and plow under a significant amount of green manure. Green manure is basically a crop that is specifically grown to be plowed under in order to provide fertility to what we call a cash crop (a crop that is exported off the farm). On other farms, sorghum, buckwheat, soybeans, oats, barley, rye, field-peas, red clover, crimson clover, and ladino clover are strictly grown for feed or sold off the farm. At Roxbury Farm you will see those crops cultivated (as well as chickling vetch, hairy vetch, sweet clover, and bell beans) but strictly to help build soil fertility. True, we don’t plow under all of our green manure crops – the rye and hairy vetch are cut and pressed into 900-pound, round bales.

All of our green-manure mixes consist of a member of the grass family combined with a legume. Cereals, such as rye, contain a lot of lignin, which brings stable carbon into the farm, while the legumes, through their symbiotic relationship with rhizobia, help fix nitrogen. Like the green-manure plots, hayfields consist of a mixture of grasses and legumes. That particular mix is nature’s way of being most efficient.

About seven acres of vegetables are planted in non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms), corn-based mulch. At first glance, the product looks just like regular plastic, but over time it behaves quite differently. At the end of the season, it breaks down and becomes part of the soil. The dark black surface of the plastic absorbs heat more readily than bare soil, holds the moisture, and helps maintain the organic matter level. Naturally available nitrogen and phosphorus are better available in relatively warm soil. Cold soils do not allow naturally occurring nitrogen and phosphorus to become available to plants, which greatly reduces our ability to produce early crops in the spring. So we fool nature with the use of black
plastic and row covers by increasing the temperature of the soil.

Weeds in between the plastic can be a great problem, as the wheel tracks do not get the proper shade needed to suppress weed pressure. This can be a real dilemma; we space crops such as peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, etc., widely enough to increase air flow and light, but all that light allows weeds to continue to germinate. Once the peppers or tomatoes reach a certain height, we can no longer cultivate the wheel tracks with our tractors. Before you know it, you have a jungle in between the vegetable rows competing with the vegetables for light and nutrients, and creating moist conditions that induce plant diseases.

Conventional growers use an herbicide in between the plastic while organic growers generally despair and seek their cleanest ground for plasti-culture. It is therefore a myth that organic growers use plastic mulch as a form of weed control; yes, it is very effective around the plant, but it creates a huge problem in between the beds. We have experimented with all sorts of solutions, including the seeding down of annual rye grass and Dutch white clover. The thinking is that providing shade by growing another low-growing crop will reduce germination of new weed seeds. This is called living mulch, as opposed to dead mulch like straw, hay, or woodchips.
The suppression works well, except in wet years when the grass and or clover become so vigorous that they become a problem too. Lately, we have switched over completely to the application of dead mulch. At first, we bought in straw bales from a local grower. When that became cost prohibitive (about $1,500 an acre), we started growing our own rye straw. When we don’t make enough rye straw, we alternatively use an early first cutting of hay that is free of weed seeds. The hay mulch has proven to be a great alternative to the use of rye straw.
Last fall, we only had a few bales of rye straw left and Jody wanted to keep some in the barn for bedding for the sheep and pigs. As a result, the garlic was mulched partly with straw and mostly with grass-based hay. This spring, we were pleasantly surprised with the result: the garlic has never looked this healthy. While straw tends to steal nitrogen out of the soil in order to break down, the hay proved to be a source of nitrogen, creating lush growth while suppressing the weeds. The disadvantage is that it takes about twice as many bales to provide the same weed suppression as straw, because the hay tends to break down faster – but, on the other hand, we don’t have to apply any other fertilizer, because the hay feeds the crop.

Hay fields are self-sufficient in their need for nitrogen and carbon. Vegetables take a lot of nitrogen, while they generally exhaust the soil carbon. Removing the hay and applying it as mulch on the vegetables, along with the cultivation of green manures, greatly helps us to reduce our dependence on imported compost and other fertilizer. ~Jean-Paul

Photos from the Farm

2009-06-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

This spring we worked on updating our washing and packing areas. We poured cement for a new washing shed for the root washers. We will start on the walls and the roof soon. We also built a new completely washable wall in the washing and packing barn and installed new lights.

Week 1 Newsletter, June 8

2009-06-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 2009 season! We are excited for the first harvest after months of preparation. We have had a busy and productive spring and look forward to a great year.

Over the winter we received many concerned emails from you about food safety bills being debated in Congress. H.R. 875 was one that brought about the most controversy as we heard that the bill would outlaw organic farming and backyard gardening. We also heard that in order to grow greens we would soon have to plow up all of our grass strips and cut down the trees around the fields to prevent wildlife from coming into contact with our produce. We are supportive of stricter food safety guidelines, especially for the industrial sector of agriculture, but we were and are worried about how those laws could affect farms like ours. So, fearing the worst, we decided to educate ourselves on exactly what food safety guidelines and laws would mean for our farm.

In April, I attended a food safety workshop with four other organic farmers in our neighborhood and about 20 conventional farmers. Our regional Cornell Cooperative Vegetable Extension Agent, Chuck Bornt, organized the workshop to answer all of the questions that farmers were asking him. The food safety regulations, at this point, are only required by certain grocery store chains and large produce wholesalers and not the federal government. These regulations are called GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) Standards and are only concerned with microbial or chemical contamination of the produce. Some farmers’ markets in the Hudson Valley may also soon require GAP certification. There are many private institutions as well as the USDA that will certify your crops as GAP certified. Each crop a farmer grows needs to be individually inspected up to three times each season and the inspection costs $92 an hour plus driving to and from the farm. To be certified you need a written food safety plan that covers all aspects of harvesting and handling of the crops grown on a farm. A food safety plan is a good thing and most of the GAP guidelines are common sense and practical. At the workshop we had the chance to discuss our farming practices with GAP inspectors and food safety specialists. We will soon post ours on our website at www.roxburyfarm.com.

The five organic farms at the workshop posed unusual questions for the certifiers and experts. Such as, how do you feel about CSA members harvesting crops for the whole membership (i.e. when you come to a member workday to take part in the garlic, potato, sweet potato, or winter squash harvest)? They don’t like that idea as they see this as a huge risk for microbial contamination. We asked about written guidelines for incorporating animals into a farm. There aren’t any that address the needs of a farm to be more self sustaining with their fertility. One farmer asked about certifying a farm that grows 60 crops. Presently each crop would need to be certified individually. This is unpractical and unaffordable for most of the organic growers in our area. At this point there is no other alternative to the crop by crop inspection. This needs to be changed if farmers’ markets are going to require GAP certification or there won’t be any farmers at the market. The inspectors were open to a discussion about how we farm and said they will need to be educated about sustainable farming practices in order to certify our farms.

Our fears about the end of farming as we know it were unfounded (so far). There are no laws that require us to become GAP certified, although we do follow the guidelines that exist at this point. Educating ourselves about food safety helped us to make some changes on the farm. The food safety experts don’t want soil buildup in the packing barn. Our washing line for the greens, broccoli, peas, etc was in the same barn as the washing line for the root crops. They also want plastic walls that can be washed down. This spring we poured cement for a new washing shed for the root crop washers. We will begin construction on the roof and walls this week. We built a new wall in the washing and packing barn that is covered with white vinyl that is completely washable. We also installed new lighting in the barn that will allow us to do a better job of inspecting the produce. We hope these changes will result in a better product and at the same time has the benefit of a much more pleasant working environment.

We need to continue to be aware of what is going on with food safety legislation. We need to make sure that food safety experts and the lawmakers understand what it means to be sustainable and to look at a farm holistically. We need to make sure that they are just as concerned about the application of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides as they are about compost and organic soil amendments. Our attention to food safety is not only to prevent microbial contamination. We are also concerned with growing food in a way that improves soil health, provides habitat for beneficial insects, rare plants, and other wildlife, protects water quality, and allows you to have a connection to the land and people that grow your food. We hope you will continue to let us know about your concerns and that we can all be part of the dialogue to improve not only food safety but the sustainability of agriculture in the U.S. ~Jody

Piglets

2009-02-18T11:08:00.000-08:00

On January 29 and 30 the two sows had their litters. We have 15 plump and happy piglets running around the greenhouse. This is the first year that we have a Tamworth boar. Tamworths are a brownish-red heritage breed that do well raised outdoors and on pasture.

Enrollment Update

2009-01-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

Thank you to all of the Roxbury Farm members who have re-enrolled for the 2009 season. We have a record number of 815 shares reserved for the 2009 season. One site, the Eileen Street site in Albany, is already full.

If you are presently a Roxbury Farm member and still want to sign-up for the 2009 season please send your form in as soon as possible. You only have a few more days to reserve your share before we open up membership to the general public. With only about 200 shares still available we are sure the spots will fill up quickly.

If you are not presently a member and are interested in signing up for the 2009 season, the 2009 enrollment forms will be available on our website, www.roxburyfarm.com , on February 1st. Download the form, fill it out, and send it to the farm to reserve your share.

2009 Enrollments

2008-12-29T15:55:00.001-08:00

Roxbury Farm members have until January 6th to reserve their share for the 2009 season. Starting Febuary 1st the general public can begin to enroll. We have a long waiting list so make sure you send in your enrollment form and deposit this week. After January 6th we can no longer guarentee that you will have a share for the 2009 season. Last year we had to turn away long time members because they did not enroll in time. Please don't let this happen to you! Contact the farm if you need an enrollment form or have questions about a payment plan.

If you are not already member our enrollment forms will be on our website at www.roxburyfarm.com on Feb. 1. Download the form, fill it out, and send it in.

Letter from a Farmer

2008-11-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

What are you doing now that it is winter? Are you still harvesting vegetables? You must just be resting now that it is cold. These are questions and comments we hear from people nearby who know we are farmers but aren’t exactly sure what it is we do in the fall. The fall is time for cleaning up, putting the fields to rest, bringing things under cover to protect them from the winter weather, and drawing things to a close. It is also time for new beginnings.

Last week we took advantage of the mild weather to harvest the celeriac, rutabaga, and cabbages. They were the last of the storage crops to bring in from the fields. All of the root crops are now stored in 20-bushel bins in the barn and the cooler. The bins are stacked six high to the ceiling in the barn and are quite imposing to look at. We will have plenty of root vegetables and winter squash to deliver for the last two weeks. In the field we can still harvest the curly “Winterboer” kale and Brussels sprouts. Unfortunately, the Brussels sprouts are diseased due to the wet summer weather, so we won’t find enough for all of you. If the cold this weekend doesn’t damage the broccoli and cauliflower, we may still be able to harvest those, too.

The crew is busy in the barn packing and washing root crops. It is a lengthy process to clean and pack thousands of pounds of root and storage crops. It does provide us with work that is under cover and out of the cold wind, but we get a little antsy for some outdoor work. We have two washers for root crops so that we can deliver them clean and sorted. We bag some of the washed produce, such as the carrots and parsnips, so that they will stay crisp and flavorful. We don’t wash other crops, like the sweet potatoes and potatoes, so that they will store better in your cupboards. The sweet potatoes are cured in the greenhouse right after harvesting. We keep them at 85 degrees for a week. The curing process makes the sweet potatoes sweet and heals over any cuts that the roots received during harvesting. Once the sweet potatoes are cured, we have to handle them like eggs because any new cuts or damage to the skin will cause the roots to rot quickly. The sweet potato crop is storing much better this year because we harvested them before the weather turned cold.

All of the cover crops are planted and some have grown quite a bit for a thick winter cover.
The later-planted rye is up about 6 inches, just enough to protect the soil over the winter, and will begin to grow again in the early spring. By June the rye will be about five feet tall and ready to cut for straw mulch. John spent a couple of weeks spreading compost in early September so that we won’t have to in the spring. Then he seeded oats in the fields for our early crops like lettuce, potatoes, parsnips, and the plasti-culture crops. The oats will die over the winter. In late March and early April we can lightly till the soil and it will be ready for planting. The rye fields will be ready for the fall crops in July and August. Other fields are in clover and grass to build soil fertility and for hay. But, for now the fields are done with growing things and are at rest for the winter.

In the animal realm of the farm, the ram is in with the ewes and the boar is in with the sows. As the day length shortens, the ewes go into estrus. We want the ewes to lamb in late March and early April, so we put the ram in the ewe pasture on November 1st. Right now, we have 45 ewes, one ram, and one whether (the ram’s sidekick when he isn’t in with the ewes, so he won’t get lonely). That means we should have about 60 to 70 lambs in the spring. We have two sows in with our Tamworth boar. We should have about 20 to 25 piglets in early March. We purchased a Tamworth boar as they are traditionally a pasture-raised breed and are able to get some nutrients from grazing. The boar made this very clear as he found ways to constantly escape the greenhouse barn last spring to get on the sheep pasture to graze. We had no idea that a pig could jump four feet high! The sheep and pigs have access to the greenhouse barn and pasture all winter. This keeps them healthier and the barn cleaner.

The 2009 seed catalogs are beginning to arrive in the mail. Over the next couple of weeks we will talk with the crew about what crops did well, what varieties we really liked, and what varieties we would like to change. We will read up on new varieties and take recommendations from other farmers and our Cornell Cooperative Extension Agent, Chuck Bornt. We will then choose our varieties for the 2009 season and place our seed orders before the new year begins. As this season draws to a close we are planning and looking forward to another. We hope you will join us as we journey through a new growing season. ~ Jody

Week 24 Notes & Recipes

2008-11-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

PORK, LAMB, and BEEF AVAILABLE: We have many cuts of lamb and pork (including smoked pork) available. We have a few cuts of beef left: soup bones, porterhouse steak, and ground beef. All the forms are at your pickup site and online. Your orders will be delivered the week of Dec. 1.

FALL DELIVERY SCHEDULE:
Capital District: Nov. 18 & Dec. 2
Westchester: Nov. 19 & Dec. 3
NYC: Nov. 20 & Dec. 4
Columbia County: Nov. 21 & Dec. 5

There will be the optional storage box delivery on your regular pick-up day the week of Dec. 15th. Check the sign-in sheet at your pickup site to see if you purchased a storage vegetable box. It is the last column on the sign-in sheet. (If you ordered a box recently, your name is not on the list yet.)

2009 ENROLLMENT FORMS: Make sure to find your enrollment form at your pickup site. Please return the form and your deposit by January 6, 2009, to reserve your share. If you send it in after January 6 we can not guarantee we will still have shares available. We have a long list of people on the waiting, so make sure you don’t miss out.

RECIPES:
HERBED RUTABAGA COUSCOUS SALAD
Salad
1 medium rutabaga1
½ c.couscous
salt
½ c. freshly grated parmesan or asagio cheese

Vinaigrette
¼ c. white wine vinegar
1 ½ t. honey
1 t. dried thyme
1 t. dried oregano
1 t. dried dill
½ t. cayenne pepper
1 t. coarse salt
½ t. freshly ground black peper
¾ c. extra virgin olive oil

Peel and dice the rutabaga into ½ inch cubes. Place the cubed rutabaga into a medium pot and fill with enough cool water to cover by about an inch. Add a pinch of salt and place the pot over medium high heat to bring it to a gentle boil. Cook rutabaga just until tender enough to be pieced easily by a fork, about 10-15 minutes. Dump into a strainer and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking process. Place in a large bowl.
Cook coucous according to package directions. Rinse with cool water to stop the cooking process and remove excess starch so couscous doesn’t stick together. Put on top of cooked rutabaga in the large bowl.
To make the herb vinaigrette, place all of the ingredients in a jar or a blender. Give them a good long shake or a whirl and then taste to adjust seasonings. It should be somewhat salty. Pour vinaigrette over bowl of rutabaga and couscous and then toss gentle to coat evenly.
Just before serving, add the grated cheese. Taste and adjust salt as desired. Serve warm or cold. Makes a great leftover lunch.

Herb-Mixed Carrots and Rutabagas
2 large carrots, peeled
1 large rutabaga, peeled
2 T. butter
1 T. chopped parsley
1 t. chopped thyme
1 t. chopped rosemary
1 scallion, thinly sliced
1 large garlic clove, minced
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 c. fresh panko or bread crumbs, browned in a teaspoon of butter

Quarter carrots and rutabaga. Cook carrots and rutabaga separately in salted boiling water until they are al dente; approximately 10 minutes for carrots and 15 for rutabaga. Drain.
Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt butter. Add the turnip and rutabaga; cook over medium-high heat until golden brown. Add herbs, garlic, salt and pepper. Toss to coat and remove from stove. Serve immediately topped with breadcrumbs.
From Straight from the Farm http://straightfromthefarm.wordpress.com

Letter from a Farmer

2008-10-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

The leaf peeping season has come to a close this week. The rain on Saturday removed the last of the brilliant colors of the woods. When the colors appear, the tree is telling us it is preparing for winter. As if the tree follows the calendar, it stops producing food by halting photosynthesis and starts pulling the remaining sugars out of its leaves. Actually the tree already prepared for this in the spring as at the base of the leaf a special layer of cells (the abscission layer) is formed that allows the leaf to later separate and fall off. And it is a good thing they do; how many of you remember the October storm of 1987? We lost many trees due to an early snow storm. The wet snow stuck to the leaves breaking off many branches. We remember it well as we were out of power for more than a week as the broken branches fell on the power-lines.

Chlorophyll gives leaves their bright green color and is very dominant. Once the green fades, the other colors in the leaf become visible to us. With oak trees all we get is a plain brown, while the sugar maples can turn a magnificent red which is due from the sugars that get trapped behind the abscission layer. The glucose turns red from the presence of anthocyanin, an anti-oxidant that we find in all red and purple fruits and vegetables like berries, tomatoes, beets, apples and grapes. The orange in the leaves comes from carotenes and the yellow from xanthophyll, which we find plentiful in carrots, squash, and sweet potatoes. Apparently the cool nights and abundant sunshine we experienced during October of this year made for a better than average fall color show.

Fall is a time of transformation and a very similar process takes place with our annual, biannual, or perennial crops. The annuals include salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and also the many garden weeds. Annuals survive the winter by completing the cycle of reproduction in one year with the production of an abundant seed supply. Pigweed, a common garden-weed, produces hundreds of thousands of seeds per plant. Every weed left in the field represents another generation of future weeds. Seeds can be tough and many survive the stomachs of our farm animals, wet soil conditions, and freezing temperatures. We use many annuals in the garden and their flexibility and vigor is an important trait as each year we can improve their qualities as new varieties become available.

The biennials have a different way to survive the winter. Some of the biennials are frost hardy greens like kale and collards. They have their own way to survive the cold temperatures. Due to the frost, their leaves turn sweet and lose some of their bitterness and the increased
glucose acts like antifreeze. Whenever someone tells me they don’t like Brussels sprouts I wonder if it is because they have never tasted a good one. Most of the cole crops available in the store come from the balmy West Coast. Cole crops and other greens harvested in October or November in the Northeast not only have superior taste and flavor, they are an important source of vitamin K, anti-oxidants, folate, magnesium, and even omega 3 fatty acids. So, eat those vegetables if you plan to be around for a while as these are compounds that keep us young!

With other biennials the leaves die back, allowing the underground parts and/or thick stems to remain alive. Carrots, sweet potatoes, parsnips, potatoes, beets, rutabaga, onions, and even cabbage and broccoli are all biennials that create an abundance of food to survive the winter and store it in their tubers, roots or stems. Instead of leaving them in the field we bring them inside our barn, and store them under optimum conditions.

There is another way we store the summer into the winter; the grasses and clovers of the pasture became beef and lamb. Even the butcher hogs and turkeys consumed high amounts of green plants and other culled vegetables from the packing barn. Animals raised on green plants, ripe fruits, and other colored vegetables are superior in health to animals raised on a grain only diet. If vegetables are good for us, we shouldn’t deprive the animals from it. What would your health be like if you would live on a diet of rice and beans only? Studies have shown that meat from pastured animals contains more anti-oxidants than meat from grain fed animals and a diet of grass prevents lipid oxidation (a major cause of deterioration of meat affecting flavor, color, texture, and nutritive value). But, besides that, to us it is simply intuitive that there is something fundamentally wrong with putting an animal in a barn deprived of sunlight, green plants, and colorful fruits. So we don’t keep as many animals over the winter as in the summer which is the reason we only provide you with meat in the fall.

So while it is getting colder, summer is not really over. Summer lives on in the crops that have been brought in to the barn like potatoes, winter-squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, onions, and beets. The summer lives on in the many hay bales stored in the barn that will slowly be fed to the animals. Summer lives on in the field in the frost-hardy greens and lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and in the root crops like the celeriac and rutabaga that will soon be harvested. And summer lives on in the meat from our animals.

With the exception of cool weather loving crops like spinach, cauliflower and broccoli, most crops have stopped growing. These days the fields are like a giant walk in cooler. In the morning we put on an extra layer, wear neoprene gloves to keep our hands from freezing and harvest what is left. Let the warmth of the summer’s sun, preserved in our food, shine in our bellies.

~ Jean-Paul

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower”. ~Albert Camus

Photos from the Farm

2008-10-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

This week we are bunching kale and broccoli rabe. We are also harvesting a bumper crop of caulilfower.

Notes for Members and Recipes

2008-10-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

FALL DELIVERY SCHEDULE:
Capital District: Oct. 28, Nov. 4 & 18, Dec. 2
Westchester: Oct. 29, Nov. 5 & 19, Dec. 3
NYC: Oct. 30, Nov. 6 & 20, Dec. 4
Columbia County: Oct. 31, Nov. 7, 14, & 21, Dec. 5

There will be the optional storage box delivery on your regular pickup day the week of Dec. 15th.

2009 ENROLLMENT FORMS:
Look for your 2009 enrollment form at your pickup site this week. YOU HAVE UNTIL JANUARY 6 TO RESERVE YOUR MEMBERSHIP. We have a long waiting list so please send your form in on time so that your share is reserved for the 2009 season. Please post-date your deposit check for January 1, 2009.

MEAT ORDERS:
We will have more pork available in a couple of weeks. The lamb will be available in two weeks. We still have some beef cuts available: chuck roast (boneless), rib steak, porterhouse steak, t-bone steak, short ribs, and soup bones.

RECIPES:

ONTARIO GREENS
1 – 1-1/2 pounds fresh greens, washed, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon garlic
Salt & pepper
1/2 cup sour cream
Steam the greens about 5-10 minutes or until nearly cooked but still bright-colored. Meanwhile, melt butter in large skillet on MEDIUM HIGH. Add onion and garlic, sauté until soft, stirring occasionally. Stir in the greens. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in the sour cream, let warm briefly. Serve immediately.

KARELIAN BORSCHT
2 tablespoons butter
4 medium beets, peeled, grated (about 4 cups)
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 small red cabbage, shredded (about 3 cups)
2 carrots, peeled, grated (about 1 cup)
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon sugar
8 cups meat or vegetable broth
1/4 pound spicy sausage (such as andouille), optional
4 tablespoons sour cream, optional

Heat butter in four-quart kettle. Add beets. Cook until soft and almost brown. Add salt, flour and vinegar. Add cabbage, carrots, bay leaf, garlic, sugar and broth. Simmer at least 2 hours. Add water if too much liquid evaporates. Close to serving time, cook sausage in boiling water until fully cooked. Drain and slice. Place soup in bowls and top with sausage and sour cream.

Week 21 Letter from a Farmer

2008-10-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Last week we began a harvest of another kind, our animal crop for the season. Barbara Kingsolver describes, in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the slaughter of their chickens and turkeys as a harvest. At first I thought of this as a euphemism until I read a bit further and contemplated what she wrote. She says, “A harvest implies planning, respect, and effort.” Our animal operation requires just as much planning and care as our vegetable crops. The turning of grass into meat is just as miraculous as the turning of a tiny seed into a cabbage or ears of sweet corn.

In thinking about what type of livestock would fit well on the farm we took a careful look at what type of environment the animal would require. In other words, what makes a pig a pig and what makes a sheep a sheep. Wild boars live in the woods where they can root with their thick snouts for insects, grubs, and roots and where they can stay out of the sun. Our pigs live in two separate wooded pastures with plenty of space so that they don’t damage the woodland. We feed them thousands of pounds of culled vegetables from the fields and a grain mix milled by a local farmer. The grain is a mix of corn and soybeans. They also eat the spent barley from a local brewery. Pigs are omnivores and require the protein found in the grain in order to be healthy and plump animals.

Our sheep and Black Angus steers are raised solely on grass. Our pastures are a mix of grasses, native plants, and clovers. These animals aren’t physiologically meant to eat grain. Their multiple stomachs turn grass and clover into bone and muscle. It is quite amazing to watch them grow over the summer months as they graze over the farm. In some people’s experience, grass-fed meat products are tough and unpleasant to eat. Traditionally grain-fed cattle and sheep have marbled and tender meat. Unfortunately, these animals are also almost always sick from eating too much grain. Our steaks are tender and marbled because we carefully manage our pastures to include a rich mix of clover. The clover is high in protein in a form the animals can digest.

This year we also raised a few turkeys on pasture. We feed them organic grain from a feed company in Vermont. They also enjoy clover and pecking through the pasture for insects. They have equated humans with food and are quite tame. The whole flock follows us around the pasture when we refill their feeders. We have two breeds, the standard Large White, which is – you won't believe it – large and white, and the Broad-Breasted Bronze, which is a brown turkey with iridescent feathers and a huge breast. Broad Breasted Bronze toms (male turkeys) puff out their feathers and show off their tails just like the classic Thanksgiving motif. We only have 50 birds, so we can’t supply too many of you for your holiday meals. We are going to harvest them soon. If you are interested in a turkey we will ask you to pick it up at the farm on the day of the harvest and freeze it on your own. We don’t have enough freezer space for 50 birds at this point.

We enjoy raising animals and they are an important part of the farm. Their manure returns nutrients to the soil, their grazing improves the pasture and hay fields, and they inhabit parts of the farm that otherwise become overgrown with sumac and rose bushes. They add life to the farm in ways vegetables just aren’t able to. They also give us the opportunity to provide you with meat products that are raised sustainably and with respect. It isn’t easy to harvest our animals, but I don’t think it should be. Not all of you eat meat – in fact I don’t myself. But it is important to me that we provide an alternative to the meat products found in the grocery store. By making the choice to eat meat raised on a small farm where a pig can be a pig, you say “no” to the confinement operations and large meat-packing plants where the quality of life for the animals and workers is not considered. This choice returns the raising and harvesting of meat into the hands of farmers and butchers who are careful and considerate in their work.
~Jody

PHOTOS

2008-10-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

Friendly Pig in the Woods Pasture

Red and Green Cabbage

photos by Luke Deikis

NOTES & RECIPES FOR MEMBERS

2008-10-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

PORK AND BEEF:
Look for pork and beef order forms at your pickup site and on our website http://www.roxburyfarm.com/. The meat will be delivered frozen. Lamb order forms will be at your site and online next week.

TURKEYS: We will be harvesting the 45 to 50 turkeys on November 3rd. If you are interested in a turkey you will need to pick it up at the farm on Tuesday, November 4th. You can pay for the turkey when you pick it up. They will be $4.50/lb and weigh between 12.5 to 30 lbs. The turkeys will be fresh and you will have to freeze them. Email the farm at info@roxburyfarm.com if you are interested. We will call you to let you know at what time to pick up your turkey.

FALL DELIVERY SCHEDULE:
Capital District: Oct. 21 & 28, Nov. 4 & 18, Dec. 2
Westchester: Oct. 22 & 29, Nov. 5 & 19, Dec. 3
NYC: Oct. 23 & 30, Nov. 6 & 20, Dec.4
Columbia County: Oct. 24 & 31, Nov. 7, 14, & 21, Dec. 5

There will be the optional storage box delivery on your regular pick-up day the week of Dec. 15th.

TWICE BAKED SWEET POTATOES
2 medium sweet potatoes
8 oz. chopped broccoli1
1/2 cup cottage cheese
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 cup shredded cheddar or jack cheese

Bake sweet potatoes in 350 oven until done. Scoop out the potato halves, leaving a 1/4-inch thick border so you don't pierce the skin. In a bowl, mash the potatoes. Combine potatoes with broccoli, and cottage cheese. Scoop the potato mixture into the shells. Top each shell with 1/4 cup shredded cheese. Bake for 15 minutes or broil for 5 minutes, or until the cheese melts and browns on top. Top with chopped parsley and serve. (Serves 2 as an entrée.)
From Chief Family Officer at: http://www.chieffamilyofficer.com/

SWEET POTATO QUESADILLAS
2 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp basil
1 tsp cumin
chile powder to taste
olive oil for sauté

Cut sweet potatoes into chunks, cook in steamer basket or microwave until soft, then mash. Chop and sauté garlic and onion in a large skillet. Add spices and sweet potato, mix well, adding a little water if it’s too sticky. Turn burner very low to keep warm without burning.
4 flour tortillas
4 oz. Brie or other medium soft cheese
2-3 leaves Kale (or other greens)
Preheat oven to 400. Oil a large baking sheet, spread tortillas on it to lightly oil one side, then spread filling on half of each. Top with slices of Brie and shredded chard, then fold tortillas to close (oiled side out). Bake until browned and crisp (about 15 min.), cut into wedges for serving.
From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Photos from the Farm

2008-10-14T06:59:00.001-07:00

On Saturday the members joined us for day of splitting and planting garlic. Thank you for your help and company.

Week 20 Letter from a Farmer

2008-10-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

NEWS FROM THE FIELDS:

Last Monday night we experienced our first frost. The peppers and eggplant that you received a week ago were the last of this season. Unfortunately, the tomatoes are gone as well for the year. Before the first frost we usually harvest three to four 20-bushel bins of green tomatoes that we ripen in the greenhouse. We can usually deliver tomatoes into November. This year the last planting of tomatoes was so diseased that there weren’t any green tomatoes to harvest. In total, you received 11 weeks of tomatoes, nine weeks of eggplant, and 10 weeks of peppers this season.

We finished harvesting the sweet potatoes on Friday. In the past we used to wait until the first frost to harvest the sweet potatoes because the frost killed the thick sweet potato vines. The vines clog up our potato digger and cause many breakdowns of the equipment. We noticed that over the last few years that the sweet potatoes weren’t storing very well. Jean-Paul had a long discussion with our sweet potato plant farmer this winter about how to increase the storage length of the sweet potatoes. The farmer instructed us to harvest the sweet potatoes earlier, before the soil temperature fell below 55° F. He said most farmers mow the vines so that they don’t clog up the root digger. We were able to harvest the first half of the sweet potatoes when the soil temperature was above 55° F. Then, it rained and rained and the soil temperature fell. We covered the last half of the crop with floating row cover in an attempt to keep the soil warmer. The weather provided us with an experiment: We can now compare sweet potatoes harvested when the soil was warm with sweet potatoes harvested after the soil temperature fell.

Earlier in the season, the farm was bursting with crops in all of our many small vegetable fields. Now, as the growing season comes to a close, we are harvesting most of the items in the shares from one field. This is the first year we grew vegetables in this field. Three years ago it was a hay field. We worked up the field in July 2006 and applied chicken manure and gypsum to bring the soil chemistry into line with what we need to grow healthy vegetables. We harrowed the field for a few weeks to help control the weeds. Then we seeded rye and vetch. In 2007, we harvested the rye and vetch for straw mulch for our summer crops. Then we seeded buckwheat. Buckwheat is one of the few cover crops that will grow in the heat of the summer. It also grows very thickly and smothers any weeds that come up. The buckwheat was killed by the first frost and the thick layer of dead plant matter protected the field over the winter. This spring we planted oats and bell beans. The bell beans fix high levels of nitrogen so that we can grow healthy fall broccoli, cauliflower, and other greens. In June, we plowed under the bell beans and oats, and finally began planting vegetables. Whenever we look at any of our fields, we are imagining what it will be in two or three years and reflecting on what was planted in it during the last three or four seasons.

We will have parsnips this season. We know that you have been disappointed during the last few years when the parsnips failed to germinate. They are among the first crops we seed in the spring and they are slow to germinate. By the time we can see if the parsnips are coming up well or not, it is too late to seed another crop. This year we paid close attention to the careful preparation of the beds for the parsnips. We cultivated the beds three times to destroy the weeds that would crowd out the slow-growing parsnips. We also irrigated the field before we seeded the parsnips, so that the seeds would have moisture from the moment the soil closed in around them. We irrigated again a few days after we seeded the crop. Then we crossed our fingers and watched the rows every day for evidence of parsnip germination. It was a success! Now we'll wait for a few more nights of frost that will make the parsnips sweet and delicious before we begin to harvest them.

As the weather continues to turn colder, the vegetables in the share reflect our desire for warm, hearty dishes. The shares from now until December will include: sweet potatoes, potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, rutabaga, salad mix (we hope), braising greens, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and winter squash. ~Jody

Notes for Members

2008-10-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

PORK AVAILABLE FOR ORDER:
Look for pork orders at your pick-up site this week or you can download the form from our website at www.roxburyfarm.com. Beef order forms will be available at your pick-up site and on the website next week. Lamb and turkey order forms will follow in the coming weeks.

THANK YOU! Thank you to the members who joined us for a wonderful day of garlic splitting, garlic planting, and moving sheep to new pasture. We enjoyed your company and are grateful for your help. NYC: Rick, Gloria & Russel Mills-Williams and Judith & William Norman CAPITAL DISTRICT: Dick & Eileen Shirey, Laura Sommers, and Richard Verruto COLUMBIA COUNTY: Chris Grimes, Heather Grimes, Paul Poux, Dianne Klinger, and Susan & Faruk Ortabas

Week 19 Letter from a Farmer

2008-10-07T13:43:00.001-07:00

I received an e-mail this week with a link to an interview Charlie Rose had with Warren Buffet. I was struck by the following comments: “In my adult lifetime I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful, economically, as they are now; the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. … The credit freeze is sucking blood from the U.S. economy,” which later in the interview was followed by: “You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It's that simple.”

Without any value judgment of his statements, I already see some evidence of this on a small scale around us. While I know of one commodity farmer who can’t pay his monthly bills anymore, others are lining up to pick up his real estate – they know that this is a buyer's market. Land prices have fallen to levels of about six years ago; they have adjusted, as we all knew that these prices could not hold up. At one point, the farmer was offered over $3 million for his property. We will be happy for him if he gets half of that today, which would be enough to pay off his mortgage.

I talked with other farmers who have direct relationships with their customers. I don’t see any fear. I see optimism that finally our products will be met with more appreciation. The days of lavish dinners at fancy restaurants might be over, and eaters think that the local, high-quality vegetables, milk, and meat we produce are the next best thing to offer a better quality of life.

We will be presenting you with a new share price soon. We know we will have to go up in price and we will try our best to minimize any share price increases, but we can’t work harder for less money. It will be extremely difficult in a time like this to make any projections on whether our expenses will go up or down. We have heard from many of you that your support of the farm comes from a deeper commitment than solely purchasing produce. But at the same time we feel bad that we need to ask you for more support, especially when some of our produce this year did not meet our standards. While we had some great crops, the lettuce and tomatoes took a hard hit in both quantity and quality from the severe weather we endured. There will be a slight share price increase, but we also assure you that we will cut any unnecessary expenses. The trouble will be to find any, as we pride ourselves on running a pretty lean and efficient enterprise already.

One place where we are going to attempt to save on unnecessary expenses may at first glance seem upside down. We are looking for a new tractor to replace our largest Case tractor that does most of our primary tillage. This year alone we spent over $6,000 on repairs on this tractor alone. A year ago we shopped around for a new tractor and I was surprised by the unwillingness of the dealers to negotiate the asking price. They were telling us that as soon as the tractors were rolling off the assembly line they were shipped directly to a farm. Corn and soybean farmers were rolling in cash due to the ethanol and biodiesel bubble. That bubble has burst too; the expansion of ethanol plants is capped and corn prices are down. Suddenly farmers became fearful and stopped ordering equipment and new tractors. While this winter was not a good time to purchase a new tractor, these days excess inventory has caused prices to tumble and they are accompanied by offers of zero percent financing. I am reminded of Warren Buffet's words: Is it time for us to be greedy and make the move to trade in our 20-year-old Case IH 5140?

When Warren Buffet bought GE stock he said: “I did not spend any money; I invested it.” When we buy equipment, we think similarly; a reliable tractor allows us to get the work done at the right moment and does not unexpectedly impact our budget by presenting us with large repair bills. Equipment acquisitions are not truly part of the share price; we set a portion of the total share price aside for capital improvements that allow the farm to increase efficiency and to better control its long-term future. With the erratic weather pattern, it is becoming more important to have reliable equipment. Some of the down time of the Case tractor this year delayed planting, which resulted in missed succession plantings, causing smaller shares. So, if you do see a brand-new, shiny tractor on the farm next year, remember we will not (as Warren Buffet said) have spent any money; rather, we will have invested in our future. It is one of those demonstrations that we are in this for the long haul. Yeah, maybe it is that simple.
~Jean-Paul

Photos from the farm

2008-10-07T13:35:00.000-07:00

This year we planted five 1000-ft beds of storage cabbage. We hope to provide you with 2 to 3 heads each of red and green cabbage this fall. Both are new varieties bred by Bejo, a Dutch seed company. Bejo is breeding new varieties especially for the fresh market, organic grower. We trialed the varieties last season and were very happy with the results. We hope they are as successful this season.

We are in the middle of harvesting the fall root crops. Here is the crew harvesting the beets for this week's share. We had our first frost of the season on Monday night which causes the root crops and leafy greens to be much sweeter in taste than the ones harvested before the frost.

Week 19 Notes for Members and Recipes

2008-10-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

GARLIC PLANTING WORKDAY:
The garlic planting workday will be this Saturday, Oct. 11. We hope the weather will cooperate with us this time! Meet us at 10:00 am at the North Farm location at the CSA barn. You can find directions to the North Farm by going on our website www.roxburyfarm.com and clicking on Directions and then click on To the CSA Barn on the bar on the photo. Bring your water bottle, sunscreen, warm clothes, place settings, and a potluck dish to share.

WORDS OF WISDOM:
Here is some advice from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: “If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week…. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation just may need to start with a good breakfast.”

BEET PANCAKE WITH ROSEMARY
1 to 1 1/2 pounds beets
1 t. chopped fresh rosemary
1 t. salt
1/4 cup flour
2 T. butter

1. Trim the beets and peel them as your would potatoes; grate them in a food processor or by hand. Begin preheating a medium to large non-stick skillet over medium heat.
2. Toss the grated beets in a bowl with the rosemary and salt, then add about half the flour; toss well, add the rest of the flour, then toss again.
3. Place the butter in the skillet and heat until it begins to turn nut-brown. Scrape the beet mixture into the skillet, shape it into a nice circle, and press it down with a spatula. Turn the heat to medium-high and cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until the bottom of the beet cake is nicely crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Slide the cake out onto a plate, top with another plate, invert the two plates, and slide the cake back into the pan. Continue to cook, adjusting the heat if necessary, until the second side is browned. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.

SWEET PEPPER PASTA TOSS WITH KALE
1 (8oz.) package uncooked farfalle (bow tie) pasta
1 T. olive oil
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 medium yellow bell pepper, chopped
1 cup roughly chopped kale
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 pinch dried basil
1 pinch ground cayenne pepper
Salt and black pepper to taste
8 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes; drain.
2. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in red pepper, yellow pepper, kale and garlic. Season with basil, cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper. Cook until vegetables are tender.
3. In a large bowl, toss cooked pasta with skillet mixture. Sprinkle with feta cheese to serve.

Photos

2008-09-30T06:20:00.001-07:00

The ewes grazing on pasture. They will stay on pasture until the middle of November. Then we will feed them hay in the greenhouse barn. They will still have access to pasture but they tend to prefer the warm shelter of the greenhouse once the snow begins to fly.

Jean-Paul cutting the Sudex (sorghum-sudan grass) that will help control some of the soil born diseases we have on the farm and will help increase the organic matter in the soil. Next year we will plant bell beans and oats in the spring which will be worked under in June and will be followed by fall cabbage.

photos by Johannes Courtens

Week 17 Letter from a Farmer

2008-09-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

Wall Street appears to have been partying until the lights went out. I really wonder if there is anyone at the wheel looking out for us. Given that, is there anyone in Washington wondering about what happens when we run out of the natural resources we have grown dependent on? Is our dependence on natural resources another short-lived dream? In this case we are all partying. According to Dennis Meadows of MIT and his project team, “Limits to Growth,” we have maybe 16 years of the world’s copper resources left, 24 years of tin, 50 years of oil, 60 years of steel, and 75 years of aluminum. The experts vary greatly on the reserves of potassium and phosphorus for the purpose of agricultural fertilizer. As most of the easily accessible minerals have been removed and the demand from Asia and India has expanded, we should expect the cost of minerals and fertilizers to rise dramatically during the next decade, which will trickle down to the cost of food and other supplies.

There have always been individuals around who provided us with a different perspective on the world. Back in the 19th century, as the world entered the industrial revolution, people like Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau offered us a different road map. Their perspective was viewed as naïve and transcendentalism was looked down on as a quack philosophy. Even if some of the aspects were a bit flaky, imagine if mankind had adopted their world view of nature as a partner and humanity as a unique individual of free choice; where would we be today? Instead we have fully embraced the benefits and conveniences of the industrial revolution, and we have given up our true individual freedom. Only slowly, because there is little left, do we see some reversal of the 19th-century perspective on nature as a savage wilderness, an impediment to mankind, and the opposite of true civilization. But just as individualism is currently expressed in our clothing, our return to nature is still somewhat sentimental. From the perspective of Thoreau, very little of our socio-economic life is based on our respect for nature and its laws.

Rudolf Steiner was one of those visionaries who drew lessons from the laws of nature. In the course of eight lectures he emphasized the farm as a living organism and viewed the farm as an individuality – closed system – (Agriculture June 7-16 1924). Steiner was also a vocal critic of connecting land to capital and credit (World Economy, lecture V, July 28, 1922). He warned that connecting land (real estate) with credit and capital is harmful to the economic process.
He argued that: “In a healthy economic process we must not and cannot give credit based on the security of land, even to a person working the land. He/she too should only receive personal credit – that is to say, credit which will enable him/her to turn the capital to good account through the land.” In light of the housing bailout, I was reminded of Steiner’s words. As it is with most of Steiner’s work, his advice is always highly sensible, but I am reminded that this kind of practicality never gets a foot on the ground, as it is always opposed by personal greed.

Okay here we go, more bad news: “Modern day agriculture contaminates our water supply with the use of mineral fertilizer and pesticides. Researchers say this year's dead zone may be the largest ever recorded due to increased fertilizer use in the Midwest and flooding along the Mississippi River dumping even more water than usual into the Gulf of Mexico.” Over time, agriculture (through excessive tillage) and forestry (through clear cutting) is responsible for the release of trillions of tons of carbon; on top of this, methane out of manure in feedlots and nitrogen oxide out of fertilizer adds even greater to the greenhouse effect.

So, if an enlightened perspective can’t get us out of this other impending crash, can we do it out of self interest? For the simple reason of survival, regenerative agriculture will need to become part of any solution. Adopting these practices will not only help retain nutrients in the soil and keep them out of our water supply, oceans, and atmosphere, we will even be able to sequester carbon. According to Timothy LaSalle of the Rodale Institute, 20% of all carbon emitted in the U.S. can be sequestered if farmers switch to regenerative farming methods. If his figures are correct, this would amount to about 300 million metric tons of carbon a year. So, while I would like to appeal to your highest and noblest intentions – yeah, the Thoreau in you – I remind you that the furthering and adoption of regenerative agriculture will be good for your future pocketbook as well. Organic farming is not only about food safety, it is about global safety. After this crash, we learned that we can’t count on our leaders to take care of this – at least so long as Monsanto and Cargill have their ear. ~Jean-Paul

Notes for Members

2008-09-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

GARLIC PLANTING WORKDAY:
The garlic planting workday will be Saturday, Oct. 11. We hope the weather will cooperate with us this time! Meet us at 10:00 am at the North Farm location at the CSA barn. Bring your water bottle, sunscreen, warm clothes, place settings, and a potluck dish to share.

CALLING FOR QUESTIONS:
What would you like to hear about in the upcoming farm newsletters? Send us your questions or comments, we would love to hear from you. email us at info@roxburyfarm.com.

Recipes

2008-09-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

Greens with Goat Cheese

¾ lb of Asian Braising Greens
2 TBS Pumpkin Seed Oil
Pinch of ginger
Pinch of anise
1 tsp Tamari
Sliver of soft goat cheese

Rinse and dry the greens. Stack them on top of each other and roll (you may need more than one stack) and cut them into thin strips. In a good skillet or wok, on medium heat, add the pumpkin seed oil. When it has heated add the greens. After a minute add the tamari, ginger, and anise. Cook for a few more minutes. Add the goat cheese in small pieces until it melts. Take off the heat and serve. from Gluten Free Girl at www.glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com

Garlicky Greens or Beans

Asian Braising Greens, Bok Choi, or Green Beans
1 tsp fresh ginger root (minced)
1 garlic clove (minced)
2 TBS water
1 TBS soy sauce or tamari
1 tsp cornstarch
½ tsp brown sugar
½ tsp sesame oil
¼ tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Vegetable oil for cooking

Heat oil in a wok or skillet. Saute garlic and ginger for 1-2 minutes then add your vegetable (if using green beans lightly steam first) and sauté for a few minutes. Combine the water, tamari, cornstarch, brown sugar, sesame oil, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl and stir until combined. Add to the skillet and stir fry with your vegetable for 30 seconds. Serve. from www.blogchef.net

MEMBER WORKDAY CANCELED

2008-09-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

The member workday scheduled for this Saturday, September 27th is cancelled due to rain. The forecast calls for over an inch of rain to fall on the farm tonight and tomorrow making the field conditions to wet and muddy for harvesting sweet potatoes.

Please join us in October for planting garlic. Check the newsletters and the blog for the exact date. Hopefully the weather will be more cooperative then.

Pastured Turkey Photos

2008-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Our turkey flock happily grazing on pasture.

Week 17 Newsletter

2008-09-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

As we are living in a period of great turbulence, we at Roxbury Farm need to think about how we should adapt to these changing times. What are Roxbury’s strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, and what are the threats?

Roxbury Farm’s greatest strength is to be found in our direct relationship with you, the members. The members come first as they provide the farm with financial security. We also see strength in the choice of a long-term land tenure model that frees the farm up from heavy financial obligations. This tool also provides safekeeping to the members by guaranteeing the farm’s continuation beyond me and Jody. This land tenure model includes a resale restriction on the farm house, which is tied to the 99-year lease. This will allow the farm to remain affordable to any future farmer. A future transition (which we hope will not happen for at least another thirty years) can only be to another working farmer, as opposed to a developer or hobby farmer. Last, our strength-within-a-strength is the long list of prospective members who will replace any non-renewals.

Roxbury Farm’s weaknesses are the seasonality of operating a farm in the Northeast, which makes it difficult to attract a permanent staff and allows us to use equipment only for a short period of the year (with payments and depreciation for the full twelve months). But having to work with a different crew each season can also be a strength, as new people make for new friends and they sometimes offer us fresh and exciting insights. Another weakness is our reliance on oil. Here we can observe another paradox, as the members who live far away are also our greatest strength; you allow us to operate at a critical scale. Another “weakness” of the farm is that we cannot expand it to reduce costs. The farm as a living organism is not only limited by its acreage, but also by the number of people that make for a cohesive crew.

Our opportunities include a membership that is asking us for more than just vegetables. While we have maxed out our ability to produce “in season” vegetables, we have a real opportunity to expand our lamb, beef, and turkey operations. We have reached the optimum number of butcher hogs that we can keep, because an increase would do damage to the woods instead of improving them. If we were able to build better cold storage (which also means a greater reliance on energy), we could expand the delivery season with root crops, cabbage, and winter squash. This would also allow us to provide longer-term employment for the crew.

One threat is the short-term security we have left on our packing house and barns at the South Farm. We have seven years left on our lease before we need to rebuild. The price of energy, which impacts everything from gas to wages and supplies, is also a threat to the sustainability of the farm; to what extent can we pass on all these increases to our members without pricing the share out of reach for most of you? We get the impression that many people must have stopped shopping at Whole Foods, as that company has posted substantial losses in the past few months. Are CSAs affected by a tightening economy as well? The weakening of the economy in New York state in particular adds to this issue. The pain of the collapse of Wall Street will be felt most in our state.

Another threat is the tightening regulation on food safety. If the FDA decides to treat small farmers as food processors because we sell salad greens, we will have to spend an exorbitant amount of money to comply with their standards. FDA please get it: We do not process food, nor do we have feedlots contaminating our fields, and neither do we re-use and filter our rinsing water. Food safety is, in their minds, still an equipment issue; we know it is mostly a human issue, or rather the lack of real human interaction with the product. Every time something is produced on a very large scale, mistakes are only discovered when it is already too late.
Yet another threat to the farm is the changing of weather patterns. We have already had to bear the brunt of that this year. Based on more than just this year’s experience, we don’t think that drought will be a major threat to the Northeast – rather, it is excessive rainfall.

When I add all these considerations, I realize that we have already taken some action to avert some of these threats. We bought (yes, we took out an additional mortgage) another ten acres of flat, well-drained land that is highly suitable for a new washing and packing barn. This spring we built a farm road that connects this new piece of land to our other land. Unfortunately, it borders on some of the wettest pieces, so drainage tile will need to be installed to continue this new road to our existing farm road. Drainage tile looks more and more like a necessity as this year’s wet conditions caused too many losses in the field, from lettuce to tomatoes. A new packing barn is the answer to a lot of the possible threats, but also puts Roxbury Farm in a vulnerable position, as the price tag for this project would be near $500,000. As we are making attempts to lessen our threats, we add to our weaknesses. In this economy we will be hard pressed to take on such an obligation. We need financial advice and we have started to work with Hudson Columbia Partnership in identifying possible funding and sources for low-interest financing.

If New York state is in trouble, maybe the time has come for it to reach out to its many small businesses, especially the businesses that help prepare us to deal with a world beyond cheap oil. We are proud that we have never asked for government support, but the time has come to change our mind on this one. This mess has shaken all of us up, but if we all become shell-shocked, we will never get out of it. As stretched as it might sound, now is the time for action and strong government support for the greening of New York state. We will be able to strike two birds with one stone: weaning off of our oil dependence and basing the strength of our economy on small businesses that actually produce something, as derivatives have proven to be anything but productive. ~ Jean-Paul

Week 17 Notes for Members

2008-09-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

THANK YOU!
Thank you to the many members who contributed to the fuel surcharge. We are grateful for your trust and support. The words of encouragement you sent along with the contributions are greatly appreciated and lifted our spirits.

USDA REQUESTS INFORMATION ON GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ANIMALS
Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has began seeking information from the public and industry about whether additional consideration is needed when genetically engineered (GE) animals are imported or moved across the country.
Consideration will be given to comments received on or before Nov. 18.
Send two copies of postal mail or commercial delivery comments to Docket
No. APHIS-2006-0188, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS,
Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road, Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.
Comments also can be submitted on the Federal eRulemaking portal at
public comments USDA

SEPTEMBER WORKDAY THIS SATURDAY
Join us this Saturday, Sept. 27, and help us harvest sweet potatoes. We will meet at the south farm (south of the Martin Van Buren site) at 10:00 am. There will be a potluck lunch at 12:30 pm so bring a dish to share. Wear old clothes and bring water and sun screen.

Recipes

2008-09-23T08:06:00.000-07:00

OVEN ROASTED FENNEL AND TOMATO SOUP (2 servings)
1 fennel bulb
3 tomatoes
1 carrot
2 cups light vegetable stock
Salt
Olive oil

Cut the vegetables into pieces, put the on a baking tray with a little olive oil and sprinkle some salt over them. Roast for about 10-15 minutes or until soft and a little golden in a pre-heated oven (350°F). Put the vegetables in a pan and add the stock, leave it to simmer for 8-10 minutes and then blend it into a creamy soup. Add a little olive oil and salt if needed before serving.
From Lucullian Delights at http://lucullian.blogspot.com

COLLARD GREENS AND PEPPERS
1 lb collard greens
1/4 cup olive oil
1 red sweet pepper, cut in 2-inch strips, 1/4-inch wide
1/2 large onion, slivered
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Tabasco sauce, to taste
2 teaspoons honey

Slice off the stems from the collards right below the leaf, and discard the stems. Fill the sink with cold water and give the leaves a good soaking and washing to get rid or all the grit clinging to the folds of the leaves.

Drop the greens into a couple of inches of boiling salted water. Steam for 2-3 minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water. Drain again and chop coarsely.

Pour the olive oil into a large skillet. Toss in the peppers and onions, seasoning them with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Once they're soft, toss in the garlic and cook 1 minute more. Dump in the greens and give them a stir. Add 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, the vinegar, tabasco, and honey. Stir one more time and serve.
From Recipe Zaar at http://www.recipezaar.com

Week 16 Newsletter

2008-09-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

After printing the letter from Frank Scheib and Dick Shirey, we were not surprised to receive a letter from at least one member who requested to hear more about the farm budget. We have always been very open with our finances and encourage involvement from members. We used to have an annual budget meeting with a self-selected group of members representing all the different communities. Dick and Frank have been intimately involved with this process for many years. Back when we had these budget meetings it was always interesting to me that the tension was so unusual: unusual in the sense that the members requested a large share-price increase while the farmers were for a more modest one. The members were right, as they wanted to ensure Roxbury Farm’s sustainability; there is little sense in cutting corners from a long-term perspective. But we were concerned that an excessive price increase would scare members away from participating. During the '90s we had to sell our produce to wholesale accounts, farmers markets, and restaurants in addition to the CSA members, and this was less than ideal. Our combined long-term interest was to increase the CSA, as we agreed that it makes for the most efficient operation. At the end of the day, we were always able to reach a consensus; a share price was set, each community pledged to recruit a certain minimum number of members, and the farm had an operating budget that served as a guide of our projected income and expenses.

As production became more efficient, the “dividend” was paid out in an increased amount of produce, which meant that at some point we halved the shares, because a full share was simply too much food for one family. This so-called half share became what we know today as a full share (the half share grew in size over the years). So, while the share price increased, so did its size. After 18 years of CSA we have always tried to maintain the cost of a share at about $1.00 per pound of vegetables. Some years we went over and some years we went under. The kinds of vegetables have changed, too, but overall we find that we provide the members with a better value than we did 18 years ago, as our quality has gone up and the prices of vegetables in the supermarket have increased substantially. This season we can no longer claim the $1-per-pound rate, as we have hit a ceiling of efficiency. We are running out of ways to save operating costs and costs are going up faster than our ability to produce better.

Yes – that brings us to this exceptional year. This year alone, our fuel costs have increased by about 100 percent compared to last year – from $21,000 to about (projected) $40,000. Our payroll will have gone from $137,000 to about (projected) $160,000 (this does not include Jody and me). As a result of the increased fuel cost, payroll, and utilities we will spend at least $43,000 more than last year. The base share price for 2008 increased by about three percent, which means we will have approximately $17,000 of extra income. Combining these three items, we are faced with about a $25,000 shortfall on our projected budget.

We expect extra income from hay and meat, but the expenses associated with these new enterprises barely cover their costs; we know it will take a few years before we are able to reach a level of efficiency similar to what we have attained with the vegetables. We also have had some unexpected expenses. For instance, in the last two weeks we had to hydro fracture the well for the packing barn (we came to the farm one Monday to find we didn’t have any water); the compressor of the walk-in cooler broke down; we installed a new fuse box that serves both the pump and the cooler; and one of our larger tractors needed to be split in half when one of its seals leaked fluid from the engine to the transmission. But then again, we always have something that needs to be fixed on this farm. Our total budget for the farm enterprise might break $600,000 this year; Jody and I hope to skim off eight percent of that in profit, which is also our wages. We always put at least 10 percent of our total revenue back into the farm: This year we invested heavily in on-farm housing, a new tractor, and a fence for the farm animals, while we took out equipment loans for a new baler and disc-bine. These equipment loans are financed at zero percent, so we figured we are better off stretching these expenses out over three years.

I hope that this information helps you in gaining some understanding of how we make this farm work financially. We hope that you do not have the impression that without your contribution we won't be able to survive; we are a stable farm, but could not foresee such dramatic changes in our economy. We have already received contributions from many members and are very grateful for your support and your trust. We all thank you very much. ~Jean-Paul

Week 16 Notes for Members

2008-09-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

SEND CONTRIBUTIONS TO:
We should have included this address with last week’s letter.
Roxbury Farm
PO Box 338
Kinderhook, NY 12106

ROXBURY FARM IN THE NEWS:
Brian Kimmel, an independent film producer filmed at Roxbury for Ingredients, a documentary examining the joy of cooking locally grown food.

Seeds of Change, a seed catalog is including Roxbury on their 2009 cover.
From Farm to Table, a WMHT cooking series, is including an interview and scenes from the farm.

A photographer for National Geographic, Green Guide, visited the farm for photos for their issue on local foods.

WORKDAY SEPTEMBER 27:
Please plan to join us for a workday on Saturday, September 27. We will start at 10:00 am and harvest sweet potatoes. There will be a potluck lunch at 12:30 pm and then work again until people are tired. We will meet at the office at the south farm which is located south of the Martin Van Buren Historical Site.

Week 15 Newsletter

2008-09-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

Letter from Two Members

Author Michael Pollan summarizes his most recent book ‘In Defense of Food’ in seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Here’s our attempt to describe Roxbury Farm in seven words: “Roxbury grows food, promotes wellness, teaches connections.”

Let’s take a look at the three key words: food, wellness and connections.
Food. When Pollan and we refer to food, we are talking about real food that comes from fertile farms, not so-called food from industrial agriculture or from processing plants.

Wellness. Everyone has an individual approach to wellness, but paying attention to the source and quality of one’s food can pay important dividends to one’s wellness.

Connections. Our food is connected to many other facets of human activity and the natural world, namely, energy, water, chemicals, location, labor, farming methods, and weather. You can read about these connections to food, but you can appreciate them and understand them better as Jean-Paul and Jody teach us weekly about them in terms of the bounty or scarcity of the harvest at Roxbury.

As you have been reading in the Farm Letters this season, you know that the connections between food and energy; between food and labor; and between food and weather are threatening the solvency of Roxbury. We are members of Roxbury for seventeen seasons, and we have followed closely the feasibility of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) concept of growing food. We are convinced that CSA at Roxbury is not only practical but also so appreciated by members that they will respond to support Roxbury’s survival.

Therefore, we hope that each member will join us in sending a $25 surcharge to Roxbury to cover the deficits caused by unforeseen increases in energy and labor costs.

As we were preparing this letter to you, we recalled an anecdote from Michael Pollan’s book ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma.’ The driver of a BMW stopped at the farm stand of an organic farmer who also raises free-range chickens and wholesome eggs. The driver asked impertinently why the eggs cost more than those in his supermarket. The farmer pointed to driver’s expensive car and said to him, “You clearly appreciate quality in automobiles and are willing to pay for it. Well, eggs are no different; you can have my high quality eggs, but only if you are willing to pay for them.”
As consumers we have been conditioned by advertising to pay for quality products that confer status on us, but when it comes to food we have been conditioned to look for the lowest price. As long-time members of Roxbury, we have noticed that we have the best of both worlds. We have quality and nutritious produce, and often we pay no more than we would in a supermarket. We want this beneficial enterprise to continue.

Thus, we are more than willing to send a voluntary surcharge to Jean-Paul, Jody and all the workers at Roxbury in appreciation for their efforts in these difficult times. Please unite with us in compensating Roxbury for their unforeseen costs growing the nourishing food we so appreciate.

~Dick Shirey and Frank Scheib
Founding members of Roxbury CSA in the Capital District

Photos

2008-09-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

The pigs living in the woods.

Over 75 bins of winter squash and potatoes are already stored in our washing and packing barn. They are stacked 6 high to the ceiling.

Week 15 Notes for Members

2008-09-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

FARM UPDATE: We spent a lot of time last week preparing some of the fields for next season. We had about 8 acres planted in Sudex, a sorghum-sudan grass that grows to about 8 feet tall. We grew this cover crop to increase our organic matter and improve the health of the soil. Jean-Paul mowed it down and then our neighbor chopped into fine pieces with his silage chopper. Once it was chopped Jean-Paul worked it under with a disc. John spent much of the week spreading compost and working it in. Soon we will plant fall cover crops of oats and peas or rye and hairy vetch to cover the soil for the winter.

WORK DAY:
Please plan to join us for a workday on Saturday, September 27. We will start at 10:00 am and harvest sweet potatoes. There will be a potluck lunch at 12:30 pm and then work again until people are tired. We will meet at the office at the south farm which is located south of the Martin Van Buren Historical Site. Bring water and sunscreen also.

Week 14 Notes for Members

2008-09-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

GOOD LUCK!
We wish Wouter van Nuil good luck as his time on the farm comes to an end. Wouter has spent the last 5 ½ months working on the farm as part of his agricultural training. He attends a 4-year school for Biodynamic Agriculture in Holland. He will start his 2nd year of school in a couple of weeks. We will miss having him as part of the farm crew. His hard work and knowledge have been great assets to the farm this season. We are sure we will see great things from him in the future.

SEPTEMBER WORKDAY
Please plan to join us for a workday on Saturday, September 27. We will start at 10:00 am and harvest sweet potatoes. There will be a potluck lunch at 12:30 pm and then work again until people are tired.

Garden-Fresh Gratin

1 small eggplant (about 1 pound)
2 sweet peppers (red or green) 2 tomatoes
1 small onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced 2 teaspoons
chopped fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
1 tablespoon butter

Trim eggplant; cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices. Core and seed peppers; cut into rings. Slice tomatoes thinly. Set vegetables aside. In bowl, toss together onion, garlic and thyme. Arrange half of the eggplant, overlapping slightly, in lightly greased 8-inch square baking dish. Sprinkle with half each of the salt and pepper. Top with peppers and half each of the onion mixture, tomatoes, and cheese. Repeat layers once. Sprinkle with bread crumbs; dot with butter. Bake in 400ºF oven for 45 to 55 minutes or until golden and vegetables are softened. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving. from www.aubergines.org

Week 14 Newsletter

2008-09-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

The potato digger is fixed again and Johnny, Wouter, Mike, Jody and I picked up about 6,000 pounds on Saturday, while Cara and Luke tended the farmers market stand. The yield looks adequate (we are expecting about 30,000 pounds in total yield this year), with the early varieties greatly reducing our average yield. While the Adirondack Red potato has a pretty interior, its susceptibility to scab makes it a poor choice for our farm. The later potatoes like Keuka Gold and NY 129 (a new variety that has not been given a real name) have good resistance against scab and potato leafhopper. We also like Eva and NY 79 for a white potato. Next year we will be introducing another red potato named NorDonna which will replace Adirondack Red and we will try to get our hands on a supply of All Blue seed potatoes.
The winter squash harvest is completed (partly due to the great efforts of our member volunteers) and is stored in the barn. We set a record yield of 50,000 pounds. The onions, on the other hand, suffered from a bad infestation of thrips. The little bugs ate the leaves and reduced the yield dramatically. After giving out onions for a consecutive seven weeks, we only have about 3,000 pounds left. We gave out most of our onions because we do not have a good place to store them this year. In the past we have stored them with apples at a nearby orchard. Our neighbors don’t expect to turn their coolers on at all this year, as most apples will go directly from the field to the apple sauce factory.

The sweet corn has been very good this year. Some sections outyielded our conventional neighbors – who average about 300 bags per acre; now we are faced with a potentially heavy pressure from CEW (Corn Ear Worm). The CEW moth flies in with fall storms from the South. They do not overwinter in New York, although the line below which they can overwinter keeps moving north. Please inspect the tips of the ears in your share this week for a worm and remove it; fortunately they do not affect the rest of the ear like the ECB – European Corn Borer – (which is currently absent in our traps). We always scout for insects and we have seen a greatly reduced number of insects this fall. We wonder if the excessively wet conditions created poor conditions for reproduction. The birds and the raccoons have also been less active than any other year.

All our subtropical vegetables were delayed from the cooler than normal spring and summer conditions. All farmers in the Northeast experienced a much later than usual harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Some later plantings are loaded with fruit that refuse to ripen. By the time the tomatoes turn color, many plants succumb to disease pressure from Alternaria to Septoria and bacterial Canker. On a good note: We have an abundant crop of eggplant and this is the first year we did not lose it to Verticillium wilt. Verticillium is one of the many diseases we inherited from the previous farmer and it survives in the soil. This new variety of eggplant has some resistance to the disease, and between our cultural practices of using compost and biodynamic preparations, we nurse the plants through the initial infestation. This year the plants simply outgrew the early signs of infestation. Also, the low levels of ECB allow us to harvest plenty of peppers. The moth lays its eggs on the top of the pepper and the larvae create a little hole that allows water to run into the pepper, which causes the pepper to rot from the inside out. The sweet potatoes look healthy but they could use another two months of dry and hot weather; as there will be little chance of that, we will be expecting a much lower yield than usual.

The fall crop of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower looks promising although they were all planted later than usual. The wet weather delayed the planting time and this will affect harvest date and possibly total yield. The Brussels sprouts are affected by Alternaria leafspot and it is too early to tell if it will affect the quality of the sprouts. Don’t have high expectations for this crop, but we aim to have at least one or two stalks ready by Thanksgiving.
The parsnips, beets, and carrots look great; this took a valiant effort on the part of the crew, as they spend many hours weeding on their hands and knees. The weed pressure was very high this season – the wet soil conditions allowed every weed seed to germinate. We lost many plantings of greens and salad because we simply could not keep them free from weeds. As the ground dries up, we have a much greater control of the weeds and you can expect a regular supply of greens and salad to be part of your share again. The pigs have been very healthy this season, taking advantage of the space we have given them. The boys live segregated from the girls in different woods. None of the boys have been castrated this year. We are told that castration is a largely unnecessary procedure. We will find out if this procedure actually affects the flavor of the meat. We also separated the male and female sheep as those boys were not castrated either. The turkeys have been a success – though we were expecting large losses while they were young, we only lost a few birds. The only problem was that they could fly over our five-foot-tall fence, so we had to clip the feathers on one of their wings (this doesn’t hurt them, it is just like getting a haircut). The three steers are very happy and love the fertile pastures we provide them with.

Making hay was a challenge, but we only lost about 40 bales out of the 750 round bales we pressed this year. The remainder is of very high quality. We sold about 450 round bales at a reasonable return. One round bale weighs about 600 pounds, so we baled about 250 tons of hay and straw. We pressed about 60 rye straw bales, which were all used for mulch between the rows of eggplant, tomatoes, summer squash, peppers, and cucumbers. Some of our hay bales are also used for mulching between the crops. It is important that we only take the very early cutting of hay to prevent the mulch from containing any weed seed. Due to the use of hay over straw mulch – which depletes the soil of nitrogen – we find that the yield of our garlic was higher this year. This is greatly due to the increased fertility of the soil, as the hay acts both as mulch, soil conditioner, and fertilizer.

Many fields are, as usual, covered with a green manure crop. This year we are experimenting with Sudex, a plant closely related to Sorghum, as a means to combat the many soil-borne diseases on this farm. Some of the Sudex is more than six feet tall and will be worked under in the next few weeks. According to the Soil Health Team at Cornell, Sorghum may harbor greenbug (Schizaphis graminum), which in turn attracts lady beetles, lacewings, and other beneficial predatory insects. The green matter of the Sudex can also create a compound that kills off pathogens and harmful nematodes in the soil. At the least, we will be incorporating a massive amount of organic matter. After I succeed in mowing it down we will need the help of our neighbor’s chopper to hack the Sudex in little pieces so that we can work it into the soil. If we don’t chop it into tiny pieces, the eight-foot-tall stalks will quickly clog up our chisel plow that we use to plow the soil.As we review this year’s crops, our mind is starting to focus on next year’s as we are preparing the fields for next year’s production. Our next few weeks will be spent spreading compost, spraying the horn manure preparation, spreading lime, and seeding the fall cover crops on the many fields where the harvest has been completed.
~ Jean-Paul

2008-08-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Susan's Seven Second Tomato Glut Solution

One 16-ounce carton sour cream or yogurt (or a combination)
Several vine-ripened tomatoes,
Your favorite basil pesto

Spoon the sour cream into a blender. Toss in as many halved or quartered tomatoes as you like, cutting away any questionable looking spots if you are dealing with overripe or imperfect bounty. The more tomatoes, the thinner the dressing--meaty, plum tomatoes will give you a thicker end result than regular "salad" or "slicing" tomatoes. Add a few large spoonfuls of pesto. Whirl it all up in the blender, then turn it off and take a little taste. Add more tomatoes and/or pesto if desired. Sprinkle in some salt if needed. Whirl once more and enjoy however you like. Use as a dressing on your salad, a dip for sliced raw vegetables, on pita bread, or chips.
from Farmgirl Fare at fttp://foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com

Mediterranean Orzo Salad

16 ounces orzo or other small pasta
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups Kalamata olives, chopped
1 pint Juliet Tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 chopped red tomato
1 large red onion, finely chopped
1 cup chopped red pepper
1/2 cup lighlty packed fresh parsley leaves and/or fresh basil
freshly ground black pepper
salt

1. Bring about 3 quarts of water to boil in the large pot. Add salt and the orzo and cook until al dente. Drain well in the mesh strainer, then pour hot orzo into the mixing bowl.
2. While the orzo cooks, stir together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon zest, and lemon juice in the small bowl. Pour the mixture over the hot orzo and toss. Allow it to sit for about 5 minutes.
3. Add the olives, tomatoes, onion, and parsley/basil, and stir well. Season with fresh ground pepper and a pinch of salt. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.
From Andrea’s Recipes at http://www.andreasrecipes.com/

Week 12 Newsletter

2008-08-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

As we are driving back from Canada I am making an effort to write on my laptop. We (Jody, Johannes, David, Linda, and I) all went to pick up Annemarie from her summer camp. Annemarie has spent the last four weeks on a canoe trip in the wilderness of Temagami, Ontario. This summer camp has become a family tradition; Johannes spent three summers there, also. Northwaters/Langskib is an opportunity for young people to discover their limits by going out in a canoe with not much more than some (freeze dried) food, a few sets of clothing, and a tent for four weeks. Think of “Survivor” without the competition. Young people learn things about themselves they never thought could be possible; carrying their supplies and canoe for miles over rough terrain to connect to another lake or river, and simply having to get along with another person while overcoming many physical obstacles. Annemarie had a partner that not only had real difficulty in getting the canoe and wanagan (a wooden box with supplies that is carried with a head band) over the cliffs and other obstacles but he hardly spoke English.
As I was listening to the many stories the campers told us about what they had learned on their trips I was amazed at the support they gave each other and the complete absence of personal competition. Many kids realized that self reliance is only possible when you work together in community. I was thinking how their experiences resonated with our efforts at the farm. Last week I wrote to you about immigration reform. I was pleading for us to treat immigrants as people and not as objects we fear. I am sure that many of you did not see the connection between this issue and the farm. But our views on agriculture do not stop at the farm gate and for some reason these kids put it all together for me again. Please allow me to back up here for a moment as I will try to explain how this all relates to our farm methods and the CSA.
When we bought the farm it was all planted in corn or potatoes. We found that almost every inch of the land had been tilled and planted to maximize its production. There were ruts from tractor tires two to three feet deep in sections of fields that are too wet to grow crops in. The farm was treated like an object and the crops were seen as commodities. Today the farm is treated as something that is unique; there is only one Roxbury Farm and we will never be able to replicate it anywhere else in the world. By setting goals to not only protect the soil against erosion but to also increase its fertility, we have to constantly review its use. By allowing the farm to become a living individuality we care for it like a living organism. Any living organism is defined by a semi permeable boundary like a cell wall, or a skin; in our case it is the woods where our property ends and becomes the neighbors’. Any living organism is qualified by its integrity; when it is invaded, it existence is challenged. Not only do we have to find integrity in our relationship with our members we have to find this in our relationship to the land as well. This can often be a struggle because our need to produce vegetables can overpower our ability to listen to the land. There is a real tension between the needs of the people and the needs of the land and we farmers often feel like we stand in between like an acrobat on a tight rope.
Some people may look at our farm and think that we are not using it to its fullest potential because so much of it is in permanent grass (we could expand the CSA and make a lot more money). In our eyes the highest possible use of these sections is hay or pasture and not vegetables or other row crops. We find ourselves taking more and more land out of production which limits the growth of the CSA. But grass and woods offer a place for animals. Pigs by nature want to dig and they were destroying the pasture. Some people put a ring in their nose to keep them from digging but we didn’t feel right about that. We want the pigs to be able to be pigs. Looking at the farm we had two sections of woods that had become full of thorns and rose bushes. The woods seemed to be a good match for the pigs. They don’t like being in the full sun because they easily sunburn and the shade from the trees would keep them cool and out of the sun. We have to be careful to not overstock the two wooded pastures or they will quickly become degraded. The two groups of pigs we have in the woods now are very content. One section of the woods becomes a small pond when it rains. The large sows can completely submerge themselves in the water with just the tips of their ears and snouts sticking out. They look like hippos on hot summer afternoons. But since we only have limited number of acres in woods, we can only raise a limited number of hogs. We will never have enough pork to meet all the members’ needs.
As this letter is too short to go into more details I just described a few little aspects that describe how we make decisions. Jody and I sit down at the end of the season to talk about what worked well and what changes we need to make. The objective is to both serve you and to serve the land while respecting the farm as an individuality. This kind of individuation process is similar to our own Self development. I should note that it is actually quite the opposite of what we commonly refer to as self-realization as the former requires a willingness to develop empathy and listening (oh yes, I have a long way to go in my own development). In order to see things clearly we actually have to leave our comfort zone. Watching these children tell us how they had overcome some of the hardest obstacles in their lives by learning to fully trust each other reminded us how much better we can do as farmers listening to our land, animals, workers and customers. The children had clearly made a connection with something in themselves. The stillness of the Temagami wilderness and the harsh conditions allowed them to hear it and unveiled the uniqueness of each other, accepting it with all the inadequacies.
~Jean-Paul

Week 11 Notes for Members

2008-08-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

WORKDAY RE-SCHEDULED: The member potato harvest workday is now on Saturday, Aug. 23rd. The workday was rained out on Aug. 9th. We will meet at 10:00 am at the farm office on the South Farm. This is a great job for members of all ages. We usually break for a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm and then work again until people are tired. Come for the whole day, the morning, the potluck, and enjoy a walk around the farm, working with the farmers, and meeting your fellow members. Bring a potluck dish to share, place settings, water bottle, sunscreen, work gloves, and clothing that can get a bit dirty. Hope to see you in the potato field!

ORGANIC RESEARCH: The Leopold Center of Sustainable Agriculture located in at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa has created a new website that posts the summaries of research published in scientific journals about organic agriculture. It includes research on organic vegetables and produce, grains, milk, poultry, meat, comparisons of organic versus conventional produce, animal health and welfare, and niche marketing. You can visit the website at http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/organic/index.html

Week 11 Newsletter

2008-08-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

I am an immigrant. I came to this country in 1986 from the Netherlands. I lived here “illegally” for almost two years until I was granted a green card. A green card is like a working permit. In 1999, I became a citizen of the US; I had to give up my Dutch citizenship as Holland does not recognize dual citizenship. But in many ways I still consider myself to be a Dutchman. Sunday, as Holland was playing the USA in the Olympic Games I admit I was rooting for the Dutch to win. (It was a tie after all as the US team played very well). I am proud of my Dutch heritage and I am proud to be American and this has never presented any conflicts. I understand the feeling of nationalism; the feeling of belonging to a country. Everybody has a primary need to belong to family, community and country. Our family, our community, and our country protect us and we need to feel that they are capable of doing so. The occupation by the Germans of Holland during the Second World War has had a devastating effect on the confidence Dutch people have in their country. The Dutch consider the US to be their big brother to provide the protection they themselves had lost confidence in. Their shadow of insecurity was transformed into some of the best social programs in the world. The Dutch government provides every citizen with full care from cradle to grave.
While I have always been critical of the US foreign policies and of its treatment of minorities, I moved here because this feeling of visiting my big brother tempted my curiosity. I decided to stay and everything they said about the States proved to be true. While the US has a strong dark side it is also a country of hope and new beginnings. Despite the lack of good social programs there is something solid about it; it is home to some of the most beautiful wilderness areas and its vastness makes a deep impression. But I have also never visited a country where the contrast between its dark and light sides is so strongly pronounced. Here our shadow is our fear of competition. While many people believe in intelligent design on Sunday, they adopt the survival of the fittest during the rest of the week.
Since I moved here it has become increasingly difficult for someone outside the US to work here. We built a solid wall preventing people from crossing our borders. I listen to the rhetoric around immigration and I am horrified to even see left-leaning politicians take hardened positions against immigration reform. As most people are simply not that interested in politics or history anyway, the US has always based their public support for new policies on fear of the alternative.
People in the US are interested in issues that affect their personal life like taxes and who lives in their neighborhood. I remember being delighted with the interest most people took to hear I was from Holland. What has happened to that curiosity? As the immigration debate is heating up we need to remember that this discussion includes the fate of people who have lived here for thousands of years. It has only been a few hundred years since political leaders drew borders in the sand that were never there before. To ease the flow of capital between US, Canada, and Mexico we created NAFTA that was supposed to ease those sharp lines. But despite these free trade agreements -unlike the EU- the borders remained closed for the people.
A lot of the fear around immigration is really about the people from Mexico and Central America. But most of the people who come to work in the US from the countries south of our border are actually indigenous. These people were here long before England, Spain, and Holland claimed their turf in the new country. Ever since the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans have been seen as a threat. As a result many have perished as we simply could not foresee a possible harmonious co-existence. The largest group of Native Americans was the Mayans. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. Today, most Mayans are predominantly Roman Catholic and many have integrated into our Western Culture. But one thing has never changed; they have always worked to create wealth for their white oppressors ever since Europeans set foot on this continent. I suggest the writings of B.Traven to gain greater insight into the suffering of many indigenous people in Mexico at the hands of their white oppressors. Suffering and slavery have been a constant in the history of the indigenous people of Central America.
The latest development of free trade has, to say it mildly, not been very helpful to the already poor and often landless Mayan population. Out of desperation whole communities have left their hometowns to work in the US, hoping for a better future for their children. While the US policies take away their feeling of protection by a country, they lean on the protection by their family and community. Here in Valatie most immigrants that originated from Mexico are all from the same community and are close-knit. They provide each other with a sense of safety that both Mexico and the US fail to provide them with.
I am bothered by the rhetoric on immigration from the media and politicians. It is almost as if we are not talking about people but objects. People come to the US for a variety of reasons and I am not suggesting we open up our borders for whoever wants to be here. But why can’t we consider exempting the indigenous people from our immigration policies and borders? The Europeans took their land, their culture, and their sense of belonging away from them. The policies of the US continue to do so. When people walk for three days through the desert to earn food for their children you can hardly consider this a choice; it is sheer desperation. Where is our humanity in all this? What are we so afraid of? Why can’t we transform our fear of competition into better social programs, just as the Dutch were able to do with their fear of vulnerability? ~Jean-Paul

MEMBER WORKDAY POSTPONED

2008-08-08T04:29:00.000-07:00

The member workday schedule for Saturday, Aug. 9 is postponed until Saturday, Aug. 23. Yesterday a thunderstorm hit the farm and we received an inch of rain making the field too wet for the potato harvest. We are expecting more rain today and tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will be dry and sunny on the 23rd for harvesting potatoes!

Photos

2008-08-05T13:19:00.001-07:00

Potato harvest. First Jean-Paul digs up the potatoes with the root digger. Then the crew comes behind and puts the potatoes into buckets.

Jean-Paul is busy cutting the 2nd cutting of hay this week. In this photo he is tedding the hay to spread it out so that it can dry. After a day or so he will rake it into windrows and then bale it up.

Week 10 Newsletter

2008-08-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

Reading back, our last two newsletters went from a drought to a flood. It has been a challenging season. The numbers are in and July is now the wettest month on record in Albany since NOAE started keeping track in 1829. We were actually spared some of the storms and we were still in a drought after surrounding areas had experienced quite a few storms. But the last 6 inches of the month fell on the farm. To top it all off, we even had a hail storm come through last Saturday night. The rain with the hail was simply more than the soil and the crops could bear.
This weather impacts a lot of farmers and you can see the result of it in your share. Normally, our fruit farmer supplies a number of customers with peaches, apricots, and plums – but not this year. His whole crop is going to Roxbury, as most of it is not marketable due to the hail. Before the hail he had already lost most of his pears to freezing temperatures. I told him that our members will be accepting of some cosmetic blemishes, as long as the fruit tastes good. I have no complaints about the flavor, and I am glad we are able to pay top dollar for fruit that would not stand a chance in the wholesale market. This is the second year in a row that his apples sustained too much damage to be marketed to their regular customer: Great Britain. Yes, you got that right; New Yorkers do not eat apples from the Hudson Valley, because wholesalers deem the fruit too small or whatever other complaints they have. Wholesalers and supermarkets would rather buy apples from Washington State. This has become a lot easier with the opening of a gigantic warehouse in Albany (thanks, George!) that receives fruits and vegetables directly off freight trains from the West. Is it a wonder we see more farmland going into development?
This has not been an easy season for farmers in the Hudson Valley, and not even a Community Supported Farm like ours is insulated from incurring hardships. I am not only talking about the weather. We look at our financials and there is little chance of staying within our planned budget. Who could have foreseen that all our suppliers would increase their prices this dramatically? You all know about the cost of fuel, but fuel is connected to almost every line item, including wages, as people need to heat their home and drive to work. So the question arises: Is Roxbury Farm too deeply embedded in our oil culture? The problem is that every time we compare the numbers, our model of agriculture wins at any price of oil as even the most sustainable farming method will go bust when oil prices hit the roof. It is an illusion that a commercial farm (I am not talking about a homestead) can emancipate itself from the world economy. We are a part of it and I believe that is a
good thing; it means we interact with the world around us. At issue is not the interaction but the responsibility of being part of a world community.
We are still an example of what is considered a low-input farm. For example, when we grow sweet corn, we use some organic fertilizer as a source of nitrogen, but it is only a quarter of what our conventional neighbors use if you compare nitrogen pound for pound. That means that we produce the rest of the corn's nitrogen needs on the farm. According to our extension agent, our sweet corn has similar yield to the neighbors', and he can only find a 4% infestation of harmful bugs. He can’t get over the beneficial insects he finds, from lacewings to praying mantises. But even such accomplishments are a drop on the economical plate as our other costs to raise sweet corn are so much higher than our neighbors'; our labor input alone is twice as much and, somewhere, wages are still connected to fuel as the prices of food, transportation, and other living expenses are affected by the price of oil. Unless we find a solution to emancipate our workers, suppliers and products from their energy dependence, we will always depend on oil. Still, that doesn't take away our excitement about building a new packing barn that's carbon neutral. Jody is looking into grants that are given specifically for new buildings with a lower carbon footprint. Simultaneously, our answer to overcoming any future crisis will not be in just becoming less oil dependent (actually a new energy-efficient barn will increase our costs); we will try to find it in becoming more dependent on each other. Our financing of the new delivery truck last year was a great example of how you, the members and the farm, found another way to underline our interdependence.
I have never had the misunderstanding that either the CSA model or our farming methods would save the world. Building a carbon-neutral barn won’t either. But they provide good examples of what is possible. Our accomplishments with low-input crops will help our conventional neighbors revise their methods (we hope). We are credible because they know that we are faced with many of the same problems they encounter on a daily basis. Change begins when that first little ripple forms in the pond after you throw in a small pebble. That first ripple happens when someone performs something extraordinary – something that people did not believe was possible. In our information age we have learned to filter out almost everything except exceptional things. Our farm, as small as it is, is known nationwide; that proves my point.
About a month ago, Jody received a delegation from the commissioner of agriculture (including the commissioner himself) when they came through to inspect the hail damage in Columbia County. They looked at the damage and asked her how we dealt with it. Without realizing it at the time, Jody made one comment that created a ripple. Jody told them that she had written a letter explaining why we were coming up short and delivering blemished produce and that the responses from the membership were incredibly supportive. “Our members understand that their food is connected to the weather and the earth,” she said. Apparently, the delegation is still talking about that incident, as they instantly realized what is wrong in their worlds. If all farmers were connected to community, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today. ~Jean-Paul

Week 9 Notes for Members

2008-07-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

THIS WEEK'S SHARE: peppers or eggplant, tomatoes or potatoes, sweet corn, carrots, green beans, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, swiss chard or Asian greens, hopefully salad mix, cilantro, and basil

MORE BLOGS: New York City member, Meg Staloff, writes about food issues, botany, soil science, some cooking, and their hope to some day start a farm in Vermont on www.gastronomeg.com.

AUGUST WORKDAY: Join us to harvest potatoes on Saturday, August 9th. We will meet at 10:00 am at the farm office on the South Farm. This is a great job for members of all ages. We usually break for a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm and then work again until people are tired. Come for the whole day, the morning, the potluck, and enjoy a walk around the farm, working with the farmers, and meeting your fellow members. Bring a potluck dish to share, place settings, water bottle, sunscreen, work gloves, and clothing that can get a bit dirty. Hope to see you in the potato field!

Photos from the Farm

2008-07-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

The harvest crew with a wagon full of sweet corn.

Water standing the wheel tracks of sweet corn that needs cultivation.

One of the fields that is too wet for vegetables that we planted into grass and clover.

Week 9 Newsletter

2008-07-28T08:20:00.000-07:00

You have to be careful for what you wish for. Last week the other CSA farms in the area also wrote about how they wished for rain. We were all eagerly watching the skies for thunderheads and hoping the ones we spotted wouldn’t blow over. This week we are all writing about how we hope those thunderheads will keep on moving. After a 3-week dry spell we had about 5 inches of rain last week, the last downpour was on Saturday night. The farm is now really, really wet.
We are saving on diesel but the rain causes difficulties in other areas. The weeds are going to be a problem. We rely on timely cultivation with tractors to keep the weeds under control. We want to destroy the weeds before we can see them; we want them to be curled up just ready to pop out of the soil. Once we can see the weeds it is really too late for good weed control. We weren’t able to cultivate last week and we won’t be able to drive in the fields until later this week (if the weather stays dry). The crew has been working really hard at hand weeding the plastic crops, salad mix, and root crops but it will be difficult to keep up when the tractors can’t be in the fields.
Diseases are also a problem during wet weather. Especially in crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. As we wrote about last week, this family of plants is plagued by diseases that need wet weather to grow and spread. Diseases are also a problem in this family because we harvest from them for weeks at a time. Things like lettuce, broccoli, basil, and chard are harvested once and then are tilled under. Although this week’s planting of lettuce has suffered from the rain and has developed some rot so we may not be able to harvest it. Then we start harvesting the next planting. If the tomatoes or eggplant get a disease we often spread it to other plants when we harvest or trellis. We do plant three successions of tomatoes and two of peppers and eggplant to deal with the disease problem.
Growing vegetables in the northeast means we will have weeks with too much rain. So what do we do to deal with the inevitable? First of all, if you visit the farm you will notice we have a lot of equipment. Other farmers tease us about our many “toys”. But, this equipment allows us to get a lot of work done when the weather and soil conditions are just right. When the sun is out and the soil is dry we have to cultivate up to about 30 acres of vegetables. One small cultivating tractor just couldn’t get it done before the weather changed. So, we purchased another cultivating tractor. We also purchased a couple of other implements that we can pull behind our regular tractors for cultivating crops like corn, potatoes, and cabbage and between the rows of plastic mulch. If it looks like rain we can have two or three people cultivating to keep the farm clean. We also have a transplanter that allows us to plant a lot of transplants in one afternoon. We have to fit the transplanting in between the rain, harvesting, washing and packing, and the weeding. Three people can plant a week of broccoli, basil, and a couple of weeks of cauliflower in an afternoon. To some our farm looks over-equipped. But, when we have a window of opportunity between rain and other work, we can cultivate, transplant, prepare new ground, make beds, plant cover crops, mow cover crops, and make hay.
Our farm plan also takes into account wet weather. We plant our fields in sections divided by grass strips to prevent erosion during down-pours and consequent compaction from our harvest trucks. We work on having healthy soils that can absorb large amounts of rain fall. We plant sensitive crops in plastic mulch with high raised beds. If needed we take sections of fields that stay wet for too long out of production and plant them back in grass and clover for hay.
No matter what we do there will be times like last Wednesday when the crew was out slogging through the mud in the pouring rain to harvest bunches of beets. Sometimes we have to ignore our own comfort and what is best for the soil to do what needs to get done. They came back to the barn soaking wet and covered in mud from head to toe. Fortunately, they are a hardy bunch and take things like this in stride. We hope this won’t be a repeat performance and that we have a week of clear skies and dry weather. ~ Jody

Calendar of the Soul

2008-07-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Week 16, July 21-27

To enfold the spirit gift within,
Commands my sensing of tomorrow,
This mature gift from god
That ripens in the depth of soul
Brings my Self to fruition.

Week 8 Notes for Members

2008-07-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

IN THIS WEEK'S SHARE: sweet corn, green beans, onions, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, salad mix, chard, basil, and cilantro.
FRUIT SHARE: apricots, peaches, or plums

SHARE YOUR BLOG: Dara Mirsky, a Pleasantville member in Westchester County, shared her blog with us, http://chickinthekitchen.com. It has great cooking tips and recipes for many of vegetables her family receives in their share each week. This is a great way to learn what to do with the vegetables or to share your cooking knowledge with other members. If more of you have cooking blogs or blogs related to your CSA experience let us know.

NEWSLETTER BY EMAIL: For most of the sites we have the option to email you the newsletter. If you gave us your email address and aren’t receiving the newsletter please check to make sure info@roxburyfarm.com is on your preferred sender list. We receive numerous replies refusing to accept the email. If you want to receive the newsletter by email send us your email address.

Week 8 Newsletter

2008-07-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

After a very wet spring it has been a dry summer on the farm so far, which has its advantages and disadvantages. We always say it is easier to put water on the fields than take it off. We haven’t ever tried to take water off the fields, but our friends at Angelic Organics in Illinois did that last week. They received 5.25 inches of rain in four days. Some of their fields were completely under water so they dug some holes in the low spots in the field and installed a trash pump and sucked out over 1000 gallons of water. This isn’t a lot of water but enough to save the vegetables growing in the low spots in the field. We empathize with them and hope the weather is kinder to them over the coming weeks.
We have watched storm after storm go north or south of the farm and on Saturday evening the storm went both north and south leaving about a 2-mile wide dry patch just over us. This means Jean-Paul and John have been on irrigation duty over the past three weeks. When it doesn’t rain we try to put ¾ inch of water on each field every week. We call this maintenance irrigation. Most conventional agricultural guides recommend that you put 2 inches of rain on your crops each week. We don’t follow this advice for a number of reasons. We don’t want to coddle our plants, having 2 inches of water on them each week would keep their roots shallow and their growth really soft. We want our plants to have deep roots to access the water that is deeper down in the soil. We also don’t want to wash away the nutrients in the soil. Adding 2 inches of water each week implies that you also add more fertilizer each week which is not an option for us anyway.
Another reason we don’t want to put on 2 inches of water is disease prevention. To put on that much water the plants would be wet for hours at a time. For example, Alternaria blight reproduces with spores that require wet conditions to open and disperse the blight. The spores only need to be wet for 4 to 5 hours to open up which would easily happen if we irrigated for 2 inches of water. Organic farmers don’t have any effective options to control Alternaria blight once it occurs. Other diseases and blights follow similar patterns.
We have an irrigation reel with a traveling gun (the huge sprinkler that shoots out the water) and an underground irrigation line so that one person can move the irrigation set up in about an hour. The irrigation reel has an 850 ft. long hose that we pull out and then it reels itself in with the water pressure. We can irrigate about five acres with each “pull”. The irrigation hose reels
itself in at about 40 meters per hour. When we irrigate the field with 850 ft. long beds it takes about 7 to 8 hours to irrigate four acres. At this rate it takes about 7 days to irrigate the whole farm. Then if it doesn’t rain we start all over again.
We also have about 6 acres of crops grown with drip irrigation. We cover the soil with a layer of biodegradable “plastic” mulch (made of corn starch so it isn’t really plastic) and bury a plastic tube with very small holes in it under the soil. The water slowly trickles out of the tube putting the water right at the plants’ roots. The layer of plastic on top of the soil reduces evaporation keeping the soil moist around plants’ roots for much longer than in bare ground. We run the drip irrigation for about 6 hours to give the plants the right amount of water. We can only use the drip tube and the mulch one season which adds quite a bit to the cost of this irrigation method. If we could discount the use of plastic for the drip tube and the cornstarch mulch it is a much more efficient method of watering. Some farms put the drip tube on top of the soil but that causes problems if you want to do this on a large scale. Each time you want to cultivate or weed you have to pick up the drip tube and then lay it back down. This is a very time consuming project that also puts nicks and holes into the drip tube if you can even manage to roll it up without creating a huge mess of knots. The farm that grows our green beans tried this method and he even had a machine to roll up the drip tape. The benefits they received from the drip tube were too small in comparison to the time and energy it took to make it work so they quit doing this after a season or two.
We chose our two types of irrigation because for our size farm they are the most efficient use of time and fuel. We pump the water from the Kinderhook Creek with a pump that is run by one of our tractors. This is more fuel efficient than our large pump with its own engine. The traveling gun shoots out 170 gallons of water per minute. With the tractor running the pump we can irrigate for 12 hours on one tank of fuel. This means we can pump 122,000 gallons of water with one tank of diesel (30 gallons) or with 1 gallon of diesel we can pump about 4000 gallons of water. All these numbers mean it costs us about $1100 worth of fuel a week if we have to irrigate the whole farm (or about $1.00 per member for a week’s worth of irrigation which does not include the cost of the equipment).
Right now Jean-Paul is starting the irrigation rotation over again. The gun is set up in the carrots, parsnips, celeriac, beets, and a planting of sweet corn. The forecast is calling for rain today and tomorrow. So, we haven’t turned it on, hoping the much needed rain will fall and Jean-Paul and John will get a few days break from the irrigation gun. (P.S. After I wrote this we received about 1 inch of rain on Sunday night.) ~ Jody

Calendar of the Soul by Rudolf Steiner

2008-07-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Week 15: July 14-20

I feel how the weaving of the Spirit

is hidden in the light of the world.

It has wrapped my authentic Self

in the stupor of the senses,

to grant me the strength,

that myself with is limits

is powerless to give itself.

Photos from the Farm

2008-07-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Carnival Winter Squash

Wild bee pollinating a winter squash flower.

Cara bunching onions.

Week 7 Newsletter

2008-07-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

Here's an update of the condition of some of our crops, and what you can look forward to in future shares.

Sweet Corn
The first planting of sweet corn is ready for harvest. The electric fence is up to protect the ripe ears from the raccoons and the bird guard (an electronic box making hawk and distressed bird calls) is running to keep the sparrows and blackbirds out. We are doing weekly scouting for European Corn Borer and releasing trichogramma wasps that feed on the corn borer larvae eggs. We also spray Entrust, an organic spray, against the corn borer larvae when needed. Soon, we will begin scouting for the corn earworm that comes up from the South with the summer storms. We planted ten successions of sweet corn, so from now until September you should receive sweet corn in your share.

Winter Squash
This season we planted the winter squash on biodegradable plastic (made out of non GMO corn) and it has been a great success. The high raised beds and the warm soil provided just the right environment for the growing squash transplants. The plants sustained some damage in the hail but quickly grew out of it. The plants are large and healthy and are in full bloom. We are looking forward to a great harvest.

Onions
The fragile onion plants sustained quite a bit of damage from the hail storm. The leaves were broken and bruised just when the onions needed the leaves to increase the size of the bulbs. The damaged leaves are also more susceptible to soft rot and the plants have been exposed to thrips, an insect pest that burrows into the leaf tissue and yellows the leaves. The onions will be much smaller than in previous years. We will begin harvesting the “Ailsa Craig” fresh, sweet onions this week.

Tomatoes
Jean-Paul ate the first red tomato last week. Once the first red tomato appears, the rest should follow soon after. There are a lot of green slicing tomatoes and Juliet tomatoes on the vines. The hail damaged the stems and leaves, allowing septoria blight into the plants. They are also affected by tobacco mosaic virus and we will have to pull these plants. Fortunately, we plant three tomato plantings, and the next plantings look very promising.

Potatoes
The first potatoes are ready for harvest. They are an early white variety that sized up nicely. The Adirondack red, which is an all-red variety, will be ready for harvest next. The Keuka Gold potatoes still have healthy green plants, so our fall storage potatoes will be a good size, too.

Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potato transplants come as “bare-roots.” This means they don’t come with their roots growing in soil like the rest of our transplants. This year the plants arrived one day after we received a couple of inches of rain which prevented them from getting planted. By the time they got in the ground (a week later) they did not look too happy anymore. Just as they were beginning to form new leaves again the hail storm hit. The hail fell into the planting holes and rested up against the plants. This cooled the plants down to below 55 degrees, causing 30 percent of the plants to die from chilling damage. The rest of the plants are just beginning to vine out and cover the beds. The crew weeded the sweet potatoes last week and the field is looking good.

Other Crops
The storage carrots and beets are seeded and will germinate soon. The storage cabbage and Brussels sprouts are planted and beginning to grow. We planted two plantings of eggplant and peppers, so we will have a longer harvest of both this season. The first peppers should be ready soon. We have a scattered series of plantings of salad greens and cilantro as the weather did not allow us for proper successions. Often the ground was too wet for planting. Jean-Paul planted ten acres of sudex and field peas last week to build fertility and prepare the ground for next season. This week, we will plant seven more acres of vegetable land back into hay to allow the ground for a longer rest.
~ Jody

Week 6 Notes for Members: MEMBER WORKDAY ON SATURDAY

2008-07-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

FRUIT SHARE NOTICE
Two-thirds of the orchards in New York were damaged by frost and/or hail this spring. So, unfortunately there isn't any fruit available for this week’s delivery. Yonder Farms, our fruit supplier, lost their sweet cherries to frost and their early pears to the hail. Next week we will be back on track with apricots and/or peaches. Thank you for your understanding.

MEMBER WORKDAY
Come join us for the garlic harvest this coming Saturday (July 12). We will start the workday around 10:00 am and work until the crew is tired. We usually break for a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm. Join us for the whole day, part of the day, or just the potluck. Members of all ages are welcome. Please bring a potluck dish, your place settings, water bottle, and sunscreen. Come dressed to get dirty. The workday will be at the South Farm location near the farm office. Hope to see you there!

BLACK CURRANTS
You can order a half-pint or full pint of black currants from Heron’s Roost Farm, which is located in Southern Columbia County. The currants have never been sprayed or fertilized with synthetic fertilizer. Look for order forms at your pickup site or online at www.roxburyfarm.com. Orders will be delivered next week with your vegetable share.

Week 6 Letter from the Farm

2008-07-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading “Fidelity, Five Stories” by Wendell Berry. The short stories are about a tightly knit farming community in the hills of rural Kentucky from just after the Civil War to just after World War I. The families in the stories have farmed the same land for generations. Berry tells of us of the families’ great love for their land and how the families survived only because they were a community. It reminded me of the stories my mom and my grandparents used to tell me about their farm in rural Iowa.
I grew up being fascinated by stories of the history of my grandparents’ farm. They lived in small farming community in the flat plains of northwest Iowa. They had a small, diverse farm with a dairy herd, beef cows, pigs, and sheep; a large orchard and garden; and they grew corn, soybeans, and cut hay. My grandfather’s brothers also farmed nearby. They would come together to help harvest and plant – whenever help was needed the other farmers were there. Life in the towns was intimately connected to the life on the farms. If there was a bad year, life in town was tough, too. The townspeople and the farm families were interdependent.
Then, as Michael Pollan writes, we went the wrong direction with agriculture for 70 years. I am not saying I want to return to the lifestyle my grandparents had – I do enjoy the conveniences and technology we have today. But that same sense of being connected to the land and to a community is driving a change for a different kind of agriculture than the industrial model of farming we find today. A newfound desire for local food is bringing people back to the land, either as new farmers or customers supporting a farm. We are creating new communities that are not bound by close geographical or economic confines. Customers in New York City can feel just as connected to a farm as the customers who live in the farming communities. Due to the support of loyal customers there is now a resurgence of small farms in Columbia County who support each other when times are good and when times are hard. As an example, this week I was recovering from a small farm accident and couldn’t be on the farm. Paul Hess and Kelly O’Hearn, who worked on the farm for the 2006 and 2007 seasons, have now started their own farm down the road. Paul gave up an afternoon on their farm to help us out with tractor cultivation. The farm crew put in extra hours and took on new responsibilities to make sure the shares were ready for delivery. Dick Shirey, a longtime Capital District member, came to the farm for two days to help the crew harvest and weed.
We see recently that industrial agriculture is not doing its job to feed the world’s
population. Cheap food is no longer cheap enough. In some nations, the people don’t even want the products our farmers produce; they fear the diseases that could be carried by our beef cows. Each year, more and more acreage is planted in genetically modified crops. It is a daunting task to take on this form of agriculture and its 70-year legacy. We can each make a small step by being aware of where our food comes from and work toward making this choice accessible to everyone.
The communities that support small farms today can bring about great change and provide hope for a different future. The communities purchase farms and protect land for future farmers. They create models that allow farmers to farm in a way that sustains the land and provides for animals to be raised humanely. The communities train and nurture new farmers. They realize that children need to get their hands in the dirt and provide the means to bring children to the farms or bring gardens to the cities. The farmers and the eaters have made the choice to be interdependent once again. ~ Jody

Notes for CSA Members the week of July 1

2008-06-30T14:04:00.000-07:00

There is pork sausage available for order. Look for order forms at your pick-up site or on the farm website at www.roxburyfarm.com

There are also black currents availabe for order from a farm in Columbia County. Look for order forms at your pick-up site and on the farm website.

This week's share includes: salad mix, braising mix, mini cabbage, broccoli, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, fresh garlic, scallions, basil and parsley. The fruit share is a quart of strawberries from Yonder Farm (the berries are not organic).

For Columbia County Members Only: There will not be a delivery this week due to the 4th of July Holiday weekend. There will be a make up delivery in November. Look for a postcard in the mail this week to tell you the pick-up date.

Photos from the Farm

2008-06-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

The winter squash is beginning to bloom. Soon the field will be full of wild bees visiting the bright orange and yellow blossoms.

The potatoes are blooming. They flowers are the same the color as their potatoes. The redish/purple flowers will have red skinned potatoes. The white blooms will have white or yellow skinned potatoes.

photos by Johannes Courtens

Week 5 Letter from a Farmer

2008-06-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

First of all thank you for the many supportive letters we received from you as a response to Jody’s letter of “Gone to hail.” This week, I have chosen to write about some of our farm methods related to biodynamics. I could highlight all the quantifiable angles: the aspects you can count, measure and weigh. On this farm we rely a lot on numbers and good research and we respect the good science that comes from our friends at Cornell. So, what is it that opened us up to the rather extraordinary exercise of taking cow manure and placing it in a horn, to bury this in the ground over the winter, stir it for one hour in plenty of warm water and to spray this concoction over a field? Is this an exercise of faith and is there any science involved? And what is scientific anyway?
The natural world is always contextual; no creature lives by itself. No tree lives without the soil, sun, moon, birds, rain, bees, worms etc. We consider the farm as a whole to be an organism – a very messy concept indeed, as it includes not only the total farm and surrounding ecology, but also its economy, the community, etc. This goes way beyond our ability to accurately count, measure, and weigh. Therefore, some scientists will ignore an outcome that has too many fluctuating variables. A researcher friend once observed that something else is going on at our farm, and actually on all these biodynamic farms. “Whatever it is you do, keep doing it,” he said. The way he said it implied that he couldn’t quite put his finger on it – something intangible, something you can only feel and experience by walking the farm. Only by understanding the details will we fully appreciate the whole. Maybe contextual science is the “ultimate” science. But this will demand a complete new awareness whereby we can separate feelings from sentiment, and thoughts from garble. I am not ready yet, but I can imagine what it looks like.
The context of this biodynamic farm includes its relationship to the people who depend on it. Roxbury Farm is the result of a shared vision of the farmers and many of the original members. Following a dream or a vision means taking a chance, and our early members were fully aware of that. When we started the CSA, no one had heard of the concept. Following new ideas can be terrifying, but at some point you have to let go and jump. Visions are like dreams and are part of the context of this farm. Dreaming to me means “to sense an emerging future.” Someone who makes an effort to sense an emerging future is probably more likely to accept the idea of putting manure in a horn than someone who wants proof before the act.
When you act on a dream, you act more out of listening to an inner voice than out of calculation. Those decisions create either the greatest delight or the greatest despair, and usually the most memorable experiences. The greatest decisions in my life have been made by trusting the faculties that have little to do with numbers. Here we lean on a different ability – the words intuition, empathy and love come to mind. Fortunately, there is hardly a traditional learning process required: no downloading of information, only the ability to surrender and to develop an open heart and an open mind. (Someone once told me that the mind is like a parachute: it works best when it is open.) A long time ago, an inner voice told me to become a farmer. Since then I have felt blessed and cursed by my job, but I have never doubted that decision; it is a lifelong discovery to understand the purpose of this “calling.” (As I write this, Jody and I are feeling quite a bit of discomfort – I threw my back out and Jody had a minor farm accident – but I am writing this to make a point, not to gain your sympathy.)
Some people associate listening to an inner voice with spiritual or religious matters; maybe true, but even nonbelievers still utilize it when they make the most important decisions in their life. Art and religion cultivate or help us to articulate these experiences. Art might well be the vessel for the modern-day transcendental experience. I happen to have been raised as a Catholic, so I am most familiar with the stories of the Old and New Testament. If I had been raised as a Muslim or Hindu, I would be able to find stories of these experiences in the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. In my mind, every religion is truthful, as all of them can be a meaningful way to get closer to the divine part of our Self and the world. Good religious practices allow us to open up our minds, hearts, and wills and stop us from listening to the voices of judgment, cynicism, and needless fear.
A Christian community priest once said that going out and spraying the horn manure preparation on the field is a similar act to that of the woman who poured expensive ointment over Christ’s head (Matthew 26 and Luke 14). The rational voice in me speaks like the apostles who scolded the woman for wasting such expensive oil. They could have sold the oil and given the money to the poor. Christ responded to the apostles that they should stop bothering the woman as she helped prepare him for his death. My heart tells me that the earth, its people, and other inhabitants are suffering, and that it needs the blessing of our love as much as our daily cares. We need to develop the woman in us.
From Hildegard of Bingen to Bernadette Soubirous, women have had strong visions or apparitions. In the story of Bernadette, Mary asked her to scrape the ground, saying to her “Go to the spring, drink of it and wash yourself there.” There was only a little muddy water to begin with, enough for Bernadette to drink. At first this water was muddy and dirty as the Grotto was a pigsty, then, little by little, it became clear. In its physical content, the water in Lourdes is really no different than the surrounding springs, so what allows it to heal? When I spray water with just a tiny amount of horn manure or silica in it, I intend for this water to heal the earth and its food. Do my intentions matter for this to have its effect? Am I crossing the line here between pure matter and universal life energy? Do I have to make a choice between facts and dreams? Why can’t I give them both their rightful place, as maybe the tension between the two is often imagined.
I have the dream that food will not only nourish us, but that it will eventually be a healing medium again – and this concept goes beyond “safe food.” My dream is of a world where farms and gardens are integral, vibrant, and diverse; in symphony with all living forms and rhythms. It is a world where people have Self determination. In this world, food will have vitality and authenticity. Food can give us the strength to discover our authentic Self, as eating allows for the spiritual world to whisper in our ears. When we listen closely, we might develop a new story for this planet: one that concludes that our presumed separation from this earth is an illusion. Call me a dreamer, but we have to start somewhere. ~ Jean-Paul

Photos

2008-06-18T07:07:00.000-07:00

Cara, Luke, and Mike harvest sugar snap peas. It takes a fast picker 45 minutes to pick a bucket full. For a full week of deliveries we have to harvest about 25 buckets which means we spend about 20 hours picking peas during the week.

Justin and Wouter harvest broccoli while Jean-Paul surveys the field.

Week 3 Newsletter

2008-06-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

This week we want to introduce you to the people who are growing your food and caring for the farm. They are a pleasure to work with and we hope you are able to meet some of them this season.
John Middleton is back for his third season on the farm. We are glad to have a third person to share the weight of managing the farm. John has stepped up to manage the maintenance and upkeep of our considerable fleet of equipment. He also helps to oversee the greenhouse production and has started to take on much of the field work that only Jean-Paul and I used to do. He is also a good teacher and helps us to instruct the apprentice crew on how the farm works. As we write this, he is in Brazil visiting his fiancée, Lidia. Due to visa issues, Lidia won’t be able to join John on the farm until the fall. We look forward to having Lidia become part of the farm crew next season. John and Jean-Paul will take turns delivering the vegetables to New York City.
Justin Wilder joins us for his second season. Justin, along with his wife Sarah and their son Dylan, also lives on the farm. Justin is a Minnesota native and moved to New York when he met Sarah. Justin is also an artist and spends part of the year drawing caricatures at fairs and festivals. We appreciate his hard work and willingness to do what needs to be done. Having people return for more than one season helps us to have a consistency with the work on the farm. Justin, Sarah, and Dylan also care for the pigs on a daily basis. Our new Tamworth boar has been christened Sweet Heart by Dylan for his bright red color. Justin is taking on the Westchester delivery route this year.
Dave and Linda, Jody’s parents, are starting their fifth season on the farm. They joined us from Iowa after they retired from teaching. Linda provides us with a presence in the farm office. She is there on Mondays and Fridays putting together the newsletter and answering your emails and phone calls. She also takes in your enrollment forms and payments. She maintains the member database and keeps track of your membership, fruit shares, and meat purchases. Her work allows us to serve you better. Dave is our resident carpenter, electrician, web man, and driver. This winter he took on the building of the apartment for John and Lidia. He has helped us improve the farm infrastructure with electrical work, building projects, and fencing. He also updates the website each week. The Capital District members will see him on Tuesdays when he delivers the produce.
Cara Fraver most recently has been working for Just Food in New York. She was responsible for connecting farmers to community kitchens and food pantries. This program is called “Fresh Food for All.” She helped to manage the relationship between the farmer and the community kitchen to make sure both parties’ needs were met , which isn’t always an easy task. She and her partner, Luke, decided
that farming was what they wanted to do, and so made the big move from Brooklyn this spring. This season Cara is taking on the greenhouse production and transplanting in the field. We appreciate her attention to detail and positive spirit.
Luke Deikis studied film at Sarah Lawrence University. For the past few years he has been a freelance lighting technician for commercials and movies in the city. While living in the city, Luke and Cara gardened and grew hops to brew their own beer (which we hear is quite tasty). Luke has a talent for construction and is always trying to build a better mousetrap. This is a skill that will come in handy for starting a new farm. We appreciate his ability to look at a situation and see how we can improve what we are doing.
Mike Yund is a Capital District native, but is arriving at the farm by way of California. He moved out to California after college and found he loved working in agriculture. He worked on two farms, doing greenhouse production and managing a market stand at a large farmers’ market in the Santa Cruz area. He decided that he wants to pursue a career in agriculture and wanted to learn farming closer to his family. His aunt is a longtime Capital District member and told him about Roxbury. We are grateful to her for bringing Mike to the farm. His laid-back style is a welcome addition to the farm. His willingness to get the job done with a smile is a pleasure to be around. He is helping Jean-Paul out with hay making by doing the tedding and raking.
Wouter van Nuil is from the Netherlands. He is a student at the agriculture school Jean-Paul attended. As part of his schooling, Wouter needs to complete a five-month apprenticeship. We are fortunate that Wouter chose to do his at Roxbury Farm. While he is working all day on the farm, he is also required to write an extensive report on the farm that includes all areas of production – plant and animal. He comes to the farm with a lot of experience and knowledge. He is also always willing to work at whatever needs to be done and does so with precision and care. Wouter is the youngest of the crew this year.
We are fortunate to have these people helping us to grow your food with such dedication, care, and love for the work. ~Jody

Stormy Weather

2008-06-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

On Monday afternoon the farm was hit by a severe storm bringing with it golf-ball sized hail and 2.5 inches of rain. We sustained some crop damage and we will see in the coming days how extensive the damage is. Some of the crops you will receive in the next few deliveries will show some hail damage. The peas for the rest of the week and maybe next week were shredded and bruised by the hail. The tomatoes, winter squash, and onions are damaged but should grow out of it in a few weeks. Our fellow produce growers to the north lost most of their crops and think it will be 2-3 weeks before they can have a harvest for their markets again. It looks like a lawn mower went over their fields. The orchards in Kinderhook and Valatie lost their soft fruits and most of their apples. We will keep you updated on the crops in next week's newsletter.

We have already received emails of support and encouragement from members. Thank you for your kind words and good wishes!

Calendar of the Soul for the Week of June 16

2008-06-15T18:13:00.000-07:00

Week 11, June 16-23

In this the sun’s most glorious hour
It rests with you to know this word of wisdom:
Surrendered to the beauty of the world,
Feeling yourself within your Self, experience this:
The human I can lose itself
And find itself within the Cosmic I.

PHOTOS

2008-06-10T14:05:00.000-07:00

SAVING OUR SWEET POTATO PLANTS

It has been too wet to transplant our sweet potato plants. The plants (or slips as they are called) come in the mail from a farm in Tennessee packed in peat moss. The slips are thin roots with a few leaves attached. We trim off the leaves to reduce evaporation before we plant them. On Monday we had to dig small trenches in the field and temporarily plant the sweet potatoes until the field is dry enough to plant them permanently. We should be able to dig them up and plant them on Friday or Saturday.

OUR NEW TURKEY FLOCK

Baby Large White Turkeys

Baby Broad-Breasted Bronze Turkeys

Notes for Week of June 9

2008-06-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

THIS WEEK's SHARE
Salad mix, braising mix, spinach, arrowhead cabbage or bok choi, radishes, and turnips

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH BARACK OBAMA
Your hometown of Chicago is served by Angelic Organics, a local family farm featured in the 2007 documentary The Real Dirt on Farmer John, which Al Gore called “incredibly special.” Small farms that market to local communities are vital components of healthy local food systems. What policy initiatives would you propose to strengthen local food systems? Unfortunately, I have not had time to see the film, but I am very familiar with the great work of Angelic Organics and other community supported farms. These types of farms can provide an important source of fresh fruits and vegetables to inner-city communities that do not have easy access to grocery stores that sell organic foods. Moreover, farms like Angelic Organics that sell directly to consumers cut out all of the middlemen and get full retail price for their food, which increases the financial viability of small family farms.
As president, I would implement USDA policies that promote local and regional food systems, including assisting states to develop programs aimed at community supported farms. I also support a national farm-to-school program and am pleased that the Farm Bill provides more than $1 billion to expand healthy snacks in our schools.

COMING NEXT WEEK (OUR BEST GUESS) salad mix, braising mix, garlic scapes, cabbage or broccoli or bok-choi, zucchini, radishes, parsley, mint and arugula.
FRUIT SHARE: Empire apples

TURKEYS
At 6:10 AM on Thursday, the local post office called (as we had requested) to let us know that the day-old turkey poults had arrived from Iowa. We had to get them as quickly as possible to a warm location (90˚F). Jody dunked each of their beaks in a dish of water to get them to drink. We are raising two varieties of turkeys this year, Large White and Broad-Breasted Bronze. We are trying 30 of each to see how hard it is to raise them. All of the reading we did tells us that turkeys are very sensitive and difficult to raise. So far all 60 have survived and are quickly growing. We will keep you updated on their progress.

Week 2 Newsletter

2008-06-10T13:58:00.000-07:00

So, when it rains it pours. After a very cold and dry May, June is starting quite differently. The first week of June brought lots of rain and hail and then more rain and very hot weather. We received many local thundershowers that left the fields too wet to plant. Our sweet potatoes are sitting in the barn waiting to get into the field. They came in on Friday after being in a UPS truck for three days. Today we will temporarily set them in the ground as the chances for showers will last through Tuesday night. The fifth planting of sweet corn – while waiting in the greenhouse to be transplanted – has grown 4 inches in the last two days. If we have to wait another day it will be too tall and the plants will break in the process of planting, which will set them back irrevocably. I was planning on cutting more hay, but with such unstable weather I can’t take the risk. So far we have received four inches of rain in one week with more on the way. It will be Saturday before the ground will be dry enough to work.
We were also very disappointed with the first delivery, but at least we did not have to plow anything under, as in other years when we had crops come in too early. We have lost many broccoli rabe plantings because an early May warm spell with lots of moisture can make this crop mature from a small plant into the fullest of flower heads in a week. Our concern now is that all our plantings will come in at once. How much lettuce can you eat in one week?
Even the insects are late this year. Usually the European Corn Borer (ECB) that causes us problems in the early sweet corn can be found in high numbers this time of year. We have been working with Cornell Cooperative Extension on their project to use parasitic wasps to control the ECB. The scientists and extension agents will be hosting a field day on the farm to show other farmers how to identify ECB and how to use the wasps as a natural control method. They want to postpone the field day until the end of June because we haven’t found any moths in the traps and we won’t be able to identify the eggs – two important means of scouting.
On another note: We will not deliver any strawberries this season. We lost them to the weeds. We did not replant them this year for next season’s crop after I did a cost analysis of how much one of those pints actually costs us to produce. To plant half an acre of strawberries
we buy $1,000 worth of plants. We fertilize the field with about 20 yards of compost, which costs about $600. We spend about $3,000 worth of labor on planting and weeding and use another $600 worth of straw to mulch the berries. Given what our average pay on the farm is, it costs about another $2,500 to pick 2,100 pints – and that is if we have a good year. Extra strawberries are picked mostly by the local members who benefit the most from this enterprise. But the wealth is not equally shared; while some of you bring a five-gallon bucket of strawberries home, most of you have to settle for two pints. Those two pints cost you almost $4.00 each. We have had years where you only received one pint, as one week of rain can wipe out all your berries. We know we can do a lot more with $8,000 than to produce one or two pints of strawberries per member. We have increased some other crops this spring, including another planting of broccoli and snow peas; and in the fall, we will add popcorn. When you eat the extra broccoli, or the new snow peas and popcorn, don’t think for one moment that they compare in any way to those delicious strawberries, but realize that we try hard to serve you with a good value for your investment in us.
Talking about money, we are definitely hurting from the rising gasoline prices. Our fuel expenses so far are at 200% of last year's rate. We also had to give our workers a raise, as they simply can no longer live on the wages we paid in 2007 with normal inflation. Inflation for folks like us is more like 15%, as most of our income goes to heating oil, gasoline, food, and insurance. We might need to consider the introduction of a voluntary surcharge if we get in trouble financially as the season goes on. I will put the emphasis on “voluntary,” as some of you are most likely in the same boat as us. We still hesitate – we don't like doing this, as we strive to live up to our commitments. One thing we have done this year is to buy replacement equipment with credit. This allows us to keep more money in the bank – but we have broken our own pledge to never borrow money for equipment. Buying equipment is not an investment, it is the cost of running a farm and equipment depreciates rapidly. Money borrowed from a bank for equipment has led to the downfall of many farmers. We have no intention of joining them, but given the zero percent offers from our local dealer and our need for cash, we have made an exception to the rule this year.
On a more cheery note, our crew this year is fantastic. We are all very much into our work and it is fun to be around such motivated people. Next week we will introduce you to them. ~Jean-Paul

Calendar of the Soul

2008-06-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

The Calendar of the Soul are verses for each week of the year written by Rudolf Steiner. He wrote these verses to help the reader to become aware of how our soul life is connected to the natural cycle of the year. We read each week's verse every morning before we start the day. We read it in order to still our minds for a moment as we prepare ourselves for the coming day. We hope that as the year progresses the verses will help us remain connected to ourselves and to what is unfolding in the natural world.

The verses begin the week of April 7-13th. We are now in week 10.

Week 10, June 9 to June 15

To heights of summer skies
The radiant Being of the Sun arises;
It takes my human feeling
Into its own wide realms of space.
deep down and dimly I am made aware
that one day I shall know;
A divine-like being felt your presence there.

Pick Your Own Strawberry Farms

2008-06-08T16:54:00.001-07:00

Thompson Finch Farm: Ancram, NY (southern Columbia County) Organic Pick Your Own Strawberries and Raspberries and a Farm Stand. Always call ahead to check on picking conditions at 518-329-7578. For directions visit their website at www.thompsonfinch.com.

Indian Ladder Farms: Altamont, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead at (866) 640-PICK. For directions visit their website at www.indianladderfarms.com.

Stone Ridge Orchard, near New Paltz, NY Sustainably Grown Pick Your Own Strawberries, Pear, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead 845-687-4379 or visit their website at www.stoneridgeorchard.com

Samascott Orchards, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, and Sour Cherries. Call ahead at 518-758-7224 or visit their website at www.samascott.com.

Yonder Farms, Valatie, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries. Open most weekends during strawberry season. Roadside stand is on Route 9 just north of Valatie.

The Berry Farm, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries and Blueberries and a Farm Store. Call for information at 518-392-4609

Farm Photos

2008-06-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Mike, Cara, and Luke laying floating row cover on the eggplants and peppers.

The Farm's Black Angus on pasture.

June 2nd Notes for Members

2008-06-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

COMING NEXT WEEK (OUR BEST GUESS)
salad mix, braising mix, broccoli rabe, turnips, radishes, and arugula.

FRUIT SHARE: apples

COLD WEATHER NOTICE
The abnormally cold and dry spring has slowed the growth of the crops, resulting in a smaller share the first few weeks. While we have experienced some warm days, the nights have continually been in the low 40s. The crops need warm nights in order to continue to grow. While much of the farm is covered in floating row cover to increase the growing temperature it can only increase it a few degrees. The summer's crops look great under the row covers and will soon make up for the first few weeks of small deliveries. And with injury upon insult we were hammered last Saturday night with a hail storm that damaged some of the salad greens, spinach, onions, peas, early tomatoes and other crops that were not covered with row covers. We will be delivering some head lettuce from Markristo Farm to make up for the shortfall this week .

MEAT ORDERS
We have an assortment of cuts of lamb and pork sausage available for purchase. We have limited quantities of both so we apologize in advance if we can’t fill your order. Look for order forms at your pickup site or online at www.roxburyfarm.com. We will have an assortment of pork cuts and turkey available in the fall and, next spring, more lamb and our own grass-fed beef.

COOKING TIPS
We recommend that you wash and spin-dry the braising mix and store it in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Chop the braising mix and add it to sautéed onions and garlic. Place a lid on the pan and braise for 2 to 3 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Week 1 Newsletter

2008-06-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 2008 CSA season!
We had a good winter with many opportunities for reading some of the many books and articles people recommended to us. One book that really grabbed my attention is “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl” by Timothy Egan. The book tells a story that places much of the responsibility for the dust bowl on the shoulders of the government’s agricultural policy and willful ignorance.
The dust bowl affected land in southern Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, a corner of New Mexico, the panhandle of Oklahoma, and northern Texas. This land was a dry, flat, treeless grassland. Stephen Long, who explored this area in 1820 for the U.S. government, wrote “… I do not hesitate in giving the opinion that it is wholly uninhabitable by people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.” The government disagreed; they wanted this area of the country settled in order to control it. Speculators began buying up land and tempting people to move west promising cheap land that would lead to great riches. The Department of Agriculture encouraged people to begin breaking up the sod and practice dry-land farming using the dust as mulch to encourage the seeds to germinate. The cowboys and ranchers who knew the land pleaded with the homesteaders and government agents to leave the land unplowed.
During World War I the prices for wheat skyrocketed. More and more land was plowed up for wheat. Towns appeared all over the West, propped up by speculation on wheat prices and land. Farmers saw their bank accounts growing on the high wheat prices and borrowed on it for more land and new equipment. Then the Great Depression hit and prices fell. The farmers borrowed more money to plow up more land to pay down their loans. The government gave the farmers loans to keep them on the land (which led to the giant subsidies that are part of our Farm Bill today). As the situation became hopeless, the rain stopped falling. Farms dried up and blew away.
In 1936 alone, more than 850 million tons of topsoil blew away and more than 100 million acres would never again be productive farmland. People were dying from dust pneumonia, their lungs filling with dirt. The only thing left to eat on many farms was the pickled roots of tumbleweed. Dust from Oklahoma blew into New York City and Washington, D.C. causing the street lights to turn on in the middle of the day. Roosevelt finally realized that the government’s policy of plowing up this area of the U.S. was nothing but folly. The government began to buy up farms and move the farmers to land better (con’t p.2)(letter con’t) suited to agriculture. They planned to purchase 75 million acres of land to return it to grass but only purchased 11.3 million acres. Even today some of the land is still sterile and drifting after 65 years of being left unplowed.
The book left me shocked and heartsick. Fertile soil is the heart of any farm. While I assume that most of the farmers in the dust bowl loved their land, they were misled and were naive about the harsh climatic conditions. They blindly trusted the government, not taking into consideration what the cowboys and Native Americans had experienced on the land for hundreds of years before them. Few of them asked the important questions.
The lessons of the dustbowl led to the creation of the conservation service. Farmers were assisted by grants to become better stewards of the land. But while we have come a long way to prevent soil erosion, we continue to embrace new ways of making our riches from the land. In some ways this story reminds me of the brazen introduction of GMO (genetically modified organisms). Again, many people blindly trust the government to protect us from harm. Most of the conventional corn and soybeans in this country have been genetically modified, as they are either Round Up-ready or resistant to insects. When we eat non-organic tofu, soy milk, corn chips, corn syrup, or anything containing non-organic soy or corn, we eat plants that have been spliced with genetic material from other species. The argument is that there is nothing wrong with this because it is largely a sped-up process of what might occur in nature over thousands of years.
What questions should we be asking today? What are the side effects of GMO crops? What happens to the people and animals that eat GMO crops? How many GMO genes find their way into wild plants and onto farms that don’t use GMO crops? And once this has happened, what are the long-term consequences? In my opinion, the modified genes that are finding their way into our wild plants and unmodified crop plants could become the next dust bowl. We have started down a path we might not be able to return from. Once the modified genes have changed the genetic makeup of certain wild plants (as they seem to be) we can’t just undo the damage. It took only a few years to blow the Western top soil away that took thousands of years to create. We are facing a similar dilemma with GMO; the plants on our planet have found their genetic makeup over the course of millions of years of evolution. We are about to change this in a few short years and we have no idea if we will ever be able to turn the clock back on it.
By joining a CSA, you know who grows your fruits and vegetables and who raises your grains and meats. With this we are quietly saying “no” to the government's and universities' willful ignorance on the use of GMO. But our quiet resistance might need to become more vocal, as this concerns not only ourselves but the generations that follow us. The unintended consequences of GMO are beginning to surface and we need to know what they are in order to strengthen our argument against them. The Nature Institute, which is about 20 minutes from the farm, in Harlemville, is publishing the research done on the unintended consequences of GMOs. You can read their studies on their website at www.natureinstitute.org or you can contact them at 518-672-0116 for paper copies of their reports. It is time to join our voices of protest with those of much of the rest of the world who refuse to use GMO crops until these questions are answered.
~Jody

CSA Deliveries Begin this Week!

2008-06-01T04:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the 2008 CSA season! The first CSA deliveries will begin this week (the week of June 1st) on your regular delivery day. The share will be smaller than normal due to the abnornally cold weather we are experiencing this spring. While we have had some nice warm days the night temperatures have continually stayed in the 40's. The crops need warm night temperatures to increase their growth rate. Most of the farm is covered in floating row covers to help keep the crops warm but they can only increase the temperature a few degrees. The summer crops are looking great and will make up for the smaller shares you will receive this week and next week. We thank you for patience.

The weekly farm newsletter and important updates will be posted each week on our blog on Monday evenings. Check back regularly to keep in touch with the activities on the farm.

Spring Photos

2008-04-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

Greenhouse full of onions, parsley, eggplant, peppers, cabbage, and celeriac.

Luke and Cara seeding broccoli

Onion seedlings

Day-old lamb

Newborn piglets

Spring

2008-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Outside, the rain is falling down and the damp atmosphere makes me want to spend a few hours in the office. Yes, I am not much of an office person. I correspond and write early in the morning when it is still dark outside and I simply can’t do much outside. With Jody dreading inside work just as much, we certainly have a particular management style that puts a cap on the growth of the farm. Jody and I are like a chef owner that can’t leave the kitchen. Linda (who we hope is happy spending 20 hours a week in the office) is pointing out another email from a disappointed wannabe member:

“Hi. We are writing regarding a membership to the Delmar, NY site. It is now the third year that we have been too late to sign up. By the time we checked in February, it was all full!!!! Because we have several little kids, it would be difficult to do another site. We are wondering if we can be put on the waiting list now, for 2009? My husband and I are third generation vegetarians and very much in need of what you have to offer. Our neighbor introduced us to your goods several years ago and in fact we enjoyed what she and her family were unable to use (or didn’t know how to use).” Jolene Albany, NY

These are not the only type of emails we receive. We get emails from groups that lost their CSA farmer. Other emails are from existing groups that want to start a new site or from individuals that want to create a whole new system of food delivery based on bicycle power. They have one thing in common: they want us to grow their food.

We have to say no to all of them. And it is not about the money. It is about the fact that the farm is a living system. These days we are the steward of about 285 acres, we are actively farming about 200 of those; 90 in vegetables and covercrops and 110 in hay and pasture. That leaves about 85 acres to the woods, wetlands, ponds and the creek while some land is lost to roads and development. While most of the land is dedicated to food production it hosts a great number of species. For more detailed information about the biodiversity on our farm please read the report from the Landscape Ecology by visiting http://www.roxburyfarm.com/ At the home page click on roxbury farm manuals and then click on Landscape ecology study on North and South Farm (or if you received this letter by email simply click directly on this link).

The farm can feed about a thousand families with a full share of vegetables while our capacity for meat has not been tapped yet. We can not expand our vegetable acreage without compromising the integrity of the farm. So, we can make some of the people happy all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but we cannot make all the people happy all the time. Y You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you ca
Sometimes emails make us happy. We were asked for permission to feature Roxbury Farm and the multiple benefits of CSA on a website. As people write the craziest things about us I wanted to read the copy before it was posted. To my surprise it was an elegant piece and I just quote the last sentence of the piece: “The life of the farm and the life of the community become part of a shared alternative that represents a healthier and more sustainable food system”. For the complete article go to American Feast

What we need is just a whole lot more Roxbury Farms in the Hudson Valley. We are willing to help young farmers start one but we just don’t want to run another one; this one will do just fine.

On another note; the lambs are coming in with the first three born yesterday. The first baby piglets arrived soon after. The greenhouse is filling up with onions, cabbages, celeriac, parsley, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. It is a lovely sight to see new life sprouting again.

See you in June,
Jean-Paul
for Jody and the Roxbury Farm Crew

2008 Membership

2008-02-04T08:37:00.001-08:00

We have a record re-enrollment this season. By January 31st we had 800 members signed up for the 2008 season. We thank all of you for your early commitment to the farm.

The 2008 enrollment forms are now online for prospective members. In the Capital District the Eileen Street site is full and in Westchester the Pleasantville 2 site is full.

Week 25 Newsletter

2007-12-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

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

Happy New Year!

2007-12-27T11:23:00.000-08:00

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's Delivery Postponed

2007-12-13T06:32:00.001-08:00

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.

Preparing For Winter

2007-12-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Newsletter 24

2007-11-26T10:08:00.001-08:00

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

Greetings

2007-11-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

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!

Welcome

2007-11-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

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.