Long harvest day

We’ve had some longer days on the farm, but today was our first nearly twelve hour day. It wouldn’t have been such a long day, but Adam and Laura’s annual organic certification was reviewed today by the area’s agent. Throughout my time as an intern I’ve heard and read countless examples about how farmers work so much faster, harder, and with more efficiency then their interns. With Adam and Laura gone we were left to our own devices and that statement was proven true. We did our best to move quickly, but it was still evident that Laura and Adam are so much better at harvesting than we are. Laura joined us shortly before five this afternoon, after the agent had looked through their paper work, and realized we were picking up steam, but we could move faster. She announced a challenge for our next green bean harvesting. Who ever can pick the fastest will get a six pack of a beer of their choosing. If they can pick faster than her then there’s an additional prize that has yet to be determined. I’m hoping it’s a home made cake. You know I’ll be moving as fast as possible.

We had some interesting drama today. Around elevenish today we were just headed out to harvest our dill when we looked to the north to see our neighbor driving his massive red tractor equipped with a sixteen foot spray booms on either side of the machine. Sure enough, he was spraying a herbicide on his GMO soy beans. The farmer however neglected to pay attention to the prevailing wind which was from the north. Any residual spray and fumes were going to head directly to our farm. I pointed the tractor out and Laura screamed at us, “I hope you can hold your breath for thirty minutes.” Shortly after that statement my nostrils burnt with the smell of something similar to paint fumes and instantly my throat began to burn. I had a bandanna in my back pocket, so I threw that over my nose and mouth. Laura and Adam began to retreat and said we need to leave the area now! We made it back to the pack shed and quickly flushed ourselves with lot of water. The burn in my throat stayed with me for the rest of the hour and even now my throat feels like I’ve been yelling all day. Shortly after we made it back to the pack shed Adam and Laura looking very pissed hopped on their golf cart and drove out the farmer to scold him. The farmer took the obvious ignorance route of “oops, sorry about that. I guess you want me to stop, right?” Their response was, “yes you need to stop. If we find any reason to do so, we’ll report you to Minnesota Ag and take what ever legal action is necessary.” I love it! These are veggie farmers with knowledge and power! Adam and Laura returned to us and told us what the herbicide was. With Adam’s previous job of working with toxic chemicals he began spitting out some interesting facts. Turns out just fifteen micro liters of the stuff this farmer was using has the strength to kill fifty percent of the fish population is a given space. A bit more has been known to cause health problems to rats. The whole ordeal was incredibly sobering and has me very turned off from conventional foods. I think you, the reader, should revisit the idea of eating all organic food. It makes so much sense and is a clear path to rebuilding your local economy amongst about a thousand other great things. Luckily we’re safe and we should be ok.

Off to bed. Good night.

Cloudy day?

Oh my gourd. It’s cloudy today and I don’t think we even hit eighty. The sunless cool day was such a relief. It set today’s pace as fairly mellow and everyone’s moods were a little subdued. Not a terrible thing a all. It was a pleasant and needed change.

Not much to chat about on the farming front. Our crops are maturing way faster than expected. We might have sweet corn by the end of next week. Our fields are in constant battle with the weeds. The thistles have died down, but they been replaced with pig weed and purslane. Purslane is a fun weed to pull since you can eat it. It tastes slightly of citrus. Maybe like a mellow crunchy version of cilantro. Pig weed is edible too, but it just tastes like a bitter green and the texture resembles grass. Both are easy on the hands and pull out fairly easy. There’s just an abundance which makes it pretty tedious.

Toby the dog is good. He’s been keeping us safe from dump trucks and cable guys. He’s a constant source of entertainment when you’re zoning out in the fields. He’s his own dog and doesn’t need to be at our side constantly, but he’s usually in the vicinity searching for field mice or gophers.

I finished Atina Diffley’s book Turn Here Sweet Corn! That book was really great. An amazing journey of this women’s life. She came from a family in rural Wisconsin, fell in love with the land, and pursued and shared that love throughout her life. She made some really hard choices, had some very tough hard ships, but stuck to it and persevered. It is a wonderful source for learning about local growers, organic farming, the human element, and what it means to live on a farm. There’s an inspiring legal battle near the end that paved the way for a new level of protection for organic farming.

Here’s a great quote from Atina when she’s talking about her role as a farmer and how it shapes her life. “I am a creature of the seasons. The structure of my life allows me to adapt and flow with the changes of nature. The results of labor are visible and tactile. We have made our dreams real. We feed people and nourish health. I wake with the birds, ready to be part of the glory of life.”

For those of you who love this stuff, I recommend this book to you.

Busy, busy, busy

Things are ramping up in my world. Harvesting is in full swing. I’ve committed myself to building the end walls to our hoop house, which means longer working days. My weekends are a mad rush to get out and see people, all the while trying to get some rest. And in my spare time i’m trying to plan for the future move to Arizona.

This weekend was a prime example of the rush. I finished the day on Friday by mowing the “lawn”on the farm to a presentational status for Saturday’s potato pick. I drove home, hopped in the shower, cleaned up my beard, did some laundry, had dinner at the coop and read my book, and then slowly shut down. I was a sleep at about nine that night. Saturday I was up at seven, I biked over to the donut cooperative to grab breakfast for Caroline, Hannah, and myself. On my commute from there the sky opened up and I got soaked. So much for our drought and so much for wearing a nice black sweater. Working market was fantastic, but a little damp. I was on a caffeine kick most of the time and was being super chatty. That was really fun and I met some really great people. I forget how many beautiful people live in Minneapolis. Working the market stand allows you to get a great view of all the farmer’s market folk. After closing things up, Margo and I made our way home and hopped in the car to head down to Simple Harvest Farm. The ride there was really great. I was still hopped on caffeine, which had Margo laughing a lot. The farm was cute. They had about twenty goats including five kids. There were bees, chickens, and happy pigs eating apples. I milked a goat. Let me tell you the udder on a goat feels like a flaccid penis. Yep. Weird stuff. But hey I had things working right and the farmer was impressed. She said I was a natural. Ha! Well after browsing the farm, giving some goats some neck rubs, and seeing these weird birds call French Guineas, we headed to Faribault to visit Margo’s mom and step dad. We enjoyed a snack of bread and cheese with roasted garlic. Chatted for a while and then we headed to the Rice County fair. That was something else. Get ‘er dun is all that needs to be said about the fair. You can build around that phrase and imagine what it was like. Make sure to include tractor pulls in your imagination. After that experience we headed back to cities, threw on some clean clothes and hit the dance floor at the Nomad’s Hot Pants DJ funk dance night. That was a blast. We danced for two hours and then called it a night. We made it home, crashed in bed, woke up today at ten and whipped up breakfast and said our weekend good byes. I cleaned house, headed to my parents, lounged and did some catching up in the email department. Had dinner with my Papa and sister Naomi. Always a good time. We’re all pretty low key people, but we had some good conversations. I ran to the grocery store and then it was time to hit the road back to the farm. I’m back now doing a little more catching up and then I’m going to read and sleep.

For all of you, I’m going to take some more photos of our current CSA so you readers can see the bounty of veggies we’re harvesting. Things are looking mighty tasty and our meals on the farm have consisted of at least half of the food from the farm and the other half is from local sources. It feels so good to eat local. I really appreciate having the privilege and resources that allow me to buy food from around here. Hopefully one day my farm will be close enough to people who aren’t as privileged as me so they can experience the joy of eating local fresh food.

good night.

Our market stand.

Back from Decorah

I’ve been to Iowa a handful of times. Correction, I’ve driven through Iowa a hand full of times. I spent my first night in Iowa Saturday night at a place just outside of Decorah called Seed Savers. The night’s sleep followed by a day at Rock Springs farm.

Here at Loon we’ve been appreciating the breeze. It hasn’t been cool, but it keeps the mosquitoes at bay. Our week ended with a solid day of harvesting followed by some pea field destroying. It’s our first crop that we’ve seen from seed, sprout, plant, fruiting plant, dying plant, and back to soil. After work I hopped in my wagon drove back to cities with a brief stop at my parents for a veggie drop off and then off to my place. I went out that night and grabbed a few drinks and saw some old friends and caught up on life off the farm. Saturday morning was spent having coffee and donuts with my bestie, Andy Skiles. We spent the morning catching up, laughing, and talking about humanity. I rushed back to the farm so I could join the car pooling gang to go down to Decorah. Daniel and Caroline were all set up to go and I quickly followed suit. Andy and Irene showed up and then we it the road. This was my first road trip that involved constant talking during the trip. That was really different, but a good change. Lots of potty mouth humor, story competitions, and farm/barn appreciation. Just outside of Decorah I saw my first ever Amish person riding in a buggy. That was really cool. To see the old world life style and see that was working out just fine for people today was very neat. It’s reassuring to me that simplicity and practicality can exist and be sustaining. We drove down this quiet road and pulled into Seed Savers, a seed supplier who carries a multitude of vegetable and flower seed varieties. The place was really pretty and had such a warm and inviting feel. Lots of family people, young and old hippy-ish people were gather around a stage with a band playing folk music.

We listened while the evening slowly turned to night. The music ended and we made our way to a nearby clearing and set up our camp. The stars made their way out and much to our surprise there were no bugs other than gaily dancing lightning bugs. The stars were stunning and just before I went to sleep I had the chance to see a shooting star. Waking up the next day we all took our time and slowly put our things away. We walked the farm’s grounds and enjoyed the complimentary coffee. Noon came and we headed to Decorah for lunch. I will say Decorah’s historic downtown is possibly the most beautiful small town downtown that I have ever seen. Such history and preservation. They had a co-op and we made our way there. After lunch we headed to Rock Springs farm for a farm tour that focused on farming efficiency. As far as the farm tour I won’t get to involved in what was talked about, but I will say this farm had a well thought out layout. Their equipment for all jobs on the farm were very very nice. We all enjoyed the tour and took refuge in the shade when we needed to. Seeing this farm is a stark contrast from Loon and the other farms I’ve visited, but the other farms I’m familiar with have their space utilized in their own special way. What it comes down to is if you know your fields and what you’e doing then you need to adapt and refine processes. Sometimes you need to weigh the costs versus efficiency. And the super spendy stuff doesn’t always pay off or really improve things. We stopped by the Decorah Mexican restaurant and then hit the road. Before we left town we dropped Daniel off so he could volunteer at Seed Savers and hitchhike back to Hutchinson. The trip back was a quiet one that I slept through a majority of.

Back on the farm, it’s still hot. Very hot today actually while we were out weeding the fields. I drank five 32oz. water bottles today. A new high! Glad i’m staying hydrated, but not happy about this climate change we’re experiencing. Sometimes I feel like we’re fighting an uphill battle that’s only getting steeper. I find I get down on things when I get exhausted. So that’s a great reason to end this now and get some rest. Tomorrow is a new day and a new opportunity to change the world. Good night and thanks for reading.

Good morning world. Let’s harvest some veggies.

You say tomatoes, I say toaster

The heat wave has passed, but working under the roof of our massive hoop house has me second guessing things. Today’s work consisted of basically pruning and clipping our tomatoes. In our hundred and forty four foot long hoop house we have well over seven hundred tomato plants. Managing this many plants isn’t super difficult, but with Hannah and my vacation from last week, things were forgotten about. There were two rows of a large variety that needed some serious pruning. “Why pruning?”, you ask. In order for our plants to produce a lot of fruit and grow up rather than out they need to have their suckers removed. This is a tedious task when you’re on top of keeping the plants pruned, but once you let them go, bringing them back takes so much time. We had plants growing side ways, falling over under their own weight, and others had suckers so large you weren’t sure if it was a sucker or the main stem. With some cloth gloves to save our skin and keep the plants clean we spent nearly seven hours today just doing that. Hannah and I worked pass quitting time so we could finish the row we were working on. Here’s a shot of Hannah going to town.

I had to post pone my bike ride yesterday. I was out to airing up my tires and in the process the mosquitoes found me and began feasting. I took that as a sign as I should wait until tomorrow and air my tires up in the sun where they can’t get me. Today’s bike ride was glorious. I rode north to Stahl lake and hit up the single track. A little loose dirt under the tires always feels great, especially if you’re narrowly missing trees as you’re sliding around. After my single track I hit the road again and turned the tunes up so I could ride as hard as I could. I can tell I haven’t been riding too much lately, but it felt great to stretch my legs out and feel the burn.

I made it home to find Caroline was making a fantastic dinner accompanied with some zucchini chocolate chip cookies. Yes the cookies were amazing and the zukes were from our farm. Actually I’d say more than half of dinner was from our farm. Talk about eating local. It made me feel pretty good since I have been driving way too much. I’d like to think it’s balancing out my carbon foot print.

Banana bread is almost ready so I bid you good night. Thanks for reading.

Monday recap

I’m back in south central Minnesota. Last week was short with the fourth of July and a trip to the boundary waters. Coming back to the farm Sunday night was refreshing. It’s a great pace of life, the work load has found a rhythm, and the heat has left.

Our veggie harvesting is in full swing. Our CSA box was packed with Chinese cabbage, fennel, carrots, broccoli, dill, cilantro, garlic, zucchini, norland potatoes, yellow squash, patty pan squash, and cucumbers. In my experience Loon Organics puts out the the best CSA around.

Today began with pulling the carrots and catching up with everyone about the long weekend. Shortly after catch up the daily singing began and we were in our groove. The light breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay. Hopefully with the dry weather their population will diminish, but for now we have to deal with the infestation. Wearing a long sleeve and a sweatshirt in eighty five degree weather isn’t ideal, but it’s our best defense.

Turns out with last week’s heat we lost a chicken. On Friday when the temperature was well above one hundred, one of the hens couldn’t handle it and died from heat exhaustion. Adam had to finish her off by snapping her neck and then Toby took care of the body. Ashes to porcelain, pepper to candy cane as they say. I know that’s a little dark, but it was inspired from when Margo and I had some fun revising idioms while we were on our boundary waters canoe trip. Some other good ones were, don’t throw the baby out with the root beer and don’t look a gift horse in the tooter.

Big news on the internship front! I accepted an internship outside of Tucson, AZ at Sleeping Frog Farms. I’m headed that way shortly after my internship ends at Loon Organics. I’m thinking that will be sometime in late October. Like I wrote in my prior posts, organic veggie farming is my calling. I feel at home here and I love the work. The internship there should be a great learning experience. A much different way to farm with a whole new list of challenges.

I promised myself I’d go for a small bike ride so I’m off. More news to come!

mosquitoes

I did not proof read this, since I finished it so late. sorry.

I hate these bugs. They’re pretty relentless. It’s about 82 outside and fairly humid. I’m in my trailer in a hooded sweatshirt and my work pants in an effort to hold back the fuckers. I’m sweating slowly. I’ve probably killed two dozen tonight and I’m sure there’s at least another two dozen air born looking for my sweet blood. I have a fan that is dual purpose, keeping me cool and to blow the bugs away. Turns out this fan that I commondeered from my parents house happens to be pretty weak. Oh well, I’m slowly getting use to the dull sting and lingering itch. Hopefully none of these little buggers are carrying West Nile or some other gross disease.

I apologize for not writing much lately. I’ll give you a run down of the last week of my life and maybe that will justify my lack of participation.

Last weekend was the infamous Powderhorn 24. A twenty four hour bike race that took place on a four and half mile circuit threading its way in and out of the Minneapolis neighborhood, Powderhorn. Margo was in Chicago and I had nothing but free time. I spent my Friday night and most of Saturday riding a bike, eating, volunteering, and sleeping if I could fit it in. Sleeping definitely took a back seat. Once the bike race was done, which our mixed gender team placed four in the mixed gender ranking, I made my way of to my friends house to have an out of body experience. I was eating and drinking with them, but my mind was not there. The early start on the Friday, the massive amount of riding, lack of sleep, and just general energy expenditure left my mind in a pile of mush. I left early and made it home before ten at night. I tried to sleep at first, but sleep would not come. I was so exhausted trying to sleeping was exhausting. I attemped to watch Gang of New York, but was soon uninterested since I had a lack of attention so I moved onto reading. That dind;t work either so I turned the lights off and tried to sleep. The last time I saw the clock it read 12:30am. I opened my eyes and found the clock reading 6:30am. Really?!?! just six hours of sleep? Well my mind was on fire so I read for an hour expecting to calm down and sleep some more. Nope, my eyes just got tired. Well it was time to get up and eat some donuts. I rolled over to the Donut Cooperative and had a delicious Pina Colda donut. I ran a few errands and hung out at home. I slipped from an unconscious woken state to a conscious state that involved me reading. Seven O’clock couldn’t come soon enough. It obviously did and I picked up Hannah and Caroline. We headed back to the farm. I made it to sleep at about midnight and woke at seven.

Turns out we were suppose to start at seven that morning. Whoops! Well we hustled to harvest and spent our afternoon weeding. I ran back to cities to pick up Margo from the bus station. It was lovely to just spend the evening with her. I slept very little, but it was the most restful sleep I had gotten in the last three days. Waking shortly before five was tough, but the sun was starting to come up so it wasn’t difficult. I stopped by my parents, dropped off Michael’s car that I had borrowed for the weekend and grabbed my motorbike. I was pretty sneaky so as not to wake anyone, but that just weirded them out and I received some texts and a phone call later that morning. That day began with some composting of dead seedlings that had no space to be planted on. Then we moved onto pruning our tomatoes. Hannah was out delivering the CSA shares. After lunch we spent the afternoon weeding and working odd jobs.

Tuesday night was our communal dinner and the evenings talk was about post harvest handling. Basically after you harvest your crop you need to take special car of your veggies otherwise you’re product just sucks. Post harvest handling is the most overlooked portion of farming, but is very likely the most important part of farming.

Wednesday we harvested for the local CSA shares. After lunch came stretching plastic on the new hoop house. We had been waiting for a hot day and this was our chance. Little wind and highs in the low 90’s. Yuck. I easily sweat a gallon during the whole fiasco and was entering the early stages of heat exhaustion. After our hard day’s of work we went to Yoga and at the end of class I fell asleep in Shsvasana. We hit up the liquor store came back home made Adam a drink and then we all went to the lake for a dip. That was so refreshing and revitalizing.

Thursday we all worked on odd jobs and struggled in the heat. I was in quite the mood. Kind of horny and lost in thought.

Friday we harvested for market and for our Minneapolis CSA shares. It was another hot one, but we had no wind so the mosquitoes were relentless. Lots of swearing was had by all. You either had to over dress and suffer the heat or dress comfortable and get eaten alive. After lunch we ad finished things up and we headed to the fields to transplant some romanesco. Once that was done we helped set up the irrigation to wet the fields. Turns out the first half of this month we were way too wet and with the heat came little rain and we started to enter drought mode. The work day ended and I sprinted back to the cities. Friday night was low key and I had the opportunity to catch up on the week’s 7am starts and lack of sleeping. I was woken up with a cold bottle on my feet. It was so lovely. I was suppose to go to a house warming party but I was way to exhausted to do much.

Saturday Margo went to work and I headed to Maplewood to trade my motorcycle for a car. Yep I own a car now. A 1994 Toyota Camry wagon. Very low key, clean, and exactly what I’ve been looking for. Saturday day was low key. With the hot days I didn’t do much, which was perfect. I was too hot and tired to do much. Saturday night Margo got an awesome tattoo of an anatomical bee and then we went to a birthday party and had a blast talking with friends and petting puppy dogs.

Sunday was mellow too and included a healthy dose of donuts. I headed to my parents to hang out. I had a good talk with my brother Jon and then cleaned up my pile of storage stuff. Filled a box full of clothes to be donated. I also had to chuck a few things, but the best part of all was I had the chance to mount my massive Campagnolo sticker onto my car. I posted a few things for sale on craigslist, one of which people were clawing at the bit for. I drove back to the Seward coop to meet a guy form Hudson, WI to sell some fishing gear. When I got there I saw Margo and we chatted while I waited for the guy to come. After the sale we enjoyed some deli food for dinner and then we headed home to snuggle and chat. Eight o’clock came and I had to roll. I drove the new car west and cranked my music. Head phones are nice, but a car stereo plays music in a completely different dynamic and makes music very powerful. Well here I am and I am pretty tired so I’ll be heading to sleep.

Now you know why I haven’t wrote much lately. I’ll get back to something more regular. Thanks!