Compost, Soldiers and Gardening!

What a crazy week we had!  We spent a lot of time last week spreading compost on our fields - we do this every other year (mostly due to expense), and get 20 yards to spread on 1 acre or so.  At that time we also spread organic fertilizers like Cheep Cheep, Pro Grow, etc.   It is just such

 a great way to spread fertilizer since we already have the compost spreader hooked up.  We did this project last Sunday - a day when no other

 farmers at the Intervale really do any tractor work, and since we need both the New Holland (for the use of the bucket) and the John Deere (for the PTO for the spreader) for the task, it's just better knowing that we won't be hogging the tractors when other farmers need them.  It was a beautiful and productive day - preparing us for the task of tilling and laying the biodegradable plastic for the 

potatoes, onions and shallots - a project for 

this week.  It took us 3 hours or so - not too bad, considering we only do this every other year, and I have relative inexperience with using the bucket; that thing definitely takes some practice!  Our other major projects this week involved potting up hundreds of pots for Gardener's Supply Company - we have a growing account with them and do quite a few potted veggie starts for their retail store.  With all the beautiful growing weather coming up, it feels good to get moving on the potting up so that everything can get out of the greenhouse and sold to all those eager gardeners

 out there!  The pots all look so obedient with their colorful tags - like regimented soldiers ready to fight the good fight against conventional food! 

 I always feel so proud of all my plants when we drop them off at Gardener's Supply - I know they're going to good homes with people that will appreciate what they have to offer.  It's a nice component to our business that takes up most of our time this time of year and then it's over by Memorial Day weekend.  A short, but sweet part 

of our season.  We moved the geese and ducks out to their outside house - they were simply getting too big for their brooder!  They're only a week and a half old!  They have been growing so quickly!  I recently read that Pekin ducks can potentially be 

ready for harvest in only 6 or 7 weeks (that's faster that cornish chickens!) - and in that amount of time they'll have eaten 20+ pounds of feed!  Crazy!  I'm so glad we're supplementing with pasture (currently grass clippings - soon field

 grass) - which they love!  They descend upon any patch of grass like locusts; except they're quite cuter and make nicer sounds.  They actually

 whistle more than chirp - very cute.  We anticipate moving them out to field pasture very soon.  First, we must construct a solid home for them to live in at night after they're done ranging and also to protect them from predators.  We're planning on making them a house on top of this frame - Spencer was very proud of his medieval style wheels he fashioned out of an 

old cable spool!  They work quite well, actually.  We're also planning on a door that becomes a 

ramp for them to walk up.  This was a fun Friday project, after we deconstructed the old hay rick at our field - we needed a nice flatbed wagon for moving plants to the field, and the wood from the walls was rotten and dangerously falling apart.  So, we will be gleaning some great wood from that project for the duck house and the pig house as well.  Saturday was our first 80 degree day here in Burlington!  We were so focused on trying

 to pack so much in on this perfect day that we almost had project paralysis - but, we were able to accomplish some major gardening projects here at home (after spinning class, a great breakfast, and tuning up the bike of course)!  Don't worry, the irony is definitely not lost on us - we are farmers that leave the farm early some days to come home to garden!  It is definitely funny!  However, it makes tons of sense - we love 

gardening at home because it allows us to grow things we'd never grow at the farm; like perennials, fruit trees, flowers and fun herbs.  It was nice to see the Johnny Jump Ups doin' their thing, and to notice that our first try at asparagus seems initially successful!  The wormwood, angelica, chervil, chives, marjoram, thyme, sage and mountain mint are all up and looking great!  We spent time talking about the project for the front yard - Spencer's super fun crazy wild and huge garden!  Since we grow so many baby veggies at the farm, he thought it would be fun to grow HUGE veggies at our house.  And, after falling for the urgings of Eat the View and the White House garden, we decided it was time to do our own front garden here in suburbia!  As Spencer unloaded the tiller from our van and started to till up the front yard, I was listening to The Splendid Table, where Lynn Rosetto Kasper had a story on just that - growing a garden instead of a lawn.  

Her guest was Rosalind Creasy, who was touting her new cookbook, but she's also known for

 her book on Edible Landscaping - she grew wheat on her front lawn!  Felt good to be on the

 same page.  It felt like we were getting some support while tearing up the lawn in a block of lawns that are all perfect and manicured.  Now it looks so purposeful and industrious, and ready for the transplants of our Giant Red Celery, Mammoth Cabbage, Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkins, Giant watermelons, etc.  It's going to be a blast, and certain to be a conversation starter this summer!  We'll post pictures as the garden 

progresses...  There it is, the last post of April!  Hard to believe!  We're gearing up for the first downtown farmers' market, which is only 2 weekends away!  Hard to believe we've only got 1 free Saturday left for 5 months!  Gotta make some relaxation plans for next week...

Bird Pics & First Planting Projects

We've arrived!  We received our very first ducklings and goslings this Wednesday.  They are so cute and so independent compared to the cornish cross chicks.  The chicks seem to need so much care, or they die.  Even when you think you have covered every contingency, some die.  They need heat, they need water, they need grit, they need a surface to walk on that is not too slippery or they'll develop leg problems, they need their butts wiped or else they'll "paste up".  At times, it's a little much.  However, with the arrival of the ducklings and goslings, 

we have realized how cool heritage breed animals can be.  They simply know what to do, how to live, and they are oh so charming while doing it!  Our rare breed chickens last year also made us realize how much more sturdy they can be.  After growing out cornish cross chickens, the rare breed guys are just so much more chickeny!  They scratch, they look for bugs, they hassle each other and they make dust baths.  The cornish cross chickens are little couch potatoes - they sit, they eat, they poop.  Rinse and repeat for 8 weeks.  They sure are efficient food-meat machines, though; they make meat in only 8 weeks.  By comparison, the rare breeds aren't ready for 14+ weeks!  The feed gets expensive, but they certainly work harder on the farm - they scratch up ground and clear weeds far more efficiently than the cornish cross birds.  At any rate, it is fun experimenting, and we are having fun watching the ducklings and goslings!  There is no doubt that they are water-oriented animals!  They need tons of water to drink, because they play in it, too!  They need enough water access to drink, but not swim in quite yet - their down doesn't have their mother's oil on it so they'd chill really quickly.  We need to wait until they feather out before we install a kiddie pool for them, but meanwhile they make bubbles in their water font!  Especially these little black ducklings - they spend their entire day running between the water (blowing bubbles in the water while drinking), the duck chow and the little bit of grass they

get at this stage, their feet smacking on the ground all the while.  So cute!  I can't wait until we can get them outside rooting around in the dirt and in the sunshine - probably a couple more weeks under the heat lamps, until our weather regulates a bit more.  We got these birds from the hatchery in Iowa called Murray McMurray which has a great catalog (you should have one around just for reading material!).  The folks at Murray have a sense of humor, too - they offer lots of bird combinations based on use of the bird: Barbecue Special, Frying Pan Special, Homesteader's Delight, etc.  The bird package we got was the the Barnyard Combination #3, 6 ducklings and 6 

goslings.  They send an assortment of varieties - and we've had fun trying to figure out what types of birds we got sent.  We think we have 2 blue swedish ducklings (the black ones), 2 fawn runners (upright ducks), and 2 pekin ducks (all yellow).  In the goose department, we think we have 2 chinese white OR white embden, 2 toulouse OR african (they look identical at this stage), 1 Sebastapool (it will be frilly and white) and 2 buff goslings.  We got sent one extra goose - thank you, Murray McMurray!

In other farm news, we have officially completed all of the construction of the Haygrove with the completion of the simple doors!  Feels good to

 finally be done, and start using the Haygrove to its fullest potential!  We would have finished the doors last week, but we actually ran out of plastic that Haygrove sent us.  When we called to let them know we thought we had been very conservative with the plastic, but still ran out, they made good with us and sent us the perfect amount to complete the doors!  This is just another reason we love this company!  They have been amazing in the customer service department!  Thank you, Haygrove!

So now that that is done, we are well on our way with our growing season at the farm!  We have transplanted our first round of head lettuces, baby bok choy, red, chioggia, and golden beets, and seeded the first rounds of arugula, broccoli raab, radishes, salad mixes & fava beans.  Below, some pictures of that process - including a time lapse of transplanting.  Because it's fun to watch!  Enjoy!

Doors open and secured.

Irrigation set up and flowing!

Looking good!

Covered the brassicas - to protect from flea beetles.  I think that we could probably just have secured them with tacks instead of using a shovel and soil to secure the edges since we are under cover already and wind inside isn't too much of an issue.  Such creatures of habit are we.

Looking so industrious!

More gosling and duckling pictures... can't resist!  This is one of the African OR Toulouse geese.

One of the blue swedish ducklings looking curious!

Closing the new Haygrove doors.

Laying Driptape in the Haygrove

Transplanting Beets.  Note very tired dogs not doing much - end of the day.

Seeding, Irrigating, Micros & Chicks!

Mr. Smeems is super excited to be spending long days at the farm doing his favorite activities - barking, sniffing, digging, getting filthy while exploring...you know, dog stuff!  Bullet is never far behind, and is in fact usually leading the charge!  Last week we spent some time working on tilling the Haygrove beds with our BCS tiller, and getting them ready for seeding.  While Spencer did that manly job, I spent a lot of time re-organizing our irrigation and cobbling together what I think amounts to a really nice system.  Hopefully it works!  We'll turn it on this week and put it to the real test.  Digging trenches really puts the old muscles to work, but I'm happy to report that with all my gym-going activities, my recovery time after this super-physical activity was merely overnight - I woke up the next morning  surprisingly not remotely sore!  True testament to working out and doing strength training really paying off!  At any rate, Spencer seeded the first rounds of arugula, salad mix, radishes, dandelion greens, etc.  We'll be transplanting out the first round of lettuce heads this week in those same beds.  We're gearing up for the Downtown Farmers' Market, which starts this year on Saturday, May 9th.  Four weeks away!   Today, after meeting with my gym trainer, I received the phone call from the post office saying that there was a box of peeping chicks waiting to be picked up!  So, off I ran to collect some food for them from Guy's Farm & Yard out in Williston, do my grocery shopping, collect the peeping chicks from the post office, turn on the super cool new brooder box we ordered, and put them away in their toasty new environs.  All went smoothly, and we now have 26 cornish roaster chicks slowly getting meaty in our brooder!  They sure are cute at this stage!  They seem to like their new house and are happily peeping away - they are successfully finding their food and water, so all's well.  After getting those guys situated, I ran back down to the Intervale to harvest the first batch of microgreens of 2009!  They'll be sold to Healthy Living and should be on their shelves after 1pm on 4/14/09.   We'll be doing deliveries 2 times a week to them, on Tuesdays and Fridays.  Here's some pics of the chicks and microgreens!  We're anxiously awaiting our ducks and geese, which should be arriving tomorrow.

Here they are checking out their new digs.  The green gel stuff is 1st day vitamins for them.

Curious about the camera.

Doin' their chickeny business!

Micros!  Can you identify all 8 varieties in there?  Amaranth, Arugula, Mizuna, Red Bok Choy, Tatsoi, Hong Vit Radish, Giant Red Mustard and Russian Red Kale!

Close up micros.  Had some sashimi, pork dumplings, and rice over a salad of these tonight.  It was sublime!

WCW, Food Club and Micros!

The Red Wheel Barrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

I first read this poem by William Carlos Williams in 10th grade in Mrs. Ludwig's English class at Manual High School in inner-city Denver, CO.

Back then, I liked it because it was so short, and I was sure that this was one poem that I could memorize! However, this week as I was seeding in the greenhouse, this poem came to me, unbidden and wouldn't let go. Here I was, 19 years hence, FINALLY aware of the meaning of this poem! Alone, the seeds, the soil, the trays, the sticks that remind me what I planted, and yes, the red wheelbarrow I use to cart soil, all seem so inconsequential.

They're essentially meaningless alone. Together, they mean everything to me. For it is on these tiny seeds that we pin all our hopes for the season. Every greenhouse season I am surprised at my own incredulity over the power of the potential energy stored up in a tiny dry seed that becomes a huge tomato plant that grows so massive it kicks us out of our hoop-house every September! What I think William Carlos Williams was saying in his poem was that these everyday items, the wheel barrow, the rain, the chickens, they don't seem like they mean much, but to someone they do; and perhaps they mean everything in some sense to that someone. I am also reminded of people that visit any farm, and see farm implements that look ancient, rusted, and unused. Chances are that so much depends on the two-bottom plow seemingly rusting into the soil. I guarantee that a farmer has plans to hitch that sucker up and use it perhaps only once a season, but so much depends on that one use. Nice poem! I forsee myself reflecting on it often.

That said, finally we have the Half Pint Farm Food Club Brochure ready to go! First 15 respondees become the lucky members of our farm share for 2009! Read thoroughly before committing, then get ready for what we're calling the "Summer of Taste!" Can't wait to meet all of you!

Lastly, a head's up - the first microgreens will be ready in one more week - YUM!

Some pictures of our week for your enjoyment:

Seeding micros

The first beets up!

Our cipollini onions starting to come up this week!

Red bok choi microgreens lookin' mighty fine!

We broadcasted some Cheep Cheep before Spence disked it in.

Spencer doing the first pass of disking. We have some winter-killed oats to turn in. Hopefully they'll break down in a week or so. We refer to this process as "hitting the reset button". Note the side-skirts up and hanging.

Side skirts hanging loosely as per the FEMA requirements. The temperature rose instantly after we got these up!

A nice view over the tops of our circus tents after getting one door up. Forgot to get a picture of the door, though. Will do that this week as we get that project finished.

A view of Half Pint Farm from the perspective of the tops of the Haygrove. Neat!

Lastly, what are we eating these days? Homemade pizza often - this week's offering, pizza di quattro stagioni! One section with artichokes, one with anchovies and mozz, one with mushrooms and parsley, one with prosciutto and olives. The tomato sauce is made with our very own pineapple and gold medal tomato sauce from 2008. YUM! Buon appetito!

I leave you with my homage to WCW in poem entitled:

The Amaranth Seed

so much depends
upon

a white amaranth
seed

sprouted with rain
water

beside the fuzzy
seedlings

Haygrove Skinned!

What a fantastic thing to wake up this morning feeling my aching bones, knowing that I earned every single sore muscle yesterday accomplishing the project that had been nearly 2 years in the making!  

What an amazing day - we had so many people come out and help us.  No small thank you goes out to our friends that woke up early on a Saturday to help us!  Nick, Jane, Rob, DD, Ron, Glenn, Becky, Adam & Emmett.  You should know how grateful we are to you - this wouldn't have been possible without your help!  We got the most perfect possible day that we could have gotten - sunny, warm, and windless.  Blessedly windless!  We had a plan - we had job assignments, and the whole process took us 3 hours - a whole hour less than we anticipated!  The order of operations went like this:  hoist the sausage of plastic onto the top of the house, flop one end over and clip it into place, pull the sides down, pull it taut all along the length, rope the tension into it, then rinse and repeat until we were done.  It went exactly according to the plan, and having no complications with the weather was icing on the cake.  All that remains now is to build the doors (simple plastic ends) and the plastic skirts along the outside.  We plan on prepping the beds this week, and seeding in them next week!   Here's some fun pictures of the process, as well as some more great videos.  Enjoy!

Spencer giving the order of operations - note the frost on the ground.

Hoist the plastic on the ridge, and pull down until it is evenly draped.

Drape that plastic!

Cinch it taut!

Secure the ends with clips.

Rope it!

Here's a video from the day before - threading the plastic down the middle bay.

Skinning the first bay of the hoophouse...

Skinning the last bay.

Haygrove Plastic Unrolled!

The past two days have been days that were long difficult to picture how they would happen!  On Wednesday we helped our friend Adam at Adam's Berry Farm get the plastic onto his two Solo Haygroves - a thoroughly illuminating experience!  After helping him with that, we could picture how our process would go with much more clarity.  First task was how to get 1500 pounds of plastic off of the gigantic roll we were sent.  It boiled down to running up to Queen City Steel, asking to borrow two 10' steel pipes (one to use to lift the roll, one to use as an axle through the roll), schlepping those down to our field in the back of our Subaru (bet they never thought their cars would be used in such a way!), and go ask Intervale Compost Products if we could hire one of their guys and their huge front-end loader (oh, and please bring any chains you have) to help us suspend the roll of plastic to get it all unrolled.  We got that all organized Wednesday afternoon, and scheduled 8:00 am on Thursday to get it done.  All told, it went quite smoothly!  We are thrilled that that part of the job is done, and now all we have to do is get the plastic on the top and secured down with a series of tension ropes!  We're looking to start that project Saturday morning at 7:00 am out at our field.  We expect it to take a total of 4 hours.  We'll be providing donuts and coffee to all that would like to join us!  We need at least 10 people to make this happen - please contact us if you can help!  Email us at info@halfpintfarm.com to let us know if you can.  Thanks in advance!  Hope to see you there!  Meanwhile, enjoy this time-lapse video of today's process!

The video of the unrolling out process...

We had great help for this project!  Thanks a ton to Adam, Becky, Jessica, Andy and Nick - we really appreciate your help and muscle.  THANK YOU!

Outstanding in the Field

We have been asked to participate with the group Outstanding in the Field this year!  We are thrilled, as we have enjoyed their amazing cookbook, and have been told over and over that we should host an Outstanding in the Field event.  We will be partnered with Steve and Lara Atkins of The Kitchen Table Bistro in Richmond, which we're thrilled about!  Not only are they one of our favorite restaurants to work with, they were just nominated for a James Beard Foundation award (the Oscars of Food)!  The Outstanding in the Field event at Half Pint Farm will be on Friday, August 14th, 2009.  It promises to be an amazing event with incredible food!  Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 20th - the first day of spring.  If you think you would like to attend, you can look at the schedule here.  We'll see you at the farm!  

In other Half Pint Farm event news, we are going to host a Vermont Fresh Network Farmers Dinner as well!  No date has been set for that, but we'll post something here as soon as we know when it is!  Thanks for your interest in Half Pint Farm events!  We're excited to host and share our farm with everyone!  Now, back to the greenhouse to start growing some food!

Slow Food Awareness!

A million thank yous to all you Vermonters who came out to support the Slow Food meeting I organized today.  It was an amazing sunny Spring-like day and over 50 folks came out of the sun to Pauline's Cafe to learn a little more about Slow Food and how us Vermonters and particularly us Burlingtonians would like to organize ourselves.  THANK YOU!  What was particularly interesting was the sentiment that there is a definite need for an organization that supports the consumers' (in Slow Food parlance, that's co-producers) quest to understand and get a new appreciation for food.  There was such an enthusiasm for: educational potlucks (learn how to cook something specific together - recipe sharing, etc.), as well as not creating a new chapter, but galvanizing an effort under the current Vermont chapter.  Also, a nice voice arose from people looking to identify with a food community.  Such powerful stuff, and oh so motivating!  The other overarching feeling coming out of this meeting was, "Let's have more events, and let's have them now!"  I must say, I was also impressed with the level of folks' commitment to helping make events happen.  WOW!  What a difference a change in season, some sunshine, and some terrific company with like-minded foodies makes!  It was a pleasure to meet so many amazing folks with such great ideas.  I can hardly wait to start working with them!  I also gained the awareness of a local food blog I did not know about previously: Hippo Flambe!  Check it out not just for the super duper cool name, but some inspired recipes and captivating food stories.  Thanks, Robin!  

We got home from this great event just in time to thaw a chicken we grew last Spring for dinner.  Spencer spatchcocked it and grilled it.  We had a side of Anishinaabeg Manoomin wild rice with that amazing chicken - and it was the most incredible rice I've ever had.  It had a deliciously smoky taste that went perfectly with the grilled chicken.  To top it all off, we had glasses of our homemade carrot wine we made with Arethusa Collective Farm's 2007 fall carrots.  Absolutely perfect meal...  All of this would have been enough - just another Slow Food dinner in the Welton household; but then there on 60 Minutes as we were eating, was a report on Alice Waters and her influence on Slow Food in America!  

Couldn't have planned it better myself!   Enjoy the video - interesting, and timely.  Also timely was the article in the NYTimes this past week about Michelle Obama's efforts concerning good healthy food.  It's a great time to be involved in food, people!  So let's invite someone over, make a meal, pick up our forks and enjoy each other's company - conviviality.  It's where it's at!

Planning, New Directions, and Battle Royale!

I can't believe that I haven't written since January!!  What happened?  You know - I think my blog posting schedule has been ruined by Facebook!  I feel like I've been writing nearly everyday, but really what's going on is that I'm sucked in to Facebook to update my status!  Lame.  From now on, it's only meaningful blogposts for me!  Well...maybe I'll only sneak onto Facebook to check on my friends' status updates...  

Besides getting sucked into Facebook, things have been busy here at Half Pint Farm.  Our days have been replete with my daily trips to the gym to get into shape for the farming season (transplanting requires about 500+ bad-form squats each day in the Spring!), walks with the dogs to try and keep the cabin fever from getting too out of control, discovering new recipes, organizing a new Slow Food Chapter here in Burlington, AND (of course!) we are busy planning our farm season everyday.  

We're busy in the sense that we've been doing a lot of the cerebral work of our farm for 2009.  Our main goal during every growing season is to completely avoid any thinking.  I know this sounds crazy, but it is a system that we've been using since we started our farm, and will continue to use; it works extremely well for us.  What we do is we make up tons of spreadsheets that function as field seeding schedules, farm maps, lists, order sheets, greenhouse seeding schedules, etc.  What we do once we've made all of our seed selections is to list them all, and then look at our maps and see where everything fits in.  Spencer is very good at this job, and

 really does most of the initial work pencil-ing in the various crops and their rotations on printouts of our farm layout that are detailed down to each bed that is available on our farm.  We are able to pencil in every rotation of every crop that we grow.  Once this job is done, I sit down and transcribe it into our computer spreadsheets.  We then go over it together to make sure there's no mistakes.  We do the same kind of detailed sheets for the greenhouse seedings.  What they enable us to do is to look at the week of seeding in the greenhouse at a glance, and we will immediately know how many trays we'll need to fill with soil and what seeds need to be with us that day.  They make our seeding life effortless - it really helps to concentrate that kind of detailed thinking process to the time of year when we have time - the winter.  These sheets are our bible through the season, and we consult them every Monday morning while we walk around the farm making the "to do" list for the week.  What all of this slightly obsessive planning does for us ultimately is free our minds during the season to make decisions about day-to-day things that come up, not crucial seeding issues that should have been thought out already.  We also find ourselves being a lot less stressed out about our day-to-day farming lives, because all the major things have been thought of already - we can spend our time concentrating on the growing part (how to make a better trellis system, what needs to be staked?, how about mulch?  should we weed today?, etc.), which requires so much of our attention during the season that we honestly don't need to be thinking about what should be going in the ground this week - we can just follow our plan for the week that we laid out in March!  A nice system, if I do say so myself, and one that we'll be talking about at the Farmer to Farmer conference next week in Saratoga Springs, NY.

We've got some exciting new directions that Half Pint Farm is implementing for 2009!  We have decided to expand our Food Club CSA this year to accommodate more hungry Burlingtonians!  Be looking for our brochure in upcoming posts!  Also, we have decided to add some animals to the mix!  Last year we experimented with some heritage breed chickens, and really enjoyed it.  We'll be doing many more this year, along with some cornish game hens and some quail!  Another pretty exciting development is that we'll be getting some new employees - they come in sixes and will be 6 pigs (rototillers), 6 geese (weeders), and 6 ducks (insect eaters)!  This is a new direction that we're going in to try and close the nutrient cycle loop on our farm.  We have been researching how best to manage and house these critters, and think they'll fit quite nicely on Half Pint Farm.  More as we move in that direction - Christmas goose, anyone?  

I can't end without mentioning the palpable battle royale currently being waged between Mother Nature and the gigantic axis our world spins on.  With daylight savings time coming and the recently beautiful sunny mornings making it feel like Spring, we remember how quickly things can change - just started hearing the sparrows in our hedges last week, I'm beginning to think I've shoveled the driveway for the last time this winter, there's more grass than snow showing, and there's more of a trend towards rain than snowflakes.  I didn't wear a coat at all today, and kept thinking...Spring?  I can dig it!