Why I Cried

I'll be honest: it's been a rough week here, and this is not a happy blog entry. Overworked and underpaid is an understatement to how we're feeling right now... exacerbated by our sense of isolation both physically and socially. Example: We came home from a 14-hour day of arguing, harvesting, a flat tire, deliveries and selling veggies by bicycle in a downpour that made us $5, to half of our meat bird flock sleeping OUTSIDE their fencing. We knowingly cut out a lot of work for ourselves for just the two of us, but we were optimistic that things would fall into place with help from friends. Things get done, and friends do help, but halfway through this season it seems that from here out there are more and more things to do with fewer hands and more things to buy with fewer dollars. It's looking less and less likely that we'll be able to take ONE weekend off to spend together in Burlington for our anniversary because we can't find coverage for the animals, when what we need more than anything, more than equipment, more than money, more than getting stuff done, is a vacation. I truly feel good and am proud of what and how much we've accomplished and how self-disciplined I've become, but there needs to be a balance. We are burning out quicker than we can refuel, and there doesn't feel like a fill station is anywhere in sight.

Speaking of cars, on top of all that, the car that I bought in Mississippi is starting to be constantly needy at almost 200,000 miles. Flat tire (my fault), coolant leak ("fixed" for a week until Monday), still missing a title (from the sleaziest dealer in all the land). Let me put this out there: we have to drive everywhere for everything, and I'm really missing my two wheels. Especially when 90% of the professionals I deal with concerning my car are decidedly unprofessional, overcharging and treating me like an idiot because clearly women know nothing about cars. And the hoops to jump through to borrow a vehicle to get to where we need to go makes my passion for bike-centric living bloom like algae on the lake. And I have to laugh at the thought of even having time to take a recreational roll down the rail trail.

Yesterday I helped Andrea slaughter rabbits. I haven't participated in many animal processing (really just the one time with some old laying hens) but this one ran rather smoothly and I don't think it could have been more humane. Andrea processed the rabbits far away from the other ones, one at a time, and each one's life ended quickly. She showed me how to skin them and eviscerate them, and her partner Rick and I concurred that the only part that "got to us" was how warm their bodies are as you take them apart. I will spare the macro-shot pictures. With two more slaughter days this week I've been thinking a lot about my upbringing in a Kosher home and what it means to follow kashrut. There are many specifics to keeping Kosher but I have been most concerned with the aspects that address if the animal did not suffer in death and if the animal is "clean" enough to eat. Well let me tell you, we've got the most kosher pigs and rabbits you'll ever see, and I can guarantee they've had better lives, have/will have more humane slaughters, and have more scrutiny over the processing than many kosher factory processing plants of animals fed antibiotics and GMO corn.

So in light of all this, I came across this blog: The 'Why I Cried' Project. Felt cathartic to read and felt some solidarity with all the other passionate hardworking people out there. Complements one of the three books I'm currently reading nicely: The Greenhorns collection of essays by beginning farmers.

I know these feelings of frustration and anxiety will pass and that things have to get worse before they get better, but while I'm here I might as well cry about it, right?

Um...

The blog posts (or lack thereof) have come up in conversation with several people recently, so here goes my best attempt at an update over the past (3!!!!?????) months. The weeks have gone by rapidly. I'll cover each element separately to try to wrap my head around things.

Veggies: Everything is coming up roses. Actually, with everything else going on, I totally neglected to literally stop and smell the flowers and never got around to planting calendula and sunflowers, my favorites, but have been cutting the weedy wildflowers to bring in a bouquet for our market stand. I think they look nice. Gotta represent that Vermont red clover.

We've been learning lots about weed control, mainly how you can't, and cover cropping and rotational planting. Not anything too sciency, but with a little common sense and some foresight it's easy to figure out. For plants like chard and kale and broccoli, we've mulched them with hay about a month ago and haven't had to weed them since. We cover cropped a large section of our field with a pea/oat mix from High Mowing. This did fight out some of the crabgrass but was mainly to keep our soil in check and to fix some nitrogen during the early part of the season when we didn't have a ton of stuff to plant. From the peas in the cover crop we harvested a lot of pea tendrils, the part of the plant before it turns into a pea, which makes an excellent salad mix addition, garnish, or snack.

Even though we aren't 100% sure of where or what we'll be doing next growing season, we'll definitely be cover cropping over the winter and planting a garlic party come the fall. G'bye grass!

 We noticed a bizarre nutrient deficiency with our field, however: everything on the western half of our field grew beautifully and in a timely fashion. The eastern side grew stunted, sickly, and took forever. Our rows are oriented east-west, so for example, pea plants at the front of their row grew several feet high and toward the back tapered off to about a foot. Unfortunately we didn't see this problem until after several long-term crops were planted, such as some onions and a little bit of fennel, so we missed out on some field potential there. But now we know! So over the next few tills (after rows of things like cabbage, shell peas, radishes, other early spring crops) we amended the soil with North Country Organics "Pro Gro": an organic approved mixture of minerals and nutrients. This made a world of difference, and now all our plants grow uniformly in their rows. We've also gotten creative with foliar sprays as well: raw milk, sea salt, and fish emulsion blends, supplying necessary B-vitamins and nitrogen... yummmm? Now, things are coming in great. We have lots of tomatoes that are on the verge of ripening, more zucchini than we know what to do with, and endless cuttings of chard, kale, and salad mix. We found ourselves with some awkward amounts of crops which we found creative recipes to turn into value-added products. I made a delicious radish relish with spices like cumin and turmeric, which made an amazing burger topping, and pickled snap peas that we are still munching on. Another discovery that we are still enjoying: turnip green pesto! Try it, you won't regret it. Found the recipe on the Salts Kitchen blog. http://saltskitchen.net/2011/12/08/thumbs-up-turnip-greens-pesto/

Pest control has been manageable, our only major issues being cucumber beetles and cabbage worms. We used some DIY methods to control them such as salt sprays, but ended up needing some processed organic pesticides. Not our preference, but we were in a pinch and did our research to find the very least-bad one (Spinosad: A naturally occurring bacteria that kills harmful insects, used on almost all large scale organic operations) and only sprayed the plants with the worst damage. 

On a brighter note, if the summer vegetable work took a week, we are finally around happy hour on Wednesday. The metaphorical weekend is creeping up sooner than later and even though there's still work to do, the bulk of it is over. We're proud of the amount of care we've been able to give to the crops considering how time consuming animal care is as well, and with both less planting and less animals right around the corner, we'll really be able to amp up the veggie attention.

Pigs: They're huge. We moved the slaughter date from November to September and then again to July 26. Now that we've done that I can't believe I was mentally prepared to have them around for that long... They are low maintenance but still something to think about every day, hauling at least 30 gallons of water to them in the woods every day, moving their pasture every week, searching dumpsters for pounds and pounds of food that will really only get them a few meals, trips to the farm and garden store every few days to buy more supplementary grain, trying not to think about them as pets....

Eli came over and showed us a slideshow of a NOFA workshop he went to which showed how to slaughter and break down a pig. It was fascinating and actually got me very excited for the end of the month. He told us about how the Italian farmers leading the workshop used every part of the pig to make mouth-watering dishes, including coagulated blood saute, brain frittata, and raw liver. While I'm sure I'll be a bit hesitant to actually cook and then eat stuff like that, I can't imagine throwing away parts of these pigs now that we've put in all this work to feed them and keep them healthy for the season and that I've gotten to know them a little bit. Some people have warned us against naming the pigs and being friendly with them, but I would much rather eat something that I've had a relationship with, much like vegetables and the eggs from my own hens, rather than an anonymous Iowan born and quickly raised, power-washed-with-antibiotics sub-animal.

Special Advertisement: if you're interested in purchasing a whole, half, quarter, or eighth of pig, let us know ASAP! It's a great deal to buy it in bulk and you get a mix of cuts (not TOO much of the weird stuff I just mentioned...). 

Hens: We now have a total of 26, a rag-tag motley crew. Some adopted from a confinement operation, others from a sweet old man. In a perfect world we'd be getting at least 20 eggs a day, but with a combination of hot hot hot weather and wide age variance in our ladies, we've been getting closer to an average of 15. We move their pasture often and sometimes boost their feed with a little cayenne, which seems to help, but on the whole we don't feel like it's worth it to get more layers. We have no problem getting enough for our CSA members, eat a few ourselves, and the extra box or three we bring to the market. We also adopted a rooster named Coco (he came with the name, but have found that the phrase "you go Glen Coco" has been appropriate to say to him in several situations) because some of our hens kept escaping the yard to visit the neighbor's rooster, which has helped keep them closer to home. We also took him with the hopes that he might fight off predators but he is a scaredy cat and just crows at you then runs away. At the very least, he is endlessly entertaining if not an unwelcome alarm clock.

Rabbits: 3 weeks ago Andrea brought us 9 little bunnies in a tractor that we pull along the grass twice a day. They are fun to hang out with and I'm happy that I'm not the one presiding over the processing of these guys because they are too cute. She brought us 4 more last week in a bigger tractor which is easier to pull around because it has wheels. They'll be gone quick, a week from yesterday, and we'll run two more batches this year for her. She already has them sold to a caterer, which is great, and she plans to use their fur for something as well.

Meat Birds: What started with 46 is now 33. After 2 weeks of being chicks we moved the chickens and turkeys outside to a small tractor Sam built. We noticed one chicken much smaller than the others, not eating or drinking, so we brought it inside and nursed it back to health. We tried to assimilate him/her back with his/her siblings, but they didn't take to it very well as it was still... the runt. Runt, as he/she is affectionately named, is now the family pet, listens to NPR or the alternative rock station, and likes to perch on shoulders.

About a week later we had a massacre. At night, we would either bring the remaining 45 back inside or cover their tractor with a tarp. One night there was a storm and we can only speculate, but we think the strong wind lifted the ground stakes that held down the tarp, exposing the tractor, and allowed one or several predators to drag out 4 turkeys and 9 chickens, leaving some scattered around the tractor and some MIA. It was a frustrating day but we managed to build them an entirely new, much larger and way more secure tractor (made out of the old hog panels), complete with an electric charge provided by the weaker solar charger we had originally bought for the pigs. We also bought a strand of electro-net which is now set up as their run in front of the tractor, so they spend days on lots of grass and (hoping to not jinx it) have had 0 predator problems since. They electric netting doesn't bother the birds, as their feathers protect them from shock, but it does bother the noses and paws of raccoons and other critters, which is most important. The turkeys are getting large and some of the toms are developing the quirky habit of displaying their feathers and waddling around while some of the chickens are now old enough to attempt a cock-a-doodle-doo a la Coco. We process the chickens on July 23rd and will get a new batch of chicks next week. We're going to try Cornish Crosses, the more widely used commercial meat breed and will similarly order a batch of faster-growing turkey birds to supplement the ones we lost. These more economically viable breeds are slightly controversial among animal raisers due to their rapid weight gains but are breeds of choice for the famous Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in VA and many other local organic operations in the area given their ability to forage when given the opportunity.  Since the verdict still out on these breeds, we want to see for ourselves why and see if we agree with the traditionalists or the new wave of breeders looking for alternatives to the classics. 

Miscellaneous other things: hot and dry weather keeps us busy watering plants and animals alike. We've sold some veggies to Burlington and Enosburg restaurants. We've taken on 2 more "veggie only" CSA shares. We are enjoying fermenting and sprouting: I made a sourdough starter and Sam the master baker has been putting it to good use. Kohlrabi kraut, regular kraut, ginger carrots, and kombucha are gettin' their stink on. We love the farmer's market and enjoy the company of our neighboring vendors, including Laughing Wolf grass-fed highland beef out of Fletcher and our East Shore Vineyards friend Wendy. We will take a weekend off after the pigs move to the great freezer in the sky to go see Wilco. And plans are once again up in the air for what the future will bring us at Fat Rabbit Farm but so far, that's worked for us! We've had a lot of fun with visitors here, so don't be shy and stop on in. We work hard but play hard, and by play hard I mean eat creemees and hit up the swimmin' holes.