New Construction

We are rested and ready for the growing season and hopefully with a little help, I can get back into a regular "blogging" of all that is going on here...there is so much going on, that it is hard to know where to start.

Soooo...we will start with our new barn.

After having spent a good part of the 2009 season trying to sell our herd of cows, we had a change of heart.
We did not want to split the herd, and we wanted them to end up at the right place, so...we came full circle and decided not to sell.
You may wonder why we wanted to sell them in the first place???

We are vegetable farmers first and foremost. The cows help us to manage the land that is not suitable for vegetable production, and they are beautiful to look at grazing the verdant pastures at sunset; but when they get out of their pastures and are running over neghbors heirloom lawn balls, or tramping through the neighbors alfalfa field in the middle of our busiest time of year...well, Chris was ready to throw in the towel.."What are we doing this for?", "Do we even make any money on this beef operation?" "Wouldn't it be nice to only grow vegetables. imagine how much better we would be at it if that was really all that we did." These are all words straight from my husbands mouth, during the height of the season

The answers to many of the questions left little reason to keep them, no they do not make us a lot of money, yes, it would be nice to focus on only the vegetable production, but the answer to"What we are doing this for?" brought us slowly to the realization that we could not let them go.


Diversity is good for land, for the economy, for our diets.


Our farm is a diverse landscape of hills, lowlands, water ways, gravel and trees. Keeping this diversity in balance is our job.

Our farm business is heavily slanted toward vegetable production (albeit mixed vegetables) and selling beef and plants supports the vegetable operation while giving us added income.

We like to eat meat that has been raised here on our farm. As a former vegetarian, I only started eating meat when we began raising it.

And so the beef herd stays, in their new barn with their automatic waterer and when the grass greens up they will wander up the hill to graze to their hearts content.

The new barn is the beginning of a long term vision of more efficient and permanent systems. With better infrastructure and sytems we look forward to many more years of certified organic grassfed beef here on our farm.!!!!

Mourning tomatoes

Last Friday we started picking cherry tomatoes. They are always the earliest, and always provide a glimpse of what is to come.

On Sunday night Chris and I pulled out the Compendium on tomato diseases, we were concerned about some yellowing on the lower leaves, we figured early blight...but wanted to be sure.
On Monday morning I went for early morning walk with my sister-in-law......I wanted to inspect the tomatoes more closely, there it was, as sure as could be the tell tale signs of late blight.

Yes, the blackened lesions around the stem, the gray spots on the leaves. Monday afternoon Chuck Bornt our extension agent confirmed it as late blight. We spoke with him yesterday and he has confirmed seven more cases in our area. Two days later some plants were pretty devastated, while others were still green.

In this picture below you can see the area/variety that was the most affected, brown amidst some green. We are in the process of pulling all of the heavily affected plants, saving the green ones. A chemical salesman came to the farm today, the first we have ever met. He came to bring us the Certified Organic Copper that we will be spraying on the still green plants and on our second planting which is still looking green.

We have very mixed feelings about copper, about spraying in general, we tend to be Luddites in this area, we don't tend to even spray the organic sprays. But the dilemma is that we have put a lot of work into these plants, they are among the earliest seeded in the green house, they are then transplanted into larger cell trays, they are then transplanted onto black plastic outside, they are then trellised each week to keep them from falling over. Hours and hours of labor. And trying to save them will be hours and hours more labor....so, is it worth it??? Of course it is if we get tomatoes.

There is no guarantee that pulling and spraying will even work, late blight is a persistent disease under the right conditions. It destroyed the Irish Potato Crop in the mid 1800's causing the Potato Famine.

This has been the perfect season for late blight. Wet and cold. And even now though the sun is shining, the nights were cold leaving a heavy dew...more moisture providing perfect breeding grounds for the late blight spores to spread.

Forward we move, we spent the first hours of realization feeling sick to our stomachs, the next morning we accepted complete loss, by the next afternoon we felt we should be proactive and try to at least save the second planting. So in some sick way things are looking up. Other crops look superb, the garlic is large and white and abundant, the purple carrots we will be harvesting in the next months are gorgeous and beans are sweet and crisp...time will tell for the tomatoes...we will keep you updated.

Keeping out the deer

Here are some pictures of the double lines of electric fence that we have throughout the farm to keep the deer out of some of their favorite foods. In a year like this, lush and wet, it is very upsetting to us that they choose lettuce and strawberries over all the tender alfalfa and grasses out in the fields
Deer are persistent. But this year we are attempting to use temporary fences surrounding close to maturity crops in order to break their routines. So far so good. The strawberries have a more permanent set up as the deer destroyed last years plants by eating every last green until they could no longer photosynthesize. Sad!!! Maybe will will bite the bullet and put up a permanent super high fence around the farm....we don't love that idea, it will feel a bit like a compound, time will tell.

Of course we also have a few nuisance hunters patrolling the property at dusk. The neighbors all know to expect shots this time of year. Jose, Carmello, Eduardo and Efrain will be eating well this summer, they enjoy the venison and hopefully the hunters will keep it coming.

Regardless of these attempts at deterring the deer, we try to plant enough with them in mind...
but they often take more than their share.

Oats and Peas

The oats are just heading up this week. Chris decided to turn in some oats and peas this week in order to prepare the ground for summer vegetables. We plant the oats and peas into ground that we plan on using late summer to early fall. Cover cropping is a practice which not only prevents water and wind erosion, it feeds the soil as well. There are many different types of cover crops, but oats and peas are nice in the spring because they are quick growing and can handle the early season cold snaps. The peas are a legume, which means that they fix nitrogen.

Here are some pictures of the nodules created by the rhizobia (nitrogen fixing bacteria)that are growing on the roots of the peas plants. They are the slightly pink small round things attached to the roots. The soil is teeming with many different types of rhizobia and when the peas roots begin to grow, they attract the particular rhizobia that will work with the pea plant, in a process called symbiosis, to fix nitrogen. Each legume has a compatible rhizobia and if your soil does not have the correct match, nitrogen fixation can not happen. Our soil has the right rhizobia judging by the pictures. It is possible to purchase rhizobia called inoculants which you mix with the seed to insure symbiosis.
The nitrogen is already present in the air spaces of the soil. The gas moves through the nodule at the root and then is converted by the rhizobia into amonia which the plant uses. The plant in return provides energy to the rhizobia...as much as 30% of the plants captured energy goes to feed the rhizobia.


When the plant flowers it release the rhizobia back into the soil and focuses it's energy on seed formation. The rhizobia can live in the soil for up to three years if soil conditions are right.

We turned in this small section of oats and peas before the flowering time because we needed the space. The rest of the oats and peas we hope to let mature and combine so that we have seed for next years cover cropping.

Chris is using the Soil Saver to turn in the oats and peas. It will take two passes over the course of a few weeks to kill this crop. It will take another few weeks for the organic matter to break down into fine enough pieces for the vegetable seeder to not get clogged up.

Rock Raking

This week we were able to get our friend Matt to come and operate our rock rake on a few fields that we wanted to get ready to plant. This field was potatoes last year and we will be planting it with sorghum sudan grass some time in June. As a cover crop sorghum sudan adds large amounts of carbon the the soil, also known as organic matter, it provides the nitrogen producing soil organisms with food to keep them busy all next year when we will plant this field to vegetables again.

Ahhhhhh!!!!! This makes us happy, rows of rocks ready to be lifted by our rock picker. Though these rocks will be gone from the field forever tomorrow afternoon, there will be plenty more coming to the surface over the year. It is the nature of rocky soil to stay that way despite all our human efforts to change it. It will however make life easier for machine and man in the short term and in a few years we will pick this field again.

Tomorrow this will be in action...the rock picker, you can see the rakes that lift the rocks and deposit them into the rear box. Once full you drive to the ends of the fields and unload the rocks. Much smaller than those rocks used to make the famous stone wall all around New England, there must be something we can do with millions of fist sized rocks...ideas anyone????

The First Mowing

We are not baling hay yet...but today we got the mower out and started mowing for straw.

The Rye & Vetch last week The Rye & Vetch & Chris & Lael Today


We mowed all of our rye and Hairy Vetch today, it has been grown to enrich the soil with organic matter and to fix nitrogen. We grow many cover crops here on our farm, but the only ones that over winter (meaning they do not die with the frost) are Winter Rye and Hairy Vetch.

We will bale it up and use it as straw for our strawberries and garlic.

Freezing Temperatures

Today was cold!!!! The weather is calling for temperatures in the mid-thirties tonight and so we spent the day covering all of the cukes and zukes that were planted out last week. The tomatoes peppers and eggplants were covered earlier in the week before another evening of projected frost.

We have never planted the above mentioned crops this early. Other years there has always been a multitude of reasons that we waited until we were not threatened by frost. Either the plants were not ready, the plastic was not laid, or we did not have enough floating row covers to ensure protection if the temperatures dipped towards freezing.

We bought hundreds of high tensile wire hoops to create mini-greenhouse conditions for the plants. The hoops keep the floating row cover from touching the plants (very abrasive on a windy day) as well as allows any frost to settle on the cover and not get through to the plants. We are hoping for the added benefit of reduced wind on our young plants.

The spring winds on our farm are enough to make you batty, on the days that it blows it is relentless, lifting plastic just laid, flying row covers into the trees, and wind whipping young plants; both dehydrating them and bending there often fragile leaves and stems. It will be interesting to see how the plants respond to them as well as how they respond to our field conditions...time will tell.