sunrise over the field last week

my thanksgiving

this weekend we had a thanksgiving ceremony at our farm. just our family and our good friends who helped us make the ceremony. i really wanted to do something a little bit formal to express the gratitude and love i feel in my heart towards our land, our animals, and our family. so we did it, and it was very simple but beautiful.

in november

i love these days. i can still work outside, but i don't need to be in a rush and there's no pressure like during the busy season. i can take my time harvesting or doing whatever needs to be done, and enjoy being outside.

this was a great season for us, in many ways. i am grateful for all of it.

here are some recent pictures:
snowman, happy children and home-grown carrot, a couple of weeks ago

i really like this picture of sena

very proud of our brussel sprouts. 3 ft long stalks and very tasty sprouts...

we grew our own flint corn this year. we bought a grinder, and the girls have been grinding it to make corn bread and other good things.

 another sunset over the farm

sunset over the field, two days ago

this is the place where i live, work, rest, pray; my home, my sanctuary; the place that feeds and sustains us. i feel truly privileged.

Pickling, fermenting, root cellaring, and so on.

There are many ways to preserve food; the ones we use most are root cellar, freezing, canning and fermenting. Freezing is my least favorite, because it uses lots of energy and is vulnerable to power outages, which we now get on a yearly basis. I was a little nervous when we lost power with the storm a few weeks ago, since my freezer is full of food that we worked hard for, and I did not want to lose it. In future years I’d like to cut way back on freezing, and use other methods of preserving instead. Canning uses a lot of energy too, so I’m not crazy about it from that standpoint, but at least once canned, the food can safely be put on a shelf in the kitchen to last through the winter and more. Fermenting I love, and so far it’s my favorite way of preserving food. All you need is salt and water and good veges. It’s low impact as far as energy consumption, and as far as I know you can preserve many kinds of veges by fermenting them. I love the taste of fermented foods, and the health benefits (very good for our intestinal flora); unfortunately, Ed does not like fermented foods, and the kids like some but not others, so that’s a limitation. But I am planning to learn more about different ways of fermentation, and ways of incorporating fermented foods into cooked dishes, and maybe they’ll like it more.

So far this season, I’ve made sauerkraut (fermented green and red cabbage), fermented cauliflower and carrot pickles (Romanian style), pickled Lebanese turnip and pickled beets. These last two were not fermented, just refrigerated in vinegar brine.  Aiyana wants me to make kimchee, which she liked last year, and I want to try German fermented turnips, which I heard good things about. The Lebanese pickled turnips were my first this year, and they came out really good. I love eating them with venison steak, and they’re great with falafael (which is how I learned about them in the first place. You know those pink pickles you get when you go our for falafael? I always thought they were beets, but they’re mostly turnip with a little beet added for color).

It’s really nice to have had a change of pace with the end of the CSA. We’ve spent more time focused on the kids, especially homeschooling. Ed’s working with them every morning, and they have a schedule for each day. It’s all very organized, Ed style. I homeschool once in a while, when Ed’s busy doing something outside. Yesterday for example, he was working on moving the shed near our house, so I took over with the kids. He’s relocating the shed a short distance away. It will give us a nicer view of the fields from the house, but more importantly it will allow us to build a new root cellar where we hope to be able to store more veges. Root cellars are great for storage, as long as you can maintain the right temperature. This one will have 3 walls and the ceiling covered in earth, so hopefully it will naturally maintain a temp in the 40’s in there throughout the winter. That would work for storing root veges, such as carrots, beets, turnips, and other veges like cabbages and brussel sprouts.

As of right now, we still have a few veges in the field, such as lettuces, spinach and other greens, carrots, beets, turnips, brussel sprouts, etc. We plan to sell them through weekly farm sales over the next few weeks. Once they’re out of the ground, we plan to let the ground freeze everywhere, which means no winter production at all, at least for a couple of months. We think that this will be good for the soil, as well as for reducing disease and insect populations that may overwinter when the soil is not completely frozen (like when you have a hoop tunnel). We’ll see how this pans out over the next few years, but it feels good to be able to give the fields and ourselves a break from production.

I recently read a quote from an old-time farmer in The American Farm, by Maisie and Richard Courat. It reflects how I feel, and goes like this:

“The real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind and the cropland itself…The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer.”

Yes, the land teaches the farmer a lot if one is open, sensitive and willing to learn. One of the many beautiful things it teaches us is how to nurture and work in harmony for long-term wellbeing. As we learn these things, the health of the land and the crops it produces becomes a visible mark of our efforts. The health of the land has to come first if we are thinking long-term; focusing on crops alone can lead to misuse and abuse of the land, which will soon enough, and fairly enough, stop producing.

deer update

Ed got 4 deer over the weekend. No more are coming in now, and hopefully it will stay this way. But he still sees plenty just outside the fence, unfortunately. The ones that came in did quite a bit of damage to the apple trees we planted this year. 

Ed and I skinned and butchered two of them, and kept the meat and one skin. The whole thing has been quite an experience. I feel like I’ve accumulated enough bad karma to last me a while. None of us likes this one bit, but we felt like there was no choice. I didn’t mind the butchering and the blood and guts too much. It’s the taking of life that really bothers me.  I’d like to know if food can be grown without this taking of life. I don’t think so, but maybe I’m wrong…

our electric fence was down when we lost power with the storm, and deer started getting into our field. i saw tracks yesterday, and ed went out last night and saw that they were getting in even though the fence is now back on. i guess once they get in they learn that the zap they get from the fence is not that bad, and they keep coming through. ed saw 7 deer last night, some inside the fence, some just outside the perimeter. he went out three or four times and spooked them away, but they kept coming back in as soon as he left. so far they seem mostly interested in the cover crop we have planted, but i aslo found some damage to the hakurei turnips when i harvested yesterday, and i am afraid for the brussel sprouts, and carrots that are still in the field. last year when they were getting in, we had quite a bit of damage in the beets and carrots.

ed went out again early this morning, before dawn, and saw a whole bunch of them inside the fence. he stalked them for a while, and while he was doing that he also saw three bobcats. he also saw an opossum late last night. it's quite active out there!

ed's going out again tonight to hunt the deer. this time if he gets one, or more, we'll butcher them ourselves and keep the meat (in the past we gave them to friends who eat venison). i hate having to do this, but with the numbers we have out there, if they start getting in, our field will be done in a matter of days. so i'm getting ready for that...