Happy equinox!

It has been so beautiful out lately. When I go out to milk in the morning, or out to harvest on CSA days, I feel so blissful, by myself in the field, the sun just starting to warm the chilly morning air, and only the wind rustling through the trees to break the silence.

These days, the temperatures are warm during the day, in the 70's or 80's, and refreshingly cool at night and in the morning. Sunsets are especially beautiful, the light so soft and soothing.

This time of year brings me so much peace and comfort, and a gladness in my heart that it is good just to be here and experience this.

Happy autumn everyone!

Farm tours

Several times a year, we are asked to give farm tours to various student groups. Sometimes it’s highschool students, sometimes university. We’ve also had groups of adults.

These tours can be exciting and also exhausting. We don’t get paid for them, and we don’t ask for pay, but do it because we want to share our farm and our philosophy with people.  Most years, in a group of 20-30 university students, there will be 2 or 3 students who are interested and enthusiastic. The rest come because they’re taking a class and have to fulfil a requirement and this tour is part of that requirement. When we first started doing the tours, I hoped to reach everyone, or most students, and to spark some excitement in them. I quickly realized that if we manage to reach just one or two people, that is great. Some years, it seems like we’re not reaching anyone; the students look bored, they have no questions, and keep checking their phones. This feels hard, because we put out a lot of energy doing these tours, and we share our home and our fields and speak about the things that are most important to us, and when nobody responds, it’s discouraging. But if there’s even one or two people who seem moved, then it feels like the energy we put into it is worth it.

Yesterday I took a group of 25-30 UConn students around the field and spoke about vegetable production, while Sena spoke about the orchard and our animals. The main message we always try to convey to people is care of the land and the environment. I have realized over the years, that to me, the main purpose of our farm, more important than feeding people even, is to teach about the land and how our food choices impact it; and fortunately the rest of the family came to this same realization independently. 

After the tour, I felt spent. I don’t know if our message was heard, but I am glad that Sena got a chance to be involved in presenting our farm. She’s not afraid to be honest, and after the tour she told Ed and I that if we want to make people care about the earth we need to be less "boring" - she thought we gave too many technical details- and make the tours more fun in order to keep our audience’s interest level. I am willing to let her lead the whole tour next year, because I think she has a lot more energy at this point than Ed or I, and she knows more about farming and living off the land than most people who come for the tours. I’d be happy to just be in the background as a resource, or just be out working in the field, and let her be the one to inspire. I am proud of her though, my little Sena, so caring and passionate about the earth.

There hasn’t been much time to write lately because the pace of work has been relentless. The good news though is that the heat and humidity we had over the past month have broken, fall is on its way, and everything is slowing down, which means that we will too.

Most of my canning and food preservation is done, and I did not do it alone. Sena helped with grape jam and apple sauce – she cut and cooked the apples, and I canned them, and Ed made a huge batch of apple chips.

We have tentatively started homeschooling again, I say tentatively because right now it’s mostly stuff the kids can do on their own, like history and geography, and some English. I cannot put much time into homeschooling yet with the field and CSA still going. Both Sena and Aiyana are very motivated to start up again, and they want to make sure that they’re at grade level with all the subjects. What more can I ask for than for them to be willing students? Now I just have to give them the best I can.

Every Friday this summer, we have been delivering vegetables to two accounts we have in the New London area: one is Fiddleheads Food Coop, and the other is Oyster Club, a very cool and trendy restaurant in Mystic, who serves locally grown food and seafood in a treehouse! Since we’re driving all the way to New London, we decided to make a full day out of it, and so after the deliveries are done, we head to the beach, or somewhere else fun. Mostly we’ve been going to Bluff Point, because Sena and Aiyana and I love it there. Bluff Point is great because the beach is about 2 miles from the parking lot, which means that most people do not walk to it; but Sena and Aiyana and I bring our bikes, and it takes 10 minutes to bike to the beach, and the ride is beautiful, and then, we pretty much have the beach to ourselves for the rest of the day. We spent some beautiful Fridays there this summer, swimming and playing in the water, and having so much fun. Ed and I take turns doing deliveries every other Friday, and he has been doing some fun stuff with the girls as well; last time for example, they went snorkeling in Rhode Island at a spot where Ed used to spear fish some years ago.

This is Bluff Point:

Peace