my beautiful girls

i got my camera out just in time this morning, when sena and aiyana were hugging and listening to music. the sun was streaming in through the window, and it felt perfect. i want to keep all these precious moments locked inside me somehow...

peace

real helpers

aiyana helped me prep some beds this morning. we'll be transplanting cabbages this coming week. aiyana's a little worker, and she likes to help in the field. she's very pleasant to be with, and we can work together side by side just listening to the birds, without need for much talk. i really like that.

sena's been extra helpful lately too. she really likes to cook, and she's been making quite a few dishes for us. she does everything except for the stove part, which we do together, or i do by myself. her favorite dishes to make are crepes, corn bread, cheese biscuits, and apple fritters. she's got her recipes, which she copied from my books, and she follows them very well, and puts the whole thing together. last night she made the best cheese biscuits. all i had to do when i came in was put the tray in the oven, and they were ready 10 minutes later. sena's cooking is very helpful to me, and she loves to do it. besides, she's pracicing her reading, and her math, since she has to use all kinds of measurements. we had a little misunderstanding a while ago - she thought she was in charge of all cooking from now on, and when i told her that i still intended to cook, she was pretty disappointed. i told her she still has a few things to learn, but if it were up to her, she'd take it all on right now. i told her i'll give her my favorite recipes to study and then we can work on them together. so far, she prepped all the ingredients that go into butternut squash soup. when i came in, we cooked it on the stove together. now she's working on borcht.
one tricky part with this whole thing was the cleaning and everything else that goes with cooking. a few times, i walked into the kitchen and was about to start crying. there were onions all over the floor, and spices sprinkled all over the counter. i told her that this would not work, and that if she wanted to cook she had to take on the cleaning too. she did not like it, but she wants to cook so badly that she eventually agreed. so now the understanding is that she'll clean the counters, and sweep the floor after she's done, and she'll empty the dish rack, and i'll do all the dirty dishes when i come in (she does not like to wash dishes). so far this works pretty well.
it's really nice that the kids can be so helpful, and it's also unexpected (especially since they're still so young - aiyana is 5 and sena is 7). i never asked them to take these things on, but they really want to be helpful, and with the right guidance, they can be.
peace

if i weren't farming...

i'd be surfing, or climbing mountains, or biking around the world, or living in a gypsy wagon with my kids.
i'm glad i found farming.
peace

we're really busy once again, but this year, as opposed to last, it feels like we're more on top of things. we still have a long "to do" list, but it feels like we're able to cross things off just as new ones are added. the weather has been sunny and dry enough that we've been able to plant quite a few beds, maybe about 50 so far, and we're where we wanetd to be per our schedule. we did get a late start this season due to weather, but we've been able to catch up and we think we'll have crops ready for the beginning of the CSA in may, as planned. the hard thing about growing at this time of year is managing the hoop tunnels. they need to be covered at night and when it's cold, but when the sun comes out, they need to be vented, otherwise they overheat and the plants don't do well. so all of this means a lot of moving and lifting sandbags, which can take a lot out of you. also, on windy days it's harder, because the plastic covering the tunnels blows about wildly and is hard to manage, and being on top of a hill, we get lots of wind.
but, the upside with the tunnels is that we're able to grow crops at this time of year, without using any heating or any other power source other than the awsome sun. our greens are doing really well under there, so much so that we have an abundance and started selling them right at the farm. not as part of the CSA (which does not start until the third week of may), but as a stand alone thing. basically, we put out an email at the beginning of the week telling people we're going to be picking on a certain day, and they tell us what they want. we know what to pick, and they know that when they come we'll have it ready for them. we've been doing this the past two weeks and the response has been very good. we plan to keep doing it, every other weekend, when we're not doing the storrs farmers' market.
here's claytonia

 look how well it's doing under the covers! amazing, just a thin sheet of plastic, and sun!

 here's Ed, PhD (Professional hole Digger), putting in fence posts. we really would not be doing any of this without him. i'm the dreamer, he's the doer. i'm focused on overarching principles and ideas, he's on the practical. it's actually a pretty good combination.

 getting compost delivered.

 the rapt audience watching the delivery

tonight ed and i are invited to give a talk at eastern state university about farming and what drew us to it. i'm excited about it. i can talk about farming for a long time. i'm really in love with it, and don't really know where to start as far as explaining why. i guess the lifestyle is a big reason, being outside, being in touch, being independent - i thrive on these things. also, people's response to what we're doing is a big motivator for me to keep doing it. i'm a thinker and a dreamer, but i also like to make ideas materialize, and i guess farming makes all that comes together for me.

peace

chicks

we got 15 baby chicks yesterday, and are expecting 50 more today or tomorrow. the girls have been very excited. aiyana, especially has not left their side since they arrived. the chicks are currently in our livingroom, in a crate, under heat lamps. we have to maintain a temp of around 95F for the first week, and then lower it gradually until they're ready to be moved outside(by 5 weeks)

midnight, on the other hand, is not too excited about us getting the chicks. we told him that he couldn't eat them, so that's no fun, and then he had to give up his spot on the couch  since it's too risky having him in the house. he moved to the barn... i do miss him though. he's a great teacher of how to just be oneself with no apologies. he knows how to relax and seek comfort, and when he needs to spring into action he does it effortlessly.

peace

Henny Penny

Henny Penny, our oldest and smallest hen died this week of old age. we were really attached to her. she's been through a lot, but always came out tougher on the other side. one time some animal got her leg under the fence when we weren't around, and broke it. when we found her, her leg looked pretty bad, broken and a bloody mess. we brought her in the house and nursed her. it took weeks, but she recovered. at first she just hopped around the yard on her other good leg, but eventually she was able to use the broken one again too.
she was never a great mom, but she had a lot of personality, and even though she was half the size of all the other chickens, she was by far the wisest and most experienced. she also stayed very friendly with us after we helped her with her broken leg. we were all sad when she died...
here is Aiyana with Henny Penny a couple of weeks ago.

peace

in the gound

the soil got dry enough last week and we are able to plant in the ground. thursday and friday were gorgeous, sunny and warm, and working outside again felt blissful. made me feel very happy to be where i am, doing what i'm doing. but anyway, here are some pics showing what's going on in the field and the greenhouse:

lettuces, which we started in soil blocks in the greenhuse, germinated last week. normally we like to start lettuces directly in the ground, bc transplanting them (we have 3000 blocks) is painfuly time consuming. but this year with the snow and wet ground, we could not plant in the ground as early as we would have wanted to, so we decided to give them a jump and start them in soil blocks. 

 cabbages, coming up in the greenhouse (soil blocks also)

 look at the onions. they're cranking!

 more onions...

 2 beds of peas planted on friday. more to come this week, if the weather cooperates.

this is what most of our field looks like right now. we fixed up the hoop tunnels, removing the ripped plastic, and re-covering the beds. even with all the snow load the tunnels saw this winter, the spinach underneath was mostly fine. rodents did some damage though...it's so hard to control them. we're planning to get two more cats for rodent patrol. midnight, our beautiful, friendly cat, has been getting too comfortable on the couch over the winter, and he's been slacking on his rodent duties.

 this is what the spinach looks like under the hoop tunnels. we're pretty happy.

 and this is our garlic, which we planted last fall and had under hay all winter. it's coming up beautifully! very encouraging...

 peace

CSA news

our CSA filled up as of last week. can't believe it! it's only march....
we have 94 families, some with full shares, some with half shares, for a total of 80 shares. very exciting!
now we can just focus on growing the food.

Happy Spring, and Peace!

can't stop thinking about japan. i find the nuclear thing especially overwhelming and upsetting.

snowdrops

the world can be a crazy place, but there are always snowdrops. and spring is here!

the last picture is claytonia, growing in our greenhouse. people love it in our winter salad mix.
peace

we had a lot of rain in the past 2 days, and temperatures have been high enough that most of the snow is gone off our fields. the chickens are very excited to be on the grass again. we are happy too. last year, however, we were planting in the ground at this time. this year that won't be possible, with snow still being on the ground and everything being so wet. we will be delayed by a few weeks, but even so, things look much better now than they did a couple of days ago when everything was still under 2ft of snow. so we are hopeful that the ground will be dry enough to work and plant by the end of the month.

most exciting though, was welcoming the first few snowdrops in our yard yesterday. i always look for the snowdrops at this time of year, and i had been looking all last week, but all i saw was snow. finally, i went to check yesterday, and there they were, poking their beautiful white heads out of the melting snow. is there anything more hopeful than snowdrops on a gray, rainy, slushy kind of day? we were all very excited to see them.

peace

knitting

i've been knitting a bit this winter. we have a spinner at the market, and she sells beautiful wool from her own sheep, which she dies and spins by hand. we've been trading vegetables for wool. she gave me some nice brown wool, and i made myself a cardigan which i love to wear, and i also made sena a whale dress, which you can see in this picture. she is really excited about it.

i really like to knit at night by the fire. i find it very relaxing and meditative. i like how repetitive and simple it is and how it allows me to focus, to bring my wondering mind back to the present moment over and over again, with every stitch.

 aiyana wanted a picture by herself. she came up with this pose, which really made me laugh.

peace

saturday's market

we had a market on saturday, and managed to bring 22 bags of greens picked in the greenhouse (spinach and some salad mix). they sold out by 3:05 (the market officially opens at 3). people really want fresh greens at this time of year. i felt bad that for the rest of the market we had nothing on the table except for turnips. i kept appologizing to people for not having more...
soon enough though, there will be plenty of fresh vegetables again. although with all the snow that's still on the ground, we will be delayed somewhat in planting. our plan was to start planting in the ground next week, but that won't happen. we have to wait until the snow melts, and then another few weeks for the ground to be dry enough to work. working the soil when it is too wet is really bad practice. it ruins the soil organic matter. so we'll have to wait, but i hope not too long.
peace

four onions germinated so far. it's been 1 month since we planted them, and they take a long time at this time of year. i've been checking on them every day for the past week. hopefully with some sun and warmer weather this coming week more of them will poke out of the soil....

a day away

sena and i spent a really nice day in new haven last week. we went to the yale university peabody museum, to a nice cafe for lunch, back to the museum in the afternoon, then a nice vegetarian restaurant for dinner, and we ended with an unplanned, but very exciting visit to a planetarium. sena loved the peabody, especially their dinasaur and mamal evolution exhibits. we both liked the geology exhibit a lot. there was an entomology exhibit as well, and we tried to identify insects that we see around our farm and find out more info about them. there was another exhibit i really liked, on black holes, but sena was not too interested in that. there were some school kids running around that one, and sena wanted to get out of there. there was a big difference between sena and the school kids that were visiting the museum. some of them really didn't want to be there, you could tell, and only came because their class did. so they made a lot of noise and were pretty disruptive. sena really wanted to read and look at the exhibits, so we ended up just trying to go to the parts they weren't at first. after they left, it was more peaceful and we could go wherever we wanted.

by the end of the day sena was pretty tired, but i convinced her to come to the planetarium anyway. it was well worth it. we saw the night sky and had an astronomer point out different planets and other things of interest. we also saw a short movie on the search for water in the universe. i always feel awe when our lives are put in perspective this way. i am always blown away about how amazing the universe is. also, whenever i see a picture fo the earth taken from space, i instantly want to cry. it just seems so beautiful, and i feel so protective of it.

it was a really nice day, and i felt very inspired at the end of it. i think sena learned a lot, and most of all, we both had a great time hanging out together.

peace

greenhouse news

2400 onion soil blocks done.
200 cabbage soil blocks done.
all waiting to germinate in the greenhouse.
the season has started!

my 39th birthday

i turned 39 last thursday. i was planning to spend at least part of the day in the greenhouse, but when i woke up in the morning, i felt very mellow and didn't really want to get out. so i sat by the fire and knitted, listened to music, and relaxed in the sun looking over the snow-covered field. i hung out with my sister and the girls when she came over to bring food. i enjoyed the silence when ed took the sena and aiyana out. i made pizza from scratch and ed and i ate it all when he got back.
it was a good day.

peace

Callahan

just finished reading a fascinating book: "Exploring the electromagnetic spectrum", by Philip Callahan.
wow! i've been waiting for something like this for a long time. i'd say that the quote that best sums up the book and callahan's central theme is "everything is connected to evertyhing else, especially by the electromagnetic spectrum".

callahan says that form and frequency go together, which means that different life forms sense and emit different frequencies as a means of communication with their environment. that includes us. most of us are only aware of a small slice of the spectrum, in the visible and audio ranges. that's what we're tuned to, but there is so much more out there, which other forms of life can perceive (like dolphins with echolocation, and moths who are able to perceive ultraviolet radiation).

callahan's work covers many areas, but it always comes back to electromagnetic radiation as the form of communication between all things. one idea i find fascinating is that insect antennae are tuned to infrared radiation emitted from specific plants which the insects like to eat. related to this is that healthy plants will not attract insects and will not experience as much damage (just like healthy humans are less likely to become sick). i really want to learn more about this.

i just ordered another book by him called "Tuning into nature", which i can't wait to read.
check out his work!
peace

indoor pics

taken over the past month or so:
sena, celebrating her 7th birthday with good friends and new books

 sena and aiyana (their moods seem a little dissonant in this one...)

aiyana practicing guitar. she's making lots of progress, and can play two songs quite well now (twinkle twinkle little star, and the little monkey song). it's amazing to see how fast those little fingers can move, and how coordinated they can be.

peace

more frozen sparly landscape

the ice has melted now, but i took these last thursday when i was shoveling the greenhouse (which you can see on the far right)

our hoop tunnels are somewhere under that snow...

 peace

snow, rain, ice, sparkles

we had lots of snow here over the past week. the greenhouse was starting to rip under the snow load. ed's back was hurting from bringing in lots of fire wood, so he couldn't shovel.
our greenhouse is 100ft long by 20 ft wide. shoveling it seemed daunting. but once i started i found that it really wasn't too bad. it took me two and a half days to do it, but i actually enjoyed myself. it felt nice to be out again, working, surrounded by white snow and blue sky. i finished just in time, because it started snowing again, and then it rained, and then everything froze solid. i don't think the greenhouse could've taken that.
the kids have been loving the snow, of course. it's so freeing to see them and their response to these gifts we are given everyday.
aiyana could barely walk through the snow at first...

sena resting after some serious sledding

aiyana

my sweet aiyana

 just to give you an idea of how much snow we got (we actually got more since these pictures)

some serious fun, even the frozen rain

our frozen clothes line

this morning, when i woke up, the sun was out and everything looked magical, all sparkly and white. i felt so uplifted, i went out in my pajamas to take some pictures. driving the kids to class, all we said was "wow", look at this, and look at that, the entire way.
these pictures do it no justice...

 peace

we had a farmer's market on saturday. we didn't bring much - about 20 bags of spinach i picked in the greenhouse (once i managed to get the door open with all the snow...), some beets, and turnips from our root cellar. money-wise, it's not really worth going to the market at this time of year. we're not making much, certainly not enough to compensate for the hard work required to grow in the winter. but people are so happy to have fresh greens right now, you can see it on their faces, so that makes it worth going. i feel really good about the relationships we developed with our customers. we know many of them well now, and it's always a fun interaction. i feel that we care about them, and i really do feel that they care about us and our well-being. i also feel how much they appreciate our work. so all that makes it worth going to the market even at this time of year.

on sunday, sena went to coventry market with her whale booth. ed went with her, and said that all went well. she handed out about 15 pamphlets. people wanted to give her money, which is what usually happens, but she told them that it would be more helpful if they took her pamphlet instead, read it and try to do some of the things it talks about. i think that people mean well by trying to give money, but really, that's an easy way out. you can give a couple of dollars and think you've done something for the whales, without really changing anything about the way you live, without really thinking about it too much. sena never intended to collect donations, but when people started giving, she eventually accepted and sent the money to CSI (Cetacean Society International). but overall, she feels that it's better to just have people speak to her and take the pamphlets, and basically think about the issues, and do something. so she's been discouraging donations quite strongly. she was happy with yesterday's event, but i think she wished more people talked to her. she was pretty tired when she got home - i think she puts out a lot of energy when she does this. i have to keep reminding myself that she's 7. she's so mature, and so serious. she's so dedicated to the whales, it's really moving to see how connected she feels to them. she actually feels connected to all living things. sometimes that can be difficult - for example, this fall, ed had to cut down 2 trees that were casting large shadows over our field. we have a lot of trees on our land, but even so, sena was really upset about it, and we had to talk to her for a long time before she halfheartedly agreed. one day, last year, ed's dad was cutting down some bittersweet vines that were choking some of our trees. by mistake, when he pulled on a vine, a huge branch broke off this large maple, and came crashing down. sena was watching fom a distance, and when she saw that, she just started wailing. it was really powerful, she was wailing and wailing, and there was nothing i could do or say to help her. she was just so upset. she said that the tree does not want to be cut down, just like we don't want to be killed. how do you argue with that?

peace

sena in coventry

sena will be setting up her whale booth at coventry market this sunday. she's very excited to be there, and she put together a short description of her booth that will go out to the market distribution list. it kind of breaks my heart. she really means what she says. here it is:

Sena’s Whale Booth

My name is Sena.   I love whales. I will have a whale booth.   I am seven.

I am trying to help the whales.  Can you help the whales too?  There will be pamphlets about whales at my booth.  The pamphlet will have stuff that you can do to help whales. And for more info you can go to my website www.senawhales.org.

she also updated the drawing and handwritten text on her pamphlet.

 peace

see what you look at

the icicles hanging off the roofs of houses are so beautiful today. there really is so much beauty all around, if only we could see what we're looking at.

"seeing what you're looking at" seemed like a trivial concept when i first heard of it (i think it comes from Carey Reams), but the more i think about it, and the more i experiment with it, the more i understand the difference between looking and really seeing. it doesn't seem so trivial anymore.

enjoying snow

nothing like fresh snow to get the kids all excited

 i really like our house. especially knowing that ed and jonny built it. it's very simple and comfortable, just enough for what we need.

 i can never take enough pictures of the field

peace

2011 CSA info is out

we finished putting together the info for our 2011 CSA, and emailed it out to the people on our waiting list; we also updated our website www.shundahaifarm.com with the latest on the CSA.

it's only been two days since we put out this info, and the response has been excellent. people are signing up and seem very excited about the upcoming season.

we've been getting some really sweet notes and emails from our existing customers, telling us how much they appreciate what we're doing and thanking us for it. thanking us not only for the food we're growing, but also for the way we are living and for having a positive impact on our community and environment. this is so rewarding! i really feel humbled by the way people have responded to us, and the way they encourage and support what we're doing. a big reason why i chose to farm is because i need to feel connected to something real, Nature, the Earth, and because i want to share and encourage that connection in other people. i feel that this is happening, and am very excited about it.
peace