the storm

The storm wasn’t too bad here. We lost power for a day, but we were well prepared for it. We hardly missed it. We had the woodstove for cooking, and if need be, Ed was prepared to hook up the tractor to the water pump to pump water out of the well. But we didn’t have to do that, because we had saved enough water to drink, do dishes, flush the toilet, and other basic necessities.

Ed cut down a few poplar trees just before the storm hit. They were right near the big greenhouse, and the winds were blowing out of northeast, so if they fell, they would’ve damaged the greenhouse a lot. Ed said that poplar is not strong, and one of the trees was already dead. Still, I was a little sad to see them go. They stood like sentinels along the driveway.

Our little greenhouse suffered a bit of damage. The plastic that covers it was ripped, so we can’t use it anymore, but that’s not too bad.

We didn’t get much rain here, just under 1 inch, but the winds were very strong, probably the strongest we’ve ever experienced. I went just outside the door in a sheltered place after we lost power, when the storm was really raging, and watched for a while. It was quite awesome, witnessing all that power unleashed. I didn’t feel scared, just awed. Nature is amazing. We humans have done a lot of stupid things that are coming back to hurt us now in the form of natural disasters and other things, and, sadly, will continue to hurt our children and their children through no fault of their own. We have misused the gifts of Nature and as far as I can see still are, through blindness and greed and laziness. But, with or without us, Nature will always continue, it will regenerate in one shape or another, and in some way, I find that comforting.

we got the garlic in the ground this week. our garlic has been getting better each year. we save our own seed, and only plant the best and biggest cloves. soil health helps too, of course.
speaking of soil, we have lots of area in cover crop right now, which feels really good. we have a winter rye/clover/vetch/pea mix, which overwinters nicely here in CT, and keeps the soil covered all winter long. we incorporate it in the spring, about 3-4 weeks before planting a cash crop, and it adds organic matter to the soil, as well as stimulate microbial activity which is so important to soil health.

last week of CSA is this coming week, and i hear that we're getting a storm too, so we'll see what that's all about.

sena was invited to help tan some deer skins this past week. our friends who also farm got 4 deer in their field over the last two weeks. they had been getting crop damage for over two months. they kept the meat and wanted to try tanning some of the skins, and sena was invited to help along.

peace

sunday afternoon at mansfield hollow

a beautiful place, 10 minutes from our house

peace

geese

when geese fly overhead on a clear fall morning,
i stop, acknowledge and give thanks
i try to hold on to this beautful moment
which, always, has to pass.

my beautiful girls

working on the sheepskin we tanned a few weeks ago

sena with a huge sunflower we grew in our beneficial flower garden. she was working on taking the seeds out and roasting them.

 yesterday, waiting for cousin Jake's birthday party

sena spends hours reading every day 

 to herself, and to aiyana

aiyana

peace

a day in old lyme

sena, aiyana and i had a beautiful day last wednesday. we left early for old lyme (one hour away from our house) and went to the florence griswald museum, for a special fairy exhibit. there were many kinds of fairy houses, all outdoors in beautiful surroundings, and it was a great day to visit them. the sun, crisp air, blue sky and brilliant fall colors added to their magic and beauty. many of them were made of natural materials, such as driftwood, seashells, sea grass, twigs and moss, and so on. sena and aiyana were besides themselves with excitement. for lunch we splurged at the local cafe on the veranda, with a view of the woods and marsh that inspired many of the artists that came and went at the florence griswald house over the years. the view was worth the price, and the food was pretty good for restaurant fare.

after the museum we headed to the ocean. the beach was absolutely deserted, except for us. sena and aiyana played in the sand and in the water, and i just sat and looked at the ocean. i can do that for a long long time, same as with fire. they just draw me to them, and i just want to sit and stare into their mystery.

when we got back home, there was a rainbow in the sky. these days are a real treat.

here are some pics i took of the different fairy houses and surrounding area

my lunch

peace

we had our first frost last night. the temp went pretty low, down to 27F or lower i think. we spent yesterday covering lettuces and other greens in the field. we harvested all the peppers out of the field, but not the ones in the greenhouse. we were hoping that the greenhouse would offer enough protection against the frost, but it got too cold and everything in there was frozen this morning. so the tomatoes and peppers we had in there are done. i'm a little sad about that, but mostly i am happy. this feels right for this time of the year, and i'm glad that we can now give the soil in the greenhouse a break over the winter, and just focus on taking care of it instead of producing anything. we plan to have the greenhouse open from now until february and let it freeze solid in there. that should help eliminate any disease or insects that may be trying to establish in there.

our house, back porch and root cellar are filled with storage crops such as onions, garlic, beets, squashes, sweet potatoes, beans, corn, etc. it's a nice feeling to see your work at the end of the season manifested in such a physically obvious form.

ed butchered another hen this morning, and i got it going in the crockpot right now. it will be ready tonight and aiyana and i will be enjoying chicken soup for the next few days.

the sheep skin i tanned turned out great. the kids have been sitting and laying on it in front of the fire at night. they love it, and i must say, it is really cozy, and it also lost its strong smell. it still smells a little sheepish, but it's a nice smell, which reminds me of little villages in romania.

i borrowed a few poetry books by wendell berry from the library. he loves the land just like i do, and expresses it beautifully.

tonight aiyana and i are going to a sweat lodge. i'm very much looking forward to it, and i am now preparing some butternut squash soup to share afterwards.

enjoy these beautiful days.
peace

aiyana's birthday party went well. she had a lot of fun and seemed to genuinely enjoy herself, which made up for the stress i mentioned in my previous post. also, the post party clean-up was a lot easier than the pre-party preparations, since my mom did most of it, which i am grateful for.

things are really winding down in the field. we only have 3 weeks of CSA left, which as always, i have mixed emotions about. i welcome the change of pace in the winter, but at the same time, i need to be outside in the field, and there will be less of that.

we've already pulled a lot of crops out of the ground, although quite a few remain. we still have tomatoes in the greenhouse, which we now keep closed to keep the temperature up. i'm really surprised that we still have tomatoes at this time of year, and they still taste great. i made a delicious tomato garlic salad today for lunch, a treat for mid-october. we still have lots of greens in the field, plus root vegetables, and we're just about finished digging up the sweet potatoes, which did great this year.

this season, we really made a special effort to get cover crops in the ground as early as possible, so as to give them enough time to grow before the winter, and have nice ground coverage until the spring. i love doing cover crops because they're one way to care for the soil.

we've kept a fire going in the woodstove over the past few days, not for us, but because we want to make sure that the storage crops, such as dry corn and beans are really dry. but i am enjoying the smell of burning wood as i walk outside into the crisp air, and the coziness that the fire brings to the house. i do welcome this colder season.

peace

it's very windy and very beautiful right now. we've had a lot of gray, damp, rainy days, which were nice in their own right, but now the sun is out and the wind seems to be announcing a change.

it was aiyana's birthday yesterday, and today is her birthday party. i must admit i'm not a party fan. i feel that instead of focusing on aiyana, i'm focused on party preparations and the frustrations that go with, and i end up spending less time than usual with aiyana, and likely yelling at her more. i want to say it's worth doing this for her, and i guess it is, because i will be happy to see her happy wth her friends, but as far as us being togehter in a meaningful way, i guess we'll have to do that another time. and i guess i should stop thinking about myself, since this is her birthday after all. hmm...makes me feel kind of selfish.

aiyana turned 7. the old "where did the time go" is very appropriate here? sena said the other day that "months and years are short, but days and hours are long". so true.
so, Happy Birthday to my little sweat lodge partner, and my beautiful eternal blossom.

One thing I don’t like about farming on a small scale like we do is the financial insecurity. I don’t really like to talk about it, but I feel that it’s important to. There’s a lot of publicity given to small farmers these days in the mainstream media, but nowhere did I see any discussion about this crucial aspect of farm sustainability (well, maybe except from people like Wendell Berry, but he's not exactly mainstream).

It bothers me a lot that we work as hard as we do, doing something that is so important and good for our community and society (not only providing healthy food, but also, more importantly, taking good care of the land and other resources in the process), and yet, despite being as successful as we are, we have to feel chronically insecure about the money situation. I said that we are successful, because we have a thriving CSA and in general excellent customer feedback, as well as a yearly waiting list. We have more than enough demand for the product of our labor, our crops do very well, our vegetables look and taste great, we take good care of our soil, and so on. By those measures, we are successful.

The financial insecurity I’m talking about is not just our experience. All other small farmers I know of either have to have off-farm income, or, they barely make it through the winter, scraping pennies together until next season starts again

Most people try to help us by suggesting we sell to more venues. The problem is not that we don’t sell enough, but that on a per hour basis, we get paid peanuts for what we produce.

This is not right. Ed’s always talking about the need to increase prices to a level that would reflect the true cost of production of the food we sell. But if we did that, I’m afraid that we’d lose most of our customers. Because whether we realize it or not, we, in this society, want cheap food - that’s what we’ve bee taught to expect. Supermarket food seems cheap enough (and that is one benchmark we, small farmers, are held against, whether consciously or not), that is until you count the cost of pharmaceuticals needed to mitigate our cheap-food-related illnesses, and the costs we all pay for the damage cheap food production causes to our soils, water, air, and the environment. If you count all that, cheap food would reveal its very expensive cost.

I try not to dwell on the financial thing too much, although it’s hard not to; I focus on why I love to farm and that keeps me going.  Also, I am encouraged by the fact that our farm is doing better each year, and is becoming more sustainable in many aspects. Although, if we looked at what Ed and I get paid per hour for all the work we put into producing the food we sell, it’s quite discouraging. Last year it was about $6 per hour, and this year it probably won’t be much better. As far as I know that’s normal for farmers like us. A few years ago, when we worked for Pratt and Whitney as engineers, we got paid more like $40 per hour; we didn’t work nearly as hard, and our contribution to the well being of society was questionable. I don’t need to be paid $40 an hour. But fair compensation would be nice.

One day when I was out in the field, I had a thought that made things clearer. I reaffirmed to myself that I’m not farming to make money, but I also realized that I do need to make enough money to be able to keep farming (unfortunately we too need to pay taxes, car insurance, etc....). I’m farming because I love to take care of the land, and because, like Sena said, “we want to teach people about the earth so they can help the earth”. I think that these are good reasons, and hopefully all else just falls into place.

inspiring and authentic

check out this blog:
it's Amy, a woman my sister and i know - very inspiring.

woke up on Thursday morning from a deep dream, with peter gabriel's opening lyrics to "secret world" playing in my head:

"I stood in this sunsheltered place
'Til I could see the face behind the face"

went out to the field to harvest for the CSA, and it was a beautiful morning, and it felt exhilerating, all the while, the lyrics playing in my head. it's been like that on and off since then. i realized that that's what i'm doing, looking for the face behind the face. i don't know what the meaning of these lines is for peter gabriel, but for me, looking for the face behind the face is about the search and slow unveiling of that undefined, but powerful love that keeps me going and that i sometimes get glimpses of.

years ago, one of my sister's friends, also my friend, said in a discussion about work that he hated physical labor, and i agreed. today, it occurred to me that my body is the only gift i have to offer. i feel that i am given so much, and the only thing that is truly mine and that i can honestly claim to give is the labor, effort and love of my body.  so i've come to see physical labor in a different way, not as something demeaning or as some kind of drudgery, but as one way, one form of offering gratitude.

speaking of physical labor, i've been spending lots of time and effort this week tanning a sheep skin. some friends dropped off 6 sheep skins at our house on the weekend, because they had a feeling i may be interested in them. they raise sheep for meat and butcher them once a year. if i didn't want the pelts, they'd be thrown out. i accepted them, and decided to try tanning one of them myself, using the brains, which they also dropped off. i've been reading about brain tanning, and had some experience with the rabbit skin. as for the other 5 pelts, i gave one away to another friend, and salted the remaning 4. i plan to send them off to be professionally tanned at the end of the week.

the kids have been excited about this, and felt inspired to resume work on the rabbit skin they started weeks ago. they worked it for 2 days, and it came out really nice, fluffy and soft. they're very proud of it, and take it everywhere they go. their girl-friends are mostly disgusted or scared of it. they are not afraid or disgusted by the meat on their plates, or the leather in their garments. that's what i'm talking about. anyway, sena doesn't care, she's proud of it and continues to bring it to gymnastics, etc.

the sheep skin is on a different scale than the rabbit. it's a lot bigger and a lot more work. i got to it as soon as my friends dropped it off on saturday. i scraped off any pieces of meat or fat clinging to the skin (there wasn't much, the butcher had done most of this). then i washed it, and got all the dirt out of the fleece. i hung it outside overnight, and on sunday the girls and i started scraping it with rocks, and then rubbing the brains into the skin. the brains are supposed to make it soft and pliable, and they do. but you have to work them in really well, and keep scraping all the while. yesterday and today we did more scraping and working in brains. the last step will be to dry the skin through friction, which means rubbing it against something hard, like a big stone or a wire or a piece of wood, until it dries. this was the hardest part with the rabbit skin, and i expect it to be harder with the sheep. although, i am pretty encouraged by how supple the sheep skin is already just from working in the brains. the girls want to use it as a rug to sit on in front of the fire in the winter. but ed told me today that he's not snuggling down with "that thing". i guess he's not impressed.

two pictures of aiyana with the rabbit skin and her latest missing tooth.

peace

fall equinox today. a beautiful time of the year. when everything starts drawing inwards, preparing for winter sleep, and renewal.
we've just had the most beautiful fall days, crisp and sunny, warm during the day, cold in the morning and at night. the leaves on trees have started to turn, and sometimes, when the wind blows they come down in a golden shower that looks magical. i love this time, it makes me burst with joy to be a part of it.

Last night I put the kids to bed and I just lay in my own bed crying.  Sena and I had been reading a story about the history of the Lenape Native Americans, Quakers and English in Pennsylvania in the 1700’s. It was heartbreaking. For me, history is often heartbreaking, and I have a hard time teaching it to the kids. I just don’t know how to teach in a detached manner. History seems full of people mistreating other people, lying and deception, killing and betrayal. It’s all about power, and more often than not it is written by those who won. So it’s hard for me to just discuss it with the kids nonchalantly. Especially since they are smart and sensitive, and they innocently ask why things happened the way they did, and I never have a good answer for that, except for lack of integrity, greed, lust for power, etc. And I don’t really want to get into that too deeply with them. So it’s really hard, and I find myself very disturbed by such events as the European colonization of this continent, and many others. It feels like all I can do is cry about it in the privacy of my own room.

I feel the same way about the disrespectful attitude most of us have shown and continue to show towards the Earth and all its creatures and resources. It just makes me so sad and hopeless, how we disrespect the many gifts the Earth gives us, in this consumer society, and now it seems in all societies. “We are attached to the Earth by a thousand strings”, but we rarely acknowledge that or act accordingly.

So without getting into blaming and name calling, which is tempting, I feel that all I can do is to “stand in the light” (a beautiful Quaker concept which means acting from a place of personal integrity, oneness and compassion). Which is very hard for me, but worth striving for. And maybe  I can teach the kids to do the same.

Peace

I used to not be able to get up early in the morning. Ed used to make fun of me that I never saw a sunrise in my life. He was pretty close. If I did see one, it wasn’t by choice. The only way I used to be able to get up at say, 6:30am, was with an alarm clock and that was just awful. I felt so bad, it almost made me throw up. On the other hand, staying up late never was a problem for me, and I always felt more energetic late at night.

I thought that this is pretty much who I was and never expected things to change. But they actually did. Between farming and having discovered a really good multivitamin that I take every day (called Perfect Energy by New Chapter Organics), my body established a new pattern. I’ve been waking up naturally around sunrise, and I love it. I love going outside with a cup of coffee, sitting still and waiting for the sun to come up. It’s beautiful and magical when it does. Everything is transformed. At the other end of the day, witnessing the sun going down is also beautiful, and there’s something that feels right and complete about witnessing both in one day.

I think that a few things contributed to this biological change: being outside all day long, I think set my body more in line with natural rhythms (I also noticed for example that I’m less cold in the winter and less hot in the summer, and my body’s better able to deal with the temperature throughout the year); also, I’ve been naturally drawing away from artificial lighting. I use it when I have to, at night before going to bed, but only the minimum necessary, and if I had my choice I’d try not using it at all. I feel that artificial light messes up our biological rhythm, and I just don’t like the feel of it, especially very bright light. But I know I’m starting to sound a little out there with this one.

Someone once told me that the things that made her happy had nothing to do with money. I often think about that, and it helps to remember it when I get stressed about how risky farming can be in some ways. This simple but powerful witnessing of the sun rise has nothing to do with money, just with being present enough to enjoy it. And there are so many other things like that.

took this in front of our house last Thursday morning, before starting to harvest for the CSA