recent pictures from the farm

onions, just transplanted

 things are going well in the greenhouse

 beets, growing in the green house

 lettuces - we'll be selling some this week

ed, transporting tomato plants back and forth between our house and greenhouse. it has been too cold most nights to leave them in the greenhouse, so we bring them in the basement at night and back to the greenhouse during the day. we have to get them in the ground this week because they're getting too big to be in soil blocks - hopefully the weather will cooperate.

 heirloom tomatoes

 peas

 peas - they're not bothered by the cold

edible violas that we put in our salad mix. sena wanted me to put this picture in

there is a calm and peacefulness
that will hold you when you let go.

rest in the rhythms of nature
rest in what is true
rest in what is simple an quiet
rest in what is.

it's so beautiful out right now. the bright fresh green of spring is everywhere, the sky is blue and the sun is out. everything seems fresh and new and promising, which is the beauty of spring.

lots of stuff going on at the farm. got apple and asian pear trees in the ground this past week, as well as kale, broccoli, cabbage, onions and the regular plantings of carrots, beets, lettuces, greens, etc.
it was a pretty intense week, and i got sick right after onion planting, which is what seems to happen every year. i think it's because it's a stressful event, transplanting 6000 onions, and even though we have help, i still have to coordinate everything and make sure it all goes well. but everything did go well this year and the onions look happy where they are right now.

peace

a short article i wrote for a local newspaper (Mansfield Independent News)

Soil Health, Your Health

 

Farming can be a beneficial, beautiful, and spiritual way in which humans can cooperate with Nature in order to provide for some of our most basic needs. Farming allows us to feed ourselves, and find inner peace through connection and a gradual understanding of our place in Nature.

It is unfortunate that society has come to view farming as a war between humans and Nature. Misguided by this, toxic chemicals and poisons have been developed that greatly harm our soils, our environment, and our health, and have made us dependent on their continual use. However, there are ways of living and of growing food that focus on soil health rather than killing pests and disease.

The soil is an amazing, living universe—much more complex than our current understanding of it. Great attention to soil health produces crops that are naturally healthy and strong against pests and disease. But achieving and maintaining soil health is a long-term endeavor.

A cup of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth and it is these bacteria, fungi and other micro-organisms found within the soil that are the real farmers. When thriving, they form beneficial relationships with plants and help extract nutrients out of the soil; they help with soil structure and affect the amount of air and water in the soil—all of which are critical to plant health. 

Yet, every garden and field is different, and people who work the land must make an effort to understand their particular soil characteristics and needs.

A good place to start is with a yearly soil test, the results of which allow a gardener to address any organic matter deficiencies, and optimize mineral balance. Reduced tillage, cover cropping and mulching, are other important practices in soil health.

On our farm we apply well-thought-out amounts of good quality compost, fish and seaweed, that have many benefits including inoculating the soil with beneficial microbes, providing a source of food for soil micro-organisms, and boosting plants’ immunity to stress and disease.

Soil health is affected by many other factors which are not easily controlled such as acid rain, environmental pollution, and water quality. It is important to acknowledge that whether we grow food or not, we all have a direct and significant impact on our soils, through the types of waste we generate, the products we use on our lawns (pesticides, herbicides, etc.) and the types of products we purchase and how they are manufactured. 

Our health is intimately connected to the health of the land that feeds us, the quality of the water we drink, and the quality of the air we breathe. It is in our interest that these precious resources be clean and healthy.

If you garden or farm I wish you a happy, healthy, productive gardening season. And if you don’t, may you be nourished by healthy food grown in healthy ways.

more from Rachel Carson's "The sense of wonder"

"Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature, the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter."

some pics of us over the last few weeks

my seedlings and I in the greenhouse

 aiyana reading

sena and ed

aiyana in the greenhouse (she seeded some of the onions and broccoli you see in this picture)

from The Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson

"a child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. it is our misfortune that for must of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. if i had influence with a good fairy...i should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength."

our CSA is full for this year. that feels good.
the lettuces and beets have germinated in the greenhouse. phew, something is growing. the greenhouse is fully planted, and now i'm waiting for the soil outside to dry so i can start planting there.
if you're interested, here's a link to the March newsletter we sent to our CSA.

we got more snow last night and the ground is covered again. i am starting to feel anxious. i was planning to get peas in the ground weeks ago, but the soil has been either frozen or covered in snow or just too soppy to work. i guess my expectations were led astray by last year's spring, which was unusually warm. at this time last year, we were already harvesting!
i did manage to get beets and carrots, lettuces and spinach in the ground in the greenhouse, which is now up and going again. i'll seed some brassicas in there this week as well. also, the soil blocks (onions, broccoli, cabbage, parsley and other herbs) are doing fine in the greenhouse. hopefuly the ground will be ready when it comes time to transplant them outside.
our CSA is not starting till June, and we should have plenty of crops in the field ready to harvest by then, even with this late spring weather we've been having. one thing's for sure: when the weather warms up and the soil will be ready to work again, we're going to be really busy!

peace

gifts from the earth

snow-drops

 

 baby kale

enjoying the sweet smell of snow-drops

roxi's new baby

my sister gave birth yesterday to a little girl, named Lucy. everyone is doing well, and they are very happy.
congratulations to Roxi, Ricardo, Stella and Julia for their little one!

pictures are here.

peace and blessings to the new life that came into this world!

more walt whitman

The First Dandelion

simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,
as if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,
forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass - innocent, golden,
calm as the dawn,
the spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

spring is coming

there are many signs:
the snow-whites are poking their heads out of the ground
the chickens have been laying more eggs
the cats are quite excited and want to go out much more than a few weeks ago
sena and aiyana said that they feel something pulling at them to be outside
so, spring must be on its way.

peace

after finding our greenhouse damaged by high winds a few weeks ago, and watching the days go by when i should've been in there planting but wasn't, and feeling all kinds of anxiety about it, we finally got it all fixed again last friday and my onion blocks are in there now, nice and snug, and everything is ok. i really wasn't too late with the planting, but i didn't like not knowing when we'd be able to get the greenhouse back up and when i'd be able to get back in there. we had about $600 worth of damage, and some lessons learned.

so this week i'm finishing planting all the onions, and i'm also starting broccoli, cabbages, kale and parsley in soil blocks. very exciting to be back out there again. i guess the season has begun.
and our CSA is about 75% full, so that's going well.

here's something from Walt Whitman:

"hast never come to thee an hour,
a sudden gleam divine, precipitating,
bursting all these bubbles, fashions, wealth?
these eager business aims-books, politics, art, amours,
to utter nothingness?"

peace

winter, in shades of gray

snow blowing over our field

beautiful, ghostly trees border the edge of another field

picnic table after the storm

 sena and aiyana going out for morning chicken chores the day after the snow

winter, in color

ed took out the tractor to clear snow from our house and some of our neighbors' houses. look at that blue sky....

this morning, aiyana and her good buddy snowflake, were snuggling on the couch. that's pretty much as cozy as it gets, i think.

Aiyana's essay on what farmlife is like for her

My Cats and Chickens

My name is Aiyana.  I am 7 years old.  I live on a farm.  I am responsible for my chickens and cats.  I have four chickens and four cats.

In the winter the cats mostly sleep. They go out only at night time.  Since they don’t go out a lot, they grow fat.  We have four of them.  Their names are: Snowflake, Cookie, Midnight, and L.T.  The cat who is named L.T. is the mother of Snowflake and Cookie.  Snowflake is very loving.  Midnight is huge, but that is okay.  In the summer, they hunt voles and mice.  Sometimes they get chipmunks and birds.  We got them to hunt voles and mice.

We have four chickens. Their names are Cutiepie, Pegleg, Thankful, and Protector.  Protector is a rooster.  Pegleg’s name stands for her leg.  Pegleg has a leg that got turned over and it makes her so she cannot walk.  We don’t know, but we think that she was born like that, but, however, that’s okay.  There are some dangers for the chickens. The good thing is that we keep them in coops.  The dangers are: foxes, raccoons, hawks, and a lot of other stuff.  We move my chickens once a week.  In the winter we have to bring in the water at nighttime so that it does not freeze.  In the summer, we gather eggs from them.  Every day, in all seasons, my sister and I bring water to them and when their food runs out, we bring more food to them.

I saved my chickens because my Dad was going to butcher them.  Now I am responsible for taking care of them.  I really love my chickens and cats.

Aiyana Mocanu Wazer

February 7, 2013

Sena's essay on farm life

Sena, Aiyana and Ed are preparing for some talks they were invited to give for 2nd and 3rd graders from 3 different schools. The talks are next week, and the subject is farm life.
Coincidentally, we're working on essay writing as part of our home-schooling, so Sena wrote her essay on the topic of the presentation. Here it is (click on it to enlarge and it will be easier to read):

Aiyana's still working on her essay, which is very sweet. I'll post it when she's done.
Peace

sena, aiyana and i had a great time today. sena recorded some of it in these pics she took with her own camera (except for the ones of her, which i took; i also cropped a couple of hers):

they wanted to go to the cafe on sherbrooke where i first met larissa; after talking about it for a while, they were not disappointsd. we had croissants (chocolate for aiyana as you see) and coffee and a nice view of busy city streets

 i showed them some of the engineering buildings where i studied. this statue was nearby,

 for lunch we went to an indian restaurant and had more food than we could eat.

 sena loved the soup and naan

 she liked some of the decorations too

 and this is driving back home...

vermont is really beautiful. yesterday sena, aiayan and i had a great day driving from CT to Montreal. it was sunny and cold and the roads were not busy. i like VT because there are no billboards, and mostly because of the mountains. i am impressed and moved to be in the vicinity of mountains that are over 400 million years old, and which, even though they may not be impressive in size anymore, they're nevertheless impressive in age and what they've been through. i read that the Appalachians were once as high as the Rockies or Alps, and were formed at the time when Pangea, the supercontinent, was coming together. that is humbling, and i do feel awed and grateful to be in their presence.

through this long bout i've had with whooping cough over the past month, my mind kept returning over and over to the topic of midlife. i'm not sure what midlife is, but some of my friends are referring jokingly to their "midlife crisis". yesterday, on my drive up one thing became clear to me: that this age where i am right now has at least one great thing going for it - i am old enough to have some decent life experience, and young enough that if i want to make any changes and live my life differently i have time to do it (well, you never know about that of course, but i'm assuming...). so the question that has been coming back to me over the past weeks, is if and how do i want my life to be different? i'm having a hard time coming up with answers, because i am pretty content already. but some vague feelings do come up: i think i'd like to be more present with the children, less distracted. also, i know that i want to deepen my experience with and contact with the natural world. like the mountains i drove through yesterday. i've driven through them plenty of times before, and usually noticed them only superficially. either i have the radio on, or something else to distract me from the full experience. yesterday was different, but i know that i still have a ways to go before i experience them openly and fully. and it's like that with almost everything.

so about midlife, actually, when i think about the topic, i have a surge of hope and excitement, of unbounded possibility, and that feels really good. i feel more ready now to recognize what's important than i was earlier in my life, and thus i feel more able to take my life in a meaningful direction.all that being said, i have yet to articulate to myself any changes that i want to make, but i feel that if any, they will be more of a suddle, internal nature than external, and i expect that to take a long time.