Farm Name, Take 2.

Short story: There's already a farm called Speedwell Farm in Vermont.

Therefore, I wish to introduce you all to Ten Speed Farm. She's still as handsome as ever.

Thanks to everyone who suggested names for both rounds of Name That Farm.

In other news, people love to ask me "how's the farm?" right now. And to be honest, I kind-of want to bite them for asking. As the very least, I usually say something like "Um, have you looked outside lately? There's quite a lot of snow and cold out there. The ground is, um, frozen." Which isn't a very nice way to answer people who are just curious and want to ask me about my giant, new project.

I feel a little bit like Grover in The Monster At The End of This Book. You know what I'm talking about. The part where he gets very frustrated with you, dear reader, and says "You do not know what you are doing to me!" Yes, that's it.

So, you want to know what a newly self-employed farmer does in early March?

I calculate theoretical bed feet needed for each succession of each crop.
Then, I make maps of what a nice crop rotation might look like.

I read about cover crops.

I wait for my seeds to arrive.

I cook all of last year's food. Frozen green beans, pesto, blueberries, strawberries. Delicata and butternut squash from the basement. Canned tomato juice, tomato sauce, and whole tomatoes. Oven-roasted tomatoes from the freezer. Canned peaches and dilly beans. Parsnips from the garbage pail full of sand.

I research hoophouse manufacturers and try to decide how large of a house I can afford to build.

I make lists of equipment I must buy/find/borrow/make.

I teach myself how to use Quickbooks.

I add more and more items to the list entitled: "Do This As Soon As The Weather Warms."
I try not to get stressed out by the length of this list.

I pore over my farm notebooks from past seasons, hoping that I was wise enough to write down all of the important things I need to know now. When I can't find the answers, I call Queen Tomato.

You get the idea.

Onward.

Announcing: Speedwell Farm!

I'm pleased to report that I did my first Winter Farmers Market as Speedwell Farm last weekend. I never thought that my first farmers market on my own would begin with digging my car out from under a foot of snow, but there you go. It had snowed all Friday night, and continued to snow all day Saturday, so the market was smaller than it might have been, but I was glad to be there, signing people up for my email list.

For those of you who don't know how I run my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), it's actually not a true CSA. I send out an email every Monday morning with a list of what I'm harvesting for the week. People then email me back with their orders. On Wednesday, I harvest everything that's been ordered and pack it up. People come to the farm anytime after 3pm, put their money in the coffee can, and take home their bag of veggies.

So, the only way to gain customers is to sign people up for my email list. This was the main reason for vending at the farmers market, but I did sell some veggies, too. Potatoes, butternut squash, delicata squash, red & yellow onions, and parsnips.

In the dictionary, under "Handsome."

Hutterite ~ Vermont Cranberry ~ Cannellini

If it made economic sense to grow dry beans on a small scale, I'd do it. Unfortunately, the only way to harvest and clean more beans than this picture shows is to either have a lot of help, or buy a small combine. In case you're curious, these beans were grown in about 75 bed feet, with three plants diagonally across the bed. It isn't a lot of space for this much tasty food, but it's hard work to clean even this many plants. I may not have the space, time, or energy to grow so many beans next season, but I hope I can justify a few.

Naming, Part II. (or, I Suck At Being A Mechanic.)

So, I have a new-old rototiller. It is awesome, red, and was made sometime around 1990, I think. It weighs about 450 lbs., and is in pretty good shape for a machine that's almost 20 years old.

It does not have a name, yet. But neither does my farm. That is a bigger problem, but it is not the biggest one right now.

My family has a long history of naming cars, and I think I should be allowed to bestow a proper name upon this large piece of cast-iron machine, even though it is not a car or an animal.

When I was a kid, my uncle had an early-1970s Toyota Land Cruiser named Clint. Postcard featuring Clint Eastwood was taped to the dashboard. We used to drive Clint on daylong fishing expeditions. All the way out to very end of the beach. Mind the Dangerous Riptide if you go in the ocean.

My father now drives a slate-grey Mini named Victor Nigel Winston. How very British.

I used to own a white 1991 Honda Civic Hatchback named Burien. (say: "Be-yur-ee-en.") Which is a city near Seattle. Don't go there if you can help it.

At the top of my to-do list right now is this: Plant Garlic. Which is something I cannot do without the help of my new tiller. Oh, and did I mention that I had to take apart my tiller a little bit in order to fit it inside my car, Maude, to get it home from New Hampshire. In the process of dismantling the handlebars and one of the gearshift levers, I misplaced a very important spring. Now, it's time to plant garlic, and I can't drive my rototiller without the lever that makes it go from Forward to Neutral to Reverse. And I suck at being a mechanic. I went to the hardware store to try to find a suitable replacement for said spring, and neither of the springs I bought were quite right. Time to try again, but meanwhile the ground is getting colder and days are getting shorter. And oh, there's an inch of snow in the forecast tonight. Ack.

I know that October snow never sticks around, but it's making very nervous to not have that garlic in the ground.

Advice, given & taken

This is not a poetic post. I'm rich with lists right now, so this post is more like a list, to go along with all of the others. Tools and supplies to buy. What to grow next year. Projects that still need done in order to put the farm to sleep for winter. Restaurants to contact. Friends who have offered to help me build my hoophouse. And there you go--I have so many lists that I can make a list of lists. I hope this doesn't get out of control during the winter.

Anyhow, here goes. A list of some very very good advice I was given recently:

*It is easier to apologize to chefs than it is to watch your produce rot in the field, unsold and uneaten. Sign up more restaurants than you think you can serve. Start practicing your apologies now: "I'm very sorry, I don't have a full case of redleaf lettuce for you this week."

*Don't buy a pickup truck if you can avoid it at all. You can get compost delivered.

*Do buy the biggest hoop house you can afford. More hoop house space means more space for starts; more tomato production.

*Honda engines are better than Briggs & Stratton engines, but Troy-Bilt makes good rototillers, and if you've found one on craigslist for $500 and the pictures look good, buy it. Even if you have to drive to southern Maine to pick it up.

*Borrow a bike trailer for the first month. That way, you can decide whether or not you like the bike-delivery idea. If all goes well, buy your own trailer.

*One of the best parts of Midweek Pickup is that people come to the farm. Delivering to town changes the whole idea and might not actually be better for you and your customers.

*When you go talk to chefs, bring them your most beautiful vegetables as gifts. There's more where this comes from.

Some Secrets

Over an early breakfast with two farmer-friends, I found myself uttering the words:

"Want to hear a crazy plan?"

To which my friends replied, "Yes, and then I'm sure we can top whatever plan you have with our Even Crazier Plan."

So I told them my Very Secret Plan, which depends upon so much at this point that it would be foolish to get specific in a World-Wide-Web sort of way. But I will say this: calf muscles, cover crops, and calculations. Oh, and Cannellinis.

I've stopped hunting for a pickup truck.
I would take a cheap rototiller at this point, but I've got cleaner, simpler tools in mind.

(Yes, my friends have an Even Crazier Plan, and I hope it works for them. If it does, you'll all know about it in time. I promise. It's that good, and that big.)

Planning Ahead

I call over to Dairy Man's house this morning and actually get him on the phone. Huh. We almost never talk on the phone; usually we leave messages back and forth, or he writes me notes and sticks them in my red wheelbarrow, which I keep in his barn.

Sometimes we communicate by happenstance; he drives up to the farm while I'm working. If I stop what I'm doing and move towards the fence, he'll lower the throttle and take the tractor out of gear while we talk about the weather. He doesn't cut the engine entirely, and I understand completely. With old tractors, it's best to leave the engine running. If you shut it off, you may not get it started again. Then, you're stuck in the middle of the hayfield, middle of the road, halfway in the barn. Anywhere except the place you were aiming for.

We talk over the low engine chugs. Always, his slow, sweet Basset Hound almost asleep on a blanket-throne on the seat next to him. I hang off the side of the cab with my left hand; pat the Basset with my right.

I'm slow to ask him for things; unsure of how far I can actually push my luck. But the answer to all of my small requests continues to be Yes. I wonder if he knows the full extent of my admiration. For his years of work as a dairy farmer as the price of milk kept falling and falling, and for being unfailingly sweet and helpful to me as I try to start something of my own. He's never once expressed any doubt that I can do whatever it is I've set my mind to. The stereotypical old farmer might try to discourage me from entering in to the sort of work that, for him, eventually became too much. But he doesn't. He smiles at me; agrees to plow more pasture, or bring more mulch hay. He reveals pieces of this old farm's history, and I wonder if he can feel my desire to keep him talking. But it's not hard, once he gets going. I think he likes to see this land being put to good use.

So this morning, when I actually get him on the phone, I have a hard time expressing myself. How to navigate this relationship when I can't see his smile and can't pet his Basset Hound? I have two questions. I start with the easy one: Would he bring up more of that mulch hay, and stash it in the tractor shed? It's no rush, really...

"Sure. Soon's I have a truck going up that way, I'll dump it in behind where that old mower was. How many bales you want? A dozen? Yep, that's no problem."

Now I'm left with only the bigger, harder question to ask. "Is this a good time? I have one more question for you."

"Yep, this is a fine time."

"I was just wondering...well, I saw someone pull up to the farm the other day, while I was working, and he got out of the car and looked around like he was thinking about buying the place. Did you hear from anyone about that?"

"Well, I'm not really the contact person for these things. It's really my brother's job. He's the point person on this. But I will let you know if I hear of anything."

"Because I'm just trying to think, now, about cover-cropping for next year, and things like that. And I'm taking this year off from doing any markets, but I would like to start doing that again next year, so I need to start thinking about that, and how it will work."

"Well, nothing with this land will happen so fast that you'll have to move off of it this year. I'll make sure of that. And even if somebody buys it, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll have to move. Things like this tend to go very slowly. And even if somebody does buy the land, we could certainly find you a place for your vegetables down here. Don't worry. I know if you have to move down here it'll mean starting over, but we'll make sure you still have a piece of land."

(Dairy Man's family owns two separate pieces of land. The one I'm on, and the one where his extended family all live, just down the road about three miles.)

"Okay. That makes me feel much better."

"Yep, don't you worry."

"Thanks, [Dairy Man]. Have a good day."

"You have a good day, too. Bye, now."

"Bye."

So I'm off to rent a tiller, now, to knock down some weeds and lay cover crop seed on the fallow places. Looks like I can plan for next year, after all.