Worcester Woods Farm

  Over the past couple of months, I’ve been trying to think of how we could make the CSA more efficient for everyone.  There are a million little things that work well to make the farm run smoothly, but in thinking of all of us together as a whole (meaning the farm and you thirty shareholders) it always comes down to you buying only what you really want to eat, or are able to eat.  To me, this is the one glaring flaw in the average CSA setup.  If we were running a restaurant, and you all liked to come and eat our food, you would be a little surprised to find out that we were deciding what you were all going to be eating for supper.  Granted, it might be wicked good and exactly what you were looking for, but still… 
  A farm should be a viable business just as any other, and although I believe there should be incentive in place encouraging agriculture to be a healthy part of our local economy, it seems we should be as practical and “customer-friendly” as anybody else.  In order to make real changes in our ability to bring local food to the largest amount of people, I think the small farm has to make it as easy as possible for the person buying the food.  While we certainly applaud you all for having the foresight and sense of responsibility for participating in a group like this, the truth is that Joe Blow, who goes to Shaw’s or wherever, is not going to be a part of this unless we make it easy and economical for him to do so.  And those are the people who are really going to make the difference, because they are by far the majority. 
  So this is the tentative plan I have come up with for next year’s CSA program : We will be switching to a weekly ordering format.  You will be paying a determined amount at the beginning of the season, but it will work as a sort of running tab that will be kept until you have used up all of your money.  This would seem to make a reasonable compromise between grower and eater, and the basis from which a sustainable CSA program could run.  It helps us by getting money when we really need it most, and you by having the freedom to buy what you like.  We would either use a website or email, and say, on Sunday we would post a list of what’s available for the upcoming week, and you would have a few days to order before a Thursday or Friday deliver.  If you don’t get around to ordering, then you could either skip the week or get a regular assortment in the way that you do now.  Phone orders would be fine too, mostly because I don’t think there would be too many to handle.  You could also order chicken, eggs, turkey, flowers, or whatever else we have going on as part of your tab. 
  A program like this could also be expanded to us including other farmers, craftspeople or service providers.  If one of you were keeping bees or making syrup or whatever, it would be a great way to distribute your stuff on a small level.  This could also lessen our need to try to focus on so many different crops.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able to get some strawberries, cheese, and a good loaf of bread with your order each week?  I’m sure there are many people who have the ability or desire to grow or produce something of excellent quality that don’t also have the urge to try to make a living at it.  Someone could make a little money or barter their stuff for other food.  There are many ideas coming into my head, but I think I must be getting close to taking up Bonnie’s recipe space on the backside of the page, so I will leave it for another time. 
  I would like to say though, that this will be tricky for us to figure out.  How much of this do I grow, and how much of that?  It’s easy to know that you probably won’t buy all my kohlrabi in one week, but what if you all order 3 pounds of tomatoes and we don’t have enough to fill the order?  First come first serve, and maybe have the option of substitutions for people who order late?  That sounds like a mess.  What if I post broccoli as available for ordering, and then it bolts during hot weather in the middle of the week?  What if you don’t use much of your tab through the summer and have to buy a hundred pounds of potatoes at the end of the year because you need to use up your balance?  And what if I grow something I think you will all buy and nobody ends up wanting any?  It wouldn’t hurt my feelings but it would hurt my bottom line! 
  Anyway…that’s the idea.  I should try to put it all down on paper sometime and figure it out, instead of daydreaming about it while moving hose around in the field.  If you have input or want to hear more, give a call, stop by, or write us an email.  We like hearing from you. 

  Each week with our CSA deliveries we include a newsletter with recipes, produce facts and essays written by Seth about the farm.  Many people have requested that these articles be posted on our website so that they can be shared with others.  The following are articles that were written for past newsletters.  I will post each new essay once a week if you’d like to keep up with us.  Enjoy.

        June 20th

 I have been planning to put together a nice little weekly newsletter for about a month now. Many times I have put it on my list, relegating it to a rainy day, an evening I can keep my eyes open, or, as a last option.. the morning of today’s harvest. So here we are, 6 AM this morning and I’m bound and determined to write something down before I go cut your stuff. Actually, first I have to feed chickens and pigs, rabbits and hens, clean up the kitchen and dump water out of hundreds of seedlings flats. Then I go cut all your stuff, wash it, bag it, and sort it out for Bonnie. Then I can start working on what needs to be done today. Today I have a bunch of flowers to put in, a few thousand feet of salad greens to sow, setting up for harvesting 200 chickens tomorrow, weeding the onions, herb beds and the fall brassicas.  Let’s see…then I have to take care of all the animals again before my father comes down to help me sink a bunch of cedar posts for trellising tomatoes. I also need to top dress the melons with compost, pull up the broccoli raab that bolted on me yesterday and replant the bed with fennel. Then, if there is time, I really need to do some work potting on collards, kale and cauliflower.
         Will it all get done? I doubt it. I’ll try, but there won’t really be enough time. I’ll get sidetracked by a myriad of inconveniences, some worse than others. The worst probably being walking all the way to the other end of the upper field and realizing you forgot seeds or a tool or something. Not finishing my day’s list really used to bother me. At night I would think about all that I didn’t get done instead of what I accomplished. Well, I’m still doing that, but it doesn’t really bother me that much anymore. I love to work, and I love to cross things off the list, but I am no longer letting nighttime and sleeping be a deadline. It is becoming a reward. And if I can work better, your food will taste better.
          This is where a CSA is really a great thing. The food you are getting from us is real. There are calloused hands attached to your Chinese cabbage, and tons of bug bites have resulted in the sowing of your carrots. There are things that don’t germinate, and a few less green beans because a moose walked right down the middle of the bed. You know where your food is from its very beginnings, who grew it, and that it is a result of honest effort. That makes things taste really good. It probably makes them healthier for you as well. This food is not surrounded by flashy signs and fluorescent lights. The price of this food is not “$1.49″ , so as to make you think it’s cheaper than a “$1.50″. Your produce is not sitting in the bottom of a box in a walk- in cooler for a week before you buy it. I’m gonna go pick it in a few minutes, and Bonnie is gonna bring it over to you this afternoon. That is real food. We hope that you love all the stuff that grows in these rocky soils, and thank you for participating. See you next week…     

   July 5th

When people find out that you are farming for a living, they really like to talk about the weather. “We really could use some rain”, or ” Things might grow if the sun came out” are conversations I am having all of the time in my life these days. These are statements that are only partially true when you are growing a hundred different varieties of veggies, flowers and herbs. At any one time, the onions could really use rain, the melons are craving sun, the tomatoes want a little of both, the radishes are not going to hold if its 80 degrees for a couple more days, etc. etc. For this reason, I find it almost impossible to talk about the weather in a generalized way.  What used to be a fool proof “small talk” topic has now become such a complicated, emotional subject that a few brief words at the gas pump at LBJ’s never quite seem to satisfy. This is of course no fault of the person making the small talk, who is only attempting to relate, and to some extent, sympathize with the farmer. I certainly appreciate that. But there are so many variables going on in my head surrounding the weather, I can usually only agree and leave it at that. And for this, I must apologize to “the weather” if it feels that I have not given it enough respect, in hopes that it will treat me kindly in the future!
      Currently, most of your vegetables are doing ok thus far, and despite the ever present setbacks, it looks to be a pretty good year for growing. I’d say we are about seven or eight days behind where we could be right now, and as we get into more steady temperatures things will start to catch up. The early spring peas don’t seem to be happening, owing to some sort of wilt. We are going to shoot for a heavy fall planting, which will also be good for putting some in the freezer for the winter. Cucumber beetles have hit us hard early on, but the plants are beginning to grow past it. The tomatoes are pretty grumpy about these nights in the low forties, but they look healthy and vigorous. Considering our elevation, soil type and the cold little micro climate the farm is in, we will probably never have the first of any veggies in the area, but the slow and steady nature of our seasons seems to make the produce keep really well and taste great. I would call this a fair trade. Hope you enjoy the new veggies and get ready for your fridges to be full in a couple more weeks…

  July 11th

Here are some facts and figures about the farm that may be of interest…
 
  We have just under 85,000 square feet of tilled growing space this year. That’s just about 2 acres. Half of that is here at our house, and the other is split between Lory’s (next door), and Daniel’s( A mile and a half down the road). They are both on the river, and as a result, have a decent sandy loam with no stones and excellent drainage. Here at the house, we are a couple hundred yards from the river, and the result is a very stony soil with lots more clay.
   The house and land we are on (300 hundred acres) is owned by “The Bado’s”, from Hoboken, New Jersey. I have been here for 9 nine years, and Bonnie has been here with me for 5 years. The Bado’s bought this house about 60 years ago, and have used it for family vacations for almost all of that time. The house is divided into two sections, with us in the large side, and their use of an apartment in the back. We have a good relationship with them, and although they rarely use the place these days, are happy that the land is being put to good use. How long will we be here? Good question. We would love to make an offer at some point to buy at least part of the land, but this would be a ways down the road.
   This year we are raising 10 pigs, 80 or 90 hens, 75 turkeys, about 750 chickens, 2 dozen ducks, a couple rabbits, 2 dogs, 2 cats and a weasel who we have, regretfully, been feeding our hens to for a couple weeks now.
   For all of our potting mixes and about half of our finished compost we buy from Vermont Compost in Montpelier. Over the next couple years we will be able to pretty much supply all of our own fertilization and soil building, as we are now pasturing our animals and finishing up the composting of accumulated manures. This will greatly improve the efficiency of this farm and help out our bottom line. Trucking in compost and manure can be very costly. We deliver most of our micro nutrients in the form of lime, rock phosphate and greensand.
   For irrigation we pump water from the river at Lory’s and Daniels, and here we rely on our well. (Which, quite graciously, has never run dry.) Right now its raining really hard, and I have to go harvest your turnips. Enjoy the veggies, and see you next week!
 

  July 18th

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if he ever had a chosen people, whose breasts he had made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.
                                                                                                                  Thomas Jefferson
 
      A little over the top, don’t you think? I can see old Tom sitting out on his balcony, looking over the fields, watching his slaves “labor in the earth”. Thinking to himself, “Man, this is awesome. What a great farm I have here. Everything looks so orderly, efficient and productive…i’m gonna go write about how powerful and romantic this whole agriculture thing is”. Meanwhile, I can only assume the slaves were out in the field thinking “I can not WAIT until this last row of beets is weeded. The cut on my finger is getting infected and it hurts to just hold on to the hoe. I’m hungry, and these friggin’ deerflies are driving me crazy”.
        Everyday I go through both of these mind sets over and over. When your head is down and you’re working, there is often the idea that “This sucks”. When you get to the end of the project you look up and appreciate how great everything looks and think, “There is nothing more important than this”. I suppose such is the same with every labor we pursue, but often I feel there is an overuse in the idea of virtue as pertaining to farmers. I do this work mostly because I enjoy the challenge, love the independence, and subscribe to the benefits of the product. It is an added bonus if what we grow makes people healthier, boosts local economy and preserves agriculture in Vermont. So since I am mostly “self” motivated, it seems the virtue placed upon the job is unwarranted. I would bet that most farmers you ask would not say that the primary reason they are doing what they’re doing is for the good of the public. It is primarily driven by the need to be independent and the love of hard work. So maybe the virtue can only be applied to the fact that all this work is done for very little money!
        We should have a lot more summer veggies this week than we do. The squash and cukes are sizing up but weren’t quite ready for this week. The beans….I don’t know what’s going on with the beans. The rain last week slowed everything down a bit, but there are tons of flowers on the plants, so they should be coming along within the week. The tomatoes are pretty lush, potatoes are growing beautifully, peppers and eggplant need some help but they will come around. The first batch of carrots did not germinate, but the second and third planting is coming along nicely. When Bonnie gets home tonight from delivering we will have grilled chicken, steamed greens and some roast turnips with butter and herbs. Wicked good food!
 

  July 25th

Over the last seven years we have raised almost one hundred pigs here at the farm. That’s more than 12,000 lbs of pork and almost 1,000 lbs of bacon. After trying several different breeds, we have found the “Landrace” pig to be the best suited for our needs. These are usually white pigs with a long body and good disposition. Generally, we buy the piglets in April/May at eight weeks old, and we keep them for about six months, or until they reach about 250 to 300 lbs. It takes about 900 lbs of grain to get a pig to 300 lbs, which make them very efficient “converters” of feed. Although smelly and obnoxious, pigs are very playful and friendly if given enough attention. They love to have their ears pulled and their foreheads rubbed. People always ask if we name them, which we don’t. They are mostly addressed as “good pig”, or “You fat pigs”.
          With that said, it really sucks when pigs get out. Almost without exception, if one pig gets out…they all get out. Our pig pens are made out of pallets that we get from the co-op and the feed store. They are free, last for quite a while and make great kindling when they retire. We don’t use electric fence for a few reasons, mostly because I just don’t trust them for pigs. I know some people have good luck with them, but we have so many vegetables within close proximity to the pen that it is too much of a risk.  They often push up sod on to the wires and the line will ground out, not to mention our electric bill is already a million dollars. If there are troubles with our pens we can usually catch them before they become problematic.  When the pigs are out for a while before we know about it, they can do tons of damage to our veggie beds.         
           Still, though, they get out. They don’t actively try to escape, it just happens when they put too much pressure on the pen by playing or lying up against the side for shade. To get the pigs back into the pen is really a two or three person job. It does no good to try to “catch” the pig. You have to basically herd them back in, by suggesting their direction from a certain distance away. The distance varies by how nervous or tired the pigs are and how close you are to the pen. One person does the suggesting, and the other holds the pen open and keeps the ones we already have in from getting out again. I have done this alone when necessary, but a farmer can lose his patience and resort to less than friendly practices.  It’s good for everyone involved when Bonnie is there to hold open the pen. I also give thanks to our neighbors for helping out on more than one occasion.
           So many times one of us has been doing dishes in the kitchen and looked up to see them coming down from the field. “Pigs are out!” is usually all that is said, and then positions are taken.  Most often it is fairly quick and painless, but there have been some crazy pig chases. Once we found ten 250 lb hogs in the woods over a half mile away, and just got them in as it was getting dark. Once they got out at 11 o’clock at night and two of them fell into a six foot well and we had to drag them out. It’s pretty embarrassing when they hold up traffic on the road, too. Let’s hope for more moose sightings this summer than pig sightings.
 

  August 1st

     I want to tell a story this week that we heard from one of your fellow “share-mates”. It concerns a reptile and a head of lettuce. This poor unassuming woman was pulling her lettuce from the fridge the other day, probably looking forward to a nice refreshing salad, when, I’m sure to her amazement, out popped a large snake! As hard as I try, I cannot figure out how such a surprise came to be. When I harvest lettuce, the first thing that happens is that it is tossed into a large plastic bin full of cold water and submerged for usually five or ten minutes. The heads are gently floated around to remove the lion’s share of the soil and grit, and then brought in to the kitchen for the second wash. From there, each head is submerged again in cold water in the sink. Then I take each head out, rinse it under running water and then shake it upside down several times to drain the bulk of the water. The lettuce is then picked over for slimy outside leaves, then bagged and put into coolers. I can certainly see an earwig getting by or some other sort of little bug, but I’m amazed at such an elusive and resilient snake.
     And speaking of snakes, there seem to be tons this year. More than I have ever seen here on the farm, for sure.  A bunch of times now I have stuck a pitch fork into one of our compost piles and unearthed a nest of 15 or 20 of them. Many of them have been accidentally sliced in two (or more) by the lawn mower. They sleep in corners of the chicken pens, slither around on flats of seedlings, have snake parties in the greenhouse till early in the morning…you get the picture. So if anyone else has the unfortunate pleasure of adopting one of our snakes, our apologies. Please don’t try to return them to us though.
      On a sad note, there is a fusarium wilt affecting the tomatoes. We planted tons of plants this year on a plot that grew beautiful onions last year, and now the bottom leaves are yellowing and turning brown. This is a soil-borne fungus that can live in the ground for many years. Eventually the damage will make its way up the entire plant, killing everything. Right now there are a lot of nice big green tomatoes on the plants, and we are hoping a bunch of them will finish. Hot weather makes the wilt increase rapidly, so a cooler than normal August might save the day. Very frustrating, to say the least.
      We have yet to set a date, but we hope you will all be able to come out for a CSA pig roast/party/farm tour/smorgasbord extravaganza this year. Last season we had it later on in the season, but I think this year we may want to do it earlier, maybe the beginning of September. We are shooting to have a Ferris wheel, camel rides, a tractor pull and probably a magician, followed by huge fireworks at night. If for some crazy reason this can’t be pulled off, there will at least be excellent food, good company and a less than fancy petting zoo for the kids. We will let you know a date soon, and hope that you can come. Have a good week…
 

August 8th

 Here are a few scenarios that I have put into multiple choice. You will probably come up with some better options on your own, but try and guess what we would do.
 
1. There is a weasel getting into the hen pen every night and killing one or two birds. The current pen can not be mended to prevent this from happening, and the stupid little jerk won’t take a trap. Do you…
 
            A. Hope that he gets full or bored and stops the carnage himself.
           B. Waste a good night’s sleep waiting out by the pen with a .22, hoping to overcome the impossible and shoot something smaller than a ferret in the dark in an enclosed area with chickens going crazy.  
          C. Build some expensive, time consuming fortress to keep him out, and then expect the hens to lay hundreds of extra eggs to pay for it all.
          D. Let them run free in the yard, so they can do damage to the garden during the day and safely roost on the top of your truck every night where they take a million craps before sunrise.
 
 2.  You wake up unbelievably sore in the morning because you were bent over working for 10 hours straight the day before. The problem is you’ve only finished half the job. You know you really need to finish this up and be done with it, but…. Do you…
 
             A. Get out there in that 85 degree humidity and finish that task, even though your lower back goes numb and fuzzy each time you stand up.
           B. Decide it can wait another day and do something easy…like mow the lawn.
           C. Somehow convince yourself that it doesn’t really need to get done, and then procrastinate for the next two weeks with even more pathetic excuses.
           D. Try and trick Bonnie into doing it.
 
 3. All in a matter of hours the truck breaks, the mower breaks, the tiller breaks and the upstairs toilet breaks.  Which do you fix first?
 
             A. The truck. You need it to move some manure, pick up a yard of potting mix, and bring grain up to the pigs because you are getting too lazy to carry it all the way out there.
            B. The mower. If the lawn looks like crap, it makes everything else look like crap, and then your motivation goes down because it all seems a little overwhelming. Plus, its gonna rain for the rest of the week starting tomorrow.
           C. The tiller. You make a lot of your money on salad greens and a new planting really needs to get in the ground. The weeds are getting out of control in between the winter squash, and the potatoes need to be hilled again. Plus, its gonna rain for the rest of the week starting tomorrow.
           D. The upstairs toilet. You got a golf ball stuck down in there by accident when throwing it for the dog to fetch the other morning (I wasn’t trying to throw it in there), and now it won’t flush. The downstairs bathroom works fine, but it’s just not the same….
 
 4. You sit down after supper one night and tally up a bunch of notes you have been keeping on the recent growing season. You figure out since April you have been working countless hours for less than a livable wage.  You know that you aren’t doing this whole thing to make a lot of money, and a lot of the money is going back into building up your business, but hey, it still  kinda sucks. You need to make a decision on your future plans, and your options are…
 
               A. Quit. Go do something else. You got a good taste of farm life, fed a lot of good people good food, and tested your abilities and disciplines. You have many other interests, and want to start a family. You could still grow most of your own food, make better money and have at least some free time. You could work on your golf game a lot more than you get to now.
             B. You could try to get bigger. Lease more land, find some financing for equipment, and create some jobs. There is excellent opportunity in local foods right now, and you live in an area that has lots of consumer interest and healthy competition. You wouldn’t have to get huge, you’d just need to increase the cash flow and really organize all your ideas. (Ha! I talk like this through my fingers, not my mouth.)
             C. To choose one side of our production and stick with it. This basically means animals or vegetables. Since we don’t really have enough pasture to do animals the right way, it would have to be vegetables. But the soil here is not ideal for veggies as a sole source of income. Plus, there seems to be a lot more risk in small farm vegetable production, as there is so little room for error. We could do pretty well with poultry, but I’m not sure I would want the responsibility of keeping up with misguided governmental inspection.
              D. To realize that this is the hard part. You knew there was going to be one. The idea is to create a sustainable homestead/farm that can be run by just a couple of hard working people. With an organized and focused plan, you could efficiently do syrup and seedlings in the spring, veggies in the summer, and meat and storage crops in the fall, and then firewood and sleep in the winter. The catch is that you want to be able to do it without borrowing tons of money, or starting out with any to begin with. This is the part that I believe makes it sustainable. There should be a merging of the intelligent, ecologically conscious, ideal driven grower with the resourceful, practical, and durable, worked-every-day-since-high-school kind of person. The hard part is trying to find the balance, mostly related to making money without money. But you still believe strongly in the plan, and you know that some day you will be saying “remember when we used to have to do everything the hard way?”
 

  We have been blessed this year with ample amounts of sunshine.  There are times that I just wish it would rain every three days or so to avoid having to irrigate.  Then I just remember last June when it didn’t stop raining and many crops suffered for it.  As farmers, we want the best of both worlds so that our crops make it safely to your tables.  We have to step back and remember to be thankful for whatever the days bring.  Today it’s beautifully clear, sunny and a little cooler than we’ve gotten used to.  I’m thankful for it.

  There is so much food in the ground in our three plots.  Chard is just about ready and the salad greens are thriving.  Tomatoes are in and staked.  Potatoes have shown their leaves so the Colorado potato beetles aren’t too far behind.  Zucchini, squash and cucumbers are slow this year but I see some flowers out there.  I’ve got to do something about those cucumber beetles before they destroy the plants.  Cilantro, basil and parsley are coming along, as are the green beans.  This coming week is the Fourth of July, so we’ll probably deliver on Thursday instead.  Then our next batch of chickens comes on Friday.  In summer everything happens so fast it’s hard to keep up.  I’m sure all of you understand how that is.  We get as much done as possible before the winter sets in again.  It feels great to be so productive in such a short amount of time.  I hope you all are enjoying this fine weather.

  It’s May 18th all ready.  Time is flying by as we prepare our soil for another growing season.  We are pretty busy up here in Worcester.  Most of our animals have arrived and we’re planting as much as we can.  Radishes and mesclun have been sown.  Onions, lettuce and chinese greens have been transplanted.  Flats of flowers, tomatoes, and peppers have moved from the house to our new hoop house outside.  All this activity is making for great appetites and heavy sleep.  I’m sure everyone is enjoying this spring in all its green glory.  We look forward to getting fresh produce to all of you in just about a month.  We’ll make sure to give a call about a week before our first delivery to give you all a heads up on our delivery day and time.