dreams and doings of a young farmer

Last week I spread 800 lbs of soil ammendments, by hand, in one day, using a coffee can.

I would not recommend this to anyone.

Ever.

But it had to be done. The soil test from the fall came back indicating rather serious acidity. Having a pH reading a little south of seven is desirable for vegetable production, but this was pretty bad. So I got five hundred pounds of high calcium lime through the NOFA bulk order program, as well as two hundred pounds of greensand and 100 pounds of bone char.

As I walked through my Sisyphean task, one coffee can at a time, the soil began to look like the surface of the moon, or a sinister cupcake, pockmarked and powdery, synthetic, suspicious.

It was necessary, but ugly, upsetting. I yearned to see and smell the clean uniform brown of loamy tilled earth, to see the slate wiped clean. So I got to the garden early the next morning and fired up the BCS.

The BCS is made in Italy. Those Italians are very fussy about their terminology and insist that the machine they produce is not a mere rototiller, but is in fact a “walk-behind tractor.” They may be fussy, but they also kind of have a point.

I’m pretty much in love with my BCS 732, and I have little regard for machinery. I don’t drive stick. I didn’t learn to operate a tractor until I’d been farming for five years. I just don’t like machinery, I don’t have an affinity for it, it makes me nervous.

But I feel like the BCS is playing on my team. After reading the manuals and pulling the start cord so hard I fell on my ass, the engine sputtered to life, and it puttered up and down the rows in first gear for hours, churning through chunks of sod and throwing out rocks like a champ. The wheels turn independently, so the turning radius is pretty much zero.

Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. It wasn’t that fun. The handles are awkwardly low and the machine is very heavy, so navigating back and forth across my bumpy uncultivated field was exhausting. But I did it all by my self. I didn’t have to call a man to help me. The field is tilled and I did it on my own. And that, my friends, is priceless.

I took this shot last week, and already it’s clearly the past – with the sunny weather we’ve been having on the island, the greenhouse is full and thriving. Strong germination rates, happy plants. I did the math this morning and I have something like twelve hundred tomato starts, which is borderline insane. Everything you see to the right of the center aisle? Tomatoes. Jet Star, Brown Berry, White Cherry, Pink Beauty, Big Beef. Over 400 Sungolds. More heirlooms to come. The plan is to sell almost two thirds of them. Even non-gardeners like to have a tomato or two.

Now that the seed starter is full and humming along, the project for this week is building greenhouse number two, the tomato house. At eighty feet long it’s almost twice as big as the seed starter, which is kind of a headache, but I learned a lot the first time around and I think this one will actually feel easier. My friend Emily helped me lay out the heavy anchor timbers this afternoon with the Vermont Cart, which is perhaps the best wheely tool known to man, and after working up a sweat we took a break at the Black Dog with iced Chais. Hopefully, tomorrow, the hoops go in.

Starting a farm is a young person’s game. You want to be a farmer? Before you have kids, before you have a mortgage, before your back hurts too bad, when you can eat sleep breathe your work, strap on your boots and go.

Last night on the phone with my mom I apologized, for appearing to drop off the face of the earth, dodging phone calls and watching my inbox crest and overflow with unanswered queries. I rise before dawn these days, around five or so, propelled by this borderline manic productive energy, and still there are not enough hours in the day. My housemates think I’m slightly batty. They’re right. But I can’t help it. The long hours, the bumps and bruises, the imperfect angles and broken tools and daily frustrations, it all feels so different when it’s your own. It’s more than worth it. It’s everything.

After a week of carpentry for non-carpenters (yours truly), the seed starter greenhouse is done. It’s not perfect but it’s all mine and i couldn’t possibly be more proud of it. in the morning i’ll begin filling it with flats of seeds, onions and peas and bachelor buttons, dreams of spring, dreams of here and now.

My first spring project at the new farm is putting up the greenhouse we brought from off-island, so I can go ahead and start seeding. I’m a bit behind on that front. Most local growers have at least onions and tomatoes sown and sprouted. Fortunately for me, rates of growth this early in the season are so slow that a delay of even a few weeks in march isn’t a major handicap. The business of growing in earnest doesn’t take off until the temperatures rise further and the days grow longer. These recent few days of t-shirt weather make us all feel like we’re off to the races, but there are more frosts and chills to come.

The process of dismantling the greenhouse, transporting it across the ocean, and reassembling it has been for me a giant lesson in humility. At every turn I’ve needed help, and at every turn I’ve found it. Chelsea helped me with the first step, popping the hoops out of their original foundation. We wrestled with rusty bolts and bent sheet metal, laughing and swearing the whole time. My little brother did most of the heavy lifting with me, as did my father, stooping and shuffling as we carried over two tons of timber and hoop onto the truck one day and off again the next. My mom, organizer extraordinaire, helped me cram all the containers and hoses and boxes in like jenga pieces. On the island, my friends have pitched in to frame up the sides, improvise pipe fittings, and just provide company when I’m frustrated or overwhelmed.

Thus far, I’d say we’re about halfway there. My friend Chris and I put in the ridgeline yesterday, which is a piece of metal conduit that connects all the hoops along their highest point. I’m picking up the rollup sides at griffin greenhouse tomorrow, and I will hopefully spend the weekend putting on the plastic, well within my goal of finishing the house before the end of march.

The Palmer family declares victory over the box truck.

Bakehouse Farm has arrived.

It’s been a long time coming.

After a long week of driving, aided by visits to friends and audiobooks from Cracker Barrel, I finally made it back North. It’s been sleeting and gray, but I’m still so happy to be home.

This afternoon, my mom and I took this injured canada goose to the New England Wildlife Center, a wildlife veterinary clinic south of the city. He was admitted and diagnosed with a lacerated right wing, and the future looks bright – he was active and responsive, not very aggressive for a canada goose but alert enough to object to being scooped up and carried through the wards.

I worked for the wildlife center as a teenager. It was a very different place. The old facility was a ramshackle concrete building that may or may not have once been a military bunker. Dimly lit, half sunken below ground, with narrow hallways and low ceilings. It stank to high heaven, of bird poop and raccoon piss and everything in between. Space was at a premium. I think there was an iguana who lived in a tank on the radiator. Piles of laundry constantly threatened to tumble into the aisles.

But I loved it. The constant stream of new patients, the proximity to the animals, the company of the talented and dedicated techs and interns I worked with. They did wonders with limited resources. It was entirely worth spending time in such a stink hole, to have access to what the clinic had to offer.

A few years ago they finally completed a new facility a few towns over. Embarrassingly, I hadn’t seen it until today. It’s incredibly nice, with teaching space and real treatment rooms and surgical suites, all with large windows to allow observation. Even the resident llama got some sweet new digs. I think the goose is going to be real comfortable during rehab.

Saturday is harvest day. Usually fairly mellow. Greens in the morning (usually asian mix and herbs for me), tougher stuff once the heat of the day comes on, pack the truck in the afternoon to be ready for market in the morning.

But today, we went on an adventure, down the road in Margie’s blue minivan to fetch the season’s first load of loquats.

Steve, the grower, gave us a few tall ladders and walked us through the grove, past lychees and longans and tangerines, to the loquat trees growing along the fenceline by the neighbor’s abandoned avocado grove.

These trees were some serious business, very tall, nothing like the fastidiously pruned apples, plums, peaches, and pears I worked with back north. And of course, the ripest clusters had a way of being clustered waaay up on tree, just out of reach. But we easily managed to pick what we needed.

Which brings us to the real question-

What the hell is a loquat?

Until this afternoon I had not seen a loquat, eaten a loquat, or even heard anyone say ‘loquat’ (it’s such a funny word, I’m sure I would have remembered). So I may not be the best person to answer that question. But considering how many we ate while picking, popping them like grapes in the shady grove, i can give it a shot.

They are small, about the size of a dried fig, and the skin has a little bit of fuzz to it, like a peach, but not so much that you can’t stand to eat it, like a kiwi. The seeds are big, they take up about half the cavity space, and very smooth, fun to spit. They grow on the tree in clumps and snap off easily when ripe.

The taste varies depending on the level of maturity. Loquats that are still pale yellow with a touch of green have this addictive citrusy acidity thing going on, tasting sort of like a peach and sort of like an orange. Ones that are dead ripe, orange with brown spots, taste a lot like apricots.

Luckily for us, the ones that taste the best are the ones that people are not inclined to buy – they’re mottled and wrinkly, brown spotted, homely. We saved them for the crew to eat, and maybe to cook with.

Picking loquats was my last harvest at Bee Heaven Farm. Bright and early Monday morning, Homer and I are getting in the truck and heading North, back to the land of ice and snow.

Perhaps foolishly, I can’t wait to leave tropical paradise. I’ve loved my time here, but I am so excited for the season to come on the island, I am so ready to start a farm, to run the show. Not apprentice. Not intern. Not manage. Not share crop.

Farm. I just want to farm.

There are plenty of things that are inconvenient about the gypsy apprentice life. Living without heat, indoor plumbing, or mold-free upholstery. Picking up stakes and moving every six months or so. For all that I’ve learned from it, for all that I’ve loved parts of it, when I say that I’m ready for it to end, I mean it.

But one thing that I’ll truly miss is the people. I’ve met some phenomenal people on the different crews I’ve worked with. Sarah is one of them. We spent the fall together at Garden of Eve in 2008, harvesting beets and making pizza on Sunday nights in the little beach shack on Sound Shore Drive.

Sarah is now living and farming in France, which she records on her blog, and occasionally we’ll catch one another on gchat. It’s kind of funny and kind of great, to be living in a barn where i sleep with hot water bottles on cold nights and hang my clothes from the rafters, and yet be able to just shoot the breeze in real time with a friend a world away. The wonders of wireless internet.

So she asked me the other day to name my five favorite seed varieties I’ll be growing. Here they are, in no particular order:

Matts Wild Cherry: A tiny red currant tomato, pictured above, both in my shirt hem and on the vine. Margie is growing them here, they do well in South Florida. In fact, they seem to do well just about everywhere. The farmer who turned me onto them, Phil Barbato of Biophilia Farm in Greenport NY, said that for him they are always the first to bear in the spring and the last to die in the fall. They’re also pretty darn cute. I had a tough time getting them to germinate at Mermaid last spring, and then didn’t trellis the plants, so it was a little bit of a shit show, but I think I can get it right this year.

Karma Dahlia: Everyone at the ASCFG conference this fall was in love with this series. The karma dahlia is vegetatively propagated and copyrighted. So you buy plugs (for the non-growers out there, plugs are baby plants in plastic trays) in the spring, plant them in the field, and enjoy a long and super-productive harvest. The traditional way to do dahlias is to plant these giant tubers in the spring and then dig them out again in the fall, which is a ton of work, and you need somewhere to store the tubers for the winter. So I’m going to try these instead, probably in the hoophouse to max out the yield.

Hulk Aster: Pictured above. How excellent is that? I love green flowers. This one’s really weird – it has no petals. I guess you either love it or you hate it. But if you can’t see the appeal of a cut flower named HULK, well, I’m not sure I can help you.

Fairytale Eggplant: An old favorite of mine. Small. Striped. Cute. There’s not much more I want in an eggplant. The plants are somewhat dwarf too – I think I’m going to put a few in three gallon pots and try selling those as well.

Purple Haze Carrot: A hybrid carrot, also a 2006 AAS winner. Sometimes with the non-orange carrots you have to lose both the traditional color and the traditional taste, and the carrots are runty to boot. Not so with Purple Haze. Interesting to look at, sizes up pretty well. Expensive seed, but if I can get them to germinate it’ll be more than worth it.

No, it is not an optical illusion. And no, it is definitely not a product of photoshop.

It is simply a carrot that grew through a rock.

Here’s a different angle-

It’s a highly unlikely event, this carrot, but not impossible. Carrots have a peculiar and particular growth habit. They first send out a long tap root, thin as a strand of baby hair. The tap root is weak and flexible, which is why carrots grown in rocky soil often turn out twisty and gnarled – in its early days of life, the taproot will snake and bend around whatever lies in its way.

This carrot threaded through a hole in this piece of limestone, and then began to expand, filling the hole and otherwise developing a normal taproot. What are the odds that the limestone would be angled just so? That the carrot seed would be perfectly centered above the opening?

It doesn’t really matter. We’re all enjoying the carrot.

I’ve never been a huge fan of canning. It’s a sort of sore spot – farmers are supposed to be food preservers. It’s a homesteading skill right up there with milking cows and making yarn.

But come on, admit it – isn’t canning kind of a pain in the ass? The giant cauldron of hot water, the fussy metal rack, moving everything with tongs. Is it clean? Did it seal? Can you say botulism?

Since coming to Homestead, I’ve been introduced to natural fermentation, and am pretty much completely hooked. It’s dead easy and the food is delicious. Once Muriel coached me through my initial hesitation (you just put the food in salt water? really? that’s it?), i went on a little fermentation spree – radishes, beets, turnips, and kimchi. I love watching the bubbles rise to the surface, the colors change, the brine stain purple and pink, the mason jars lined up on a shelf in the cooler.

It’s addictive.