Monthly Archives: February 2010

It’s been raining here all day. Our field is so wet it shines the same soft snow grey of the sky.

We got word last night that the Access to Agriculture grant did not make it. It was a long shot, many farms are after the same money, still, it was a nice thought – the little project that could out of sweat and determination and community love having enough money backing it to really take off.

So instead, we need your help. Not your money, necessarily, but we’ll take that too. We need your time, your ideas, your social networking skills. We need to put together a rockstar troupe of every type of brain and brawn, folks who know how to think critically and personally about access, farmers, people who love to haul and sweat and move their bodies, people who want to organize, connect, involve others, people who want to test our fields, give us honest feedback on every aspect of the project. PLEASE. This project is integral to our mission, and a hugely personally important to me. Help us make our pick your own awesome, then help us document and record it, help us make suggestions for others to do the same and then spread the information. That is what Access to Agriculture is all about.

Enthusiasm Required. All Abilities Wanted.

email us for our flyers, print them out, post them everywhere.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

(And thank you Dandy Pilon, flier maker, for your time and energy and amazing brain.)

Ariel

It is grey and chilly outside, and the week’s forecast is the classic New England late winter weather: cold, snowy rain. But spring is, without a doubt, on the way. Though we’re still in the throes of winter – the ground is still far from workable and a few more good snowstorms are likely – I can already feel spring creeping up through the soil. Things are getting ready to grow. The days are getting longer. The scent of thaw, that sweet evening smell of cool water and warmer wind, is everywhere.

Our chicks are a week old, and thriving. They, too, are a sign of the coming spring – in only a week they’ve already grown substantially. We added some cardboard around the sides of the brooder to give it some extra height – their wings are growing fast, and they’re starting to jump and fly. We don’t want baby chicks lose in our kitchen! Yesterday we raised the heat lamps up about 6″ – as the chicks grow, they get hardier, and their need for heat lessens. We noticed them crowding the edges of the brooder, a sign they were too hot. Since we raised the lamps, they’ve been hoping about, testing their wings, and looking curiously at the cardboard walls surrounding them. We’ll move them into the bigger space on the porch by the end of the week, and before we know it, they’ll be living in our homemade chicken coop, pecking happily at the first flush of May grass.

In the life of a farmer, spring comes in several stages. The first stage is setting up the greenhouse, and doing the first seeding. Though we often do this while there’s still snow on the ground, it is the first work of the year that feels like spring work. Seeding onions is the traditional start of the farming season, even though it happens long before the ground is workable. It is around this time when I start craving warmth, and green, and long hours outside under the sun. But those things don’t come until the next stages of spring – the first warm, dry days the soil is workable, the first direct seeding of the year (peas, carrots, beets), transplanting onions, and then we’re head over heels into early summer, from which there is no looking back.

We spent yesterday morning cleaning and setting up the greenhouse at Gaining Ground. It was another perfect day, warm and sunny and clear. We worked in t-shirts in the 80 degree greenhouse, sweating as we set up the long rows of benches. I reveled in bringing boxes of old corn and rotted squash out to the compost pile, in muck boots and a tank-top. It felt great to be working hard again, gearing up for the season, using my muscles.

I am continually amazed by the generosity of farmers. As we arranged the wooden-framed seedling tables on cinder blocks, working together, talking of farming, I kept thinking: this is the way real community economies should always work. I’ll give you space in my greenhouse, you’ll come help me set it up. We’ll share watering responsibilities. We’ll enjoy each others’ company. If you need an extra tray, you can borrow one of mine. If I need ten more tomato seeds, you’ve got me covered. This is the way I want to live my life, as part of a community that shares, that offers and receives, that gives back. I want to be an active member of an exchange of time and resources and ideas, of shared challenges and shared joys.

The greenhouse looks great, ready to receive trays of onions and leeks and lettuce, bok choy and broccoli, kale and collards. I can’t believe how quickly the winter has gone by. Next week, we’ll start our first onions. And from there on in, the days are just going to get longer and warmer, the work more demanding and more rewarding. The greenhouse will fill up, and so will our fields, and before I know it we’ll be harvesting fall brassicas under the sweet, crisp October sky, our muscles worn out from a long season, already dreaming of the rest and quiet of the deep winter.

Laura