Monthly Archives: March 2010

Rain

Posted on March 30, 2010 | 1 Comment

Rain rain rain rain rain.

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.

It’s raining again. The roads are closed again. Fields all over town are turning back into ponds.

I’d really like it to stop raining. But going outside and shaking my fist at the sky is not going to do anything. Nobody is going to hear me but the chickens, who already think I’m a little silly for chatting with them and calling them “duckies”. (Their little fenced in home behind our house is still solidly dry land, but the rain-pond forming in the low part of the yard is fast approaching…)

So, rather than shaking my head, worrying, and fighting with the weather (which amounts to nothing more than fighting with myself), I’ve got a new strategy: love the rain. It’s going to rain whether I like it or not, so I might as well like it. The beautiful silver sheets of it reflecting on the windows, the stillness of the house, the warmth of a pleasant morning spent inside. There’s plenty to do: updating our farm finances, writing recipes and other tidbits for our CSA zine, catching up on email, getting our crop and greenhouse record-keeping system up to date. There’s a wheelbarrow full of tools that still needs sorting in the barn.

The fields are going to dry out. We’re going to plant when we plant. The season is going to unfold in its own way – rain now, and I don’t get to decide what next. What I do get to decide is how to make the best use of this rainy day. A pot of tea, some good music, and time to do all those important things that the warmth and sunshine and workable ground will not allow me to do later.

It’s wet and grey and March-blustery out today. Later, I’ll put on boots and feed the chickens in the rain. What comforts me is that I’d pick this – rain worries, wet and muddy chores, and weather you can’t control – over any other job, any day, hands down, no question.

Rain rain rain rain rain. Even so, being a farmer is still pretty great.

Laura

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The Big Move

Posted on March 27, 2010 | 1 Comment

If you’ve never rolled a chicken coop down a main road on a gorgeous, clear, Saturday morning, you should. It’s pretty fun.

Kael and Natasha arrived bright and early to help us haul the thing from the barn to our house, where our chickens will be living for the next month or two. We were all a bit skeptical, anticipating mini-disaster. Would the wheels hold, or fall off halfway there, in the middle of Lexington Road?

Here we are setting out, ropes attached to the front of the coop, everyone set to go. We could not have asked for a more beautiful morning.

The move went without a hitch. The wheels held; the coop rolled beautifully. We made quite the funny parade: Kael and Ariel in front, pulling, me behind, pushing, and Natasha bringing up the rear in the truck with the hazzards on.

We celebrated the successful move with a fantastic breakfast. Then Ariel and I set up the fence and turned the battery-powered solar energizer toward the sun to charge up. We’ll move the chickens into their new home tomorrow at dusk, when they’re quiet and calm. We’ll give them a night in their new home, and then open the coop up in the morning.

Hey, chickens. Your world is about to get a whole lot bigger, brighter, and more beautiful.

Laura

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The Finished Coop

Posted on March 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

We did it! It’s a good thing, too, because the chickens have jumped out of their brooder and taken over the whole porch. It’s time for them to get outside where they’ll have plenty of sunshine, fresh air, and space to roam.

Kael found a great set of nesting boxes on Craig’s List, which he brought back from Maine. Last weekend we installed them, finished the siding, made a human door, a chicken door, and a door to collect eggs from, and finished off the walls. The only thing we needed was roofing. We had a piece of plywood we were about to use, but it was getting dark, and it was heavy, and a little too short, and full of holes. Not the best option. We decided to wait and see if we could find some galvanized metal roofing.

I went into Concord Lumber on Tuesday morning to see if they sold roofing. They said no, and they didn’t know of anywhere that did, either. As I was leaving, I ran into Verena from Gaining Ground. We talked for a bit, and she asked me what I was looking for. When I told her I needed some metal roofing, she said, “oh, no problem, come on by the farm, we’ve got a few sheets left over from building our sugar shack.” So, once again, I was amazed at the generosity of this farming community. It’s all about sharing resources.

Here are Kael and I attaching the roofing to the nearly-finished coop.

It was a gorgeous, spring-smelling late afternoon. After attaching the roofing, we finished the window (complete with a sill), and then built a detachable platform for a set of casters, for moving the coop long distances. With the casters on one end and wheels on the other, it moves quite nicely. We’ll be walking this beauty down Lexington Road tomorrow morning at 7:30. When it’s settled behind our house, we’ll take the casters off. The nice thing about this system is that we can move the coop short distances just by picking it up with two people and dragging it along. When we need to move it further afield – down the road, for instance – we can just attach our handy set of casters.

The finished coop. Chicken door and ramp. The darker panel on top opens for easy access for collecting eggs.

Kael demonstrates the use of the egg door.

Living in luxury: cedar siding and a window with a sill!

The human door (for getting in there to clean), and the inside: roosts and nesting boxes.

It’s been a long, fun, satisfying process, from design to finish Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who helped – virtually everything we used to build it, as well as most of the tools, were donated, found on the street, or salvaged from garages and basements. An especially big thank-you to our friend Kael, who took on the project with great enthusiasm, from the initial design talk in our kitchen one January morning, through many work days at the farm, to the finish last night, on a windy, spring-smelling March evening.

Laura

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This is March

Posted on March 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

A rainy day.

This is March in New England. 70 degrees and sunny one day, 50, windy, and rainy the next. So while I can wish as hard as I want for an unbroken string of warm, sunny, windy days to dry out our field,  it looks like the world has other plans. How to be a farmer, lesson #1: Don’t bother worrying about the weather. It’s really, really not worth it.

So this morning I shrugged off the rain and went to work in the barn. We’ve spent the last two weeks organizing all our tools and supplies, and the barn is starting to look like a place people using. We sorted, rolled, labeled, and hung our remay (a big accomplishment!), as well as all our netting and chicken wire. We converted a stall into carpentry central, with shelves of nails, screws, and hardware, and a wall for hanging hammers, squares, and saws. All of our hand tools are hanging on pegs on the wall. I’ve been steadily working my way over them with a file, linseed oil, and a wire brush. Even the most rusty old hoes will be gleaming by the time the get into the soil in late April.

This morning I put the finishing touches on the workspace in our little corner of the barn. I set up a sturdy table with sawhorses and a piece of plywood, rigged a pair of standing lights, and brought over a power strip from the house that will run a saw, the lights, the battery charger, and our trusty barn speakers, all at the same time. With the big doors open to let in the silvery light and Paul Simon to keep me and the rain company, I was ready to go.

This is my first week as a full-time farmer. My part-time winter job is over. From here on out, it’s farm, farm, farm, all day, every day. On a rainy day at the end of March, that meant:

- Making signs for our CSA and PYO. I cut a bunch of scrap wood into various sizes, primed it, and then painted it with chalkboard paint. Now we have about 30 chalkboards at our disposal, ready to go for our first distribution.

-Revamping some old easels: We got donated a few old easels, which we’re going to use at our two CSA pick-up sites to list what’s in the week’s share, etc. They both needed a little fixing up, as well as a coat of chalkboard paint. Now they’re set to to go.

- Checking the Greenhouse: While the coat of primer was drying, I went over to the greenhouse to check on our seedlings. All is well. Our latest planting of broccoli has sprouted, as well as our first lettuce. The deep purple scallions, about two days behind the Nabechan variety, are almost all up.

There’s not much glamor in the work that happens on a rainy day in March. I cleaned some old chicken waterers we found in the barn – we’re about to move our chickens into the coop, and they’ll need bigger waterers than they have now. I did a little more barn organization – put all the tool cleaning brushes in one box and labeled it, sorted the bucket of scrap wood into large pieces and small ones (which we’ll probably use to make the spikes on our dibbler.)

These are all things that I have time to do now, before there are any plants in the ground. Come May, I know I’m going to be grateful that all those signs are ready to go, that the tools are sharp and well-oiled, that instead of untangling a dusty, holey pile of remay, I can simply walk into the barn, pick up the roll labeled 1 bed, 50′ and throw it over the cukes.

This is March. We’re not in the throes of the season, yet. This morning I woke up at 7:30, did chores, had breakfast, and got to the farm around 9:30. I came home for lunch, did a few errands, went back to the farm for a few hours, and I’m home again. There’s still just enough time in the day to take things slow when it’s rainy and grey outside. I’m grateful for the few weeks I get to have as a full-time farmer in these, the small beginnings of the season. Now for a cup of tea, a little nap, and to roast the last of the winter squash for dinner.

Laura

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