February on Lewis Waite Farm

Late January is close to being the quietest month on the farm. Since the ground is frozen and covered with snow the most important tasks are keeping the animals fed and comfortable with good nutrition to bolster their health during the most trying months for them. The pigs eat and sleep a lot in their hay beds and only recently have been venturing into the pasture to poke around through the snow. The cows are out in the hayfields where we move the feeders daily to spread their fertilizer and leave them with the remnants of the previous day’s bales to provide more comfortable sleeping areas. We have taken a hint from the animals lately and are taking more time for resting, planning, and learning so we can be ready to gear up for the coming spring. Only six more weeks of winter when the woodchuck wakes up! It has been so gray this winter; I don’t think there will be any shadow for him this time. Lately it has been raining, gray and a black and white picture outside. The snow cover had melted on the southern facing slopes and the wind was howling. These were days for the footwear that gives you traction on the ice – yak traks. It certainly feels better doing chores outside to be able to just walk across ice and slippery snow without having to watch each step. Then over the weekend it chilled right down to 10 degrees, snowed and rained but the ground is again covered with squeaky white snow. An hour north there was 15 inches of snow but here there are only about 3 or 4 with more on the way tonight.

We had a wonderful time at the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association) conference the last weekend of January. What a great gathering of wonderful folks, topics and enthusiasm for growing things. We attended the seminars each day – one on Friday and 4 on Saturday and Sunday. There were so many choices we had to split up to be able to see the ones that interested us the most. The topics included:

How to get started with organic certification

CSA open forum

Healthy pasture, healthy animals

The future of raw milk in NY

Raising organic beef with heritage breeds

Pastured hogs

Root cellars, constructing, filling and cooking

Multipurpose edible perennials for the northeast

Carbon sequestration and credits for organic farms

Drying herbs in upstate NY

Developing sustainable animal wellness plans

Introduction to vegetable lacto-fermentation

Record keeping for greater farm profitability and organic certification

So many interesting things to explore, so little time to delve fully into all of them!

I was especially interested in the edible perennials presentation. The presenter, Ethan Roland, advocated for permaculture cultivation of our perennial gardens so the soil is less disturbed, the combination plants complement each other in function and form much like a forest. The book Edible Forest Gardens was highlighted as his inspiration (the author is his friend) to design and plant a mix of tall, medium and low growers so each one filled a role. The roles are: ground covers to prevent weediness, nitrogen fixers to promote the root health of all, heavy feeders which are supported by the mix, nutrient accumulators with deep root systems to bring up nutrients from deep in the soils, and insect nectaries to support various beneficial insects or to deter insects from the other plants in the combination. The perennial plants he described for our region are not as well known as the standards like rhubarb, strawberries and asparagus. Some of these include sea kale, miners’ lettuce, orach, mintroot, Welch onion, ramps, walking onion, Good King Henry (a leafy green), skirret, Turkish rocket, giant fuki and climbing spinach – all perennial. In our effort to feed ourselves from the farm, these options sound very appealing as they offer a regenerating bounty of foods for a similar maintenance effort as a perennial flower bed – and you get to eat it too! I have already decided to try a plot or two around our dwarf apple trees, currants and blueberry bushes as a start. The herb drying farm operation was pretty interesting too – I’ll be incorporating herbs into the permaculture planting too.

We also brought home the certification book of organic program rules, the NOFA synopsis of the application and compliance of the rules and the application for organic certification. Our lives will change if we do indeed forge ahead with certifying the farmland, pastures, hayfields and woods. The number of things you have to keep detailed records about is a bit daunting. The records provide the story, year after year, that certainly proves to the world that everything you have bought for use on the farm, everything you have done on the farm, and everything you have sold is in the spirit of organic compliance. If you were to start to certify your farm, where you grow some vegetables for sale, some livestock for sale, and make rhubarb jam, all certified organic, you are required to keep as many as:

5 kinds of forms for inputs to the farm,

3 kinds of forms for seedling and transplant records,

4 kinds of forms for each field records,

12 kinds of forms for harvest records,

7 kinds of forms for livestock records,

11 kinds of forms for processing records (for the jam), and

8 kinds of sales record forms from the farm.

So we thought maybe we could start by seeing if we could certify only the pastures, hayfields, woodlots and our own garden areas as a beginning. That way we could reduce the numbers of daily recording forms by 18! So we’ll have only 32 new sets of record to keep!

So this time of year with the wind buffeting the windows on our hillside, Alan and Colin have been outside putting the farm-grown and harvested siding up on the new barn (be sure to check out the pictures this month at the distribution). The new facility will certainly be ready for this summers use. After the pig chores, I can be inside perusing the permaculture websites, plowing through the seed catalogs to place our orders for spring, and reading about organic practice guidelines. Hope you all are having as good a time as we are!

Nancy

Spring on the Farm

Alan and Nancy Brown At the End of Lewis Hill Lane Town of Jackson Greenwich, NY 12834 phone (518) 692-9208 or 692-3120 | Email

Spring on the Farm