Garlic Workday this Saturday

We will have a member workday this Saturday, July 11th to harvest the 2009 garlic crop. Please join us at the North Farm/CSA Barn location around 10:00 am. If you arrive later look for signs to tell you where to find us. We will have a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm so please bring a dish to share, your plates, and utensils. Wear old clothes and shoes that can get dirty and bring your sunscreen, water bottle, and gloves. Members of all ages are welcome for an hour or the whole day. Hope to see you there!

Photos from the farm

This is the new corral and handling system to help us move the cows with less stress on both the animals and the humans.

Week 5 Newsletter

This season we are managing more animals than in past years. We will be finishing eight steers on pasture at the South Farm. Jody’s 50 ewes produced about 80 lambs that are pastured on the North Farm. The two sows had large litters but, unfortunately, one of the sows wasn’t too careful and stepped on quite a few, reducing the number of butcher hogs this year to 15. That sow was brought to the butcher a few months ago (we constantly cull animals with bad mothering instincts or ones that are mean). The butcher hogs and the single sow live in a seven-acre forest at the North Farm. The sheep and pigs are kept in by a high-tensile, 13-strand, woven-wire fence; it keeps both the predators out and the farm animals in.

With the increase in the number of animals comes the need for good handling systems. When the steers are ready for slaughter, we need to maintain a stress-free environment (for both people and animals). Getting an animal into a small trailer in the middle of a field without a handling system is hard on the animal and frustrating for the people trying to chase it. Unless you are a hunter, there is little point in chasing animals.

Our steers have a 30-by-36-foot corral that moves with the pasture. It consists of a bunch of interlocking gates that are easily taken apart and put together again. They have grown accustomed to this place, as we have placed the water tub and salt box in the corral. During the extreme weather of the past few weeks, the steers have come to view the corral as a sort of barn they can use as a refuge. If we need to move the steers to another pasture, we first lock them inside the corral. In the beginning, they freaked out when we locked the gate behind them. But, despite their thick brains, they have realized that the reward of this temporary restraint is new lush grass - lately they passively wait until Mike and I have set up a new fence.

If we want to load them onto a trailer, we have another setup that moves the steers through a crowding tube and alley, which allows us to sort them. For some reason I don’t understand, cows and other animals are less frightened when they are forced to move through a curving aisle with walls that restrain them on both sides. Giving the animals too much space allows them to hurt themselves, as they respond to the illusion that they can flee; restraining them has a calming effect.

We have a similar sorting system for the sheep - the trick here is to get them all in the barn. Sheep have a strong herd mentality and, unlike the steers, the sheep stick together. That gives a sheepherding dog a great advantage, as he/she can move the herd as one flock. Once inside the barn, it has been a challenge to get the first sheep to move through the sorting chute, but when you get one in (sometimes with a little encouragement) the rest are more likely to follow.

The nice advantage of sheep and steers over pigs is that they make us completely self-sustainable in our food supply; they eat grass, which especially after all this rain has been in plentiful supply. For the pigs, we used to buy in pig feed from a local grain dealer that purchases his grain from local farmers. That has changed; this year he couldn’t guarantee that the grains he purchased were GMO-free. As a result, we have secured another source of pig feed from Green Mountain Organics that will guarantee the feed to be free from any GMOs. Unfortunately, the cost of certified organic feed is much higher - the cost per ton went from $310 to $590. So, my dear pork lovers, you will notice an increase in the cost of pork this fall. If that means that we have priced ourselves out of the market due to our set of high standards on both animal ethics and feed source, we will be happy to give the forest back to the gnomes.

On ethics: We are expecting a visit this month from the Animal Welfare Approved organization to label our meat as certified humanely raised and handled. Our main obstacle to certification had been that our butchers were initially a bit shy in getting certified (it takes both the farm and the processor to obtain the label) but, after their facilities and handling systems were approved, we were able to complete the process. The requirements for certification are reasonable and greatly consider the welfare of an animal from the animal’s perspective. Good pig, cow, or sheep farmers should be able to get into the psyche of the animals they raise; once you do, you can’t do a fraction of the things we typically expose our domestic animals to these days.

Not everyone enjoys eating meat, and neither should we consume a lot of it; but when we do, it’s great to know that the animal made a contribution to the environment by keeping more land in grass (a very good remedy against global warming) and that we did everything to assure you it led a stress-free life. ~Jean-Paul

Garlic Harvest Workday and Farm Update

Dear Roxbury Farm Members,
The Garlic Harvest Workday will be on Saturday, July 11th from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm. Members of all ages are welcome for the whole day or a few hours. Please meet us at the North Farm/CSA Barn Location. We will share a potluck lunch around 12:30 pm. Please bring a dish to share, a plate, and utensils. The farm will supply beverages. We also recommend you bring work gloves, a water bottle, and sunscreen. Wear clothes and shoes that can get dirty. We hope to see you there!

On another note we have experienced another week of rainy weather. Fortunately the fields were dry on Monday so the crew worked until 8:00 pm to get all of the transplants and seeds in the ground that needed to be planted last week and this week. Monday night it started to rain again and hasn't stopped since. After three weeks of this weather the crops are beginning to suffer. You may notice that over the next two or three weeks the shares may be lacking a few items because of the weather. Over the last week we have only harvested about 1000 summer squash and zucchini. Usually by this time of year we are harvesting over 4000 summer squash and zucchini a week. The squash and zucchini need lots of sun and warm temperatures. The peppers and tomatoes are starting to fruit so we are hoping for some hot, dry weather to ripen them for your shares.

Week 4 Newsletter

The wet weather has caused the vegetable farmers in the Northeast to go on a late blight alert. Late blight is the disease that caused the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s. We experienced it firsthand in 2000 on our tomatoes. After the spores arrived (with a thunderstorm), it blackened the plants in a matter of days, transforming them into slimy, moldy skeletons as the mold consumed all the tissue. It is a disease feared by both organic and conventional farmers, because there is no cure once it has been detected. The only thing a grower can do is preventative treatment. We have been advised to spray moderate amounts of copper, though it is generally considered too mild of a treatment when the infestation level is high.

In last week’s letter I stated that many crop failures are human failures. In the spirit of that I will quote a variation on this by John Mitchell, an Irish political writer of the 1840s: “The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the Famine.” His observations were considered treason by the English and he was exiled to Bermuda. Two and a half million people starved to death because the landlords regarded the land as a source of income from which to extract as much money as possible. During the late 1840s, peasants were evicted from their properties and landlords burned down their modest cabins (shacks, really), to use the land for grazing and grains. While millions of people starved to death, food continued to be exported to England.

There are some lessons to be learned from this experience. Not unlike the new wave of young farmers, born and bred in the city, who venture into agriculture these days, the average Irish farmer leased a farm of one to five acres in size. We are in the middle of an enormous land transfer from active multi-generational farmers to wealthy landowners. Organizations like the Columbia Land Conservancy and the Open Space Institute recognize the need to create a link between these new landowners and farmers, understanding that there will only be a fruitful relationship when the two parties get along and there is an ironclad agreement describing mutually agreed-upon terms. There is an influx of city folks in the Hudson Valley in love with land, both rich and poor, and not only around here. A while ago, a young farmer in California wrote on a blog:

“Then there is the issue of land access. There is no doubt that the owner of our ranch is doing the best that she can, with what she has. But why are we still in a situation where the rich get to decide the best uses for land, while hard working, intelligent, compassionate, humble workers just do what we’re told? Most opportunities that I hear about for young farmers in this area involve farming for someone with land, and that someone is no doubt rich, and almost as likely, they KNOW NOTHING ABOUT FARMING. We get told to mow the lawn with a fossil-fueled machine, instead of having it grazed by sheep. We are told that floating row cover looks tacky, ‘can we not use it?’ ‘Well, maybe not, if you don’t mind grubs in your radishes’.
My point is this: the sustainable food system will never truly exist under the currently existing conditions around land ownership. It’s not just enough to create local markets for organic food. If we truly need 20,000,000 new small-scale farmers to make this thing work, then those millions of farmers need secure access to land. No matter how many well-intentioned ‘progressive’ rich people there are in the Bay Area who want to see a farm on their land, tenant farming, sharecropping, or—as they used to call it—‘serfdom’ isn’t going to cut it.” (By Antonio Roman-Alcalá of San Francisco)

While the land-loving city folks have little in common with the greedy English Counts of the 1840s, we need to encourage thinking outside the box. Antonio’s writing underscores the need for new ideas regarding land ownership. While Roxbury Farm served as a model in 2000 when we moved to new land, few have followed our lead. Our transition was largely made possible by charitable gifts from the CSA members and the Open Space Institute. Simply stating that every farm needs 1,200 members and an Open Space Institute isn’t going to cut it; there isn’t enough gift money earmarked for land preservation. Something fundamental has to change in our approach to land ownership, something far more radical than philanthropy. We sympathize with Antonio in his hope that something better is still to come. ~Jean-Paul

Week 3 Newsletter

The weather appears to form a pattern. Reviewing last year’s newsletter by Jody was titled; ”Gone to Hail”. The hail hit again, except this time it spared Roxbury Farm. Little Seed Gardens, Golden Harvest, and Yonder Farm (only a few miles north of us) were hit hard, losing a majority of their crops. Yonder Farms supplies the farm with fruit and this is the fourth year that they will apply for crop insurance for their apples. There is a bittersweet side to this as one consequence is a drastic reduction of their spraying regime. Damage from hail is mostly cosmetic but the global market excludes any fruit that shows a blemish. For four years we have been able to purchase “low spray” fruit not by design but by default.

The sudden wet weather has changed everything on the farm. While only a few weeks ago we were occupied with irrigation and haymaking; now we deal with muddy harvest conditions, and the challenge of staying on schedule with the succession plantings. Each vegetable is seeded in successions to ensure a steady supply and optimum quality. Some folks believe that having a CSA is less demanding as it reduces the risk to the farmer. I don’t agree; we feel a tremendous pressure to ensure that every week we have a great share to deliver. Once we have the down payment in our hands we have made a promise to you. If your main outlet is a farmers’ market and you lose a lettuce planting or two, you miss a few sales. But as a CSA you can’t afford to miss any succession or experience any crop failures because your members put their trust in you.

We all understand that the members share in the risk of any possible catastrophe like hail, flooding, or windstorm. But notwithstanding those acts of God, farmers have a lot of influence in the outcome of a crop. Most crop failures on farms are still human failures. Sometimes it is a matter of poor planning; planting parsnips in a weedy field whereby the weeds become twice as tall as the seeded down parsnips, or planting a crop like broccoli that requires a lot of nitrogen in a low fertility field. The other most common mistake was pointed out to me many years ago by my friend and colleague, John Peterson of Angelic Organics.

The irony of it all is that I was confronted by John during a session I taught to other CSA farmers about equipment. I explained to the group the methodology of properly sizing your equipment to the scale of your operation. This can be a relatively academic exercise. John became very agitated with the exercise and at the peak of his frustration screamed out: “This is wrong, you need to take these numbers and multiply them by at least two”. “But John, not too many people can afford that” I replied. “It is more expensive to undersize your equipment” was his final word on it as he continued to sulk during the remainder of my presentation. While John has a real love relationship with his farm equipment (read: Farmer John on: “Glitter and Grease”) he is also rational and in retrospect I had to admit he was correct. The crop losses that were due to equipment breakdown or inability to get the work done during small windows of opportunity changed my perspective. Collecting the many pieces of highly specialized equipment (you won’t find many pieces of our equipment on the local equipment dealer’s lot) took many years and a lot of research to collect. When John visited Roxbury Farm last year I accomplished something I never dreamt would happen; he not only approved our choice of equipment, he was almost envious.

Last week was one of those weeks where this foresight paid off. We only had one day to put all our plants and seed for the week in the ground and to plow up ground for future succession plantings. Unfortunately that day was on a Wednesday; our busiest harvest day of the week. That day showed us that people are still the most important resource as the majority of the harvesting (even on a large scale) is done by hand. Our crew of nine, with exceptional focus harvested and washed 400 bunches each of turnips, radishes, broccoli rabe, and scallions, 400 lbs each of salad mix and braising mix, 400 heads each of lettuce and bok choi, 2400 scapes, several boxes each of cilantro, parsley and sorrel, and they were able to harvest the daily picking of summer squash and zucchini. In addition to that, we were able to mulch about two acres of plasti-culture, stale seed bed 2 acres of raised beds, plant 6000 sweet corn plants, 3000 broccoli plants, 3000 Brussels sprouts plants, seed down 7000 row foot each of salad and braising mix, cultivate two acres of potatoes, four acres of sweet corn, and work up about four acres of new vegetable land. Yes, it was kind of late when we were done that day but when it poured buckets of rain again the following morning we knew none of our efforts had been in vain.

The common mistake most CSA farmers make is that they penny-pinch when purchasing equipment. While equipment is very costly, a breakdown can be far costlier as a farmer potentially loses the opportunity to get his crops in the ground. What I learned from Farmer John is that it is better to oversize your equipment as it allows you to take advantage of small windows of opportunity. One of those small windows was last Wednesday. With John Middleton keeping the equipment in tip top shape, with a harvest crew moving in high gear, and the foresight that you can hardly have too many pieces of equipment around, we have a little more peace of mind. That, and headlights on the tractors. ~Jean-Paul

Pick Your Own Strawberry Farms

Thompson Finch Farm: Ancram, NY (southern Columbia County) Organic Pick Your Own Strawberries and Raspberries and a Farm Stand. Always call ahead to check on picking conditions at 518-329-7578. For directions visit their website at http://www.thompsonfinch.com/.

Indian Ladder Farms: Altamont, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, Raspberries, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead at (866) 640-PICK. For directions visit their website at http://www.indianladderfarms.com/.

Stone Ridge Orchard, near New Paltz, NY Sustainably Grown Pick Your Own Strawberries, Pear, and Apples and a Farm Stand. Call ahead 845-687-4379 or visit their website at http://www.stoneridgeorchard.com/

Samascott Orchards, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries, Blueberries, and Sour Cherries. Call ahead at 518-758-7224 or visit their website at http://www.samascott.com/.

Yonder Farms, Valatie, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries. Open most weekends during strawberry season. Roadside stand is on Route 9 just north of Valatie.

The Berry Farm, Kinderhook, NY Pick Your Own Strawberries and Blueberries and a Farm Store. Call for information at 518-392-4609