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I made it to the farm– drove from Rochester after a pleasant morning in which Boy decided to resume my earlier war against the invasive garlic mustard on the creek bank. He was pretty accurate, and had decent success at getting the roots. It was cute.
Arrived midafternoon, just as Farmkid was about to finish her daily ration of TV. Sister showed me some of their new stuff– the beautiful glass-fronted fridge in the farmstand, she admitted, was largely because she couldn’t forsee how else to sell flowers this year if the market didn’t happen. So she’s got bouquets in there, and they’ve made like a hundred bucks a week from sales out of that fridge, so they ought to have it paying for itself by midsummer, though people’s excitement to shop straight from farms has died down.
“People were afraid of grocery stores,” she explained. “They’re not now.” Not that anything’s different. Still– “It actually means we’re wasting less produce; it used to be more effective for us to leave some of the extra stuff to rot, but after pickup on Wednesday, I went out Thursday and gleaned our own field for what hadn’t been needed for the CSA, and that’s in the fridge now, and a bunch of it will get sold and maybe we’ll donate the rest to the food pantry. Wasn’t worth the labor, before, to harvest, and it’s not exactly a waste to let it compost in place, but.” She shrugged. They’d harvest extra stuff for themselves in the past, and it wasn’t much, but.
They’d had produce in the fridge from some neighbors (”the Tarbox kids”, she called them, some twentysomething scions of an old farm family up the road) who produced for farmer’s markets that had been shut down. They’re going to keep that possibility open.
I also noticed that on the shelf in the farmstand they were selling Pocket Buddies, rocks Willa had painted, for fifty cents each. That was clearly Willa’s idea.
They’ve semi-accidentally increased chicken production. “Well, there’s a batch out there that’s twice the normal size,” Sister commented. “We sort of didn’t realize– after our first batch sold out, we asked the hatchery if we could increase future orders by ten percent, and we hadn’t realized that this next batch to arrive had 75 extra chicks in it already for another farm that had intended to cancel their sub-order from us, and then we also had a few extra for another friend who wound up not wanting them……… anyway the group that just went out on pasture has uhhh twice the usual number in it, so.” We calculated out which date those are getting processed on and I mentally committed to being here for it.
The group we’re doing this Tuesday is also oversized; there’s a contingent of 75 heritage-hybrid chicks in it which were started with the first batch they processed two weeks ago, but the Freedom Ranger hybrids need two more weeks to finish than the gross Cornish Cross blob-chickens, so those extra 75 birds are out in a corner of the pasture looking– fantastic, actually, they’re much more beautiful birds than the CCs.
(Vegetable Manager took me on a little tour of the farm while we gave the dog a walk after dinner [since Sister and BIL were occupied with a vet visit to get the newest boar piglets castrated], and filled me in on what’s going on in his department. He’s increased the picking garden by about 50% and is preparing soil for a huge perennial add-on next year, and roughly sketched out three or four more years of plans– terraces, landscaping the creek right there, more fruit stuff– he’s so interesting. Then he did the dishes, because he’d just been fed dinner spontaneously and in past years has been the one who has to deal with castrating the piglets because he was the only one with the skill-set from an earlier job, and he hates dealing with pigs.)
Farmkid is enormous– she’s grown three inches over the past year, and now outweighs her best friend, who is slightly older, by about ten pounds. They’ve been telling everyone they’re half-sisters, which since everyone knows their moms and everyone knows my BIL, sort of erases her bestie’s dad, but he seems not to mind. Also, though, they’re six, so nobody really listens to them too much? Still, it’s funny and sort of weird.
Farmkid apparently wrote a 30-page book on the computer yesterday so I’ll have to check that out. I also need to practice her handwriting with her.
OK people are awake, I gotta go be a people.
I made it to the farm– drove from Rochester after a pleasant morning in which Boy decided to resume my earlier war against the invasive garlic mustard on the creek bank. He was pretty accurate, and had decent success at getting the roots. It was cute.
Arrived midafternoon, just as Farmkid was about to finish her daily ration of TV. Sister showed me some of their new stuff– the beautiful glass-fronted fridge in the farmstand, she admitted, was largely because she couldn’t forsee how else to sell flowers this year if the market didn’t happen. So she’s got bouquets in there, and they’ve made like a hundred bucks a week from sales out of that fridge, so they ought to have it paying for itself by midsummer, though people’s excitement to shop straight from farms has died down.
“People were afraid of grocery stores,” she explained. “They’re not now.” Not that anything’s different. Still– “It actually means we’re wasting less produce; it used to be more effective for us to leave some of the extra stuff to rot, but after pickup on Wednesday, I went out Thursday and gleaned our own field for what hadn’t been needed for the CSA, and that’s in the fridge now, and a bunch of it will get sold and maybe we’ll donate the rest to the food pantry. Wasn’t worth the labor, before, to harvest, and it’s not exactly a waste to let it compost in place, but.” She shrugged. They’d harvest extra stuff for themselves in the past, and it wasn’t much, but.
They’d had produce in the fridge from some neighbors (”the Tarbox kids”, she called them, some twentysomething scions of an old farm family up the road) who produced for farmer’s markets that had been shut down. They’re going to keep that possibility open.
I also noticed that on the shelf in the farmstand they were selling Pocket Buddies, rocks Willa had painted, for fifty cents each. That was clearly Willa’s idea.
They’ve semi-accidentally increased chicken production. “Well, there’s a batch out there that’s twice the normal size,” Sister commented. “We sort of didn’t realize– after our first batch sold out, we asked the hatchery if we could increase future orders by ten percent, and we hadn’t realized that this next batch to arrive had 75 extra chicks in it already for another farm that had intended to cancel their sub-order from us, and then we also had a few extra for another friend who wound up not wanting them……… anyway the group that just went out on pasture has uhhh twice the usual number in it, so.” We calculated out which date those are getting processed on and I mentally committed to being here for it.
The group we’re doing this Tuesday is also oversized; there’s a contingent of 75 heritage-hybrid chicks in it which were started with the first batch they processed two weeks ago, but the Freedom Ranger hybrids need two more weeks to finish than the gross Cornish Cross blob-chickens, so those extra 75 birds are out in a corner of the pasture looking– fantastic, actually, they’re much more beautiful birds than the CCs.
(Vegetable Manager took me on a little tour of the farm while we gave the dog a walk after dinner [since Sister and BIL were occupied with a vet visit to get the newest boar piglets castrated], and filled me in on what’s going on in his department. He’s increased the picking garden by about 50% and is preparing soil for a huge perennial add-on next year, and roughly sketched out three or four more years of plans– terraces, landscaping the creek right there, more fruit stuff– he’s so interesting. Then he did the dishes, because he’d just been fed dinner spontaneously and in past years has been the one who has to deal with castrating the piglets because he was the only one with the skill-set from an earlier job, and he hates dealing with pigs.)
Farmkid is enormous– she’s grown three inches over the past year, and now outweighs her best friend, who is slightly older, by about ten pounds. They’ve been telling everyone they’re half-sisters, which since everyone knows their moms and everyone knows my BIL, sort of erases her bestie’s dad, but he seems not to mind. Also, though, they’re six, so nobody really listens to them too much? Still, it’s funny and sort of weird.
Farmkid apparently wrote a 30-page book on the computer yesterday so I’ll have to check that out. I also need to practice her handwriting with her.
OK people are awake, I gotta go be a people.
