Inti Raymi: a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground

Happy Summer Soltice, y'all! Today is the longest day of the year and the first day of summer. Quite the reason to celebrate, if you ask me. I hope you all were able to get outside and spend some quality time with Mother Earth on her highest day. Thankfully, the weather held up beautifully and I was able to take full advantage of almost all the hours of glorious sunshine (I didn't get up at 5:13 in the morning so I missed a few of those early morning rays...).

First thing in the morning, a few friends and I headed out to Seeds of Solidarity in Orange, MA for a solstice gathering. (As a side, SoS is an awesome educational nonprofit farm that is completely no-till, meaning they do not cultivate the soil with any sort of tillage such as plowing and the like. Instead, they use cardboard to suppress weeds and plant their seeds into holes in order to not disturb the living organisms that inhabit the soil and make healthy soil structure. Pretty awesome stuff, but hard to do on a bigger scale, such as our operation at Stone Soup.)

We had an hour of mediation; this was time set aside to listen to the world speak around us as well as to begin to remember our ancestral selves, our past lives, or simply attempt to return to the essence of who we are for a few moments. It was some much-needed silence and reflection for most of us in the circle, I think. Afterwards, a Creek Indian Shaman who was present at the ceremony blessed us each in turn in his traditional language. The smell of burning sage always brings back many wonderful memories of past ceremonies such as this one, and I am thankful to have another memory to add to that mix.

Once we had all been given blessings, we began our group effort to build a circle mandala on the land. People laid down flowers, lavender, written notes on colored paper, and other works of art. One person planted a Columbine tree in the circle and the shaman put a bone from a deer's throat in the center. A mother and her two beautiful children were in attendance and they poured some sand that the mother had from her ancestral home of Bengal in Southern India. A very moving moment, indeed.

We did a few more rituals involving the seven directions (south, west, north and east, plus sky and earth, and then the self) and my friends and I read a meditation written for the occasion. We ended with a prayer circle and potluck. All in all, it was a magical morning.

After this, I returned to the farm and spent the first part of the afternoon with my toes in the soil, hoeing our nightshades in the field. Tomatoes, eggplants and peppers - freeing them of weed pressure so they can get big and healthy!

The second part of my afternoon was spent lounging around in various rivers and waterfalls around the Amherst area. I won't even say more because words can't describe the sense of peace and beauty that pervades those woods, those waters. I am thankful.

Week in Review - whew!

Sometimes things get crazy and when you finally take a breather, you realize it's Friday afternoon and you've got streaks of dirt on your face that you're sure have been there for days. I had one of those moments a little bit ago. It's a pretty good feeling, to have survived yet another hectic and crazy work week.

Here on the farm, we're in week 3 of our CSA and we're running at full speed. Things certainly didn't slow down after the squash fiasco on Monday morning. Contrary to our poor cucurbits, our tomatoes are alive and well - so well indeed that they needed a little tending to. We spent a few hours training their delicate vines around strings hanging from the top of the greenhouse. While we do this, we also pinch off any "suckers" that might be growing off the main stem. We do this because, as their name insinuates, they will only suck nutrients away and diminish the quality of fruit that the plant produces. The main stem continues to climb upwards, producing more "suckers" as well as other offshoots bearing yellow flowers which will then yield our desired fruit! There are already clusters of light green bulbs appearing on the vine, and soon these plant will be towering way high over our heads. I should start taking bets for when the first 'mater will be ready for eatin'!

Tuesday brought bouts and bouts of rain; nothing exceptional. Wednesday brought a bit of sadness as we lost a sweet Black Star chicken. This little lady had been with the farm since it's inception four years ago, and I guess she was just too worn out to keep going. Four years is a long time for a chicken. Thanks for all of your eggs, mama!

Wednesday was also the first day of the new farmer's market at Kendrick Park in Amherst, so that was a big deal for us. We had a lot of work- getting all of the produce ready for market as well as putting the Boston CSA shares together- but we got it done, and just in the nick of time! Jackie is our market maven and she set up a most beautiful display of our best turnips, salad mix, herbs, basil plants, garlic scapes, rainbow chard, and our delectable strawberries! It was great fun to walk around the park and check out the other great farms selling alongside us. My favorite was Bart's solar-powered ice cream stand. I was even able to trade a bag of spinach for a cup of amazing ice cream (double chocolate rasberry and local peach) - isn't that glorious?!Trading is probably my favorite thing about market. After a market has ended (or during, as it was in my case), vendors walk around and trade their goods for whatever they may desire. Jackie came away with an astounding amount of goat cheese from Sangha Farm, and there's really nothing else I could want more in the world. Good life.

The rest of the week was savoring the first snap peas of the season and taking on the big task of direct seeding winter squash to make up what we lost. I love the simple act of setting a seed down in the soil and covering it with dirt. It's raining now, so the seeds will get the moisture they need to germinate and make that magical transition from dormancy to aliveness. Simply magical!

The great squash depression

After a very joyful and happy weekend off for us farmers at Stone Soup Farm (I was on a weekend retreat with college friends, Jarrett was away at a southern wedding, and Emily and Dave were out and about doing fun things in the Valley), we were ready to start our work week bright and early on Monday.
That is, until Emily declared at our morning meeting - "I have bad news. Do you want it now or in the field?"
Jarrett wanted it immediately, of course, and we all held our breath for it.
"The winter squash are gone."
Where'd they go, you ask? Well, they went under Reemay Row Cover after we transplanted them into the field, as you can see in the first picture of this post. It was a preventative measure to protect them from the atrocious cucumber beetles that had mangled our other cucurbit crops with a vengeance.
But when we lifted the row cover early Monday morning, they were nowhere to be found. You could see the few droopy remains of a butternut squash here and there, but besides that - nothing. When we examined the soil closer, we could see skinny strands of something white-ish where the plants used to be. I had no idea what they were. It seemed as if someone had removed each plant from the soil and replaced it with this stringy thing.
The unfortunate events that led to this devastation are quite simple. The days after we put down the row cover were way hotter than we expected, and the little squashes couldn't handle it. Burnt. Charred. All that was left was a scraggly remain of what was once the stem. I wasn't aware that they were so sensitive to heat, but now I have seen the proof.
It was a hard decision - to protect them from the beetles or to bet against the weather. In the end, it was the wrong decision. Those plants that were left out from the row cover were still standing, and it seems as if the cucumber beetles hadn't even found this area of our fields at all.

Jarrett took this scene in quietly, and instructed us to pull up all of the row cover to better assess the damage - a death toll of about 80%. We're not sure what we'll do from here; maybe salvage the remaining living plants and consolidate them in a different part of the field, perhaps scrap the whole thing and start again from seed. Regardless, we will have a winter squash harvest this year. It may be smaller than we had hoped, and it may come later than we wish, but it will come.

They say to be a good farmer, you gotta kill a lot of plants. Well....

The beauty of horse power

Earlier this week, the apprentices from Stone Soup joined many other farm apprentices from the region (we all belong to a program called CRAFT) at Natural Roots Farm in Conway, MA. Usually, the CRAFT apprentices are split into two groups that visit different farms, one in the east and one in the west, to make it easier for transportation and such, but not this day. We were all gathered at Natural Roots, from near and far, because no one wanted to miss out on the opportunity to visit David Fisher’s completely horse-powered operation.

I had visited his farm once before, in the fall of 2009, with my Sustainable Agriculture class at Umass. Of course, I had been impressed back then, even with my little knowledge and experience in farming. The view from the parking lot is beautiful enough to knock your socks off: gorgeous green forested hills, leading down to a beautiful flat valley of extremely neat and attractively symmetrical fields, and bordered on the opposite side by the South River. To get to the fields from the parking lot, you cross over a quaint bridge that shakes and wobbles with every step as the river rushes beneath your feet.

Not only is this farm in the most idyllic of locations, but they also seem to be doing just about everything in their power to be self-sustaining – a very inspiring endeavor in my eyes. One of David Fisher’s main reasons for employing horses to get his work done is because he does not want to support a war he doesn’t agree with by burning petroleum fuel. They grow most of the hay they need to maintain the horses each year, but they buy in a fair amount of grain as well. Still, there are amazing things happening at Natural Roots farm, as this incredible story shows: in March of 2008, around 150 community members came together to help with a barn raising on their land- a barn that was built completely out of wood harvested from their own forests, pulled by their horses and cut and milled on site. Impressive, isn’t it? It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.

David Fisher certainly seems to have gotten “it”, that elusive thing we all keep thinking and talking so much about. Living sustainably on his land, and helping to build a healthy community in the process – a portrait of success if I’ve ever seen one. On the other hand, him and his apprentices keep busy from 6 in the morning until 7 in the evening with farm chores and the like. Winters don’t provide the much-appreciated respite from the season as they do for most other vegetable growers in the area. Wood must be harvested and chopped, stalls must still be cleaned daily, and many a sleigh ride must be had! Preparing the horses for work is a very time-consuming task, from what I gather, but also extremely rewarding. David told us about his close relationship with his animals, and he explained that learning how to communicate better with them has helped him greatly with all the other relationships in his life.

Just watching him work the land with his animals was incredibly awe-inspiring, in its’ quiet simplicity. He hitched up a team to a few different implements to show us how it worked. One of his apprentices mowed the cover crop and then he ploughed the soil, while another stale bedded another part of the field with a shallow tool that readies the soil for planting. The absence of the harsh tractor engine was the most striking to me. No noise besides the soft jangle of the horses’ reins and the comforting commands of the rider steering them. The tractor seems so abrasive in comparison, so unnatural … And yet, this morning I mounted our John Deere 1050 and got to work.

strawberries are IN!

Each day, I find another magical reason why I love working on a farm. This morning, it was presented to me in the form of a gorgeous, delicious, and shockingly rosy red strawberry! Whoever said you can't grow big and beautiful strawberries without the use of harmful chemicals was definitely lying, and we have the proof. No chemicals, no soil amendments, no insecticides - nothing! Just pure deliciousness, and a bit of straw to keep the weeds out. (Hence the name! Did ya know?)
Jarrett had to chase us out of the field this afternoon, we just couldn't stop munching. Some of them have tiny bites taken out of them, probably from little mice wandering the field at night, but no major damage. And the difference in taste and texture is... significant. No waxy residue or strange tart aftertaste, just pure sweetness. Words can't explain. Come and see for yourself! Our summer CSA season has officially begun, and the pick your own field is filling up fast with tons of goodies - strawbs included! Happy eating (:

Season opener

Hello blogworld, I have decided to dedicate a separate blog for chronicling happenings on the farm this season. I hope you'll join me through the wonders and challenges of farming! And please feel free to kick me in the butt if I fall behind on updates... I can be a slacker sometimes.

Also, I've added an email update function to the site in case you'd like to join our listserv and have these blog posts sent directly to your inbox. You can add your email address in the top right corner of this page.

If you'd like to read previous updates about the farm, please check this blog.

Best,

Carmella + the rest of the Stone Soup crew!