Three years...

Today is our third year anniversary.

Three years ago tonight we were running around like crazy people getting ready for Saturday's big event in our barn. We were cooking and cleaning and being generally insane. There was no Spa day for this bride. Instead my sister had to come and literally pull me out of the barn 90 minutes before the ceremony. "YOU HAVE TO GO GET READY!" But wait! I am still thickening the stew and we have to light the candles! "NO! NOW!"

Hubby was even worse. Guests were arriving when his sister pulled him off the mower. "YOU HAVE TO GO GET READY!" But... "NO! NOW!"

We had a lucky beautiful day. It stormed and was cold on the day before and the day after, for us though it was beautiful.

Kind of a metaphor for our lives the past three years together. So many things have happened, so much sadness has come into our lives. The death of both my parents, loss of a pregnancy, medical emergencies and hospitalizations. Through it all he has been my rock, and without him I fear I would have crumbled.

It has not been all sadness, far from it, I have found my soul mate, and though I want to whack him sometimes (OK, often!) he is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and together we are building a new life. One which is better then either of us could have done on our own.

Today is our anniversary and I am sitting in the sorting shed waiting for the last couple members. One of my friends said she thought it was sad we would not do something tonight. But, honestly, we are doing something, as we do with every CSA pickup day, we are taking steps to making our life together better. To growing our farm, where we will soon (not a hint not that soon people!) grow our family. Where we can be in the good times and the bad. If we have to wait a day or two to eat an expensive meal, it does not matter.

Here is hoping for better years to come, together.

On the farm mowing is a project....

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Strange Organic Post of the day...

Did you know that only 5-10% of organic veggies in this country are grown with organic seed. Did you even know there was such a thing? Obviously, organic seed comes from plants which were grown organically and are not treated (with non-organic) seed treatments.

So I wonder, how important is it to most organic eaters that their food be grown with organic seed. Not being certified organic, for us it is not a huge deal and about 10-15% of our seed each year is organic. For farms who are certified they have to get organic seed where it is commercially available (and not a huge premium, it is something like 25% more.)

As we are starting to think about next year, stuff like this is coming to our minds more and more. And this morning I was reading an article in a Veggie Farmer magazine that made us talk about it. I think most consumers don't really worry about organic seed, or even think about it. We think about it, for a couple reasons.

First, although we don't always buy organic seed we want to be pretty careful about seed treatments. We don't want our seeds soaked in chemicals. There are organic seed treatments and those are life savers, helping mainly with seeds germinating and growing healthy in cold damp spring soil.

Then there is, in my mind, the main benefit of organic seed. The seed's parents were grown under organic conditions, so hopefully the plant that results will be better tolerant of an organic life. Better able to handle stress, fight off bugs, and resist disease. And while this is a nice benefit of organic seed, it is usually not enough to make us buy a variety we would not otherwise get. There are so many variables to factor in to selections, organic seeds is just one little piece, at least for us.

Then there is the coming wave of organic seeds, grown specifically for organic growers. These have promise. The article I mentioned talked about carrot varieties being grown specifically for early growth of the carrot tops. Wow, would that be nice! Carrots are a bit of challenge to grow sustainably because their tops grow SO SLOW. Every weed in the world is established before the carrot looks like more then a tiny fern, and since their leaves are so small, any weed competition is a problem... If the tops grew faster we would spend fewer hours weeding the carrots! Things like this would push us to buy more organic seed.

For now, we will keep using the organic/ conventional label on our seed as just one of many factors we consider when deciding what to grow, a huge challenge every year.

Ready for Frosts

Two and a half weeks left in the season and a handful of frosts in the forcast. Hopefully the row cover does it's job.

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Mowing...

Sounds like a simple enough task.

This week we need to mow the back field.

Well, the back field is about four tenths of a mile long, and a couple hundred feet wide at the narrowest spot, and we have a 5 foot brush hog.

As I type this, sitting at my desk, my farmer hubby is on the tractor driving in BIG circles, again.

Yesterday he got about 5 acres (?) mowed in 5 hours. We are guessing all in all it is about 25 hours of work, some of that is our fault because we waited until it got a bit tall to mow, the cost of diesel and the time. Eventually we will be planting in this field, but for now we just have to keep it from falling into succession (the forest around it starting to take it over.) We are thinking our first year of putting a little stuff back here will be next year, but we have this water problem. There is none in this field, so it will have to be hauled in, no nice huge cistern to look towards. Water back here will be the big issue, and we are thinking about ways to tackle it. Our first plans are for hoop houses, so those beds will not require as much water.

The second issue is fencing this 20 acre monster. It might have been possible to make the outline of the field more irregular, but I don't know how! We will probably fence it in pieces for specific things. Time will tell....

I love fall...

Such a beautiful fall day! Farming in the fall is the best. Field work feels so nice, when the cool winds blow and the smell of fall is in the air. The urgency of spring is absent and the hope for a new year is starting.

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I love fall...

Such a beautiful fall day! Farming in the fall is the best. Field work feels so nice, when the cool winds blow and the smell of fall is in the air. The urgency of spring is absent and the hope for a new year is starting.

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