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Wet, Weedy And Weird: Summer 2023

When it first started raining, I was thrilled. We were starting the growing season NOT in a drought! But, as you know, it just kept coming, enough to break records in June and July and cause terrible floods in some places (we did not have that here). While I continue to remind myself to be grateful there is water coming our way regularly, it’s also true that there is such a thing as too much. As Brene Brown said: the opposite of scarcity is not abundance, it is enough.

A Good Year For Lettuce

Early on in this rainy season most of our plants grew quickly and looked great. I thought we were being set up for an exceptional gardening year and harvest. Instead, the excessive ups and downs and weird weather patterns have hindered our production.

It really started last winter.

The spring bloom – or lack thereof – confirmed that the February polar vortex did wipe out this year’s peaches. Peaches are an important crop for me. You may have read about my August and September canning marathons putting up 50 plus quarts of peaches each year. So, I did mourn that loss… but I hoped that the berry season might make up for it, since fruit set on the bushes around here looked great. There was also a late frost in May, but, luckily, that barely touched us.

A Rhubarb Plant Almost As Tall As I Am!

It was also a chilly spring so the heat lovers stagnated, like our eggplant. But the kale, collards, broccoli and Brussels sprouts flourished. The lettuce was huge, tasted great, and lasted extra long before bolting. The rhubarb and asparagus were big and beautiful.

Looking Up At The Peas

Most of our plants looked fabulous, truly lush in the gardens, orchards, pasture and wild places. Many of our climbers – pole beans and peas especially – outgrew their normal trellising, we added more, and they continued to keep going. The leeks, root crops, corn, and flowers for pollinators were vibrant and big. It was such a contrast to last year’s meager greenery in the drought.

Brussels Sprouts & Broccoli, Well-Mulched

But along with the crops growing well, the weeds proliferated. We have a low-weed system, using lots of mulch and not tilling at all. Despite that, there has still been weeding to do, especially in our newer orchard areas where there is a strong seed bank and the trees are too small to shade out new growth. So, while we didn’t have to water at all, we have had more than enough unwanted plant removal to take up that time. At least the goats love most of the volunteer plants so it doesn’t seem like a such a waste.

As the season has been moving along, many of our yields are just not spectacular. The peas grew tall and tasted great – but died after just a few weeks. Our zucchini plants had a similar trajectory. Our rattlesnake pole bean vines are huge, but not that productive. My first plantings of cukes wilted quickly – I’m not entirely sure which disease it was, but in the wet conditions it hit them hard. My later plantings look ok, but since it continues to be so rainy I won’t be surprised if it gets to them, too. The eggplant and tomatoes are only trickling in. Blueberry picking was awesome – until the spotted wing drosphilia numbers rose. We used to have over a month of picking, but the past few years only get about 2 weeks until the berries get mushy because of the larvae

Tomatoes Ripening Very Slowly

Also, even though there have been some serious spikes in heat, we have not had the extended, less intense heat that many plants produce best in. It felt great to us humans when the heat broke… but with highs only in the 70s, lots of plants slowed way down.

 

Lush Pasture for the Goats

Not everything is doing badly. Some other crops look good: winter squash, root crops, dry beans, yellow summer squash, our unusual berries (clove currants and jostaberries especially). Our basil has been excellent and most of our garlic is big and beautiful (the red variety is smaller than usual). Our animals are thriving with such lush grass and greenery to nourish them.

However, overall, this is turning out to be our least productive growing season yet.

In these difficult conditions, we are once again glad that we discovered permacultural principles and growing methods. Having healthy soil filled with organic matter and humus can moderate the extremes of wet and dry. Keeping the soil covered with plants and mulches suppresses weeds, retains moisture when needed, and lowers soil temperature when it is hot and sunny. An emphasis on plant and animal diversity means we never have a year that is a total loss. Earthworks such as swales help our land slow and capture the bursts of heavy rain, stopping erosion and keeping the groundwater and well charged. I can’t imagine trying to live this way without all that in place.

Permaculture also encourages big picture thinking, beyond our own place and time.

A lot of work goes into growing good food

It is very likely that weather will continue to be volatile and hard to predict, probably more than we’re currently experiencing, and it is going to be challenging to grow food. People seemed to understand the importance of maintaining our food supply when shelves were emptying at the start of the pandemic and then with recent price spikes at grocery stores. I’m not sure if people grasp how much harder it is to grow food in these times of climate disruptions.

I don’t want to frighten anyone – I am not sure fear is a great motivator of real, intelligent change. I hope that we can become aware of these issues, even though they are scary, and deepen our appreciation for food and farmers and our planet’s life giving systems so much that we are inspired to act in support of all of them. There are many ways to do so. Here’s one:

Building Good Soil Is Possible

Right now the Farm Bill is being worked on in Congress (it comes around about every 5 years). It is a great opportunity to ask for change. The bill’s current priorities favor agribusiness and destructive technological and market schemes. Instead, these resources could support the small farmers who actually feed most humans and real solutions addressing environmental problems. How food is grown deeply matters – it’s why Steve and I have committed much of our lives to doing it well! Agricultural methods can destroy the earth or help to stabilize the water cycle, put carbon where it belongs, stop soil loss, reverse desertification and more. You can learn about how to advocate for change at NOFA-NH and AFSC.

Back at the homestead, it’s hard not to get discouraged in a year like this, but we will keep our own gardens going and hope you will, too, as another way to strengthen our resilience and food security and lessen the stress on the biosphere. We’ll also remember to take in the beauty all around us this season, such as the extraordinary vista of blooms in our front yard.

Our Herb & Pollinator Garden

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2022 on the Homestead

Before the 2023 growing season starts, I am taking some time to pause and assess last year on the homestead, in our permacultural ‘observe and interact’ way.

As an overview, I would say it was a tough year due to yet another drought, but that we managed to have a respectable harvest anyway due to adaptations we made. As always, some crops thrived while others did not. For consistency, in this blog I have kept the same topic headings as in previous years – plus a special section on new projects including our experiment with wheat growing!

Starting Seeds

Starting Seeds Indoors

My growing season got off to a solid start in March with indoor seed starting. I continue to be satisfied with the peat-free seed starting mix from Organic Mechanics mixed with our worm castings.

Sticking with newer seed and storing it well has kept my germination rates high the past few years. I am also doing more of my own seed saving, which means a yearly refresh of my supply. Some seed saving is easy, like flowers, herbs, and beans. Other types require more thought but are accessible, like lettuce, radish, and tomatoes. Still others are challenging, like squash, and biennial roots. My strategy is to add one or two types of seed to my repertoire every year rather than overwhelm myself by trying to do it all right away.

Weather and Water

Unfortunately but not unexpectedly, serious droughts are coming more frequently (‘abnormal dryness’ and ‘moderate’ droughts do come and go here somewhat regularly). In 2016 it felt like a shock after nearly two decades of normal precipitation. It was a relief when that ended, but an even worse dry period hit us in 2020. That one barely let up before another started in mid 2022.

Rain Water Storage

So, we relied on the upgraded water catchment system we installed last year, with four 275 gallon totes. Watering is not as thorough as rain, and it’s a lot of work, but it did save our plants and allow for a decent harvest.

Rodents, Pests and Diseases

Rodents continue to be a problem for us, especially voles. Now, I am aware that small mammals are critically important in our ecosystems and that populations are collapsing in some places (examples include China and England).  Loss of biodiversity is a dangerous and heartbreaking phenomenon, so I really don’t want to complain too much about healthy numbers of critters! However, the voles are taking too much of my root crops to be ignored.

I think there are two main reasons my preferred strategy of waiting for their predators to bring numbers back down is not working. First, our milder winters allow more of them to survive and breed. Second, because we have extensive fencing to protect our animals from predators, our gardens from deer, and now our orchards from porcupines we’ve created an especially safe haven for the furry little ones.

Raised Beds for Root Crops

So, we are starting to institute more drastic measures for crop protection. Last year I moved these crops out of the annual garden, but the voles just followed me. Friends gave me two very raised garden beds when they moved last year and they grew some

Carrots from the Raised Beds

awesome, not-at-all-chewed-up carrots. We’ll be building more, although we will put them on the ground with metal hardware cloth under them and see how that works.

 

We are considering growing our potatoes in large plastic barrels. I avoid plastic as much as possible and would rather grow everything directly in the ground, but I need to try something.

We have attracted the attention of porcupines. I find these animals adorable and love the sounds they make. They were, however, starting to do some real damage in our orchard. They especially love young pear trees. Deer are always an issue as well, so we did a serious fencing expansion that should keep both species at bay without our having to become more aggressive with them. We’re hoping that good fences will make good neighbors in this case (although I am much more a supporter of ‘tear down the walls’ actions in human interactions)!

Otherwise, we didn’t have major pest or disease outbreaks, which surprised me during such a stressful drought. In fact, there were so few vine borers we had the best summer squash harvest of our lives! I did have my usual struggle with caterpillars in the brassicas, which row cover and hand picking mostly kept in check. The Brussels sprouts were a little bit overrun, with all those nooks and crannies that the critters can hide in.

Labor

I continued my new pattern of driving to events less and using Zoom more thus having a little more time to keep up with the work here. I also did cut back in a few areas because I have been dealing with tendonitis in my arm, which made my workload more realistic. Which brings me to…

Animals: Bees

I have decided to take a break from beekeeping. My arm injury was definitely being exacerbated by the particular stress of frame lifting and moving the boxes. Bees are also difficult and many years disappointing, so a break from that is welcome. I hope to try again in 2024.

Animals: Goats and Pasture

Lily with this year’s kids

Spring birthing went well for both Lily and Georgia, our two pregnant does for the year. Pasture management was more challenging in the drought but we did ok in keeping the land covered and green. We could use more land to rotate the goats through for better parasite prevention in the herd, but what we’re doing is working well enough for now.

The big goat news is the arrival of new boys! In order to avoid inbreeding, we need some amount of turnover in the buck population and it was time. We found a breeder who had similar practices, made arrangements when kids were born in the spring, and picked up a pair – a buckling for breeding and his wethered (neutered) brother as his forever friend. I don’t like to buy or sell just one animal. I think going alone to a new place where they are likely to be quarantined for weeks is far too stressful. Zac and Ike (named for characters from 800 Words, FYI) have since joined the other boys – Marley the buck and Pinky the wether. Zac already got to prove his worth this Fall, spending two afternoons with Diana, who will be giving birth in early April!

Zac, Ike and Pinky

Animals: Poultry

This was an area we thought we’d pare back our plans to be sure of having enough good pasture. We hatched out 26 chickens and 2 ducklings. However, one of the hens had other ideas.  Without our even noticing, she made a nest in the brushy field and successfully brooded 14 chicks! I only figured it out when I heard that loud, distinctive peeping and found her strutting around surrounded by little ones. So, whoops, suddenly we had 40 chickens in the works. We were impressed with and grateful to the mama, and embraced the abundance, even if it was a little overwhelming.

New Projects: Maple Syrup and Wheat

Our Own Maple Syrup

Given that we are having trouble with the bees, we decided it was time to try maple sugaring. We had done a batch about 10 years ago, tapping a few red maples on our property and boiling the sap indoors leading to a harvest of… a pint or so. Not impressive! This time we invested in equipment to more easily collect the sap and boil it outside. We also reached out to neighbors for permission to tap their trees, too, if they weren’t doing it themselves, including a few sugar maples. The extra investment and work improved our yield to about 2 gallons. It is significant work, but we appreciate that it comes at a time of year that is otherwise quiet for us. We plan to keep that going and do even more in the future.

Years ago at a NOFA Summer Conference, I attended a workshop on home-scale grain growing in the Northeast, something I hadn’t considered even possible. I was so excited, but also intimidated to try it myself. A few years ago I gave it a try but the harvest was eaten by birds, mostly goldfinches. This past year, I tried again, growing a test plot in a bed 3 feet by 8 feet. I am thrilled to report that it worked! We managed to bring it in before the songbirds ate it all, dried it, threshed and winnowed, ground the wheat berries… and made an amazing loaf of bread! Threshing was the hardest part and I hope we can refine that. But, I am convinced now that it’s possible and planted 4x as much in the fall for a 2023 harvest. The global wheat shortage is likely to only get worse, so I’m doing my part to help localize this crop. We’ve been buying wheat berries from Maine for years, and this was the first year they sold out of the variety we wanted.

Growing Wheat

Drying Wheat

Bread from our own Wheat!

 

 

 

 

Harvest totals 2022

This accounts for what we brought into the house and remembered to weigh, which we mostly succeed in doing – except many overgrown cukes, kale, basil and zucchini were fed straight to the animals this year.

Alliums – garlic – 34.5 pounds (#) (185 heads); garlic tops – 180; leeks – 60.25#, perennial onions – 9.25#

Beans and Peas – snap beans – 90.75#; dry beans – 10#; sugar snap peas – 7#

Brassicas – broccoli – 13.75#; brussels sprouts – 9#; kale/collard – 42.5#

Harvest in July

Corn, popcorn – 7.25#

Cucumber – 128.5#

Eggplant – 13.5#

Greens – lettuce – 6.25#; nettles – 2.25#

Herbs – basil – 2.25#; dill – 1#

Mushrooms, winecap – 4.5#

Potatoes – 39#

Roots – beets – 4.5#; carrots – 45.75#; parsnips – 16.25#; radishes – 196 (here’s where the voles were: potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips!)

Summer Squash

Squash – summer – 244#; winter (butternut, delicata, long pie and Seminole) – 790.25# (it was a great squash year)

Tomato – slicing – 30.25#; cherry -11.5#

Wheat – 2#

Fruit: azarole – 16.5; crabapples – 118.5#; currants, red and white -18#; elderberry – 5.75#; grapes – 40.5#; honeyberry – 2#; mulberry – 2.25#; peaches – 182.5# (from 4 trees); rhubarb – 12.5#

Maple syrup – 2 gallons

Sea salt – 3 quarts

We brought in 87.3 gallons of goat milk (from 3 goats); 83# goat meat; 10# goat lard

Our poultry harvest came to: 1,385 (115 dozen) chicken eggs from 12 hens; 710 (59 dozen) duck eggs from 7 ducks; chicken meat – 89.5#; duck meat – 6.5#

Stored Crops

Food Preserving

Preserving food for the off-season is necessary for us to eat from our land year-round. Here’s a summary of what I put up from the harvest I just detailed, plus some gleaned crops:

Canned: peaches -25 quarts; grape juice – 18 pints; grape jelly – 4 pints; clove currants – 13 pints; elderberry syrup – 4 pints; applesauce from gleaned apples – 6 pints; pears, gleaned – 29 pints; blueberries from berries picked at Tuckaway Farm – 15 pints; strawberries – 27 pints and strawberry juice – 11 pints from berries picked at East Wind Farm

Dried: peaches – 5#; kale/collards – 8 gallon bags; tomatoes – 1# ; grapes (raisins) – 2.5#

Refrigerated: lactofermented cucumber pickles – 10 quarts

Frozen: blueberries from Tuckaway – 2 gallon bags; snap beans – 10#; eggplant – 5#; summer squash – 30#; basil/garlic pesto – 5 pints; chevre cheese – 10 pints; mozzarella cheese – 10#; and most of the meat.

We also store these crops that aren’t preserved exactly, just handled and stored properly: dried beans, popcorn, garlic, potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, winter squash, pears and apples.

Looking Ahead

So far, 2023 has been a tough year for me. Despite taking many precautions, I had my first bout of COVID starting in January and after two months I’m still not fully recovered.  While not life-threatening, it was otherwise worse than I’d expected. The only upside was that it hit me in the quiet season on the farm. Meanwhile, my arm injury is still aggravated. I am therefore trying to allow for a less demanding workload coming up in an effort to fully heal. Taking a break from beekeeping is the major change I’ve made to that end. We also didn’t order very many trees for spring planting. Upkeep and getting the most out of what we have already going on will be the focus.

That will include a nice big garden, the expanded wheat trials, and more protective ways of growing root crops. We have goat kids coming in early April, and will raise more chickens.

I hope to keep writing, now that I have figured out how to use the speech recognition on the computer which saves my arm quite a bit of stress. Thanks for reading and I hope you had a good 2022 and your 2023 is going well so far! 

Here’s my most interesting image from 2022:

Snakes in our crabapple tree in the fall!

 

 

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Another Busy Busy Season

I may have planted too many beans this year!

During growing and harvest time, its easy for me to feel overwhelmed. I have systems and plans and projects that are bursting with life as I’d hoped – but not always going quite as I had planned. Control is elusive… ok, impossible. I suppose the whole experience is a good lesson in how much control is an illusion (or delusion) of the human mind. At the same time, to have any success as a farmer/gardener is to be organized and proactive about taking care appropriately and with good timing.

It feels like a contradiction: I should not try to control life, but I can’t lose control. That edge is really uncomfortable. But, I have been trying to be more accepting of contradiction after hearing author John O’Donohue’s opinion of it: “We should allow the different sides of what is contradictory inside of us to come close and meet each other. There is a secret life in contradiction… it’s always a place of fecund energy. And where there’s energy, there’s life. The force of energy within your own contradictions can actually bring you to a new level of growth and possibility.”  Permaculture principle 11 does ask us to Use Edges and Value the Marginal for that same reason: “The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.”

Goats love to climb – it’s just who they are!

As I think about it, the goats are good at teaching me the difference between control and appropriate action. First of all, accepting that our land was not suited for the Jersey cow I had dreamed of was a way of listening to reality rather than imposing my will. Then, we heard so many distressing stories about the bad behavior of goats when we first started keeping them. Everyone wanted to tell us about how they escape, eat your garden or poisonous plants that kill them, violently butt people, scream all day, etc. We did have a few escape incidents early on.  But we studied goat behavior, talked to others, and through trial and error we created systems that properly channeled their normal goat tendencies in ways that help rather than hurt them and our homestead. It was a practice of observe, interact, accept feedback, self-regulate and respond to change (more permaculture principles). We learned how to channel the flow instead of fight against it.

So… what has kept us busy this year?

Our spring planting season was manageable, although we did have an extensive tree order arrive during April. At least it was raining back then.

It was when the drought settled in that we began to struggle to keep up.

Serious rain collection for a changing climate

That started in mid-June, adding daily (sometimes 2x a day) watering to our list of tasks. In what we used to think of as a “normal” year, we did almost no watering after plants were established in the spring. In the new climate of droughts here in New England, this becomes a necessity. We were grateful to have installed a robust rainwater collection system last year, able to hold over 1,000 gallons. We got towards the bottom of the supply a few times, but it rained enough to have continuous use of them through the summer.

Harvest time!

Being able to keep up with watering did lead to a prolific harvest for most of our crops. I had an especially good season for summer squash, snap beans, cucumbers, leeks and basil. Nearly every day I put something up for winter, which led to my next round of excess activity. I dehydrated peaches, apples, pears, grapes (raisins), kale,

Peaches! Not as many but super sweet in the drought.

summer squash, and winecap mushrooms. I froze beans, eggplant, summer squash, cheese, and pesto. I canned peaches and froze a lot of other smaller fruit that I will can now that it’s not so hot: strawberries, blueberries, grapes, currants, and elderberries.

 

As autumn settles in we fill our cold storage – garlic actually comes in earlier, then apples and pears, with the winter squash curing in the greenhouse first, and the roots are packed up for the root cellar.

Rotational Goat Grazing

There is always animal care to be on top of. Happily, that went smoothly for the most part. The goats had a good birthing season and our rotational grazing system is working well. I kept up with the heavy summer milk production by making (and freezing) mozzarella along with my usual yogurt and soft cheese. We had solid planned poultry hatches, and a surprise batch of 14 that one of our hens orchestrated out in the field without our noticing. We are now in poultry harvest and processing season, which is a lot of work, physically and emotionally. I took the year off from the bees which did free up some time for me.

The well-mulched annual garden needs very little weeding

There was weeding to do in the orchard and pasture areas, which is not a job I love and is always needed at the hottest time of year. Our annual garden system with my heavy mulching needs almost no weeding and that’s how I like it. But in other larger areas I am encouraging a mix of plants, mostly groundcovers or animal forage and still need to be on top of pulling out the plants that I don’t want there.

It’s really not until mid-October that I notice the pace slowing – and have time to start catching up on writing, reading and rest!

This year I had the added complication of deciding to continue extra off-farm work. Most years I suspend a lot of activities – True Tales Live takes a summer break, my drumming classes stop, Seacoast Permaculture offerings slow down, and I step back from activist work. However, this season I felt called to stay more connected to my work with NH Peace Action and the Friends Committee on National Legislation as it was an important moment in the struggle to end US involvement in the Yemen War – a war causing a terrible famine. So, I’m a little more behind than usual, but I am glad I did it. Underpinning all of our work here is the desire for a more peaceful and just world, and growing a little less of our own food to help others get any food at all was the right choice.

Packing carrots for the root cellar

Long Pie winter squash curing. We eat year-round from our garden with long-lasting crops and food preservation.

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