Special feature: Theo and his eating habits

Just for laughs...

Theo, enjoying a hand-salad at our cook-out

Improvements:  hand-salad dipped in pickle juice

The pickle-dog

Dare I say, he is a bit of a ham???

Field trip Friday: Down to Amherst and over to Northampton

Wm, sharing his field plans

Betsy, drilling a hole for wire trellis

Emma and Kiyoshi planting onions

Sophia and Wm planting onios

Our first stop today was Wm's plot of farm land in North Amherst at Amherst Brook Conservation.  We helped him with a few tasks.

Caitlin and Theo putting up the hops "teepee"

Wm  took us over to meet the new farmers on the block:  Many Hands Farm Corps.  These fellows have leased some wonderful land and are putting together a CSA as well as a farm/land stewardship program for youth.  We joined them in planted several rows of onions and they showed us their hand-made hoop house.  It was a beautiful structure.

Planting MORE onions

Looking at the hand-made Hoop house

After eating our lunches, we hopped back in the van and drove to Northampton to visit Nate and Jen's farm--Crimson and Clover.   I can't remember if I had blogged about this before.  GrowFood Northampton is a community group that, within one year, organized and fought to have some beautiful acreage preserved and then leased the purchased land to Nate and Jen, The Farm School staff.  They now are 99 year leasees of some wonderful land.  We took a tour of the place and then helped with some tasks.

Andrew, basket weeding

Nate telling us about the barn

Justin and Nora helping Andrew roll out the remay

Remay, rolled out

Connecting with Andrew at the post-work cook-out

Emily, stepping out of the sun

Some other nice shots of the day.

Tracks:  human and dear

Freshly plowed in rye--note small red tractor in distance.  Yay Stella!

Bloomed Trillium

The First spring planting and the Wood Wagon

the last trays in the cold frame

Nora carrying kale.

This morning, I joined the group putting the first plants in the ground.  This is the field we watched being plowed yesterday--Middle Field in North Orange.  First we loaded all the plants into the trucks, as well as a soil amendment, hand tools, buckets and water.  Then we drove over the the field and unloaded everything.      

Rebekah carrying chard

The truck, filled and ready to go

Nitrogen rich amendment for the soil

Kiyoshi hoeing in the 8-1-1

We spread the 8-1-1 amendment on the field to give the soil a healthy dose of nitrogen and hoed it in.  Then the tractor went over each bed sketching in three rows on each bed.







To plant our vegetable starts, we first dipped the trays in a diluted fish emulsion.  It smelled a lot like the boathouse at Stoney Point on Great Spirit Lake (family reference) without the gasoline smell.  Then one  of partner a pair placed each plug about a foot apart along the bed and the second of the set dug a hole with a trowel and placed the plug in the ground.  We did this for our different kinds of kale and then our collard greens.  

 Lastly we planted several rows of Swiss Chard.  The variety we use is called "Bright lights" and we harvested it last fall in "bouquets" since the stems are of such different colors:  white, fuschia, yellow, orange and red.  As we placed the plugs, sometimes there was more than one germinated plant.  We got to choose one and pluck the spare and one factor in choosing was to make sure there was a variety of stem colors.

Chard in the ground!

Drilling through wood and steel

Carriage bolts in a line

In the afternoon, I worked on the new wood wagon.  You may have seen the old manure spreader being demolished several weeks ago.  Then people have been welding the wheel axles of that spreader to a new frame.  Today the wood planks were being attached to the frame.  First the boards were cut to length.  Next a drill with a very strong bit bored through the wood and then the steel.  Last, for today, we used carriage bolts with washers and nuts underneath.  We did this during a rainstorm and it was a bit wet slithering under the wagon to tighten the nuts.  Even though I had a tarp, I kept sliding off it and ended up with a very wet back.  The plan is to put removable sides on the wagon--in the summer, we use it as a flat bed to move harvested vegetables out of the field and in the winter, put the sides on and carry firewood to Maggie!

Lunch and field prep

This morning, Rebekah and I prepared lunch. We reheated the last three soups (black bean, tomato and chicken soups) and made roasted carrots and parsnips as well as whole wheat/honey biscuits.

Stephen hitching up the bed shaper

In the afternoon, our group went out to see the North Orange fields.  Stephen and Tyson demonstrated hitching up implements to the tractor and then did their best to "shape the beds."  It was a bit tough because the field was still full of plowed in oat straw, which was the cover crop from last fall.  Cover crops are funny things--after a field has been harvested, the farmer plows in the left-over plants and then puts new seed down on the soil.  This seed--often oats, rye, vetch or a combination of these--germinates, grows and is left inthe field over the winter.  It isn't collected as food for humans or animals.  Instead, it nourishes the soil adding nutrients and organic matter to feed the microbes therein.  Those microbes help feed the next food crop.  This is a great story for another time.

discussing the soil

Looking back at the bed

While the farmers continued to fiddle with the tractor, the rest of us went off to clear the hedges around the North Orange fields.


Emily pointed out some lovely flowers--a trillium about to bloom and another crocus like flower already in bloom.  I was excited to find Canada Mayflower--one of my favorite spring flowers--about to bloom.  I'll sneak back over this weekend and see if they bloom.  The weather has gotten warm and muggy today.  Very summer-like!

Emily up a tree

Trillium about to bloom

Bee Class and Independent Projects Day 1

This morning we met with Jen to learn about bee diseases and then take a look into the health of the beehives here at Maggie's Farm.

Diseases of bees: (photos and details to come)

Inspecting the hives  (photos and details to come)

This afternoon we had our first "Independent Project" work time.  I went to Sentinel elm to set myself up in the orchard.  While I was waiting for the children to return from a walk to see the lambs and piglets at Maggie's, I watched Justin set up his forge.

Justin, forging ahead on his independent project

When the children returned, I took them up to the orchard to go over the basics of pruning.  They marked branches that fit  the D criteria (dead, diseased, damaged or disoriented) and then we went around pruning them.  They helped to remove suckers --roots shooting up new branches-- and then we collected the trimmings.  I returned to the orchard and continued to prune and clear around the trees.  The new trees should show up this week and we'll plant them with the next group.

Greenhouse work and preparing for harvest time

A small group of us went to the green house to seed trays of lettuce and pak choi this morning.  You have already seen trays of soil with people bent over them.  How about some action?  Here is a short clip of me using a little seed tool with tiny lettuce seed.

Emily Stephen Tyson and Caitlin

We went out into the Flat Field at Sentinel Elm to see the growth of the newly seeded pea plants.  This field had been plowed by horses so the rows were 30 inches on center--that means from the center of one row to the center of the next is 30 inches.  The little plants were coming up and the ones under the remay (white cloth) were even bigger.

Stephen Tyson and Caitlin

Here come the Peas!

Our next task was to pull up some spent spinach plants.  The chickens enjoyed picking through the old greens.  

Stephen and Emily folding up the irrigation tubes

Forking in the hoop house

Chickens enjoying spinach

At lunch, Theo demonstrated the "hand salad"   There is no quicker way to get one's daily greens than this!

In the afternoon, our half of the group were in charge of cleaning up the last dirty corner of the barn, stacking the sacks of seed potatoes and sorting and counting the various produce boxes.   Satisfying work, for sure.  We're ready for the harvest now.  If we could only get our seedlings in the ground!

Scrubbing the wall

Beautiful orange gloves

Seed potato delivery!

Greek Easter

Normally, I focus this blog on the work of the Farm School's program for adults.  This post, on our community lunch, is a benefit they don't tell you about when you apply for this program.  We had a wonderful time preparing Sophia's ideal Easter dinner and an even more wonderful time eating the meal.

Menu:  Hummus, pita bread, fresh-picked greens salad, spanokopita, roast lamb, roasted root vegetables, "greeked eggs" (like Deviled eggs), yogurt/cheese cake, dilly beans and Cadbury Egg/devil's food cupcakes.

Brian tasting his wicked sweet cupcakes

Sophia working on the Spanokopita

Noah, rolling out pita

Sandra, Sophia and Brian cooking pita while Katie finishes up the hummus

Freshly baked spanokopita

We ate our meal and then had our "egg wars"   An egg war consists to two people smashing an egg on egg and only one dents or breaks.  The winner goes on to challenge other others.  Matt was a grand egg warrior!

Sophia explains "the war"

Warriors gather

Trash talk commences

Matt and Rebekah are finalists

Matt demolishes Rebekah's egg

Other great photos of our gathering!

Colleen and Amore get a "Tyson Swing"

Sophia, Katie and Noah get ready for dinner

The food, with Noah and Bradley in background

Theresa looks on