Halloween--the day before.

Red Fungus

This afternoon, I worked on seeking out the tree varieties for our identification work.  Many of the trees now have lost their leaves.  The bark?  Well, bark looks pretty similar in the forest.  So I enjoyed my time outdoors and snapped a few photos of my adventure.

The colors of fall on a Rhododendron?

Found art on the trail.

Remains of a small mammal

This evening was the traditional Halloween party at Sentinel Elm Farm.   I dressed up as the patch of plastic in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.   Pretty scary!

Nate as a mouse; Andrew as Nate

Snacks

Bonnibel and Lee--as the Eastern Pacific garbage patch.

The Stand of Sugar Maples and Tenon and Mortise

Emily the Egg Thief and Bonnibel the Quackulator

The most amazing sight of the evening was little Nell, filling her halloween pumpkin/basket with veggies from a farmer's CSA box costume.  "Ooh, I have a fennel" says the four year old with glee!

Nell putting vegetables in her Halloween pumpkin

Friday small groups work

Betsy carrying the weeds.

Our prunings from the raspberry

This Friday, our small group went to work and learn with Wm.  (No, that is not a typo...  His name is "Wm").  He has a little more than an acre of conservation land in the town of Amherst under cultivation and enjoyed sharing his work, theories and tasks with us.  We worked on pruning his raspberry bushes and weeding the elderberry, gooseberry and currants.

Wm's roadside find

After we finished up our work at his plot, we drove to collect apples for making cider.  On the way, Wm spotted some osyter mushrooms by the side of the road and we stopped to harvest them (with the permission of the land owner, of course).  They were beautiful blooms of fungus protruding from a stump.  The mushroom is just the "flower" or more closely "The fruit" of the fungus organism.  The actual fungus is spreading inside the tree (or the soils, if it is found on the ground) absorbing its nutrients from living or decaying matter, not from the sun.  He gave us some instructions for preparing this type of mushroom which included lots of cooking--consuming raw mushrooms is not a practice he recommends.  He also showed us that it probably best to leave some of the mushroom on site to allow for the spreading of spore--fungi's answer for seeds.


We arrived at a home where Wm has an arrangement:  he prunes their apple trees and they allow him to collect the apples that he wants.  Boy, were there a lot of apples!  And each of the three varieties we harvested were so delicious and unique.  Sorry, I have no names for them.

Justin climbing the tree with Betsy's encouragement

Collecting apples

We returned to Wm's home and ate our lunch, discussing land-leasing ideas as well as fermenting various beverages.  After lunch, we washed our apple harvest and crushed and pressed the fruit.  The resulting cider was an exquisite mix of the three apples. We were as happy to gather our gallons to take back to the farm as Wm was to take a gallon into his home.  He is a great source of information on so many subjects--we are fortunate to count him among our instructors.

Justin turning the cider press.

Brian smiles at the motorized apple crusher

Boring.... but not a boring day!

Group B had the most boring day.  Literally!  We worked on our timber frame posts, making tenons and mortises.  Here are a few shots of this project:

Nora, sharpening her chisel.

My mortise.

Emily using the "fascinating" machine

Lee helping Nora cut away her tenon.

Nora, starting on her tenon.

After lunch, Patrick invited (requested!) our help in re-covering the hoop house at Sentinel Elm.  We stretched the plastic over the arched frame and shifted it into place.  Then Andrew started in on attaching the plastic with zig-zag wires.  Inside this hoop house, we have a crop of mid-winter carrots ripening as well as several varieties of greens.  Thanks to everyone who had a hand in making a snug home for our crops.

Wednesday--a day later...

Monster truck

Wednesday, my name came up for the lunch rotation with Caitln's and she designed and executed an amazing taco lunch.  My first jot was to harvest the chard, so I jumped into my favorite farm truck (affectionately known as the Monster Truck--though I'm not sure if it is called Monster because it is large or because it looks like it was attacked by Godzilla...) and drove out to North Wyslawski field for some beautiful Swiss chard.

Almost all the colors of the rainbow!

New salad spinner

This beautiful chard all comes from the same seed--each plant expresses some different gene, I'm guessing, to come out a different stem or leaf color.  Sort of like having siblings with different hair color?  My favorite color of Swiss Chard stem is the pinky-orange one that looks like Rainbow Sherbert.  Doesn't taste like sherbert but packs a wallop with vitamins.

Caitlin chopping like a mad woman.

REturning to the kitchen, I found Caitlin in full swing, chopping onions, garlic, peppers, with wild abandon.  She had Buddy on the phone, asking about porportions and timing.  I trotted out to the cold storage in the barn to gather more peppers; then I heated the refried beans, the rice and chopped cilantro.  I also made roasted garlic sour cream for the topping, while Caitlin heated up the tortillas.  Soon it was noon and our fellow farmers were coming in from harvest or animal husbandry class and they tore into our lunch with happy abandon.  Since this was Nate's last CSA harvest, Patrick presented him with a little apple pie.  

Happy eaters

In the afternoon, I joined in the harvest of broccoli and more chard, and then we finished washing and sorting out the vegetables in the CSA boxes.  

Rebekah and Theo washing leeks

Andrew harvesting broccoli

After harvest was complete, Nate took us on a field walk and we ended up hearing about the tractor attachments.  I won't pretend I retained everything he said but suffice it to say there is more than one way to plow a field, shape a bed, lay plastic, cultivate and there is probably a tractor  attachment or two for each field job.  Here are some photos and my guess at what each item was.  Farmers and friends:  feel free to correct my captions.  And, if you can't think of a good birthday gift, I'd really like a disker/bed shaper combo...

Spring harrow?

Chisel plow

Waterer/planter

Plastic spreader

Blue bed shaper?

Seeder

Traveling Tuesday

We were out and about in different ways today.  We started our morning getting to know the "Chicken Coop" middle school children.  Wow, they were a lot of fun.  First we got to know them in a question and answer game and then we joined together to load and deliver firewood to Maggie's home.  Maggie is the woman who donated the land and farmhouse to establish the Chicken Coop School and the Adult Practical Skills training program.  She was born in the house shown below and has lived nearly her whole life on the ridge.

Backing up the truck

Unloading the wood

  Pass it along

After delivering the wood, we continued our soil work with Carlen.  We explored the layers of soil in a pasture and then in the homestead garden.  We found between 4 and 6 inches of top soil and several interesting layers below.  We learned that the soil in New England can freeze up to four feet deep and that the worms and other soil organisms migrate below the freezing line in order to survive.

Seminar in our common room

Our indoor discussion included learning how to submit a soil sample and looking at Nate's records regarding our study plots.  I was amazed to learn that alfalfa plants sink roots deeply into the soil in order to bring up minerals.  A little plant that is 15 inches high can have roots up to 5 feet underground.  We also discussed tree identification.

After lunch, we loaded up in the cars and trucks to travel over Chase Hill Farm, a raw dairy and cheese farm.  We met with Mark Fellows, the farmer, and he showed us around.  He is raising a French breed of milk cow--the normande cattle which is a multi-purpose breed--which is good for milk and good for meat.  He also conducts some of his work with horses and is dreaming of getting a "horse-powered treadmill" to power his milking operation.

"Pesticide" in a box

Normande cattle--beautiful spots!

This strange looking contraption is the answer to chemical pesticides.  It is a cow-sized box through which Mark's normande cattle pass each day.  As they walk through, the legs of old jeans hanging down inside knock the flies off.  The walls of the box are made of three layers of screen.  The outermost is a tiny mesh that entices the flies outward.  The two inner layers of screening--one of them flexible, the other not--trap the flies so they cannot return to their cow companions.  Voila!  Ideally, Mark says that this system works well when cows have to pass through it many times a day--for example, if they are heading for the water trough.

Cheese Cave

Waiting to see into the cheese cave.

Chase Hill Farm Milk room

April's offspring

Nora getting to know the horses

Did I mention this was the most beautiful autumn day I have ever experienced?  When we returned to Maggie's Farm, it was tough to go inside to do house chores.  Most of us wandered out to enjoy the warm evening.