One of the advantages of NOT doing year-round markets (and the year-round growing that goes with them) is that the end of one season, and the beginning of the next, are much more crisp, defined events.  Like the first ambitious shoots of garlic poking up through the straw, these baby cabbages get us excited for the big breath of life that says SPRING.

Now:

You can believe what you will about global warming, but global everything-is-going-to-heck is an inarguable fact.  We didn't have our first frost til late October--then it snowed 5 inches--then it basically didn't snow all winter, until March, when it snowed another 5 inches...  and now two weeks later it's EIGHTY?  I'm not complaining--we're blessed with a great spring-fed pond to irrigate with and strong silt loam soils that don't mind a little warm, dry weather.  Like every other farmer I've talked to, though, I can't help but feel a little unsettled...  what does this MEAN?

Regardless of what it means:  We'll take it!  This time last year we were still buried under snow, and we hadn't even gotten the materials together to build our greenhouse, nevermind have it full of plants...  now we've got our upper field plowed, the garlic's up and looking happy, the greenhouse is filling up with hopeful little sprouts, and things feel good.  Amazingly, even the flats down by the river seem nearly dry enough to work--though we'll do some investigation with a shovel before we actually take equipment down there.  Those soils have a lot of potential, but handled wet I think they also have a lot of potential to really be unpleasant.

All this springtime has really lit a fire under our butts to get the projects done...  not that we have any more time to do it.  We're gathering CSA members for the best CSA in the capital region (share still available!) and tackling projects and maintenance with abandon.  One of the projects has been to patch the hole in the back of the van--this is usually covered with metal and carpet, so the veggies are nice and safe, but I'd like a more permanent solution, so I'm trying to patch it properly.  All part of the fun of starting a farm:

Along with the winter salt, some enterprising rodents around here have been active over the winter.  As we unpack things from their winter resting places, we're sometimes greeted with unpleasant reminders that we're not the only tenants of this ground.  And just like in your kitchen, they don't just eat a piece of bread and be done with it, they chew the corner of every slice in the bag.  This is a good hundred feet of layflat irrigation hose that's junk now.  It's enough to drive a man mad.

We've also finally gotten our act together enough to register the farm with WWOOF, an international organization that coordinates volunteer workers on organic farms.  Volunteers come live and work with us, and in exchange for a half day of work each day, they get room, board, fresh air, fulfilling work, and the opportunity to learn something about how we run our farm.  We're already getting inquiries and are excited by the prospect of having both some help, and also some unusual company around.  Some of our first contact through WWOOF are three Taiwanese girls who plan to come in July.  Can't wait!

...since we're hoping to make our farm as welcoming to volunteers as possible, we also figured we ought to get some boats.  After all, a volunteer or WWOOFer has to do SOMETHING with all that time he or she isn't working!  So along with my never-ending list of farm needs, I've been searching craigslist for a kayak and a canoe.  Today I drove Chucho down to Ulster County and picked up both at once, for a pretty good price!  Even though we're already bewilderingly behind on our to-do lists, Cara and Tucker and I made some time to go out on the river before dusk today.  The river's half full of water from the fields drying out,  but it's a very gentle, slow full.  It was a really nice moment to reflect on how lucky we are to live such a great life, in such a beautiful place with this strong farm to care for.  Sure, we work like dogs, but we like our life, too...  and now there's BOATS!

The snow came just as we were in the midst of cleaning our and reorganizing the "chicken shed": This little outbuilding wasn't originally built to hold chickens, of course. The story is that at some point the previous farmer, Gordie, was working at the fair when someone failed to come pick up their competition chickens. Gordie brought them home and retrofitted one of the small sheds on the farm to house them. Even though it's obviously been many years since any chickens lived there, the nest boxes and tiny chicken entry door remain, so we call the thing the Chicken Shed. We store irrigation parts, rowcover spikes, tiny metal hoops for low tunnels, seeders, sprayers, trellising supplies, and a million other things in there. We moved in in a bit of a hurry, though, so it's all willy nilly and hard to deal with. Since the building's so small (and so full) it's pretty much impossible to organize it without dumping its contents onto the grass outside. Which is what we did. And then it started snowing! Some of that stuff is snow-proof, but lots isn't, so we had to rush and find homes for as much of it as possible. It made a snowy mess in the barn, but it was better than risking ruin to our seeders, spreader, and other finicky tools.

Cara's almost done rebuilding the inside of the Chicken Shed now, which should make life a little easier next year. It's just in time, because we've got about a thousand little projects to do in the barn, too!

In the meantime, my war with Chucho (the van) has continued. I think this is THE most trying mechanical SNAFU I've dealt with, which is saying a fair bit, I think. In a nutshell, after *finally* getting the left side of the van buttoned up, I started to redo the right (they have to be balanced for safety) only to find the main spring BROKEN IN TWO. So now I had to buy a new set of springs, wait for them to arrive, and then redo the left side as well as finish the right! That wasn't the bad part, though: The big stubborn bolt that had given me grief on the left was outdone by his neighbor on the right. I mean, REALLY outdone. Like full sized sledge hammers, multiple tanks of propane in the torch, huge clouds of nasty fumes from rust-penetrating sprays hitting cherry red metal, 6' solid steel breaker bars, TEN foot black pipe cheater for more leverage, broken sockets, and on and on. For DAYS. At one point I had the weight of our entire 5 ton van resting on the tip of this stubborn bolt as I simultaneously hammered it and abused it with an impact driver, to no avail. I was very seriously considering welding the shock onto the broken control arm and walking away from the issue forever, when I had one last thought: I can't put more up pressure on the bolt than the weight of the van, or I just end up lifitng the van... but what if I chained a jack to the axle so the van can't escape? It sounded plausible, but my 6 ton bottle jack's relief valve opened before the bolt moved. I figured I'd give it one last Hail Mary and drove to Albany for a 20 ton hydraulic ram.

It worked! So now I've got it back together. I've spent many hundreds of dollars and nearly a week of labor to repair the complications of a problem that hadn't even made it onto the To Do list yet!

Having the van together means that we can move forward on some acquisitions, though. Number one, at least in terms of proximity, was picking up some greenhouse benches that a neighboring farm was selling. They grow bedding plants for retail sales and had upgraded to fancy galvanized units, which made their home-made wooden tables available to us! At 14 feet long, they were a little awkward in the van, but since I still haven't found the right trailer for us, we made it work.

We have a little over a week before we plan to turn on the heat (read: money) in the greenhouse, so we need to move quickly to spruce up these benches. I want to divide each 4'x14' bench in half, then somehow fashion a "moving aisle" system so that we can make the most efficient use of our tiny greenhouse.  It requires the bench tops to roll from side to side, so there's only one aisle in the whole house.  When you need to access a table, you push apart the benches like moses with the Red Sea, and they just roll out of your way. Like many things, it's easy to understand how to do it... it's just hard to figure out how to do it WELL, with limited time and financial resources to boot. But I'm excited for the challenge.

I'm glad the van's back in order, as it's also auction season, and we're looking for a couple of needle-in-a-haystack bits of field equipment. The to-do list is stretching off the bottom of its oversized page, and I find myself sliding back into that familiar triage mindset, calculating which projects will do the most good with the least resources expended. We're setting the alarm clock earlier and earlier, working later and later trying to cross off at least some of the list. Soon spring will actually be here, the rejuvenating breath of life that is tiny plants in the greenhouse, and the warming and awakening of the fields and soils... but also the responsibility of caring for all those tender little things. It's terrifying and stressful, but also thrilling and invigorating. And we're incredibly lucky and excited to be sharing this season with the fantastic members of our community who have signed up to be a part of our CSA. This is going to be a really, really, REALLY kick ass season!

Community Supported Agriculture has always been a really important part of our vision for Quincy Farm, and it means a lot to us to be opening this farm to our community.  Years ago when Cara first signed us up for a CSA as shareholders, I was a little worried.  What were we going to do with all this stuff, I wondered.  What even IS some of it?!  And sure, I thought, I want to know my neighbors, but I'm also busy and I have friends already.  Fast forward several years, and I was singing a whole different tune.  Surprise, super fresh food that's grown with careful thought to the plants' health and their role in nature TASTES AMAZING!  Healthy plants = delicious food, and our CSA farmer was able to get them to us even fresher than from the markets.  And those weird varieties of greens I used to make fun of?  I learned to love them, and I actually found it LESS stressful to prepare dinner because I didn't have to figure out what to eat:  It was right there, chosen by the farmer to be the freshest, bestest available.  And last, SURPRISE:  Those other CSA members, who lived in our community, who were also passionate about incredible food and farms and community, well, we had a heck of a lot in common.

Years passed and our lives changed so we were on the other side of the CSA equation, working for CSA farms and being the providers instead of the consumers.  Lo and behold, we found that all those wonderful benefits have their match on the farm side:  With the CSA members on our side, we were able to focus on growing really amazing, high-quality food and were able to get it to people at its very peak of freshness.  However worn down we felt mid-summer, there was the highlight of CSA distribution to get a boost from our excited CSA members... and as much as our shareholders want and need to connect to the ground and to their farm, we as farmers need the chance to sink some social roots and be a part of the broader community we live in and support.  It's an amazing, wonderful win-win situation.  So we're really, really excited to have a wonderful distribution point, a great community, and a beautiful piece of ground that we can all share in.

In other news, all of our spring seeds are showing up!  Bright yellow sunshine melons, crisp fresh french breakfast radishes, those perfect salad pingpong tomatoes...  We really love good food, so we fill the field with the varieties we know are the juiciest, snappiest varieties out there... but we also can't help from trying some new stuff, too.  This year we're trying a new kind of yellow cherry tomato, an updated version of the Brandywine slicer (my personal favorite, but an inconsistent performer), a new strain of broccoli, a "rainbow" kale, and a bunch of other stuff!  We try to not gamble on too much acreage, because we refuse to sell something we're not impressed with ourselves...  but sometimes you just hit gold with a new variety, and it trying new things is part of the thrill.

All these seeds coming in keeps us in a spring-like state of mind, which is great...  but it makes it a little more stressful when things go wrong.  My ongoing battle to keep everything running took a step backwards the other day when two studs under the van snapped off.  They snapped while I was trying to replace the shocks, which I was replacing because one of them had actually rusted through, leaving a messy puddle in the barn for me to clean up.  Now that the stud's broken, we have to remove two big parts of the suspension and replace them, too... but of course their bolts are rusted solid where they bolt to an even larger, more expensive part.  All this was after replacing a bunch of power steering lines that had ruptured.  Fortunately, we have Baby, our wonderful 86 F250 to rely on while the van's down...  at least we did until this afternoon, when it developed an intermittent electrical issue that caused the truck to absolutely die with no signs of life.  Of course, this happened while I was running errands off the farm and Cara is out-of-state visiting relatives!  A couple hours of embarrassed wrenching in a Hannaford parking lot jiggled whatever the intermittent item is into compliance, thankfully, and I got home, off-schedule but without a tow.  But I have only the vaguest hunch what the issue is (fusible link in the ignition switch circuit?) and no time or plan to fix it until it misbehaves again...  Makes me nervous about driving that truck to an equipment auction in south Jersey next weekend, though!

That's the news from Quincy Farm.  I really promise to update our blog more often, because I know all of you are interested in how things are going.  Even though spring is sneaking up quickly, things are looking pretty good in the field--the lack of snow actually means the ground has frozen harder than in a snowy winter, which is good for killing off the bad bugs...  and obviously the lack of snow means the river ought to behave itself, and the fields themselves will have a lot less work to do to get warm and dry enough to plant.  It makes us a little nervous to not have had winter--what if it snows in July?!--but for now we'll take it with a positive spin and believe it's just the good beginning of a really great season!

Your farmers,

Luke & Cara

I don't know if it's premature or tardy to say we've reached the end of Year 1...  it's not REALLY the end of the calendar year, yet...  but we're also a month past the point where we'd planned on being done.  Yesterday was our last "regular season" market, though--a fantastic turnout from our great customers in Glens Falls--and we're still alive, so we're declaring victory!

Even though it wasn't part of the plan, we're also going to be attending winter markets in Ballston Spa (first Saturdays in the CCE building on High St) and Glens Falls (every Saturday from 9-12 at Christ United Church on Bay St).  We don't have the fancy infrastructure some other growers have (yet!) but we're fighting the good fight against Old Man Winter as best we can, with multiple layers of remay on low tunnels, and of course we have delicious sweet potatoes, winter squash, beets, onions, leeks, etc.  We ended up losing an awful lot of our carrots to the funk after the rains in September, which is too bad, as they're super sweet and have proven quite popular.  A lot of other stuff just never recovered from the shock of all that rain and never really matured...  Nonetheless, we're looking forward to the opportunity to continue to be a part of those markets through the winter.

Also--and this is big news--we're excited to be organizing a CSA in Ballston Spa for 2012!  The details ought to be worked out any day now, but shoot us an email if you want to be kept in the loop.

Despite some really close calls, we ended up missing frosts here on the farm until the Snowpocalypse came in late October.  Actually, it was just a few inches of really wet snow, but it made a mess of things as it built up on the trees and wires.  Prior to that, we were still harvesting delicious eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers right up to Halowe'en.  After the frost, we were blessed with a pretty serious Indian Summer in early November, letting a beautiful crop of fall broccoli size up under row cover.  We're still harvesting spinach, swiss chard, radishes and broccoli...  So we're lucky, and grateful.

Theoretically things should have slowed down for Cara and me by now, but somehow they haven't.  Whatever slack the waning growing season offered has been snapped up by the pressure to milk the off-farm income streams for whatever they're worth.  We'd love to squirrel away enough money over the winter to allow one of us to not work off the farm next year.  It gets kind of taxing to be doing a 3 1/2 hour drive down to NYC to earn that cash, though.  Our fantastic friends in the city have been offering me a place to sleep when I'm down for multiple days, which has made it possible for me to work 3 or 4 days a week down there...  which is great...  but tears me away from the life (and the wife, dog, and home) that this is all about.  As fall slips into winter and I feel so little relief from the insanity that was this season, I'm sometimes afraid that I won't find time to recharge before next season hits...  but I'm sure it will happen.  When we planned this endeavor we knew it was going to tax us for all we were worth to make it through these first few seasons...  and Mother Nature didn't make it easy on us (or anyone else!) this season.  Having said all that, despite the inherent challenges of Year 1 and the unique ones of 2011, we not just met our financial goals, we exceeded them.  Yes, it's more a credit to our incredible conservatism (pessimism?) writing the business plan than a reflection of our prowess as farmer businessmen, but it's not too shabby for a start-up business.  And it gives on hope about the feasibility of the rest of the plan.

Even though this year's not done and we haven't even begun to do all of our winter maintenance, next year is already here: we're crunching numbers and searching for the things that will improve the weak links here at Quincy Farm.  We have lots of ideas of how to improve our efficiency, from little inventions to expensive implements.  We also need to update our irrigation scheme and figure out what we need and what we can afford if we're going to expand our acreage next season.  And, of course, we need to make a crop plan, figure out how much seed we need and when and where, and make that happen...  and figure out what additional inputs we need, and from where...  and maybe expand the greenhouse...  and get proper running water to the hydrant in the barn...  and about a zillion other little infrastructure crises...  and Cara said something about unpacking?

Looking back on Year 1, I really don't know how we pulled it off...  and I honestly don't think I have the fortitude to push myself *quite* that hard even one more season...  but there are fleeting moments, here and there, when we pause and take notice of each other and our life, and it seems like maybe, just maybe, this was a good idea.  Maybe.

A few weeks ago, the National Young Farmer Coalition asked if we would be interested in flying to Washington DC to lobby for a Regional and Local Food Act.  We were elbow deep in our Friday harvest and washing and without giving it much thought, I answered, “Well, why not?”  In the days that followed, I came to understand that this was a fly-in with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (Lindsey had mentioned this on the phone, but I don’t always absorb things well when I’m multi-tasking), I had lots of answers to why not as started to doubt whether I should try to represent sustainable agriculture or farmers from my region.  Like many beginning farmers, we are very small this year and our household income is generated off the farm while we try to use our farm income to capitalize.  Farms in my county are large, mostly dairy and run by farmers from farming backgrounds.  However, as I started to research my representatives’ districts, I became a bit more comfortable with my understanding of how the Local Food, Farms and Jobs Act would benefit all kinds of farms.

The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act was introduced by Representative Chellie Pingree and Senator Sherrod Brown this month.  This act is suggestions for legislation that would tweak parts of the Farm Bill to address the needs of those of us who market our farm products within 250 miles of our farms. 

On November 3rd, I rode Amtrak to DC and met the staff from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.  NSAC had gathered an impressive group of farmers and advocates from around the country to speak to their representatives.  With Steve Etka from the National Organic Coalition, Aisha Amuda and Kathy Mulvey from the Community Food Security Coalition, Daniel Bowman Simon from SNAP Gardens and Josephine Chu Master of Arts Candidate in Global Environmental Policy at American University, I met with two New York State Congressmen. 

Chris Gibson is the Congressman from my district; in fact, he’s from Kinderhook where we lived for two years.  He is also a new member of the Agriculture Committee, which meant that he was a high priority for this fly-in.  He was quite receptive, chatting with us about his support for farms in his district, his concerns about GMOs and his focus on solar power.  Rep. Gibson is politically conservative, but he listened to our concerns and seemed interested how the Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act could benefit his constituents.  This was a surprising moment for me—it felt as if by making our voices hear we actually might be able to change the direction of government. 

Our second meeting was with Rep. Bill Owens who is on the Agriculture Committee as well.  None of us were from Owen’s district, which includes lots of the Adirondacks and northern New York.  I’d say that the meeting felt a bit chilly, but I would add that I was impressed that both of these Congressmen met with us themselves.  Yes, staffers were present, too, but they both took time out of their days to meet with us face-to-face.  Owens signed onto the bill in the days following this meeting.  Perhaps he was expecting to co-sponsor prior to our meeting or maybe we had an impact!

I took the train back to Albany that day and was back at my house just 34 hours after leaving.  We’re pretty busy around here and I don’t spend much time thinking or reading about the Farm Bill.  I have always found the minutiae of the Farm Bill’s 1500 or so pages overwhelming.  However, in learning a bit about this act, I felt that almost all of the changes mentioned addressed parts of the Farm Bill that apply directly to our farm or farmers we know.  I was happy to have overcome my doubts about speaking to the politicians who represent me and I  hope to see more support for this Act in the following weeks, especially as the Farm Bill process is more confusing than ever with this year’s Super Committee process.

It's getting to be a bit of a monotonous refrain, but things have been busy here at Quincy Farm.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, our total rainfall for the months of June, July, August, and September combined is usually 14.2".   This year, our rain gauge here at the farm recorded more than that in just 30 days thanks to Irene, Lee, and the interminable rains that followed.  To say it has been wet is putting it very gently.

Fortunately, we finally caught a break in the form of a several days of dry, sunny weather this week.  A number of opportunities came and went for fall crops in all that rain, when it was too wet to prep beds or seed,but at least we've got a quick window now to put some last minute cover crops down before fall.  We also finally got to our sweet potatoes, which have been growing in the sandy upper fields and seem great despite the wet summer.  With a little luck we'll finish that harvest tomorrow morning and have a great crop curing in the greenhouse by evening! 

We're also counting our blessings on having narrowly missed another frost this past Wednesday--friends of ours just slightly north were a little less lucky, but all we experienced was some tip burn on the sweet potatoes' leaves and unhappy basil--neither of which matter too much.  It's a real blessing to still be harvesting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants this late, and while it doesn't undo the season's setbacks, it sure helps.  On the other hand, rather than mellowing out, our harvest days have gotten even more hectic, as we've now got our fall crops stacked on top of the summer ones!  It's too dark to see much before 7 or after 6:30, which means we really have to hustle in between...  It's an alright problem to have, though.

In the midst of all this frantic cover-cropping and harvesting of warm weather crops, we're also walking a fine line on the cool weather vegetables growing in the flats--a portion of our fall carrots, which we usually don't harvest until after a good frost, are starting to rot in the ground from all the waterlogging.  The impact of constantly saturated soil on the plants has been far worse than the initial flooding.  Roots need oxygen, and when the soil is saturated with water, whether from actual flooding or just never-ending rain, they can't get it.  Plants get sick and things are unhappy.  We want the carrots to size up and sweeten, but we also want to provide high quality product to our customers...  and we want to not have this additional labor burden just yet!  So we're taking a gamble, harvesting the border areas immediately and hoping the beds on slightly higher ground will hold tight.  Other things, like cabbage, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, are a mixed bag--some plants are doing nicely, while further down the bed things seem very sad.  Even an inch or two of elevation makes a difference when things are that wet for that long.

To keep it interesting, Cara and I finally got married this past month!  Yes, after 8 years, 2 houses, 2 apartments, 3 cities/towns, a tank of fish and now a dog, we finally tied the knot here on our farm on September 24th!  It seemed like we'd have plenty of extra time our first season farming, so why not throw our own wedding?!  We'll try to put up some photos of that once there's a moment to breathe...  it's not exactly farm business, but we value the personal connection we have with all you who loyally come to us each market, and this is a big deal for us!