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!

I just typed this whole blog post, and our website host somehow hiccuped and lost it.  It's a common theme in starting a farm--you do your best to get something done, maybe even finish it, then something outside your control happens and you basically redo the whole endeavor.  Hopefully you're more efficient the second time around, learn a few things, and get better results.  In the end, you either give up in frustration, or achieve a nicely-running and efficient farm! So here we go again:

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First and most important: CSA SHARES ARE STILL AVAILABLE! Spring is here and CSA's are filling up, but Quincy Farm still has a few openings and we'd love to have you as part of the farm! Click the Where to Find Our Veggies tab at left for more information. If you've already signed up--Thanks!!!! If you know a neighbor, friend, or relative in Ballston Spa who wants to enjoy super high quality veggies while supporting a great small farm, hound them into joining!

Now, onto the bloggy part:

They say March is in like a lion...  must be a snow lion.  After nothing more than a very occasional dusting of snow all winter, we woke up March 1st to nearly 6" of dense, wet snow blanketing everything. At least we got to use that snowblower I bought on Craigslist last fall.

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!

Things are getting busier here at Quincy Farm, which is a little disconcerting because they never really slowed down as far as I would have liked...  But we're really excited for this summer nonetheless.  Here's hoping we survive it!

Maybe the most important piece of news is that we're finally able to offer CSA shares in Ballston Spa!  Click here to learn more, or click below to download the sign-up form!

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

This weekend’s market in Ballston Spa will mark the end of our first season’s marketing, as our supplies of delicious baby beets, sweet potatoes, turnips, cabbages, and more are running thin.

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I heard recently on the radio that a groundhog’s heart beats only 4 times PER MINUTE during hibernation, and that his body temperature drops from 98*F down into the thirties! 

While those groundhogs snooze away the pleasingly slow days of winter, Cara and I have, in our more normal human fashion, crossed the dark and snowy solstice.  Now our days get longer, spring gets closer, and the lingering fatigue of summer blossoms into the growing itch of spring-fever.  Yes, the solstice was over a month ago, but due to off-farm employment and lack of luscious photo material, I’ve been kind of a lousy blogger.   I promise that when winter ends, I will be more diligent.

Except that, this year, winter hasn’t really come—instead of the feet upon feet of snow we had last year, we’ve had temperatures that are swinging up into the forties and higher almost weekly.  True, in between we’ve been down into (and below) the single digits, but somehow it still is feeling like The Winter That Wasn’t.  I still haven’t used the nice used snowblower we bought, haven’t gone skating on the pond that hasn’t really frozen, and haven’t gone sledding on the hills that aren’t snowy.  I wonder if the groundhogs have noticed, or if they’re still snoozing in their burrows below the frost line, indifferent and oblivious…  But I should watch my tongue—while reading back over these few blog entries of the last year, I couldn’t help laughing at a sentence I wrote back in May, as record spring flooding soaked our flats:  “At least we don’t have hurricanes,” I said.  Ha!

Anyway, here we are, surviving, thriving, and getting excited about the coming season.  We’ve been attending conferences, trying to catch up on the social connections we neglected all summer, and generally getting our bearings.  We’re nearly done with our seed order for this season, which for us seems to be the number one trigger for spring fever.  It’s exciting, yes, but also kind of terrifying—we’re upping our production by a pretty optimistic margin, yet we’re still financially committed to not taking a draw out of the farm profits to support ourselves.  This means we need to somehow work off-farm enough to pay the mortgage, health and car insurances, food, and miscellaneous expenses of normal life, AND increase production acreage and marketing.  It seems insane, honestly, given how perilously close to total calamity we pushed ourselves last year, but it also seems like the only viable path if we’re to expand the farm enough to support ourselves, and hopefully a family, before we lose whatever lingering sparks of youthfully wreckless determination we still lay claim to.  But with the help and support of the most kick-butt customers in the capital region, and our soon-to-be-faithful CSA, we can all make this work!

On that note, we’re excited to be sending out CSA enrollment forms any day now, even though the Ballston Spa distribution location isn’t quite 100% confirmed.  This is a big step towards realizing the farm we’ve always envisioned having, and while it’s a little bit daunting, I think we both feel that having a CSA base will be one of the most rewarding elements of having this farm.  We always envisioned Quincy Farm as a healthy balance between markets and CSA, and now we’re able to make that a reality!

So, to all of you who have expressed interest in joining the CSA, and to all of you who have supported Cara and me with your encouragement, feedback and grocery money at market all season:  THANK YOU.  A bunch of kale and an encouraging word may seem so trivial, but it’s your steady dedication and support that is helping us breathe life into this viable, sustainable, family farm, and into the common values we all hold.  Thanks for keeping us in mind when your stomach rumbles and demands fresh, delicious food; thanks for coming out to support us at market in the cold rain and the searing heat and icy winter mornings; and thanks to those of you who believe in Quincy Farm and are ready to sign on to the CSA and enjoy a season of staggering deliciousness!  2012, here we come!!!

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.