Pearson's Town Farm @ Saint Joseph's College

Productivity

2012-02-10T11:24:00.003-05:00

Things at the farm are looking good and things are being finished. There's a lot of people coming to the farm to give a helping hand and it seems the animals are loving it.

Volenteers came in today to help with putting new mats on the ground and help put up some fencing. Things are going up around the farm with speed it seems. Everyone is enjoying the company and having a good laugh with one another.

We have Tim and Chris who came over to lend a hand with putting up the fence so the little guys can't exscape and meet paths with Charlie.

Chris has been coming to the farm for a couple of weeks now and giving a hand with picking some seeds to helping Tim put the fence up.

We have Blake who comes over and gives a hand with anything that needs to be done. He's a quick worker and learner and with the effort gets things accomplished.

The dedication of all the workers things are getting done, yes it might take a cup of coffee to keep everyone from freezing, but none the less, with their help, the farm is becoming more organized and complete.

As for the animals, they're doing quite well. They all had their feed today and are bright and happy. The bunnies are getting bigger and are just about to open their eyes and take a look at their new world. Callie is fitting in quite nicely with the other animals but her new best friend out of all of them is Chevon, the baby goat. They have a bond that seems inseperable and where ever one is, the other isn't too far behind.

Chevon is growing, and soon will be full grown, but once a goat gets bigger, you've got to get castrated. Simple as that. (ouch) He's not really enjoying life, but once momma stays with him for a bit and he takes a nice rest in the sun, he'll be back enjoying his time with Callie.

With everything going on here, the farm is looking great and also quite clean.

A day in paradise

2012-02-06T14:42:00.002-05:00

Farm is running smoothly and the sun is shining. It seems now with the temperature rising and the sun being out more. Work is being done around the farm to clean it up and it seems like the animals are noticing and are quite happy as well as the workers.

Every day that passes our new addition, Chevon, is growing. It's only been a week, but Chevon seems to be a lot bigger and is quite curious with everything. He knows when you're coming with food and hops up and down and to think he could barely walk a week ago. Every time you go near, he gets excited and wants to see what's going on, but once you get close enough, he runs to mommy. Chevon is a great addition and adds a nice "aww" factor.

The bunnies seems to be growing, but not as quickly. It's hard to get a good look at them because they hide themselves from the rest of the world however, they will be hopping around everywhere soon.

Another new addition to the farm but a sweet heart to the farm is Callie. Callie's been fitting in just fine on the farm and is enjoying the attention. She's an interesting goat as well because she actually seems to want attention from everyone and the best part is how she makes her sounds. Out of all the animals, Callie has the most subtle voice. When you bring her food, the sound she makes is almost as if she's saying please and thank you. A nice addition to the Pearson's Farm.

Lots of Goat News!

2012-02-02T18:09:00.007-05:00

Since our last post we have had a few new additions. Our goat Brandi finally had her baby after several days of waiting! The best part is... we got it on tape! The kid is a baby boy and his name is Chevon!

Brandi loving Chevon!

Sound was edited out, if you have ever heard a goat in labor, you will thank me!

Another great addition to the farm is our 7 month old female goat, Callie. I personally found her and donated her to the farm. Another female goat is a great addition to our farm and she is the sweetest, most adorable goat in the world. She loves everyone and follows me around everywhere.

Callie being Cute

Another addition since our last post is BIG Charlie. When I say big... I mean BIG! He's bigger and scarier than buster ever was and ever could be. He also has a very weird and slightly scary

"BAAAA"

Charlie was breathing heavy and watching Callie... CREEPY!

The last new additions (for now) is our new baby bunnies... which are too little for the world to see. BUT soon...very very soon the baby bunnies will be hopping all over the place!

I love the time of year when new life is all over the farm! It is simply incredible! And to think, it is not even spring yet... and the sheep have not even started Lambing! This is really going to be an exciting semester at Pearson's Town Farm!

Callie and I

I'm not kidding this time.

2012-01-27T17:02:00.007-05:00

When my wife was pregnant with our oldest son, she was two weeks past her due date, terribly uncomfortable and still the doctor wouldn't commit to inducing labor. Part of his decision was that there was just "no room in the inn" - May of 2001 was the most 'productive' time of that year at Maine Med's Labor and Delivery Ward, and there were no available beds. I like to think that the other part of his decision was informed by the idea that nature will take its course when the time is right. Whatever his logic, that was the first time I ever saw my wife's face split open and demons fly out of her eyeballs.

The end result. . . she got a private room!

Brandy our doe goat has been pregnant for what seems forever now. Our bucks and does (in fact all of our goats) run together because of space constraints, and frankly, they are a fun project born on a whim. The sheep on the other hand are bred very intentionally and with some degree of scientific super vision. Our goats though, they do what they want, when they want, including breeding which makes it hard to pinpoint a delivery date.

To compensate for accuracy we do the next best thing. . . guess. Well, we make our guess as educated as we can by watching for the the signs and symptoms of labor, and we use one of our books as a guide. While many of our references are wonderful tools, in some instances it seems that life does not strictly apply itself to the recorded observations of our books. I.E. the book says that delivery will occur between two and three weeks after the udder bag fills. . . Or, as we have learned, sometimes the doe will five weeks to deliver after the udder bag has filled.

Another example: the book told us to expect delivery 24 to 36 hours after the signs of labor begin. . . Or, as we have learned, sometimes delivery occurs as much as 72 hours after the signs of labor begin.

In the end it is amusing, but the farmer feels silly making proclamations based on a well researched book that end up being, well, a smidgen off.

So today was finally the day. Brandy delivered a healthy kid buck at just after 1 pm. I had forgotten how much noise one little goat (Brandy, not the baby) could make. We had a wonderful audience present for the actual event with one in our party texting everyone else on two different phones, and of course, shortly after, the throngs started arriving.

So now, little Pat (who really isn't all that little) has a baby brother. Visiting hours will begin Monday for those of you who are local. As for a name. . . I am still teetering about that. After the great name wars of 2010 I still hold that numbers are better. Plus people get attached to things with names, and this kid's fate is not yet decided.

In our next installment. . .

"New Charlie and the genes of tomorrow."

January

2012-01-21T19:55:00.004-05:00

"Winter starts here in January now, you know?!"

That's what the boss said in our last meeting. I'm becoming acutely aware that he isn't wrong. After such a ridiculous November/December, I find that, as of late, I am snow blowing the farm nearly as often as I would be mowing the grass in the summer.

It is certainly not unwelcome! While I have other things that I would like to be devoting my attentions too, there is something zen about a couple of hours behind the snow blower. It's much like weeding in the summer - An irritating activity if you are just sitting and thinking about it being done, but amazingly therapeutic to actually do. A quiet activity that you can devote your whole self to; getting lost in your thoughts, or examining plants, albeit they are weeds, in a level of detail you would normally not have time to do. And they are amazing. They are just as amazing in their complexity as any of the vegetable plants that we grow.

And so somehow snow blowing is like this, like weeding. As the snow is chopped by the auger and thrown through the end of the chute to find itself in flight again and gently returning to earth you can watch it and wonder at it. Making cuts along side the hoop houses you can stare at the formations that cling to the curved sides of the house, like some sort of terrestrial barnacle attached to the rocky shore line. The patterns that appear on the side of the cold frames, each unique, each equally beautiful, remind you that the greens growing inside are probably a little put out that these chilly little patterns are obscuring the already diminished amount of winter sunlight. But it is all part of the environmental cycle, and this chilly interruption to our everyday farming expectation is actually an essential part of the system, allowing the soil to rest and reminding us that we ought to also.

Inside the barn is a different matter altogether. The sheep greet us every morning waiting for us to through their hay out into the paddock. Each day it lands in a different spot so that as they eat, the sheep might also deposit a little nutrients onto the ground in a new location. Our hope is for an even distribution of this 'black gold' so that we can till it in, in the spring readying the soil for the coming plants.

The goats, still thinking about food, like a good teenager. Brandy, of course, is still holding out. Keeping us on our toes, she continues to leave us guessing as to when her little one(s) might appear. By our best guess we should have had kids in the middle of December, but without the convenience of a marking harness, like we use for the sheep, our best guess is all we have.

By this point in the winter the poultry have figured out that there is less snow in the barn than outside, and every day we have a little more trouble getting them back into the coop, and everyday we notice a few more of them roosting on the manure rail just above the sheep. They have such a 'hard life'. The rail is just hight enough that it makes it difficult at best to try and pull them down, one chicken at a time, each night to redeposit them in the poultry palace. And so each night there are a couple more that are allowed to sleep in the barn, not that it is anywarmer.

The biggest challenge for the farmers is finding all of the new nesting spots when we collect the eggs. As new chickens move from the poultry palace to the barn, they all vie for the best nesting spots, sometimes sharing one or two. At times we strike it rich finding nests with two dozen or more eggs in one spot, other times we discover an egg here, or there, tucked behind a hay bale or under a table.

While the sheep don't seem to mind the poultry sharing their space, one poor hen learned a hard lesson about where it is acceptable to lay when you are sharing space with a much larger animal, after being accidentally kicked by Amall the llama. It turns out that sunning on the ground behind an already somewhat neurotic llama can lead to unintentionally mimicking a 'place kicked' football when a door nearby shuts and the llama suddenly jumps not sure what has happened. It is also a lesson to the farmers that Amall's kick is connected to his nervous response. This can be valuable information when working in the paddock with the llama - there is more than one reason to stay near the front side of the animal!

On the farmer front, we have been making great strides reorganizing and cleaning the barn. There is still quite a bit of disarray and many things still need a permanent home, but it is looking better and better everyday. I am hoping for some sort of grand reopening party just after President's Day. . . but we will see.

Snow days

2012-01-13T15:48:00.008-05:00

The new year came and went, and all was quiet on the farm. I meant to update you all last week, but honestly. . . nothing exciting happened.

This, on the other hand, has been a pretty exciting week. We had the Ag trade show in Augusta this week. We learned about raw milk production and new legislative updates regarding carcass disposal (that does sound exciting doesn't it??). All of the electrical in the barn is done. Meaning that all areas in our wing of the barn now have lights. Since all of the rabbits now have permanent housing, and we have officially inaugurated 'Rabbit Alley', we have now begun the process of cleaning and reorganizing the barn and the "office" to make it people friendly for the coming semester.

Of course, what fun is getting something done without a hiccup or two. . . enter, the snow storm yesterday. Not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. The farm has that beautiful, peaceful look about it again, plus, this time I got to use the tractor to plow - yeah, fun!!!! Have I mentioned how much fun our lovely little Kubota is?

The storm cut into our organizing project, but it gave us occasion to do a thorough cleaning of all of the stalls and get the critters rearranged (We needed to clean the stalls before the storm to get the bedding up to the compost ahead of the snow). Brandy is now parked in her birthing stall (due any day now), Rocky and Pat have been reintegrated and are getting along well, and we are just about ready to take ownership of our new ram, Charlie. I will tell you a bit more about him when he gets here. . .

In the meantime, the weekend is here and we are going to take a break before the semester starts. I will keep all posted should Brandy deliver. In the meantime, here are those pictures that I promised. Some scenes from the past three weeks!

Students working on hutches for Rabbit Alley.

Garlic under hay in the walled garden.

Savoyed cabbage in the ed field the last week of autumn semester. . . yep, you ate this already!

Chickens chillin' in the sun Wednesday before the storm.

Winter greens under row fabric in the south hoop house.

Grow happy!!

We can rebuid it. . .

2011-12-31T11:16:00.004-05:00

It's not the best blog title, but I just a got a call from Dr. Bridge while loading up the blog. Dr. Bridge is one of the leaders of the service trip to Guatemala. They are currently laying over in Huston, TX, which made me think of Austin. That made me think of Steve Austin who was the 'Six Million Dollar Man', the opening credits of which started with 'We can rebuild him. . .'.

So that was probably a whole lot more about my morning thought process than you need to (or wanted) to know. But it is all relevant to the goings on at the farm as the year ends. We have seen such tremendous growth and change just in the last year that it feels like we are reinventing the farm all over again. So, no, we aren't rebuilding it, but we are certainly making wonderful improvements.

The weather as of late has been so bipolar. It's hot, it's cold, it snows, it rains, it sunny, it's confusing. The sheep have been in and out of pasture more times since the college has been on break than I can count. Even they are getting a bit confused about where they are supposed to be.

Having open pasture has been nice. Keeping our woolly friends and their guardian (Amall) on grass has kept our hay bill down this year, which gives us a little wiggle room in the spring if it ends up being really wet. We are supplementing them of course with hay, because we have so many moms-to-be, but there is something to be said about still rooted grass.

Speaking of babies. . . There has been a lot of work being done on the barn itself, and this has made for a little extra noise and commotion for our doe goat Brandy who is expecting any day and the rabbits who are about 30 days out from delivery.

Facilities, God bless them, have given us (what we are calling) the loading dock. It is a branch of the barn that looked to be, formerly, the spot where livestock would have been loaded onto trucks, or conversely unloaded. It gives us a place to keep the tractor, who still lacks a name, out of the weather. All of the other petrol powered equipment has moved there as well. The space is even large enough that we are able to share some of it with our friends at the milfoil project.

For those of you who are unaware, milfoil is an invasive water plant that moves into a body of fresh water and multiplies until it crowds out native plants and fish. There is a group on campus that monitors a number of local lakes and removes large quantities of this little nasty every summer. In the course of conversation we concluded that composting would be the most environmentally friendly way to dispose of it. So it is a good marriage. They harvest it, and we recycle it back to soil nutrients.

In addition to the loading dock, Facilities has also granted us the "hallway" that links our wing of the barn to the loading dock. It's not a giant space, but it is perfect to put our cooler and a couple of tables to process/package veg in the summer before taking it to the cafe or market. Of course with all of this we have been given new lighting! Now we will be able to see in a number of new places in the barn (in the winter it gets dark in some parts of the barn as early as 3 pm.).

I have a lot more to say about the poultry in the palace, the ducks in the new and future chicken tractor and of course there is always compost, compost, compost! However, this is already starting to look like a novel and I haven't added any pictures yet. . .
In fact, I think I will save the pictures for next time.

Until then, Happy New Year!

Christmas is coming.

2011-12-20T19:51:00.004-05:00

The autumn semester officially ended on December 15th. Since then the students have fled for home, the ground has finally frozen, the hoops are planted and growing, and the farm is peaceful.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, I want to thank so many of our dedicated volunteers and interns. . . Heather, Alyssa, Timmy, Amanda, Melinda, Andy, Courtney and the many others who helped make the farm lively and productive over the past few months. . . . Thank you!

As the farm rests for the next month, there will be a lot of activity behind the scenes getting us ready for the coming year. Many hours will be spent pouring over seed catalogues, meeting with the chefs and finalizing the growing schematic for the fields.

One of the great joys of Pearson's Town is having the opportunity to (re)teach people about the abundance and variety that can be grown even in this crazy Maine climate. Not that I am against corn, cukes, tomatoes and potatoes, but there is an unexplainable joy in introducing people to okra, sweet potatoes, and kohlrabi, artichokes, and peanuts. . . all of which can be grown right here in Maine!

We look forward to another bountiful season and the opportunity to share it with you. In the meantime, enjoy the magic of the season and have a very merry and blessed Christmas and New Year.

Grow Happy!

When will winter come. . .

2011-12-06T16:03:00.004-05:00

. . . and other random things on the farm.

Well, here we are. . . December. It was near 50 degrees today. It rained, but it was warm.

We harvested for the last time on Friday. Cabbage, kale, and turnips. The ground isn't frozen yet - not at all, so harvesting was a cinch. Given the uncertainty in the weather I had contemplated holding off a little longer, but with only two weeks left in the semester they weren't likely to get much bigger.

The sheep are enjoying life. They have been out to pasture much later than usual. We have been bringing them in for the rain storms, which likely isn't necessary, but better safe than sorry.

They are all bred now, and Dynah is showing signs of the "saddle bags" already.

On the opposite side of the aisle Brandy (the goat) is packing on the pounds. Hopefully this means February babies - gauging her breeding date is a little trickier - and milk! Rocky has been on sabbatical in Buxton where he is visiting a friends farm to do a little "work". He should be returning to us a bit later in the month.

Have I mentioned the turkeys yet? They were delicious! It's almost eerily quiet on the farm now though. No gobbling to fill the air. No giant birds to trip over. It is nice, but a little lonely. I am sure that we will be back in business in the spring again though. Aside from the joy of the cafe and students we have even had parents asking how to buy them. . . . oh boy!!

Yup, things have quieted down considerably! That means time to catch up on paperwork, organize and clean the barn, oh, and of course start breeding bunnies! The first of the two hutches is nearly complete and we will start breeding for meat over winter.

Come spring we would like to add it to our educational program. The hutches are equipped with windows in the back so students (young and old) can observe the babies as they grow. The point of course is to demonstrate the ease of meat production.

"Rabbits," you say?! "Cute, fuzzy bunnies?!?!?!"

To that I say, "yes!"

With a buck and two does you can produce between 200 and 600 pounds of meat a year. . . healthier than chicken and in some opinions, better tasting.

But this is another post for another day.

In the meantime. . . pray for snow.

December is almost here. . .

2011-11-28T13:15:00.003-05:00

It snowed the day before Thanksgiving. . . and not just a little.

It felt a bit like January as we ran the snow blower and the shovels through the 6 or so inches of snow. It was beautiful! The snow was heavy and it clung to the trees, catching the sunlight as it moved across the sky.

I am always humbled by the natural beauty of the farm in the summer when all of the crops are flourishing, and yet it is some how equally beautiful to see the farm at rest beneath a blanket of snow.

The forecast is calling for warmer conditions in the coming days. This should be interesting. . . Is there global warming?

This one is Fun!!!

2011-11-08T07:43:00.002-05:00

Does anyone remember that British fella that went by the name "The Naked Chef"?

You know, Jamie Oliver. The chef that went to West Virginia and turned the school system's food program on it's head (for the better).

Well, back in August PROP (People's Regional Opportunity Program) and C.P.P.W. (Communities Putting Prevention to Work) put on a workshop for local school food service directors geared toward local purchasing, seasonal menus, and healthier food. Part of the program was a tour to our farm here at Saint Joe's where we talked more about local food and how to grow it in a sustainable, healthy way!

It turns out that the workshop and the farm were noteworthy enough to make it on to Mr. Oliver's website. . .

Grow happy!

So much for a long autumn

2011-10-31T13:22:00.011-04:00

Just as I was pondering the cosmic significance of picking fresh green beans on the 20th of October, we had to switch gears and I found myself pondering the cosmic significance of digging out the chicken coop on the 30th of October.

Yup. . . snow, already. In many ways it is super cool. It is a sure sign that our 'outdoor' work is nearly done and we can concentrate on cleaning/reorganizing the barn and catching up on our long overdue paperwork. Time inside also gives us a chance to evaluate the last year and start planning the coming growing season. October is a little sooner than usual, but hey, early preparation is good.

Of course, snow in October lasts about as long snow in May. It's already mostly gone - there is still about an inch and one half left, but let's take the moment to recap on the last couple of weeks. . .

In true farm fashion we have been devoted to, if not only salivating over, garlic and getting it in the ground. Our friends from the Green Team at Windham Middle School came out and helped us to prep the soil and get the garlic divided out, while a number of our Ecology students got the garlic planted.This year we have Elephant, German Extra Hardy and Red Russian in the ground. We are also working on building up a seed stock of Musik (a particularly captivating variety).

When not working with the garlic, a couple of student volunteers (thanks Bob and Andrew) have been getting the hoop houses planted for the winter - specifically our tomato house. As promised, we have kept the tomatoes coming until November first (technically tomorrow), but now we have to work quick to get the rest of the greens in.

We also have been finishing off the shelling of the corn, which we hope to clean dry and grind for corn flour to be used in Mercy Cafe, and the harvesting of our corn and parsnips seeds.

On the other end of the barn our three eligible bachlorettes in the sheep barn have been bred and will spend the next 155 days incubating our spring lambs. While we can't prove it we also suspect that Brandy

(our goat) is with child(ren) which will lead to milk in February.

On a yummier note - our turkeys are no more. Actually, they are still around, but they have taken a whole new shape. . . so to speak. We spent Friday at Farmer's Gate in Leeds, Maine, processing our Thanksgiving birds. In spite of the sensitive nature of the process I will be blogging about that in the coming days. I think that while not everyone has the constitution to participate in the process, everyone is responsible to know where their food actually comes from.

Well. . . back to the fields, er, hoophouses. In the meantime,

Grow Happy.

Autumn - It's finally here!!

2011-10-18T11:52:00.018-04:00

Doesn't this post seem late? Well, in a "normal" year perhaps it would be, but here we are, working in middle October in our shorts!
There are still beans in the ground, and yes we are still harvesting them. Tomatoes still adorn our second hoop house, and many of our annual herbs are growing like champs.

Autumn generally heralds the end of the "traditional" growing season here in Maine and causes farmers across the region to crave fatty foods and become abnormally drowsy. While we do grow in high tunnels through the winter, the lion's share of the work is shoveling snow and breaking up water for the critters. This year feels a bit different though. There is a lot of excitement around the farm which is, subsequently, interfering with my natural instinct to hibernate.

We have harvested most of our autumn crops and are hard at work putting the garden to bed (was that a pun?!?). We even harvested three bushels of apples off of the tree on the property (boy are they good). There are another three or so bushels to harvest, but we need a taller ladder. . .

Buster is out with his ladies getting us ready for the coming lambing season - we are looking at a March lambing this year.

The Bon Appetit turkeys are big enough to saddle and ride to campus.(does anyone out here remember 'Joust' - the old Atari game. . . they would look a bit like that) On the other side of the coop, the chickens are just finishing up the fall moult and are starting to produce again.

And Rockie, Brandy and Pat. . . well, they're goats.

We have welcomed back our friends from Westbrook High School, and are eager to plant garlic with the Windham Middle School's Green Team. It would seem that the rest of our time (for the next few weeks) will be spent teaching ecology students the joy of getting dirty and enjoying the bliss of being clean while working with business students in the classroom.

Stay tuned for our next adventure. . . Turkey Nightmares on Halloween. .

Saint Joe's, Pearson's Town and Sustainability.

2011-09-29T07:37:00.004-04:00

Check out Saint Joe's and the Farm on local channel 6!

Awesome Farm Boss Experience!

2011-09-24T21:17:00.010-04:00

I got to be in charge of the Farm while the real Farm Boss Myke, was away at the common ground fair! I LOVE being the farm boss! It is such an incredible experience!

(Tim falling in love with Pat, helping him get unstuck every time he cries)

Day 1:

Farm boss duties completed:

1. Pick corn stocks and pick the corn off of them. Tim and I picked the corn and I had fun running through the corn field. Because I was the boss and I could do whatever I wanted!

2. Plant lettuce and Swiss chard. I had fun planting and getting super dirty in the process. However it was a super muggy day and I have 19 bug bites...and STILL counting!

3. Pick green beans. While I was planting, Tim was picking green beans!

4. Herding the (not very smart) turkeys and goats back into their home. That was pretty easy!

(Rocky being all manly and awesome. Rocky's a pretty amazing goat, he followed me around everywhere after I gave him some leaves.)

(Turkeys trying to get me in trouble while I was the farm boss, but I showed them who was boss and got them down safely without harming any plants OR turkeys!)

After that I pretty much smelled like turkey poo for the last few stops I made before heading home. It was okay though because it turns out if you smell like turkey poo you get really fast service!

Day 2:

Still being a super awesome farm boss!

After the Lobster Bake I noticed that one of the sheepies were in the wrong part of the pasture as all the other sheepies and super amazing Amall (The Llama!) So. I got to herd her back in with Amall. Amall was so cool he ran along the other pasture with me and the sheep. It was fun! Amall stopped freaking out when his sheep was back in his protection and he thanked me by letting me pet him. All the students/parents pulling out of the college were also pretty amazed by the fact I was in the pasture with Amall and the sheep!

Day 3:

All the animals still love me and are pretty amazing. All and all, I am sure they will be glad to see Myke again, and I will gladly pass on my Temporary "Farm Boss" Title back down to the most amazing farm boss I have ever met, Myke Russell. (No sucking up intended!)

However, I am more than willing to be Farm Boss again! And I loved the experience!

Oh well, back to being the employee on Tuesday!

(I got this!)

(Genesis and I hanging out!)

Another summer season waning.

2011-09-05T11:16:00.005-04:00

I like transitions. I don't like change, but I like transitions. They bring with them warm memories and the promise of something new.

What a phenomenal summer we had out here at the farm. In spite of being out numbered five to one, Noah and I managed to survive the blessed organization that 10 female co-workers brought with them. From Melinda's insistence on straight rows to Amanda's love for all things goat, it was truly a great year.

Alas the summer (the academic summer that is) is now over and like a bee hive the campus is a buzz with students moving back into their dorm rooms. This means that our traditional growing season is coming to a close and we have already planted for the coming winter. With many changes over the summer from the new reporting structure (yup, I got a new boss), to the super fabulous new tractor (Dear old interns, this is where I inform you that not a single intern had to turn a compost pile by hand this summer. . . which is so unfair. They have no idea the fun they missed), we are ready for a break to rest and recollect our thoughts and strategize for the future.

Breeding season is upon us and we are warming up to reintroduce Buster to his lady friends as well as preparing Rocky and Brandy who will, with any luck, be providing milk in the early spring for the Chemistry of Cooking class.

As I bid good friends and good interns adieu for the school semester, I am happy to welcome back Heather who will be coming on board for a third (yup, she's lost her mind) winter season with us.

Stay tuned for some more photos from the summer as soon as I dig up the ol' camera. . .

Memories of Mae

2011-08-27T20:39:00.012-04:00

In memory of Mae Baby, May 6, 2011 to August 26, 2011

May 6, 2011, about 11:30am, my Mae baby was born. Extra little, she was the daughter of Bates and Buster, the poor inbred little lamb. Bates didn't want her, she barely even started to clean her. We had to hold her down to allow Mae to feed. When it was decided for sure that Bates didn't want her, I adopted her.

Naturally, not being a sheep, she couldn't feed from me, but boy did she try! She tried my neck, my chin, my armpits, my knee caps, you name it! It took her a while to latch onto feeding from her bottle. Or maybe she's just not a drinker....

Her first few days, she was a funny little thing. She would wake up in the middle of the night and not go back to sleep, even after eating a little, so I brought her into bed with me and she was fine.

And sometimes during the day, she wouldn't quite know what to do with herself, so she put herself in time out....
She could be found chilling out quite often:

She began to grow fatter, fill out her shape so that she wasn't so wrinkly. We would take her for walks to campus or down the road. She was very popular. Everyone wanted a visit. We heard comments like, "Isn't she the cutest thing!" or "Why did her mom reject her?" or "I've never SEEN a baby LLAMA before!" Well, I haven't either. I do have some experience with baby sheep however...

Taking her for a walk down the road one day, this couple turned their green truck around and came back to us and stopped to visit. They fell entirely in love with her. They want our next bottle baby.

On the way back to the farm, a group of motorcycles passed us and Mae, unleashed, was curious and began to act just like a dog: she chased them!

I took off after her and grabbed her and ran the rest of the way across the street just in time to NOT get hit by a car.

Summer went on and Mae cried a lot, especially after she was 10 weeks old and we stopped bottle feeding her. She also got lots of threats from this summer's interns that they would eat her. But Dan in the cafeteria pardoned her and insisted that no one was allowed to eat her. And I added to that by reminding them that she was too little and there was hardly any meat on her.

And every time Amanda threatened to eat her, I retorted by threatening to eat Pat, the baby goat. THAT shut her up.

We tried several times to put her out in the pasture with her people. She refused to be integrated and climbed through the electric fence every time and went either back to the barn to find me or to the door of marketing, where she knew she got fed her bottle.

We put her on a leash and staked her outside the barn to keep her in one spot, since she wouldn't stay in the field and we needed her eating grass. She sometimes liked to play "dead fish" on my coworkers as they tried to walk her out to wherever we decided to put her for the day. She never played dead fish for me. She may have walked slow, but she came for me. We would keep her and Pat together, they were friends. Amanda even made them sleep in the same stall together. She called it their "Honeymoon Suite."

One day, Melinda decided to give her a haircut. She sheared a giant heart on her back. It was sort of cute while she was laying down, but once she stood up, we realized it was slightly off-center. That afternoon, Caitlin fixed it up a little bit and also trimmed her bushy eyebrows. We sheared her the rest of the way a couple days later.

Well, as I said, we stopped bottle feeding her. And again, as I said, there was hardly any meat on her. She stopped growing about the time we stopped bottle feeding her.

Last week, we came in in the morning and was standing funky in her stall. She was sort of squatting as if peeing, but she wasn't peeing and she wasn't moving. Bringing her outside that day, she played dead fish on me for the first time. She flat out refused to go. I carried her out and put her in the grass. She sprawled out, laying in an unnatural position for a sheep. After a while, I went to visit her and she tried to get up and could not get up. She just struggled. So I picked her up and put her on her feet and she seemed alright, though still a little not-quite-normal.

She stayed like this for a couple of days. I went on vacation to visit my brother, who is moving to Louisiana, and my sister and grandparents in PA. I was gone for two days and was trying to figure out where the spot is on my camera and was looking at photos where the spot appeared to try to figure it out.

I happened to be looking through photos of Mae and was telling my mother about how Mae hadn't been feeling well and how I should call Myke and find out how she was doing.

Just a few minutes later, Myke called me and gave me the news.

Being distraught on the phone, I did not quite understand what the problem was, or what caused the problem, or what, but it had something to do with the fact that she hasn't grown in a month and a half, regardless of how much grass she's eaten.

Because of these complications, Mae passed away.

Mae was a typical child, she cried and played and whined and ate and pooped. She was very sweet lovable (at least in my opinion. If you ask Kate, you'll problem get a different response.). She will be missed very much.

Mae Baby, May 6, 2011 to August 26, 2011

Oops! You didn't see this coming??? Really?!?!?!?!

2011-08-22T19:22:00.002-04:00

I will NEVER say, "I told you so!"

Monsanto. . . Not the second coming of Jesus!

I will say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Camp Plant-A-Seed: Helping Kids Grow!

2011-08-19T16:21:00.016-04:00

During the last week of July, Pearson's Town Farm played host to Camp Plant-A-Seed, a grant funded day camp for ages 5 to 11 year old kids. The camp was directed by the amazing Amy Russell, who has been planning this camp since February (I helped here and there.) The camp was completely free for the 21 kids that tended, which meant that it gave campers the opportunity to attend a summer camp when they might not have otherwise have the chance to do to finances.

They were absolutely awesome kids! We had a great week full of adventures, learning, and fun!!

A camper is happy to be planting in the sun.

The game field were campers played games such as Capture the Flag, Don't Wake the Dragon, Red Light, Green Light and Grandma's Underwear.

This camper loved catching chickens, especially Midnight Joy.

Some of the boys walking back from a water break.

Campers playing games in the fields.

At the camp we emphasized learning about sustainable gardening, healthy living, and nature. Our crafts, activities, and lessons were centered on these.

The kids made solar ovens and cooked their afternoon snacks of hot dogs and smores in them. We were able to talk about solar energy as well as how the sun helps us all during this activity.

Of course, the kids added to our ever growing painted rock collection in our Kinder Garden.

Kids painting their rocks.

The rocks were added to the Kinder Garden.

Another activity we did was egg heads. Using egg shells as little flower pots, the campers drew faces on the eggs and planted grass seeds to use as hair.

Of course we did a lot of learning during camp as well. Lessons included parts of a plant, composting, permaculture, healthy eating habits, and more!

Amy teaching about parts of a plant.

Farmer Myke doing a composting demonstration.

Campers put their new knowledge to use by using compost to plant seeds.

The kids loved playing in the dirt!

And of course all campers go to participate in my favorite part of the farm -- Harvesting! Campers harvested beans, peas, and garlic during their week on the farm.

One of the best parts of the week was that we celebrated FOUR campers birthdays! Each of them brought in their favorite birthday treat to share with the rest of the camp.

Yummy cake!

Delicious cup cakes! We also had ice cream cake and ice cream bars.

And what would a week at Pearson's Town Farm be without the beloved animals? The kids were all over our fuzzy friends. Every morning and afternoon kids were introducing their parents and younger siblings to Mae, Pat, Bun Bun and everyone else. During the first day we let Pat the goat tag along with our camp. But that ended after he stomped all over everyone's lunches.

One of the campers caught a gater snake.

Mae was loving the extra attention.

Of course, Pat was a celebrity.

In addition to all the learning, games, crafts, and farming we did, we went swimming! Splashing around in beautiful lake Sebago made the entire camp week complete.

Campers showing off in the water.

I feel like I barely covered what we did at Camp Plant-A-Seed! Each day was action packed and full of fun! They kids were all excellent and an absolute joy to work with during that week. It was energizing and exciting. The kids loved it, and so did the parents. I heard over and over again about how this was many campers first time to camp and that parents were so glad we put this camp on so that their kids would get to go to summer camp.

While it was one of the most rewarding weeks at the farm, it was also exhausting. (Don't worry -- I was just resting my eyes for a moment. I didn't actually fall asleep on the kids.) Completely worth being tired though. Amy and I completely loved each of those kids and are hoping to do it again next year.

So, at the end of it all everyone agrees: CAMP PLANT-A-SEED ROCKS!!!

Seeds of Peace

2011-08-04T14:57:00.008-04:00

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So several weeks ago now, Seeds of Peace and Seas of Peace came to help out at Pearson's Town Farm and Catherine's Cupboard! Seeds of Peace "is dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence." (their own words from their website http://www.seedsofpeace.org/.) Teenagers from Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and America start the program at a summer camp located in Otisfield, Maine and continue with year-round regional initiatives.

The particular groups that visited us were students who have already done one year of Seeds of Peace and were invited to do a second year. Seas of Peace are also students that were invited to return for a second year, but this new program would be operating on sail boats instead.

After a nice getting-to-know-you lunch at the Mercy Cafe, we went back to the farm and began working on different project.

Nice introductory talk and splitting up into groups.

One group repaired a raised bed that are used so that wheelchair bound people can garden too!

Another group worked the pumpkin patch.

Go, Seeds of Peace, Go!

My group repaired a fence. They were completely awesome, especially because I had never repaired a fence before or done anything with a fence before for that matter. But they jumped right in and made it beautifully.

Spending some time with the sheep.

This guy is awesome! That tiller is tough work, but he was a champ about it!

Oh yeah, and Pat was famous. Everyone held him at some point. My favorite story of the day was when the Seas of Peace kids first arrived and Pat came over to them. Farmer Myke invited our guests to play with the baby goat by saying, "Go on and pet him -- he's just like a puppy dog." To which one kid replied, "A puppy dog? Things are very different in American."

After a hard afternoon's work a water fight broke out.

It was ended with a super-bowl winner reenactment -- that is, they dumped a cooler of ice water on their leader.

This picture is just cool in my opinion.

After working on the farm, everyone climbed on the buses and headed over to Catherine's Cupboard. Everyone participated in a group discussion with Amy Russell, the Catherine's Cupboard Director. They discussed how the food pantry worked, all the programs that Catherine's Cupboard put on, and more. What I learned from the talk was just how special having things such as food pantries are. The teenagers told stories about how these types of services weren't offered in their home country. They talked about how pride would prevent people from utilizing these types of programs. Many left inspired to start these types of services in their home countries.

After the discussions the Seeds of Peace helped set up the pantry and worked it. They were able to meet with clients, talk with volunteers, and experience everything the Catherine's Cupboard family had to offer.

And then it rained! I've never seen such a large group of kids so excited about rain. When I mentioned this, they reminded me they lived in a desert. Instead of commenting on my lack of common sense moment, we all danced around in the rain. AND THEN...

There was a BEAUTIFUL double rainbow!

Standing in awe of the double rainbow.

When all was said and down, we cleaned up, put all the tables together, and feasted on pizza made by Bon Appetite.

It was good pizza!

At Kid' Corner, the kids colored peace signs and finished the sentence "What Peace means to me..." Most of them were really cute -- "it starts at home." "happiness and joy." "no more war." But the most powerful one was done by a Seed of Peace kid. The peace sign was only half colored and it said, "I didn't finish the peace sign because peace is not yet achieved."

This is Ben, one of the Leaders of Seeds of Peace. His picture is here because he is awesome and he has awesome long hair.

There are ten versions of this picture. This is the only one where one isn't walking out of or walking into the group.

It was an awesome day with a truly amazing group of kids. And the best part (in my opinion)? After I had returned to my room at the end of day, I sent my Dad and e-mail. My Dad is currently serving with the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan This is his second tour in the Middle East. I was so excited about the Seeds of Peace/Seas of Peace visiting us that I sent him an e-mail describing everything we did and all the insight I had over the day. My Dad replied to the e-mail the very next day and said that hearing about Seeds of Peace and what they are doing was a much needed moral booster. He said it was inspiring to hear about how the next generation is already working towards peace and he hopes that their efforts would help to end all wars.

So a big thanks to Seeds of Peace for sharing the day with us. You guys are awesome! We can't wait to work with you again in the Future!

~ all photos were taken by farm intern Alyssa.

For the love of Farming!

2011-07-29T19:23:00.005-04:00

I had not realized how much I missed the farm until I visited it today. Pearson's Town Farm is just a very beautiful and heartwarming place. Going there is very calming and makes me a very very happy person!

(Genesis and I)

I really enjoyed seeing our newest member, Pat. Cutest little baby goat ever! (Or until the next litter)

(Alyssa and Pat)

My favorite part of the visit was visiting with Genesis (The Sheep). She has gotten so big since the last time I saw her and yet I knew exactly who she was and she seemed to know who I was too! I loved going right into the stall with the sheep and petting them.

(Genesis laying down, and Joy standing up)

I cannot wait to get back to work in the fall. I hope we get a ton of new volunteers this year! I'm in such a hurry to get back that I even volunteered to help for the rest of the summer. I even loved weeding! And lastly, I got to see how our thanksgiving dinner is coming. So far, so good!

(Mmmm Turkey!)

Everybody Loves a Baby!

2011-07-14T13:04:00.005-04:00

So remember when I said no more baby posts? That goes to show that even the best of us have to eat our words every now and then (quote from Dumbeldore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by the way. Final Harry Potter Movie tonight at Midnight. You're right, this has nothing to do with the farm. I'm just excited.)

There would be no one in the world better to write about the surprise birth than farm intern Amanda. And so the rest of the blog is her own words!

This past Tuesday started like any other Tuesday… the interns dragging themselves to the farm promptly at 8:04… errr, I mean, 8:00. As the day went on, the animals made their usual slew of noises and cries, nothing out of the ordinary. However, around 4:30 pm, our goat Brandy made a cry that even got the attention of Myke. Although she usually makes enough noise for 20 goats, Myke decided to check on her just in case. Imagine his surprise when he saw an extra set of hooves appearing from Brandy! He immediately called all his interns and family to witness the birth. After about 20 minutes of agonizing cries and disgusting fluids, I was a (surrogate) grandmother! A healthy boy was born, who I named Pat. Ten minutes later, Pat was taking his first steps and crying his bone-chilling cry. It has been eight days since this little furry miracle has been prancing around Pearson’s Town Farm, and they have been eight days of joy and threats of dinner from Myke.

Pat has already grown quite a bit and has an amazing sense of curiosity, so naturally he gets into everything and chews on everything. He gets along with Bun Bun, Mae, and all the other animals. Except, of course, Buster. But then again, who gets along with Buster?

I have spent the majority of my time following this little baby around, cuddling and playing. I mean, I have been working in the field non-stop. His personality is awesome, and he has been great with visitors. Today, the Seeds of Peace camp visited the farm and Pat did nothing but wag his tail as he was passed around to 40 sets of hands and oohhed and ahhhed over all day. Brandy is a good mother but not overly protective, so she doesn’t mind Pat leaving to visit with eager visitors. Rocky is a typical boy... I mean, he has been decent with Pat. He doesn’t pay much attention to him unless he is eating, in which case Rocky would head-butt himself if he got in the way.

Pat has been such a positive presence on the farm, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that we have been blessed with his unexpected birth.

*All photos are taken by Amanda. Except for the one that has Amanda in it -- that one was taken by me. Stay tune for a blog post about our adventures with Seeds of Peace.

While the Farmer Was Away...

2011-07-05T14:29:00.008-04:00

So this week Farmer Myke went away mini conference thing where he found it to be "tremendously reaffirming for me to be at this training/workshop. I am up here with a number of other colleges that are years behind where we are! One college just got a hoop house, one college is trying to grow organic produce, but can't sell it to their own cafeterias, and these folks are looking at what we are doing with awe and hope! In so many ways, we are blazing the way in sustainability and just plain old hardcore colleging! (no that is not a word). Oh, and we are definitely the only college that has livestock/poultry. . . the others are sooooo jealous.

I am also getting a lot of support from the state folks and guru's of composting who really want to see our compost program succeed and want to help us meet that goal."

Meanwhile, back at the farm...

We're pretty much the most ballin' farm ever.

It's been a very exciting time at the farm. Two Tuesdays ago, we went on an adventure to pick up more hoop houses. We finished weeding the walled garden (You know, the first time around. You can't really tell looking at it now. Silly weeds that grow back). And we had a fox attack!

Celebratory Whoopie Pie that was eaten after the walled garden was finished.

The Fox Attack of July 3, 2011.

So I went to open up the farm. Myke had generously given us long holiday weekend off, but we still have to take care of the animals. I went about farm, feeding rabbits and sheep. Then I went to feed the new baby chicks we had just bought.

Only to discover there were no baby chicks left. Just feathers and wings. And a headless chick in the sheep's stable. And just as I caught sight of the headless baby chick, I looked up, and staring at me was a fox. Quickly putting the pieces together, I realized that the fox got into the barn through the missing door (we really should replace that door...) and consequently massacured our two dozen new chicks.

What followed was a backwards sort of Bugs Bunny cartoon. I chased the fox beyond the pasture and pumpkin patch into the woods. I went into the barn just to see the dead chick again, and when I came back out and there was a fox sitting right there, staring at me. I'm fairly certain that it was a different fox. This one was much braver. I would chase him behind Marketing before he disappeared, go to do something, and then ten minutes later see him again. I eventually ended up stalking around the farm with a rake trying to keept his fox away from my farm.

I'm sure the image of me jumping fencing and screaming "FOX!" at the top of my lung was movie-comedy worthy!

Eventually the farmer showed up, but of course the time that happened, the fox had disappeared.

But, on the postivie side, we found five baby chicks throughout the farm, still alive and cheeping!

The next day I returned to the farm after a weird commuicion mishap with Mae. So I had Mae on the leash, I turned the corner, and there was the fox, sitting on top of the wood pile. We had a twenty minute stand off (during with the farmer's phone decided to fail, epcially) before he ran away. I tired reasoning with the fox, telling him that if he didn't get his family and get out of here, someone was going to get hurt. And odds are it was him.

Which ended up being true. This morning we all headed back to the grind. As he weeded and planted, the fox sunk around and Amanda spotted him. Luckily, the farmer was actually around this time. He managed to get the fox, despite the fact that his interns have a habit of running towards the fox-exterminator device instead of out of the way. Leaving a fox dead, the chickens safer, and me with only one thing to say:

I told you so, fox. I told you so.

*note: all photos were taken by this awesome intern:

The End of Mae... Er... May/Beginning of June

2011-06-22T19:52:00.013-04:00

Hello all! My name is Kate and I am one of the summer farm interns who will be posting regularly on this blog. And by regularly, I mean regularly. Not just when a new baby sheep is born. We’re all going to be better at that from now on!

So update on how the end of May/beginning of June has gone.

The school year ended, most people left campus for the summer (or for life in the case of seniors) but eleven brave souls stayed behind to manage the farm in exchange for free room and a meal. Amanda, Courtney, Melissa, Aylssa, Melinda, Mary Jo (MJ), Annie, Caitlin, Jamie, Noah and I are the interns this year. Yep! Ten girls, one guy, and a farmer that will probably need a little therapy after the summer ends, but that’s alright. It’s been a grand and exciting adventure ever since.

Now, a lot has happened in about the last month. So I figured the best way to break it all down is a chart:

Yes, a huge hunk of our time has gone to weeding. Particularly in the walled garden, which was taken over by what I’m sure are evil grass. (Cold, calculating, and fast growing evil grass).

Amanda and Courtney taking a break from weeding in the walled garden.

Mae has become very attached to all of us and follows us everywhere. Which is very cute and Mary Had A Little Lamb like, but when we are weeding and she tries to help but instead eats all our beans… Or when she forgets to follow us and then disappears and BAAAAs all over the farm… or she eats my beloved peas. Yeah. Then we tell her we are going to eat her. Not in front of Alyssa though.

Mae sunbathing.

The goats are crazy as ever, getting into anything. Brandi may or may not be pregnant. We have no idea, but we are hoping! Myke bought them leashes so now we can keep a little better track of them.

Rocky standing on a table, eating a pencil.

Mama duck hatched her eggs. All ten of them hatched! However, only three are left. We named them David, Elijah, and Glen. David is my favorite one. We bonded a lot over a nice bath (and by that I mean, I gave David a bath). However, David might be a girl, I have yet to determine. I won’t change her name is she is a she. We’ll just start a new trend together.

Mama Duck and her three babies. (David is the one in the middle.)

We’ve had several school groups visit the farm, including second graders from Windham. This is my favorite part of the job. They are always so excited to be on the farm. They absolutely love the animals. This group in particular was just a great group. A few gave their left over carrots from lunch to Bun Bun. They LOVED Mae. My favorite moment of the day was when about three students went into the barn to say good-bye to Mae. One little boy took an extra long time and waited for the other two to leave before he whispered, “I love you, Mae.” I thought it was adorable. Watching the kids reaction when the chickens descended on their lunch area was hilarious and adorable as well.

Bun Bun, who all the kids loved!

There is a ton more we have done so far this summer. There’s been alumni weekend, breaking in the new tractor and the new lawn mower. Tilling an area for a new pumpkin patch, shearing Buster and a ton more!

It’s going to be a great rest of the summer on the farm, which means you all better stay tune, because there are going to be a lot more stories from this farm!

Caitlin and Noah, two of the Summer Farm Interns, holding chickens.

All Photos were taken by Amanda Knowlton, who is beautiful, amazing, and brilliant!

Alyssa Jean's Mae Baby

2011-05-10T11:36:00.006-04:00

Just what you've always wanted: another post about babies!

Last year's baby lamb, Bates, was unintentionally bred TOTALLY out of season by her OWN FATHER! So while our other 5 lambs were born in February-March, Bates had her baby on May 6, 2011 at 11:30am.

Myke and I had been out at the farmer's market site to help hang the new banner by the road. We came back and as we were passing the pasture field, we noticed that one of the sheep (it was too far away to tell who) was laying very awkward and not normally. So while I went back out to the garden (as far away from the pasture fields as you can get!) to finish planting zucchini, which I'd been working on before the market, Myke went out to check on her. Then he sent his son Owen to run and get me.

Owen made it as far as the barn, where King Richard IV (all of our mean roosters are named King Richard) was keeping watch. Owen dared not go farther. So he yelled for me from there, but I didn't hear him. Finally he plucked up the courage to come out to get me, and we RAN for the pasture as hard as we could! Then I had to run back to the barn and get the shepherd's crook, then run back to the field. I was terribly winded and couldn't breathe for a few minutes. I need to get back in running shape....

Once I got my breath back, we herded all the sheep besides Bates into the next pasture over, then went over to Bates to check on her. Presently, a baby lamb appeared. However, she got too tired to make it out all the way; Myke had to pull her back legs out and set her in front of Bates. Neither one of them looked too good; I wasn't sure if either would survive at first.

Finally, after a few long minutes, Bates got up and walked around and ate some grass. She licked the baby a couple of times and went back to her own business. She would not allow the baby to feed. We waited about an hour with them before holding Bates down and finding her teat for the baby. The baby preferred the poop that was next to it. Weirdo.

Finally, once she'd got some milk/colostrum into her, we left them together and headed off to lunch. When we came back from lunch, Bates was still not interested in her baby. In fact, she managed to climb her way through the electric fence and the baby could not figure out how to get back to her. At least Bates stayed just on the other side of the fence and didn't wander off. Once I helped the baby find her way under the bottom wire, Bates walked off too fast for the baby to comfortably follow.

The baby got some visitors from the college, so we picked her up and carried her around for a bit. After a while, I carried her back out to the field and brought her to Bates, who was lying down in the grass. I set her down next to Bates and walked away a few feet and sat down. Bates turned her head away. The baby came back over to me and curled up in my lap. And that was that.

We tried to bond them again by locking them both in the barn together and trying to get Bates to feed her, but it didn't work. The baby became our first, and hopefully last, bottle-fed baby.

So we brought her home (to the Russells) and fed her milk replacer mixed with hot water and fed it to her out of all we had: a Twisted Tea bottle, which allowed for many comments of how she is learning to drink at such a young age.

Amy and I named the baby Mae.

Mae bonded to me the way she should have bonded to Bates. She even tries to nurse on me: my neck, my armpits, my fingers, my elbow pits. I am now her mother. Let me tell you, it's pretty tough being a single mom at 19 years old! But I keep hearing from many different people what a great job I'm doing, so I feel pretty good about both myself and Mae! My own mom even wished me a happy Mother's Day last Sunday!

In the past 8 days, Mae has pooped on me at LEAST ten times (diarrhea....), and peed on me countless times. I wore the same clothes for 5 days straight to make sure that I didn't get too many of my clothes ruined. I finally washed them yesterday and they actually look alright now. Not perfect, but better!

She didn't eat much on Monday; she was teething. Tuesday, I forgot her bottle at home. Then she turned out to be very hungry. So we brought her over to the college and raided the nursing department for a baby bottle. And by that I mean that we asked one of the nursing professors if there were any spares.

Mae and I were stopped by many, many people between the "fishbowl" in Mercy Hall and the office in the Heffernan center, just the next building over. It generally takes about a minute and a half to walk from point A to point B. It took at least an hour. Mae is very popular. All week, I got many compliments on my mothering, many questions about Mae, about why her mother didn't want her, etc.

While many people knew who I was before because of the work I do on the farm, that amount must have doubled this week! Wanna know what else at least doubled? Mae's size. She was SUPER thin when she was born, very skinny and wrinkly. After 4 days, she had probably about doubled and filled out her skin. Sometimes while feeding her, I could actually SEE her getting fatter!

As the week went on, Mae began to get fatter and stronger. She follows me everywhere, stopping only to pee. She even slept with me for the first few nights when she was extra fussy. I pulled her right into bed with me and she curled right up and went to sleep!

Now she is pretty well kennel trained and sometimes even goes in on her own to pee or sleep. Other times, she poops or pees all over the floor, even the carpet. It's hard to clean up, but I'm getting more skilled. Of course, dish soap helps too!

Tuesday night, Mae frolicked for the first time. Now she runs around like crazy all the time! I can run around in circles for 10 minutes straight and she chases after me like mad the whole time, only stopping to pee every couple minutes.

Right now, Mae is in "time out" because she pooped on the floor about eight times in one hour. She even pooped on Myke a few minutes ago. Pretty funny. But now that she is eating grass (or dirt, as she prefers), her poop is getting thicker, not so diarrhea-y, which is definitely a good thing. It's also greenish-brownish now instead of yellow.

Tomorrow I will move out of the Russells and back onto campus, forcing me to leave my baby girl behind. I won't see her every night. I won't have to wake up 2-5 times a night to feed her or play with her. It's all very sentimental. It's actually pretty hard on me. But I will see her every day, because she'll come with Myke to the farm every day.

My experience with Mae has made me realize that when I have my own human babies, I am going to be a very emotional mom. I'll probably cry when they take their first steps, talk for the first time, go off to kindergarten, etc. Yup. But I know it will be totally worth it (years from now!). I love babies. It's just a little bit sad how fast they grow up.

Mom, now I know how you feel. Love you!

More pictures to follow......

Babies, babies everywhere. . .

2011-05-03T10:16:00.003-04:00

Didn't we already have this title. . . okay, maybe we did, but it is still true.

The sheep are all done for the year, but they have been replaced by baby chickens, baby turkeys, baby ducks. . . baby plants. . .

Stu made a connection with one our local farmers that opened up a door for us to grow our Thanksgiving turkeys again this year (it seems that the state passed a few "overprotective" laws that punished the many for the sins of the few which threatened our ability to grow our own T-Day dinner). So with the "how do we legally process our turkeys" hurtle passed we are back on track with a whopping 40 turkeys brooding in the barn (yes, pray for the farm staff this year!).

As we near the end of the school year and the beginning of the "farming season" things are hoppin'. The Ecology students are wrapping up their time on the farm which results in a two week lull in help. Normally this would be a cause for freneticism (is that a word?), but in this case we are so far ahead with the general work that the loss in help disrupts very little in the flow. Our biggest inhibitors this year have been the loss of space to get our seedlings started and the lack of consistent sunlight.

We are at about 50% below, what I will call, normal for started seedlings. It is an acceptable set back in a transition year, that will be remedied later in the year as we get additional electricity in the barn. In the now it means that we won't have much of an early season harvest, but by June we will be movin' and shankin'. . . and harvesting.

It's a great time to be on the farm. The ground in workable, seeds are being put in, the livestock are back out in the fields. . . things seem alive!

Now we are only two weeks away from interns. . .

Genesis's First Field Trip By Heather Aceto

2011-04-24T12:04:00.009-04:00

I was asked by a very nice man (Pastor Lee) if he could borrow a lamb for easter Sunday's mass.

So of course I asked Myke and he said I could "borrow" a lamb to bring to The Bible Believing Baptist Church. I chose Genesis so that the mommy sheep would at least have one lamb to tend to.

This is the Bible Believing Baptist Church where Genesis spent her morning.

This is Pastor Lee with Baby Genesis, very appreciative of this opportunity.

When we first got Genesis she was crying and her mom was mad and Amall looked like he was going to kill me. But once we got in the car she settled down and started eatting hay.

At the Church (Located in Gray, Maine.. where I live) Genesis was tied to the cross outside of the Church, off set of the road. She was supposed to resemble Jesus the "Lamb of God" Because Lamb's are said to be very pure and innocent as was Jesus. Everybody at the church loved Genesis. She got a lot of attention. While she was tied to the cross she got every car that drove by to slow down and check her out. She also got a lot of people to come over and pet her and take her photo. When she wasn't getting as much attention she spent her time mowing the lawn for Pastor Lee.

There she is proudly playing her role of "lamb of God"

After a while she got tired and decided to take a quick nap.

Once the services were over we took Genesis home to her Mommy Baby, Daddy Buster, Uncle Amall, Sister, and all her friends.

Genesis enjoying her long ride home. When she got home she did not want to get out she was so comfy and tired. But We carried her back into her stall and she cried for her mommy and her mommy and sister cried back and they were very happily reunited.

Thank you Genesis for being such a good "Lamb of God" You definitely will be remembered at the church!

Now that your home its time for me to go have an Easter Dinner.. (Don't worry I'm not having Lamb!)

Baby Chicks are getting BIGGER! By Heather Aceto

2011-04-14T19:41:00.006-04:00

Wow!!! The baby chicks are getting sooo big! Don't worry they are still in Myke's office for those that are visiting. We only have four now. Three Pearson's Town Farm chicks were sold. They will have a very happy life =)

Don't worry the chicks are still supper cute!

They are growing up to the point there they have soft fuzzy body's and are growing real chicken feathers on their wings!!!!!

They are just sooooo cute!!! They are my best friends!

I know your thinking... Babies always grow up and it is sad but true... BUT, don't worry because there are more chicken eggs in the incubator right now! AND there are 3 duck eggs! And a turkey egg! VERY exciting! More information to come soon... till then... stay tuned =P

Ode to Ida Lou by Alyssa Jean

2011-04-07T21:06:00.006-04:00

Our fifth and final lamb was born last Monday around 8:30am. Dyna(mite)'s little girl, fondly named Ida Lou, was the only one who waited for me. Being in Vermont for the semester, I missed the birth of our other four lambs, though I quickly came to visit. I do love them all, but Ida Lou quickly became my favorite, having been there for the event. She was already out and standing when Myke and I arrived that morning, but Mama Dyna had not yet cleaned her. Gooey and bloody as she was, she was the cutest, most beautiful little girl ever.

While Myke went off to his staff meeting later that morning, I was left alone with Ida Lou and Dyna and the rest. I sat and held my baby girl for hours and wrote her a little ode. It goes something like this:

My little baby Ida Lou
She is so very very cute
She's having trouble with her food
Yet still she puts me in a good mood!

There used to be another verse, but I can't remember it all now. I came up with it as I let her go to eat. She was having some troubles finding the right place! It took her a few minutes, but she finally got it. By the end of the week, she had gone from being the smallest lamb this year to, well, still small, but very tall and somewhat lazy, laying down and eating at the same time!

But of course, we can't forget about the other critters!

Amall keeping steady watch....

Two of the girls cuddle:

Danni grins. Or is she whining?

Gathered round the table for a midday meal. And Charley in the middle of it all!

Brandy shows her wild side:

The sheep head out to pasture for the first time this spring:

Chickens investigate Dyna and Ida Lou's stall:

And finally, our first "batch" of eggs have hatched! We have seven baby chicks total so far!

It is proving to be an exciting spring, even with only occasional visits from Vermont!

April 1rst: 18 inches of snow - no joke!

2011-03-30T10:25:00.023-04:00

Yup, I meant to blog last Friday, but that is just how my weeks go sometimes. . . maybe a more often than not. In the end though, it was better that I waited till now. It's snowing buckets and more excitement has happened in the last few days than happened all last week.

Dyna delivered on Monday. . . right on time! A little ewe lamb joins our flock bringing the total flock population to 11 and a llama. While mom and baby were hanging out in the nursery, we took advantage of the receding snow, and put the rest of the flock out to pasture. I would dare say that they really enjoyed it!

Spring really sprung this week among the bipeds on the farm. There were people galore all week. We had visitors,we planted, prepared seed trays for our upcoming outing to the food pantry (stand by for details), cleaned the barn, worked in the hoop houses, composted,and, of course, walked the critters. . . .

There was the usual St. Joe's crew, and our E.S.300 volunteers, as well as a number of prospective summer interns, but most exciting was the return of our friends from Westbrook High School. They were challenged to move a little hay and try to wrangle 9 sheep (which is 50% more than they wrangled last year).

Then, there is today. . . snow. It seems that spring has something to prove to winter. Truth is we traditionally have one snow storm in April that clobbers us. It seemed like a good day to work from home and get prepped for next week. Starting this week we will be teaching basic seed starting and gardening techniques at Catherine's Cupboard Food Pantry. That will happen every Wednesday evening through April. Wednesday afternoon we meet with the Windham Middle School's Green-Team - they want to start indoor gardens. Thursday and Friday we are at Windham Primary teaching 200 3rd graders about composting before they start their own pile. As I am typing this I talked to Aimee J. at the school who has informed me that there are three chicks in the incubator that are hatching. . . more babies coming. . .

Busy, busy. . . but it's that time of year again!

Did I say spring?

2011-03-21T15:16:00.002-04:00

Perhaps I miss spoke in my previous post. My claim to the "Spring" surprises had more to do with the anticipation of spring than those things actually happening in spring.

This, of course, being Maine, concepts like seasons are really just arbitrary ideas. You can never really predict what the weather will do regardless of the season. An example. . . Saturday called for mostly sunny skies; highs in the middle 40's -NO mention of snow whatsoever!!!! What did I wake up to?!?!? SNOW! It was bombing out of the sky with about an inch already accumulated.

Yesterday, of course, was the first day of spring, and today (the second day of spring). . . SNOW!!! A weather reporter suggested as much as six inches. I can't speak for all of mankind, but I am super ready to be done with this winter silliness and get to digging in the dirty with sunny skies and temps in the 70's.

Honestly, though, I am amused. The amount of accumulated snow that has been lost in the last week has been fabulous. We can see a good chunk of the pasture, and the sheep are itching to get out. Walkways are clear (well, they were an hour ago), the compost and leaf piles are accessible again. I even saw that crazy white van that we used last summer poking out of a snow bank.
My favorite part of the spring thaw is watching the ducks take advantage of pools that have formed in some of the lower areas. that water has to be frigid, but they are like kids in a toy store, playing and making a raucous.

The lambs are getting big, and Dyna is due somewhere between this Friday and next (if our numbers are right - we see how that has gone in the past). Stay tuned for planting updates. We will put up some pics in my next post.

Spring surprises

2011-03-14T09:42:00.005-04:00

Last month the Environmental Awareness Club sold egg sponsorships to students and faculty on campus. The donations support the E.A. Club and Pearson's Town pledged to save and incubate a chicken egg for each sponsorship (we are willing to hatch duck eggs too, they just aren't laying yet).

So here we are. The weather has turned, the maple trees are running and the morning temps are warm enough for us to do early egg collections for incubation. We loaded our first round of eggs into the incubator on Friday.We were stilling having some technical difficulties with the humidity, but as of this morning I think we have it worked out. Hopefully our first batch will be emerging the second week of April.

The great news is that the E.A. Club raised enough funding to keep our incubator full until the end of this school year! For those interested in checking out the early stages of poultry life without taking a trek over the farm, you can visit us in our temporary office adjacent to Student Life.

With Spring comes a whole host of activity over at the farm. Our volunteers from E.S. 300 (the environmental studies classes) have been helping us out planting some of our early cole crops, tomatoes, peppers and other yummy starts, and we are prepping the soil in the hoop houses that have been holding an average day time temperature of 70 degrees.The greenhouse on the end of Mercy Hall is up and running again (many thanks to our hard working facilities/maintenance crew). Between PTF's starts and the Coleus and Beans that the bio classes have planted it is starting to look lush and alive again!

We farm types are not the only ones who have noticed spring on the move though. Warm temperatures mean melting snow, melting snow means green grass is on the way. Some of our walkways are already turning green, and our sheepish friends in the barn are getting excited. This weekend, in fact, they got so excited that a couple of our smaller ewes, and all of the lambs found a weak spot in our gate and decided to take a walkabout. Nothing will give a farmer heartburn faster than discovering fresh foot prints and other sign outside of the fence! Alas, that is what I found when I came in this morning. Our sheep friends were on patrol in the early morning hours making sure that the property was secure (and I suspect looking for any bare patches in the lawn!).

In the end they all decided to return to the feed rack and were found lounging near the barn. . .

The next couple of weeks will be exciting. We are beginning to look into tractors!!!! and will be posting for internships for the summer just as soon as students return from spring break.

In the meantime, stay warm and grow happy!

BABIES!!!!!

2011-02-24T19:26:00.015-05:00

Baby lambs EVERYWHERE!!!! They are so cute! First there was Charlie, out first very cute little boy. (Who is now called Omar de Sheep) He was born on Thursday. Gracie is such a good mommy, She loves her little boy so much. (As do we all)

Now, Just a week later he is hanging out with his dad and uncle Amall (The Llama!) He even frolics!

Then on monday Farmer Myke went away (for the midnight run) He promised that no babies lambs would come into this world while he was away. Then I get this bizzar call on monday morning. "Baby had a baby! and there is another one coming! Can you get to the farm?" So, of course I went!!! It was the most amazing experience of my life! When I got there Baby (The sheep/mom) had already had her first twin. It's a girl!

Baby Girl #1

Aimee and I watched Baby for a while and than we saw hoofs!!! Little lamb feet poking out trying to get into this world! Then we got to watch the second lamb come into this world! (and I got it all in photos, however I will only show you a few)

"Look mom! Thats my sister!"

Aww A happy family =)

Baby Girl #2

Watching Baby (the mom) deliver her second baby and love her just as much as she loved the first child was amazing. The bond between sheep and their children is instant and incredible. The love that the sheep have for their babies. Baby will even let her babies climb all over her like jungle gym. I was more than happy to be there when the twin girls were born and to welcome them into this world. Being there to witness life is amazing. One of the reasons I truly do love Pearson's Town Farm.

Then came another surprise on tuesday morning! Dani had delivered her baby girl outside the night before. The baby and Dani stayed outside all night long. That is one tough lamb! However Kate (The baby lamb) is doing very well today and her mommy loves her very much!

Kate! (She loves to be pet, but her mommy doesn't like people to go near her!)

As Myke told everyone the sheep are not due intil LATE MARCH! So, I am expecting Dyna to give birth... hmm probably tomorrow, if not tonight. =) She is the only one that has had a child before (Bates) So she is a pro. She is ready for anything!

Then there is Proud daddy Buster the baby making machine and Uncle Amall eatting hay outside. Uncle Amall is a very good uncle and loves all of the babies. When the sheep were in labor he did a great job of keeping everyone away from them until we could get to the mommy and safely move her into a different stall.

Then we must not forget the goats! They would definitely not be happy if we forgot to mention them! They love the attention and will do anything to get it! Including eating my jacket!

Brandy (The girl)

Rocky (The boy)

Well if there is definitly one thing I learned over the past few days it is pretty much everything about lambing. While Baby was lambing I was reading the lambing book and I learned A LOT! Quiz me... I dare you =) Working on the farm is such an amazing experience! I would not trade it for anything!

Beginning another season.

2011-02-20T13:19:00.007-05:00

For everything there is a season. . . or so the Bible says.

We have four seasons in "normal" life to help us explain the change in weather events: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter (and Mud season if you live in the north). Each of these seasons brings with it its own joys and tasks, and there are certain activities that you abstain from in each of these seasons (no one shovels snow in summer - what a dream!).

There is much too much happening on the farm for us to be limited to just four (or five) seasons. Due to the year round activity we have had to create what we will dub "sub-seasons". They are shorter than the traditional seasons, but like those seasons they bring certain joys, certain chores, and certain rests. Unlike the traditional seasons, if you don't get your chores done in season, you're sunk!

I say all of that so that we can herald in the current season here at Pearson's Town. . . Lambing season! Yes, lambing season! A season that we should be able to predict using our handy dandy calendar, but as of yet haven't mastered.

We very intentionally bred our sheep in November, to give us late lambs. Having a roughly five month gestation period, by our calendar lambs should have started arriving the last week of March and the first two weeks of April. Naturally, however, in our ongoing battle of the wits, Buster, our ram, decided that he would throw a monkey wrench into our plans. Thursday of this week, I walked into the barn as though it were any other day. The feel in the building, however, was much different. Amall our trusting guard llama had all of the sheep corralled outside one of the stalls and was standing a very rigid guard detail. Outside were five sheep. Inside there were not one (which would make six - the number of sheep we have), but two - Gracie, and a small ball of white gooey wool.

It turns out that dear ol' Buster bred Gracie before we had separated him from the flock (insert technical breeding blah, blah information here). Dear Buster was not wearing his breeding harness before we separated them, hence we had no idea this had happened. Fast forward five months, and in walks the farm manager as Gracie has just finished delivering and is beginning the cleaning process. Ugh!

(Farmer's note - The best way to lose about six to eight hours of productivity is to have a baby anything. All work comes to a screeching halt and the throng of visitors spikes.)

So here we are Baby X (not yet named campus community. . . get on it!!!) has arrived. A bouncing baby boy. Mother and son are doing well, and papa is proud - stubborn sheep!

If all goes well, there won't be anymore birth announcements here for another month. . . but. . . on goes the battle of the wits. . . Feel free to swing by for a visit!!

February Thaw

2011-02-13T19:58:00.011-05:00

(This is the door handle to one of the hoop houses)

It's been a long, cold, snowy coupla months, but here we are - above freezing (just barely - like 1 degree, but that counts!) temperatures for two days in a row. The weather folks say that we should be in the middle 40's tomorrow! Get them swim shorts ready.

We have welcomed back our friends from the ES300 classes, and none too soon. They started their service time in earnest and have been super helpful. We are always excited about help to move snow off of hoop houses, leaf piles, and keep walkways clear. Now, however, is also the time to get some of the early season alliums started, and get the barn ready for the frenetic spring that is coming.

One particularly memorable event this week was an invitation that we received to participate in the Health and Wellness Fair. The catch was, that the fair was being held in the Alfond Center and that they wanted us to bring some of the "fur children". We obliged, of course, and brought Baby and Gracie over for a little fun. I had no idea how great the acoustics in that building were until the girls started making some noise; and most people had no idea how much a couple of sheep could smell in an enclosed public space. Much to their credit, the organizers had the good forethought to make sure that there was plastic sheeting on hand to handle the "mess".

You would never expect that people would be so surprised to see people taking sheep for a walk along the roadside like it is some weird happening. Sure enough, driver's reactions ranged from outright laughter to utter shock. In the end there were no automobile accidents, we had a good time and managed to drum up a little excitement for the farm and the impending lambing season. Oh, and we talked about the importance of good, locally grown, organic food too!

Many, many thanks to Riley, Chris, and the gang from facilities for coming out to repair our broken pipes, and clear our roof!!
Those roof guys are nuts! Awesome, but nuts!!

Getting ready for spring. . .

2011-02-06T16:47:00.008-05:00

. . . at least we would like to be. This has been a wonderful Maine winter. It would be an understatement to say that the last month on the farm can be summed up with one activity. . . "snow blowing". As we look to the coming weeks, it almost appears that winter may never end. Storm after storm, after storm - we are running out of places to put all of the white stuff. Our facilities crew, however, is awesome!!! They are like some sort of crazy machines, plowing the snow, moving the snow, finding new places to stash the excess, and working hours that even I can't fathom. All I can hope is that for their sake this crazy snow stuff ends soon. Perhaps ole' Punxatawney Phil isn't yankin' our leg and spring is coming sooner rather than later.
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To recap the last month we have been up to the usual silly winter activities like seed ordering, planning garden layouts and then all of the "normal" meeting type things. Among those have been the procedural stuff like, "Do we offer a CSA or stick with the Farmer's Market, or both?", "How many interns can we have?", "How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a parsnip?", etc. Some of the more exciting meetings included our sit down with the Windham Primary School, who is interested in starting a school garden and on site composting operation.

But that was then (January), this is now (February) and we've got stuff to do.

Lambs are right around the corner, our friends from the ES300 classes are back and with school back in the swing of things there is always compost!! Stay tuned for more garden/farm like posts. . . once we get rid of the snow that is. . .

Farmer Myke gets a tractor for Christmas. . .

2011-01-07T10:39:00.007-05:00

. . . And other silly images.

(This model apparently comes with an intern to supervise from the roof!)

Okay, so it isn't a real tractor. . .well, it's real, and it's a tractor, but it isn't really a tractor that we can use here on the farm. Still, I was amused!

It is such a magical time of year here on the farm. It is quiet all around campus minus the buzz of faculty and staff getting things ready for the coming semester, but it is a different quiet because the farm isn't doing much - not like in the summer.

The pond is frozen and there is snow on the ground, though not as much as I would expect this time of year. In fact, there is little enough snow that we could pasture the sheep if we were feeling so inclined.

Here are some photos from recent days. . . I wanted to include some photos from the secret garden, but the camera lens kept foggin' up. . . oh well.

(Our happy home covered in snow) (The Fur Children - One year later still eating) (The hoop house)

(Amall the Llama wondering why I am bothering him at lunch time!)

Winter is here. . .

2010-12-22T08:32:00.004-05:00

Literally!Not only has the winter solstice come (yeah for increasing daylight!!!), but the snow came with it. There is only about an inch or so, but there is definitely snow. The addition of the snow to the already "quiet" campus gives it a feel like the farm is tucked in for a long slumber. My favorite part of the our first storm of the year was it's timing. The poultry palace has been making slow progress, in part do to some heavy wind storms over the last several weeks. Twice we had the roof underway only to have major storms come in and literally blow our work down. Aside from the irritation of time lost, we were set back as we scrounged for new shingles to replace the damaged ones. By God's grace, we found new shingles and as I sunk the last nail into the last shingle the first flakes of snow fell. In fifteen minutes I couldn't see the roof anymore, but it was done!
So now, as the fields nap I can sit warmly in the office and watch the snow coming down. All that remains is to monitor the sheep to determine our space needs for the coming lambing season,keep the mother hens warm,and watch the days grow longer.

Life is good!

Sometimes there just isn't enought time for everything

2010-12-15T09:41:00.007-05:00

Well, here we are. . . the end of the semester. Things have come together nicely in the last few weeks. The secret garden is up and running, and about two weeks, maybe three, ahead of last year. There is a bounty of pea flowers popping out. I am hoping for a great harvest of peas to take out to the pantry just after the new year. The herbs are flourishing, and the lettuce, and beans (we wanted to try something a little different this year) are looking pretty darn good.

We planted Hobbes (our number 2 hoop house) with spinach, greens, cabbage (for the spring), and carrots. This autumn we opted to only plant half of Calvin (our other hoop house) in order to work on the soil health a bit for the coming season. For whatever reason, the soil underneath our hoops is the only soil on the property that is not "spot on". Wonderfully we can work it back to perfection.

The ed field is put to bed with garlic and spring parsnips the only remaining residents. Even our compost piles are ready for the winter nap. Now we can start thinking about building the "spring" pile in January.

In Windham our resilient Green-Team pushed forward in spite of scheduling and weather obstacles to convert their raised beds to mini hoop houses. We have them buttoned down for the winter and we will now wait till spring to do some cosmetic work on them.
This project has been particularly exciting for me because it has been almost completely driven by students! They are passionate, committed and eager to learn and participate. What a joy for some so young!

As Christmas comes and the New year wanders in I will likely be writing a little less (there isn't much happening right now), but I will make every effort to keep photos coming so that those invested folk can see the progress of the farm while you are tucked away at home. . . .

Enjoy the season and Merry Christmas.

Buy a 2011 Pearson's Town Calendar!

2010-12-02T19:12:00.005-05:00

Hey there everyone!

It's holiday time again, and you're looking for that perfect gift for your farm, animal, or food lover right? Here is the perfect gift!

A 12-month 2011 Pearson's Town Calendar created by Saint Joseph's College Photography Club! Each calendar is only $14.00. Your purchase benefits SJC's Photo Club.

If you'd like to order, please visit http://www.lulu.com/product/calendar/pearsons-town-farm/14008018

Thank you for your support!

Thanksgiving reflections

2010-11-24T20:24:00.006-05:00

We here at Pearson's Town have so much to be thankful for this year!Starting our program with only one year guaranteed funding, we have now finished our second season. We have made many friends far and wide. We have been able to impact students, community members and even had a few words with state and federal legislators. At Saint Joe's, we have become an official part of the school through the Mercy Center. There is more, much more, but there are other things on my mind. . . I just came from Catherine's Cupboard, the food pantry that we are blessed to partner with. Tonight they gave out 118 Thanksgiving dinners and a score more turkeys to families in need this season. It was nice to see family's needs being filled, and I am more than thankful for Bon Appétit and Wayside for procuring so many turkeys for the cause. Still I can't help but think, "Is it possible that Maine farmers can provide locally grown, free range turkeys for Maine's people and still be able to have viable businesses?"
When I see words like Butterball I can't help but think about how the bird was raised and how that reflects on how much we value the people that we are going to sell, or in this case give, those birds to (Don't get me wrong, in the absence of a perfect system I happy for what we have to share with those in need). Was the turkey loved and valued as a food source that will nourish some child, or just another number among the many thousands stuffed in an enclosure with another weight benchmark attached to it?
We butchered the P.T.F. (Pearson's Town Farm) birds last Wednesday and we ate them Thursday at the school's T-day dinner. It was wonderful to know that our birds grew up with us, and that we saw them from day 1 to the oven (yes we helped butcher them too, at a state inspected plant), to the plate. We were involved in literally every aspect of the birds life after they hatched. They roamed free, they chased children, the trapped cars at the farm (sorry to the kind gentleman who dropped off leaves and couldn't escape the horde of turkeys. . . we will work on getting birds with proper manners next time), they followed us around at meal times and ate bugs from our compost piles. They even, on more than one occasion called in a couple of flocks of wild turkeys who have been regular visitors ever since. I am thankful that on top of all of the other blessings on our farm that we are able to offer the students at Saint Joe's and the clients at Catherine's Cupboard "real food"! Food that was grown with the health of people in mind, not the bottom line. I have a great dream that our students and our patrons will speak up and demand a food system that is first and foremost focused on people and not income. Perhaps, if I may be so bold, in a time of struggling economies, the govt would devote more time, energy and resources to rebuilding a strong agricultural base in Maine, and the U.S. and support family farms and local agriculture! After all, cars will come and go, fads will change, but food is forever!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!! Don't forget to be thankful for the everything in life! Family, neighbors, friends, warmth, and especially life!!!!

Why, oh why sheep is your rumpus red!?!?

2010-11-15T19:41:00.007-05:00

One of the things that we are particularly proud of at Pearson's Town is our humble little flock of Southdown sheep. Okay, most of the flock is humble. Then there is, of course, Buster the ram. . . not so humble. Actually, at this time of year he is down right ornery and very protective of his ladies. One thing that he is a little self conscious of, though, is his "super suit".
Saint Joseph's recently hosted a group of administrators from colleges from Maine to California who are in charge of the summer programing at their institutions of higher learning. During their stay they came by for a reception at the farm. Chef Christian made up a wonderful spread of local fare and our guests endured a rather "blah" day to come tour our place. As we meandered about the farm one of the visitors couldn't believe that we were successfully rearing an organic flock! Through careful application of our permacultural design we have used plants and animals, animals and plants to work together to eliminate the need for a lot of the chemical and medical intervention that our modern times have come to "need" in order to survive.
Our local ruminant vet is excited that are making a go at it, and has given us an "A+" on flock management and health as we move into the winter.
But what about those fannies?!?! Yup, they are red and red is good! Perhaps not the "most" back to earth method, but the marking harness is terribly helpful in allowing us to plan our lambing schedule. After our sheep have mated, the harness lets us know who may be pregnant and helps us to forecast the delivery date. Sheep have a five month gestation period, and an April lamb sure beats a February lamb. Should we have a February lamb though, the marking will let us know that we should be ready to make preparations for cold weather delivery (hypothermia is one of the leading causes of lamb mortality). In our case, we kept Mr. Buster away from the ladies for the month of October so that we would avoid those early lambs. March lambs are much more convenient (for the farmer) and it still leaves them plenty of time to fatten up for the autumn market.

So. . . that is why our lambs rumps are red. Wonderfully, the makers of the crayons that we use make them in a wide array of color. Perhaps next year we will go with something a little different - perhaps they will have a tie dye crayon by then. . . hmmmmm!!

When snow is the scariest seasonal spook. . .

2010-11-09T20:22:00.011-05:00

. . .and one is thankful for a good harvest, a good year, and the end of turkey life on the farm.

They (the turkeys) are the size of your average four year old now. . . and heavy to boot. But this post isn't about them. It's about the end of a season (in a manner of speaking), good friends, and garlic. . . lots of garlic.

Buster was reintroduced to his lady friends on the first of November after a month of separation. I believe that he has forgiven us for his time of exile, but only time will tell. Orange is this years marking color - yes the color of the crayon that Buster is wearing that leaves his mark when "the deed" is done. If you are having to ask yourself what I am talking about, this would be a good time to find a parent and ask them. . .

We have four ewes with orange rumps and are looking forward to a fruitful spring. I am holding my breath for lots of twins, but will be happy with what the Good Lord provides.

On the other side of the farm, students and some of our community partners have been feverishly adding compost to our fields, tilling, planting garlic, planting the hoophouses and setting up the "Secret Garden 2010". We didn't ever think that we would finish, but I think that we have wrapped up all of our summer operations for the year. . . except of course the compost, are much more focused on growing some good winter vittles and tending to our critter friends. Our Westbrook High School contingent have been key in getting our secret garden ready. They have also been teaching me a thing or two about animal husbandry ;-)
With all of the numbers in for the year (minus turkeys and some greens) we generated just short of seven thousand pounds of food this year which is closer to my goal of ten thousand pounds an acre.

Many farmers in Maine look forward to the long winter months when they can rest and recollect themselves, but with January comes more planning - organizing fields, thinking about maple syrup, tree pruning and starting plants under protection. . . With Thanksgiving being our last big push I,too, am looking forward to a time of rest and working on the educational programming for next year! In the meantime, we have a bit more planting to do and best of all. . . Wednesday is the day when we prep our little turkey friends for their big day! Stay tuned for all of the fun details. . .

Cruising into autumn

2010-10-19T08:37:00.009-04:00

Things on the farm are coming together nicely. October has reminded us what a proper Maine autumn ought to feel like. The night time temperatures have dipped considerably. While many parts (if not most all of the state) has already experienced their first frosts already, we just recorded our first frost this morning - October 19th! Thank you Sebago Lake!!!

Pearson's Town has been increasing our outreach work. . . Windham Junior High's Green-Team has decided to take a go at a small scale winter garden. We are modifying their raised beds into mini high tunnels. Yesterday we planted garlic, lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets. The placement of the beds is a little off for winter sunlight, but I feel that we can make a good go at it.

Last week we welcomed a class from Westbrook High School. They found the experience of being outdoors and connecting with nature and food so beneficial that we have agreed on a weekly visit until old man winter tells us that the weather is just to . . . uninviting.

On the farm we have been continuing to enjoy the company of the ES300 students and a class from the sociology department (See Nat, everything does relate to agriculture). With their help, even on the blustery and cold days, we have managed to make a lot of forward progress toward our wintering operations. The Ed field is nearly tilled and covered, the starts for the hoops are started, or in one case, already in, and the compost piles are making great progress toward winter readiness.

Our old pal Buster is a little grumpy. He has been separated from his lady friends for the month in preparation for the mating season. We are crossing our fingers for a plentiful, and late, lambing in the spring.

So that about covers it for today. . . back to moving hay around. . . .

Faires, festivals, and farms. . .

2010-09-30T10:26:00.011-04:00

Oh what a month, and here it is already come to a close. Since having changed vocations I have found that the seasons don't seem to last as long as they once did. . . or perhaps I am just getting old.
September has been a wonderfully productive month! As we are preparing things for our winter operations I thought that I would take a minute to share some of the happenings of the last couple of weeks. . .

The Pearson's Town crew, along with some daring students and staff from Saint Joe's made a trek up to the Common Ground Country Faire in Unity. It is always a wonderful event, but this year all the more so (in my not so humble opinion) because we had the opportunity to share a little of what we are doing down here at Saint Joe's. Pearson's Town had a table in the Ag Demo tent and was staffed by volunteers from the farm.
We talked with a lot of folks and tried to challenge as many farms and farmers as we could to develop direct relationships with their local food pantries. Our goal is to see every farm in Maine commit some percentage of their yield to food pantries. Not the seconds or gleaning mind you, but rather some of the first fruits, so to speak. Food is a right not a privilege. Everyone should have equal access to healthy, locally grown food regardless of status or financial ability. Yet it is the folks that find themselves needing to use food pantries who are the same folks that are at the heart of many of the health care issues we are facing. . . So why are we feeding them the dregs and the seconds?? If we continue to expect them to survive on the "left overs" how do we expect to fix some of these national problems?
Bottom line. . . if every farmer commits what they can. 1%, 5%, 50% of their first crop, it doesn't really matter to me so long as we give, we can make real change! But enough ranting.

Among some of the connections that we were able to make were with the likes of Will Bonsall of the Scatterseed Project, and Neil from Medomak High School (check out their seed catalogue. . . they have the most righteous seed saving program I have ever seen. Especially for a high school!).

Is this a good time to mention that with the help of the ever talented Matt O. Pearson's Town took three third place ribbons for tomatoes in our first ever veggie submission?!?

Many thanks to Alyssa, Mike B., Noah E., Annie, and Shani C. from Saint Joe's who came out to help. Also many thanks to Laura, Matt, Devon, Therese, Ryan, Mark and Karrie for coming out and spending part of the weekend with us!
Lastly, many thanks to all of those from the Saint Joe's community who came out to show their support!

Tuesday, the 28th, was our Sustainability Festival and Eat Local Challenge here on campus. The cafe served over 1,000 meals to students, staff, the general public and our very special guests - the seventh graders from Windham Junior High School.

250 very awesome middle school students came over to the farm to take a tour and talk about things like organic growing, agriculture's impact on the environment and how plants and animals work together. The most important lesson that we learned. . . . Poop is cool!!!!! It's natural, it's accessible and it helps to eliminate our need on oil (is this starting to sound like a political blog. .)

Now as we look toward October it is a bitter sweet feeling knowing that winter is just around the corner, but a fabulous breath of fresh air knowing that after such a wonderful season of labor and bounty that we can finally rest a bit.

Response to a valid concern

2010-09-29T08:41:00.004-04:00

The following is, hopefully, the best response that I can offer to an anonymous commenter. If you care to read the concern, check out the comment left by Anonymous on September 27, 2010. Be aware that some "colorful" language was used.
Out of principle, I will not delete any comments (unless they are just completely inappropriate), but rather as an offering of transparency, I will address what concerns may arise. That being said, come on out and join us in our work and perhaps what can be made into "concerns" can be alleviated through understanding.

Dear Anonymous,

I guess that I am not clear on what part you believe to be ‘cow manure’ (poop is cool by the way). We aren't a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination.

Plastic is very simply explained - society is addicted to it. I suppose that if you don't have any or never use it then you would have every right to be upset.

In the case of our compost pile, yes, plastic happens. It is, for many of us, the least pleasing part of our composting operation. But here is the breakdown:

All of the food scraps are put into 5 gallon buckets and those buckets are then brought to the farm. Now, because of societies addiction to plastic, people want (or demand by way of the FDA, USDA and whatever other health safety regulators you want to pick) individually wrapped butter, grapefruit, spoons, sporks, forks, jelly packets, gloves in the kitchen, etc. Many of these items are small. After 3,000 meals a day, it is likely that some of those items are missed in the process. The buckets are then emptied into the compost pile. We pull out what we can, but sometimes it is just too . . . um . . . gross to be reaching in and pulling it out. Once a month or so, a crew goes through and thoroughly cleans up the grounds around the compost pile. If the plastics that we collect are recyclable, then they are recycled. If they are not, then, sadly, they are thrown into the refuse bin.

When we turn the piles, we pull out what we can. When we sift the finished product, we remove what we can. There is a lot of plastic there. Sometimes we miss stuff. We pick it up when we find it. As I said, we are not a perfect system.

I would offer two options for curing the plastic woe:

1) Ban the use of plastics. They are oil based and, aside from allowing us to live a life of ease, that our children will inevitably pay for, they really do us little good.

2) Rather than offer an anonymous comment that could have benefited from the use of spell check and perhaps a more appropriate use of language, come on over and be part of the solution.
I mean it. BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.

Grow Happy!

A note from Thomas Sheehan, our executive chef!!!

2010-09-27T17:32:00.003-04:00

When God talks in subtle ways

2010-09-09T20:08:00.005-04:00

Normally I would leave the deep and inspirational thoughts to Sister Silvia. She is much better about those things than I, but today's story merits retelling. . . at least in my mind.

(Author's Note: This may be a little telling about me, but please - folks that I work for. . . don't panic!)

Most of our crops are at least 2 weeks ahead of schedule. In some cases they are as much as four weeks early. The visual cues that the plants are putting off have caused my mind to switch into autumn mode - a quieter mode. I am tired. It has been an amazing season, a busy season, a productive season, but a long season.

In my head it is autumn. It is time to slow down - to plant things that will grow more slowly - to focus more on reflection and planning and less on actual farming.

In reality there are still 7 weeks of market left, the masses of hungry young people have returned to campus, the Mercy Market just opened (I will write more about this later because it is just darned cool!!!)and we haven't even held the Eat Local Challenge yet. In little words. . . we are still farming people!!!

The crops that we should be harvesting now are done. . . there is enough time to squeak in a few short season veggies that we can use, but there is going to a be a lull in the diversity that we have enjoyed offering over the summer. Topping that with the farm's conversion (funny word there) over to the Mercy Center a lot of the things that I really shouldn't be worrying about have changed. Leadership, funding, protocol, reporting - it's all changed.

The chaos of it all has really added weight to the stress that I am already under - thinking in Autumn mode while trying to function in Summer mode. Earlier this week I was ready to throw in the towel. . . till the ground, eat the sheep and ride the llama off into the sunset to look for some cushy office job (um. . . yuck).

My head was all a blur with worries and thoughts and there was little calm up there. What does a farmer do when he/she is stressed out. . . . . . . they weed. So that is what I did. I tucked myself in the back of Hobbes - our hoop house with the jungle of cucumbers. I hid behind the trellis of cukes and sat with the peanut plants for a while gently plucking the lambs quarter out that had so unwelcomely taken root.Most of the lovely orange peanut blossoms are gone now, but still the plants themselves demand a certain respect. In many ways they make me think about potatoe (yes with an "e") plants. They start small, but quickly take over, making a carpet of themselves, covering any visible soil. The blossoms which are bright like the rising sun sit low on the plants and stay there quietly whispering beautiful thoughts that bring joy. . . at least to my heart. But these were largely missing now.

The placement of our peanut plants was not ideal. We tucked them into the back corner of the hoop house because they were ready long before the other plants and there were still a large number of greens growing in the hoop. The back corner was the first open space that promised freedom from early spring frost. It never occurred to me that the veil of climbing cucumber vines would be so thick as to obscure the peanuts from both our site and water. Hence they were a bit neglected, and now I had little hope of any harvest - yet another point of frustration.

As I pulled one particular lambs quarter from within the patch of peanuts, it's root mass pulled up quite a bit of dirt. After a brief conversation with the rotten little weed (it had about 50,000 seeds on it) I returned my attention to where I had been weeding to find that where the root mass had been there were two peanuts in various stages of development!Peanuts. . . really, really, real peanuts!!!!

I had given up on them and yet there they were!!!!! Growing and flourishing in spite of all of my misgivings. . . . then the "Ah ha!" moment hit.

And there was a little whisper from God saying. . . "Knock it off knuckle-head! Fretting and stewing will get you no where."

I was in the most beautiful place in the world doing the most wonderful job I can think of and still I somehow found a way to selfishly be miserable over things neither can I control nor do they really matter in the long run anyway.

Funny how a little thing like a peanut saved six sheep, a few "still-growing" veggies and my sanity. . . but thank God for the small things!!!!

Rain-eo, Rain-eo! Where for art thou, oh Rain-eo?

2010-09-03T18:53:00.006-04:00

What a summer!! We haven't seen much by way of rain. A fitting answer to last years deluge. Still the surface water is really feeling it, but the wells are holding their own.
Even in the absence of the rain everything has been early - except the herbs. They are still taking their sweet time. . .

So it's September now. How did this happen?!? Life on the farm is wonderful. So much is happening so very quickly that at times it is difficult to keep up with it all (let alone have time to blog about it).

Our farm family has grown. We have added Gracie and Baby to the flock, many thanks to the Bridge girls from Saint Joe's and Olivia and Tim from Dragonfly Farm. They are majestic creatures and promise to produce some good lambs for us in the spring. The trick now is to keep Buster separated so we can have late spring lambs and not January lambs - Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The poultry palace is still under construction. With the closing of the summer season the interns are returning to their studies and I have suffered a hand injury building a fence that has left me a little. . . well. . . short handed. The frame is up, the roof and floor are nearly finished leaving the walls and the hardware. The chickens have done a bit of exploration around the region and seem to be pretty content with the new digs.

The growing fields are a funny matter. With everything being about three weeks early many things have come and gone. Some of the ones that are still flourishing have totally surprised me. An example?!?

How about pumpkins?? Usually we would be harvesting pumpkins in a couple of weeks - right about the time for the Common Ground, and for April to use them to decorate the cafe.

This year - they have been done and harvested for two weeks.

On the flip side, the okra - a southern crop - they have been producing like nuts for two months and are showing no signs of slowing. On a personal note I am glad for that! Not only because okra is so darned yummy, but because they adorn themselves with, arguably, some of the most beautiful flowers in the garden!!!!!And now. . . September. Our autumn and winter crops are started. We are thinking more about our secret garden than our Weeman Road field now. . . it is the harvest time - the time for farmers to make one last big push before the resting season (not that we ever rest. . . there is always compost).

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With the start of the school season I want to wish all the best and offer a very heartfelt thank you to all of our summer interns from 2010: Chris B., Ashley D., Alyssa D., Noah E., Michael H., Daniella F., Shandani C., A.J., Mark C., Chris P., Jack M., Nate S., and Mary Jo. You guys made the season the success that it was and have helped to further establish Pearson's Town at Saint Joseph's College.

My promise to next years interns. . . . a tractor, and no more major projects. . . . well. . . maybe!

The post part two. . .

2010-08-14T19:05:00.004-04:00

Yea, I promised to break it up so I left an important part for here. . .

At the request of our many friends and neighbors, we will be selling produce directly at the farm during hours that the staff is there. If we have it we will sell it to you. If it needs picking, we will pick it. If we don't have it. . . well. . . you will just have to wait till we have it.

So, if you need veggies or eggs, swing by or call ahead. All proceeds benefit Pearson's Town Farm and are used to further it's programs.

Farmin' the dream

2010-08-12T11:46:00.007-04:00

Sit down and hold on. . .

. . . Obviously there has been a long silence here. Not for any other reason than by the time I sit down at the computer to update you all on the goings on here I fall asleep. In order to keep this post manageable I am going to break it up into two posts.

Since the last post in July, we have lost a handful more interns to the vast depths of "life off of the farm". It is, as I understand it, an endless void, dark and gloomy in which vegetables are found only in their slaughtered form, and those in mass graves on the shelves of the produce department of the local grocery stores. How dismal!
Those poor souls who have left us are missed but never forgotten.Our Midway Celebration was sparsely populated. We had a good time with some community friends,our friends from the Cafe (Thanks Julio and the gang for the STELLAR barbecue), and participants from the Portland String Quartet workshops. With that we begin the downhill journey toward autumn and the end of the traditional growing/harvest season. At Pearson's Town the autumn veggies are all in and growing. . . one last push to hang onto the warm sunny season that passes so quickly here in the north.

The Midway Celebration was followed almost immediately by BAMCO's Northeastern Conference - "Living the Dream" was the theme. Chef Tom and the gang put on an unbelievable spread with a healthy sprinkling of veggies from the farm. Maybe next year. . . lamb!!!!! The Tuesday night festivities were held at the farm with all the fixin's. Certainly an event on the farm to remember. One of my favorite parts (and there were soooo many) was to discover that one of the big bosses is from my home town. It really doesn't bear any weight on anything, but it is just one of those moments that makes the world just a bit smaller. . .

When the conference was over we woke up to discover that we at Pearson's Town are living the dream. The last big event for the summer (I think) is our participation in the Backyard Locavore Tour hosted by the University Extension. Folks bought tickets to tour several local farms and spend time with Master Gardeners, Master Preservers, and other experts. We spent quite a bit of time talking about permaculture, grass fed vs. grain fed, and the importance of promoting family farms, local diets, and good nutrition. Our Master Preserver Andrea brought along a mean veggie dip! Yum!!!!

So what's next?!? We have two new ewes coming just in time for breeding, our poultry palace is getting close to done,I am still fighting with the pasture fence, school starts in just a couple of weeks, and of course there is the Lake Region's Farmer's Market every Saturday from 8 - 12 at the Manchester school off of Route 302 in Windham!!!

Swing by and see us sometime!!!

Harvesting in the Kinder-Garden!

The beginning of the never ending summer of squash. . .

Some Kinder-Friends practicing for Thanksgiving.

Does anyone know what is going on here?!?!?!?!

The colors of the farmer's market

2010-07-18T21:24:00.004-04:00

The weather is warm and holding. I read today that this was the warmest June in recorded history. Pretty crazy to think of how that has affected the overall growing season.

From our friends in the gardening circles we have mixed reports. . . some, like us, are about four weeks ahead of schedule, others are right on the money for a "normal" year, and others still are having sluggish harvests.

I am very happy to report that we were able to provide a very rounded offering of color at the market this week. From the beet greens, which are red and green to the summer squash and it's yellow to the striped zucchini and it green and pale colors it was a lovely site at market. Our friends next door to us at the Fresh Start Farms stand had their usual fresh greens, which are always so vibrant, but also some early white onions, potatoes and radishes. I really enjoy having them as neighbors because, aside from being wonderful folks, our stands together really bring out the vibrant colors of life at the market (which is by no means to say that any of our other friends their don't also add - our market really is the best ever :-).

On darker notes we have finally had to struggle with nature. Up to this point we have never lost a bird (chicken, duck, turkey, etc) to a wild animal. This week. . . 29 in two days. It turns out that we have a bit of a weasel problem. I have yet to solve this mystery, but I am sure that we will over come! In fact, we have begun construction on the new Poultry Palace. I am pretty sure that it has more square footage than my house, and will have all of the amenities. . .eat your heart out Ty Pennington. Once it is in place, our poultry will find solace and warmth.

The bright side of the week. . . the Catherine's Cupboard Garden is built and partly planted. The warm season crops are all but in. We will focus on the cold season crops and autumn harvesting for the balance of this season and then watch the magic next year while we inaugurate the plot for it's first official year.

In the mean time it is time to weed, weed, weed. This season has been great for our crops and great also for our weeds. . . Back to the fields. . .

Saturdays. . .

2010-07-16T18:10:00.003-04:00

Hey all of our loyal readers. . .

Tommorrow might be a good day for you to stop by the Lake Region's Farmer's Market at the Manchester school in Windham off of Route 302. Today we harvest more than 400 pounds of yummy produce from cabbage to summer squash, green beans to kohlrabi.
So, um. . . yeah. . . tommorrow is probably going to be a great day to come and stock up on your veggies. There is other really great stuff at our market too.

Hope to see you.

Summer is heating up. . .

2010-07-09T05:03:00.007-04:00

These ridiculous temperatures aside, things around the farm are really starting to cook. . .
The Seeds of Peace came out Wednesday to talk about serving people and starting grass roots movements. They started at the farm and then wandered over to help out at Catherine's Cupboard (that is our food pantry for you folks from away). Afghans, Palestinians, Israelis, Mainers, Indians, they were all there - young people wanting to make a positive impact on the world. We made the nightly news. . . . The young lady that channel 6 interviewed was wise beyond her years, as were many of them. And what a joy to see them volunteering at the Cupboard, working together and sharing joy with the pantries clients. It just proves that there is hope brewing in the younger generations. . . .On the farm the Kinder-Garden came out and painted rock-bugs and built fairy houses while learning about insects in the garden. The heat was pretty tremendous but there was much fun to be had. The kids, in their benevolence, put a halt to all work on the farm and had the interns come and paint with them.We are currently harvesting summer squash, zucchini, kohlrabi, kale, collards, and greens.This truly is the best time of the year, and it looks promising to continue well into the autumn. We will most definitely be out to market this weekend and while we are offering all of the above, we are looking forward to the green and purple beans that are just about a week away from harvest. . . they will be followed by tomatoes then peppers.

We are also very excited about our new permanent attraction. . . the bees.With much thanks Saint Joe's very own Dr. Mitschele Pearson's Town now has two happy looking hives of honey bees.They serve two very important purposes: For us farmers they mean extra pollinators in our fields which promises a potential for higher produce yields. For the students it means honey!! Not this year as the hive needs time to grow and establish but next year and hopefully many years to come!!!
For you folks with allergies or fears, dread not the bees will be moving to their permanent home a bit off of the beaten path in a week or so. For now they are out front in the parking area while we are preparing them a place, but they offer no harm to the nonthreatening visitor.
Mark July 31rst on your calendar - that will be our next open farm day. Come by and check out all the fun. . .

Kinder-minder

2010-07-06T12:43:00.003-04:00

You know, like RE-minder, but for kids!

The Kinder-Garden will be open tomorrow from 9 am to noon for all of those kids that need to get out and play in the soil. It will also be a great opportunity to let your artistic side out! We will learn about the bugs that live and eat in our garden while painting our very own rock insects.

Open to children of all ages. Wear appropriate clothing for the heat. There will be drinking water on site.

Hope to see you there!!!

Farm update - this one could be a long one. . .

2010-06-30T11:23:00.005-04:00

. . . as it should be after so much time without posting.

We have been busy here at Pearson's Town with so many projects to do and our transition to the Mercy Center happening this week.

The Ed field is so very different from this time last year. Then we needed a boat and the plants needed snorkels (those that were surviving). Now things are lush and green and we are able to get produce to both the cafe and the food pantry. Last year our herbs were languishing, this year we have so many I am worried about space. Last year the Kinder-Garden couldn't get off the ground because of the dismal weather (though I will mention that their garden grew the best last year), this year we have had two events (if you include the planting day) and their garden is still growing the best (kids ARE magical).

Already we have seen greens, garlic scapes, collards, kale, kohlrabi,cabbage, radishes, peas, chard and even patty pan squash coming out of the fields. This is the time of year that I personally feel so alive because the fields are not just art, but they are producing life that can be shared.

Buster and the gang are finally out to pasture. Fence maintenance took a little longer than planned, but we were able to make them functional enough to enclose those wily beasts while finishing up the work. Security tells us that Amall the llamahas been doing a superb job chasing foxes, turkeys and other visitors out of the fields. An investment well made!! Many thanks again to the Snell's.

A surprise that came to us was the addition of the U.S. and Maine state flags.They, along with the repair of our flag pole were donated by a very special benefactor to whom we are deeply indebted and can never say thank you enough!!

And so we progress. As I am typing Mark is out tilling up the new Catherine's Cupboard Garden.With some grant money and permission from the school we were able to create a separate growing space for clients of the cupboard. Here they will be able to have some space to grow their own, we will run workshops and we will be able to share more with those in need.

Many other things are status quo. We are still in search of funding for a tractor (and a tractor itself!!), this will make our composting operation and some of our field expansions a world easier. In the meantime we are learning a new respect (or a growing respect for those of us who have been around a while) for our forefathers who had to do it ALL by hand.

Alright, I have to get back out there. . . stay tuned for updates from THE POULTRY PALACE!

Kinder Kick Off

2010-06-28T15:06:00.006-04:00

A word from the Kinder-Garden!
We held our first event "in the garden". It was reading... and unfortunately, no one other than me, and my kids showed up... But, we weeded, and planted, and replanted, and in the end, read in the garden. It was a hot Saturday, but a fun one! We sincerely hope that for our future "in the garden" series, more people will come! Keep your calenders free, July 7 we will be enjoying art in the garden, and quite possibly some fairy house making!!! Tell your friends, and their friends... it will be a good time... there is no rain date... if the weather is yucky, please join us instead at one of our other dates. (look for the kinder schedule it is labeled "Kinder-Schedule" in the "Farm Topics link).Amy

"I love it when a plan comes together."

2010-06-14T22:07:00.006-04:00

The A-Team movie came out this week. The A-team was one of my favorite television shows in my younger days, and Hannibal (the fella whose quote is our blog title today) was my favorite character.

Hearing Liam Neeson use George Peppard's old line is forgivable for the moment (I have yet to see the movie) because I have long been a fan of Mr. Neesons. It is even better to hear that line again because I really feel like it is appropriate for the farm this year.

Walking through the fields at the farm demands a sense of expectation and joy. Every where there are veggies growing. All the spring usuals are up(the ground hogs have been forgiving this year), and there are even cucumbers and winter squash already fruiting. . . how weird. The year has been forgiving with just enough rain at just the right time. It is almost as if nature is making amends for last year. . .

Our new laying hen flock is in and staying sheltered in a brooder (yes that is in fact one of our chicks above. Thanks to Shani for having a wonderful talent with the camera). In a few months they will take the place of our current flock who will be moving into their new mobile home (the chicken tractor) following the sheep out to pasture.

Speaking of. . . the sheep are FINALLY all sheared. Our go with Dinah (the mom) was a little rough. She really didn't have the patience for us and the hand shears. It may have led to a nick here and again, but we all survived the process. With regards to the wool, I have it on good information that Mollee has been spinning the wool from Buster and Dani. . . that should be cool.

Many thanks to our friends with Americore Vista for coming out and showing the weeds a thing or two!! Those guys (and gals) are phenomenal farmer types. They weed, they seed, they talk to llamas and sheep. They really helped us to get a handle on our education field so that we can get some natural weed control happening. . . You guys really are the best!! Thanks again.

The farmer's market is going well. This week we should have some greens, chard, radishes, garlic scapes, eggs, and of course our "farmer's surprise" tomato plants (which is to say that they were missed labeled and it will be a surprise for the gardener when they come to fruit. . .).

Hope to see you at the farm or in Windham.

Grow happy.

Rainy day update. . .

2010-06-10T14:52:00.005-04:00

There has been so much going on lately I don't know where to begin. . .

The cat is out of the bag now - Pearson's Town will be part of the Mercy Center on campus. It seems a good fit to me. With all of the outreach that we have found ourselves participating in lately (on top of all that farming jazz) I feel that we are really becoming a new link between the school and our neighbors. Nothing makes me happier than being at the market and hearing folks talk about the good that the school does, or being at the restaurant and being cornered by someone who recognizes us from the pantry or the farm. The community enthusiasm for the work that St. Joe's is doing in the Standish/Windham area seems, to me, to be growing.

Here on the farm we are at no loss for things to do. . . even on this rainy day. Our compost piles are making fabulous progress again, many thanks to the crew who turns our massive piles by hand. To see our piles hitting 140 or 150 degrees is somehow, strangely (and I mean strangely), satisfying.

Our raised beds got a make over this year with some new loam that is a bit more loamy. We decided that they were a more opportune spot for our herbs this year since the sheep took over the old herb bed. In complete contrast to last year most all of our herbs are up and doing fabulously. Now it is a matter of being patient as we wait to bring them into Chef and the crew. . .

We named the hoop houses after our favorite theologian and philosopher (not to mention comic book characters) Calvin and Hobbes. Matt O. of St Joe's has taken over Calvin, transforming it into an amazing collection of tomatoes and peppers. Together we have been inter planting lettuce, greens, and carrots, creating a virtual "Salad house".
In the Hobbes house we are polishing off the last of the greens, Swiss chard, and radishes as we prepare phase two of our experiment planting peanuts in Maine. The peanut plants are big and look happy, yet eager to be in the soil.

The market goes on, and the plants in our fields are growing. This year is almost as far as you can get from mirroring last year, and we are thankful.

I have to get back to helping out around here, but stay tuned for other fun adventures like:
"Hey Myke, we have a duckling. . .I thought it was a mouse. "

Grow happy.

2010-06-02T08:35:00.002-04:00

It's the time of year to start thinking about what you and the kids are going to be doing all summer... Well, let me suggest a wonderful trip to the farm!!! (or several trips to the farm!!!) Not only will you get to hang out with the sheep and llama, and the chickens and ducks, and not only will you get to help weed the kids garden, and possibly harvest some yummy treats, but you will also be able to join in some wonderful family focused fun events!!!

The following schedule is times that you and your children, and your friends and their children are welcome to come play, harvest, work, eat, and enjoy the garden. I hope to see lots of people taking advantage of these free, child friendly, parent friendly, summer events!

All events run from 10am -noon. No food is provided, unless there is something to harvest... feel free to bring a picnic lunch, and stay past noon... Parents are expected to participate with their children. This is not a drop off situation.

June 26 Reading in the Garden. Come enjoy stories of old, and new while sitting in the grass! Feel welcome to bring your favorite story to share.

July 7 Art in the garden. Come explore the world of natural art. We will collect items from the woods, and make them into art!!! Also we can make fairy houses in our fairy house area!!

July 24 Art in the Garden. This event will be run the same as July 7, but will vary based on participants, and desire.

Aug 4 Music in the Garden. Come sing a song or two, camp fire style! Please feel free to bring any instruments you may have, and let's make a band!!!

Aug 24 Music in the Garden. Again, this will be run the same way as Aug 4, but will vary based on participants, and desire!

Sept 1 Back to school!!! Come pack a school lunch from the garden. Also, we will plan on decorating canvas lunch bags, depending on availability...

Sept 11 Back to school!! Come pack a school lunch from the garden. Again, we plan on decorating canvas lunch bags, based on availability!

Sept 25 Reading in the Garden. This is a repeat event of June 26. Different stories, different story tellers... come and bring your favorite story!

Oct 9 Celebrate Autumn in the Garden. Come make fairy houses, and have a nature walk, and just enjoy the day on the farm. This event is a bit more open house than the other planned events. I wanted to make people feel like this is their farm to enjoy in their own ways...

Nov 6 Harvest Celebration!! Come enjoy the "fruits" of the summer, and celebrate with the community! We will have pictures from the summer to share, and we will plan a small art exhibit. If people want to repeat events from the summer i.e., sing songs together... this would be great!!!

All events are based on the communities involvement. Each event is appropriate for any age, and because it is in the kids garden, it includes "kids" of all ages! If you have any questions, or ideas please feel free to contact me @ blindconfusion8@gmail.com

Happy Summer!! Hope to see you June 26!!

Amy

And they came together. . .

2010-05-23T13:24:00.013-04:00

May is a whiz bang month. Even off of the farm there is usually just too much to do, but as a farmer, May is compounded by silly things like tilling, planting, seeding, and so on. This year was no different, save that we added a few activities to our otherwise hectic lives. In the last two weeks alone we have had to do the usual farmy things as well as start training a new farm crew, finish up a master gardener course, start participating at the local farmer's market, and attend the national Farm to Cafeteria conference in Detroit, MI. The conference was, once again, phenomenal, but that is a different story.

At the end of all the pandemonium that is May we celebrated our second annual Community Planting Day. It was a most wonderful endeavor, and it evidenced a truth to me that people will congregate around food, even if it isn't finished growing yet. This year was, in my opinion, better than last, with a larger and more steady crowd.

In the course of the day we welcomed family, friends, neighbors, home-schoolers and more. The Kinder-Garden was hopping, as the adults worked out in the Ed field planting onions and brassicas. Some folks started weeding the old flower bed which, I am glad to say, has some of our perennials from last year up and budding.

Children and adults alike took a break from our work to watch the sheep (and llama)in the field while the chickens and ducks wandered around with us.

A great big thanks to Matt O. (our tomato master) Doc Kelly and Ms. Novak (the square foot garden guru's)Rebecca H. and Amy R. (for taking such good care of us and our Kinder-Folk)Heather A. (who somehow I managed not to get a picture of - Sorry Heather), and Al (Mr. Fresh Squeezed Lemonade himself - and for the great food too.)for helping to make it all possible.

For those of you interested in the Kinder-Garden program for the summer, keep your eyes posted here for the schedule of events. We are expecting to see it around the first of June.

Grow happy and enjoy the sun!

Posting from a world away

2010-05-17T06:33:00.004-04:00

Okay, maybe not a world away but I am overlooking the US/Canadian border right now. All of my thoughts about Detroit have faded away in the last 18 hours. It is a beautiful city, especially at sunrise.
We are here at the annual Farm to Cafeteria Conference with the hopes of getting fresh local food into more schools across the country. Today is field trip day. Chef and I will be heading out into the country side to check out the local distribution chain to see what is getting out and how it is getting into school food programs.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, the whole 2010 growing season crew starts today. They are a fine bunch of folks and I have every confidence that the farm is in good hands.

More to come. . .

Community Planting Day is coming. . .

2010-05-12T16:52:00.005-04:00

And sooner than you think!!!!!

Saturday May 22nd, from 10 am to 3 pm, the farm will be celebrating our second annual Community Planting Day. The Kinder-Garden will have it's summer kickoff as well as our other events including:

Square Foot and Raised Bed Gardening demonstration.

A talk on growing in hoop houses (or high tunnels).

Spend some time with our livestock and free range poultry.

Take a leisurely stroll on the trails surrounding the farm.

Get your hands dirty as we plant seedlings and warm weather crops.

Check out the link to our flier (thanks Sue!!!)

http://sigma.sjcme.edu/mysjc/pdfs/CommunityPlantingDay.pdf

We would have put the flier on here but our farm powers could not over come the technical constraints of the almighty computer!!! Down fall of western civilization those things are I tell ya!!

May 8th, 2010

2010-05-08T09:49:00.004-04:00

Happy, Happy Graduation to all of our out going Seniors at Saint Joseph's College from us at Pearson's Town!

You will be missed, but always welcome to swing in when you find yourselves in need of fresh, organically grown veggies!!!

All the best to you, and good luck.

(Yes, the Llama picture is really random)

Lake Region's Farmer's Market

2010-05-03T08:07:00.004-04:00

Saturday was the most wonderful beginning to May imaginable. The sun was out, the horrendous winds that had swept the area the previous two days had passed, and best of all it was the official beginning of "farmer's market season"- Hey!! We have a "season" for everything else. . .

This was a first both for Pearson's Town and for myself. I have been frequenting farmer's markets since I can remember. Never before, though, had I the opportunity to be on the "farmer" side of the tent. Truth be told it really isn't a good place for me, I hate selling people things that I could just give them, especially if it will promote good eating habits and long life. Fortunately for all involved Michael H. (SJC '10) and Molly K. (who is having as hard a time leaving the farm as Chris Brandes is) were there to help!!!

Up at the crack of dawn, Michael was assembling the necessary business supplies and setting up our site, while Molly hit the hoops to harvest head lettuce, radishes and braising mixes. With eggs collectedand tomato starts a la Matt O., we were off. I ran courier between Molly and Michael making sure that we had what we needed. Oh. . . before I forget - Many, many thanks to Mrs. Boulay the wonderfully handy "better half" of Saint Joe's own Garry who randomly showed up at the farm to help weed. That was great!!!! Thank you ma'am!!!

The Lake Region's Farmer's Market gang is amazing. They were all there and available to help us newbies (especially Scott from Penny Farthing Farm). In no time we were open and the people came. It was a surprisingly steady day for the first day of the market, and all told Pearson's Town did pretty good. I was especially pleased that we were able to demonstrate the ability to grow winter produce by being the only farm to offer fresh produce.Our produce supply was sparse to be sure, but there was some to be had, and it was gobbled right up!
Our offerings at the market will increase as the veggies come into season. Already we are seeing pea flowers, the carrots are sending out true leaves, and (if the ground hogs will leave us be this year) we have a healthy bunch of started cabbage and broccoli.

For me one of the highlights of the day was the number of folks from the area surrounding Saint Joe's that came out and talked to us. They all mentioned seeing our sign on the road and more than a number of times they asked if we will have a "market" at the farm. From conversation it seems that a common thread amongst "our neighborhood" is that the people would like see the farm become a kind of place for the community to come get produce and be together. It sounds right up my alley!
So, to everyone from the Whites Bridge Road community that came out to see us - Thank you for the support. You all have my word that if the Good Lord smiles on our fields this year we will have some sort of community and good veggies at the farm!!

The end of an era

2010-04-28T12:24:00.006-04:00

History buffs may recall the grand story of the "unsinkable Molly Brown", but I assure you that she had nothing on Pearson's Town's "unstoppable Molly K."!!!!!!Friday we bid adieu to the last of our first year interns. Aside from being a force to be reckoned with, and a joy to work with, Molly became a good friend. She worked feverishly, and spread her joy for working with the earth to everyone that worked with us, and she was the ONLY intern that really loved running the tiller. Is this beginning to sound like an obituary?!?
Molly represents the end of an era because she is the last of our paid interns. Now that our seed money is spent, the farm moves forward completely driven by Saint Joe's students and volunteers, and that is exciting! This is the opportunity for Saint Joe's community to really take the farm and run. Every student that has come out to the farm has been a tremendous help in keeping the farm running and I hope, for them, that it has been a learning experience.

We are gearing up to have an offering at the Lakes Region Farmer's Market starting this Saturday. It will be good to get into the community a bit more and drum up some more local awareness, but it will also be nice to bring a little revenue for next season. Running a farm is no small matter and this year we have made a number of upgrades. Still, it would be nice to end the season without having to scrape and beg for funding for basic things (although I am still MORE than willing to grovel for a tractor). But next season is a far off thing and there are so many exciting things happening now!

For you our devoted followers make a note on your calendars. . . May 22nd will be our second annual Community Planting Day. We will open up the farm again and invite folks to come out and cultivate community with us (and of course do some work).

We will put out some advertisement in the days to come. . .

In the meantime a HUGE thanks to Molly K. You are much missed. . . .

Enjoy the spring.

April on the farm. . .

2010-04-23T08:20:00.010-04:00

Not April L., but the month of April. The "growing season" is barreling in on us even though in many regards it has already begun. The maple trees, at least the small ones, have full leaves on them and the birch are magical this time of year. The pastures are starting to look green which is most appreciated by our friends the sheep. Pearson's Town is growing. We have begun remodeling "our" wing of the barn to make it more efficient for the up coming summer (and years to come). The space is good. It gives us the ability to do so many more things. Many, many thanks to Don, Walt and facilities crew! These guys are awesome. Make sure that you thank them when you see them - much of the beauty of our wonderful campus that we so enjoy is built on the back of their hard work!

As we expand the biggest change, and that which has caused the loudest buzz on campus is the addition of our new shepherd. . . (I was going to insert his name here but the "Unbiased Llama Naming Committee" has not completed its selection) the llama. After a 13 hour trek our friend the llama (who was formerly named Louis) joins us from Limestone, Maine. Many thanks to the Snell family for providing us with such a fine animal. "Our friend" has spent the last week acclimating to his new environment and more so to the farm crew. His view isn't as vast as it once was in the land of potato fields, but I believe that he will find the company nice and the work fulfilling.

Why a llama you ask?

Simple, "Our friend" watches over the sheep while the farm staff can not. He keeps them safe from things like coyotes, coy dogs and the occasional stray neighborhood dog. He is the ultimate form of organic pest control.

Across the green our friends in the "Slug Patrol" have decided that they need back up and Mumma Duck is brooding a nest of about a dozen eggs.Why they think they need back up I will never know. There has been no significant rain ergo no slugs. . . yet. Maybe they know something that we do not.

We the bipedal mammals, on the other hand, have been planting like mad to get a jump on the start of the growing season. Many thanks again to Rippling Waters Backyard Organic Farms for letting us use some of their seed house space again this year!
On campus, our hoop houses are planted with greens, beets (Sorry April), carrots, shell peas, and radishes. With the blue skies, and direct sun light we have been finding needs to open the roll up sides more often and longer for ventilation as the internal temperatures creep into the 90's and 100's during the heat of the day.
Alyssa D. - our work study (well, technically she is Prof. Gulnik's, but she has been on loan to us - Thanks Jeanne!) had an opportunity to talk on camera about her time on the farm. I hope she said nice things about the compost!!!!!!
As April winds down (can you believe that?!?) the farm is definitely up and running. We are actively growing things and working around the farm (not just on the compost). We have seen a huge influx of visitors since the weather has turned. Many thanks to all of you who made it out to the farm last Wednesday to celebrate Earth Day. We will be making the big llama name announcement very soon. In the meantime, we would love to have you come out for a visit and experience all the growth.

Business on the farm

2010-04-15T07:45:00.008-04:00

Farmers are such backwards people, they are almost, unAmerican. We work weird hours, spend most of our time talking to life forms in a different species (if not genus or kingdom), don't mind a little dirt, barely detect most repulsive smells, and worst of all, suffer from a completely backwards calendar.

Out in the real world people are already a buzz about an early spring. They are talking about camping and days on the lake and barbecues. On campus the tension is mounting as finals begin to loom on the horizon, but mostly folks are sitting on the grass tanning, reading or just enjoying the warm weather. Our student population is already looking past those dreaded days of finals to leisurely summers. . .

For us across the asphalt river business is picking up. We are loving that we are so far ahead of last year, and ae working like mad to get, and stay, ahead. We are just coming into the beginning of our busyness. No thoughts of vacations or leisurely days by the lake - although barbecues are always a topic of conversation. Instead we are looking forward to planting and weeding, shearing and composting (okay, maybe only I am looking forward to composting. . .).

Regardless of what tomorrow brings, life is in full bloom now. Here is a bit of what we have been working on. . . .
Interns and volunteers prepping beds for the 2010 growing season planting.

Garlic planted in October of last year peaking up through the mulch enjoying the early warm sunlight.

Shearing our sheep. . . this is harder than it looks!!!!

Lettuce growing in the hoop house (its good to get close to your food occasionally).
Chickens are laying like crazy - eggs are for sale now, or find us later at the Lakes Region Farmer's Market.
Dinah with Bates out in the "portable pasture" for the first time.

More spring greens.

Duck nests are hard to find. . . even in the coop. Will there be ducklings??? Stay tuned. . .

Good morning farmers

2010-04-12T07:50:00.003-04:00

Spring has sprung!! We are at T-Minus 20 days and counting to the opening of the farmers market.

A few matters of general blog "maintenance" to bring to your attention. I have been encouraging the interns and volunteers to share their thoughts here on the blog and with much gratefulness they have! The one thing that we have to work on is signing our work some how. In the meantime, to alleviate the fears of the many, NO, I was not nearly killed by King Richard. That was one of the many wonderful volunteers. Although the thought of the farmer being slaughtered by the rooster is ironically entertaining. . .

The ed field has been turned over and we have seized these last lovely days to start building the beds. We have starts at both Rippling Waters (thanks guys!) and here at the farm. The hoop houses have greens, carrots, radishes and leaks growing in them.
Already we are being reminded of our place in the food chain by the awakening and emerging critters. I.E. the ground hogs, cut worms, slugs, and various caterpillars. I have been having insect nightmares again (are their farm therapists out there??), but many of those have been put to rest by our catching a groundhog the other day. That is of course after we caught two skunks. . . watch Borders for my upcoming book, "How To Catch a Skunk Everyday and Live To Tell Your Family About It". We may even be featured on Brittany Spears remake of her music video, "Oops, We Did It Again". But that is another story. . .

Other farm news . . . We sheared Buster the ram. That was fun. Buster hasn't talked to us since. Bates the lamb "dropped" her tail and now looks a lot more like mom. The ladies will be soon to follow in offering their fleeces. . .

Speaking of fleeces, if there are any artisans on campus that are interested in spinning wool or learning how, we would be more than happy to donate the remaining two fleeces. We are told that they are a medium grade - 50-60 weight fleece breed with a good crimp (what does that all mean??!?!?!?!).

Alright, the sun is up and there are things to be done. I will post some pics in the coming days. . .

King Richard ATTACKS!

2010-04-03T13:12:00.003-04:00

First of all... Today I almost died... Second of all... I have to thank my mother for saving my flipflop.

Here is the story... I am only gunna tell everyone once... because it was a very scary experience for me.... I brought my beautiful niece to the farm to meet our newest member, the baby lamb, Bates. After showing her the cute bundle of joy and petting the suddenly extremely friendly Buster, we went to say "hi" to the chickens. The chickens in the small coop were still locked up so, we went to say "hi" to the chickens in the big coop...

That is when I saw him... King Richard... (play scary music here)

Why he was in the big coop I will never know... I always knew there was a reason I personally was scared of him.. even though he had never attacked me, personally. Today was going to be the day, and I should have sensed that.

This was the moment that my innocent niece saw an egg... How could I say no to that face? She was so excited.... After much consideration, I decided I was going in...

When I stepped in, I made a scary noise and all the hens backed away and went on with their normal business... not King Richard, the very large rooster. He stood proud on the ramp up to the chicken coop. The glorious egg, laid under the coop.

In this moment I thought of Alyssa Jean's "Chicken shuffle." This is when you shuffle your feet fast, towards the chicken, to scare the chicken away. Unfortunately I did not think of the fact that the ground was basically mud and chicken poop and I was wearing flip-flops, making each step a slidey, smelly, sticky movement. So I tried the "Chicken shuffle" but, it ended up being more of it one-foot-sliding-through-the-mud-as-the-other-flipflop-got-stuck-in-the-mud. Needless to say, I was now one shoe down.

This is when I noticed that King Richard was not happy at my attempt to chase him away. He was so angry in fact that he flew into my stomach and started pecking me! IT WAS SO SCARY, I SCREAMED! He fluttered his wings aggressively and he pecked my hands as I tried to push him away. Then I tried to push him with my shoe and my other flipflop fell into the mud in the middle of the caged in area. But King Richard was off me and so I ran out of the the coop and I closed the door quickly behind me.

My niece asked me if I was okay.. and thankfully I will live... I have a peck mark on my finger (I tried to take a picture but for some reason... it isn't visible in photograph) and a small red scratch mark on my stomach (it did not bleed at all). Physically, I will be fine... but mentally I will always be afraid of.... (play scary music again) King Richard.

... On a side note, all the other chickens are amazing and I am not even afraid of all the other roosters (that are in ed field). Nobody needs to feel bad for my niece... because after all my hard work of trying to get that one egg... I walked around the coop and saw a egg directly on the other side of the fencing that I could easily reach my hand in and grab. With everything said.. at least she is happy now. Oh, and my mother thankfully went in with the scary rooster, well my niece and myself distracted the chickens and retrieved my flip-flops (covered in poop) for me.

I still love everything about the farm with all my heart... but I have to say... I DO NOT like King Richard!

The Beauty of Farming

2010-03-29T14:17:00.015-04:00

Hey everyone. This is my first blog for Pearson's Town Farm... My name is Heather. I work as a "Community Service Leader" through work study. But you will find me spending most, if not all, of my spare time at the farm. It is amazing how a farm can bring so many people together into a friendship/family-like bond.

I live at home, So I do not get to the farm as much as I would like. When I am there there is always something fun to do...

One of my favorite things to do is play with the chickens.

"Patchworks" is one of my favorite chickens because she lets me pick her up and she has pretty kick-butt feet.

Another one of everyone's favorite thing to do egg hunting. There is nothing more exciting then everyone's personal daily Easter egg hunt. =)

Life. That is one thing that is always present at the farm. Recently the most amazing and cute creature was brought to us, Bates. He (we still believe Bates is a boy) was brought to us by complete surprise, but at the farm we tend to expect everything and I for one was wicked excited.

Isn't he just completely adorable?

Myke says we are going to kill him and eat him. He even called him "Dinner" today. I know he is being honest... but for right now when you look at this little ball of cuteness.. How can anyone think, "Mmmm Food!"

Today at the farm, sense it was all wet and gross, we worked on planting. That is another one of my farming passions. I LOVVEEEE working with extremely tiny seeds. It is so fun to try to get one seed that looks 10 times smaller than dust into each section.

As the Vice President of the Photography Club, I hope to be taking more pictures and adding more post... Everyone should stop by at the farm at least once... To see the beauty of life all around us as well as have a good laugh.

It's a boy. . .

2010-03-28T14:39:00.006-04:00

. . . well, I am pretty sure it is. Of course, I was pretty sure that neither of our ewes were pregnant. (We forgot to actually confirm it and now Dyna won't let us close enough to)

Saturday morning a group of freshman girls from Bates college came down to do a service project at the farm. What a joy!! Extra help, and with the good weather and soft soil we had every intention of building beds in our education field. Saturday of course had other plans for us. It was about 27 degrees when I pulled into the farm, the ground was frozen! There was no soil turning to be done. Not right off anyway.

After a tour of the farm, we determined that not being able to feel our toes was simply too much. We went inside to do some planting. Maybe this was a good thing, after all Molly and I found out that the farmer's market is starting up two weeks earlier than we thought. So, we started plants, mostly flowers, and waited for the temperature to come up a bit.

That morning, the day before the beginning of the holy week, the temperature never got up above 37 degrees. At about 10 the Bates crew and I decided that there wasn't going to be an optimal time to dig trenches so we just went to it. On the way out to the field I noticed that Dyna wasn't acting right. She was pawing at the ground, laying down and then getting up again. She would come in, and go out of the barn repeatedly.

After getting the crew started in the field I decided that Dyna needed some watching. After heading back to the barn it was time to do what any good farmer would do. . . .call the wife!!! Dyna was still acting really strangely. With Amy on the phone googling "Sheep Health Issues" while grabbing the sheep handbook the problem became suddenly VERY obvious.

Mid sentence I said, "Why don't you try googling. . .oh gosh those are hoofs!"

Dyna was delivering the lamb that she wasn't pregnant with. Some frantic yelling to Mike Blais (our former intern who was out in the field with the Bates crew), and a call to security for medical gloves (in case we had to intervene) and we were off and running. Delivery took fifteen minutes, and Bates (we named the lamb in honor of the Bates Freshman girl's crew that was there to help us) was up an walking with in twenty minutes.

Molly, Alyssa, Amy and the Kinder-Garden auxiliary, Heather, Stu and his kids, Campus Security, 5 Bates girls, Mike B., Charmaine from marketing and Dana P. (our autumn intern via the phone) were all present and accounted for within an hour of the delivery. Alyssa was our photojournalist and Molly was in the helping get little Bates started nursing - Bates learned that milk doesn't come from momma's knee caps.

So, as of this morning, Palm Sunday,Bates was running around his jug and looking great. My new fear. . . if Dyna was actually pregnant what does this mean for Dani?!?!?

Stay tuned here for updates, or swing by the farm for a visit. . . .

Permaculture spring. . .

2010-03-21T05:19:00.009-04:00

We are taking strides toward permaculture finally. We have been reading about it, and pondering it from the outside up until now. . .
In nature plants and animals work together to create a sustainable circle. All things in nature work together to create balance - and in return nature very efficiently turns sunlight into bio-mass. In conventional agriculture, most home gardening and landscaping, we the people, add loads of extra inputs to keep "balance" and end up very inefficiently converting sunlight to bio-mass. In most cases we have replaced "nature" with chemical substitutes that work fabulously on the short term, but tend to have long term troubles associated with them.

We have been struggling with an over abundance of roosters here at the farm. We inherited them gratefully, but in the last several weeks they have become mean, fighting and picking at the hens. The State of Maine has seen fit to tuck tail (so to speak) to the USDA and has written rather imposing regulations about poultry processing that are very anti-family farm and very big-agribusiness friendly for our state. The result is that we have had no viable means to thin out our roosters. . . yet.
Chickens wandering about in a half tilled field.

The good news is that for the inconvenience of housing that many roosters in one spot we are now reaping the benefits. With the ridiculously warm weather we have decided to go ahead and till. The fields are just about done now, but in tilling we have exposed weed seeds and overwintering insects including a few nuisance caterpillars. Our roosters are now happy as they have ever been going over the education field doing some preliminary weeding and pest removal.
Hopefully they will have fattened up and had their fill, giving us a head start against the bugs before they make the trip to meet their. . . processor. When the rains come it will be the ducks turn to get the grubs and the slugs. . .
Permaculture really is as neat in action as it is in theory. Alyssa "weather proofing" a temporary chicken shelter.

Peanuts, peanuts everywhere

2010-03-16T05:04:00.006-04:00

The snow is out, the hoops have been hovering in the 70's and as far as I have seen there is not much frost left in the ground.

Stu and I spent the latter half of last week in Pennsylvania at Delaware Valley College. It seems that they are exploring their food service provider options (schools go through this every 10 years or so) and being an Ag school that grows more than enough food, dairy and meat it seems a logical move for Bon Appetit to throw our at in the ring. Our trip, though, is not what seems relevant here as is what happened while we were away. With all of the environmental factors aligning, Molly took advantage of the opportunity to till in the walled garden and set out carrot, radish, greens and peas in the hoop houses. She really got a ridiculous amount of work done last week in spite of my absence and the lack of student assistance (spring break last week, no students were on campus).

So this week it seemed only fitting that we would surprise her. You see, she has a love of planting, especially seeding. . . when she's not busy organizing or planning. Every year I enjoy picking one really random crop that shouldn't grow up here and we try to grow it and see if it is something that we can make work. This year it's peanuts, and Molly has been chomping at the bit to get them planted. So here we are planting peanuts. . . and a few other sites from the secret garden. . . Molly shelling (or is it husking?) the peanuts. (Those are shelling peas in the background)

Alyssa planting the peanut seeds into start trays. Peanuts need roughly five frost free months (Say that five times fast) so we have to give them some lead time indoors.

Sweet peas climb up well beyond the support infrastructure that we constructed for them.

More shelling peas ready to be taken out to the hoop houses.

Onion and leek starts soaking up the rays.

Russell's and Castle Lupines to make the exterior of the Gowan house more colorful.

The label says dill, but an expert eye could tell you Easter egg radishes. The dill is planted in between the radish rows.

Its winter. . .

2010-03-03T17:46:00.005-05:00

. . . I think?!?!

The snow is virtually gone, the temps in the hoop houses are hovering around the 70's on sunny days. You don't even really need a jacket to go outside. The climate is just getting weirder. . . The temptation is to go out, get the fields plowed and start planting, but it is still waaaaaaay too early and who knows what March and April may bring.

It's fun to be around the farm this time of year. Things in both the hoops and the secret garden are growing fabulously. Many thanks to the facilities crew we were able to increase our lighting space and our start trays. Round two of the lettuce is getting ready to go into the ground (in the hoops) after we harvest round one. The sweet peas are standing at about four and a half feet, and we have been experimenting with growing pea shoots for the salad bar. We are expecting flowers any time now. The tomatoes. . . well. . . we aren't quiet sure what to think about them, but the carrots that grow beneath them are looking very carrot like.

As we look to the coming season we have started some flowers that we hope to sell to recoup some of our seed cost. They are up and looking fabulous. Hopefully they won't be absurd by market time.

The compost is cooking right along with one pile ready to go and one right behind it. The sheep are happy, though they did not breed as we had hoped so we will look into adding the not-so-old fashioned way so that we can offer some lamb in the autumn and we will try the breeding thing again in the autumn. But the real fun on that side of the field are the chickens. It has become the favorite past time of a few of our regulars to have their own "Easter" egg hunt. Maybe "Lent" egg hunt would be more appropriate. The birds that we have are all donated birds, so many are cross breeds. Today we found a green egg. No, not mold. There are a few breeds that have unusual egg laying characteristics, the Americauna is one. The Americauna is the result selective breeding of the Auracauna, a South American chicken known for laying colored eggs. Green and blue shelled eggs are the norm for these birds with an occasional pink egg finding its way into the mix. By the look our birds we don't have any Americauna chickens. . . But apparently we have one that is half Americauna. The question is, which one. . . .

Great EGGS-pectations!

2010-02-19T17:33:00.004-05:00

What is this madness?!?!? Two posts in one day?

Well, I guess that it is Farm Manager perogative. This one is a good one though. . .

We got an egg. . .our first egg. Yes the very first ever Pearson's Town Farm egg. Whatever shall we do with it?!? Hmmmmm. . . .

It's all about compost. . .

2010-02-19T08:26:00.005-05:00

. . . Or at least one might think that if they spend too many hours reading this blog or visiting the farm. Compost makes up, easily, one third of our work load. The usual routine is moving buckets and adding to piles (or building piles), but every now and again we get to break from that and turn a pile - to add air. Yes, air!
As it turns out compost is a lot like burying trash (the other analogy, the one that I prefer to use, is a little more morbid, and it is much too early for that). Put the refuse underground and all of the little critters, fungi, and bacteria go to town! They gobble and reproduce and gobble again. Underground, however, all those little fella's are kept in check by a number of environmental factors the biggest of which is air. Above ground we have the ability to control that - to a degree. We build our piles and make sure that all of our environmental factors are just right, water, food, living quarters, air, etc. and we encourage our li'll friends to make themselves at home.
You have heard of a "hot pile", no?!?! Well that refers to the heat at the center of a pile. It is an indicator that our little microbe friends are working. They eat, and multiply and eat and multiply and all of that activity gives off heat! Much like living in a city, though, there are only so many resources (okay, in the country there are only so many resources too. . .). When resource run out the microbes stop reproducing and eventually begin to die off and the pile gets cold.

Air is our usual culprit. Our little friends the microbes use up air, but unlike underground where resources are controlled by nature, on the surface we can add some of them. So we turn the pile or find some other means of introducing air into the mix and life in the "compost city" goes on. Little things go to work, pile heats up again, solids are reduced and we end up with an amazing soil amendment on the other end.
It's like magic. . . . not always the most popular job on the farm, but magical nonetheless.

Gaining ground on spring

2010-02-10T16:39:00.002-05:00

The snow is receding and man is it starting to look like spring. The last couple of days it even felt a bit like spring. Such a tease I tell you.

The secret garden is really starting (emphasis on the word 'starting') to look the way that I had envisioned it. We have started started to companion plant in the beds. There are now carrots growing in the tomato bed (the 'maters are still there too), beets are growing up in the herb bed and we have German time creating a ground cover beneath the snap peas.
As we start greens (lettuce, spinach and chard) in the cellar, growth in the hoops continues inching along.
We were pleased to be able to offer pea shoots in the servery and today Molly brought up Pearson's Town coriander to spice up the kitchen. Growing in the winter is definitely slower, but we are learning a lot about increasing productivity. We are also collecting data on energy use so that we can find ways to grow more with less - after all if we are sucking up a ton of energy we are missing our goal of growing produce sustainably.

In the meantime the evil weather people are threatening snow in the coming day. . .grrrr. In light of the recent sunlight though, we have very little to complain about!!!

Farm to Fork

2010-02-06T19:30:00.005-05:00

We are committed to bringing farm fresh, organic, sustainably grown produce to the table! We don't just feed the school, we feed the folks at the food pantry and occasionally we serve other civic groups in the community.

Last Wednesday we had the opportunity to serve lunch for a seniors group that would meet at the ol' fire barn (that is Mainer for "the fire station") the morning before Catherine's Cupboard Food Pantry would have its distribution at the same sight. Since Catherine's Cupboard moved to the town hall in September of last year we seem to have lost touch with some of those wise folks! Stu proposed that we should offer them a lunch at the new pantry location to reconnect with them and give them an opportunity to see the Cupboard's new home.

What an odd group of people we are to serve a fancy meal to anybody, but the farm crew offered service with a smile! At the Cupboard Molly, Heather and Raynehelped to serve a superb meal (would we expect anything less from Chef?!?!?) to twenty one seniors from the community and a hand full of town employees. What a magnificent connection we made with those who have farmed and gardened before us. The meal was amazing. . .in fact the butter was so pretty one table refused to use it lest they mess up its appearance!

We were an unsightly group to be sure in our farm finery (do farmers have finery???). Still the seniors were pleased, the farm crew had fun being 'fancy', Stu got to work in the kitchen again(he likes that), and Chef glowed as our guests lauded the food and his craft!!

While none of the food served at this meal came from Pearson's Town, we know that much of the ingredients came from local farms. I can't speak for the others, but nothing makes me smile like knowing that great local foods are being improved upon (by the likes of Chef) and served to people that really appreciate them! Our opportunity to grow food and then also get to serve food makes Pearson's Town truly Farm to Fork!

. . . plus, who would have thought that our humble little crew was so good at catering. . . hmmm.

Oh, For the Love of Compost!

2010-02-02T22:23:00.011-05:00

Hi everyone! This is my first blog for Pearson's Town Farm! My name is Alyssa Jean and I'm a work-study intern for the farm and I'm not gonna lie, I actually enjoy composting. Heavy, smelly, frozen compost. Carrying 50 buckets that weight half as much as I do from the end of where the snowplow plows to the compost piles over yonder has built up my muscle tremendously. I can flex my arms and actually see it now! I think it is the first visible muscle I've ever had! This is a very exciting concept for me. Look at that muscle! I am so proud of myself! :D

Composting is really just great. You make nice, rich soil for your crops to be happy and you can enjoy yourself doing it, climbing up compost mountain, trying to pour frozen compost out...better than unfrozen compost actually. A little tougher, but certainly less smelly and wet. AND fewer flies, which make for an irritating time.
It does kind of bother me, however, just how much food we waste. Most of what we compost is still good, it just did not get eaten for one reason or another. Some of it looks delicious. Some of it smells delicious. Some of it even tastes delicious, because if you are like Molly and I, you are unafraid to be "the most disgusting thing I have ever seen!" as Rayne says, you will try some of the not-so-wasted wasted food. Here is Molly and I eating some type of raspberry jelly roll type thing. It was a little frozen, but totally worth it. "It has a little bit of a stir-fry taste, don't you think?" Molly asked.And of course, I needed to wipe my mouth with a composted napkin!And if you are anything like me, as President of the Photography Club here at SJC, you can find some pretty interesting photos among the composted! It could produce a pretty cool art project. Some photos showing here:

Even these MARSHMALLOWS from a bowl of Lucky Charms didn't get eaten! AMAZING! Usually, the marshmallows are the first thing everyone eats! I guess this eater wasn't so lucky!

Well that's what I have to say for now. Myke, I hope you enjoyed that! (He's been telling me I should write on the blog for ages!)

The "SECRET" Garden

2010-01-26T20:20:00.006-05:00

I was asked recently during an interview, "Why do you call it 'The Secret Garden'?"

What exactly the young journalist was looking for, I still don't know for certain. Perhaps the answer to her question lies in the question itself. . .

You see, Pearson's Town was virtually unknown to many on campus this last semester. Only in the last few months has much of the student body become aware our existence. Slowly we are seeing more and more visitors from the school come across the road to visit or help out with the daily chores.

During the summer most of the farm is in plain sight; everything is above ground, green growing and not terribly mysterious, except maybe at the cellular level. The winter is a completely different story. With a couple of feet of snow on the ground you just don't see much growing. Even in the hoops, where things are alive, growth is retarded by the temperatures and short periods of day light. What on earth is a farmer to do in these conditions. Cabin fever is likely to be the end for many, especially myself. So we had to find a place to grow things. . .

Our "garden" that we set up in the cellar of one of the school's buildings was originally dubbed 'The Hidden Garden', simply because it was in an obscure part of the campus and far from any sort of student traffic. While 'hidden' sounds fun, the word 'secret' always seems to perk up people's sense of curiosity. Curiosity might lead to more questions, that might lead to more answers that might make more folks aware that we are here. . .

So, the 'Hidden Garden' slowly became 'The Secret Garden'. The folks whose feet we work beneath seem amused by our comings and goings. They even bring people down to our 'secret' layer. Maybe someday I should warn them about the ghosts that mingle amongst the plants. . .

. . . and the carnivorous mice. But that is another tale.

We want to keep Chef happy!

2010-01-25T17:26:00.003-05:00

So I am told, one of the things that our "new" chef asked about when he was hired was whether or not we had an herb garden. Well, we have a farm. Granted that it is winter, I would hate to think that we can't at, bare minimum, keep him in fresh herbs.

So while we are letting things grow slowly in the hoops, we have working to beat the band to make things happen in our "secret garden". Someone asked about why I would refer to it by that name. . . stay tuned for that post.

In the meantime, we have been scrambling to make things happen. You know about the peas,if you have been reading this blog for any length of time, but we have been growing and starting herbs over the last couple of weeks hoping to start getting stuff back in the cafe by February. . .

Rosemary, German Thyme, Dill, Oregano, Broad leaf Sage, etc have been started and growing. Today was very special as we noticed Amethyst Basil popping out of the soil in a tray set that we thought was dead. . .

To fill a rainy day we complimented our garden work with cleaning of the barn to better serve our plans for upgrades for the coming season.

We are still composting!! Yup, it's winter, but things can happen with proper management. If you are interested in participating, we are always accepting kitchen scraps. Drop us a line or stop by if you have questions.

"Mollee", in French it means, "Hey, look - Snow!"

2010-01-19T18:12:00.007-05:00

. . . Which is not to be confused with Molly, our new intern.

Finally, after her many guest appearances over the summer and autumn, Molly (or Mollee as, it is rumored, the Internet knows her) has joined Pearson's Town as a paid intern. There has been much anticipation over her coming because she brings with her a fantastic energy level, and more importantly I wont have to talk to just the sheep anymore (Okay, actually our volunteers have done a fabulous job keeping me sane. . . as much as that is possible).

Of course the downfall of Mollee's coming. . . she brought the snow, and not just some snow, but ALL of the snow. Midwesterners are at this very moment wondering why they can see blue sky and where the world's supply of snow could have possibly migrated too. . .

. . . Well, we have it people!!!!!! Would mind terribly taking it back????

Indoctrination including cleaning snow off of hoop houses, shoveling snow, snow blowing, shoveling snow a couple more times, clearing snow, and then watching the snow build up again. Today, as if to validate all of the children out there who believe that if you can't see the monster, the monster can't see you, we spent a bulk of the day in the "secret garden". We had a fair amount of transplanting to do. There are about 300 pea shoots that are growing nicely to offset the herbs and greens that we have started. Still a ways out from being available in the cafe, they make a nice reminder that there can be life in the heart of a Maine winter.
We are also glad (and a little surprised) to welcome aboard Alyssa as a work study intern. It looks as though she is going to be funded by the school, and is going to help us with some of our image (by way of photographs and digital stuff) as well as, of course, the usual farm chores. After all, who could give up the joy of composting?!?

Mondays. . .

2010-01-12T09:45:00.004-05:00

Its winter and most Monday here on the farm are pretty mundane. The last couple of Mondays have been phenomenal because the school has been closed for holiday, so it has been blessedly quiet. Now, though, the students are back, and we are glad to have them because the cafe is churnin' out the good food again. . . which means compost!

So this Monday was a little less mundane than others. It was the Monday that we had to get back into the compost spirit, but more importantly, or perhaps equally importantly (because after all what is more important than healthy soil??), our congress woman Chellie Pingree came by the farm for a visit and lunch at the Cafe. She seemed a very down to earth person and as I understand she was (or maybe still is) an organic gardener. Her staff were very pleasant and everyone seemed excited about organic farming and hoop houses, and agriculture until those wily little devils came out and stole everyone's attention. . .yes, the sheep. Apparently there is some draw to fuzzy little mammals that no one can resist. Now I don't know if we should eat them or keep them?

Honestly though it was a great time. We talked a little bit about the program and what we are hoping to accomplish here at Pearson's Town and Saint Joe's. Perhaps once health care is a topic of the past, we can get back on the agriculture band wagon. . . or maybe we can focus on agriculture as the foundation of health care. . .

(Photos Courtesy of the tall guy with the camera that was with Rep. Pingree. With any good fortune I am not breaking any laws by posting these. . .)

Winter in action

2010-01-07T10:26:00.006-05:00

I am pretty excited that school comes back into session next week. That means that the help will come back!!

Heather came out over the break to help plant (did I just say "plant"?), clean out chicken coops, shovel snow. . . yep, sounds like the ideal winter break to me. What a great help it was though. She managed to help me get caught up just in time to bring everyone back. That means new projects!!

The hoops are growing greens . . . and purples. . . which we are hoping to offer in the cafe in February.

Um. . . did I mention planting ?!?! Why yes, yes I did!! In our "secret garden" we planted something like 300 new greens, 150 new pea plants and oodles of herbs. With any good fortune we will be actively producing usable quantities starting in February with increasing yields right into the summer!

In our "secret" garden we have taken Doc's raised beds from the summer's square foot garden and covered the bottoms with some left over hoop house poly - to hold the water in. In the first frame we keep our newly started seedlings, and a few lonely left overs from the summer. . . notice the sad looking eggplant (it was too cold this summer for that poor fella to produce, but it refused to die. So now, we are looking to see if we can make something happen in the winter).

Once the seedlings get to big for the start trays, they move into one of the three remaining frames. In the case below. . . sugar snap peas.

Once they reach maturity we will be harvesting them and sending them to Chef to improve them in some festive culinary way. . . And then there are the ducks. . . They don't live in the "secret" garden. They are still out in their coop, waiting - always waiting. They want the snow to leave and the slugs to come out. Until such time they are tolerating the chickens and enjoying water changing time every morning when they come out to take a very "splashy" (okay, splashy isn't really a word. . . yet) swim.

The last of '09

2009-12-31T11:15:00.009-05:00

The year is waning the clouds are increasing - snow will usher in 2010.
Even as we sit around - we do work occasionally in the winter too. . . don't get the wrong idea - and dream about some exciting projects for the coming season it is hard to let go of good times from the last year! Here as an end of the year offering are some photos of some of the folks that made Pearson's Town happen!Much of the following is all a collective of inside jokes (if you weren't there), but should bring a chuckle if you were. These are some of the phrases and moments from around the farm in 2009 (Disclaimer - Some of the statements made may be a little, um. . . well. . . controversial, and a couple of the photos may not be for the young, and those with week constitutions). . . If you have any to add please leave them in the comments. . .

"Well, screaming worked for us!"
- Emily when explaining her and Sierra's technique for catching groundhogs.

"Hey Myke. . . I may have broken the shovel. . ."

- Chris after breaking a shovel

"Hey Chris, remember that drill bit I lost?!?"

- Myke after having found a drill bit INSIDE a turkey.

"You wanna come fluff a row with us?"

-Chris to a local T.V. News producer when their crew came out to do a story on the farm.

"Hey this turkey has an extra arm."

- Emily upon discovering Monsanto - our beloved turkey with an extra appendage!

"Uh, Myke remember hoe?!?"

- Chris broke another tool. (There may have been a trend here).

"Blais, we're not trying to dig to China here!"

- A reminder made while we were building the planting beds

"So, do you know how to dig a hole?"

- A question asked to one of our interns by an intern from another farm.

"Um. . . Lichten just chased a groundhog into the woods with a scuffle hoe."

- We never saw that groundhog again.

"I am NEVER driving that van again!"

- Blais after hitting a fence, picnic table, rusted out tractor and then getting it stuck in mud. All in the span of ten feet at less than 5 MPH.

"I win!!"

- Anyone, after having found and emptied the NASTIEST 5 gallon bucket of compostable food scraps.

"Oooooooooh, I know why no one is sitting near us."

- Dana after having discovered that the smell of compost in our hair and clothes was the reason we got through the line at the cafe so quickly!

"Tell 'em about the chicken coops Myke."

- Said while leading a group of 70 nuns on a tour of the farm. The chicken coops were recycled from old confessionals.

And with that. . . it's back to work!

2009 comes to a screeching halt!

2009-12-29T10:52:00.009-05:00

It's cold out today. The thermostat reads about 17 degrees but the wind chill with gusts is bringing us closer to zero.

The hoops are maintaining. We have survived three snow storms now and are no worse for the wear. I have been doing some adjusting to the row covers, making them higher, a little more taught, etc., as we run through our first go at winter farming in the high tunnels.

The critters here are holding up well. The sheep have finally overcome their phobia of snow. . . goof ruminants. The ducks on the other hand, who had taken to nesting under the coop to avoid the dreaded chickens (it must be like having 50 little brothers. . . and sisters) have resigned themselves to the idea that they will be warmer in the coop out of the wind.

The exciting part for me these last couple of weeks have been the happenings in our "hidden" garden. The herbs and tomatoes are holding their own, but the peas. . . the peas!!!There are now two score and nine pea plants that are climbing toward the. . . ceiling?!?. . . rather vigorously. My hope is to see some fresh snow peas, sans the snow in the Cafe in February. Could it happen?!?!? I guess we will have to wait and see.

The winter solstice - the longest night of the year.

2009-12-22T07:57:00.004-05:00

It has come and gone - the first day of winter. It always evokes so many different e-motions. Being that I am not a cold weather person, it depresses me. . . the FIRST day of WINTER, and yet it is the solstice. . . days are now getting longer -more light! Woohoo!!!!

I spent the first day of winter in our fair state capital. That's Augusta for you flat landers. Before one of the Ag department's subcommittees was legislation governing small family run poultry operations. You see, there exists in Maine (at the moment) an exemption for small farms that process less than 1000 birds in a year and ONLY sell on the farm, through a CSA program (same as selling on farm really), and at farmers markets. Under this exemption these small farms can't sell to restaurants, groc stores or across state lines. The exemption eliminates certain inspections and allows for on farm, open air butchering of poultry. At the outset that may sound like a bad idea and the proposed change in legislation aims to eliminate the exemption. But think about it for a minute. These folks are selling birds to people who CHOOSE to buy their birds, know the farmers, often times know the birds, and are welcomed onto the farms at any time to inspect the facilities and practices for themselves. This is not a case of some big mega corporation trying to hock birds in mass to an unsuspecting public. . .
For me the bill boiled down to the government wanting to tell people what to choose rather than just letting them choose - all the hallmarks of freedom - Hancock, Adams and Washington would be proud!

It was phenominal to see the agricultural community on the whole come together. There were fish farmers, beef farmers, veggies farmers, consumers, authors, public policy groups, poultry farmers (of course) and best of all. . . kids!! What an amazing community the local agriculture community is. People whose livelihoods are not directly affected turned out to speak against this change of regulations. (I might take a moment to mention that in the whole span of human history it has only been the last 75 years or so that food has become so dangerous as to render it inedible unless some government inspector blesses it with his clip board after having it processed in a lab, operating room or a bubble)

My favorite part of the hearing was when the director of the Maine CDC got up and started spewing facts and recent statistics about the dangers of un-inspected poultry to general health. He may have forgotten to mention that ALL of the violations came from the big corporation factories. . . but we will forgive him. In fact the more he spoke the more it became clear that in light of all of the recalls, contaminations, etc., that regulators might be looking at the wrong folks. It seems perfectly logical for us to impose tighter regulations and loftier tax burdens on the little people who are producing real food in the open air and haven't tried to kill anybody? Let's leave the folks with oodles of money alone in spite of the fact that they still manage to cause nationwide salmonella pandemics in their so called "sterilized" butchering bubbles. It was probably just a little mishap anyway.

Enough of my soap box - things here at the farm are moving along at a sluggish pace. Maybe "leisurely" is a better word. Everything is growing lazily. The other day I had to teach the sheep to walk in the snow. . . they are so weird. The birds are doing well, and even our hidden garden is showing signs of promise!!! Tomorrow the plan is to add the last of the compost for 2009 to pile 4 and maybe, just maybe turn the other three. That will depend on temperature (outside) and energy levels (four piles by me onesie may require super human endurance).