Welcome Winter

When I say, "Welcome, Winter..." I'm trying to be sincere. However, I'm still having trouble getting as excited as everyone else seems to be about the 4-6 months of winter peering over the horizon. Mark is having no trouble getting super amped about the snow. He already bought Cross Country ski's and is looking into getting some snow shoes. He has also already been invited on two winter camping trips, both of which I have declined to attend. I am slowly getting ready for winter. I bought some heavy duty snow boots and I was gifted a pair of snowshoes by a wonderful woman at our local bookstore. A friend and co-worker also offered to give me a free snowboarding lesson. Seeing as it's been about 12 years since I last strapped my feet to anything designed to take me quickly downhill, it's probably time to give it another try.

We've been busy since I last posted. Mark and I each took a week-long vacation. Me to Montana for a wedding and he to NYC and then North Carolina for the wedding of friends Dan and Julie, who he met doing E-corps in Austin.
Most of Mark's trip was spent in transit: a train from Montpelier to NYC, then a bus to New Jersey, then he and his friend Eric drove from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. Then he repeated that in reverse. Luckily, he did get to spend some time in both New York and North Carolina, not just in transit. I had a great time in Montana. I attended a beautiful wedding of a childhood friend and her British fiancee' (now husband.) Hamilton was full of British folks and it was fantastic! I also saw a number of other friends and generally had a great time.

When we both returned to VT, we worked for a few days and then Mark's Dad and Step-Mom, Joel and Deb, came for a visit. We all had a great time touring around, looking at the leaves, making and eating tasty food and looking at pictures of Mark's new nephew who Deb and Joel had visited in Wisconsin before coming to Vermont. It was a fun visit and I'm so glad they got to see where we spent our summer and where we'll be staying for at least the next 2 and a half years. It's a somewhat arbitrary number, but we made the commitment to ourselves to stick around Vermont for at least 3 years. After all the moving we've done in the last three, it seemed like a good time to settle down for a bit, get to know a place and solidify some friendships, all things that are hard to do when you move every 6 months.















The end of our season consisted of harvesting and washing literally tons of root vegetables. 38 rows of potatoes, 12 rows of carrots, 4 rows of beets as well as a number of above ground crops all had to be harvested before the ground froze. We managed to get everything out and spent days and days in the barn, shoveling veggies into the giant barrel washer and then sorting and packing them as they rolled out onto the long tables we had set up. Overall, it was a really good season and a definite opposite experience from farming in Texas. Whereas a good 1/4 to 1/3 of our time in Texas was taken up by irrigation, we only had to irrigate once in Vermont. Whereas in Vermont we don't have the bull nettle, fire ants and rattlesnakes that abound in Texas, we do have many diseases, mostly associated with the cool, wet weather, that would never have survived in Texas. Mark and I are both very glad we ended up in Vermont. It's a pretty awesome place. Here's a photo of Me, Mark, Maggie, Bill and Brandon near the end of the season. Brandon left right before Halloween and though we miss him, Mark and I have settled nicely into life without roommates.


So, now that farming is over, we sit around and eat bonbons all day, right? Nope. As soon as the season ended, Mark started right into his new job as a seed packer at High Mowing Organic Seeds. They're a local, organic seed company, located in Wolcott. Their website is pretty great, especially if you're into farming/gardening. Just think, if you order seeds this year, they may very well have been packed by Mark.

I started off November working a few days for Bill here and there. I also started working in the produce section of the co-op two nights a week as well as working for a wonderful woman I met at Community Dinner, named Maggie McGuire. Community Dinner is held every Thursday, from noon to one in Hardwick. It's a free lunch and most of the food is supplied by local farmers, the co-op and the food bank. Robin Cappuccino started Community Dinner back in 1992 and has been spearheading it every Thursday, except for the 2 months that he is in India, working with his parents organization: Child Haven International
A few weeks ago we attended an Indian dinner and Sari fashion show benefiting the organization. It was well attended and helped to remind me what an unusual and interesting place in which we have landed.

In early November I applied for a collective position at our local co-op, Buffalo Mountain, and I was hired on the 18th. Buffalo Mountain is unlike any other place I have ever worked. It is an actual collective, meaning no bosses and no hierarchy. I'm still working in produce and now I am also the re-stocker for a large amount of the grocery items. For a small store, we manage to pack a lot of items onto those shelves! My first collective meeting is this Wednesday. I'm excited to be working in an environment where we can all make schedules and decisions that work for us, where decisions and policies are not handed down from a higher authority, but come from the folks that are actually doing the work. It's an eclectic crew of people and I'm stoked to be a part of it.

Aside from our new jobs, we've gone on a few hikes, worked on some art projects and had dinners and brunches with friends. A few weeks ago we hiked the highest peak in Vermont, (Mt. Mansfield elev: 4,393ft) with our friends Matt and Emiko.The wind at the top was incredible! I could lean into it and be held up solely by the wind pushing me back. Emiko and I studied abroad in Ecuador together back in 2004 and she recently moved to Montpelier after farming in Bozeman, MT all summer. I am excited to have her around.

For my 28th birthday, one of my favorite singers, Langhorne Slim, came to Burlington, so Mark and I headed to the big city. We had hot beverages with a friend, Mark bought XC skis, we ate great Vietnamese food and then danced our asses right off at the show. All in all a great day. Another exciting thing happened on the 1st, my friend Katie Hollingshead Meek had her 2nd baby, Asher Allen Meek. What a lovely birthday present! Here's a photo of the pillow I made for him and the two stuffed animals I made for his very proud older brother, Eli.


In other news, Mark started and Etsy shop: Mumbledown where he's selling silkscreened patches. Check it out!

Well, I'm sure there's more news, but can't think of anything at the moment. To those of you who made it all the way through this blog, thank you! Hopefully in the future, now that we have
internet at the house (!) they will be more frequent and shorter. Enjoy the transition into winter.

Hello Fall

Well, here we are, days from the Autumnal Equinox and I have finally acknowledged that I have let the summer slip past and with it all my stories for Hello Young Farmers. Here’s the thing about farming, when there’s stuff to write about, you’re too busy and tired to write. Now it’s been so long since my last post that the idea of doing a summer long re-cap is too daunting. Perhaps I can manage to keep this short, yet wildly fascinating!

The season has gone well. The weather has been all over the place, a week of highs in the 40’s in mid-July and then a few days in early September where it was in the 90’s. These days it is settled into a fairly consistent pattern of lows in the 40’s and highs in the 60’s as we head into fall. When the leaves began to change colors the third week of August I was dismayed, imagining snow by Labor Day. Fortunately, my fears were unfounded.

This summer was full of fun and hard work. The seeding, transplanting and weeding of May and June quickly gave way to the non-stop harvesting of July and August. Here's a photo of Mark watering a trailer full of seedlings right before we transplanted them into the field. The crops that needed to be harvested every other day and subsequently took up an enormous amount of our 40 hour work weeks included peas, beans, zucchini, summer squash and tomatoes.
Other crops that were harvested less frequently, but still a few times a week were carrots, beets, radishes, broccoli, kale and chard, among others. One thing we learned when harvesting carrots is that there are some pretty racy vegetables out there. When we weren’t harvesting, we were washing and packing the harvest for our wholesale orders, CSA members and Farmer’s Markets. The weeds in the fields grew waist high and some crops were almost lost until Bill hired a giant weeding crew to work for a week to get the fields back under control. This season I have been in charge of putting out our weekly CSA newsletter for our 91 members. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I’ve come a long way from the 1^st issue which took me nearly 5 hours and didn’t really fit within the borders of the page. I’ve grown to enjoy it and I now look forward to the 2 hours each week where I get to reflect back on the previous week and tell our members what we’ve been doing to keep ourselves busy.

Along with farming, this summer has consisted of some lovely hikesa visit from my parents, visits from our friends Adam, Nicki, Eric and John, exploring small VT towns and back country roads, fishing and various artistic pursuits. I’ve done some sewing for myself and others and Mark has painted a few silk screens, including this one for a farm t-shirt, and just today finished the first draft of his book, My Best Friend Dave. We look forward to the next week in which I will be flying to Montana for a wedding and Mark will be busing to NYC to visit friends and then road tripping to North Carolina for a wedding as well. In early October, Mark’s Dad and Step-Mom will be coming for a visit. We’re hoping that the gorgeous fall colors stick around long enough for Joel and Deb to enjoy them.

Vermont has been good to us so far and it is with excitement and nervousness that I look toward this winter. We will be staying at Harvest Hill through the end of October. Most of our work time will be spent harvesting and washing thousands of pounds of carrots and potatoes as well as cleaning up the greenhouses and fields for their winter rest. Starting in November, Mark will be working at High Mowing Seeds, an organic seed company based in Wolcott, VT, packing and shipping seeds. I have just begun the job search and have yet to nail down winter employment. Whatever I do, I plan on leaving enough free time to volunteer with local domestic violence and sexual assault organizations. Vermont winters sound daunting with their freezing temperatures and limited daylight, but locals assure us that if you pick up an outdoor sport, the winter goes by a lot quicker. I’m hoping that X-C skiing will be my new favorite past time once the snow starts falling. Hopefully with the end of the season, we will have more time to update HYF and reflect upon the past season as well as giving you all updates on our Vermont lives.

Happy Fall!

Part of the onion harvest

Maggie, ready for the work day

Mushroom Mania

One of the great things about working at Harvest Hill is that every so often we get to go on field trips to other farms. Bill knows a lot of other farmers in the area and is committed to taking us on outings to learn about types of farming that he doesn’t do, such as mushrooms, herbs, and orchards. He wants this internship to be an educational experience as well as a taste of what running a functional farm entails.

On May 26^th, we went to Wild Branch Farm to learn about mushroom and mycelium cultivation. It was awesome. What some people may not know is that mushrooms are only a small portion of the organism known as mycelium. Mycelium is the main part of the organism and mushrooms are just the fruit of the mycelium. Glenn and his wife Cathy have a diverse farm involving vegetables, cows, goats and mushrooms. You can check out their website at www.wildbranchmushrooms.com The mushrooms they grow for market are oyster mushrooms, but Glenn is also interested in cultivating mycelium that will aid in environmental clean-up. As both primary and secondary decomposer, mycelium is effective in removing harmful elements from the surrounding area and consolidating the toxic elements it removes.

Glenn cultivates his mushrooms from wild mushrooms that he collects. Once he finds a mushroom he likes, he brings it into his lab and shakes it in front of this fan system while holding a Petri dish underneath to catch the spores. The Petri dishes are then left to grow more spores.
Once he has grown a strong enough culture, he then uses the spores he has grown to inoculate more Petri dishes and continues this cycle.
If the spawn is fully grown, but not immediately needed, it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to a year. Once he is ready to grow mushrooms from the cultures, he soaks barley or oats in hot water. Once the grain has cooled, he packs it into a vacuum seal-able bag and adds mushroom spawn. He then seals the bags and lets the spawn feed on the grain for approximately a month. Below are three pictures of these grain/spore mixtures in various stages of growth.

Once the spawn has fed on the barley for long enough, it’s time to add this mixture to straw. The first step in this process is to steam straw in a wood-oven fired steamer.

The straw is steamed for 4 hours and then left to cool for about 30 minutes. Once the straw is cool enough to handle, it is pitchforked onto a stainless steel table and mixed around to get all the hot pockets of leftover steam out. Next, the bag of spores and grain is opened and mixed into the straw. The grain has a very earthy, fungal smell, somewhat of a cross between tempeh, mushrooms and good soil. You can see Brandon partaking of the smell in the second photo down.

After the straw has been thoroughly inoculated with the spores, it is stuffed into giant bags made out of thick, greenhouse plastic. The straw is thoroughly compacted as too much air will cause the straw to grow bacteria and spoil the mushrooms. Next, the tops are tied off and small holes are cut in the bags to allow the mushrooms to emerge. It takes about two weeks for the mushrooms to poke through the bags and then another 5-10 days to become fully grown. Oyster mushrooms grow best at around 60-70 degrees with 90% humidity. Though many mushrooms can grow in the dark, oyster mushrooms need light to grow.

Glenn built a special room connected to his greenhouse for the mushroom bags to be hung. In the winter the room is heated by a wood stove, as is his greenhouse. He also set up a special drip line that drips water onto the walls, which helps control the humidity level in the room. The bags are hung on stands made out of rebar and left until the mushrooms mature.

Our afternoon at Wild Branch was great. Aside from learning about mushroom cultivation, we also got to see baby sheep and goats and Mark and I bought some of the best ground beef either of us have ever tasted. Glenn and his family have 200 acres and only 9 cows, so the free range cows have all the grass they could possibly want. There also seems to be something about meeting the farmer and seeing where the animal or plant lived out its days to make the food taste that much better. As an added bonus, Glen gave us a mushroom bag that had already fruited twice to bring back to the farm with us. As I write this, the bag has just started producing mushrooms again. Soon enough, we will be eating some very local oyster mushrooms!

Welcome to Harvest Hill

We finally made it. After 2.5 months on the road, then 4 months in Montana, then another month on the road, we arrived at Harvest Hill farm in Walden, VT on April, 17th. When we arrived, the farm looked like this:

With snow still on the ground, I was skeptical that there was any farming to be done, but 2 days later, our job started. The first weeks of work involved lots of seed starting in the greenhouse, transplanting seedlings into bigger trays, and eventually transplanting tomatoes from their trays into 5 rows in the greenhouse. We also did some outside work, primarily preparing the fields for planting. Bill even let me drive the tractor on day two! It was a little scary and I kept picturing myself somehow rolling this $28,000 machine or ramming it into a rock pile at the edge of the field. Needless to say, I did neither of those things and emerged from the day unscathed.

Our housing at Harvest Hill is a giant leap up from Montesino. Instead of living in an airstream trailer or a construction zone, we inhabit an old farmhouse that was built in 1919 and has a great view. Though it has its quirks, there is a working kitchen and indoor plumbing and all in all, it’s quite cozy. The house is heated by 2 woodstoves, one in the kitchen that can also be used for cooking and one in the basement. They are both excellent heat sources, putting off more heat than I would have imagined possible. Our first few nights here we really loaded the wood into the stove and managed to get the house up to 90 degrees before finally figuring out a good balance to keep the fire going all night, but also keep the house at a reasonable temperature.

A week and a half into our stay we got a surprise in the form of 16 inches of snow!


Maggie had to take bounding leaps to get anywhere and the snow was over the top of my mud boots.
The snow was picturesque and somewhat magical to behold. After a fairly dry winter in Montana, it was nice to see a little moisture.

Our first weekends were spent exploring the surrounding areas. We went to a great brewery, Trout River, which serves pizza on the weekends and took in a movie at the Catamount Arts Center in St. Johnsbury. We also familiarized ourselves with the local Co-op, Buffalo Mountain, and got library cards. Vermont is unique in that it has many functional, self sufficient, small towns. Most towns have a grocery store or co-op, library, post office, gas station and at least one good restaurant. One weekend we went into Montpelier, which is the smallest of all the state capitals, weighing in at around 8,000 people. Our boss, Bill, also informed us that it is the only state capital without a McDonald’s. While in Montpelier, we took in the opening day of the farmer’s market, went to a ‘Greenup Day’ festival and finished the evening at a craft brewery festival.

One Sunday we decided to hike Wheeler Mtn. Loop. It wasn’t a particularly strenuous hike, but it afforded some nice views at the top.


We also ran into our waitress from Trout River Brewery on our way back down. Vermont is a small state in more than one sense.

In the beginning of May, our co-workers and housemates, Brandon and Miranda and Miranda’s dog Cookie showed up. After a few days of Maggie making a great show of being the dominant dog, she and Cookie became good friends. On their 2nd day here, we all went for a walk in the woods surrounding the farm and Cookie met a porcupine. We think he must have tried to bite the porcupine, because his whole muzzle and nose were covered in literally hundreds of quills, as well as his paw and the inside of his mouth. The rest of the evening was spent holding Cookie still while Mark and Miranda pulled quills out with pliers. Cookie was a trooper, but finally enough was enough and he started biting any pliers that came near his face, putting an end to the quill extraction. The next day Miranda had to take him to the vet to get the rest of the quills removed. It turned out to be a good thing she did as there were quills stuck down in Cookie’s throat that we never would have been able to pull out while he was conscious. After a week or so of limping around, Cookie was back to his happy self. It’s been over a month and he has yet to encounter any more porcupines, so hopefully he learned his lesson. He is, however, still afraid of pliers, tucking his tail and slinking away any time one of us wields a pair.

The last month has been filled with transplanting, watering and weeding. 3 weeks ago we planted 13,000 onion plants in two days. Now we’re hand weeding those 13,000 onions. We spent a morning planting 1,700 pounds of potatoes. A good yield is 7-10 pounds of potatoes for every pound planted, meaning that we will be harvesting anywhere from 12,000 to 17,000 pounds of potatoes, come fall. Other veggies we have planted into the fields include broccoli, cabbage, head lettuce, lettuce mix, carrots, radishes, beets, kale, chard, brussel sprouts, peas, beans, corn, basil, winter squash, summer squash, artichokes, peppers, cherry tomatoes, eggplant and sweet potatoes. We have also spent countless hours, weeding, pruning and mulching blueberry plants and transplanting flowers.

All in all, we really love Vermont and our experience at Harvest Hill so far. Bill is a good boss, our location is gorgeous and the surrounding communities are welcoming and lovely. For such a small population, there is a lot going on, including Vaudeville shows, puppet troops, 5K races, agriculture/sustainability fairs and lots of farmer’s markets. It’s good to finally be here. I will leave you with a few more photos.View from Route 2, near the farm.


A storm rolling in over the greenhouses.


The onion patch before we planted 1,300 onions.


The view from our front porch.