Gleanings Farm

Fourteen years ago, on a cold February weekend, Eric, our 10 month old son, Eli and I went driving around rural upstate New York, looking for a place to settle. We had actually wanted to stay in Massachusetts, but a combination of high land and real estate prices and Eric's grandparents' (who would come to live with us and whose needs for care were a big part of our motivation to move) false European perception that somehow Massachusetts was much colder than upstate NY meant that New York was our best option. We explored, we adventured, we fell in love with the Schoharie Valley and its…
  (Athena takes her ease) A couple of readers have asked me to describe all the people and critters on our farm - they are newer readers or old ones who know things have changed a bit but not how, so I thought I'd do a series of short posts introducing you the residents.  For some reason, I thought we'd start with the cats. The cats are the only true pets on our farm.  That doesn't mean they don't have a purpose - they do, of course, the obvious pet control,  but ultimately we'd have them (although probably not quite so many) even if we had no use for them.  We're just kinda cat people.  I…
The season cycled over the weekend - officially it is not quite spring, but in fact, spring now has a toe hold. Even if it goes back to chilly or even snows, the ground is too warm for it to last, by the end of an unusually warm week the grass will be green and the soil dried enough to move forward. That doesn't mean my (optimistic) plantings of peas and bok choy, spinach and sweet peas may not stagnate or my fruit tree blooms get caught by frost (we can't even say a late frost, it is two months to my last frost date, and anything can happen in upstate NY and usually does), that the boys in…
Probably the biggest loss to last year's flooding in upstate New York was my potato crop. I could have dug them by the end of August, but as the saying goes "shoulda but didnta." It was a warm summer and potatoes stay better in the ground in August here than they do in my house - unless, of course, they are under 3 feet of water. The big loss wasn't the potatoes I had planned to eat all winter, although that was a pity - I can buy potatoes from farms that weren't flooded, up on higher ground. What I lost were 5 years of saved potato seed, varieties initially purchased and now adapted to…
Spring is a trick of the light - it should be, after all, since ultimately the shift of seasons is about angles and sun. At some point in March the light changes - a new "certain slant of light" and thus, spring is here. It will be a while most years before the green and the daffodils or even the spring peepers arrive in upstate NY, but in the meantime, the sky and the air and the angle of sun says spring. Seed starting is in full swing now and I sometimes feel I spend far too many of my days elbow deep in potting soil - but the smell of moist compost is energizing as well. It is…
I thought y'all might want to see as well as hear what's going on around here. First, there's the baby goats: (Asher with Midori) (Isaiah holding Margarita) (Poppy nurses little Grog. Stout is in the background waiting his turn.) The baby goats aren't the only baby things we have in profusion: (Marigold gave us 8 baby Cinnamon Rabbits, while Rosemary followed with another five.) (Mama hen and her babies) Meanwhile, the harvest is coming apace! Everything is growing like weeds (including the weeds!). Check out the boys in the raspberry patch. They don't leave us much! (Lavatera in…
We shared two cherry tomatoes this morning, the first ripe ones of the year, and that, to us, is the proof we're fully into high summer. If I don't pick the zucchini every day, I'm sorry. The weather is hot and sultry, the apricots are close to ripe and the peaches are following. The boys drown in fruit every day - it is the one thing I can't say no to. The fireflies sparkle like fireworks. The kids live in the creek and under the sprinkler, and seem to stretch out daily, getting taller, stronger, learning new things. Tonight we're headed to a baseball game (local minor league) - what…
Last night as I went about my chores, I was mulling over a possible post on how farming is actually easier than most people think it is. I'm winding up a stretch of time where Eric and the boys have been in NYC visiting Grandma, while I stayed at home to tend the farm. While Eric and I don't have a very gendered division of labor, we do have our customary tasks. Eric does floors, I do roofs, He does engines, I cut wood, I can, he bakes, when we had babies, I did input (nursing) and he did output (diaper changes). I got all self-satisfied about how well I was managing by myself, which of…
I came home last Monday night after three days spent in Washington working on business for the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, and it was one of the most glorious homecomings I could imagine. Not only was there the joy of coming home to my boys and Eric, but also my home is more like paradise in June than at any moment. (Mac the Marshmallow waiting to welcome me home) We're headed into the transition point from spring to summer, and you can feel it. The spring bulbs are behind us, the peonies are in bloom, the animals are fat and happy on lush growth, and there are jars of…
Crap. We've had so much flooding (not the house, thankfully, but the creek has breached its banks, the driveway is flooded and the barn has about a ton of much-needed ;-P mud added to it) that I have to cancel our planned open farm day this Sunday. We're just not going to be in shape for it, and I'd be too worried about stuck cars and kids not familiar with the property near the creek. Profuse apologies for all of you planning on coming - this sucks - and there's more rain in the forecast. Still, no harm done, we're way better off than those near the Mississippi, and we'll plan another…
It has been kind of quiet here, because well, it is spring, and that means that all my primary focus has shifted outside the house. The period from May 1 to June 15 is the busiest, craziest, wildest period of the year, and the shoulder season, ie, the month of April, its biggest rival. We have six baby goats on the ground right now, with two more does due this weekend and five more due in July. I'll be posting the "goats for sale" list very soon - we'll have a 1 year old buck (Goldenrod), at least one senior milking doe and at least one baby, and later in the season, we'll have two doelings…
Ok, have you always wanted to come to see the farm? Here's your chance. On Sunday, May 22, we're having an open farm day from 10am to 4pm at our place at 43 Crow Hill Road Delanson, NY 12053. We're about 45 minutes west of Albany in rural upstate NY. We will have baby goats to pet, baby rabbits (hopefully), chicks and ducklings, milking and scything demos, some kid activities (if we can get them to do any activities, rather than just racing around and playing in the creek ;-)). I'll also have books, vegetable, herb and flower plants, eggs and herbs for sale, and maybe other stuff as well…
(Just in case you didn't grow up in the 1980s and need the reference.) Two years ago, we bought Jessie the goat from our friends Jamey and Carol. We wanted Jessie because of her great genetics - she's a milk machine, and a sturdy, healthy goat who makes stunning babies. Zahra, her first daughter is still one of their best does. Her brother was sold as a breeding buck. We were thrilled to be getting Jessie. Even more thrilled because Jessie swiftly became my favorite milker. (Sshhhhh, don't tell the others I play favorites.) She's sweet, she's gentle, she's easy going - whatever you do…
Well, first there's the baby goats. Last Friday, we collected our foster goat, Tayish. He belongs to a friend from our synagogue who won him in a raffle, believe it or not. He's a 10 week old wether, and the kids have made a pet of him. Here's Simon holding him: Then, on Sunday, Bast gave us our first birth and our first doe of the season, Calliope. It was nice for Bast that she just had the one little one - last year in her first season she had triplets! Each season's babies name choices have a "theme" - this year is Greek mythology. Calliope was a (probably hopeless) expression of…
Life has been proceeding more or less apace, and it feels like a long time since I've sat down and contemplated anything, much less my Anyway Project goals. At the same time, all this business is a series of steps on the way to actually many of the things done. I hope that's true of all of you! As you'll remember, the goal of the Anyway project is to integrate our preparations for a harder future with our daily life now, to turn them many parts into a whole. As I wrote previously: The larger idea of the Anyway Project is to make our lives work more smoothly. Most of us stand with feet in…
Jessie finally kidded early Monday morning, giving us a solid ten baby goats, five does and five bucks. And on Thursday while celebrating one of my best friends' birthdays, we set them almost all out on parade (we ran out of kids to hold them before we ran out of kids to be held): (From left to right, Isaiah and Poppy, Simon and Hemp, Josiah and Marshmallow, Asher and Heliotrope, Gideon and Stachys, and Rachel and Licorice.) Missing from the lineup are Calendula (seen here in a not-terribly flattering picture of me - Calendula is the top doe, Licorice is hanging out on the bottom) And here…
Wendell Berry has an essay in which he argues that the greatest single evidence for the merits of British culture is that they developed sixty-five breeds of sheep: What does it mean that an island not much bigger than Kansas or more than twice the size of Kentucky should have developed sixty or so breeds of sheep? It means that many thousands of farmers were paying the most discriminating attention, not only to their sheep, but also to the nature of their local landscapes and economies, for a long time. They were responding intelligently to the requirement of local adaptation. The result…
The first thing you need to know about my farm is that it is huge. I mean enormous - by world standards. The vast majority of the world's farms - more than 80%, are very small farms, of less than 2 hectares (about 5 acres), and they produce the majority of the world's staple crops and calories. I suspect most folks in most of the Global North will find that a little surprising. The term "farm" in the US tends be applied most often to very large farms. We have a strong internal sense that small scale agriculture is particularly unsuited to growing staples. Most small farms in the US…