The Season is Under Way!

Well, I moved to the farm almost a week ago, but I've only been farming full time for the past two days since my last exam was on Tuesday... which means that I am officially done with my college career! Life has begun! I can't tell you how amazing it is to be living each day, doing what it is I love, on my own terms, at my own pace! This has already been such a great experience for me, but it has had no shortage of challenges!

Before I get into the craziness that has been my life as Farmer Claire for the past couple days I'll just say that the garlic continues to get bigger and more beautiful every day. It feels so good to see something growing as we get the season started. It's a reminder of all the wonderful things that lie ahead!

Before I begin, let me say that this is me being completely real about my learning curve in an attempt to keep things honest and open... I'm having a blast but I don't know everything. So this is as much a discovery process as it is a very familiar comfortable way of life for me...

Alright, so this week I realized that I needed to lime our soil heavily before Fred came to plow on Wednesday since we need to raise our pH by a full point! However, Wednesday morning arrived, and since I had been in Burlington the day before finishing up my exam and running errands I totally forgot to purchase the lime! So I frantically called Ben at 9:00am (who was still in Burlington) in an attempt to figure out how we could calculate the amount of lime to use... after consulting many books, our brains, and our soil test we decided that I only had a couple hours til Fred would arrive and it was more important to have some lime on than none at all (We've since figured it out and will apply the rest soon).

Instead of continuing to freak out I pulled myself together, picked up some lime from Central Supplies and spread fifteen 40 pound bags of lime over the first half acre. We know that's far less than we will need, but at least it was something. Our soil looked like a light snow had fallen on it...

Fred arrived that afternoon and did a fantastic job roughing up the ground. He went back over the area we limed with his plow and then turned over the new parcel I marked out behind the barn.

When Fred was done, my worst fears were reality... there were huge rocks everywhere. 

So today I spent the better part of my morning out there with a demolition bar, trying my darndest to get as many of the big ones moved as I could... but with it being so muddy and the ground being so uneven the tractor was no use. I had to give up... Hopefully after the rain lets up I'll be able to make a bigger dent in the boulders out there. For now I've decided to focus my energy on other things.

Like the plants! I think I've got about 40 trays seeded at the moment. 

I've been using a soil block maker which takes a bit longer than the plastic seed trays to set up, but it has a much smaller ecological footprint which is why I'm sticking with it! 

Those little seedling trays have taken up all the temporary space 

I had set up for them in the hoop house, so today Jake gave me some carpentry lessons as we constructed our first hoop house table out of the hemlock we got from the Howards! Soon the whole greenhouse will be full of those tables. I have to be honest, I'm really happy with how it turned out. I can't wait to make more!

Finally, before I head to bed I have to let you know that our t-shirts have arrived! We got them done at Green Mountain Imprints in Shelburne. 

They've got our farm logo on the front and a great line drawing of the barn and the hoop house that Jake designed for us (it may look very familiar as it has appeared on this blog once before) on the back.

These lovely shirts come in red, navy blue, chocolate brown, or a mossy-green color. They are printed on organic cotton and are $18.00. Shoot me an email if you'd like one!

New Life

Ben and I ventured down to the farm this weekend to find the hoop house steamy and very much alive at a toasty 75 degrees! There were even a few dandelions mixed in there. I have to admit that I was really relieved to feel just how warm it was despite the light snowfall outside! I knew the hoop house was a good purchase, it's just really nice to see that we did everything correctly and it's working really well! I can't wait to get seedlings in there!

I spent a good deal of the afternoon on Sunday peeling stickers 

off the banana boxes my mom so graciously collected for me during her afternoons volunteering down at the food shelf. These boxes were then laid out over the entire floor of the  hoop house. It was so sad to have to put cardboard down and smother the new life that had emerged in our absence, but we really can't have grass growing in the hoop house. Next weekend we are hoping to begin building the tables that will hold our seedlings so we need to have the grass under control. 

Now that the cardboard is down we will put a layer of mulch hay down on top of that which should suppress the weeds entirely.

This weekend Jake and Ben worked really hard to get the window and the door installed in the hoop house. I don't

 know what I would have done without those boys. 

I am not very handy and find myself much more useful on the vegetable growing side of things, although I am learning slowly. So, as you can imagine, having the boys there to aid me in the finishing touches of the hoop house was such a gift! Hopefully next weekend we can finish the roll up sides, and the structural aspects of the hoop house will be finished!

In addition to getting the hoop house opened up, I also moved Sunny's paddock from behind the barn to run on the uphill side of our plot and then open up out into the far field. In the space that freed up I was able to plot out the next chunk of land we'll be tilling up for use this season. In a few weeks Fred will be coming back to break that ground and incorporate lime over both plots, and then we'll be all set to start the season in the soil!!

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, the garlic we planted last fall has broken through the

 mulch we laid, and it looks great! This is our first crop poking up through the ground, and we couldn't be happier about it. It's a pretty small amount, unfortunately not enough to give out in this year's CSA. Instead we are planning to save this garlic seed, and we're thinking we'll end up with about 400 cloves to plant this fall, which will be more than enough for next year's CSA. So I suppose that's something to look forward to!

Before I sign off, I just want to mention that we still have CSA shares available, as well as pork by the half pig, so please write us and check out our brochure. So keep spreading the word, we so appreciate it!

Breaking Ground

This is the story of two new farmers starting a Community Supported Agriculture(CSA) venture in Randolph, Vermont this spring. Let's get acquainted...

This is Ben. He's a Sustainable Landscape Horticulture major at the University of Vermont who has been working with the apple orchards up at the UVM Horticulture Research Center for the past two years. He graduates this spring.

On our farm he's the tractor man, the tinker, and the woodsman. He's the technical brains and the brute strength of the operation. He makes a mean tofu stir fry and loves live music more than monkeys love bananas.

And I'm Claire... an Ecological Agriculture major with a minor in Community International Development who will also be graduating from UVM this spring. For the past two summers I've worked on veggie farms, in 2007 I worked on Old Shaw Farm and this summer I worked on Common Ground Student Run Farm up at the UVM Horticulture Research Center. This will be my first time running a CSA of my own, and I couldn't be more excited!

On our farm I'm the business coordinator, overall organization guru, and veggie mastermind. I'll be the one organizing the CSA shareholders and developing crop rotation and planting schedules. I LOVE carrot cake and my favorite word is zesty. I also enjoy finger painting and contra dancing.

So, what is Sundora Farm? Well, Sundora Farm is a mixed vegetable farm that will be offering 20 CSA shares to anyone who is interested in being a shareholder for the 2009 growing season. And what does it mean to be a shareholder? It means that before the season begins you make a payment to the farm in exchange for 17 weeks of fresh, pesticide-free, local produce that you pick up at the farm once a week on CSA Pick Up Day(we haven't figured out what day yet). It also means that you (and your children if you have them) have a farm to visit as often as you like to learn about agriculture and what it means to be sustainable. As new farmers, we are excited to put our collegiate knowledge to good use, and we want to share as much as we can with you! The more we know about how our food is grown and where it comes from, the more equipped we are to make responsible, healthy decisions for both ourselves and the environment.

And, how did we get the name Sundora Farm? Well, there are two animals on our farm that we love, and wanted to include in this new business...
This is Sunny. He's the 27 year old Morgan that my parents have had for the past few years. He's a grounds keeper of sorts, you know, he mows the grass behind the barn and keeps an eye on the perimeter. He'll be keeping us company as we work right next to his paddock this spring.

And this is Dora. She's our 5 year old Briard that acts as a watch dog and frisbee catching machine. In the summer she likes to swim in the pond and run in figure 8's around Sunny despite his lack of excitement at her shenanigans.
So we took Dora and Sunny and fused them to become Sundora. We plan to design a Dora-Sunny hybrid creature soon which I'm sure will appear on numerous T-shirts and other things as the season begins.

Right now on the farm, certain things have to happen before the winter arrives, so Ben and I come down to Randolph from Burlington on the weekends as often as we can. Yesterday we planted garlic.

Garlic is a crop that should be planted right about now, in mid October, and mulched with some sort of mulch hay or straw to be left in the ground during the winter months and into the spring(if you look back up at the picture of Ben, he's spreading mulch on the freshly planted garlic). We decided to plant just a little bit of German Extra Hardy garlic to see how it does in our soil.

We also need to plow the 1/2 acre where our veggies will be, just to break up the sod and start working on soil aeration. We tried cultivating it with the rototiller that my parents own, but it just wasn't doing the trick since this soil hasn't been tilled in 20 to 30 years. We need some help since we don't have the equipment we need to get the job done, so a man by the name of Fred is going to come over this week with his plow to turn the soil. That way next week when we come back to the farm we can plant winter rye as a cover crop. Winter rye adds organic matter to the soil and covers it to prevent erosion from happening. This is a picture of the land that will eventually be vegetables come spring... we'll call this the before picture.

Yesterday we also took a soil sample to give to the soil lab up at UVM to see what kind of nutrients, pH, organic matter, and nutrient holding capacity our soil has. Once we have that information we'll know how much compost we'll need to incorporate into the soil.

Next weekend, in addition to seeding the winter rye, we'll start the process of erecting a hoop house for starting seedlings in, so keep an eye out for that!

Til next week, enjoy the fall colors and remember to support local farmers!!