Gildrien Farm

 
 
A few weeks ago we had a clean-up day to deal with the aftermath of the flooding. Honestly, we'd been pretty depressed about the whole thing - losing that field this year, plus the winter plantings we can't plant, plus the potential of having it happen again, plus the thought of all that food going to waste - and we took up the offer that Annie Harlow made to put our clean-up day out to the ACORN network because we figured if we got a few more hands, we could get it over with more quickly.

Well, we sure got some more hands.
Those hands included the entire Middlebury College men's soccer team, several of our CSA members, some friends, and a couple of folks hardly even know. It was humbling and gratifying to watch all the energy that these people brought to the work of tearing out plants, pulling up plastic, hauling potatoes, and making the biggest compost pile we've ever had.

It was also incredibly efficient - in literally an hour and a half, our team of 30+ people did what would have been at least two weeks of work for Jeremy and Brian. And it was almost fun! Such an amazing gift to receive from our community.

We've also been touched by all the people who stopped by our stand and the market to ask how we're doing and buy an extra squash or two.

As climate change makes big weather like Irene more likely and alters the patterns of the seasons, farmers are going to have to adapt in a lot of different ways. Perhaps that gorgeous river-bottom soil will have to be limited to orchards or pasture. Clearly diversification is going to be increasingly important - if we'd been growing only winter squash, we'd be totally screwed. And I think community is going to become more and more important as well - for work parties, for investment in new ideas, for moral support.

So the good thing about having lost our field was that we got to see our community in action. And that was pretty great.

(Thanks to Annie Harlow for the photos.)
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From the last indoor winter market.
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We won't be at the market tomorrow (the 21st) because all the wet weather got us a bit behind & threw off the succession plantings. But we should be back next week with lots of goodies, and we're getting really excited for CSA!
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Fall is here 09/19/2010
 
Yikes! September!

The summer seems to be pretty thoroughly over, though the Eye in the Sky claims that there's some more warm weather coming. We've gotten about to the end of the summer foods - we gave pretty much the last of the tomatoes and definitely the last of the cukes  to the CSA this week - and the fall goodies are coming in. The cherry tomatoes are the only thing still going in the greenhouse, which has been mostly taken over by drying onions and curing winter squash, but even they are starting to look tired.
We're getting ready to start on our new greenhouses - just got the building permits last week. Soon we'll rip all the tomato plants out of this house and plant some spinach and carrots, probably; the big new one will be our tomato house next year and this one will probably be our plant house, where we'll start all our seedlings. The third one will be much smaller, and probably an experimental house, a place to play with new ideas.  It's pretty exciting to contemplate the possibilities of all this new greenhouse space - even though we don't heat our greenhouses, they provide enough protection to really change the scope of what it's possible to grow up here, and we're really looking forward to exploring that a lot more in the coming seasons.
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Tomatoes! 06/27/2010
 
Yes, the tomato plant is a foot taller than I am.
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Spring snow 04/28/2010
 
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After a beautifully sunny week, it's snowed about an inch over the past two days. It's supposed to be in the high seventies over the weekend.

And that's spring in Vermont.
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Hello, sunshine! 04/03/2010
 
Shorts, sandals, and a tank top - what month is this, anyway? It was in the 80s today at the farm, and I spent the day pulling the mulch off the garlic. The "weed-free seed-free" rye straw that we mulched with ended up being neither of those things, so I also spent the day weeding the garlic. I might be a little sunburned, but it was great to be outside in the sun.

Two weeks ago, it got down to six degrees overnight. I was a little worried about the spinach, carrots, peas, and onions growing in the greenhouse. When Jeremy went out early in the morning, everything was frozen solid, but by 10 it had all thawed out and looked great - just like it's supposed to do! Pretty exciting. We've started tentatively harvesting the spinach, and the carrots are getting bigger by the day. Horray for spring!

You can see some more photos from today over on the photos page, under The Season Begins!
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