9-13-10

THRESHOLD FARM

WITH A MOO MOO HERE AND A MOO MOO THERE

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET

COMICE PEARS

APPLE RECORDS

Threshold Farm is our new home. It represents the 20th and final farm on our WWOOFing adventure. In two weeks, we will no longer be volunteer migrant farmers. What we will be in two weeks remains up in the air, but seeing how we've lived the past 9 months of our lives floating in the breeze, we see no reason to panic and plan out our entire future. Let come what may!

This farm just south of Albany is biodynamic. Hannah (originally from Germany) and Hugh (originally from Australia) know Jeff "The Barefoot Farmer" Poppen, who we stayed with this winter. They also know Luke Frye, the winemaker who purchases biodynamic grapes from Annelle and Thurston at Clover Creek Family Farm. The biodynamic farming community proves it is a small world after all.

Perhaps the most important resource a biodynamic farmer uses and learns from is Steiner's Agriculture Course. On this trip, we have looked for the famous work. We saw it once out west, but never had proper time to read through it. Of all the book stores we've visited and searched through, we have never been able to locate a copy for ourselves. But Eurika! At last, we have found not one, but three copies here. One edition is an advanced printing, one is a British translation, and one is an American English translation. Steiner delivered eight lectures during a week in the summer of 1924, and we intend to read one each night (from the American English translation) for the next several days, all the while asking Hannah and Hugh to help elaborate on topics and ideas we have trouble understanding. Agriculture Course is a bible of sorts, and just like that slightly more famous text, people live obsessively by its words, re-reading over and over and over. We'll admit, it's a little crazy, but we must read it once in order to form our own opinion.

The farm here is beautiful. There is an apple orchard, pear orchard, and peach orchard. There are 3 pigs, over 20 cows, over 20 chickens, several ducks, and many acres of vegetables. Hannah and Hugh have two young children, Christopher and Emma, who are in 3rd grade and 2nd grade, respectively. Our first day on the farm saw us changing a fence enabling the cows to graze in a new area, and harvesting carrots, tomatoes, and green beans. After a siesta, we cleaned onions and tied corn ears together for drying. Our initial impression here is extremely positive; we suspect we'll get along very well with this family, and learn a tremendous amount about biodynamic farming.

9-6-10 **VIDEO INCLUDED**

BETTY BEAVER

After nearly three full weeks, today was our last day at Juniper Hill Farm. In order to finish what we started, we skinned the greenhouse today. With several extra hands on board, we managed to get the massive sheet of plastic over the bows and tightly secured around the frame. Adam remarked several times that this is the tightest skin he's ever seen on a greenhouse.

GREENHOUSE HIGH TUNNEL VIDEO


Juniper Hill provided us with a lot of firsts: first melon of the season, first tomato of the season, first time this season preserving for the winter, first tractor ride, and first farmer's market we worked at. We truly enjoyed all of those new things and all our days here, especially the companionship with Melody and Adam. We also spent our time at Juniper Hill reinforcing lessons we've learned along our trip. We realize the knowledge we have acquired on this trip is invaluable and will help us grow great fruits and vegetables of our own some day, but at the same time, we are not fooling ourselves into believing we are now equipped to run a farm of our own. Dream as we may, we are not nearly ready to start our own farm yet. We've basically just completed our freshman year of farming. In order to become a seasoned expert, you do truly need seasons of experience.

Of all the new we've experienced here, there are some voids still left for us to hopefully fill at our next and final stop. Watermelons, apples, pears, and winter squash...we're coming for you.

9-5-10

DON'T MAKE ME CUT THIS SQUASH!!

PATTY PAN

DRIVIN' ALONG IN MY AUTOMOBILE

MEL PICKING HERBS

MEL'S HOUSE

Sunday is a work day here because Monday is a market day. It's strange, even when we've worked on weekends at other farms, usually we'd work Saturday and have Sunday off. Here, it's the opposite. To get ready for Monday's market, we have to harvest everything on Sunday. It feels nice and Jewish not to work on Saturday.

Today we harvested: peppers, eggplants. squash, zucchini, lettuce mix, broccoli, greenhouse tomatoes, spinach, and green beans. These will all go to market tomorrow, in addition to the beets, carrots, leeks, onions and potatoes we harvested the other day. When we first arrived at Juniper Hill, the produce growing all over these 15 acres was overwhelming and we had to walk around for a while just to find what we needed to harvest. But at this point, doing all that harvesting has become routine. We know where everything is, we know how much we need to harvest, we know just the right way to do it, and we know what to do with it once we've harvested it. For so long on this trip we did every chore possible besides harvesting. Due to the inclement weather we found nearly everywhere we stayed, we rarely harvested anything. Now, all we do is harvest. And it's great!

Being the patient, good teacher he is, Adam taught us to ride one of his tractors. After some lessons and seeing how parts worked, we tilled in the summer's finished crop of sweet corn. No matter what happens from here on out, Aaron can always say he drove an old, beat up, rusty Ford tractor wearing dirty overalls with gunk under his fingernails. He sure was a real farmer for at least a half an hour, and nobody can ever take that away from him! And no matter what, Jen can always say she has never once in her first 28 years been taught to drive any sort of stick shift vehicle. Maybe in the next 28 years...

9-3-10

ELIZABETHTOWN FARMER'S MARKET

GOT ID?

The Adirondack State Park is unique in that the park is livable; unlike the majority of state parks and national parks, you can actually live here. When one thinks of a state or a national park, ideas of recreation, hiking, learning, swimming, camping, etc abound. But no one ever thinks, "Hey's let's move into Yosemite National Park!" And why not? Well, for this obvious reason: it is illegal. On most state or national park service property, and you cannot buy land and build a house within their boundaries. But in the Adirondack State Park, you can. This park model was experimental back in the day, and apparently other countries are trying to create parks with livable communities in them. The idea of having protected land with recreational opportunities in an established community seems like an amazing idea. Or does it?

Trouble is, these established communities were developed years ago for reasons very different than recreation. They were built on the foundation of logging, mining, fishing, and other natural resource stripping. Some time ago, people got upset, and exclaimed "You can't cut down all the trees! You can't mine all the metals! You can't bottle all the water! We're going to preserve this land!" But when that happened, almost all the jobs that citizens were dependent upon vanished. What does a coal mining town do when mining is prohibited? What does a logging company do when it can no longer log? Why, lay off hundreds and hundreds of its employees. And then what happens to those communities? Today, we are finding out.

It is really an ongoing experiment. Across the lake, Champlain that is, VT has long been establishing its brand new identity. When people think of Vermont, they think of skiing, cheese, education, teddy bears. VT was clever enough to re-brand itself, and people love VT and visit and spend millions every year. Tourism is huge there, and they are proud to support only VT products. Here, it's a bit different. There are huge vacation areas in the Adirondacks, like Lake Placid, but mostly, all the sleepy towns scattered throughout this park are in serious economic trouble. Seems like half the homes we drive past are for sale; seems like only old timers live here. Everyone leaves, because everyone knows there is no future in a dead region like upstate New York. The average family income in "The North Country" hovers around $30,000 per year. People struggle for work, especially in the winter when tourists don't visit.

Years ago, everyone only supported their local food economy, because there was no such thing as food from other states, let alone other countries. But now, with the advent of cheap food in supermarkets, cheap products at Wal-Mart, cheap gas, cheap everything, people find themselves living cheap, cheated lives up here. And so if everyone continues fleeing the impoverished rural areas all over the US and heads to the city for brighter pastures, who's going to tend those abandoned pastures, and feed all the billions of people in the city? Can city folk continue to expect 6-figure salaries and refuse to buy non-uniform shaped fruits and vegetables while 4-5% of America struggles to grow food for 95% earning barely 5-figure salaries?

9-2-10

WEIGH IN

BUCKETS OF FUN FOR EVERYONE

GREENHOUSE SKELETON

DON'T CRY, THEY'RE ONLY ONIONS

One of Aaron's favorite foods, or arguably his most favorite, is potatoes. So one would think that today would be his most favorite day on the farm: the day we dug them up.

Although we didn't plant any potatoes on our journey, we cared for them at several farms. At two farms in Oregon we concentrated on covering the leaves of young potato plants with soil to encourage stronger root growth and more prodigious tubers. Digging potatoes here partially completed our understanding of the life cycle of the potato crop. Missing out on planting is a big gap we hope to fill one day. Traveling has been spectacular, but it's hard not being at the same place and watching the same plants for an entire year; however we do understand the basics by seeing crops at different stages on different farms and this knowledge is both rewarding and helpful.

The potato harvest at Juniper Hill was no easy task. Two factors were hinderances to the quantity of potatoes we harvested: 1) weeds 2) sandy soil. The massive amounts of weeds that were allowed to grow at least three and a half feet tall made it nearly impossible to find the raised beds the potatoes were planted under, let alone find the potato plant itself. Also, the plant leaves had died, so locating the withered leaves after ridding the area of the weeds was like trying to find Waldo in "Where's Waldo?" The weeds stole precious nutrients in an already nutrient deprived sandy soil, so the potatoes themselves were on the smaller side. These were no Russet Burbanks. We still managed to harvest hundreds of pounds of taters.

We harvested new potatoes, which should be eaten immediately. Storage potatoes are harvested later in the fall. Their extra time in the ground toughens their skins and readies them to last throughout a long winter. When harvesting storage potatoes, the leaves have long since stopped photosynthesizing and despite the dead looking leaves, the tubers below are fine and developing their thick skin. During the Great Irish Potato Famine, blight attacked the potato crop and when all the potato leaves wilted and died the Irish farmers believed their crop was unharmed, as leaf wilting was not an unusual occurrence. The blight didn't just cause the leaves to look withered as they always do, and nobody suspected anything was wrong. Unfortunately it hadn't only harmed the leaves but killed all the roots as well. Fortunately for Adam and Melody their tubers were all in tact below their dead leaves, it was simply a matter of locating them and then digging, digging, digging.

9-1-10

MIND THE GAP

GERONIMO!!!!!!

DOGGY PADDLE

WORKING HARD

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

ON AN ISLAND IN THE SUN

STAND BY ME

It was so brutally hot today, we left the farm around 3pm and went swimming. At Little Falls, we jumped off the rocks and plunged our bodies into cool clean water. It was so badly needed.

Something that is questionably needed is plastic. Juniper Hill Farm has, under the majority of their crops, black plastic. The plastic is laid over entire rows, directly after tilling and fertilizing with manure and compost. Immediately after tilling the soil and adding compost and fertilizer, weed seeds germinate. Normally at this time they grow out of control and begin to take over, but the plastic wrap blocks the sunlight and suppresses their growth. After a two week period, all the weeds die back and the soil underneath the plastic is warm, nutrient rich, and ready to receive transplants. Melody and Adam transplant their starters in holes they dig through the plastic. If you tried putting the plastic down over the transplant, it would be a nightmare situation. By transplanting through the plastic, you create a weed free environment that retains moisture and heat, both beneficial to encouraging the crops you transplant to thrive.

The only problem with utilizing plastic in your field, aside from the cost spent on the material and the time spent laying it down, is what to do at the end of the season. The plastic must be changed each year to be fully effective. In Lewis County, there is a free plastic recycling program, where county workers come and pick up the plastic for free and recycle it. It is a system that works very well here, but other farmers in this area frown upon the practice. We've seen plastic used on other farms, and there's no doubt, it does wonders for stopping weeds, and in our opinion, melons, tomatoes, and okra could never grow so well in this north country climate without the plastic. The black plastic makes the soil warmer, attracts sunlight, and creates a micro-climate well suited for growing heat loving crops. We're learning that "organic" doesn't always mean old school. State of the art techniques are used on organic farms throughout the country to meet the demand and match the output of conventional farms. Progress should be celebrated. But for some reason, it's just hard to ignore all the environmental implications of all the plastic use.

8-31-10

SAMMY TIME

DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?

PICKIN' PEPPERS

ERNEST & TAMMY'S LOVE CHILD

The heat wave has officially hit. It's been in the upper 90's since Saturday and there is no sign of it breaking. We had such a cold, wet winter and spring we finally feel like we've found summer. Working in the fields in the blazing heat and humidity turns already physically demanding work into physically exhausting work.

We are not the only ones feeling the effects of the heat: the crops are too. Certain plants, specifically sungold tomatoes and lettuces are not tolerant of the heat. The lettuces are wilting and the sungold tomatoes get soft and crack, rendering them useless. The only time to harvest these two crops are first thing in the early hours of the day, before the sun is beating down on them. If you harvest lettuce early in the morning and immediately submerge it in cold well water, the heat of the fields is washed away and the crisp lettuce can live in the cooler for several days. If you harvest this same lettuce in the middle of the day, under the noon sun, it won't even make it through the evening. For the sungolds, the heat not only alters their texture, but also their flavor. Typically sungolds are the sweetest, most wonderful burst of deliciousness imaginable, but in the sun not only do they get mushy and crack, they lose much of their trademark flavor.

The squash, field tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and okra, on the other hand are thriving in this tropical climate. If Adam and Melody knew to expect this heat, they would have planted mangos! All these vegetables are growing so vigorously they must be harvested every day now, instead of every few days in normal summer temperatures. The heat has also worked wonders for the melons. The asian sun jewels are all ripe and harvested and the cantaloupes are finally ready. Next up: watermelons. Any day now...