Today, we got some snow. Not much, but it was enough to get the kids excited and to cause some changes on the farm.

The birds didn't get to go out of the coop. They love to get outdoors and scratch around for bugs and other tasty tidbits, so when they don't get their freedom, they get upset. Snow and cold temperatures can hurt their feet and combs.

I plugged in the oil pan heater on the tractor, too. Since it's been so cold, that helps to get it started during the winter. We use the tractor to plow the lane to the road. I enjoy doing it more than I thought I would.

I'm also happy that we got a delivery of firewood last weekend. Although we have a lot of trees on the farm, I wasn't able to spend much time on firewood this year. We love, love, love the wood furnace, so we'd much rather spend the money on wood than propane.

Which reminds me: I forgot to water the seedlings in the greenhouse today. (We have a propane furnace in there, too.) The broccoli sprouts will be ready to eat soon, but the lettuces haven't germinated. Sometime in January, we'll have Tom Thumb and mache salads.

-Brian

Today, we will be eating our first farm-raised turkey. My sister-in-law is roasting it today, and I'm excited to bring this experience full-circle.

In May, we received a batch of 15 Holland White heritage turkeys. By the time that we had them slaughtered, we were down to 11, and now we have four. One tom and three hens make up our breeding flock.

Anyone who has visited the farm in the last few months has inevitably been followed around by a flock of gobbling turkeys. There were a lot of toms in the bunch, so they were loud, loud, loud! Now that there's only one male left, the gobbles don't sound so powerful.

At least one of the hens has taken to sitting on eggs, both chicken and turkey. Turkeys are not the most graceful birds, so a few typically are cracked by the time that we gather them. I'll be anxious to see how well the birds sit in Spring.

There's always something to anticipate on the farm. I'm thankful for that.

-Brian

We got the turkeys processed this morning. Since they were so much bigger than the chickens and we are not equipped with things like killing cones, we decided to pay someone else to do it. They're in the freezer right now.

I can't wait to eat one. Before we started on our "organic trip," I loved getting whole turkeys. It gave me a great excuse to cook multiple meals. While we transitioned, I had a difficult time adjusting to the price of chemical-free food. Buying a turkey meant $60+ instead of the artificially-low $0.69/lb around the holidays.

Now, after we spent $7.50 per chick, fed them, watered them, protected (most of) them from our dogs, shooed them into the coop every night and listened to their constant gobble-gobble, the price seems more accurate. We get no government subsidies. We don't have 10,000 square foot buildings. We put our own labor into producing food that has had a chance to live life.

One tom and three hens were spared. They will be our breeding stock for next year. Our hope is that we can develop more self reliance by growing from what we produced the year before. Just like saving seeds, we would like our animals to increase our stock naturally instead of buying from a hatchery or breeder every year.

Plus, who wouldn't love to see them hatch in Spring?

-Brian

This is an essay from one of our CSA members (and dear friends), Trilety Wade.
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Squash is on the vine and I just recently hit the required 10 hours of work at Black Sheep Farms.  Honestly, my intention was to have reached this goal by June or July, with mornings spent in dew decorated fields and afternoons under the frugal shade of a wide brimmed hat.  But is the end of August and I have just now completed the 10th hour.  Fortunately, Brian and Kelly won’t throw me off the farm if I try and rack up some more hours this fall – or so I’ve been told.  And I do plan on continuing because my membership in the CSA is also a commitment to a sustainable style of farming and the farmers (also friends) who hold onto the land with the grip of roots and clay.

I’ve met a few members and missed a few members and thought I’d share my experience during my wee 10 hours on the farm.

May found me kneeling along a felled log with fungus-inoculated dowels and mallets in hand as Brian and Alvaro (?) drilled hollows into the drying crust of wood.  Comet (Brian and Kelly’s youngest) and I would follow the guys, and with a swift swing of the rubber mallet we would fill the holes with a spore-soaked dowel.  This was quite the hand-eye coordination task for us both.  And after (300?) holes and before a nap, Comet made a new friend in Triltree – as he likes to call me.  We then capped the holes with wax and. . . . now we wait.  With the chicken coop shading our work I realized farming is an exercise in waiting and hoping.  We wait and hope for the mushrooms to sprout next spring.

Early June and it was a girls’ day at the farm and in the greenhouse.  Kelly, Kristin, Nicole and I transplanted/repotted seedling tomatoes into larger containers and prepped them for planting in the earth.  We made soil from perlite, compost, and vermiculite while we talked about the burdens and joys of love and children and work and farming.  The greenhouse, with its narrow pathways, packed us, and our coordinated movements together like warm eggs in a carton. 

One of the next times I was out was on a Scheduled Work Party day; a day when Kelly had identified collective tasks that could be worked on by a group of members.  In one of the few humid days in July, Kelly and I worked alone and together digging and drying garlic and staking up liberated limbs of tomatoes.  Kelly’s optimism and positive attitude made any of my sporadic cynicism fall like rotten fruit to the earth in which we worked.  We sweat and laughed and talked about the surprises of marriage and the taste of heirlooms. 

And then came August.  My volunteer experience of August opened my eyes to the realities and challenges of working the ground.  We spent the afternoon between blighted tomatoes and tiny potatoes.  The blight, that comes on the air, rotted the many tomatoes that Kelly had hoped would bring heft and color to our weekly boxes.  It’s a shock when something is destroyed and you could do little to nothing to prevent it.  We moved from the tomatoes to the potatoes.  From the barn, Kelly dragged an implement she earlier referred to as the Potato Fork. Of course I figured it would be just that – a fork of sorts – a pitchfork type tool.  And then she pulls out a tool that is almost taller than me with blades like you’d see on some piece of yellow machinery.  Kelly and Ali made light work of this effective tool while I. . . well I did many fewer turns of that fork and the soil beneath.  Potato harvesting is a treasure hunt for buried nightshade treasure, but as with most treasure hunts sometimes the booty isn’t so big.  The fingerlings we were pulling were small, some the size of peanuts.  And while on my hands and knees and looking at the dark but empty soil I asked, “So you probably won’t plant these fingerlings again huh?”  And Kelly, in her most matter-of-fact-mother-farmer tone said, “Of course we’ll plant them.  They taste great and they could be bigger next year.  We lost all our tomatoes and we’ll plant those again next year too.”  Lesson learned.  We did dig up some great big onions and carrots that day. . . so maybe it’s a wash?  Or maybe it’s farming.

I remember during the first gathering when Kelly & Brian explained the 10 hour volunteer requirement.  That didn’t seem like much at the time.  And yet, cumulatively, all our hours are equal to the work of horses and ploughs and multitudes of hardened hands.  Just four of us members together make up an entire week of work.  But the hours or days or weeks of work we put into Black Sheep Farms will bring an entirely different outcome from our regular jobs, it will bring food to our tables and the tables of new and old friends, it will bring stability and sustainability to Kelly and Brian, it will bring fertility to the soil and diversity to the seed, it will bring laughter to the leaves, and it will bring a sense of fulfillment of living and working and breathing one’s own ethic.

This week, we lost nearly every tomato plant on Black Sheep Farms to late season blight.

Although we grow many types of vegetables and flowers, tomatoes are the stars. The magical combination of acids, sugars, colors and summer creates a legacy that makes us ache during their seasonal absence. In December, we dream of their luscious flavors as we circle old favorites and hopeful contenders in the catalogs. In February and March, we plant each tiny seed and watch as they create tiny sprouts. We transplant them to bigger containers and watch the weather reports, wondering when we can expect the last frost in May. We bring them outdoors during the day to harden their bodies and spirits and protect them at night in the safe, temperate greenhouse. We plant them near a strong trellis so they have the chance to grow up, literally. As they stray and sprawl on the ground, we tie them to the wire trellis so they can reach for the sun.

And, most years, we delight in the fruit that each tomato plant bears. We haul away overflowing boxes. We sell them to strangers and friends, knowing the joy that each person will have as they bite, slice, stew or sauce. We brew the tomatoes into a flavor-filled concoction that we freeze and enjoy as the winter winds howl.

Except this year. Late season blight is a merciless killer, and it is unstoppable. Blight is a fungal disease, and it is augmented by the cool, damp weather we have experienced this summer. Instead of the hot, humid but dry weather we expected, the summer has been rainy and temperate. Had we known, we would have planted cool-weather crops like spinach, chard, even lettuce. But there is no way to predict the weather, no matter what the television forecasters would have you believe.

So this year, we are practically without tomatoes. We planted fourteen varieties, from Golden Currant cherry to Crnkovic Yugoslavian, from Nebraska Wedding to Black Krim. Almost all dead. And as much as we suffer personally, it pains us to turn up short for the members of our CSA. We have invested so much of ourselves in this relationship, and it hurts to realize that the gifts we had planned to give have disappeared. At the start of the CSA, we explained that we all share in the successes and the shortcomings of the season. If we have an abundant year, we all benefit. If the year is difficult, we all have less than expected.

The reality is much more difficult than the theory. Struggling with the unexpected death of our tomatoes has been hard on us, but we've had so much support from friends who have shared kind words or brought us tomatoes of their own. It turns out that the community that we have fostered together has been the true gift of summer. We are grateful for each of you.

-Brian