FREAKS

Out on the farm we've been pulling lots of deliciously sweet carrots out of the ground for well over a month now, and last week we started to harvest them using a mechanized carrot harvester. It's this crazy lookin' contraption that looks more like a hunk of rusty old metal with wheels than a useful farm implement, but it works amazingly well. The carrots don't come out looking quite as nice as when you harvest them by hand, but the volume we're able to harvest in such little time is impressive.

Most of us go to the market or grocery store and pick out a nice lookin' bunch of equally sized carrots with or without tops (leaving the tops on actually makes the carrots go bad faster), but the the carrots the farmers don't show you are nothing short of magical. There are several styles of mystical carrot that form deep in the humus. Some are quite beautiful and some are border line offensive! The first kind I discovered was the "lover carrot(s)" when I pulled up my first crop of carrots in Early July.
The Dancing carrot is on the more graceful side of the spectrum.Then moving towards the freakish side... the dwarvesThe mutants
The parasitic and conjoined Twins
And last but not least, the Carrot ORGY.
Adam

Hillbilly nightmare!

SOOOOOOOO, if you've been checking in to see what's up with ol' Adam, then you haven't seen ... well ... anything in the last couple months. Some things went down on the homefront, things involving a duck, a couple of inbred yokels, and us (Bettina and I). To start with the short version, we moved into Trumansburg, so we could live close to our workplaces and put a few miles in between us and our old roomies. It's been a very busy couple of months. The harvest season is in full throttle, so I've been fermenting zucchinis, cucumbers and kim chee like a sloppy lunch lady with too many mouths to feed, all while working 10 hour days and trying to get our lives back in order. The cherry on top is that our new landlord is a bit of a nosy psychopath. He comes around a little too often and tells us to stop hanging things on the wall and to start using our sink drains... hmmmmmmm. Every day it gets a little better than it was the previous week, though. I hope that winter will be a pleasant few months of relaxin' and readin'. To make up for lost time, I'm going to do some recap entries over the next couple weeks.
Since I'm sitting here writing to all of you, I might as well tell you about our dear old inbred former roomies... Once upon a time there was a real jerk of a drake (a male duck). He would pant and strut if he thought anyone or anything was trying to compete with him for the love of his darling little duck mate. Although amusing at first, his musings soon became tiresome and those around him, were forced into action in order to stifle his aggressive behavior. The creative drake gave one of the inbreds a nice size welt on the arm, and the innocents decided enough was enough. One cloudy day whilst tending to the arugula, Bettina turned to find our creative friend panting and threatening to nip at her... um... tucus. After tricking the assailant into entering the garage, she locked him inside, and promptly informed one of the inbreds of her encounter. The inbred was none too happy about the current position of the "supposed" assailant, and left in a huff to consul the jerk drake. At 20 minutes past quitting time Adam arrived and learned of the goings on, and was none too happy about it. Later that evening the event was brought up in conversation with the inbred we call Sling Blade, and after finding no helpful resolutions about the drake, the second inbred burst onto the scene spewing venom and wrongful accusations of violence. After trying to defend themselves against the she-devil and her very personal attacks on their characters, the innocents yelled and attempted to interject, but alas the she-devil was deaf to reason, and retired with a door slam. No words were shared between the innocents and sling blade and she-devil thenceforth. Funny? Perhaps. Tragic? Certainly possible. Better in the long run? For Sure. Good riddance, inbreds.



Adam

The Magical Deep Red Vegetable Called A Beet

Growing up I always liked the tangy taste of Grandma Farmer's Pickled Beets she had in canning jars. She'd serve them in a pretty glass serving dish on Sundays. They'd sit there in their deep red, almost purple juice and beg me to have more. I'd carefully slip one onto the spoon and try to get it to my plate without it dripping on the white tablecloth. Usually there'd be a nice bright red spot left behind. But that amazing bite and tingly sensation on my tongue after eating one was so worth it! MMMMM!!!
Well, this year I wanted to grow some of these magical deep red beauties and try to make some of my own pickled beets. My oldest daughter and I would keep picking every now and then to see if they were big enough. I had no idea how tall to let them get before diving in. We had a lot of false starts, but when we got back from vacation in July, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were ready!
Check out the size of that beet! It's like a baseball! We didn't just have one like that, we had several giant beauties!
Pulling beets is so exciting! We were taking turns harvesting. It was so much fun and so satisfying! It was like getting a present every time you pulled them from hiding in the dirt!
I wish I had weighed them because it wasn't a light load! I have no idea how many pounds it was.
Here they are after trimming all the gorgeous leaves away. Next time we'll save some of the leaves to eat too, but now all the real work begins!
Washing and scrubbing beets is quite the task! Loads of dirt to get off! My sink didn't stay that clear! It was pretty pink and murky by the time we were through scrubbing!
After scrubbing, we boiled them and then dunked them in ice water to get the skins off. Then I slipped their skins off and cut them up. This was really fun and messy!
This is the amazing sauce that makes them all pickled! I used Apple Cider Vinegar instead of regular vinegar. I think it'll be real nice tasting!
After all that, we ended up with 4 pints of pickled beets! While that doesn't seem like a lot, it'll last a while! I might have to plant some more for the fall harvest! I love pickled beets!

April

Veggie Markers

I wanted to include the kids with the garden as much as possible this year and I had a fantastic project in mind. I thought it would be fun to paint our own vegetable markers for the garden. My son helped paint the solid colors on the pieces of wood and my youngest daughter hung in there for quite a while painting veggies and then playing and then coming back for more painting.

My oldest daughter lasted the longest. She loves being creative. She even painted pictures on the newspaper when we were through with the signs. It was a lot of fun and great to see their representations of different vegetables. I know I had fun painting too!

April

Garlic Scapes

It's garlic scape time in the finger lakes, which means the first real produce of summer is not far behind! It has been raining all week, which is always good for the plants, but despite all the green growth, it's been a little glum. But things like fresh spring kale and the garlic scapes keep our spirits high and looking forward to the upcoming harvests. I can see the blackberries around the corner, and the strawberries are out in full force. I got a big ol' bunch of scapes from one of our sister CSA farms, and I made a really nice pesto out of them. My ol buddy Matt back in Brooklyn gave me that idea last summer when he had surplus scapes from the farm stand he works for. For those of you who don't know where scapes come from or what they are, they are the little shoots that come out of garlic plants when the plants are almost at maturity. The shoots grow out from the middle of the plant into a curly green, tasty treat. When you harvest these little delicasies, it sends more energy into the roots to plump up those garlic cloves, so it's good for your garlic harvest too! You can cook them up with some kale or collards, or eat them raw in a salad or pesto. Here's the rough recipe for my pesto:

- A double handful of scapes (a big ol' bunch)
- 3/4 - 1 cup olive oil
- 1/2 - 3/4 cup parmesean cheese (or asiago, or any other dry stinky, salty cheese)
- 1 cup nuts (pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, or whatever nuts you have around. Probably not peanuts though)
- And a little salt to your taste

Mine turned out to be really tangy and spicy, but I bet it'll be good on a pizza, or in pasta.
Adam

Punkin' Patch

This morning we saw the sunshine right away and it was obvious we were in for a grand day of working in the garden! My son went to work with daddy today and so my youngest was following me around telling me how dreadfully bored she was. I promptly seized the moment and told her it was going to be pumpkin planting day and she could help! This immediately stopped her in her tracks and she went in search of the seeds.

She declared that she wanted to hold all the seeds we were planting in her pink Hello Kitty purse and be in charge of them. We were planting pumpkins, sun flowers and marigolds, so she had a fist full! No problem! But first, we must dig a trench! Her head hung with frustration and I told her not to worry, we'll work together and get 'r done!

I beckoned my 10 year old to come help me dig and we had our first true lesson on how to handle a shovel. She thought it was great fun for the first couple, then it became a chore 'cause...well it was one! You see, we were digging a trench right along our chain-link fence in the grass (gasp!). It was actually quite fun! We would dig, flip and chop. This was to turn over the grass and weeds and then to work the soil for planting purposes!

During this amazingly long process of dig, flip, chop, we were discovering all sorts of great things. I found a sleepy moth that I held on my finger for a while and the girls tried to hold it as well, but alas it broke free and flew away. My youngest was finding worms and having a wonderful time playing with them. She was also concerned that we may be killing the worms with our shovel during the "chop" part.

After we were not quite half way through, my little punkin' had waited long enough and was ready to release the seeds from her Hello Kitty purse. I showed her how to place them in the soil, to pat it down and to space them a little ways apart. We were going to alternate between pumpkins, sunflowers and marigolds. She watched ever so carefully and declared that she was ready to do this task.

I continued to dig the trench and she happily planted away in a wonderful fashion of "freestyle" planting. She said it was kinda crazy, but it'll work. Indeed! I have no idea where the pumpkins start or stop and if there will be a menagerie of sunflowers and marigolds bunched up together in one corner or if there will be 20 pumpkin vines fighting for space in a 3 foot section. Needless to say, we will have fun when they pop out of the ground!

She planted with fervor till about half way along the fence and then announced that she was done now. She told me that I was in charge of the rest of the seeds (not much was left!) and she picked up her pink Hello Kitty purse and skipped off into the front yard.

I had to laugh at the cuteness factor. The goal was to plant pumpkins along my oh so beautiful, yet sturdy chain-link fence and have the pumpkins trellis and look lovely with a splash of sunflowers towering over and keeping guard and some marigolds holding the line secure. What we ended up with is a treasure for always, a PUNKIN' PATCH that is as delightful as my 6 year old.

April

THE SCOURGE OF THE FINGER LAKES

It's been a week, and we haven't caught that little bugger. We mowed the grass, and that helped, but not for very long. Then, about 7 little chickens somehow found themselves caught in the fence and either died from the shock of the electric fence, or before they could struggle free had their heads popped off and their blood sucked. So, to sum it up, 7 more dead baby chickens and ONE serial killer weasel at large. Then, today as I was chisel plowing on a field a good 300 feet from the chicken house, I came across a pile of austerlorp feathers lying on the bare ground, which means there's an accomplice! Enter Mr. (or Mrs.) Hawk.
This is at least the third bird that the hawk has swiped and feasted upon. It's a little harder to tell when a hawk nabs a bird, as there is no decapitated body lying around after the deed is done. If you're lucky you'll find a pile of feathers or a half gutted corpse. It really sounds like a horror movie when I describe to people what's happening to our flock. We set some weasel traps today with some bloody meat as the bait, and I began a search for a guard dog, so we can at least feel like we have some power over this situation. Maybe Underdog will show up to save the day or my ol' pal Foghorn Leghorn. I heard that donkeys make excellent livestock guards.

Adam

BEWARE of the Weasel

It is only AFTER you get chickens, that you find out you've been living with a weasel! We've lost almost 10 teenage Austerlorp chickens on the farm to a weasel in the last few days. We've never seen it, nor do we really know what we're looking for. Now, when I first thought about a weasel interacting with chickens, I was thinking of a little ferret type animal with innocent little eyes and a pleasant demeanor.
But then I remembered that Looney Tunes cartoon with Foghorn Leghorn and the weasel, and I realized that weasels are maybe a little more aggressive than you might think. But aggressive enough to take 10 chickens in a few days?
It still wasn't adding up in my head, because weasels are so small. I'm fairly certain they are of equal if not a slightly smaller size than our little chickens. The curious detail about our dead chickens was that they were murdered at night AND during the day, and weasels are supposed to be nocturnal. The other curious detail was that the bodies were not being dragged away and devoured, but left out in the open... without their heads. So they must be vicious, snarling little beasts!
Then a gnarly old concrete dude, that was working on our new barn floor, told us that weasels love fresh blood. In fact, they love it so much that they pop the chickens heads off and suck the chickens dry. So... these are not just cute little aggressive beasts, but blood sucking, vampires!
This was a truly disgusting image to have of our cute little austerlorps, between the jaws of that beady eyed blood sucker. While all of this weasel education was coming about, we were trying to figure out how to stop the madness and move on in all of our chicken endeavors. Do we get a dog? Do we mow the grass and wait in a rocking chair with a 22 rifle? Do we put the chickens in the barn and wait until the roosters are big enough to fight the weasel off? Well, we decided to mow the grass, set traps, AND wait with a 22. We shall see how long this evil will remain. Until then, keep your children inside, lock the doors, and get a good nights rest.... if you can...

Adam

Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan speaks about food in Minnesota based on his book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I found this very interesting and think it may be my next read!

It's about an hour long, but highly interesting! This will take you to MPR (Minnesota Public Radio).

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Enjoy!

April

PEEPS

Chicks have been steadily hatching at our house since last night's entry, and as promised I have pictures of those fuzzy little ladies. I can't believe how cute they are! It's enough to turn Mickey Rourke into Marisa Tomei.


They've got a nice life ahead of them too. Sittin' under the heat lamp for a few weeks, with chillaxin' in the chicken coop, then off to the yard to take craps all over my car. It sounds pretty good to me.

Chicken Fever!

OHHHHHH I can not wait for everything to grow and then end up in my stomach! This is a very hard time of year to be... an eater and a cooker of food. There are certainly treats to have and good greens to cook up, but the anticipation of those summer veggies is sometimes a little too much to handle! On top of that, I've been patiently waiting for the 500 austerlorp chickens to show up on the farm, and that chicken house we built has been sitting empty for a month! Well, at long last the little teenage mutant chickens are here! I went into a trance when I was hangin' with them the other day. The sound of 500 little peeping chickens is hypnotic. Rosie the farm dog was beside herself and so were we. It'll be many months until they start laying, but just the fact that they have arrived will tide us over until we start ripping vegetables out of the ground and off the vine.

The tiny peeps of our housemates hatching chicks has been my background music of the evening. I held a chick in my hand that had just broken out of its egg, and I felt like a proud father even though I hadn't done a thing to aid their birth thus far. By morning, there just might be a whole pack of drying little chicks under the heat lamp! It has indeed been a weekend of chickens and warm fuzzy feelings... I feel like a three year old girl.













Adam

Ramps and Fiddleheads

I'm entering my 4th week at Remembrance Farm in Trumansburg, New York. It's a largely mechanized, Biodynamic, Organic vegetable farm. Nathaniel, the owner and operator, mainly grows root vegetables, salad and cooking greens, and soon eggs. Our chickens haven't arrived yet, but soon... SOOON there will be 500 little hens doing the Egyptian around the pastures of clover. In the mean time we've been working on a big ol' chicken house. It's really just a hoop house on skids, but we've been building perches and roosts on the inside, so it will really only be a hoop house in structure. Last week we started planting onions with a transplanter. The transplanter is a little implement that pokes little holes in the soil while also putting a dab of water in that hole. Two people sit in seats attached to the back and shove onion plants (or whatever you're planting) into the holes like 10 year olds playing whack-a-mole at the arcade! We planted around a 150,000 plants in a week, which is not bad for three guys in a week. It was hard to feel too proud of ourselves, because the Amish were goin' to town on a new addition to the work barn and a new machine shed for the farm. They've only been going for a week, and it's just a few days off from being finished! Those guys build like maniacs!
When I got home today, my lovely lady suggested we go forage for some spring goodies in the woods, so we did. We came back with a fist full of ramps and some fiddleheads which we promptly fried up to tide us over until dinner. For those of you who aren't familiar with either of these spring delectables, Ramps (on the right) are wild leeks that grow in the forest mainly, and Fiddleheads are the curly little sprouts of the fiddlehead fern. The long one in the photo is too mature to eat, I picked it to show how the plant looks at a later stage. It is really satisfying to find such tender little green treats this early in the season. I'm already looking forward to garlic scapes and the first of the cookin greens!

Adam

IT'S OFFICIAL!

I'm heading off to Ithaca on the 10th of April to start a new life with my lovin' lady! I will be working on a Biodynamic (Organic) farm, raising root vegetables, greens, and chickens! We lined up a place to live with some really great people that have a house on 5 acres in the Trumansburg area. They've got honey bees, vegetable gardens, chickens, ducks, fruit trees, fruit shrubs, and dogs and cats! I'm really excited! I feel as though I'm being immersed in a boiling pot of farming madness! Of course all of this spawned from a lot of hard work looking for places to settle, getting a car, researching jobs/farms and of course cutting the umbilical cord from NYC, but I'm finally reaping the benefits! I'm heading up to Vermont in a week to take a class entitled: "Design for Peak Oil and Climate Change." It'll be an intensely apocalyptic week with all sorts of crazy notions floatin' around the room. Then after that we'll pack up the truck and get out! I can't wait!

Dysfunctional Farm Kids

Being a farm kid growing up in rural Kansas was never really something we thought much about. It wasn't a novelty with all the other rural kids we road the bus with. Our dad maybe had more pigs than the average rural kid, but it definitely wasn't a topic of discussion. I can only remember one time when it was fascinating to someone at school. That was my eighth grade year when I was learning how to drive the tractor and disc a field. My friend Sarah drew a picture of me doing this in my yearbook. She thought it was so great!

Being a farm kid was not a real novelty until I went to college. One of my friends from Kansas City wanted to go check out my family's farm one weekend. So a bunch of us went. I don't really remember if my friends were impressed with the farm or just enjoyed the company of my family.

I do remember how much of a rarity I was when it came to transferring to a Christian Liberal Arts college on the northside of Chicago. Everyone assumed that I milked cows, slopped the hogs, was up at dawn and knew how to grow things. They couldn't have been more wrong. This is how one of the many conversations might have went:

Friend- You grew up on a farm?
Me - Yeah, in the middle of Kansas.
Friend - What kind of farm was it?
Me - My dad raises hogs and cattle and grows wheat.
Friend - Weed?
Me- No. Whhhhheatttttt. You know, grain, the stuff flour is made from?
Friend - Wow! So you like milked cows and collected eggs and stuff!?
Me- Ummm...no. We didn't have milk cows, just beef cattle and we never had chickens.
Friend - Oh! Well, you must have had a lot of chores though.
Me - Ummmm...no, we sometimes had to feed our dog.
Friend - Did you drive a tractor?
Me - Yes! I did do that in the summers.

Little did we know that the modern age of farming had turned us into Dysfunctional Farm Kids.

The acre upon acre of wheat and corn planted, fertilized and harvested by machine.

The pasture grazing cattle being sold to feed lots and then packaged for us in cellophane.
Chickens laying eggs in chicken prison.
Milk sold in plastic jugs with colorful lids.
Beans, corn and tomatoes came in cans with pretty labels.
Vegetables shipped from across the country and around the world as "farm fresh."

This was the demise of understanding what it meant to be a true farm kid.

We were never face to face with the soil and seed.
We didn't know how to milk a cow if we needed to.
We never experienced the curiosity of finding warm eggs underneath a hen for our breakfast.
We didn't know how to tend a garden or store up a harvest.

So today, my brother and I are staring into our dysfunction and saying, "No more! We must learn how to survive on this land the good Lord gave us!" The desire to farm runs deep in our hearts. It's in our blood! The desire is pushing us forward into a healthier, more fulfilling lifestyle of living from the land.

April

Back To RURAL LIFE!

I recently hit the three year mark of New York City life, and it looks like there won't be a fourth! It's funny how putting yourself in a completely foreign world has a way of making you look back to your roots with little pangs of regret. I think most people move on, live it up, and put on a new set of clothes after that moment of reflection, but it wasn't that easy for me. I've been plagued with apocalyptic visions of failing family farms, contaminated food, grass-starved cattle, and food shortages. For a while I managed to keep my farming urges at bay by telling myself that I was an "artist," but I couldn't keep it together with New York City yelling down my throat everyday. Having nowhere to sit outside that doesn't smell like dog doodie, and never escaping the honking and yelling was just too much for me. SO, I'm off to the countryside of upstate New York to farm the days away, and soak in the sun for hours on end everyday! My friends think I'm crazy, but I could say the same about them. I can't wait until I can see a tree out my bedroom window, and feel dirty from earth instead of smog. It's amazing to me that I spent so much time as a kid playing video games in the basement, while the Kansas winds whipped across my giant outdoor wonderland. Never again will I take a patch of dirt for granted. I'm off to chill with the chickens and sweat under the summer sun. RIP NYC

Adam