Milking Madness

It' been quite a little bit, since my last entry... more than 6 months... BUT I'm still farming and I'm always learning and having a great time doing it. I've been at Hawthorne Valley Farm in the Hudson Valley just south of Albany, NY since late January. I'm a in a 2nd year apprentice position here. I work primarily with the 75 head dairy cattle herd. I've been milking early mornings (4:30 am) and "late" nights (6pm). They keep me busy on this farm, but it has been really great learning about the dairy biz. It's not just dairy here though, it's RAW! Raw milk is a featured product on this diversified farm. They also produce cheeses, yogurt, lacto fermented vegetable products, and lots of veggies for a CSA and weekly farmer's markets in NYC. There's also a Waldorf School across the street, and a visiting students program that hosts a new group of kids every week. The kids from across the street and the visiting students get the full farm experience and work closely with us for a few hours a day. There's a lot going on here, and many many people going through the farm every day. This week the cattle got to start eating grass again, and they are loving it! They were clicking their heels and wobbling their udders in sheer joy out on the spring pasture. A big change happened this season. Bettina, my lovely lady, is farming by my side and learning the ropes of veggie production and animal management. It's been a wonderful thing to share the farming experience with her, and see her excitement as the seedlings sprout and the spring calves drop from their mamas. We've been rising at the same time (for once) and crashing hard at 8:30 every night like clockwork. We're both pretty darn tired but we've been helping each other get through the week when one of us is less tired than the other. Bettina and the rest of the vegetable crew have been transplanting lettuce, beets and onions in the fields and seeding tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse. We're getting closer and closer to fresh summer veggies. I can't wait! That's all for now, but I'll leave you with some photos from the farm.

Adam

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