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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] is the list quiet
  • Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 08:26:33 -0400

Win all around! That's a great story, Kathryn.

Fields still too soggy here to do anything -- planting has been very delayed, I'm trying to finish clearing out paperwork as once it's dry enough I'm going to be extraordinarily busy. Sun is out right now, rain forecast again for Monday but it doesn't sound like much rain so I will hope.

I feel bad even complaining about my wet fields, however, when people in some areas are underwater entirely. I hope everybody on this list is at least safe.

Richard, how can you plant when you're still so wet? do you have very sandy soil? I've learned the hard way that if I try to work in my fields when they're soggy, even entirely by hand, all I get is a cake of mud around the plant that turns into a hard seal and keeps it from growing. -- or were you planting in hoop houses?

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale

On Apr 29, 2011, at 10:36 PM, KAKerby AT aol.com wrote:

Today was a very big day here.  We finally signed the land lease that I think I spoke of this past winter.  We rented 14 acres of pastureland from the older gentleman farmer who is one part foster grandfather, one part mentor, one part hay broker for me.  His kids and grandkids look to the farm as a pretty place and full of memories but none of them are interested in actively working it.  I had hoped and worked towards this day for a long time and it's finally a done deal.  His eyes were gleaming as we started to talk about the livestock I'll be grazing there and the soil testing I'll be doing, how I'll keep the pasture tended, how I'll be fencing and rotating paddocks, etc.  This is a piece of ground away from the main farm which has been under-utilized for many years.  He just didn't have the energy to get out there and deal with it.  So having someone working it again for honest-to-goodness agricultural purposes (as opposed to something like a soccer field or a paint-ball field) is making him all sorts of happy.  It's a big step for us and solves a lot of feed issues for us, but I think I'm more pleased about his excitement at having it in production again.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
Ruminations - essays on the farming life at frogchorusfarm.com/weblog.html






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