Spartan Hayers

July 23, 2009
Yesterday I visited Far Reaches Farm with Amy Rose. We volunteered all morning, starting at nine and finishing around 1. Lucky me, the owner set me to work weeding a large raised bed full of thistles and clover! All the same it was interesting to change my scenery, even if only for a few hours. The plants grown are exotic fuzzy cacti and shrubs with purple Alice in Wonderland berries from around the world. Nestled in black plastic pots, the plants fill 5 hoop houses and an acre of land.


Curran Driving


Cherry Belle and French Breakfast Radishes

Returning to Sunfield at 1, I pitched in to help finish the afternoon chores before gorging on salad, bread, and fettuccini noodles with sugar snap peas. Immediately after lunch we began a marathon harvest of beets (20 bunches), carrots (50 bunches), mizuna (10 gallons), arugla (15 pounds), broccoli, squash, zucchini, basil, parsley, chard, lettuce mix, lettuce heads, and more for the rest of the CSA and most of the Queen Ann market harvest. Loading the harvest truck with icy well water, plastic tubs, harvesting knives, rubber bands, and the rest of the harvesting gear, we managed to finish the job (at least the harvest) by 5. We had 6 people working as fast as possible in the heat of the day so it went quite a bit faster than normal—we usually only have 3 or 4 workers at once. Processing the produce was a team effort as well, washing, boxing, and preparing the goods for market. Finally after cleaning the processing flat we were ready for the real work: haying.


Celebrating 5 Months to Christmas (we needed a reason to stay up late)



Several days before the hay had been mowed, laid out for a couple of days to dry, and then baled the day before yesterday. It was time to collect the bales and huck them to the barn loft. We don’t have an elevator so we had to toss the 40-70 lb bales by hand through the narrow loft window which proved to be quite a task after loading them on the trailer by hand as well. Leslie, Sarah, Danielle, and Heather loaded the flat bed truck with 3-4 tiers of bales and took the truck back to start lofting them before we returned. Eric, Rampa, Curran, Celeste, and I worked the trailer bed and tractor. Curran drove the tractor (his first time ever—he’s 9) while Celeste sat on top of our hay tower, an observatory of sorts, adjusting her position as the hay piled higher and higher. Eric arranged the bales while Rampa and I sprinted around the field collected bales and throwing them on the trailer bed. By the time we reached the 7th tier I was beginning to wonder if we should unload the trailer. Being mischievous farmers, we decided to collect the ENTIRE field alone and built an 8 tier tower of bales that reached 30 feet in height. Have you ever thrown a bale more than 4 feet? Try loading a moving trailer while tossing a bale 2-4 feet above your head—AFTER a full day of work. And then toss them to the barn loft.


I taught myself how to braid garlic!


Elan's AWESOME Cob Oven Pizza (This was the first pizza we cooked in Sunfield's Cob Oven)

Despite the grueling work everyone was in high spirits. For the first time since I started farming I realized I was truly happy with the work I was doing. Having extra people around was energizing and exciting, providing fresh conversation and new company. The smell of the freshly baled hay permeated our clothes which were drenched in sweat from the vigorous exertion of the fast-moving task. Despite the protective layer of flannel and denim covering my arms and legs, I had hay down my shirt, in my underwear, and stuck to my hair. My arms and legs were raw and scratched, and my throat was choked with hay dust making me feel like I was on fire inside and out. As a member of the Spartan haying team, I was happy to comply with Eric’s insistence that everyone have a piece of hay hanging from the corners of our mouths making the experience complete. By the time the task was finished it was almost 9 o’clock. I would have to return to work at 6:30 the next morning for the market harvest so Willie could make it for the noon ferry to Seattle. I hardly cared that I would be tired and sore the next morning—I was in too good a mood for that to matter. I felt like a healthy black lab after a fantastic game of fetch, flopped in the grass, panting and weary but still grinning.


Hay Team


Eric Stacking Hay

July 31, 2009
One of the greater understandings I’ve come to learn about farming is the importance of timing. The other day Sarah and I trellised about 50 tomatoes in the baking sun, standing on black fabric against the side of the long barn. We had to hose ourselves down with icy well water every 30 minutes or so to keep from overheating our bodies. Before we could trellis the tomatoes to the steel wire hanging 6 feet off the ground we had to trim the suckers off the plants, hauling away wheel barrow loads of healthy stems and leaves. It seemed a waste to trim off so much green matter from the plants. The tomatoes had put so much work into producing the thick stems and leaves that by the time we took the time to trim and trellis them, the suckers were 1-2 feet in length. Had we trimmed them a week or two earlier (or even before that), the plant would not have used so much energy to produce what we were merely toss to the compost.


Hay Tower




Other plants, such as summer squash, required constant picking. Even if the squash would not be eaten or sold or harvested for CSA shares it needed to be picked so the plant would continue to produce high quantities of squash.




Curran Leaping from the Loft

August 6, 2009
I take pride in the fact that I feed myself. Not only do I plant seeds, transplant, weed, water and tend countless amounts of produce but I bake my bread and milk my cows. While eating the dinner I prepared this evening I was struck by the fact that I baked my bread, milked my cow, harvested my eggplant, onions, garlic, and broccoli, stewed my black bean and garlic soup from scratch (I soaked the beans and all!), and obtained my organic Fromage Blanc from the local creamery via trading produce which I also harvested myself. Beyond my food, I bike to and from work. This is the sort of independence I’ve advocated everyone should have, but it struck me that I’ve never really followed through until now—and for the most part, until I had no choice. Yet, given the choice, I don’t think I would feel as happy or healthy as I do now if I did go “back”. Besides, I can hardly conceive how sad I’ll be to give up fresh raw milk when I go back to school. (Time for Berea to get a dairy cow or goat!).

A New Kind of P.O.W.

July 12, 2009
The skin on my forearms which smells like garlic and freshly turned dirt is deeply tanned now. My hands are veiny and cracked since the dry soil leeches moisture from every molecule of air in the sky and every pore in my skin, an organ learning to deal with a new set of harsh conditions—not those of lotions and perfumes and unnatural chemicals, but an abundance of that which is natural: sun, dirt, wind, water, cold mornings, and hot afternoons.


Jeff, DARLENE, John during our Tall Grassy Field Picnic

My energy ebbs and weaves, but I can work a solid 8 hours without feeling too exhausted and miserable to even prepare a decent meal. It’s as hard as ever to make myself crawl out of my sleeping bag in the cold Airstream when my alarm shrieks, vying for my attention over my preference for sleep, but once I’m up I feel ready to head to the battlefields, forming my strategies and attacking my enemy with my best weaponry (a hoe); hoeing and hand weeding nightshade and lambs quarter. Each day I’m taken, a POW in a sense, and though I’m a Prisoner of the Weeds I don’t relent from feeling overwhelmed. I understand that the weeds are above and beyond even what I could imagine I can control.


Deformed Carrot

It’s humbling to spend 5 hours hoeing the carrots only to find that you have only finished one 200 row out of 60 or 70 rows and that I’ll have to go back and weed it at least once more to ensure their success. It’s frustrating to be so small and make such small impacts on the microcosm we pretend to control as biodynamic farmers. We could introduce industry to the land, its soil and its life, but we prefer to stay humble here. Perhaps small scale farming is just the acceptance that the world is too big to handle, much as we try. That’s why we’re doing things a little bit at a time—so we can establish our limits without shorting ourselves but also without overextending ourselves.


A Chicken!

July 15, 2009
Danielle and I harvested the softneck garlic from row 4, all in all maybe 500 heads or more laying on the floor of the long barn for the first step of drying them. I have been going into the barn during the hot afternoons to bunch the garlic and hang it from the rafters with baling twine, but the process is slow since I have to clean the dirt off without peeling off too many layers of skin so I still have another 4 or 5 hours left (not including those I plan to braid). I’ll braid maybe 10 or 11 more, but it takes about 10 minutes to make a really nice braid so I won’t have time to braid them all—but cheers for self-taught skills on value added products!


Frances Milking Auggie

Even though I don’t feel like I’m learning a lot, I know I’m underestimating what knowledge I’ve acquired simply by being on a farm. Learning how to harvest produce such as broccoli or scapes so that the plant is actually stimulated to keep producing vegetables or leaves is probably one of the more important things I’ve learned. Seeing how squash, if it’s not ripe one day, may very well be ready to harvest the next morning—and how to time that with market and CSA days adds a twist to the plot. Watching lettuce and spinach bolt as soon as the weather turns too hot and dry for too long makes me realize what a short window of opportunity I have to take advantage of the fruits (or greens) of my labor and how much the weather and the timing of planting or transplanting really affects that plant’s life. It is fascinating to me.


The Hoophouse

Back when I thought I could actually weed a row in 45 minutes....

June 29
Willie and I spent the morning preparing for “Mind Mulch”, a program organized between Kate, an extension agent, and local farmers. It’s the first year that they’ve tried the program, but interns from various local, organic/biodynamic farms near Port Townsend will meet every two weeks for a couple of hours to socialize a bit and meet each other as well as have a quick lecture from a farmer about the methods of composting or biodynamic farming. This will allow us to learn from each other and other farmers. Willie was hosting this particular program and planned to discuss the methods of composting.


Cob Oven Pizza Party at Finn River Farm

Without turning on any lights, I popped a mug of water in the microwave and I flipped through Zack’s photos of the JMT. When the microwave beeped, I stood and carefully pulled my cup from the microwave. In doing so, I noticed something the size of a nickel was floating in my cup. Apparently a spider had decided to weave a web inside my mug (odd, I know, but it’s true) and I fried him in my microwave in my quest for a cup of Lapsang Souchong.

June 30, 2009
Carrots. So many carrots. I weeded carrots for 5 hours today. That’s 2 rows done: two more to go. It’s a tedious task. The leaves are lacy and small, resembling parsley. The weeds are thick and 12 inches tall, making me feel as if I were playing “Where’s Waldo?” with the carrots. After tiring of the carrots, I weeded strawberries. Same game. Except I got to eat the strawberries I managed to find, ensconced in the fuzzy, almond shaped leaves of the flowering night shade.


Sarah and Eric Fixing the BCS. Farming is EASY. That's why Sarah's wearing a dress.

After tiring of the strawberries, I decided to weed the cabbages with a hoe so I could stand up and stretch my stiff back and knees. Feeling my jeans rub uncomfortably on my lower back, I looked down and realized that I had actually managed to sunburn myself. I had forgotten my belt, so my pants were riding unusually low, especially while crouched with my back to the sun. My shirt had ridden up so the white slat of skin between my jeans and shirt caught several hours worth of intense rays. Though it’s not very hot here (relative to the South), the sun is extremely intense. I feel rather baked and exposed so I bought myself an old man’s fishing hat from the local thrift store, Olycap. Later I learned that Washington has the highest rate of skin cancer in the nation. Part of that is attributed to the short summers with intense sunshine. People don’t take the time to use sunscreen and find that they are burned quite badly—even I was burned quite badly after just a few hours!


Golden Beets are BEAUTIFUL

July 6, 2009
I worked two weeks straight with a one-day weekend, so was allowed to take a three day weekend this week. I certainly deserved it. Though I didn’t spend my entire weekend sleeping (there’s too much to do on the 4th of July!) I do feel quite rejuvenated and ready (mostly) to go back to work. I’m not particularly excited about it though. I don’t mind the work too much, but I don’t really look forward to it either. Over the past two weeks, I realize that I would enjoy the work if I did not work as much. I would be able to appreciate growing a garden of my own, producing as many fruits and vegetables for my own family as possible, but I have not discovered any hidden desire to start a farm of my own. Not to say that working at Sunfield is a waste of time—I have so much more respect for farmers than I ever thought possible.


This is also a chicken.

July 7, 2009
Oh…this is awful. I accidentally labeled every single artist in my iTunes library as Bela Fleck. I thought I was in the Bela Fleck section and was trying to consolidate some songs so I can have enough room on my laptop for my new influx of photos, but messed up my entire library instead. I thought I would be clever and delete my iTunes library and reload the music from my hard drive, but the changes follow through to the hard drive as well. So now EVERYTHING I own is apparently written by Bela Fleck. I had no idea he was so into techno and rock. Quite the versatile man.


This is a chicken.

I weeded today—strawberries and pumpkins. Then I harvested summer squash. There were not too many that were ready for harvest, but there are enough to fill the CSA shares tomorrow. The delicately curved produce indicates its ripeness by the flower on the end of the vegetable. If the flower is in full bloom, it’s not ready. If it’s wilted and brown, it should be ready for harvest. Otherwise, we I only worked from 8 to 5 today since Sarah and I were the only ones on the farm. Danielle had the day off, Heather was taking care of her kids, and Willie had a doctor’s appointment in Seattle, so nothing was keeping us on the farm for too long. Woohoo!