The Accidental Farmer

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May 5th, 2013

“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” says local-food evangelist Michael Pollan, and though his books have been translated in at least sixty-five languages including Urdu, Chicken wasn’t one of them. Even if it were, it would be lost in translation on my willful mob. Can you say “Eat food, lots of it, mostly Matthew’s plants.”

Breakfast of Chickens:  The apple blossom special.

My Dilemma with Omnivores is their lack of discrimination. They seem to pick up on the coddled pheromone trail I’ve invested into my favorite varieties an go for those first.  Just when a long-awaited apple,  pear or tomato is heavy with itself, it’s pecked or gnawed into oblivion.

Chickens are über-omnivores:  They’ll sample, trial and taste almost anything, even chicken (don’t ask).  And they’ve become so unhinged lately by the delirium of Spring that they’ve even taken to browsing the blossoms off of fruit trees in the orchard.  Who does that?

I’m not alone, of course.  I just have a larger produce department than most home gardeners, and a few too many fowl wandering the aisles.

Annual Lamium purpurium carpets the orchard. Also known as henbit, it’s chicken candy.

I spoke about “Growing Beautiful Food” at a big garden conference last month in Connecticut, where the Master Gardeners were many, and the Q&A was mostly about predation.  “Yes, it’s all very pretty, and thank you for your lovely presentation, but what about the critters?  How do you keep them out?  This was the idée fixe: Beauty is negotiable,  plundering is not.

And while I implored them to sacrifice a few peonies for eggplant, they couldn’t get passed the loss factor. Though growing things is always fraught with peril, growing food–no matter how beautiful, healthful, and environmentally responsible—is asking for trouble. Of course, in the long haul, not growing your own, or not supporting those who do it locally and organically, is the real worry;  It will be no accident when we just can’t feed ten billion people on chemically saturated agricultural land that’s dependent on a diminishing supply of petroleum. So a few wayward chickens or nibbled greens are the least of our worries.

I’m seeking absolution, I suppose; having come in from the urban cold of not knowing (or caring) where my food came from, to caring deeply and deciding to do something about it.

I came from cities – physically, psychologically. From the bump and bustle of urbanism. No planting, no growing, no harvesting. And yet, here I am in mid-life, an organic farmer, feeding my family, feeding neighbors and CSA members; lost in a headlong swoon for this crazy, sexy piece of earth, and unable to imagine a life without it.

Spring at Stonegate Farm:  One sexy piece of earth.

So I let the chickens have their barter share: They lay, I look the other way. A dilemma resolved by a kind of rural détante.  Sometimes letting go can be the very thing your life needs.  -Mb

Visit the farm @ StonegatefarmNY.org

Tags: animals, apples, chickens, coops, CSA, orchards, organic orchard, pears, spring

June 21st, 2011

Tags: CSA, weather

August 13th, 2010

My wife’s supercilious grandmother used to tell me I had peasant blood, which I took as a compliment.  Better an honest, hardworking peasant than a soft-palmed scoundrel.  Good, physical work, with something to show for it besides tight abdominals (a bountiful harvest, say) is an act of alignment and sometimes even exaltation. It ties us back to the order of the natural world.  Work is what the wild things do–all day long, for food, shelter, survival, maybe even joy.

Last week’s bountiful harvest, the love made visible by work.

Growing food for others is a physical act. “Such hard work!” they say. Yes, but how fulfilling, how joyful. “The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it,” said Ruskin.

We have become more capable, more patient, more resourceful, more humble. Work on the land develops deep connective tissue with simple purpose. Something we’re in great need of in an age of tweets and texts.

I bought a new/old tractor for the farm this year. It’s seen plenty of hard work, and it’s in its forties, so we’re peers.  It’s throaty, cast iron rumble is reassuring. No squeaky plastic or pot metal here.  No imported parts. It was built somewhere in the Midwest, back when industry had integrity, and work wasn’t just virtual bustle. It rambles across the property, making a clean cut in the orchard, indifferent to the carpet of twigs and small stumps.

A morning of virtual housekeeping, such as answering emails from clients, or prepping for a shoot, is usually balanced by an afternoon of real physical work, of which there’s always plenty. Without exertion of some kind, my time seems incomplete. I need to feel used up at the end of the day.

We don’t move anything unless it weighs a thousand pounds, the New York Times quoted us saying more than ten years ago when they did a feature on our efforts to restore Stonegate (see House Proud) .  Clearly work was not an obstacle.  After an urban upbringing, among worlds others had created, I needed to build. I needed to move mountains.  I needed to see what I could become by it.

Interiors of the new coop.  There was plenty of sustainable re-use of materials, and a little art for inspiration.

So with new coop now completed in the orchard, my sweet Copernican universe, with the farm at the center of all things and us in perpetual orbit around it, seems momentarily balanced.  I can stand back from the work and feel its value and worth to the farm, despite the near heat stroke hours it took to build.

Hens out for an early peck and scratch in the orchard.

The laying hens have taken to their new digs without a lot of fuss and feather. Even the prodigal pullet rejoined the flock, although at the bottom of the pecking order. They’re now ranging happily in the orchard, tilling and fertilizing the soil, devouring pests, making their most magical eggs. Working hard, without a second thought.  -Mb

Tags: CSA, tractors, work