Dear Folks, Whew! June is acceleration time on a farm! The days are at their longest, the soil warms up, and everything in the garden — that which we planted and that which we didn’t — jumps up and grows lustily. This June has felt more full of life, weeds, vegetables, flowers, activity, and acceleration than usual. And surprises.
The biggest surprise is that sitting on my desk are draft purchase-and-sales agreements for the Hunt and Curtis farms!
!!! How did that happen?
We may never know. What it looks like from here is that Peter Forbes, a key member of our group, the head of the New England office of the Trust for Public Lands, who has been through many, many land deals, never took seriously that “refuse to negotiate” message we got last March. He kept patiently contacting the Hunts and anyone he could find who knows the Hunts.
Then about a month ago Stephen took his dairy-farmer friend Paul over to walk on the Curtis land and peer across the fence to the Hunt land. They came back burning with vision. I guess they stood up on the hill and plotted out their whole dairy operation. Stephen told me he was going to start praying. That’s probably what did it.
Anyway, Peter and Stephen went and had a meeting with John Hunt and his realtor. (I didn’t go. I have a theory that John Hunt has a problem talking with women. And you know I don’t harbor the best of feelings about that realtor.) Stephen made a great farmer-to-farmer connection with John, talking about draft horses and a 30-cow Brown Swiss herd. Peter was the steady, gentle, but firm negotiator. And something had clearly snapped in John Hunt’s head. He had let go. He said he can’t go on supporting his brother (who lives in a trailer on the land) and his nephew (who lives there) and his mother-in-law (who is incapacitated by a stroke and living there) and all that land any more. He has to let some of his burdens down.
I was so moved when I heard that. John Hunt took over that farm at age 14, when his father had an accident and none of his five brothers and sisters wanted the job. He farmed faithfully, as his father had, steady as a rock and just about as innovative, for 30 years, keeping ahead more by selling off pieces of land than by selling milk. Finally, a few years ago, he couldn’t meet his debts. People still talk about how sad the herd auction was. Since then John has been a maintenance man at a local quarry, supporting all those relatives, with emotional roots still deep in his land. Not an educated or flexible man, not quick to envision alternatives for his life. But it seems he’s finally done so. My heart goes out to him.
Anyway, Stephen and Peter and John Hunt seemed to come to an understanding about all the points that had killed the deal before (time of closing, the lot John wants to carve out, etc.) And miraculously, when we called the Curtises, we found that their place hasn’t sold yet — though it has two serious buyers and might go at any minute.
So the hotheads in our group (that’s our name for those of us who know we are ready to make this community happen and to put whatever financial or other strength we have behind it) had a long meeting, covered flip-chart sheets with numbers and considerations, took a deep breath, and decided to go for it. We can see our way through to the closings, which will, if all goes well, take place in November. Beyond that, how to design our homes and common house, where to get the money to build them, how to move whom when, when to sell Foundation Farm — well, those are future problems, not present ones. Remember (I have to say this to myself), this deal isn’t signed yet. It ain’t over till it’s over. The Hunts have thrown monkey wrenches before, and monkey wrenches can come from other places too.
I have to say, I’m beginning to enjoy the endless serious of puzzles and problems this community project is creating. Never a dull moment. We’re learning so much! The next thing I’m getting obsessed by is how to build truly affordable energy-efficient homes. And how to help low-income people, meaning farmers, finance them. Building in community has GOT to be part of the solution. (One septic system for 20 households is a lot cheaper than 20 of them.) Building sustainably should help (lower energy bills and maintenance costs.) Capital assistance from people who want to invest in sustainability has got to be the rest of it. How to put that all together is our next challenge. And then there’s the challenge of overcoming the economic determinism that says farmers should be low-income people.
Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, back at Foundation Farm, it’s summertime and the living isn’t easy, but it keeps us amused. The weather has turned dry, dry, worrisome dry. That is really good for making hay. We got ours cut early, at the height of nutrition, it dried overnight, and we got 400 bales in the barn on the day of that historic meeting with the Hunts. We pitched hay all afternoon, Stephen got all scratchy and sweaty, then he had to clean up and run off to the real estate office, while the rest of us hosted a potluck supper for the CSA subscribers. Then, after dark, Scot and Stephen put the rest of the hay in. Doing it after dark was a good idea, actually — easier than during the heat of the day — as long as no rain is threatening, which, unfortunately, it wasn’t.
Because of the drought we’ve had to water the gardens constantly, which, in the case of Stephen and Kerry’s acre of vegetables, was a problem, because the pump they’d ordered hadn’t come. The beautiful young veggies withered and withered — I could hardly bring myself to look at them. Finally they rented a pump for awhile, at an exorbitant price, but it saved the garden. Now their own pump is installed, bringing water from the brook. But the brook is dropping. We REALLY need rain!
Scot and I gave the sheep their last round of footrot vaccine and turned them out on clean pasture. They looked much better and they aren’t limping any more. There are still two ewes with misshapen feet and active infections — we may have to give up on them. But the others should be immune now, and I have to say, though I wish it would rain, the dry weather helps the footrot.
The young chicks are half-grown, the old hens are laying huge eggs. The geese and ducks are down on the pond, all except two ducks hunkered down on nests in the barn. The horses are over in Ruth’s pasture, standing head-to-tail to switch flies off each other. The front flower garden is blessing us with peonies, roses, campanula, Sweet William, and very soon Shasta daisies and delphinium. The dogs spend their days snoozing on the cool tiles in the kitchen and come down with us to jump in the brook every chance they get.
Stephen and Kerry are madly weeding, planting, picking, and selling produce, even with Kerry on crutches. They’ve got eleven weekly customers for the CSA now, plus two farmers’ markets, plus sales to restaurants and our coop. It’s dawn-to-dusk work for Stephen, and would be for Kerry, if she were fully mobile. As it is, she can get down on her knees and do weeding, help pick, wash, and arrange the veggies, and attend the stand at the farmers’ markets. Mary helps with all that too.
It’s work! Not a lot of money. But, as Stephen says, a good way to make a living, working with nature, raising good food for people. I’m feeling as never before, however, the vicissitudes and pains of farming. Last Saturday they picked dozens of heads of beautiful lettuce at its prime, went off to the Norwich farmers’ market, had a slow day, and had to bring most of that lovely lettuce back home. Well, the chickens will like it, Stephen said. I was horrified. Such gorgeous lettuce for the CHICKENS? It happens all the time, said Stephen. I can’t sell this any more, and there’s tons more coming in the garden. You can’t imagine how many vegetables I’ve fed to the chickens in my life.
Well, Mary and I couldn’t stand feeding that lettuce to the chickens, so we washed it in cool water, loaded it in the car, and drove up and down the road, giving it to neighbors. They were glad to get it. Maybe that will stir up a few more paying customers for Stephen and Kerry.
Things are going to get tougher for them for awhile, because the doctor says Kerry’s right leg isn’t healing. Now she needs surgery, to rebreak not only the tibia but the fibula bone behind it, to align them correctly and fix them with pins. This was a blow — the whole household reeled for awhile. She had been told this can happen with a tibia break, but we all immediately forgot that information — it just wasn’t thinkable. Now it’s real. The operation is scheduled for July 11. It sounds like, once the pins are in, Kerry will actually get mobile a lot faster than before. (It’s been five months now.) And the bones will grow together straight. So, with her amazing resilience, Kerry is getting ready for the next round. She’ll be at the small Springfield hospital just one night, and then, they say, walking within days. She has no med insurance, they’re still paying off the debt from the medical stuff so far, but she’s finding places where she can get some financial help.
Mary from Virginia seems to be reveling in our sunny summer, all but the deer flies. Adapted to the south, she thinks it’s cool when it gets up into the 80s and the rest of us are dying. She’s working hard in the gardens and getting in great shape and cheering us all enormously. She’s finding her way after her mother’s recent death, and in the process managing to keep us all more centered.
Chrissie is awash in flowers. She’s turned her big garden over almost entirely to flowers and picks gorgeous bouquets for Stephen and Kerry’s market stand. (I add yarn and sheepskins — this is quite an amazing stand! Kerry’s now plotting how to add cookies and lemonade.) As Chrissie did last year, she’s helping with three farms, ours and the Sibleys’ and Edgewater Farm, so she’s learning a lot about commercial and noncommercial growing. Some of the perennials she put in here last year — valerian and pyrethrum and campanula — are gloriously blooming now.
Scot spends a lot of time in the garden, but mainly he’s teaching a summer course on biodiversity at Dartmouth, which involves gathering samples of every kind of woody plant, every herbaceous plant, every fern and moss, and this week every kind of insect in the valley (well, not EVERY), for the students to learn to identify. The woody plants were easy, says Scot, but the insects are something else. I envy him the chance to learn all that taxonomy. After summer term is over, Scot will be plunging back into his thesis full time.
And me, largely freed from the garden by everyone else’s industry (though I still manage to get my hands dirty), I’m frantically writing. I’m just about finished with the agriculture chapter of my textbook (#16 out of 21 chapters). I’m writing a paper on system leverage points for Whole Earth Review. A Balaton Bulletin is due out soon, on the subject of this year’s meeting — Time . (Ha! The resource that’s endless and boundless, but somehow always scarce! Because we make it so, says Scot, by the way we mismanage it.) I’m writing proposals to fund projects in our new Sustainability Institute. Learning about real estate transactions and purchase & sales agreements and appraisals and septic easements and subdivision permits and Vermont’s Act 250. And playing in our church bell choir — we’re rehearsing “America the Beautiful” and “The Marine Hymn” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” for our Fourth of July parade float.
And, in what may be my last summer on Foundation Farm, I’m just drinking in the beauty. A few evenings ago Mary and I went out after dark to watch zillions of fireflies dance on the pasture. Barred owls were hooting up on the hill; tree frogs were chirping. Wow! So beautiful!
Last weekend the farm was drenched with a rain of pine pollen and locust blossoms. I don’t remember ever seeing that before — probably because real rain normally washes them off the trees. But we have had no rain, and a big wind came up, so there were white locust blossoms swirling everywhere and clouds of yellow pollen so thick they looked like smoke. Both the blossoms and the pollen are high in nitrogen, so it was essentially raining fertilizer on the valley. And wow! So beautiful!
The other day I was walking back from Stephen & Kerry’s garden and got stopped dead in my tracks by the overwhelming sweet smell of a big basswood tree in bloom.
Every morning I am awakened by an indigo bunting, who sits on the pear tree outside my bedroom window and alternately attacks his reflection and bursts into his loud, lilting song.
The veeries flute from the woods every evening, the air smells of summer, of hot sun on pine trees, and we eat huge fresh-picked salads every night.
Wow! So beautiful!
If only it would rain!
Love, Dana
