Dan took the sign up to the top of the road, I put the farmer man sign out in front of the stand, we rolled the stand door open, and farm stand season 2015 was underway. My first customers were new faces, looking for eggs & bread. I was able to help them with the eggs, anyways. The rest of the day was busy. I had new faces and plenty of old ones. Hugs were exchanged, baby news told, as were tales of a puppy that had grown into a bad dog. While it is nice, and somewhat necessary, to be closed for the winter & early spring months and to have a reprieve from butchering that time, lots of my customers are more than just folks who spend money here. They are friends, an extended farm family. I genuinely look forward to seeing them again and catching up with what they have been up to over the winter.
This past Saturday was opening day. The date circled on the calendar for months, the ready-or-not-here-it-comes beginning to farm stand season. Yes, I had my typical meltdown prior- mostly because there was a partially restored 1978 Cadillac taking up pretty much the entire space in the stand up until 10 days before opening. Turning the building from a garage into a store is no easy task, but not only did I feel it looked great when we reopened, I felt like it was actually a real improvement from prior years! And while I never expect to be offering corn or tomatoes, usually I have a little bit more produce than just rhubarb & mustard greens. But this year, Mother Nature has been temperamental. In fact, the night before opening was rather sleepless, not only because I have a tendency to be awake prior to a big day, but because we had a cold front move through, taking the overnight temps all the way down to 28 degrees with a freeze. But the propane heaters we put in the greenhouse kept the plants safe, and our floating row cover prevented a lot of damage to the outdoor plants like green beans & potatoes. (We had held off putting any tomatoes/peppers/cucumbers/etc outside because this was in the forecast for some time.) So when the alarm went off (before 5 AM), we were happy that everything fared pretty well despite the weather, and got to work with Saturday morning duties like picking rhubarb and grinding & packaging 70+ lbs of sausage. Dan took the sign up to the top of the road, I put the farmer man sign out in front of the stand, we rolled the stand door open, and farm stand season 2015 was underway. My first customers were new faces, looking for eggs & bread. I was able to help them with the eggs, anyways. The rest of the day was busy. I had new faces and plenty of old ones. Hugs were exchanged, baby news told, as were tales of a puppy that had grown into a bad dog. While it is nice, and somewhat necessary, to be closed for the winter & early spring months and to have a reprieve from butchering that time, lots of my customers are more than just folks who spend money here. They are friends, an extended farm family. I genuinely look forward to seeing them again and catching up with what they have been up to over the winter. Beyond my regulars, there were LOTS of families that stopped by as well. I know the Tionesta Market Village was having a kids' day, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it or if it was just the beautiful holiday weekend. I think it's great that people bring kids to see a real farm and have the experience of seeing where food really comes from. I always try to make it a good experience as well. We had a pen of chicks for sale, and that's always an attention grabber. I'd come over and explain how to tell a baby chicken from a baby turkey, and lots of little fingers got to feel how soft a baby bird is. And I offer cups of bird food so folks can feed the chickens, turkeys, ducks, guineas and peafowl. One of my earliest customers of the day is a nice gentleman who always has me keep his change so I can hand out cups of feed to kids who otherwise may not get to experience that part of the farm. Since I charge only $.50 per cup, it's a pretty cheap act of kindness to pay forward, but it's a wonderful thing to do. But every single time I tried to give away a cup to a child, the adult with them insisted on keeping the pay-it-forward chain going, even if they had to go out to the car to bring me some change. While I've read in the paper about these kind of spontaneous acts of kindness that keep going until 70 folks in line for coffee pay for someone else's, this was the first time I had been a part of something like that. It's always heartening to see that side of the human race....or maybe it's just that we get such an incredible group of folks that stop by to see us!
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This time of year, no matter where I go, I'm drawn to seeds. Dan can look for whatever he wants in Home Depot, I'll be over in the garden section. I don't always buy, but it's fun to see what is available. And if I do see something I can't live without, it's almost always seeds I can start myself. Not only are they cheaper, but I can be sure that they are grown in a way I am comfortable having in my gardens. Unfortunately, a lot of big box store plants are sprayed with some fairly toxic chemicals. It keeps the plants healthy looking and free of insects, but the chemicals persist on the plants and can kill ALL bugs, even beneficial pollinators like bees. The most awful part is many seedlings labeled "bee friendly" and marketed to consumers as great things to plant to help save bees have been poisoned with neonaticides, which means the bees die after being exposed to the chemicals on the otherwise pollinator friendly plants. (Just another reason to buy local, where you can ask the actual grower how the plants were grown and what, if any, chemicals they have been treated with.) But I digress. The point of this was that I saw a label on some asparagus spears I had never noticed before: As a farmer, I am fairly current on a lot of matters concerning the food stamp program, as it is a part of the farm bill each year and gets a lot of press in farming publications. I also hold a Master's of Social Work, and worked in that field for years before coming to the farm full-time. But the idea that food stamps can be used to buy plants that produce food, rather than actual produce, was completely new to me. I had to read the label again to make sure I understood correctly, because for a government program, it made so much sense I couldn't believe it!
There is a pretty common saying about giving a man a fish allows him to eat for a day, whereas teaching a man to fish can help feed him for a lifetime. I'd argue the same applies here. Some plants, like tomatoes or peppers, will feed you only for a season, but a well-tended plant will produce more peppers than you could buy from the store for the same amount of money. Buying perennials or trees can feed you for years to come, but only if you have access to land to plant on, which is not always true for low income folks. But even those in an apartment can have a few plants on a sunny windowsill or porch. And freshly picked produce is healthier, as it has more nutrients (nutrients degrade over time, so the longer they are in storage, the less vitamins you're really getting). Heirloom varieties also often are more nutritious than commercial counterparts. Beyond the nutritional value are a host of other benefits, too. Gardening makes you get up and move, contributing to a healthy lifestyle. Caring for a plant connects you with nature and botany and the whole circle-of-life thing. It reconnects us to where food really comes from. Caring for a living thing, even a plant, can be a great responsibility and teaching tool for youngsters. It hones a valuable skill, gardening, that can be useful for a lifetime. It can provide a small dose of self-sufficiency, enabling the recipient to be more responsible for his or her own food, and just maybe a window into providing more for yourself and needing less taxpayer-subsidized help. It can mean so much more than fresh tomatoes. The only unfortunate part about this is that I'm not sure many folks know about it. Whether or not food stamps should be able to purchase steak or cigarettes gets a lot of press and a lot of dissenting opinions, but this is left in the background. I think that's wrong, so I'm trying to do my part to spread the message about something positive. And I know there are obstacles for many folks receiving SNAP benefits- access to garden space, frequent moves, lack of gardening know-how. But I also see that it's a wonderful opportunity for some! It's May 7. It's been a beautiful week with warm temperatures, sunshine, and just enough rain to make the spring leaves start to show. For a change, Dan's been home helping me around the farm. We have a good bit of the garden planted now, with salad greens, radishes, spring onions, potatoes, peas, beets, beans and a few other things in the ground. Another big project down was tearing down the remnants of our greenhouse. While the new greenhouse we built last year is being prepped for tomatoes and peppers, the older one we've been using for years collapsed under the weight of a heavy snow. While it was a heartbreaker back in early January, now we just want to rid the farm of the eyesore and to use the ground as garden space once again. I have month-old meat chickens out on grass, and picked up a fresh batch of chicks at the post office this afternoon. We're hatching chicks & turkey poults weekly now, with the first guineas coming in days. We had some more babies this week- the last calf of the season along with a few more kittens, and my Silver Fox rabbit babies are growing like bad weeds. Transplanting seedling plants I've started keeps me busy, but it's actually one of my favorite farm tasks. I'm lined up with our meat processor and our coffee supplier to have what we need done by opening day, which falls on May 23 this year. It sounds like life is peachy on the farm, right?
Every year I go through an epic meltdown about this time of year. We're so close to opening the stand for the year, and each year a panic sets in that it will be a failure, that the tables will be bare. It's always tough to run your own business, but it's doubly so when you depend on the weather. It was snowing 10 days ago. It's 87 degrees out right now, but we had lows in the 20's just recently. Spring was late this year, plain and simple. It's a challenge every year to have produce to sell when the last night of frost often falls after we've already opened for the season. It's easy to panic when most of the produce is merely hope in the ground right now. But there is time yet too, and I need sometimes to breathe and remember that. We'll have meat, and so canned things like jam & mustard, and I'll have vinegars ready by then, too. And plants and baby chicks. Coffee and tea. Blacksmith-made metal creations. Jewelry. I have some cute aprons I made from feed sacks, and some rainy day soon I hope to make up some totes from them as well. By now I know we'll have enough to fill the tables and welcome our farm friends back for another season, which will be the 25th since the Stevenson family has been here at the farm. There is an incredible amount of things to be done in the next 16 days, but they will get done as they always do, with hard work and long days. That is simply spring on a farm, after all. Lots to do, and little time to panic... |
AuthorEmily Stevenson is a real life farmeress and artisan and chronicles her experiences in food, farming and life here. Archives
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