Imposing A Little Structure

Life on a farm, I’m learning is often about method, habit, regularity. There’s a lot of making sure that things are as things ought to be. The whole enterprise feels a little like humanity’s effort to hold out against Newton’s 2^nd Law for as long as possible.

But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. And hey, Cincinnatus, one of Rome’s emperors was a farmer. So to help me keep up with this blog I’ve decided to post on a biweekly basis, that is every Thursday (as evidenced by this post) and Monday (as evidenced by the post I will post next Monday). Just some updates on what I’m doing on an organic farm in the Berkshires as the rolling tide of Autumn approaches. Excepting my intro post on MITP and my discussion of Turkey stupidity (everyday it’s something with those birds), this will be my first of the regular postings. And as such, I’ll start from the beginning!

What does a regular day on a farm look like?

It starts the same. Wake up sometime before 6:30 in order to start the day at 6:30. We commune in the kitchen, make some coffee and head out to do chores. (Usually with coffee in hand. Also, please stop for a moment and know that our coffee comes from Costa Rica and makes me immensely happy and reminiscent of the coffee I drank every day last summer). That mainly means feeding and watering all the animals (turkeys, geese, chickens, pigs, sheep, cattle), though it will soon also mean milking our one dairy cow, who is very pregnant by nature of being two weeks late.

Then we have breakfast, which is often eggs from our hens, in combination with something else. We’ve recently been having a lot of toast, with an organic hazelnut chocolate spread (yes, nutella, on organic crack, it’s delicious). During breakfast, we make the plan.

After breakfast, we enact the plan.

Remember what I said about method, habit, regularity, etc? It’s true, but also entirely false. Everyday the tasks at hand come as a reaction to what we’ve done before, what we need to get done before X, what unplanned circumstances we’re presented with (e.g. did the cattle fence stop working? does the intense heat mean we can’t work in the greenhouse? Is all of our broccoli going to go to waste if we don’t pick it today?). The plan is our plan for the day, and what needs to be done. The plan normally takes the shape of a to do list with far too many things to do. Those undone get carried over until tomorrow or become irrelevant.

So, the bulk of our day, from about 9:30 to about 5:30 (with apple-picked, vegetable sliced, sometimes left-overs reheated lunch in the middle) is spent working on the plan and getting as much done as possible. Whether that’s weeding, mulching, digging, moving things, cleaning things, moving fences, moving animals, laying out beds, harvesting food, preparing for market, being at market, fixing tools, selling to customers, planting seeds, cultivating beds, fermenting food, preparing preserves, or any other kind of thing that comes up and needs doing. I spent one whole day making 70 lbs of sauerkraut, because we needed to harvest our cabbage before it went bad, and it wouldn’t stay fresh. It’s fermenting in the basement now.

Then at 5:30, we do chores again, come back to the house, cook dinner, eat dinner, relax a little, blog if we can (really that’s just me), then go to sleep.

So, if you’re wondering what I’m doing on a farm, that’s kind of what I’m doing here. Why I’m here is a question for another post.

In closing, here’s a picture of one of our pastures. Idyll indeed.: