Arugula, Class, Snow & Winter

Four inches of snow sits atop beds of arugula in the Local Food Project garden- meanwhile, winter sowing of arugula and greens carries on in the LFP Passive Solar Hoophouse. As we wrap up a year full of workshops and seminars at Airlie Center, we look forward to our January 2010 Conference- Nordell & Martens: Culture in Cultivation, featuring a small vegetable farm powered by draft horses, and a 1,300 acre organic grain operation with custom milling of animal feeds.

Winter, where the harvest is soooo sweet, literally! That's because the cool temps concentrate sugars in cool weather crops, from carrots to kale to yes, arugula. If you have ever wondered why your garden carrots are not that sweet, is may be partially due to the temps of the soil during harvest. So many crops that are bland or even bitter during the summer and early fall take on an entirely new flavor in the fall and early winter.

The key becomes how you keep these crops alive in the garden for that sweet harvest.

At the LFP garden, we believe in simplicity. Metal hoops (you can cut your own using any decently thick steel wire) straddle our three ft. wide garden beds. Over these hoops, we drape floating row cover, a poly-fabric that provides a mild amount of frost protection (a few degrees), but creates a temperate, wind-free environment in which cold-tolerant greens and roots (like radishes, carrots & beets) can hang around and sweeten up until harvest. The row cover comes in varying thicknesses and price, but we like to use the stuff that is in the middle- not too light, not too heavy.

So when it snows, the cover will at least provide a little buffer between the plants and the snow, provided the snow is not too heavy. It is truly amazing to dust off the snow, and uncover a dazzling green bed of crispy greens amidst a winter wonderland!

For heading deep into winter, a hoophouse is the way to go. It's the same concept of providing a little protection for the crops with hoops and a covering, but the hoops are much larger and the covering is a high-grade plastic. In the LFP garden, we have a 30x72 ft. gothic frame hoophouse. The frame came from Ledgewood Farms. The plastic, vents, and end-wall paneling came from Griffins Greenhouse Supply. We harvested and milled all the white oak baseboards and door framing ourselves, with the guidance of experienced timber framer Eric Westergart.

And that brings us back to winter. I encourage all gardeners to go for a winter harvest, which is essentially an extension of your fall crops via a little protection from the elements.

Exploring the Small Farm Dream

This past Wednesday, December 2, 2009, eighteen emerging new farmers gathered for the fourth and final session of this year's Exploring the Small Farm Dream Course, held right here at Airlie Center. The course, developed by the New England Small Farm institute, is designed to be a concise and effective catalyst for small farmers to better evaluate new enterprise ideas, identify resources, and determine next steps. The course is so valuable because of the holistic design of the sessions, helping small farmers look more closely at the dollars and cents of a particular production model, as well as quality of life and family dynamics.

Each session, we invite a local farmer or two to share their story, experience and advice for the group. The goal of the course is not to teach how to farm, but to facilitate the connection of aspiring farmers with one another, with experienced mentors, and with the right questions. At the end of four sessions, course participants create an action plan with next steps, from additional research to mentorship opportunities to launching an enterprise!

This year we took a field trip to Moutoux Orchard and helped Rob Moutoux plant garlic while learning about his developing CSA and local grain & flour projects.

It is our hope that Exploring the Small Farm Dream and other programs create the beginnings of a more effective infrastructure to advance new farmers and new farm projects throughout the region.

Back-to-School Buckwheat

Back to school, in the garden! Three weeks ago, we decided to sow a cover crop of buckwheat in an area of the garden where we had grown potatoes. Cover crops can have several positive impacts on the organic garden system. First, cover crops add biomass and build organic matter in the soils, breaking up clay soils and making more nutrients available to crops that follow. Some cover crops, like legumes and clovers, fix nitrogen from the air into the soil, working cooperatively with soil bacteria to do so. Cover crops can outgrow and smoother weeds (especially buckwheat, which has to be the fasting growing non-weed we’ve ever seen!), and can also facilitate the disruption of pest and disease cycles in the garden. Cover crops tend to have a ‘mellowing’ effect on the soil, and also protect soil from erosion & the elements.

Point is, cover crops are cool. Problem is, many of us organic gardeners know that cover crops are a good thing, yet can never seem to get around to actually sowing them in our garden. The two main barriers to a lack of cover crops in the organic garden are space & seed. Unless you live in the outerburbs, many garden centers do not carry cover crop seed. And unless you have a large garden, it may seem like a waste of space to put a section of the garden in cover crop.

The key to using cover crops begins with having a stockpile of cover crop seed on hand. Most garden catalogues carry cover crop seed in small enough increments to use over the course of a couple years in the backyard. Four good cover crops to have in your closet are: buckwheat, oats, winter-rye, and white clover. If you have an area that is ‘spent’, like an early planting of squash, and are not about to do a second planting, just get out there and broadcast some of your cover crop seed. It’s fun, and makes you feel like a wise gardener. Buckwheat is a fast-growing summer cover crop, but does not do well in the cold. When the frost kills your tomatoes, you still might be able to sow a cold-hardy cover like winter-rye. Each cover crop has its purpose and place in the organic garden system.

Now that you have the seed, you might find yourself with a space problem, particularly in the urban garden. The space problem can be solved through the technique of undersowing, or getting cover crops started a few weeks before a particular vegetable crop is done, right underneath the vegetables, in the same bed. For instance, now’s a great time to ‘undersow’ your tomatoes with oats. The oats germinate, grow up a few inches, then the tomatoes die back, and the oats can carry on into the fall before eventually dying after several hard frosts. Eliot Coleman, the Maine organic farmer and author, writes extensively about undersowing cover crops in his book, The New Organic Grower.

Once you get started with cover crops, you won’t want to stop. Buckwheat is a great one to start with, and you can probably still sow it this week, giving you a few weeks of growth before the first killing frost…

View from a Ladder: The Evolving Garden

It’s been a busy year for the Local Food Project and there’s no better way to get perspective on all the changes than to climb up on the sixteen foot ladder and get a bird’s eye view of the evolving garden. We can take in the entire boundary of the expanded fenceline and see how the sections we newly tilled this year fit in with the overall layout of our growing space. We can look down on the passive solar hoophouse and realize how big a role it’s playing in our summer vegetable production. We can gaze at two new herb garden areas (the heart and the baseball diamond) and check out the progress of our sprouting buckwheat cover crop. And we can look forward to a productive fall and winter season, with our eyes already on plans for next spring. The view from up here is amazing!

Digging in to Small Farm Design

Participants at last weekend’s “Skills, Scale, Sustainability” workshop took home a whole new toolbox full of ideas and strategies for designing, managing, and enhancing a small-scale food-growing system. Facilitator Shane J. LaBrake drew on a lifetime’s worth of farming experience to inspire course attendees to put their sustainable agriculture dreams into motion.

During the 2.5-day workshop, Shane returned again and again to one of his favorite quotes from William McDonough—“Design is the first signal of human intention.” He showed participants how to apply that concept philosophically—in the way they set up and think about the integration of their farm system—and practically—as they lay out the beds and set the schedule for a vegetable garden. Shane’s approach to tractor operation and maintenance emphasized two simple policies: 1. Read the manual. 2. Safety, safety, safety. Attendees were empowered to understand how tractors work and feel comfortable operating them on their own farms. The workshop was a real success thanks to Shane’s depth of knowledge and the enthusiasm of the participants. View more photos from the weekend.

Holistic and Hands-On

Are you ready to take your gardening and farming skills to the next level? Join us April 3-5 for an exciting intensive workshop that will provide strategies and experiences for designing a more purposeful food production system. Farming consultant and trainer Shane J. LaBrake will share his holistic approach to small-scale agriculture, including field-based exercises using hand tools. This course is designed for emerging and intermediate growers who want to explore new ways to match their skills with appropriate scale in order to move toward greater sustainability. There’s still time to register—you won’t want to miss "Skills, Scale, Sustainability"!

The Integrated Homestead, April 17-18

The joys of cover cropping. Chickens as shredders and composters. Using cultivated fungi in the homestead. Where can you learn about these diverse topics and more? At the Local Food Project’s upcoming workshop starring local homesteading guru Harvey Ussery—“The Integrated Homestead: Elaborating the Theme.” On April 17 and 18 Harvey will build on his presentation from 2008 and provide a more in-depth look at specific homestead projects—from seed starting and transplanting, to vermicomposting and setting up a multifunctional greenhouse. You won’t want to miss this fun and informative event. Learn more and register today!

Real-Life Skills and Knowledge for Aspiring Farmers

The Local Food Project’s next event—“Skills, Scale, Sustainability”—will offer an exciting blend of farm design theory and hands-on learning. Facilitator Shane J. LaBrake is known for his unique approach to farmer training, emphasizing the importance of both management and practical skills.

Join us on April 3-5 to learn strategies for creating a farm plan that really works, communicating on the farm and at the market, and navigating the twists and turns of each season. You’ll also have the chance to get your hands dirty and become better acquainted with handtools for the small farm, tractor basics, and scale-appropriate field design. There are only 24 spots available in this unique intensive seminar. Register today!

Skills, Scale, Sustainability

How can you find greater success in your small-scale agricultural endeavors? Join the Local Food Project for a new course on April 3-5 and take home a wealth of proven strategies and hands-on skills that will help you refine your food production system. During “Skills, Scale, Sustainability”—a 3-day intensive immersion workshop for aspiring and experienced growers—agricultural consultant Shane J. LaBrake will combine sustainable farming philosophy with practical training and problem solving.

“As we consider small farm design, we’ll address real life skills and knowledge that aspiring need to know,” says Shane. Read more on our website and register early to secure your space in this essential course for small-scale growers.

A Tale of Two Farms: Conference Highlights, Part 4

Attendees at the Local Food Project’s 2009 conference—“Half Pint and Essex: A Tale of Two Farms”—had the chance to see a local draft horse team in action. Justin Lamountain, owner of Piedmont Virginia-based Greenman Forest Management, and his hardworking Suffolks gave conference attendees a sense of the horse power in use at Essex Farm. Justin and his team are also responsible for sustainably harvesting the wood used in the frame of our passive solar hoophouse. Conference participants had the chance to see these beautiful animals up close and ask questions about their work.

View more conference photos in our online album. Thank you to everyone who attended “A Tale of Two Farms”! We look forward to seeing you at the next Local Food Project at Airlie event. Our 2009 calendar will be available soon.

A Tale of Two Farms: Conference Highlights, Part 3

A memorable part of the Local Food Project’s 2009 conference—“Half Pint and Essex: A Tale of Two Farms”—was the delicious buffet lunch prepared by Airlie’s talented team of chefs.

Conference participants enjoyed a feast of seasonal, locally grown foods—roasted carrots and braised cabbage, braised pork with rosemary and shitake mushrooms, roasted red and purple potatoes with herbs, and other sumptuous dishes. Aside from the yummy feast of local foods, attendees had the chance to share new ideas sparked by the presentations and hear one another’s farming and gardening stories.

View more conference photos in our online album. Stay tuned for more highlights from “A Tale of Two Farms”!

A Tale of Two Farms: Conference Highlights, Part 2

The Local Food Project’s 2009 conference—“Half Pint and Essex: A Tale of Two Farms”—shared a peek into the innovative systems of two very different farms. Mara and Spencer Welton of Half Pint Farm (Burlington, VT) inspired us with their passion for farming and eagerness to have fun while doing it. They wowed our audience with their dedication to record-keeping, showing samples of spreadsheets with data on every aspect of running the farm—from weather and soil conditions, to market sales and production yields and beyond! Participants also got a kick out of Half Pint’s “annual meeting”—the demanding agenda for last year’s strategy session showed how comfortably Mara and Spencer take on various roles—CEO, farm manager, field worker, marketer.

Mark and Kristin Kimball of Essex Farm (Essex, NY) led an interactive presentation that mirrored how they describe their farm—high-energy and physical. A series of hand-drawn posters gave conference attendees a visual sense of the systems that make Essex go. Essex employees Sam Ehrenfeld and Matt Volz helped Mark and Kristin take questions from the audience and they all spoke about the farm’s main components: providing a full diet—veggies, fruits, dairy, meat, and baked goods; allowing its 75 members free choice in what they select each week (no pre-measured boxes or bags); feeding members on a year-round basis (summer and winter shares); working the farm with draft horse power; and operating as a membership organization where folks pay for the food at the beginning of each season.

Conference attendee Ellen Polishuk, owner of Potomac Vegetable Farms, appreciated getting such an up-close look into the farms’ systems: “The intensive study of these farms is exactly what made it so valuable, and of course the fact that they were so funny and amazing.”

View more conference photos in our online album. Stay tuned for more highlights from “A Tale of Two Farms”!

A Tale of Two Farms: Conference Highlights, Part 1

The Local Food Project’s 2009 conference—“Half Pint and Essex: A Tale of Two Farms”—was a great success! On January 9, we welcomed more than 100 participants to Airlie for a dynamic day of learning, networking, food and fun. We want to share some of the highlights from this fantastic event and welcome feedback from anyone who attended. If you weren’t able to make it, explore the blog for content summaries, photos, and other valuable info from the conference.

This photo shows folks gathered in our passive solar hoophouse for the networking social that wrapped up the day. After a morning of in-depth presentations on designing successful farm systems, conference participants had the chance to get to know one another and share their impressions. One attendee, Nancy Gravely, appreciated the opportunity to talk with other small farm enthusiasts: “It really makes a difference to spend time with other people who are doing it, seems as though something gets passed along just by being in their company.”

View more conference photos in our online album. Stay tuned for more highlights from “A Tale of Two Farms”!

A Tale of Two Farms: Last Chance to Register

The Local Food Project’s annual conference is only two days away and the excitement is building! With nearly 100 registered participants, we’re thrilled to bring together two successful farms from the Northeast with so many interesting folks from Virginia’s Piedmont and beyond. We still have space available and are accepting registrations until 3 p.m. on Thursday, January 8. Register online now using conference code 105682.

If you haven’t signed up yet, don’t miss out on this chance to hear from these two amazing farm projects (Half Pint and Essex) and connect with a diverse group of food growers and local food advocates. For more information, send an email to pelliott@airlie.org or call 540-347-1300, ext. 1363. Read more about the speakers in previous blog posts. Download a copy of our conference brochure (above) to see photos of the farms.

A Tale of Two Farms: A Note from Essex Farm

Our 2009 conference on January 9 will feature an up close look at the innovative systems of two successful farm operations. Learn more about the event.

Essex Farm will be one of the enterprises featured at the conference. The news below is excerpted from the weekly notes Essex sends to its members. Join us on January 9 to hear directly from Kristin and Mark Kimball, owners of Essex Farm.

We’re nearing the cold, dark center of the year now. The ground is close to freezing. Last chance to get fence posts in. Last chance for greens. Last year’s tilled ground is put to bed in cover crops. The horses are working today, their fur grown long, plowing new ground for next year.

There is a lot of purposeful mating going on at Essex Farm this week. The boar has arrived. He is monumental. He is a Gloucester Old Spots, with an upper lip that is lifted a little on both sides by his tusks, which makes him look like he’s half smiling. I am a little in love with him. The sows are more than a little in love with him.

At lunch today we pushed in the side table and added extra chairs to make fifteen places, and Ronnie made sirloin steaks and roasted root vegetables and carrot salad and Yorkshire pudding and an angel food cake topped with strawberry sauce.

The whole team worked to spiff up the farmyard, and put all the equipment back into the renovated pole barn. Jay is not lame and went back to work with Jack, hauling firewood from the low woods.

And that’s the news from Essex Farm.

-Kristin & Mark Kimball

A Tale of Two Farms: Essex’s Secret to Happiness

Our 2009 conference on January 9 will feature an up close look at the innovative systems of two successful farm operations. Essex Farm will be one of the featured enterprises. Learn more about the conference.

Mark and Kristin Kimball operate Essex Farm, featured in Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy as a unique example of a farm producing a complete food supply for local eaters. The 75 families who are members of the farm receive a wide spectrum of local food, enjoying both summer classics and nutritious winter staples. “Except for paper towels and dental floss, you’d never have to set foot in a store again,” writes McKibben.

The diverse range of products creates its own share of challenges for the farm. Kristin (a former travel writer) wrote in a 2005 article about the difficult task of managing multiple time sensitive projects at the same time. But the rewards are also great—for both customer and producer. “I felt like I had discovered something no less profound than the secret to happiness,” she said. Read more in her article for New Farm magazine.

Next time, we'll share some farm news directly from Mark and Kristin!

A Tale of Two Farms: Making Connections with Half Pint

Our 2009 conference on January 9 will feature an up close look at the innovative systems of two successful farm operations. Half Pint Farm will be one of the featured enterprises. Learn more about the conference.

Half Pint developed relationships with local chefs early on through the Intervale’s participation in the Vermont Fresh Network, an organization that fosters ties between farms and restaurants and provides the tools for buyers and sellers to establish long-term relationships.

Half Pint has seen its share of challenges—from floods, to rampant weeds, to a political battle over a new HayGrove hoophouse—but the Weltons continue to succeed (grossing over $50,000 on their mini-farm) through an awareness of the crops, processes, and customers that are right for their farm. Mara and Spencer also give back to the farming community by speaking at events, volunteering with domestic and international projects, and hosting gatherings at the farm.

A Tale of Two Farms: A Full Grocery Bag from Essex

Our 2009 conference on January 9 will feature an up close look at the innovative systems of two successful farm operations. Essex will be one of the featured enterprises. To learn more about the conference, send an email to localfoodproject@airlie.org.

Kristin and Mark Kimball came to Essex Farm (in Northeastern New York near Lake Champlain) in the fall of 2003 and quickly set to work creating a unique CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) enterprise that provides members with a full grocery bag of food each week—vegetables, orchard fruits, grains, baked goods, dairy, and grass-fed meats. Powered by a team of Belgian draft horses, Essex Farm feeds 75 families year-round. Members experience the full spectrum of local food, enjoying not only summer classics like tomatoes and peppers, but nutritious (and storable) winter squashes and root vegetables.

Next time, we'll look at how Half Pint established lasting relationships with area restaurants.

A Tale of Two Farms: How Half Pint Got Started

Our 2009 conference on January 9 will feature an up close look at the innovative systems of two successful farm operations. Half Pint Farm will be one of the featured enterprises. To learn more and register for the conference, send an email to localfoodproject@airlie.org.

Mara and Spencer Welton grow baby greens and gourmet specialty crops for direct sale to farmer’s markets and restaurants and wholesale to local grocery stores in Burlington, Vermont. Looking ahead to its seventh season, Half Pint Farm began as an incubator project at the Intervale, a reclaimed urban waste site that now hosts a network of thriving small farms.

The Weltons have purposefully kept Half Pint small, finding the one and a third acres a perfect size for two people to manage and capable of producing exquisite vegetables that stand out for their taste, nutrition, and uniqueness. Check out Half Pint Farm’s website to learn more.

Next time, we'll share a peak at how Essex Farm offers CSA members a full grocery bag of good food!

From Garden Bed to Dining Room Buffet

So how do Local Food Project veggies, herbs, and berries make their way from the garden to the buffet table at Airlie Center? Check out our online photo album for a visual tour of the trip.

You’ll see plants getting their start as tiny seedlings, growing, being harvested, washed, delivered, prepared, and presented for the enjoyment of Airlie guests. Start the tour now!