February News 2010

Hello again, 

I have found myself in the "pick myself up and dust myself off" mode lately. We have hauled ourselves through our usually ambitious winter shake-down of clean up, construction projects, revamps, and rejiggers of the farm's infrastructure. A dusty and greasy old barn bay has yielded to a bright and lovely (and sort of heated… gasp!) new farm office. My beloved desk of five years, a board propped up on two beehives, was retired. The epic mess in the "side-barn" has been sorted and swept and is ready for another season's abuses. Tractors and harvest records and been combed over and our slate has been cleared for a new season. Everything changes, and with those changes we learn and grow up.

      An uplifting and exciting change around the farm is that I live on it now! Garth and I moved in a few months ago. I feel like I just walked onto the set of a 'Folgers' commercial: sipping hot coffee watching the sunrise over the farm from the porch of a little white farmhouse. The coffee is Redding Roasters, but you get the idea. It is hard to believe that such a short time ago I was living in the West Village and teaching in the Bronx. Everything changes.

      I am not really a cold weather person, but each year the backside of our calendar (November through February) gets more and more exciting on our farm. Every freeze this winter signals another nail in the coffin of the dreaded tomato blight that hit so many New England farms last summer. I have spent a lot of time attending and speaking at organic farming conferences and young farmer coalition meetings, and this work always seems to lift my eyes a little to the horizon – to all the amazing people who are gathering under this tent to take on some pretty bleak odds. In his book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawkin writes about the "unnamed movement" that is coalescing around food, the environment and human rights : "If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren't pessimistic, you don't have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren't optimistic, you haven't got a heart." These people, the stalwart members of our CSA, the eager young farmers to whom I speak, and the sage tree-huggers for whom none of this is news; this coalition of human beings is something I would bet the farm on. Indeed I have.

      By this point you are wondering, 'what about the farm part of the farm?' Apple tree pruning begins next week and it's full steam ahead from then until the last apples are harvested for Thanksgiving dinner. We seeded scallions and leeks in the greenhouse this week. The return of quiet hours hunched over a seed tray is a welcome meditation for me. Our CSA will expand to 200 shares this year and we are hoping to clear most of our waiting list. Some of you have been patiently waiting for a couple years now, and I want you to know we have not forgotten and we truly appreciate your loyalty and patience. We will open the shares to our returning members first and then contact those of you on the waitlist by the end of February. There is no need to put your name on the waitlist if you have already done so: we keep careful records, all dated. If you have not signed up and are interested, please see the CSA section of our website, www.thehickories.org, for details and an online sign-up form.

      We have been dusting off not just physically but virtually, too. Our website is getting a wintertime face-lift. My brother, our web designer, continues to develop a website that is truly one of the most beautiful and most functional of any farm I know. Check out our new section on Job Opportunities, and please spread the word to every Iowa farm boy and energetic, unemployed, wanna-be farmer you know. The calendar is filling up with local farm-friendly events in the area so be sure to check that out and join me – film nights, Fairfield County Farm Bureau winter conference, NOFA meetings, etc.

         As the snow is flying horizontally across the pastures this afternoon it is nice to think of the scallions and leeks snuggled in their warm seed trays – little seedcoats bursting and first tiny root hairs pushing down into the soil. Everything changes, yes, but that wonderful cycle is as fixed as the earth underneath us.

All the best,

     Dina Brewster