Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for awhile will have followed our contemplations over the past year or two regarding whether to retire the seasonal vegetable CSA. Having considered doing so last year, we instead instituted a significant make-over for 2021, basically halving the yearly share by making it every-other-week and letting farm members pack their own bags. This reduced the amount of work on our end, and seemed a workable template for a more sustainable way to manage the CSA, much as we’d intended.
But it also provided scintillating glimpses, during the off-weeks, of what life on the farm might be like once the CSA was retired altogether.
These inadvertent tastes of opium have had their effect. I wish I could say I was not susceptible to the temptations of sloth, as I might have contended in my 30s or 40s, but the wages of age are hard to deny. For now, the possibility of laying in the hammock under the plum tree and falling asleep (first: to want to lay in the hammock), or to go on a summer vacation, or actually experience a summer weekend in Madison – these are enticements that have now got my work-ethic by the neck. And while I still find it difficult to sit still for more than ten minutes, part of what motivates me to drop CSA now is precisely that I want to leave some working capacity in my joints and tendons for what I’m hoping might be an active old-age (unless it already is).
The vegetable patch at the farm is likely to shrink only modestly next year, in any case. We will still be feeding ourselves and producing enough for our regular canning-runs so we can keep our value-added sales going. We may do Fall storage shares. The orchard may also increase its production if we are able to provide it more assiduous attention than we’ve been able to in recent seasons.
Farm Blog
Thank you again for braving the blizzard to celebrate, connect with great food, and 'planting an orchard'! Just imagine all those future cherry trees (don't forget to squat:-).
I am so uplifted from all the good vibes, intentions, laughter and seeds shared and planted.
We were able to raise $850.00 in funds! This will go a long way, thank you! Additionally, with all the seeds donated today and from what I've gleaned from others, The women growers in the Sine-Saloum region will be able to plant out a couple hundred row feet/farm. In the past we've planted shared 'demonstration beds' ie since many of the farmers share space/land to grow on we've constructed seeds beds to trial different varieties, plant insectory herbs and flowers and share techniques. From there seeds are harvested and shared forward amongst the individual farmers. So in essence your generosity helped plant teaching/learning/eating/
sharing beds of veggie, herb, and flower goodness!
I will honor my commitment and extend the immense gratitude, generosity that was shared during the workshop with the women farmers in the following ways:
Work with NCBA CLUSA Farmer to Farmer Program to transfer funds and mail seeds.
I'll also email and share highlights, photos forward later this week in celebration of our workshop success.
I am tentatively set to travel there Nov/Dec. or January in 2016.
I also finally remembered the name of third grower group, JUBO (means widespread). If you're interested in learning more about how they got started, here's a link to an interview I did as part of my last Farmer to Farmer adventure in Senegal.
I Will keep you in the loop as the project evolves and thanks again for sharing your generous spirit!
For the chocolate lovers:
Becky Otte, who made the amazing truffles, has more of her chocolate goodness to share and is selling some of her creations just in time for Valentines. if you're interested send her an email: raonine@gmail.com
Also Here is a link to Roots Chocolate website.
For the Fruit Lovers:
I've enclosed a handout of some of the different fruits we grow at our farm as well as a flyer highlighting this season's events at the farm! We'd love to have you venture out and tour the orchard, come visit us (though not nearly as cool as the orchard poses we did during the workshop).
Thank you again for helping me transition from being a butterfly weed seed (ie wind pollinated, not knowing where or how my intentions, projects might stick) to more of an oak or cashew seeds - wherein I can deepen my awareness, provide support in the same place(s) in Senegal for the growers and in my backyard in Wisconsin:-). Here's to planting the seeds of the as yet to be imagined on and off the yoga mat! Wishing you all much abundance.
Happy Mid-winter!
Yours in hardy kiwi,
Erin
PS If you are into exploring the planting side as well as enjoying more local fruit creations, we'll be hosting a Local Fruit Tasting May 16, details on our website.
Summer Solstice Re-cap, Sizing up the Season
With the solstice now past and the deep of summer ahead of the prow, it seemed like a good point to assess the year so far.
The start to the 2021 growing season was auspiciously benign by comparison with a number of recent years. Green-up was long but steady -- a pleasant contrast to the extremely cold late-Springs we’ve seen in the past half-decade when tree-buds only broke in the third or fourth week of May.
The slow warm-up made for good results from the early-season vegetables, with the single exception of peas. Having been planted into delightfully dry and workable soil in mid-April, they sat for nearly two and a half weeks before receiving any appreciable moisture, and their germination reflected it. So, unfortunately, there will be no peas in the vegetable share this year. Otherwise though, planting was – by contrast to Springs in the late Teens -- blessedly uneventful, with warm soils allowing good tilth, and enough moisture during May to germinate carrots, beets, scallions, corn, beans and vining crops.
June’s early, dry heat was a challenge for the lettuce and radishes, both of which were inclined to bolt earlier than usual. Steady irrigation from our water catchments countered some of that. On them up-side, the drought in June seems to have so far kept insect populations – barring the ubiquitous potato beetle, of course -- in check. We’ll see how this plays out now that a significant change for the rainier has commandeered the month’s final week.
Read More"Transitional Year of Wonderment" modus operandi for 2021 CSA
“Transitional Year of Wonderment” may, in some ways, have seemed a better name for 2020 than 2021 – after all, the whole of humanity basically transitioned overnight to staying six feet apart from one another. And I suppose it was a bit of a wonder that we managed to keep modern society functioning (more or less) despite this.
But at Hilltop we've taken the slogan as our operating plan for the coming year, having been inspired to imagine what might be possible after seeing seven billion normally fractious and querulous human beings pivot in unison like a school of fish. Erin exercised a long-considered decision to step away from commercial flower production, and I suppose I should have taken the supportive and parallel step of putting down the vegetable CSA – which would not have been an unreasonable move after 28 years.
But – querulous human being that I am – I decided to keep the CSA going, only with a re-imagined format that would require less work so that I could keep it running without distracting Erin from delving into new training or other avenues of interest. It remains to be seen how successfully this plan will work. Erin is nothing if not a supportive spouse, and I suspect that showing up at the garden gate with a hoe in hand will be a distracting temptation no matter my intentions to the contrary.
Read MoreTurn and Face the Strange - 2021 Farm CSA Flow
If nothing else, 2020 – and now, 2021 – have made us all adept at rolling with whatever astonishing new realities history may throw at us. Since we are as well-practiced as ever at keeping our balance in the face of change, I figured the moment was right to pile-on.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, Hilltop will be undergoing some changes in the coming year. A number of infrastructural projects have been begging our attention for awhile. Erin will be stepping away from commercial flower production in order to free up time for additional pursuits, on-farm and off. All of which posed a great temptation to me to follow suit.
Upon reflection however, I decided that stepping away from the vegetable CSA this year didn't quite make sense. Erin and I will still be growing vegetables for ourselves in our gardens in any case, and -- what is more -- last Fall we made a once-in-a-decade investment in 20 yards of compost which we expect to boost the productivity of our soil.
Read MoreThe Food by the Numbers
We are paying more attention to numbers these days than we usually do, between Covid infection rates and the vote totals that will determine the direction of public policy over the next four years. And so, I will take the opportunity to slip in these for your review, so long as we are paying attention to sums of far greater moment. My figures are rather disappointing – perhaps, in that way, like some of the others.
Despite a meteorological year that was far more conducive to both vegetables and fruit than ones recently past, overall production on the farm was underwhelming this past season. This runs broadside against my perception of the year, which is that it was like those prior to 2016 when we had much more normal amounts of precipitation, decent heat and relatively abundant sunshine than we’ve seen recently.
Read MoreA Different Sort of Spring Ephemeral...Farm Adaptations Amidst Covid - 19
We were not expecting Covid-19 to join the suite of spring ephemerals, but here we are and here's how your Farmers and your Farm are adapting. Please take a moment to pause, digest this letter and with it the latest farm flow and stay healthy and grounded like a perennial - keeping a strong underground root network, with flexible shoots. Here is what to expect at present.
Gratitude! We are so grateful for all the well-wishes, check-in's and creativity that is emerging in our neighborwoods. Thank you! and please stay healthy, be playful and pragmatic.
Farm Menu: At this point our intention is to continue with the growing season as scheduled, and with it our commitment to growing resilience, beauty and abundance for you. As a small CSA we are not concerned about more than 10 people gathering at our drop-site(s). If circumstances require it, we can provide home delivery for a period of time, just please let us know. As your sole laboring farmers, we continue to uphold and ensure all public health and food safety precautions.
What's Ahead
Once past the cross-quarter point in early February, the small return of evening light -- stolen so prematurely and frustratingly back at Lammas -- is just enough to rekindle the enthusiasm to go forward into a new growing season; although frankly, at this point, sitting with my feet up and a book on my lap has not lost much of its appeal. Lengthening days do make me itchy to get back on the land and, as they say, hope does spring eternal each year. But climate change is increasingly putting a strain on that.
The three wettest years on record in south-central Wisconsin have all occurred since 2016. The next three wettest occurred during the previous seven years. So that's the six wettest years occurring in the past twelve; the odds of having another “wettest year on record” are therefore effectively one in two at this point, rather than the 1 in 80 that would otherwise be expected (the climate database I'm looking at goes back to 1940).
Counting on my Fingers: The Year in Numbers
Sometime in July, my left thumb began hurting. It wasn't due to any injury so far as I could tell – I'd simply slept on it badly, cocked-up under my neck to support my head. I didn't think much about it until I slowly realized that it wasn't getting any better as August turned to September. Thumbs get quite a lot of use around our farm, and Erin quite reasonably chided me for putting-off having it looked at. We were busy of course, and I suppose that was my excuse. By the time we were drawing-in the last of the harvest in October, my thumb's continuing sensitivity finally prompted me to set an appointment at the clinic, worried that twenty-six years of farm work might have taken its toll and that now, perhaps, I had left it too late.
As if to put as fine a point on that sentiment as possible, the soonest available time with a doctor turned out to be at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I suppose the diagnosis would have been the same whenever I'd been seen, but I found Fate's additional fillip in this regard slightly amusing. Arthritis is an occupational hazard of farming, and the sort of hand-agriculture that we engage in -- with its endless hours of repetitive motion and straining of the limbs against the forces of nature -- hardly makes it less-so. Arthritis has already crept into my back and shoulder, but I've found these joints amenable to stretching and exercise as succor for their occasional creakiness and pain. Not so my thumb, which has thus far remained recalcitrant and is generally unhappy wrapped around a hoe or hammer handle. I have a bit of occupational therapy scheduled for the winter months ahead, but I admit mild concern if I can't manage to get a grip on this new challenge. On the other hand, I'm unlikely to give up farming very easily because I'm addicted to it.
From Digits to Numbers
Read MoreThe Harvest Homestretch
A single nighthawk, batting across the sky one evening last week, was enough to panic us about the end of summer. We’d already been watching the barn swallows getting set to leave. In mid-August, their offspring still romped the skies, swooping for horseflies past our ears, testing one another with their dives. Last week they sat on the wire, carefully watching the sun go down. Next week, the boreal dark one step too near, they will be off and gone.
It seemed a good occasion then to look back briefly on the summer and estimate what the Fall might hold in store before frost chokes the life out of what remains of the garden.
Read MoreLilacs
May is the time of year when lilac blooms appear in the share.
To be fair, we did not grow these.
The four ancient trees which bear the flowers came with the house when my parents purchased it in the early 1970s. At that point the farm had been abandoned for nearly thirty years. Even at the time, the gnarled, twisting trunks were massive, coppicing out from what must have been the location of some original, planted stem, heaving the soil upward and out around them as they went, as if they were not so much growing as erupting from the earth.
Originally there were five, ensconcing the house at almost every turn. As a teenager, I removed the one that stood abaft the front porch. It's scent was lovely, pouring forth through the dining room window in May. But it had the misfortune of blocking the view to the northwest where the warm-season sunsets were an essential companion at the balustrade after a long day of work. Extracting the tree was a two day task even when I was young and full of energy. The roll of terrain left in its wake remains an object to be negotiated with the lawnmower even to this day.
Read MoreMoments in Place spark Poems
How do you capture a single moment in a place you’ve called home for most of your life? Much less distill it into 15 words?
The possibilities are endless, encounters with woodchucks, a conversation with a friend, experiencing the floods, hunting morels, moonlit swims on Lake Redstone, the moment when swallows leave, luring a swarm of bees, the smell of spring soil, whew! We are grateful to have the land, our community and our imagination guide us. The end results are surprisingly asymetrically greater than the sum of its singular words—sunflower synergy
Seriously, this past winter Rob and I traded our broadforks and spades for pens and paper, digging into brevity in the hopes that we can tell a story or two about what we love about our home in the shape of a 15 Word Poem. This was part of the 20 Poems Project, convened by Reedsburg ArtsLink.
Words, like seeds, need a bit of dormancy before sprouting. They also need a little tending to before a plant or poem is born. I am grateful for to the editing eyes of writer friends, and fellow ‘Poetry for Everyone Workshop’ classmates (I gifted myself this class through Madison College for my 40th birthday). After three months and several iterations, we just learned that each of us will have a poem highlighted as part of the 20 Poems project.
Read MoreGetting Started
An annual rite of Spring for many vegetable growers in this area is the Upper Midwest Organic Farming conference which takes place regularly during the last week of February. Some growers insist they won't start seeds until after its yearly passage.
When I originally contemplated taking up community supported agriculture I ventured to what was the first such conference to try and get a grasp on whether CSA was something I should be undertaking in my mid-30s – vegetable production has a reputation for being murderous on the back and joints, as I already knew from gardening, and I wondered if I should be diving into it more fully as I approached middle age. I remember little of the conference but the presence of a number of participants much older than myself was reassuring.
While attending, I stayed with a couple of college friends who had recently moved nearby and started a family. When I reunited with the two of them again recently – after having rarely been in touch over the intervening years – I found myself trying to estimate their children's ages and getting it wildly wrong even after compensating for the passage of time. Not only were they past high school but through college and on into adult life.
Such unpleasant shocks are a hazard of age but a good reminder, at least to me, to be thankful that vegetable farming, whatever its risks to backs and shoulders, has at least one hallmark benefit: unlike other types of agriculture - or employment generally - vegetable growers are effectively dealt a new hand to play every year.
Read MoreAvoiding the Hazards: 2018 Retrospective
I've often likened vegetable farming to golf -- each year a completely different course, unknown in its layout and length, with novel demands on one's skill-set, exhilarating to engage (inevitably) no matter how draining and demoralizing the final tee. If this comparison is apt, I can say the back nine were especially hard on us in 2018.
Farming is famous for its yearly gauntlet of perils, primarily involving the vicissitudes of weather and markets. At Hilltop, we can at least be thankful to avoid the latter since we sell primarily retail.
But Nature swings a large bat.
As growers, we hedge against calamity in whatever ways are possible – row-cover in the Spring, seven-foot deer fencing, water-catchments to bridge the droughts, obsessive mulching to hold soil-moisture and protect against pounding rains. Much of our preparation is geared toward managing the hydrologic cycle.
Read MoreA Vote with our Shovels, 2018 Fruit Results, Planting Optimism with Perennials
We harvested our last quince the other day. It held steadfast stemming from its home perched on the limb of the tree, surviving the frosts, a freeze, and even a few snowshowers earlier in October. This lovely 'love-apple' fruit marks the end of our harvest season. We have been enjoying the slow sweet ripening on the counter diffusing and seducing with hints of flowers ready to be cooked in the kitchen. When you catch a nostalgic scent of springs past, cut and simmer quince with your apples for a hearty sauce, or enjoy solo, slightly poached and drizzled with honey-invoking the spirit of Aphrodite and Venus – honoring the culinary traditions from Apicius to your Grandma's orchard, and marveling at how such an ancient fruit has been overlooked in today's kitchen. You may also be asking why quince fruit was overlooked on the fall fruit menu this season. Our harvest was minimal yet beautiful and unfortunately we did not have enough fruit to extend into fruit market shares or much for our retail quince lovers.
Not to be a fruit tease, we wanted to share how the fruit season as a whole fared and would love to hear from you! Please take a moment to let us know how we did and we will do the same
Read MoreFlowers as Self-Care and Nourishment
A Guest Blog Post I contributed to the Leek and the Carrot
Every once in a while, I get a nudge of encouragement and invitation to creative play in a flower farming industry that provides endless challenges through all the beauty. A huge thank you to Lauren Rudersdorf, the talented writer, farmer, and soil sister behind the Leek and the Carrot and Raleigh's Hillside Farm. It is an honor to be a guest blogger and share acts of beauty and flower mojo with you. And if you haven't already, her blog one to follow in all it's culinary ingenuity and farm-her authenticity. Thank you Lauren!
It must have started with plucking a daisy’s petals, in my mom’s garden. Mindlessly chanting, “He loves, me, he loves me not,” as I plucked petals daydreaming of a crush I was too awkward to approach in my gangly teenage years. It’s interesting to note that the daisy, along with several thousand species of aster family members, usually have an uneven number of petals, so if you start with ‘(s)he loves me,” that’s probably where you will end up! Maybe the flowers seduced me, as I plucked the petal love. Regardless, the theme of love and trust has stuck with me as I love flowers and continue to learn what it means to trust in their wisdom as a flower farmer.
I have always grown flowers – in my mother’s garden, as part of my own landscapes, apartment balconies, and kitchen windowsills as I worked my way around one mountain peak to the next in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Interior as an outdoor educator and native plant restorationist, and later returning to my Midwest roots, wherein among other adventures, I fell in love with a farmer and well, a Farmer Florist was born. When I started farming with my husband Rob at Hilltop Community Farm in 2009 flowers were always part of the field mix, work/life balance, experimentation, and soul nourishment. The last 7 years, however, I have been consciously shifting from vegetable production to fruit and flowers and this is my fourth season with a ‘formal’ flower csa program and 11th season with wedding flower work. I enjoy how flowers balance and compliment other areas and market channels for our farm including our fruit and vegetable share program.
Read MoreOrchard Music
"To listen to trees, nature's great connectors, is to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty," David Haskell, Song of Trees
We have been listening to, singing with, and growing fruit trees and flowers since 1993--growing and nurturing neighbors, and fruit forests throughout this 24 year time frame and would love to welcome you into the farm foray--we promise we won't make you sing and dance. We will let our fruit and flowers sing a symphony for your tables.
At the start of another season, as we wake up from the dream state of winter-- here are some of our farm's favorite music we invite you to tune into.
FRESH Start
In the short lull between seasons that we get at the top of the year, my mind is sometimes directed toward the wider landscape in which our CSA and others operate.
Generally unseen by CSA customers are the support organizations that provide help with visibility, marketing, professional development and skill-sharing necessary to the farms which grow their food. Fair-Share, the organization that provides these services in much of southern Wisconsin, is probably familiar to eaters as the sponsor of the annual open-house at which CSA farms advertise their wares to potential clientele. In its earlier years the organization was known as MACSAC (Madison Area CSA Coalition), a group of eaters as well as farmers who came together with a mission to educate the public about sustainable farming issues in order to help kickstart the CSA movement in Madison during the early 1990s. Given the solidarity and general bon ami that exists within the community of CSA practitioners, it might seem hard to imagine that there was a brief period of schism and dissension back in the first decade of the millennium.
Read MoreReckoning
Better late than never.
With squirrely and uncooperative weather from almost start to finish this growing season, analysis of 2017's production – like all the rest the year's work – got pushed back by several weeks. But I've finally had a chance to compile the numbers. They are rather uninspiring.
While this growing season's rains (33.05” in total) were not quite as miserable as 2016 (37.88”), they were still 40% over the historical average for the April through October period. And, as usual, the specific timing of the rains was what was most significant. While last year's deluges came almost exclusively after the middle of August, 2017's were heavily loaded toward planting season – we were already 10 inches ahead of 2016 in the short period from the start of April to the end of June.
Cold weather accompanying the rains in the critical third week of May slowed drying and made soil preparation for popcorn and peppers an ungodly slog, especially since both crops were slated for a section of the garden with heavier, more clay-ish soils.
Read MoreNo Sun, No Food
We thank our subscribers for bearing with the hiatus in food-delivery during what is typically the pinnacle of vegetable production so that your farmers could go on a fishing expedition out west for a view of the “great American eclipse” (a term which slightly irritates me). The last time we missed a late-summer delivery was when Erin and I got married in 2011. Best that these interruptions are kept to a minimum if for no other reason than that they double-up the harvesting work in the adjacent weeks.
Not that you missed much.
Read MoreOf Tides, Foxtail Lilies, and Vase Life Tips
I woke up from the mystery of the night thinking of flowers and the resurrection of the morning, of tides and foxtails.
Rainwater dreams, muffled by the excitement of distant thunder (maybe Tuesday into Wednesday we will see rain?). This past week was tidal. Washed ashore from Ghana and teaching—beached at the foothills of my flower beds—I traded sand for silt loam between my toes, ripening mangoes for a hearty saskatoon set, and bright pink red hibiscus petals for equally showy peonies. No time to linger, the blossom tides are peaking.
Read More