I recently returned from Senegal in support of a farmer to farmer project through NCBA – CLUSA (National Cooperative Business Association – Co-op League USA) working with women grower groups in the villages of Kembu, Owayel, and Nguidor on seed saving techniques for their vegetable crops –unearthing stories and origins of seeds along the way.
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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.
Flowers on the Vegetable Farm?
Every farmer in her/his career hits the pause button and considers a re-invention. For me it's been steadfast, subtle, and soaks in a mix of the personal to planetary when it comes to optimal growth for our farm and finances. With seeding needs just around the corner, taxes due, body restored from a restful winter and farm plans in tow for the year ahead, I never knew that my farming re-invention would embrace so many F-words! I am moving away from the vegetable realm (my husband Rob's terrain) and honing in more on fruit, food forests, financial footing, and flowers. The latter, flowers, I've been marketing direct through CSA and providing wedding flowers for the past three years -slowly, mindfully This season, I am looking forward to stepping into my new role as Farmer Florist, experimenting with how to take flowers to the next good dance.
Read MoreYou're Invited: Yoga, Chocolate & Fruit Tasting Benefit Supporting Seeds for Senegal Project
Sunday, January 24, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm, Main St. Yoga Studio, 1882 East Main St. Madison, WI
Come breathe, move, open your heart, and celebrate mid-winter with an all - levels yoga class taught by Hatha Yoga Instructor Barbara Flesch.
Then we’ll dine in community, savoring the sensory experience of nourishment with a mindfulness tasting of chocolate, and sweet and savory fruits grown with love and care with Erin Schneider, Co-owner of Hilltop Community Farm, LLC. Cost of class includes yoga instruction and homemade and homegrown organic food, fruit and refreshments from Hilltop Community Farm.
Read MoreYour Annual Food Calorie Receipt
The calendar has gone November, so it must be time to reckon the season's work. You might remember that back in August, at share #14, I got out the calculator for a preliminary estimate and was sanguine enough to predict a record year in-the-making,“north of 180 lbs per share” as I optimistically put it.
Not quite, as it turned out.
But at 163 pounds, it was the highest yield in the past four years, a full 25 lbs (18%) more by weight than last year's paltry 137.5 pounds, the lowest of the past four years.
Read MoreFalling in Love with the Love Apple...An Homage to Quince
There's a quince in the kitchen, it's plump curvaceous, cherub of a fruit, marks the start of frosty mornings at our farm in La Valle, WI. This lovely fruit marks the end of our CSA season, tucked in the last share box next to the butternnut and onions, its slow sweet ripening on the counter diffusing hints of flowers in the kitchen, reminding us of season's past. We encourage our members and fruit friends to let its presence and scent linger. Then when you catch a nostalgic scent of springs past, cut and simmer quince with your apples for a hearty sauce, or enjoy solo, slighlty 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.
Read MorePost humus reflections - Celebrating the Soil
Well after 7 months, 37 soil fabric pieces and resulting soil profiles, 204 square knots (with homespun yarn by laura/orange cat community farm), roughly 15 x 23' of fabric, 3 group stitching sessions including support from a hedgehog, 7 yards of wonder under, 4 poems, 18 stories, 49 photos, millions of microbes, a few choice words during the sewing process:-), and countless intentions infused with love later...the Soil Quilt has been unearthed!
Thank you for helping provide a platform for which the soil to have it's say and for your humble and heartfelt collaborations with the humusphere during the International Year of Soil!
Read MoreYou're Invited: Unearthing a Soil Quilt
Sunday, October 11 from 10 - 11:30 am at the Rock Springs Public Library
Celebrate the 2015 International Year of Soils by honoring and learning about the soil community locally. Unearth and share stories with local farmers, soil experts about our connection to our foodshed. Celebrate the making of the Soil Quilt and resulting artwork, stories. Light refreshments served. Co-hosted by Sauk/Columbia County Farmers Union. Take the Farm Art D'tour and see the Soil Quilt and other Art and Agriculture/Food highlights following the event.
Read MoreField of Vision
The United Nations has declared 2015 the International Year of Soil, and none too soon. The stuff keeps sloughing off the continent into the rivers and oceans, mostly under the constant wheel of industrial agriculture which treats this substrate of terrestrial life as if it were a widget machine, ever happy to oblige the beck and call of the commodities market. Though soil is the alpha and omega of agriculture, a good number of farmers still don't seem to reckon as much by their behavior. To most people meanwhile, dirt is just something to keep out of the carpet.
As an ecological farmer of course, the soil and its constant health and improvement must be front and center on my radar. So it was with appropriate sheepishness that I admitted to our farm members in the April Hilltop newsletter that I know nothing about soil.
This is not entirely true.
Read MoreFor the Bees
Mid-afternoon, I find myself lingering in the zinnias and wanting to just lay down under the silphium and sunflowers in the orchard, soak in the warmth, the colors, and just listen to summer. It is revved up by cicadas, orchestrated by crickets, tuned by tree frogs and abuzz with bees. The bees right now are drunk on nectar, and loaded down with pollen. I am amazed that they can fly, so laden with cargo!
Where would be be without the birds and the bees?
Read MoreMid-Season Prospectus
We routinely refer to memberships in CSA farms as “shares,” but until recently the aptness of that terminology hadn't struck me. But the other day I wondered what a CSA “bond” would look like.
In a sense, we already know. There are a number of farms – often larger ones, but not exclusively – which make arrangements to buy-in produce from CSA colleagues or another local farm in the case that certain crops fail or do unusually badly on the home soil. In one way, this may be looked at as simple conscientiousness on the part of the grower, but it is not uncontroversial in CSA circles. Many Community Supported Agriculture traditionalists view the at-risk nature of the buy-in by the member as essential to a model in which the community truly supports the agriculture. With too much guaranteeing by the farmer, the relationship with the eater turns into something more like bond-issuance than the purchase of an equity share. The farmer essentially lines up “backing” (albeit from other farmers rather than a bank) so that she/he can guarantee a return on a subscriber's membership fee, presumably one which, at worst, represents a modest premium for the purchaser over the value of food that could be got at market during the same time-frame.
Farmers who hew to a more share-based approach can occasionally be heard to cluck their tongues at this sort of arrangement, but it would be wise to be careful and not just because our colleagues deserve our respect. The CSA market has broadened enormously over the past 20 years and – as in the financial markets – bonds may be more approprite for some than stocks, especially if it gets them to eat from fields in the nearby countryside rather than California. Though I've not yet heard of such a thing, I wonder if farms seeking to expand might capitalize by issuing multi-year bonds in addition to their shares, paying out modest dividends in vegetables while using the cash-flow to incerease their productive capacity.
But that's not what I sat down to write about.
Read MoreWe're in the News...Currant situtation: Tangy fruit →
by Jane Burns, Wisconsin State Journal
The puns are endless, and there is a pretty good supply of food uses, too. What there isn’t, however, is much knowledge about a once-common fruit that is making its way back into dishes and drinks in Wisconsin and throughout the U.S. Currants disappeared from American plates and palates for a few generations because of a blip of history. They’re back now, with growers and gardeners finding places for them on their land and in their recipes.
Read MoreWe're in Acres U.S.A. : Branching Out: Sustainable Farmers Embracing Alternative Orchard Methods
Read MoreWe've made it into Acres USA upcoming July 2015 issue.
Here's the article from Writer, Tamara Scully highlighting our farms and other farmers' approach to sustainable orchard management. Happy reading and our gratitude to Acres, Tamara, and all our farm friends for helping us write the future story of our farm and fruit.
Branching Out: Sustainable Farmers Embracing Alternative Orchard Methods
Aural Fixation
The soundscape of our farm would not normally be a newsletter topic, nor would it even seem relevant to the enterprise of farming; but in the same way that we can often diagnose the health of our cars by the slightest variation in the sound coming from the engine compartment, so too is the overall health of the farm discernible just standing with open ears on the back porch.
In the early years of Hilltop – an era when hayfields were rather less assiduously kept -- the ecstatic vocalizations of a bobolink could be heard emanating from the neighbor's patch, nearby to the east. The birds had evidently found a corner routinely missed by the scythe in which to nest. From mid-May until July the riot of song would erupt, often with the male rising on wing to broadcast his message more widely on the wind.
Read MoreYou're Invited for a Picnic in the Orchard
What do currants, soil quilts and fencing have in common?
We hope you join us on Saturday, July 11 from noon - 3 pm, for a relaxing picnic in the orchard to find out! Enjoy great food and conversation, celebrate the season, our new orchard fence that came together from a 2014 crowdfunding effort, and join us for some stories and stitches as we weave together the great soil quilt.
Highlights: an orchard tour, picnic lunch, tips for using currants and other local fruits, and the opportunity to relax and enjoy great food and conversation. You will leave the day with fruit resources/recipes and the opportunity to participate in the making of a Soil Quilt to be featured during the Fermentation Festival, Farm Art D'Tour this fall.
We will have local fruit creations on hand to sample and a picnic salad to share.
Please plan to bring a vegetarian dish to share (guests included), your own table service, blanket/chair(s). Dress for an outdoor picnic, rain or shine.
Check out our Farm Events Page for more farm happenings.
Black Currant Fool. Photo by Erin Schneider
Humus - sphere
That the United Nations has declared 2015 the International Year of Soil has been a good prompt for me to go out and -- um, have you got the windows closed? – actually learn something about the soil. This is a bit awkward to admit, but as someone who's been farming, if modestly, (occasionally immodestly, when it's warm) for the past twenty years, I know virtually nothing about the substance on which I rely for a substantial portion of my income. Of course, like anyone who works the land, I've come to know when the soil is tired or burgeoning, healthy or depleted, but this is an instinctual thing, developed inevitably from years of having the soil between my hands, knowing how it should feel, seeing how it absorbs water, observing what weeds are present, which vegetables are doing well or poorly.
Read MoreLet the Soil Speak...
Unearthing what might happen when soil microbes, curiosity, and art are stitched together...
The United Nations has declared 2015 to be the International Year of the Soil. As a local Sauk County farmer, I am delighted to see the world's attention directed toward this miraculous substance, the preservation and maintenance of which are among my daily duties. As a trained soil scientist, I can describe the physical, chemical and biological propertis of the soil, but there is far more we DON't understand about how soil biology transforms the once-living back into life's components. Most folks, meanwhile, regard this substrate of terrestrial life merely as something to scrub out of the carpet.
So let the soil speak!
Read More2015: To Be or Not to Bee?
It's been a rough year for our livestock.
As you may know, Erin and I ventured away from the plant kingdom last Spring with a foray into bee-keeping. We needed animals that could look after themselves while we were off in town three days a week, and bees seemed to be about the only candidates. You might have read the account of our somewhat bumpy start with the bees in last year's newsletters. But our charges acclimated themselves well despite our ineptitude, and all appeared well until they started to outgrow their nesting chamber in July.
Read MoreGoing with the Mid-Winter Flow - Pause, Capture, Retain, Redirect
We've leaped across the 'cross quarter' point (the 1st 1/8th point) in the solar year, the wood chuck has been roused from his den to see if it's cloudy or clear, we've finished cleaning trays and pots and have started to seed the first rounds of alliums and herbs, we've checked on our bees, pruned the fruit trees and shrubs and continue to take stock of phenology and finances. In February the ground starts to slowly wake up toward spring, the light's intensity get's noticeably stronger, lambs are being born, and we start to plant seeds for the CSA season and seed intentions for the year ahead.
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Women growers at Dar Salam Sere, demonstrating seed bed preparation as part of a farmer to farmer project in Senegal. Photo by Erin Schneider
You're Invited! Yoga, Chocolate, and Fruit Tasting: A Benefit to Support Seeds for Senegal Project
Sunday: February 1 from 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Main St. Yoga Studio, Madison WI
RSVP Today
Suggested Contribution: $30
$20 - $25 plus a *vegetable seed packet
Contribution includes yoga instruction and homemade and homegrown organic food, fruit and refreshments from Hilltop Community Farm.
Come breathe, move, open your heart, and celebrate mid-winter with an all - levels yoga class taught by Hatha Yoga Instructor Barbara Flesch. Then we’ll dine in community, savoring the sensory experience of nourishment with a mindfulness tasting of chocolate, and sweet and savory fruits grown with love and care with Erin Schneider, Co-owner of Hilltop Community Farm, LLC.
Read MoreFood and Farming Eco-tones: Turning Tensions into Opportunities →
After the last quince was harvested and potato dug at my farm in La Valle this autumn, I hopped across the pond, to discover the places and spaces where food, farming and public health meet—supporting work with NCBA-CLUSA (National Cooperative Business Association) Farmer to Farmer Program in Senegal and in Ethiopia with Just Coffee Cooperative and a UW –Ethiopia Twinning Partnership program. This was my fifth trip to Africa and third adventure in Senegal with the Farmer to Farmer Program, though my first time in Ethiopia. With each experience new life is danced and breathed into me.
Trading Valton silt loam for mangrove mud, calm for chaos, I always forget that Africa seems to require a certain initiation period even amongst the most seasoned travelers. Ethiopia demanded self-direction and motivation, in part because my project partners left me on my own once, I arrived. This stood in stark contrast to the comprehensive logistical support from NCBA-CLUSA and the Farmer to Farmer program. What I also love about the farmer to farmer program is its ground-up, peer to peer approach. Your work is based on the needs, skills, and interests of the farmers—and not surprisingly, these needs, skills, and interests are characteristic of those in Wisconsin and the U.S.
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