Showing up

A nice perk to my job at Penn State Extension is I get to visit farmers markets. Community farmers markets, on-farm retail farm markets and public markets. This is not actually part of my job description and I'm sure the powers that be would question why I do this. "Why don't you just call them?"

There is so much you gain by just showing up at someone's place of business. Besides, being a farmer, I am never comfortable spending a lot of time in an office and I have little patience for the bureaucracy that is required to run a machine the size of Penn State Extension. So taking some time to visit the businesses and people I serve seems to me to be a good use of my time rather than filling out paperwork.

It actually takes quite a bit of planning to do this. If I don't plan these trips, they won't happen. Early in the season I decide how many visits I want to make each month. I pick a region and plan to visit 3 to 4 markets that day. That's about the most I can do when you factor in travel and the operating hours of the market. If I'm visiting community farmers markets I don't want to arrive during the first hour that the market is open since that is the busiest time and vendors and managers are not able to talk shop. After all the planning, the hardest part of the day is making sure I showing up.

When I go, I usually don't have an agenda. I don't need one. The managers are happy you came to their market. They are usually anxious to know what I think. "What do you think of this display?" "What about the flow of the market?" On a recent trip, the manager of a retail farm market had just installed a new P.O.S. (point of sale) system and was excited to show me its features. I can't get that from a phone call. I can usually get a feel for the status of the market when I enter. You can feel the passion that someone has for their business. Is there order or is there chaos? I always come away inspired by their hard work and passion and usually a few ideas for upcoming winter programs.

In the end, this job is about people. Yes, it's research and education but first it's about the people you serve and making a difference in your community. If they don't know you, they won't trust you. Why would they trust you if you never seen their business?

One day I was visiting a large public market. I made my way to the manager's office. I introduced myself, told them a bit about what I do and the programs we offer. They seemed to be not very interested so I gave them my card and left. When I got back to my office, there was a phone message for me from that manager asking about rules regarding dogs at a market.

I think it was Woody Allen that said "90% of life is about just showing up". So I show up.

"Because It Is Right"

Barcelona, a beautiful city filled with lovely people and fantastic food. Recently I, along with my wife Holley and my Extension colleague Carla Snyder, attended a conference on public markets in Barcelona, Spain. During that trip, with the help of Slow Food Barcelona, Carla was able to organize a trip to the Lleida province of Catalonia to visit an organic farmer who grows olives and almonds and produces his own olive oil and vinegars under the brand Oleum Flumen (river of oil) which he sells locally and distributes to markets in cities around the world including the eastern U.S.

We left our Barcelona apartment at 6AM to take a two and a half hour train ride to meet with Marti Teres I Rios. Marti comes from a long line of grape and wine producers but for the last 20 years or so he has been growing olives and producing this exquisite olive oil.

Clara, Marti’s daughter, attends university in Barcelona and was gracious enough to give up her day to come along with us and act as our interpreter translating from Catalan to English and back.

Marti greeted us at the train station. He asked Carla in English, “You speak a little Spanish?” Carla said “Yes, a little bit”. Marti replied, “I speak a little English so we will practice together.” “But, I don’t speak Spanish, I speak Catalan.” With Clara’s help, the communication was excellent and when Marti talked about specific farming methods, even though he was speaking Catalan, we understood him perfectly. For instance, Marti described how he uses a cultivator attachment on the tractor to cultivate the rows of trees to control weeds instead of using herbicides. He smiled and said in English “You understand me!” I replied, “We understand farming.”

Marti farms 180 hectares (roughly 444 acres) between three locations and farms with a holistic vision that he talks about in very matter-of-fact manner. It isn’t preachy or idealistic. At one point, Marti looked at us and said, “I don’t do this to make a statement. I do this because it is right”. Marti’s philosophy can be summed up by a quote from their website: “Our lands are worked, with the conscience that this is the first step to bear a fruit of the best quality. For this reason, we escape from aggressive and polluting treatments. We combine traditional systems with new methods and new technologies.” They go so far as to track their carbon footprint traveling between the three locations and plant trees to offset the effects.

Lleida is an arid area. It is part of the agricultural heart of Catalonia producing fruit and wine along with olives and almonds so water is very important. Marti collects as much water as possible through various systems in the processing, roof tops, and other areas and stores the water in cisterns underground. All the energy on the farm is produced by solar panels and a windmill with a biodiesel generator as a backup.

Inside the processing building, all the lighting is natural, coming through slots in the ceiling and although it was overcast the day we visited, it looked as though we were under florescent lighting. Drains in the floor collect all the waste water into a cistern. The processing equipment was custom built for Marti and allows the operators to monitor quality throughout the process. They process 700 kilos per hour, 10,000 kilos per day. Marti says they can do three times that much but fears the quality would suffer. To Marti, quality is more important than quantity. The olives are processed within two hours of harvest.  

Following our tour, we were treated to a wonderful lunch located in the small farm house that serves as their office. Marti said that there is a special time before lunch called aperitiu where you have some fresh bread with olive oil and salt, maybe some cheese, a glass of wine or beer, and conversation. Then, you eat lunch.

The olive oil for the bread was pressed the day before just for our visit which we thoroughly enjoyed along with olives and a sheep cheese called Almadroch which has Arab origins. While savoring these local delicacies, Clara told us about the variety of products they produce.

The olive oils are offered in glass, can, and vacuum box. Marti says the quality is best preserved in a vacuum box.  They offer three kinds of oil, Premium, Ninou, and de Finca. They also offer white wine vinegar and cider vinegar. They also make a dark vinegar that is aged for twenty five years. It is named after Marti’s Grandmother, Paula. After lunch, Marti poured a small amount of this dark vinegar into a wine glass and passed it around the table for us to swirl in the glass and smell. With each swirl in the glass, the aroma changed from earthy to woody to chocolate.

Clara explained that the local towns have their own signature salad and the one for their town consisted of lettuce, olives, anchovies, cod, and a kind of sauce and of course, olive oil. Mountain Paella was the main course which Marti explained that traditionally, Paella was a Thursday dish when you used up all your leftovers before going to market on Friday. He said, “You may not find real Paella in Barcelona. There is no yellow rice in real Paella.” The meal was served with local wine. Afterwards, we wandered through the olive trees and their small shop and fed their three donkeys named Elvis, Madonna, and Michael Jackson.  I was told that they are part of the weed control for the olive trees but honestly, I think Marti simply likes having the donkeys.   

Laboring on Labor Day

Labor Day weekend means we were laboring all weekend. We are in full harvest mode. We've scheduled animals for slaughter and winter feed for the remaining stock and of course picking produce from the garden. Over the weekend we picked, processed, caned or froze several quarts of beans, tomato sauce, ketchup, including 4 quarts of peach shrub. Shrub is a beverage that goes back to 18th century made from fruit, vinegar, and sugar.

Our peaches have done rather well this year and we have been canning and freezing many, many quarts so I was looking to do something different with the recent harvested lug full. I did a search on the internet but only found recipes for small amounts that made one jar. No, we needed a serious recipe for a serious amount of peaches. Then it dawned on me, The Mennonite Community Cook Book surely should have such a recipe. I dug out my old copy handed down to me by my great aunt Sara. There, I found a recipe for elderberry drink. This was it. Fruit, vinegar, sugar, boil and jar. Then I saw the name of the person who submitted the recipe. Mrs. Warren G. Bean. It was my great grand mother, Anna Kulp Bean.

About twenty five years ago my father collected Anna's recipes and put them into a book for each of us kids so I went to the book and found the same recipe. Right underneath the elderberry drink recipe she had one for ketchup. Now we also have 3 quarts of homemade ketchup!    

Elderberry Drink

2 quarts of Elderberries 

Enough apple cider vinegar to cover the fruit and set for 24 hours

Strain through a cloth and measure liquid

add 1 cup of sugar to every quart of liquid

boil for twenty minutes

jar

"This Little Piggy Went To......"

This spring, Holley and I purchased three feeder pigs to raise and butcher this Fall. We put the rack on the truck head out to the western edge of Berks county to pick up our 40 pound, Gloucester Old Spot piglets. About an hour trip one way. We got the little guys loaded nicely in the bed of the truck and head back to our farm. Now, there is about a six inch gap between the top of the tailgate of the truck and the bottom of the rack gate on top of the truck bed. Within about a mile of leaving the farm where we purchased the pigs, Holley yelled "Stop!!" The little porkers were trying push the rack gate up with their snoots and hop out the back of the truck.

We didn't have anything to tie the rack gate down. We kept going. Holley would watch out the back window, yell "stop", I'd pull over, we push pig noses back down, and carry on. After about the fifth time, Holley suggested that she ride in the bed of the truck with them. I didn't think it was a good idea. The truck was a year out of inspection and still had snow tires on it which was illegal that time of year. I said "All we need now is to be pulled over by a cop and I would have to explain why my wife is riding in the bed of an un-inspected truck that has illegal snow tires with three little pigs and covered in pig dung." "Well officer, with all that pig dung on her, she can't very well ride in the cab now can she."

As it turns out, the pigs got motion sickness and settled down towards the front of the truck bed allowing Holley to face forward in the cab thus recovering from her own queasiness from staring out the rear window and getting back home without further excitement.

 If you want a dose of humility, Try raising livestock. It stands to reason that the animal's daily agenda will be different then yours. Most days your agenda prevails but some days the animal's agenda takes priority. One afternoon I was showing someone around our farm. We went into the barn where I had the pigs (or so I thought). They're helping turn the winter bedding so it would compost nicely. My agenda. When we came into the barn, there were no pigs. They had escaped and were happily grazing outside and bathing in the water troth. Their agenda.

Honest Poultry Men

Oh we got it bad! Real bad! Spring fever that is and we got it bad. It started on the first decent weekend in April and before we knew it, we had pulled out a row of 15 year old current plants and most of the raspberries that were threatening to take over the garden and put in 75 strawberry plants. 75, what were we thinking?!

Spring has been a bit slow to come and found us still feeding hay through most of April when I would rather have my animals grazing but the grass just wasn't there yet. The spring "to do" list was getting larger with each passing cold, damp day. But now "Freiyaahr kummt" as my people say and it is a joy.

Spring can also be felt at the Extension office where I work. I helped Emilie, our horticultural educator  unload and amazing number of large pots of mulch out of a rather small car and stacking them outside the ag center so that master gardener volunteers can help spread it around the plantings that surround the building. Each pot that was removed from the car seemed to reveal another pot. It became something akin to the never-ending handkerchief that streamed out of a clown car. Walk into the office and you will be greeted by the sound cheeping chicks that were recently hatched out of one of the several small incubators that are filling up the 4H office while the rest of us try to switch gears from winter meetings to farm visits, plot trials, programming for next year, and assisting the public with their questions as the world is seeming to arise from its winter slumber. "I found this bug on me. Can you tell me what it is?" "When should I worm my sheep?" "What is this twig? It was in my yard and my dog chews on it. Is it poisonous?" "I just purchased a small farm. What can I grow that will make me some money?" "What do I do about stink bugs!!"

At home, I am getting ready for an arrival of 15, day-old laying chicks and this would normally not be any big deal considering we used to have at any one time 1000 broilers and 200 layers running around the farm but these chicks are from rare breeds like Java, Dominique, Partridge, and Buckeyes. We purchased a chicken coop (pictured here) made by a carpenter/chicken enthusiast and his young would-be carpenter son.

My interest in poultry must be  part of my DNA. My great grandfather (whose farming diary entries are at this blog site) kept several breeds of chickens and sold fertile eggs and shipped them all over the eastern U.S. and even Canada. Inside one the his desk draws is his catalog from 1895.

The catalog offers three breeds. The Golden Wyandottes, Buff Plymouth Rocks, and Barred Plymouth Rocks. The Golden Wyandottes appear to be the most popular judging by the requests he received and his own statements in his catalog. "The Golden Wyandottes have come to the front ranks to stay. After a thorough trial of 5 years of breeding them, I must say that they well deserve the great boom they are having, by their great merits unprecedented in the history of any breed.They are an American breed and America should be proud of it." Wow, send me some! He even had testimonials in the catalog. "Dear Sir, From the Golden Wyandotte eggs purchased from you, I got 20 fine lively chicks. I am proud of them. I must now add your name to my list of Honest Poultry Men, and will try to favor you all I can in the future. I remain yours respectfully, Olney Pratt." 

I'm looking forward to raising the kind of breeds of chickens that my great grandfather would have seen in his time and will do my best to give them the kind of attention and care that he would have and be an "Honest Poultry Man". In the mean time, What do I do about the stink bugs!!

Goat Milking as a Contact Sport

After almost 20 years farming, I am now a part time farmer ever since I took a position with Penn State Extension two and a half years ago. This means that each day my wife Holley and I spend about and hour and a half doing chores when we get home from work followed by another hour or two working on other farm related tasks particularly during the growing season.

Spring is the time of year when the "to do" list looks very over whelming. We make our priorities by focusing on "food first". That is, whatever is going to feed us, takes highest priority. One of those tasks is milking the goat. If you ever owned goats, you'll know that goats have the intelligence of dogs. They also have individual personalities and temperaments which makes me question whether I own goats or do goats own me.

A few months ago, our goats birthed and Holley is in charge of milking which is good because Holley can match the persistence and stubbornness that a goat who doesn't want to be milked can display. Agnes was chosen to supply our milk needs because she is the easiest for hand milking and she is a veteran at it. Agnes had other ideas.

Everyday we had to coax her into the barn and have Nana, our Border Collie, block the doorway, grab her by the horns and drag her into the milk stand, hobble her legs so she wouldn't kick Holley or put a hoof in the milk bucket and for all this effort we were rewarded with about two cups of milk. What's the deal! Now, I can hear a chorus of farmers questioning the economics of this effort. Too time consuming for too little return and they may be right and I can certainly buy all the raw milk I want from a neighbor who produces it for a living but economics is not the point of this daily exercise.

If you are going to keep livestock, you have to learn to not necessarily think like them, but to be sensitive to what makes them feel safe and secure. I stood in the barn with my hands on my hips and goat manure on my jeans and looked at where we were milking her.

In front of the milk stand there were bales of straw. Agnes couldn't see anything except straw while she was in the stand. I moved the straw bales and we move the milk stand to where she could see her daughter while she was being milked. Like all of us, Agnes has her good days and bad days but slowly and surely, she is coming around. Last evening, Holley didn't even hobble her and she has been giving more milk.

The point I believe is the satisfaction that many people now a days receive by producing food for themselves and recognizing the amount of work it does take to produce food. Besides that, milking and feeding gives us a chance to practice what Phillip Landis, a farmer in Lancaster County, calls "high touch" husbandry. That is, daily physical contact with our animals that will give them a sense of calmness and security and gives all of us, a happier existence for our time on this farm. We don't even really need the border collie to heard the animals down to the barn and block the doorway to prevent Agnes' escape anymore, but Nana enjoys it so much.

June 18, 1898

Partly Cloudy

P.M. Charles brought separator oil from Lederachville.