Farming Alone

Things have gotten a bit more difficult at the farm now that Terra is back in school. I've still been making regular trips up to Greenfield to maintain the plants and start packing equipment away for the winter, but the pace of my work is quite different now. I've noticed that it's easier to focus on one specific task for a certain length of time, but when I reach the end of that task it's harder to start another. I am more tired at the end of the day, and I feel as though I've accomplished less overall even if I can pick off specific chores.

Because of my experience this summer, I have become convinced that farming at a scale that produces goods needs to be collaborative in order to be truly successful. I'm sure there are cases where one single farmer has managed to produce an abundance of goods and taken them to market, just as there are cases where an individual has made a successful film or staged a play entirely alone. But these are exceptions to a widely established model: in farming, just as in performing arts, the end result is almost always an expression of the creativity, dedication and effort of multiple individuals.

So though I am farming by myself, I would not go so far as to say that I am farming alone. Our garden, which is still producing an abundance of vegetables, has come to this point as much though Terra's dedication as my own, and I should also credit Terra's family, my family, and all the others who have supported our grand experiment this summer. On long afternoons of solitary tomato and bean picking, it is the thoughts of what we set out to accomplish at the beginning of this year, and all the people who got us there, that keep me from feeling lonely.

-Dan

Winding down, Gearing up.

I can't believe that it's already mid September. For me, this summer has been a chaotic blur of farming, working in Lexington, and lots of driving in between. In the last four months, the only time I've been in one place more than four days at a time was when Terra and I were in Maine. So while I'm sad to see the farm winding down for the season, it's also a bit of a relief; I won't have quite so much on my plate in a few weeks time.

Once the day-to-day work at the farm comes to a close, however, Terra and I are going to turn our attention to the very large and involved task of planning for next season, now that we are fairly certain that there will indeed be one. Early on, we decided that this season was mostly about testing out what works and what doesn't, and it has worked out well in that regard. Going into the planning process, there are already a few things about next year Terra and I are in total agreement on (winter squash gets it's own field, for instance), as well as some things that we will be discussing at length and working out some appropriate solutions for.

A few items in the latter category include the formation of a CSA, the future development of the Greenfield Farmers Market, and the scope of our farm come next spring, accounting for Terra's and my living situations. For those of you still reading our blog (I know the updates have been sporadic during the growing season), we'd like to invite comments and active participation as we begin this process. This is going to be a busy winter for Cloverly Farm, and it will be April 2011 before we know it.