Starting

We're turning a hay field into a vegetable farm on a non-profit horse ranch! 
In the past few weeks, we've:

1.  Borrowed a neighbor's plow

2.  Transported flats of plants that we've grown at the greenhouse

3. Prepared ground for planting (built a roller-marker for behind the tiller)

4.  Planted a quarter acre of lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, kale, onions, carrots, spinach, beets, herbs

5.  Set up a drip irrigation system

6.  Covered the brassica-family plants (cabbage, broccoli, kale) with row cover held down with lots of sandbags because it's a windy hill

 7.  Staked out a 3 acre deer fence and drilled holes with a rented bobcat and post-hole digger

8.  Received our donation of fencing material from a generous Home Depot grant

9.  Set post in ground with the help of strong Veterans and volunteers

 

10.  Put eight-foot-tall wire fencing up

11.  Put together a set of cultivating tools on my "new" antique Farmall Cub tractor ('53)

12.  Watched the world become filled with flowers and green things!

 

On your mark, get set, this summer is GO

Spring, the vital energy returns!

Winter succumbs her subtle beauty to the Spring,

with protest

 in the form of snowflakes.

Today, a week from May,

they lazily wandered through the greening landscape,

announcing their soft, pure, powerful presence of 

coziness and letting go

to the vibrating and insane pace of sap flow, insect emergence,

and frantic nest building.

We have been busy little seeders in the protected shell of the greenhouse.

And busy pruning blueberry bushes before the buds burst.

I have been so busy that I nearly forgot myself.

As things move from inside to outside in this transition,

I crawled out like an anxious awkward bug, unaware of all its appendages,

yet keeping its eyes on the prize and using age-old instinct

to navigate the challenges ahead.

I broke my toe on the stairs.  Twice, in the same darn place.

The body's wisdom

of slowing-down,

even with sacrifice,

for the greater balance of things.

My fruit trees arrived in the mail the same day I made an offer on a piece of land. 

I decided to start buying tractors and stuff again...

Spring, FINALLY.

Things that seemed dead asleep for ages and ages come crawling up in shades of vibrant green.

Miracles.  An eight-petaled bloom where snowflakes piled up three feet thick.

Then it happens, one evening, always when I'm not expecting it.

The urge to till the soil again.

To ask the gentle ground if she will bear us food

another year.

The silent sacrifice of earthworms to the plow,

the rich smell of warming soil,

what the steel and the diesel allow us...

Springtime creates strong instincts in animals, including human farmers.

To jump on the tractor and claim a piece of the land, in determined frenzy.

And now all those unromantic errands that go with farming,

like picking up new tractor tires from Waterloo,

clog up the never-ending TO-DO list.

 

While the dandelion's spring to-do list includes:

1. LEAF
2. BUD
3. STEM
4. FLOWER
5. SEED

Among other tasks, such as vital mineral acquisition and transport up from the deep.

And, as human species with capable large brains, 

our To-Do list, this spring and beyond,

Maybe could include action on some long-term goals:

Like saving our toes, and our balance.

 Our barns, our farms, and our communities.

Our one precious planet.

James Hansen, top Climate Scientist, spoke a few days ago in Rochester, NY, 

and suggested his hope

for our future

lies in projects like this.

Let's direct our vital energy this spring to what is truly important to us.

The time to wander like lazy snowflakes is over.

Bloom where you are planted, 

bloom strong, 

in the face of the frozen past and the uncertain future.

Barn Razing

A barn builds community, as the community builds a barn.

Same applies for taking one down I would say.

Last week I went down to Groveland to lend a hand in the dismantling of a "small" barn which is ages old, and has been taken down and put back up who knows how many times.

This barn was taken down and put back up here by my friend Eli, who thought he was going to be farming in Groveland, and now finds himself moving to a well-established farm in Newark (Peacework Farm).  Funny how plans change.  I don't know anything about that!

Eli gifted the barn to Ruth to put up at Mud Creek Farm over in Victor, as long as she could... take it down and put it back up.  Of course, she is not going to do this by herself.  So about 15 of us pitched in for the day, in the ages old practice of coming together as a community so the job gets done and nobody gets hurt.

We dismantled the thing using a variety of techniques... a constructed A-frame & pulley system which I am still not actually sure how the thing worked... heavy-duty straps... ladders...supports...

...pounding out the wooden pegs that hold the whole thing together.

Lazy snowflakes fell silently and disappeared in the mud, and the blackbirds announced their territories around the pond.  I looked around and felt glad to have all these wonderful people in my community, young people who value things like old barns.

Finally the last wall remained.

We were going to take this wall down by the strength of our arms alone. 

Slowly, slowly, carefully, carefully.      Everyone ok?      Over there, over there!      Yeah, right there. 

Keep breathing.      Slowly.      Good.

 

A whole minute of extreme concentration, where every bird's syllable becomes crisp and clear, 

and you value things like 

the traction of boots and leather gloves, the muscles in everyone's arms, tall people.

 

Just to give you an idea of the weight of these beams, some of them took 10 people to lift.  

Serious oak, the kind they're not making anymore.

And we did it! 

Then we dismantled all the walls on the ground, pounding them apart where they fit together like lincoln-logs, each perfect little slot fitting neatly into the next beam.  How I admire those little hand-carved wooden pegs that miraculously hold a thing like a barn together. 

After the truck and trailer got stuck in the mud trying to get down to the barn, we decided we would have to haul them up the hill to the road.

We piled high the trailer that would take this barn to it's new home.

Nothing left here but a bit of clean-up, and the ghost of a dream that hardly started in this field.

Although he directed the day's progress with good spirit, I feel a bit of Eli's sadness in the going-away of his plans for this land.  At breaktime, we all marched through his piles of farm junk and timidly laid our claims.  A historic agrarian sight-- a bunch of dirt-covered people standing around in their boots, discussing the value of a grain drill.  Or a walk-in cooler if these folks are vegetable farmers.

Plans change.  Stuff gets swapped around.  I gave away all my farm junk for a trip around the universe of the heart.  It was worth it.  Now I get to buy stuff to farm with again.

There's always a chance to start anew, even after a disaster like winter.

And, I guess, nothing really ever stays the same, not even an ages old barn.

But what doesn't change is our will to grow, our will to be a part of something bigger, something lasting, to be part of a family of friends, to help things along when fifteen can do what one or two can't.

Therapeutic Farming

Let the growing begin!

I've started my work at the EquiCenter in Honeoye Falls, NY, as Farm Manager of their newly developing program for Therapeutic Farming!  The EquiCenter currently offers horseback riding and other equestrian activities to people with disabilities, at-risk youth, Veterans, and their families.  They have 200 acres of beautiful fields and 25 beautiful horses!  It's the perfect situation for starting a food-growing project:  beautiful rolling landscapes of pasture and hay, tractors, tools, barns, a group of eager volunteers, and as much manure as we need!

The EquiCenter has been already working with Dr. Beverly Brown, a Horticultural Therapist and professor at Nazareth College, to develop a program at the EquiCenter using small raised-bed gardens.  Now they've hired me to help them go from "garden" to "farm," increasing their ability for healthy organic production of food to distribute to families in need and the communities they are already working with.

Nazareth College has generously donated use of their greenhouse until we've got our own.  It's a fancy high-tech glass greenhouse with automatic temperature and humidity control, and I've even set up automatic watering on our germinating seeds.  We're also growing vegetable and flower starts for the healing garden at Nazareth that the students help run, and I am speaking to classes about organic farming.  I run a weekly volunteer session, for folks to come out and learn how to start vegetables from seed.  Many people are coming out to lend a hand-- we are almost out of room in there!

How nice is it to smell the compost-rich earthy potting soil and get your hands in it?  After a cold snowy winter, this is a welcome activity for me, and I am already benefiting from the therapeutic elements of germinating seeds in unfrozen soil.  Another benefit is the focused meditative state that comes with concentrating on putting just one tiny seed in each cell of the plastic seedling trays.  I like to imagine the full head of lettuce that each seed will become.  What a miracle I get to participate in.  What a powerful act to help turn soil, water, sunlight, and a speck of a seed, into a big healthy salad for a family.

 

 

We have started some broccoli, kale, onions, flowers, and lettuce so far!  Someday the snow will finally melt and we can plant these in the ground.  My planting schedule says they will be ready at the end of April.  I hope the ground will be thawed and dry by then!  I will be leading regular volunteer days several times a week out at the EquiCenter Farm starting in May.  Email me if you want to help out:  ebullock at EquiCenterNY dot org.  All ages and abilities are welcome to participate.  Come be a part of the miracle.  The hungry world needs you.

Winter Pastimes

It's been over five months since I've written a blog entry!  I feel as if I've been in hibernation, but looking back over my photo record of the winter, I realize that I've been all over:

1. Land Searching!
2. Big Picture Learning & Practicing
3. Civic Duty in DC
4. Visits to Faraway Friends

This land search deal has lasted for 6 years, as my patient real estate agent knows well.  However, since I sold my farm business and moved out of town, and then through life's unexpected twists and turns, moved BACK to Rochester, the search has intensified.  I know I want to farm, I know where I want to farm, I know how to farm, and I know that I don't want to farm on leased land anymore.

I've been looking high and low, far and wide, for the right place to plant my roots for the rest of this lifetime.  Land-searching in the wintertime lets me flex my creative-visioning muscles, dreaming up colorful abundance in monotone landscapes that often look more like the surface of the moon than an organic fruit or vegetable farm.  But I enjoy walking through fields, and I enjoy dreaming and planning.  Here is a sampling of the landscapes I've seen this winter, some candidates for my lifelong stewardship:

And oh, the soil maps!  I may have the glacially-formed landscape of all arable topsoil less than 30 miles south of Rochester memorized by the time I'm finished with this search.

And the barns.  I have always been in love with these pastoral dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, many of them are falling down because we have collectively turned our backs on these relics that were once so central to our thriving rural communities and economies.  Now we often just store junk until the whole thing collapses.

 

But, other than prancing around in collapsing barns and across tundras of blowing snow, I've filled my time with learning, in its various forms-- from gatherings to farm visits.  Also, practicing meditation, at Blue Cliff Monastery as well as on my own.

I was blessed to be invited to a lovely meeting of the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast (PINE) at the Omega Center in Rhinebeck.  These committed folks are thinking really long-term:  how we will be growing our food in a not only organic and sustainable way, but absolutely regenerative, restorative, and resilient!  We brainstormed, networked, shared experiences and project ideas.  I am excited to learn more and more about how agriculture can change and adapt beautifully to a changing climate.

I spent a few days with Sean Dembrosky in Trumansburg, who is becoming a serious expert at extreme backyard food production-- he is experimenting with locally-adapted fruit and nut tree varieties, shittake mushrooms, and bio-char production.  We stayed up tending neat pit-fires of recently felled pine trees, then poured water on them when they were all red-hot as hell.  What remains is not ash but a dark stable form of carbon which can stay in the soil for thousands of years, adding fertility to garden beds for the long-term.  This is a practice that indigenous people used for many years in the tropics, but we are just starting to learn now, and it could be an important tool for our atmospheric-carbon problem.

 

I have been hanging out with my favorite farmer-mentor, Elizabeth Henderson.  She and I both live in the city of Rochester now, so we like to get out to farms on field-trips and stuff: 

This is our field-trip to see Doug Mason's hundreds of acres of produce, and high-tech warehouse:

I swear we are not a Carhart ad.  And yes, those are robots x-raying and sorting apples for size, color, and defects.

Another field trip:  I couldn't pass up a visit with my favorite kids in the world, Felix and Zola, who just moved to Cooperstown with their omelette-providing buddies.

And it was a good fall for gathering wild mushrooms!  My housemate Emily and I found a 50-pound Chicken-of-the-Woods while walking the dog along the Genesee River, eating it for many meals for several weeks, and freezing some for the winter months.  And these Maitake were abundant and delicious in a woods which will remain anonymous!

 

I got to tour the apple orchards of Ontario and Williamson, up by the lake where the weather is moderate for fruit growing and the landscape almost looks like Napa Valley.  New apple production is all on a trellis system like grape vines, except 10 feet tall!  "Trees" are planted as dense as two feet apart and pruned aggressively.  I understand the practical reasons for this change in techniques, and appreciate the skill and beauty that goes into it all.  But I still have questions about the long-term resilience of a system like this, which currently is dependent on a lot of chemical sprays.

Winter is also for dancing -- I learned that a local grange hall hosts a monthly Cajun Zydeco band, a sign out in front claiming that it is the largest grange in the USA!  It is a beautiful building, and as I get down on that lovely wood floor, I feel connected to all my ancestral booty-shakin' agrarian folks.

Oh, also berry pies.  I like to perfect my pie crust practice in the winter.  We all need more butter in our lives when the temperatures go below freezing.  These were made from wild grapes!

Can't say enough about Blue Cliff Monastery, in the Catskills, and the life-changing lessons I've experienced there.   Sitting on a cushion in silence, I learn again and again that peace and happiness are not something to be sought after but are actually present and accessible at all moments when we just wake up to the fact that we are alive right now!

 

I got the wonderful chance to lobby in DC as an organic farmer concerned with the fact that so much of our food in the US comes from genetically modified crops which were designed by the big-ag industry to tolerate vast spraying of herbicides.  I was joined by a dozen other organic farmers from around the country, as well as top scientists researching these herbicides and "super-weed" resistance, which requires farmers to spray more and more chemicals in order to kill weeds, a toxic treadmill which poisons our land, our water, and our bodies, and only benefits the companies selling the chemicals.

 

An important report just came out from the World Health Organization that the world's most popular herbicide, glyphosate (Round-Up), probably causes cancer.  Over 80 million acres in the US are sprayed with this stuff each year, so this is a bid deal.

I have been disappointed by all the US mainstream press coverage on this report, which across the board seems to defend Monsanto's claim that this science, done by French researchers working for the International Agency for Research on Cancer, is faulty and not to be listened to.  I hope that people can read between the lines to see that of course a gigantic multinational company like Monsanto, and others in the industry, will spend millions to try to convince us that its toxic chemical business is safe!  They have a lot at stake!  But so do we...

In DC I got to see it from the inside, hear it direct from the mouths of our legislators:  the agribusiness industry has lobbyists in there all the time, telling them about studies that their (paid by Monsanto) scientists have come up with to prove that the chemicals are absolutely safe.  The Senate and House staffers asked us to show them science which proves the hazards of glyphosate-saturated GMO crop production -- they honestly do want a clear and true view.  We left them with a few facts, a few stories, (I may have shed a few tears), but really, we do lack a lot of solid scientific evidence.  That's because there's no money to fund these kinds of studies.  It seems like science is no longer a noble effort for truth; results you are looking for can be easily bought.

The two scientists I spent the day with in the Senate confirmed this story:  the research they are doing at Penn State and Washington State University (which highlight the potential hazards of escalating herbicide use, and dire warnings about cancer and birth defects) is consistently squelched, accused, questioned, and called "junk science" by the industry.  These are intelligent men with PhD's, with genuine concern for people's health and the future health of our land and our planet.  They have volunteered their time, like me, to fly to DC to try to help our law-makers understand the situation we are in.

Monsanto's lobbyists are probably not volunteering.  What an eye-opener for me to understand how things function in this country.  Big corporations have money to be able to basically make laws as friendly to their purposes as possible.  Their purposes being: making more money.  They may claim to be feeding the world through technology-enhanced crops, but I'm sorry, the world can feed itself in a much better way.  It's just that no one is making much money as a small organic farmer growing for their local community.  So our ability to change laws is limited.

But we try!  Below, my new friends Matthew Raiford, 6th-generation veteran-farmer from Georgia, and Kara Boyd, president of the Association of American Indian Farmers!  I feel so honored to be a part of this hopeful effort.  I truly believe that our hearts are stronger, in the long run, than the dollars that are currently turning the wheels of our "democracy." 

After this intense civic effort, I turned west-ward, to my heart's longing for sun, green, ocean, and old friends in California.  Goodbye, winter storm warnings, hello Half-Moon Bay.  Everyone needs a little splurge once in a while.

Now it's March, back to a shades-of-grey landscape, invisibly lined with the hopefulness of flowing sap, buds preparing themselves for another season's growth, farmers preparing themselves for long days of work.

  

I am taking soil samples through a foot of snow.  I am as eager as those buds.  I am a seed almost bursting with its desire to put roots into the ground.  

I am turning my new hatchback into a truck again, filling it with rusty farm equipment and a fine layer of dirt.  (My old hatchback didn't make it through the winter.)

And I am dreaming of summer, of blueberries, and of a bright future of good hard work powered by the heart.