Real Farmer

Three-year-old CJ is uniquely positioned to arbitrate certain disagreements on the farm. Accustomed to the process of city-fied apprentices showing up on the bus only to be churned out months later as farmers, and unsullied by many societal mores, she has an honest and pure perspective on whether someone has become a “real farmer” yet. One day after a morning of transplanting in the rain and mud, Alex comes inside to CJ who says, “now Alex is a real farmer.”    Amused, her mother prompts her to judge me as well. “Is Faith a real farmer yet?”

“No. Too clean.” I glance at my hands and knees ingrained with dirt and shirt coated in pollen, mud, and leaf mold, and touch my unwashed hair matted under a dirty baseball cap. “Clean?”

Reba interprets that even when dirty, I maintain an aura of cleanliness.

After three months on the farm, it seems I have established merely a “thin veneer” of farmer. Somehow despite the dirt, knowledge of vegetables and farming, and occupation working on a farm, I still don’t entirely pass for a farmer. What is it? My posture? My speech? A short life spent striving toward intelligentsia apparently runs deep.

       For the most part, I’m just amused by this (effortless schmoozing with the well-traveled, well-read, well-cooked suburbanites who constitute a good portion of CSA members). Sometimes, though, it takes on tricky overtones. We have a livestock farmer friend who comes to weekly farm dinners. Cheryl grew up in a farming family, and owns a livestock farm with cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys. Cheryl is tough, serious, and competent: she sees right through me. What did you study in college? What will you do after this season? My answers to these questions yield an incredulous “Why on earth are you farming anyway?”

       Very reasonably, a born-and-bred farmer would have doubts about the farming aspirations of an over-educated recent graduate fixing to head back to the city for a comfortable, health-insured, air-conditioned yuppie career. Sensing this, I have no adequate response to her questions. How do I explain the necessity for a spiritual farm-work cleanse following too many months of intellectual labor? How do I avoid the inevitable implications of luxury in time spent frivolously trying on a lifestyle? My responsibility as a privileged member of the upper-middle class to find happiness in work? Even my class angst itself feels offensive.

       Luckily, this issue has a quickly-approaching expiration date. In all likelihood, by the new year I’ll be setting up in a city somewhere beginning one of the aforementioned career paths, never to play at farmer again. In a smaller possibility, eventually I’ll come back to farming for good. I’m assured that over the course of years, any city person can be entirely transformed. For sure, there will always be a farm child around to tell me if I’ve made it yet.

Hygiene

     Every day at the beginning of lunch I wash my hands before preparing a meal. Recently, I laughed with the realization that for me, this action has become something closer to a vague gesture towards hand-washing: I use soap, and rub my hands together under the cold water, but truth be told I’m satisfied after the loose dirt has fallen from the tips of my thumb and first finger. The soap serves to sanitize whatever is left behind.

     Pretty obviously, farm life demands certain adjustments to my accustomed hygiene regiment. As probably everyone who has ever lived or traveled in close proximity to me has realized, I keep clean pretty devotedly. In the absence of a shower, I minimally find a way to wash my hair under a sink every day. Even taking a shower at night rather than in the morning always seems a hardship, as my thin hair easily becomes oily overnight. My go-to study break is simply to wash my hands.

     The problems with these habits on a farm is the sheer amount of dirt and sweating inherent in the work. Clean hands are nice, but if I’m going to head back out to plunge them into the ground in an hour, I have little motivation to get all the dirt off. Furthermore, there are types of dirt on types of skin that really just aren’t going to come off (have you ever pruned tomatoes? The green stuff really just doesn’t come off).

     One week in, my meek confession to the other apprentices that I have showered every day was met with a laugh. “That will change soon.” The average amount of showers per week among apprentices was something like 2.5. Granted, the weather was much cooler then, but I was still pretty surprised.

At first I tried intentionally to take fewer showers. If no one else minds that I’m grungy, why not save the water? Avid cleanliness is surely only a sign of urban vanity. However, when unshowered I would feel myself become withdrawn and short-tempered, invariably requiring that I sacrifice my lunch break to clean up instead of waiting until after work.

     A couple months later, I’m still finding a new balance. My hands, feet, and knees have patches of more permanent dirt, while I keep my face and ears entirely clean. I always shower after milking the cow, but sometimes let it slide in the evening if I don’t feel too sweaty and it’s already getting dark. I re-wear shirts for days in a row, but typically change underwear.

     As it turns out, the goal is not to lower one’s standards for cleanliness, but change them. There are types of dirt that you want to get off and other types in which you can comfortably feel at home. I went to a family reunion this weekend found with amusement how much I enjoyed showing off and defending my farmer hands. At least for a recent farmer, it’s funny how the dirt you choose to keep in a way becomes integral to your farmer identity.

Hay

     Today we did hay. Because my questions this morning only led to ambiguous proclamations: “hay farming is real farming!” and “you know, I just have this romantic feeling about making hay,” the exact process remained a mystery to me until we got there.

     On account of my increasing attraction to all things that disrupt our schedule, I blindly volunteered to go along and help. We would be leaving at five, and should dress for the combination of heat and abrasive projectiles.

     Bill, Benny, and I hitched the trailer to the pickup truck at five and drove over the hills and past the lake between innumerable farms to reach our destination. The field adjoins the farm of a friend who keeps wild blueberries, and told Bill about the hay harvest.

     We pull into the field to see other trucks similarly outfitted with trailers and young strong helpers (all male excepting myself), a tractor with a torture-device-looking attachment on the back, and dozens (hundreds?) of square bales of hay dotting the field. Our team efficiently divides the tasks so that Benny tosses the bales into stacks of four or five, I drive up next to the pile, and the two of us toss them up to Bill who arranges them in the truck bed and trailer. In no time, we have 50 bales in the truck, and 25 in the trailer. As we drive out, Bill talks with the man on the tractor, whose tractor appendage is bundling the loose hay into bales.

     We are given permission to come back for a second load of equal size- priced $2.50 per bale. Bill drives home somewhat more gingerly than normal, given our oversized load, and backs right into the barn where they two (effortlessly?!) toss the bales up to the second floor, where I sneezingly heave them into stacks against a wall. Once again, we work with an infectious efficiency which compels me to ignore the innumerable little cuts appearing on my forearms, the hay in my shirt, mouth, nose, socks, as well as all my misgivings about my insufficient strength. It’s a little intoxicating, and I feel all my previously unsensed tensions or concerns oomph out of existence with each bale.

     We take a short break and then head right back for the second load. Bill once again provides random pieces of farming knowledge or local lore, as prompted by the passing scenery. We pick Bill’s brain a bit more about hay-farming, which is at once a time-honored tradition and pesky inconvenience. Hay is vital to all farmers or anyone who keeps animals. Farmers feed animals hay in the case of insufficient pasture, but also just through the winter. The hay is produced from healthy pasture that has grown to sufficient size, and can be dried completely in the sun. In this area, there are two harvests of hay. The first is of less quality, because by the time the weather is warm enough to dry the cut grass completely, it has already gone to seed, and has fewer nutrients. For this reason, the first cut is cheaper.

     To harvest hay, one needs a tractor to cut the grass of sizeable fields, the attachment to ‘ted’ the hay, or spread around to dry, and the attachment to suck up the dried hay and shoot out tied bundles. Bill estimates that new, the equipment would cost something like $20,000. However, with a few days work, a field like the one we visited will yield 1200 bales. Twice a year at even very low prices would result in a profit after only a few years.

     Hay is cool because its distribution relies on the net of connections between land and farmer, and farmer and farmer, all on an intensely local scale. Although I think a good bit of the romance escaped me, I enjoyed the novelty of the task. Although not nearly as strong as my counterparts, I played my role and ended up as dirty and scratched as they did.

Transplanting

     For the better part of Thursday we transplanted. Transplanting is a good representation of the work we do here- it’s a simple and direct contribution to plant production, specifically organic in many ways, and repetitive and uniquely exhausting.

     Having never participated in the production side of conventional farming, I have had a hard time extricating the more organic of our practices from those any farmer would do. Of course, a lot of what defines organic in our current food system is the prohibitions – pesticides, genetically modified seeds, hormones/antibiotics for animals, etc. However, more ideally, organic is a positive designation broadly defined by synchronization with nature. (I won’t get further into ‘organic’ right now, but maybe will come back to it later. In the meantime, see Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” for more detail).

     In this light, a lot of things we do can be viewed as cool strategies for harnessing nature rather than clever tricks necessary in the absence of chemicals. Transplanting is one such naturally advantageous practice.

     A week or two ago, we seeded a variety of plants. We set up a number of trays for each plant, in which we put those divided black plastic ice-cube-tray-looking things. Each hollow is filled with soil and given 1-2 seeds. Thus there are something like 72 seedlings per tray, and something like 6-10 trays per variety. Summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce, sweet potatoes are all seeded mid-June. After two weeks spent coddled in the warm and damp greenhouse, the seedlings have sprouted. By spending the first days of life this way, the seedlings are strong and healthy to move outdoors. This benefit is important to organic farming especially, because plants that are stronger are better at resisting natural hazards in the absence of chemicals.

     In preparation for transplanting, Bill tilled the soil and laid black plastic with the tractor on several rows in the field. Tilling aerates the soil and kills the weeds. The black plastic is another commonly organic practice- by quarantining plants within healthy soil, it dramatically reduces weeds and pests. The number but simplicity of steps we followed to transplant the seedlings lent itself to an elegant and efficient division of responsibilities. Faced with clean black plastic rows, the first step is to cut X’s at regular intervals in two staggered lines. Benny led the line with a 2.5-foot stick and knife to cut the holes. Next, Alex followed with the gardening shovel to dig holes. Tiff followed him with a bucket of Cheep Cheep- ‘dehydrated chicken litter’ (organic fertilizer), of which she tossed a handful into each hole. I followed and mixed the cheep cheep into the loose soil with my hand. And lastly, trailing behind, Laura transplanted one plant into each hole and covered with the removed soil. As one person threatened to outstrip another, s/he transplanted briefly until the balance was restored.

     We started in the morning rain and finished in the searing afternoon sun (interrupted by a restful hour-long lunch-break). Like most tasks (weeding, harvesting, pruning), transplanting is repetitive and not physically demanding. The labor comes from the heat and duration of the task. We never work aerobically, but we work all day. Bending and kneeling in the soil, carrying or dragging things, and simply being in the sun/rain/bugs culminates in an exquisite exhaustion that peaks just in time for the day’s end at 5. A casual poll revealed that I am the only one sore the next morning (still recovering from months at my laptop in Mansueto reading room).

     This pace and type of work by rights should be numbing, but manages not to be. At times we convivially chat and joke, and much the rest of the time we recede into our respective thoughts or ipods. We transplanted for most of that day, but more often we don’t do any single thing for more than a couple hours and take refreshing trips in between in the back of the pickup truck. We are always working, it always transparently contributes to a tangible goal, and we are always done when the day ends. Combined with the fuzzy feeling of the pureness of organic practices, and the ample time for extracurricular research (and writing, napping, cooking, reading), this type of work makes for an exceptionally pleasing lifestyle.

Derby

     We pull into the parking and gawk out the windows- fierce women emerge from a car several spots down wearing spandex and toting heavy gear. I’ve arrived with three other apprentices to the Solstice Slam, this month’s home roller derby bout for the Rock Coast Rollers. We came in support of farmers Reba and Bill, who, respectively, skate for the team and announce the bout.

Rock Coast Rollers block the Upper Valley Vixens's jammer

     Reba, farmer and mother, was initially at odds with my picture of what a derby skater might look like. Although tall and strong, she very much looks both the farmer and mother with her shorts and sandals, practical digital watch, and superhuman ability to multitask. My impression of derby came from a friend in Chicago who periodically tried to get a group together to go see a roller derby bout. The spirit with which he approached the event (as though it were a circus), and the description he provided- girls on rollerskates racing around a track and pummeling one another- made it sound more like a vaguely lewd version of WWE more than athletic event.

     However, either I had it wrong, or midcoast Maine does it a bit differently. While many of the cast of characters associated with the team fit the bill- women who work on boats and are known to arm-wrestle men in local bars, women with heads shaved to reveal tattoos who work at the food co-op, the team and bouts are surprisingly family-oriented. Bill and Reba’s children aged 3 and 6 excitedly stayed up way past bedtime to attend, as did a number of the kids’ friends, various CSA members, and a variety of random community people. From the car I could see a young edgy lesbian couple in combat boots joke with the elderly couple and grandchildren standing in front of them in line.

     As rain started to fall lightly, we timidly exited the car and moseyed toward the entrance. Reba strides out toward us and calls, “Perfect! Faith, will you substitute as a penalty box timer?” Erm..? Another apprentice who goes a lot of derby practices and had been planning to be the timer was called upon last minute to wear the team mascot banana costume instead of timing.

     “Ok- what does that mean?” Reba ushers me in and a succession of authoritative women with clipboards instruct me in the relevant basics of derby. As it turns out, one needs to know almost nothing about derby to time the penalty box, only that girls hurling into the seats there need to stay there for 60 seconds, paused for interruptions in the game. Start timing when the “meat hits the seat.”

     The bout started and I slowly became confident to brace the chairs for oncoming impact and assertively call out remaining times. The game itself also became clear with occasional explanations from other NSOs (non-skating officials). Two teams of five skate in circles. One skater from each team is designated the “jammer” and scores points for her team by lapping opposite team members. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but you can imagine the chaos and ferocity that ensues.

     Derby is a pretty exciting time, with a much different vibe than I had imagined. Instead of purely a spectacle, it’s much more participatory in spirit. And while the women do play up the aesthetic with crazy outfits and their derby names – “Vengeful Vegan”, “Roto-tilda”, “Ginny Wheelsly”- at the core it’s actually a sport and has a competitive but incredibly friendly tone. The women have this kind of fiercely supportive sisterhood among their own team, as well as extending to the other. They are lobsterers and vegans and disproportionately queer, but also mothers, students, farmers, artists. It’s a diverse and empowering sort of group and sport. The women come from all over, but are fierce and strong, and invite the audience to take part in a festive and positive atmosphere.

     We skip the afterparty and return home past ten- way past a farmer’s bedtime, but well worth it.

Butter

Today we made butter.

                While the day from 8-5 is filled with the standard variety of farm work (today: harvesting garlic scapes and cabbage, remay rollup, and five hours of weeding carrots), the time thereafter varies more. My basic pattern is shower, food, and books. Food often involves cooking; reading often becomes derailed with random tasks or conversation. Over the past couple days, inspired by the sudden appearance of a rickety and twice-melted immersion blender, as well as an overabundance of ageing milk, we have made butter. (I also executed a highly successful horchata experiment).

                Reba, our farm mother extraordinaire, walked us through the remarkably simple process. First, we skimmed the cream off all the jars of ageing milk in the fridge. These date back to the 16^th- just under a week ago. Raw milk seems to stay unambiguously fresh for about a week. At that point, the cream is fairly separated on the top, and the milk smells a bit sour. It’s still safe to drink I imagine, but given the effectively unlimited supply of milk in our fridge (six or seven 1.5 liter mason jars at any given point), we usually toss the older ones to the pigs. Farmer Bill is looking to improve the cow barn to meet standards necessary for milk sale (primarily a poured cement floor), but in the meantime we’re saddled with more than we can possibly ever use. 

                The skimmed cream is left out for an hour or so to warm up a bit. Then we poured it into a larger mason jar dimensioned perfectly for the immersion blender. Like when making whipped cream, we blended the cream constantly until suddenly a portion of it coalesced into a fluffy mass. The cool thing is that while a portion of it becomes butter, a fixed fraction of it becomes buttermilk. Continuing to mix won’t change the fraction of butter to buttermilk that results from mixing the cream.

                We poured the buttermilk into a smaller jar (pancakes tomorrow?), and transferred the butter to a bigger bowl. To remove any remaining buttermilk from the butter, we sort of kneaded it with a butter pat, also adding cold water to “wash” out as much buttermilk as possible – this helps the butter keep longer.  Then we added a little bit of salt and put the butter in a little Tupperware.

                Despite my lack of any specific love for butter, I found this process really pretty cool. Butter is the simplest thing, but somehow exotically rural inasmuch as people generally have any sense of how to make it. Because realistically, why do people need to know how butter is made? However unnecessary, though, it’s a small thing that makes the world feel a bit more coherent.

Chicken Slaughter

Farmer Bill explains the necessity of cutting both arteries in the neck

 Today was chicken killing day. Months ago the farm bought 24 ‘meat birds’ – pretty, male, typical-looking chickens. Lately they have been starting to try to crow, signaling their maturity. A delay to the slaughter would risk fights among the proudly matured males.

Given my delicate sensibilites and vegetarian leanings (in myth, if not truth), I was spared participation by the need for a volunteer to deliver CSA shares into town instead of slaughtering. I was able to stick around long enough, however, to watch the first couple rounds and take pictures.

First is the capture of the chickens from their “chicken-tractor”, a coop partially shaded with a tarp that is dragged around the pasture for benefit both of chicken and soil. The chicken is grabbed by its feet, loudly protesting but resisting little otherwise.

Then the beheading- the chicken is stuffed into an open cone, with its head and neck pulled through the bottom. The same little serrated knife we use to harvest lettuce and pea shoots is all that’s required to cut through the neck (the knife is nearly identical to those I have used yearly to carve pumpkins for Halloween). True to reputation, both the chicken’s head and body continue moving after beheading for at least a few seconds.

Chicken head bemoans its fate

The plucking begins with a dunk in hot water- something like 150˚, for 20 seconds or so. This allows for easy plucking, which renders the bird recognizably edible. There is still the disembowelment process, though, which is possibly the most gruesome. After cutting off the neck/feet, the internal gutting starts. Starting with the anus, you carefully cut around and pull everything out the back. The intestines, spleen, liver, heart, and esophagus are all visible. This part looks tricky; the inexperienced risk unappetizing splats and glops.

So that’s chicken-killing. Reportedly not as difficult to stomach as it seems. I’m not sure- maybe I would have been up for it? In consolation for my potential disappointment, Farmer Bill promises ominously “there will be more death”. Next time?