Farm Vacation
I took time off to work
We moved a building yesterday.
Statements like that usually get people’s attention because, for some reason, most folks don’t see that as a typical event. Still, other farm tasks like clean out the hen room, hill the potatoes, or wheelhoe (cultivate) the broccoli and onions just don’t seem to get the same reaction. I find that a bit odd because I am guessing most people don’t write those down on their “to do” lists either.
Then again, I suspect most people also don’t take a vacation from their job so they can get farm work done.
Taking Time to Farm
I don’t think we’ve ever completely figured out how to balance the Genuine Faux Farm with the rest of our lives. But ever since I took the job with Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network in 2020, the boundary between too much and too little has been extremely difficult to identify.
You see, there’s this thing I have about integrity. I feel that if I am going to write from the perspective of a small-scale, diversified grower of food, I should probably actually raise some veggies, manage some fruit trees, and tend some poultry. But if I’m going to work full-time for PAN, how much can I farm? And how much farming must I do to qualify as a “real farmer?”
It’s only taken six years to (maybe) figure it out.
Okay. Six years and a much needed farm retreat that helped Tammy and I to develop a new five-year plan. We’ve already shared our intention to push hard on the repairs of the old farm house and included a report on some of the progress in March and April. We have also tried to rededicate ourselves to taking walks in some of the beautiful places around us to work on our mental and physical well-being.
The plan also included a very careful look at our work schedules and how we could, perhaps, implement a farm schedule around them. We’ve noticed that I, in particular, do better with two-week blocks of time on the farm. So, I scheduled time off starting Memorial Day weekend that continued through the first week of June.
These are two key weeks where I could focus on all of the things that simply have to get done if we’re going to succeed this year. This is not something I’ve successfully scheduled in prior years for various reasons. But we managed it this time and I think it may have been one of the better things we’ve done at the Genuine Faux Farm.
Learning Our Limits
I’ve been writing the Genuine Faux Farm blog since 2009, so I am certain that I’ve shared many, MANY times how we are always making adjustments. However, I don’t think we’ve really given ourselves the opportunity to figure out what we could (and should) be doing on the farm that works with two people where both have full-time, off-farm employment.
Last year provided us with an excellent case in point. Yes, there was some difficult weather. But when isn’t that the case? The real issue was sitting right in front of me when I wrote this article last August. The time I had to do farm work wasn’t available when I needed it. Some of that was certainly beyond my control. But after some excellent discussions during our retreat, we determined I could, and should, actually take more control.
Some of that control is being exercised with a new paid time-off use strategy. As a result, I think we will get a better measure as to how much we can reasonably expect of ourselves on the farm. If things fall off of our “to do” list this year, we’re just going to have to be honest and discuss whether those things no longer happen here or if they just become part of a rotation. For example, we’ve already determined that we cannot raise both broiler chickens and turkeys in the same growing season. So the current idea is to raise broilers this year and turkeys next.
I recognize that we have been pretty fortunate with our weather so far this season. Yet we are well past the Farmer Delusional Syndrome period that usually occurs in January and February. We’ve already seen our share of mini-tragedies and I have certainly asked myself why we do what we do multiple times in the past couple of months.
Despite that, I think we are giving ourselves an excellent opportunity to learn what we can reasonably expect from ourselves and the Genuine Faux Farm in our current reality. Both of us don’t mind working hard, we just want to avoid feeling like we’re on a virtual hamster wheel.
Two Weeks and a Long List of Accomplishments
We started Memorial Day weekend with some sizable accomplishments. We planted most of the brassica (broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale and romanesco) in the Southwest Plot and threw in a few more onions. We like to grow these crops together because the onions help reduce issues with cabbage loopers and cabbage butterflies.
However, once the young brassica went into the field, we had to set up a defense system (electric netting) or the rabbits would simply have several meals and we would have no broccoli. And, because the bees knew we were already committed to that project, they decided to have a swarm.
When bees swarm, you have to act quickly or lose the swarm as they depart to find a new home.
It seems that we were able to capture that swarm and we may have also managed to catch a second swarm just a few days ago. This was an excellent reminder that there are always things that will change our plans. And no, bees typically will not ask first if now is a good time…
We were also reminded fairly early that Mother Nature does not care if we’ve taken time off to farm. If she wants to rain on our parade, she will. And we were also reminded that Murphy’s Law (if it can go wrong, it will) still applies, regardless of our intentions and in spite of our careful planning. Equipment broke and the farmers got tired and just weren’t ready to do more - it didn’t matter if it made a shambles of the schedule we had carefully drawn up.
And yet, in two weeks we also planted the cucumbers, zucchini, melons, watermelons, zinnias, carrots, beets, borage, winter squash, sweet corn, sunflowers, marigolds and beans. We harvested asparagus, lettuce, tatsoi and komatsuna. We hilled all of the potatoes, trellised the peas and cultivated all of the rows not just once, but twice.
I suppose many people can say they’ve planted that many different veggies or more. But our scale is still much bigger than a garden. There are about 450 row feet of potatoes and at least that many row feet of onions. There are a couple hundred broccoli plants and I’m pleased to say that we have on solid 150 foot row of marigolds.
We ran drip tape for irrigation, turned our compost piles and even worked on the flower plantings by our sidewalk. We had a plant, egg and veggie sale. We moved the hens to the Summer Cottage and put them on pasture out by Maurice the Weeping Willow, Gretel the Austrian Pine and Minnie the Mighty Oak. Then we cleaned the hen room out and moved the henlets (our next flock of laying hens) into the hen room.
There were numerous other things as well - but I suspect you got the point and are tired of reading a list.
And… oh yeah. We moved a building. For those who wonder what that entails, I wrote an article titled How to Move a High Tunnel in 13 Easy Steps that I published last year. That will give you an idea of what we had to do.
Perfection? All Work and No Play?
I don’t want to give everyone the wrong impression. The last couple of weeks were not perfect. Nor did we work every single moment of every day at the farm.
There were certainly some bad moments and I do not want to dwell on them here. For instance, moving the building (the high tunnel) did not go exactly according to plan. Our tractor (Rosie) would not start, so my energy and time was diverted to that issue, nearly causing us to abort the high tunnel project with rain and wind heading our way.
There were several additional challenges, but is sufficient to be aware of them. They don’t need to carry more weight than they deserve. This is what farming is. There are always adjustments because things don’t go according to plan at the farm. ALWAYS.
And yes, there were things we did not get to that we intended to do. Actually that list is surprisingly short. But there were still things that did not happen and probably will not happen. Instead, they go on to the discussion list for the future.
On the other hand, I do want to celebrate how well we balanced our work with the rest of our lives. Tammy managed to kayak a couple of times and even managed to get me to go once. We played a board game most days, I wrote my Postal History Sundays, and we even went to the Waverly Palace Theater for a movie.
Let me just put in a plug for the theater. We went to the latest showing on a Sunday and ended up with our own private viewing. Even though we were the only ones in that showing, the employees there were happy to see us and treated us kindly and well.
We took time to enjoy the iris bloom. We replenished our vases nearly every day.
And now, we get to figure out how to balance the full-time job with the farm once again. But I don’t want to talk about that now.
So…. Did I mention we moved a building yesterday?
Few of us can imagine the satisfaction of having moved a building - a culmination of everything on, and not-on, your 'to do' list. But your writing, once again, brought that close in. This really felt celebratory. Huge respect.
I appreciate your writing down the kinds of hiccups that thwart progress for all of us, Rob, including "Then we cleaned the hen room out ..."
When we moved to our farm, in 1947, the first chore for my brother and I was to clean the hen house. He's sure that it hadn't been cleaned since the Hareding administration. My eyes water today in recollection.
I continue to marvel at my own too optimistic planning, even after confronting years of reality. I'm attributing this to humans' continued optimism. Thanks for contributing to my upbeat outlook, Rob.