Summit Springs Farm

Hello, all, and sorry for the lack of blogging.  It’s winter, and we’re laying low…what can I say?  Most of the planning for the 2012 season is done, including our organic certification paperwork, and in just a couple of weeks, we’ll get the greenhouse heated up and start sowing seeds!  In the meantime, a couple of announcements.  First, come see Farmer John this Friday 2/24 at the Auburn Public Library from 4:30-6:30 PM for their annual farmers’ market/CSA fair.  I’ll be talking up the farm and will have some organic carrots, potatoes, and garlic for sale!  And, looking ahead, our next farm potluck is happening on Tuesday, March 20th from 5-9 PM.  Get that on your calendars, and I’ll also post a reminder about this as the date gets closer.  Be well, eat well, and stay warm!

Howdy, folks!  We hope everyone is enjoying the snow now that it’s finally arrived.  The ice we could do without, but at least things are finally feeling typically wintery in these parts.  Farm life slows but never stops, even in the heart of winter.  We have sheep to tend, firewood to schlep and stack, snow to shovel, and plenty of planning for next season.  I’ve been playing around some with this very webpage, updating photos and info. for the coming year, while Sonya has tackled the seed order.  This is a big job…she has to figure out how much of everything we need and then decide which veggie varieties to invest in and where to find the best deals.  The scene below, complete with computer, calculator, cup ‘o tea, notes, and numerous open seed catalogs, is typical:

One thing we’re NOT doing is the farmers’ market.  The Norway Winter Farmer’s Market is still going strong, every first and third Saturday from 10am-2pm, but we’ve decided to stop attending.  We really only have carrots, potatoes, and a bit of garlic left for storage crops, and the greenhouse greens are done, having died back once some consistently cold weather settled in.  It was a great experience, and we want to thank market manager Candi Rousseau, all of our fellow vendors, and the folks in and around Norway who came by to check out the market and who bought some produce from us.  We hope to do the market again next fall/winter!

We’re deep into winter now, but a sure sign of the spring to come is the arrival of the chicks!  Yes, I drove to the post office early this morning to collect a small, chirping box.  Back here, we lifted out the tiny chicks one by one, dipped their wee beaks in water and feed, and set them free in their new enclosure right on our porch.  We went with the “surprise special” package from Ideal Poultry Farm in Texas this time:  25 hen chicks of various breeds (23 made it, and 2 died in transit…sad but not unexpected).  We have no clue what the breeds are yet…as the hens grow up, we may have a better idea…but the mix of yellow, brown, and black chicks is fun to see.  Lydia has been closely watching the chicks and has even held a couple so far.

Finally, after a long holiday lay-off, it’s time for the first Summit Springs Farm potluck of 2012!  Join us right here at the farm for a brunch potluck on Sunday, 1/22 from 10am until 1pm.  We’ll provide plenty of coffee and tea, some food of our own, a roaring woodstove or two, and sheep and baby chicks to check out.  You should bring along a dish to share and be ready for fun and fellowship with your friends, neighbors, and fellow CSAers.  Hope to see you here!

I had hoped to do a post before Christmas, or at the very least before the end of 2011, but alas… We spent almost a week over in Vermont for Christmas, hanging out at my grandparents old house and spending time with my sister and her family, my dad and stepmom, and Cousin Gulliver, up from DC. It was lovely! We hope everyone had a great holiday season and is enjoying the new year so far.

As 2012 begins, we’re finally feeling as though things are slowing down.  It was a busy fall, with twice weekly harvests for CSA member orders, wholesale accounts, and the farmers’ market, plus the usual fall farm clean-up projects.  The colder weather has probably finally put an end to the carrot and potato harvesting as well as the various greens we’ve been tending in the greenhouses.  It’s good timing:  The final installment of the Norway Winter Farmers’ Market market of 2011 happened on 12/17.  The market will resume on 1/7 and happen every first and third Saturday after that until the spring.  We’ve enjoyed participating in the market these past couple of months.  In the new year, we plan to take the market on a week-by-week basis, depending on what we have going on and how our veggie supplies are holding up.  Keep an eye on the farm’s Facebook page for market updates going forward.  Here’s update #1:  We plan to skip the market on 1/7 due to some other plans.  The next market is on 1/21, and at this point, I’m planning to be there.

We also have big market news for next season:  We’ve decided not to attend the Bridgton Farmers’ Market.  This was a tough decision.  We’ve really enjoyed participating in that market over the past four years.  The vendors are great, and the market has grown and diversified significantly during our time there.  Our customers have been great, too, and we did well there.  However, Sonya and I feel we need to streamline things a bit next season.  We have the sense that we’ve been stretching ourselves too thinly, and especially considering how our family has just grown, we felt a change was needed.  This means no markets at all next season…we had already decided to stop coming down to Portland for the market there, too…and a chance to focus all of our efforts on the CSA.  Many thanks to the Bridgton community for their support, and good luck to all of our fellow vendors next season.  We hope it will be a great one for a truly special market!

One final note:  Would you or someone you know want to live here?  Yes, right here at Summit Springs Farm!  The 3rd floor of the the house is a self-contained, 1-bedroom apartment, and it is available to rent right now.  Here are the details:  $700/month is the cost; the apartment has its own entrance and a small bath and kitchen; all utilities are included; wifi is included; no smoking and no pets, please.  We’re seeking a quiet and conscientious tenant!  Spread the word, and please contact the farm for more information:  998-2196.

So, farming isn’t easy folks.  It takes a lot of planning, a lot of patience, a knack for improvising, etc.  It’s also pretty tough on the body.  The work itself keeps Sonya and I fit, and we add to that some self-care to help our bodies stay strong…Sonya has her daily yoga practice, and I try to do some stretching and such when I can plus running in the off season.  We don’t have health insurance…if you’d like to see me go off on an angry tangent, ask me about THAT sometime…so it’s very important that we practice preventative maintenance to help us bear the stress of a long farm season.  For this, we turn to a number of very talented folks to help us stay strong, healthy, and focused.  We hope you all will consider supporting them in their endeavors, too!

Just up the road is the Summit Spring Holistic Health Center, and over the past few years it’s been a joy to get to know our neighbors, Christine Baldwin and Eric Anderson, both personally and professionally.  These talented healers have helped all of us immensely.  Eric is an acupuncturist, and Sonya began visiting him over a year ago in an effort to address prenatal and postpartum insomnia.  She feels that her treatments with Eric, along with zero balancing sessions with both Eric and Christine, significantly contributed to her recovery.  I started seeing Eric, too, mostly out of curiousity as I’d never experienced acupuncture before.  I found the results to be subtle yet significant, and I try to get in there for a session every month or so to reset and rebalance my chi…I think of it as an “energy tune-up”.  Christine and Eric have much to offer…have a look at their website for a list of more of the types of therapy they offer.  They also hold classes and retreats every now and then at their beautiful office and home up the hill at the site of the old Summit Springs Hotel.

Also here in Poland is Marcy Covey, and her business is called Dragonfly Healing Touch Thai Yoga Massage.  Thai yoga massage, as the name implies, is a fascinating hybrid of yoga’s stretching and massage’s hands-on muscle manipulation.  I think of it as assisted stretching, and as a pretty non-flexible person, I need all the help I can get!  Sonya and I try to see Marcy once or twice a season and find the experience relaxing and energizing all at once.

We also turn to a couple of other ladies for more traditional massage.  Our good friend and CSA member, Carney Brewer, lives down in Portland and is a licensed massage therapist and reiki practitioner.  In the past, she’s come to us, but these days, she has a space at The Awake Collective in Portland.  Carney is a funny and talented lady, and we appreciate the massage and energy work she’s done for us over the years!  Please visit her page at The Awake Collective for more information.  Every so often during the off-season we try to see Karen Higley, another massage therapist based out of her home in Raymond.  Karen is a skilled therapist specializing in deep tissue massage and hot stone massage.  She finds and gets rid of knots I didn’t even know I had, and I walk out of her space feeling like I’ve had my ass kicked, in a good way.  To contact Karen, call 749-4670.

Our pal Carney Brewer

Last but not least, we regularly visit our friend and chiropractor, Johanna Hill.  Hanna is actually Sonya’s former boss at Coffee By Design.  Several years ago, she decided to return to school to become a chiropractor and relocated to St. Louis to study at Logan College of Chiropractic.  She’s back in Maine now and has just launched her own practice, Pine Tree Family Chiropractic, in Yarmouth.  We discovered the benefits of chiropractic care when Lydia was a newborn.  She spent some time with another local chiropractor to help her with some birth-related jaw and neck issues that interfered with her ability to properly breastfeed.  Son and I started getting regular adjustments, too, and noticed that the typical mid- to late-season fatigue and wear and tear of farming were significantly lessened due to our visits.  Hanna is a wonderful and intuitive healer, and her practice features an emphasis on pregnancy, post partum, infant, and children’s care.  Hanna’s website is coming soon…in the meantime Pinetree Family Chiropractic is on Facebook.

Chiropractor Hanna Hill does her thing on Miss Lydia.

Hanna works on a smiling Lydi.

Even little Ezra has some adjustments.

And, we now have a scholarship-assisted membership to the Pineland branch of the Cumberland County YMCA! We’re looking forward to the whole family spending some time over there this winter swimming, using the gym, perhaps taking some classes, etc.  Another nice thing about our relationships with the folks profiled above is that we are able to trade with most of them.  It’s satisfying to avoid the transfer of money and to simply swap our goods for their services.  It strikes me as being a more intimate and meaningful arrangement, and it creates a satisfying sort of loop:  The food we grow nourishes and provides strength to these healers who in turn pass this energy back to us so that we can continue our work growing their food.  What could be better?

Greenhouse kale and spinach

It’s awfully quiet around here these days.  The pigs are gone…to the Windham Butcher Shop last Sunday, processed on Monday, and picked up by Ezra and I on Wednesday in a radically new form.  Thank you, Toot and Puddle.  I think we did pretty well with our first foray into pork…both pigs weighed over 200 pounds (Toot @ 243 lbs = Big Pig).  We’re swimming in sausage!  All the chickens are gone, too, taken in groups over a period of weeks by various neighbors and CSA members.  I’m enjoying a rare stretch of having no early morning or evening animal chores (the sheep are back out on pasture…I move them to fresh grass twice a week, but otherwise they take care of themselves.)  We’ll get chicks later this winter, and we actually plan to get more pigs, too, (three this time) from Hanne Tierney at Cornerstone Farm in Palmyra at some point next month.

Farewell, gals!

One of the last egg collections of the fall. All the hens are now off to new homes.

Folks, we’ve decided to tweak our winter farmers’ market schedule a bit.  Due to a combination of factors, including higher market fees and the fact that we’re motoring through our veggies pretty quickly, we’ve decided not to attend the Portland Winter Farmers’ Market this winter.  We apologize to friends and customers who were looking forward to seeing us and shopping with us there!  We plan to continue on with the Norway Winter Farmers’ Market at least through the end of the year (though we will skip next week’s market, 11/26, because we’ll be away).  In January, the market goes to an every-other-week schedule and will be held on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month.  After New Years, we’ll see what we have left and probably take it on a week-by-week basis as to whether or not we’ll attend.  Keep an eye on this blog or the farm’s Facebook page for updates.

Thanksgiving is just about here…  We’re going to travel to Westmoreland, New Hampshire to enjoy the feast with my sister and her family and then spend a few days up in Vermont, hopefully with some good friends joining us.  (A shout-out to our neighbors for sheep and cat sitting!)  We hope that you and yours have a wonderful and joy-filled Thanksgiving.  We are all truly blessed and have so much to be grateful for!

Happy greens in the greenhouse.

Specifically, it was Monday, November 7, 2011, a gorgeous, sunny, warm autumn day, and we were all outside soaking it in and chipping away at some farm work.  An important day for Ezra, too, his 2-month birthday…he slept through much of the morning, attached to Dad in his pack.  I brought out the camera to capture some of the day, but Lydia really took the idea and (literally) ran with it…she took most of the pictures below, actually!  I’ll add some commentary here and there, but her photos mostly speak for themselves.  Enjoy!

Lydi, Ezra, and I spent most of our time stacking wood…

The sheep were up near the house in and around their winter quarters yesterday.  Today, with warmer weather and all the snow gone, I moved them back out onto pasture.

The piggies, too, were out and about.  Toot and Puddle go to the butcher next week, and we’ll miss them.  They’re HUGE now but quite friendly and always curious about what we’re up to.  I spent some time in the pig pen earlier today, giving Toot a rubdown.  He’s like a big, lazy dog.

And the chickens, too…free-ranging all over the farm these days.  A few have been picked up, and we’re still hoping to give the rest away.  Please let us know if you’d like some free laying hens!

Sonya spent the morning mowing and then raking up hay and grass near the greenhouse.  We’re happy to report that the garlic is now completely mulched and ready for winter!  Thanks to everyone who dropped leaves off at the farm.  If anyone has more, we’re still happy to take them.

Sienna's wool

I think we may be the worst shepherds ever. Just before some really frigid weather hit along with a freak October snowstorm, we finally sheared the sheep! Sorry, sheepies! Cold enough for ya? Actually, we didn’t shear anyone. The work was done last week by Colin Bridge-Koenigsberg, the son of CSAers Ted Bridge-Koenigsberg and Leslie McConnell. Colin is seventeen, a veteran 4-Her, and his family has raised sheep for 20 years. He did the deed right out in our back pasture, bringing along a generator to power his shears.

Colin works on Sienna while Somebody and Logan look on with curiosity/concern.

Colin at work

Now, that first day, he got the gals, Sienna and Savannah. After watching all this, along with some earlier jumpiness as a result of our neighbor’s target shooting, Logan the ram was having none of it. Though I made the sheep’s electric fenced enclosure much smaller for the occassion, the wily Logan evaded capture and eventually jumped the fence in defiance. Colin decided to return a few days later after the big fella had calmed down. Though we were able to catch Logan easily enough the second time around, he still put up a helluva fight. The procedure is that you get the to-be-shorn sheep on his or her butt, and after a few fits and starts most sheep realize that they’re powerless and relax into the situation. Not Logan. It took both Colin and I numerous tries to get him, hold him, and shear him, and he fought the whole way along, knocking the wind out of Colin a couple of times and spraining my wrist as I tried to hold him steady. Whew! Eventually, the deed was done, thank goodness…I’m not looking forward to doing THAT again.

The Big Guy, finally coatless.

Our (mostly) shorn flock. Logan, freshly shorn and pissed off, watches from a distance.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned Somebody. The little ram lamb wasn’t shorn because his date with destiny was so close. That day was today, actually…I dropped him off this morning at the Windham Butcher Shop. It’s a little sad…he was small and weak and probably sick with worms, but very cute and friendly. We’ll miss him, and soon we’ll, er, eat him. Such is life on the farm. In a video I posted a couple days ago, you see the sheep out and about as a result of the snowstorm. The snow made their electric fencing out in the pasture useless, and the sheep went right over the top of it in an effort to find food (“where did our grass go?”, I’m sure they wondered). So, we scrambled around, Sonya herding sheep, me rushing out for supplies, and both of us quickly putting together the sheeps’ permanent winter quarters, complete with a shelter shed, up close to the house. They seem pretty happy in there, and we are expecting a load of feed hay from Morgan Hill Farm in New Gloucester to be delivered tomorrow. Bring on the winter…at least sheep-wise, we’re ready.

Happy Halloween, all!  That snow storm on Sunday was pretty scary, huh?  We have a ton of unfinished business out in the fields, but we’ve accepted that some things just might not get done as a result of the storm…some crops are probably done for, too.  I shot a short video this morning for your amusement:

Also, spread the word that we are now officially accepting new CSA members for the 2012 season!  Tell your neighbors and friends to check out the website or give us a call (998-2196) for information about how it all works.  Interested folks can visit the CSA sign-up page to view and print a sign-up form.

Just a bit, though!  The CSA is over, and it’s nice to be free from that schedule, but there’s still plenty to do around here, including:  mowing and tilling all over the farm, continuing harvests for the farmers’ market and wholesale customers, getting the rest of the carrots and potatoes out of the ground, taking down deer fences, building some sort of permanent winter fencing for the sheep, mulching crops for the winter, splitting and stacking wood, all manner of farm clean-up and organization, etc.  Never a dull moment!

A special thanks to CSA member and friend, Eddie Watt, for his help harvesting and more the past couple of Friday mornings.  This past Friday, especially, it would have been really tough to get in the harvest without Eddie’s help.

The first edition of the Norway Winter Farmers’ Market went very well.  The whole family made the drive up to Norway this past Saturday, and the hall at the First Universalist Church was packed with area growers and producers offering up everything from veggies and meats to breads and pastries, honey and maple syrup to homemade soaps and other crafts.  The vibe was wonderful, and we hope the market will be even busier in the weeks to come as more people realize that it’s happening.  Come on up and check it out every Saturday from 10am until 2pm!

Thanks to those of you who have dropped leaves off here at the farm, and a reminder to everyone interested in getting rid of leaves:  The farm needs them!  Drop them off anytime over near the barn, and we’ll use them to mulch in next season’s garlic, among other things…

And…want some laying hens of your very own?  As we did last fall, we’d like to rid ourselves of an aging flock for the winter, and rather than process them all (messy and time-consuming), we’d much rather pass the gals along to good homes.  If you’ve ever wanted to have a few chickens around for eggs and/or amusement, this might be a great way to jump in.  Our current batch of hens are around 2 years old.  Their egg production has dropped (and will drop some more once winter settles in), but the gals are continuing to produce eggs at a rate of roughly 3 or 4 eggs per week per hen.  Once again, these birds are free for the taking, so let us know if you’re interested.  And, for the record, we plan to order chicks in the latter half of the winter so as to have a fresh batch of layers ready to go next season!

Just want to post a shout-out to Poland’s own Square Root Natural Foods on rt. 26.  Our friends, Zakk and Emmy, launched their store almost two years ago, and it’s been great fun to see it grow and thrive and to see the creativity, passion, and energy that’s gone into it.  Square Root sells our veggies and many other products from local growers and producers. They have a wide variety of organic and natural foods, dietary supplements, a great bulk section, and an ever-expanding and wonderful wine and beer selection.  If you want to “keep it local” and support our economy, support Square Root! Poland is lucky to have ‘em, and we urge our friends and neighbors to shop there!