vacaciones

So I'm just back from vacation, which was excellent. It all started with - what else? - a farm tour. I went to see 2 spoons farm, a new meat CSA up in Pownal, VT. They just started in April and jumped in, with tamworth pigs, chickens (they started them in the Joel Salatin style pens, but moved into doing pastured chicken with movable electric chicken fence, like we do), dairy goats, cows, sheep and a bit of a garden for themselves. I talked to an 8 year old at the beginning about the hanging things on the goat. she said they were called billies, and it was a billy goat. i pointed out the udder and said i didn't think it was a billy goat (from wikipedia: they're called wattles). Gabriella took the picture of me and Michael there.

then i headed to boston where i walked into 69 elm and got a mud mask. most excellent. the week was full of lots of biking, farmers markets, good folks, dogs and good food. My roommates are fostering a greyhound, Beck, so we took him on lots of walks and to an adoption day on Sunday where he got lots of attention and interest. Becky and I rode bikes over to see the city hall market, and I met an awesome farmer at central square - his name is farmer al, he's been selling at central sq since the 70's, and he sells a book called "farmer al's seeds of wisdom". It's got great stuff like "if the water isn't coming out, there's probably a crimp in the hose". awesome.

I also got to stop by the food project and check out the Urban Learning Farm - complete with a new shed (on the left) and a grape arbor in the middle! and the beds look awesome. this year our interns laid out the garden in the winter, with a bed for a salsa garden, a bed to attract butterflies, beds laid out in rows and beds laid out in square foot gardening.

Meanwhile on the farm we did our garlic harvest a couple of weeks ago. Don drove through with the tractor and the chisel plow to loosen them and then we had tons of volunteers who helped us pull them up, put them into the tractor, put them into bunches of about 10, tie a slip knot around them and hang them in the barn. They'll dry up there for about 4-6 weeks.

This week is my distribution week, and it's also when we'll start to get tomatillos...and melons! so exciting! we also had a couple raspberries, I think they'll start soon. Melissa and Geoff and I spent the whole weekend canning and I made cookies. This weekend we're heading to the NOFA conference.