Essex Farm, part deux

January through February I worked at Essex Farm – up on Lake Champlain. I learned a ton – from how to make soap, how to strip cows, how to set up an evaporator for maple sugaring season.

Essex is a lovely little town on the lake. I lived right across from the ferry dock, and could see the little green light at the end of the dock (felt a bit like Daisy from The Great Gatsby). I had run-ins with Casper, a Jersey bull they were using (apparently, when you have your period you should be particularly careful around bulls), helped matt and sam move the sows into farrowing pens, in which we’d constructed little tables that fit into the corners so the piglets could fit underneath and the sows wouldn’t be able to sit on them. I got my time in hand milking a jersey down to 10 minutes and built my hand strength up to milk 3 jerseys in a row. (don’t tell me I have popeye forearms – I prefer the comparison to Rosie the Riveter). I learned how to split wood with a maul, which they brought in with teams of horses (they use Belgians as draft horses for most of the work on the farm)

In the meantime, I drove down each Wednesday for a class in Greenfield “Tilling the Soil of Opportunity”. I came out of the class with a business plan for a CSA in western mass. Between that and working with Target Hunger on establishing a relationship with a farm out there, I’ve been busy!