AgriCulture: Semi-Independent: Turkeys

AgriCulture: Becoming Farmer McGregor

A deadly chewed rhubarb leaf Photo by Mark Scherzer "It's just like Checkov's gun!" Steve practically hooted into the telephone. As if my call was all about the plot of some comedic play, and not serious business. It was not exactly the reaction I expected after I called him to say I was afraid I might have killed Doodle, the sweet lamb who was rejected by his mother at birth while Steve was minding the farm last July, and has bonded with us human caregivers, Steve in particular, ever since. To be fair, Steve didn't hoot derisively until he had figured out, through an extended discussion of the circumstances, that Doodle's demise was highly unlikely. I had told him that I had been doing chores Tuesday evening and was transferring a cartload of compost to the vegetable garden with Doodle in my company, as is typically the case when I'm near the barn. I wanted to dump some nourishment on a planting bed I was preparing near the rhubarb patch. And before I knew it, I saw out of the corner of my eye Doodle munching on a rhubarb leaf. Knowing that rhubarb leaves are poisonous to humans, I yelled out and ran over, trying unsuccessfully to get whatever he was munching out of his mouth, and rushed him out of the garden. Extremely concerned, I immediately texted Gillian, the wonderful vet, who is particularly expert in sheep matters. She texted me back right away, confirming that rhubarb leaves are poisonous to sheep too. They can cause sudden kidney failure and death soon after ingestion, or kidney problems in the following days. She advised that I should give Doodle 60 ml of mineral oil by mouth to prevent absorption and that in the following days I should monitor his urination to be sure he was not developing kidney stones. (To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how I would do this. I am rarely around to see Doodle urinate, and I'm not sure if I followed him for a couple of hours I would see him pee, or would know if the quantity or quality of urine was different from normal.) Fortuitously, I knew I had some mineral oil, because I had come across a container the day before in the garage. I'm not sure why I had it originally or why it was in the garage, but I was able to get it right away and measure out 60 ml into one of the baby bottles that I had previously used to feed Doodle his milk replacer. I used a nipple with an exceptionally large opening, in the expectation that I might have to pour it down his throat. I didn't have to, because at 9 months old he still remembered exactly how to drink from a baby bottle once I got it in his mouth. But because of the large opening, during the process of getting it into his mouth a fair proportion of it had dripped out on my hand. Determined that I had to give him more quickly, I headed back to the house. It helped expedite matters that Doodle was all too happy to tag along with me. We walked right into the kitchen, and he took the bottle with the additional 20 ml of mineral oil without complaint. "People kill the things they love," was the refrain that went continuously through my mind. I was extremely concerned, so I googled as much as I could quickly find about sheep and rhubarb leaves. I was pleased to find several accounts of people whose sheep had ingested rhubarb leaves without apparent consequences, and to find that in order for the oxalic acid in rhubarb leaves to have significant effect on a human being, one would have to eat about 2 lbs of leaves. Even extrapolating down to Doodle's size of about 35 lbs, it began to seem highly unlikely that the small portion of one rhubarb leaf he had been able to eat in the less than a minute we were there could do him significant damage. Though my fears were somewhat quelled, I felt compelled to let Steve know about the situation. While I play the parental role on a daily basis, it was Steve who cared for him right after birth, got Gillian involved to save him from certain death back then, and who comes closest to being Doodle's birth mother. A couple of weeks ago, while Steve was again visiting, it was remarkable to see how they communed, with Doodle nuzzling him and seeming to try to nurse on Steve's shirt. If I were to cause Doodle's death, I don't think Steve would forgive me. I was relieved that once he heard the whole story and determined that Doodle was in no real danger, Steve saw the comedy in the situation. And he really let me have it. "You know how Chekhov displays that gun innocently at the beginning of Uncle Vanya, and you just know that the gun is going to go off later on? Well," he said, "this is the same thing. Every goddamned time we go to the vegetable garden, you point out to me that the leaves on the rhubarb are poisonous. Every time. As if you think I'd eat them! You were basically setting it up that something had to happen with those leaves, and that something finally happened. Thank God, just like in Uncle Vanya, nobody really got hurt." Not that Steve hasn't asked for daily reports on Doodle's condition ever since. But as I've told him, Doodle four days later continues to be perfectly fine. He is now forever banished from the vegetable garden, however. One shot of Chekhov's gun is enough. Doodle Nuzzles Steve, selfie by Steve Gutierrez WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb. Sorrel: $3/bag Rhubarb: $5/lb EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. $6/dozen Lambs went to market. If you ordered, stay tuned for pickup. + Coming soon: Mint FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464

A deadly chewed rhubarb leaf Photo by Mark Scherzer "It's just like Checkov's gun!" Steve practically hooted into the telephone. As if my call was all about the plot of some comedic play, and not serious business. It was not exactly the reaction I expected after I called him to say I was afraid I might have killed Doodle, the sweet lamb who was rejected by his mother at birth while Steve was minding the farm last July, and has bonded with us human caregivers, Steve in particular, ever since. To be fair, Steve didn't hoot derisively until he had figured out, through an extended discussion of the circumstances, that Doodle's demise was highly unlikely. I had told him that I had been doing chores Tuesday evening and was transferring a cartload of compost to the vegetable garden with Doodle in my company, as is typically the case when I'm near the barn. I wanted to dump some nourishment on a planting bed I was preparing near the rhubarb patch. And before I knew it, I saw out of the corner of my eye Doodle munching on a rhubarb leaf. Knowing that rhubarb leaves are poisonous to humans, I yelled out and ran over, trying unsuccessfully to get whatever he was munching out of his mouth, and rushed him out of the garden. Extremely concerned, I immediately texted Gillian, the wonderful vet, who is particularly expert in sheep matters. She texted me back right away, confirming that rhubarb leaves are poisonous to sheep too. They can cause sudden kidney failure and death soon after ingestion, or kidney problems in the following days. She advised that I should give Doodle 60 ml of mineral oil by mouth to prevent absorption and that in the following days I should monitor his urination to be sure he was not developing kidney stones. (To be honest, I wasn't quite sure how I would do this. I am rarely around to see Doodle urinate, and I'm not sure if I followed him for a couple of hours I would see him pee, or would know if the quantity or quality of urine was different from normal.) Fortuitously, I knew I had some mineral oil, because I had come across a container the day before in the garage. I'm not sure why I had it originally or why it was in the garage, but I was able to get it right away and measure out 60 ml into one of the baby bottles that I had previously used to feed Doodle his milk replacer. I used a nipple with an exceptionally large opening, in the expectation that I might have to pour it down his throat. I didn't have to, because at 9 months old he still remembered exactly how to drink from a baby bottle once I got it in his mouth. But because of the large opening, during the process of getting it into his mouth a fair proportion of it had dripped out on my hand. Determined that I had to give him more quickly, I headed back to the house. It helped expedite matters that Doodle was all too happy to tag along with me. We walked right into the kitchen, and he took the bottle with the additional 20 ml of mineral oil without complaint. "People kill the things they love," was the refrain that went continuously through my mind. I was extremely concerned, so I googled as much as I could quickly find about sheep and rhubarb leaves. I was pleased to find several accounts of people whose sheep had ingested rhubarb leaves without apparent consequences, and to find that in order for the oxalic acid in rhubarb leaves to have significant effect on a human being, one would have to eat about 2 lbs of leaves. Even extrapolating down to Doodle's size of about 35 lbs, it began to seem highly unlikely that the small portion of one rhubarb leaf he had been able to eat in the less than a minute we were there could do him significant damage. Though my fears were somewhat quelled, I felt compelled to let Steve know about the situation. While I play the parental role on a daily basis, it was Steve who cared for him right after birth, got Gillian involved to save him from certain death back then, and who comes closest to being Doodle's birth mother. A couple of weeks ago, while Steve was again visiting, it was remarkable to see how they communed, with Doodle nuzzling him and seeming to try to nurse on Steve's shirt. If I were to cause Doodle's death, I don't think Steve would forgive me. I was relieved that once he heard the whole story and determined that Doodle was in no real danger, Steve saw the comedy in the situation. And he really let me have it. "You know how Chekhov displays that gun innocently at the beginning of Uncle Vanya, and you just know that the gun is going to go off later on? Well," he said, "this is the same thing. Every goddamned time we go to the vegetable garden, you point out to me that the leaves on the rhubarb are poisonous. Every time. As if you think I'd eat them! You were basically setting it up that something had to happen with those leaves, and that something finally happened. Thank God, just like in Uncle Vanya, nobody really got hurt." Not that Steve hasn't asked for daily reports on Doodle's condition ever since. But as I've told him, Doodle four days later continues to be perfectly fine. He is now forever banished from the vegetable garden, however. One shot of Chekhov's gun is enough. Doodle Nuzzles Steve, selfie by Steve Gutierrez WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb.  Sorrel: $3/bag  Rhubarb: $5/lb EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. $6/dozen Lambs went to market. If you ordered, stay tuned for pickup.  +  Coming soon: Mint FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464

Agriculture: Chekhov’s Gun

Broccoli heading for a new garden bed Photo by Eric Rouleau Tuning in this morning to Ici Musique, the Montréal radio station, we were immediately reminded that it's Earth Day. The theme of Eric's favorite program was songs involving gardens. Appropriately, I had scheduled this weekend to be a full weekend of working in the vegetable garden. Rather than plain old Earth Day, though, I'd call it Earth Moving Day. The garden this year is, at least at the initial stages, something of a back breaker. Spring garden preparation is always strenuous. It inevitably requires digging to prepare planting beds and hauling compost. This year, I've made the compost distribution an add-on to daily chores. After I unload the muck from the barn floor on the still decomposing part of the my compost mountain, I wheel the cart down the other side and fill it with already cured compost. I then wheel that to the vegetable garden (Doodle of course tagging along), dump the compost on a planting bed, and bring the cart back to the barn to fill it with the next load of muck, starting the cycle again. In addition to the usual garden prep, there are other elements that render "making the garden" particularly strenuous this year. First, we are installing what I hope will be rabbit and groundhog proof fencing around a new perimeter line. Macho Matt started us on that process by putting in gate posts and gates, and installing the first two sections of fence along the lines we all laid out. We've continued the work, pounding in metal fence posts, then using twisted wire to affix three foot high rigid metal hog panels to the posts. This in and of itself is a relatively quick and efficient process, but it's really only the beginning. Once the hog panels are up, we dig a trench a bit more than a foot wide around the outside of the fence, and then attach four foot high chicken wire to the metal hog panels. The upper three feet of chicken wire is vertical against the hog panels. The last foot is flush to the ground, and then covered back over with the layer of soil we dug out. I thank my sister for this suggestion. She says the groundhogs start digging to get under the fence, but when they hit the chicken wire they get frustrated and go elsewhere. Determined as I am that this year the garden will feed us humans, not rabbits and groundhogs, we are going that extra mile toward impregnability. In addition to new fencing, we are reconfiguring the garden beds. Last year, as Eric and I were feeling our way toward living as a couple, he had occasion to remark that I was a bohemian, while he was a cartesian. He was referring to much thornier issues than the garden, but it turns out he was correct up and down the line. You can see it in our respective approaches to garden beds. Many of you have, when visiting in the past, remarked on my unusual use of round planting beds. Well, they are being phased out, at Eric's suggestion. He acknowledges that there is a place for charm in the garden, but feels that vegetables are pretty charming all by themselves and that the quest for visual interest must be reconciled with efficiency. Rectangular beds will make mowing and other maintenance considerably less strenuous, and Eric convinced me that I should try to keep the work to the essential -- and to what I can really accomplish. Eric went on line and got a garden planning program, and we together this winter created a plan for everything other than the tomato patch. We've been assiduously following it. Unfortunately, this too involves a great deal of earth moving. To put the beds where we want them in the shape we want them to have, we are digging up large clumps of lawn in some places, and moving them, as turf, to other places that may have been planting beds before. At times it seems all the soil in the garden is moving from one place to another. It's fun to see the transformation, but exhausting. Do I mind? Not at all. A vegetable garden is not just a utilitarian tool. It's a creation, an expression of value, and in some very real senses an act of love. One of the most beautiful songs in the repertoire of québecois music to which Eric has introduced me is by poet and songwriter Clémence DesRochers, the first verse of which is: Cet été je ferai un jardin Si tu veux rester avec moi Encore quelques mois Il sera petit, c'est certain J'en prendrai bien soin J'en prendrai bien soin Pour qu'il soit aussi beau que toi. (This summer I will make a garden, If you want to stay with me A few months longer It will be small, surely, I will take good care of it I will take good care of it So that it will be as beautiful as you) While I would certainly have made a garden if Eric had not decided to stay, it would not have been this garden. This garden embodies what we've decided to try to achieve together, and to me it's worth taking all the good care required. The Garden Plan We Created Photo by Eric Rouleau WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb. Sorrel: $3/bag Rhubarb: They're still mostly short and stumpy, but ready to eat $5/lb EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen Lambs went to market. If you ordered, stay tuned for pickup. + Coming soon: Mint FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

Broccoli heading for a new garden bed Photo by Eric Rouleau Tuning in this morning to Ici Musique, the Montréal radio station, we were immediately reminded that it's Earth Day. The theme of Eric's favorite program was songs involving gardens. Appropriately, I had scheduled this weekend to be a full weekend of working in the vegetable garden. Rather than plain old Earth Day, though, I'd call it Earth Moving Day. The garden this year is, at least at the initial stages, something of a back breaker. Spring garden preparation is always strenuous. It inevitably requires digging to prepare planting beds and hauling compost. This year, I've made the compost distribution an add-on to daily chores. After I unload the muck from the barn floor on the still decomposing part of the my compost mountain, I wheel the cart down the other side and fill it with already cured compost. I then wheel that to the vegetable garden (Doodle of course tagging along), dump the compost on a planting bed, and bring the cart back to the barn to fill it with the next load of muck, starting the cycle again. In addition to the usual garden prep, there are other elements that render "making the garden" particularly strenuous this year. First, we are installing what I hope will be rabbit and groundhog proof fencing around a new perimeter line. Macho Matt started us on that process by putting in gate posts and gates, and installing the first two sections of fence along the lines we all laid out. We've continued the work, pounding in metal fence posts, then using twisted wire to affix three foot high rigid metal hog panels to the posts. This in and of itself is a relatively quick and efficient process, but it's really only the beginning. Once the hog panels are up, we dig a trench a bit more than a foot wide around the outside of the fence, and then attach four foot high chicken wire to the metal hog panels. The upper three feet of chicken wire is vertical against the hog panels. The last foot is flush to the ground, and then covered back over with the layer of soil we dug out. I thank my sister for this suggestion. She says the groundhogs start digging to get under the fence, but when they hit the chicken wire they get frustrated and go elsewhere. Determined as I am that this year the garden will feed us humans, not rabbits and groundhogs, we are going that extra mile toward impregnability. In addition to new fencing, we are reconfiguring the garden beds. Last year, as Eric and I were feeling our way toward living as a couple, he had occasion to remark that I was a bohemian, while he was a cartesian. He was referring to much thornier issues than the garden, but it turns out he was correct up and down the line. You can see it in our respective approaches to garden beds. Many of you have, when visiting in the past, remarked on my unusual use of round planting beds. Well, they are being phased out, at Eric's suggestion. He acknowledges that there is a place for charm in the garden, but feels that vegetables are pretty charming all by themselves and that the quest for visual interest must be reconciled with efficiency. Rectangular beds will make mowing and other maintenance considerably less strenuous, and Eric convinced me that I should try to keep the work to the essential -- and to what I can really accomplish. Eric went on line and got a garden planning program, and we together this winter created a plan for everything other than the tomato patch. We've been assiduously following it. Unfortunately, this too involves a great deal of earth moving. To put the beds where we want them in the shape we want them to have, we are digging up large clumps of lawn in some places, and moving them, as turf, to other places that may have been planting beds before. At times it seems all the soil in the garden is moving from one place to another. It's fun to see the transformation, but exhausting. Do I mind? Not at all. A vegetable garden is not just a utilitarian tool. It's a creation, an expression of value, and in some very real senses an act of love. One of the most beautiful songs in the repertoire of québecois music to which Eric has introduced me is by poet and songwriter Clémence DesRochers, the first verse of which is: Cet été je ferai un jardin  Si tu veux rester avec moi  Encore quelques mois  Il sera petit, c'est certain  J'en prendrai bien soin  J'en prendrai bien soin  Pour qu'il soit aussi beau que toi. (This summer I will make a garden,  If you want to stay with me  A few months longer  It will be small, surely,  I will take good care of it  I will take good care of it  So that it will be as beautiful as you) While I would certainly have made a garden if Eric had not decided to stay, it would not have been this garden. This garden embodies what we've decided to try to achieve together, and to me it's worth taking all the good care required. The Garden Plan We Created Photo by Eric Rouleau WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb.  Sorrel: $3/bag  Rhubarb: They're still mostly short and stumpy, but ready to eat $5/lb EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen Lambs went to market. If you ordered, stay tuned for pickup.  +  Coming soon: Mint FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

Agriculture: This Summer I Will Make a Garden

When it became apparent that my sister and brother-in-law would be traveling through the Hudson Valley at the end of this week, I decided that it would make sense to move the ritual Passover seder meal to Good Friday, midway between the first night of Passover and Easter Sunday. Because of the co-occurrence of the holidays, Eric and I discussed possibly having a fusion seder/Easter feast, in which coquilles Saint-Jacques would take the place of gefilte fish and a roast ham would substitute for the brisket. But the challenge of melding a holiday meal built around bread that didn't have time to rise with one symbolized by bread that has risen is confounding. Two different stories, matzoh and hot cross buns. Sometimes you simply have to recognize real differences. Matt takes a lamb appreciation break Photo by Mark Scherzer So we proceeded with a traditional seder on Friday (albeit with the Christians outnumbering the Jews), and will proceed with a traditional Easter dinner today (with the Jews, conversely, in the majority). This approach allows us not only to recognize the differences, but appreciate them. The same process of recognition and appreciation might be carried over to the farm, where the effort to understand the livestock I raise involves a constant struggle to figure out how they are like us, and how they are different. You may recall that a few weeks ago I was contemplating the best way to raise Doodle, the lamb rejected by his mother. Let him accompany me, as his substitute mother, and get first chance at the food I distribute (my approach)? Or keep him with the flock to let him learn to be a regular sheep (Eric's)? Or take a middle course of excluding him while distributing the feed, but giving him extra treats on the sly (Steve's)? Many of you sent in thoughts. While most voted in favor of my indulgent approach, Eric's sister, Kathleen, offered what turned out to be the most sage advice. She said, "do a little of each," more or less predicting how it has all played out. No sooner had I put the options on the table than Doodle himself started showing conflicting desires, sometimes hanging back with the herd, sometimes insisting on coming in with me, sometimes looking for special treats and attention after the fact. As Doodle separated himself a bit from me, I began more keenly observing the other sheep during feeding. I noticed, for one thing, that Doodle was not the only one in need of special help. He is somewhat vulnerable for being younger and smaller, but equally vulnerable are the oldest ewes, like Nilufer, now 15 years old, and Lale, now 14. Nilufer, particularly, is subject to being bonked out of the way by younger, stronger ewes at the feed bowls. I've taken to letting them both stay in the main part of the barn while I distribute food, to give them a head start, and often end up hand feeding Nilufer on the side. The herd is in fact incredibly rough on any more vulnerable sheep. While they are very respectful of ewes giving birth, taking pains to avoid walking anywhere near mothers with newborn lambs, it only takes days before they treat those lambs as entirely "on their own". Last week I observed a lamb mistaking a ewe for his mother and approaching her as she was eating her grain treat. She bonked him out of the way so hard with her head that he ended up splayed out on all four legs a couple of feet away. While I am convinced that ewes and their own lambs feel love for each other, it seems that caring between sheep unrelated by mother/lamb ties is in very short supply. In that respect, I am quite sure that humans are different. We may not always offer generosity, but we are surely capable of it. I need look no further for evidence than the sojourn of my friend Matt this last week on the farm.  Matt, a civil engineer by training, has all sorts of skills that are invaluable on the farm but which I sorely lack, including understanding how things work mechanically. He also likes the hard physical labor of farm work. Not for nothing do we refer to him as Macho Matt. In the space of the week, even while doing his office work several days, Matt fixed two major gates. He mined the former pig pasture for metal fencing and posts that could be repurposed to define the new parameters of the vegetable garden. He installed three recycled gates at the garden entry points, and began installing the fencing there. He fixed a wheelbarrow and reconfigured a pen in the barn that the sheep had managed to destroy. Most important, he dismantled the jerry-built front of the chicken coop, installed new gate posts, lintel, threshold and cross bars, and re-installed the door so it works properly. Once we rewired the front of the coop, it was entirely renewed as a safe space for the chickens. Even after returning to the City, Matt has been in touch, mulling designs for new roosting bars for the turkeys that will arrive in late May. Though Matt claims he does this for the pleasure of it, it represents a generosity of spirit that I am pretty sure the sheep do not possess. We should recognize how human generosity so exceeds that of the animals, and celebrate the difference. Matt reconstructs the chicken coop Photo by Mark Scherzer WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb. EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. The lamb market date has, for logistical reasons involving the truck, been changed to April 18, so there is still time to order. Coming soon: Sorrel is up. Another week or two to harvest FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

When it became apparent that my sister and brother-in-law would be traveling through the Hudson Valley at the end of this week, I decided that it would make sense to move the ritual Passover seder meal to Good Friday, midway between the first night of Passover and Easter Sunday. Because of the co-occurrence of the holidays, Eric and I discussed possibly having a fusion seder/Easter feast, in which coquilles Saint-Jacques would take the place of gefilte fish and a roast ham would substitute for the brisket. But the challenge of melding a holiday meal built around bread that didn't have time to rise with one symbolized by bread that has risen is confounding. Two different stories, matzoh and hot cross buns. Sometimes you simply have to recognize real differences. Matt takes a lamb appreciation break Photo by Mark Scherzer So we proceeded with a traditional seder on Friday (albeit with the Christians outnumbering the Jews), and will proceed with a traditional Easter dinner today (with the Jews, conversely, in the majority). This approach allows us not only to recognize the differences, but appreciate them. The same process of recognition and appreciation might be carried over to the farm, where the effort to understand the livestock I raise involves a constant struggle to figure out how they are like us, and how they are different. You may recall that a few weeks ago I was contemplating the best way to raise Doodle, the lamb rejected by his mother. Let him accompany me, as his substitute mother, and get first chance at the food I distribute (my approach)? Or keep him with the flock to let him learn to be a regular sheep (Eric's)? Or take a middle course of excluding him while distributing the feed, but giving him extra treats on the sly (Steve's)? Many of you sent in thoughts. While most voted in favor of my indulgent approach, Eric's sister, Kathleen, offered what turned out to be the most sage advice. She said, "do a little of each," more or less predicting how it has all played out. No sooner had I put the options on the table than Doodle himself started showing conflicting desires, sometimes hanging back with the herd, sometimes insisting on coming in with me, sometimes looking for special treats and attention after the fact. As Doodle separated himself a bit from me, I began more keenly observing the other sheep during feeding. I noticed, for one thing, that Doodle was not the only one in need of special help. He is somewhat vulnerable for being younger and smaller, but equally vulnerable are the oldest ewes, like Nilufer, now 15 years old, and Lale, now 14. Nilufer, particularly, is subject to being bonked out of the way by younger, stronger ewes at the feed bowls. I've taken to letting them both stay in the main part of the barn while I distribute food, to give them a head start, and often end up hand feeding Nilufer on the side. The herd is in fact incredibly rough on any more vulnerable sheep. While they are very respectful of ewes giving birth, taking pains to avoid walking anywhere near mothers with newborn lambs, it only takes days before they treat those lambs as entirely "on their own". Last week I observed a lamb mistaking a ewe for his mother and approaching her as she was eating her grain treat. She bonked him out of the way so hard with her head that he ended up splayed out on all four legs a couple of feet away. While I am convinced that ewes and their own lambs feel love for each other, it seems that caring between sheep unrelated by mother/lamb ties is in very short supply. In that respect, I am quite sure that humans are different. We may not always offer generosity, but we are surely capable of it. I need look no further for evidence than the sojourn of my friend Matt this last week on the farm.    Matt, a civil engineer by training, has all sorts of skills that are invaluable on the farm but which I sorely lack, including understanding how things work mechanically. He also likes the hard physical labor of farm work. Not for nothing do we refer to him as Macho Matt. In the space of the week, even while doing his office work several days, Matt fixed two major gates. He mined the former pig pasture for metal fencing and posts that could be repurposed to define the new parameters of the vegetable garden. He installed three recycled gates at the garden entry points, and began installing the fencing there. He fixed a wheelbarrow and reconfigured a pen in the barn that the sheep had managed to destroy. Most important, he dismantled the jerry-built front of the chicken coop, installed new gate posts, lintel, threshold and cross bars, and re-installed the door so it works properly. Once we rewired the front of the coop, it was entirely renewed as a safe space for the chickens. Even after returning to the City, Matt has been in touch, mulling designs for new roosting bars for the turkeys that will arrive in late May. Though Matt claims he does this for the pleasure of it, it represents a generosity of spirit that I am pretty sure the sheep do not possess. We should recognize how human generosity so exceeds that of the animals, and celebrate the difference. Matt reconstructs the chicken coop Photo by Mark Scherzer WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK Horseradish root: $2/lb. EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. The lamb market date has, for logistical reasons involving the truck, been changed to April 18, so there is still time to order. Coming soon: Sorrel is up. Another week or two to harvest FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

AgriCulture: Generosity of Spirit

Spring, the season of rebirth and regrowth, is almost upon us. Winter's last full official day is Sunday, March 19. But Spring is an insistent force, and will be restrained neither by the calendar nor by cold wintry weather. If I needed any proof of this proposition, I found it yesterday evening. As Eric and I drove east east from Germantown, where the little snow we had this week has largely melted away, to the higher elevations of Northwestern Connecticut, where my friend George spent part of the week snowed in without power, we saw in the middle of a lawn in Lakeville, surrounded by deep snow, what appeared to be a large forsythia bush in bloom. Here in Germantown, it's easier for the season to show itself in full force. The little white snowdrop flowers that have been blooming for the last couple of weeks have been joined by six inch tall daffodil leaves, with buds that seem on the verge of opening. I even saw a couple of phlox leaves emerging near the house this afternoon. And fuki buds are popping out of the ground, it seems everywhere I look. Fuki, also known as Japanese butterbur, is a plant with flat round leaves which can be massive, a foot or more in diameter -- heart shaped, large, and coarse. The leaves appear at the end of stalks that begin at ground level and stick up about six or eight inches. People often mistake fuki for rhubarb. The stalks resemble a thin reddish celery stalk. The buds, which look like tiny greenish cauliflowers, appear right at ground level in early spring. The fuki here was planted in a fit of landscaping enthusiasm some twenty two years ago. It was located in a shady damp spot east of the driveway in order to quickly cover a lot ground with something decorative. I've come to view the plant as a horrible invasive scourge because, through sending out underground runners, it has been appearing opportunistically everyplace it can reach, sometimes areas not so shady and mucky. Unfortunately, in the height of summer, whenever the weather turns hot and dry, in all but the shadiest, wettest spots the plants wilt, and so does their beauty. The leaves dry up quickly; the stems turn a brittle brown. Because they have shaded out all competing growth, the fuki patch looks like the remnants of a forest fire. Spring landscape beauty becomes summer's desert. I would like to do everything I can to limit the area covered by fuki. Fortuitously, it turns out that fuki is regarded as something of a delicacy by the Japanese, a "mountain vegetable." The buds, known as " fuki noto", are harvested by hand in early spring and used in a variety of preparations. I'm thinking about doing a fuki noto tempura tomorrow. From my research today, it seems the stalks are also quite edible when they're young and tender. Parboiled in salt water, followed by an ice water bath to take out some of their signature bitterness, they may then be added to soup or transformed into a vegetable dish served with miso paste. My hope is that if I harvest enough buds and early stalks, and even convince others to eat them, that I will keep this rampant scourge under control. I assure you , this is not a general instinct of mine. Confronted by the first growth of spring, I do not generally try to beat it back. Indeed, I encourage the life force in all its manifestations, be they vegetable, animal, or human. Take Spring Fever. I have the impression, from my social world, that there is a pandemic of this condition already well under way. Various of my friends are falling into various stages of infatuation and outright love right about now. I've always been a love junkie. There's rarely been a period in my life when I wasn't in love with a mate or potential mate, regardless of season. But to see friends who previously proclaimed no interest in becoming part of a couple suddenly changing course and considering mating makes me suspect there's something in the atmosphere that has freed up that particular human need and desire to express itself fully. Is it disconcerting to have friends disappear from your radar as they focus on bonding with the objects of their awakening affection? Sure, but I remind myself that I've similarly disappeared from their radars at similar points in my life, sometimes repeatedly. And there is a countervailing joy in knowing that they are being animated by what seems to me an expression of the life force that matters most. There is a culture war being waged right now against being "woke". I will refrain from expressing my feelings about a state of being I can't define. But I do, in these balmy days of life and love erupting, most emphatically cast my vote in favor of "awakening". WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: FUKI NOTO, LAMB AND EGGS FUKI BUDS: $8/LB EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

Spring, the season of rebirth and regrowth, is almost upon us. Winter's last full official day is Sunday, March 19. But Spring is an insistent force, and will be restrained neither by the calendar nor by cold wintry weather. If I needed any proof of this proposition, I found it yesterday evening. As Eric and I drove east east from Germantown, where the little snow we had this week has largely melted away, to the higher elevations of Northwestern Connecticut, where my friend George spent part of the week snowed in without power, we saw in the middle of a lawn in Lakeville, surrounded by deep snow, what appeared to be a large forsythia bush in bloom. Here in Germantown, it's easier for the season to show itself in full force. The little white snowdrop flowers that have been blooming for the last couple of weeks have been joined by six inch tall daffodil leaves, with buds that seem on the verge of opening. I even saw a couple of phlox leaves emerging near the house this afternoon. And fuki buds are popping out of the ground, it seems everywhere I look. Fuki, also known as Japanese butterbur, is a plant with flat round leaves which can be massive, a foot or more in diameter -- heart shaped, large, and coarse. The leaves appear at the end of stalks that begin at ground level and stick up about six or eight inches. People often mistake fuki for rhubarb. The stalks resemble a thin reddish celery stalk. The buds, which look like tiny greenish cauliflowers, appear right at ground level in early spring. The fuki here was planted in a fit of landscaping enthusiasm some twenty two years ago. It was located in a shady damp spot east of the driveway in order to quickly cover a lot ground with something decorative. I've come to view the plant as a horrible invasive scourge because, through sending out underground runners, it has been appearing opportunistically everyplace it can reach, sometimes areas not so shady and mucky. Unfortunately, in the height of summer, whenever the weather turns hot and dry, in all but the shadiest, wettest spots the plants wilt, and so does their beauty. The leaves dry up quickly; the stems turn a brittle brown. Because they have shaded out all competing growth, the fuki patch looks like the remnants of a forest fire. Spring landscape beauty becomes summer's desert. I would like to do everything I can to limit the area covered by fuki. Fortuitously, it turns out that fuki is regarded as something of a delicacy by the Japanese, a "mountain vegetable." The buds, known as " fuki noto", are harvested by hand in early spring and used in a variety of preparations. I'm thinking about doing a fuki noto tempura tomorrow. From my research today, it seems the stalks are also quite edible when they're young and tender. Parboiled in salt water, followed by an ice water bath to take out some of their signature bitterness, they may then be added to soup or transformed into a vegetable dish served with miso paste. My hope is that if I harvest enough buds and early stalks, and even convince others to eat them, that I will keep this rampant scourge under control. I assure you , this is not a general instinct of mine. Confronted by the first growth of spring, I do not generally try to beat it back. Indeed, I encourage the life force in all its manifestations, be they vegetable, animal, or human. Take Spring Fever. I have the impression, from my social world, that there is a pandemic of this condition already well under way. Various of my friends are falling into various stages of infatuation and outright love right about now. I've always been a love junkie. There's rarely been a period in my life when I wasn't in love with a mate or potential mate, regardless of season. But to see friends who previously proclaimed no interest in becoming part of a couple suddenly changing course and considering mating makes me suspect there's something in the atmosphere that has freed up that particular human need and desire to express itself fully. Is it disconcerting to have friends disappear from your radar as they focus on bonding with the objects of their awakening affection? Sure, but I remind myself that I've similarly disappeared from their radars at similar points in my life, sometimes repeatedly. And there is a countervailing joy in knowing that they are being animated by what seems to me an expression of the life force that matters most. There is a culture war being waged right now against being "woke". I will refrain from expressing my feelings about a state of being I can't define. But I do, in these balmy days of life and love erupting, most emphatically cast my vote in favor of "awakening". WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: FUKI NOTO, LAMB AND EGGS FUKI BUDS: $8/LB EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

AgriCulture: Spring Awakenings

Another small March snowfall this morning frustrated my outdoor work but served to remind me of how much I need to do for spring. Each time it snows, the branches and berry canes etched in white loom all the larger, shouting "we need pruning." I felt a bit overwhelmed walking by the blackberry patch. The feeling intensified as I pitchforked a wheelbarrow full of muck from the barn floor and saw again how much remains to do. It feels like I might just as well have thrown the hay bales directly on the floor, and skipped the intermediate stage where the sheep tear it out of the manger to eat. And the hay supply is running low. In the fall of 2021 I over-bought, and ended up with hay left in the barn when spring arrived. As a result, in the fall of 2022, with a fairly constant number of sheep, I adjusted my buying down, and now it seems I have only about two weeks supply left. With at least six weeks before the pasture can serve as the main food source for the sheep, I'm going to have to bring in more hay in the next week or so to bridge that gap. I'm not sure this really represents a misjudgment on my part. In 2021 the hay I bought was "second cut" (the late summer cutting), fresh and tender, and the sheep tended to consume it thoroughly. This last fall, there was no second cut hay available to buy, as a result of our midsummer drought. The first cut hay I was able to find was stalky, dryer and coarse, not nearly as attractive to the sheep. The result has been much more wasted hay left on the barn floor, much more mucking of the floor for me, and much quicker depletion of my supply of hay bales because they are really only being partially consumed. I made the best choice I could in buying that hay, and, thankfully, the sheep don't complain. But I do perceive a slightly higher degree of frenzy when they get their daily grain treats: a little more aggression about knocking each other out of the way to get at this scarce resource. The herd dynamics have led to a certain degree of debate around here about how best to handle feeding time. On that subject, I am far less certain about which way to go. Many of you will recall the birth of Doodle, the little lamb rejected by his mother last July. Doodle is doing fine. Most of the day he hangs with the herd. He plays and hops around like a standard healthy little lamb. He is, unsurprisingly, affectionate toward humans. But, probably as the result of his near death experience just after birth, he is still quite small, even when compared with his twin sister, who his mother did not reject. It seems that his fate, as a smaller creature, is to be emphatically knocked out of the way when the sheep compete for their daily grain treat. My solution has been to keep Doodle with me in the barn when I exclude all the others in order to set up feeding. He accompanies me outside as I trundle the wheelbarrow up to the compost heap. He follows me back in to the hay storage room, he follows me when I put out the herd's mineral supplement, and, most of all he follows me when I put the grain their feed bowls. In essence, he gets a huge head start on the other sheep in consuming the grain. I justify it by recognizing that once everyone else comes in, he is going to get knocked out of the way. But my approach turns out to be controversial. Eric, being a consummate human resources professional, urges me to abandon this most favored treatment of Doodle so that he will develop sheep life skills. "Doodle has to learn to compete," says Eric. "He'll never be able to do it if you give him a free pass." My possibly soon-to-be housemate, Steve, also criticizes my approach. Steve is something of a shrink manqué, and much as he analyzes the dynamics of the human denizens of Turkana Farms he ventures deep into the realm of sheep psychology. "If the others keep seeing Doodle through the fence getting special access," insists Steve, "they are going to resent him. He'll be an outcast." But in contrast to Eric, Steve's solution when he does chores is to take Doodle aside while the others are busy scrambling for the grain bowls and to let him eat out of his hand. I've expressed my doubts that sheep have complicated enough minds to experience jealousy or resentment. Those, I feel, are uniquely human emotions. Steve disagrees. "They're simple emotions, just as basic as feeling love or the need to be loved," he tells me. "They're part of the territory." To be sure, sheep are by nature desperate to belong to the herd. They need each other's company and are miserable in isolation. They have enduring feelings of attachment; ewes who lose lambs are despondent and cry for days. If that's love, they have it. But even if I concede to Steve that sheep have jealousy and resentment too, I don't get how feeding Doodle by hand would avoid those feelings. Won't the herd resent that privilege? Or is Steve right to think they're too busy eating to notice? There you have it, three approaches (my give him the food, Eric's give him the skills, and Steve's sneak him the love) that probably say something about our respective characters and life experience. But as to which one serves Doodle best, I could use some guidance. "Prune me, please" say the blackberry canes Photo by Mark Scherzer WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

Another small March snowfall this morning frustrated my outdoor work but served to remind me of how much I need to do for spring. Each time it snows, the branches and berry canes etched in white loom all the larger, shouting "we need pruning." I felt a bit overwhelmed walking by the blackberry patch. The feeling intensified as I pitchforked a wheelbarrow full of muck from the barn floor and saw again how much remains to do. It feels like I might just as well have thrown the hay bales directly on the floor, and skipped the intermediate stage where the sheep tear it out of the manger to eat. And the hay supply is running low. In the fall of 2021 I over-bought, and ended up with hay left in the barn when spring arrived. As a result, in the fall of 2022, with a fairly constant number of sheep, I adjusted my buying down, and now it seems I have only about two weeks supply left. With at least six weeks before the pasture can serve as the main food source for the sheep, I'm going to have to bring in more hay in the next week or so to bridge that gap. I'm not sure this really represents a misjudgment on my part. In 2021 the hay I bought was "second cut" (the late summer cutting), fresh and tender, and the sheep tended to consume it thoroughly. This last fall, there was no second cut hay available to buy, as a result of our midsummer drought. The first cut hay I was able to find was stalky, dryer and coarse, not nearly as attractive to the sheep. The result has been much more wasted hay left on the barn floor, much more mucking of the floor for me, and much quicker depletion of my supply of hay bales because they are really only being partially consumed. I made the best choice I could in buying that hay, and, thankfully, the sheep don't complain. But I do perceive a slightly higher degree of frenzy when they get their daily grain treats: a little more aggression about knocking each other out of the way to get at this scarce resource. The herd dynamics have led to a certain degree of debate around here about how best to handle feeding time. On that subject, I am far less certain about which way to go. Many of you will recall the birth of Doodle, the little lamb rejected by his mother last July. Doodle is doing fine. Most of the day he hangs with the herd. He plays and hops around like a standard healthy little lamb. He is, unsurprisingly, affectionate toward humans. But, probably as the result of his near death experience just after birth, he is still quite small, even when compared with his twin sister, who his mother did not reject. It seems that his fate, as a smaller creature, is to be emphatically knocked out of the way when the sheep compete for their daily grain treat. My solution has been to keep Doodle with me in the barn when I exclude all the others in order to set up feeding. He accompanies me outside as I trundle the wheelbarrow up to the compost heap. He follows me back in to the hay storage room, he follows me when I put out the herd's mineral supplement, and, most of all he follows me when I put the grain their feed bowls. In essence, he gets a huge head start on the other sheep in consuming the grain. I justify it by recognizing that once everyone else comes in, he is going to get knocked out of the way. But my approach turns out to be controversial. Eric, being a consummate human resources professional, urges me to abandon this most favored treatment of Doodle so that he will develop sheep life skills. "Doodle has to learn to compete," says Eric. "He'll never be able to do it if you give him a free pass." My possibly soon-to-be housemate, Steve, also criticizes my approach. Steve is something of a shrink manqué, and much as he analyzes the dynamics of the human denizens of Turkana Farms he ventures deep into the realm of sheep psychology. "If the others keep seeing Doodle through the fence getting special access," insists Steve, "they are going to resent him. He'll be an outcast." But in contrast to Eric, Steve's solution when he does chores is to take Doodle aside while the others are busy scrambling for the grain bowls and to let him eat out of his hand. I've expressed my doubts that sheep have complicated enough minds to experience jealousy or resentment. Those, I feel, are uniquely human emotions. Steve disagrees. "They're simple emotions, just as basic as feeling love or the need to be loved," he tells me. "They're part of the territory." To be sure, sheep are by nature desperate to belong to the herd. They need each other's company and are miserable in isolation. They have enduring feelings of attachment; ewes who lose lambs are despondent and cry for days. If that's love, they have it. But even if I concede to Steve that sheep have jealousy and resentment too, I don't get how feeding Doodle by hand would avoid those feelings. Won't the herd resent that privilege? Or is Steve right to think they're too busy eating to notice? There you have it, three approaches (my give him the food, Eric's give him the skills, and Steve's sneak him the love) that probably say something about our respective characters and life experience. But as to which one serves Doodle best, I could use some guidance. "Prune me, please" say the blackberry canes Photo by Mark Scherzer WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

Agriculture: Raising Doodle

By Mark Scherzer  I know you are all accustomed to my ruminations on the state of the world taking primary place in this bulletin, and the sales pitch for the farm being distinctly secondary. I'm turning that approach on its head this week, because I want to make sure I'm clearly conveying a message. This farm is getting back in business. After the death of my partner, Peter, I figured I had to pare things back to what I could manage entirely on my own, all while spending time to reconstitute a personal life and run my law business in the City. The farm's production contracted considerably as a result. I think the reconstitution process has reached a point of maturity and stability. I've built a life centered here rather than the City and moved the law practice here in that effort. I'm finding how to integrate the farm work into the work day so that it gives me needed breaks from my desk work rather than interfering with it. I have a group of friends and regular visitors who bring me great joy; several of them come in part because they find helping with farm projects to be therapeutic and fun. Most important, I am happily partnered again. Eric, my partner, has a keen eye for what I like and what I can manage. He is encouraging me to reorganize my operations, to stop doing what I can't do myself economically and to do more of what brings me both pleasure and reasonable revenue (like raising turkeys!). All of which means the period of contraction is drawing to a close. It's time to take more seriously the tasks of producing agricultural goods and selling them. To that end, let me say far more prominently than I have been saying in the past few months, I've got farm produce I would love to sell to you.  Winter snow, Spring eggs Photo by Eric Rouleau Let's start with eggs. A couple of weeks ago, I announced that eggs were back. I excitedly described pullet eggs, the first laid eggs of the newest hens, of which we are entering the last week of production. I expected something akin to the Oklahoma land rush, when they opened the territory's borders to American settlers in 1889. Fifty thousand people lined up and rushed into the territory in a frenzy to claim some of the 12,000 160 acre tracts that you could own at no cost if you lived on and worked the land. (There is always a hidden cost to anything free, of course. In the case of Oklahoma, that cost was paid by the Native Americans displaced to Oklahoma from the Southeast a half century earlier through one sided treaties that the United States then decided to one-sidedly abrogate. Individual Native American families could claim their own 160 acre plots, but those lots unclaimed were forfeited from collective tribal ownership.) Similar land rushes were repeated several times in later years, and you can be sure pretty much all of the land was grabbed up. Not true, however, of my eggs. I'm bringing in a lot every day. The new pullets have now been joined by the older hens, who are starting their annual crescendo of egg-laying that tells us it's now biological, if not meteorological spring. Cartons of eggs are stacking up in the fridge. So in case my previous invitations were too tentative, let me send out the message loud and clear: Eggs are back, and I'd be delighted if all our regular egg customers were to return as well. The eggs are fresh, they're delicious, and it's more ethical than the Oklahoma land rush -- you pay for them. Now let's turn to lamb: We had to push back the lamb market date from last week because the ground was a little too soft for our trucker to feel comfortable backing up to the barn. They're now scheduled to leave March 20. This means there is still the opportunity for those of you who would like to order a whole or half lamb, custom butchered to your specifications. You receive it all neatly packed and frozen, giving you a stockpile of lovely lamb for several months use. Rack and leg of lamb for feasts, lamb shanks and stew for homey family meals on chilly days, lamb chops and steaks for the grill, and ground lamb to be made into dozens of enticing treats such as spicy Adana kebab, which Eric and I will enjoy tonight. Finally, coming later this year, as noted above, our heritage breed turkeys will return. I know I don't have to extol their virtues; many of you came to know the farm through our turkeys. I am anticipating raising fifty this year, about half the usual number from past years, to ease back into production and anticipate a shrunken customer base after a five year hiatus. For several weeks now, virtually every night I've had vivid dreams on the same theme: I am trying to get somewhere, I can't do it unless I pass a hurdle (a degree, a test), and I awake at a point of frustration. The settings vary wildly. I've gotten stuck at places as diverse as a seaside cafeteria/gymnasium in Turkey and a Long Island Railroad train in Patchogue. The dreams are populated by characters often from my distant past - college friends I haven't seen in years, men I dated a handful of times. But the theme is constant. Maybe the dreams are about the state of my world writ large. But somehow I'm sure that a farm that has been a bit sleepy is in my mind one of those hurdles, and that reinvigorating it is one way to get where I need to go. A correction: A Mechaya Last week I wrote that my Uncle Max, upon entering the lake at our Catskill bungalow colony, would loudly proclaim "L'Chaim" (to life). I was immediately corrected, first by my dear cousin Al, a generation above me who also frequented that lake. He wrote: "What Uncle Max used to say was “a mechaya”. This means a pleasure and it would be used in the situations such as going into the lake or sitting down after a long run or after exhausting work. The guttural “ch” I have heard cutely described as a backwards snore." Al pointed out that he had previously corrected the same vignette the last time I told it, and I had apparently forgotten. Al's was quickly followed by an erudite note from my friend Bernard: "I don’t know how much Yiddish you’ve been around; I seem to remember not all that much. I think what your uncle was exclaiming may not have been L’chaim but It’s a m’chayeh (variously spelled in English. Yiddish מחיה mekháye 'delight, pleasure', from Heb mekhayé '(something that) vitalizes, rejuvenates' Same root as L’chaim. It “gives life.” Very very stereotypically, it’s what a Brooklyn Yiddish lady says when she gets to the shore and splashes water on her bosom: Oy, it’s a m’chayeh!!" So there you have it. I stand duly and double corrected. The lesson to all, however, is to be wary of what you think you remember quite clearly. It may be just what it sounded like to you. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now. FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

<h4>By Mark Scherzer</h4> <h3></h3> I know you are all accustomed to my ruminations on the state of the world taking primary place in this bulletin, and the sales pitch for the farm being distinctly secondary. I'm turning that approach on its head this week, because I want to make sure I'm clearly conveying a message. This farm is getting back in business. After the death of my partner, Peter, I figured I had to pare things back to what I could manage entirely on my own, all while spending time to reconstitute a personal life and run my law business in the City. The farm's production contracted considerably as a result. I think the reconstitution process has reached a point of maturity and stability. I've built a life centered here rather than the City and moved the law practice here in that effort. I'm finding how to integrate the farm work into the work day so that it gives me needed breaks from my desk work rather than interfering with it. I have a group of friends and regular visitors who bring me great joy; several of them come in part because they find helping with farm projects to be therapeutic and fun. Most important, I am happily partnered again. Eric, my partner, has a keen eye for what I like and what I can manage. He is encouraging me to reorganize my operations, to stop doing what I can't do myself economically and to do more of what brings me both pleasure and reasonable revenue (like raising turkeys!). All of which means the period of contraction is drawing to a close. It's time to take more seriously the tasks of producing agricultural goods and selling them. To that end, let me say far more prominently than I have been saying in the past few months, I've got farm produce I would love to sell to you. Winter snow, Spring eggs Photo by Eric Rouleau Let's start with eggs. A couple of weeks ago, I announced that eggs were back. I excitedly described pullet eggs, the first laid eggs of the newest hens, of which we are entering the last week of production. I expected something akin to the Oklahoma land rush, when they opened the territory's borders to American settlers in 1889. Fifty thousand people lined up and rushed into the territory in a frenzy to claim some of the 12,000 160 acre tracts that you could own at no cost if you lived on and worked the land. (There is always a hidden cost to anything free, of course. In the case of Oklahoma, that cost was paid by the Native Americans displaced to Oklahoma from the Southeast a half century earlier through one sided treaties that the United States then decided to one-sidedly abrogate. Individual Native American families could claim their own 160 acre plots, but those lots unclaimed were forfeited from collective tribal ownership.) Similar land rushes were repeated several times in later years, and you can be sure pretty much all of the land was grabbed up. Not true, however, of my eggs. I'm bringing in a lot every day. The new pullets have now been joined by the older hens, who are starting their annual crescendo of egg-laying that tells us it's now biological, if not meteorological spring. Cartons of eggs are stacking up in the fridge. So in case my previous invitations were too tentative, let me send out the message loud and clear: Eggs are back, and I'd be delighted if all our regular egg customers were to return as well. The eggs are fresh, they're delicious, and it's more ethical than the Oklahoma land rush -- you pay for them. Now let's turn to lamb: We had to push back the lamb market date from last week because the ground was a little too soft for our trucker to feel comfortable backing up to the barn. They're now scheduled to leave March 20. This means there is still the opportunity for those of you who would like to order a whole or half lamb, custom butchered to your specifications. You receive it all neatly packed and frozen, giving you a stockpile of lovely lamb for several months use. Rack and leg of lamb for feasts, lamb shanks and stew for homey family meals on chilly days, lamb chops and steaks for the grill, and ground lamb to be made into dozens of enticing treats such as spicy Adana kebab, which Eric and I will enjoy tonight. Finally, coming later this year, as noted above, our heritage breed turkeys will return. I know I don't have to extol their virtues; many of you came to know the farm through our turkeys. I am anticipating raising fifty this year, about half the usual number from past years, to ease back into production and anticipate a shrunken customer base after a five year hiatus. For several weeks now, virtually every night I've had vivid dreams on the same theme: I am trying to get somewhere, I can't do it unless I pass a hurdle (a degree, a test), and I awake at a point of frustration. The settings vary wildly. I've gotten stuck at places as diverse as a seaside cafeteria/gymnasium in Turkey and a Long Island Railroad train in Patchogue. The dreams are populated by characters often from my distant past - college friends I haven't seen in years, men I dated a handful of times. But the theme is constant. Maybe the dreams are about the state of my world writ large. But somehow I'm sure that a farm that has been a bit sleepy is in my mind one of those hurdles, and that reinvigorating it is one way to get where I need to go. A correction: A Mechaya Last week I wrote that my Uncle Max, upon entering the lake at our Catskill bungalow colony, would loudly proclaim "L'Chaim" (to life). I was immediately corrected, first by my dear cousin Al, a generation above me who also frequented that lake. He wrote: "What Uncle Max used to say was “a mechaya”. This means a pleasure and it would be used in the situations such as going into the lake or sitting down after a long run or after exhausting work. The guttural “ch” I have heard cutely described as a backwards snore." Al pointed out that he had previously corrected the same vignette the last time I told it, and I had apparently forgotten. Al's was quickly followed by an erudite note from my friend Bernard: "I don’t know how much Yiddish you’ve been around; I seem to remember not all that much. I think what your uncle was exclaiming may not have been L’chaim but It’s a m’chayeh (variously spelled in English. Yiddish מחיה mekháye 'delight, pleasure', from Heb mekhayé '(something that) vitalizes, rejuvenates' Same root as L’chaim. It “gives life.” Very very stereotypically, it’s what a Brooklyn Yiddish lady says when she gets to the shore and splashes water on her bosom: Oy, it’s a m’chayeh!!" So there you have it. I stand duly and double corrected. The lesson to all, however, is to be wary of what you think you remember quite clearly. It may be just what it sounded like to you. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Mar. 20, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now. FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

AgriCulture: Great Eggspectations

Part of my chore-time ritual, twice a day, is to muck a wheelbarrow full of accumulated waste hay and sheep poop from the barn floor and trundle it out to the compost heap. Even with this effort, the stuff builds up. It's anywhere from 6 inches to a foot deep in the part of the barn closest to the hay manger. This morning, as I was doing the mucking, I felt my fingers go a bit numb. I was wearing inner gloves and outer gloves, but it was pretty cold to be working in the barn. It was the sort of cold you feel when the air hits your face walking into a freezer storage room. My reaction, to my surprise, was to echo my late great-uncle Max when he entered the lake at our Catskills bungalow colony on a hot summer day. In my memory, he bellowed out "L'Chaim" as he splashed himself with the cold water, which you all know from Fiddler on the Roof means "to life," a toast.  As my cousin Al, who actually speaks Yiddish, has corrected me, he actually was calling out "mechaya," "a pleasure." This morning, I said to myself, what a pleasure, how refreshing to feel real winter cold. There is something I have long loved about the extremes of winter, the stretches of bitter cold for days on end. Sure, everything is harder to do. Gates ice shut, doors won't slide open. Even though I keep an electric de-icer in the sheep's water tank, ice can freeze over the top, requiring that I break it up with a prising bar. The painful numbness of my hands, my toes, my nose and my cheeks that takes over after an hour of chores in the cold, the feeling of being chilled to the bone, remains with me even after I come inside. But that pain, the struggle with the elements, also makes me feel, well... Butch. Strong. Healthy. Getting up to the barn with frigid north winds whipping the snow off the pastures into my eyes feels like I've gone on an Arctic expedition. Just finishing chores always seems like a small victory. My romantic macho farmer fantasy of myself finds momentary validation. The sensation of braving the cold is one I have almost missed entirely this year. Even when Eric and I traveled to northern Vermont two weeks ago in search of winter we found mild temperatures. The ski conditions were surprisingly good, but it was good spring skiing, including some bare spots and slush, in mid February. Here on the farm there has hardly been a challenging chore time. I will freely admit that my taste for braving the cold is not the best reason to complain about the mild weather. Don't worry, I have other reasons, too. I worry that it will have bad effects on the farm. For example, I am concerned that the weather will interfere with my lambs going to market as scheduled this Monday. Usually I can count on the ground being frozen hard at this time of year, and a truck therefore being able to back up to the barn for them to be loaded in. It seems touch and go for this Monday whether the ground instead will be muddy, and the truck unable to approach it. I am concerned too that the lack of prolonged deep cold will mean winter doesn't take any toll at all on pests and pestilence. Will ticks, voles, and spores of plant diseases all come through winter in full flourish, and reproduce in overwhelming numbers a couple of months from now? Will this summer be a nightmare of insect bites and plant diseases? And what does the apparent acceleration of spring mean for my fruit trees? I've always understood that it's best to trim fruit trees when they are dormant. If it is warm on a sustained basis, are there dangers in continuing to trim? Also, with a season that doesn't know whether it's winter or spring, will the trees be prompted to flower earlier than they should? If they flower just as a cold snap happens, the entire season could be wiped out. Earlier flowering increases that risk. At least the mild weather has meant that I've made great progress in trimming the trees. It's been delightful most days to work outside. Spending all that time with the fruit trees has given me lots of time to think about the wonders of their growth process. I'm constantly enthralled by their now fat and very visible buds.The buds are so tender that the sheep run over to devour them as soon as I throw the trimmed branches over the fence. Yet they are so tough that they form and thrive in mid-winter in even the coldest years, and manage to survive the vicissitudes of the weather to become delicate flowers and luscious fruit. Which leaves me in a state of some internal contradiction. For all that I may miss having had a real winter, I am still excited, as I always am, for the signs of incipient spring all around. Things won't remain dormant for long. The rapidly greening branches of the forsythia bushes and willow trees, the fiery red bark of the coral bark maple, the sorrel leaves and daffodil leaves poking out of the ground in the vegetable garden and perennial garden all remind me that life resurges. About that I have no regrets at all. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Feb. 28, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

Part of my chore-time ritual, twice a day, is to muck a wheelbarrow full of accumulated waste hay and sheep poop from the barn floor and trundle it out to the compost heap. Even with this effort, the stuff builds up. It's anywhere from 6 inches to a foot deep in the part of the barn closest to the hay manger. This morning, as I was doing the mucking, I felt my fingers go a bit numb. I was wearing inner gloves and outer gloves, but it was pretty cold to be working in the barn. It was the sort of cold you feel when the air hits your face walking into a freezer storage room. My reaction, to my surprise, was to echo my late great-uncle Max when he entered the lake at our Catskills bungalow colony on a hot summer day. In my memory, he bellowed out "L'Chaim" as he splashed himself with the cold water, which you all know from Fiddler on the Roof means "to life," a toast.  As my cousin Al, who actually speaks Yiddish, has corrected me, he actually was calling out "mechaya," "a pleasure." This morning, I said to myself, what a pleasure, how refreshing to feel real winter cold. There is something I have long loved about the extremes of winter, the stretches of bitter cold for days on end. Sure, everything is harder to do. Gates ice shut, doors won't slide open. Even though I keep an electric de-icer in the sheep's water tank, ice can freeze over the top, requiring that I break it up with a prising bar. The painful numbness of my hands, my toes, my nose and my cheeks that takes over after an hour of chores in the cold, the feeling of being chilled to the bone, remains with me even after I come inside. But that pain, the struggle with the elements, also makes me feel, well... Butch. Strong. Healthy. Getting up to the barn with frigid north winds whipping the snow off the pastures into my eyes feels like I've gone on an Arctic expedition. Just finishing chores always seems like a small victory. My romantic macho farmer fantasy of myself finds momentary validation. The sensation of braving the cold is one I have almost missed entirely this year. Even when Eric and I traveled to northern Vermont two weeks ago in search of winter we found mild temperatures. The ski conditions were surprisingly good, but it was good spring skiing, including some bare spots and slush, in mid February. Here on the farm there has hardly been a challenging chore time. I will freely admit that my taste for braving the cold is not the best reason to complain about the mild weather. Don't worry, I have other reasons, too. I worry that it will have bad effects on the farm. For example, I am concerned that the weather will interfere with my lambs going to market as scheduled this Monday. Usually I can count on the ground being frozen hard at this time of year, and a truck therefore being able to back up to the barn for them to be loaded in. It seems touch and go for this Monday whether the ground instead will be muddy, and the truck unable to approach it. I am concerned too that the lack of prolonged deep cold will mean winter doesn't take any toll at all on pests and pestilence. Will ticks, voles, and spores of plant diseases all come through winter in full flourish, and reproduce in overwhelming numbers a couple of months from now? Will this summer be a nightmare of insect bites and plant diseases? And what does the apparent acceleration of spring mean for my fruit trees? I've always understood that it's best to trim fruit trees when they are dormant. If it is warm on a sustained basis, are there dangers in continuing to trim? Also, with a season that doesn't know whether it's winter or spring, will the trees be prompted to flower earlier than they should? If they flower just as a cold snap happens, the entire season could be wiped out. Earlier flowering increases that risk. At least the mild weather has meant that I've made great progress in trimming the trees. It's been delightful most days to work outside. Spending all that time with the fruit trees has given me lots of time to think about the wonders of their growth process. I'm constantly enthralled by their now fat and very visible buds.The buds are so tender that the sheep run over to devour them as soon as I throw the trimmed branches over the fence. Yet they are so tough that they form and thrive in mid-winter in even the coldest years, and manage to survive the vicissitudes of the weather to become delicate flowers and luscious fruit. Which leaves me in a state of some internal contradiction. For all that I may miss having had a real winter, I am still excited, as I always am, for the signs of incipient spring all around. Things won't remain dormant for long. The rapidly greening branches of the forsythia bushes and willow trees, the fiery red bark of the coral bark maple, the sorrel leaves and daffodil leaves poking out of the ground in the vegetable garden and perennial garden all remind me that life resurges. About that I have no regrets at all. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: LAMB AND EGGS EGGS ARE BACK! Nature destroys but it also regenerates. Egg production is back in full swing. Choice of rich concentrated young pullet eggs or regular size eggs, either way $6/dozen TIME TO ORDER LAMB Order a whole or half lamb, cut to your specifications, $7/lb hanging weight. Lambs go to market Feb. 28, so you need to get your cutting instructions in now.

Agriculture: Good Buds

Hi All, Mark here. It’s a balmy winter Saturday. The sun is ever higher in the sky. The breeze is mild. About half the pastures and lawns are bare; only a thin layer of slushy, melted, refrozen, and remelted snow covers the rest. The ground is soft. It’s the sort of day that says “Look for the crocuses to pop.” Yesterday was almost as nice. These are the kinds of days that generally send my spirits soaring. So why did I wake at 5 this morning with a feverish anxiety dream about the farm? Why were my sheep giving birth to rabbits? Why was a new dance venue opening across the street with, I was assured, highly amplified music all night, which would not only make my home unlivable but also deprive the farm, my biggest asset, of any value? Why was the order of everything unraveling, leaving me no safety net? Maybe because these balmy days are occurring in late January, not early March. Had this weather come after a deep polar vortex, or weeks of consistent cold, it would be a welcome reminder that winter is not eternal. But it’s more like a reminder that winter has barely ever started. As of tomorrow, January 29, New York City will have gone longer without accumulating snow than in any previously recorded winter. It may be a completely snowless season there. In Germantown, where we average 46 inches of snow annually, we’ve had no more than about 6 inches so far. Our small snowfalls were followed so quickly by rain or warm weather that I have only had to shovel the driveway once. Sure, February is usually the snowiest month, but I doubt we’ll come close to our annual average. Even the mountains up north have been unusually warm. Only yesterday, after a few significant snow dumps, did Eric and I work up the confidence to commit to a few days of mid-February Vermont skiing. Otherwise, plunking down a room deposit seemed a bit like buying cryptocurrency - highly speculative. No wonder I’m anxious. In the last few years, the social order and work routine as it existed most of my life was upended by COVID. The geopolitical order was shattered by Trumpism and Ruscism. And now it turns out that the foundation of all life, the earth and its atmosphere, is changing, perhaps sooner than we wanted to believe it would. If none of the order of your world is steady, how do you make life choices? Unfortunately, you have to assume that things will fall apart, and choose with all your worst anxieties always in mind. I’m convinced that this is not only a human reaction, but is deeply ingrained in the entire animal world. I’ve concluded this because I’m not the only uneasy one on the farm these days. My chickens, too, have had their world rocked by change and uncertainty, and I observe them reacting by assuming, similarly, that there is no safety net. You may recall that last fall a weasel was decimating my young chickens at night. While that problem was resolved, in the last couple of weeks a daytime threat has loomed over all of them: a very large and very present hawk, which I’ve seen eating prey on the ground near the pond, perching in a tree outside the parlor window, and swooping down onto the front lawn. While I didn’t see it in the act, I am quite sure it also killed two of my chickens and totally eviscerated one of them, eating all the meat off the bones. I was pretty sure the hawk was the culprit not only because it has been so present (the rabbits and chipmunks that seemed to multiply in the yard have been scarcely observable lately), but also because of the way the chickens react whenever the hawk can be seen or heard above – by running into the coop and hiding in the corner, preferably under a solid surface. I realized, also, that the chickens had become far more vulnerable to hawks than they’d been in several years. On his Thanksgiving visit, Perry, the son of my later partner, Peter, enjoyed a chainsaw saturnalia, which included radically pruning back the vines and branches that had covered most of the chicken coop’s front yard. It left an open space for swooping of which the hawk could now take advantage. I had hoped a scarecrow might help, but one on-line post said it would only provide a better perch for the hawk to use to survey its prey. Instead, I decided to restore the netting that once covered the chickens’ front yard at the level of the eight-foot fence. Last weekend I pressed our visiting friend Paul, always an eager hand, into service. We not only shielded the open section of yard, but at Paul’s suggestion added periodic yellow caution ribbon to alert the hawk to the netting. While I think the chickens are once again secure from aerial attack, they have not yet figured that out. If they are aware that the hawk is observing them from the fence post tops or nearby tree branches, they continue to hide in the coop. I expect, after the trauma of the hawk attacks they witnessed, they will continue to do so until the hawk stops coming around. I get it. They have no reason to have confidence in their safety net. It’s so hard to know in this world when you are secure. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: Not much. I am getting impatient for eggs but am pretty sure the new layers will be producing imminently. Meanwhile, please consider ordering a whole or half lamb cut to your specifications at $7/lb hanging weight. FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

Hi All, Mark here. It’s a balmy winter Saturday. The sun is ever higher in the sky. The breeze is mild. About half the pastures and lawns are bare; only a thin layer of slushy, melted, refrozen, and remelted snow covers the rest. The ground is soft. It’s the sort of day that says “Look for the crocuses to pop.” Yesterday was almost as nice. These are the kinds of days that generally send my spirits soaring. So why did I wake at 5 this morning with a feverish anxiety dream about the farm? Why were my sheep giving birth to rabbits? Why was a new dance venue opening across the street with, I was assured, highly amplified music all night, which would not only make my home unlivable but also deprive the farm, my biggest asset, of any value? Why was the order of everything unraveling, leaving me no safety net? Maybe because these balmy days are occurring in late January, not early March. Had this weather come after a deep polar vortex, or weeks of consistent cold, it would be a welcome reminder that winter is not eternal. But it’s more like a reminder that winter has barely ever started. As of tomorrow, January 29, New York City will have gone longer without accumulating snow than in any previously recorded winter. It may be a completely snowless season there. In Germantown, where we average 46 inches of snow annually, we’ve had no more than about 6 inches so far. Our small snowfalls were followed so quickly by rain or warm weather that I have only had to shovel the driveway once. Sure, February is usually the snowiest month, but I doubt we’ll come close to our annual average. Even the mountains up north have been unusually warm. Only yesterday, after a few significant snow dumps, did Eric and I work up the confidence to commit to a few days of mid-February Vermont skiing. Otherwise, plunking down a room deposit seemed a bit like buying cryptocurrency - highly speculative. No wonder I’m anxious. In the last few years, the social order and work routine as it existed most of my life was upended by COVID. The geopolitical order was shattered by Trumpism and Ruscism. And now it turns out that the foundation of all life, the earth and its atmosphere, is changing, perhaps sooner than we wanted to believe it would. If none of the order of your world is steady, how do you make life choices? Unfortunately, you have to assume that things will fall apart, and choose with all your worst anxieties always in mind. I’m convinced that this is not only a human reaction, but is deeply ingrained in the entire animal world. I’ve concluded this because I’m not the only uneasy one on the farm these days. My chickens, too, have had their world rocked by change and uncertainty, and I observe them reacting by assuming, similarly, that there is no safety net. You may recall that last fall a weasel was decimating my young chickens at night. While that problem was resolved, in the last couple of weeks a daytime threat has loomed over all of them: a very large and very present hawk, which I’ve seen eating prey on the ground near the pond, perching in a tree outside the parlor window, and swooping down onto the front lawn. While I didn’t see it in the act, I am quite sure it also killed two of my chickens and totally eviscerated one of them, eating all the meat off the bones. I was pretty sure the hawk was the culprit not only because it has been so present (the rabbits and chipmunks that seemed to multiply in the yard have been scarcely observable lately), but also because of the way the chickens react whenever the hawk can be seen or heard above – by running into the coop and hiding in the corner, preferably under a solid surface. I realized, also, that the chickens had become far more vulnerable to hawks than they’d been in several years. On his Thanksgiving visit, Perry, the son of my later partner, Peter, enjoyed a chainsaw saturnalia, which included radically pruning back the vines and branches that had covered most of the chicken coop’s front yard. It left an open space for swooping of which the hawk could now take advantage. I had hoped a scarecrow might help, but one on-line post said it would only provide a better perch for the hawk to use to survey its prey. Instead, I decided to restore the netting that once covered the chickens’ front yard at the level of the eight-foot fence. Last weekend I pressed our visiting friend Paul, always an eager hand, into service. We not only shielded the open section of yard, but at Paul’s suggestion added periodic yellow caution ribbon to alert the hawk to the netting. While I think the chickens are once again secure from aerial attack, they have not yet figured that out. If they are aware that the hawk is observing them from the fence post tops or nearby tree branches, they continue to hide in the coop. I expect, after the trauma of the hawk attacks they witnessed, they will continue to do so until the hawk stops coming around. I get it. They have no reason to have confidence in their safety net. It’s so hard to know in this world when you are secure. WHAT'S AVAILABLE THIS WEEK: Not much. I am getting impatient for eggs but am pretty sure the new layers will be producing imminently. Meanwhile, please consider ordering a whole or half lamb cut to your specifications at $7/lb hanging weight. FARM PICKUPS: Email us your order at farm@turkanafarms.com, and let us know when you'd like to pick up your order. It will be put out for you on the side screened porch of the farmhouse (110 Lasher Ave., Germantown) in a bag. You can leave cash or a check in the now famous pineapple on the porch table. Because I'm now here full time, we're abandoning regular pick-up times. Let us know when you want your order any day between 10 and 5, and unless there are unusual circumstances we'll be able to ready it to your convenience. If you have questions, don't hesitate to call or text at 917-544-6464 or email.

AgriCulture: The Safety Net

Turkana Farms, LLC, is a small scale producer of heritage breed livestock and a wide array of vegetables and berries on just over 39 acres in Germantown, New York. Under the stewardship of Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer, the farm is dedicated to sustainable agriculture and eschews the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, growth enhancers,  and antibiotics.

The "Waste Not Want Not" bulletin of last week, which included news of the death of my elderly sow, Possum, elicited a range of responses, including valuable kitchen composting tips to help me replace my living, breathing consumer of food scraps. But virtually everyone added condolences. By far the most touching and beautiful tribute came from my next door neighbor Emily, a gifted designer, who delivered a card of her own creation. On the front was an illustration of my great big pig gazing through the chain link fence from her mugwort filled pasture. On the back, she wrote, "I will miss visiting Possum through the fence." And then there was the message from my frequent farm sitter, soon-to-be (I hope) housemate, and always attentive reader Steve: "You had to dig a grave for a 400-pound pig and didn't think that was interesting enough to be your main topic?!" Truth be told, Steve was not the only one curious about Possum's burial. Others asked. And the issue rather preoccupied me too, from the moment I found her lifeless in her hut. To begin with, of course, there was her size. Six feet long from snout to tail, 3 feet tall, and 21 inches from side to side at her widest exactly. (I measured her before digging.) A solid, wide creature who always amazed visitors. She was also awkwardly located. Her pasture was fenced off and deliberately set in a soggy low lying area, a pig paradise where they could create mud wallows in the summer and the sheep would not want to graze. It is fenced off from the rest of the property with no wide gates or any easy route for mechanized vehicles to enter. Then there was the matter of time and temperature. Our unusually warm winter saved me from a painful battle with frozen soil, but it would only hasten the decomposition of her body. I felt an urgent need to get her in the ground. To top it all off, I was alone. It was one of my rare (and unwanted) weekends without Eric. He and Steve and Matt and Tom and Paul all offered to help, but dispersed as they were from the Berkshires to New York City and Eastern Long Island with commitments they couldn't instantly drop, I didn't feel I could wait. Against all their warnings (Eric insisted: "Don't do this yourself!"), I stubbornly decided I just had to get to it. Shovel in hand, I went down to survey the possible burial sites.In a perfect world, I would bury her next to her former companion, Vernon the boar, in the middle of the pasture. But the prospect of maneuvering this massive corpse down and up a rise and across a stream was a quest I could not undertake. Besides, any action emphasizing their coupled status would be terribly guilt inducing for me. Possum and I had a complicated relationship. She came to us as an adult, a gift from a farm where she constantly fought with a rival sow. In most circumstances she was sweet and liked to be approached and petted, but she, like any sow, could be ferocious if ever her piglets were threatened. And I, unfortunately, on one muddy spring day, found myself trying to grab her male piglets for the vet to castrate. I grabbed a hoe to keep her at bay as she charged me. With her full weight, she jammed it back into me, cracking one of my ribs. From then on, I kept a wary distance. That was just one reason I spent several months soon thereafter convincing my late partner, Peter, to sell off our 30 plus pigs. After they were almost all gone, I reversed course. I couldn't bear to part with Vernon the boar, having raised him from when he was just a couple of months old. Fearing he would be lonely, we kept his companion, who was, ironically, Possum. (Possum and I both loved his sweet nature.) And as fate would have it, she was left alone when Vernon died. Her farm of origin did not want her back. I felt guilt at her life isolated from pig society and with only a couple of daily visits from me. Emily's note was especially comforting by letting me

The "Waste Not Want Not" bulletin of last week, which included news of the death of my elderly sow, Possum, elicited a range of responses, including valuable kitchen composting tips to help me replace my living, breathing consumer of food scraps. But virtually everyone added condolences. By far the most touching and beautiful tribute came from my next door neighbor Emily, a gifted designer, who delivered a card of her own creation. On the front was an illustration of my great big pig gazing through the chain link fence from her mugwort filled pasture. On the back, she wrote, "I will miss visiting Possum through the fence." And then there was the message from my frequent farm sitter, soon-to-be (I hope) housemate, and always attentive reader Steve: "You had to dig a grave for a 400-pound pig and didn't think that was interesting enough to be your main topic?!" Truth be told, Steve was not the only one curious about Possum's burial. Others asked. And the issue rather preoccupied me too, from the moment I found her lifeless in her hut. To begin with, of course, there was her size. Six feet long from snout to tail, 3 feet tall, and 21 inches from side to side at her widest exactly. (I measured her before digging.) A solid, wide creature who always amazed visitors. She was also awkwardly located. Her pasture was fenced off and deliberately set in a soggy low lying area, a pig paradise where they could create mud wallows in the summer and the sheep would not want to graze. It is fenced off from the rest of the property with no wide gates or any easy route for mechanized vehicles to enter.  Then there was the matter of time and temperature. Our unusually warm winter saved me from a painful battle with frozen soil, but it would only hasten the decomposition of her body. I felt an urgent need to get her in the ground. To top it all off, I was alone. It was one of my rare (and unwanted) weekends without Eric. He and Steve and Matt and Tom and Paul all offered to help, but dispersed as they were from the Berkshires to New York City and Eastern Long Island with commitments they couldn't instantly drop, I didn't feel I could wait. Against all their warnings (Eric insisted: "Don't do this yourself!"), I stubbornly decided I just had to get to it. Shovel in hand, I went down to survey the possible burial <a href="http://sites.In" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sites.In</a> a perfect world, I would bury her next to her former companion, Vernon the boar, in the middle of the pasture. But the prospect of maneuvering this massive corpse down and up a rise and across a stream was a quest I could not undertake. Besides, any action emphasizing their coupled status would be terribly guilt inducing for me. Possum and I had a complicated relationship. She came to us as an adult, a gift from a farm where she constantly fought with a rival sow. In most circumstances she was sweet and liked to be approached and petted, but she, like any sow, could be ferocious if ever her piglets were threatened. And I, unfortunately, on one muddy spring day, found myself trying to grab her male piglets for the vet to castrate. I grabbed a hoe to keep her at bay as she charged me. With her full weight, she jammed it back into me, cracking one of my ribs. From then on, I kept a wary distance. That was just one reason I spent several months soon thereafter convincing my late partner, Peter, to sell off our 30 plus pigs. After they were almost all gone, I reversed course. I couldn't bear to part with Vernon the boar, having raised him from when he was just a couple of months old. Fearing he would be lonely, we kept his companion, who was, ironically, Possum. (Possum and I both loved his sweet nature.) And as fate would have it, she was left alone when Vernon died. Her farm of origin did not want her back. I felt guilt at her life isolated from pig society and with only a couple of daily visits from me. Emily's note was especially comforting by letting me

AgriCulture: The Kindness of Neighbors

In the flurry of big news stories at new year -- Ukraine, of course, the deaths of Pope Benedict and Barbara Walters, and more -- this was an easy story to miss in the New York Times on New Year's Day: How Central Ohio Got People to Eat Their Leftovers. It was an important piece of reporting, though, once again reminding us that each of our individual actions contribute to carbon emissions and global warming. The story focused on how the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) was trying to change behaviors in its region to reduce food waste coming to its landfills. Why? It turns out that one third of the food Americans buy is thrown away. Households throw more food away than restaurants, grocery stores or farms. All of the rotting food in landfills emits about double the carbon that commercial aviation emits. Cutting this waste stream could not only save precious space in landfills but also contribute significantly to minimizing climate change. SWACO is effectively swaying behavior through various means of public education, including teaching people how to shop more efficiently and to use leftovers deliciously. It has been particularly successful in using an army of influencers to change household behavior. Who are they? Kids, who learn in school about both the pernicious effects of food waste and how yummy leftovers can be, and who then wage highly insistent food conservation campaigns at home. The story made me smile. I have long been a devoted antagonist of food waste. In early adulthood, I fought food waste chiefly through voracious eating. If I couldn't finish a particularly delicious dish, I would put it in the fridge and begin grazing on it a few hours later, and periodically every couple of hours, until it was consumed. Alas, you can't eat that way forever. I was fortunate, therefore, to meet my late partner, Peter, who liked to put leftovers away and transform them the next day. When Peter's kids would visit him for the summer they went into revolt when the rice left over from dinner became the basis of rice salad for the next lunch, and the leftovers of that went into something else the following day. But for him it was a matter of both principle and economic necessity. And I loved the rice salads, which I continue to make, middle Eastern style, to this day. I love that in this respect Eric bears a strong resemblance to Peter. It pains him not to use leftovers, and I am at times astonished at his skill in doing so. Last week he somehow cleaned out 5 or 6 different tupperware containers of leftovers in the fridge, combined them into a lunch melange that he heated in the microwave, and produced a lunch that I would gladly eat again, if only that combination of ingredients could ever be reproduced. There are, of course, inevitably going to be food scraps that we find unpalatable or leftovers that, through negligence or bad placement in the fridge, get left behind. For some of these I have specific uses, such as coffee grinds that I spread around the rose bushes. For other items I had planned, when contemplating this bulletin, to recommend employing pigs. Pigs are omnivores. They like virtually everything we like, and then some. They will eat, with gusto, apple cores, meat bones, wilted lettuce, corn cobs and the glop at the center of a pumpkin. In my years of raising pigs I learned what they won't eat (e.g. citrus, leeks), or what makes them sick (avocado pits and peels, uncooked potatoes) but it's a pretty short list. Some of you may recall that in 2009, the Egyptian government culled all Egypt's pig herds, ostensibly to forestall an outbreak of swine flu but, some suspected, motivated in part by a desire to rid the country of pork, which to Muslims, like Jews, is a forbidden food. The cull affected not only the Christian minority who a

In the flurry of big news stories at new year -- Ukraine, of course, the deaths of Pope Benedict and Barbara Walters, and more -- this was an easy story to miss in the New York Times on New Year's Day: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/01/headway/composting-food-leftovers.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How Central Ohio Got People to Eat Their Leftovers</a>. It was an important piece of reporting, though, once again reminding us that each of our individual actions contribute to carbon emissions and global warming. The story focused on how the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) was trying to change behaviors in its region to reduce food waste coming to its landfills. Why? It turns out that one third of the food Americans buy is thrown away. Households throw more food away than restaurants, grocery stores or farms. All of the rotting food in landfills emits about double the carbon that commercial aviation emits. Cutting this waste stream could not only save precious space in landfills but also contribute significantly to minimizing climate change. SWACO is effectively swaying behavior through various means of public education, including teaching people how to shop more efficiently and to use leftovers deliciously. It has been particularly successful in using an army of influencers to change household behavior. Who are they? Kids, who learn in school about both the pernicious effects of food waste and how yummy leftovers can be, and who then wage highly insistent food conservation campaigns at home. The story made me smile. I have long been a devoted antagonist of food waste. In early adulthood, I fought food waste chiefly through voracious eating. If I couldn't finish a particularly delicious dish, I would put it in the fridge and begin grazing on it a few hours later, and periodically every couple of hours, until it was consumed. Alas, you can't eat that way forever. I was fortunate, therefore, to meet my late partner, Peter, who liked to put leftovers away and transform them the next day. When Peter's kids would visit him for the summer they went into revolt when the rice left over from dinner became the basis of rice salad for the next lunch, and the leftovers of that went into something else the following day. But for him it was a matter of both principle and economic necessity. And I loved the rice salads, which I continue to make, middle Eastern style, to this day. I love that in this respect Eric bears a strong resemblance to Peter. It pains him not to use leftovers, and I am at times astonished at his skill in doing so. Last week he somehow cleaned out 5 or 6 different tupperware containers of leftovers in the fridge, combined them into a lunch melange that he heated in the microwave, and produced a lunch that I would gladly eat again, if only that combination of ingredients could ever be reproduced. There are, of course, inevitably going to be food scraps that we find unpalatable or leftovers that, through negligence or bad placement in the fridge, get left behind. For some of these I have specific uses, such as coffee grinds that I spread around the rose bushes. For other items I had planned, when contemplating this bulletin, to recommend employing pigs. Pigs are omnivores. They like virtually everything we like, and then some. They will eat, with gusto, apple cores, meat bones, wilted lettuce, corn cobs and the glop at the center of a pumpkin. In my years of raising pigs I learned what they won't eat (e.g. citrus, leeks), or what makes them sick (avocado pits and peels, uncooked potatoes) but it's a pretty short list. Some of you may recall that in 2009, the Egyptian government culled all Egypt's pig herds, ostensibly to forestall an outbreak of swine flu but, some suspected, motivated in part by a desire to rid the country of pork, which to Muslims, like Jews, is a forbidden food. The cull affected not only the Christian minority who a

AgriCulture: Waste Not, Want Not

Virtually every morning, when I open the gate to descend to the path around the pond, on my way to feed Possum the sow, I cause a stir of sorts. Possum hears the sound of the latch opening and the gate squeaking and stirs herself to come out for breakfast. The other domestic livestock react similarly. The chickens run toward me for the cracked corn I spread in their yard as soon as they hear the door slide open. The sheep, if they perceive my movement toward the barn, return from grazing in the pasture to gather at the barn door and ready themselves for the “charge of the light brigade” – the race to their morning grain treat. The wild cohabitants of my space are similarly attentive to my movements, but respond differently. When I open that same gate to head toward Possum, rabbits and squirrels dash for cover. Frogs on the margin of the pond jump in the water. And most mornings for months, I’ve gotten to witness the elegant take off of a great blue heron that seems to spend every morning hunting for the fish that multiplied in the pond. The heron is an odd creature, It appears fragile and delicate, its body resting on long spindly legs, and its wings, while large, not appearing substantial enough to propel its body. Even though it instantly reacts to the sound of my arrival by leaving, it seems to move with a slow deliberation, its huge wings flapping languorously. It is sort of the diametrical opposite of a hummingbird. But I don’t think it’s really delicate. Its long skinny beak must be a powerful weapon against its chosen prey; I wouldn’t want to tangle with it. Observing its departure one morning this week, my visiting friend Steve speculated on how “it must be nearly impossible for such a delicate bird to get through the winter”. I told him I didn’t have that impression.They seem quite cold hardy, and I think when the pond freezes such birds hang out at marshy margins, like those along the Hudson, that don’t fully freeze and where they can pick off fish in the shallow waters. I’m not sure if I’d call the heron a visitor anymore. It is in the same place so regularly every morning that I’d have to say the pond has become part of its territory. The boundary lines on my property deed are not necessarily the ones observed by the animals I share the neighborhood with. The difference between visitor and resident can be a kind of blurry one, and the ambiguity extends well beyond the great blue heron. A few weeks ago, when Eric’s dog, Lillie, was here for the week, she as usual accompanied me out to morning chores. She immediately started barking and running at the screened porch. I at first assumed she was protecting us from a delivery person. When I saw no truck in the driveway I then assumed she was responding to a skunk, since skunks at times have created burrows under the porch. But when she kept running at the screen itself and barking, I investigated further. There, inside the porch, I found perched on rattan side table a barred owl. I knew there was such a creature in the neighborhood. This summer, I asked my visiting brother in law Doug, an avid birder, what the weird shriek, which I found so unsettling just after nightfall, was. When he said it was a barred owl call, it made sense to me, as I had at times in the past seen that remarkable looking bird on telephone lines along the side of the road. When I showed the picture of it to a neighbor, he said “I know that owl, it is always hanging out in a tree by my pond, where it hunts.” He thought of it as a resident of his property. From what I’ve been reading, the barred owl claims rather large territory. It may well principally nest next to my neighbor’s pond, but probably regards my property as its own territory as well. They seem to claim territories as large as 800 acres, which would easily encompass my house, the house of this neighbor down the street, and the telephone lines over on Church

Virtually every morning, when I open the gate to descend to the path around the pond, on my way to feed Possum the sow, I cause a stir of sorts. Possum hears the sound of the latch opening and the gate squeaking and stirs herself to come out for breakfast. The other domestic livestock react similarly. The chickens run toward me for the cracked corn I spread in their yard as soon as they hear the door slide open. The sheep, if they perceive my movement toward the barn, return from grazing in the pasture to gather at the barn door and ready themselves for the “charge of the light brigade” – the race to their morning grain treat. The wild cohabitants of my space are similarly attentive to my movements, but respond differently. When I open that same gate to head toward Possum, rabbits and squirrels dash for cover. Frogs on the margin of the pond jump in the water. And most mornings for months, I’ve gotten to witness the elegant take off of a great blue heron that seems to spend every morning hunting for the fish that multiplied in the pond. The heron is an odd creature, It appears fragile and delicate, its body resting on long spindly legs, and its wings, while large, not appearing substantial enough to propel its body. Even though it instantly reacts to the sound of my arrival by leaving, it seems to move with a slow deliberation, its huge wings flapping languorously. It is sort of the diametrical opposite of a hummingbird. But I don’t think it’s really delicate. Its long skinny beak must be a powerful weapon against its chosen prey; I wouldn’t want to tangle with it. Observing its departure one morning this week, my visiting friend Steve speculated on how “it must be nearly impossible for such a delicate bird to get through the winter”. I told him I didn’t have that impression.They seem quite cold hardy, and I think when the pond freezes such birds hang out at marshy margins, like those along the Hudson, that don’t fully freeze and where they can pick off fish in the shallow waters. I’m not sure if I’d call the heron a visitor anymore. It is in the same place so regularly every morning that I’d have to say the pond has become part of its territory. The boundary lines on my property deed are not necessarily the ones observed by the animals I share the neighborhood with. The difference between visitor and resident can be a kind of blurry one, and the ambiguity extends well beyond the great blue heron. A few weeks ago, when Eric’s dog, Lillie, was here for the week, she as usual accompanied me out to morning chores. She immediately started barking and running at the screened porch. I at first assumed she was protecting us from a delivery person. When I saw no truck in the driveway I then assumed she was responding to a skunk, since skunks at times have created burrows under the porch. But when she kept running at the screen itself and barking, I investigated further. There, inside the porch, I found perched on rattan side table a barred owl. I knew there was such a creature in the neighborhood. This summer, I asked my visiting brother in law Doug, an avid birder, what the weird shriek, which I found so unsettling just after nightfall, was. When he said it was a barred owl call, it made sense to me, as I had at times in the past seen that remarkable looking bird on telephone lines along the side of the road. When I showed the picture of it to a neighbor, he said “I know that owl, it is always hanging out in a tree by my pond, where it hunts.” He thought of it as a resident of his property. From what I’ve been reading, the barred owl claims rather large territory. It may well principally nest next to my neighbor’s pond, but probably regards my property as its own territory as well. They seem to claim territories as large as 800 acres, which would easily encompass my house, the house of this neighbor down the street, and the telephone lines over on Church

Agriculture: Resident or Visitor?

Perry, the son of my late partner Peter, arrived to our delight Thanksgiving morning. We hadn't much warning that he'd be in New York; he flew in to do a job installing whatever it is he installs in buildings. But once we learned he'd be in the vicinity we made sure he would get to the farm for the ritual turkey meal, because after all he's an important part of my family. After about an hour here, Perry remarked at the pop music with French lyrics playing in the kitchen, which he found refreshing. "This is great. The only things you ever played before were NPR and all Dad's Turkish folk music." Slightly exaggerated, but fundamentally true. Life with Eric very much comes with its own sound track, one I have come to love. It very much has been a changing of the channel. Changing of the channel is not just a figure of speech in this case. Among the dominant sounds in the house these days is the programming of Ici Musique, the Montréal based public radio station. Streaming the station is one of the ways that Eric stays tied to his home culture. Although it plays plenty of popular music, the station treats all of its content as art worthy of respect. Some programs are curated by guest artists, or are organized to commemorate artists, eras or themes; they incorporate background commentary about the artists' life events or earlier artists that influenced the work. It gives me insight into the seriousness with which the québécois treat their culture, and at the same time improves my French vocabulary and listening skills. It is particularly easy for me to listen to since I can turn to Eric, as I probably do a dozen times a day, and get the low-down on a word I don't really understand. Last Saturday night we saw the Montréal singer / songwriter Coeur de Pirate in New York City. On the drive back up Sunday morning, we heard an interview on Ici Musique in which someone kept using the word I heard as "plat", which turns out is spelled "plate" but pronounced "platte". "Do they mean just 'flat'"? I asked Eric, "like 'calm' or 'flat seas'"? He said the sense would be more like "boring" or "uninteresting". "C'est plate" might be a bad review for a play or a party. He said the French would almost never use such an expression, that it was a very québécois usage. As with all additions to one's vocabulary, it is best absorbed if it can be applied immediately to life repeatedly. As it turned out, "plate" was definitely my vocabulary word of the week . That evening, we both came down with chills. And while we both seemed to recover somewhat by the following morning, late Monday I was seized with more intense chills alternating with sweats, low grade fevers and debilitating headaches and joint pain that confined me to bed for most of the rest of the week. A negative COVID test brought me no comfort. I was reminded for the first time in a long time of what it is to feel really sick. To lack desire or appetite, and not be able to imagine having it ever again. To have one's greatest desire be comfort, and yet to derive little from being comforted. To feel that everything you say is off base or unable to connect with reality. To only want to crawl under a rock. I was relatively immobile and inactive, with Eric blessedly taking on himself the entire burden of buying feed, doing chores, and cooking. But there was nothing Zen or calm about my flatness. The boredom, feeling tired of the absence of interest, was almost excruciating. If someone were to ask how I feel, I thought "plate" would be an appropriate term. This morning I awoke feeling largely recovered. It was the first time this week I had sense of energy. It was the first time I was able to do the chores as they should be done, not to get by with just the minimum tasks necessary to avert disasters. I was able to feel the sun's rays as a source of energy, and to see the calm joy of the animals as they,

Perry, the son of my late partner Peter, arrived to our delight Thanksgiving morning. We hadn't much warning that he'd be in New York; he flew in to do a job installing whatever it is he installs in buildings. But once we learned he'd be in the vicinity we made sure he would get to the farm for the ritual turkey meal, because after all he's an important part of my family. After about an hour here, Perry remarked at the pop music with French lyrics playing in the kitchen, which he found refreshing. "This is great. The only things you ever played before were NPR and all Dad's Turkish folk music." Slightly exaggerated, but fundamentally true. Life with Eric very much comes with its own sound track, one I have come to love. It very much has been a changing of the channel. Changing of the channel is not just a figure of speech in this case. Among the dominant sounds in the house these days is the programming of Ici Musique, the Montréal based public radio station. Streaming the station is one of the ways that Eric stays tied to his home culture. Although it plays plenty of popular music, the station treats all of its content as art worthy of respect. Some programs are curated by guest artists, or are organized to commemorate artists, eras or themes; they incorporate background commentary about the artists' life events or earlier artists that influenced the work. It gives me insight into the seriousness with which the québécois treat their culture, and at the same time improves my French vocabulary and listening skills. It is particularly easy for me to listen to since I can turn to Eric, as I probably do a dozen times a day, and get the low-down on a word I don't really understand. Last Saturday night we saw the Montréal singer / songwriter Coeur de Pirate in New York City. On the drive back up Sunday morning, we heard an interview on Ici Musique in which someone kept using the word I heard as "plat", which turns out is spelled "plate" but pronounced "platte". "Do they mean just 'flat'"? I asked Eric, "like 'calm' or 'flat seas'"? He said the sense would be more like "boring" or "uninteresting". "C'est plate" might be a bad review for a play or a party. He said the French would almost never use such an expression, that it was a very québécois usage. As with all additions to one's vocabulary, it is best absorbed if it can be applied immediately to life repeatedly. As it turned out, "plate" was definitely my vocabulary word of the week  .  That evening, we both came down with chills. And while we both seemed to recover somewhat by the following morning, late Monday I was seized with more intense chills alternating with sweats, low grade fevers and debilitating headaches and joint pain that confined me to bed for most of the rest of the week. A negative COVID test brought me no comfort. I was reminded for the first time in a long time of what it is to feel really sick. To lack desire or appetite, and not be able to imagine having it ever again. To have one's greatest desire be comfort, and yet to derive little from being comforted. To feel that everything you say is off base or unable to connect with reality. To only want to crawl under a rock. I was relatively immobile and inactive, with Eric blessedly taking on himself the entire burden of buying feed, doing chores, and cooking. But there was nothing Zen or calm about my flatness. The boredom, feeling tired of the absence of interest, was almost excruciating. If someone were to ask how I feel, I thought "plate" would be an appropriate term. This morning I awoke feeling largely recovered. It was the first time this week I had sense of energy. It was the first time I was able to do the chores as they should be done, not to get by with just the minimum tasks necessary to avert disasters. I was able to feel the sun's rays as a source of energy, and to see the calm joy of the animals as they,

AgriCulture: Plate

With temperatures forecast to plunge well below freezing imminently, I realize the days of covering my fall plantings at night to extend my growing season are over. In preparation for the inevitable, I harvested all the daikon radishes of harvestable size I could find earlier this week. Yesterday, I brought in a large bunch of sorrel that I transformed into sorrel soup; I will bring in the rest, wilt it and freeze it, by tomorrow. This morning, I pulled virtually all the oasis turnips. During this little frenzy of activity, I have occasionally recalled Martin Luther King, Jr.’s expression, “the fierce urgency of now”. But to be honest, that expression has been lurking in my consciousness for reasons that far transcend the garden. It has far more to do with world events of this week, both historical and current. This week marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), the organized violence against Jews, Jewish communal institutions and businesses in Germany and Austria that occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Marking the day always causes me to look back at the drawing (above) my Viennese father made as a young adolescent a year or so after the event. My father was not artistic by nature. He was encouraged to draw his memories of the trashing of a Jewish stationery store (If I recall correctly, belonging to his uncle) as a sort of therapy while he was at La Guette, the Rothschild chateau where he and about 60 other German and Austrian children his age were lucky enough to be given refuge and educated up until the German invasion of northern France in 1940. As we now know, the world felt no great urgency about Kristallnacht or what it might portend at the time. Had there been greater efforts to understand what was happening and what subsequently developed, and to throw sand in the machinery of death once the Holocaust got going in earnest, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. But, as illustrated by the story of Rudolf Vrba, who escaped Auschwitz and tried to alert the world to the mass murder under way, larger geopolitical calculations can frustrate such efforts. I commend to you David Remnick’s interview (“The Man Who Escaped from Auschwitz to Warn the World”) with Vrba’s biographer in this week’s New Yorker Radio Hour for insight into both the power and limitations of such individual action. The story resonates today as we see western governments calculate how directly to confront Russian actions in Ukraine that, if not more vigorously opposed, will also cause mass suffering and death. If you asked me almost any day, I would say our world is only marginally less unsettled, and unsettling, than the world of 80 years ago. You might say I have traveled through life on a “Tsuris Visa”. I was raised by my parents to always expect cataclysmic “tsuris” (Yiddish for “troubles” or “woes”) lurking around every corner. I started this week fearing tsuris from the elections, either because my preferred candidates would all lose or because, if they won, the other side would violently reject the results. Yet only some of my candidates lost, and in many parts of the country the radical election deniers and authoritarian nationalists I most worry about lost too. Most of the losers seem to have acknowledged the legitimacy of the process. Whether you characterize it as Liz Cheney did (a “clear victory for team Normal”) or as President Biden did (“a good day for democracy”), to me it definitely seemed that “Things are not as bad as I thought.” As if following the theme of “things are not so bad,” on Thursday we learned that inflation has eased a bit, meaning we may be able to preserve economic stability

With temperatures forecast to plunge well below freezing imminently, I realize the days of covering my fall plantings at night to extend my growing season are over. In preparation for the inevitable, I harvested all the daikon radishes of harvestable size I could find earlier this week. Yesterday, I brought in a large bunch of sorrel that I transformed into sorrel soup; I will bring in the rest, wilt it and freeze it, by tomorrow. This morning, I pulled virtually all the oasis turnips. During this little frenzy of activity, I have occasionally recalled Martin Luther King, Jr.’s expression, “the fierce urgency of now”. But to be honest, that expression has been lurking in my consciousness for reasons that far transcend the garden. It has far more to do with world events of this week, both historical and current. This week marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), the organized violence against Jews, Jewish communal institutions and businesses in Germany and Austria that occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Marking the day always causes me to look back at the drawing (above) my Viennese father made as a young adolescent a year or so after the event. My father was not artistic by nature. He was encouraged to draw his memories of the trashing of a Jewish stationery store (If I recall correctly, belonging to his uncle) as a sort of therapy while he was at La Guette, the Rothschild chateau where he and about 60 other German and Austrian children his age were lucky enough to be given refuge and educated up until the German invasion of northern France in 1940. As we now know, the world felt no great urgency about Kristallnacht or what it might portend at the time. Had there been greater efforts to understand what was happening and what subsequently developed, and to throw sand in the machinery of death once the Holocaust got going in earnest, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. But, as illustrated by the story of Rudolf Vrba, who escaped Auschwitz and tried to alert the world to the mass murder under way, larger geopolitical calculations can frustrate such efforts. I commend to you David Remnick’s <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3JnL25ld3lvcmtlcnJhZGlvaG91cg/episode/Yjk1YmIzNDEtOGUzNy00MWNhLWEyZGQtZTk2ZmRjODYyODQy?hl=en&amp;ved=2ahUKEwip_sqBiqn7AhWnFVkFHWG_ALsQieUEegQICRAF&amp;ep=6" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">interview</a> (“The Man Who Escaped from Auschwitz to Warn the World”) with Vrba’s biographer in this week’s New Yorker Radio Hour for insight into both the power and limitations of such individual action. The story resonates today as we see western governments calculate how directly to confront Russian actions in Ukraine that, if not more vigorously opposed, will also cause mass suffering and death. If you asked me almost any day, I would say our world is only marginally less unsettled, and unsettling, than the world of 80 years ago. You might say I have traveled through life on a “Tsuris Visa”. I was raised by my parents to always expect cataclysmic “tsuris” (Yiddish for “troubles” or “woes”) lurking around every corner. I started this week fearing tsuris from the elections, either because my preferred candidates would all lose or because, if they won, the other side would violently reject the results. Yet only some of my candidates lost, and in many parts of the country the radical election deniers and authoritarian nationalists I most worry about lost too. Most of the losers seem to have acknowledged the legitimacy of the process. Whether you characterize it as Liz Cheney did (a “clear victory for team Normal”) or as President Biden did (“a good day for democracy”), to me it definitely seemed that “Things are not as bad as I thought.” As if following the theme of “things are not so bad,” on Thursday we learned that inflation has eased a bit, meaning we may be able to preserve economic stability

AgriCulture: The Fierce Urgency of Now

A week ago I was down about the state of the world. One and a half million Ukrainians were facing electricity interruptions as Russia's brutal imperialist war took an ugly turn in tactics. Yet Kevin McCarthy, the prospective Speaker of the House should the congressional balance of power shift, was complaining about our giving a "blank check" to Ukraine. This week I feel so much better. Vladimir Putin has assured us that Russia does not intend to turn its war nuclear and has called for unity with those in the west who embrace what he calls his Christian values. Even nicer, Kevin McCarthy solicitously called Nancy Pelosi to inquire after her family's welfare after a right wing extremist attacked her husband with a hammer, clearly heralding a new era in bipartisan warm feelings and cooperation. OK, I'm being sarcastic. The same Vladimir Putin has continued Russia's barbaric attacks on infrastructure, now depriving four million Ukrainians of life sustaining utilities. The same Kevin McCarthy is still intent on restoring or even enhancing committee assignments for Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a frank antisemite who helped set the stage for the hammer attack by calling for Nancy Pelosi's execution for treason, even endorsing a statement that the most expeditious way to deal with Speaker Pelosi would be a bullet to her head. And yet, I do feel better. Because while the world around me may be disintegrating, I am resolutely "cultivating my own garden," stabilizing and getting things operating better here on the farm. I haven't lost any more of the young chickens. I've also found the groundhog's route into the coop, which will allow me to close him out. Things in sheep world, too, are decidedly looking up. A couple of weeks ago, I was terribly concerned about getting hay in for the winter. I wanted to stock up so I could keep the sheep fed even if snow covered the route up to the barn. The mid-summer drought in this region meant that virtually no second cut hay, the later cutting that is usually preferred as fresher, was locally available. I was resigned to buying first cut, but when I called the fellow who supplied me in the past few years he told me he hadn't made any first cut this year either because he was dealing with his house burning down. I called someone he referred me to, who after a week of back and forth said he could not deliver wagons full of hay because he had no help to load them. He referred me on to a third person, who was unable to deliver on our first planned date for the same reason, "no help," and who didn't respond to my further messages. By last weekend, I found myself awakened by hay concerns at 3:30 a.m., googling hay suppliers. By a stroke of good fortune, this third supplier suddenly called me Sunday morning, ready to come deliver, while I was enjoying the company not only of my chum, Eric, but also of occasional visitor Macho Matt. Matt is both a fan of farm work and a dynamo at accomplishing things. He earlier led the effort to paint the barn.This Sunday he, Eric and I worked with the farmer who delivered the hay to get two full ricks unloaded and stacked in the barn. Even better, while we were awaiting the deliveries, mechanically adept Matt was able to reconfigure an interior gate that the sheep had been continually knocking off its pindles, and to restore to smooth operation an interior sliding door that, by sticking, had made moving between the two halves of the barn a challenge for months. The latter he accomplished with two twists of a wrench. Said Matt: "I feel like that was my #1 achievement of the weekend if not the month." With the sheep having gotten their fall shearing at the end of this week, I feel we are now fully prepared for the winter. And I've even now gotten a glimmer of how to deal with the ever challenging question of what to do with all the sheared wool accumulating in the storage loft, to

A week ago I was down about the state of the world. One and a half million Ukrainians were facing electricity interruptions as Russia's brutal imperialist war took an ugly turn in tactics. Yet Kevin McCarthy, the prospective Speaker of the House should the congressional balance of power shift, was complaining about our giving a "blank check" to Ukraine. This week I feel so much better. Vladimir Putin has assured us that Russia does not intend to turn its war nuclear and has called for unity with those in the west who embrace what he calls his Christian values. Even nicer, Kevin McCarthy solicitously called Nancy Pelosi to inquire after her family's welfare after a right wing extremist attacked her husband with a hammer, clearly heralding a new era in bipartisan warm feelings and cooperation. OK, I'm being sarcastic. The same Vladimir Putin has continued Russia's barbaric attacks on infrastructure, now depriving four million Ukrainians of life sustaining utilities. The same Kevin McCarthy is still intent on restoring or even enhancing committee assignments for Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a frank antisemite who helped set the stage for the hammer attack by calling for Nancy Pelosi's execution for treason, even endorsing a statement that the most expeditious way to deal with Speaker Pelosi would be a bullet to her head. And yet, I do feel better. Because while the world around me may be disintegrating, I am resolutely "cultivating my own garden," stabilizing and getting things operating better here on the farm. I haven't lost any more of the young chickens. I've also found the groundhog's route into the coop, which will allow me to close him out. Things in sheep world, too, are decidedly looking up. A couple of weeks ago, I was terribly concerned about getting hay in for the winter. I wanted to stock up so I could keep the sheep fed even if snow covered the route up to the barn. The mid-summer drought in this region meant that virtually no second cut hay, the later cutting that is usually preferred as fresher, was locally available. I was resigned to buying first cut, but when I called the fellow who supplied me in the past few years he told me he hadn't made any first cut this year either because he was dealing with his house burning down. I called someone he referred me to, who after a week of back and forth said he could not deliver wagons full of hay because he had no help to load them. He referred me on to a third person, who was unable to deliver on our first planned date for the same reason, "no help," and who didn't respond to my further messages. By last weekend, I found myself awakened by hay concerns at 3:30 a.m., googling hay suppliers. By a stroke of good fortune, this third supplier suddenly called me Sunday morning, ready to come deliver, while I was enjoying the company not only of my chum, Eric, but also of occasional visitor Macho Matt. Matt is both a fan of farm work and a dynamo at accomplishing things. He earlier led the effort to paint the barn.This Sunday he, Eric and I worked with the farmer who delivered the hay to get two full ricks unloaded and stacked in the barn. Even better, while we were awaiting the deliveries, mechanically adept Matt was able to reconfigure an interior gate that the sheep had been continually knocking off its pindles, and to restore to smooth operation an interior sliding door that, by sticking, had made moving between the two halves of the barn a challenge for months. The latter he accomplished with two twists of a wrench. Said Matt: "I feel like that was my #1 achievement of the weekend if not the month." With the sheep having gotten their fall shearing at the end of this week, I feel we are now fully prepared for the winter. And I've even now gotten a glimmer of how to deal with the ever challenging question of what to do with all the sheared wool accumulating in the storage loft, to

AgriCulture: Pillow Talk

AgriCulture: A Dangerous Place

I am savoring this Columbus Day weekend as a time of reprieve. Nuclear war has not yet begun. We can continue to live in the hope that perhaps it will not. Maybe the Russians who are threatening it will realize that the consequences for them would be even worse than defeat in their war to annex some mineral-rich and agriculturally productive provinces in Ukraine. "I hope the Russians like their children too," said Eric, recalling one of Sting's songs ("Russians") that was quite popular in the 80's; it resonates today and echoes that dreary time. The feeling of reprieve derives also from less cataclysmic matters. After predictions of November-like cold earlier in the week, Columbus Day weekend in this part of the Hudson Valley has passed without frost. Cool and crisp, but lovely. This reprieve, however, we are sure is just temporary. Frost is an axe that we know is going to fall some day. Regardless of its inevitably, the delay in frost has been a great source of joy to me. It increases the likelihood that there will be some local second cut hay on the market this fall, after a summer of drought cut production drastically. It gives my escarole, spinach, beets and daikon radish in the garden a fighting chance of getting to decent size this month. It postpones my turning off the outdoor water, allowing me to continue showering in the open air as I have exclusively done since May. Nevertheless, knowing that the reprieve is not forever, I am taking the opportunity to anticipate the end of growing season, and enlisting whatever help I can in that process. Old friends Craig and Rosemary from Washington, D.C., on their way to a brief New England vacation, came prepared for the weekend with farm duds. This morning, they picked almost all the remaining quinces, roughly 30 pounds of them. We enjoyed a Turkish lamb and quince stew for dinner last night. Now I will process the newly picked quince into quince paste, quince jam, and some poached quince in syrup as a dessert. This afternoon, I enlisted Craig in a long postponed barn project: removing a metal wire mesh we had installed in the manger in a futile attempt to prevent the sheep from pulling large quantities of hay from the manger onto the barn floor and wasting it. They demolished that flimsy wire, but twisted remnants were still attached. We installed in its place hard metal feeder panels which the sheep will be unable to take apart so readily, which gives me less trepidation about keeping the herd fed this winter. While we were doing all this, Eric was engaged in another key end of growing season task: taking care of the bonanza of green tomatoes which will no longer ripen well on the vine, but which should not go to waste. We put aside those of a certain size for fried green tomatoes, but for the rest Eric had a clear plan, a traditional québécois green tomato ketchup. It's no surprise that the québécois should have a great solution for green tomatoes. They have a season that closes down early, likely to leave them with a lot of unripe tomatoes. And it's also not such a big surprise that the solution might involve something called ketchup. Canada is the only place I've ever been where you can buy ketchup flavored potato chips. Ketchup has a venerable history. Many sources agree that the name derives from East or South Asia, either a Chinese or Malay word or the name of a specific concoction called keh chap from the island of Amoy, combining soy sauce and fish essence. English sailors brought Asian ketchup home with them in the 17th century, and the English in the next hundred years changed the recipe to include such ingredients as anchovies, lemon, shallots and mushrooms. It is thought that tomatoes first entered the ketchup picture in Nova Scotia in the 18th century. In 1837, a New England farmer, Jonas Yerkes, started bottling tomato ketchup commercially. The Heinz company followed later, and f

I am savoring this Columbus Day weekend as a time of reprieve. Nuclear war has not yet begun. We can continue to live in the hope that perhaps it will not. Maybe the Russians who are threatening it will realize that the consequences for them would be even worse than defeat in their war to annex some mineral-rich and agriculturally productive provinces in Ukraine. "I hope the Russians like their children too," said Eric, recalling one of Sting's songs ("Russians") that was quite popular in the 80's; it resonates today and echoes that dreary time. The feeling of reprieve derives also from less cataclysmic matters. After predictions of November-like cold earlier in the week, Columbus Day weekend in this part of the Hudson Valley has passed without frost. Cool and crisp, but lovely. This reprieve, however, we are sure is just temporary. Frost is an axe that we know is going to fall some day. Regardless of its inevitably, the delay in frost has been a great source of joy to me. It increases the likelihood that there will be some local second cut hay on the market this fall, after a summer of drought cut production drastically. It gives my escarole, spinach, beets and daikon radish in the garden a fighting chance of getting to decent size this month. It postpones my turning off the outdoor water, allowing me to continue showering in the open air as I have exclusively done since May. Nevertheless, knowing that the reprieve is not forever, I am taking the opportunity to anticipate the end of growing season, and enlisting whatever help I can in that process. Old friends Craig and Rosemary from Washington, D.C., on their way to a brief New England vacation, came prepared for the weekend with farm duds. This morning, they picked almost all the remaining quinces, roughly 30 pounds of them. We enjoyed a Turkish lamb and quince stew for dinner last night. Now I will process the newly picked quince into quince paste, quince jam, and some poached quince in syrup as a dessert. This afternoon, I enlisted Craig in a long postponed barn project: removing a metal wire mesh we had installed in the manger in a futile attempt to prevent the sheep from pulling large quantities of hay from the manger onto the barn floor and wasting it. They demolished that flimsy wire, but twisted remnants were still attached. We installed in its place hard metal feeder panels which the sheep will be unable to take apart so readily, which gives me less trepidation about keeping the herd fed this winter. While we were doing all this, Eric was engaged in another key end of growing season task: taking care of the bonanza of green tomatoes which will no longer ripen well on the vine, but which should not go to waste. We put aside those of a certain size for fried green tomatoes, but for the rest Eric had a clear plan, a traditional québécois green tomato ketchup. It's no surprise that the québécois should have a great solution for green tomatoes. They have a season that closes down early, likely to leave them with a lot of unripe tomatoes. And it's also not such a big surprise that the solution might involve something called ketchup. Canada is the only place I've ever been where you can buy ketchup flavored potato chips. Ketchup has a venerable history. Many sources agree that the name derives from East or South Asia, either a Chinese or Malay word or the name of a specific concoction called keh chap from the island of Amoy, combining soy sauce and fish essence. English sailors brought Asian ketchup home with them in the 17th century, and the English in the next hundred years changed the recipe to include such ingredients as anchovies, lemon, shallots and mushrooms. It is thought that tomatoes first entered the ketchup picture in Nova Scotia in the 18th century. In 1837, a New England farmer, Jonas Yerkes, started bottling tomato ketchup commercially. The Heinz company followed later, and f

AgriCulture: Green Tomato Ketchup

Serenity descended on the farm this weekend. Partly from the stillness of the air after high winds brought in a cool front. Possibly because Saturday’s very dry air subdued the cacophonous insect chorus of high summer into just a single, high-pitched tone from just one species — the last to complete its mating process, I imagine. The concluding note of summer's symphony. Or perhaps it was just the aftermath of a lively night with good friends — lubricated by what some might view as an excessive four bottles of wine — that kicked the weekend off. Eric decided to mark the change in season by making a “bouilli,” a traditional Québecois pot au feu of beef and salt pork slow cooked with savory spices for four hours, with end-of-summer vegetables — rutabaga, green and yellow string beans, cabbages, potato — added about halfway through the process. I fetched a large chuck roast, the traditional cut used for bouilli, from Hover Farm, whose herds graze our land, as the central ingredient. Because it was far too much meat for just me, Eric and our visiting friend Paul, we decided to make a party of it. From the north came Tom, from the east, George, and from the big city to the south, Steve. Aside from Eric, none of us had ever tasted a bouilli. As was true with Eric’s other Québecois dishes, the end flavor was far more sophisticated and delicious than I might have expected from reading the unprepossessing ingredient list. The magical blending of flavors comes from the care taken in preparation. Preceded by an extended cocktail hour, accompanied by generous pourings of hearty red wine, which continued to flow as we devoured the apple cake Paul had whipped up that afternoon, dinner was a smashing success. One to be remembered, not just for the beautifully prepared food, but also for the unquestionable sense of well-being and boisterous camaraderie excited by our being together. Joyous — but exhausting. The two often overlap. I won’t go so far as to say I was hung over on Saturday, but let’s just say that at my age after such a roaring start to a weekend, nothing seemed more welcome than a contemplative tail. Luckily, Saturday itself came through with its still quiet. And what better way to appreciate it than a walk with man’s best friend? Lillie, Eric’s aged Carolina dog, proceeds at what can only be described as a slow and deliberate pace, which makes her the ideal guide for a meditative, restorative stroll, and Tom and I decided to accompany her. It was a short walk, limited by Lillie’s lack of enthusiasm for long treks. We made our way just along the farm’s eastern border on Old Saw Mill Road and past the two farms to our north. By the time we turned around and started back, we felt fully enveloped in the quiet: the constant hum of that one last vibrating insect species in the afterglow of its own mating season, nary a car passing. Just the barely discernible patter of Lillie slowly trotting her old arthritic bones behind us. The sense of stasis came from what we saw as much as what we heard. The spectacular view of the Catskills looming in the distance, as they have over the Hudson Valley unchanged for centuries. The well-kept farmhouses we passed that should have been full of life but are now only sporadically used, lamentably deprived of their active farmers by illness and death in recent years. The pastures, though green from our recent rains, were also static in their way, no longer burgeoning with the rapid growth of spring and summer. It all might have seemed melancholic, but such quietude this time of year evokes for me happy memories of how, in my childhood, the world seemed to enter a state of suspension as the Jewish High Holidays approached. For us, all normal activity was suspended — schools closed and work was forbidden. Of course, there was a large festive meal for Rosh Hashanah, and if the salt pork were removed, Eric’s boui

Serenity descended on the farm this weekend. Partly from the stillness of the air after high winds brought in a cool front. Possibly because Saturday’s very dry air subdued the cacophonous insect chorus of high summer into just a single, high-pitched tone from just one species — the last to complete its mating process, I imagine. The concluding note of summer's symphony. Or perhaps it was just the aftermath of a lively night with good friends — lubricated by what some might view as an excessive four bottles of wine — that kicked the weekend off. Eric decided to mark the change in season by making a “bouilli,” a traditional Québecois pot au feu of beef and salt pork slow cooked with savory spices for four hours, with end-of-summer vegetables — rutabaga, green and yellow string beans, cabbages, potato — added about halfway through the process. I fetched a large chuck roast, the traditional cut used for bouilli, from Hover Farm, whose herds graze our land, as the central ingredient. Because it was far too much meat for just me, Eric and our visiting friend Paul, we decided to make a party of it. From the north came Tom, from the east, George, and from the big city to the south, Steve. Aside from Eric, none of us had ever tasted a bouilli. As was true with Eric’s other Québecois dishes, the end flavor was far more sophisticated and delicious than I might have expected from reading the unprepossessing ingredient list. The magical blending of flavors comes from the care taken in preparation. Preceded by an extended cocktail hour, accompanied by generous pourings of hearty red wine, which continued to flow as we devoured the apple cake Paul had whipped up that afternoon, dinner was a smashing success. One to be remembered, not just for the beautifully prepared food, but also for the unquestionable sense of well-being and boisterous camaraderie excited by our being together. Joyous — but exhausting. The two often overlap. I won’t go so far as to say I was hung over on Saturday, but let’s just say that at my age after such a roaring start to a weekend, nothing seemed more welcome than a contemplative tail. Luckily, Saturday itself came through with its still quiet. And what better way to appreciate it than a walk with man’s best friend? Lillie, Eric’s aged Carolina dog, proceeds at what can only be described as a slow and deliberate pace, which makes her the ideal guide for a meditative, restorative stroll, and Tom and I decided to accompany her. It was a short walk, limited by Lillie’s lack of enthusiasm for long treks. We made our way just along the farm’s eastern border on Old Saw Mill Road and past the two farms to our north. By the time we turned around and started back, we felt fully enveloped in the quiet: the constant hum of that one last vibrating insect species in the afterglow of its own mating season, nary a car passing. Just the barely discernible patter of Lillie slowly trotting her old arthritic bones behind us. The sense of stasis came from what we saw as much as what we heard. The spectacular view of the Catskills looming in the distance, as they have over the Hudson Valley unchanged for centuries. The well-kept farmhouses we passed that should have been full of life but are now only sporadically used, lamentably deprived of their active farmers by illness and death in recent years. The pastures, though green from our recent rains, were also static in their way, no longer burgeoning with the rapid growth of spring and summer. It all might have seemed melancholic, but such quietude this time of year evokes for me happy memories of how, in my childhood, the world seemed to enter a state of suspension as the Jewish High Holidays approached. For us, all normal activity was suspended — schools closed and work was forbidden. Of course, there was a large festive meal for Rosh Hashanah, and if the salt pork were removed, Eric’s boui

AgriCulture: Contemplating the New Year

How quickly they grow up. Those of you who followed the early tribulations of Doodle, the rejected lamb, will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that he has, at nearly two months old, grown into a feisty, vigorous little fellow. No longer does he need gentle encouragement to drink his bottle. The minute he sees me he pulls at my pants leg, insistently seeking the sources of milk he knows I bring him. He can drain three bottles in just a few minutes. Only now, he’s been cut back to two bottles. The weaning process, transitioning him from milk replacer to a normal sheep diet of hay and grain, has begun. Weaning generally happens earlier in bottle fed lambs than in those raised by their mothers. It can proceed because the rumen, the adjunct chamber to the stomach where grass or hay ferment and become digestible, has developed. Accordingly, Doodle has joined the herd in grazing the pasture, which they do for ever more extended periods now that the punishing sun of the summer has abated. When the sheep get their grain treat, Doodle is right in the mix, gobbling up that candy as well. Like any proud parent, my feeling of joy at his meeting milestones mixes with regret at his increasing independence and, I must fear, decreasing devotion to me. Will his affection live on when I am no longer his sole source of sustenance? Twice in the last week I’ve had a taste of the psychological balancing act in Doodle’s mind and the corresponding conflict in my own. As I was doing chores I gave over the Doodle feeding to Arthur, visiting from Washington, and then a few days later to more frequent visitor Tom, while I undertook the less entertaining sheep-tending tasks in the barn. Both times, I could see Doodle’s hesitancy, as he interrupted gulping from the bottles they held with starts in the direction of following me around the barn. In the battle between his devotion to me and his desire for milk, the bottle always won. It was as it should be, but I can’t say I wasn’t feeling a little rejected. The theory of weaning is that you gradually reduce and reduce the amount of milk until the addiction to it just fades out. Hopefully they barely notice. Over the last week I reduced Doodle’s meals by a quarter of a bottle every few feedings, until we got from three bottles to two. Doodle noticed the absence, and was not happy with it. He kept seeking more, sucking on my fingers. This is not a stress-free process, and it’s hard not to feel that I’m depriving him of something he needs. This weekend, I am at Eric’s in Queens, awaiting the arrival from California of Perry, the son of my late partner, Peter. On this anniversary of Peter’s death, Perry and I will, as has become our tradition, take a boat ride around Manhattan, recalling the significant events in Peter’s life as we pass the places they occurred. Being away from the farm means someone else must be there. This time, as so often, the task falls to Steve, who, the last time I departed the farm on vacation to Quebec, shepherded Doodle through his first tenuous days of life. In the weeks since then, I have received an untold number of impatient texts from Steve wondering why I have not yet sent the daily picture of Doodle he requested. As I reviewed the various changes in routine that Steve would face, and the details of the weaning process, Steve said he might feel compelled, given their strong and significant bond, to increase Doodle back up to three bottles during his visit, “like an indulgent uncle.” “Absolutely do not!” I practically yelled. “This process can only go in one direction. If I have made any progress in pushing Doodle to independence, you will undo that.” I relented just a little bit – Steve could maintain Doodle at two full bottles each feeding, instead of imposing the next scheduled reduction. But, I tried to tell him, this reduction was ultimately for Doodle’s own good. Try telling someone that it’s

How quickly they grow up. Those of you who followed the early tribulations of Doodle, the rejected lamb, will undoubtedly be pleased to learn that he has, at nearly two months old, grown into a feisty, vigorous little fellow. No longer does he need gentle encouragement to drink his bottle. The minute he sees me he pulls at my pants leg, insistently seeking the sources of milk he knows I bring him. He can drain three bottles in just a few minutes. Only now, he’s been cut back to two bottles. The weaning process, transitioning him from milk replacer to a normal sheep diet of hay and grain, has begun. Weaning generally happens earlier in bottle fed lambs than in those raised by their mothers. It can proceed because the rumen, the adjunct chamber to the stomach where grass or hay ferment and become digestible, has developed. Accordingly, Doodle has joined the herd in grazing the pasture, which they do for ever more extended periods now that the punishing sun of the summer has abated. When the sheep get their grain treat, Doodle is right in the mix, gobbling up that candy as well. Like any proud parent, my feeling of joy at his meeting milestones mixes with regret at his increasing independence and, I must fear, decreasing devotion to me. Will his affection live on when I am no longer his sole source of sustenance? Twice in the last week I’ve had a taste of the psychological balancing act in Doodle’s mind and the corresponding conflict in my own. As I was doing chores I gave over the Doodle feeding to Arthur, visiting from Washington, and then a few days later to more frequent visitor Tom, while I undertook the less entertaining sheep-tending tasks in the barn. Both times, I could see Doodle’s hesitancy, as he interrupted gulping from the bottles they held with starts in the direction of following me around the barn. In the battle between his devotion to me and his desire for milk, the bottle always won. It was as it should be, but I can’t say I wasn’t feeling a little rejected. The theory of weaning is that you gradually reduce and reduce the amount of milk until the addiction to it just fades out. Hopefully they barely notice. Over the last week I reduced Doodle’s meals by a quarter of a bottle every few feedings, until we got from three bottles to two. Doodle noticed the absence, and was not happy with it. He kept seeking more, sucking on my fingers. This is not a stress-free process, and it’s hard not to feel that I’m depriving him of something he needs. This weekend, I am at Eric’s in Queens, awaiting the arrival from California of Perry, the son of my late partner, Peter. On this anniversary of Peter’s death, Perry and I will, as has become our tradition, take a boat ride around Manhattan, recalling the significant events in Peter’s life as we pass the places they occurred. Being away from the farm means someone else must be there. This time, as so often, the task falls to Steve, who, the last time I departed the farm on vacation to Quebec, shepherded Doodle through his first tenuous days of life. In the weeks since then, I have received an untold number of impatient texts from Steve wondering why I have not yet sent the daily picture of Doodle he requested. As I reviewed the various changes in routine that Steve would face, and the details of the weaning process, Steve said he might feel compelled, given their strong and significant bond, to increase Doodle back up to three bottles during his visit, “like an indulgent uncle.” “Absolutely do not!” I practically yelled. “This process can only go in one direction. If I have made any progress in pushing Doodle to independence, you will undo that.” I relented just a little bit – Steve could maintain Doodle at two full bottles each feeding, instead of imposing the next scheduled reduction. But, I tried to tell him, this reduction was ultimately for Doodle’s own good. Try telling someone that it’s

AgriCulture: Weaning

AGRICULTURE

You think this is all I walk? Small Farm, Big Data Hi all. Mark here.When in the first week of March my telephone (above) told me that I had walked just 20 miles in February, my first response was anger at the intrusion. How dare my telephone spy on me? In what deluded state did I mistakenly sign up for this so-called service, I wondered? My second impulse, however, was to argue with the app, and prove I was better than that. No, Google Maps Timeline, you recorded only 20 miles, but that doesn’t mean you measured all my movement. You are often sitting on my desk while I am moving about. You are not in my bathrobe pocket when I’m riding my stationary bike. You're sometimes plugged in while I’m out doing chores. I’m not as sedentary as you tell me I am.My desire for approval, yet resentment at being judged to begin with, may encapsulate my response to the world at large. But my relationship with modern technology is particularly conflicted. I can see in theory how it enables all sorts of connection and understanding we never had before, and at the same time how it invades, intrudes, and tyrannizes us.Take the Farms2Tables app through which our farm now sells so much of its produce. By aggregating data as to what’s fresh daily from lots of farms and making it immediately available to lots of restaurants and institutional buyers, it enables a meeting of buyers and seller in the virtual universe, without having to move the produce to some central market. The buyer can order a small quantity, the seller need only ship that small quantity instead of shipping it all and having it sit, wilting, in a marketplace stall waiting for potential buyers to come around. The efficiency of moving only what is ordered enables the collection of a small order one day and, after transfer to another truck overnight, delivery to a buyer 50 to 100 miles away the next day. Fabulous in concept and, thanks largely to the efforts of operator Patricia Wind, executed with exactitude, it truly delivers on its promise of using data to enable small farms to provide the freshest of produce to the big market.Yet it tyrannizes too. We must check the app for orders frequently. In order to respond effectively we need to keep our frozen meat inventory constantly updated, and must constantly inspect the vegetable garden in season to list what we have as it becomes ready to pick. And we can't always just assume by a superficial glance that we know what we can supply. If we get an order in the morning for beets, we have to go out and pick them right away, to be sure we have enough good ones, un-nibbled by voles, to fill the order. The app requires that we spring to attention immediately when an order is placed because if we don't accept the order by noon, it is deemed declined. The tyranny of technology.Among many advantages I anticipated with Troy and Victoria taking over after Peter’s death was their high comfort level with modern technology, a byproduct of their youth and fine educations. I figured if anyone could figure out a way to take advantage of the good in this technology without suffering the negatives, they could.In many ways, my expectations have been borne out. They are real data hounds. They have created not only a highly refined freezer inventory and a “spreadsheep” to keep track of our sheep herd, but have been data and research driven in every aspect of their work. They research the nutritional mix in the sheep's diet and the many roads to hoof health. They even keep tabs on how many loads of combined sheep poop and hay they take out of the barn when mucking it.Their strategy has already borne fruit. They've figured out who the productive ewes are through their lambing patterns over time, and whose less healthy birth lines should not be encouraged. They will be making our breeding more selective. They've figured out ways to economize on hoof treatments. They've saved several vulnerable newborns, including most recently the lamb Sophie, who is being

You think this is all I walk? Small Farm, Big Data Hi all. Mark here. When in the first week of March my telephone (above) told me that I had walked just 20 miles in February, my first response was anger at the intrusion. How dare my telephone spy on me? In what deluded state did I mistakenly sign up for this so-called service, I wondered? My second impulse, however, was to argue with the app, and prove I was better than that. No, Google Maps Timeline, you recorded only 20 miles, but that doesn’t mean you measured all my movement. You are often sitting on my desk while I am moving about. You are not in my bathrobe pocket when I’m riding my stationary bike. You're sometimes plugged in while I’m out doing chores. I’m not as sedentary as you tell me I <a href="http://am.My" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">am.My</a> desire for approval, yet resentment at being judged to begin with, may encapsulate my response to the world at large. But my relationship with modern technology is particularly conflicted. I can see in theory how it enables all sorts of connection and understanding we never had before, and at the same time how it invades, intrudes, and tyrannizes us.Take the Farms2Tables app through which our farm now sells so much of its produce. By aggregating data as to what’s fresh daily from lots of farms and making it immediately available to lots of restaurants and institutional buyers, it enables a meeting of buyers and seller in the virtual universe, without having to move the produce to some central market. The buyer can order a small quantity, the seller need only ship that small quantity instead of shipping it all and having it sit, wilting, in a marketplace stall waiting for potential buyers to come around. The efficiency of moving only what is ordered enables the collection of a small order one day and, after transfer to another truck overnight, delivery to a buyer 50 to 100 miles away the next day. Fabulous in concept and, thanks largely to the efforts of operator Patricia Wind, executed with exactitude, it truly delivers on its promise of using data to enable small farms to provide the freshest of produce to the big market.Yet it tyrannizes too. We must check the app for orders frequently. In order to respond effectively we need to keep our frozen meat inventory constantly updated, and must constantly inspect the vegetable garden in season to list what we have as it becomes ready to pick. And we can't always just assume by a superficial glance that we know what we can supply. If we get an order in the morning for beets, we have to go out and pick them right away, to be sure we have enough good ones, un-nibbled by voles, to fill the order. The app requires that we spring to attention immediately when an order is placed because if we don't accept the order by noon, it is deemed declined. The tyranny of technology.Among many advantages I anticipated with Troy and Victoria taking over after Peter’s death was their high comfort level with modern technology, a byproduct of their youth and fine educations. I figured if anyone could figure out a way to take advantage of the good in this technology without suffering the negatives, they <a href="http://could.In" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">could.In</a> many ways, my expectations have been borne out. They are real data hounds. They have created not only a highly refined freezer inventory and a “spreadsheep” to keep track of our sheep herd, but have been data and research driven in every aspect of their work. They research the nutritional mix in the sheep's diet and the many roads to hoof health. They even keep tabs on how many loads of combined sheep poop and hay they take out of the barn when mucking it.Their strategy has already borne fruit. They've figured out who the productive ewes are through their lambing patterns over time, and whose less healthy birth lines should not be encouraged. They will be making our breeding more selective. They've figured out ways to economize on hoof treatments. They've saved several vulnerable newborns, including most recently the lamb Sophie, who is being

AgriCulture: Small Farm, Big Data

Fungal AffectionHi all, it's Troy.The robins are gathering, the ephemeral blooms are popping, and the geese are heading northward. Spring has finally reached our farm. For over a month, Victoria and I have been jealously watching our friends in North Carolina post pictures of sunshine and seedlings flourishing in their gardens. At last, it is our turn to dig up some dirt, bury some seeds, and say a few prayers that nothing gets eaten – after all, the furry critters that live among us have also been eagerly anticipating the warmer clime.Beside all the great practical reasons to crawl, with squinting eyes, out of our dens each year, there is also a great relief in simply realizing that the rest of the world is still there too. As our eyes adjust to the light, we can see everyone else emerging from their winter hidey-holes as well. For Victoria and me, it has been a prime time for us to connect with some of our new Hudson Valley neighbors. Just the other night, our new friend and neighbor Marissa, who works at nearby Hearty Roots Farm, invited us to dinner with some other young farmers in the area. We had pizza and drinks with a freshly harvested garden salad and a garnish of local farmer gossip. Did you know that Neversink Farm didn’t design their patented Winstrip seedling trays, but rather bought the rights from a foreign company? Scandalous! And from what I hear, the operators of Chaseholm Farm are the coolest cats in the Valley, but they’re also real dark horses -- it’s not easy to get into their inner circle. It’s a pretty small world for young farmers up here.I suppose then I shouldn’t be so surprised when strangers are aware of my sudden appearance on the scene. Several times, I’ve been introduced to people who were eager to meet me, the new farmer at Turkana. I’m not used to this kind of celebrity status. Certainly, some of this fame comes from the vast readership of this newsletter (fun fact: In college, I never let anyone look at my papers except for the professors who graded them – so consider yourselves in the lucky few). However, I’m starting to notice some recognition from other farmers around as well. I stopped in at Sparrowbush Farm to say hi to one of the farmers from pizza night. I had only met him two nights earlier, but he had already spread the word about “the new Turkana guy” to his coworkers, who were ready with questions for me about what we were up to these days.This integration into a new social network reminds me, as many things do, of fungus. It may sound negative to you, because fungus has the unfortunate reputation of being associated with death and decay. But while it’s true that many fungi are great at breaking down dead material into tilth, they also have critical life-giving properties as well. As it turns out, the various mushrooms that we are familiar with – from the cute toadstools peeping out of the litter layer to the massive plates growing out of tree trunks – are all just the fruiting bodies of the fungus. Under the surface, there is an extensive mat of fungal tendrils called mycelia that compose the rest of the organism. These mycelia are excellent at absorbing moisture and making nutrients available for plants. Some fungi, called mycorrhizae, have evolved a very intimate relationship with plant roots. The mycorrhizae maximize the plant’s water and micronutrient absorption, while the plant gives the fungus sugar that it produces in its leaves. One mat of mycorrhizae might connect hundreds or thousands of plants together into a single network. Through the mat, plants can even send chemical signals to each other. Who knows what kind of gossip our garden plants are passing around!Considering it like I would a fungus, I can see that there was already an extensive mycelial network of farmers and food lovers in place when I got here. Turkana has been a part of that symbiosis all along; whereas, I have just been transplanted into it. But I can alre

Fungal Affection Hi all, it's Troy. The robins are gathering, the ephemeral blooms are popping, and the geese are heading northward. Spring has finally reached our farm. For over a month, Victoria and I have been jealously watching our friends in North Carolina post pictures of sunshine and seedlings flourishing in their gardens. At last, it is our turn to dig up some dirt, bury some seeds, and say a few prayers that nothing gets eaten – after all, the furry critters that live among us have also been eagerly anticipating the warmer clime.Beside all the great practical reasons to crawl, with squinting eyes, out of our dens each year, there is also a great relief in simply realizing that the rest of the world is still there too. As our eyes adjust to the light, we can see everyone else emerging from their winter hidey-holes as well. For Victoria and me, it has been a prime time for us to connect with some of our new Hudson Valley neighbors. Just the other night, our new friend and neighbor Marissa, who works at nearby Hearty Roots Farm, invited us to dinner with some other young farmers in the area. We had pizza and drinks with a freshly harvested garden salad and a garnish of local farmer gossip. Did you know that Neversink Farm didn’t design their patented Winstrip seedling trays, but rather bought the rights from a foreign company? Scandalous! And from what I hear, the operators of Chaseholm Farm are the coolest cats in the Valley, but they’re also real dark horses -- it’s not easy to get into their inner circle. It’s a pretty small world for young farmers up here.I suppose then I shouldn’t be so surprised when strangers are aware of my sudden appearance on the scene. Several times, I’ve been introduced to people who were eager to meet me, the new farmer at  Turkana. I’m not used to this kind of celebrity status. Certainly, some of this fame comes from the vast readership of this newsletter (fun fact: In college, I never let anyone look at my papers except for the  professors who graded them – so consider yourselves in the lucky few). However, I’m starting to notice some recognition from other farmers around as well. I stopped in at Sparrowbush Farm to say hi to one of the farmers from pizza night. I had only met him two nights earlier, but he had already spread the word about “the new Turkana guy” to his coworkers, who were ready with questions for me about what we were up to these days.This integration into a new social network reminds me, as many things do, of fungus. It may sound negative to you, because fungus has the unfortunate reputation of being associated with death and  decay. But while it’s true that many fungi are great at breaking down dead material into tilth, they also have critical life-giving properties as well. As it turns out, the various mushrooms that we are familiar  with – from the cute toadstools peeping out of the litter layer to the massive plates growing out of tree trunks – are all just the fruiting bodies of the fungus. Under the surface, there is an extensive mat of  fungal tendrils called mycelia that compose the rest of the organism. These mycelia are excellent at absorbing moisture and making nutrients available for plants. Some fungi, called mycorrhizae, have  evolved a very intimate relationship with plant roots. The mycorrhizae maximize the plant’s water and micronutrient absorption, while the plant gives the fungus sugar that it produces in its leaves. One mat of mycorrhizae might connect hundreds or thousands of plants together into a single network. Through the mat, plants can even send chemical signals to each other. Who knows what kind of gossip our garden plants are passing around!Considering it like I would a fungus, I can see that there was already an extensive mycelial network of farmers and food lovers in place when I got here. Turkana has been a part of that symbiosis all along;  whereas, I have just been transplanted into it. But I can alre

AgriCulture: Fungal Affection

You all undoubtedly remember the Bible story most often told to demonstrate the wisdom of King Solomon. Two women were fighting for custody of a child, each contender claiming to be the child’s mother. King Solomon had the unenviable task of deciding which woman should prevail. How did he go about doing it? He suggested dividing the child in two. One woman accepted his judgment. The other, clearly horrified at the thought, retracted her claim and asked that the child be entrusted to her rival. The woman willing to give the child up, King Solomon decided, must be the actual mother, as proven by her devotion to her child’s welfare. He awarded custody to her. I, acknowledging there is much we can learn from the Bible, would like to follow King Solomon’s example. This is the week the first group of the lambs born last season goes to market. Many of you purport to love lamb, and indeed will go to great expense in restaurants to order such fashionable dishes as braised lamb shanks – perfect winter fare. To you professed lamb lovers, I am offering to divide a lamb in half. Only in a twist on the Biblical story, those who take up my offer will actually receive the half lamb, cut to your order by a butcher. Because I know your willingness to take half a lamb is not evidence of your disregard for the lamb’s welfare. Indeed, I know that one of the reasons you prefer to order lamb from a farm like ours is precisely because you care for the lamb’s welfare. You recognize that our lambs freely roam in open pastures, and take shelter at their will in our enormously comfortable and brightly lit new barn on cold snowy winter days. You know their diet is principally grass and hay, the food their digestive system is designed to handle, with grain given only as a small daily treat. You are aware that they are processed humanely at a local facility that is certified as Animal Welfare approved. Finally, you understand that for heritage breeds like our American Karakuls, the only way to ensure that the breed is perpetuated is if there is a market for its meat. So why have you hesitated to order one of these lambs, whose availability has been known for weeks? In my Solomonic wisdom, I recognize that the issue for many is a very mundane one: freezer space. You look at one of our sleek fat lambs out there on the pasture, and you think, “I could never fit the meat from one of those creatures in my freezer.” Yet the fat woolly lamb that weighs in at perhaps 80 pounds when placed live on the scale goes through a number of steps on the way to being carved into freezer packages. It is first of all skinned of its heavy wool pelt. (Troy and Victoria, under the tutelage of our former farm hand, Peter Siegenthaler, are planning to process the pelts into tanned sheepskins this year). Its head and lower legs are then cut off, it is eviscerated of its guts, and the blood is drained out. What remains, the meat, bones, tail and some organs, comprises the animal’s “hanging weight”. It is called “hanging weight” because it is in that form that he meat is hung up in a cold room and aged for several days before being butchered With pastured animals, the hanging weight will be about 50% of the live weight. That 80 lb. lamb will hang out at about 40 lbs. (We charge by hanging weight, at $7/lb. ) The amount that goes into your freezer, however, is further reduced by the butchering process which, depending on your instructions, removes a great deal of fat and bone, as well as tendons and glands. The 40 lb. hanging weight is likely to translate into 30 lbs of actual cuts of meat. And if you order half a lamb, the approximately 15 lbs of actual meat you get from half of a live 80 lb. lamb is something any normal freezer compartment, including normal New York City apartment freezers, can handle. What do you get as part of that half lamb? Much depends on how you direct the butcher to cut your meat up. Rather than

You all undoubtedly remember the Bible story most often told to demonstrate the wisdom of King Solomon. Two women were fighting for custody of a child, each contender claiming to be the child’s mother. King Solomon had the unenviable task of deciding which woman should prevail. How did he go about doing it? He suggested dividing the child in two. One woman accepted his judgment. The other, clearly horrified at the thought, retracted her claim and asked that the child be entrusted to her rival. The woman willing to give the child up, King Solomon decided, must be the actual mother, as proven by her devotion to her child’s welfare. He awarded custody to her. I, acknowledging there is much we can learn from the Bible, would like to follow King Solomon’s example. This is the week the first group of the lambs born last season goes to market. Many of you purport to love lamb, and indeed will go to great expense in restaurants to order such fashionable dishes as braised lamb shanks – perfect winter fare. To you professed lamb lovers, I am offering to divide a lamb in half. Only in a twist on the Biblical story, those who take up my offer will actually receive the half lamb, cut to your order by a butcher. Because I know your willingness to take half a lamb is not evidence of your disregard for the lamb’s welfare. Indeed, I know that one of the reasons you prefer to order lamb from a farm like ours is precisely because you care for the lamb’s welfare. You recognize that our lambs freely roam in open pastures, and take shelter at their will in our enormously comfortable and brightly lit new barn on cold snowy winter days. You know their diet is principally grass and hay, the food their digestive system is designed to handle, with grain given only as a small daily treat. You are aware that they are processed humanely at a local facility that is certified as Animal Welfare approved. Finally, you understand that for heritage breeds like our American Karakuls, the only way to ensure that the breed is perpetuated is if there is a market for its meat. So why have you hesitated to order one of these lambs, whose availability has been known for weeks? In my Solomonic wisdom, I recognize that the issue for many is a very mundane one: freezer space. You look at one of our sleek fat lambs out there on the pasture, and you think, “I could never fit the meat from one of those creatures in my freezer.” Yet the fat woolly lamb that weighs in at perhaps 80 pounds when placed live on the scale goes through a number of steps on the way to being carved into freezer packages. It is first of all skinned of its heavy wool pelt. (Troy and Victoria, under the tutelage of our former farm hand, Peter Siegenthaler, are planning to process the pelts into tanned sheepskins this year). Its head and lower legs are then cut off, it is eviscerated of its guts, and the blood is drained out. What remains, the meat, bones, tail and some organs, comprises the animal’s “hanging weight”. It is called “hanging weight” because it is in that form that he meat is hung up in a cold room and aged for several days before being butchered With pastured animals, the hanging weight will be about 50% of the live weight. That 80 lb. lamb will hang out at about 40 lbs. (We charge by hanging weight, at $7/lb. ) The amount that goes into your freezer, however, is further reduced by the butchering process which, depending on your instructions, removes a great deal of fat and bone, as well as tendons and glands. The 40 lb. hanging weight is likely to translate into 30 lbs of actual cuts of meat. And if you order half a lamb, the approximately 15 lbs of actual meat you get from half of a live 80 lb. lamb is something any normal freezer compartment, including normal New York City apartment freezers, can handle. What do you get as part of that half lamb? Much depends on how you direct the butcher to cut your meat up. Rather than

AgriCulture: Half a Lamb is Better Than None

Sheep Walking a TightropeHi all, Mark here.  Yesterday my sister texted a comment on a picture Troy and Victoria had posted. "Love this expression on Orhan," she said of a shot of our flock wether, Orhan the Second. Interpreting the expressions on animals' faces is always a tricky business. While I agreed that I loved the picture, and I perceived that anyone looking at him would find him entirely lovable, I also couldn't help but read into his facial expression something of a lost feeling, an uncertainty about the future that carried with it considerable trepidation.To understand the immediate circumstance giving rise to the image, you have to understand a bit who Orhan is. He is the designated successor to our only previous flock wether, Orhan the First. That Orhan was half of a set of twins, the first lambs born on the property. He was partially bottle fed because his mother had inadequate milk for two lambs and often kicked him away from her udder. Orhan the First became understandably attached to us as the source of his food, and we to him as the source of unmitigated devotion. Because he was castrated (therefore, a "wether"), we could keep him without fear of in-inbreeding and without concern about rivalry with whatever ram happened be rotating through our flock at any given time.The advantage of a wether like Orhan was that he was bonded to us in ways that enabled us to control his behavior somewhat better than other flock members. Because we could get him go where we wanted him to, he could start movements that led the rest of the flock to follow, so he served as something of a natural leader. It is a time honored tradition to use wethers in such flock leadership roles. Put a bell around his neck, and he becomes a "bellwether," an expression which entirely makes sense once you understand its origin.Orhan was with us for about 15 years until his death. When he died, Peter and I discussed replacing him with another similar flock leader. Serendipitously, along came Orhan II. Orhan II was not a bottle fed lamb, he was more than adequately nourished by his mother and grew large quickly. But he bore a physical resemblance to Orhan I, particularly in wool color, and he was also incredibly personable with us. He came over to be petted, and, though to a lesser extent than Orhan I, hung out with us sometimes in the barn. We elected him the new flock wether and honored him with Orhan's name.Last spring a new generation of lambs was born, and recently Orhan started to perform one of the wether leadership functions he was selected for. A couple of months ago, Troy and Victoria isolated all the younger male lambs destined for market in a pasture to the northeast of the barn, and they placed Orhan II with them to serve as leader and manager. This week, those eleven lambs did go off to market. Perhaps some of the expression on Orhan's face reflects his sudden dislocation as his companions of the last month or two suddenly disappeared. Now he must reintegrate into the rest of the flock. There is a hint of bewilderment.But there's a larger context as well. Perhaps Orhan could be concerned with the larger threat to the continued existence of sheep. This week the New York Times published a full section supplement on how to eat to combat climate change ("Your Questions about Food and Climate Change, Answered"). It follows on reports from such organizations as the UN Environmental Programme, whose 2018 Annual Report which points out that agriculture accounts for a huge proportion, perhaps a third, of human environmental impact, that a big part of the problem is overconsumption of meats by rich countries, and that of all the meats one might eat b

Sheep Walking a Tightrope Hi all, Mark here.  Yesterday my sister texted a comment on a picture Troy and Victoria had posted. "Love this expression on Orhan," she said of a shot of our flock wether, Orhan the Second. Interpreting the expressions on animals' faces is always a tricky business. While I agreed that I loved the picture, and I perceived that anyone looking at him would find him entirely lovable, I also couldn't help but read into his facial expression something of a lost feeling, an uncertainty about the future that carried with it considerable <a href="http://trepidation.To" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">trepidation.To</a> understand the immediate circumstance giving rise to the image, you have to understand a bit who Orhan is. He is the designated successor to our only previous flock wether, Orhan the First. That Orhan was half of a set of twins, the first lambs born on the property. He was partially bottle fed because his mother had inadequate milk for two lambs and often kicked him away from her udder. Orhan the First became understandably attached to us as the source of his food, and we to him as the source of unmitigated devotion. Because he was castrated (therefore, a "wether"), we could keep him without fear of in-inbreeding and without concern about rivalry with whatever ram happened be rotating through our flock at any given time.The advantage of a wether like Orhan was that he was bonded to us in ways that enabled us to control his behavior somewhat better than other flock members. Because we could get him go where we wanted him to, he could start movements that led the rest of the flock to follow, so he served as something of a natural leader. It is a time honored tradition to use wethers in such flock leadership roles. Put a bell around his neck, and he becomes a "bellwether," an expression which entirely makes sense once you understand its origin.Orhan was with us for about 15 years until his death. When he died, Peter and I discussed replacing him with another similar flock leader. Serendipitously, along came Orhan II. Orhan II was not a bottle fed lamb, he was more than adequately nourished by his mother and grew large quickly. But he bore a physical resemblance to Orhan I, particularly in wool color, and he was also incredibly personable with us. He came over to be petted, and, though to a lesser extent than Orhan I, hung out with us sometimes in the barn. We elected him the new flock wether and honored him with Orhan's name.Last spring a new generation of lambs was born, and recently Orhan started to perform one of the wether leadership functions he was selected for. A couple of months ago, Troy and Victoria isolated all the younger male lambs destined for market in a pasture to the northeast of the barn, and they placed Orhan II with them to serve as leader and manager. This week, those eleven lambs did go off to market. Perhaps some of the expression on Orhan's face reflects his sudden dislocation as his companions of the last month or two suddenly disappeared. Now he must reintegrate into the rest of the flock. There is a hint of bewilderment.But there's a larger context as well. Perhaps Orhan could be concerned with the larger threat to the continued existence of sheep. This week the New York Times published a full section supplement on how to eat to combat climate change <a href="https://sable.godaddy.com/c/46279?id=43028.1182.1.3045e7e496562446763e32f661873fab" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">("Your Questions about Food and Climate Change, Answered")</a>. It follows on reports from such organizations as the UN Environmental Programme, whose <a href="https://sable.godaddy.com/c/46279?id=43028.1183.1.2cc90b605f0b8a0bf16c011af6aaa20b" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">2018 Annual Report </a>which points out that agriculture accounts for a huge proportion, perhaps a third, of human environmental impact, that a big part of the problem is overconsumption of meats by rich countries, and that of all the meats one might eat b

Agriculture: Sheep Walking a Tightrope

Last weekend, as we zoomed from a frigid start around 0 degrees Saturday morning to a springlike sunny 50s on Sunday afternoon, I took the opportunity to enjoy tea, biscuits, and lovely walk in his back field with my across-the-street neighbor, Adam, and his and Annette’s dog, Pearl. I knew the weather was just a delicious tease, and that we would be back in deep winter again for a good while before the real deal was upon us. But it was enough to evoke for me the hunger for spring Peter used to express about this time of year, when he began complaining of “cabin fever” and accordingly started planning our annual April jaunt to New Orleans. From the high ground on the walk back from the south border of Adam and Annette’s property I got an unaccustomed distant view of our barn and the field running from there down to the road. There, calmly, in the mid-afternoon sun, our entire sheep herd, large dots at that distance, appeared to be sauntering slowly back toward the barn from the roadside manger on Lasher Avenue where they had been munching hay and the remaining skeletons of discarded Christmas trees. Generally, left on their own, the movement of the herd is a very slow motion kind of event. In an open field full of grass, the herd reminds me of an amoeba or bit of protoplasm, irregularly shaped. They lurch fitfully in one direction or another, guided by some unspoken signals they convey to one another. Although the herd has some clear leaders, the mechanism by which they decide to shift from side to side or take unexpected turns is not fully apparent. Last Sunday, when there was still six inches of snow on the ground, the movement was more orderly, single file, up the path they had created to get from the barn to the road without getting their feet unduly wet. But they always move at a pace that allows older and lamer sheep to stay with the group. I was struck by the contrast between the herd’s sauntering pace Sunday afternoon and what I had witnessed just that morning at chores. Then, too, there was a substantial group down by the manger at the road. As Troy and I stocked the hay in the barn and annex mangers and set up their grain treat bowls, many, alerted by our noises and closing of the barn doors, realized what we were doing, and made their way up to gather outside the barn doors, ready to thunder in and get as much grain as they could when we reopened the barn. But a few lambs were so absorbed with whatever they were doing that they had not gotten the message. When we rolled open the doors and the excited baas of the herd reached a crescendo, the ears of young lambs down by the road perked up, and when they realized they were alone down there they charged at lightning speed back up toward the barn, bleating most of the way. In their case, their urgent movement was clearly not for the grain. At that age, they generally are muscled aside at grain time and they only develop the grain habit over months. It was rather the separation from the herd and particularly from their mothers that impelled their mad dash to rejoin the group. The sorts of bleats they emitted betrayed their motives. Both the slow movement of the herd that usually allows stragglers to stay with the group and the mad dash of the lambs when separated express the importance to sheep of the group staying together. Sheep have long been symbols of extreme group think. People are described as sheep like when they appear to be unthinkingly following some invisible diktat that comes from their membership in a group. People of my political persuasion often dismiss MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporters this way. A friend of mine of decidedly more conservative bent told me that the white-garbed women at the State of the Union address last week evoked in his mind the wearers of Mao jackets during the Chinese cultural revolution. That comment in turn provoked another friend, from a far leftier perspective, to w

Last weekend, as we zoomed from a frigid start around 0 degrees Saturday morning to a springlike sunny 50s on Sunday afternoon, I took the opportunity to enjoy tea, biscuits, and lovely walk in his back field with my across-the-street neighbor, Adam, and his and Annette’s dog, Pearl. I knew the weather was just a delicious tease, and that we would be back in deep winter again for a good while before the real deal was upon us. But it was enough to evoke for me the hunger for spring Peter used to express about this time of year, when he began complaining of “cabin fever” and accordingly started planning our annual April jaunt to New Orleans. From the high ground on the walk back from the south border of Adam and Annette’s property I got an unaccustomed distant view of our barn and the field running from there down to the road. There, calmly, in the mid-afternoon sun, our entire sheep herd, large dots at that distance, appeared to be sauntering slowly back toward the barn from the roadside manger on Lasher Avenue where they had been munching hay and the remaining skeletons of discarded Christmas trees. Generally, left on their own, the movement of the herd is a very slow motion kind of event. In an open field full of grass, the herd reminds me of an amoeba or bit of protoplasm, irregularly shaped. They lurch fitfully in one direction or another, guided by some unspoken signals they convey to one another. Although the herd has some clear leaders, the mechanism by which they decide to shift from side to side or take unexpected turns is not fully apparent. Last Sunday, when there was still six inches of snow on the ground, the movement was more orderly, single file, up the path they had created to get from the barn to the road without getting their feet unduly wet. But they always move at a pace that allows older and lamer sheep to stay with the group. I was struck by the contrast between the herd’s sauntering pace Sunday afternoon and what I had witnessed just that morning at chores. Then, too, there was a substantial group down by the manger at the road. As Troy and I stocked the hay in the barn and annex mangers and set up their grain treat bowls, many, alerted by our noises and closing of the barn doors, realized what we were doing, and made their way up to gather outside the barn doors, ready to thunder in and get as much grain as they could when we reopened the barn. But a few lambs were so absorbed with whatever they were doing that they had not gotten the message. When we rolled open the doors and the excited baas of the herd reached a crescendo, the ears of young lambs down by the road perked up, and when they realized they were alone down there they charged at lightning speed back up toward the barn, bleating most of the way. In their case, their urgent movement was clearly not for the grain. At that age, they generally are muscled aside at grain time and they only develop the grain habit over months. It was rather the separation from the herd and particularly from their mothers that impelled their mad dash to rejoin the group. The sorts of bleats they emitted betrayed their motives. Both the slow movement of the herd that usually allows stragglers to stay with the group and the mad dash of the lambs when separated express the importance to sheep of the group staying together. Sheep have long been symbols of extreme group think. People are described as sheep like when they appear to be unthinkingly following some invisible diktat that comes from their membership in a group. People of my political persuasion often dismiss MAGA-hat wearing Trump supporters this way. A friend of mine of decidedly more conservative bent told me that the white-garbed women at the State of the Union address last week evoked in his mind the wearers of Mao jackets during the Chinese cultural revolution. That comment in turn provoked another friend, from a far leftier perspective, to w

AgriCulture: Oh, We Like Sheep

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