Greetings from Sweetland
My dad is famous for always trying to make ‘matched loads.’ Whether it’s carrying clean laundry upstairs and dirty downstairs on the same trip, or driving across state lines to sell a used lawnmower and buy a wood stove on the way home, he’s always got an eye out for a matched load in the name of efficiency.
And since we joke that farming is really just a lot of moving heavy things around in circles on the farm, I’ve taken up his pursuit. A tractor bucket full of veggie castoffs up to the compost pile can be paired with a load of gravel to put in the pesky potholes in the parking lot brought back down the hill. A gator loaded up with grain for the animals in the pasture can return with remay and hoops from the nearby veggie field. And of course empty crates come back bulging with produce every harvest morning.
Like matched loads, but on a grander scale, we are always looking for ‘matched projects,’ where waste from one project is needed elsewhere. We’ve dug ponds that have provided fill for farm roads, bought lumber for siding in lengths where the offcuts served a second project building birdhouses, and paired a logging job called for in our forest management plan with milling timbers for our new barn and getting wood chips for our boiler.
In fact, our new barn build created all sorts of opportunities for matched projects. Perhaps the coolest of these has been providing access to the “Bonus” field, where our new PYO gardens are taking shape. The field was named “Bonus” because when we were buying the farm in 2012 an erroneous early depiction of the property boundaries didn’t include it. After we’d already committed to buy the farm and settled on the price, the correct survey was provided and so we got an extra 1 acre field as a “bonus.” The name stuck! We lucked out, because bonus has outstanding soils and has produced some of the heaviest hay crops on the farm (up to 250 bales per acre!). But really, being so close to the farmstand, we’ve always thought it should grow vegetables for our members.
Access was hard, though. With the gate situated on a blind curve in Rt 132 none of us liked accessing Bonus, and we certainly didn’t want CSA members dodging traffic to get there. Leveling the site for the new barn, however, was going to produce a large amount of fill, and we needed a place to put it. Building a farm access road across the ravine to the bonus field matched perfectly! Now you can stroll leisurely across the deep ravine (between granite posts salvaged from the old barnyard) to harvest “bonus” PYO veggies and flowers in the Bonus field.
Soon the cherry tomatoes and tomatillos will ripen, the noodle beans will cover the teepees, and the second succession of sunflowers will bloom. We’re also excited to have some of our weekly events migrate over to Bonus, where there is a little more room to picnic and play away from the parking lot. With our daughter Fern helping us to see new hazards and benefits, fences are going in to exclude the steep drop offs and a sandbox is getting added to help entertain kids while you enjoy the gardens (sandbox toys welcome!). We’ve got a little more cleanup to do before we open the field for visits (beware the barbed wire and equipment right now) but we hope to have it ready for walks across the land bridge next week!
Cheers
Norah and the Sweetland Crew
OPEN in the original PYO Garden
Flowers
Parsley
Sage
Lemon balm
Basil
Thai basil
Collards
Kale
Week 9 Harvest
Half Pint
Napa Cabbage, 1 head
Kale, small bunch
Lettuce, 1 head or Mesclun .35 lb
Zucchini/summer squash, 3 lb
Cucumbers, 2
Fennel, 1 head
Tomato, 1
Brimming Basket
Napa Cabbage, 1 head
Kale, medium bunch
Lettuce, 1 head or Mesclun .35 lb
Zucchini/summer squash, 4 lb
Cucumbers, 3
Fennel, 2 heads
Tomatoes, 2
Kohlrabi, 2
Veggie Monster
Napa Cabbage, 2 heads
Kale, large bunch
Lettuce, 1 head
Mesclun .5 lb
Zucchini/summer squash, 5 lb
Cucumbers, 5
Fennel, 3 heads
Tomatoes, 3
Kohlrabi, 3
What’s Cooking This Week
You can find ingredients for all of these recipes in our farm store! We source meats, dairy, grains, beans, sweets, and more from local and sustainable producers. Don’t forget to use your CSA member discount!
