NOFA Winter Conference

Last weekend Max and I went to the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Winter Conference in Worcester, MA. As a non-farmer, I was a little sheepish about going, but the program included a nice mix of beginner, intermediate, and advanced activities. In fact, there were so many workshops on things I am interested in as a gardener and potential farmer that I had trouble deciding what to attend.

The one-day conference also included a key-note speech by an organic apple farmer, a teacup auction for various farm goodies (neither of us won, but we really wanted the Armsby Abbey gift certificate), a potluck lunch, and a nice vendor selection. At the technology conferences I occasionally attend, you don't get cheese samples, seeds, organic soap, and sips of raspberry wine accompanied by roasted beet spread on crackers.

I went to three workshops, one on raising certified organic poultry, one on finding your own farmland, and one on edible landscaping.

The organic poultry workshop was largely new to me. I was interested in what they do to raise the chickens from the beginning of life, and that warm chickens wander; cold chickens huddle. After they are old enough and can fend off some predators better, they are given lots of outside space. I'm used to chickens in school buses, but they talked up the chickens with the movable cages, which is what Salatin uses. It allows the chickens to add manure to the field while cutting your grass. You move cages twice per day, and add new ones as the chickens grow. You can plant on the field, but harvest must be 90-120 days after the chickens have been there. There was some talk of the changing legislation for organic farming solutions, and how it might be to work with the new Congress. Apparently NOFA sued and lost over the organic standards back in 2002, but many of their changes are under consideration.

In the workshop on acquiring farmland, sponsored by Land for Good, I had a wonderful time talking to people who were in various stages of trying to start their own farm. Some were currently working at local farms and hoping to strike out on their own. Others, like me, had a full-time job outside farming, and were saving money. The big thing I learned is that it's very difficult to get land without a business plan and experience farming. It's also very difficult to get money when you are farming. Everyone noted that you can't readily do both at the same time. But a few had done it, one gave up his software job, another really wanted to raise kids on her farm, and she and her husband saved up and now were "living the dream." It was really interesting to see all the paths and ages in the room, and the Land for Good folks are developing tools and workshops to help you sort out your farming goal. I'm currently reading Salatin's You Can Farm, and he really stresses that this is an entrepreneurial adventure, not an escape from real life. And in this workshop, I received a sheet on budgeting and a worksheet on my own values. I also got a healthy idea of what it means to work this out as a couple, and managed to have conversations with my boyfriend that I just haven't learned to frame in the right light. It's a big thing, figuring out a farm.

The last workshop I went to was about landscaping with wild edibles, run Ethan Roland by AppleSeed Permaculture. One of the first pictures Ethan displayed was a woman standing with banana trees in Holyoke, MA. Wow! It turns out that you can grow the banana leaves up here, though the plants will not fruit. You can use these lives in cooking or as serving dishes. He went on to talk about kiwis and American persimmons and the pawpaw, a fruit that is native to North America and tastes like mango. There's a hardy pawpaw that can grow in Zone 6, which is about where I am. I also learned where pine nuts came from (and why they're so expensive...it's a 20-year start-up period to get the tree growing). He talked about an edible landscaping wiki sponsored by the Apios Institute. It includes information about growing the plants, their uses, what to plant them with, and plans of existing gardens that include these plants.

I left this conference wishing I had a couple acres to play with, but instead I must appease myself with dozens of seed packets that need starting. I learned last year that you can't start leeks too early, so I put 50 seeds in the seed trays from Johnny's Seeds. I added water, and now I wait for spring in my landless, balcony-less condo.

Codman Community Farms

Last year I grew a garden at Codman Community Farms, and I plan to go back this year. The farm is very generous with their plots, so I got only a half plot, and arrived to find it was three times the space I expected! It was a wonderful outlet for stress...no one loves to pitchfork dirt more than me. I grew stuff I loved, sweet potatoes that surprised me with their size and perfectness, tomatoes that took a long time to grow, but were delicious in the end, wild sesame stolen from my boyfriend's sister-in-law, hot peppers, scallions, melons from H-mart, shiso and daikon from Ebisuya and way way way way too much zucchini. I actually had about fifty varieties growing in my garden, because a small garden is great for single plants that you pick up here and there at garden shops or the library book and plant sale.

I'm heading into next year and will try to keep track of spending better, as well as the harvest, hopefully on this blog. I have a gigantic wish list I've generated from Johnny's Selected Seeds. Hopefully I can trim. Last year I spent a lot on transplants and hope to do more from seed this spring. So, on to that project.

Buy No Food month

This month is Buy No Food month. I really love eating, and though I in particular love supporting direct-to-market, local products, I'll eat almost anything. (I even crave Big Macs about twice per year, but really those are travel food and should be treated accordingly. My parents didn't just take us to MacDonalds; it was a treat that you got on the 600-mile trip to Grandma and Grandpa's farm. And we didn't have dessert every day either. Anyway...)

I keep track of all my spending at mint.com. And the fact of the matter is that between groceries and going out, I spend $500-600 on food. Just for me. I mean, I share it with people in my life, but those people usually share back about equally. But still, even though I grew a garden last summer, my food costs did not go down.

I buy a lot of food, because I love food shopping and discovery. But I don't always eat it all, as I might get busy or sick of leftovers or whatever. So the idea this month is to only eat the food at my house, and to not go out for drinks or dinner. It's partly to eat what I have, and partly to get into cooking mode.

It also means saying no a lot. In some parts of the country, like when I lived in a more rural area, it was trivial to stay home each night. But in the Boston area, my boyfriend and I get invited out multiple times per week. We have favorites and rituals. Or I might stop by for a pre-made chicken on the way home, because I'm hungry and tired and worked 50 hours and went to two classes that week and there's just no way I'm going to cook anything. In fact, I'm guessing that this problem extended the garden. If I spent 10 hours per week at the garden, that's 10 hours less time to cook. And digging and wedding takes energy.

It's much easier to buy less food when two people are cooking in the same apartment. I did this with my sister a couple years ago, and she and I had a merry time of it. At the time we had a glut of CSA veggies, and she could process winter squash like no one else. I am not in a veggie CSA right now, but I am allowing myself $5-10 in veggies each week. So far this has been enough.

So experiment experiment. It would be good to drop the food budget significantly, because I love to cook and have other priorities. It's the sort of thing worth feeling guilty about...what happened to special occasions? Why is there one twice per week? It's embarrassing the amount I let the budget go out of whack against what I want in life, so a month of extreme should help me adjust back to moderate.

Somerville Winter Farmer's Market

After a year off, I think I'll dust off the old blog and start posting again. If I post enough, the fact that I took off a year will fade into the past, forgotten, right?

I just finished my courses for my grad degree, but I have my thesis to complete. I'll write a couple posts about my past year and my plans for this year.

In the meantime, you should check out the Somerville Winter Farmer's Market. One interesting thing to note is that changes to MA legislation, you can now buy local wines at farmers markets. My spy tells me that the Turtle Creek wines were very good today. I'm excited that you can go to the market and get fish and meat and wine and chocolate, along with the veggies.