Week 10 August 26th

The ground is dry; I disced in the finished areas of the garden and clouds of dust formed in the tractors wake. I bought oats to seed in as a cover crop, but yesterday’s rain prediction slowly disappeared throughout the day. The oats will have to wait, there is not enough moisture in the soil right now for them to germinate, and although they would sit patiently buried in dirt waiting for water, the crows like to walk around picking out the seeds as a snack. We direct seeded some fall greens where the onions came out next to the greenhouse and watered them in with a sprinkler. Joni and Joyce helped me, and we were all covered in a fine layer of brown dirt when we were done. Once they are up, they will be irrigated on drip tape like everything else. Fall greens in trays are looking strong, and likely we will have to begin pulling some tomatoes out to make room. I’m never quite ready to pull the tomatoes, but the greens need enough time growing in the ground before the light disappears and everything freezes.

Please choose 8 items

• Green Cabbage

• Kale

• Carrots

• Red Onions

• Squash/Zucchini

• Cukes

• Celery

• Head lettuce

• Yellow Potatoes

• Sungolds

• Heirloom Tomatoes

• Fennel

• Eggplant

• Sweet Peppers

• Jalapeños

Week 9 August 21st

We watched the weather change from the screened porch last night, puffy clouds glowing orange and pink backlit by the setting sun. The change started in the afternoon while we were outside with the kids unpacking from markets and jumping on the trampoline. Wind blowing in from the west slowly pushed out the hot humid air and threatened to rain on and off for hours. The rain never came, although we wished it would, but the cool air was welcomed with a big sigh of relief. The dogs felt the change too, running around chasing each other, re-energized by the drops in humidity and temperature. It’s a funny thing to wish for rain after all I did was hope for it to stop this spring, and I thought about this for a good time today. The weather is fickle, and I am always trying to learn to trust the farm and the plants and their ability to keep growing.

In the share please take 8 items

• Heirloom Tomatoes

• Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

• Kale

• Parsley

• Celery

• Cabbage

• Red Blush Lettuce

• Sweet Peppers

• Eggplant

• Jalapenos

• Squash/Zucchini

• Cucumbers

• Green Cabbage - lots! plan on making sauerkraut

• Yellow Potatoes

Week 8 August 14th

Onions started coming in yesterday. We pull them and arrange them in the seedhouse to dry bottoms up. The seedhouse has a ventilation system that kicks on automatically at 75 degrees, but on these hot days it will stay over 100 degrees in there for the bulk of the day, and with the fans running allows for good curing. In a few weeks we will start slowly trimming off their stems and selling them at the farmers markets and offering them in the CSA. When the inside of the stems no longer have any moisture left we will trim up the rest for winter storage. Now starts the slow process of gathering all the food out of the fields and stockpiling for winter, while also still harvesting summer crops that are in full swing.

Please take 8 items and pick your own basil and husk cherries

• Yellow potatoes

• Sungold tomatoes

• Heirloom tomatoes

• Green Cabbage

• Red Blush Lettuce

• Sweet Peppers

• Jalapeños

• Eggplant

• Carrots

• Squash

• Cucumbers

• Beans

• Kale

• Beans

• Celery

Week 7 August 7th

In the age of internet oversharing, I've become resistant to doing what feel like cheesy gratitude posts. I even jokingly thought perhaps I should balance out all the rosy Instagram farm and homesteading content by doing a farm fail page. It would be all too easy and realistic, with some shots of the kids being uncooperative or screaming thrown in. Someone has probably already thought of this, I haven’t bothered to check. Having said that, last week we had such an overwhelming outpouring of unsolicited volunteer and friend help it feels necessary and with genuine gratitude that I share about it here. Joyce has been volunteering with us since Joni was born, and she is typically here with us twice a week for anywhere from 2-4 hours at a time helping with anything and everything we are doing. She was here Monday and Wednesday last week weeding holes and picking beans. Jay was here Monday as well and helped Kyle harvest all of our cabbage that now sits happily in our walk-in cooler. Jay used to participate in our CSA at the Earle farm, and for the last few years has driven all the way here to Cornish to help us, as well as at our Conway field. My friend Jane asked to and took Joni swimming for a number of hours Tuesday which left me free to do emailing and cleaning. Ruby showed up with 4 of her Pine Root Farm interns on Thursday and got all of our early potatoes that were planted here bagged and into storage. Friday, Jay, his wife Kim, and their daughter Paisley and a friend came back for the morning. Kim and Jay weeded carrots and beets, and Paisley and friend gave my two girls the endless amount of undivided attention they crave, which left me free to do random small farm tasks that never seem to get done. Ashlee was here twice doing her flower arranging and always surprises me by weeding perennial flower beds randomly. It was a week that made me feel very proud of the farm and all that we’ve created here, and it all demonstrated the support that is essential for keeping us going. Even after my first draft of writing this, more volunteer support is pouring in for this coming week in various ways from current csa members and friends. People often ask us how we do it all, and the answer is its hard and with a lot of help. We are so grateful. Thank you.

In the share: Please take 8 items and PYO Basil

• Sungold tomatoes

• Squash

• Carrots

• Yellow Onions

• Heirloom Tomatoes

• Kale

• Beans

• Cukes

• Sweet Peppers

• Jalapeno Peppers

• Eggplant

• Celery

• Summer Crisp Red Leaf Lettuce

• Green Cabbage

• Kohlrabi

• maybe husk cherries if we can get them picked

Week 6 July 31st

Its the season of hot mornings out early harvesting before the sun is up and wilts the plants. Afternoons are catching up on weeding and weed whacking, our hands and clothes now permanently stained with grass and dirt. The cherry tomatoes have almost reached the 6-foot-high lower metal bars spanning the greenhouse, and we tied them to their trellis string for the last time. From here on out they will grow a bit taller and then flop over heavy with the weight of their fruit. We will push through them to pick, a tangled jungle of vines and sweet orange treats. The first round of squash is done in the tunnel and in the next week we will seed those beds to winter carrots. Kyle harvested all of the cabbage with a volunteer this week, and it now sits in 8 huge bins in our walk-in, and that section of the garden will soon be turned into a green cover of oats for the fall. Early potatoes are next to be pulled. If we are lucky on time these hot evenings we’ve been bailing early on the farm and heading over to long pond. Although it’s hard to stop working, the transition from busy day to night is sometimes tricky and seems to be made easier for us all with a short swim.

Please choose 8 items and PYO Basil

• Celery

• Cabbage

• Parsley

• Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

• Sweet Green Peppers

• Eggplant

• Squash/Zucchini

• Green Beans

• Butter Crisp Lettuce

• Kale

• Carrots

• Beets

• Yellow green onions

• Kohlrabi

• Fennel

• Maybe Cukes?! These are being slow.

Week 5 July 24th

Kyle stayed on the farm yesterday and with the help from our volunteer Joyce tackled some early in the week harvesting and then weeding in what I call the “first garden”. Joni and I took off after dropping Ryah at Little Farm School and met up with Ruby who owns Pine Root Farm and her daughter Juni. Both of us are feeling hard July farmer burnout and needed some mountain scenery to re-ground. We carpooled up into Evans notch and spent the morning hiking the White Cairn Trail off the Stone House Road. It was a slow hike, lots of stopping for snacks and collecting items for fairy houses, and we kept re-motivating with the promise of chocolate chips at the designated turn around spot. We looked at fallen logs half rotten by rain and time, thick beech stands, funny rocks, and streams gone dry just to a trickle. We left some fairy objects in an old stump that might be home to a gnome and brought a few found trinkets home in a bag for later construction. Moon frolicked in the woods running back and forth amongst the kids and I absorbed his obvious joy of being in a new place taking in the peace of the weather and being off the farm. We didn’t make it as far as my original hope, but the kids ended happy and spent the whole car ride home chatting and giggling, a sure sign of a successful outing. Evan’s notch has always been a favorite spot of mine, having spent weeks working on the East Royce Trail during my trail work summers, as well as patrolling all the various loops and ridges the Appalachian Mountain Club maintains. The Baldface circle trail is a hike I try to do every year, something magical and appealing abouts its long open rock ledges and views. Last year my friend and I completed it on a perfect November day via the Slippery Brook Trail avoiding the steepest ledges so I could bring the dog, seeing no other humans for the entire 10mile loop. Today was a child sized hike but satisfying in its own way, a readjustment in expectations, the simple pleasure of sharing the mountains with friend, dog and children.

Please take 8 items and PYO Basil. If you took cucumbers last week please leave those for someone else as they are still not in full production yet.

• Green Beans

• Fennel

• Cucumbers

• Summer Squash/Zucchini

• Beets

• Carrots

• Sweet Green Peppers

• Green Yellow Onions

• Green Red Onions

• Parsley

• Kohlrabi

• Crisp Head Lettuce

• Kale

• Chard

• Sungold Tomatoes

• Red Radishes

July 10th week 3

July 17th week 4

Mid July is the peak of it all. The few weeks where we feel like everything needs our attention all at once, and priorities must be made. Fall brassicas go in the ground, weeds are exploding, harvesting is increasing with many plants like tomatoes and squash needing to be picked twice a week, and the field and pasture is due for its once yearly mow. We are chipping away at it all, almost done today making a thorough sweep of weeds through the whole garden after some early morning harvesting. The field is mowed but the pasture will have to wait. In a week or two the weeds will slow down and as hot season crops like peppers, onions, and eggplant start producing we will be pulling done broccoli, cabbages, kohlrabi, slowly shrinking our garden maintenance back down.

Please choose 8 items and pick your own basil. Please ask us to show you where. If you are an Earle member who wants basil in addition to the 8 items please indicate this in your email.

• Carrots

• Bok Choi

• Beets

• Red Onions

• Yellow Onions

• Parsley

• Kale

• Chard

• Kohlrabi

• Buttter Lettuce

• Fennel

• Cucumbers

• Red Radishes

• Summer Squash/Zucchini

Peppers, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes are likely just a week away.

July 10th week 3

We all spent last Friday up at our cooperative sweet Potatoe and squash field in the Albany New Hampshire Town Forest. It’s always a tossup bringing the kids, but it was a beautiful day, breezy, clear, cool. We spent about 5 hours up there which I consider to be wildly successful. Joni has been more energized about “helping to farm” this summer now that she is off from school and she had a very concentrated stretch of weeding with my farmer friend Jennie while Kyle and I did some good weeding and Ryah wandered about and moved clods of dirt. At some point the kid’s concentration faded, and I removed them to the nearby river where we threw rocks, had snacks, and the dog frolicked in the water. The town forest field usually has a fair amount of pedestrian traffic as there are public walking trails around the fields to the river and into the woods. Friday was July 4th, and the fields were as empty as Ive ever seen them, we had the whole place to ourselves which lent a magical quality along with the near perfect and constant breeze. We headed home around 2pm, heading south away from the incoming Conway weekend traffic and both kids passed out immediately for the length of the drive home.

Please take 8 items:

• Sugar Snap Peas

• Bok Choi

• Beets

• Red Scallions

• Parsley

• Kale

• Rainbow Chard

• Butter Lettuce

• Broccoli

• Kohlrabi

• Fennel

• Basil

July 3rd Week 2

We went for dinner and a tour at Hancock Family Farm last night. We met Geof back when we were interns at Earle Family Farm in 2012/2013. He was part of the original Foothill Farm Alliance Winter CSA group we are still a part of. He has been a big inspiration and wealth of knowledge and support for us here on our farm in Cornish. Geof originally farmed up on Devils Den in Porter along with a field on Spec Pond Road under the name Alma Farm but has since moved to Casco and changed his operation to be primarily Farm Stand Focused. His growing field is about 10 acres, half of it in corn. Where we cram as much food as possible in our little rocky space here, Geof has big wide aisles large enough for tractor cultivation. It was a beautiful evening with the corn just tasseling and blowing in the breeze, we walked the field, heard about what was working and not working, and then shared a potluck dinner with other farmers and interns. It’s always refreshing to get together with other farmers, as it can feel like you're out alone on a ship stranded in the middle of the ocean sometimes facing all the struggles that farms face. I’ve come to realize farming is absurd, the weather, the bugs, the animals, the broken equipment, and then if it all works ok, we’ve got to go out and sell what we’ve grown. But we all keep doing it, a true labor of love.

Please take up to 8 items

• Sugar Snap Peas (hooray!!! first time we’ve grown these post kids)

• Summer Squash/Zucchini

• Baby Beets and Greens

• Scallions

• Garlic Scapes

• Parsley

• Curly kale

• Rainbow Chard

• Red Radishes

• Kohlrabi

• Baby Basil

• Romaine

• Muir Head Lettuce

June 26th Week 1

It looks like a farm again here. I have breathed a deep sigh of relief. Even after 10 years of gardening, May and June are hard months for me. The energy input required to get the garden from barren flat brown to dynamically green is overwhelming and exhausting. Kyle says I underestimate the tiny plants, and their incredible will power to live, he is probably right. There is a point in time around now when all the plants have reached a visual size and shape where I know they will make it, and I can sit back and just gently tend them. A little weeding here or there, trellising for support, or pruning to encourage a healthy habitat. Now we sit back a bit and watch the garden explode.

More choice in the coming weeks, as we are just really starting to get food in. Peas are just around the corner.

Please choose 7 items this week.

• Baby Beets and Greens

• Lettuce Mix

• Romaine Lettuce

• Rainbow Swiss Chard

• Baby Summer Squash

• Garlic Scapes

• Parsley

• Curly Kale

• Red Scallions

April News

Summer C.S.A. Sign-ups http://www.hosacfarm.com/csa

• Full or Summer Share options with pickup @ Hosac Farm

• Modified Share with pickup @ Earle Family Farm

• Flower Share add on

Go to the website to get more details and sign up.  The earlier the better for our season planning.  Thank you to everyone who has already signed up.  

April News
 

Welcome to Spring!

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As the days grow longer and the temperatures rise, we are excited to welcome the vibrant season of spring here at Hosac Farm. This is a time of renewal, growth, and new beginnings, and we have plenty of updates and events to share with you!

The above paragraph came from the search engine DuckDuck Go's AI assist chat bot.  I had been telling Kyle I was having trouble starting a newsletter and he jokingly offered to have chat GPT write one.  He later typed in "Farm Spring Newsletter 300 words", and it spit out the above and much more.  We laughed.  It was both good, and generic, using all those catch phrases of spring and gardening.  It was depressing how quickly it generated the newsletter, with all the proper talking points like ground prep and summer share sign-ups.  I mentioned the AI experiment at a farm dinner gathering we had this last weekend with our winter cooperative farms, and it got some laughs, and another farmer admitted to using it for a promotional piece he just couldn't get motivated to write independently.  For now, I continue to not have much interest in AI beyond mild disgust at humanities never ending quest for automation.  I will let you know if somewhere along the way I change my mind.  

The ice on the pond broke with the warm spell a few weeks ago.  At first just a single large hole opened in the middle, the spot that gets the most sun all day. The ducks and geese that had already returned, crowded into the limited open water. I wished the geese ill thoughts in my head, willing them to stay out of our garden.  Then a few days after that, the sun broke the rest of the ice, and with the snow melt and rain, the pond rose back up to above the rock we watch by the dock, our most reliable indicator of the ponds water levels.  I'm fascinated yearly by these shy ducks that live on the pond and am always trying to get a closer look that might help identify them.  They spook easily. Any detectable movement by human or dog and they exit the water in blurry mass of flapping wings and soft quacks, moving themselves farther away.  The body of the males look white from a distance, but it's impossible to tell if it's just a reflection of light on their feathers. Binoculars haven't given me a clear shot. One spring my mom and I spotted them across the pond and went off on an hour or so walk around, thinking we could get a better look from the other side.  As soon as we approached, but still too far to see them clearly, they were off, and instantly closer to the farm side while we were now all the way on the other.  Their sudden spook when I'm out walking often alerts me to their otherwise unnoticed presence. Joni and I walked around the pond a few weeks ago and somehow approached these ducks without spooking them.  It was the closest I've ever gotten to them, especially impressive considering we had with us a loose dog running wild through the woods, and Joni keeps up a constat stream of chatter even when hiking.  We were up on a high point overlooking the pond, at a neighbor's small cabin, and perhaps the height difference blocked our noise and the bird's sightline.  We were still further away than I would have liked to get a firm ID, but we were close enough to see distinctive white on the chest and a very obvious drooping black crest on the head of the male.  Joni was able to hold in conversation for a short period and I tried unsuccessfully to take pictures of the ducks thinking I could zoom in later, but they quickly became wise to our presence and flew away.  

Farm Happenings
We applied for a Resilient Food Infrastructure Grant last fall targeted at strengthening Maine's middle of the supply chain (post-harvest activities like packing and transporting).  We asked for a Ford Cargo Van.  We have severely outgrown our truck and Subaru, often limited on what we can bring to markets and other deliveries, leaving produce behind and making multiple trips especially in the winter.  We were notified last week that we have been recommended by the state of Maine to receive this grant.  We are awaiting a contract, and it is not official until that is signed in hand.  We are cautiously excited, and without any unforeseen hold ups in funds being released by the USDA we hope to have this in use for this farming season.  The state has indicated that they will be sending out contracts in the next few weeks.  Maine indicated that they had a high number of applications, so we are very grateful to have been selected.  We received help in various ways with our application, including many 'letters of support" from members, neighbors, and local businesses. If this all goes through it will be a huge boost to our business giving us a farm specific vehicle, allowing us to transport more produce.  It also alleviates the fear of needing to make a new vehicle purchase in the next few years, an impossibly expensive purchase.  

We have decided to take a pause on the solar project.  Although we were awarded this grant, the funds initially got held up with the administration change, and there is still some lack of clarity if they will be released.  For this project we would have had to front all of money and then been relying on a reimbursement along with a tax credit. At this point in time, we are not comfortable with that arrangement and feel it would be too financially risky without enough benefit for the farm.  Perhaps we will revisit this later.  

We decided to go for the deer fence.  This will be a huge project for us, requiring a small loan, but think it will be worth the peace of mind and reduction in labor hours long term.  We have hired a company out of southern New Hampshire to professionally install this, and it is projected to be started and completed in about 5 days during the end of June.  We will still have to set up our temporary system this year, but I will take pleasure in telling myself as I am doing it, that it's for the last time.   

We have struggled for years in designing a logo for our farm.  This is what we have come up with, a tribute to our seasonal yearly resident Killdeer.  
 

February 16th

Summer CSA Information:

We are adding back in an Earle Farm pickup this year.  Tom and Ruth have generously allowed/encouraged us to add a pickup back at their farm.  Please see the pickup options and details below as well as on our website.  We need a minimum of 10 to sign up at Earle Farm so tell your friends! 

February 16th,
Last weekend I treated myself to a weekend long tracking workshop called Wild Camp, "Tracking Deep Dive".  It was run by Andrews Nelson and her tracking partner Danielle. Based at Merrifield Farm, no longer in full farm operations but a well-known fixture in the Cornish and surrounding area and just on the other side of Hosac Mountain from us.   It was an interesting collection of people, several of them moms in a play group I've been part of for the last few years (including Danielle), one of my neighbors, a close neighbor of Merrifield Farm, and a few other new faces to me from further away.   In total there were 8 of us participants and after a brief time inside for some introductory discussions, we split into two groups and spent the next 5 or 6 hours exploring the woods.   My group followed the snowmobile trails stopping to examine any interesting tracks, and talking through the many possibilities of what animal made them.  The recently fallen deep snow made definitive identification difficult. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that often tracking remains a mystery, best solved by many hours of experience, getting to know the local animal population intimately, and the best action is to follow out a track until some identifying behavior might be observed.    We saw lots of squirrel tracks, one set in particular ending in a comical crystal-clear whole-body print of snow smushed against a tree.  After a quiet lunch sitting in the snow, we abandoned the snowmobile path and went off trail following an intriguing set of tracks that all we could tell for certain were likely made by a group of larger mammals.   The tracks meandered along the westerly side of an increasingly steeper hill, one set occasionally diverging from the others, only to rejoin several hundred feet later.  The deep snow and previous night's winds made distinguishing features (at least to me) invisible, but I found myself happy to be climbing, taking in the occasional views across a narrow valley up to the man cleared and snowy white top of Hosac.  It was a beautiful day to be in the woods, the fresh snow sparkling and the trees casting long shadows.  As the afternoon light changed to evening light, we abandoned the track, climbed to the summit of the hill we were nearest. We then changed courses pointing ourselves down and towards the farm, picking our way through the deep snow until we re-joined the trail.  There we came across the tracks of the other group who had clearly had their own set of adventures during the day.   When we re-convened the next day, we learned the other group had potentially answered the mystery of our track's identity. They had been on a less windblown section of the same set of tracks and discovered more clear evidence of coyote prints, and even a spot in the woods where it seemed some play behaviors could be observed.  Andrews' deep familiarity with the animals near her farm prompted a discussion about the potential reason for the coyotes traveling up the hill we climbed; often feeding on mice and smaller game, perhaps they were checking on the health of the deer population higher up to see if winter had yet made any of the animals weak enough for the pack to consider attempting to take one for food.  The next day after another fresh snowstorm we stayed closer to the farm learning more specific details of each animal's footprints such as toe numbers, relative print size, and gait behaviors.  Inside learning was interspersed with some outdoor play, where we watched a dog change gait and then followed along with his footprints in the snow.  We made mystery human track scenes in pairs for each other, again showing me just how difficult it is to recreate a scene based on footprints alone.   I left the weekend with a great appreciation for our woods, and for the multi-faceted knowledge being an experienced tracker requires.  Although at this point in my busy life I don't feel like I have the patience to follow out tracks or do lengthy woods "sits" to observe passing animals, I felt the experience expanded and strengthened my natural curiosity of the subject.   I've been on a winter reading binge consuming a number of good books with animals as their focus.  "The Tiger", "Coyote America", "A World on the Wing", and "How to Tame a Fox" to name a few.  I've also found myself trying to move more quietly and now watching the dog move out ahead of me in the snow and following along seeing if I can identify when a walk turns to a trot and so on....
If anyone wants to learn more or try a "Wild Camp" adventure go HERE to learn more....

Farm News:

Solar: The solar project is on pause.  With federal grant funding and tax credit uncertainty we are waiting to make a decision on this project.  The grant award allows us two years to begin construction on this project.  
Fence: We are considering investing in permanent deer fencing for our garden. We have to this point been relying on a 3D fencing strategy for the deer where there are two sets of electric lines for the deer, the outermost line baited with apple scent.  The idea is that deer have bad depth perception, so they are deterred by depth of the fence not the height.  They also learn not to walk through the lines by touching the bait caps first with their noses if at all, as with their insulated hooves they are notoriously hard to shock.  This fence has been about 90% effective for the deer but comes with a number of headaches, like regularly refreshing the bait scent, checking the strength of the electric current through the fence, and weekly weed whacking under the lowest line to prevent grounding.  We also have had a number of severe thunderstorms come through in the middle of the night and always wrestling with unplugging the fence charger or not.  This past summer our charger even unplugged got fried by a massive lightning strike and melted an electric outlet in the barn.  In addition, this fence does not prevent the invasion of other critters.  In the last couple of years, we have had a very persistent family of geese that walk from the pond to the garden to graze in the evenings.  Although the dogs are excellent deterrents the geese quickly learn what hours of the day it is safe to graze and two years ago in one evening ate and destroyed about 200ft of young cabbage plants.  In response last year we added a non-electrified stretch of flexi net along the pond side, and this was effective once staked down every 10ft to prevent the geese from walking through and under the netted lines.  Kyle and I are starting to feel like this is a cumbersome amount of non-permanent fencing that is sucking up a significant amount of valuable time each week to properly maintain, not to mention the yearly not insignificant purchases involved in upkeep with the overall keep you up in the middle of the night knowledge that it's not 100% effective  So, we are getting quotes for a permanent solution and talking through the farm economics of the purchase. It feels like the next logical BIG investment/improvement for our farm. Stay tuned! 

Fun Note: Spinach is alive and well in the tunnel and tasting so good! Pretty amazing despite these long cold stretches.  

February News

Summer CSA Information:

We are adding back in an Earle Farm pickup this year.  Tom and Ruth have generously allowed/encouraged us to add a pickup back at their farm.  We are slowly re-energizing as the kids are getting a bit older. Phew! Please see the pickup options and details below as well as on our website.  We need a minimum of 10 to sign up at Earle Farm so tell your friends! 

February News,

We took down two big ash trees this year, one by the barn, and another by the house.  The one by the barn was the easier decision, its top had struggled to leaf out for years and several of its large top branches were clearly dead filling with woodpecker holes and starting to randomly break off.  When it finally came down, the whole inside center was hollow, been rotting away, invisible to us for years.  The other tree was a harder decision.  It was a gorgeous, straight, tall, with elegant symmetrical branches, its canopy arching over one side of our house. I felt a stubborn defiance about not cutting it down for years, counter to the general thinking that all native Ash trees are slated to die from the invasive Ash-Borer beetle.  This tree was so thick, so tall, so strong, maybe it could be one of the few that weathers the storm.  But then woodpecker holes started showing up in the lower branches, and last summer it didn't leaf out quite as well as years past, a sign indicating its overall declining health.  Kyle and I went back and forth about if we should limb the branches that overhung the house, and I spent many hours staring at it deciding which way it would fall and if that would mean it would crush our house. Windy nights started to keep both of us awake and worried, as all creatures', human and pet, sleep on the tree side of the house. The other ash, on the property and in general, are showing more obvious signs of wear from the borer, the outer bark flaking off leaving bright brown streaks, a sure sign of death to come.   Last March we finally did it, hired a man to come cut it down.  It took him a few hours, skillfully tying ropes to pull it away from the house as it fell.  I disappeared to the woods for the day not wanting to witness its death firsthand.  Kyle said as it fell the ripping wood make sounds like gun shots going off it crashed thankfully away from the house but through the branches of several of our small apple trees.  And there it sat all summer, us being too busy to clean it up until fall.  Joni and I counted the rings and were surprised to find it was only about 70 years old, it was deceptively large, but I learned Ash are fast growing, and it had a prime spot with no competing trees nearby.  The look of the house without its tree was disturbing at first, but we've gotten used to the change, and have a collection of saplings coming this spring in an effort to replant the ones we've lost and will continue to lose. 

CSA 2025 Details

Pickup Location Options:

• Hosac Farm-Cornish Maine -Thursdays - 4-6pm

• Earle Farm-South Conway New Hampshire- Thursdays -4-6pm

We chose to raise our prices this year because of our rising input costs, thank you for understanding and choosing to support our farm, we are grateful for all of our members

Share Options:

• Full Share Cost: 525.00 for 14 weeks Late June-October Hosac Farm ONLY

• Summer Share Cost 325.00 for 8 weeks July-September Hosac Farm ONLY

• Earle Farm option Cost: 400.00 for 10 weeks Mid July-September Earle Farm ONLY

• Flower share 250.00 for about 8 to 10 weeks of a weekly fresh bouquet. Hosac or Earle

• If you are picking up at Earle Farm, we will be sending out a produce list by Tuesday of each week and ask you email us your item selection by Wednesday night, or we will make a random selection. Shares at Earle Farm will be pre-boxed. We are experimenting with how it feels time wise for us to add back in the Earle Farm pickup this year so have made the decision to shorten it to 10 weeks. If you are selecting the Earle Farm and would like to do the whole share that is fantastic but will need to pick up the first and last 2 weeks of the season at our farm in Cornish or arrange a drive share.

January News

Summer C.S.A. signups are open, read more below.

As we are winding down our winter CSA season and have run out of enough food to be worth attending the Bridgton Market, we are truly in winter, and our days have taken on the familiar unhurried flow that I look forward to in the busiest summer months.  Mornings are still early, sleeping past 6 a distant and blurry, luxurious memory, and the first hour of the day is filled quickly with the readying of children and the feeding of animals. A new routine for us this year is getting Joni out the door and onto the bus, and once she is headed to school Kyle and I usually take turns walking the dogs.   The older dog is given the choice if he wants to go along, and the younger one is always eager and ready to go, conditioned now by the act of us putting on our boots and the word "walk". Cold sustained temperatures have the pond frozen solid for the first time in several years and we are happily using it as our winter playground. We were treated to a few weeks of glorious ice skating before this last little layer of snow covered the ice.  Before the snow, Joni mastered balancing on her own in skates, and Ryah tried on a pair but decidedly preferred to slip slide around in her boots.   The rising and setting sun each day makes the ice "talk", deep echoing regular woops and waaps, and the kids were excited to trek down to listen and skate.  Snow has made the pond talk less and it is now covered with layers of our tracks documenting our daily walks with dogs and afternoon outings with children and sleds.  The footprints of deer and coyotes are mixed in with ours and I imagine them wandering the pond at night taking in our information though scent and feeling as familiar with our daily habits as we feel with them.    Sprinkled into our meandering days is some vegetable packing or harvesting for the winter CSA which is now winding down, and there is always the never ending need to clean and organize the garage and barn no matter how many times or how recently it has been done.  I have two dinner shifts at Kristas this winter, which helps offset the feelings of unproductivity that always accompany the slowdown of deep winter.  

Farm Activity:

We applied for and received a grant to that would cover part of the cost to put up solar panels at the farm.  We are working through the logistics, finances, and the timing to make a final decision if this project is a good fit for the farm.  

We applied for a resilient agriculture grant through the USDA to expand Maine's middle of the supply chain activities.  You can read more about it here. We requested funds for a delivery van as our current vehicles are way beyond capacity.  This grant received a large number of applications, and we will not hear back until March.  We received a huge amount of help with the application from a very knowledgeable friend and also as part of the process had to receive letters of support from the community.  Working on this grant highlighted the valuable relationships we have built along with our business and for that we are very grateful.  Thank you!  

Sign-ups for the 2025 summer CSA are open.  www.hosacfarm.com/csa to check it out. We did have a small crew that coordinated a drive share situation to the South Conway area.  If you are interested in this, please email for more information. 

We are casually talking about extending the Foothill Farm Alliance into the summer and offering expanded pickup locations in the Conway area, but it is unclear if this will be ready to get off the ground for 2025.  

We will be attending the Bridgton Farmers Markets on Saturdays starting again sometime in May or June.  

We will be attending the Kennebunk Farmers Market on Saturdays starting in June.  

December news

December News

The season's first storm caught us mildly by surprise.  Long, warm, fall temperatures made us relaxed and fairly unmotivated to finish up the last few gardens' clean up chores.  Snow fell on sections of flexi netting and the lengths of hoses running out to the tunnel, cementing them onto the ground for now. The greens in the tunnel are tucked under blankets of "Remay", removed for a few hours each sunny day to ventilate, and we cross our fingers the spinach and bok choi will still look decent after these cold night temperatures. 

 Along with the colder weather, the barn cat brothers "Fred" and "George" got their annual invitation to enter our home.  In part because of the cold, and also because they offer good rodent deterrent during a time of year when we are storing lots of produce in various locations throughout our old house.  Although they are always eager to come in and lounge, in years past they have had an annoying habit of meowing loudly at 2am if kept in overnight.  They are 5 years old, the same age as Joni, and each winter I am hopeful they will have settled enough to be quiet through the night.  My tolerance for being woken up by a creature other than a small child over the last few years has extremely diminished.  We built them an insulated, heated box to be sent out to, after first testing them inside for a few overnights each year.  This winter, so far, the cats seem to finally have settled, and they have been sleeping indoors now with us for several weeks.  

It's fun to have them in the house with us. Good winter entertainment, they are both exceptionally friendly and tolerant of the rough ways of the youngest human, often being tugged on before we can get there to rescue, they seem to enjoy often being half inside the young dog's mouth.    

 I give the cats the recommend feeding size for two, but Fred is too thin, and George is too fat, and it's hard to find a way around this as they share food access.  Watching George squeeze himself through the cat door to the basement, I was suddenly struck with the image of him stuck there like Whinnie the Poo.  I pointed this out to Joni, as we had just listened to that story, and we had a good laugh imagining what we might decorate his bottom with should he get stuck.   We laughed at how sad he would be not being able to reach his food bowl and listening to Fred snacking behind him. 

Its slower and more cumbersome to get out of the house now, especially with the kids, more layers, more complaining, cold fingers and toes while processing vegetables, but I mostly enjoy the seasonal shift.  Morning walks are less rushed and therefore more luxurious, and the snow cover makes everything extra beautiful and has slowed down the ticks.  I like being able to see farther through the trees, far off hills usually obscured by thick summer leaves are now visible. The Hosac Mountain ridge across the pond glows each evening, visible from our field for about 20 minutes during sunset, and I wonder if I will ever feel sick of this beautiful place.  

 
We are attending the Bridgton Farmers' Marketeach Saturday 9-12 at the Masonic Lodge until we run out of food.

We are in the 3rd week of our winter CSA cooperative the Foothill Farm Alliance

Our seed order came in, and sooner than we know it, it will be time to plan for Summer 2025.  

Fall News

LAST CHANCE FOR WINTER CSA 2024/2025 sign ups....
http://www.thefoothillfarmalliance.com

The first real frost of fall came last week.  It's been coming late for several years now. So regular in its lateness that it feels unsurprising and expected.  It was fun to walk into the garden early the next morning after the frost, hearing the frozen long green blades of grass crunch softly beneath my feet. I looked at the remains of the flowers, eggplants, and tall kale plants all wearing beautiful transparent sheets of sparkling ice.  The fall greens next to the tunnel looked frozen stiff, bent over heavy with the extra weight.   I briefly second guessed my decision to leave the unharvested Chinese cabbage uncovered overnight, but decided it was a for fun experimental planting anyway. In contrast to outside, a quick peak inside the greenhouse revealed happy perky rows of greens and the interior thermometer read a balmy 42 degrees.  The dogs ran back and forth wild in the chilly air as I walked the field, sniffing the tracks of all the creatures that visited the farm in the night.   I took in what has now come to be a sign of mid-fall, the frozen gardens making me feel strangely peaceful. As I was snapping photos of frosty plants, I got several texts from other farmer friends sending pictures of their fields. It seems for all of us farmers it felt good to see the frost, a signal to the end of a long season, an end to certain bugs and weeds, and a sure sign that we are winding down into winter. The early frosts we haven't had in several years now used to send us into a panic of mad dashing to cover tender plants with plastic and any other long sheets of fabric we had available, hoping to eke out a few more weeks of harvest profitability.  The first year we did our cooperative winter squash planting we had to harvest all of it in Mid-September ahead of a predicted 30-degree night that would have damaged the fruits.  We got what we could out of the field in one day and left the rest stacked in boxes in the field protected by tarps to keep the frost out until we could come back the next day.  Now the delay in frost has us all relaxed in our harvesting and planting late rounds of greens, and peppers and tomatoes into late October.  
The Chinese cabbage and other greens easily recovered once the sun warmed their leaves. I harvested some last week, and now with a week of warmer temperatures again, it has more of them heading up nicely.  The greens and carrots in the greenhouse are still sitting without their row covers, although we did set up the hoops as a mild attempt to be prepared for the eventual colder temperatures.  Our storage areas are full to the brim for winter, the walk-in cooler, potato room, and odd places around our house.  It's fun in a way to see all the boxes of winter squash living in our mudroom but I look forward to them slowly disappearing over the next few months so we can get to our shoes and coats again with ease.  

We will be attending the Bridgton Winter Farmers Market at the Masonic Lodge, until we run out of food, every Saturday starting November 9th.  

Our Cooperative Winter CSA the Foothill Farm Alliance starts November 9th and pickups are every other week for 7 weeks through the winter.  There are four pickup locations to choose from.  Go to the website to sign up.  www.thefoothillfarmalliance.com

CSA week 13

We’ve been frolicking through the cover crop in the evenings. I lure the kids into the garden with the promise of husk cherries. We didn’t plant any intentionally this year but a handful of plants have come up in scattered places as volunteers. It gets both the kids moving through the garden in the later hours of the day when we are simultaneously trying to burn up any left over physical energy and avoiding aggravating their deteriorating mental energies. The garden is always most beautiful in the evenings maybe especially in the fall when many beds of plastic have been pulled and are replaced with a thick mat of green oats. Stetson watches us longingly waiting for our season to complete so he can be set free in the garden to browse on all our un harvested leftovers and the lush cover crop. I would always let him out around this time just putting up un-electrified flexi-net around un-harvested beds but he discovered this spring he could simply push through them to get what he wants so now he must wait. We’ve been spending some long days at our Conway planting and now the sweet potatoes and squash are all curing and there is maybe a day or two work up there to clean up.

In the share: please take 8 and PYO zinnias

• Sweet potatoes

• Butternut squash

• Acorn squash

• Delicata squash

• Sungolds

• Yellow onions

• Sweet peppers

• Cabbage

• Potatoes

• Lettuce

• Kale

• Eggplant

• Parsley

• Beets

• Leeks

CSA week 11

Long days getting fall food in, Moon and I spent the day yesterday up at our cooperative planting in the Albany town forest harvesting winter squash with friends and frolicking in a sea of sweet potato vines. We will be harvesting the remaining squash and starting in on sweets over the next two weeks.

Please take 8 items

• Yellow onions

• Red onions

• Delicata squash

• Spaghetti squash

• Acorn squash

• Potatoes

• Sweet peppers

• Jalapeños

• Pablanos

• Butter lettuce

• Chinese cabbage

• Cabbage

• Sungolds

• Kale

• Beets

• Parsley

C.S.A. week 10

Last Friday I snuck out for an evening walk. Upon my return I looked up to see probably 200-300 birds circling over our house and field. I called for Kyle and the kids to come out, and we watched them and took some poor-quality video. The birds were about 3 times the size of a swallow and had a distinctive white stripe on the underside of each wing near the tip. We watched them circling for about 30 minutes or so until their numbers started to dwindle. Joni and Ryah both enjoyed watching them, Joni asking questions as usual about the birds’ behaviors.

The woman who volunteers with us is a Maine master naturalist and has a special interest in birds. She had mentioned to me last week in the garden that it was about the right time to keep an eye out for Nighthawks, as their migration south was around now. She said they would be best seen in the evening hours. I didn’t think I would see the Nighthawks or more specifically, know if I saw them. But here they were above our house in such numbers I have never seen in any other bird before here or anywhere. A quick internet search showed their distinctive shape and wing stripes and talked about them congregating in large numbers over a particularly good feeding area usually near water. I sent the poor video to a few other friends with bird interests to share my excitement, and did see a few more Nighthawks the next evening at a friend’s place but not in impressive numbers. The evening walk return timing must have been just perfect and I had I not gone perhaps we would have missed seeing them.

In the share:

Please take 8 items, and as many as you can eat or can red tomatoes, and PYO basil. This is likely the last good week for basil, its going to seed.

• Chinese cabbage

• Butter lettuce

• Sungolds

• Sweet peppers

• Jalepenos

• Beets

• Carrots

• Summer Squash

• Potatoes

• Red Onions

• Leeks

• Green Beans

• Lacinato Kale

• Parsley