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Hug Your Farmer! from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

Look at those Leeks!

And one happy parsnip picker!

The Richmond Elementary school kids came down to our leased farm in Richmond Village to harvest Leeks and Parsnips for their school lunch program.  Always good to get kids and parents on the farm to see where their food can come from.  In this case - right out their back doors on a village farm!

To see more pics go to our Flickr page:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerichofarm/

Montreal Sausage Trip

Spent the day researching sausages up in Montreal.  The goal is to produce some incredible sausages from our meats.  We perused 3 different locations in Montreal:  Marche Jean Talon, Little Italy and Marche Atwater.  

Here are some pics of the day!

Poor Farmers Pallet Potato Planter

Works Great!

Birthday Boy!

Asa turned the Big 5 today!  Here he is relaxing at camp with his littler sister Hazel who turned 5 months.

We got off the farm for the past few weekends to enjoy the nice weather up in the Northeast Kingdom, where Christa's folks have a camp on a lovely lake.  We slept in, ate great food, canoed, played games, read books... started to feel like regular folk for a change!

Busy Spring!

The farm animals are generating offspring...

and the Farm Crew is laboring in the fields!

We couldn't farm very well without them.

Eating out of the backyard

Our patch of wild leeks out in a wooded section of our backyard.  The gastronomical possibilities are mind boggling!

Washed and cleaned ready for eating...

The result... sauteed wild leeks in red wine and balsamic vinegar, mesclun from the hoophouse, our farm's 100% grassfed beef, Does Leap Farm Caprella.  

Beverage: raw milk, local wine or homebrew.

Ironman

Giroux Body Shop - a farmer's friend!  These guys are great, if i have a thorny issue with some farm machinery or equipment I take it to them.  Countless times I have taken a photo of another farmers piece of equipment and had them build it for me.  Or I come up with an idea on a piece of scrap paper and Steve fine tunes the drawing and specs before building.

Here they are at some of the machines they use to fabricate metal parts and pieces.  I bought a 6 ft section of square steel tubing as a tool bar for one of the farm implements.  A tool bar is just that, a bar that you add various farming tools to such as:  cultivator shovels, disc hillers, etc.

My imagination and pocketbook are the only limiting factors with these great folks in the next town over (Hinesburg, Vermont).

Other Farmers Iron

I have a fondness for Farmers Iron.  There I've said it and I am not ashamed!

My favorite iron pile is at my neighbor Ed's dairy farm down the road.  I have bought my share of iron from him over the years, and have never been disappointed.  

The coolest piece of iron he has is a rock picker, made in Montana!  I could use it on the home farm which consists of Peru Stony Loam (emphasis on stony).  The other land we lease has few if any rocks on it and most of the veggies are grown there.

I took a friend up today to see Ed's rock picker in the pouring rain. It was decided that it was too much iron for his small rocky plot.

Later in the day after making deliveries to Burlington stores, I stopped off at the Intervale to chat with Thomas of Arethusa Collective Farm about tractors (of course).  He showed me the beautiful Allis Chalmers Gleaner Combine he purchased last year from a farmer down in Addison County.  Thomas uses it for beans and harvesting seed from cover crops grown on their organic farm.

Spring has Sprung!

Some photos of Spring!

Annual sheep shearing with Sally's sheepdog keeping the crew in check!







Asa enjoying some Sugar on Snow (with a pickle) at a sugarhouse in Huntington, Vermont.








Seeded Transplants are up in the greenhouse and ready for the field hoophouse.

How to get a "G" home

Picked up an Allis Chalmers "G" cultivating tractor today in Brookfield, Vermont.  I bought it in the fall from an old dairy farmer who runs a sizeable dairy operation (look at his JD corn harvester).  He saw it on a trip in the southern states and had to have it.  That was about 4 years ago and he found that he doesn't use it much anymore.

So after dropping off 15 lambs this morning for slaughter, I headed with the livestock trailer to pick up the "G".  I was taking a chance on whether it would fit in the livestock trailer, but I remember it having the wheels on the narrowest setting.  It was a squeeze, but it fit in just fine and was easier to fasten down than on a flat bed trailer.

This "G" might be going to a vegetable farmer in Burlington who has been on the lookout for one.  Its gone already!

Early Spring!

We have had some beautiful weather this last week...40s, 50s and 60s for the weekend.  Lots going on around the farm.  The laying hens are roaming on the vegetable fields adjacent to the hoophouse, they are going crazy for the worms and greens.  Lots of planting going on in the hoophouses, put in some early potatoes today.  Spinach is taking off in the hoophouses, as is the fall garlic planting.  Many seeds being planted in the greenhouse for future transplants.  

The pigs are enjoying the sunshine lolling around their round bales of hay and digging deep for worms.  Mostly they just sleep in the warm sunshine.

Don't know how long this will last....but its nice while its here!

Beer or Eggs

When I gave a workshop at the Vermont NOFA Winter Conference on our winter production of eggs and mentioned what we sell a dozen eggs for, quite a few folks gasped at the price ($5.00 a doz at the Farmers Markets). They said they could never sell eggs from their farms for that price. I suggested they ask their customers what they pay for a 6 or 12 pack of beer (it will likely be more than a dozen local eggs). Then point out to the customer all of the things they can use those eggs for: baking, scramble, sunnyside up, poached, hard boil, egg salad sandwich, pound cake, omelet, pancakes, waffles, deviled eggs....

Those local eggs are better for you than beer, and you don't need to show ID to purchase them!

For more egg related info from our farm, check out a recent Burlington Free Press article about our winter egg production.

Cheers!

christa and asa drawing lambs

christa and asa drawing lambs
Originally uploaded by Jericho Settlers Farm

Here is a great photo of Christa and Asa on the pasture at The Barber Farm land we lease in June of 2009. Christa is drawing some pictures of the mother ewes and their lambs. Spring 2010 will be here before you know it!

January Thaw!

Let me tell you about the wind! It howls around these parts when the weather warms up. We had our "January Thaw" and 3 ft of snow disappeared in a few days. Of course the warm southerly winds made a mess of things to.

When I drove up to our leased farm to feed the cattle, I noticed something didn't look quite right down the pasture road. So I drove down aways and there was our egg mobile turned upside down! Luckily the laying hens are on the home farm in the hoophouse for the winter.

I get to add another item to the list of things to do on the farm this spring!

Winter feeding of our beef herd

Winter feeding
Originally uploaded by Jericho Settlers Farm

Guess what our cattle eat in the winter time?

Hay, minerals and water.

Here is a photo of some of the calves from this summer bellying up to the bale. This was during early January with nearly 3 feet of snow on the ground!

Hoophouses in Winter

Hoophouses in Winter
Originally uploaded by Jericho Settlers Farm

We received around 2 1/2 feet of snow in early January, on top of another earlier foot of snow. As you can see the two field hoophouses are fairly well covered. We shovel snow from the sides and knock off snow from the roof so we can get some light for the greens growing inside. Our Winter CSA members got some great sweet spinach in the mid January Share!

New Hoophouse

We finally finished putting up a large 30ft wide by 140ft long hoophouse for the winter laying flock of 800 layers. They have been out on pasture until now. The will spend the winter roaming around in the hoophouse adding fertility for next springs vegetable crops.

Thanks to Charlie, Matt and Steve for putting in the groundposts.

Thanks to Adam and Matt our trusty farm hands for building the house and for braving the winds while putting the plastic on!

Thanks to Ed Persons of Ledgewood Farm for making incredible hoophouse frames and providing excellent service!