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Your check reserves your Little Flower Farm Share!
Check out the sidebar pages for more info!
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| 2021 CSA bouquets ready for delivery |
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Sign up for our 2022 Season!
Goat Cheese Shares are Back!
GOAT CHEESE SHARES!
Support our wee herd of Nubians with your $25 investment, and get a dividend of 4 weeks of cheese!
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| Hello Gorgeous! LuLu, ready for her close up |
The Ideal CSA Member
In Winter the “littles” play at garden with the bath mat.
While the morning shower washes the residue of sleepy dreams
from my stretching, yawning frame, they are busy with combs and brushes
“cultivating” the shaggy strands that stand in for the soil of imaginary fields
awaiting precipitation.
“You’re the rain Mama! Come rain on our garden!” they cry as I step out and reach for a towel.
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| Harvest Day |
Later, in February, the light begins to strengthen and the
children gaze out the window suddenly disdainful of the recent pleasures of ice
skating and sledding, positively nostalgic for summer.
“Remember the green grass we had last year Mama! We had all
the green we wanted in all the world!”
Like bears coming out of hibernation we put in our seed
orders in January, send out our farm-share ads in February, and now, as March
approaches, I find my mind tracking the goats at the back of all the day to day
thoughts of Algebra, Laundry, Dinner, and the dusting I plan to do sometime in
the near future.
Next week we’ll begin regular barn checks to see if any of
the does are kidding. This time of year can be difficult for young kids,
especially smaller siblings born after a stronger kid has already managed to
get up on its feet nursing. The cold and the competition can prove too steep a
challenge for some of them without some timely assistance. (Or so we tell
ourselves, eager to lend a hand and get back into the intimate game of husbandry,
tired of our woodstoves, and quite evenings, ready to begin again.)
Farm-Share checks are beginning to come in. It feels like
the assembling of old friends.
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| Swiss Chard and Summer Cover Crop 2021 |
Perhaps the greatest shot in the arm is the sense that there are a few folks out there who understand how beautiful it can be to take an interest in a farm, to put food on their table that has been grown and harvested without exploitation of either the people working on the farm, or the farm itself. Who are ready and willing for the challenge of eating seasonally, locally, and giving up some of the almighty luxury of choice.
A few years ago we had a booth at a CSA fair in Minneapolis.
Almost every farmer we met there was anxious about the future of Community
Supported Agriculture. Most of them were taking every opportunity to chat with
each other and ask the dreaded question of how many members they were retaining
each year, and how they had evolved to meet the ever -changing desires of their
members. With very few exceptions most of them had begun to offer “Pick and
Choose” options at their farmer’s market stands each week, for members to come
and fill a box with the veggies they preferred and leave the ones they didn’t.
Many had online marketplaces, and were harvesting individual weekly orders.
Many had diversified their share sizes, offering various sizes to meet the
different needs of families, couples, and individuals. All of them were larger
programs than ours, and I grew dizzy at the logistical nightmares they were
describing: trying to fulfill such a vast array of desires, and chasing down
multiple orders, marketing them multiple ways, and the man-power such daily
efforts required.
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| Grazing Goats in the Kale Bed after CSA season |
I told one fellow veggie grower that I could not shake the feeling that these farms had failed to communicate with their members the realities involved for the farmers when grocery store styled “choice” was made paramount. I felt certain that most folks signing up for a farm-share would understand that eating what was available on the farm each week was part of the whole point of supporting a local farm, and that asking the small farm to be both the farmer and “grocer” at the same time, in the pursuit of providing the same amount of choice experienced at the stores, would be unrealistic, and downright unsupportive. Those who still valued their choice over the farm and farmer’s welfare, should be encouraged to go back to the store or farmer’s market, I argued.
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but you’ll lose some folks. These
days we can’t afford to lose anybody. We’re trying to retain as many as we can,
even as they seem to grow bored of the CSA model.”
As if to prove his point a woman interrupted us with a
barrage of questions and demands.
She had a long list of things she wanted, things she didn’t,
and wanted a pro-rated share for the weeks she’d be out of town.
Our answers were simple, but not satisfying to her. She left
in a huff, shaking her head.
“See what I mean?” my fellow farmer finished. But I was more
glad that she left, than I was worried that we didn’t have enough to offer.
“You can’t build a farm with members like that” I said.
Big words, I thought, but you can’t eat ideals!
That’s when the man in the Carhart vest to the right of our
booth stepped over to introduce himself. He didn’t need to. I already knew who he
was. I’d read several articles featuring his farm, a venture he and his
brothers had begun in the Driftless region of Southwest WI on a shoestring.
They were now a 400 member CSA farm and were making organic oils out of their
sunflower crops, developing quite a name for themselves as one of the very few
local producers.
“I miss the days out in the field.” He told me. “We got so
big, I don’t even do the farming anymore. I think you’re right to stay small.
It will keep you remembering why you’re doing it in the first place.”
He was wistful, and I was heartened.
Since then, we’ve found that there is an ever- growing group
of people out there who are willing to sign themselves up to the adventure of
supporting and eating from a farm. These people understand the “choice” the
grocery store touts is largely mythological. Fewer varieties are available to
the shopper in the store, due to the limited varieties that are conducive to
shipping, and growing on a massive scale.
One choice you will never be given in a large grocery store
is the choice of “fresh”. Our farm harvests the bulk of the vegetables in our
shares hours before delivery, or at the most, a day in advance. There is no
transit time across state lines in a semi-truck, waiting on pallets in the back
of a distribution warehouse cooler.
Though the CSA model, is in my opinion, not as ideal as the
European markets, which are open every day, largely unregulated, and are part
of the daily habit of people in those walkable, live-able, closer-knit regions,
it remains a vivifying way to connect to the land, eat well, and promote local
stewardship of precious resources.
The ideal CSA member is one who is willing to give up the
tired habit of getting what they want when they want it (at any cost), and is
open to the surprise and responsibility of gift.
In this way, they are very like the farmers who grow their
food.
Beatrix and the Blessed Sacrament
J.S. Marcus’ Jan.21st article on Beatrix Potter in the Wall
Street journal states that “at the height of her fame, she began to wind down
her career to devote herself to sheep farming in England’s Lake District.”
In reality, she chose to devote herself to her husband and
become Mrs. Heelis. Mrs. Heelis, as Mrs. Heelis, would of course be “a country
woman” and involved in animal husbandry and care of the farm and gardens. Why
should this fact be less accessible to the current readers of newspapers than
the fact that she became a “woman farmer”?
The article continues and finishes in similar fashion:
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| The curmudgeonly Mrs. Heelis with muddy clogs |
“…but according to a BBC radio documentary about the writer,
she developed a curmudgeonly streak and, eventually a reputation for not liking
children all that much. By the 1920s, Potter, now known as Mrs. Heelis, was
shouting down misbehaving Lake District children…. this final incarnation of
Beatrix Potter is evoked in the (new exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert
Museum) by a pair of her crude farmer’s clogs.”
Oh dear. Married, miffed by miscreants ruining her
shrubberies, AND possessed of muddy farmer’s clogs. How far she managed
to fall from the accolades and fame she earned for pictures of bunnies in
waistcoats and hedgehogs in ruffled aprons!
When will the world realize that the measure of a person is in how small and insignificant, they’ve managed to become in some forgotten part of the world, and whether they have found someone to love, and love well?
Of NFTs and Furbelows
Furbelow
1: A pleated or gathered piece of material: ruffle; specif: a flounce on woman’s clothing. 2: something that suggests a furbelow esp. in being showy or superfluous
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| Important Historical illustration of a Furbelow |
On our farm we embrace technological poverty.
It’s part of our commitment to invest in each other and to
be content to be attentive stewards on our scrap of land.
I still find it an endless source of amusement to hear how
portions of the rest of the world fare
in the whole- hearted embrace of tech as the new messiah of our lives, which
will make all things new, and make our yokes easy and burdens light.
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| The new L.F.F. Nubian herd sampling Fall kale beds |
According to Fortune.com, last year a bored teenager named Jaiden Stipp made a piece of digital artwork.
He listed it online. It sold for 20 Ethereum. At first his
father was incredulous. Then the $30,000 hit his son’s bank account.
Today he employs a few artists. His mother has quit her job
to work as his manager. His art sales are now valued at over 1 million dollars.
His dad no longer scoffs.
I listened to this story on the radio, trying to grasp what
exactly a NFT was. To no real avail.
A google search at the library revealed crummy electronic
images of dogs with sun glasses, pictures of grinning excited millennials, and
a Ven diagram of the properties of NFTs (indivisible, unique, and provably
scarce.) Sounds like the traditional family, I thought cheekily, as I scrolled
down to find the other things that people who searched for NFTS were also
interested in. One of them caught my eye:
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| 2021 Hogs on Harvest Day |
HYDROPONICS.
Ah. The ever-present attraction of the almighty machine
which does work for us while we avoid getting our cuffed sweatpants dirty.
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Tokens. Non exchangeable.
Tokens. That make millions.
The word Fungible takes up its space in the dictionary just
after “funeral” and is closely followed by fungicide and fun house. As I tried
to wrap my mind around what fungibility is and how non fungibility could
possibly result in something agreed upon to have value, and be bought and paid
for with an electronic currency which is then converted into the very fungible
heap-big-pile-o-cash, I found my eyes and mind wandering to the next page of
the dictionary where the equally interesting word “furbelow” resides…and the
story I remember loving as a child: “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”
In her book “On Pilgrimage” Dorothy Day tells of a Jewish
law she had heard of, in which, if a Father does not teach his son a trade, the
son’s obligation to take care of his father in old age is waived.
It is chilling to realize that even as we sit our children
down in front of television sets as baby sitters, and give them the hand held
screens of our smartphones to occupy them during any kind of wait in the
Doctor’s office, or dining out during a family dinner, instead of teaching them
the superpowers of patience, industry, and human connection and conversation,
we are building for our generation the future we will inhabit in the nursing
homes of the next generation: completely machine managed, in which medications
are dispensed by robots, families say goodbye to dying loved ones via zoom, and
the tasks which bring people in direct contact with bodies and their bodily
fluids are managed by low-paid over worked vulnerable immigrants and teenagers.
Oh wait. The future is now.
“Yes, we will have more time with modern conveniences,
but we will not have more love”
-Dorothy Day
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| Dorothy Day with her grandchildren (cjd.org) |
A fellow I know who works in H.R. and
“knows a lot about farming because of all his connections with farmers through
his work” told me that I wouldn’t believe how high-tech dairy farming has
gotten. He said to me: “It’s amazing! Gone are the old days of the dumb hick
farmer figuring out a ration for his cows. Now they’ve got these computers
hooked up to the feed troughs. They can ascertain all the right vitamins and
minerals for each individual cow, and send the feed needed without the farmer.
Hundreds and Hundreds of cows kept track of like that!”
I tried to scale the lofty heights of his splendorous awe,
but kept getting hung up on the image of hundreds and hundreds of grain-fed
dairy cows in stanchions on cement-looking out over lagoons of manure pit
slurry.
Would it have been any use to mention that the “dumb hick
farmers of the old days” knew that the cow is a ruminant, and as such, thrives
on grass and not on grain? Funny how “dumb” is really dog whistling for “content
with a financial situation which is now deemed socially unfashionable, foolish,
and unacceptable.”
“Cold and hunger and hard lodging, humble offices and
mean appearance are considered serious evils. All things harsh and austere are
carefully put aside. We shrink from the rude lap of earth and embrace of the
elements, and we build ourselves houses in which the flesh may enjoy its lust
and the eye its pride”
John Cardinal Henry Newman’s Lenten sermons
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| Resident Goatherd#2 |
But his bank account will likely not suddenly swell with the
likes of 30K.
His constant and quixotic investments in invisible realties
like soil health and family unity and the souls of his children will be scoffed
at.
Perhaps worst of all, and the most unpardonable: he will
have dirt on his furbelows.
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| Resident Goatherd #1 |
“Don’t worry Papa. I know what to do.”
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