I was by myself at the farm for a few months, and during that time it was hard to get much of anything started.  I can’t even remember what projects I finished.  It just didn’t amount to much.  Most of my time was spent wandering around looking at whatever.  There were plenty of old junk piles to pick through and branches to break underfoot.

Kristin moved up in November, easing the loneliness and becoming an inspiration to get some things done.  We split wood, carried cedar posts out of the forest and tried to get our little room in order.  That continues as Kristin builds kitchen cabinets from scratch.

A few weeks ago, Gray came to live with us.  Then Noel started living at the farm most of the time.  In a few days, Danielle will be here and the farm will have its full crew.

The animal workforce – in addition to the human mules – is trickling in to the farm.  A few weeks ago, Noel brought five barred rock chicks home.  Gray built them a small chicken sled, which is a variation of chicken tractor but without wheels.

We use our daylight free time to watch the chicks’ evolution from little puffballs into dirt scratching, bug eating, fertilization helpers.  Their first contribution to the farm is their crap, with eggs still months and months off.

Oh, and just so you know, the chicks are Bosco, Scritchy Scratch, Rufous Beaver, and Peachy Tips.  One remains unnamed, but Kristin wants to call it Mike Slaton.  I said it might be confusing when it comes time to put Mike Slaton in a roaster.  People might get the wrong idea about us if they overheard the conversation…

Speaking of Mike, he is hoping to raise up turkeys on some adjacent land:

If you are interested in having a delicious, pastured, naturally raised, Heritage breed turkey on your table for Thanksgiving this year please consider purchasing one from me.   Here is how we are going to do it:

In order to meet everyones’ demand for a turkey this year, a CSA type situation would work best.  In order to help me as a farmer with the initial costs, including buying the poults, feed, structural needs, etc.  These considerations and processes are starting now, because it can takes up to 7 months to raise Heritage breed turkeys to maturity.  If you are interested please let me know and we can discuss the CSA process (which will more than likely be an initial $25 payment up front, and the rest being paid upon pick up or delivery). Depending on your desired weight, etc.

As of right now the breeds I am highly considering are:

Bourbon Reds (Originally bred in Bourbon County, KY. Bluegrass region in the late 1800′s)
Narragansett (Brought to America by English and European colonists in the 1600′s)
Black Spanish (Originated in Europe as a direct descendent of the Mexican turkeys carried home with explorers in the 1500′s)

Each of these varieties size up to be beautiful, heavy breasted table birds with a very rich flavor.  Your interest and support in this venture will be helping to promote raising livestock sustainably, on pasture, just the way they were meant to be.  While also supporting locally, environmentally responsible young farmers!  Please feel encouraged to contact me with any questions about this CSA program, Heritage breeds, etc…

Mike Slaton – Sustainable Farmer – Pittsboro, NC

Last Sunday I helped Gray put in the last row of posts for the new goat fence.  Floretta the goat arrived Sunday night, but the fence wasn’t finished for her arrival.  It still isn’t…

Floretta is getting into her new surroundings and her new collar, eating up the tall grass and pine saplings.

She is also getting used to the dogs, which she has headbutted a few times.  The dogs got the message…

Many of us never meant to become farmers.  We had our ambitions to enter the world as accountants or lawyers or teachers or some other clean, respectable professional.  We never really thought about the origins of our food; we always knew that the supermarket shelves would fill themselves, food came in boxes or cans ready to serve and farmers were simply one dimensional photographs in the mix of a hot new marketing campaign.

Farming was at best some idyllic retirement scheme, never a seriously considered career possibility.

But then something happened.  In the previously steady route of our lives, a shift occurred.  The soil moved under us somehow, got stuck in the creases of our pants, in the ridges of our shoes, in the lines of our palms.  Suddenly white picket fences, situation comedies and mutual fund returns didn’t seem so interesting anymore.  The big ball game and the driving range became distractions from the reality of a new love affair.  We got hooked on the possibilities of growing our own food and also providing that food to others.

The epiphany was likely different for many of us.  Maybe a friend took us to a farmers market.  Maybe someone had a plate of local hamburgers or collards at a picnic.  Maybe the news of some global food disaster made us question the monocultures piled high on our plates.  Maybe a real life farmer entered our life.

For a few of us, those with farming in our past – a childhood spent in the fields of the big farms or the family plots, throwing rocks into the hedgerows for little or no pay or watching over milking machines in the stench of industrial sized barns – there was no love, no kind of encouragement, no appreciation for our part in the dynamics of food production.  We were simply limbs and calluses then, small gears in a giant cranking clock.  We left the farm to pursue something else only to be pulled back hard when it became apparent that we could abandon everything that farming once meant to us.  We could make it ours.

Still others came to farming from DIY and anti-authoritarian backgrounds, building urban community gardens or putting up food in anarchist collectives.  Gardening always had a community aspect to it, but we wanted something more.  We knew that we could do the work, that we had the right vision and skills.  We just needed the access and the resources to get started.

Regardless of how we arrived at this point, here we are; we will call ourselves farmers from now on.

Our new loves – with their sharp hooves and unfamiliar odors, bright green leaves and bee covered flowers – give all the confidence to continue and pursue every goal we can imagine.  Our new hates – hail, crop failures and rain on market days – fully test our tolerance and keep those same goals in the territory of attainability.  Throughout all the highs and lows we can look at ourselves over and over again knowing that, if we stick to our ideals, we can do noble and appropriate work no matter what happens.

Local and sustainable farmers are our peers and our heroes, the most supportive, loving and steadfast community we could ever hope for.

We young and new farmers have the opportunity to change the features of the agricultural systems we have come to inherit.  Through the way we speak, act and work we can change the old infrastructure, market by market and county by county.  We have the time and ability to influence extension agents, educational systems and other institutions to make them function the way we need them to function in order to attain a sane and purposeful community based food system.

We are the new blood in the old body.