We have made the tough decision to sunset our CSA program. I have made an equally tough decision to take a hiatus from wedding flower work (o.k. so I might still do June weddings where peonies and perennials are at their prime). Wow! This is a big shift as many of you have been with us for decade(s).
I could say that it’s the woodchucks that are making me do this. When I started farming with Rob in 2008-2009 season, our vegetable beds were overrun with woodchucks. Since then we seemed to have had a truce, wherein they left the broccoli and fruit alone in exchange for all the clover and forage in our sprawling field borders. That is up until this season, wherein the next generation of ‘chuckers’ managed to tunnel from the old barn foundation, burrow under our fence and re-surface right next to our beans. I had to admire their engineering and spatial sensibilities, even as they leveled the blossoms and went onto the carrot tops.
Woodchucks aside, my goal of slowing down, taking a sabbatical from production farming this season didn’t really happen, as a few wildcards and labor needs needed to be a priority. It's all good, though it’s also really hard as the farm is home. I love growing food and beauty and sharing this with you. I love plants though need to shift and restore balance. While I am grateful for the humane growing season, wedding flower re-books from last year, a few writing projects that brought joy, and just in time support when the harvests seemed endless, my body is telling me I can’t do it all anymore and I need to pause and listen to it.
I have decided to step back from the business of farming, focus on orchard care and
Farm Blog
Thank you again for braving the blizzard to celebrate, connect with great food, and 'planting an orchard'! Just imagine all those future cherry trees (don't forget to squat:-).
I am so uplifted from all the good vibes, intentions, laughter and seeds shared and planted.
We were able to raise $850.00 in funds! This will go a long way, thank you! Additionally, with all the seeds donated today and from what I've gleaned from others, The women growers in the Sine-Saloum region will be able to plant out a couple hundred row feet/farm. In the past we've planted shared 'demonstration beds' ie since many of the farmers share space/land to grow on we've constructed seeds beds to trial different varieties, plant insectory herbs and flowers and share techniques. From there seeds are harvested and shared forward amongst the individual farmers. So in essence your generosity helped plant teaching/learning/eating/
sharing beds of veggie, herb, and flower goodness!
I will honor my commitment and extend the immense gratitude, generosity that was shared during the workshop with the women farmers in the following ways:
Work with NCBA CLUSA Farmer to Farmer Program to transfer funds and mail seeds.
I'll also email and share highlights, photos forward later this week in celebration of our workshop success.
I am tentatively set to travel there Nov/Dec. or January in 2016.
I also finally remembered the name of third grower group, JUBO (means widespread). If you're interested in learning more about how they got started, here's a link to an interview I did as part of my last Farmer to Farmer adventure in Senegal.
I Will keep you in the loop as the project evolves and thanks again for sharing your generous spirit!
For the chocolate lovers:
Becky Otte, who made the amazing truffles, has more of her chocolate goodness to share and is selling some of her creations just in time for Valentines. if you're interested send her an email: raonine@gmail.com
Also Here is a link to Roots Chocolate website.
For the Fruit Lovers:
I've enclosed a handout of some of the different fruits we grow at our farm as well as a flyer highlighting this season's events at the farm! We'd love to have you venture out and tour the orchard, come visit us (though not nearly as cool as the orchard poses we did during the workshop).
Thank you again for helping me transition from being a butterfly weed seed (ie wind pollinated, not knowing where or how my intentions, projects might stick) to more of an oak or cashew seeds - wherein I can deepen my awareness, provide support in the same place(s) in Senegal for the growers and in my backyard in Wisconsin:-). Here's to planting the seeds of the as yet to be imagined on and off the yoga mat! Wishing you all much abundance.
Happy Mid-winter!
Yours in hardy kiwi,
Erin
PS If you are into exploring the planting side as well as enjoying more local fruit creations, we'll be hosting a Local Fruit Tasting May 16, details on our website.
What's Next?
Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for awhile will have followed our contemplations over the past year or two regarding whether to retire the seasonal vegetable CSA. Having considered doing so last year, we instead instituted a significant make-over for 2021, basically halving the yearly share by making it every-other-week and letting farm members pack their own bags. This reduced the amount of work on our end, and seemed a workable template for a more sustainable way to manage the CSA, much as we’d intended.
But it also provided scintillating glimpses, during the off-weeks, of what life on the farm might be like once the CSA was retired altogether.
These inadvertent tastes of opium have had their effect. I wish I could say I was not susceptible to the temptations of sloth, as I might have contended in my 30s or 40s, but the wages of age are hard to deny. For now, the possibility of laying in the hammock under the plum tree and falling asleep (first: to want to lay in the hammock), or to go on a summer vacation, or actually experience a summer weekend in Madison – these are enticements that have now got my work-ethic by the neck. And while I still find it difficult to sit still for more than ten minutes, part of what motivates me to drop CSA now is precisely that I want to leave some working capacity in my joints and tendons for what I’m hoping might be an active old-age (unless it already is).
The vegetable patch at the farm is likely to shrink only modestly next year, in any case. We will still be feeding ourselves and producing enough for our regular canning-runs so we can keep our value-added sales going. We may do Fall storage shares. The orchard may also increase its production if we are able to provide it more assiduous attention than we’ve been able to in recent seasons.
Summer Solstice Re-cap, Sizing up the Season
With the solstice now past and the deep of summer ahead of the prow, it seemed like a good point to assess the year so far.
The start to the 2021 growing season was auspiciously benign by comparison with a number of recent years. Green-up was long but steady -- a pleasant contrast to the extremely cold late-Springs we’ve seen in the past half-decade when tree-buds only broke in the third or fourth week of May.
The slow warm-up made for good results from the early-season vegetables, with the single exception of peas. Having been planted into delightfully dry and workable soil in mid-April, they sat for nearly two and a half weeks before receiving any appreciable moisture, and their germination reflected it. So, unfortunately, there will be no peas in the vegetable share this year. Otherwise though, planting was – by contrast to Springs in the late Teens -- blessedly uneventful, with warm soils allowing good tilth, and enough moisture during May to germinate carrots, beets, scallions, corn, beans and vining crops.
June’s early, dry heat was a challenge for the lettuce and radishes, both of which were inclined to bolt earlier than usual. Steady irrigation from our water catchments countered some of that. On them up-side, the drought in June seems to have so far kept insect populations – barring the ubiquitous potato beetle, of course -- in check. We’ll see how this plays out now that a significant change for the rainier has commandeered the month’s final week.
Read MoreEven the Best Laid Wonderment Plans....are Subject to Planting
I cannot fully explain the gravitational pull of arboreal grace and how each spring I bow to your tree-ness—as I thrust another pointed dig with the D handle shovel and etch a hole for the young pear tree to and tuck it into the soil spanning rhizospheric reach of influence.
At the start of the growing season, I surrender to my lack of botanical restraint. It’s hard to resist the insistence of fruit trees and tomato starts, and to plant that which will outlast my lifetime. Even the act of pruning (of shedding, mind you) yields the potential for dozens of new fruit trees as I snip and save scion wood, graft it forward for giveaways, and divide and transplant the currants. With their trimmed limbs, the shape of sea pens, I attempt to write it all down, on seed scrolls, to center myself.
As you may recall, last fall, I shared my intention of a farming sabbatical in 2021 to embrace change and explore, in mutual evocation, what the next ten plus years of the farm may be (or not). I even gave this year a title, “The Transitional Year of Wonderment”..
"Transitional Year of Wonderment" modus operandi for 2021 CSA
“Transitional Year of Wonderment” may, in some ways, have seemed a better name for 2020 than 2021 – after all, the whole of humanity basically transitioned overnight to staying six feet apart from one another. And I suppose it was a bit of a wonder that we managed to keep modern society functioning (more or less) despite this.
But at Hilltop we've taken the slogan as our operating plan for the coming year, having been inspired to imagine what might be possible after seeing seven billion normally fractious and querulous human beings pivot in unison like a school of fish. Erin exercised a long-considered decision to step away from commercial flower production, and I suppose I should have taken the supportive and parallel step of putting down the vegetable CSA – which would not have been an unreasonable move after 28 years.
But – querulous human being that I am – I decided to keep the CSA going, only with a re-imagined format that would require less work so that I could keep it running without distracting Erin from delving into new training or other avenues of interest. It remains to be seen how successfully this plan will work. Erin is nothing if not a supportive spouse, and I suspect that showing up at the garden gate with a hoe in hand will be a distracting temptation no matter my intentions to the contrary.
Read MoreTurn and Face the Strange - 2021 Farm CSA Flow
If nothing else, 2020 – and now, 2021 – have made us all adept at rolling with whatever astonishing new realities history may throw at us. Since we are as well-practiced as ever at keeping our balance in the face of change, I figured the moment was right to pile-on.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, Hilltop will be undergoing some changes in the coming year. A number of infrastructural projects have been begging our attention for awhile. Erin will be stepping away from commercial flower production in order to free up time for additional pursuits, on-farm and off. All of which posed a great temptation to me to follow suit.
Upon reflection however, I decided that stepping away from the vegetable CSA this year didn't quite make sense. Erin and I will still be growing vegetables for ourselves in our gardens in any case, and -- what is more -- last Fall we made a once-in-a-decade investment in 20 yards of compost which we expect to boost the productivity of our soil.
Read MoreThe Fruit and Flower Mood Board - a Season's Color Palette Reverie
The other day I received an inquiry to grow and design a flower feast for a 2020 wedding celebration. With 12 years under my belt, I continue to deepen my understanding of how to both read the landscape as a grower, align wedding dates with flower phenology, and read the needs and interests of clients and members.
June brought the ability to see green. Growth was the name of the botanical game and I found myself marveling at how the pears, peas, and poppies sprung from its original seed-coated horizontality, gesturing forever upward and outward. Onward with growth, mulch, and the subtleties of purple and pink. Pink pillows of peony blossom, cathedral spiries of delphinium racemes and the intimate splashes of pink on pistils on view when I paused to consider fruitset of apples and aronia.
Read MoreThe Harvest Homestretch
A single nighthawk, batting across the sky one evening last week, was enough to panic us about the end of summer. We’d already been watching the barn swallows getting set to leave. In mid-August, their offspring still romped the skies, swooping for horseflies past our ears, testing one another with their dives. Last week they sat on the wire, carefully watching the sun go down. Next week, the boreal dark one step too near, they will be off and gone.
It seemed a good occasion then to look back briefly on the summer and estimate what the Fall might hold in store before frost chokes the life out of what remains of the garden.
Read MoreNo Sun, No Food
We thank our subscribers for bearing with the hiatus in food-delivery during what is typically the pinnacle of vegetable production so that your farmers could go on a fishing expedition out west for a view of the “great American eclipse” (a term which slightly irritates me). The last time we missed a late-summer delivery was when Erin and I got married in 2011. Best that these interruptions are kept to a minimum if for no other reason than that they double-up the harvesting work in the adjacent weeks.
Not that you missed much.
Read MoreTales of a Senegal Beekeeper
..for so work the honeybees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom."
- William Shakespeare, Henry V 1599
“When you work with bees, they put something in your heart,”Adema Senghor, President of the Toubacouta Beekeepers Association, shared with the ~16 aspiring women beekeepers that gathered in Missirah, Senegal to wrap up our farmer to farmer training on beekeeping and plan next steps for their apiary. Adema graciously offered tips gleaned from over 25 years experience as a beekeeper in Senegal. Both he and co-founder Moussa Manne with the Toubacouta Beekeepers Association had agreed to share with the women how they got started with beekeeping as well as commit to supporting the Missirah women as mentor beekeepers. They are also the purveyors of the award winning 'Sur de Saloum' —prized honey from the mangrove blossoms and other petals sipped from native trees and cashew groves in the 'La Paletuveire' (French word for mangroves and the coastal plain forests that shape Senegal's Sine Saloum Delta).
Read More2016 By the Numbers
2016 was a good growing year in many respects.
At 178 days, the frost-free period was exceptionally long, even after a relatively late last-freeze on May 15th. We harvested sweet peppers well into the month of November, after what was already a banner-year for the crop. Potatos also performed spectacularly despite over-planting and tight spacing, cranking out almost 300 calories per square foot. Many warm-season crops were 10 to 14 days earlier than normal. After a couple of beautiful broccoli harvests in late June and early July, we thought we might be headed for another 15-week season like we saw the previous year.
And then the rains came.
Read MoreYou're Invited: Yoga, Chocolate & Fruit Tasting Benefit Supporting Seeds for Senegal Project
Sunday, January 24, from 2:00 - 4:00 pm, Main St. Yoga Studio, 1882 East Main St. Madison, WI
Come breathe, move, open your heart, and celebrate mid-winter with an all - levels yoga class taught by Hatha Yoga Instructor Barbara Flesch.
Then we’ll dine in community, savoring the sensory experience of nourishment with a mindfulness tasting of chocolate, and sweet and savory fruits grown with love and care with Erin Schneider, Co-owner of Hilltop Community Farm, LLC. Cost of class includes yoga instruction and homemade and homegrown organic food, fruit and refreshments from Hilltop Community Farm.
Read MoreField of Vision
The United Nations has declared 2015 the International Year of Soil, and none too soon. The stuff keeps sloughing off the continent into the rivers and oceans, mostly under the constant wheel of industrial agriculture which treats this substrate of terrestrial life as if it were a widget machine, ever happy to oblige the beck and call of the commodities market. Though soil is the alpha and omega of agriculture, a good number of farmers still don't seem to reckon as much by their behavior. To most people meanwhile, dirt is just something to keep out of the carpet.
As an ecological farmer of course, the soil and its constant health and improvement must be front and center on my radar. So it was with appropriate sheepishness that I admitted to our farm members in the April Hilltop newsletter that I know nothing about soil.
This is not entirely true.
Read MoreFor the Bees
Mid-afternoon, I find myself lingering in the zinnias and wanting to just lay down under the silphium and sunflowers in the orchard, soak in the warmth, the colors, and just listen to summer. It is revved up by cicadas, orchestrated by crickets, tuned by tree frogs and abuzz with bees. The bees right now are drunk on nectar, and loaded down with pollen. I am amazed that they can fly, so laden with cargo!
Where would be be without the birds and the bees?
Read MoreAural Fixation
The soundscape of our farm would not normally be a newsletter topic, nor would it even seem relevant to the enterprise of farming; but in the same way that we can often diagnose the health of our cars by the slightest variation in the sound coming from the engine compartment, so too is the overall health of the farm discernible just standing with open ears on the back porch.
In the early years of Hilltop – an era when hayfields were rather less assiduously kept -- the ecstatic vocalizations of a bobolink could be heard emanating from the neighbor's patch, nearby to the east. The birds had evidently found a corner routinely missed by the scythe in which to nest. From mid-May until July the riot of song would erupt, often with the male rising on wing to broadcast his message more widely on the wind.
Read MoreYou're Invited for a Picnic in the Orchard
What do currants, soil quilts and fencing have in common?
We hope you join us on Saturday, July 11 from noon - 3 pm, for a relaxing picnic in the orchard to find out! Enjoy great food and conversation, celebrate the season, our new orchard fence that came together from a 2014 crowdfunding effort, and join us for some stories and stitches as we weave together the great soil quilt.
Highlights: an orchard tour, picnic lunch, tips for using currants and other local fruits, and the opportunity to relax and enjoy great food and conversation. You will leave the day with fruit resources/recipes and the opportunity to participate in the making of a Soil Quilt to be featured during the Fermentation Festival, Farm Art D'Tour this fall.
We will have local fruit creations on hand to sample and a picnic salad to share.
Please plan to bring a vegetarian dish to share (guests included), your own table service, blanket/chair(s). Dress for an outdoor picnic, rain or shine.
Check out our Farm Events Page for more farm happenings.
Black Currant Fool. Photo by Erin Schneider
Thank you for your help with growing our fruit n farm community!
Our IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Campaign a Success!
We so appreciate your contributions to our orchard fencelifting campaign. You helped us raise $4,840 on-line through IndieGoGo. That's 82% of our on-line goal of $5,900. Serendipitously, 84% of our fenceposts are firmly rooted in our orchard soils thus far. Our hope is to finish installing the fenceposts before the ground firmly freezes and complete wiring, gate building by Spring 2015. While we were just shy of our on-line goal, we were also able to raise an additional $930 in funds off-line and received another $800 through in-kind donations in the form of materials and support with staging posts and digging ~230' of holes.
Thank you for helping give us structure to our dreams! You can hear the saskatoons exhaling as we speak, as they can finally grow beyond 2 feet!
Read MoreInvesting in Women Farmers - Happy IDRW (Oct 15)
Join the 65 funders and hundreds of farm friends, who have invested in the future of our farm...and the millions of people around the world supporting and celebrating the efforts of women farmers.
Women are the backbone of farming. Across the planet, women play many roles in changing the food system from one of insecurity and scarcity to one of sustainable abundance and nourishment. October 15th marks the International Day of Rural Women and with it a chance to pause, reflect, celebrate and honor the stories, skills, and experiences women bring to agriculture and honor our roles as farmer, entrepreneur, daughter, caregiver, teacher, learner, farm-a-cist, auntie, soil steward, logistician, beekeeper, tour guide, facilitator, cook, wife, and fruit lover to name just a few of the hats I wear on any given day.
October 15th also marks the (almost) endpoint to our fruit n fencelifting campaign on IndieGoGo. I will be celebrating the IDRW through a combination of facilitating/engaging in a global discussion with others through my role as Women's committee member with the World Farmer Organization, and honoring the day, hoisting a toast, shovel in hand, to fellow women farmers from the field, digging and placing fenceposts for our orchard.
Read MoreYour Food Calorie Receipt
As ever, October has somehow lept upon us. Indeed so fast this year, that we never got out a proper September newsletter. Apologies for the elipsis.
With all 20 share bags behind us now, it's time to look back at the growing season and see just how things stacked up, or didn't. By comparison with 2013, the immediately noticeable difference is in the totals: Last year, we provided 154 lbs of produce per share, this year 138. Last year's calorie count was 26,300; this year's is 20,400.
While those numbers are slightly shocking (at least I was shocked when I looked at the bottom of this year's spreadsheet), the 16 pound / 5,900 calorie deficit was almost entirely down to two crops: can you tell what they were?
Read MoreSometimes Good Neighbors Build Good Fences...
Digging in toward the home stretch...
Since we extended the invitation for others to be part of growing our fruit n farm community by supporting our fencelifting campaign, we had an idea of what we needed ($5,900) to support costs and labor, and to build a long lasting, reliable and sustainable piece of infrastructure that would support the next generation of orchardists and fruit lovers.
With three weeks into our campaign, we are reminded that fence-building, like farming, relies on our ability to respectfully be in relation to the Earth and in relation with people, observe openly and learn before taking action.
What we have recently learned is that contrary to poetic insight, good neighbors do build good fences.
Read More