Monday, February 27, 2012

Chicken Love, Virgin Islands-style

Many farmers in the US order baby chicks through the mail, and they're picked up at the local post office when they're a day old.  In the Virgin Islands, their chicks arrive the old-fashioned way.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

February Break

We are officially on a three-week break until the end of February.  Some of my fellow classmates have headed to Italy to work on an organic farm in Tuscany (http://www.spannocchia.com/index.cfm).  Others are doing mini-internships or using the time for reading and studying.  I'm doing a combination, and not ashamed to admit that I'm sleeping in a little, too.

I've really wanted to work on basic carpentry skills, so for a few days, I rebuilt a set of rickety stairs in the upper barn with Josh Pincus.  Stairs are pretty straightforward to make, but can include some tricky math calculations involving rise and run.  These stairs will also have to be detachable so that the wagon can fit in the barn for loading and unloading hay.  We sat down, and with the help of Josh's expertise, some instructions I found online and a cool YouTube video on using stair gauges, designed our stairs.  Josh kept an eye on me for awhile, then set me loose to work on my own.  I cut all the stringers and treads, sanded, and put it all together.  Never in a million years did I think that I could do something like this.  Where did I get that idea, anyway?



I've discovered that using a circular saw definitely appeals to my meticulous nature.  Now I'm on a roll!  Here's the plan for the next stair project, which I'll build sometime in March:















I also helped out with chores for a few days.  Caring for the cows, sheep and chickens on your own is a lesson in what it's like to look after livestock on your own farm.  We've been feeding a mixture of beet pulp, apple cider vinegar, aloe, and garlic to the pregnant ewes to provide them with vitamins, probiotics, and anti-microbials, and it's a little like sheep crack cocaine.  They go nuts for it.  I experienced a sheep stampede, which isn't dangerous, but must be seriously hilarious to watch.

This weekend I headed to Burlington for the Northeast Organic Farmers Association conference, which was excellent.  And tomorrow, for no purpose other than good, clean fun, I travel to the Virgin Islands for ten days.  I'm trading my Carhartts for a bathing suit, if just for a short time!  See you in March, when the serious business of the growing season begins.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Chicken Love

In the spirit of learning or doing something new just about every day, I decided to enter a cake decorating contest.  Up to this point in my life, cake decorating has meant popping open a can of Betty Crocker Ready-To-Spread Frosting and applying it to the cake made with Betty Crocker Cake Mix.  No kidding.  But the new Liz bakes from scratch and makes her own frosting.  At least for this little affair.

My friend Ken Johnston was the creator and organizer of the first annual Holyoke Winter Carnival, which took place last week and featured a schedule full of really fun events like a dog show, chili cook-off, spaghetti dinner, a hockey game between the fire and the sheriff's departments, Zydeco music, a pancake breakfast, and, you guessed it, a cake decorating contest.  By the way, if you ever want to organize a wildly successful community event on a shoestring budget against all odds, Ken is your man.

Here's a little background which will help explain the idea I came up with for the cake.  Several years ago, two Holyoke city councilors introduced an ordinance to allow backyard chickens.  Unfortunately, it was controversial and failed miserably.  Fast forward to this year's mayoral election, when Holyoke's new mayor, Alex Morse, ran on a platform promoting unity and all-inclusiveness.  One of his campaign slogans was "I Am Holyoke."  Thus was born the City-Hall-Backyard-Chicken-All-Inclusive Cake.  After all, chickens are people too, right?


My friend Stephen, Farm School faculty member and vegetable grower extraordinaire, was my co-creator.  Here's the crazy thing: we won!  Best Holyoke-inspired cake and best overall!  The competition was an amazing array of fondant-covered, gorgeous, professionally done works of culinary art, but were no match for the chickens of downtown Holyoke.  We even got our picture taken and were interviewed by the Springfield newspaper.  Oh Hallelujah fifteen minutes of fame!

Article: Bakers Take the Cake at Holyoke Winter Carnival

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

The Starrett Company


Eons ago, or what seems like it, I mentioned that the L.S. Starrett Company was one of the few remaining factories in the greater metropolitan Athol area.  This week, we were lucky enough to get to tour this facility.  Starrett makes precision tools for machinists and tool and die makers...things like micrometers, calipers, gages, squares, and bandsaw blades.  Laroy Sunderland Starrett, the company's founder, was originally a farmer (!) in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  He is the inventor of the combination square, and if you've done any carpentry work, you know how very, very handy it is.  We weren't allowed to take photos inside...apparently some top secret stuff happens here.  I took a few pics in the factory museum (no worries...all on the up-and-up) which give you a sense of the products they make.

Every day, I drive past these buildings on my way to the farm.  I had no idea how extensive it was!  Here's a cool old drawing I found on Wikipedia:


Seems like we walked for miles and miles on our tour.  It's hard to give you an idea of how enormous this factory is; it spans both sides of the Millers River and must be in the tens of thousands of square feet.  Each area contains pieces of machinery that perform very specific tasks, with an operator sitting at each station. It's loud and smells like machine oil.  There's an old-fashioned-sounding bell that goes off for break time.

It's interesting that this company has survived and thrived when many others have not, and there are some good reasons for this.  They're diversified and have factories in other US cities, Brazil and China.  They have a specialized niche and a reputation for quality and innovation.  All the same, they've kept their world headquarters in Athol.

The museum was fascinating.  The system of belts ran the factory machines back in 1800's.



                                        
  

 It was nice to get back outside.  But I think all that machine oil went to our heads.