Views from the Field: Richard Giles

In the most recent Views from the Field, we hear from Delaware County vegetable farmer Richard Giles. Richard received a Pure Catskills Agricultural Development last year to purchase a new tractor implement for Lucky Dog Organic Farm. Also check out the video below for the Lucky Dog crew in action.

Lucky Dog Farm, Hamden NY from VeccVideography on Vimeo.

One of the most important crops on our farm has been a washed mix of baby salad greens, which we grow on wide, flat-topped bedded rows. And because we are an organic farm, weeds have always been our greatest challenge in growing this high-valued crop. So we applied for the Pure Catskills grant to help us purchase a tractor-mounted vegetable bed flameweeder.

This piece of machinery burns propane fuel through torches aimed at the surface of our crop beds in order to destroy small emerging weeds either just before planting or just before the crop emerges. I had used similar machinery for weed control in cotton in the south, but flame weeding hasn’t been a common practice in this part of the country. One of the obstacles we encountered as we began researching the equipment was that our local propane dealers were not familiar with it, and were at first reluctant to commit to supplying fuel for the machine.

The other obstacle was money. This is a familiar problem. I think that lack of access to money for production-improving practices is certainly one of the top problems for the small diverse farms in the Catskills. In the course of our search, we found machines built by two companies that seemed to fit our needs, one of them priced at about $8,500 and the other at about $12,500. As luck would have it, the machine best suited tour crops was also build by Flame Engineering, the company with the most experience in building flame weeding equipment. And it was the lower priced machine. Even so, we would not have been able to buy the machine without the Pure Catskills grant.

We received the machine in mid-June, a little late for a full-season test, but early enough to get a lot of use out of the new weeder. I had imagined the machine mostly as a salad production enhancing tool, but as soon as we had it set up and filled with fuel, we flamed over the tops of some just –emerging potatoes in rows that were becoming fuzzy with weed seedlings. Over the course of the summer, we used it on carrots, a crop that is very slow to germinate and very poor at competing with weeds, on unplanted beds ahead of our lettuce transplanted, on potatoes again at the end of the season, after the vines had been clipped in the weedy zone before harvest and of course on our salad beds.

Because we farm in a flood plain, we will never be free of weed seed, but we are already beginning to reduce our weed load with this piece of equipment. In the spring and early summer we usually prepare quite a bit of our vegetable cropland for planting. As we work through the season planting and transplanting, some of these fields have to be reworked, by means of mechanical tillage, several times to keep weeks down. With this flamer weeder, we are able to sweep quickly across these areas without disturbing the soil, to kill new flushes of weeds. The efficiency of this method makes me happy. One of my concerns when we were contemplating this machine was that even though we would not be using synthetic herbicides, we would be burning fossil fuel to kill our weeds. We are in fact doing just this. But we have made a positive compromise, trading a swift, low horsepower trip over the field to burn weeds with propane for several high horse power tillage trips.

Views from the field: Ilyssa Berg

In this 'Views from the field,' we hear from Ilyssa Berg of Painted Goat Farm in Otsego County. Ilyssa's been making some fantastic fresh and aged goat cheeses in recent years. A grant awarded by Pure Catskills supported the development of a new variety of aged cheese and improving the farm's processing equipment.

Let's hear more from the farmer herself...

Cheese ready to be sent up the 'elevator' to the aging room.

Painted Goat Farm is a small, farmstead cheese producer begun from the ground up about four years ago. With funding assistance from the Pure Catskills’ Sustainable Agriculture Development Program, we purchased and installed needed small equipment in order to create a new semi-hard aged goat cheese. This product helped us to diversify our cheese selection and to utilize our milk early in the season before the Catskill region farmers’ markets and business activity picked up.

Another view of the elevator.

Different styles of cheese have different temperature and humidity requirements during manufacturing and aging. The improvements to our aging facilities included changes to our ventilation system, the ability to monitor the temperature and humidity in the cheese make-room and caves, and installation of a freight elevator to transport the cheese to the caves below ground. We are very happy with the results from the project. Our cheese making process is improved and so has the stability of our products.

Turning wheels of cheese in the aging room.

In 2010, we sold 285 pounds of “Fighting Goat”. It is a mild, nutty, semi-hard cheese which is washed in a wonderful New York State hard cider, giving it a natural, peach-colored rind and a robust flavor. Our customers were often surprised to see and taste a hard goat’s milk cheese and promptly added it to their cheese plates. Some of our customers prefer goat’s milk cheese over others because of adverse health effects from other dairy products and so, they appreciated having more styles of cheese to eat. For others who think they don’t like goat’s milk cheeses, they were more inclined to try a hard cheese and discovered they actually like goat cheese. A hard cheese also has a longer shelf life than our fresh (think cream cheese) and soft-ripened cheeses (think camembert), which retail outlets really appreciated. But, most of all, our new product enabled us to extend our market season through the winter months when our herd was “dry”. We took the opportunity to jump into making another cheese - a waxed-rind Gouda-style cheese, which we aged over the winter. We were able to start marketing earlier this year than ever before. We have already sold out and have started filling the caves with more. We hope we will age as well as our cheeses now do.

Views from the field: Gideon Frisbee

The sap house at the Frisbee Farm. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Pickens.

Today's "View from the field" is a spring update from Gideon Frisbee of Riverdale Farm & Forest in Delhi. Riverdale was the recipient of a Pure Catskills grant to diversify their line of maple products through the purchase of a filter press. The farm is now able to market their syrup in a wider variety of sizes and containers.

Greetings from Riverdale Farm & Forest in Delhi NY. We’ve made it through the month of March, dodged the latest snowstorms, and are thinking SPRING! It is a busy time of the year for us in many aspects of our operation. We have two new calves in our grass fed beef herd and more to come any day. Our first batch of feeder pigs will be here this weekend and meat chickens are coming next month. Most of our time right now is spent in the sap house, producing pure maple syrup from our 800-900 taps. It has been an excellent year and it is not over yet. Many producers in the area are very happy with the season, especially after a very poor season last spring.

We are excited this year to be using our new 7” short bank filter press that we were able to purchase with the assistance of a Pure Catskills Sustainable Agricultural Development Grant in 2010. This machine has allowed us to expand our packaging capabilities to not only include our usual Catskill Mountain Pure plastic jugs but also new decorative glass containers. The use of a filter press allows us to package a beautifully clear product with no fine particles or sugar sand that could have easily been seen in a glass container otherwise. We have focused on packaging in a 250 ml size glass maple leaf which has been very popular amongst our customers. The fancier packaging is great for gifts, and our customers are buying more syrup than usual for this reason.

As we enter into April, we hope that Mother Nature cooperates and extends our already successful maple season a bit longer. If not, there is always plenty more work around the farm to be done!

Views from the field: Michelle Premura

Pure Catskills members receive support for business development through our Education Scholarship Program. Michelle Premura of The Turquoise Barn in Bloomville attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY) Conference in Saratoga Spring last weekend and shares her thoughts with us here.

Michelle with fellow farmer Terry Hannum of Abundance Farms.

This is a review of the NOFA conference I attended in Saratoga Springs January 21-23; a truly inspiring educational event. This will have been the 3rd time I’ve attended over a period of 5 years. Each year there is always something new to learn. What makes this conference such a great educational experience is that the learning takes place not only during the workshops, but throughout the entire weekend. There are group meals, lectures, book signings and trade shows throughout the hotel all weekend.

The theme this year was “Diggin Diversity”. Quite appropriate I thought. There were people from a variety of backgrounds with various levels of experience participating in and facilitating the conference. What’s interesting is that, despite age, race, experience, socio-economic background, everyone has a similar interest in sustainability, preserving the art of agriculture, and a mutual respect for individuals and the earth. The workshops & events also cover a wide area of interests and are, for the most part, on the cutting edge of what is happening not only in New York State but on a global level.

I attended classes on food preservation with a specific interest in fermentation. This is one of the main methods I use to preserve vegetables from the garden. Besides being a practical & simple way of preserving, there are also numerous health benefits associated with fermentation. My intention is at some point to produce on a small scale, jars of preserved veggie blends from the garden using this method. So this class was on the top of my list to attend.

I also attended a workshop on internships, apprenticeships, & hiring staff. Since we do have a number of volunteers each year on our farm, this gave me a clearer understanding of the difference between volunteers, internships & apprenticeships.

Some of the other courses I attended were managing compost, no till gardening, & business taxes. There were also keynote speakers presenting inspiring & motivating talks not just about farming/gardening but about the impact and important role that food plays on many levels in our society. Of specific interest was Malik Yakini’s presentation on urban farming in Detroit. Malik’s enthusiasm, perseverance as he articulated the importance of community working together toward a common goal, was inspiring.

Another prime benefit of attending the conference is networking. I was able to make connections with a number of people that I will be discussing the possibility of future work together at Turquoise Barn. And even more exciting is the possible opportunity of being able to attend next year as a presenter giving food demos.

Views from the field: Sarah Budde

Pure Catskills members receive support for business development through our Education Scholarship Program. Sarah Budde from Majestic Farm in Mountaindale recently attended a conference with her husband Brett as part of the program. She shares a report on their trip here!

Sarah in the fields at Majestic Farm.

The Young Farmers Conference was a two day conference held at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown NY. The conference ranged in subject matter from integrated pasture management and technical aspects of farming to government policy to work songs. It included over fifty workshops. In addition to the workshops the conference offered keynote talks from farm heavyweights such as Bill Niman and Dan Barber. Attendees of the conference ranged from college students enthusiastic about permaculture and biodynamic farming to seasoned farmers looking to connect with contemporary practice. Mostly it was a young, progressive crowd of excited young farmers with a couple more or couple less years experience than us.

A pair of hogs from the Majestic herd.

Together Brett and I covered about fourteen courses in all. These courses were informative and inspiring. After each course we would get together and giddily discuss what new facts we had found out, what type of information the presenters were giving and what new practices we may translate to our own farm. Particularly of interest at the conference was Stone Barns own practice of raising pigs in forestland. We spent time during the social hours seeking out various young farmers who were doing similar things as well as meat producers and packagers, USDA officials and restaurateurs. The conference further encouraged our own aspirations to put in a 20-C kitchen, add hoop houses and diversify our current operation. We received literature on organizations we intend on joining and future workshops and conferences we hope to enjoy.

Views from the field: Conor Crickmore

Views from the field is a series of essays from our business members on the experience of farming and producing local food. Here we learn about the experience of raising "slow grown" chickens from Conor Crickmore of Neversink Farm in Neversink, NY. The farm was a recipient of a Pure Catskills Sustainable Agriculture Development Grant earlier this year. With the funding provided, on-farm poultry processing equipment was purchased for their flock of slow growers.

Neversink Farm has the only slow grown organic chickens in the northeast. As a reformed vegetarian of 20 years, having broilers was a hard decision but how to raise them was not. Our philosophy from the start has been to produce the best possible food while doing it in a way that felt right and to sort out the costs later. We will put the chickens on pasture early, let them roam freely, and feed them GMO-free organic local whole grains ground fresh on the farm.

The problem was we didn’t see the sense in putting birds bred for factory life on pasture. In a quest for raising poultry cheaper the fast growing chicken was created and is now used almost universally. A fast growing hybrid chicken grows from egg to slaughter in six to seven weeks. This fast growth results in difficulty walking and standing. That growth rate just didn’t sit right with us. It gives the bird no time on pasture and a quality of life that we wouldn’t feel good aboutInstead we found a French variety of chicken that can easily forage and be outside from two weeks old. These birds take 12 weeks to mature, giving them ten weeks on pasture.

The common pasture cage was also not an option for us so we built a moving shelter that allowed true free access to roam the pasture and eat fresh grass and clover. When it comes time for slaughter, we wanted to do it in the most humane way we could using professional equipment on the farm, by us and in the open air. The cost of professional equipment for our small farm was prohibitive and the grant from the Watershed Agricultural Council enabled us to bring this improved product to market. We will also provide a means for other local farmers and homesteaders to rent such equipment. We feel that our slow grown, certified organic chickens that are raised on pasture are very content and are also the best tasting.