Old fashioned farming

Hay in the field.

Last week I finished reading Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. I’ve long been familiar with Berry’s nonfiction and poetry. In fact, Casey and I wrote Berry a letter some number of years ago, letting him know that he can be credited (at least in large part) to turning us onto the idea of farming so long ago. We felt the need to thank such a living legend while he was (and still is!) living.

But Jayber Crow was my first experience with Berry’s fiction. Not surprisingly, the pace of the book was slow, and I worked through it with some dedication a few evenings a week. It was slow but rich. And all so very intentionally so.

The story spans many almost the entirety of the 20th century in rural Kentucky. Through the dramas of the characters, we see larger movements unfolding — especially the movement away from an old fashioned man and animal-powered type of farming and toward mechanized (and high debt) farming. As someone who is very familiar with Berry’s nonfiction essays, the themes felt very familiar as they revealed themselves through these specific stories. With regret, the narrator tells the story of one farm in particular that over decades transitions from a sustainable stewardship under the hands of a hard-working but patient and calm farmer (horses and mules and all that) to an out-of-control, eroded wasteland under the hands of his rushed, prideful son-in-law. But, of course, the narrator takes his time telling the story, clearly revealing where his own loyalties lie simply in his pacing if nothing else!

And, so, pace has been on my mind. Along with hand tools and other kinds of “power” on our farm. Our own farm is not-so-much “old fashioned” as all that. We’ve never believed that by eschewing chemicals and debt we were just walking back in time. We own fuel-powered vehicles, including a tractor for tillage and such. But our farm certainly can relate back to those ideas Berry idealizes: stewardship; intentionality; appropriate technology; human and animal scaled operations.

Fittingly, I went to Wilco this weekend to pick up a second pitchfork for the farm. I ran into some long-time CSA members who commented that I looked so perfectly “farmy.” Yes, pitchforks and scythes and all that do harken back to those older farms — the era that Berry eulogizes in his writing.

But for us, a scythe or pitchfork is not nostalgic (nor is our decades-old cultivating tractor) — these are real useful tools. Ones we prefer (at least for now) over their modern equivalents. We owned a scythe before any other tool on our farm — before we even had a farm. Wendell Berry has a famous essay about scythes (“A Good Scythe”) that turned us onto the idea of a different kind of power. Since acquiring our first “good” scythe over a decade ago, we have used them regularly. Because they are useful. How do we use it? Where others might use string-trimmers and such. Oh, the difference between wielding a loud, vibrating, fume-creating string-trimmer and a scythe — how vast in every way! We scythe the grass out around our orchard trees; we scythe green oats to feed our animals; we scythe lines in the pasture to keep the grass from shorting out our electric fencing … I am not convinced that doing this work with a hand tool is any more taxing that carrying around a big machine. If anything, we’re convinced of the opposite. And, it’s lovely.

Using the tractor to haul loose hay.

The pitchforks have been getting more action too since we started making our own hay last week. I mentioned that we bought a mower-conditioner. We also bought a hay rake (and we borrowed a “tedder” from a neighbor). But we did not buy a baler. Instead, we have been manually picking up hay and piling it in our hay shed loose. Which is of course how hay was stored for all the centuries before balers were invented.

Is it as efficient as bales? Oh no — not in terms of effort or space. But it’s scale appropriate. A baler is an expensive, complicated, single-use piece of machinery. We hear they are good at breaking themselves when you need them to work. And so for now, buying our own baler is not high on our farm’s priority list. For now, making hay for our own animals will continue to be a hybrid-enterprise — part mechanized and part good old-fashioned human powered labor.

Casey throws hay higher and higher!

Incidentally, that old-time farmer that gets high praise in Jayber Crow is described as being a good leader because he starts work with his hired hands, digs right in their with them, and ends work with them. As I watched Casey hauling hay beside two of our workers, I thought this is also something we have in common with that farmer — we love the work that we do, and we would never ask anyone working for us to do anything we wouldn’t (or don’t) do beside them. And so, tasks that could feel very hard just feel like good valued work. We watch as the hay piles up, perfectly conditioned in the summer heat, and moved by caring hands. Certainly, it wouldn’t make sense to do it this way on a larger scale, but for us, for now, it works. One step at a time; intention all the way.

I suppose that’s all we can do around here — the future is so hard to predict, and the enormity of our work can feel daunting if we think of it all at once. But one step at a time; a load of good hay here, a load of good hay there — and so we prepare for coming seasons.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Make some squash-a-ganouj! “What’s that?” Casey made it up this week. We have always loved the flavor combination of baba ganouj: roasted eggplant + tahini + garlic = yes, please! But our eggplant season is often fairly brief (depends on the year, but compared to other staple crops, it is always much shorter!), so we would have to wait until late summer to get our baba ganouj fix. Until now! This weekend Casey tried making baba ganouj with zucchini instead of the eggplant. He roasted it and then prepared everything else using (more-or-less) basic baba ganouj proportions. In other words, he stuck some roasted zucchini in a food processor with tahini, lots of garlic, and salt … if we’d had some lemon that would have been awesome too, but we didn’t, so Casey added some red wine vinegar, and it was still awesome. We’re totally hooked. The texture and flavor is super close to the eggplant version (perhaps a bit milder? But not much!). He made another batch tonight. Highly recommended!!!!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Fennel
• Lettuce
  
• Beet greens
• Chard
• Kale
• Summer squash & zucchini
• Leeks
• Garlic