Winter talking & pondering

Can you spot your farmers? Here we (mostly) all are, gathered on the last day of our farmer retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs. Note the fresh snow on the trees! So lovely! A beautiful setting AND wonderful company. (Thanks to Josh Volk of Slow Hand Farm for sharing this photo with me!)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

  • Cabbage
  • Brussels sprouts
  • Butternut winter squash
  • Turnips
  • Celery root
  • Carrots
  • German butterball potatoes
  • Leeks

Well, our whirlwind trip to Breitenbush came and went. It’s amazing how much can be packed into a two day, two night adventure (including just a lot of toddler logistics).

Admittedly, with Rusty in tow we get about half as much unadulterated “shop talk” time, since we take turns hanging out with him. It isn’t that we can’t have conversations while watching Rusty; they’re just generally a lot more interrupted. But, being in the mountains with a toddler offers its own unique joys, including playing in a foot of fresh snow!

Since the format of our farming retreat is based on farmers just talking to each other, this “conference” offers us as many opportunities to share as it does to receive. It was interesting this year to share our new big plans (i.e. new land, “full diet”!) with farmers we’ve known for many years. We all started out as vegetable growers, and still many people only have “side” enterprises besides veggies. So, there were very mixed reactions to the concept of adding as much diversity as we are planning.

Some people were super into it (no surprise, these were people who are going in a similar direction on their own farms), and others expressed confusion or skepticism. Of course, we feel skeptical some days too, so that seemed about right. There’s always the challenge of talking about very big, multi-year plans in one conversation — the compression of dreams into one brief period does make them seem crazy. But we think we understand the scope of this big dream, and we are taking it one day at a time.

No surprise, these days my (Katie) conversations at Breitenbush tend to veer toward the bookkeeping and business side of the farm — whether or not to do online CSA sign-ups (we have chosen not to obviously), how to organize pick-up locations, legal issues and employees, marketing, etc. These topics seem so natural (and important) to me now, and over the last six years of helping to manage this farm, I have learned a great deal about how to run a small business.

And, yet, I still have moments of whiplash, when I realize I’m having a lengthy conversation about worker’s comp or taxes, and I wonder, “how did I become a business person?” Before we started our own farm, I had zero interest in business. To me, “business” was something the preppy kids in college majored in so that they could have Fridays off and drink on Thursday nights. I, of course, majored in art and English — creative pursuits worthy of my time.

I don’t regret that decision at all — I doubt a business major would have exactly met my needs today — but it has been entertaining over the years to finally realize and admit that I have a highly analytical mind and love these aspects of the farm. Getting to talk about it with others is just icing on the cake!

Anyhow, we arrived back on the farm at the end of Wednesday’s workday and jumped right back into the swing of things with the Newberg CSA harvest on Thursday. It was a very long day for Casey and me and had us looking eagerly toward the weekend.

But, Friday held more fun. Casey, Emily, and my mom took the morning to slaughter and process four of our old laying hens and four of our youngish drakes (male ducks). Emily and my mom (who lives next door and has her own small farm) both had poultry processing experience, but this was a first for Casey.

In part, the slaughtering happened simply because it was time for those birds to go: the hens were five years old and no longer laying, and having too many drakes is not a fun thing for the female ducks (they seem much calmer now that there is only one drake to chase them around!). But, Casey also wanted very much to experience the process since poultry is a part of our big, long-term farm plan (at the very least, as we work through flocks of layers).

After farming for six years, we have a keen concept of scale of endeavors — we know that a five-acre market garden is not just a big garden. It requires a different scale of tools and methods. The key to scaling up anything is not just to do more of it faster — it’s to work smarter and to create functional efficiencies. There are many scales to every endeavor — for example, we don’t have a mechanical transplanter on our farm, but friends with twenty acres of vegetables certainly do.

So, Casey wanted to experience the slaughtering process and start thinking about concepts of scale with poultry processing (since we already have experience with small scale poultry husbandry). While processing 100 chickens is certainly a different task than eight birds, certain concepts and tasks remain constant.

So, now Casey has seen and experienced those tasks and is brainstorming an interim scale solution — how do we inexpensively set up an efficient way to process birds on the farm? If we decide we like poultry, then perhaps we can rethink it again and invest more money and time in something even more suited to a larger scale. That’s how we do things on this farm, and that’s how we envision this whole big-term scaling up project.

(As an aside, we treated ourselves to a fantastic farm lunch that day too: fresh roasted duck, salad, risotto, and parsnip spice cake!)

One very special thing about these birds is that for the last several months they have been fed exclusively from farm products — kitchen scraps, of course (which is an example of scale in of itself since we won’t ever have enough kitchen scraps for a 100 bird flock!), but primarily oats and corn we grew last season. We’ve also made sure they’re always on fresh ground with green things to forage. The ducks came to maturity and started laying on this diet, so clearly it is a healthy alternative to expensive organic ration.

Growing our own animal feed is an integral part of our “big picture” goals, since feed costs keep going up. The way we see it, in farming you profit from the sun — it’s the free energy source (as opposed to fertility inputs, water, and labor — all of which cost money in some form). Animals can’t use the sun directly, so it’s in the growing of the feed that we can profit.

That’s part of why we bought the combine last year (which is how we got the oats!) and why we’re considering hiring a custom farmer to make hay from our 31 acres of red clover. It’s also a goal that adds another layer of complexity to everything (even as it could make everything profitable as well).

We talked about all of this (full diet, growing feed, etc.) recently at the sunrise Mac Rotary club, and apparently the talk went over well. I was glad to hear the positive feedback, because it was one of those “compression” moments when Casey and I felt more than a little bit insane to be taking on so many moving parts “at once” (or at least eventually at once, but over time as we learn and add enterprises). Afterward, I felt like the subtitle of our talk should have been: “We’re crazy, but we’re good at it.”

Maybe that’s the theme of our farm life so far. I always feel like we’re biting off just a little more than anyone else expects that we can chew. I remember that very first summer being told through the grapevine that a new associate thought our farm plans were “ambitious” (and it wasn’t said in a positive way). Looking back on what we accomplished on one acre that year (with not very much time to get started), I agree. We were ambitious, and there were moments when we felt a little more than crazy, but I mostly remember having a ton of fun, meeting a lot of new people, eating some amazing food, and feeling so happy that we had chosen an unconventional path for our life.

In closing, I do promise that eventually these newsletters will turn away from so much dreaming and more to the moment at hand. February is just that kind of month — when we go to farm conferences (another one this weekend!), talk a lot about the upcoming season, and generally spend more energy getting the season moving. In due time, we will feel that more of our energy will be spent sustaining the moving parts of this unique season (weeding, harvest, moving water, etc.), but we’re in that dreamy, get-things-going phase right now: planning, planting, seeding, etc.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
… and the rest of the farm crew!

~ ~ ~

Next week’s vegetables (probably!): Salad mix • Cooking green of some kind • Parsnips • Carrots • Rutabaga • Potatoes • Onions

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2 Responses to Winter talking & pondering

  1. Nadya says:

    gladyou you enjoyed your time & exchanges at the “Burning Bush! ” always nice to getaway breath of mountain air vicariously!
    it is amazing what you have accomplished and are planning! As one of your gluten-free foodies & members, I do hope you leave growing gluten containing grain crops to others,as that avoids the issue of contamination of other crops as you harvest and store them! The oats would currently be gluten-free, if the combine was …..

  2. Katie says:

    Nadya — gluten free members are VERY much on our minds! Casey is already scheming about how to have someone else combine our rye and wheat so that the oats and everything else would be fair game for GF eaters. : )

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