Spring Update

 

It has been a soggy few weeks, we are glad for these few hot sunny days. Both the winter and spring small grain is growing fast, and now with the warmer weather on to planting beans and corn.  Some of the winter wheat is just starting to head up. Adam put ribbons on the earliest heads so that we can save seed from these.

We are now raising red heritage meat chickens. Our seed cleaner not only blows out the chaff, weed seeds and the odd grasshopper, but also grain that is much smaller or broken. We decided this would make good chicken feed, and in combination with pasture (they love burdock!), and a supplemental organic grain mix that we soon hope to replace with our own blend.

Save the Date! - The farm tour day will be August 28th. More information soon. Arnie's hay wagon we use for hay rides is over 100 years old, made in the last century in Central Pennsylvania craftsmen who brought the design over with them from Germany. It is made for loose hay, which is why it has sloped raised sides, instead of the flat bottom on modern wagons created for baled hay. “It is perfect for hay rides, because you can fluff a lot of hay in it, and people can flop in the loose floppy hay” according to Arnie.

A great start to 2011 field operations!

More Snow?

Well at least we got a good head start on primary-tillage (plowing), Wednesday before the storm. The dry and windy weather for a couple of weeks has really dried out the soils, and so Adam and our good friend Dave Olson (pictured) were able to prepare fields for early spring crops.

With some snow flying around yesterday, Alice and I marked out fields for plowing, and were able to see which sections are still quite wet. Also, fall planted crops: winter wheat and rye are just beginning to put on a bit of growth and "green-up". We scattered red clover seed under some winter wheat on our seed-development field; it fell into the cracks in the soil from recent thawing and refreezing. There it will be ready to grow when consistent warm temperatures take hold, and after the grain is harvested we will have a lush carpet of green leaves suitable for grazing, and crimson blossoms for medicinal teas.

We are eagerly waiting for barley seed from Andrea and Christian of Valley Malt: a new WMass business. Besides growing for the grain CSA we will market the 2-row barley to local Massachusetts breweries, who are putting money up front for buying the seed, to be malted in Hadley. If we let them know in advance, we can most likely get CSA member's barley malted for home brewing.

Since planting season is 3 weeks away, this Saturday will be the last time we are at Amherst farmer's market (to sell anyway) until late July. We will have whole wheat flour and un-milled berries.

More soon...

New website is up.

Hello - Adam here. We put up a basic website yesterday at: http://www.whiteoakgrains.info/, (Alice did most of the work).

Thanks to NOFA for advertising for us this week in the Organic Food Guide!

Also... I was surfing Google earlier today and found a Boston Localvore post talking about our farm, White Oak Farm, with a link to the PVHG grain CSA, which is a big mistake. We helped get their "CSA" off the ground a couple of years ago, but had a difference of idealogy which did not allow us to continue working with them. We grow all of the crops for our grain share, with a high standard of organic methods. We try to keep the price reasonable because we believe local-organic food needs to be a real food alternative, not a fad, trend, or niche. Thanks.

Wednesday Feb. 9, 2011

A system of community self-reliance...

Our grain farming depends on the granary equipment at New England Small Farm Institute (NESFI). (Here is the grain dryer attached to my John Deere 520 in front of the NESFI barn). Local fabricaters in Amherst put this trailer unit together based on plans from VT farmer Jack Lazor of Butterworks organic dairy farm. The funding came from Mass.Dept. of Ag. Resources, through a grant written by NESFI. Grants ususally require in-kind matching funds. The funds used for this grant were from many community members and their projects to further local grain production.

Amherst Winter Farmers Market

We are now at the Amherst Winter Farmers Market at the middle school selling wheat berries, flour, and soon all local pies and other baked goods. Look for us in the far corner of the cafeteria! The market is held every Saturday from 10-2.

Beer from the fields!

We recently sold some grain to Valley Malt, a home garage-style malting business that has started up in Hadley, MA. It's exciting to see people make a go of reviving this on a cottage industry scale locally.  They in turn are selling our malted wheat to Worm Town Brewery in Worcester, who are making it into beer, which then will be sold to a brew pub in Cambridge MA. I think this is the longest regional supply chain we have ever sent our grain down, an interesting venture into the world of a larger (but not too large) food-chain.

Eat our grain at Hungry Ghost Bakery!

For the past few months we have been selling wheat to Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton, home of the famous "Little Red Hen" project. They are a great community establishment and bake really delicious sourdough breads daily in their wood fired oven (pic above!).  They are now baking up a "locavore loaf" every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, as well as flat breads on Saturday and Monday,  often made with our wheat (ask!) Check out their website: http://www.hungryghostbread.com/

Heirloom wheat multiplication project

We hand planted a 1/4 acre of a heirloom variety of wheat called Banatka, as part of a SARE funded project headed by Eli Rogosa and the Heritage Wheat Conservancy. We are excited to take part in this important work of multiplying these old wheats, that in many cases exist only in very small amounts. Planting by hand was quite a way to plant a wheat field in contrast to the house-sized combines and planters in the mid west! For more information about the conservancy visit: www.growseed.org

Cover Crop Seeding