Essex, New York Guide and Community Blog
Is there such a thing as too much asparagus? Impossible! Especially when it’s succulent purple asparagus… Sara Kurak of Full and By Farm sent out an email this morning reiterating Sunday’s asparagus announcement: they’re already harvesting asparagus. We are still harvesting daily and need some eaters! Please stop by, or stop by again to grab [...]
The good news is that we found local-ish organic wheat for the season, six tons were delivered from Vermont yesterday. With last year’s flooded season we were not able to get any grains from our usual Essex/Willsboro farms. The bad news is that the scarcity and high gas prices mean that we are spending almost twice as much [...]
We’ve yet to take down the buckets but it seems that sugaring season has come to a close, a full week before we had even tapped last year. The grass is greening in front of our eyes now, and the soil thermometer registered 75 yesterday in our sandy field. Even more than the t-shirts and straw hats we’ve all [...]
It’s been another busy sugar-season week, dominated by long days and late nights of boiling sap. This time of year we get to have all of our meals outside by the fire as well as farm meetings, rarely returning inside other than for sleep. Watching weather come and go, huddling close to the dry heat [...]
We boiled syrup late into Monday night. I split wood by the nearly full moon as it reflected brightly off of new snowfall, pin point stars and bright planets shining down. And the crisp, crisp air burning into your lungs and fingertips if you stepped more than a few paces from the roaring evaporator. James and Nathan abandoned the [...]
“Remember the week 6 note where Kristin mentioned Who can catch the most sunlight, and keep it? Well she’s away this week and that means I’m here to take you into the deep end of the pond regarding that sentence. Let me warn you in advance, the train of thinking I’ve been on the past [...]
”If Kristin were writing this note this week all we would hear about would be sheep and sheep dogs. Since we first started farming here eight and a half years ago she has constantly entreated me to bring on the sheep. My response has almost always been snarky “…so that we can feed the coyotes?” [...]
“Mark and I just got back from our annual retreat to Montreal. We were wearing our town clothes and I thought we were looking pretty good, but not good enough for all the attention we were drawing on the street. Then I saw that Mark had his knit hat on inside out, and it was [...]
Author, Kristin Kimball and husband Mark, owners of the Essex Farm provide a glimpse into their lives and how they came to their unique calling. During The Wild Center’s first-ever remote “barncast”, Kristin read excerpts from her book, The Dirty Life. At the end of the video Mark and Kristin answer some questions from the [...]
I sat down this week to peruse and place the big annual seed order, one of the coziest and most delightful of winter tasks. Last year I nestled in close to a warm fire, with wind and snow whipping against the windows, the view a sheet of pure white. This year, not so much. There [...]
