Mark Kimball, a few months ago, (injured & healing) in a field at Essex Farm (Credit: Kristin Kimball)
Enjoy this Essex Farm update from Kristin Kimball at Essex Farm, in Essex, NY!
I zipped around the farm by bicycle with Mark yesterday afternoon. This is news because it was his first spin since he broke his leg the first week in February. It was a cautious ride, but enough to qualify as a zip. His leg is sore and weak, but his internal radio is tuned once again to WFRM, all farming, all the time. This is a good thing, considering the season.
The drained fields are ready, despite this week’s hard, heavy rain, and the next three days are our window for the biggest planting push of the year. Yesterday, the whole team focused on potatoes, first cutting the oversize Kennebec seed potatoes into golf ball sized pieces, then hauling them to Monument field, where Jenny and Liam had Jake and Abby hooked to the potato planter.
Plant potatoes together before saying, “I do.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Watching Jenny and Liam work together reminded me of our first years, when Mark and I were a team of two. I am not nostalgic for the brutal hours nor the stress of startup, but watching them reminded me there is something precious about working hard together as a couple. It’s a facet of a relationship not many people get to explore.
Like taking an arduous trip together, it pulls the shield of romance off of a relationship, and reveals its strengths and weaknesses. My friend Cydni, who grew up on a ranch and married a cowboy, says you should make sure you work a cattle chute together before you say I do. I think you should plant potatoes… [Continue reading Kristin Kimball’s Essex Farm Note.]
In 2004 Mark and Kristin Kimball founded Essex Farm in Essex, NY. It was the first full-diet CSA farm formed (as far as they know)! Kristin wrote her memoir, The Dirty Life, chronicling her transition from city girl to farm wife and the first year of life at Essex Farm. Since then Kristin continues to chronicle life on the farm on her blog, which we give you snippets of here on the Essex on Lake Champlain Blog.
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