Take an Essex Farm tour in photos. These pictures were taken last week. Hear the reports and see some samples of the images from Kristin Kimball below:
Mark and I did some reconnaissance on the home 80 this morning. It was drizzling, of course. The rain has been unrelenting for weeks now. Here is an ode to drainage, in pictures. If it weren’t for drainage in these fields, you would just see big smears of mud with aquatic weeds here.
Click an image to get a larger view and to read the caption (or see them below the gallery).
1. Back at the farmhouse, the ducks are having a grand time. It has occurred to me that the ducks may have seized control of the weather this year. You really couldn’t ask for a better year for ducks. (Credit: Kristin Kimball)
2. In Mailbox Field, the zucchini is beginning to size up. We may have some ready for harvest next week. The field corn looks very good. We will not get a sweet corn crop this year (both the first and second plantings got flooded out), but we will have field corn for roasting ears. Green beans are coming, too. (Credit: Kristin Kimball)
3. This is where all the water comes out, at the east end of the field. I love you, drainage. (Credit: Kristin Kimball)
4. And here is an example of the lemonade you can make on a diversified farm on a lemon of a year. This field, mostly clover, was too wet and too lush to graze with dairy cows, so Gwen moved the laying hens here. The high-protein forage will help cut the grain bill. And the hens are ecstatic. (Credit: Kristin Kimball)
1. Back at the farmhouse, the ducks are having a grand time. It has occurred to me that the ducks may have seized control of the weather this year. You really couldn’t ask for a better year for ducks.
2. In Mailbox Field, the zucchini is beginning to size up. We may have some ready for harvest next week. The field corn looks very good. We will not get a sweet corn crop this year (both the first and second plantings got flooded out), but we will have field corn for roasting ears. Green beans are coming, too. [Mark Kimball in photo.]
3. This is where all the water comes out, at the east end of the field. I love you, drainage.
4. And here is an example of the lemonade you can make on a diversified farm on a lemon of a year. This field, mostly clover, was too wet and too lush to graze with dairy cows, so Gwen moved the laying hens here. The high-protein forage will help cut the grain bill. And the hens are ecstatic.
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.
Leave a Reply