McClary Hill Farm

Feeling a bit like the boy who cried, “WOLF!,” having tried to quit once before, I’m sorry to say that I need to close the farm, for the time being.

This time I am resolved.

In March, it will have been five challenging years.

I have learned that food production is a curious and demanding business. Having had grandparents who farmed, I understood the amount of work involved, but, shame on businessman-me, I underestimated the capital required to build an efficient farm infrastructure.  I also underestimated the re-training required for an industrial brain to become a farmer’s brain. Agricultural work-in-process is measured in months and requires both urgency and patience and faith… all at the same time!

For these reasons, most farms are multi-generational highlighting the tragedy of much of our agricultural policy over the last 50 years.  By industrializing (get big or get out) food production we detached ourselves from our food producers. Without a human face and human accountability we came to accept the inferior food products dominating our store shelves, products that are celebrated by elaborate marketing programs, food products that fatten, weaken and sicken us — food products and processes that you would never tolerate from a farmer that you know, nor would a farmer you know attempt to foist such products on you.

And, at least partially, as a result of the false value of cheap food and the faulty values behind its flourishing, a farm business requires more than one set of hands working full-time and at least one off-farm income with health insurance in order to survive.

I am convinced, more than ever, that our food system is wrong.  Fortunately, there is a gathering momentum behind the move to change.

I have tried to be innovative in my approach to the farm.  I adopted many new/old ways of managing animals. I developed and invested in methods to reduce my farm’s carbon footprint while improving soil quality.  But cleverness is no guarantee of success, even though the absence of cleverness assures failure.

I have toiled for five years, but industry is no guarantor of success. I have built buildings, renovated my house, improved a barn, built four greenhouse structures, opened up 25 acres of woods, built a wood-fired heating system, gardened, weeded, wept and written and sang (and talked to myself), maintained a milking herd of Jerseys, kept sheep (lawn ornaments, really), pigs, chickens, eaten and sold GREAT food, learned a ton and gone broke.

Cash IS King.

I have learned that it is easier to save money than to make money.  You can’t just save your way to financial stability.

The two big cash drains are insurance (health, property and liability), and property taxes.  If I was 30 years old, I would try to go without the health insurance. But at 51, I don’t think it would be wise. And not paying one’s property taxes, well, that is a path that leads nowhere… fast.

I am fortunate to have had an opportunity to do this work. It has been the most meaning-filled work that I have done in my life. The rewards of having people come to the farm and buy my products kept me going perhaps longer than I should have.

I am as committed as ever to the notion that our strength as individuals is derived from our sense of community and that a connection to the land, with its demand for shared labor and struggle and its reward of shared joy and sacrifice is the deepest and most durable component of creating community.  It is ironic that the job that has required me to be as rugged-an-individual-as-possible has taught me the impossibility and fraud that the notion of the rugged individual is.

We are who we are because of who we all are.

I will stop milking the cows in the next week or two.  I will sell them as soon as possible. I also have a fair amount of equipment that I will sell off.  Stuff that I never quite got into production, but that would have been necessary for the conversion of raw materials into finished, value-added products.

I will hold onto a tractor and the implements that I have.  There continue to be tasks necessary for the maintenance and improvement of the pasture land — it would be a crime to let it return to forest.  It is a tool that should be handed to the next generation.

I will, over the next couple of months be finishing up the ell and getting some heat in the upstairs of the new building, as well as finishing up the grant for charcoal creation.  These completed activities may open up some opportunity for cash flow generation.

I desperately hate the idea of giving up, but this is an opportunity to find other meaningful work that may, or may not, enable me to find my way back, refreshed, replenished and wiser.

I thank you all for the patronage, kindness and support you have provided me. I am happy to have been a part of a growing local food movement that can now step in and provide you with the products that you have been getting here.

One’s reach should always outstrip one’s grasp.

I am truly grateful and proud to have been a farmer for you and your families,

Dave

It took 11-1/2 hours to fill, but it is now full.  The furnace has been charged and the system is back on line.  Temperatures are slow to climb, primarily due to the lack of insulation on the surface of the tank.   That will be finished tomorrow… I hope.

Here are the pics.

This is Plan B. There have been a number of improvements made over the original cover

This was Plan A. The primary improvement from this setup is that the tubing enters between the top cover and bottom liner instead of through the top liner. This should eliminate any loss due to evaporation. But we will see.

The new setup has a built-in tank temperature gauge and a built-in refill line.  The new liner will also have a water level gauge that will sit on top of the liner.  These are all improvements that will reduce water loss due to evaporation.

Now, if only the liner will last for more than a year.

Started refilling the water tank at 5:12 PM. After 3-1/2 hours of flowing water we’ve got about a foot at the bottom of the tank. Only 4 more feet or 14 hours of water to go!

The greenhouse will be warm and damp tonight since the tank is uncovered.

Nice to be making progress.

Again.

The creaking ice beckoned,

wanting to show how,

overnight,

it had warped itself

into a cat-tail rimmed bowl.

The beavers dredged

a splay-footed trail

resolved to repair

the responsible breach.

Industry thwarted,

no materials for repairs,

they ate,

worrying the bark

from chiseled saplings

before retreating to their ice-locked lodge.

One of the dogs

mouthing a gnawed stick

breaks through a dark patch.

She struggles,

calibrating claws’

slip and grab,

and lurches,

lurches,

and finally lurches free,

shakes and runs

to rejoin the others.

From behind an icebound rock

and blood-red barberry,

a partridge startles and whirs

an accelerating arc

into a waiting wire-mesh fence.

An explosion of feathers,

she drops to the ice,

eyes closing,

gulping air

past an un-hinged tongue,

one wing askew.

Her mate, launching south,

and without looking back,

flies.

Went for a walk with Alice and our friend, Kent, yesterday. When we made it around the property to the beaver pond

If you look closely you can see how the ice slopes down into the center of the pond.

we found some unusual ice formations.

Slanting afternoon light

The water level dropped about a foot and a half  due to a washout in the beaver dam.  The washout must have occurred as a result of the heavy rain we had a couple of weeks ago.

We did find some newly chewed tree branches and trunks left above the ice as well as a trail in the snow that indicates the beavers moving about gathering food.  It will be a long winter for the beavers if they can’t access the food they have stored in the pond.

With apologies to my skiing friends, I haven’t missed snow.  We had the Halloween storm, but since then there has been a general lack of winter, let alone snow.

There's a cow and a doorbell under that whiteness.

Yesterday, we got 4 inches… enough to grease the roads and make dragging the cart to the barn a minor challenge.

I can’t complain.  We’re at the midway point of the snowiest part of the year, the sun has bounced off the lowest point in its annual circuit, I’ve got enough hay to feed the animals until grass comes back,  and enough wood to keep us all warm until spring.

Time to finish the taxes and pull out the seed catalogs.

Photo Credits… photo credits… Alice took the picture that appears on the This I Believe Website!  It’s a good shot of the Woozeling Moo!

In 2006 I wrote an essay for the Public Radio International (PRI) show, This I Believe. Five years passed and I had forgotten about the essay.  I had thought it pretty good, but recognized that they must get loads of good stuff submitted, and chalked it up to experience.

At the end of 2011 I got a call from John Gregory the producer of the show telling me he had found my essay in the archive.  This should qualify John for a nomination for the radio equivalent of excellence in investigative journalism. He had to dig deep to find that essay.

The end of the story is that I got to record the essay at NHPR in Concord NH.  With Alice’s wordsmithing,  John’s guidance and editing and Andrew Parrella’s expertise in the NHPR studio, we came up with a recording of the piece.  It will air on the Bob Edwards show this weekend, January 13 and 14.  It can also be accessed via the link below.

(http://thisibelieve.org/essay/10761/)

Should you listen, I hope you enjoy it.

Update.

Mini the Woozeling Moo, The Lady Woo, the widdle cow is doing fine.  She gimps around on three feet, but she gets where she wants to go. She is now living full-time with the big cows and appears to have been accepted by her mother. Mini is a happy little cow.  I continue to be amazed that she has made it this far. I’m beginning to see parallels between that cow and my farm.

The Woo moved to the pasture when her brother, Mojo the pig, went off to be stud pig at a farm in Wolfeboro.  I worried, as I watched Mojo ride away in the back of a pickup truck, that Mini might get depressed without her pig-pal.  I mean, they’ve been together practically since birth.  But cows can be a bit hard to read and I haven’t seen any real change in Mini’s behavior.

My favorite memory of these two is watching them run ahead of me as I went to the barn in the morning.  The routine for the morning was to go to the greenhouse and open the door.  You see, as Most-Important-Animals-On-the-Farm, Mini and Mojo slept overnight together in a hay-filled corner of the greenhouse. When the door slid open Mojo would grunt happily and bound out of the greenhouse knowing that food was in the offing.  Mini would gradually, with a good deal of encouragement, drag herself out into the morning.  I would load up the wheelbarrow and head for the barn and the two would wobble and hobby horse their way along.  After chores, the two would stay in the pasture near where the cows were eating their hay.  At around 3:00, when the sun would start to go down, Mojo would nudge Mini into action and the two would return to the greenhouse together.  Sometimes I would see them coming across the road and other times I would just find them in a little mammalian pile in their hay bed in the greenhouse.

These two are a very special pair of animals.  It will be interesting to see if they recognize each other when Mojo comes back.

Other news…

The house heating system, a wood fired gasifying furnace attached to a 3000 gallon tank of water, had been operating flawlessly since the beginning of the winter.  In the category of “famous last words”, I had even gone so far as to say that the system was, possibly, the best thing I had ever done.  Hmmm.  As if on cue, this past Sunday, I noticed a drop in the temperature of the water coming into the house and went to check the furnace.  It was happily chugging away making hot water.  Then I went to check the connections to the water tank… all’s well there. Then I went to the tank and noticed that my water level indicator was missing.  It had been there a week ago, when I noticed that the water level was down an inch or so.  This was pretty typical of the evaporative loss that I had seen for the past year.  I took the cap off the tank and poked a broom handle into the hole.  I swirled the handle around in the opening feeling for the resistance of water.  Lower and lower went the handle without feeling any water. Four feet down I felt nothing.  The handle was dry.  To shorten the story, the tank was empty.  EMPTY!  3000 gallons gone.

Given the precarious financial condition of my operation, the general lack of time due to renovation and expansion projects and the onrushing demand of the coming spring, this was not good.

I was greatly discouraged.

Yesterday I spent the day tearing the deck off the tank, removing insulation and copper coils in order to get at the liner.  I did find a strange hole in one of the corners, how it got there is a mystery.  It would it appear to have been enough to cause the tank to drain.

Today brings other tasks.  I’ll need to let you know about the result.

Kinda creepy!

In fact, it’s horseradish. I decided to dig out a couple of roots before the ground freezes tight.

And a handful of tomatoes from the greenhouse. I find it funny how little interest I have in a tomato this time of year, but it was nice to make a pizza with fresh sliced brandywines.

The gift from a warm November.