Farming in the shade

Winter is a time for us to rest a little, to catch up on paperwork, to plan, and to fix/improve things. But this winter our to-do list of projects is two pages long. The projects on those two pages may be six months' worth of work, and I'm sure we haven't thought of everything.  The Farmer's current project is a gravity table we bought as a pile of parts. We already use a fanning mill to remove sticks and weed seeds and other unwanted debris from the beans. The gravity table will help us to remove more of the not-quite-perfect beans, and cut down on our hand sorting.  The gravity table (above right) needs a large industrial fan to operate. The fan was not included in the pile of parts. For months we stalked Craigslist, until we found a fan large enough to do the job and inexpensive enough for us to afford. It involved a road trip to a factory district in Chicago, and we are grateful for our friend Glenn's help with getting the fan (above left) home. The...

All the harvesting is now done for the year. We have started putting things away and buttoning up the farm for the coming winter. What a gorgeous fall we have had! As we turn our attention to these things, we take a moment to reflect on our blessings. We are blessed to have the ability and desire to farm. We are blessed to have family and friends who support us. We are blessed to be able to worship in the way that we choose. We are blessed to have enough to eat, clothes to wear, and warm homes. Thank you for being part of our Shady Side Farm family. We are grateful that you allow us to raise food and fiber for you and your families. Happy Thanksgiving!

This makes me happy.  This fall was full of regular, abundant rain, which made harvesting difficult to impossible. Besides the weather difficulties, we dealt with regular break-downs with the combine. We would fire it up, begin to harvest, and it would immediately break. We would spend a week of nice weather fixing it, and just before we finished fixing it, it would rain like crazy. Then we would have to wait for the ground to dry up, and once it was dry, we'd try to harvest again, and the combine would break. Repeat, ad nauseum.  I could go on about how stinky this fall has been. I have tried to have a Habakkuk 3 mindset (though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vine... yet I will trust...), but honestly, it's been hard.  But this--THIS. The combine is working, and has been for over an hour. The corn is dry, and the ground is only a little bit muddy. It looks like we might get a harvest after all. Thanks be to God!

The bean harvest of 2014 was not great. So last summer we rotated between three farmers markets, and didn't have too much trouble moving the small quantity of beans we needed to market. The bean harvest of last fall, however, was much better. We continued to rotate between three markets all winter long (some of them outside!). But early this summer, we realized that we needed to work a little harder to move all these beans. We added two new markets to the mix, and now we need a Franklin Planner (an old-fashioned kind of scheduling app that uses paper and a pen) to keep us knowing where we are coming or going. With the great help of our parents, we cover five markets. The Holland market is an every Saturday market. The Fulton Street market (GR) is an every other Saturday market, as is Sweetwater Local Foods market in Norton Shores. New to the mix this year are Kalamazoo (every other Saturday) and South Haven (as often as we can get there--generally every other Saturday and mo...

Yesterday we moved the cattle from one pasture to another--a total move that had to be close to half a mile. It was a hot day, one of many hot days this summer all strung together in a row. If you've ever picked a field of green beans, or hoed a field of pickles, or followed a potato digger, lobbing the freshly-unearthed taters into a nearby receptacle, you'll know what this summer feels like. You look up from what you're doing and think, "Didn't I make any progress at all? The end is still so far off..." And then you realize that once you reach the end of your row, you will turn around and start back across the field to where you started. That's what this summer feels like. Are we there yet? We watch the weather, hoping for a break in the heat, or the relief and refreshment brought by rain. People comment to us: "This is what we wished for in February!" And they drive off to their cottage or the beach, while we move our animals and pra...

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,      and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,      the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,      the Spirit of counsel and might,      the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.  And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. --Isaiah 11:1-3 Save Save Save Save

Now that most of the sheep are out on pasture, The Farmer has begun cleaning out the barn. The bedding is packed down very solidly, and so the first step is to scoop it out of the barn and bring it outside to place it in the manure spreader.  Once the spreader is full, he turns it on, and the spreader spews it everywhere, breaking it up into smaller pieces. Stand back! He loads it into the mixer wagon, which beats it up some more. He opens the side gate on the mixer wagon, and the compost travels up the conveyer into the invessel composter. The composter slowly turns and aerates the manure and straw, allowing it to heat up and do its thing. The constant turning of the drum makes for a high-quality, consistent product. After 3 or 4 days in the composter, The Farmer takes the compost out of the drum and piles it up outside. It then ages for about a year before we sell it. All compost is not created equally. Our compost is made from sheep manure and straw beddi...