I began working as farm manager at Little River Flower Farm in Buxton, ME a bit over a month ago. As far as this blog is concerned, that explains two things: 1) why I’ve remained inactive for this long, but 2) as I begin trying to get back on track, what many of my subsequent posts will reference. The farm already has an oft-updated Facebook presence, so creating another blog like at the Farm Museum seemed redundant. I’ve got work done on posts about killdeer, plastic in the field, and rototillers. Updates coming soon!
May 26, 2012
Little River Flower Farm
May 26, 2012
Quotes of the day: 5.26.12
Have been working with another Portland resident recently to turn a 10x20 plot in his yard into a vegetable garden, which his family and Ruth and I will share to grow in this summer. The process of tearing up the lawn brought two quotes to mind:
“That path [through the meadow]…is a thing of incomparable beauty, especially right after it’s been mowed. I don’t know exactly what it is, but that sharp, clean edge changes everything; it makes a place where there wasn’t one before. Where before your eye sort of skidded restlessly across the tops of the overgrown grass, in search of some object on which to alight, now it has an enticing way in, a clear and legible course through the green confusion that it cannot help but follow. The path beckons, making the whole area suddenly inviting. (Even my cat, whom the tall grasses never bothered, now makes a point of keeping to the path.) New possibilities have opened up: there’s now the prospect of a little journey.”
-Second Nature, Michael Pollan, 1991
“The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well have not been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
-Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
May 26, 2012
All my life
“All my life I’ve wanted to be a farmer. I’m finally catching up with myself!” -Don Kauber, 71-year old beginning farmer, West Baldwin, ME
More on Don soon.
February 21, 2012
Quotes of the day: 2.21.12
“When schools such as the University of Idaho cut their agriculture programs, you know times are tough for this degree. The state has more than 25,000 farms, for cow’s sake, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture census, in 2007. Still, if your idea of a good day is getting up with the sun and working till it sets as an agricultural manager, a degree in agriculture might be your calling.
Just don’t expect farms and ranches to be calling you, says Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., and author of ‘The 10 Best College Majors for Your Personality.’ ‘It’s true that farms are becoming more efficient now and so there is less of a need for farm managers,’ he says. That means less jobs. In fact, the U.S. Department of Labor projects 64,000 fewer jobs in this field over the next seven years.” -College Majors That Are Useless, Terence Loose, Yahoo! Education, 1.19.12 (note: this article listed agriculture as the #1 most useless degree, followed by fashion design, theater, animal science, and horticulture) “After reading the January 19, 2012 Yahoo Education article ‘College Majors That Are Useless,’ one might be led to believe that the author, Terence Loose, has something against eating, wearing clothes, enjoying a natural landscape, or smelling a bouquet of roses. What other reason could he have for singling out Agriculture, Animal Science, and Horticulture as three of the five most useless degrees? …a Purdue University study funded by the USDA projected an estimated 54,400 annual openings for college graduates in food, renewable energy, and the environment between 2010 and 2015. The study projected only 53,500 qualified graduates will be available each year and stated that employers have expressed a preference for graduates from colleges of agriculture and life sciences that tend to have more relevant work experience and greater affinity for those careers. …A mere two weeks ago, the Washington Post printed the results of a Georgetown University study showing that recent college graduates with degrees in agriculture and natural resources were among those with the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at 7 percent, surpassed only by graduates with degrees in health (5.4 percent) and education (5.4 percent).” -‘Useless’ or Essential? Why Our Agriculture Majors Are Growing, Jennifer Ryder Fox, Dean, College of Agriculture at California University, Chico, 1.23.12 “No scientist performs a greater act of faith in the predictability of the operation of natural laws than the farmer who plows a part of this year’s harvest back into the earth.” -Agriculture, the Island Empire, Andre Mayer and Jean Mayer, Daedalus, 1974
December 9, 2011
Vernon Farm
My blog just started getting followed by Vernon Farm. I don’t know much about these folks but apparently they teach gardening in Boston and I wish I knew more! Check it out above.
RSS feed: http://farmersfold.tumblr.com/rss
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