1. Write a letter to the editor of the Concord Monitor expressing your support for our farm’s bid.

2. Come to the vote on Saturday, December 3rd at 10 AM, at the Canterbury Elementary School, and help us explain to Canterbury residents why Brookford Farm would be an asset to their community.

3. Help us spread the word by posting this message through social media, on blogs, and with calls and emails to friends.

4. Urge your friends, colleagues, and relatives in Canterbury to get out and vote in favor of our organic, grass-based farming efforts, and tell them that what we are building is not just a farm, but also access to healthy food, revitalized soil, and strong communities in our area.

Thank you so much for your support!

photo courtesy of Sharon Houston

We owe a huge debt of thanks to all the volunteers who cooked, worked in the parking lot, organized vendors, silkscreened T-shirts, taught workshops, led events, painted faces, carved pumpkins with kids, and baked cakes yesterday at QuarkFest. Thank you to Erin and Cate for teaching phenomenal food workshops, Cathy and Sharon for painting faces and carving pumpkins all day in the kids’ area, to Jeanette, stellar vendor and raffle coordinator, Lisa and Maria for being there wherever needed and all day long, Jonathan and Barbara for masterminding the food area, Kaniska for putting together the cooking class materials, Hannah and Mack for tabulating the Quark-Off ballots and doing countless other jobs throughout the day, David, Caleb, and Lorelei for helping from set-up straight through the last event, Kurt and Tom and Jacqueline for help in the food area, all the great volunteers from SlowFood UNH, Hannah, Wilma, and Jonah for morning help, and last but certainly not least, to Lindsay, Mark, Phil, Maria, Peter, Pat, and Jameson, who gave of their incredibly limited free time to run Cow-Pie Bingo, oversee  massive parking operations, paint signs, lead hayrides, hustle raffle tickets, compose original music, and make us a big old breakfast.

We also want to send our humble thanks out to all the masterful chefs who generously donated their time and resources to showcase all that’s delicious about quark. Elizabeth from Black Bean Cafe, Amelia from Blue Moon Evolution, Chris from Flatbread, Ana Gabriela from Henry’s Market, Lisa from Squash Blossom Farm, and Michelle from Street all taught us a thing or two about a subject we thought we knew very well – thank you!

And the musicians who played at our event were not only excellent, but they also came together to cover a hole in the schedule which happened just a few days before the event. If you ever get a chance to hear Deep Hole Road or the Fiddling Thomsons, you should go! You’ll be really glad you did.

And the day would not have been complete without all the community groups who came out and showed us what’s really great about where we live. Thank you all for coming out and sharing a great day with us at Quarkfest!

Despite all our best efforts, we could never have pulled together a festival of this size without the help of a dedicated group of volunteers and a core group of community organizations and businesses which have helped us to cover the huge costs of putting on this event. A few specific thanks are in order:

A Market of Manchester and Dr. Dan’s Natural Healing Center of Newburyport got us a couple of big-top tents in which to house the musicians, the quark cook-off, and the dining area.

Farm Credit East paid for event facilities like portable toilets.

Valicenti Organico and Cutter Family Properties funded the printing of promotional materials like posters and flyers.

Thompson Finishing (207) 408-4799 painted our street signs for around town.

Dover Agway bought the T-shirts we’re making for our volunteers, and Aubuchon Hardware paid for the ink and screens to print the design.

Slow Food Seacoast got us the cake boxes we’re using to send home prize-winning cakes from the Cake Walk, as well as the little plates and forks for Quark Cook-off samples.

Green Alliance, The Wire, and WUNH all donated publicity.

Through the generosity of these donors, we’ve been able to cover about half of the total cost of putting on this event, so we’ve decided not to ask for admission at the door. But we still have a ways to go, so the money that we raise from the raffling of gift certificates and prizes in hourly raffles as well as games like Cow Pie Bingo and the Cake Walk will help pay for all the entertainers, power the grills, get screening rights for the barn movie, and buy us all a lot of paper plates and mustard.

So consider bringing some spending money with you to QuarkFEST – you could win hundreds of dollars in prizes from the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, Red Rover Coffee, Beach Pea Baking Company, Black Bean Cafe,  High Mowing Organic Seeds, Flatbread, Noggin Factory Toys, Blue Moon Evolution, StreetFood 36o, Durham Marketplace, Strawbery Banke Museum, and of course, Brookford Farm. If the festival does end up generating any profits for the farm in the end, we’ll donate 10% of them to our CSA financial aid program.

Festival volunteers will be wearing bright T-shirts with a chicken design. Please help us pass the thanks to them as well – they are hometown heroes!

Also, we’re looking for volunteers to bake Quark Cakes for our cake walk fundraiser. Just drop us a line and we’ll get you the quark!

To read our latest newsletter – and all the details about QuarkFEST – click here.

You may know that the lease for Brookford Farm’s land is up in April 2012, and that the farm is looking for a new place to call home. As you can probably imagine, the process of transitioning a farm with all its animals, tractors, people, seeds, and equipment is enormous. But a large part of what we’re doing right now is searching for land to farm. Through this, it’s become clear that farmland of any size is a rarity in our state. Not to put too fine a point on it, the total percentage of active farmland in New Hampshire today is about 2 percent.*

Two percent. And when you consider that only a small percent of that two percent is being organically farmed, you get a fraction of a percentage. We believe in organic farming, and will never change our practices. But we are faced now with a dilemma. Given that no large parcel of organic land is available to us in New Hampshire, we feel we have two options: should we leave the state, or should we get land which is not yet certified organic and rehabilitate it?

We know that we have a pivotal role to play in the work of preserving local food supplies, decreasing energy consumption, and bringing neighbors together. When people meet up at farmers’ markets, CSA pick-ups, and locally-sourced produce aisles, our community grows. And in tough economic times, the financial support of neighbor supporting neighbor means a difference of about $70 million a year in terms of the Gross State Product, and an added 60 cents on the dollar to other industries which are also affected by farming. It’s also important to note that we have chosen to farm in this manner because we enjoy it, and  because it is healthy for us and for our children. As a society as well as individuals, we all benefit from the health dividends of food that is good.

We want to stay here in New Hampshire, and also to claim this land which has not been treated well, and with our energy, hard work, and dedication, to return it to a state of natural fertility and productivity once more. We believe in that project. But for this to work, we also need to stay afloat financially – and we are going to need your continued support in order to do that. So we are asking you, our community, for your feelings about this project before we commit to it.

Please let us know what you think.

Should we take on the project of rehabilitating the land which was conventionally farmed, or should we search outside New Hampshire for land which is already certified organic? Would you continue to buy our products even if they were not, for a few years, certified organic?

Please fill out our one-question survey to let us know your thoughts.

* All statistics were drawn from the Home Grown Report of Spring 2010, put out by Food Solutions New England.

Our hayrides are much more than just a free wagon ride through pretty countryside – though they are certainly that. You also get to hear about the inter-connected lives of the many plants, animals, and people of our farm. We usually start with a little tour of the barnyard behind the farm store. In summertime, most of our animals are living outside on verdant, green pasture. But many animals are still too young to go out – and they live in the barns until they’re big enough. These days, our newest generation of egg-laying chickens live in the long chicken-shed behind the farm store.

If you’re driving down Sligo Road past the farm store, you can often see calves on the river side of the road enjoying some grass and the company of their peers. Calves which are under a couple of weeks old live in the barn attached to the big garage next to the farm store.

If you’re standing by the young calves in the barn, we sometimes call the barn across from you the ‘maternity pens.’ We keep very pregnant sows here, as well as nursing mothers and young piglets.

After we leave the area where the young animals live, we head out to the fields. Since we are always moving the animals around on the pastures, you always see different things on hayrides. Lately, most of the chickens live on Sligo Road just past the turn-off to Pinch Hill Road. Two covered wagons are in the field, and each one gets moved each day to a completely new spot of pasture. You can see a little bit of the electric fence we use as an enclosure in this photo – it’s not very big. It’s mainly there to keep predators out. The chickens could fly away if they really wanted to. But they don’t want to. The geese at the bottom left of this picture are there to guard the chickens. Don’t mess with the geese!

In the picture below, it’s easy to see what a huge difference only a day makes in our system of intensive grazing. In the frame of this photo are the footprints of three different days. If we left the chickens in one place too long, they would destroy the land. If we didn’t have them at all, the soil would not be enriched by the calcium and nitrogen in the chicken manure. In a few weeks, the brown spots left in the path of the chicken trailers will become visibly much greener than the areas where the chickens were not.

The pigs also perform really important tasks. The field pictured below was inhabited by pigs just a few weeks ago. Fields which are bordered by forests are constantly being encroached upon by shrubs, shoots, and young trees. It takes a lot of constant effort to maintain the borders of a field – unless you have pigs! Pigs are naturally excellent diggers, and they thrive in marginal areas which have shade (pigs, after all, can get sunburns) acorns, and delicious roots. In no time at all, the pigs rehabilitated this field, and we were able to sow it with vegetables which we’ll harvest for the winter. You’re more than welcome to join us for more fun at our next free hayride. Details on our events calendar.

A few months ago at the Garrison Players Arts Center, a historian, a farmer, and a member of a community theater got together to present a lecture on the past and present of local farming. Despite their disparate occupations, each of the presenters had a story to tell about agriculture in our region.

The building in which the event took place was itself a figure in the talk. Built as the Hiram Roberts Grange Hall in the latter part of the 19th century, the building that now houses Garrison Players, spent many years as a meeting place for farmers. With the changes that took place in 20th-century agriculture, the structure fell out of use and spent a number of years in neglect and disrepair. It would have been demolished if a group of dedicated community members hadn’t committed themselves to the project of raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours of donated labor to save the Hall, and along with it, to re-envision an important community space in our town.

This building, then, able to re-invent itself against all odds, was the perfect venue for a talk on farming in our time. Local agriculture has many of the same things to offer communities that it did so long ago — a place to meet neighbors, learn about food, support the shared benefits of a strong economy, and plan how to care for the land around us — but like the Grange Hall those many years ago, local farming in our state is in real jeopardy.

If you visit farmers markets in the Seacoast of New Hampshire this summer, you might be under the impression that local agriculture in our area is a thriving enterprise. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong. We all benefit from a great local food movement and from the community organizing efforts of local activist groups like Seacoast Eat Local and Slow Food Seacoast, to name just a couple. But the challenges facing farmers are enormous.

Farmers in our state are the least profitable in New England. About 70 percent finish each year in the red, according to the Home Grown report put out last year by Food Solutions New England. The average farmer in our state lives at somewhere around half of the federal poverty rate, and many, if not most, live without basics such as health insurance. Access to affordable land is one of the largest financial challenges for many farmers in our state. Many farmers who have not inherited land obtain use of it by leasing from established landowners. This works out sometimes, but it can also create instability for the farmers, the food supply and the land itself.

Brookford Farm is a case in point. Brookford provides a huge variety of food to the people of our region, from beef to zucchini and from arugula to wheat. But the land under all that food is leased, and that lease will not be renewed next year. In April of 2012, the animals, plants, and people who make up Brookford Farm will need to find new land to forage, scratch, take root in, and work with. If that land can’t be found around here, it will have to be found farther away — in another state, if necessary.

Given the unusually tough conditions of farming in New Hampshire, there might be some benefits to moving elsewhere, but this is our community, our home, and we don’t want to abandon the work we’ve already done. As a farm, we aspire to be much more than a grocery store. We want to do what the old Grange Hall did a hundred years ago — to create a place for neighbors to know each other, to support the health of a community, to protect the land, and to work for a better economic situation for everybody around.

In New Hampshire, only about 6 percent of the food we eat was grown in the state. If Brookford Farm has to leave, that number is going to get even smaller. To be able to stay, we’re going to need the same type of community effort that saved the Grange Hall from becoming just another sunken cellar in a field. A creative solution, a whole new beginning, and a lot of help from our neighbors and friends. Farmland is scarce in our part of the world, but we can’t believe that it’s non-existent — not yet. If you know of open land — about 200 acres — which is not in use, we would love to hear about it. And like all the other farmers who are working hard to put food on tables in our region, we need your conscious effort to support local agriculture before we’re no more than a thing of the past.

If you visit Brookford Farm during the fall and winter months, you might wonder what is under the tarps and old tires in the concrete bays just across from the cow barn. It’s not farm junk waiting to be hauled away, cow  manure, or compost. It’s the single most important food source for grass-fed cows during the long months of winter, and it’s called haylage. Haylage is made from early summer grasses, which are fermented under anaerobic conditions to produce a food which is very much like lacto-fermented sauerkraut, and it’s especially great for cows. Because our cows eat this highly nutritious haylage, they are able to produce fantastic milk throughout the many months that the pastures are covered with deep blankets of snow. Haylage is a close relative of silage – the difference between the two is that haylage comes from grass, or hay, and silage is the fermented product of corn-stalks. Our cows, being grass-fed, eat haylage.

A couple of weeks ago, just as soon as the rain abated and the fields were dry enough to get out the tractors, Luke, Phil, and Jake have been busy every single second of their daylight hours making haylage. In the next couple pictures, you can see that dusk is falling as they pull in their last wagons.

In the far left of the above photo, you can see the tires which weigh down the tarps that cover the haylage, and create good conditions for the probiotic bacteria which are so important in preserving the haylage throughout the winter months. That’s also the reason why Jake is driving on the cut grass in a tractor, over and over again – if you’ve stopped by the farm in the past couple of weeks, you know that this is nearly a constant activity during this work. One person, usually Luke, mows the grasses out on a field. A second person, usually Phil, collects the cut hay in another tractor, and brings it in a haywagon back to the bays at the farm, where a third person, often Jake, compresses it into a tight space in the concrete bay which is used for this purpose.

This picture was taken yesterday afternoon, on the final day of the haylage cut. The pile has grown to overflowing, and Jake is pressing it down one last time before it is covered.

Meanwhile, just one bay over from the haylage reserves, some young farmers have found other creative uses for empty haylage bays. Look out Little League – the farm is also a great place to practice pitching and catching.

Still other young farmers prefer to brush up on their tractor skills. It takes a lot of practice, work, and years, to get something like this right.

You may or may not know that what makes a cow a cow as opposed to a heifer, a calf, a steer, or a bull is that she is 1) female and 2) a mother. Some general terms that apply to both males and females as well as to all ages of animals are cattle and bovine. But since we are talking about cows, I can tell you that many in the Brookford dairy herd are either  pregnant or have recently given birth to new calves. So, happy belated Mother’s Day to you, Truly, Elmo, and Butter!

Below are a couple of the farm’s newest newborn calves, Bosnia and Dagestan (Luke is on a geography kick with cows’ names these days.) They were born just last week to Beryosa, which means birch tree in Russian, and Dinkle, which means spelt in German. It’s a tradition to name heifer calves using the first initial of their mothers’ names. This helps us to keep track of family trees within the herd, and besides, we think it’s a beautiful thing to do.

This brings us to heifers. A heifer is a young female who hasn’t yet been pregnant or had a calf. Heifers can be babies, like Bosnia and Dagestan above, or up to several years old. Since animals at our farm are grass-fed, they mature more slowly than grain-fed cattle. This means that we wait almost a year longer than many dairy farmers to breed our heifers, which makes them almost three years old before they start to give milk. These heifers are carefree like youngsters should be, enjoying life with their friends and associates on the JV team.

Cows see greener pastures during spring parade at Rollinsford’s Brookford FarmBy LAURENNE RAMSDELL
lramsdell@fosters.com

Ramsdell/Democrat photo Cows and calves were led from Brookford Farm to pastures on Sligo Road during the Rollinsford farm’s Heifer Parade and Barn Dance on Saturday.

ROLLINSFORD — People drove from all over on Saturday afternoon to join Brookford Farm for their Heifer Parade.

A drummer boy and a set of tractors led two dozen cows and calves up Sligo Road to greener pastures where for the first time this season they were released into lush fields. Most galloped along, eager to taste the sweet green grass, while others needed a little push along the way.

One tractor pulled a hay wagon filled with children throwing dandelions and other spring flowers to the crowd. Those who attended the springtime event cheered and waved as the cows passed, running behind the herd to get the first peek of them entering the fields that will serve as their home throughout coming spring and summer months.

Once the cows hit the field, they took off running. Most trotted and danced around the field, jumping around while stopping occasionally to grab a mouth full of grass.

Jeanette Gagne of Somersworth said she had been “counting down the seconds” for the Brookford Farm event, eager to see the way the cows react once they hit the fields.

“It’s so funny to see the cows get to new grass,” said Gagne as she snapped photos from the parade’s start to finish. “They’re just so joyful.”

Gail Santos of South Berwick, Maine, who stood next to Gagne, said she was happy to attend an event that would support such a “wonderful farm.”

The two women went back and forth about how community-oriented the staff at Brookford Farm are, praising them for inviting the public to attend such a unique event.

Following the parade, attendees made their way back down Sligo Road to attend a barn dance and outdoor bash that went well into the evening.

For more information on Brookford Farm, visit their website at www.brookfordfarm.com.

Come git your farm on with the funnest dandelion-throwing, tractor-processioning, local sausage-eating, barn-dancing you ever had.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Read more…

Seacoast-area agriculture has a history spanning hundreds of years. Over time, much has changed – and much has stayed the same. Join Nina Maurer, consulting curator at the Counting House Museum, as well as farmers from Rollinsford’s very own Brookford Farm for a look at the changing face of local agriculture — from late 1700s farmer-mariners who traded with the Caribbean to modern-day organic farmers who increasingly depend on local markets for trade.

[audio: http://brookfordfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/spring-sound-portrait-cows-in-the-barn.mp3]

Beside the shady field where the pigs are now is a pond, and at this time of year, it’s filled with thousands of the little frogs known as peepers.

[audio: http://brookfordfarm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/peepers-in-april.mp3]

This Friday, we met with five UNH students and 1600 Dover High School students to talk about the health, environmental, and social benefits of eating local food, and along the way, to introduce yogurt as a healthy option for lunch.

Students were texting each other at the table, swapping quips, and bolting down their lunches in the 25 minutes they had to eat it. They were also slapping Brookford Farm cow stickers on each other and asking for seconds… of yogurt.

Vivien Fam, Lauren Goldthwaite, Erin Greenhalgh, Sarah Iske, and Kim Mayo, all students in Nutritional Science at UNH, surveyed the students about their opinions about our low-fat yogurt, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.

Several students from Dover High  have started an interest group for introducing locally-sourced yogurt into the school’s cafeteria, which would make the Green Waves even greener.

Cozette Carroll Russell and Julian Russell are in their second year of making a feature-length documentary on Brookford Farm. It’s a thoughtful look at the daily lives of first-generation farmers, with an eye for the beauty in the changing seasons and our common labors. The film is in editing now, but it’s required viewing for everyone who’s passionate about local agriculture, environmental stewardship, and the poetics of place. But with arts programs being cut at every level, what little money there once was in support of independent film projects is quickly drying up. So we’re taking things into our own hands.

We hope you’ll join us in supporting Brookford Almanac on Kickstarter, a new, easy-to-use way of funding creative projects through online donations. Cozette and Julian just have 29 days to raise $5,000. If we all get together and donate a little or a lot, we can raise the amount needed to produce the film. It’s easy to pledge a donation, and you’ll also get to choose from a creative assortment of thank-you gifts, including your name in the credits, an original ringtone, film posters, screening tickets, and even the right to name a newborn calf from the farm.

We think you’ll agree that this is a story which needs to be told – please join us in your support of this film. You can view clips and film stills of Cozette’s amazing work on the web or on facebook.

On Monday morning, we woke to find 10 out of 34 cows sick. By Tuesday, four of them – Armenia, Heidi, Olga, and Zulu – had died. The six cows who survived feel sick and are not producing milk anymore. All this leaves us feeling very sad about the cows. In addition to this, we’re at only about 50% of our normal dairy production.

We are now in search for 8 or 10 new organic cows, and hope to bring them into our herd by sometime next week. Bringing new cows into an existing herd is not a simple thing, though. Cows have an established social order, and it takes time to introduce new ones into the group. On top of this,  purchasing the new cows will be difficult for the farm and will cost somewhere around $20,000.

Because of all this, we hope that you will understand that some dairy products will be in short supply in the coming weeks.

The greenhouse was constructed in May. All photos are courtesy of Jeff Benton.

In August, the greenhouse was used for ripening tomatoes.

This winter, the same greenhouse was used to provide a protected foraging space for the chickens.

The definition of agroecology reads just like a page from our playbook, so I’ll quote it at length here,

“Agroecology is both a science and a set of practices. It was created by the convergence of two scientific disciplines: agronomy and ecology. As a science, agroecology is the application of ecological science to the study, design and management of sustainable agroecosystems. As a set of agricultural practices, agroecology seeks ways to enhance agricultural systems by mimicking natural processes, thus creating beneficial biological interactions and synergies among the components of the agroecosystem. It provides the most favourable soil conditions for plant growth, particularly by managing organic matter and by raising soil biotic activity. The core principles of agroecology include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather than introducing external inputs; integrating crops and livestock; diversifying species and genetic resources in agroecosystems over time and space; and focusing on interactions and productivity across the agricultural system, rather than focusing on individual species. Agroecology is highly knowledge-intensive, based on techniques that are not delivered top-down but developed on the basis of farmers’ knowledge and experimentation.”

The full report is 20 pages long, and if you’d like to read it, the full text is here. One of the really unique aspects of places like Brookford Farm is that we strive to include so many different plants and animals in one place, integrating soil conservation and soil health and a certain synergy among the many different species which call Brookford Farm home.

The above photos of our greenhouse over the course of the past year illustrate just one of the ways we aim to maximize the productivity of a space at the same time we create mutually beneficial interactions between organisms while reducing our use of external inputs to the soil and animals.

Another segment of the report worth noting is something we’ve all known for a long time – the over-reliance on grains like corn for animal feeds is detrimental to overall food availability, and that amount of grain the world feeds to animals each year could feed 3.5 billion people. That’s not including the amount which is wasted in packaging, transport, and spillage – further making the case for keeping food supplies close to home.

This fall, journalist Joyce El Kouarti wrote an article on conservation efforts at Brookford Farm. Read an excerpt of the article below, or find the original piece online at Forest Notes magazine.

Will Work for Food: Conserved land plays a critical role in the changing face of New Hampshire agriculture

Rather than adopt the large-scale American farm model of growing or raising large amounts of a single item, the couple chose to emulate the farm management practices that they experienced first-hand in Europe. Instead of specializing in one specific crop, they grow and sell a variety of vegetables and also raise cows, chickens, and pigs. From the farm’s forests, they cut cordwood for heating and chip brush for their animals’ bedding. Luke describes their farming model as “biodynamic-lite.”

“I think of the entire farm as one connected organism, with the different animals and crops functioning as organs within that system,” he said. [...]

by Julie Defelice

The fields of Brookford Farm may be covered in a heavy blanket of snow today, but the grade school children at Tidewater Waldorf School in Eliot, ME are already gearing up for spring planting.

As part of just one of the farm’s collaborative school partnership programs, Brookford Farm and its growers, located in Rollinsford, NH, are teaching Lisa Sweeney’s 2nd and 3rd grade Tidewater students about farming. From growing, to harvesting, to preparing fresh, seasonal food, Mrs. Sweeney’s enthusiastic students will travel to the farm each week once the ground begins to thaw, and immerse themselves in the daily activities of farm life.

Catarina and Luke Mahoney began the farm’s school partnership program so that students from local area schools could gain practical hands-on experience and a real world appreciation for community-based, sustainable agriculture. For Mrs. Sweeney’s students the program fulfills part of their Waldorf-based elementary lesson block for Farming and Gardening.

Developed by Rudolf Steiner in 1919, Waldorf education seeks to present academic subjects in a pictorial, dynamic and hands-on way in hopes of stimulating the child’s imagination and fostering a deep love for education. Waldorf teachers strive to transform education into an art that educates the whole child – the heart and the hands, as well as the head. “Farming and Gardening teaches the student how animals and humans depend upon the earth’s soil” said Mrs. Sweeney.  “How they make best use of it throughout the yearly cycle of seed, to plant, to food, to compost, then back to seed.”

Much to the Mahoneys’ delight, Mrs. Sweeney’s students have already begun their learning. Just last October the students made weekly visits to Brookford Farm as part of fall harvesting. Following Catarina’s lead, the last of the season’s tomato crop was picked one week, and in the week that followed, the vines snipped, pulled from their twine and tossed in a heap for composting. Before their time was done, the students had also trimmed nearly 50 pounds of onions in a hayloft and witnessed a mother reuniting with her hungry calf for the first time less than twenty-four hours after being born.

One of the Mahoneys’ three young boys also attends Tidewater and was eager to share with his classmates what it means to live and work on a farm. In his well-worn boots, he was not only the first up the ladder to the hayloft, but happy to demonstrate just how easy it is to lead some one-hundred Jersey cows from the field back to the barn before sunset.

In conjunction with their program at Brookford Farm, Mrs. Sweeney’s students will take their practical knowledge back to their outdoor classroom at Tidewater and plant an array of organically-grown vegetables in the school’s raised garden beds. Last season Tidewater’s crop included potatoes, beets, swiss chard, turnips, tomatoes, squash and carrots. Once the crop was ready for harvest, the vegetables were shared by all students and used in each of the classrooms for a weekly pot of Stone Soup.

Just as all the children at Tidewater Waldorf School know the fable Stone Soup, a story that demonstrates how cooperation and sharing makes for a great pot of soup, they know too how grateful they are to Luke and Catarina Mahoney for their efforts. For it takes many hearts and minds to make a great education.

The President of the United States recently delivered the State of the Union speech, and last weekend, we at Brookford Farm had a more modest, though still important, meeting with our share-holders. We thought you might also like to know where we are, were, and hope to be…

Sustainable Agriculture and Biodiversity at Brookford Farm

Luke spoke about how important it is to us that Brookford Farm is a very biologically diverse place. This is noteworthy not only because we can offer so many different types of food to ourselves and our members, but also because having a variety of plants and animals living on the farm helps us to have a farm which is self-nourishing, which means that we try to avoid bringing in materials from outside. This is a core value of ours which has its origins in our experience as biodynamic farmers. On Brookford Farm, animals and plants support each other’s health when the cows eat the grasses on the pasture and then leave their manure to fertilize that same pasture. When the chickens follow the cows, they eat the insects from the cows’ manure, and leave behind their own manure, which is rich with calcium, an important mineral for soil health. When we grow grains for ourselves and then use the straw from those grains, which might otherwise be a waste product, as a winter bedding for the cows, it then acts as a sponge to collect the cows’ waste, which then helps us to create fantastic compost that contributes valuable nitrogen to improve the health of the soil. Another example of diverse cycles working in tune with each other is when we make quark, butter, or cheese from the cow’s milk, and whey is left as a by-product. Because we have pigs on the farm, and whey is an excellent and nutritious food for pigs, the whey is not wasted, but is in a way another contributor to the manure which, again, is so vital to the health of the farm as a whole.

2010: Travails and Successes

Aaron and Luke spoke about the many individual highs and lows we had this year with specific plants and animals. As we reflect on what worked and what didn’t, we found it most useful to think in terms of three categories: The Great, the Fine, and the Bad. Among the great successes this year were many summer crops, dairy and pork products, which we were able to make available to the CSA, as well as to farmer’s market customers, stores, and restaurants. Carrots, beets, sweet peppers, melons, tomatoes, pork, and dairy products are some examples of these items. The second level, the ‘fine,’ shall we say, were in short supply and were generally not sold at all outside the farm, which was sometimes a hardship for us. Because our CSA members are our first priority, though, these losses were not felt by the CSA for the most part. Some examples of this were eggs, many cuts of beef, onions, potatoes, garlic, celeriac, and cabbage. In the third category, the ‘bad,’ we had failures which were so serious that they also affected the CSA this year. Needless to say, we hope to do better with these things next year. Some examples of this are parsnips, spinach, sweet corn, and Brussels sprouts.

Notes on Some 2010 Disappointments

Beef – a steer ready for slaughter slipped and strangled himself early last spring, which seriously depleted our supply of beef. Also, the hot and dry weather of this summer was very conducive to a type of hoof disease, aptly named Hoof Rot, to which many of our cows and calves succumbed. Not only was this fatal for a number of the cows, caring for the cows who had hoof problems also required very intensive treatments. Besides hoping for a slightly wetter year to come, we are treating the cows preventatively with some minerals which seem to be helping their health so far.

Parsnips – we did several plantings with what turned out to be bad seed. When we switched to a new kind, we had great success, but by then it was too late to harvest many parsnips of good size.

Brussels Sprouts and Cabbage – we planted many of the brassicas on a new field this year, which had rather clayey soil that was bad for them. We’re moving these crops to a different field this year.

Spinach – There were two main reasons why we had a disappointing spinach harvest this year. First, spinach is really demanding of nutrient-rich soil. As we build up the health of our soil, the spinach quality will improve dramatically. Also, we plan to use low tunnels to cover the spinach this spring and fall to extend the growing season for spinach and other greens.

Sweet Corn – because our CSA this year started in August, our CSA members came in at the end of the corn season. Another reason why members didn’t receive very much corn was that harvesting organic, non-GMO corn is an extremely time-sensitive and tricky process, since it’s ripe in a very small window of time, and also, since it’s not sprayed, little worms called Corn Borers are invariably present.

Eggs – this year we had 800 new chickens of the New Hampshire Red variety. Simply put, these chickens didn’t lay. We’re getting pullets (mature birds) of the Golden Comet breed this year, and they will be here in July.

Organic Valley and the Dairy Revolution

Catarina spoke about our former relationship with the dairy cooperative Organic Valley, which was once a stable and important piece of our dairy operation. In years past, Organic Valley bought a set amount of our milk wholesale, which they then pasteurized and blended with the milk from other farms and packaged as Organic Valley milk. This June, Organic Valley told us that they objected to our sales of raw milk, and that they wanted us to make a choice: either give them all our milk and cease selling to everyone else, or be dropped as members of their operation. We decided to part ways. As a result of that decision, we suddenly found ourselves with hundreds and hundreds of gallons of milk which we needed to do something with. The result, we think, was a happy one: we continue to have relationships with the people who drink our milk, rather than shipping it off in an anonymous truck several times a week. The other major result of that split was that we dramatically expanded our previous dairy offerings of raw milk and cream, yogurt and quark to include cultured butter, kefir, buttermilk, and Camembert. Of course, processing all this milk also involves a lot of work, and our dairy facility is quite small. In addition, we recently lost our primary cheese-maker, who decided to devote time to other activities. We’ve hired some new workers for the dairy, though, and are looking into producing even more varieties of dairy products in the future, including our own cheddar cheese.

A New CSA Model: Build-Your-Own Brookford Shares

Among our CSA members are big families and single individuals, vegetarians and people who prefer to eat meat, people who want to eat only food from our farm 12 months a year, and people who grow their own gardens and don’t need summer vegetables. We know that one-size-fit-all CSAs don’t work for many of our CSA members, so this year, we’ve decided to move to a quarterly sign-up system. Members can choose to sign up all year, or for just three months at a time. Base shares have also been sized much smaller, so the new vegetable shares are just about 2/3 the size they were in the past, and new dairy and meat shares are half the size they were. We did this so that shares would be easier for individuals and small families to manage. The smaller shares are correspondingly cheaper, as well, so if you need more food than one of the new small shares, it’s no problem to size up to two shares for areas your group needs more of. We’ve also moved to a system which features three “base” groups – dairy, vegetables, and grains. To build a share, members choose two out of these three groups, and then are free to add on other items such as meats, eggs, and (new this year!) broiler chickens as they wish. In addition to flexibility of sign-up times and the greater degree of choice we’re offering, this year there’s also more freedom around pick-up times and locations. Rollinsford members can choose between Thursday evening and Saturday morning pick-up times, (it’s still Thursday evening for Exeter members) and now, any 5 members who get together somewhere on a Brookford Farm delivery route can set their own pick-up place. Last but not least, we know that not everyone can afford the cost of a Brookford Farm CSA share, so if you would like to donate toward someone else’s discounted share, we welcome and support this show of community. If you know someone you’d like to recommend for financial aid, we are screening applications for families who’d like to apply now.

The great news for this part of the world is that farmer’s markets don’t end just because it’s getting cold. Seacoast Eat Local markets happen every Saturday in various locations, and this year we’ll also be at the Derry market on the first and third Sundays of every month from 12 – 4pm. You can also find us in the Exeter area on Thursdays from 2 – 5 pm at 9 Newfields Road. Seven days a week (during daylight hours,) you can also come to our own farm store for everything you could possibly need except Froot Loops – pastured meats, truly free-range eggs, raw milk and cream, a wide assortment of yogurt and cheeses, grains and flour from the farm, as well as all the certified organic veggies you could want (send an email to brookfordfarminfo[at]gmail.com if you’re interested in purchasing bulk carrots, beets, winter squashes, rutabagas, or radishes from us at a discount.)

Also, starting this Friday, we’ll be selling our products at the Mills at Salmon Falls in Rollinsford. We’ll be there from 3 – 7pm every Friday. Look for the Brookford Farm sign (and the crowd) at the far left of the Mills parking area.
Many of you will be excited to know that we’re up to speed with processing the wheat we harvested this summer in time for the winter holidays. We have 2.5-lb bags of really excellent New Hampshire-grown flour in both hard red (for breadmaking) and soft white (for pastries and lighter breads) varieties of wheat. Beach Pea Bakery made bread with our flour in October for the Harvest Barn Dinner in conjunction with Chefs Collaborative, and they raved about our flour’s quality. We’re pretty happy with it, ourselves. You can get our flour at all the above-mentioned markets, as well as at our two farm store locations, and Brookford Farm CSA members can also opt for grain as a portion of their farm shares.

Last but not least, we’re accepting new members for our winter CSA. Send an email to Mary at brookfordfarminfo[at]gmail.com if you’re interested in learning more.

In other news, we’ve switched from a regular facebook page to a business page. You can find the new page by searching the term ‘Brookford Farm’ on fb and looking for the image of the pumpkin (same as above,) or by clicking the pumpkin picture in this post.

By Jeremiah Turner
Business Editor
jturner@fosters.com

Sunday, August 29, 2010

“On my commute past a farm in Rollinsford this summer, there’s been something going on that I’ve had a hard time getting my mind around.

From a distance there looks to be a covered wagon positioned each morning in a different spot in the pasture, with hundreds of chickens fenced in around it and pecking in the grass.

Now I’ve seen backyard chickens in home yards, and of course the pictures of the unfortunate commercial birds squeezed into metal cages and miserably forced to lay for the supermarket trade.

But this wandering wagon thing, this was special. So I stopped to inquire the other day and it turns out there’s a wonderful agrarian cycle of life going on at a place called Brookford Farm and we ought to all take note.

The chickens are a fairly recent part of the organic dairy farm’s sustainable agriculture mix. This is a fancy way of saying they use one thing to create another.

At a time when we’re all eating scared because of mega-farm bacteria recalls, the latest being salmonella-laced eggs from the Midwest, we’re fortunate to have farms like Brookford where we can buy food created the way it ought to be.”

To read more of this article, click here…

This October 10, 2010, from 11 – 4, Brookford Farm will be hosting an event in celebration of real food & local culture with a harvest festival we are calling the Quark Festival, in honor of one of our favorite cheeses. Local artisans will be there, as well as chefs from celebrated local restaurants, and we’ve invited local musicians and farmers as well. Sample our delicious artisinal cheeses as well as other dishes made with our pasture-raised beef and pork, organic vegetables, and renowned dairy products. There will also be workshops on traditional crafts like beekeeping and food preservation, pumpkin-carving, a straw labyrinth, and of course a hayride through beautiful countryside. For kids, there will be crafts, games, activities, and more!

This is what it looks like before harvesting… and after.

Another great effect of harvesting grain on the farm is that an important by-product of wheat is straw, which provides high-quality winter bedding for new calves like Pepper, Oleg, and Olive, who are being cared for by Pepper’s mom Pia.

A major complication in this process has been the various complaints of our oldish combine, which Luke has been working on for more than a week now. Click on the link to see what it looks like when it’s working. Then gaze long on the still photo of what it looks like most of the time… when Luke works on it. By the way, this picture was taken by Luke’s son Emmanuel, who’s just four years old.

A last note on our system of harvesting grain: because we put the chickens out to pasture on land that previously grew spelt and wheat, the chickens benefit from any grain that was spilled during the harvesting process. And their manure in turn will benefit the next generation of grain….

Chicken report: we’re up to about 35 eggs a day from the young chickens. Come on, girls.

Piggy report: they smell awful but are very cute.

Cow report: Here’s the numbers – 33 cows now have milk and 13 are dry. That’s in diametrical opposition to about three weeks ago. High cotton.

Dairy report: OMG! Buttermilk, chocolate milk, hand-stretched mozzarella, more quark than you can shake a stick at.

Meat report: Check back in mid-July for the newest in pork and beef.

Persons report: We had a Boston school visit our farm in the past couple weeks. Some of the students really know how to handle a chicken!

Calves are cute…

Aaron and his avatar…

And finally some new hot chicks…

As for me, I’ve got a new set of replacement blades for the X-acto knife, and am all about making a new banner for farmer’s markets.

We were so happy to see so many people out this Saturday at the market at Wentworth Greenhouses. What a fantastic venue for a winter farmer’s market! Outside it’s January in New Hampshire – inside it’s like being on a subway platform at rush hour – but with squash.

Hands-down, it was the most people I’ve ever seen in a greenhouse. What a great experience for our first foray into working at the market with Luke.