Emmalina asked for advice about finding a draft horse, and as usual, I assume that there is probably someone else who wants to know.  So here is a quick list of tips, based on our experience.

1.  Find a teamster near you. When we first considered the possibility of working with horses, we went to visit the closest farm using horse power that we knew of – the wonderful David Fisher at Natural Roots Farm listened to our questions, told us about his experiences, and showed us around his beautiful farm.  When we started looking for our own horse, we mostly used craigslist, which led us to various horses, and eventually to our own Cole.  Just as important, that search led us to meet fellow teamster and ferrier Roy Nilson, who helped us “test-drive” Cole (Cole’s origin is unknown, so Roy brought out harnessing and worked him with us, to see if he knew any commands etc), and helped us out enormously and in so many ways when we were first getting started.  He is still our ferrier, and our dear friend.

2.   Get schooled. There are some really excellent draft horse books put out by the Small Farmer’s Journal.  The Journal, also, is fantastic.  Ben also owns, and has watched many times over, the Doc Hammil videos, which are great.

3.  Get hands on. Working with horses is intensely physical, not to mention dangerous, even if you know what you’re doing, and while books and videos can help you become familiar with some of the basics, I think Ben and I would agree (And most teamsters would, as well) that you need to learn from a real live person, with a real live horse.  Before we started really looking for our own horse, Ben took a draft horse intensive workshop at Fair Winds Farm.  Find the best workshop that you can get to, and go!

Ok, so that’s my best advice for finding and getting ready for a horse.  Our horse, Cole, is a Belgian (possibly a mix) who weighs about 1600 lbs.  We suspect he was from Amish country, because he got some excellent early basic training from someone, and there are not many draft horse trainers in our area.  He was bought at auction, and living at a farm with someone who liked big horses, but knew he’d be happier working, which is how we came to find him.  One of his back hooves is slightly deformed, which our vet says poses no trouble with the amount we work him (1-2 times a week in the busiest parts of summer), but might have given him early arthritis working 6-10 hour days on an Amish farm, which is probably why he was sent to auction.

Other than that, I would just add that having a draft horse on our farm has been a wonderful, joyful experience.  Even when he decided to come into the living room.

I have been feeling, these days, incredibly be blessed to be here, in our beloved Valley, enjoying the tender new spring.  This time of year, driving past other greening farms, I wonder how anyone could choose to live anywhere else, or live any other kind of life.

In June, sometimes, in the crazy scramble to get everything planted while my child is crying and screaming to inside right now while we’ve only planted a few feet of potatoes, well, sometimes I understand the choice.

But then harvest comes and I forget all over again.  I mean, how could you not want this?  Some days, a new lamb is born, and yes, some days those grown lambs are head-butting your daughter in the back, prompting her to yell, “Ok, take them to the slaughterhouse straight away!”  Some days you get to stuff yourself on sun warmed raspberries, and some days, there is a lot of weeding to do.  Some days a visitor, looking at the horse-drawn, rusty equipment in your yard, says, “It’s kind of like a graveyard,” and some days, your husband comes home triumphant, having perfectly cultivated the whole field with the horse.  Some days the horse lies down on his back and rolls around in the dust like a gigantic dog, and you laugh while the whole house shakes.  Some days the horse breaks a window (accidentally) by rubbing his butt up against it to scratch himself.  Some days the raw trust of the animals in our care nearly breaks my heart.

Every day, it all comes down to us, here, on this small piece of land, so blessed and grateful to be its caretakers, in all its imperfections.  Because I’ll let you in on a secret – we are imperfect too, and we were made for this.

So grateful to all of you who came out to our Open Farm Day last Sunday – we had an amazing time hosting more than 50 people!!  Kids got to thresh beans with our awesome farm partner Seth, we disced the field with Cole our draft horse, showed our grain trials, and shared lots of yummy local foods of course!  A huge thank you to NE Sustainable Agricultural Research & Education, whose generous grant to us this year made the Open Farm Day possible, and helps to bring this space here, too!

(last photo by CSA member Bernard Brennan – thanks Bernard!)

Friends, I’m going to take a break for a few days – this week has been extra challenging with my little one, and I need all the spare moments I can get.  Gratitude to you for understanding, and I’m so excited to be back soon and work in the kitchen with you!

Blessings on your weekend.

And then they, with our amazing friend and farming partner Seth, proceeded to rock the field, weeding and hilling the beans all at once!

I’ve watched our sunroom and house fill with sheaves like these: wheat, oats, garlic

I started my preserving, and filled our oven with these,  making Round the Clock Tomatoes (from Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand), to take us into winter.  (Mostly, our locavore strategy is: Eat yourself silly while it’s in season, and then wait ’til next year.  I am putting up some tomatoes, and freezing some berries, but we’ve found that after a few years of eating seasonally and locally, we actually don’t even desire to eat the items that are out of season.)

Starting preparing for Lamas – the Harvest Festival on August 1st.  Get ready to see some loaves at Wheatberry that look a bit like this, and taste like the best terroir this side of the Nile

Hope you’ve had some weeks filled with all the glorious tastes of summer, friends!

With a broken camera (oh that fateful final “click!”), family visiting, and no internet at home, the time is ripe for a blog summer break!  Only for a week or so, and then we’ll be back.  In the meantime, pop over to www.localgrain.org to see a video of Ben and Seth cultivating the bean field with our horse Cole.  Also, sign-ups for the 2010 Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA are now open, and you can print out the form!

We had a fabulous Field Day with Alan and got to see the spelt field just days before it will be harvested.  We’ll have photos and video up very soon from that Field Day.  Have I mentioned that we got a wonderful Sustainable Community Grant from New England Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (NESARE)?  That’s part of what is making this whole year possible, especially this space here and our Field Days.   So thank you NESARE!

This week, Ella and I will be continuing a pilgrimage through Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, a wonderfully spattered copy handed down from Ben’s mom.  I’m reading (and loving) Julia’s memoir My Life in France, so it’s only natural that I would cook from her.  Did you know she couldn’t cook a lick until she was in her thirties?

Why haven’t I used her recipes more before?  A mystery.  Last Sunday, with cherries from our Kitchen Garden CSA share, we made Cherry Clafoutis.  I’ve always wanted to like clafoutis, but it’s always seemed soggy and weird.  Not so when you make it at home!

Super easy – Clafoutis is basically a pancake batter without leavening, spread half in your buttered hot pan, dump on fruit (any fruit, not just cherries!), then top with remaining batter.  Put in oven.  Devour.

So until next week, folks.  We’ll be out in the fields, in the kitchen, in the lake, and knitting away as furiously as a squirrel gathering nuts.  (Seriously, I’ve got this shawl, this fall hat, this sweater, and more on the needles!  Apparently June tells my brain: prepare for the winter!)  Have a great week everyone!

(Cole plowing with Ben last weekend)

Just found out about this video of Ben talking with UMass students about local grain and our project with Pioneer Valley Grain – check it out here!

And have a great weekend – we’re off to Boston to meet our sweet new baby nephews.

On Sunday, we had a big tri-birthday celebration, aka a pie extravaganza.  I proposed to my dear friend Seth, and our farm apprentice Jeanine (the other two birthdays) that we try birthday pies instead of birthday cake, and they gamely agreed.  And oh my, it was fabulous.  Cauliflower-Potato Pie, Chicken Pot Pie, Buttercup Squash Pie (the best “pumpkin” pie you’ll ever have), Apple Sour Cream Pie, and Rhubarb Pie.  Ben had planned to make Chocolate Mousse Pie, but spent all day down at the fields getting ready for winter wheat planting – so I suppose we can forgive him! So why a photo of an empty crust?  Because I was too busy eating the pies to photograph them, sorry!  I have to tell you, it is all about the birthday pies.  Yup.

(Ben and Jeanine discing the bean field at home with Cole last weekend)

It’s probably going to be quiet here this week – we’re super busy getting the fields planted in next year’s wheat, getting ready to meet our brand new nephews (born this morning!), and then this weekend, we’re off to Animal Powered Field Days.  Plus the usual animal care, harvesting, baking, fencing, etc etc . . . you know how it goes!  Wishing you all a wonderful week.

Here’s the booties for the new wee ones (so close to finished!), and a hat for their big sis, which Ella is now claiming is hers.  Hmmm.

(photo by Jeanine Dargis)

finds Cole eating hay off of Molly’s back.  Molly has turned out to be an amazingly sweet, chill ewe.  Ben has been hard at work building us a new barn door, and while he was using a Sawz-all to cut out some of the wall, she laid there, chewing her cud, the Sawz-all grinding away next to her head.  Amazing.

Is it just me, or does the lovely crisp air bring on crazy preparation urges in anyone else?  We’ve been canning like mad, harvesting, starting seeds for the hoophouse this winter, ordering longjohns, knitting up a storm of sweaters and legwarmers, cutting out flannel pants for Ella . . . I love the fall.  Bring on the delicata squash and the cider, I say!  Bring on the leaf peeping and the Animal Powered Field Days!  Bring on the Garlic and Arts Festival, and the dozen other amazing festivals that all seem to happen at once.  Bring on the delicious cool that calls out for snuggly blankets, scarves, and hot tea.  Love it.  (Ok, I may also be a bit biased, being a fall baby, but really, what’s not to love?)

Oh, and did you see the cover of Time a few weeks ago?  “The Real Cost of Cheap Food”!!!  Yes!  Oh, and hop on over to Hip Mountain Mama, who has an amazing art supplies giveaway going on.  And then hop over to our house on Sunday for the Sewing Bee!  Grain bags galore, yes siree.  We’re going to need them soon – the first beans get harvested this weekend!

And, as I keep reminding myself, don’t forget to breathe.  Enjoy the beautiful days.

standing in our living room.  Apparently, if we don’t make sure our back door is firmly latched, he can walk in.  Whoops!  I guess it was Murphy’s Law that Sheep in a Subaru would have to be followed by a Horse in the House, eh?

Hope to see all of you Saturday at the Field Day!!  We’re cooking up all sorts of delicious local grain treats.

I made Calabacitas for dinner the other night, and was stunned that I had never made it before.  It is super easy, super delicious, and perfect for this time of year.  I did a simplified version of a recipe from Jessica Prentice’s book Full Moon Feast (available soon at Wheatberry).

2 Tbsp olive oil or butter

2 onions or leeks, diced (I didn’t have these – so I can testify that it’s just fine without)

5 medium summer squash, sliced in rounds

3 ears corn, kernels cut off the cob

2 medium heirloom tomatoes

Heat oil or butter in a heavy-bottomed (I use cast iron) pan.  Saute onions/leeks until translucent.  Add squash, saute lightly, add tomatoes and corn.  Saute just until all the veggies are warmed through, about five minutes.

And there you have it!  Delicious with cornbread.

Back at the farm . . . have I mentioned how our dog, Ghandi, is in love with Cole the horse?  It’s pretty hilarious.  He seems to think, “Wow, you’re the biggest dog I’ve ever seen!  I want to be just like you.”  Here he is, standing still in perfect imitation of Cole as Cole gets hitched to a log.

Unfortunately, Ghandi’s attempts to become one with Cole include regularly rolling in his manure.  Which is better than our younger dog, Zasha, who yesterday decided to skip rolling in it and go straight for eating some manure.  Which she promptly threw up on my kitchen floor, and went outside for more.  Why, I ask you.

In the garden, the squash plants we so carefully planted did not like our cool wet June at all, but luckily these giants emerged from our compost pile, and are now taking over everything in their path.

Hope to see you at the NOFA conference this weekend!  In less good news, apparently the tomato and potato blight are so bad now that they’ve called an emergency meeting on Sunday morning as part of the conference.  More here.