Bat Power

     There are no pictures with this post, because it is abut poop. There may be a lot of new farms, large and small, starting up in this age of startups and back-to-the-landers. But how many of them can say they are powered by bats and llamas? That's right: First-Flower Farm is not only low-petrol, we are high on the poop chain, too! This is the haute stuff, and for me, its free!
     Let me explain. All this Domaine de Doo boasting comes about because I am fortunate in my friendships. You might say I know how to work my connections. For some, that means ascending the Ladder of Success. For me, it means getting out my Shovel of Attainment. Nothing makes me happier than getting a big pile of shit. Lucky for me, this spring yielded the mother lode from two most unusual sources.
    My friend Melissa has been an urban homesteader since long before it was cool. We two were already calling it "Suburban Homesteading" (a term WE invented) back in the mid '90s, when we did it without the benefit of the then-six-page Baker Creek seed list, the chic-chic linen smocks and Hunter boots or the cute chicken shanties. We labored with a baby on our hip and a shovel in our hands. Spring play dates for our then-toddlers became a mere by-product of trips to help her clean up her llama pasture and return with a pile of poopy mulch for my vegetable garden. The kids went off to rappel down the swing set with dog leashes while we shovelled. Her farm was called "Honey Hill" for the bees her husband and she raised. After her divorce, when most of her income came from the byproducts of her llama herd, she pondered a switch to "Hot Shit Farm."
     The best thing is, llama shit isn't actually hot. Like the goat manure I was familiar with from my childhood days on a Michigan dairy goat farm, it issues forth in compact little pellets, and can be used on plants without burning them. After the stink of anaerobic decomposition from winter-matted dirty bedding hay has dissipated, there's no smell to it either, making llama a neighborly manure to use on a pocket farm or Suburban(TM) Homestead.
     When Melissa heard I had thrown in the 9-5 paid farm job for a farm endeavor of my own this spring, she was supportive if not downright jubilant. At last she must have thought, We'll have something in common again: now she can see what it's really like to starve, doing what you believe in!  As a gift to my infant endeavor, she gave me a division of lovage and a seedling agastache (both of whose parent plants I had given her years ago) and, best of all, three giant buckets of gorgeous llama compost. And though her llamas have won her many ribbons at the state and national level, it's the byproduct I'm admiring. It, too, deserves ribbons. It is now feeding the phenomenal rise of my first-ever crop of snapdragons-from-seed, as well as a stand of "Copperhead" amaranth and  white "Psyche" cosmos and half-a-dozen artichoke seedlings.
     The rest of the garden is growing before my eyes on a twenty-year accumulation of bat guano.
     When the family trust decided to put The Patient Spouse's ancestral family farm on the market, the realtor advised them, among other things, to clean up the attic. The Farmhouse dates back centuries, and the attic has a marvelous accumulation of concomitantly ancient things: a big-wheeled spinning wheel you can picture Betsy Ross or her compatriots spinning wool upon; a barber's cabinet that might also have held bloodletting and surgical tools when those things were a hairstylist's purview; gas fixtures abandoned at the outset of the Edison bulb. It is a dark and marvelous place. Through the center of all this historical oddmentry, running from gable to gable, was the thing I wished most to inherit: a pile in places 6" deep of petrified bat guano. While The Patient Spouse checked the furnace and tilled the family vegetable garden for our potatoes and corn, I put on a dust mask and shoveled seven 5-gallon pails of pure poop. I could hardly believe my great good fortune: first, that it was there to be shoveled and, second, that no one else in the family wanted to inherit it!
     Actually, I may have made off like a bandit in the inheritance department. A little Googling revealed that my guano has a chemical analysis of 10-3-1 (Nitrogen-Phosphorus-Potassium). By contrast, the balanced organic fertilizer I paid $30 for a single 5-gal pail of is about 3-3-3. Not only that, the guano available by the box online runs $10.50 (on sale for spring, marked down from $13.95 plus shipping for those without Amazon Prime) for a 11/2 lb box. So my free attic treasure would be worth about $300-$600. Antiques Roadshow might want to film this for it's next Surprises From the Attic segment!
     Online, one can select from a multi-ethnicity of global bat dungs, among them Desert, Jamaican. Indonesian, Mexican, Peruvian and Sumatran. But not all these bat communities poop equally, and some sport a much lower chemical analysis than my rich, local source. The proof of my poop's value is evident in the way my weak little transplants have done on two foliar feeds with a dung-comfey tea and a little dusting to top dress them at planting. Everything is thriving, and the vegetable starts have set roots and grown so fast I hardly recognize them from one day to the next!
    There is also a happy endnote to this tale. I was in the attic a few days ago to release a couple of trapped starlings, and the floor was already sprinkled with more bat doo. Melissa's llamas are always under good care and thrive even when she hasn't. But the bats hereabouts have been a beleaguered species of late. So it is good to see evidence that those clouds which once darkened the skies as they flew out the chimney on summer evenings are still alive and active, tucked up there among the hot, dark eaves. Bloom Where You are Planted.

Love, Devotion and Surrender

   
    When I go to the market, I can't help but feel a little competitive. That guy over there has a bunch of rhubarb he didn't buy off my stand, and it's much smaller than the bunches I'm selling. Why are folks going for that chick's salad mix when mine has yellow and purple pansies mixed with the greens? Really? That lady is buying fudge instead of my lilac-blackberry syrup? What gives???
    Inter-farm snark isn't part of the wholesome, community-centered farm market image. However, it is a competition when it comes to markets. Behind the scenes, each of us growers and makers needs a marketing trick or two up our sleeves. Especially when there's no farm stand back home on the acreage and no steady weekly CSA income and traffic, these brief hours in the market are the only place to gamble the farm. You have to essentially kill your crop by picking it, then bring it to an unrefrigerated space, and get it to turn from perishable commodity to cash dollar in a few short hours. There is a fierce undercurrent of hope vibrating beneath those blue and white canopies on a summer afternoon. We all want you, the buyer, to love and want what we do as much as we do. To do so, the buyer sometimes has to make a few sacrifices as well: fresh, occasionally messy flowers over the near-plastic ones from the supermarket; radishes with a little dirt on them instead of the kind "triple washed" and then showered on the hour in the produce section; a fly or two hovering around the baskets of fragrant strawberries. We love, devote and surrender out in the fields; the customers, we each hope, will do the same as they wander from awning to awning. Otherwise, our precious product goes home to sit in the fridge, appear on our penny-pinched dinner table (the Patient Spouse has consumed two meals of pansy and lilac salad to his undying credit—not exactly the Blue-Plate For Stonemasons) or cycle itself back into the soil via the compost heap.
     We all have a trick or two up our sleeves. Finding a way to make the produce, the fudge, or the flowers speak for themselves is crucial to getting them off the table and into the motley arrangement of re-usable bags that circulate the grounds on the arms of weekly shoppers. The first market, fresh lilacs with "free" first smells and compulsory second whiffs did the selling for First-Flower, and half of my stock went merrily homewards to other houses. I went home with $60+ dollars - not a living wage, exactly, but the first time earned income has flowed into, not out of, this endeavor. Last week, daughter Margot the Mathematician offered correct change (after standing in one place for four hours, nine plus three only equals twelve for some of us. Ahem...) She also poured out samples of lilac-blackberry seltzer and rose geranium seltzer. Wherein the Patient Spouse was found to have an equal in the Good Sport department: the burly man whose wife called out, "Honey, do you want to try some lilac seltzer or some rose?" We all acknowledged the bizarre quality of this inquiry—after which he gamely tried the seltzer and bought the syrup, and even managed to retain his pride at the same time!
     Now we are home again, with gorgeous salad in the hydrator where I am product testing it for shelf life and appeal, and a spectacular bouquet in every room. The Patient Spouse gets the lilacs on his dresser and the lilies-of-the-valley on his desk. That way, he can enjoy them in private, and remain a Man Among Men.

Getting Ready...

 In the remaining weeks before the first farm market on May 19, First-Flower is a veritable madhouse of activity. It is a good thing the Patient Spouse is out earning a viable income and not being called upon to provide continual moral support. It is a good thing the Mathematician is at school (finals week) and not criticizing my choice of paint colors and fitness at tent set-up. It is just me and the Farm Dog, who is most fascinated by the shade under various stationary objects and the intriguing goings-on two yards over. (What can it be living inside that old converted doghouse in their backyard? I'm waiting for my neighbor to chastise me in person for the constant disturbances my dog has caused the gimpy raccoon she is nursing back to health inside that little animal shelter ever since it came loping into the yard a week ago...)
     Here are some baskets I found in attic and root cellar, now an attractive shade of First-Flower 1940s green. This photo is notable primarily because I have intentionally used the most recent "Help-Wanted" section of the Shopper's Guide, so I won't be tempted by all the ads for "skilled gardener, pay commensurate with experience." Am currently, still, chronically, experiencing non-commensurate pay.

    While the weather was shabby (cold, rainy, near-freezing, snow flurries on May 12), I finished sewing my 1930s line of potholders and aprons, and figured out how to display them so they wouldn't clash with the 1900s line on the other side of the rack. I hope some day I will be doing all this sewing in the winter and spending yuckky spring days inside my greenhouse doing the better work of farming, but until that time, this sideline gives me some flowers to sell before the photosynthesizing kind are ready.

 Baby food jars from the farmhouse cellar make cute little 4oz vases which I hope to sell with a tiny bouquet or herbs included. The perfect hostess gift!

Kitchen chaos! Why does it always seem that to get something really clean requires making an utter mess first? In anticipation of selling jams, jellies and other flower-flavored products, my kitchen has to be certified by the Town of Great Barrington. The process is really simple, if a little costly: the town in Massachusetts where your kitchen is located tests your knowledge of keeping reasonably clean in the kitchen, asks for proof you've passed  ServeSafe and Allergen Awareness exams, and checks the temperatures of your hot water and refrigeration. Knowing this, I have cleaned every nook and cranny, washed everything right down to the spice jars, put labels on all my bulk-stored items, and cleaned nooks and crannies that haven't sen the light of day since we moved here. It all needed doing anyways.
     While each additional town you plan to sell your "cottage industry" food in requires their own documentation and fee payment, they abide by the decision of your hometown Board of Health when it comes to kitchen certification. Happily, not only does my kitchen pass, I also discover what may well be the most helpful, neighborly, prompt arm of Great Barrington town government. The BOH (and Building Inspector's secretary across the hall)  are a terrific group of individuals, and that restores a little of my pride in the town, where my tax dollars often seem "at work" in squanderous ways such as the replanting of new Bradford pear trees to replace the old ones deemed "too large" and an "inappropriate street tree." Yup.
    Now, on to that first market, and the big question: will anything I have for sale week one actually BE a flower?...

The Long View

If you climb a mountain, the landscape below takes on both an order and a timelessness that suggests peace. The weeds and the potholes and the wrinkles of life aren't visible from such a distance. "Taking the long view" is a necessity when those wrinkles begin to seem like mountains in the Sysiphean endeavor that is life. That said, here is the long view of First-Flower Farm as I see it every morning from our upstairs bedroom.
     This is the part in the book about the divorced mother of two trying to reinvent her life in rural New England by farming/beekeeping/animal husbandry (I've read them all) where the mom encounters one too many obstacles, has a big fit  and then, despite being months in arrears on her phone and electric bills, somehow finds the money for too much beer and a $300 pair of reading glasses (you know who you are).
    I'm not that mom. She's probably a whole lot more fun for most people to read about, because she is spectacular in naivete, guts, failure and redemption. Me, not so much. I haven't sprung for fancy specs or anything like that, but the tears of rage have been real enough in this past couple of weeks of dropped seedlings, spectacular bruises, freak frosts, damp-off, raccoons and the EZ-Up tent that isn't. "What is your first flower going to be?" I have been queried by several well-meaning supporters. Well, it's dandelions or garlic mustard, I haven't decided. Whichever is blooming next week when I have my first market.
     Frost arrived in the early part of the week. I had covered (with help of the Patient Spouse) the few tender things like the pet coleus and the enormous rose geranium now trellised up the pergola. We covered the cold frames, and with only a possibility of frost, this seemed sufficient given the cold those frames have weathered so far. I didn't even check next morning until 10:00, when the P.S. came out to ask how everything had made it through the night. The second frame, covered in corrugated sheets of Palram (therefore not tight around the edges) and set directly on the ground was fine. The hotbed looked like someone had capriciously poured boiling water here and there, blackening about 90 percent of the zinnias (my backbone cut flower) just starting to recover from an earlier trauma, and most of the second planting of peppers.
     That night, anticipating a relaxing evening watching a movie, I thought to myself, "I wonder how those chicks are?" We had put them in the big chicken house a few days before, and hadn't let them out in their fenced yard yet. The house has a little portcullis door on a pulley, which we always shut at night after the flock has come in and roosted. Even though the house was shut tight, I decided to go out and make sure all was well.
     The first thing I saw was a raccoon hanging from the inside wire wall. Beneath him, two of our six chicks lay, disemboweled and mostly eaten. The chicken door was tightly closed. The remaining chicks huddled in the far corner in terrified silence.  I screamed for the Patient Spouse, scooped chicks into my arms and deposited them in our mudroom, then ran outside to join him in battle. Raccoons are fierce when cornered. They also have very, very thick hides. After at least a ten-minute stabbing fight on the part of the Patient Spouse  (during which I was stationed at the now-open portcullis with a shovel to bash and bury however much raccoon made it past him), the coon made a break through a tiny hole in a windowpane, breaking out the glass and escaping under the chicken house, through the garden and over the fence. We pursued as far as the edge of the woods. Now we only have four chicks.
    The tent is called an EZ-Up, but the instructions call for two people to help each other with the set-up process. The Patient Spouse bought it to use himself a summer ago, and didn't, so I was glad not only to have this required shelter for market, but to make the purchase of it then, worthwhile after all. He wanted very much to help me figure out the setup, but I will be alone for the three markets I've signed on for, so I'll have to be able to do it myself. I asked him to stand by and provide moral support. Having set it up himself, he decided on a fast overview of the instructions, followed by me struggling in much the manner of Snoopy in the original Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Except that my words came out as the actual thing, not like @**!#. "EZ-Hernia" seemed like a better title for the thing, but we/I managed to bring it listing and moaning to its feet with about the same grace and speed as a tired camel.  I leaned against one frail metal leg and tried not to weep. I thought of tents on Amazon, tents in the outdoor living department at Target, tents everywhere that were a little shorter, a little smaller, surely a little more EZ. Then I thought about Ma from Little House who would never have let an EZ-Up stand between herself and westward progress, and I announced that I would now be taking the tent down—alone—and then putting it back up—alone—until I could do it EZly.
     So here I am. The Farm has survived another week. I can set that tent from flat to shelter in about two minutes, alone, @**!#. The Patient Spouse has wired a brick to the portcullis in really quite an elegant way, and the chicks fell asleep in my arms the night of their trauma such that I now feel bonded to them and vice-versa, which is delightful. I'm off to Andrews for green zinnias, having replanted all the others. (The peppers were mostly Wenk's Hots and I wasn't really depending on them.) Every challenge can be met, one way or another, and it still feels like the Farm is abundant, when I think of what it has given me so far in joy, insight, and development of inner and outer resolve—and life lessons that reach beyond me, as well. Zinnias or no zinnias, these (actually very minor) trials have shown me that I have so much! As my older daughter put it, "That's what I need in my life, Mom: A man willing to stab a raccoon for me."