Category: Agriculture

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Formidable Fall Tasks

It happened this week.  We grazed the last of the standing stockpiled forage and started to feed hay.  The first spot that we are “bale grazing” is next to a swale that we filled with soil last year to better define it.  It also serves as the spillway for our small pond.  The wet springs of the last couple of years had made it a prime candidate for muddy grazing in the shoulder seasons.  Hopefully, the extra soil will funnel the overflow and feeding out hay in this spot will produce better grazing in the future. 

After finishing up in that spot, barring a miraculous return of growth for fall grazing, the cows will venture north to bale graze a section of our neighbor’s field that can really use rehabilitation.  A drought put to good use?

As the frenzied pace of August winds down, our energies are directed toward the project list.  Our fall list is a formidable one; topmost is streamlining our milking chore time by finishing a dairy processing kitchen.  As possible, I’ve been plugging away this last month to frame a ceiling and run the electrical wiring.  Equipment is starting to arrive with more in the wings awaiting procurement.  Finishing this kitchen space will allow us to house a miniature bulk tank that will rapidly chill and hold milk reducing the need to have someone at the ready to bottle as we milk each chore time.  This will make it a lot more feasible to do chore time without assistance, freeing up a farmer for other tasks. 

This particular project has been 15 years in the making.  Well, in the starting anyway.  I guess it  took Carolyn’s departure to Sweden to become urgent enough, though it’s been on our minds since she was five and…started a few times since then.  She has dutifully bottled milk twice a day for the last 4 years.

Despite the formidable list, September is the month of overflowing bounty for Maine farmers.  Everywhere on the farm, the year’s labor shows rewards.  This year’s new hens are laying eggs in abundance now.  The last batch of big meat birds is in the freezer, and Benjamin’s garden is producing delights.  Delights that pair well with dairy, pork, and veal.  Make us your meal plan, we won’t disappoint.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Resources

The summer weather we have been receiving for the past couple of months is enough to make a northerner blush. We don’t know what to do with it. Some of us can just enjoy, others of us dread the ‘payment’ for sunny skies and 80 degree weather.

“Just you wait,” I can hear a part of my brain say.

The lack of moisture, of course, concerns a farmer more than most. After a wet, wet spring and just 3/4″ of rain since July 1st, the current trajectory is not a good one. Our stockpiled pasture will soon run out and we’ll have to start feeding hay months earlier than normal.

In years like this–3 of the last five–our thoughts turn to patterns and possibilities. Could we irrigate the pasture? What kind of infrastructure would that require? Where would we procure the water necessary? To reliably irrigate 25 acres of ground, one would need to be able to draw over 2,000,000 gallons of water for about 4″ of coverage. That would handle a seasonal drought only. We could have used that this year just since the middle of July alone to keep the pastures verdant and vigorous.

Aroostook County potato growers are in full irrigation mode. Potatoes planted in May add bulk to their tubers in August. Acquaintances of ours have spent untold thousands digging ponds and piping water underground to spigots that service their fields. They can now put an inch on an acre fairly quickly. That is over 27,000 gallons.

Alas, it is a pressing problem in the moment as the parched earth below our feet begs us for relief. For now, we can only watch and manage for the resources we do have.

In that vein, I’ve heard from some folks that humans are geo-engineering and can control the weather; if any of you know to whom I could address my concerns for immediate relief, I would appreciate that information.

Until then, I’ll try to turn this northerner’s anxious-for-rain brain to low and enjoy the gorgeous weather.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

Continuing Education

The “University of YouTube” came along just in time.  Jacks of all trades are aging out and it is harder and costlier to hire tradespeople.  It is true, the folks of Maine have, more than not, aimed to solve their own minor problems with a, “can’t be that hard,” attitude.  But boy, if the internet had nothing else to recommend it, I’ll take professionals walking me through fixing what breaks around here every day.   

These last couple of weeks, we have had to troubleshoot and fix: refrigeration, a vacuum pump on the milking machine, the scalding machine’s gas regulator, lighting system, pilot and thermocouple.  Thankfully, none of the repairs turned out to be more than tune-ups or replacing readily found parts. 

I’m just extremely grateful to the folks who decide to film themselves explaining normal operation and common failures for just about everything under the sun, who then post it to YouTube.  It’s my very own, customized continuing education, such a great 21st century, accessible tool for anyone with a sensibility to try.  We did alright this time around and did not dig ourselves into a deeper hole. 

Besides troubleshooting equipment, we’ve been hauling and stacking hay.  One of our hay producers prefers if we can pick it up in the fields as he is 78 this year.  Loading bales onto the truck in the cool of the evening after all the chores are done and driving back in twilight makes for a nice end to the day.  We hope we can fill the hayloft.  It can hold about half of our winter needs.  Filling it in June would cut down on winter hauling, though stacking hay in the winter is nicer than in the summer.

The critters have all finished shedding winter and their coats are sleek and shiny as they graze in grass as tall as they are.  Ahh, early summer.  If you’re a cow at Quill’s End, it is easy living.  You can taste the sweetness in the milk.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.

Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.

The Intimacy of Eating

Here’s to letting our taste buds lead the way. Our pastures this week have me drooling a little at the capacity of our animals for converting this lush June fertility into delicious, nourishing food.

There are many reasons to support human-powered, small, ecologically friendly farms. We produce real food that is nutrient-dense and full of flavor. We care for our place by improving the soil and local ecosystem. We keep dollars circulating through our own communities. We strive to raise and train the next generations of stewards. Farms can add a common sense to our communities’ dialogue that comes from working closely with nature, recognizing our part in it, not apart from it. We provide a measure of comfort and security in case of supply chain breakdowns.

I could go on, but you get the point. I believe strongly that we need more farms and farmers on land to stem the tide of the last 80 years of adulteration from corporate chemicals that has occurred in our soil and to our food.

The number of dairy farms in Maine has dropped from 5,100 in 1945 to 145 in 2023. Ponder that.

In 1945, the entire dairy herd was pastured during the growing season and fed dry hay in the winter. In 2023, the majority of dairy cows in Maine eat a “total managed ration” and live most of their lives on a concrete slab.

As a rule, our culture has called this progress. The cows are more efficient. The tractors are more efficient than animal power. Economies of scale are more efficient than a decentralized, localized system. This same logic would result in a “total managed ration” for humans as well. It would be more efficient.

Oh, but the taste buds. The intimacy of eating. The culture and variety. The seasonality. The memories.

It gives me a great degree of pleasure to watch all the critters here at Quill’s End eat. Especially during the growing season when their ‘plates,’ like ours, have a wider diversity of foods.

Imagine the choices we abandon if we step only into the grocery store for our sustenance, where 85% of the products on the shelves did not exist before 1945: what farmer to patronize, what sustainable practices to encourage and support, what particular variety to request from one of your farmers. We leave behind a farm visit with a pasture or garden walk for aisles of bright packaging and fluorescent lights.

As blessed as we are here in western Hancock County, we shouldn’t rest until our places are filling up our plates daily, and more of our pastures are full of life and laughter, furthering a community-based model of food production that continues to spread to more rural places. Led by our taste buds and the intimacy of the act of eating from our place.

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Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.