Look what Rory found on Google Maps:
This is Charlie MacNamera haying the Main Street Field.
Just wanted to give a quick update of the latest happenings….
- We have signed our farm lease! It’s the real deal now. Our lease runs for five years.
- Our business name is “Stone Soup, LLC.” This is partly because the farm is so darned rocky, and partly because of the fantastic fable, Stone Soup, in which a delicious meal is made due to everyone bringing a little of what they have to the table.
- We got the initial plowing done! Although the plow broke an axle due to the rocks, the plowing did indeed get finished. Pictures to come.
- Our CSA is filling up fast! We have 24 members already. We are hoping for 40-50, so be sure to get on the list if you want to join.
More updates and pictures soon.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged lease, LLC | 1 Comment »
We’ve been dreaming up our orchard lately. Browsing through catalogs and websites, thumbing through varieties, debating the various merits of Flavor Gem versus Dapple Dandy pluots or Redhaven versus Garnet Beauty peaches. I love the names of all the varieties: Honeyblaze nectarines, Hosui Asian pears, Canadian Harmony peaches. We will be putting in our order within the next day or two. In the spring we will get a bunch of baby trees in the mail that will look like spindly five-foot sticks with roots at the bottom. We’ll put them in the ground, and then we’ll wait- and wait- and wait some more- until in about three years, we get a delicious crop of fruit! I can almost taste the juice running down my chin already.
Cresthaven peaches
Hosui Asian pears
Dapple Dandy pluots
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged fruit, peaches, plums, pluots, trees, varieties | Leave a Comment »
Alida and Rory were fortunate enough to have the chance to visit two really amazing farms this weekend to talk with the farmers and learn about their operations. This gives us a chance to better understand the inner workings of some small farms, and to see how different farmers are making it work. It gave us a lot of ideas of what to do and what to watch out for.
The first farm, Riverhill Farm, is in Nevada City, CA. Riverhill is a beautiful farm that grows all kinds of vegetables, including some of the most gorgeous kale we’ve ever seen. Alan Haight has been farming there since about 2003 and runs a very successful CSA. He estimates that he’s feeding about 600 people, which is really significant given that the town only has about 3,000 people. So Alan is feeding 1/5 of the town. Who says small farmers can’t feed the world?
The second farm, Yolo Bulb, is right outside Davis and is run by Mike Madison. Mike produces lots of delicious olive oil and has an amazing cut flower operation. Rory’s hoping to grow a lot of cut flowers at Langwater Farm, so it was great to get to ask all kinds of questions about how he does it. He had a lot of helpful suggestions about everything from varieties to tractor implements. Mike even gave us a big bag of books to jump-start our farm library!
All in all it was a very inspiring weekend and made us excited to get started with our own operation!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alida, California, farm, mentors, Rory | Leave a Comment »
Just a brief update on the latest happenings on the farm….
- The lease is almost all done! After a number of back-and-forths between ourselves and the Ames family we are very close to having a completed lease. We’ll be leasing the land for five years, with the idea that it will be renewed into a longer term lease if everyone is happy after those first five years.
- We are working on forming an LLC, a Limited Liability Company. This will protect us personally from any legal liability that might come out of the business. Although the farm property itself will be called Langwater Farm, we need to pick a different name for our business entity (I know, it’s a little confusing). Currently naming the LLC is our biggest hurdle… any suggestions??
- Kevin bought a pickup truck! It’s green.
- Kate and Mary (Rory and Kevin’s mom) went and visited the farmhouse where Rory and Alida will be living. We’ll be leasing the farmhouse, which is on the property, along with the farm. Apparently the house has a wood stove, plenty of room for visitors, and a secret staircase! Couldn’t ask for more. Here’s a picture of the house.
So that’s what we’ve been up to. Needless to say, we’re getting very excited about the part where we stop worrying about LLCs and leases, and actually get to farm!
Stay tuned for more updates soon. In the meantime let us know if you have ideas for our business name.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged farm, house, lease, LLC, news, truck | 2 Comments »
Recently Kate and Kevin went out to the farm and took a bunch of pictures while Charlie McNamara, the farmer who has been haying the fields for several decades, was doing his first cut of the season. That’s him on the tractor–
He’s on the largest field (16 acres), which is on the south side of the property. Here’s a shot of the other side of that field:
The far treeline in that picture is the edge of Langwater Pond, a long skinny pond that forms the western border of the farm. The eastern border of that large field is this beautiful old stone wall
Here’s the farm road running along the northern edge of the next field over, the Post Office field. The Post Office field is smaller, about six and a half acres. We’re contemplating an acre or two of pumpkins there for next year. 
The property also has about 40 acres of mixed forest. These are all deciduous trees, but there’s also a fair amount of Eastern White pines in other spots. 
And here’s Kate! She took all these great photos (and more that we’ll be posting soon). 
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged farm, Kate, Langwater, pumpkins, stonewall | Leave a Comment »
I came across a new variety of melon the other day that I’m adding to my list of best-named varieties. Collective Farm Woman melons are grown by an organic farm up in the Capay Valley, the hotspot for organic/sustainable agriculture in the northern Central Valley. My favorite variety name is still Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, but my friend Beth recently told me about another heirloom tomato called Cosmonaut Volkov (also from the Ukraine like Collective Farm Woman–they really know how to name them).
I used to think that working for Crayola naming new colors would be a plum job, but maybe the action’s at Seed Savers Exchange naming the heirloom varieties they uncover.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged heirloom, melons, tomatoes, varieties | 1 Comment »
“So, are you buying this farm?”
That’s a question we get asked a lot when telling our friends and family about the farm. The short answer is no. We’re leasing it. This type of land tenure arrangement, basically the same as renting, can be beneficial in many situations, but is especially popular amongst young farmers like ourselves who don’t have the money to outright buy a farm. A lease arrangement allows the owners to use their land for farming without having to actually sell their family property or farm it themselves, and allows the farmers (us) access to land that would otherwise be unaffordable or unavailable.
One issue with leases as opposed to buying land is the issue of secure tenure arrangements. How do we make sure we don’t buy all kinds of equipment and invest in the land, only to have the landowners change their minds next season? The answer is long-term leases. I know farmers with leases as long as 99 years. This means they have an incentive to take good care of the soil, to implement conservation practices, and to plant perennial crops. Without this long-term lease, and without knowing if they would be on the land next season, that incentive for good stewardship would not exist.
The lease we are working on right now is a five year, renewable lease. In other words, we are secure in our land for the next five years, and at the end of that term, assuming everything is going well, we’ll sit down with the Ames family and write a new lease to extend our time. Currently we haven’t signed the lease- it is going back and forth between us and the Ames family so that each party has a chance to add things and make sure it adequately addresses all our needs and concerns. It’s a chance to think about all the things that might happen over the next five years and figure out how we might address issues as they arise. The lease process is a lot of work– reviewing legal documents, communicating, figuring out what the farmers and the landowners need– but well worth the time, since setting up a good lease is critically important to our farm.
Land for Good, a nonprofit organization focusing on land stewardship and agriculture, is facilitating our lease process. Their website has a lot of great resources about leasing and other alternative land tenure arrangements, if you’re interested in learning more.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Land for Good, lease, stewardship | Leave a Comment »
Just wanted to share this article from USA Today we recently saw. It’s all about the new wave of young farmers that is sweeping the country. We’re proud to be a part of this exciting trend!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged new farmers, news | Leave a Comment »
Holy cow, this is actually happening!
I’ve been thinking this to myself, oh, about every hour or so for the past week, ever since we got the news that we will soon be farmers. This time next year, we’ll be planting, weeding, hoeing, tractoring, harvesting, distributing, all on our very own farm. It still doesn’t seem quite real– it’s terribly exciting, and excitingly terrifying.
How did this come to be? It all started with a little email via New England Land Link that a land trust was seeking a farmer for property in Easton, Massachusetts. Since Kevin and his wife Kate live nearby, it seemed like a potentially perfect opportunity, especially since Rory and I have been keeping the idea of a move back to Massachusetts on the back burner. So we wrote a proposal. And another proposal. And an interview and many conference calls later, we now find ourselves the shocked and delighted tenants-to-be of a beautiful piece of farmland! The lease is not finalized yet, so nothing’s set in stone, but the process is under way and we are feeling good about working with the landowners and about the land.
About the land. It’s 80 acres total, about half woods, half fields. The property belongs to the Ames family of Easton. Part of the property was originally designed by landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, the creator of Central Park. Needless to say, it is drop-dead beautiful. Fields gently curving against woods, surrounded by stone walls, dirt roads snaking through the woods and fields and over small streams, all bordered by Langwater Pond on the west.
Currently the property is not farmed. It’s a bunch of fields and woods. However, apparently back in the day, it was the home of Langwater Farm, famous for its Guernsey cows and Clydesdale horses. Here is a Langwater cow on the farm– note that the view is the same as our photo from Rory’s Iphone on the blog header (photo from lindahowardstein’s photostream on Flickr).
We’ll be calling our farm Langwater Farm, both at the request of the Ames family and as a nod to the rich history of this land.
We are looking forward to documenting our experiences getting the farm up and running here on this blog, and invite you to track the progress of our future farm. Stay tuned for future posts on leases, tractor shopping, farm stand construction, and so much more!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Ames, cows, farm, Langwater, news, Olmsted | 4 Comments »
