Winter 2011-2012 Quarterly
Winter? What winter?! I’ve been spending this non-winter trying to stifle my desert-bred hysteria about water. I’m convinced we’re in a drought, with less than half of our normal precipitation for the season. With great hope, I even made and lost a bet that real winter would return in February, despite all evidence to the contrary. Years will tell us if this type of winter following such a wacky spring, summer and fall are La Niña, El Niño or Climate Change, and whether we will swing wildly from one extreme to the other as a general rule.
At the Good Life Farm, our adjustment reaction is to plan for annual fluctuation via careful crop selection, tillage practices, variety and breed choices and budgeting. Want to establish perennial crops without irrigation? What happens in a year like last year? Should we invest in costly back-up systems with pumps and ponds and lines, or lose the year’s growth in perennials and potentially the whole crop for annuals? Should we focus our financial and physical energies on building soil resources the long, biologically-driven route with pasture, infrequent tillage and low short-term financial gain? Or should we
continue to split the difference by growing some high value, high-input crops that keep us going financially for now? Our perennial plantings are still in toddler stage, and our farm has years to go before realizing the full benefit of our “ecosystem services” approach. We continue to wrangle with these ideas, using our permaculture-inspired values as a way to keep ourselves in line with our goals for life on Earth.
In addition to generally being concerned about the planet and its life, we have made some swell strides in our own little world. This winter we moved forward on our icehouse- the passive cooler Garrett is building into the back half of our below-grade barn basement. I purchased 4,000 2L recycled soda bottles (don’t ask), and had wonderful help rinsing and filling them with water, which theoretically would freeze after a few days below 15F. We haven’t had the right weather for supreme icehouse creation, but our infrastructure is ready in a long term way- we only have to fill those bottles once, stack them 
inside the ice house, and next year we’ll open up the hatches and let the freezing air caress that water into ice. We’ll be having a grande olde party in May, and will happily show and better explain this new and wonderful addition to our lives.
Further additions to the Good Life include our inaugural Spring CSA (March- May), a new business collaborator in Liz Coakley and the recovery of Pet, our third Belgian work horse.
- The Spring CSA detail is all over our website, so I’ll forebear mention here except to say FRESH, green and yum! Shares come weekly March 14- May 30 and we have only a few shares left. Many of our collaborating partners still offer wholesome meals, pasta, dough, shiitakes and meat. We offer on-farm pick-up, home delivery and a group drop at The Piggery.
- Liz Coakley joins us as part of our vegetable growing team! Keeping with our goal of filling available market niches, Liz spent this winter researching just the right crops for 2012, and now has an eclectic mix of tasty late summer, fall and winter vegetables to add to the Good Life wholesale list. More on Liz at our Community page… Welcome and hooray!
Pet is a former Amish work horse, coming by her name thanks to her incredible sweetness. On her old farm she was a first horse for the kids, and a proven mother. On our farm, she has taken a year to recover from previous injuries, but is now up and working! Thanks to the insight of our more experienced mentors, we identified Pet’s willingness and intelligence as motivators for giving her time to heal and earn her place in our herd. We are hoping to continue adding to our work horse numbers, building two solid working teams who can all do single work, with Pet as one. Long-term, we shall see, but we are moving in the right direction.