It has been a busy week of arrivals!
From Green Mountain Heritage Farm we picked up the newest Green Mountain Girls – three piglets that will be our new breeding stock. They are only 6 weeks old now, cuteas buttons, but will become our future sows! They are in the upper barn but about to move out front to learn electricity, making way for the chicks that are coming!
We did get a first small batch of 30 chicks, early Monday morning, who are waiting in the upper barn for 200 more friends to arrive probably Friday morning.
chicks in their shipping box
On the heels of the chicks arriving, Laura’s parents rolled in after a lot of hours on the road. It is great to have them back and we look forward to getting them back on the farm team!
Speaking of teams, the last of our new staff arrived this week. In addition to John & Kathy, Penelope Hobbs has joined us after graduating from Cornell with a degree in computational biology and a passion for farming, as well as steward of the Ag Fraternity. She will be primarily joining the livestock team as well as marketing & bringing some serious tech saavy-ness to help smooth out some of our recordkeeping and systems.
And we love to take this opportunity to introduce the rest of this year’s farmers, who have joined the team lately.
Andrew, is old news by now, but for those who haven’t met him he is our crop manager and this week ensured that all of your summer veggies got in the ground with love
and care and efficiency!
Anna Svagzdys is back with us part-time, working her magic mostly in the crop world, but as an amazing multi-faceted team member she has her hand in many elements including milking and some additional art for the farm we hope. She has been published again off-farm, this time focused on her new hobby. (Trail Rider Magazine, p 33)
Amber Reed joined us in mid-May with a major focus on our goat herds, other livestock care and working with Mari to care for our young orchard plantings. She comes to us with a bunch of livestock experience, though mostly with cows…so she will be useful as we decide if they are ever joining our herds but also as a cheesemaker. Once we are over this spring push we hope to get her into the kitchen to help us learn about other cheeses. She joins Andrew in bringing us some biology background. And is also a wicked chervil digger.
Amber & Josh conquering a patch of chervil
Josh Gerdes joined us in mid-April with a primary focus working with Mari and the overall farm maintenance and buildings and grounds. Of course, that has meant everything from being the key operator of the new compost spreader to attacking chervil! He also was a key part of building the new stone walls, working with Tessa and her dad Gary.
Guy installing new weed barrier in the hoophouse....
Guy Scheibner will split his time between crop care and maintenance and food processing. In the midst of getting his Certificate in Professional Cooking from New England Culinary Institute (NECI), we are going to tap those skills not only to preserve this year’s harvest, but also to test out some new prepared foods. And of course some summer farm dinners, keep an eye out for updates.
And of course Laura, Mari, Uno and Hop are still on duty thrilled to have new teammates to help us grow and steer this farm towards success.
The last new arrivals are some summer bugs! Less welcome, but certainly expected. At least they will ensure we don’t get bored around here.