Green and growing
About two weeks after planting, everything is starting to grow.
It’s been a busy month here at the farm. Lots of time was spent preparing our field for its plots of fiber hemp, flax, sorghum and indigo. In the adjacent beds, 90+ new willow cuttings for basketry use are taking root, alongside the venerable (and very large) stand of rhubarb that has been here for as long as anyone in the neighborhood can remember.
I have planted many varieties of basketry willow this spring, including collections from the Vermont Willow Nursery, and some from a basket weaver in Wisconsin (Zestinferna on Instagram). The willow is mulched with layers of cardboard, all the waste wool from our shearing in April, and layers of partially-composted hay/manure. It’s been a dream of mine for years to establish a basket willow planting, and I am glad it is finally happening.
Gazing ball with madder. Ovine collaborators in background.
In the dye and vegetable garden, it’s been great to have extra hands at work (Hannah and Grayson are avid gardeners, and my folks have planted squash, green beans, and lettuces). The Weld and dyer’s chamomile I transplanted from Smokey House are establishing nicely, and the madder beds are finally beginning to fill in. I had an early, small harvest of woad, from which I made woad balls (a fun process I plan to document in its own blog post sometime soon).
Mama’s first woad ball.
I’ll go into some detail about my field/bed prep in this post, and provide a bunch of information about seed varieties, seeding rates, and early care of these plots, since a lot of what I am growing is part of ongoing research processes, and this documentation is something I need for that work (and to save time next year when I am repeating many of these processes!) Some of this information was covered in my previous blog post from early May. I mean it when I say there’s minutiae here - I won’t be offended of you skip over details that don’t interest you.
Let’s get into it!
Field/bed prep
My friend, Barreto. I really feel like we formed a bond.
After removing as much loose, fallen hay as I could from the former pasture which is now my research field, we rented a heavy-duty walk-behind Barreto rototiller from a local shop. I can’t say enough good things about this tiller! The machine we rented came with its own trailer, was easy to unload and load, easy to start, and at 13 horsepower, has a lot more oomph than tillers I have used in the past. It does weigh more than 500 pounds, so it’s definitely a workout in the field. The weekend of April 20, Stan and Grayson took turns and tilled the field twice. I rented the tiller again three weeks later on the weekend of May 11, and did a third pass through the field. I also took soil samples for testing at this time, and discovered that the field was high in nutrients and had an organic matter of 9.7% (thank you, sheep!). Because my field has been fallow for a long time – 70 years would be my guess, based on prior occupation of our site, and had substantial recent additions of hay and manure from the flock, there were very few rocks and weeds to contend with as we prepared the field this spring.
Like cake.
During the week of May 13, Tansy and I mapped out the plots for everything I was planning to seed, and marked all of the planting areas with stakes and string. The weather looked dry for most of the week, so I held off on seeding until there was a good amount of rain in the forecast. When the time felt right, I did a final seedbed preparation with a 30” bed prep rake from Johnny’s (link), to get the soil as smooth and fine as I could.
The seedbed rake used before planting, and the landscape roller (tank filled with water for a weight of 270 pounds) used afterward to improve seed-to-soil contact.
Flax
Avian flax about two weeks after planting.
The fiber flax was planted on May 17 and 18. At the request of a friend, I am running a side-by-side test of seeding techniques. My two large plots of Avian flax are each 26’ x 30’. One was planted in approximately 4” rows with the Jang JP-1 single row seeder, and the other was planted in the traditional way by hand broadcasting the seed. The two plots were seeded about 20 hours apart (the Jang plot went in first). I calculated a seeding rate of 100 pounds per acre for the Jang seeding, which translated to just 1.5 pounds of seed.
My friend Jang, with optional double disk opener and kickstand - vroom!
Based on guidance from flax grower Karla Sandwith in Canada, the Jang was configured with the double disk opener (an optional part purchased separately) set for about a ¼ - ½” seeding depth, and the seed plate was removed to facilitate seed scatter within the row. I used the LJ-24 roller in the seed hopper, and set the gears for very tight seed spacing of 1.5”; 11 at the rear sprocket, and 13 at the front. I tried to put each row as close as possible to the row preceding it and ended up with a row spacing of approximately 4”. With these settings, my 1.5 pounds of seed filled the 26 x 30’ bed perfectly. The next day, I seeded the adjacent 26 x 30’ bed with Avian flax by hand broadcasting. I began with 1.5 pounds, but this looked and felt like too little seed compared to how I would usually hand broadcast, so I seeded an additional half pound in the hand broadcast plot. I hand broadcast about one cup of Dutch white clover seed over both flax beds, then rolled them with a landscape roller.
The smaller flax plantings I have going this year; Calista, Lisette, and Linore, are all from saved seed that I am growing out for seed and are in 2 square meter beds that were hand broadcast and rolled. I had still smaller quantities of Evelin, Melina and Cascade flax which I am growing for seed in nursery pots. The cascade seed was given to me in a tiny envelope marked 2012. Three seeds germinated! The Melina seed I found inside a bundle of retted straw from 2017 last year and decided to try to save. I have two robust pots of plants growing from it. Flax is a remarkably sturdy seed.
I did not expect to see a significant difference in the seeder vs. hand broadcast flax plots, but so far, the flax planted with the seeder has germinated more quickly and uniformly than the flax that was hand broadcast, and the stand looks more robust. I think I will get useable material from both plots, but early indications suggest that the flax planted with the seeder is going to be the better crop. Time will tell, of course.
Early germination of the hand broadcast flax. The stand has filled in quite a bit in the last week, but stand height is definitely more irregular here than in the plot planted with the Jang seeder.
Hemp
Bialobrzeskie hemp looking pretty in June.
I have five different fiber hemp varieties in the ground this spring, all of which were planted on May 20 and 21. For UVM, I am growing Futura 83 and Bialobrzeski hemp, the same varieties I planted at Smokey House in 2023. For my own USDA SARE project, I selected three dioecious hemp varieties: from Hungary, Tiborszallasi, from King’s Agroseeds, Carmentecta, and “Zaki,” a variety provided by the USDA germplasm bank at Cornell. I had a very small number of the Zaki seeds available (and their germination rate tested as only fair), so that went into a 2 square meter plot. The seed for UVM was planted in two 10’ x 30’ plots, and the Tibor and Carmenecta seeds for my SARE were planted in two, 15’ x 30’ plots, plus an additional 10’x 30’ plot of the Tibor seed, laid in at a different seeding depth than the larger plot - in learning how to use the Jang planter, I ended up doing a bit of experimentation with seeding depths.
Hemp seed in the Jang hopper. The seed roller is the black disk at the base of the hopper. You can order many different configurations of these for different seed sizes, and change the seed spacing by changing gears on the planter.
I used the same configuration of the Jang seeder, but I swapped out the internal roller for one with larger “dimples” for moving seed, the LV-24. I kept the gearing the same as I had for the flax, and once again tried to place my rows as tightly together as the seeder permitted. As I planted, I discovered that the bolt which secures the double disk opener was gradually loosening, resulting in a deeper seed depth than I intended in the Carmenecta and Tibor plots - almost 1”. I was worried that this might negatively affect germination, so I reset the opener to about a ½” - ½” depth and planted a second small plot of Tibor seed to see if there was any difference in germination. As it happened, germination was quickest and most uniform in the plots with the deeper seeding depth, but everything came up and looks good. All of these hemp beds were planted at a seeding rate calculated to be 80 pounds per acre.
Come on, Zaki - I believe in you!
My little plot of Zaki hemp has been getting a lot of TLC - initial germination was very low and growth has lagged behind that of the other, industrial varieties I am growing. After an initial heavy rain the day of planting, I found that some hand broadcast seed was exposed on top of the soil, so I carefully sifted a thin layer of potting soil over the seeds and pressed them into the ground with my flat hands. Fortunately, many more plants have germinated now, and as of this writing (June 10, 2024), the Zaki hemp seedlings are about 3 inches tall on average. It’s interesting to note that the Bialobrzeskie and other industrial varieties growing right next to it, are all more than 18 inches tall! I selected the Zaki as a variety to try as part of my grant because the plants I observed in the field at Cornell last year were quite short and almost flax-like in their habit. I’m looking forward to seeing how these plants continue to develop.
Rotational crops - Sorghum and indigo
Between the planting of the flax and the hemp, I got my other seeds for this research field into the ground on May 18 and 19; a sorghum/broom corn, and direct-sown Japanese Indigo. I used the LV-24 roller and gear settings for the sorghum, and the LJ-24 roller for the indigo. Why plant these other crops as part of my hemp grant work? I have divided my field into roughly three equal parts, so that I can rotate crops through different plots over three years. Many traditional sources describe a longer rotation for flax (5 to 7 years); I don’t have room to subdivide my field into that many small plots, so I am hoping that a three year rotation will be adequate. I plan to add compost to this field each year after harvest, and will do soil testing each year as well. Many old sources describe flax as a “heavy feeder” on the soil, but I tend to think of it more as a bellwether crop that will really let you know if your soil is not up to snuff.
Baby brooms in seedling form.
The broom corn crop looks wonderful, and I hope to have a good harvest that yields material for broom-making. Germination of the indigo has been spottier than I’d like. Usually I start indigo indoors and put it out as transplants. This was my first time using a seeder to plant indigo seed. I suspect I may not have gotten the seed as clean as I should have (shout out to my neighbors Denny and Arena who recently gifted me with an awesome vintage seed cleaner!). It’s also worth noting that I did not use the roller on the indigo. Given how much it seems to have helped boost germination of the hemp and flax, I should have used it here, too. Still, lots is coming up, and if I can keep ahead of the weeds, I should get a harvest. It’s more of a factor for next year, when I have written some retting water and dyeplant experiments into my grant.
A vintage seed cleaner gifted to me by my cool neighbors.
Indigo seed.
More on that another time though - if anyone has lasted all the way to the end of this document, congratulations! You have a lot of stamina.
A note on rain and watering - I have been keeping a close eye on the weather at all times, and have done some hand watering of all of the beds every few days if conditions are dry and rain has been lacking. I usually don’t have a way to water my fiber plants, but this year I do, and I’m quite invested doing all I can to help these plants succeed, so yes, some watering this year; by my count, I’ve watered four times over the past 23 days since planting began. Not a lot; just enough to keep things on track.
My season one review of the Jang JP-1 planter: five stars, would recommend. I’m really happy with it as a tool, and I hope to get lots of use out of it in the years to come.
Happy June!
Springtime: sheep shearing, spinning, and planting season
A couple weeks after the heavy snow, springtime has come.
Spring has arrived in earnest and we completed the process of sheep shearing several weeks ago. The weather was rainy in the days leading up to our April 15 shearing date, and I closed the entire flock (40 sheep) into the barns a couple of days before our shearer, Fred Depaul, arrived. Everyone was a bit damp despite my efforts, and in the week after the sheep got their haircuts, I spread the fleeces out in the sun to finish drying.
Iris, a freshly shorn Icelandic sheep, looking a bit sandwiched between Ergo and Facto, two of my Romney ewes.
The legendary Fred Depaul finishes our day with a haircut for Rose, an Icelandic X Shetland ewe.
I found that I had an unusually high amount of felted wool on some of the fleeces this spring, which I suspect was caused by the record-breaking wet summer we had in Vermont last year. Still, a lot of beautiful wool, including the fleeces from the ewe lambs born last spring. I typically send about a hundred pounds of wool off to the mill I work with to be processed into roving in yarn (in recent years I have worked with Battenkill Fibers and the Junction Fiber Mill for processing), but I still have quite a bit of inventory left from last year’s clip, so I’m hoping to sell more of the 2024 fleeces as raw wool.
Skirting a Shetland lamb’s wool. Below, a full fleece on the skirting table.
The grass is finally growing here, and the flock is looking forward to getting onto fresh greenery for the season. The change in rhythm is welcome, as the farmwork shifts from interior projects and the barns to outdoor landscape and planting tasks.
As winter receded and spring began, I hand spun a number of hemp fiber samples for my friend and colleague, Laura Sullivan, in support of her hemp research at the University of Vermont. These samples represent plots grown with different seeding rates and harvest dates, and I spun both line and tow fibers. It felt great to take a deeper dive into these materials, as it dovetails with my own fiber hemp research work, just getting underway. For more about Laura’s very interesting work, check her out on Instagram at @hempfiber.artistfarmer.
Spinning carded hemp tow.
Hemp tow fibers hand processed on a drum carder.
Some of the samples after scouring and re-skeining.
Detail of a handspun hemp yarn.
I have been busy getting processing/work spaces ready for my own research work here at the farm. I have raw and retted fiber (both hemp and flax) left from the crops I grew last year at Smokey House Center. I have moved some of this material into one of my barns here at Mountain Heart, and a bunch of last year’s Bialobreszkie and Futura 83 hemp is presently retting in a tank and on the grass around the farmhouse. The second floor of my small barn is a seasonal workspace where I have spinning equipment and several of my looms.
Retted samples from last year’s crops awaiting further processing.
Setting up the summer studio. I have seven looms set up at the moment, but I’m the only weaver. I should try to remedy this!
Outside, we’ve been preparing my little research field for planting. This field is about .25 acre/11,000 square feet, and has been used as pasture for the sheep for the past four years. I will continue to give the sheep access to this field during the winter, so we are creating fencing that will permit this. Given its small size, we prepped the field by first raking/forking up areas where there was a thick layer of fallen hay, and then ran a heavy rototiller over it. We will till it once more before planting it, which I am hoping will happen during the week of May 13, weather and seed shipments permitting.
Fieldwork in progress. A portion of the field at the right of the image is not in use this season, as a new septic drainfield will be installed later this summer.
I’ll be planting fiber hemp, flax, indigo, and broom corn in this field in 2024. The hemp varieties include Futura 83 and Bialobreszkie, being grown for UVM’s ongoing research work. My SARE grant is focused on dioecious varieties (with roughly equal numbers of male and female plants in a population), because I want to better understand the potential for obtaining fine, long line fiber from the male plants, and will be harvesting them separately from the female plants.
It’s been a challenge sourcing small quantities of dioecious seed. A lot of current industrial hemp research emphasizes plants with a lot of biomass (heavier stems, very tall, and feminized or monoecious crops), which is not necessarily what I am interested in exploring (in a future blog post, I’ll try to talk a bit more about what I’ve been reading about historic hemp linen production in Europe and Asia, and provide some links to online sources for more information).
I will be planting Carmenecta hemp from King’s Agriseed, Tiborszallasi from Northeast Heritage, and a variety called “Zaki” from the USDA Germplasm Bank housed at Cornell.
The indigo is also part of my grant project, as I will be using it for side-by-side comparisons of the effects of using retting water for irrigation. The broom corn is being planted as part of my rotational plan for this small field. Also, I love ornamental broom and broom-making!
My primary flax plot (about a 30’ x 60’ plot this year) will be Avian. I have smaller quantities of other varieties I am growing out for seed, including Linore, Callista, Melina, and Lisette.
I am hoping to plant all of these crops with a new seeder I acquired this spring, A Jang JP-1 single row seeder. I’m aware of others using this seeder successfully with flax seed, and I’m hoping that it will also work for hemp. I just used the word “hope” twice in as many sentences - that seems both like a good place to stop writing, and an expression of every farmer and gardener’s state of mind in springtime.
The handsome Jang seeder.
Ready for action.
Endings and beginnings
Springtime snow at Mountain Heart Farm, late March, 2024
All the snow of the winter has fallen in the last two weeks, and I’m feeling anxious for spring to arrive.
It’s been a season of stark contrasts, marked by the deaths of animals old and young, and the arrival of new life in the form of surprise lambs and a new puppy.
Sen, the old border collie, in his usual spot with his best friend, a 19-year-old cat named Shadow, a few days before he died
We said goodbye to our elderly rescue dog, Sen, who died peacefully in his sleep with his good cat friend curled up beside him. He was born into difficult circumstances, and he was never quite a ‘normal’ dog, but he was a good one, and we were lucky to be his family.
The new puppy, Marlowe, is a tri-colored smooth collie, just over 3 months old. He is full of the puppy energy I had forgotten, and has made friends with Rollo the cattle dog, who has been helping him to quickly learn the ropes around the farm. The cats are reserving judgement for now.
Young Marlowe
We also sadly said goodbye to several of the elderly sheep in the flock over the winter months, including Rain, Cooper, and Gwynn. At about 15 years old, Cooper was quite old, and had been a beloved member of the flock for many years. A big Dorset wether, he was raised as a bottle baby and was very friendly with people. Coop once performed in a commercial, for which he was a consummate professional, flawlessly hitting his marks over multiple takes. I still find myself looking for his huge body out in the pasture, towering over the rest of the flock, and listening for his distinctive bellow.
Our other winter loss was a young ram named Mullet, who died of complications from wethering surgery. He was a beautiful, friendly, black Shetland x Romney, and had spent the winter free-ranging the front yard, separated from the ewes. Or so I thought. While I was still mourning his unexpected loss, the first of an unknown number of surprise lambs arrived.
Baby Ninja, mom Leia, and the back end of baby Noodle - Surprise!
Sleeping in the sun between snowstorms
Baby Nimbus with Lachnta
Clearly, my plan to keep the ewes away from young Mullet has failed. I hadn’t planned on doing any lambing at all this season, but the flock had other plans, and I confess, I’m glad that Mullet had a chance to pass on some of his genes in the flock. We’ll see how many more lambs arrive in the coming weeks.
Textile flax, 2023
Fiber hemp at Smokey House Center, 2023
Since 2020, I have been growing flax (and last year fiber hemp) at the nearby Smokey House Center here in Danby. In the fall of ‘23, I wrote a USDA SARE Farmer Grant to expand upon some of the fiber hemp research work I did there for UVM, and was pleased to learn earlier this winter that my grant has been funded.
In many ways, this work is building upon an earlier, flax-based SARE grant I completed shortly before moving to Vermont. In addition to a plot of textile flax (Avian this year), I will be growing multiple varieties of fiber hemp, and working with some very knowledgeable technical advisors from UVM and Cornell.
Antique and contemporary hemp textiles, and a hemp line fiber sample from the 2023 season
Watch for future blog posts about this work, which will include selective harvesting of male and female plants for long line fiber quality, variety trials, retting experiments, and using retting water as a fertilizer for dye plants. I hope that the work I’ll be doing contributes to the development of a new regional infrastructure of natural textiles, healthy materials, and green building products.
After a lot of consideration, I made the decision to move this ongoing and new bast fiber research from Smokey House to my home farm, Mountain Heart. I’m grateful for my time growing at SHC, where staff old and new supported my work and helped to shape the research questions I am exploring now.
There’s a lot of work to be done to get ready for springtime tasks, including sheep shearing this month, and the preparation of planting beds for flax and hemp research.
If it would just stop snowing…
Bluebird sky. Dorset Peak. So much snow.