My name is Derrick Soares and I am from East Greenwich, Rhode Island. After I left Ridgewood Ranch, I went to help Tim on his farm for about a month before heading home to take care of some pressing personal issues. I’ve spent the past 6 months saving money to return to the west coast,…
Name and where are you from? Jamie Golden, from San Francisco What are you doing these days? I am working at Open Field Farm, a 500 acre organic, biodynamic farm. We have a 100-member CSA. We grow vegetables, grains, beans, dry corn. We also have a U-pick flower field and herb field. We have a…
A Sonnet to Shearing Sheep Ah beauty of the sheep whose wool has grown In the heat of summer they sweat and wheeze Their fleeces call to be future sewn into sweaters and hats flown in the breeze. We use a rough stone to sharpen our shears From the tall grass we take up the…
A recent 3 day workshop at the Grange School of Adaptive Agriculture featured an interesting combination of presenters and topics. One was Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm, Restorative Agriculture Development Inc, and author of Restoration Agriculture representing a variety of techniques aimed at optimization of solar energy and water for food production. The other was Spencer…
Germination By Matt Gal I’m having trouble deciding if magic is the right word to describe my time spent at the Grange Farm School. It’s the only word I know that can accurately sum up the overwhelmingly beautiful, educational, and improbable experiences that I had there. I’ll start by freely admitting that I had no notion of…
Back on the farm beat while spring brings us sunshine and the urge of labor days in the field. With my soil test in hand and a workshop with restoration agriculture monolith Mark Shepard in mind, I’ve followed some clues in the soil (low calcium, the need for better water penetration and tilth) along with…
Last week 48 chicks were born in our living room! Our hatch rate is improving as we learn the nuances of our incubator.. up to 70% from 60% last year. They are such cute fuzzy little dinosaurs. Currently they are living behind our workshop in Ohio Brooder boxes. The Ohio Brooder was originally designed during WWII as…
The dark’d come, and the gang was away, so Daniel was on duty to put the sheep in the hay. He filled up the tin bucket with alfalfa pellet and shooked and shaked it like a vigorous zealot. The sheep raised their brows with looks of keen satisfaction and Daniel thought, “this is it! the…
Tuesday March 8, 2016 My soil test is in the mail but I’ve already spent time with the clay loam, by hand and satellite imaging. There is a rocky swirl across the field in the likeness of a yang or a ying. I took two tests, one from the wide, circular part of the…
Last Thursday night, the over-wintering team at the Grange Farm School came together for a delicious family dinner. It sometimes can feel like a group therapy session when we are all finally able to sit around the table and talk and laugh after a long week. While it was not exactly a fancy candle lit dinner, we…
