Transitions

Fall absolutely flew by on the farm. As soon as Labor Day hit, there was a sense of everything winding down: one by one, the crops in the fields were pulled up and the beds tilled under, and one by one, days until the end of the program marched onward. It was around this time that our collective sense of urgency regarding what we would all do after the program ended seemed to get more pronounced. My job hunt became a bit more serious, and as I researched different opportunities, I came to realize that I really wanted to get back to DC. As much as I love Vermont, DC still feels like home, at least for now.

Harvest continued throughout September, as the pace on the farm slowed down a bit. We were still bringing an overwhelming bounty to the weekly farm stand at UVM, and I had fun hawking our wares to the passing students. As farm work became less intense, our class work ramped up, with assignments focusing on crop planning and business planning--both extremely important skills for a farmer to have! I finally got a part-time job, which ate up a lot of the free time I enjoyed throughout the summer (but the paycheck sure was nice). Perhaps the overwhelming feeling of September was that of fluctuation: the farm's slow death accelerating, even as it continued to feed us; the program curriculum intensifying, even as we started considering our next steps in earnest.

Our chickens went to slaughter in mid-September. Initially, the hope was that we would be able to slaughter the chickens ourselves (an experience that I certainly wasn't looking forward to, but felt that it would be important to take part in). But with a lot of red tape and liability issues involved with slaughtering animals on UVM property, we ended up outsourcing the task to Maple Wind Farm, a local operation that processes hundreds of chickens a week and one of the only smaller-scale chicken processors in the state. We went on a field trip to Maple Wind earlier in the summer and saw their processing facility, so we had a good sense of what our chickens were in for.

The morning of chicken processing day, a group of us gathered at the farm in the early pre-dawn hours. We took a moment to thank the chickens for the work that they did improving our farms throughout their lives, and the meat they would soon give us. After spending over two months raising these chickens and spending so much time with them, it only felt right to take some time to honor their lives. Then we rounded them up in a process almost identical to the chicken wrangling I did at the beginning of the summer--only at a much smaller scale. There was something slightly magical about gathering chickens on a dark, chilly fall morning; the stars were out, all was quiet, and I enjoyed the methodical, steady nature of the work. It was one of those farm moments that I experienced numerous times this season, where I had an overwhelming sense of appreciation for being so in touch with my food, and working with a community to accomplish a task. The whole process was over fairly quickly, and the chickens were on their way. A week later, Isabella made a beautiful chicken lunch for us, complete with farm veggies. With nearly all chicken in this country produced on factory farms, it was wonderful to know that our birds were able to live natural lives of foraging, pecking, scratching, and roosting.

Chickens on their last day on the farm

At the end of the month, we student farmers got to spend a week running the farm ourselves. Honestly, the most challenging part was figuring out how to divide the work between 21 people. It felt great to know that we could prioritize farm tasks, identify issues, and manage nearly everything that needed to be done on our own, and it demonstrated to us just how much we had learned over the past five months. We also took a field trip to Pete's Greens, a large-scale organic farm, and High Mowing Seed Company, which produces organic, non-GMO seed. I was really impressed with both companies. Despite their large scale (they grow on about 90 acres) Pete's Greens takes sustainability very seriously, and has managed to scale up low-impact practices that are generally associated with much smaller farms. They also work to support smaller, local farms by incorporating them into their CSA distribution. We learned all about plant breeding and seed production at High Mowing, touching a little bit on the technology of plant genetics and issues surrounding GMOs. I never realized I was so interested in plant genetics, but I was fascinated by this complex, scientific world!

One of many spectacular Vermont sunsets