Winter Whispers Soft

Vic Gravel-RGF Staff

The collective breath is slowing here on the farm as we exhale toward winter. A surprise snow last week blanketed a garden half-asleep, dusting the coats of our ever-fluffing sheep and peppering the noses of Jack and Thor in a most delightful dapple. Our final fall bits are nearly complete-garlic has been planted, garden beds turned and tucked in to sleep, stray animal fencing has been retrieved from wilting pastures and the wood stove warms our frozen fingers and toes at the end of the day. As days turn cooler, nights frozen, I am on a mission to glean as many tactile skills as possible before donning gloves that make knot tying and carpentry a bit more challenging. In these days of deep autumn, swooning toward winter, I strive to emulate the garden beds we worked so hard to clear; I am absorbing skills, philosophies, and techniques, enriched by the compost of good company, great teachers, and meaningful work. These past few weeks have been defined by transition, something I often find myself struggling with. And yet, here on the farm, this thing so commonplace and so challenging feels a bit more gentle. Let’s talk about why. 

We start from a place of utter joy. Just a few Fridays ago we had a very special evening here on the farm: the moon hung luminous and eerie over the landscape, a warm evening breeze tousling wigs and rippling robes. Jack-O'l-anterns flickered all over, mottling pastures and walkways with creeping shadows. Kiddoes and their families arrived in droves to enjoy an evening of games, treats, and a properly spookified farm. Adorned with all the appropriate Ms. Frizzle trappings, -an emerald green dress specked with insects of varying varieties, bee-patterned socks, magic school bus earrings, and a curly whirly up-do secured by mushroom and butterfly-patterned hair pins-I was prepared for an evening of jolly good fun. It was time for farm Halloween! 

The night was as perfect as could be for our farm Halloween celebration: evening temperatures in the 60s, a moon one day from fullness, tables decorated with my hand-crafted “spooquets,” games galore and snacks abounding. Costumed kids and their families enjoyed a night chalk-full of delights-fresh cider pressed from the Clark’s local apples, hay rides, a campfire and marshmallows, donut-on-a-stick, arts and crafts and so, so much more! The night was magical, the most wonderful way to bid October a warm goodbye. And a few extra special shout-outs: to all the volunteers who came out that night, to the Clark’s for the apple press and all those delectable apples (especially after the dismal year we’ve had for fruit trees!), and to Pioneer Valley Grower’s Association for their donation of the pumpkins so central to creating our spookified farm ambiance- we truly could not have pulled it off without you. Thank you for everything, y’all. We continue to appreciate you beyond words.  

A mere week after that unseasonably warm day a snow shower arrived, bespeckling the farm with crystals unanticipated and, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyed. After a week of planning, prepping, and going-going-going for farm Halloween, it is almost as if Mother Nature herself sensed we all needed a bit of a break…and a good snowball fight. Transition in good company, whether it is the changing of the seasons or the departure of those held dear, becomes the soft blanket you long for after an unexpected snow storm. Red Gate Farm is a constant reminder that we as humans are only as strong as the container that holds us, and the people we choose to surround ourselves with fortify that vessel. I am honored and proud to be enveloped by the warm blanket of the Red Gate Farm family, a group of strong, kind-hearted, passionate, endlessly caring, hilarious, authentic, extraordinary people. In this time of transition, I cannot think of a better group of humans to share space, smiles, and serendipitous snowball fights with.

Then came garlic fest 2023! On October 25, 2023, Red Gate Farm staff came together to collectively complete a feat so enormous your socks will be permanently knocked off…pretty inconvenient for winter, sorry about that. We, with smiles on our faces and fingers in the dirt, planted 600 CLOVES OF GARLIC!!!! 600!!!!!! Singing and laughing with every dibble, we plopped single cloves into their new winter caverns, sprinkling a little Red Gate magic in with every teeny garlic baby. Planting garlic humbled me-in the enchanting alchemy of the garden, one tiny clove becomes 8,10,12 cloves all wrapped up in a papery bulb; green flags wave in the warmth of summertime, beckoning our hands to unveil the magical transformation that has unfolded over the winter and spring. I see this transformation as a vital reminder that the seeds of kindness, love, compassion, and joy, once planted with care, increase exponentially, especially when experienced and shared in community with others. 

This week has seen us finishing bucking up our logs and organizing our firewood to keep us warm this winter, chipping our final pile of leaves and spreading them as mulch atop our sleepy garden beds, collecting garden signs and de-trellising tomatoes and beans, and breathing deeply as we watch the farm’s diaphragm slowly but surely contract. This month and the next we have/will also be saying goodbye to two of our incredible farmer-educators. With the new year approaching, the new season approaching, the new flow of the farm approaching, new educators on the horizon, I am once again firmly planted in a state of bittersweetness. This place, these people have become my family in so many ways. It is a strain on my heart to say goodbye to the people who have come to mean so much to me, who I admire so much, who have been mentors and friends alike. And, because I care about them so much, I am elated to see them embark upon new and exciting adventures. Red Gate Farm is also a place that has underscored the importance of holding two seemingly opposed things-emotions, facts, etc., at once in my mind and body. To be a fully embodied person is to hold space for these paradoxes, allow these emotions to flow through you, colliding and entwining to create a dynamic landscape of ‘aliveness.’ 

Transition is hard, yes, and it is always happening. Working at the farm, watching change unfold so constantly and being among such special souls makes holding these sticky feelings just a little less painful, a little less destabilizing. With some pretty massive transitions coming up in my life,-graduating undergrad chief among them-I am deeply grateful to the farm for strengthening my ‘getting through, and even appreciating, transitions’ muscle. I end today’s blog with a heart both aching and glowing. Seasons change, people come and go. Blanketed by the warmth of community and meaningful work, these facts feel a little more tender to my soul.

Falling Fast and Fleeting: Autumn at Red Gate Farm

Vic Gravel-RGF Staff

Days creep cooler, nights threaten that icy dew every farmer dreads. Somehow it is already mid October and leaves from vibrant orange mute, blanketing the garden and pastures in sun dappled showers. These past few weeks I have been thinking a lot about the impermanence of things-autumn school groups have come and gone. Fall is the long breath exhaling gently into the slumber of winter, everything lulling toward rest. This mid October I am thinking about the passing of time, how sweetly we savor it all when we recall that time is limited, and how life on the farm lends itself to all this reflecting. Let’s talk about it. 

In early September I reflected on the energy buzzing about the farm in anticipation of our first school group of the season. In so many ways kids are the vivifying force of this space. “The wind is blowing,” I wrote, “the asters and goldenrod frame the scene-the rams are grazing on fresh, lucious pasture grass. Moths and butterflies are flitting by, swallows and meadowlarks swooping side by side. The garden is lush, technicolor and bursting with life. The trees have lots to say today, anticipating the buzz of tiny humans back on the farm. Clovers quiver, aspens quake, Red Gate farm vibrates in wait for all the kiddoes to return.”

In September those kiddoes arrived, vans and buses packed to the brim with stuffed duffels and giggling tweens. We welcomed Brooklyn Heights Montessori School and Mary Walsh Elementary School followed by Wellan Montessori School just last week. Together kids and staff co-created spaces of compassion, kindness, hard work, and resilience utterly bursting with so, so much laughter, music, and smiles to melt your heart. We hauled wheelbarrow upon wheelbarrow of weeds from the garden to the compost, several tenacious students earning their spot on our renowned “Epic Wheelbarrow Journey of Epicness” leaderboard. We walked oxen and cracked bulbs and bulbs of garlic, enjoyed delectable meals featuring garden produce whipped up by farm cook Theo, listened to stories by firelight, and surveyed our towering sugar maples. 

I had the honor and pleasure of leading my first work block during Wellan’s visit, a time when kids and staff collaborate to complete various farm work tasks. It was pure magic-we caked our hands in soil harvesting carrots, beets, tomatoes, and scallions, the perfect chance to teach the kids a few of my favorite words: Amaranthaceae, Apiaceae, Amaryllidaceae, and Solanaceae. I’m a sucker for -aceaes. We chatted about beet thinning and debated the merits of tomatoes as fruits, eventually moving to garlic bulb cracking-a time to sit and gather, sharing stories and laughter and tenderness. These are the moments most precious to me-being together with the kids in moments of vulnerability uniquely brought out by our collective work and play and humility in this place. This is the magic of Red Gate Farm.   

Now it is October and our fall season is quickly coming to a close. We are weeding the garden and turning beds, prepping to plant garlic, nestling our animals into their winter enclosures, preparing for our annual Halloween shindig, and trying to get our last bits in before the frost arrives. All the while I have been acutely aware of just how quickly these weeks, our time with the kids, and this season are passing. While collecting hordes of massive dahlias and the last of the season’s marigolds, snapdragons, and zinnias with the kids, I had a moment of clarity about the gift of the impermanence of things. 

Part of what is both so challenging and so profoundly meaningful about this work is that we as educators only spend three(ish) full days with visiting student groups. You are attempting to create an experience for each child that will enrich their life far beyond the bounds of the farm, instilling values and experiences that shape them as a growing individual in vital ways. All of this is to be done in three days, -relationships cultivated, bonds formed, memories made- and yet, by another stroke of Red Gate magic, it happens. Kids leave changed, educators are moved and made better by every child that comes through this farm. We are constantly learning from one another, kids and adults, humans and animals and plants (though I suspect we are learning a lot more from the animals and plants than they are from us). I firmly believe it is the brevity of the school group visits that hones our intentionality as educators, that allows us to embody in a focused way the values and behavior and emergent moments so important to us. Passion and intention are infectious, and school groups give us the chance to lean into both of those things. Everything is impermanent, and so we make it all mean something. 

I watch as marigolds melt to brown, withered goop, as oaks and maples shed themselves bare, I watch as kids arrive at ten a.m. on a Monday and leave by noon on a Wednesday, as raspberries ripen and fall from the cane. I watch as the world never stops, only inhales and exhales, made all the sweeter by the impermanence of things. How short this fall season was, how short and how utterly magical. Here on the farm and as an educator I find myself so much less inclined to wish autumn just a little longer; I can sit with the bittersweetness, savor the moments as they pass. With this budding ability to let the fact of impermanence and ephemerality simply be, I leave you. This too cannot last forever.

Introducing...Vic's Fall Farmternship (and Other Farm Shenaniganry)

Vic Gravel-RGF Staff

Howdy, farm blog-iverse! My name is Victoria Gravel (she/they)-I often go by Vic- and I am so excited to be introducing myself as a farm intern here at Red Gate for fall 2023! I am currently a senior at UMass studying Sustainable Food and Farming as well as English, so you can imagine my excitement in taking over a FARM BLOG for nearly three months, especially this one.

I began working at Red Gate this past April as a part-time educator and quickly fell madly in love with this place. Funnily enough, I began work here at the farm the day after my birthday- I consider my continued ability to be present on the farm as the greatest birthday gift I have ever received…sorry, Mom. The electric purple roller blades were great, but bearing witness to the awe on a child’s face after unearthing their first potato? Can’t be beat.

As a student of farm and nature-based education, I am constantly mulling over what makes this work meaningful-for students, for educators, for society as a whole. As a student of language and literature, my core guides me toward metaphor, toward what feels poetic, toward what feels most true and precious and beautiful. My English degree has also instilled in me the importance of a strong thesis both as a concept in the art of the essay and, more broadly, as a lodestar shepherding one’s attention toward that which feels most alive for them. The guiding questions directing me this fall toward what feels most alive and true are, simply put, why agriculture and nature-based education at all? What are students taking away from their experience here on the farm, and how is Red Gate Farm intentionally designed to foreground those experiences, values, and ways of being? What stands to be gained from an agriculture-based education that is different from “traditional” compulsory schooling?

Together we will explore these questions in the form of photos, poems, reflective responses, and maybe even a few interviews! I’ve always wondered what Jack the ox thinks about all this, there seems to be such profound wisdom just emanating from those horns. I’ll keep you all updated on whether his schedule allows for an interview-he is quite the busy bovine these days.

I hope to post a new blog every other week on Fridays, but I ask for your forgiveness for any future delay: I have many gardens to tend to this fall, both literal and metaphorical. What, you thought I was going to end this blog without a single metaphor? Clearly you don’t know me very well, which leads me to my next point: who am I beyond the farm, anyway?

Both on and off the farm you will likely find me with my nose in a poetry anthology, scribbling in my little yellow notebook, and seemingly staring blankly into the distance when in reality I am searching for the soul of a flower petal by petal or tracking a honey bee from hive to forest and back. I love to practice yoga, lift heavy things up and down, travel, hike, write, dance, cook and enjoy meals with others, laugh with friends until my sides split, and hang out with animals any chance I get.

That’s all for now, folks. I hope you’ll get to know me and the farm even better with each new blog post. Welcome to The Chronicles of Vic’s Fall Farmternship and Other Farm Shenaniganry-enjoy the ride!

Getting Ready for the Fall

Fall is here and with it is the cooler air! At Red Gate Farm wood is the sole source of heat which means we have lots and lots of wood to chop. We use wood for two important sources: to heat the farmhouse and program buildings; and for maple sugaring! We use chunky, split logs of firewood in our furnace. For maple sugaring, we need thin, flat pieces of slab wood to feed into our evaporator. All summer we have splitting and stacking wood to prepare for winter. In total we need over 60 pallets of firewood and about 30 pallets of slab wood to get us through the cold season - that’s a lot of wood!

Split firewood ready to be stacked and dried. We’ll use this wood in our furnace to heat the farmhouse and program building.

Pallets of stacked slab wood we’ll use this Spring in our evaporator to make maple syrup. The relatively small, thin pieces help us keep the fire at an even temperature and the sap boiling steadily.

We’ve already stacked quite a few pallets of slab wood for our sugaring season.

A small sea of slab wood is all that’s left to stack and should get us what we need for the sugaring season!