Farmer Greg, here. As you may already know, I came from a science background before I started farming. While I no longer dwell on the minutiae of analyzing the components of regional air quality, my experiences in grad school still influence how we think and farm here at Stonecrop.
When I started out farming years ago, I remember looking at the farmers I knew and thought to myself “Huh, well, Rich worked for GE, Andy was an engineer, Fred used to work at Kodak…why did all of these former science minds get into farming?”
I quickly learned that it was only by chance that so many of the farmers I met early on also were former engineers/scientists. However, as I thought about it and started becoming a more experienced farmer myself, I came to the realization that farming is essentially a series of great big, year-long experiments and that in this way, it makes perfect sense that all these science-minded people like me were drawn into this field (yes, pun intended).
I approach farming with that same scrupulous scientific approach that I relied on in my chemistry days. We have fancy equipment (like tractors, manure spreaders, cultivators, spring-tooth harrows) that, similar to my old lab equipment, seem to always need a little tinkering here or there. We spend a lot of time thinking about our pastures, figuring out which type of forage to plant for certain animals and when (This week, for example, I planted fall forage for pigs to graze over the winter. I’m hoping I seeded at the right time so there is plenty of growth but not too much, before the cold weather hits in the fall.) We have intense spreadsheets for every enterprise (another takeaway from grad school) and even track data on our iphones while we’re out in the field. My grad school advisor would be proud…
Assuming we farm until we’re about 65, we will only get another 30 trials at this great experiment. We intend to make the most of them and will keep sharing about the lessons we learn along the way. Thanks for being on this journey with us.
Your Farmers,
Greg & Jenney
PS- Our next Farm Tour is in 2 weeks! On the tour, we will start with our barn and share about how we moved the 200 year old timber-frame to our farm, then we will share about our pig breeding program and show off a new litter of piglets. We will check out the laying hens, Thanksgiving turkeys, meat chickens and our ginger/turmeric high tunnels as well. The tour will last 1-1.5 hrs and is 5$ per adult (CSA members are free!) Click here to RSVP and get more details.