Farmer Simon

2006-08-24T17:30:00.000-04:00

Portland is considered one of the most livable cities in the country. Why then does my stuff keep getting stolen. Two months ago my bike was stolen from inside my apartment building and today some ruffians absconded with my car.

I called my parents to tell them and they both laughed hysterically. They have seen my car and refused to ride in it last time they came to visit. Yes the Escortia is a complete piece of shit, but it runs fine. Focusing on it's cosmetic defects would be superficial and shallow.

If you live in the greater Portland area please be on the lookout for a group of drunk teenagers riding around in a '91 maroon Ford Escort. I want my car back and please tell them without a poo in the back seat.

On to more important things. Restaurant life. Only two months into this new career and my back is already starting to tell me to pick another profession. But I'm having fun and really enjoy it still. I have learned so many things.

Orange is the decaf.

Whipped cream good.

There are two major hazards in the kitchen.

Hot

and Sharp

Hot is worse than Sharp

This is not called a squeezy thingy.

It's called a pastry bag.

You use the pastry bag to squeeze out sweet delicious things. Whipped cream and also cannoli filing. I get to make the desserts in the Italian restaurant. Actually someone else makes them, but I do put them on plates and make them look nice.

2006-08-01T13:11:00.000-04:00

Prep Cook Confidential.

This is a picture of a nude bike ride I went on in June. The world's biggest nude bike ride. Coincidentally I happened to be riding at exactly the same speed as that girl on the right for almost forty-five minutes.

So last week I asked the cooks at the Italian restaurant I work at what the most disgusting thing was that they've ever put in anyone's food. No boogers or dingleberries from these guys, but one of them had an interesting response.

"Never put anything nasty in anyone's food, but at a restaurant I used to work at the chefs used to fatten up the annoying servers."

They don't call them waiters or waitresses anymore (I guess it's just too demeaning and of course server sounds so much more respectful and empowering). Anyway it turns out that the pain in the ass servers would be given meals with extra high portions of fatty foods whenever they ordered anything from the kitchen. Apparently it worked and a few poor souls were unknowningly plumped up.

Although I am still a neophyte to this whole restaurant thing in both of the places I work I definitely sense a tension between the front of the house (servers and bussers) and the back of the house (chefs and knife lackeys like myself). I guess it makes sense. If the food doesn't come out perfect the servers have to deal with the consequences and will make lesss tips. If the servers mess up orders and change things around then the cooks end up with extra work. And while working in both the front and the back at my two current jobs I am beginning to see both sides of this story. What I do know though is that in both the front and the back people are working their asses off. I have never worked so hard in my life for such long periods of time without even stopping for five minutes to take a break.

The thing that confuses me the most though is the huge discrepancy in pay scales between servers and cooks. Most of the guys in the kitchen have been to cooking school for two years (at $20k/year) and come out earning $10-12/hour. These guys are amazingly knowledgeable and skilled at what they do. The servers, some of whom may have been doing it for years, can sometimes make 3 or 4 times that amount. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah it takes skill to be a good server and know about wines etc, but cooks should be making more.

Last Summer I started a regular blog feature called RECIPE CORNER. I think it could be time to bring it back again. Here it is, straight from the kitchens of Portland, Pencil Penne.

RECIPE CORNER #3 - Pencil Penne

Boil four quarts of water in a large pot. When boiling add one pound of penne pasta and salt. Pasta water should taste like the sea. Mediterranean Sea not Dead Sea.

Cover bottom of frying pan with olive oil and when hot add two finely minced shallots. After two minutes add one cup of white wine (please don't substitute wine cooler). Simmer until wine has reduced by half.

When done, remove pasta and drain in a colander. Don't rinse with water and wash off all the starchy goodness. Put penne in a large bowl.

Pour shallots over pasta and add 1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese.

Now for the final touches. Drizzle about 3 tablespoons of Pepto Bismol (Walgreens generic version also works fine)and then sharpen about one third of a number two pencil on top of pasta and toss. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

I've found that grittiness of the pencil sharpenings really meld well with the softness of the shallots creating a simple, but truly wonderful summer dish.

2006-07-15T20:23:00.000-04:00

Is Speed-metal one or two words?

Back at the blog again after a long absence. I hope to finish recounting my South American adventures at a later date, but for now I want to talk about the present.

In March after I got back from my trip, I spent a month in Europe. Well actually mostly England, which doesn't sound quite so glamorous, but I did spend a week in Milan visiting my cute niece Tallulah. I spent a couple of weeks in Cambridge working for my dad at his catering company to find out if I would like working in the food industry.

I liked it.

I came back to San Francisco, very briefly, and then drove up to Portland so see if I liked it.

I liked it.

Now I live in Portland and I work and earn money. I have a new nephew named Otis. He lives in Portland also.

By the time June rolled around I hadn't worked in almost eight months. I was broke, discouraged, and a little desperate for some incoming cash. I had spent quite a bit of time pounding the portland pavements in search of restaurant work. I had the dual handicap of being overqualified for any entry level position and having no real experience in a town where twenty and thirty something slackers are as common as dental floss bikinis on a Rio beach.

Finally my friend Jonthan introduced me to a friend of his who runs an Italian restaurant and I was given a chance to prove my worth. "Ever worked in a kitchen" he asked me. "No" I replied. "OK, come in on Sunday and we'll see what you're made of."

So a month later I'm still working as a prep cook at this same place as well as bussing and hosting two days a week at another place. My first week I had to ask a co-worker the name of the verb for what I was doing. I knew it wasn't traveling cause I kept waking up in the same bed. I also knew it wasn't something I actually chose to be doing. What I'd choose to be doing would be watching three World Cup Matches a day and then going home to drink beer and read about them on the internet. But I had to come to this place every day and do things that other people told me to do.

Work. That's what it's called. That's the name of the verb of what I was doing, hunched over a chopping board finely dicing vegetables for bolognese and pulling the innards out of calamari for a sum smaller than what I made in high school carrying golf clubs for rich assholes.

So now I am in the restaurant industry. The restaurant industry while sharing a love of exploiting workers with the non-profit world is, as you would expect, a completely different world. There are no check-ins, no weekly facilitated staff meetings, in fact no interactive decision making processes at all. After looking carefully around the restaurant I have not seen a talking stick and not once have I heard "so what I hear you saying is........."

It's also been quite a while since anyone yelled at me while I was working. After my three day honeymoon period had ended, the owner came in one evening while I was peeling carrots into the carbage can (and also in equal amounts onto the floor). "Clean up the fuckin' floor Simon, it looks like Denny's in here."

And that was just the beginning.

At first I got defensive, making excuses about why I hadn't done this or that, but now I just stand there and take it. See my boss (who is actually a really nice guy most of the time) is one of those people who just needs to yell at people now and then, thinking that it will keep them on their toes and work harder. While this may be the case for a small business owner such as himself, the yelling sessions rarely have anything to do with when I do something wrong (which is quite often).

The folks at the restaurant have been really patient with me. They have had to teach me everything. How to hold a knife. How to stand so you don't fuck up your back. And a thousand little tricks for cutting onions, peeling potatoes, pitting cherries and cooking pasta to perfection. Now I finally feel like I'm an asset and not a liability. I start my shift, the sous chef gives me a list of tasks, and I spend the next 8-10 hours slicing and dicing away with very little supervision.

I like this work. I like the physical aspect of it and I love the fact that food is still the focus of my livelihood. I think I may want to own a restaurant or catering company one day. Just need to figure out some shortcuts to learn the skills to make this happen.

More on Portland in future blogs, but this afternoon I went to my favorite cafe (Stumptown) and overheard one nerd hipster barista ask the other nerd hipster barista (with a mustache).

"Is speed-metal one or two words "(I hyphenated it cause i don't know the answer).

"God that's a good question" he replied.

And then there was short silence as they both mulled it over, yearning to go home and look it up on the internets.

Farmer Simon

2006-03-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

The long version volume 2: Thumbs up

After three fun filled days in Rio, we took off for Ilha Grande which is on the stretch between Rio and Sao Paolo known as Costa Verde. It was Christmas Eve and our only reminder of the holiday season was a bizarre TV show we watched in the evening. Brooke was sick and after coming back from a hike I found her in the room, watching the tube. The title of the show was something like the ‘Philanthropic Bikini Patrol’ and consisted of five very attractive and buxom ladies decked out in red bikinis and Santa hats. They were also accompanied by an unattractive midget who was also wearing the special red attire. The Bikini Patrol was patrolling, as patrols usually do, through some not so good neighborhoods in Sao Paolo and bestowing good will on the local residents.

The first group of guys they encountered appeared to be homeless and were given wine and cake by the swimsuit models. It was expensive wine and from what little Portuguese I knew at the time the announcer seemed to be making fun of the fact that they had never drunk wine before and didn’t really appreciate how nice it was.

The merry band of bikinis then traveled onward and found an encampment in the street. Basically a tarp pulled over some scraps of wood. Some poor guy was pulled out and then given an instant makeover on live TV. The leader of the posse proceeded to squirt hair gel onto the top of his head and run a comb through his matted locks. They then pulled off his shirt and pants and began spraying deodorant in his armpits, his old clothes were replaced with brand new ones which were much too big for him. He now looked like some poor confused homeless guy in oversized clothes with far too much product in his hair.

After also loading him up with cake and wine some of the patrol made motions like they were going to kiss him, but then pulled away at the last moment in disgust. What teases! Now it became apparent why there was a midget in the group as she was then pushed to the front of the group so she could give the homeless guy a big kiss on the cheek. And then they were on their way again, ready to do more good deeds. I suppose that's one solution to the homeless problem.

The next day I hiked along the coast and along the way several groups of people warned me that there was a snake up ahead. I was able to gauge that it was green, it was by the side of the path and it was right before a blue house. As I got close to the house I started staring at the ground and every vine, tree root and branch looked like a snake. A leaf fell on the ground and I almost peed my shorts. I finally got so nervous that I made a quick u-turn and calmed myself over coffee and ice cream back in town. I had no idea there were so many fuckin’ snakes in this country.

After a couple of rain filled days on the island we headed back to the mainland and onward to Paraty, which was a couple of hours away by bus. Paraty is a beautiful coastal town with cobblestone streets and lots of restored colonial buildings. Here it is.

The highlight of our stay in Paraty was not the beautiful waterfall we saw, the world famous puppet show we watched or almost being killed every five minutes trying to ride my rented bike to a neighboring town. It was the black eye I got from my travel chum. One night we got back to our room and there were hundreds of mosquitoes waiting for us. Luckily these were the slow kind and were pretty easy to kill. After massacring most of them, Brooke tried to jokingly kill one on my back. She missed and ended up hitting me right in the eye. I almost fell over from the pain and could not open it. I stumbled into bed and the next morning I had a real shiner. To think that I had been such a good friend to Brooke while she was sick and this was how I was repaid.

Portuguese for Dummies

I think I made a pretty decent effort to learn Portuguese. I had a couple of lessons before the trip and I tried to study at least fifteen minutes every day. In a few weeks I was at the point where I could comfortably ask basic questions and do Brazilian Sodoku puzzles, but in two months I never really got much beyond that. Compared to Spanish, Portuguese is really hard to understand and the words all seem to blur together. I really did try to talk to people, but after someone asks you where you're from and you ask them to repeat it four times, there’s not much chance of a conversation happening. I think if you speak a lot of Spanish, you can learn Portuguese pretty easily, but if you’re like me and just know a little you end up being muddled and confused. The languages are so similar that most of the time I didn’t know which one I was speaking.

Portuguese is a beautiful language to listen to, but hearing the Brazilians pronounce English words was really comical. I was walking around Olinda (a town in Northern Brazil) one night with my Brazilian friend Rosangela (pronounced Hosangela) and we stopped for a beer. ‘Peachy stoppy’ she said and the other Brazilian guy we were with nodded in agreement. ‘Peachy stoppy’. I had no clue what they were talking about, but after inquiring further I discovered that we were all in the middle of having a pit stop. Then a few days later I heard another Brazilian talking about Bradgie Peachy. Surely you know about Bradgie Peachy. He is a famous American movie star and goes out with Angelina Jolie. They are very happy together.

So here are a few basic pronunciation rules if you want to speak Portuguese.

T sometimes has a CH sound. Boa noite (good night) is pronounced boa noich.

R has an H sound. Rio is pronounced Hio.

D sometimes has a J sound. Boa tarde (good afternoon) is pronounced boa Tarj.

And a lot of words that end in consonants seem to have an ‘ee’ sound added on.

Here are a few examples

Banana Spleechy - Banana Split

Peeky Neeky - Picnic

Milky shaky - Milkshake

Ketchy Shoopy - Ketchup

Fas chee Fuji - Fast Food

Pinky Floy jee - Pink Floyd

Hock and Holl - Rock and roll

Heggae - Reggae

Hippy Hoppy - Hip hop

And so on…………………

So even though I never really learned that much Portuguese and undid all of my Spanish, I ended up being saved by my thumb. You see in Brazil all you have to do when you see someone on the street is stick out your thumb and ask the question ‘Tudo bem’ (all well?) and all your communication problems will be instantly solved. This is no exaggeration. Throughout my trip whenever I would stick out my thumb I would be instantly greeted with a huge smile and the prompt response of ‘tudo bom’ (all good). Even the grumpiest frowns would turn into smiles at the sight of my outstretched thumb.

Here’s Brooke and our surf teacher, Leandro executing two perfect thumbs up. Note Brooke’s beautiful technique even while clasping a longboard.

And here’s another one, performed while also cradling an ice cold beer.

I did this move just once as it’s really only supposed to be used on special occasions. Try not to focus too much on my bulging surf muscles and look at this beautiful double thumbs up.

A round of smiles please bartender. Oh and a Caipirinha for me. Don’t know what that is? Well stay tuned.

2006-03-19T14:21:00.000-05:00

The long version volume 1: Rio De Janeiro

On December 20, 2005 I went to Brazil with my friend Brooke and flew to New York to meet her the day before. The next morning when we left it was twenty degrees and thousands of transit workers were striking for luxuries like health care and job security. It was the first day of the transit strike and millions of people were trying to make it to work on time. We were trying to make it to paradise.

Now I am all in favor of workers’ rights and the environment and all that business, but not when it affects my ability to buy whatever the hell I like for the lowest possible cost and do whatever I want with the least possible hassle. On Tuesday morning these crazy strikers were severely affecting my ability to get to the airport. The car service we booked flaked on us and Brooke had to call one of her friends to take us for fifty bucks. What if we never got to Brazil and just froze our asses off in Brooklyn all winter? No one would ever see our matching wax jobs.

The car service finally showed up half an hour late and as we pulled into our terminal at JFK I once again affirmed my support of the workers and their right to strike..

I am in solidarity with you brothers and sisters!! And Fuck you Bloomberg you fascist twat!!

We finally got into Rio 14 hours later where we would be staying with Brooke’s ex-boyfriend Dave, who had been working in Rio for the last year as a freelance journalist. I slept on the most uncomfortable bed you could imagine, which felt like a few chairs pushed together. Some of the other trip participants, however, were lucky enough to share a comfy bed with our host.

The next morning we woke up late and spent the day sightseeing. First it was Sugarloaf Mountain for spectacular views of the city and then later on we wandered around downtown before ending up in an area called Lapa to hear some samba music. Now I have been a fan of Brazilian music for a while, but hearing it live is something else. It gets in your joints like some kind of musical arthritis. As I was listening to the music, two questions crossed my mind: how did these people invent such great music and secondly why can everyone in this place from teenagers to senior citizens dance so much better than me.

Is it genetics that makes the Brazilians who they are or are they just products of a vibrant culture? Quite an interesting question don’t you think? We will be exploring some of the biological aspects of this nature vs. nurture debate later on in the blog, but watching the crowd was certainly as enjoyable as the music.

The next day we took a bus about half an hour away from Rio to a nearby national park, Tijuca. We were only a few miles from a city of almost ten million and yet we were in the middle of the jungle. All the jungly bits you could ever want were there; bird noises, vines, waterfalls, and dense greenery everywhere. In fact, after we climbed to the peak of one of the mountains we came across the jungliest bit of all.

Brooke, who was walking in front of me, all of a sudden jumped back and shouted, “snake!” And there it was coiled in the middle of the path, partly camouflaged underneath leaves and twigs. As later internet research taught us, it was a pit viper. It’s not the most poisonous snake, but it causes more fatalities than any other in South America. We had to bushwhack to go round it, but it really scared me how close we came to stepping on what we also learned has a ‘highly irritable disposition’. When I look back at the bravery and cool demeanor I showed throughout the whole incident I can only think about how lucky Brooke was to have such a calm and collected travel partner.

After the jungle adventure and the muscle sores I acquired on the trek, there was no more fitting activity than to partake in a little beach action the following day. We were staying in Ipanema and the beach was just a block away. I’m not such a beach person, but this was a treat. Ipanema is a serious hive of activity. Just look at this picture, for example.

Even if you are only a fraction as pervy as me, you could easily spend all day gaping at the wondrous sights on the beach. It seems that the dental floss bikini is in fashion this year again in Brazil, for something like the 40^th year in a row.

After looking around for a while I remarked to my friends that I had never seen so many guy friendly bodies. You know, really skinny, beautifully tanned, a well pronounced bottom and perfectly spherical 36DDs engaged in a continual fight with their surrounding fabric.

Do you get the picture? I was too shy to take one myself.

I was shocked to discover later on that a lot of these boobs are fake, but unless there is some new ass enhancement surgery I don’t know about, the bums are all real and right there in 3-D for your viewing pleasure.

Later on in the trip a couple of Norwegian friends and I made up a game called true or false. It’s really easy to play. You just lie on the beach tanning and sipping fresh coconut milk, and when a girl walks by you look at her boobies and shout out TRUE or FALSE. It’s great because even if they happen to speak English they have no idea what you are talking about.

I promise there will be no more crude sexist observations about ladies’ bodies in this blog, but some people have been asking me about this.

A few years ago the New York Times published an article about increasing rates of obesity in Brazil accompanied by a less than flattering photo of some beachgoers. The article caused uproar in a country which takes extreme pride in baring their beautiful bodies and even more so when it was discovered that the fatty bum bums in the picture were all from Europe. One woman from Czechoslovakia was planning on suing the New York Times when she got back from her sun soaked adventure in Brazil.

2006-03-11T07:39:00.003-05:00

The Short Version.

So here’s the short version. After reading about how bad airplane travel is for global warming I feel a little bad about this map. Since my last blog i have been to England, Italy, back to San Francisco, New York, Brazil, Bolivia, back to SF and then back to England.

The long version will be posted up here in the next couple of weeks. Just to whet your appetite, though, here are some upcoming morsels.

How farmer Simon became surfer Simon.
A picture of the $1.25 haircut I got in Bolivia.
A run-in with a poisonous snake in Rio.
My failed attempt at smuggling coca leaves into Miami.

Paying members also get to read about all the hot Brazilian girls I shagged and explicit descriptions of my stomach problems.

I also started a music blog

Farmer Simon

2005-11-11T13:43:00.000-05:00

Goodbye farm bling. Hello other bling.

I am now departed from Vermont and am essentially going to be on vacation for the next three or four months.

Finally something I can really sink my teeth into.

And now that I have high speed internet most of the time, it now takes me four hours to do nothing each morning instead of ten minutes when I get up and turn on my computer.

I am making real progress in my search for a meaningful vacation. I mean vocation.

So I left the farm two weeks ago just as the first snow of the year began to fall in East Thetford. As I write this entry I am now sitting in my friend Skip’s house in Santa Cruz, after driving 3,646 miles across country. My piece of shit car continues to confound its’ critics. I had to have two tires replaced, but other than the second sun visor falling off there were no major problems. It is quite hard, however, to drive all day using your hand as a makeshift visor.

So I guess I could fill this blog with insightful remarks about my drive across country and the pithy observations I made, but that would be boring. Do you really want to read about how strip malls have replaced the town square as the centre of all human activity? Do you really want to read about the obesity crisis sweeping the middle of our country? Do you really want to read about the terrible state of dental affairs in West Virginia or Wyoming? Well actually that last one might be interesting, for as someone who grew up under the care of the British National Health Service it felt great to have the best set of pearly yellows in town for once.

Instead here is my top ten list.

Ten memorable things about my trip across country.

A meal I had at Bob Evans in Ohio.
Riding in critical mass through downtown Manhattan with my friends B train and Nicole.
Riding past the house where I grew up in Evanston, Illinois and still seeing my name etched in concrete in front (I guess I was also the one who wrote ‘The Cure’ in florid letters right next to it).
Riding my bike along the river in Morgantown, West Virginia
Being accosted by a nutcase Christian holding a scrumpled up piece of poo paper outside the toilet in a rest area in Nevada. “Have you heard the news………….
Staying at my friend Dori’s house in Chicago. All of her pets are rescued from abusive situations and for three days I got to live in a pet version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Getting to wear my new matching sweat pants and top every day.
Seeing two coyotes that live in a cemetery in the middle of Chicago.
40 part motet. This is an exhibit i saw at the MOMA in New York. The artist arranged forty speakers in a circle. Each of the speakers recorded a different voice in a forty-part choral piece from the sixteenth century. I wandered around for thirty minutes sticking my ear to each of the speakers.
Have i already mentioned my new leisure wear? Fashion and Function.

A blog at the crossroads.

Now that I have left the farm I find myself torn as to whether or not to continue this blog. I guess we could say that the blog is at a crossroads.

Do I take the road less traveled or the one well trod?

If I stop I may disappoint the tens of devoted readers who anxiously check the refresh buttons on their browsers all day to see if a new post is up. But if I continue, I may be further contributing to the immense amount of mediocre and trivial content on the internets. I originally started this blog to let urbanites know more about farming, but now I am one of them. And I haven’t really talked that much about farming anyway, it’s mostly been a venue for me to vent my frustrations. What to do, I just don’t know. Let think for a little bit.

Ah fuck it, we must continue and in a few months if the content on this blog is completely boring at least there’ll be pictures of hot babes on the beach in Rio for you to look at.

So now we've got that out of the way, how about taking a little visit to that culinary cubbyhole known as recipe corner. In the coming weeks we will also be debuting a new column called ‘Ask a British dude’. This next recipe is inspired by my friend Carrie. I couldn’t find the original recipe she sent me a few years ago, but I think I have replicated it pretty well. And don’t forget to send in any interesting recipes you have. You could be featured in the next ‘corner’.

Recipe Corner #2: Grilled Mice and Avocado salad.

This is a nice salad to serve on a warm summer day washed down with a cool glass of freshly squeezed lemonade.

Dressing ingredients:

1/3 cup minced shallots
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 small garlic clove, pressed
1/2 cup olive oil

Preparation:

Whisk shallots, vinegar, mustard and garlic in small bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in olive oil. Dress right before serving.

Salad ingredients:

2 cups mesquite smoke chips, soaked in water 30 minutes, drained
4 small mice

9 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon minced seeded jalapeño chili
1 tablespoon finely grated lime peel
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated orange peel

2 avocados, halved, pitted, peeled, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

3 large tomatoes, sliced

10 cups mixed baby greens

Preparation:

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Place smoke chips in 8 x 6-inch foil packet with open top. Set atop coals 5 minutes before grilling mice. Bring large pot of salted water to boil. Blanch mice in boiling water (1-2 min). Transfer mice to work surface. Remove fur with potato peeler.

Arrange mice, belly side up, on grill. Cover; grill 4 minutes. Turn mice over and grill until just cooked through, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat. Cut into ½ inch wide strips

Whisk oil and next 6 ingredients in medium bowl to blend. Season with salt and pepper (can be made 1 day ahead). Rewhisk dressing before continuing.

Add avocados, tomatoes and mice in bowl. Pour 1/2 cup dressing over; toss. Season with salt and pepper.

Toss greens in another large bowl with enough remaining dressing to coat.

Divide greens among plates. Spoon mouse mixture atop greens and serve.

Serves 4.

Farmer Simon

2005-10-18T17:06:00.000-04:00

How do you like them apples?

We made cider out of them apples at the Pumpkin fest we had out on the farm last weekend.

I don’t know if I’d describe my work habits as lazy during these last days on the farm, but I certainly have discovered a new found enthusiasm for afternoon naps and crossword puzzles. As a result my supervisor, Luke, has decided to give me the shittiest tasks to perform. Most of our days now are spent cleaning up for winter and harvesting the crops which have made it until mid-October. So I’ve been assigned to roll up 86 miles of irrigation drip tape (what I haven't already mangled with the tractor) and also another 32 miles of fleece row covers which we put over the crops to keep them warm. Both of these tasks take forever and are thoroughly demoralizing and I believe this may be contributing to my only giving 85 or 90% of my usual effort during work hours.

My fantastic tan is now fading, and my farm muscles are starting to atrophy. In a few weeks, I’ll be just another sissy with a few healing blisters. I leave the farm in a week, but I have my most difficult task of the summer ahead of me, dealing with nine days of hanging out with my parents. Actually as of today only six left.

I guess it really is time to leave. I’ve exhausted the entire netflix catalogue and the temporary insanity that I have developed over the last six months could very soon turn into a serious problem. I mean there’s nothing wrong with dancing around the house in my underwear listening to Steve Winwood, right?

Of almost equal concern however, is the enormous amounts of time I spend listening to NPR. I know NPR is a low hanging fruit if you want to make fun of something, but I have been listening to some seriously dull shows. I even heard several episodes of Terri Gross’s hip hop week. Can you imagine?. I haven’t started listening to Prairie Home Companion yet and to me that’s a sign that I can leave here and eventually gather back my senses before it's too late.

I have been doing a lot of cooking this summer, and so I’m quite excited to launch what I hope will become a regular feature on my blog, Recipe Corner. This first recipe takes only a few minutes of preparation and is great for those of you who are on the run and don’t have too much time for lengthy cooking endeavors.

Recipe Corner #1 – Farmer Simon’s Eggplant (serves 2-3)

Start with one medium sized eggplant. Peel the eggplant, and then grate into a large bowl. Dust eggplant with a small handful of salt, toss with hands, cover and let sit for fifteen minutes. In the meantime chill an eight ounce glass of milk in the fridge for an equal amount of time. Remove eggplant and milk from fridge. Pour glass of milk on eggplant. Then crush three 200mg aspirin with mortar and pestle (or alternately in a coffee grinder or between a strong thumb and forefinger) and sprinkle on top. Brand name aspirin is preferred but you may also substitute Walgreens, CVS, or any other generic alternative. Serve immediately in small soup bowls.

Coming Next week to the Recipe Corner - Roast Mice with oranges.

and here's a list of my ten favorite things to eat (in no order except the first)

1. A cheese sandwich with avocado and mango chutney
2. Creme brulee
3. French Fries with mayonnaise
4. Kettle Chips
5. Naked Chef's roast chicken
6. Broccoli Raab
7. Fennel - prepared any way
8. Masala Dosa at Vik's in Berkeley
9. Tom Kha soup
10. Risotto

Farmer Simon

PS – and how do you like these apples?

Hard to do the fall colors justice with a camera, but it's pretty damn nice in Vermont these days.

2005-09-21T16:49:00.000-04:00

Kiss my Willie.

What a cute Willie, huh. Actually one of the cutest Willies around.

Come to think of it find your own Willie to kiss, this one’s all mine. I met this Willie in Chicago last week at the Farm Aid 20^th anniversary concert. Willie even gave me his autograph and a big smile. I took this photograph too.

I hadn’t been back to Chicago (where I grew up) for almost five years and I had a great time. I reconnected with old high school friends, drank copious amounts of beer, smoked pot for the first time in ages and got to hear some great music. Oh and a lot of bad music too.

On Sunday at the concert I also managed to scam a media pass, by pretending to be a journalist for a small publication called Organic Nibbles. Have you heard of it? Probably not cause I made it up. I got to go backstage and eat yummy food (and spare myself from the nasty concert fare) as well as catch admiring glances all afternoon from young journalism students who were obviously impressed with my slick plastic tag. I even lied to the woman at the beer tent when she asked what publication I was with. “I am an independent journalist,” I replied. “Oh you mean a freelancer.” She said.

“Uh yeah a freelancer, that’s what I am.”

Been a long time since I had the opportunity to pay $7.50 for a small cup of lukewarm Miller Lite. But hey I had already filed my story and it was time to have some Midwestern fun.

On to farm stuff now.

So lady Autumn has cast her slight shadow on the farm and winter is fast approaching. The days are getting shorter which means Mr. lazy bones gets to sleep longer as we start work at eight now. This week is also the start of the dental floss harvest. The dental floss vines have died back and the farm crew is now going through the fields to harvest the threads. After the threads are gathered we dry them in a tobacco barn for three weeks. This process gets rid of about 90% of their moisture and stops them from spoiling. Then onto waxing. The floss strands are dipped, hundreds at a time, into huge vats of cinnamon and mint flavored wax. The waxed floss is then hung once again to dry before being picked up by the regional floss distributor. Most of our floss is sent overseas to Bangladesh to be spooled and packaged by five year olds. Their nimble fingers are perfectly suited for the task.

Here’s another list. I think it’s great to have strong opinions about insignificant things like music. Here are my ratings out of ten for some of the bands that played at the Farm Aid concert. Please note that John Cougar and Dave Matthews got three points added to their scores because although they suck musically, I really respect the work they are doing to save family farms.

Kenny Chesney 1/10 (only because you’re so dreamy do you get one point)

Wilco 10/10 (best performance of the show)

Dave Matthews 5/10

John Cougar 6/10

Neil Young 9/10 (Played the most amazing version of southern man with a horn section)

Willie Nelson 8/10 (awesome except for a bit of nepotism going on in the band)

Widespread Panic 3/10 (this music is so boring)

Los Lonely Boys 3/10 (this music is even more boring)

Emmylou Harris 6/10 (all of her songs sound the same but she was a great back up singer for neil)

Here’s another picture of Willie. Hope it’s not too rude for blogspot.

Farmer Simon

Now I'd like to kiss that Willie.

2005-09-15T17:52:00.000-04:00

A note on the type.

Over the past few months I have received numerous inquiries about the font used in my blog. Sorry for the delay, but here is the information many of you have requested.

This blog was set in a digitized version of Didcot for linotype by Nigel Trimblebottom (1880-1956). It belongs to the family of printing types called “modern face” by printers – a term used to mark the change in style of type letters that occurred about 1800. Didcot borders on the general design of Scotch Roman, but is more freely drawn than that letter.

Farmer Simon

2005-09-12T19:52:00.000-04:00

Simon is not a farmer.

So after five months on the farm I finally reached this conclusion, at a concert in Northampton, MA while talking to my friend Toby. She had gone through a simlar process and also realized that farming is really too feckin’ hard.

Earlier that day I had spent the afternoon visiting a farm for a possible apprenticeship next year. The place was amazing and I would definitely finish the year with all the skills I need to actually run my own farm, but as I was mulling the possibility over I got a huge pit in my stomach. Once again I would be uprooting myself to a new place and even though this farm is a lot closer to bigger towns than Cedar Circle it would still be socially alienating.

I was fully aware before I moved out here about how difficult farming is, but I honestly did think it was something I wanted to. I still want to be growing veggies in some capacity, just not as a full time all encompassing occupation. If I wanted to be a full time farmer I would basically have to sacrifice all other aspects of my life and I’m just not ready to do that. So what next?

I had this idea today. Farmer Simon is going to have an online contest. Send me your ideas of what I should with the rest of my life and I will take the best suggestion and try to follow if through. It has to be related to food and agriculture although I would consider exotic dancing on a temporary basis.

In late October I will pack up my car once again to begin an extended vacation/cross country trip. I hope to land in the Bay Area again sometime in mid November to drop off my car and then head to England and Italy to fulfill my familial visiting obligations for the next year.

Here’s the exciting part. In December, Brooke and I are embarking on a traveling adventure to Brazil!! Brazil has been top of my destinations list for years and now it’s going to finally happen. Brooke has to get back to school after three weeks, but I plan to keep on going until get restless or run out of money. Probably until March.

So fall has finally descended on Cedar Circle farm after a hot, sweaty and dry summer. Got down to 40 degrees last night and although it’s still 70’s and sometimes 80’s in the day the leaves are starting to change color. Soon hordes of leaf peekers will head up to this parts. My parents are coming for a peek in October.

We still have a lot of crops in the field, but things are definitely slowing down. The tomato plants are on their last legs, peppers, eggplant and corn are close behind. We still have about five weeks left on our CSA and it’s going to be a stretch to keep the baskets filled. Lots of winter squash, onions, salad stuff and of course the perennial favorite Kale.

Our days are still occupied with a morning harvest, but our duties are switching to shutting down the farm. We’re pulling up irrigation tape from the fields, plowing in crops which have stopped producing, and taking care of the fall crops that will be fighting nightly frosts in a few weeks. Now looking back on the year (even though it’s far from over) I realize that I have learned a lot more than I thought I had. I still can’t hammer a nail into a piece of wood, but I know a lot of other stuff.

Farmer Simon

Here's a list. Some great movies i saw this summer.

1. Vera Drake
2. Fitzcarraldo
3. Ma Vie En Rose
4. Farmers and Their Diversified Horticultural Marketing Strategies.
5. Weeds gone wild (Vol. 4 in Daytona Beach)
6. Bad Education
7. The Bicycle Thief
8. Four Days in September
9. Born into Brothels
10. Dave Chapelle Show

2005-08-31T20:01:00.000-04:00

September Gurls.

I was sitting at home alone in my house for the 156^th night in a row, listening to the song, September Gurls by Big Star, and it made me realize that as September approaches, there are no cute gurlies around. In fact there weren’t any in July or August either. So I would like to take this opportunity to bemoan the fact that I ain’t getting none and the future is looking quite dim here in East Thetford, Vermont.

That out of the way, on to some farm talk. When I was in high school and applying to colleges my parents were really anxious for me to go to University of Illinois. As well as being a fine institution of higher learning it was also in state and a whole lot cheaper than everywhere else I applied to. It’s actually a really hard school to get into, but we found out that if you applied to the Agriculture department the entry standards were a little lower than the others.

So much being at stake, my Dad took over the duty of writing the letter. You know the one where you say that although you live in a city of ten million you’ve always been drawn to farming and when you were a kid you always loved playing in the garden etc. They must get thousands of these letters every year from people trying to slip in the back door so they can transfer out into some other department. I ended up going to school in Indiana.

I think this is funny as here I am seventeen years later, saying to myself “even though I am a city person and have lived in cities most of my life, I really am drawn to this farming thing and still do love the feeling of dirt under my nails.”

Someone told me last week that my blog was too serious, so here’s a lighthearted and fancyfree story which happened a few days after I moved to Maryland for my first farm experience in 1997.

I really was a city slicker back when I got my first and only taste of something called calf gelding. Michael, the farm manager came over to the field crew as we were performing the relatively mundane task of weeding onions and asked for someone to come help him with the cows. I jumped up right away, eager for a little break from our monotonous task, ready to sink my teeth into some real farm stuff. Animals and the like.

Minutes later we were herding the little boy bovines into a pen where their neck was crammed into a small opening to prevent them from moving. One person held a board trapping the neck, another hooked the hind legs to prevent the calf from kicking and a third held an object I will refer to simply as THE TOOL. Actually here’s a picture so you get the idea of what it does.

More humane than using a butcher’s knife to slice off the nuts, but unsettling nonetheless. The mere sight of THE TOOL is enough to induce nausea in most men. No blood is drawn but a well placed clamping in the right place (the vas deferens) prevents sperm development and saves the calves from humping their mothers and sisters. It only hurts for a few seconds, buy they are saved from a life of inbreeding. When I got back to the onions I realized that it would be strictly veggies from now on.

So the weird thing about the blog thingy is that it makes one a lot more prone to self-censorship than other forms of communication. It being so public and all. Why do I bring this up? Well throughout my adult life I have made quite a few decisions which ended up being a gamble (traveling around the world, uprooting myself several times to move across country), but they have always worked out and I have never had regrets.

I haven't mentioned this before, but now after five months of being in Vermont I am coming to terms with the fact that I made a bad decision moving out here. I knew that I was trading in my social life for an opportunity to learn farming and gladly accepted that, but the apprenticeship program that I moved here for doesn’t actually exist. It took me awhile to discover this and has only been mitigated by the fact that I have been really motivated in trying to have my own learning experience. I have been learning a lot and it’s not a total washout, but without anyone else on the farm looking out for me (and making sure that I’m not just another worker) I will leave the farm in November with a far from fulfilling experience. If I didn’t want to farm then it probably wouldn’t be a big deal and I could just make the most of being in a beautiful place (by myself) for the next two and a half months. The fact that I do love this work, but don’t feel adequately prepared to take the next step, is leading me to look at apprenticeships for next year. I am considering Portland, OR, somewhere near the Bay Area, and other farms in New England. Next week I visit a farm in MA which has an organized program and is only a couple of hours from here.

I am signing off now as the storm from New Orleans is arriving in Vermont and I have a feeling that the power will be gone soon.

Farmer Simon

PS – Here’s a list of some great albums I discovered (and rediscovered) this summer.

1. Sufjan Stevens – Come on feel the Illinoise. (going to see him next week)

2. Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk at cubist Castle

3. Kanye west – Late Registration

4. Red Hot and Riot – Tribute to Fela

5. Smokey and Miho – both of their EPs

6. De la Soul – Grind Date

7. Debut – Bjork

8. Aladdin Sane – David Bowie

9. Billy Bragg and Wilco – Mermaid Ave volumes one and two.

10. Tribalistas – Tribalistas

11. Trojan – Originals box set

12. Apostle of Hustle - Folkloric Feel

13. Squeeze - Singles 45s and under

2005-08-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

Farmer Simon goes to the big city

Now I’ve been to New York many times before, but this was the first time I had culture shock.

Every Saturday I work the farmers’ market in nearby Norwich. So last Saturday I got back to the farm, hopped in the shower and then hopped in my car to head south. The 300 mile ride to NYC gets progressively more urban and with it a concomitant stink and ugliness. Man have I missed urban life. Five hours later I got out of my car in Queens and within five minutes I was at an outdoor dance party with 2,000 people at the MOMA, shaking my skinny little limey ass to deep house mixed in with a little drill and bass. Or maybe it was just Chicago house and down tempo. I might have to look it up on the internets and get back to you.

Most of the people in the area around the farm tend to be older and married or 18-year old Dartmouth students. Imagine my delight then to be surrounded by more beautiful people than you would see in a lifetime here in the Upper Valley. Just hours before I was listening to my co-workers discussing the best type of gun to dispose of the cauliflower eating woodchuck that lives on our farm with. Now here I was at the epicenter of urban hipness. And the best part about it, I kind of fit in. It being summer and all, everyone is wearing a t-shirt and shorts and fashion doesn’t really count. The dance floor was so densely packed too that no one could even tell if you were doing a hippie dance. Even though I haven’t listened to the Dead or Phish in over ten years I still feel like always be a recovering hippie dancer. Better to hide in crowds and take it one step at a time.

The dance party ended at nine and then it was off to a house party. Or should I say a roof party. People hanging out on a roof, talking to each other, eating food, drinking beer and talking about San Francisco. That’s right San Francisco. For some reason almost all the people at the party had lived in SF at some point or other and had come back to NY and found others of their ilk. I even felt a little pride at being more of a SF native than some of them. “Oh you were only there for two years, huh. Oh me well on and off for about twelve years or so.”

That’s six times longer than some of those posers. I am pretty shy at parties and I did my usual act of pretending to look at stuff from the roof, drinking copious amounts of beer, and walking incessantly from room to room as if looking for someone. I made it until 2:30 am and then Brooke and I rode our bikes home drunk through the deserted streets of Brooklyn. Helmets tightly fastened of course. That was my latest night of the summer by more than 3 hours!!!

The next day I rode about 30 miles through Manhattan and watched a free hip hop concert in Central Park. Even though I love living in the country I need to have urban fun more than once every four months. To be continued (hopefully soon). The next blog will be about farming I promise.

Farmer Simon

PS - Here's a list, I almost forgot. Eleven books you should read. AKA my favorite books. In no order except the first. This was really hard because all of my books are in a basement in Berkeley and i needed a visual cue.

1. Midnight's children - Salman Rushdie
2. Good scent from a strange mountain - Robert Olen Butler
3. Self-Help - Lorrie Moore
4. Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
5. Wind up bird chronicle - Haruki Murakami
6. Love in the time of cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
(this is the best love story ever written)
7. Poisonwood bible - Barbara Kingsolver
8. Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Everything is illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
10. High fidelity - Nick Hornby
11. Son of a circus - John Irving

2005-07-25T18:19:00.000-04:00

Take a look at these hands.

These are the hands of someone who has been playing in dirt all day, but are they the hands of a farmer? The short answer is I’m not sure dog. The long answer is below.

With most jobs you can be pretty good at what you do and enjoy a modestly successful career. Now with farming you can be pretty good at what you do and still be a miserable failure. I was thinking about this because last week I made a few minor mistakes. First I accidentally tilled in about 30 feet of tomatillos thinking it was a grass strip. Sure they were overrun with weeds and hard to discern, but I still should have been more careful. Thank Jah that I didn’t turn under the whole row. Who eats tomatillos anyway? Then when I was tilling in some broccoli (which did need to be) I got tangled on some irrigation tape and the spinning blades of the tiller ate about 100 feet of it in half a second. I spent the next 15 minutes trying to extricate it from the blades of the tiller. Four dollars went into the swear jar after that experience. Other folks on the farm make similar mistakes, but when you run your own farm these little mishaps could add up toe be quite a problem.

I guess I was having a bad day, but it made me really think for the first time about what I’m getting into. I love every aspect of what I’m doing, but working on a farm and running your own are completely different. Probably a good interim step would be to be a farm manager for a year or two and see if I really have the skills to strike out on my own.

Within the next few months I have to decide whether or not I want to come back to Vermont next year as I am supposed to be in a two year program. I could apprentice again next year, but eventually I will have to make a big leap of some kind. Either to find some land or take on a position with a lot more responsibility. Part of me is thinking that if I am destined to make it then it doesn’t really matter how many years I apprentice. And if I am destined to fail then years of this won’t make a difference. Not sure that this makes sense, but it feels good to write down.

Last weekend Brooke and I went up to Quebec for the wedding of my friends Paul and Nathalie. My only other trip to Canada was to see a Dead show in 1990. All I saw then was the inside of a stadium and a motel room. Quebec has a very foreign feel to it. Hard to place my finger on why, but it just seems like it’s in a completely different country. For example, in Quebec Sponge Bob Square Pants is called Bob L’eponge. In Guatemala he was called Bob Esponja.

Paul is one of my oldest friends from SF and I discovered during the ceremony, that he and Nathalie are moving back to Quebec next year. Another friend, Carrie is going to grad school next fall in Seattle and my friend Mike is leaving for Vancouver next month. All of a sudden the tug that is San Francisco is getting a little weaker. I guess after I left most people found they no longer had a reason to stay.

We drove up on Friday and camped in Mont Orford national park. We hiked up a mountain, ate gourmet food and swam in a lake twice. The highlight of the camping trip, however, was the offer of the complimentary s’mores roasting sticks from the park ranger. We didn’t have a fire but they will be used one day.

The wedding took place at Nathalie’s family home in the country and was attended by about a hundred people. The food was unbelievable and the live band was fantastic. The ceremony was great too, although I am a little saddened that my perviest friend is now hitched up.

On a completely different note, I just finished another research project. It focuses on the dark side of farming, the part which has been pushed under the rug for far too long. In an attempt to address this serious issue I have compiled some information which will enable the appropriate authorities to focus their efforts on the places that need the most help. So here is another list.

Top ten countries for sheep shagging (in no particular order except for the first one).

Greece
Wales
New Zealand
Argentina
Kazakhstan
Latvia
Australia
Mongolia
Chile
France

Farmer Simon

2005-07-12T15:30:00.000-04:00

The Bug Catcher.

So I’ve been on the farm for three months now and farm work is starting to become routine. Not boring, but now we have planted most of the years crops we are left with basically two tasks to occupy our days. Harvesting and Weeding.

My work day starts at 7am and begins with harvesting. I hate getting up early which probably doesn’t make me a good candidate for being a farmer, but my body has finally adjusted to this early morning shock. In order to adequately caffeinate myself I have to get up at 6:30 am!!

Every day we have a pick sheet which is basically a wish list of what we need to harvest for the farm stand, farmers’ market (Thursday and Saturday) and the CSA (Tuesday and Wednesday). The field crew (usually 5 or 6 of us) then set out to all corners of the farm to harvest the veggies. It can take anywhere between 1 and 3 hours depending on the day and what is on the pick list. Harvesting is actually great fun and quite gratifying. Last week we harvested parsley, basil, squash, collards, chard, kale, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, beets, cucumbers, spinach and strawberries. Pick your own strawberries are one of the main attractions on the farm and every morning carloads of people file into the fields to load up on the sweet red goodies.

After harvesting is finished we then begin the arduous task of weeding the many acres of crops we have in production. First and foremost are next year’s strawberries which just got planted a few weeks ago. We have four acres (about 38,000 plants) which will be weeded until the fall when they will be covered in a nice winter blanket of straw. We also have many acres of vegetables to deal with. Some are pretty easy to control, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. But others are a pain in the ass, carrots, leeks, and onions are top of that list. The idea is to get on top of the weeds right away so your crop gets a good head start and you can rely mostly on tractor cultivation. Of course this never happens as like most farms we are constantly playing catch up. It’s rained a lot here this summer too which means that we can’t always use the tractors because they compact the soil.

As part of my apprenticeship I have just recently begun a very special project. I am now training to be Cedar Circle’s resident entomologist. Last week I got a beginner’s insect preservation kit in the mail from UC Davis and I am now busy at work building an insect collection so the staff can identify insects and problems before they get out of control.

It goes something like this. I run around the field with my bug catcher’s net swiping it back and forth across the plants. I then empty whatever unfortunate critters I have happened to catch into a small glass jar containing alcohol. This part is painful to watch as the insects flail about wildly in the toxic environment. I tried putting in more alcohol but it still takes a few minutes for them to die. The jar is then emptied out and they are mounted on pins, identified and labeled. The mounting part is pretty easy, but identification is quite difficult. I ordered a huge textbook which should be coming any day as the insect books I currently have are not that good. The project is going well so far but the other day I looked at the pinned up insects and noticed that one of them was still alive and wiggling it’s legs madly a day after it had been crucified. My most heartfelt apologies to that poor Japanese Beetle.

Compared to the weeds, insects are a minor problem, but some do have the potential to ruin entire crops. Flea beetles like brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage etc) and we control them by using row covers to keep them off the plants. Aphids like pretty much everything and we buy in masses of ladybugs who love to eat them. Public enemy number one, however is the Colorado Potato Beetle. When they’re not eating potato and eggplant leaves they like to fuck each other and make more of themselves. For the potato beetle we spray Spinosad, an organically approved insecticide derived from soil bacterium.

On a non work related note I would like to announce a personal boycott of Wal-Mart. I ended up going there twice (after three unsuccessful visits to local hardware stores) but have now discovered the joys of Big K-mart. Big K still has the same sweatshop low prices and it’s just as good for mullet spotting. Out here the local mullet variety is called the Vermullet. I hope you (if anyone ever reads this blog) will join me in this bold political statement.

Farmer Simon

2005-07-02T17:38:00.000-04:00

Driving Trac.

When I signed up for this farming thing I had no idea it would involve so much manly manly stuff. If you called in someone every time something went wrong on the farm you’d go broke real fast. So you actually have to learn how to repair and build things yourself. The last time I did anything like this was in 8^th grade when I made a napkin holder for my parents. I fucked up the holes that I drilled in it and I still remember how silly it looked on our dining table. So not only do I have to learn how to grow shit I also have to learn how to fix shit also. And put seventy-five cents in the swear jar.

Today I helped change the oil and hydraulic fluid on one of the big tractors. First we drained the oil, but it came out so quickly that in my hurry to move a bucket underneath the gush I dropped a nut in the bucket. So then I had to fish around in the bucket and when I pulled my hand out it looked like one of those dead seabirds you see washed up on a beach after an oil spill. We also had to use half a bag of kitty litter to soak up all the oil I spilled on the floor. So over the next several months I’ll be learning a lot more about things like carpentry, irrigation and tractor repair. We may even buy a junky tractor and fix it up as a project.

Although most of my time is spent doing manual labor such as seeding, weeding, and harvesting, I’ve also been spent quite a bit of time driving trac. That’s short for driving tractor. Sometimes things get so busy that throwing in an abbreviation like this can really save time. Cedar Circle is a much bigger farm than I would ever want to run but even on small farms tractors can really help. There’s a trade off when you use the tractors, but it seems to pay off. With more tractor work you have bigger distances between rows (to accommodate the trac getting through) and sacrifice how much you can produce per unit of land. But you rely a lot less on human labor which can be an expensive part of farming.

Not only do you need to drive straight to drive trac well, but you also have to be paying attention to height of your cultivation tools. Too high off the ground and you don’t get any weeds. Too low and you cover up the precious veggies with soil. When driving trac goes well it’s a beautiful site to see and you save a whole of hand weeding. I’m getting better, but on Wednesday I bagged my first tractor trophy. I ran into a sprinkler and snapped it right off. I’m going to mount it and when I’m a famous farmer it will be worth a whole lot of money.

This week was the first week that I really missed San Francisco. I miss the place, but I mostly miss my friends. I’m around a lot of people, but most are quite a bit younger. I ran into someone I met in Madison, Wisconsin fifteen years ago at the farmers’ market and I met up with him for Indian food and a talk on Bhangra music at Dartmouth last week. So now I’ve been out an average of almost once per month and I have a new friend. I new what i was getting into when I moved out here, but it's still tough. Might have to get a mail order bride if i stay here through the winter.

How can you help the loneliness and desolation? Come visit me. All the fresh organic food you can eat, kayaking, awesome bike riding (you get on your bike and it’s like you’re already across the bridge in Marin!) and my fantastic company all await you. My friend Brooke who lives in New York has already visited twice, but I need people to come every week.

I forgot to do a list last time, but here’s one for nostalgia’s sake and in no particular order.

Ten things I miss about San Francisco

Cancun
All of my awesome friends
Being able to go a whole week without driving my car
Watching footie with my friend Mike
DSL
Amoeba
Rides out to the beach
Used book stores
Cute girlies walking down Valencia
Cute girlies riding their bikes down Valencia

Farmer Simon

PS - For anyone reading my blog who is perhaps yearning for a little more you can gain access to all areas of my website www.farmhunk.com for only $9.95 per month . You will get weekly updated pictures of my farm muscles and much more. Send me an email if you are interested.

2005-06-23T17:25:00.000-04:00

The War on Weeds

The following is a transcript of a speech I gave to myself in Field 9b on June 21, 2005.

Radishes, Lettuce, various members of the squash family, and other vegetables:

My dearest crops, for the last nine days, the entire farm has seen for itself the state of our fields -- and it is being overrun by voracious plants.

Tonight we are a farm awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Whether we bring our weeds to justice, or bring justice to our weeds, justice will be done.

Farmers have many questions tonight. Farmers are asking: Who attacked our fields? The evidence we have gathered all points to a collection of loosely affiliated opportunistic plants known as weeds.

The weeds practice a fringe form of botany that has been rejected by vegetables, fruits and the vast majority of cereal crops throughout the world -- a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of botany. The weeds' directive commands them to crowd out tomatoes and radicchios, in fact to crowd out all vegetables, and make no distinction between helpless seedlings and full grown plants.

This group and its leader -- a plant named Stellaria Media -- are linked to many other weed families in different countries, including the Egyptian Clover Jihad and the Turnip Brigade of Uzbekistan. There are now billions of these weeds in more than 60 countries. They are recruited beneath the soil and germinated in places like Field 9b, where they are trained in the tactics of nutrient and water competition. In Field 9b, we see the weeds’ vision for the world.

And tonight, Cedar Circle Farm makes the following demands on the Weeds: Deliver to Cedar Circle Farm authorities all the leaders of weeds who hide in our land. Close immediately and permanently every weed germination camp in Field 9b and hand over every weed to the farm interns.

These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. The Weeds must act, and act immediately.

I also want to speak tonight directly to plants throughout the world. We respect your biology. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of botany blaspheme the name of botany.

Our war on Weeds begins with the weeds in 9b, but it does not end there. It will not end until the last weed has been found, stopped and defeated.

Vegetables are asking why do they hate us? They hate what we see right here in row 34 – an orderly planted line of packman broccoli which should be ready for harvest in a few more weeks if it is allowed to grow unimpeded.

The weed leaders are self-appointed. They hate the vegetables freedoms -- freedom to photosynthesize, freedom to uptake vital nutrients, and the freedom to imbibe water through their roots.

They want to overthrow existing plantings in many other fields, such as field 4, field 3a and the field by the river which hasn’t got a number yet.

Farmers are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command – hand picking, flame weeding, tractor cultivation, crop rotations and even a bit of hoeing if we have time - to the disruption and to the defeat of the global weed network.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Farmers should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.

We will starve weeds of nutrients, turn them one against another, and drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue other farms that provide aid or safe haven to the weeds. Every Farm, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the weeds.

The civilized world is rallying to Cedar Circle’s side. They understand that if this terror goes unpunished, their own rutabaga, their own carrots could be next. Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down melons and pumpkins, it can threaten the stability of beans and peppers too. And you know what -- we're not going to allow it.

We will make no distinction between the weeds who commit these acts and those who harbor them.

None of us will ever forget this day, yet we go forward to defend the vegetables and all that is good and just in our world.

Thank you. Good night and may Garlic bless Asparagus.

Farmer Simon

2005-06-20T22:23:00.000-04:00

Hi, my name is Simon.

I want to be a farmer. I think.

At the end of March, I drove my 1991 Ford Escortia across country from San Francisco to East Thetford, Vermont to be an apprentice on a 40-acre organic vegetable farm. After five years of being a food activist, I decided to shove my stuff in storage and leave all my fantastic friends and someone else whom I love very much to try my hand at farming. Mapquest tells me that I am now 3,085 miles away from my previous life.

I have been on the farm for 2 ½ months so I will have to fill in a few gaps for these first few entries. And while I’m thinking what to write next it might be time to do a list. Nick Hornby in his excellent novel, High Fidelity, states most profoundly that it’s not what you’re like, but what you like. I agree Nick, lists are good. None of my blog entries will be listless. Nick also happens to support the same football (soccer) team as I do. Go Arsenal.

Top Ten Albums I listened to while I was driving across country. Except for the first one these are in no particular order.

David Bowie – Hunky Dory (The best album ever made)
Prince’s Greatest Hits
Manu Chao (both of them)
Mos Def (the first one)
Massive Attack – Blue Lines
Joni Mitchell – Blue
Beth Orton – Central Reservation
Postal Service
XTC – English Settlement
Stevie Wonder – Love Songs

So life out here in Vermont is great. If I had to make the decision all over again I would most definitely still be here. Cedar Circle farm is breathtakingly beautiful. Nestled between two mountain ranges and abutting the Connecticut River, the farm is awash in verdant trees and lush grasslands. Sounds like a tourist brochure, but it really is amazing. My first two months here it must have rained at least 5 days a week but summer has finally arrived and I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather spend the next five months.

Cedar Circle was taken over by two of my Californian friends, Kate and Will, five years ago and converted from it’s previous toxic form into an organic vegetable operation which sells produce through a farm stand, community supported agriculture, and to a couple of local farmers’ markets. The land has had a conservation easement placed on it so it will remain farmland forever or until Vermont is flooded by melting ice caps. We grow fifty different kinds of vegetables as well as strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. This year we are also growing dental floss and graham (for graham crackers). Could be a profitable niche market for us.

East Thetford is a small hamlet consisting of a convenience store, a pizza parlor, two hairdressers (Shearz, etc and Hair Exclusive) and a post office. Ten miles away is Hanover, New Hampshire, the closest town and home to Dartmouth College and high speed internet access. Since I’ve moved here I’ve been out at night 3 times. Twice to eat dinner. I guess I traded in my social life for Netflix and chirping crickets, but I’m getting a nice farmer tan and even learning a few things along the way.

Farmer Simon