“The Manocle”

Mano Farm’s CSA newsletter

Volume 2, Issue #3
February 12, 2011

Your farmers: Justin & Quin

Phone: 805.758.3184
Web: http://www.manofarm.org
Email: manofarmers@gmail.com

A few brief announcements at the outset:

• You may have noticed shares have been much smaller as of late. We assure you
this is a function of the season, rather than an indicator that our CSA program is
in slow attrition to oblivion. Our field is presently in that liminal space where our
autumn-sown crops begin to subside and our spring vegetables yet to fully kick in.
And we’re not alone: many local organic farms are experiencing this paucity. We
appreciate your patience, support, and understanding in this moment of crop
scarcity.
• We have a mid-winter farm party planned for February 19th at 2:30 pm.
However, the forecast presently lists a possibility of rain, which would potentially
continue our rescheduling saga. We’ll inform you all of any changes or
cancelations through email.
Puzzles and maps
At times, farming has felt a lot like a putting together a puzzle. We have this
plethora of crops in our greenhouse. We have a big ‘ol box of seeds. And with any
number of possible places we could put them, where do they all go? How do they all fit
together? Is there one piece of this puzzle that might be better suited elsewhere? Is this
really the right place?
Other times, however, farming feels like drawing a map. We need X amount of
space for Y vegetable crop. We need to be able to grow X amount of crop for Y number
of CSA members. We must rotate X crop family to a given portion of the field in order to
not overtax our soils and invite unwanted pests. We need to know which turn to take
before we reach the crossroads. We need to know what barriers we might encounter
along the way.
In the early days of this project, we built more puzzles. Lately, we’ve been
drawing more maps. Just yesterday, we began laying the perimeter of vegetable beds in
the southern third of our field, where we will grow onions and countless other plant
families (new sowings of spinach and radishes are a first priority). It seemed like there
was once always a new place to go when we didn’t have any more vegetable beds. But
this southern portion of the field is it for us. We’ve settled into a workable cultivation
practice that uses permanent beds, which means that after these beds, there is no other
place to go. Now the pieces of the puzzle are all here. Now we look at what we have and
draw another map, making sure we plant enough quantitates of everything we need.
As our farming practice matures, I’d like to think we’ll eventually evolve away
from being puzzle makers and more into cartographers. However, small farms are chaotic
places. They constantly introduce new variables and shifting quantities into a bounded
physical space. These introductions are precipitated by both necessity (quantity) and
personal desires (our own, our members). For instance, last year we grew about 200
square feet of garlic. This year we’re growing about eight times that amount. Last year
we wanted to grow scarlet ohno turnips. This year we’re sticking with the ‘ol reliable
purple top. These examples show how puzzles and maps are dialectical in character —
puzzles creates maps and maps create puzzles — rather than an indicator of some
particular state of farming maturity.
-Quin