Spring is busy. Busy with us here at the Center for an Agricultural Economy as we wrap up spring and ramp up for summer and busy at the Vermont Food Venture as we continue to welcome new clients, plan new workshops and get ready for a busy summer of processing.
Spring is busy for farmers too...you could say "crazy busy".
This great post from Will Ameden, "The Flying Farmer" in Cabot, is a great example of what many small and diversified farms are like in Vermont this time of year. You can read more about his farm and flying business on his blog, Catamount Aviation and Under Orion Farm.
Enjoy the pictures and the post and then get outside for some of your own spring "crazy".
-Elena Gustavson
Program Director
Spring = Crazy
by Will Ameden in Cabot, Vermont
It has started.
Spring, with all of it’s craziness, and never ending to-do lists, means late nights on top of early mornings.
With the arrival of 17 Black Angus cows that I will be boarding for a local neighbor, and the implementation of my Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) grazing plan, something I began in October 2010, I am spending hours managing our new “grass munchers”. This means moving lots of small, one acre paddocks, building loads of new fence, installing yards of waterline and lugging in 100-gallon water tubs. I have the Angus divided into 2 herds and they stay in each paddock for just a few days.
The grass is also in “crazy” mode, growing fast and long, which means haying season will start any day now. My neighbor and friend Nate Smith, a top notch welder, spent an afternoon repairing my hay elevator and other welding jobs around the farm.
Between the on-farm sawing jobs like clapboards for the Birdsalls as well as lumber for the new farm stand and lumber shed, the sawmill has been busy with off-farm custom sawing jobs as well.
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