This is an invasives Christmas message today.  I do hope all of us are celebrating the joyousness of life today, whatever our traditions. Jumping is a wonderful activity. Have you ever tried it with a two-year-old? I advise it!

I was on the phone with my friend Noah the other day, and he suggested that if I want to stir up some trouble, I should write about Asian jumping worms. And frankly, I do like to stir up trouble from time to time. They are all the rage these days. Labelled as invasives, or Invasive Asian jumping worms, some folks are concerned that they eat organic matter so quickly that they can be a danger to particularly forest ecosystems. And then comes the invariable question, “Well, how do we get rid of them?” More than one person has turned to me in the past year under great stress over this concern.

Here is my take. We have them on our farm, by the way, and you can tell if you have them when you pull back the mulch and they start to wriggle seemingly uncontrollably. The kinds of worms we are used to are statelier in their behavior. I have noticed them, and in great quantities, particularly where we have a deep mulch and where the crops are growing to almost perfection. This to me is a clue that we are very lucky to have these folks on our property. “But”, people say, “they eat up all the mulch” to which I return, “Then put on more mulch.” What I notice also is that there is a thick layer of highly plant bioavailable worm castings on the soil where they reside – a farmer’s fertilizer gold.

Now I don’t know why they have shown up here, and I don’t really care, because I don’t think I have much power over their presence. I do know, from decades of experience, that more life on the farm, under and on the soil means for higher fertility, better tasting and more bounteous crops, and a diverse ecosystem that attracts all sorts of wildlife – yes, even deer. Hurray, we are a part of nature!

Expressing Gratitude this Week for the Many Hands Farm Staff

We had so much fun at our MHOF Christmas party last Wednesday, despite the fact that we couldn’t all be present. I was standing aside at one point conversing with Dave Petrovick, long time machine guy, MHSC board member and friend, and we marveled at all of the human capital we have invested in this place at this very moment – from Kenny Stambler who helps sell turkeys each Tuesday before Thanksgiving, to Clare Caldwell, who will have completed 16 years of fullish time employment in May.
Thank you, thank you, everyone!

Videos from this Week

Making pork stock

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James regales us after lunch on Monday on the piano

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Scott explains what happened to the chicken house door

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Jonathan receives his chicken house dedication sign

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Stu on Jonathan

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Meat for Sale at MHOF

Watch the website. We will have it all up there by January 1, 2024.

Many Hands Make a Farm

We now have copies available for sale of, Many Hands Make a Farm. The price is $25 each and if you buy one from us, the $12.50 that we clear will go directly to the Many Hands Sustainability Center. And if you would like us to sign your copy, we can do that too! We’ll ship one to you also. Enquire. Finally, we will be having a local book signing party on January 14.

Email Julie at julie@mhof.net to buy directly from us or see the link at the bottom of the newsletter to buy online.

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We have a great line up of music. Circle of Song will feature 2-3 pieces from our last concert, some of my French horn buddies will be performing in a horn quartet and playing some cool tunes, and Jack and Julie will be putting some of Jack’s famous doggerel to Sunrise Sunset.

We need a new (old) truck

We have been using beaters for many, many years and are looking to upgrade a tad. For under $10,000 we are looking for the following characteristics –

• An 8-foot bed
• 4-wheel drive
• With a cap or a truck that we can fit our existing one on
• Mechanically reliable
• Common enough so that parts are available
• We don’t care about cosmetics

Does anyone have any leads?

Join Next Year’s CSA now and insure our solvency!

You can still get a check to us, or sign up on PayPal before December 31, if you have any extra money lying around. I think we will break even as hoped by the end of the year, but a little cushion can’t hurt. We are already looking forward to bringing you good food starting June.

Come Sing with us

Circle of Song starts up again on Thursday, January 11. We meet on Thursdays from 7:00 – 8:30pm at the Barre Town Hall, 2 Exchange Street. We sing in 4-part harmony and we sing good stuff. Our next concert is Saturday, May 18. Contact Julie at julie@mhof.net.

Ellen’s January Cleanse

Ellen’s 21 Day Gentle Cleansing Program – begins Jan 8th. All details here: https://ellenkittredge.com/cleanse.php
Would you like to:

• Lose some weight, say goodbye to your cravings, have more energy, and feel fit?
• Clear up long-standing sinus issues, and chronic congestion?
• Have a peaceful and refreshing night of sleep?
• Gain clearer thinking throughout the day?
• Have glowing, soft skin that makes you look years younger?
• Identify hidden food allergies that are impacting your health?
• See actual results of lower cholesterol, lessened markers of inflammation, and other clear results of your body’s physiological changes on blood work (as many past cleansers getting blood work pre- and post-Cleanse have shared with me)
• Or, have you always wanted to do a cleanse but feel you need the support of others to be successful?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, The Gentle Winter Healing Cleanse is a great fit!
This Cleanse offers detoxification for the body and renewal for the soul! Plus, it’s a great way to reset in the New Year.
Please read here for all the details, and send any questions to Ellen directly. https://ellenkittredge.com/cleanse.php
(Ellen_kittredge@yahoo.com)

Warming, delicious, low inflammatory food is the best! When you feel better after eating something at this time of year, which is often filled with so many inflammatory foods that leave you feeling icky and low (after an initial sugar high), that’s a huge win in my book!
Here’s one of my favorite recipes in this category.

WARMING BLACK BEAN AND BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP
The ingredients are nourishing for the kidneys and spleen, and support exactly what we need to balance and heal this time of year. Please Email Ellen (ellen_kittredge@yahoo.com) if you’d like a copy of this recipe, and if you join the Cleanse you can except a multitude of recipes like this! https://ellenkittredge.com/cleanse.php

Volunteering at MHOF

Be in touch, we love volunteers – M, T, F – 8-noon with lunch. Things are a little erratic until the end of the year. We are hosting volunteers Friday, December 29. We will start up normally again on January 2.

Worcester Community Fridges

Here is their annual report – https://opencollective.com/worcestercommunityfridges/updates/2023-annual-update. Thanks to so many of you who made 7 shares possible from MHOF (they fundraised for the remaining 7 shares.

Emails from Subscribers

Good Morning Julie,

The farm I grew up on in Leicester, a mile past the Worcester line, was between the power lines that ran up Rt 122 and Rt 56 and was to great a distance to “bother” stringing electric wires for 1 house. Maple Hill Farm didn’t get electricity until the late 30ties.  You may remember my Uncle Albert Southwick’s weekly articles in the Sunday Telegram “Down on the Farm” that captured the feeling of living without electricity before the turn of the century, but written years later. I’m surprised a West Texas farm wouldn’t have had a windmill like Maple Hill.

It pumped to a wooden tank in the attic in the old farm house and than gravity feed to the faucets. Water pressure was minimal. The tank had to be monitored, to much wind and the windmill vanes had to be turned and locked out of the wind to keep from overflowing and spilling down from the attic. Not enough wind, or a dry season, and the tank was monitored to keep enough water for bare necessities. Still, it was heads and shoulders above carrying buckets. By my time at Maple Hill, we had an electric well pump, but the wooden tank was still in use.

As my little sister was about to be born, my Mom called out in the middle of the night “I think my water broke”. From a sound sleep, Dad’s instinctive reaction was to head to the attic to check the overflowing tank.

In our early days in Manchaug, I built a small windmill that sat atop a telephone pole in our wetland. A 4″ X 10 foot plastic drain pipe was our well. It only pump, on a windy day, a gallons an hour up the hill into a 200 gallon plastic water tank you would find in a field to water cattle. Slow and steady pumping reliably supplied most of the water for our “way in back” garden.

Denny and Jane LaForce

Nice, Jane, I can see it in my mind’s eye, and great story about your dad and mom. Caro noted that many farmers couldn’t afford to buy a windmill, and that summers were punctuated by almost no wind for months at a time. I also remember a windmill, though not active, on our farm when we moved to it in 1956. I used to enjoy climbing to the top of it. Julie
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I wish I was younger and able to help you on the farm
A lot of work but such connection with nature and others.
I am always so impressed with your snippets on all of the people who work together to help

Enjoy the holidays.

Love,

Joan

Well, Joan, when a friend who was considering working but thought it would be too hard to bend over all of the time, I asked her if she could crawl! You could stop over from time to time and do a little something if you would like. We are an equal opportunity employer. Thanks for your kind words. We do have a wonderful time here. Love, Julie

Health Stuff

There is a lot today. I got behind on my email.

Fasting and Longevity Summit – free event by Dr. Talks – https://drtalks.com/fasting-longevity-summit/?oid=61&ref=2327&uid=637&utm_source=campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=eliaz_dec23_nl_fastsummit_promo2&_kx=VHHjDK2XwIHehL2cydis51jg0Z7GwAqMO0uiUaYlYI0%3D.Syeesf These are always fascinating

Ari Whitten interviews Jason Hawrelak on gut health – I think this is a very good one – https://theenergyblueprint.com/optimize-your-gut/?inf_contact_key=3f5c5cdc1f41b4e61c745c049500577df378a691fa2de2618ccb1c27deca348f

Ari Whitten again – on hydrogen with Alex Tarnava
https://theenergyblueprint.com/molecular-hydrogen-alex-tarnava/?inf_contact_key=f45696e6a6847548afeeacfb72de94dab35f7cb4f843dbaf82489fd4b96e6293

Farm Doin’s

We had a short work week with just Monday and Tuesday here. Monday the storm raged outside while the Stetson folks did a double fill on the porch, setting us up with wood for two weeks. They then turned to some deconstruction work and knocked that off with no problem.

James and Candido posing

Matt and Danny turned their attention to the shed, Matt tackling the downstairs and Danny the attic. They made amazing headway on this job which gets sidelined during the heat of the season.

Paula, Elenore, Marcia and I worked on pig heads, putting by 28 quarts of stock. Once the rain stopped (almost) we were able to do more work on the blueberry hoeing and mulching.

The soup ladies

A quick rainbow on Monday after lunch

I had the fun opportunity to interview each staff member to find their thoughts about the farm and their plans for next year. I continued this on Tuesday and finished it by week’s end with Clare and Jennifer off-line.

Marcia and Julie at the staff interview

On Tuesday morning I was unable to get the chicken house door open because of warm wet weather and swelling. Scott planed it down and we were back in business. The rest of us did another pig head and produced 25 more quarts of stock before returning to our leaf harvest. We gathered 4 more totes and Elenore put them all away with the tractor. In the afternoon with Elenore’s ace tractor unloading of 7 big loads of chips, we were able to almost complete the blueberry mulching job for the winter. To be continued.

Jennifer came over on Thursday and hooked up my new computer to replace the lemon that I have been using for almost 2 years. Thank you, Jennifer. I cannot get over how much time I am saving every day!

And Stu, not getting the memo, showed up on Friday and put up Jonathan’s new sign and we did our last staff interview. Do we have an amazing line up for 2024!

Merry Christmas!
Julie

Thank you, Jonathan, for two marvelous years with us. We will miss you.

Quick Links

Buy meat
CSA pick up information
Contact Julie
Products available right now at the farm
Become a working shareholder
Donate to the MHSC
Links Workshops

Link to buy J and J’s book – Many Hands Make a Farm-
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/many-hands-make-a-farm/

December 11, 2023
Bayer Chokes on Monsanto
(abstracted by Jack Kittredge from a NY Times article on Dec. 6)

Having bought the U.S. agrochemical behemoth Monsanto for a cash payment of $63 billion in 2018, the German pharmaceutical conglomerate Bayer appears to have made what Wall Street investors are calling “the worst merger in history.” In 2020 the firm agreed to pay almost $10 billion to settle a number of claims that Monsanto’s popular weedkiller “Roundup” – which Bayer bought and was liable for — caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Since then, more and more cancer lawsuits have been filed and the corporation now faces over 50,000 of them. Plaintiffs have won the last four trials, being awarded verdicts totaling another $2 billion. Since the Monsanto purchase Werner Baumann, the CEO who masterminded the deal, has been replaced and Bayer’s total share value has plunged over 60% to $33 billion – less than half what they paid for Monsanto 5 years ago.

These facts, besides suggesting (for many of us of the organic persuasion) that this could be some sort of cosmic “payback” for Monsanto’s years of viciously pursuing (and often bankrupting) farmers they accused of illegally saving patented seeds capable of withstanding Roundup, libertarians see Bayer’s fate as proof that even if the executive and legislative branches of government are captured by vested interests, the court system can provide justice in large part because the jury system empowers common citizens to directly affect both rich and poor alike. (Of course, the tort system, which enables lawyers to split awards with their clients, certainly helps grease these wheels.)

It isn’t often that those of us in the “natural” and non-chemical branch of farming feel so clearly vindicated, and it unfortunately comes as the result of horrible disease and death for victims of these irresponsible criminals, but it deserves pointing out when it happens.

Expressing Gratitude this Week

This week’s winner of my highest level of gratitude goes to the body of Circle of Song, an eclectic group of 16 very different folks who not only get together to sing a lot of wide-ranging music, but real human beings who are dedicated to the well-being of each other. Each season at least one of us suffers a crisis of some sort, and the members are always there with comfort, food, rides, chores, you name it. As we get closer to our concert on December 16, we are driving all over northern Central Mass for extra rehearsals, pot luck dinners, and carpooling opportunities to deepen our relationships with one another. I am grateful to us, from Cailan who is 24 to Minnie who is 93 and how we enhance each other’s life.

Videos from this Week

Lard chatter

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Tarp Organizing

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Meat for Sale at MHOF

Watch the website. We will have it all up there by January 1, 2024.

Donate to the MHSC

Watch for the official annual letter this Wednesday.  Of course you can always donate anytime here – https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=LSWR5U4EET7SW. Just Paypal or checks, no credit cards.

Many Hands Make a Farm

We now have copies available for sale of, Many Hands Make a Farm. The price is $25 each and if you buy one from us, the $12.50 that we clear will go directly to the Many Hands Sustainability Center. And if you would like us to sign your copy, we can do that too! We’ll ship one to you also. Enquire. Finally, we will be having a local book signing party on January 14.

Email Julie at julie@mhof.net to buy directly from us or see the link at the bottom of the newsletter to buy online.

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Every year, more and more American agricultural output is from fewer and fewer farms, whose size and scale enable them to dominate the market and set prices for many products while spreading the costs of labor and farm inputs broadly over their operations. Many of these massive farms receive subsidies from the government. Subsidies for grain, for instance, are available on an acreage or a crop yield basis… but in reality some of that tax money is channeled to subsidize corporate agriculture so it can produce cheap grain that can be sold on world markets at prices below what farmers in Mexico or Uganda or Thailand need to be paid to survive in farming. Seeing no avenue for a good life for themselves on the land, the young people in those countries look for other work. They migrate to already overcrowded cities—like Mexico City or Kampala or Bangkok—but most can’t find honest work to support their families. Instead, they end up involved in crime or terrorism, which costs US taxpayers again in the form of humanitarian relief or military intervention, by the US government attempting to address those problems. – pages 172 & 173 – Jack

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From Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm – “This book offers a window into living a life of meaning, rooted in integrity, values, critical thinking, and persistent effort.”

Join Next Year’s CSA now and insure our solvency!

Thanks to Dylan and Amanda, Cauldron Farm, Rich and Rachel, Shirley and Jean for joining up for next year already. We only need to raise another $3,000 before December 31 to break even on the farm this year. Join up now. The food promises to be tastier and more nutritious in ‘24 than it was in ‘23.

Order your 2024 CSA share here!

Julie promoting the CSA

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Circle of Song Concert – December 16, Barre Town Hall, 7 pm
Changing The World Through Self-Transformation

Don’t miss it! We are putting on all of the finishing touches this week to make it a truly inspiring experience.

• Alleluia – Randall Thompson
• America the Beautiful -Ward/Meader
• Christian’s Goodnight – Sanky/Doudney
• Lullabye – Billy Joel
• Imagine – Pentatonix
• Dona Nobis Pacem – Mozart
• Ballade to the Moon – Daniel Elder
• Daniel, Daniel, Servant of the Lord – spiritual/ar. Moore
• Long Time Ago – Copland
• My Lord, what a Mornin’ –spiritual/Burleigh
• Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light – Bach

Minnie always puts on a great spread for us after the concert. And we are always looking for new members. We will start up again in January on Thursday nights at 7 at the Barre Town Hall. Reach out if you are interested – julie@mhof.net

Oakham Congregational Church Annual Christmas Cantata

Sunday night, December 17 at 7 pm. This is a joyous celebration. In the past I have played in the orchestra, but this year, Jack and I are singing as last-minute ringers. A wonderful festive Christmas celebration at the church.

Liberty Food Fest December 15 and 16 – Jack and Julie to speak

Are you ready to make the next growing season the best it can be?
Looking for camaraderie, as the nights get longer, and the winds blow colder?

The local food movement is about bringing people together, expressing gratitude for each other, and getting stronger as a region.

Join us December 15th and 16th for the Liberty Food Fest in Bellows Falls, VT. 

www.libertyfoodfest.com

This celebration of the local food system is going to lift your spirits.
Julie Rawson and Jack Kittredge are of Many Hands Organic Farm are pioneers of the local organic food movement in the Northeast and are obsessed with creating fertility in the soil, a process which is dependent on building networks of both happy mycorrhizal fungi and people!

Joel Salatin is one of the most uplifting, motivational farmers out there, full of new ideas. You’ll leave his talk with an extra pep in your step as you plan out your next growing season.

Winona LaDuke will give you perspective on how to live in harmony with the earth, and you’ll have a renewed spirit and sense of purpose.
This is a celebration you don’t want to miss.

Volunteering at MHOF

Winter hours for the farm – M, T, F – 8-noon and lunch.

Jennifer’s recipe for the week

Soft Boiled Eggs with Veggies

Our traditional American breakfast consists of something like eggs, meat, potatoes and bread.  While all these foods are great foods, the combination of them together makes it difficult to digest for most people.  While Western nutrition looks at calories, protein fats and carbs, Eastern nutritional understands food in terms of tastes; sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, and astringent, and their qualities (gunas), hot/cold, heavy/light, dry/oily, easy/difficult etc.  Our traditional breakfast  listed above are sweet foods that are heavy, cold, and difficult for the body to digest.  Putting too much heavy and cold on the digestive fire, literally puts the fire out.  This results in the food staying in the stomach for much longer than it should causing the food to begin to ferment causing all sorts of digestive issues, gas/bloating, flatulence.

Eggs are best when paired with cooked vegetables, especially greens.  They balance out the heavy quality bringing in lightness and they are easy to digest when cooked.  They also offer the bitter taste, which is missing from most American diets.  This is why we are often reaching for coffee in the morning, as it is bitter, it gets things moving.  As in most of my recipes, I cook with ghee, which makes foods that it is cooked with even easier to digest and assimilate the nutrition.  Ghee takes on the gunas of the food and brings the nutrition deeper into the tissues.  Here is a link to a video I made on how to make and the benefits of ghee.

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 small Shallot
• a handful of Brocoli crowns
• a handful of Asparagus, chopped to bite size
• 1 small baby Bok Choi
• Pink Himalayan Salt and Black pepper to taste
• 3 T Ghee
• Guacamole or Avocado slices
• Balsamic glaze

Directions:

1. Fill a pot with water and a dash of salt and bring to a boil.
   1. Once the water boils, gently add eggs to water and boil for 7 minutes (this is the perfect time for a soft boiled egg of medium size.  Julie’s smaller white eggs may for for only 6 mintues)
2. Meanwhile, on medium heat, sauté shallot and ghee with salt and pepper for three minutes.
3. Add remaining vegetables and cook until tender.

Option to serve with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar to bring in the sour taste and top with guacamole or avocado slices.

Emails from subscribers

Hi Julie,

You must be the master of trick photography. Those chickens look really happy and really healthy. No feather packing.

And they are outside. And it’s not even summer.
It must be trick photography because all of the industry experts that have testified before the NOSB, with 30,000-100,000 birds in each building, pretty much have their birds under stress and abused and if they let their birds outside, like you have, they’ve suggested that they would all die.
You and Jack must be the masters of deception,

Mark

Silly Mark – 😊 Julie
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Thanks for the video with the beautiful sounds of happy hens! Aren’t chickens just the best? We kept them for 13 years (until last year). We added them to our experiments in nutrient-dense, no-till, organic-style, sustainable living. But we didn’t count on falling in love with them! The sweetness of dandling a hen cannot be fully communicated. Plus the high amusement at their antics, their bounteous poop, and breaking down of raw organic matter over a single winter into finished black gold are things we never anticipated! I really miss them, but we’re not up to keeping animals at this point in our lives.

Thank you so much for the vibrant produce — it was truly the best we’ve had since we stopped growing our own. I MIGHT have a way to grow a few things next year at someone else’s house where I’ll mentor them as beginner gardeners. We’ll see.

best,
Debbie

Thank you for your kind words, Debbie,
I am glad you found us and are happy with our food. And all you say about chickens I agree with completely. Good luck with your mentoring your beginning gardener friends. Have a wonderful Christmas season. Julie
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Hi Julie,

Love, Love, Love the tour of the chicken house.  Chickens will always be near and dear to my heart and I love how you treat yours.
Friend Dan said this is the first year we hadn’t gotten eggs. We missed them, but will look forward to getting them again at some point.
By the way, my neighbors who have subscribed to your newsletter really love it.  We all look forward to reading it first thing Monday mornings.
Reports about our 5 turkeys:  They were delicious. One person put one in the freezer for Christmas.

Hope to see you folks soon.

Love,
Bob

Thanks for the report, Bob. Sorry I couldn’t sell you any eggs this time. They have become incredibly popular. And great to hear that the turkeys were a hit. I do enjoy writing the newsletter each week. I hope it continues to be of value to you. Have a wonderful Christmas and until we see each other again. Love to you too, Julie

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Farm Doin’s

Monday was a big day for getting all of our tarps organized and folded and stacked neatly in the back of the south field on a couple of wooden platforms. These 30’ x 100’ and 30’ x 150’ pieces of heavy plastic (silage tarps) are very heavy and hard to manage. But we had 11 of us managing the job. And we got it all done!

The tarp mess when we started

Putting the tarps onto the platform

The builders finished up the chicken house roosts and then Jonathan graded out front.

Jonathan grading the approach to the chicken house

The carpentry crew is now on to fixing the barn woodshed which has rotted in places.

Stu, Jack, and Jonathan in heated debate over whether to put the window back into the back of the barn woodshed, while quiet Matt listens and Clare is entertained by this “guy stuff.”

The larders accomplished 43 quarts of the golden liquid (which cools to a pure white.

Julie and Clare stripping the fat

Pouring off the lard

The leaf road crews collected 11 totes of leaves, bringing our total to 22 totes collected.

Adding one last tarp full of leaves before hauling them away.

Another beautiful week on the farm.

Julie

“Gladys, do you think this hay is adequate for our bedding?”

Quick Links

Buy meat
CSA pick up information
Contact Julie
Products available right now at the farm
Become a working shareholder
Donate to the MHSC
Links Workshops

Link to buy J and J’s book – Many Hands Make a Farm-
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/many-hands-make-a-farm/