Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.
Karel Capek

A Good Life
Russell Poe and Kelly Kingsland are living the dream life of many small farmers. With less than two of their five acres under cultivation, and Kelly working outside the home 2-3 days a week, they are supporting themselves with the fruits of their labor. A tour of Affinity Farm, quite hidden away in Moscow, left me feeling hope for the future of family agricultural enterprise.

The garden year starts in January with the planting of a few seeds in the greenhouse. The greenhouse was built onto their house and is heated by the wood stove in the living room merely by opening the door.

By March the seed planting gets underway in earnest with the planting of the brassicas, members of the cabbage family. As it warms up outside the seedlings are moved to the plastic covered hoop houses.

The crops grown at the farm are tomatoes, basil, lettuce, spinach, brassicas, potatoes, garlic, corn, eggplant and cucumbers. Affinity Farm is usually the first to have local produce at the Co-op. The greenhouse provides all the starts for their retail business, a 15 member CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), their personal consumption, and seedlings for extended family members.

Russell's advice for the home gardener is to use succession planting. If you plant all your lettuce at once you're out of lettuce in mid July. If you plant all your carrots at once you go from eating tiny carrots to eating just perfect carrots to eating overgrown carrots. They plant a bed of lettuce a week. For a home garden you might plant 4 heads a week. Carrots, beets, and brassicas should all be planted this way.

Russell and Kelly have farmed at Affinity Farm for 4 years. They have chickens and throw weeds and greens into the coop and use the manure on the garden. They also get goat and sheep manure from another garden. They get compost from the Co-op. Coffee grounds from a local coffee shop are spread around the blueberry plants and are also mixed into the soil where the potatoes are growing to raise the acidity of that soil. The higher acidity is a deterrent to potato scab.

Row covers are used on crops to prevent insects from eating the leaves and for frost protection. The strawberry plants have a side dressing of sawdust from a friend's small sawmill on Moscow Mountain. The sawdust mulch is good for the plants and it also keeps the berries clean when it rains. 

They plant other cover crops in the fall on most all of the beds, outside and in the hoop houses. They experiment with crop varieties every year in a search for the best. They learn by their mistakes. They feel very lucky to be living this life. Their requirements are not of the mainstream American standard of living but they support themselves quite well and think they may eat better than anyone in town. Russell is fond of saying: "You can have everything you want if you want the right things."

Holly Barnes fills her house with flowers this time of year, and enjoys time out in the Adirondack chairs in the garden with her husband, The Sailing Guy, and dog, Daisy.