What is summer like at the Agricola Farm?

 Happy summer everyone! Things are buzzing in our meadows. Here are the beautiful flowers growing in our pollinators meadows. These flowers are heavy with all the insects around them! I wish you could hear the happy buzzing noise they make. We follow their example and are harvesting all sorts of wild goodies! In our list now there are sumac flowers, milkweed leaves, wild mint and lemon balm, and many wild berries. The evenings are becoming consumed by processing of all these goods so our work days are getting longer but this winter we will enjoy all the lovely products we made during these long summer evenings.

An update from the pigs: They are hot.
Here is a pig that found on a creative way to use his water trough. Chilling his bum.  By the way, this is a red pig with a white band.. these days they all look the same! They use the mud to keep cool because they cannot sweat.

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gs are well into the rhythm of rotations and have got the hang of moving from a pasture to a new one. They get so excited when you open a new pasture, especially if the new place has different herbs and trees compared to the previous one. The picture below shows a group of pigs that just entered their new paddock. They were chomping on those plants like you would not believe. If you look carefully, in the background, you will see strands of ripe winter rye. We seeded the rye last year and now the pigs are doing a decent job at harvesting the grains. There is an unexplainable satisfaction in seeing pigs harvesting their own food straight from the land. A month ago we seeded one of the fields with special legumes and vegetables for them. The plants and grasses are coming up strong and happy – I can hardly wait for September when this field will be ready for them! I take pictures!

​The new flock of chicken is growing tremendously. They continue to love the grains but have mastered the art of hunting and as I am writing, there are a handful outside the window that are chasing after the same bug. Any minute now and one of them will make an impressive leap in the air that defeats any laws of gravity or physics. If she catches the bug, there will be a few minutes of what I call chicken football, where the chicken with the bug will have to escape from several chickens who are trying to tackle her and get the bug. After the excitement, they will return to hang out under the trees where they find shade and protection from the many hawks that wander around. The other day we literally saved a chicken from the talons of an hawk!

of For what concerns the sheep, we are proud (and surprised) to announce we got 2 new lambs in July! Appropriately named Giulio (july) and Tempesta (storm) – they were born during a rain storm and we found them all wet under mom in the meadow. I am getting ready to say goodbye to Asiago, our ram. We are looking for a new farm for him. He has been with us for three years and for genetics reasons we need to move him out the farm. He is a gentle and kind soul. He will be missed (and he has impressive horns!).

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In the garden all the veggies are growing happy and bountiful, although a bit late. The weather put us a bit behind this year but we have an insane amount of tomatoes ripening on the vines right now. We are about to enter the period of the long nights spent preparing tomato preserve that will dress our pasta for the entire winter. We are talking of an Italian farm here... with 5 adults and 1 girl... so we appropriately planted 150 tomato plants. It seemed just about right! We will have a little left over to share with our dinner and lunch customers. The time when zucchini are used in all shapes and forms has arrived and the herbs are going wild. We created a mini Sahara Desert in one of the offices at the farm house where we are drying our herbs. We got herbs everywhere! Some are wild, some are planted …. They are growing.  Here is a picture of the onion flowers growing in the garden. Aren't they beautiful? We will harvest the seeds for our seedlings for next year. And next year... we will have a HOOP HOUSE!!!!!!!! so exciting!

​Opening Agricola Meats! Some of you already know we are working on creating our own meat processing facility where we will make cured meats. We are already making some salame at Mad River Food Hub but we are limited by the little space and time available they have for us, the difficulties juggling the slaughtering datres with their limited availability, limitations in the type of products they let us make over there, and high prices. We have been processing our meat there for 6 years bu it is no longer feasible for us.  Thus… we put together a business plan to make cured meats in a new facility. We will not only make our own cured meat products but are committed to creating unique products for other 4 farms to create a map of Vermont flavors.  Currently we are creating salame for 2 farms and are selling our products in Boston, Vermont and New York. We are not yet in the new facility but things are finally coming together and we can hardly wait to walk into our new place. As soon as we get in there we will be able to start making a variety of cured meats such as prosciutto, coppa, pancetta, lonzino a zillions of other products. We are so excited and ready for this shift! Our hearts also warm up because of the enthusiasm that we find for the project all around us: from the farmers that are happy to finally get a fair price for their livestock and create a unique quality product, from the shop owners that are proud to promote a product in which they believe, and from the people that buy the product and discover a delicious and nutritious way to promote responsible agriculture and be part of the green change that is happening at our farms. It has been a wild and happy ride to get this project going and we have countless people that helped us on the way that we need to thanks... Elizabeth and Fred from Addison County Economic Development, Jim and Cairn from Windham Grows, Omar from UVM extension, Jill from FSA, Dan from VCLF, Lynn Ellen and Diana from Working Lands, Liz from Farm and Forestry Viability Program, Jen from NOFA, Rose Wilson (from everywhere), Annette and Gail from the Women Enterprise Center, Mike Redmond (our neighbour and he can do anything), Tony our future landlord, Carol Degener for branding, Brian from SBDC, Prof. Alberto Brugiapaglia from the University of Agricultural science in Torino. Wow..now that I look at the list (and I am sure I have forgotten someone), I feel so humble that so many people have just offered their time and their expertise and many of them have done that without asking for a compensation, only because they believed in the importance of the project... the importance of supporting  Vermont Farms, the importance of supporting a type of agriculture that helps our environment and the importance of creating a top product that can make Vermont proud. 

I am leaving you with the picture of me (Ale) with Justin, from Concord Cheese Store (hey I am wearing a dress!). Justin is one of the amazing people I have met as I am driving around introducing our products to stores around Boston. I am not a salesperson... I am a farmer and a butcher, so the idea of stepping into the shoes of a salesperson is quite uncomfortable. However, I have found amazing people like Justin at Concord Cheese Store, and like Annemarie at Pemberton Market, Peter and Brie at The Cheese Shop in Salem, Kim at Russo's, and Adam at The Boston Cheese Cellar. Each of them is so passionate and committed to the same causes we work on. They get what we try to do and they want to be part of our support system. I have stopped in many places to introduce my products and I can safely say that, if you live close to one of these stores, you are lucky and you can trust that these people put their cured meat plate where their heart is.