Farm show-and-tell
2025-04-21
Dear reader,
Happy Monday. What are you looking forward to this week?
Here’s a snapshot of what we’re up to. I wrote this up for the Latchis screening of "Nickel Boys" last week. Folks at the door were asking me why a farm in Halifax was hosting a movie screening in Brattleboro, and I was ready for that question with the following letter.
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There I was the other day, teaching a farm-stay volunteer (a “WWOOFer”) from NYC how to stack firewood. It was a cold, sunny day in April – perfect firewood weather. I was trying to explain why we do what we do on a farm, and a phrase came to my mind: “Make hay when the sun shines.”
I explained that there’s always something to do. What to do depends on the weather, and many other factors like the market, etc. In that sense “making hay” is a general term about seizing opportunity. But I also feel this saying has a deeper meaning in America in 2025.
hello from us!
The very idea of tuning one’s rhythms to the weather was unheard-of to a young person from NYC whose shiny shoes were seldom worn outdoors and had never seen a speck of mud. Given how tethered we all are to always-on devices, setting down the screen and tending to the chickens every morning – and really tuning into how the chickens are doing – is a major chance of pace. Farming has become a radical act.
“Make hay when the sun shines.” What kind of weather is this?
“It’s a good time to grow more food,” was a refrain I heard at Town Meeting this year. But what? And how? Making ends meet on a small farm is tough. Vermont has lost 56% of our cropland since 1970 while adding 50% on land not suited for hay, or any other commercially viable crops.
Given that conventional ag doesn’t work here, we’ve decided to double-down on plants like:
Canadian Wood Betony
Dang-shen (Codonopsis) - pictured
Cow Parsnip
Wild Broccoli Raab
Jerusalem-Oak Goosefoot
Purple Orach
Sepp Holzer’s Siberian Rye
‘Brussels Winter’ Chervil
‘Gagon’ Cucumber
‘Mahicannittuk’ Wapato or Duck Potato
‘Persian Broadleaf’ Shahi
Polish Root Parsley
Mao Er Shi Shu
Hablitzia (Mountain Spinach)
Moldovan Sea Buckthorn
‘Billington’ Seakale
Haskap (Honeyberry)
Flatspine Szechuan Peppercorn
Eastern Yampah
Dawlish Wild Sea Beet
Cloud Lima Beans
Rapunzel (Rampion)
Russian Bog Bilberry
Rawalpindi Tinda
Perennial Potato
Palestinian Kousa Summer Squash
Edible Chrysanthemum
Papalo/Quilquiña
Sculpit/Stridolo
Strawberry Spinach
That’s a small sample of our 2025 lineup. Here’s what these plants have in common:
They can be grown in Vermont – we think. Some, like the Sansho peppercorn, will be stretching the range of hardiness. Rather than saying “too hard,” we’re saying – let’s try it. What if we could grow peppercorns in Vermont? That would be cool.
All of the plants on this list have been in ethnobotanical relationship with humans for centuries and for millennia. A plant like Rapunzel was so common once upon a time that it lent its name to a famous fairy tale as a classic example of a plant a pregnant woman would hanker for. Today, the very idea of hankering for such a plant has been relegated to a myth.
They require two to 20 years of growth and to develop to their full potential as edible and medicinal plants – making our investment irrational in conventional terms.
Despite, or perhaps because of, these limitations, we feel that these plants have untapped potential. We believe in renewing our relationship with a plant “diversiculture” as a necessary protection against future crop failures.
what's starting? things that grow slowly and respond to presence
We’re also having more fun than ever as we get to know new friends. Market farms are like most restaurants that increase profit by “turning tables” – or harvesting succession crops. We feel called to do the opposite. We believe in the kind of nourishment that comes from long, slow conversations. Spring 2025 finds us devoting as much plantable area as possible to plants that require and reward a long-term relationship with the land.
Thank you for coming out tonight (or reading this letter). Your presence breathes life into this vision. No only the plants above, but all kinds of other things too. We raise goats on our pasture to give to the local Afghan community. We host farm-stay guests (like Brandon -- below is a photo of us logging). We offer regular public art workshops, getting-to-know-the-forest-strolls (also trolls), and live music.
We are excited to share this beautiful botanical future with you.
happy spring!
Tristan Roberts
Quill Nook Farm
Halifax, Vermont
P.S. Here's Oliver and Brandon and me pulling last summer's blowdown off the chicory bed before the snow was out (so as to protect the ground).