goatfellfarm - Tumblr blog

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Grateful for our patient birds, our helpful neighbors, our hardworking crew, and the fruitfulness of our fields. Happy Thanksgiving!

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With a lot of help from the tireless folks from Egg & Parish Hall, we're all set for winter!

Every year we close the restaurants for a day or so and haul as many folks as we can up to Goatfell Farm, our small farm on the northern edge of the Catskills.

We spend the time treating ourselves to the kinds of food we try to serve our customers: simple, delicious, well-loved. We get to know each other a little better. We stay up late around a fire, sleep in tents, in hammocks, in the barn, then get up in the morning and set the farm up for winter. 

We just got back from this year’s trip. We’re excited about the people we work with, the work we do, and the food we cook. We got some dirt under our nails and some dirt on each other and we are ready to clean up and get to work.

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Our first (annual!) Farm Dinner last weekend was all we could have hoped: blessed with perfect weather and an abundant harvest, plus a beautiful pig from our neighbors at Old Field Farm. We fed old friends and people we'd never met, watched the sun set over the Catskills, wallowed in the music of Rachel Brotman & Lora-Faye, drank plenty of Brooklyn Brewery beer and Finger Lakes wine, and lit up sparklers when the night was up.

We were incredibly lucky to have James Abbott on hand to take pictures. As you can see, it was a magical evening. We're looking forward to doing it again next year, or sooner.

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A perfect evening for our first farm dinner at @goatfell #farmdinner #pigroast (at Goatfell Farm)

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A work song, by Zettie. 

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Buckwheat: Threshing & Winnowing, a set on Flickr.

When we planted buckwheat at the farm, we thought of it as nothing more than a good cover crop, something to keep weeds from filling in unplanted areas of the field and to add some good, bulky organic matter to the soil. But a meeting with Glenn Roberts—the grain wizard behind South Carolina’s Anson Mills—got us thinking about it differently: why not see if we could make our own flour from this quick-growing crop? Here’s phase 2 of the experiment: threshing and winnowing the seed.

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We've just about hit the high point of summer, when everything's coming ripe and we've managed to catch up on the weeds that proliferated during the rain & drought cycles of early summer. 

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Lettuces, hoophouse action, seedlings, and timid ducks: it's all happening at the farm.

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What’s the coolest thing you ever got in the mail?

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Ducklings are happy to stretch their little legs after an overnight flight from Holderread Farm in Oregon.

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Busy weeks at the farm getting things ready to plant: lettuce seedlings in, raspberries & strawberries in raised beds, new starts biding their time under grow lights in the mudroom.

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The little cheepers are growing up.

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It's the prettiest spring we've had in years: long sunny days, cool nights, rain just when we need it and not a minute before. Everything is in bloom at the farm right now, including this old apple tree that practically lies on its side but won't give up the ghost.

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Not even a week old, and already proud as lions.

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It’s no view of the Manhattan skyline, but it’ll do in a pinch, @brooklyngrange (at Goatfell Farm)

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Beautiful rainy day, if you're a seedling!

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What made it through winter in the greenhouse: some mustard, red Russian kale, a few sweet leaves of spinach.