Our first expedition: Biking and Farming!

We're back! This past week we visited four different farms, biking and working and learning. Each farm provided us with a different view of organic agriculture in New England and we came away from the expedition with a new appreciation for how our food is grown and where it comes from.

We left Tuesday morning and barely made it a kilometer before Isaiah got a flat, so we spent a nice hour by Lake Warren while he went back to Kroka for a new tire. Then we pulled ourselves together and biked 34.6 km through forests and over mountains in a thunderstorm to Hillside Springs farm. We arrived soaked just after the clouds parted and the sun began to shine though and warm our tired bodies. That night we set camp in a magical spot in the woods next to the horse pasture, and awoke early to pull and top onions and learn from Frank the farmer about New England history, biodynamic farming and his own vision of how to feed a community. Frank and his wife Kim came to the land in the early 2000s with a vision of an organic farm powered by horses (seriously, they have four beautiful horses and no tractors.) Now they run a CSA that feeds 100 families, and grow everything with love according to biodynamic and organic standards. It was truly inspiring to see a small family farm thriving and setting an fabulous example of organic, local eating.

On Thursday we said goodbye to Hillside Springs and biked to Harlow's Farm via a 5-hour detour on trails through the woods. The trail was relatively easy mountain biking most of the time, and we spent a good amount of time on old railroads converted into trails so the paths were flat, sometimes with earth sloping steeply away on each side and sometimes with rock formations growing up around us. While the extra time caused us to push back our schedule, in the end the woods were so enriching that it was worth it. We slept that night in a field at Harlow's Farm and spent the morning working the fields and listening to Paul Harlow's farming story and vision. Harlow's stood out for us in sharp contrast to Hillside Springs. At Hillside Springs Frank is intimately in touch with the land and works hand-in-hand with his customers; at Harlow's, Paul acts as a supervisor and most of the work is done by employees and fancy machinery. Paul dreams of feeding this area of Vermont and New Hampshire someday but right now he ships off the bulk of his delicious organic crops to grocery stores throughout New England.

We left Harlow's in time to bike only a few kilometers to Basin Farm before lunch, where they fed us lots of wonderful food and we helped them harvest squash. Basin Farm is a community founded on the Twelve Tribes religion that strives to follow the teaching of the Bible by living together and sharing in the work, the worry and the joy. It was a very interesting experience to spend a day with a community so very different from Kroka yet holding some of the same principles such as community and respect for the earth.

Saturday morning we bid farewell to everyone at Basin Farm and biked up out of the Connecticut River Valley towards home. Originally we had planned to camp in the woods but after searching and not finding a good spot we voted to push through to our next farm, Orchard Hill. There was a beautiful campsite at Orchard Hill and it was a wonderful last night for the expedition, plus they had composting toilets!! In the morning we talked to Anton and learned about the history of his land and its evolution from a big organic apple farm and cider maker in the 1970's to the cooperative, school, farm, bakery and orchard that it is today. We left before lunch, apples stuffed into the nooks and crannies of our dry-bags and backpacks and arrived back at Kroka stronger, deeper and closer to each other. This being our first expedition we learned a lot, and it gave us a taste of what we can expect on longer expeditions in Ecuador.

As I write this Wicho and Nadino are beginning their journey from Ecuador, and we cannot wait to join them and become a complete group in two weeks!

Hasta  Luego,

Mary Kate

Recipe of the Week

Vinny

A delicious, refreshing,  antibacterial,  anti-Lyme-disease, hydrating (and did I mention 

delicious!) drink we had at Basin Farm:

Just mix together 1 cup local honey, 1 cup raw apple cider vinegar and one gallon of water and voila!

Reflections

Sometimes I wish that I could just capture a moment forever. Not just a picture because there is only so much that a picture can capture; it can't capture smells or sounds or emotions or thoughts.

Even if it could, however, there are some things that are unexplainable. Like the sun shining through the mist on an early morning, or a night at a campfire with the fire crackling peacefully, people talking, singing in the background, and in the distance a flash of lightening shining through the clouds every ten seconds. These are the moments that remind me how amazing the world is, and how

 special my time at Kroka is. 

~Amy

 Things I'd never done before Kroka:

1. Consider waking up at 5:30AM "sleeping in"

2. Cut my hand on a bottle of sunscreen

3. Pick raspberries

4. Cut my hands on collard greens

5. Pick onions. Or pretty much anything, to think of it

6. Spend an entire afternoon walking in the woods barefoot

7. Spend a night tending a fire with only one other person in the woods

8. Share my conditioner

9. Bike up a mountain in a pouring rain thunderstorm

10. (Attempt) to carve a wooden spoon
~Laura

Frank plowing fields with Elsbeth at Hillside Springs

Frank plowing fields with Laura at Hillside Springs

Students together upon returning from the biking expedition.

Harrison playing the backpacking guitar

Lucas enjoying his swim

Adin is about to jump over the river while Rose, Laura, and Amy head into the pool to join Bethany between Basin Farm and Orchard Hill.