Twenty Dollars

I really need a woods walk to pull off this writing effort. I’ve been pacing around the apartment a little turning up invariably at the pantry to look for a snack, which may help, but a woods walk yields the best writing in my experience. I will need to break this down and address things one at a time. Forgive me if the edges start to blur: my thoughts are a maelstrom.

Deep Compost Mulch No-till

A couple of years ago I encountered a staggeringly beautiful and enormous chard plant. It was growing just outside one of the hoop houses coexisting and flourishing amongst the witch grass, dandelions, and clover. It stopped me in my tracks and I have been mulling over it ever since. No fertilizer, no irrigation, no careful 6-8” between plants—thriving instead in undisturbed soil with all the other highly functioning plants we sometimes label weeds. I like to imagine the diversity in the soil to pull off a feat like that chard plant. We have tried a number of different no-till trials over the years—mowing cover crops and transplanting into the residues, permanent beds and tarping sequences, and now we are undertaking a deep compost mulch no-till trial. Currently we are aiming for five two hundred foot rows in our flower field and ten three hundred foot rows in Six Acre for our trial. The work and the expense is front-loaded—spreading a 4 inch layer of compost over the entire bed is a lot!—and we have only managed three of our vegetable beds so far. We are cover cropping the other seven and hope to squeeze in the work here and there. The flower beds are all mostly planted. These beds will be permanent and top dressed annually. If we are successful we will add more beds each year. Why are we doing this? Good question.

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Climate Change

We’ve been growing food and flowers for a long time, for more than thirty years we’ve been engaging with this endlessly fascinating work. I am an unabashed maximalist and my hunger to try new things is unabated. I like the problem solving, the revelatory moments, the beauty, and the connections with the people I am working with and growing for. I think Addison’s reasons are probably similar though he doesn’t have that maximalist streak. We are increasingly undone by the challenges the weather delivers. Lately, hot and very dry, but just as likely some other extreme, this work is getting harder every year. Our ambition to switch to deep compost no-till is an effort to reduce the farm’s use of single use plastics, to actively sequester carbon and maintain top soil by reducing tillage, and to improve soil biodiversity to achieve resilient plants. We are trying to adapt, be nimble and resilient, and farm into the future without the burden of our waste contributing to the problem of climate change. We are also trying to make more money.

Farm Workers

For one, I was disappointed when the $15 per hour minimum wage was struck from the covid relief bill passed this winter. I have touched on this before in prior blog posts: raising the price for food is tricky and had it passed there would have been broad acceptance for increased prices. Our average wage on the farm is $14 per hour. Our goal is to pay a living wage and we are steadily working towards that goal. So many people assume that we hire a bunch of college kids to grow our food. In fact, almost half the crew is over 60 and they are professionals—avid, knowledgeable, and invested. They do not fit the image of a kid picking up some summer work for pocket money and character building until they get a real job. And before another well-meaning individual suggests we organize volunteer work, I am compelled to point out that our work is skilled and I can think of no other profession that turns to unskilled volunteers as a solution to a labor shortage. Volunteer health care professional? Attorney? Nope.

Listening to NPR on my morning commute, the experts are saying we don’t have a labor shortage. If we raise wages workers will come. And then I read a piece in the New York Times about how tipping is returning to pre-pandemic norms and all the commenters gripe about the broken system of tipping and if businesses just paid their employees a living wage we could do away with this demeaning practice. And, I think, this is too hard. Maybe we should just get jobs and stop trying to run a business. I think those experts assume that the owners of the low wage paying businesses are sitting pretty—selling high and paying low and reveling in the capitalist beauty. Not so here. No one works harder than we do in our business and for a very modest financial reward. It would be heaps easier to make a living a different way. All the goals are irreconcilable: affordable, accessible food and a fairly compensated and valued farm crew. Beauty, bounty, diversity, flavor over yield, curiosity are all a drain on the bottom line. And then there’s that solar array that is always out of reach. Easily a $40,000 investment that is devastatingly short sighted not to make. Between the walk-in coolers, well pump, fans, and golf carts the energy consumption on the farm is substantial.

Mixed Greens Bunches

We will start selling our Mixed Green Bunches this week for $20. That’s a lot more than they were last year: $5. This is when I stop shilly-shallying and really drive my point home. Our flower bouquets are $20 also this year, and though that is more than they were last year I don’t think we will see decreased sales. Even though there is as much diversity, beauty, and work in the bunch of greens as in the bouquet, since it is food the price will come as a shock. This price is my pointed attempt to address two goals. Ten dollars of the sale of each bunch will be earmarked for our solar array project. The other ten dollars will be a farm worker gratuity. What of the cost of making the Mixed Greens Bunches? We have always made our Mixed Greens Bunches at a loss. I am here to say that money is not the only currency we dabble in—we make those Mixed Greens Bunches as a celebration of the love we have for all those crazy greens we grow. When you buy our Mixed Greens Bunches you will be able to affirm our goals and declare your love as well.

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February Farm Thoughts

Yesterday Addison started tomatoes for his greenhouse and about a month ago I started the first slug of ranunculus, anemones, and sweetpeas for my flower hoophouse. They are looking good and I will transplant them out soon. We’ve gained nearly an hour of daylight since the winter solstice and growth is really picking up in the greens hoophouses. The extra light picks me up a little too.

I must admit to some overall fatigue as a farmer. I have been growing food and flowers for the people of Belfast for over 30 years. Though each year we learn a little more about how to do a good job I am gutted by the odds stacked against us: Big Ag, the climate crisis, the shortage of affordable housing in our area, the costs of everything rising annually, the awkward social media self-promotion, the need to be more efficient, faster, and smarter to keep up. What is keeping up? Making enough money to keep on going for another round. Food—fresh, startlingly beautiful, flavorful, healthy, and vital—has an invisible price cap, a terrible tipping point where it spills into a luxury good class, and it no longer feels like we are growing and cooking food for the people of Belfast. As our business faces another round of price increases to benefit our workers with paid leave time—a good new state law on the surface—we struggle with the necessity of charging more for our products. Our business increasingly feels ephemeral rather than durable. Chase’s Daily and the farm each received money to offset Covid-19 losses in the last year. Despite the uncertainties of the future we have the cash flow to begin the next season. I am trying to feel the wind at my back, the rebound of energy, and the restoration of hope and optimism that mark a lifelong farmer after a few months of downtime. I am listening to No-till podcasts, watching videos on utube of successful farmers with no weeds, and trying to imagine our farm into a more resilient organism. I scrawl notes on bits of paper about tarping, cover crops, vole control, and the always just out of reach solar array. I try to think “lean” and a little dispassionately and strike a few plantings of greens from the planting schedule. Maybe, I think, we don’t need to grow as many onions?

Increasingly, we are turning towards selling plants as a way to make enough money to prop up the growing of food. There is more wiggle room with plants. We rarely grow or propagate them at a loss—we can charge, unabashedly, what they are worth. And plants keep me coming back for more—affirming the joy I take in my work. And there it is—the foundation of this business—we love what we do. During this time where everything feels wobbly growing plants, for food or beauty, is a lifeline.

I hope as the days continue to grow longer and the long cold spring creeps along our business will be able to rebuild. This is a hard one to write. It is hard to share how vulnerable we feel.

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Now: July

Chase’s Daily turned twenty years old on July 1st. This milestone was much heralded on my Chase’s Daily Instagram account. We all felt your love and appreciation. June was a hard month of heat and drought on the farm—billowing clouds of dust. We had many crop failures and many are still to come from the challenges of those longest days of the year. Enter July and an incredible deluge of rain. The farm is positioned on the first ridges and foothills after the coastal plain. Storms blew in off the ocean and parked in a narrow strip twenty some odd miles from the coast and it poured. We received more than 4 inches of rain last week. More crop losses as mature cabbages popped in half from the excess moisture. I remind myself as I try to absorb the crop failures and move past them, that these problems will turn into compost, and though tangible, are fleeting.

As Covid-19 cases surge in the West and South we brace ourselves, put on our masks, and try to make the most of this season. With the support and help of a circle of friends, Freddy has designed and built a ramada in our parking lot. It is ample, airy, and inviting. It feels like a small triumph to see our customers gather and enjoy our food and each other’s company. The inside of Chase’s Daily will feel odd all season as we have elected for the safety of our staff and family to not pursue indoor dining and strictly limit the number of customers in the space at one time. We are making every effort to fill our space with fresh air for everyone’s safety. This week we will be open Tuesday through Saturday, each day from 8am to 3pm. The produce truck should be unloaded by 10am. We will no longer offer our Pop-Up Dinners on Monday and Thursday evenings. We will be doing a Pizza Night on Friday this week and we will see where we will proceed from there. We will offer a Produce Box for pick up on Friday evening, but may phase this out if demand is too light.

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There is so much more here to cover but I will only touch on a few things.

We stand with the Black Lives Matter Movement. I’ve seen many companies break out new mission statements during this time but ours will be limited to that declaration. We donated to a few non-profits supporting the movement during June. After a family business meeting where we really looked at the red glare of our books we have put further donations on hold. We are in a tenuous spot right now and are not in a position to lead with our pocketbooks. Our support, however, is unwavering.

Cleo is back at daycare. Though we miss his constant presence in our lives, we could not open the restaurant for anything close to a full-time schedule without sending him. We will pull him out if cases of Covid-19 begin to emerge in Waldo County. We will not put our business before our health and hope that you will be able to roll with it with grace if we have to decrease our hours or services accordingly.

I listened to an editorial from the New York Times today about income inequality and did finally understand a bit why the stock market continues to grow while so many people struggle to feed themselves and their families, and small businesses are allowed to fail. The government is putting corporate profits before people. I am still trying to figure out what Chase’s Daily represents in the big picture. It requires a colossal familial effort to keep our business going. We don’t offer any benefits except two paid weeks off. We don’t pay a living wage. In all respects ours is a dead end place to work. Except we care deeply about the work we do, our co-workers, and our community. We cling to this life raft of meaningful work with like-minded people—our employees—but values can only sustain you for so long. We walk a narrow path and Covid-19 further imperils our prospects. Yesterday it was the Fourth of July and Freddy, Cleo, Romy and I went for a little hike on Deer Isle. We were lingering on a rocky outcrop when some other hikers stopped to take in the view. Marveling at Cleo’s willingness to get into the ocean they concluded we must be from Maine. Yes, we said, Belfast. Oh, Belfast, one of my favorite restaurants is in Belfast—Chase’s Daily—one of the hikers volunteered. We claimed it as our own and accepted their compliments. I’ve been bothered ever since by their comment: “I paid way too much for some greens there yesterday. They were amazing. I don’t know what you did to them.” They were referencing our Tender Lettuce Salad that was on our menu last week. Sales were pretty disappointing overall—we sold ten on Friday—at $13.50 we certainly did not sell enough to pay for the cost of having an employee work in our salad station. Nor did it cover the cost of growing all the ingredients, or begin to recoup the loss sales of the thousand or so heads of lettuce that succumbed to tip burn in the heat two weeks ago. I picked that salad myself. I love the intersection of the flavors of all the tender herbs—dill, cilantro buds, salad burnet, chervil, fennel leaf, Thai basil, agastache, cutting celery, and parsley—with the sweet, minerally, and bitter flavors of the lettuces. It is so special, rare, and under-valued. Come in this week, order some food, enjoy a salad under the ramada maybe, and savor a fleeting moment.

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Covid-19 Shutdown

These weeks of closure since mid-March have been stabilized by the slow unfolding of spring on the farm. The greenhouse is at capacity and we will transplant the first round of greens into the field tomorrow. The garlic looks good, I hear, though I haven’t made it to Back of Beyond to see it for myself yet. It’s been cold so the tempo of the work has built slowly.

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Addison’s tomato house is looking good and we will transplant the second round of tomatoes into the Big Hoop House on Friday during the rain. We are growing the same amount of food as we usually do, and though we are trimming our flower production a bit that is a plan unaffected by the pandemic. We are working with much of the same crew as last year and we are learning the new dance of masks and more space between us. We are healthy.

We’ve been having some nap-time meetings. While Cleo sleeps the rest of us—Addison, Penny, Freddy, Phoebe, Romy, and Meg—sit around our kitchen table and try to make sense of our situation. We are taking things one week at a time. Last Sunday we sold some flowers here on the website for self-service pickup on the back porch. This week we are adding a pizza night! Pizzas, salad, coffee beans, wine, cookies, etc. will go live in the shop today for pre-order today for Thursday evening pickup. Please extend grace as we muddle through learning how to sell things on the website. We are looking forward to making you pizzas.

Changes Afoot

Eighteen years ago the big retail space in the Oddfellows building at 96 Main Street in Belfast hummed with activity. Layers were being peeled away to reveal bricked-in windows, pressed tin ceilings, an expansive brick wall, and hardwood floors. A farmer and sales rep for Johnny’s Selected Seeds; a retired elementary school teacher; a photo major who had begun to pursue her love of baking; another farmer fresh from four years of painting school in NYC; and the guy she met there--also a painter with a bit of cooking experience--were the design, demolition, and construction crew.

We didn’t know at the time that we were sketching the form that our lives would take for the next eighteen years, that the place--Chase’s Daily--would touch so many people’s lives and become both a haven and a three ring circus. We were a seat-of-the-pants group, a family guided not by industry norms, or a business plan, but by our skills and interests and values. A beautiful space, really good and affordable food, a collective spirit, a farm-to-table model (when farm-to-table barely existed), an equitable workplace, and being open year round for our community, were our guiding principles. They remain so. 

We have been on an incredible and gratifying journey these eighteen years.  It has been all-consuming. Now, we find ourselves ready to experiment with new ideas and to seek more balanced lives.

This May, Chase’s Daily will undergo some big changes, as we attempt to create a business model that is more sustainable for us. We envision a Chase’s Daily with an improved physical design, allowing for more efficiency and smoother customer service. We envision simplification that allows for more consistent quality. We aim to improve profitability, so that we can pay our staff what they deserve.

So, with some regret we will shelve the lunch and dinner menus that we have tinkered with and that have evolved over the years. Rather than a full service lunch, we plan to provide all day counter service Tuesday through Saturday. The counter offerings will include expanded production from the bakery, in addition to a variety of made-to-order hot and cold food options. We plan to offer casual dinners several nights a week, as well as Sunday brunch, with table service and new menu items. The farm will continue as it has in the past, supplying our kitchen and our Tuesday through Saturday produce market.

We have not finalized our vision. We daydream about growing grains for our bakery. We hope to grow even more flowers. We will make bottles and bottles of Six Acre hot sauce. And, we will someday find a place for soft-serve ice cream. We are still an energetic group, a family working collectively to produce delicious food inspired by the farm and our various interests.  Chase’s Daily has been committed to quality since the day we opened our doors, and that pursuit will never change. We thank you for your loyalty and support, and ask for your patience as we excitedly begin this new chapter.

Addison, Penny, Phoebe, Meg, and Freddy