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Say You Saw it in The Monadnock Shopper News, May 10 – May 16, 2017
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The Row Cover Row
There are many wonderful things that could hapAt this point every year, the generous, high energy,
pen on a New Hampshire vegetable farm in May: let’s-get-things-done farmer holds his head and says,
greenhouses planted and flourishing, hardy spring “We just need new row cover.”
crops in the fields planted and flourishing, draft
Wielding her clothespins, the thrifty, organized,
horses muscled and flourishing, farmers muscled and let’s-slow-down-a-little-and-think-about-it farmer
flourishing. What a lovely month is May!
disagrees: “We just need to be more careful with the
There is one spring farm event, however, that it row cover we have.”
is never, ever wonderful: the dreaded hauling out of
This is the annual, or shall we say perennial, row
the row cover.
cover row. (The second row, of course, is in its sense of
Granted we sustainable, organic, biodynamic a boisterous disturbance or quarrel, as the American
farmers are very grateful for row cover, which is a Heritage Dictionary defines it. Typically one of us
thin cloth-like product (i.e., plastic) that keeps bugs fellow farmers makes the boisterous disturbance, and
and/or frost out, and lets sun and/or rain in to the other does the quarreling.)
the lucky garden plants.
Part of the row about
Without row cover, our
row cover also has to
turnips would be holey,
do with storage. Despite
our salad greens would
years of other brilliant
be shredded, our yellow
ideas on the part of the
squash and zucchini and
organized farmer about
cucumbers warped or envarious methods of sorttirely absent. Without row
with Kim Peavey
ing and labeling (tags on
cover, we could lose our
the outside of the bags,
peppers or our eggplant
writing on the outside
in a cold snap.
and inside of the bags, writing on the row cover itself,
Row cover, we recognize, is a marvelous invention. sorting into different color bags), a certain let’s-getA marvelous, maddening invention. It “floats” over things-done farmer, weary at the end of a crop and
the crops, but in order to float, it needs to be firmly the end of the day, is likely to stuff the row cover into
anchored, lest it sail away in the wind. On our farm, any available bag, ignoring both its label and its colorwe hold down the row cover with rocks. This mostly coded nature, and then toss it into the storage area, to
works well, since we have plenty of rocks. But some- organize properly some other time.
times a farmer tires of gathering just the right size
Thus we come around again every year to May,
million rocks and compromises by piling two or three that lovely month! when the unlucky farmer who
little rocks together and hoping the row cover will stay hauls out the row cover faces the towering heap of
put. Alas, after a windy night, the farmers have to start unorganized bags.
all over again, and find the right size million rocks.
Is this the bag of really holey 300’ row cover saved
Sometimes, too, when the row cover flies off, it to warm things up a bit for the early planted spinach?
catches on a bramble, or the fence, and Rip! A nice big Or is this the bag of only slightly holey, 200’ foot row
hole for all the little bugs and frost fairies to enter. Or cover that will do well enough for the turnips? Or is
maybe a farmer hasn’t quite gotten all those old kale this the bag of way too short but perfectly good pieces
or broocoli or flower stalks out of the garden, and of row cover that an organized and thrifty farmer
a few lie about, waiting to trap the row cover. Rip! couldn’t bear to throw away? Or is this the bag of reThere it goes again.
ally good, really precious row cover with absolutely
We find some more rocks to hold the holes to- no holes that will protect the tender greens? And so on.
gether. Or, thanks to one farmer’s brilliant idea, we
There is no way to tell, except by spreading out
use clothespins to hold the holes together.
each length of marvelous, maddening row cover from
each bag, one by one, and then stuffing each piece
furiously back into the bag when it is not the right one.
“It would save us so much time,” says a certain
farmer
to another certain farmer, who is striding by
Clean, Reliable Solar Energy
with a hoe, looking in the other direction, as if he has
no idea what might be transpiring in the row cover
world, “if people would put these in the right bags!”
Reduce Your Carbon Emissions
“Actually,” says the other farmer, stopping a moChoose the company with over 15 years of solar experience
ment, “it would save us so much time if people got
and over 80 years of roofing experience.
rid of all this holey junk and bought new row cover!”
When it comes to the row cover row, we the people
are both right. We finally, and happily, worked out
the Great Row Cover Compromise: every few years
we throw out the holiest of the row cover, and invest
in some new. Thus we sustain our crops . . . and our
fellow-farming relationship.
Commercial & Residential Solar Specialists
Kim Peavey farms and writes from southwestern
the Melanson co, inc.
New Hampshire. She and her family, as well
www.SolarSourceNE.com ~ 603-352-4232
as two teams of draft horses, grow vegetables
Green
Monadnock
Download the Sun
HAZARDOUS WASTE
COLLECTION
WHAT TO BRING: Products marked toxic, poison,
corrosive, irritant, hazardous, flammable, danger. If you
think it’s hazardous, bring it up.
A Great Opportunity to Clean Toxic Wastes from
your basement, workbench, garage and cupboards.
WHAT NOT TO BRING: Empty Containers (can be
recycled), Latex Paint, Ammunition, Fireworks, Radioactive
Materials, Make-Up & Toiletries.
All collections run 8 am to 1 pm KEENE RECYCLING CENTER
OTHER INFORMATION: Containers must be labeled as
From Route 12/West Street intersection, travel Route 12 North approximately
4.5 miles. Facility entrance is at the top of the hill on left hand side of road.
Collection takes approximately 10 minutes from the time of arrival.
QUESTIONS: Please call (603) 352-5739
Sponsored by The City of Keene
Limit: 10 gal. per household per collection.
to their contents. No containers larger than 10 gallons will
be accepted.
ALSO: Check out our new reuse center for items such as
good quality paint or various cleaning products. Perfect for
a small job and, best of all, it’s FREE!
DO NOT MIX PRODUCTS
SPRING 2017 HOUSEHOLD HAZARDOUS WASTE COLLECTION SCHEDULE
Sat. 5/13/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
Wed. 5/17/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
Sat. 5/20/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
Sat. 6/10/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
Wed. 6/21/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
Sat. 6/24/17
Bennington
Chesterfield
Dublin
Fitzwilliam
Greenfield
Hancock
Harrisville
Hinsdale
Jaffrey
Keene
Marlborough
Marlow
Nelson
New Ipswich
Richmond
Stoddard
Sullivan
Surry
Swanzey
Troy
Walpole
All collections will be held at the Keene Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility, located adjacent to the Keene Recycling Center, 55 Old Summit Road, Keene from 8 a.m. - 1 p.m.
bio-dynamically for 100
local families through a
CSA garden. See www.
hillsidespringsfarm.com
for more information
on the horse- and handpowered farm, CSA
garden, or Kim’s writing.
Prayer And
Meditation
Workshop
Family, friends, and
community are all welcome to a Prayer and
Meditation Workshop on
Saturday, May 20th at the
Keene Serenity Center at
36 Carpenter Street.
The workshop schedule includes: 8 a.m. – the
3rd Step Prayer, 9 a.m. –
the Methodist Prayer, 10
a.m. – Accessing Higher
Power Through Talking
and Reading, 10 a.m. – Native American Spirituality,
11 a.m. – Intro to Mindfulness, noon – free lunch for
workshop (sign-up sheet),
1:30 p.m. – Buddhist Meditation, 2:30 pm – R.A.I.N.
Buddhist Meditation, and
3:30 p.m. – Transcendental
Meditation.
If attending any of
these classes, R.S.V.P. by
Sunday, May 14th at the
Keene Serenity Center or
by emailing abnthebig3@
gmail.com.