Rice at One Month

We've had 3 baby girls born to City Market employees in the last month, landing a lot of cute photos in my inbox. Today I sent 'baby pictures' around the office of the rice seedlings Erik Andrus is growing for us in Ferrisburgh. 

Baby rice growing at Boundbrook Farm in Ferrisburgh

When I last reported on City Market’s pending supply of local rice, the paddies were still a twinkle in the eye of farmer Erik Andrus. Now I’ve got the silt between my toes to prove that dream is rapidly growing into a reality. 

The rice paddies have been growing at Boundbrook Farm (which I just have to point out is an ironic name for a farm now dedicated to a very wet crop) down in Vergennes for just over a month. 

This grand experiment has the uncanny timing, beginning in a spring where farmers around the state struggled with record-setting rain falls. 

The Valley of Rice at Boundbrook Farm

Erik, having never grown rice before, is learning as the rice grows. While he originally envisioned ducks eating the paddy’s weeds, it turned out the duck breed we have in the US are too large for the small rice seedlings. The first time he let the ducks loose in the paddy, they ate the weeds like they were supposed to but they also squashed many of the small plants with their big feet. The ducks will now be kept out of the paddy until the rice has grown a little taller.

Erik is also thinking ahead to harvest. When rice is harvested, the grains stay in their protective husks requiring a special piece of equipment, a huller, to extract them. That equipment is manufactured and sold in China, creating an enormous language barrier for an English speaking farmer 10,000 miles away hoping to order one. The most challenging was finding a company that would sell him a brown rice huller. Brown rice is currently regarded as “peasant food” in China. Why a farmer in Vermont would want to order a huller to produce "peasant food" has completely befuddled the Chinese companies.

For now, we’ll keep our fingers crossed the rice seedlings continue to find Vermont a suitable home and keep you updated on their progress. We’ve also set a date to take a group of City Market memebers down to see the rice and help thresh it – our Crop Mob at Boundbrook Farm will take place Saturday, October 7. If you’re interested in attending, email me and I’ll keep you in the loop.

Now I just need to go wash my toes. 

Rice Update 8/25/11: Well, I just got an email from Erik who says he's learned a lot during this first year of growing rice. Due to various mistakes, including paddy construction, soil fertility, and more, he's sad to report he won't have any rice for us this season. But the good news is that he's constructing an additional 5.3 acres of paddies this fall (up from the 0.8 acres he was growing on this year) so he anticipates a good harvest on more land next year, drawing on what he's learned this year. We're bummed not to have local rice available to our customers this year but cest le farming!