Maribeth and Derek Ritchie from Sangha Farm do the questionnaire!

What do you grow? We grow a wide variety of vegetables, culinary herbs & also produce goat cheese from our small herd of Nubian Goats.

How did you start farming? Derek: Divine Intervention, after traveling around the country for a few years I ended up in the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California, Orleans was a very small mountain town, there were only 3 professions there, working for the forest service, logging or farming. I worked for years in the produce department of Health Food Stores so I chose farming.

Maribeth: I grew up helping my Dad in his garden, he was a farmer at heart & grew most of our food. When I moved to Orleans to be with Derek I started working on the farms there also. Even though I've worked alongside Derek since we started our own farm in 2000 it wasn't until 2008 when we started our goat dairy that I considered myself a farmer.

How long have you been farming? Derek- 2009 is my 14th year of farming, I've farmed in Northern California, central Maine & here in Ashfield.

What's your favorite thing to grow? We grow such a variety of produce its hard to have one as a favorite. Our children Maia & Jayden love cucumbers so we tend to grow extra for them, this hasn't been a good cucumber year with all the rain so far. Derek loves the health benefits of kale & is always encouraging our CSA members to eat it.

Maribeth: I like making feta, its one of my favorite cheese to eat so making it is alot of fun. I also like making goat cheese truffles, I had no idea how good chocolate & goat cheese could be together.

Tell us about a typical day on your farm at this point in the season Our day begins between 5:30 & 6 a.m., after morning coffee the goats are milked & other farm animals are given water & fences checked. Breakfast is usually around 7:30 & then field work begins at 8. We work in the fields until lunch, then its back out until 5. We take a 1/2 hour break, evening chores begin at 6 with milking, feeding baby goats, checking fencing & water for the sheep & oxen.

Explain a favorite technique that you've learned or developed. We do a lot of fence moving, our sheep get moved about every 10 days, the Oxen are moved weekly, & the goats every few days. Its really important to us that everyone cooperate, so we get them 'hooked' on grain, though we feed very little grain if any at all. Once they are 'hooked' on grain we have found that putting rocks in a grain bowl works great when moving sheep from one area to another, it also works if there are escaped sheep, while grain isn't always around, we never have any trouble finding a few rocks to throw in a bowl.

How do you see farming in your future? For us farming is a life long endeavor, its not just what we do but its who we are.

What is your farm like? Is it big? old? wild? organized? have green houses? ancestral? weedy? paradise? Every farm is paradise for the farmer. We lease land and as far as we know we are the first to grow vegetables here. We have some flat land but most is hillsides which we use for pasture.

What's your favorite farming tool and how do you use it? Derek really likes using the wheel hoe. He has also started using Moses & Abe our oxen in the field this year, so they are quickly becoming a favorite tool. Its nice having them pull our harvest out of the field, sometimes there's even room for us to ride in the wagon.

What's your least favorite job on the farm? Shoveling poop. Like weeding shoveling poop is a never ending job. And boy can the sheep, goats & oxen poop!

Tell us something special about your farm. One of the focuses of our farm is growing healthy food for low income people. We have participated in the Senior Farm Share program since it first began in 2000 when we lived in Maine. We now supply low income seniors with vegetables at the Greenfield Senior Center, we also grow quite a bit of food for the Hilltown Food Pantry in Ashfield. We are now in the planning stages of making this our primary focus of our farm.

What's your favorite place on the farm? Derek: with my oxen Moses & Abe, who I"ve had them since they were 48hrs old. Last week while checking their water, Moses & Abe were laying down, I sat next to Abe & began petting his head, before I knew it his head was on my lap & he was sleeping. Even though I have had them since they were babies I"m always amazed at how gentle they are especially considering they weigh 2,000lbs each.

Maribeth: I really love it when we are in the fields & Maia & Jayden are with us. Maia is becoming quite the farmer & loves helping us, its wonderful to hear her explain procedures to our interns. Jayden is also a great help with weeding, though at 5 he would rather play in the dirt. They also love running up & down the paths, & eating veggies right off the plants.

What's the most frivolous thing you grow? Probably culinary herbs. The farm we both worked at in Orleans was a certified organic culinary herb farm. They grew mostly, herbs selling them fresh & dried. While we love growing herbs,& also sell them fresh & dried, we haven't found a large market for them. Its a lot of work to dry & strip herbs especially with the rainy summers we've been having. I think now we do it only because its a connection to where we started farming. We do use our own herbs in the cheeses we make.