Chanticleer Gardens: first impressions

After a year away from WWOOFing, Sean and I are more than happy to be back at it.  For those of you who aren’t familiar, WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) is an organization that pairs willing volunteers with organic farms that could use the labor.  The usual exchange is 25-30 hours a week of work for food, housing, and often a good deal of education along the way.  For us, it’s an ideal way to travel inexpensively/easily, meet like-minded people, get our hands dirty, and contribute to an effort that we feel good about.  We hope to have our own homestead or more someday, so we’re using this as a way to learn what it takes to run a sustainable farm.

We discovered Chanticleer Gardens on the WWOOF site by searching the New Hampshire area under the filter of “permaculture”.  Sean and I are firm believers that permaculture is the way to heal our land and provide a sustainable food system.  There is so much to permaculture that I could easily spend an entire blog post on the concept alone.  In fact, I will.  So stay tuned.  Essentially, the concept is to mimic the natural processes of earth (think ecology) and apply it to farming.  We liked the mission of Chanticleer, and the shining reviews on their WWOOF profile made it hard to pass up.  We read that their farm had been organically farming for over 40 years, which was enticing to us considering the last two farms we volunteered at were fairly young.  If they were still running after that long, they were clearly doing something right.  After a few quick emails back and forth with the farm manager (Ken), Sean and I were set up to stay at Chanticleer Gardens from August to mid-September.

Ken and Susan Koerber, the farm owners, bought 150 acres in 1969 in the town of Dunbarton, which is close to New Hampshire’s capital of Concord.  At the time of sale, 20 acres was cow pasture and the rest was forest.  Their goal was to farm the land to provide food for their growing family.  They installed a pond for raising fish and cooling off after long days in the sun, built 3 greenhouses to ensure a long growing season for flowers and produce, added a flock of chickens, and worked up the soil in a handful of areas to grow even more flowers and vegetables. 

front of their home with flower stand

view from driveway

perennial flower plot

main garden pt 1

main garden pt 2

peach tree and chicken coop

After our initial tour of the property, we were immediately enchanted.   The main lawn is dotted with small plots of hydrangeas, sunflowers, poppies, hibiscus, and lilies.  Tucked in one corner are three greenhouses.  One is currently full of fire wood (drying in time for the winter season), and the other two are home to tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, eggplant, chard, beans, cucumbers, dahlias, and other flowers.  A large outdoor garden has broccoli, squash, corn, cabbage, potatoes, parsnips, amaranth, strawflower, snapdragons…. just to name a few.  The property is covered in wildflowers of Queen Anne’s Lace, Tansies, Brown-eyed Susans, and Goldenrod.   It’s as if flowers just want to grow on their land.  The pond’s edges are covered in tall grasses and flowers, and kayaks alongside a small fishing boat await passengers on their small sand beach. Their historic home sits on top of a small hill that overlooks it all.

our camper, solar panels, hydrangea bushes

the pond is full of largemouth bass

view from pond

view from pond

Over the past few years, Susan and Ken has shifted focus away from raising animals to growing flowers for the community.  They have a steady stream of customers who pick up Susan’s floral arrangements on a table in front of their house.  Susan is extremely talented and has a great eye for arranging, so those flowers fly off the table.  She does flowers for local weddings from time to time as well.  Their extensive veggie garden is simply to feed themselves and share with the community when they can.

Ken and Susan haven’t had much WWOOFer help in the past few months, so there is a fair amount of “catching up” to do.  The greenhouses and gardens need weeding, as do the flower beds around the property.  Plenty of produce is ripe for the picking (or digging), so we’ll be eating our share of farm-fresh food.  Ken would like to enlist our help to set up more watering systems in the garden, build a foundation for another greenhouse, improve the garden beds, and help to organize some materials.  All the while, he’ll be unloading a vast amount of knowledge that he has built up in his 77 years of life.  Susan loves weeding, so she’ll be out there with us whenever she’s not preoccupied with arranging flowers.  We are looking forward to it all!

Ken and Susan are an absolute delight to be around.  A friend of Ken’s called him a “mad scientist farmer”, which I think is fitting.  He’s an engineer at heart and loves running little experiments in different plots of the gardens, always with carefully controlled variables.  He has an easy laugh, a relentlessly inquisitive mind, and an impressive amount of energy.  He is very much focused on the mentoring side of the WWOOFing exchange, so I’m sure he’ll be a wonderful resource going forward.  Susan is witty, sarcastic, and straightforward – all of which I find very comforting to be around.  She’s kind, grateful, and an incredible cook!  We eat lunch and dinner with them every day on their porch that overlooks their backyard and pond.  I felt at home immediately.

More to come soon!