YELLOW CLOVER CARROTS: Planted after incorporating a yellow clover cover crop, we like to give credit where credit is due. These heirloom carrots are sweet and hefty like fall carrots should be.
O’HENRY SWEET POTATOES: More creamy white sweets.
GARLIC: We planted all that we needed and some nice heads remained for sharing.
RED CABBAGE: brilliant magenta meets your salads this week.
KALE OR TAT SOI: Try eating them raw. They have been cold-sweetened.
LETTUCE: The very last of the lettuce are romaines and butterheads.
ENDIVE: A new French variety we are trialing. We are trying to pronounce it as the French say we must (“ahn deev” or thereabouts). Tastes like lettuce to us and it is spectacularly frilly.
BROCCOLI OR CAULIFLOWER: Most likely the last of both.
HERB CHOICE: cilantro, dill or dried herbs.
NEXT WEEK: leeks, hakurei turnips, spinach, gai lan, watermelon radishes, beets, fennel, herbs, greens.
FARM REPORT:
The farm quickly shifted from autumnal splendor to a frozen wintery blast this week. In advance of the forecast of two nights in the mid-teens, we harvested like mad and battened down the hatches. Row cover was added to the high tunnel beds and the entire week’s share was harvested from the fields. The coolers are full to the ceilings with cabbages, roots and greens. Sweet potatoes are all clean and stacked in the cave. Darkness was on us with many more carrots to harvest in the field. We are hopeful that the soil kept them safe and we can get the rest of them out later this week.
Today your farmers retreated to the indoors and worked on a grant proposal to the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program of the USDA for demonstrating new cover cropping methods. The carrots in the shares this week are a testament to the benefits of cover cropping and we are ready to take the next step in their use. Wish us luck!
In 2008 we met our 5-year goal of being a 100% CSA farm. No more standing around at market hoping the customers would come to buy, instead we were able to stay focused on farming, knowing that all of our produce was already sold.
Morning light in winter
As we plotted our future we realized that one thing we were not doing was getting the most out of the land we were cultivating. It seemed friends with home gardens were growing more in small areas than we were in long beds of crops. We decided to expand our operation by contracting – growing less plants and paying more attention to them.
We had been asked that January to coordinate a CSA Workshop at the Great Plains Vegetable Growers Conference in St. Joe. We immediately contacted Liz Henderson from Peacework Organic Farm to join us on the panel. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to show her our progress since those days in 2001 at her farm.
Rebecca and Elizabeth Henderson in January
We also took time to visit friend Liz Elmore who was working at The Land Institute in Salina, KS. This group of folks, headed by Wes Jackson, are working in a field they call natural systems farming. In what they state is at least a 100-year project, they are breeding perennial grains that can be grown in a prairie-like system. We suggest you visit their website to learn more, and to support their efforts.
Board at The Land Institute explaining some of their work
February was busy as we converted the Allis Chalmers G tractor from gas to electric. With volunteer apprentice Lorne Carroll’s help and John Graff’s welding ability we performed the operation lickety split. We had just started our blog and documented the progress there.
Lorne assembling new motor parts, old G gas engine at top of photo
Then there was Rocky. We knew that we needed help keeping the critters out of our fields and off of our crops, but were not sure what type of dog would do the trick. Livestock guarding breeds seemed to be the best choice – big and intimidating to a critter, but calm and sweet with people. So when Tom Parker told us a local farmer had Great Pyrennes/Anatolian Shepherd cross puppies for sale we jumped at the opportunity. We brought Rocky home on February 5th. He was tough to resist.
Rocky and his brother Bandit
2007 volunteer apprentice Jen Baughman joined us for the year. Her sweet spirit and positivity kept us smiling during a difficult year.
Jen and Rebecca potting up fall crops
The fields in 2008 were drenched on numerous occasions. The potatoes were a total loss, as the trenches we cut to plant them in filled like irrigation ditches in April. The tomatoes did OK, but were diseased and dying by Labor Day. In September another gullywasher set back the Fall plantings.
Attempting to bail out the potato beds in mid-April
Effect of 3 inch rain in September
Typical 2008 harvest morning with CSA troopers
On the bright side, the strawberries loved the rain, as did the beans, greens, carrots, garlic, lettuce, sweet potatoes and cover crops. We harvested 587 quarts of strawberries that year. The Honeoye variety was a good choice…easy to pick, juicy, flavorful, not too sweet, and red all the way through.
Our first harvest off the new patch
Fresh Tropea onions
Just dug carrots
Weeding crew at the strawberries
A colorful share
Kid Rocky
Though we did not necessarily need it, our solar powered irrigation system was installed in May. Missouri contractor Henry Rentz set things up and we took it from there. It came in handy in August, the only month without a downpour.
Our new solar panels and irrigation pump
The wetness of the year gave pause, as we realized that our farming methods were vulnerable to excess rain. Problems could occur with only 2 to 3 inches of precipitation, something we knew to expect in the future. So we worked on several strategies to address excess moisture.
Step 1: Take low spots in the fields out of production. Being so dry when we started farming in 2003, we did not know just how wet some areas could get.
Step 2: Mulch as much as we can. A canopy of hay or straw over the surface of our silt/clay soils does wonders to keep the plants and soil life from suffocating after a downpour. Hay also provides food for worms and eventually the crops. As we like to say, we have grass-fed vegetables.
Jen mulching with hay over a buckwheat cover crop
Step 3: Use the electric G to gutter our beds, keeping the crops raised and reducing the chance of flooding out the plant.
Step 4: Continue with our cover cropping and biological farming methods. It is a proven fact that organically-farmed soils handle water better in wet conditions, and provide drought tolerance during dry times.
Rocky enjoying a nice stand of buckwheat
And so we entered another winter on the farm. Back to the remodel. This time it was the kitchen and dining room. We do alot of cooking and canning, so a functioning kitchen was a huge improvement to the homestead.
Stripped down and ready to go
So what did 2009 hold in store…best season yet, bees, sheep and double the apprentices.
CARROTS (F/P) Last out of cold storage. The pesky heat this summer kept 3 plantings from sprouting, so this is it for the year.
ONIONS (F/P) It was a good year for onions. Dry weather during their critical dry-down time meant less loss in the field and in storage. This week, we are handing out Prince, our best keeper.
SWEET PEPPERS (F) Not many this week, we are trying to restrain ourselves from picking all the green fruit that still has a chance of ripening. At the first warning of frost we’ll have to pick them all, but until then there’s still time for some more sweet reds and yellows.
OKRA OR HOT PEPPERS (P) The okra is at its peak right now. As soon as the weather cools so will it’s production.
TOMATOES (P) It the partial shares turn for the few remaining tomatoes after a glorious run.
PINK BEAUTY RADISHES (F) The first of the fall plantings of radishes, young and tender. By next week they should be full grown and ready for everyone.
KALE OR COLLARDS OR OKRA OR ANAHEIM PEPPERS (F) And the first picking of the fall kale and collards. We grow Toscano and White Russian kales as fall crops.
GREEN BEANS (F/P) Finally the beans are back for a quick run before their season is done. We are picking off of 3 different plantings that stalled over the hot summer: Rattlesnake pole beans, Jade green beans and yellow wax.
HERBS (F/P) Basil, parsley, thyme, summer savory or a dried herb.
ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms shares, Pierce’s fruit shares
NEXT WEEK: More radishes, kale and collards, okra and peppers. A few more tomatoes. Arugula and broccoli raab (rapini). Potatoes and garlic.
mowing down the cover crop
FARM REPORT
Anyone who has been out to the farm lately can’t help but notice our 8 feet tall cover crop of sorghum sudan grass and cowpeas. The sorghum sudan looks a lot like corn, so many have asked if that is our sweet corn crop. Sorry to disappoint you all, but we are very happy with our healthy cover crops. Cover crops are grown to add nutrients and organic matter to the soil prior to planting our vegetables. The huge amount of biomass produced keeps our soil life active and including both a grass and a legume gives a balance of both carbon and nitrogen to the subsequent crop. In this case, the sorghum sudan and cowpeas will decompose through the fall and will provide a good foundation for the fall planting of garlic and our spring plantings next year. The cowpeas like growing with the grass because it can climb up the tall stalks.
As the nice weather continues, our work continues to pick up. From potting up tomatoes in the greenhouse, to planting and mulching more broccoli, to equipment maintenance. The order of the day yesterday though was cover cropping.
We have experienced the many benefits of cover cropping over the past several years and have worked up a system that seems to work well for our farm. Each spring we spread a mix of chickling vetch and oats on the beds that will be planted with our fall crops. The beds are cultivated to eliminate (most all) weeds, the seed is broadcast, the tractor harrows them in, we wait for rain to help them germinate, and then watch them grow into a mass of green organic matter.
Sometime in late June we will spade this “green manure” in and let it decompose for a couple weeks. Soon after we cultivate to get any small weeds that want to come up, and then plant our fall crops. The feel and smell of the soil at this point is just something you have to experience. It is alive and fully cycling nutrients, creating the conditions we organic farmers work for.
Below is a video of Lucas broadcasting the seed. A clearer version is on YouTube.
The seed after broadcast
Getting ready to harrow
The fun really began though when, for the first time in farm history we put our flame weeder to work. After buying a new part this week, we got the bugger working, taking on a project we had planned on tackling for many years, the asparagus beds.
In our last post we talked about the problems with these beds and our plans to abandon them when the new patch kicks in. But in the meantime we hope to harvest some quantity of asparagus from the old bed.
The video and photo speak for themselves. What isn’t shown is the taste treats we enjoyed as a part of this exercise. The asparagus has already come up and, while we harvested what we saw, when we started burning we could see there were still spears coming out of the ground.
Well the fire served to do nothing more than char those spears, allowing us to harvest grilled asparagus! That’s why we love this job.
