Category Archives: irrigation

In the Share – Week 1 (extended season)

Allis Chalmers G, broccoli, chicken coop, chickens, cultivating, irrigation, leeks

EGGS  This week only, we have enough eggs to add to the shares.  Our hens have been busy fertilizing, weeding and eating bugs for us, when they aren’t sitting in the coop laying their healthy and colorful eggs. (eggs will be offered on the bulk list for the next two weeks.  Egg shares start the first week of the regular season in three weeks.)

LETTUCE  From the high tunnel, butterhead or red leaf varieties.

FRISEE ENDIVE  Add to your lettuce for a frilly salad.

SPINACH  We may be out of spinach after this week, it had a long run from its original seeding in September 2015.

GAILAN  Also planted back in September, broccoli’s more slender cousin.

ARUGULA OR SWISS CHARD  More greens from the high tunnel.

CARROTS  From cold storage of the fall 2015 crop.

POTATOES  Ditto on these.

HERB CHOICE  garlic chives and/or tarragon

NEXT WEEK:  Lettuce, green onions, hakurei turnips, radishes, and bok choy

FARM REPORT:

Welcome to the first week of the CSA! The harvest has begun just in time for Earth Day.  Organic farming and community participation is what sustainability is all about.  Thank you for caring about your Mother Earth!

The planting of the Spring crops is all but complete.  The fields are full of peas, potatoes, onions, broccoli, cabbage, kale, chard, carrots, beets, spinach, leeks and loads of lettuce.  Here we are last week putting the finishing touches on the leek planting.

 The rain has given us a temporary break from planting work.  Instead we filled our time giving the packing room and wash area a good Spring cleaning.  We adhere to and train our crew in good food safety practices.  This includes cleaning and sanitizing all of the crates and tools that we use for harvest.  It is a big task, but well worth the effort.

Up until two days ago, the fields were very dry.  Dry weather has its pros and cons.  Last year during the torrential rains I told more than one person that it is much easier to bring water to the plants than to take it away.

Other pros of dry weather: it was dry enough to kill lots of weeds!  Here’s me and the cultivating tractor, our Allis Chalmers G, getting things tidy.

However, there is a big con of dry weather:  it was necessary to walk out irrigation tape in April, which is not always necessary but was very necessary two weeks ago.  This takes time, but was totally worth it.  All of our transplants look amazing after a nice drink from the pond followed by a good bath from the sky.

So, I’m sticking to my assertion that a dry year is better than a way-too-wet one.  Although this week’s rain was tremendous and impossible to duplicate.  Thank your Mother Earth!

2008—Our Fifth Season

Allis Chalmers G, community supported agriculture, cover cropping, csa, electric tractor, Elizabeth Henderson, irrigation, mulch, rocky, solar power

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.

In the Share – Week 16

dry, irrigation, storage crops
okra

TOMATOES (F/P) Most of the fruit is coming from our “heat-set” hybrids, which are packed with flavor thanks to the drought.

POTATOES (F/P) This will be the last week of potatoes in the shares for the year. There is an assortment of fingerling, yellow and red.

GARLIC (F/P) After checking the seed garlic, we have enough to plant and some more we can hand out to you for a few more weeks.

CARROTS (F/P) Plain orange this week, no weird colors but boy are they sweet.

SWEET PEPPERS (P) A combination of shapes and sizes.

BEETS (F) The spring-planted bulk roots are shining right now as they help us over the hump to autumn.

CHOICE: OKRA, HOT PEPPERS, EGGPLANT, SALSA PACK, OR ONIONS (F) Choices, choices, there are many.

HERB CHOICE (F) Marjoram, parsley or a dried herb. We’ve pulled together some more dried herbs for the selection in order to give the basil a break. Any week you can choose a dried tin instead of a fresh herb.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms CSA shares

NEXT WEEK: More tomatoes, sweet peppers, okra, hot peppers, carrots and onions. A few more beets.

FARM REPORT:

The farm is running full steam ahead as we have since the pace quickened sometime back in March. Every August we more-or-less repeat the Spring planting in order to have lots of tender greens and roots feeding us through the fall. The sweaty work is usually compensated by a bountiful end of the growing season. We are hopeful that we are headed in that direction. The irrigation pond is holding and has actually risen since we began filling it from the old pond. We are about finished with that process and think that we have plenty of water to make it until first frost.

We realize how very fortunate we are to be in this position. Farmers across the region are experiencing losses to crops and entire seasons of income. Today the weatherman said, he had “never seen anything like this”. Humidity is at a desert level, 17%. They talk of a chance of rain this weekend and we are hoping it happens despite having a busy weekend scheduled out of doors. We hope to get the high tunnel finished on Sunday with a good crew signed on to do the job. We will happily cancel and re-schedule if it means it is too muddy to work. We haven’t had been able to use that excuse since sometime in March or April!

In the Share – Week 7

irrigation, rain, tomatoes

SUMMER SQUASH (F/P) Some of these boys got a big on us, thanks to the heat. See Tom’s post for some yummy recipes for these big boys.

CARROTS (F/P) First of the season, fresh out of the ground with their tops. We like to give you the entire carrot for the first round, but they keep better with their tops off. Leave half an inch of green and store in a plastic bag in your crisper.

WALLA WALLA ONIONS (F) Fresh, sweet onions are best appreciated raw in your favorite salad.

KOHLRABI (F/P) The last of the spring crops, these are so crisp and juicy they will remind you of a rainy day.

CUCUMBERS (F/P) Talk about crisp and juicy, the cuke is the perfect farmer snack after sweating in the fields.

CHOICE OF KALE OR SWISS CHARD (F) Our crop of greens is hanging in there for now. Enjoy their healthy goodness while they last.

HERB CHOICE (F) Basil, summer savory, parsley or dried herbs.

LETTUCE (P) We managed to grow just enough lettuce for the partial shares to get their turn this week. After that it is curtains for the frilly heads until fall.

CHERRY TOMATOES (F/P) Just a small taste to whet your appetite.

NEXT WEEK: More cucumbers, summer squash and tomatoes. More beets. Garlic and new potatoes.

FARM REPORT

The first day of summer is here, although it has felt like summer for months. This week it feels like a blast furnace actually. I despise these hot, dry, windy days almost over any other weather short of something dangerous like a tornado. At least with a tornado you usually get some rain! We thought we might get some rain on Friday.  The clouds looked promising as we harvested the garlic.

But only a few drops fell.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not wishing for severe weather, but the farm’s plants and people are ready for a break from this desiccating blow torch!

Despite said blow torch, the crops for the most part continue to survive and flourish thanks to a steady stream of irrigation water. The pond has dropped quite a bit since we began drawing from it in April.
Here’s a picture.

That’s about the level it was at the end of last summer, the lowest it’s ever been. So here’s a game we will now play called: How low will the pond go? Will we draw it down until we can draw no more? Or will our dear pond water hold out until the September rains fall?

Thanks to all that water and a thick layer of mulch on almost everything, the farm looks a lot like summer with big bushy tomato plants full of green fruit. Wait a minute …  there’s actually a few red ones out there! We’ve never harvested ripe tomatoes in June until today. There’s the silver lining in our harsh weather reality: early summer fruit! Look for the tray of cherry tomatoes at distribution this week for a first taste of the season.

Fair Share Farm CSA to Start May 9th

bad seed, csa, fair share farm, irrigation, lady beetles, onions, solar power, sustainable agriculture, tomato plants

The time has come to start the harvest. This Spring has been unusually mild and has created an early maturing of most everything on the farm. These conditions have convinced us to start the CSA a week earlier than originally planned. So…the schedule for the first week’s pickup will be:

Wednesday Distribution (Bad Seed or Farm) May 9th
Saturday Distribution (Liberty or Farm) May 12th

For deatils relating to your distribution site please click on the link. If you are a farm pickup, you will have chosen either Wednesday or Saturday, so please take note of which day you are scheduled for.

The farm crew has been busy keeping up with everything the last month. Our 2012 apprentices Dani Hurst and Ryan Stubby started the last week of March and have now been on the job for a month. Peruse the previous blogs and you can see all that we have been up to.

This last week we have been concentrating on our summer crops. On Monday we started up the irrigation system as the plants were becoming quite parched. Our solar irrigation system seems to be working well this season. You can see in the photo the high flow we get on-demand from the panels. We measured this flow at 35 gallons per minute.

Elsewhere in the field crops destined for future shares, such as onions and broccoli are growing well.

The tomato plants are starting to go out. The cherries and caged hybrids are in the ground, and the heirlooms and remaining hybrids are No. 1 on the runway. Squash and cucumbers are germinating in the greenhouse and will be in the field in the next 10 days or so.

We began seeing aphids in the greenhouse on the peppers and eggplants the last few days, so felt it was time to call in the biological hit squad of lady beetles. Rebecca bought some at Family tree nursery and we set 1/3 of them loose last night. This morning they seemed to be quite active. We expcet them to do their job and help keep our transplants as healthy as possible.

Look forward to seeing and feeding all of you soon.

In the Share – Week 14

irrigation

TOMATOES (F/P) Another week of an adequate tomato crop, nothing too overwhelming. Plants that survived the cold, wet early May are doing horrid compared to those planted afterward, some of which are slow to ripen.

WATERMELON (F/P) A choice of two varieties: the red Sangria (oblong and grassy-green on the outside) or the yellow Peace (more round and a lighter green with dark green stripes). As our favorite Coop seed company, Fedco, says “Give Peace a chance”.
SALSA PACK (F/P) All full shares get them, partial shares get a choice with carrots
CARROTS All orange this week
GARLIC (F/P) An artichoke softneck variety
HERB CHOICE: Basil, garlic chives or a dried herb. Partial shares choose between garlic and herbs.
SUMMER SQUASH (F) Running out of summer squash recipes? The last planting of the season is just coming on now. Check out FSF CSA member Emily Akin’s blog for a recipe for vegetarian squash burgers
CHERRY TOMATOES OR RATTLESNAKE BEANS (F) The pole beans are beginning to slow, so enjoy them while you can
HOT PEPPERS OR EGGPLANT (P) Check Tom’s blog from last week for the hot pepper i.d.
EGGPLANT, SWEET PEPPERS OR OKRA (F) Nothing loves the heat more than the okra.
ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms shares delivery
NEXT WEEK: More tomatoes, squash, peppers, eggplant and salsa. A few more melons. The last planting of cucumbers may be starting. Potatoes and onions return.
When Tom and I first moved back to the Graff-Cave Family Farm in the fall of 2002 the region was in the second year of a two-year drought. Photographs from the time contain lots of burned-up grass and stunted crops. Our first irrigation system was built in a hurry out of resources on hand. The old cattle pond served as water source and a gas-powered generator pumped the water to our thirsty crops. It wasn’t a very elegant solution, but it kept our plants alive along with our dream of building a truly sustainable farm.
Fast forward to 2010 during a hot, dry summer. Yes, I said dry. Most everyone in the region is feeling the heat this summer, but most have had record rainfall to go with it. Not us. We count ourselves lucky to have missed the 2-5 inch deluges that others have received. The headline of the KC STAR today reads First rain, now heat causes grumbling among growers. While our neighbors to the north and south have much to grumble about, we have been spared for the most part (what’s my excuse then?!).


pond full of water makes farmer sleep easy
Dry weather can only be looked upon as good luck if you have an dependable irrigation system. Ours has come along way since our first year at the farm. A new pond and a solar-powered pump bring water to our fields cleanly, quietly and cheaply with a rate of at least 25 gallons per minute. We’ve been pumping thousands of those gallons on our fields for the better of three weeks now and will probably be pumping for a couple weeks more. As long as we get the usual soaking fall rains, the pond should recharge quickly. Irrigation is especially critical for establishing the fall crops.
Newly transplanted cabbage with drip tape
The next chapter in the irrigation saga is about to unfold. Energize Missouri Agriculture, a program funded with Federal stimulus dollars is helping us expand our solar-powered system. With cost-share funds we were able to purchase additional solar panels and underground supply pipe that will make our system more energy-efficient with better pressure so that we can bring water to the highest sections of the farm. We will be installing the supply line in the next month or two, as soon as the weather breaks and we have time to get to it.
pile of pipe and valve boxes waiting to be put to use

In the Share – Week 4

irrigation, solar power, strawberries

morning harvest

BROCCOLI (F/P) Spring broccoli is never a shoe-in, but this week at least it shines.
LETTUCE (F/P) The heat is getting to our some of our lovelies, but most varieties are staying cool under pressure.
STRAWBERRIES (F/P) from the patch that just keeps on giving.
GARLIC SCAPES (F/P) the flower bud from the hardneck garlic patch. Scapes are incredibly tender and delicate – perfect for Farmer Tom’s Garlic Scape and Strawberry Dressing.
RADISHES (F) The last of the spring crop.
ENDIVE (F/P) Something we are starting to experiment growing more of. A pleasingly bitter salad green. Tom paired it with above dressing – yum. Let us know if we should be growing more of it.
HERB CHOICE (F/P) dill, mint, oregano or dried herb

ALSO THIS WEEK: Parker Farms delivery

NEXT WEEK: maybe the first sugarsnap peas, more broccoli, lettuce and strawberries.

This has been a good week for farming. Plenty of sunshine and the return of the warm air has brought lots of plant growth. The cherry tomatoes have begun developing their first green fruit. While the planting continues, we have caught up on the backlog of plants and seeds that had been delayed by the cool, wet weather of the past 2 weeks.
peppers and tomatoes newly planted
A sign of the change is that we fired up the irrigation system. The submersible pump left it’s winter vacation in the greenhouse for it’s summer job floating in the pond. Some minor repair of the floats was necessary due to our pesky muskrat pond-dwellers, but after short work we floated her out, plugged her into the solar panels and flipped the switch. With water now pumping heartily to the fields all that was left to do was roll out the tape along each row. The farm crew has made short work of that so that now all of our summer crops have had a deep watering and are handling the transplant with grace.
water pumping thanks to the sun