A Wet Week

Surely, at some point this season we will pine for rain showers like we've gotten this week, but right now we could really use four or five days of sunshine.

When the fields are consistently wet we can't weed or plant. Simultaneously the rain seems to make the weeds grow nonstop. So those tomatoes we recently put in now look like this. In a day or two all those little green specks will be a carpet of weeds.

We could clean up those weeds pretty quickly with a tool called a wheel hoe, but with heavy, wet soil the wheel hoe just picks up dirt and quickly becomes useless.

So, we have to weed by hand. We are growing on some land that we haven't planted before and we have discovered that there are a lot of weed seeds that we'll have to take care of before we plant the fields again. Here are two beds of onions that we weeded by hand (you can see the remnants of the pulled grass in the path between the beds). To the left is a third onion bed that we've since been able to weed.

We like crops like peas, which manage to stay ahead of the weeds. Peas are also a favorite crop of ours because they are great to snack on while harvesting!


The only thing we may need to do differently with the peas next year is put up a taller trellis...

This week we finally got our tomatoes planted. Planting the tomato field is one of the more involved planting tasks. Tomatoes take a lot out of the soil so we like to put some organic soil amendments on the field at the same time as we plant the tomatoes.










We get the tomatoes in deep by digging a hole for each one. As you can see the plants have gotten pretty tall because the weather hasn't let us get them into the ground until now.






And here's the freshly planted tomato field before the skies opened up and watered the tomatoes in. The picture below was then taken about an hour later.


Finally we got to enjoy some interesting clouds before deciding what project we would tackle the next day.

This Week On The Farm

Because of fields being to wet we weren't able to plant things at the optimum time of the seedlings life. Here is an example of a flower that definitely should not be flowering still in its seedling tray! Below are very large Brandywine and Pruden's Purple waiting to be planted.So this week we have been playing catch-up. The fields were finally dry enough to prepare beds, which Ben did after market on Saturday. Here he is bed shaping at 9:30pm! The following day was a marathon planting day. We planted summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, celery, celeriac, sunflowers, asters, celosia, snapdragons, scabiosa, and marigolds. Next up, tomatoes!

Meanwhile we have lots of crops in the ground that need our attention. Pictured below is our spring brassica planting (broccoli, turnips, bok choi, arugula, etc) under protective row cover.

Here is a nicely weeded bed of turnips and below that a desperately needing to be weeded bed of salad mix. See it in there?

A Winters Worth of Work

This winter we converted our corn crib into a living space so that we can have interns live and work here on the farm. It was full to the brim with ancient corn. We have no idea how old the corn was since we inherited it when we moved to the farm and hadn't dealt with it until now.


It took several truck loads to clear all the corn out. It was not the most pleasant job but the end result is really nice living quarters complete with hot water, electricity, insulation and windows!




Another big project this winter was getting our greenhouse ready to go for the spring. We had put the plastic up in the fall, but we still needed to install the end walls, sliding doors, and ventilation system. Here is a picture of the greenhouse from this week---full of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, lettuce and flowers.

1st week in May

May started off well for us in that we got just over 1 inch of rain. Not too much, not too little. Perfect for our spinach, snap peas, and potatoes pictured above. The plants in the ground should really take off now and we'll be harvesting by the end of the month! We have tiny carrot, beet, salad mix, chard, cilantro, dill, radish and turnip seedlings coming up in our direct seeded beds. Our sweet potato slips came in the mail and got planted just before the rain so they should be off to a good start, all 500 of them! We have begun the spring Brassica planting and have all the kale in the ground. Next up, kohlrabi, cabbage and broccoli. Before seedlings get planted they have to harden off. We move them out of the greenhouse for a few days so that they can adjust to the direct sun and all the wind before we plant them in the field. Pictured above are Brassicas and flowers hardening off. Now, hopefully we will have a few days without rain so we can get these plants planted! The tomatoes pictured our going to be planted in our hoop house to get a jump start and hopefully be ready a few weeks earlier then usual.

Early April

We are pleased that our 2010 season help arrived this month and we quickly put them to work. They came in a mini van with California plates and unpacked their stuff into our converted corn crib living quarters. They had a weekend to get acquainted with the area and then we got started with greenhouse seeding and field planting.

This week we were busy planting potatoes (all 500 lbs of them...300 lbs more than last year) and onions (about 2,000 in the ground so far). In between planting we weeded our crop of raspberries. The young plants are doing well this spring and we can't wait to harvest raspberries for the first of many years to come.

The season is in full swing and one can already see that we have expanded quite a bit this year. The greenhouse tables are already full of flats of seedlings and we have to make at least 8 more tables to accommodate all the flats left table-less at the moment. We are also growing on 2 more acres of land this year (making the total acreage a little less than 5) and we planted the onions and a few potatoes in this new ground. It has been farmed organically the past 3 years so we are hopeful that it will do well for us.

The tasks are mounting up and the anticipation of fresh picked veggies is making for an exciting Spring. Plus our Organic Certification application is being processed and we are being inspected at the end of the month. Hopefully, we will be able to label our produce as Certified Organic by the first market!

Signs of Spring

It is safe to say that spring is here to stay. Around the farm there is new life steadily growing. Pictured here is a nice covered cropped field of rye that is starting to green up, garlic that is peeking through the straw mulch, and our onion seedlings now growing in our greenhouse. We are filling our greenhouse up quickly with lettuce, kale, specialty greens, scallions, and lots of flowers. Greenhouse season really gets going the 1st week in April when we will start tomatoes, peppers, basil, broccoli and eggplant. It feels great to start the season!