A Season in Pictures

I realized I did not post very much this season. The farm demanded a lot more of my attention this season as I increased production to accommodate the CSA shares. I am so pleased at how well the season went and feel so happy to have a happy, growing CSA membership. 
Here are some pictures from the season taken by Farm Intern rock star: Gretchen! By the end of the day we were beaten down and exhausted but she always managed to pull out the camera and grab a few photos.

                                                    Zinnias for bouquets and "pick your own"

                                                                        Beautiful Asters

                                            Garlic harvested and ready to hang, all 3,000 bulbs

                                             Meg was a big help overseeing the garlic harvest

                                                    Tromboncino Squash-an Italian Heirloom

                                        A typical Saturday Market morning-Fun with vegetables!
                                                    (photo taken by market friend, Bob Allen)

 

                      Thanks Bob, for these beautiful photos and for capturing the vibrant life in our food!

                                                            Pepper plants chock full of peppers

       I think this was my best year for heirloom tomatoes. They were sweet, juicy and produced great well into September! We experienced some disease but pulling any infected leaves kept the rest of the plants healthy for good production during this hot, dry Summer. 

  Onions drying. They may be small, but I am just relieved to have onions! Soon after transplanting 5,000 onion plants they were hit by 2-3 nights of freezing temperatures. The plants that survived were then void of rain for the next 6-8 weeks or so. (What a season!) Irrigation only goes so far...but we produced some delicious onions this year.


A few of the Fall crops flourishing on the farm:

                                              CSA share for October 1, week 18

                                               CSA share for October 8, week 19

Heat and Drought

My pleas for rain have grown louder and a bit more desperate this week. After the difficult growing year last year, I vowed to not shed another tear over the weather. So, this year I am taking a more positive outlook and controlling what I can control.   I continue to irrigate and build organic matter in the soil, which help to hold water in dry summers. But the soil is dry (and dusty) and feels very hot as we assess soil moisture and get ready to plant Fall transplants. I am hesitant to put any plants in the ground as I know they will become stressed immediately, and we could lose them. And while we are irrigating as much as we can, there is a limit as how much water can be distributed in a given week. We are now going into our 6th week without any significant rainfall -- we have received 3/4 inch total!  To put this into perspective, vegetables require an inch of rain EACH week for optimal growth. Now you can understand their (and my!) stress.

Valuable time is spent away from weeding and tending to the crops as we lay thousands of feet of additional drip lines, turn on and off valves, fix leaks, and flush the filter system to keep the lines clear of any silt and dirt. I often remark that it would be so much easier if it would just rain!Despite this, we really do have a bounty each week. The cucumber and squash are plentiful with millions of blossoms, the tomatoes have beautiful green fruit, and the beets and carrots are deliciously sweet. As we are finishing up with Spring broccoli, we are starting to harvest tender, sweet cabbage and cauliflower. Peas are on their way out, as predicted, and we are gearing up for the big garlic harvest! You are all welcome to come out for this major harvest, we will announce the date and time soon, and we will plan for a fun evening of harvest followed by snacks and refreshing beverages!

                                  Green Heirloom Tomatoes- Getting closer to your plates!

                                                          The CSA share this past week

It's starting to look like a vegetable farm!

I love early June! The crops start to put on a lot of growth, quickly, which makes the farm come alive with new colors and shades of green. It is hard to take a break, let alone a day off, this time of year but when I look around at all the delicious food growing around me I am reminded how much I love this work. It also helps that Matt is also inspired by the vegetables I bring home and cooks them up for delicious, healthy dinners.

The first two weeks of the CSA are behind us as well as the first week of markets. This time of year the harvests are mainly greens with some early roots, until the peas and broccoli mature...which should be very soon! I will happily eat greens every day of the week because I know they give me strength to put in extra hours on the farm. We are working hard to hold back the weeds, which are growing stronger than the crops in some cases. It is best to kill weeds when they have just barely germinated and it is effortless with one of the farm's many long-handled hoes. If we miss this window, we have to spend more time and energy to remove the weeds. But weeding is just another aspect of the farm work that needs to be addressed in order of urgency, and I am constantly making lists and prioritizing and re-prioritizing. Checking and re-checking to make sure everything gets done on that days to-do-list. When something doesn't get done on the day it was intended, there is a very good chance it will not get done that week since each day is planned and has new priorities.
I'll post some more pictures soon, but here are some from the past two weeks:

 

 Sugarsnap peas are just starting and they are so sweet!

 The first round of carrots-best germination I have ever had!

 Tender head lettuce

Radishes- bunched for CSA shares

Tomatoes are thriving in the warm sunny days.

First CSA week

This past Monday was a perfect harvest day for the CSA; misting rain and a cool, cloudy sky. This allows us to take our time harvesting because we know the sun and heat won't reduce the quality of tender greens. We really found our rhythm around the washing tent and the new wash station allowed us to efficiently wash greens and spray bunched roots.

                                                          Hakurei and Scarlet Turnips

                                                                                 Arugula

                                                                               Spring garlic

                                                                  It's a very green box!

                   This cooler weather is great for the peas...which are flowering and developing pods.

Long planting days.

We have been spending many hours and days getting all the plants and seeds in the ground. Our eyes are mainly focused on Summer harvests but I am also planning for Fall and even roots we can over winter for next Spring. The first round of tomatoes are planted, which include many heirloom varieties, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos and some canning tomatoes. Also planted this week, is the first succession of cucumber and summer squash-more than I have ever planted before! We planted a patty pan yellow squash, classic zucchini, and Cousa-a Lebanese Summer squash and the most delicious squash I have ever tasted!
All these plants love the hot, sunny weather we are having  but they do not handle dry soil well. And stressed plants are more susceptible to insect infestations so we are irrigating these sensitive crops. I am quickly learning about these new soils and how sandy loam soils will dry out after a rain.

                                 Sugar Snap peas with garlic growing strong in the background.

Caterpillar tunnel to get the tomatoes off to an earlier start. The fabric row cover acts as a mini greenhouse increasing heat during the day while the sun is out and offering a few degrees of night-time low temperature protection.

Just one word: Plastic!

No, I'm not actually that excited about this. Sometimes as a beginning farmer I have to do things to build the farm that I do not intend to sustain. I could even go so far to say I'm not proud of these practices, but that would imply feelings of shame, and that wouldn't be accurate. In fact, I am satisfied that I can utilize an array of farming tools and techniques to help me save time and money and even have positive affects on the harvests.

Using black plastic as a soil covering mulch is one such practice. Laying it out tightly on a newly tilled bed significantly warms the soil and eliminates weeds, resulting in an earlier harvest that can be larger and more abundant. We will put all the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants on the black plastic mulch this year.

By laying alfalfa hay in the paths between beds, we can keep weeds down and build soil as it decomposes.

This week I am feeling like things are going according to schedule. The weather seems to have stabilized and we should be past the freezing night temperatures of last week. (Hopefully since I am itching to get tomatoes planted on this plastic!) Transplanting Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Kale, Leeks and other spring seedlings will be completed this week.

This is intern Gretchen's first full week on the farm and she has already experienced what its like to farm in a crazy Central New York Spring!

Managing ecologies

So much of my work on the farm is not spent tending to the crops that will be the bountiful end reward to that labor, but instead is spent managing the relationships between all life on the farm. My job is to choose the seed and then give it a fighting chance. And fight it must! So many forces are aiming against that chosen seed: other competitive seeds racing our young plant for nutrients, space, light, and water; pests that seem to focus their attention only on our future harvests, and lack of rain to germinate our seed are a few examples of what we are up against.

But my bag of tricks is pretty impressive and our seeds usually triumph.

This is a picture of early Arugula and Mustard seedings under row cover. These young leaves if left uncovered would quickly find themselves dotted with tiny holes, evidence of feedings of the persistent flea beetle. If the pressure is strong enough, the plants could be set back considerably or we could have complete crop failure. This lightweight, floating row cover sits atop the plants as they grow protecting them from insects as well as offering minimal frost protection.

When April showers are nowhere to be found, you can find me on the farm laying irrigation. The seeds can't germinate without sufficient water and putting plants into the ground without watering them in will result in transplant shock and crop failure (seeing a trend?) This is an example of the drip tape irrigation connections to allow me to irrigate sections of the field at a time.

The drip line spool propped on the wheel barrel for easy unwinding.  The first 100' of drip tape being laid out...with many many many more to follow.

This is the drip emitter. Spaced every 8" for even watering of crops. Laying the line close to each row conserves water and reduces wed growth by only putting it where it is needed.

Going into the barn this evening I noticed the chickens have made a fine roosting spot for themselves. Not where it was expected, but a safe distance from the curious dogs down below. They seem very happy and active in their new home.

Seeding begins!

This has been a busy Spring on the farm. Getting everything ready for the season, pulling out equipment and sharpening tools. I have also started seeding outside and this past weekend got the first generation of peas in the ground. Sugar Snap fans...get ready! I use this nifty tool for most of my direct seeding on the farm. It's an Earthway Precision Seeder, and can be outfitted with different sized seeder plates to accommodate a variety of seed sizes and spacing.

 Driving it down the bed, the front opens up a furrow in the soil, drops the correct amount of seeds and then covers them with loose soil before the back wheel drives over the furrow tamping the soil in place.

Unfortunately the soil is too try to germinate most of the seeds I have laid down. I will be setting up the irrigation system soon. This is strange for April, which is typically too wet and I worry about seeds rotting in the wet, cool soil.
 The seeding in the greenhouse continues as well. We will be transplanting into the fields soon, so check back for more pictures.

Soil prep continues...

Farmers focus a lot of attention and care on their soil. We read about it, talk about it, research it. We obsess over it really. The life in the soil and the care we put into ensuring the optimum conditions to support this life is integral to the farm. As I mentioned before, tilling aggressively has negative impacts on the soil and the rototiller is one of the worst culprits. It acts as it sounds; rotating tines tear through the top few inches of soil, pulverizing it into tiny pieces so what's left is the softest, finest soil surface. For the microbial, organic health of the soil its terrible. These tiny particles lead to compaction which results in poor drainage, lack of oxygen, and loss of beneficial microbes.

But, for the plants which get planted into newly tilled beds, life is good. The soil presses firmly against seeds for proper germination and the transplanted, young seedlings are coddled into their teens by soft, caring soils.
There are few alternatives to this useful tool on small farms.

Tonight I tilled up beds that will soon be planted to sugar snap and snow peas. I rented a tractor and tiller from a local farm supply shop and took a while to re-orient myself with how best to operate it...

                                ...mainly, how to drive straight so I would end up with straight beds.

Well, I'm still learning. 

As I was driving, I remembered what a farmer in Maryland said lovingly of his intern as she created incredibly crooked rows, "She never did anything straight in her whole life, why would she start now". Ha!

I have loads of rocks to pick this weekend and plenty of seeds to put in the ground over the next few weeks. If you are interested in coming out to the farm to help out, just email me at farmer@dailyharvestfarm.com. 

Amending the soil and big tractors

Despite the cooler, wet weather this week the soil was certainly dry enough to till. Friday turned out to be a sunny day and a perfect day to plow. Luke, the farmer up the road was available and met me at the farm around 5pm Friday afternoon with his big tractor and disc-harrow. It did a great job breaking up the cover crops and working up the soil. I was skeptical that the discs would do an adequate job and thought we needed to use the plow, but I'm glad I was wrong. We plowed the field in the Fall using a moldboard plow and discs. The moldboard actually slices and inverts the soil's top layers. If you think about soil as having most of its complex life in the top 6", you can see why disturbing this and burying it is not good for long-term soil building. Continuous plowing in this way will also create a plow-pan beneath the soil in which roots cannot penetrate. A great book to read more about this is the "Ploughman's Folly", written in the 1940's  had a huge and controversial impact. Luke mentioned having a chisel plow in his collection of implements, so I think I will try that out in the future. The chisel plow cuts through the soil, deeper than the discs, but doesn't disturb the soil layers as much. I'll let the green manures decompose a bit, add to soil fertility, and awaken microbrial activity.

To aid in this process, I add soil amendments to bring the soil's nutrient levels and ph to an ideal level for growing veggies. Based on the analysis of the soil test I took last October, I amend the soil with various products from the Fertrell company, which are approved for organic growing. I mainly use rock phosphate and greensand. Not only do they add valuable minerals to the soil, but they also improve soil structure by binding my sandy soils.

I am excited about how easily the soil crumbled under the discs. No clods, no shiny surfaces, that indicate compaction and damaged soil.

We will be planting peas, carrots, kale, and lettuces into this wlcoming soil very soon!