Week 4, Season 14-15

The harvests have started off well this year at least once we got started.  The weather has been tame and the pests have been fairly low aside from the turnip greens.  We are about to start a big planting of more kale, broccoli, komatsuna, lettuce, and cabbage.  Our plantings go in waves out in the field around October and then sporadic crops here and there and then a big wave this next week.  It would be nice if I could plan it better for when I have time off.
Our sweet potato crop is awesome and am glad to have tried it out.  This weekend will be pick number four and we are a little over half way down the row.  Aside from some of the wacky shapes and gargantuan sizes, they taste great and are holding well in the field.  I shut the irrigation drip tube on them about six weeks ago and they are doing fine holding in the ground.
I have started putting in some of the winter cover crops on the fallow fields and completed one field with rye, rye grass, and clover.  I am having a late start this year.  I've got two more fields to do before we are finished.  I'm also trying to spread a self-seeding, indigenous legume that grows wild to all the fields to help do some of the work for us during the winter.  My goal is naturally appearing, self seeding, perennial cover crops that I don't need to buy/sow each year for both winter and summer.  We are a few years from that goal but are getting closer each season.
I took a picture of some of the red cabbage in the field to share.  I love to walk by it and check it out.  It has a beautiful color and hope it will harvest well later on.

Local Organic Produce 30% Off!

I had to travel to Gainesville this week to take part in an annual poinsettia variety trial at UF.  This was my first time at the event and it was pretty cool to see all the latest and greatest poinsettias.  This is a trial for commercial growers so they can compare growth and colors to what they are currently growing.  After a while of comparing colors my eyes started to wig out from all the bright reds and I had to look at something different.  I did see something I thought was a very new and interesting variety.  This was just out so you can say you heard it here.  They are breeding for a yellow-orange-squash colored poinsettia plant that they are hoping will pick up some Thanksgiving sales for the poinsettia market.  That is my insider tidbit for poinsettia aficionados.
On the way home I stopped in at a local supermarket to get a drink for the ride.  I decided to check out the produce section just to see what they had in the way of organics as I normally don't do the food shopping for the family.  Then I thought since I was there that I would compare what our share of produce would add up to with what our members have paid.  I did this last year and remembered that the week I checked was comparable to the store value.  This time our members are doing really great.  So the process was, I added everything in the share item by item that I could find that was organic, and when they didn't have it as organic, I added in the conventional items for the total price.  I did my best to add price per ounce compared to what we distributed or price per item depending upon how it was being sold.  I was able to find about 65% of our farm share in the organic section.  The other 40% was not available so I used conventional prices to complete the share.  I wound up with a bill of approximately $31.00 for what our members paid $22.50 for.  A remarkable savings of about 27%.  If you throw in the eggs then we are about 30%.   It would probably be higher still if I could find all of it in the organic section.  The awesome thing about buying from our farm is not only are you getting organically grown (except in a few rare occasions) produce at a discount, but all of it is locally produced (under 20 miles for all members), and for the most part, picked hours to minutes before you take them home.  So, quality is higher (better for your family's health), fossil fuels and energy to ship and maintain the produce are dramatically less (so you are helping the environment), and you are improving the economic conditions of your neighborhood by keeping the money local.  I am very thankful that we have members that are making a decision to improve on a way to purchase produce.  I am also thrilled that I can help the social, economic, and environmental factors of my surroundings by growing produce for our community supporters.  This is a real tangible way we are all supporting one another.  Maybe we should call it Community Supporting Agriculture!

Go GMO or No?

GMOs or Genetically Modified Organisms have been a topic of conversation lately at seemingly every agricultural and university function I attend.  I know most of the sentiments from our community supporters are against them as well as the organic community.  We don't use any GMO seeds at our farm and we are not planning to change that in the near future.  It is interesting to note that as of 2013, roughly 85% of corn, 91% of soybeans, and 88% of cotton produced in the United States are genetically modified (wikipedia).  Here is an interesting viewpoint you might like to listen to that explains what the scientific community's viewpoint is.  This is the 2014 Distinguished  E.T. York Guest Lecture Series from the University of Florida featuring  Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam an Extension specialist in animal genetics from UC-Davis.  The lecture is about an hour and a half, so you may want to factor that in before you click on it.  Most of it was worth listening to.  You can probably skip some of the intro and the "What do the Facts Say" music parody and not miss anything.  Here is the link for your viewing pleasure.  http://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/6b427993a59d45fb9d207dffa4255ed41d

2014-2015 Season Start Up

     We are off and running again on our 5th season at Steed Farms.  The summer is gone and our crops are being transplanted for everyone.  Today I transplanted cucumbers.  They were looking really good out of the starting gate.  I hope they stay that great.  We are still waiting on strawberries.  Beans, turnips, yellow squash, zucchini, and patty pan seeds are emerging.  The sweet potatoes are looking great and I am really pleased with our late summer planting.  I hope we can grow them again in the spring.  We will be harvesting for our first week pick up this year in a few weeks.  I have been digging a few up just to check.  If anything, they might be on the large size. One thing I learned is not to start them in plug trays.  The roots get all twisted in the small cell before planting causing some really strange looking potatoes.  I'm sure they will taste the same.
     This year I am trying something different for my seedlings.  I had to resort to using my own recipe for organic germinating soil.  It seems like organic products are really hard to keep in constant supply.  Vendors are always switching soil and fertilizers every year.  It becomes really difficult to get familiar with how plants react to a specific soil and how a new fertilizer behaves in the field and in pots.  After I was told they were no longer carrying my familiar soil that I worked on figuring out last year, I decided to come up with a recipe that I could duplicate each year on my own.  1 part peat moss, 1 part compost, 2 parts perlite, 0.5 parts composted cow manure.  It took me a couple of iterations and tweaking before the seedlings liked it.  But I think I've got a good mix that I can work with.  Besides it winds up being cheaper than what I would have paid.  Now I wish I could do the same for the fertilizer.
     Other things I learned from last season:
Never use wild radish as a cover crop,
Coyotes eat watermelons, and pumpkins,
Plant virus prone tomatoes on the inside of a green house and resistant ones on the outside,
Using plastic mulch might be a game changer,
Sometimes lost harvest knives turn up in weird places,
Chicken feather loss can be unexplained and be really slow to grow back.

A rabbit ate our seedlings early on.

Potting up more rosemary.

Covercrops for soil health.

Our sweet potato bed.

One plant!

Nate sneaking up with a camera.

New Additions to the Farm

The summer is officially winding down and it is time to start gearing up for the fall produce season.  The blog posting slipped away from me by the end of this season.  I cringed when I saw my last post being May.  Ouch!  Well it is time to start going through the seed boxes and taking inventory.  Then the fun part begins, when I go through all the veggie seed catalogs and imagine all the beautiful varieties growing lushly in my fields.  My farm looks the best at this time;  In my imagination with no weeds, no pests or diseases and catalog, picture-perfect produce spilling all over the beds for harvest.

We started early this season with some sweet potatoes.  This was prompted by an attempt of an extension agent bundling orders from a few farms to purchase organic cuttings from North Carolina.  We went with Covington variety and planted it at the end of July. This is a newer variety from NCSU and completely new to the farm.  Another new addition to the farm is us using plastic mulch for the first time on this crop due to the extremely heavy purple nutsedge weed pressure.  When plastic mulch is stretched tight over the row nutsedge will grow right through it.  So I left some slack in the plastic and it seems like it is working.  I think that I will use it for all the other crops this year.  The sweet potatoes look great thus far.  I hope we will have a good harvest for our first veggie pickup at the farm.

I also wanted to announce another new addition to Steed Farms.  The birth of James Andrew Steed 8/1/14.  He was 7.5 pounds and 18.5 inches.  He is a nice content baby and is doing great thank God.  Momma is doing great as well.  Welcome to our family baby James!

Sweet potatoes!

Week 22, 2014

I am officially old.  I changed clothes from work the other day donning my worn farm shorts and tee shirt.  Inevitably, I got distracted somewhere between changing socks and getting my farm sneakers on.  I remember slipping on my brown work shoes to bring them to the garage where my house Crocs reside.  Thinking as I did it to consolidate all my shoes in the garage for my return from the farm.  Unfashionably for me I never made the exchange for the farm shoes.  When I got to the farm and stuck my foot out the door to hit the ground running, I noticed my brown dress shoes, blue socks and work shorts.  I stared in disbelief for a minute and then it dawned on me.  I was officially old.  I did turn 40 this year but it hadn't hit home until I saw my brown dress shoes.  I did however, continue to finish the field work.  I figured that people couldn't see my feet from the road anyway.

The weeks are ticking by and crops are struggling with the weather to keep yielding (me too).  Kale has petered out, tomatoes are going down fast due to heat and the heavy rain a few weeks back.  Peppers are just starting to produce.  I have some in pots in the greenhouse and more out in the field.  I am just seeing where we get better yields.  Leeks are just turning ready.  We only had two weeks of sweet onions this year due to poor germinating seeds.  I planted some very late not sure of the outcome, but it looks like they won't size up until next year.  Our herbs have been doing great this year in the pots.  This was a good decision from last year and we have had a much better yield and consistency. 

I have been watching for some peaches this year and they were almost ready.  We had enough for about 1 week pickup.  I went by to check the status early this week and the entire crop was gone.  I'm not sure what took them but I couldn't find a trace.  Usually if it is critters they take a few bites and leave the seeds or half eaten fruit around.  Not this time.  I'm not sure what happened here.  There is always next year to hope for.  This year was bad for tree fruit.  No loquats either.  Our citrus have pretty much succumbed to citrus greening except for a few trees near the greenhouse which are infected. I am trying non-organically to keep them producing.  It would be really unfortunate to lose our great yielding lemon tree.  I'm not sure if we can keep them alive or not.  There are two olives on my tree this year.  This will be the second year of 4 years since planting that we have had two olives.  I only planted it on looks but I am always curious to see if they will ever yield an olive.  Two years when I ate one of the two that were on the tree, I learned that you can't eat olives off the tree.  Trust me on this one.  They apparently need to be brined before eating.  Which I know now for this year if they yield a harvestable fruit.  I'm not sure what I can do with two olives...maybe a martini? 

Our blueberries in pots yielded fairly well.  The boys love to go there first and check them.  Katie has discovered them as well and I could barely pull her away kicking and screaming because she couldn't find anymore to eat.  I hope to add some more for the farm for the benefit of our customers (as well as Katie's) in the near future.

Week 18, 2014

Our season is heading into spring and the warm season crops are starting to wind up.  Tomatoes are looking good this year.  I've got a few tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) resistant varieties as we determined from our UF research visit last season.  We are using Sakura, Charger, and Celebrity as our grape and round varieties.  We have seen less whiteflies but the spidermites are starting to become a problem.  I've been trying to start a new shoot from the base of our Celebrity once they reach their determinite height.  I just add soil and fertilizer and cover the old stem and get the new shoot to root.  It is like starting a whole new plant.  So far it is working well and I hope to start the plants a little shallower in the pot and then add soil as new stems are formed for new plants.
Lettuce has been spotty this year.  We lost a crop from worm compost and then our back up crop failed due to something wrong with a bag of soil.  We finally had to buy some from another organic grower just to get a crop in.  By this time we got our fourth crop from our seeds in the ground just in time for the return of upper 80 degree weather. We will see if we can harvest before they bolt.
Our strawberries are doing better than I imagined possible from organic, in the field planting.  Commercial growers will run water for 10 days straight sun up to sun down, to set the bare root plants in the field.  I planted the bare root plants into trays and ran intermittent mist for a week until they established roots, then planted them to the field.  We probably saved 98% or more of the water over a traditional planting method.  I also only sprayed the plants with a fungicide and insecticide one time each.  That is the most amazing part.  It has taken up until now for the taste to increase in the berries, but now they are tasting like real strawberries.  We will see how long they last.  I believe we will add them to the list for next year if we can come by the transplants.  This process has taken me three years to figure out.  First was pots in the shade house.  Next was pots in the greenhouse.  Finally, I figured I would just put them out with the rest of the crops and amazingly they did the best there.  This has encouraged me to try watermelons and an Asian melon that we had a little success with a few years back.  I can never get the melon plants to stay alive once they set fruit.  I hope this year is different.

Here are some pictures from the farm...

A new tomato growing from the base of the old plant

15 Sakura grape tomatoes on one stem!

Collards ready to pick

Shares for delivery

Nathan sneaking up on a hawk with a camera

Week 12, 2014

It is hard to believe that it is already half way through the season.  Tomatoes in the greenhouse are getting larger and should soon start picking.  Our cauliflower trial did great and it looks like we will have a new veggie for farm produce.  Freemont was the variety and looks like a winner for us.  I only planted enough for a trial, but it looks like it will do fine.  The rutabagas should pick this week.  This was an effort from a trial last year.  We will see what everyone thinks about them.

The strawberry trial is doing better than I expected and it looks like there is an abundance of flowers forming.  I hope they will carry out to fruit.  I might consider planting them next year if they yield alright.  I will be trying melons again this year.  We will see what happens.  Last year they were planted in a field that had terrible fertility and hardly anything yielded produce.  So the trial was uncertain.  This year should be better.

Potatoes are just starting to sprout from the ground and we will be doing our next planting today.  This year is flying by and it is time to plant corn, beans, cucumbers, okra, peppers, squash and zucchini.

Happy New Year! Week 6 2014

Things have gotten a little chilly here at Steed Farms.  We went camping on New Years (Anna, Nate, Noah and myself) at the farm.  This is the second year we've done it and it might be the last time we all sleep in one tent.  We barely fit without bumping into each other all night..  Jenn and Katie are smart and stay home.  We do have fun roasting hot dogs and trying to find animal eyes with the spot light.  We tracked down some spiders whose eyes were glowing bluish white.  I did hear a bunch of coyotes near midnight a little north and east of the farm but didn't see them.

I was able to disc in our summer cover crops and put in a winter cover crop finally last Saturday.  It was just in time for all the rain we had this week.  Thank the good Lord for all the rain!  It looks like it will do fine now and is already a couple inches tall.

The crops were a little off with the mostly hot weather and then sporadic cool days.  Some of the plants were stressing and getting some fungal spots.  Everything is growing fairly well except for the strawberries.  I tried them again this year and they are getting anthracnose spots on the older leaves.  When this happens the leaves fall off.  So I have small little plants with new leaves.  I haven't sprayed them with anything and should be but I haven't had a chance to.  I've been too busy removing yellow flowering wild radish from the field.  I thought last year it would make a good cover crop, and I think it was.  I didn't have the foresight to realize that it would go to seed and make my life miserable.  Everything we grow from seed looks just like it: arugula, diakons, raab, turnips, rutabaga.  I can't hoe the row because I can't tell the difference.  So I need to hand weed when they get older.  Lesson learned.

Here are some pictures from the farm...

carrots after weeding wild radish

before weeding wild radish

Week 2 produce

sugarcane and lemon to refresh from weeding

pigeon pea cover crops

Nate sneaking up with a camera