Pre-Pickup

We decided to have a pre-pickup for our members for some plants that were going down hill but I still wanted our members to partake of. The squash, and cucumbers are giving up the ghost and we did a few last harvests before I pull them out an replant something in their place. It is fun and exciting to meet everyone this season and greet our returning members after a summer hiatus. Iincluded a picture of the poor looking squash.

Things are look pretty good considering all factors in the field. We are growing the best tomatoes to date. I have found that the variety Celebrity works great for us. It is interesting to note that they responded the best to the addition of our woodchip/horse manure addition whereas the other plants seemed to have no response or a negative response as in the case with the eggplant. A picture is above. The cucumbers are all gone. They never seemed to recover after the 40 F weather we had at the farm in early Nov. The eggplants are still achingly slow and are just now starting to flower with little eggplants forming. I'm not sure that they will make it before frost. The Asian greens are growing nicely aside from the beetle pressure that is unrelenting that we are finally getting a hold of. We ha ve one freak that is growing twice as fast as the others. I included the picture above. I hope to save the seeds from that plant for next season. Herbs look nice. Mint looks better than last year at this time. Mustards, collards, turnips, are lettuce are a little late this year. I held off planting because I was a little nervous that they would have a hard time germinating and growing with the unusual heat this fall. We have bell peppers for the first time. We had germination problems in the past. I just hope that they mature to beat the colder weather up ahead. They have tiny little peppers on the bushes. They jalapenos look about the same. All in all things look pretty good.

I planted a few grain crops to see how they fare. I was surprised at how productive the rye was last year. I planted a plot of hard winter wheat, another winter rye, and a hulless oats. Each plot is about 4x4 foot square and is just to see what happens. I had the idea that we could either harvest for members or use a cover/chicken feed crop.

I think that I am going to add a few more Valencia trees this winter and will begin to add them as time permits. Here are a few pictures from the farm. Notice I also changed the main picture. It was about two seasons beyond the little trial plot we started out with. I thought that I would show how nicely things are looking. Notice how weed free we are!

We are looking forward to our first official pickup this Saturday and the start to a great season; heaven permitting.

Novemeber on the Farm

Well it is hard to believe that it is already November, even with almost a whole year to prepare for its arrival. It might be harder to believe if it wasn't for how busy we are preparing for the season's beginnings. Things are moving along. The red bok choi is looking good, cucumbers are producing, squash are showing up on the plants, tomatoes are forming. The eggplants are just now entering into puberty and reaching a growth spurt. I'm not sure what was causing their delayed adolescents. Beans are still a bit off and I will be doing soil test on fertility levels this week to see if anything is wrong there. Mint is growing, along with dill, and parsley. The sugar cane is doing well and will be nice for a December harvest. Our resident Dixie Chicks have stopped laying while they go through their molting process. Our Rock Band (Jenn calls the new chicks, the Pleiadies, after the Seven Sisters star cluster even though we are now down to the six sisters) are getting larger by the day and it will be nice when we start offering our organic CSA members the eggs. Overall things are looking nice for a good start to the season at our farm.

Farm Happenings

We have just planted our squash, zucchini, napa cabbage, and red bok choy out to the fields. We also planted 10 different varieties of lettuce in 72 cell trays. I had to spray some organic pesticides for aphids and whiteflies. We are also starting to develop some downy mildew on the cucumbers. The cucumbers are coming in early this year; we have already picked about a dozen. I hope they hold up for harvest time in November. Our green beans are looking very yellow and our eggplant seems to be in a holding pattern. This is what happens when you change fertilizers. It is best if you can see how it works on different items and different conditions. We were not able to get our usual Sustane fertilizer and had to go with something else. It is not reacting the same way. We also have not had any rain lately so the fertilizer that is releasing is not making it to the roots. This might explain our yellow beans and slow eggplant.

My youngest brother Patrick has joined us for a few weeks out at the farm. He needed a place to crash and was willing to work in the fields. He has been a big help so far, cleaning up the nursery and planting many of the vegetables in the trays and field.

It's nice to see the oranges starting to turn orange again. They almost go unnoticed during most of the season disguised in a camouflage green. One really needs to look for them on the tree. And then almost magically they start turning the first shades of yellow, and then reappear into view. This is where I start thinking about how good they taste in the wintertime, and about how nice it is to cut one off the tree and eat it while I'm working.

We had a loss of one of the young chicks this last week. Something, maybe a raccoon reached under the hen house and took a bite of one and killed it. We made some adjustments to the pen and hopefully it will not happen again. Nathan and I got it out of the pen and buried it beneath one of the orange trees