Happy New Year 2020!

We have been rapidly moving through the season at Steed Farm. We are in our sixth week of the 2019-20 season.  We had a very rocky start with the weather at the start of the season. So much rain fell that we experienced flooding when we planted our sweet potatoes and squashes.  The weather has  now calmed and the crops are responding well.  We now have greens galore and more squashes than most members like to eat in a week!

We have had good growing response from a few new crops this year.  Choctaw squash, peas shoots, and Ethiopian kale have produced well.  The choctaws grew tremendous vines producing about
30 lbs of squash per vine.  The pea shoots are crisp and sweet like fresh peas;perfect as salad toppings.  The kale  tastes a bit like mustard, broccoli, and/or kale depending upon when I've tasted it.  Its is growing well in our warm winter.  We have a few new varieties yet to ripen and I will report on them in a later post. 


Over the last summer we added four pastured cattle to our farm and hope to have beef to sell in the fall.  Nate and I spent the summer "down-time" mending the broken south fences.  I've also spent a good bit of time getting our pasture in better shape for the calves; mowing, killing weeds, seeding, and fertilizing.  The cattle are doing well with the changes and are gaining weight (a good thing for cows).  Which reminds me to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  We hope that this is your best year yet and that you and yours are happy and healthy.  We will continue to strive to produce fresh organic produce to enrich your lives and add to your healthy choices.

 

Week 24, Season 2018-19

This is the last harvest weekend for our 2018-19 season. I am happy it is wrapping up and looking forward to having a few Saturdays back in the week.  I will however,  miss seeing everyone at pickup time. 

Our season was really good this year.  We had bumper tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, bok choi, greens, swiss chard, and starfruit.  I was disappointed with the corn crop.  We had raccoons and poor pollination.  Last year we had tons of corn.  This year I didn't even eat one ear. I wanted a little more broccoli, squash, cucumbers and peppers.  Something to shoot for next season. 

A big winner this year was using bug screen for the greenhouse.  That paid off greatly in reducing the amount of pest pressure from stinkbugs and allowed the tomatoes to benefit.

We are planning next year's season already and I will start plowing in this season's weeds.  Cover crop will be planted in a few weeks and then we will take it easy for a few weeks.

Next blog will have a bunch of pictures from this season's hard work.

Week 21, 2108-19 Season

We are quickly approaching the end of this farming season and I can already see myself not at the farm on a Saturday morning.  However, I did realized this week two things.  My mind is already turning towards thoughts about next year's crops and methodologies; and I thought about how we probably won't eat as much produce as we do when we harvest our crops.  I miss bok choi already.  We ate some from Katie and James' garden at our house and I thought we usually don't buy that from the store.  So I will probably wait until next fall before I see it again.

Corn is slowly maturing and will be ready very soon.  The new red potatoes did very well this year and we will harvest until the end of the season.  Not sure if the leeks will finish on time this year as I planted them late.  Hopefully they will size up. 

We are picking beets this week.  I always struggle to grow good beets but this year it looks like we will get some from the field. 

The squashes are slowly gaining ground and producing more along with the eggplants.

We lost our last cucumber crops to some rodent (squirrel, rat, or mouse) that ate all our seedlings emerging from the trays.  By the time it wrecked the crop I couldn't replant a crop for the end of the season.  We will try again next year.

We planted a ton of onions this year so I hope everyone loves onions.  We are picking lots of red and white sweet onion and will do so until the last week of harvest.

Looking forward to a couple more harvest weekends!   

Week 16, 2018-19 Season

The last few weeks have been alternately warm and cool.  We are still growing lettuce; barely.  It wants to bolt but a few days of cool slow it down a bit. 

This is the last week of starfruit.  I was surprised to price the fruit at a retail store for $2.50 a piece.  We had about 6 weeks of fruit this year.  The tree yielded very well. I fertilized it this week so as to keep up production for next season. 

We are about four weeks away from harvesting potatoes.  I planted 'Reddale' and 'Dark Red Norland.'  They are looking very well so I hope the yield is as good as they look.

Corn is about 4 inches high.  I had to replant due to a lack of rain and some skips but it is starting to take off.

Onions are sizing up, leeks are small yet and green onions are growing as well.

Tomatoes are just starting to ripen.  The plants grew tremendously this year but there is some disease in the greenhouse.  Organic fungicides don't really slow down the progress of disease so I spent a good amount of time this week removing infected leaves and branches to reduce the inoculum levels.  Hope it helps.

Strawberries have produced well and are starting to slow down due to the warm weather.  I noticed that many fields are already done picking around town.

Only eight more weeks left in the season!

Week 13, 2018 -19 Season

Things are looking good in the field over the last couple weeks.  We could use another good rain.  We've been a little dry and plants always respond differently to rain compared to irrigation.

I planted leeks and green onions last week.  This week I am setting the squashes and finishing the green onions planting.  I am planting a few miscellaneous crops to fill in some gaps and then our plantings are wrapping up for the end of the season.

Strawberries are producing copious amounts of gorgeous fruit this week.  Looks like one more week of starfruit before we finish their season.

Tomatoes are still green and ripening.  I have never seen so many tomato flowers in the greenhouse.  We should be in good shape in two months.

One crop of beans is finished and another is emerging from seeds.  Onions and carrots are a few weeks out.   Red potatoes are looking good but could use some rain.

The warmer weather is causing the lettuce to bolt so we might be wrapping up the lettuce season early unless we get another cool spell.  I thought this full moon would bring rain and a cool front, but we missed out.  We'll see what this week brings us.



 

'Bout Time

Well, it IS about time to write a post.  It is also about time that I haven't posted in a while.  Running around with six athletic kids is very tiring.  Sitting down to write a blog post seems like an extra homework assignment.  Finally thought I would summarize what's been going on at the farm.

This season has been one of the hardest seasons of our ten we have been growing.  We have had very wet, very hot, very cool, and very damp- making for another typical, atypical fall/winter in the Bay area.

Ants are a real problem this year.  They have been chewing the stems of transplants and killing them.  We lost two crops of broccoli, one crop of kale, and a collard crop due to their behavior.  This is the first time they bothered  cole crops.  Thankfully, we are finally getting things under control (even if half of the season is behind us).

This season we are growing on the eastern side of the property that borders Hwy 39.  The soil has doubled in organic matter.  This means our soil fertility has increased with additions of cover crops and organic soil amendments.  Our annual soil test reported we only needed to input nitrogen this year.  Looks like things are working out in building up our soil.

There are some growing changes this year.  We are growing strawberry 'Sensation' instead of 'Camino' with much success.  This variety produces berries earlier in the season and they are much larger than Camino.  We added pole beans, baby bok choy, downy mildew resistant cucumbers, and screened our greenhouse so bugs can't enter.   We have been late with tomatoes but they are growing with reckless abandon.  We should soon be picking them.  Pole beans did well for a few weeks but seem to have slowed down.  They are very tasty and extra long and I can grow them in the greenhouse during the winter.

Snow peas are just starting to yield.  Beets, beans, carrots, mustard greens, scallions, lettuce, and sweet corn are being planted this week.

Hope to keep you updated from time to time...