Last Pickup 2011-2012

Well here it is already.  It is in some ways hard to believe that 24 weeks have elapsed from the start of the season and in some ways I am ready for the end of the season.  Overall it was a pretty good season aside from the weather which was very squirrely, but it proved good for the end of the season with dry weather.  We didn't get as many fungal diseases as we usually do.  Some things from this season to take forward are to plant a bunch of veggies in excess of what we need.  Never ever take more than a two day vacation in the middle of the season.  I really need to reevaluate my fertilizer plan.  Seems like things are running out of steam towards the end of their cycle.  I learned that planting beans behind bok choi is a good thing.  I learned that is a lot of fun to have volunteers out at the farm during picking time (Thank you very much John-Carlo and Dali for your help).  Next year I am going to try strawberries again but I will need to adjust their fertility.  I will need to do something different about the chickens.  We did manage to catch two racoons but only after they killed all the hens.  Here is a picture of the crime scene and the killers.   We used the dead chickens to bait a trap and caught a small raccoon the first night.  Nate was really excited because he got to go with me to pick up the trap and set it up at night staying up until 9:30 on a school night.  But he got to spend some time with Dad and it was an real adventure for him.  I thought there might be more than one culprit and we set it up again and caught a much bigger raccoon.  One that liked to growl.  Handling the cage was difficult because there were no hand holds were the critters couldn't get to you.  The small raccoon we just used a towel to hold on to the cage, but the big one I used the loader on the tractor to get him in the truck.  I then drove down to the river and let them go.  I hope that is the last we will see from those two.
The veggies are finishing up the pumpkins turned out nice and we have two weeks of picking with them.  the corn struggled this year due to fertility and pests which erupted when we were away.  That is why we will not be leaving the farm during the season.  The zucchini are awesome this year and so are the Roma tomatoes.  We will be getting ready for our cover crop which will be cowpeas and sorghum x sudan grass.  We will also be looking forward to a little easier weekend.

Thief in the Night

I arrived at the farm to a terrible sight.  The chicken coop door was open, a few chickens were outside, and a bunch of white feathers everywhere.  Something got into the coop and killed five of the chickens.  Including one of my favorites, the little white leghorn.  That was such a curious, good laying chicken.  All but one of the chickens were eaten down to the bones and dragged away from the coop.  There was one of the original Dixie chicks left inside the coop half eaten.  This is really bad and we have got to do something.  I moved the coop, buried the chicken, and am formulating a plan.  I am going to borrow a live trap from a friend to see if we can catch whatever is doing this.  In the meantime I reinforced the coop.
It was nice to finally get some rain at the farm.  It has been months since we had a drop out there.  But that hasn't been a bad thing with keeping disease at bay.  The weeds are quickly taking over as I usually can't keep up at this point in time with only three weeks left before we begin plowing everything under.  I will keep the weeds down where it matters like the peppers and basil but let them have there day in the sun everywhere else until the tractor and disc are called in to prep the fields for the cover crops.  The okra is starting to form flowers.  The pumpkins are almost ripe.  The corn is struggling this year.  The cucumbers and the yellow squash  are shutting down.  I wish I had planted one more rotation of squash and cucumbers this season.  I figured I could keep them going for the last few weeks but I may have been wrong.  It is a little too early to tell.
The pictures didn't make it again this week as the battery died on the camera while uploading for this blog.  Maybe next week.

One of the special attributes of our farm that we like to cultivate is the community portion of the community supported agriculture operation we run.  I think it is great that some of our farm supporters interact with one another at pickup and beyond.  I mean really, we all see the same people every Saturday for 24 weeks.   It is nice to get to know each other in the community and see where we have common interests or learn new things.  Since I don't have one of my own pictures for this blog post, I do have a picture of one of our supporters doing cool things in the community.  Here is a picture of Danielle with her bowling team raising money for Big Brothers/Big Sisters.  Go Danielle (blue shirt holding the ball)!  Another great way to build community!

Harvest Week #20 2012

A big thank you goes out this week to John-Carlo one of our more adventurous supporters who spent the morning helping me and Nathan harvest the weekend pickup.  It was a lot of fun from my perspective having someone to chat with while you work.  I hope John-Carlo had fun too.  At least he said he did.  Nate did a great job of picking the beans, zucchini, and he even got to use the clippers to harvest the eggplants.  I was impressed that he could do that.  My favorite quote of the day from J-C was "This is a lot of work!" as we finished up harvesting and then started to wash everything.  It made me smile.  Thanks for noticing.  It sure is...but I like doing it.

The pumpkins are ripening nicely.  The corn has been attacked by European corn borer.  This is the first year that we had them that bad.  Things are terribly dry.  The orange trees are shedding all their leaves to stay alive.  The dryness that we have been experiencing has been good for the pumpkins and onions during ripening and in general we have seen less disease.  I am starting to see hoards of stink bugs.  More than past years.  Those guys are a terror.  I haven't found a way to control them yet.  I am not sure where they come from either.

Something ate all our stone fruits.  They were almost ripe and I only harvested  a handful of nectarines, a few plums, and a couple of peaches.  The nighttime menace got everything else.Very disappointing this year.  I think it was a raccoon.

Cucumbers are looking bad.  Kidney bean trial looked OK.  I might do a bigger trial next year.  I will wait for them to dry out before I harvest them.  Just a few more weeks to go.  I will post some pictures with our next post.