Week 4, 2012

Things are going well this season so far.  The veggies are looking better than they have in the past.  Our beans and broccoli are some of the best we have grown.  The weather has been warm but good to grow in despite the lack of rain.  We just planted in beets, more collards, cabbage, red mizuna, and a variety of herbs.  I would also like to thank my globe trotting, techie cousin Gavin from Ireland who made a guest appearance at Steed Farms and helped to plant a row of broccoli with my brother Pat.  Out of all the things he could have wanted to do in Central Florida, working for a day at the farm was up on his list.  I wasn't able to make it to see him work as I have had a crazy busy end of the year with my day job and being on leave with the newborn as well as tending to a sick wife but I very much appreciate the time he gave in planting the crop.  We will keep you updated with the broccoli.  I'll even call it Gavin and Pat's row.  Thanks for your help guys.    

 I am trying to pot the herbs into pots this year to see if I can get a multiple year harvest off them.  I transferred the mint into three gallon pots to better find it year after year from the weeds that grow in the fields.  Once I mow the mint and the surrounding area down after the fall it takes me hours to extract weeds from the mint and control it again to be able to harvest.  So I figured that maybe growing it in pots might help with the annual problem of mint management.  We will see.

We have been having some aphids pretty bad in the diakons and the turnip greens but I hate to spray them.  It is somewhat counter productive, but when the aphid population builds up there usually is a massive build up of predators that takes place shortly thereafter.  This year the predator response has been late in arrival but finally this week I was starting to see some really strong numbers of lady bugs and parasitic wasps doing their jobs.  I hope you guys are hungry!

Our first delivery went well and I am thinking that this will be a big area for our future.  It is a little logistically challenging at the moment for our size but we will grow into it.

I have been rooting some cassava I got from a friend from my church missionary trip.  She was growing some at her house and gave me a cutting last year.  Apparently you just stick it in the ground and it grows.  It will not survive the winters at our location so you harvest before the cold.  I planted it last year and we had one night of a freeze and it killed the plants to nearly the soil line.  They bounced back and it grew all year.  We harvested and boiled it.  Not bad at all.  It tastes a lot like potato but you will need to change out the water a few times as you boil it.  We sent in the cooked roots to Anna's class that was having a lunch on root crops in science class.  It would make a nice addition to our line up of veggies with a starch crop for the beginning of the season.

Here are some of the pictures I have been talking about.

Gavin, Pat, Me and Catherine Rose (she didn't help plant anything yet).

Passing through the plot with Nate.

Picture of the field.

Another angle.

The north plot.

Veggies and nutsedge weed problem.

The "new" bean/corn seeder.

My truck was totaled by a person on a call who drove through a red light.  Please drive with total attention and leave hand held electronics off in the car!

The demolished greenhouse after the bad windstorm.

A baby bunny at the farm.  It wouldn't move even after I told it I could see it hiding in plain sight.

Season Start 2012-13

Its hard to believe but the new season is upon us.  I have been somewhat reluctant to start the first blog post of the season this year.  I guess time is at a premium and leisure time to sit and write a blog is scarce.  Anyway, the first season pickup is tomorrow so I thought I can't delay it any longer. 

This summer I have converted out previously ornamental producing ground that has just been holding plants for the past three plus years into new vegetable ground.  I used the frontend loader to scrape off the plants and then ripped up the groundcover.  I then cut out the irrigation and converted it to drip lines.  It was very heartbreaking to see our plant blocks reverting back to bare ground after all the work and money we spent to put groundcover and irrigation lines in to grow plants.  But now it is being utilized to produce food and better yet, is that these vegetable blocks will be on a timer so I can set up the irrigation without being there everyday to turn on and off water.  I used tree and leaf litter from the prunings along the power lines that was done nearby and  placed a couple of inches of the organic matter on top and tilled it in.  I then planted cowpeas and surghum x sudan grass and tilled that in.  We then had tons of rain and I watched as nearly all the cowpeas nearly drowned.  I have never seen that much water standing for so long at the farm.  Eventually the waters subsided and I was able to start our season off.  I had made a plan B thinking that I might not be able to work the ground for planting but things worked out alright. 

We have had an interesting summer to say the least.  Our farm was burglarized twice and my shop was broken into with almost all my tools that were worth anything stolen.  My work truck was totaled after someone ran a red light and T-boned me.  Then a windstorm knocked a tree into the mobile home and smashed out a window and the high winds ripped off the plastic on a greenhouse and crushed the roof frame.  All this happened in the span of about a month.  We have not taken care of the damage to the greenhouse yet but it is somewhere down on the list of things to do.  My Dad asks how can I deal with all this and keep going.  My reply is faith, prayers, and grace.  I readily accept the good things from the Lord, I should try just as readily to accept the trials.  Our bible memory verse for a while was from Job.  "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Lord."   But summer is now behind us and the season is starting out looking good.  And there are always blessings to enjoy like the birth of Katherine Rose, our #4, born on 11/4 at 10:44 weight 7 lb 4 oz. 

The weather since things have gone into the ground has been great for growing minus some light rains which always is better than many irrigations.  I'm not sure why but one rain event is like the effect of a dozen irrigations.  The plants are growing fine otherwise and the breaking of new ground helps.  This year I used the tractor to form beds with the wheels.  I am gearing up for tractor use later on and practicing making rows.  I will need to use less hand labor if we want to do more with less.  Over the summer I bought a tactor mounted bean/corn seed planter from a retiring farmer.  I used it to plant the beans in the bed and it worked like a charm.  I was able to offset it on the tractor and went down one side of the bed to plant a row and turned around and finished the other row in the bed at just the right spacing.  I am super excited to plant beans now and can't wait to try it for the corn.  I also bought an antique looking transplanter a the same time.  I tried to use it with my brother and broke the chain that drove the wheel.  I let him take it home to work on during his spare time.  When it was working it was doing a good job when it planted a plant (which was about one in ten times).  We need to tweak it and get some practice in with it.  I think it will be ready for next year's season and if working properly it will save tons of time.

We have planted beans, cucumbers, turnips, arugula, broc. raab, diakon radish, bok choy, komatsuna, carrots, kohlrabi, mustards, mizuna, tomato, kale, collards, cabbage in the field or greenhouse.  Everything but the cucumbers are doing great.  I really need a downey mildew resistant cucumber.  I haven't found one yet. 

We are looking forward to meeting with all the old and new supporters showing up tomorrow morning and starting twenty four weeks of fresh, local, organic produce.  We are also starting a delivery route tomorrow for the first time.  We will see how that goes.  I'll blog about it with lots of pictures from the summer that I didn't include with this post.

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.