Learning the life of a farmer

It was a CRAZY August here. Lots of harvesting, planting and visitors. We started our winter brassicas (members of the broccoli family) in the greenhouse in mid-August. We planted four different types of heirloom cabbage, broccoli, collard greens, and cauliflower. We have been direct-seeding in the ground our chicories (Italian salad green, like lettuce) since the beginning of August in successions. We are also still doing our weekly plantings of lettuce, beets, carrots, etc. We are now doing twice weekly plantings of lettuce since as the days get shorter, it will take much longer to mature to a harvestable size. We hope to have lettuce until November. Our melons are ripe and so are our tomatoes (although limited) and we have been enjoying summer squash and cucumbers for a while now. I have been making weekly batches of refrigerator pickles with the ones that we can't send to the restaurants.


The pumpkin patch


The freshly weeded chard patch with the cosmos flowers blooming in the left hand side of the photo and the trellised cucumbers on the right hand side.

There is one summer fruit we planted and will not be enjoying much of. Our tomatoes have been hit with late blight. Late blight is a plant disease that attacks mainly tomatoes and potatoes (it was the major factor in the potato famine in Ireland). Late blight is caused by an oomycete pathogen that survives from one season to the next in infected plants or in the ground. This organism is well known for its ability to produce millions of spores from infected plants under the wet weather conditions that favor the disease (it has been an incredibly foggy and wet August here). Early in the season, the disease can be introduced into a field or garden on infected plants, from volunteer plants growing from diseased plants that were not harvested last season, compost piles, or infected tomato transplants brought into the area. Spores produced on infected potatoes and tomatoes can travel through the air, land on infected plants, and if the weather is sufficiently wet, cause new infections. It causes the stem to turn brown in sections and leaves to die and turn brown.


The "blighted" tomato plant.

However the blight got to our farm, it has infected almost all of our plants. We will still have some tomatoes, but at a limited yield. It is truly heartbreaking and hard to move past. I am just glad that we are a very diversified farm and do not just grow tomatoes, or otherwise life would be much worse for us. That is one of the joys of being a small, organic, polyculture farm. One crop may die, but at least there are lots of other plants of different varieties growing too. We put A LOT of hard work into our tomato plants though, between starting them in mid-March, transplanting at the end of May, making and installing a trellis system, weeding, trellising and watering. This whole experience has helped us to realize just how hard farming is. You can do everything right and then the weather and a little bad luck blow in, and you could lose it all. It will effect our profitability, but hopefully not to much. Next year for our tomatoes we will choose a different spot for them, plant different varieties and successions ... and pray for drier spring/summer weather!

Another thing farmers have to deal with, is the weather. This August, is the coldest on record in the area. There has been a lot of fog and cool nights, as low as 45 degrees. Our plants, especially cucumbers, have been producing very slowly. Then, 23rd and 24th of August, it was over 95 degrees on the farm. Most of our plants were not used to this kind of heat. Some of our melons, which we had been waiting on to ripen for three weeks, got fried. The tomatoes that were red on the vine also fried. We did not lose anything else though and we harvested twice as much summer squash as usual on the following Thursday! I guess you win some and you lose some.

The egg that our dear hen Buffy was sitting on hatched the day after our last post (a bit over a month now) and has grown so much. It (not sure if it is a boy or girl yet) now has all of its real chicken feathers, not just the downy feathers if was born with. It has been a real blast watching it grow. All four of our chickens are laying now, which is nice. Brian got to brew his first ten gallon batch of beer in mid-August thanks to some new brewing supplies from dad; another IPA.


The chick with momma on July 16th, the day it was born.


All of our chickens grubbing on spent grain from beer brewing; you can see how big the chick has gotten (it is in the bottom left of the photo).

We always are paying close attention to how things are growing, and as long as a farmer has a field full of plants, there's always something to be thankful for.

Summer is FINALLY here!

Things are growing like crazy here on the farm now that it has been getting warmer. The summer squash now have flowers and tiny fruit, the tomato plants are thigh high and starting to set fruit, some of the first cucumbers are almost ready to eat, and the 1st batch of melon plants are sprawling all over! Our first real heat wave is coming on, so what better time for a summer BBQ?!


The tomatoes. Compare with the photo from the blog post on 6/22!


The cucumbers on the trellis and broccoli and chard in the foreground.

We are now in our second week of selling to restaurants. Right now we are bringing them: baby mustard mix, spinach, chard, kale, anchocress, peppercress, arugula, rucola, turnips, radishes, basil, and various herbs. We will start selling Italian broccoli, lettuce, and cucumbers next week and summer squash the following week. We will not have tomatoes and melons until mid-August most likely.


Our beautiful radishes, washed and ready to be boxed.

Now that we are harvesting and eating the first of our summer crops, we are starting to plan our winter crops, which we will have to start planting around the beginning of August. We plan to grow collards, broccoli, cabbage, chicories (Italian winter green like lettuce), root crops, chard, kale, garlic, brussel sprouts, mache, and winter squash/pumpkins (10 varieties). The winter squash/pumpkins we actually started this last weekend in our greenhouse; we have over 1600 starts! These will go out around the 1st of August into the portion of the field that has been under cover crop since mid-May.


Our 1650 pumkin and winter squash starts in our greenhouse.

The clayey soil here is continuing to surprise and frustrate us. The lime treatment we did to some parts of the field will hopefully work over the long-term, but we haven't seen much improvement yet in the tilth of the soil. On the bright side, the soil in the areas we have started to turn over from our first round of crops does seem to be working up pretty nicely. We figure it can only get better from here.

We have some good news and some bad news about our chickens... yesterday two of our hens disappeared, probably result of a coyote. Barbara our Barred Rock and our little Wellsummer went out in the morning and didn't return at night. On the bright side, Buffy our Buff Orpington hen is 3 weeks in to her broodiness with 2 eggs under her - she should be a mom soon. One of the eggs is hers and one is Barbara's, so Babs may yet live on at the farm in some form. Buffy is definitely the sweetest of the hens so she should be a great mom.

Happy Summer Solstice!

Well, all our transplants are now in the ground. We planted out all of our tomatoes, our second round of cucumbers and melons, and our greenhouse is pretty much empty!! We have finally had some hot days on the farm; we had one weekend where it was in the mid-80's. The heat is great for sun loving crops, like tomatoes. A lot of our tomatoes were quite pot bound and nutrient deprived once we FINALLY got them in the field. They were turning purple, which is a sign of potassium deficiency. Potassium is released from the soil once it heats up, which has now happened. Our early girls, mortgage lifters, and all our other varieties are looking very healthy and happy. We do not expect to have a tomato on the farm until mid to late August, but at least they are looking much happier now.

Our tomatoes have now been staked, we are just tying them all up to the stakes. The system seems to be working good so far, but the real test well be when the plants are weighed down with fruit!


The staked tomatoes.


Our cucumbers from the first round have been staked too.

We have been direct-seeding into the field now for a month. A lot of people find it interesting that we plant every week, all through the growing season. This is very different from home gardening. On a farm, you must always have a fresh product for market. Every week we plant: lettuce (several varieties), filet beans (until mid-July), turnips, cress, spinach, mustard greens (3 varieties), and beets (3 varieties). Every other week we plant bush beans (3 varieties), dill, chervil, cilantro, carrots (rainbow), arugula, rucola, and radishes. We will continue this planting schedule until about mid-august, when we start seeding our winter crops. You have to get the winter crops in early so they have time to grow to a decent size before the days are too short and the weather is to cool.

Some of our crops that we planted on June 5th (our first planting) are almost ready to sell. We hope that by the end of next week we can take the restaurants some cress, mustard greens, arugula, kale, herbs, and possibly chard. I think at this point Brian and I will fell like we have really accomplished something!


Our first seeding into the field is growing!!

Other news around the farm: We got three new little hens on the 9th. They are only 2 months old and are very cute. We picked out a Welsummer (lays dark brown eggs), a Rhode Island Red, and a Ameracauna (lays green/blue eggs). They seem to be getting along with the older hens/rooster, but not really hanging out with them. They will not being laying until September.



Brian has been doing some fishing at the pond and has landed some very large bass (2 pounders), some of which we ate. Hanging out at the pond after working in the sun all day is the perfect way to end the day!

Transplanting like crazy!

Well, its been a while since the last post since things have been very busy around here. We got the field disced the second time on around the 15th. After the second disk, we realized that we were going to need a rototiller since the soil here is fairly clayey and did not break up as much as we would of liked. We rented one on the 16th, since it was supposed to rain on the 17th. We worked until 11pm, but we got it all rototilled before the rains came! The soil looked much better in most spots, but there were still some areas that had fairly large clumps of clay.


Brian, driving our tractor with the rototiller attachment we rented


On the left, the soil has been rototilled; you can see the difference from the soil on the right, which has not.

We planted a quarter of our field in black eyed peas, which we are using as a cover crop. A cover crop is simply a crop that covers your field, helps block out weeds, increases soil fertility (especially nitrogen), helps prevent soil erosion, and breaks up soil. We are planning to leave the cover crop in the field until August, when it is time to put pumpkin/winter squash transplants into the field.

We started transplanting into the field by the 24th, but it was slow going in spots because of those clay clumps. Well, nature was on our side this time and sent us just over a half inch of rain on the 25th. We realized after this rain, that our spader (the closest thing we have to a tractor) broke up the soil very nice after it had been "re-soaked". We have a BCS rototiller with a Tortella spader, which works up the soil very well; it is quite the beast though! We have now spaded 1/2 the field, and most of it looks great. For the spots that still have clay clumps, we bought some agricultural lime, which is 100% natural and organic. The lime helps to break up those clay clumps.


Brian using the spader to work in the lime in a rather clayey spot!

We have transplanted a lot into the field now. We just planted out our first round of cucumbers (4 varieties) and Melons (2 varieties), along with a ton of cauliflower, kale, chard, and two of our four varieties of tomatoes. We also did our first succession of direct seeding in the field. We will we planting certain things, like lettuce and spinach, once a week, all through the summer to ensure we always have a fresh supply for the restaurants. We should hopefully be selling vegetables to the restaurants in a month.


Our 500 early girl tomato tranplants


Mary, working on transplanting.

We have had some help getting all this stuff done. A cook from one of the restaurants has been coming three days a week and Brian's cousin will start coming several times a week also!! We could not do it without some help.

Other news around the farm........
The chickens are doing great! Our rooster is healthy and crowing all day long and our hen has been broken from her broodiness. We are now getting about three eggs a day. Brian and I are both starting to feel like real farmers. We have definitely learned that you have to watch the weather and learn to just "roll with it". It is humbling to be at the mercy of nature, but also very refreshing. This May, we have received 1.6" of rain, which is about an inch over average May rainfall! This is good for a state that has been in a drought the last three years.

The field has been disced

Well, it has been a busy week here on the farm. Most importantly, the field was disced last Thursday by our neighbors ranch manager. We, the farm, do not own a tractor, we just have a walk behind spader (small, looks like a rototiller). We were so excited when we saw the neighbors tractor out in our field and his ranch manager hooking up the disc to it. He drove the disc around the field about three times on Thursday, which broke up the soil very nicely. He will do the same one more time this week, once some of the biomass has broken down.


The field getting disced the first time around

Another excitment: We got our chickens! We ended up getting three hens and a rooster from a guy that was moving up in Sonoma. We got a pair of buff orpingtons, a barred rock and a sexling. We have already got about 10 eggs from them! The orpingtons are having a little trouble adjusting to their new home though. The female has gone broody (Disposed to sitting on eggs to hatch them), which would be fine, except she has no eggs to hatch! We put some fake, marble eggs in the coop so that the chickens would know where to lay their eggs and she adopted some of these. The reason it is not a desirable state to have your chicken in is because she does nothing but sit in her hen box! She does not eat, drink, lay more eggs, or go outside. So, we are trying to break it by keeping her out of the chicken coop and in a cage in the barn. Our rooster is having some bowel issues. We took him to the vet last week after noticing blood in his stool. We kept him inside for a day and he seemed great; everything was normal. Well, after a day back out, he was constipated again! We did not want to pay to take him to the vet again, so he has moved inside again where we have been feeding him things to try and "lube" him up ( apples, strawberries, peanut butter, and even vaseline). Sounds like a pretty good gig to me! (except the eating of vaseline) He has been waking us up with his crowing now the last two mornings at 5:30am! He then continues crowing until around 10am. We are really hoping he gets back to "regular" soon so that he can move back out!! We built the chickens a little run to play in until they get used to their coop, after which time we will allow them free range into the yard. They always get locked into the coop at night though to protect them from the abundance of wild life out here!


The pair of buff orpintons and the sexling.


The barred rock out in the run we built.

We moved a lot of the vegetables that are ready to be transplanted out of the greenhouse when we saw the field being disced last week. We are hardening them off -- getting them ready for cooler temperatures and more wind. We moved out our cauliflower, kale, some of our tomatoes, and chard. At night these vegetables are covered with remay crop cover, a woven fabric, to help keep them a little warmer. We are hoping these will be planted out by the end of this week or the beginning of next. We did get another 4/10th of an inch of rain on Sunday/Monday, which will delay discing by a day or two, but mostly we were very happy about the rain. It really broke up the soil and saturated it very nicely. We also started half our melons and cucumbers this week along with some watermelon. We are not going to grow a whole lot of watermelon this year, it is more of an experiment. We are trying two seedless varieties so see how they do and growing one big,red one. Oh, we can't wait for those to be ready (probably not until August)!


The plants being hardened off are under the white "box". Our greenhouse behind it and the beautiful disced field in the background.

Anticipation is really starting to build now, and we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel - the tunnel being an unusually wet and cold spring! With only 6 weeks left until summer, we know that the cool damp weather has to be coming to an end. Mornings are still quite crisp, with temps dipping in to the mid 40's. They say the warm season extends quite late around here, so we'll be hoping for that indian summer to bring hot weather in through September/October. Well we need to get out to work now, but hopefully our next entry will be all about everything we've been planting and transplanting in the field!

Its May!

Well, it's May and I think the rains have stopped! We definitely have a lot of water in the pond to last through the season and the ground is pretty well saturated! We are really hoping to have the discer (plow) in the field this week. It seemed that throughout April, every time the field finally dried, it would rain again, and not just a little, but 2" of rain in a day!! As they say "April showers bring May flowers"...

This week we worked on our tomato trellises. We are gathering redwood boughs (off the ground) to use instead of buying some cheap (but not really that cheap) lumber from the store. We cut the boughs to 8' long, criss-cross two pieces and screw them together to make an "X". Then we put a bar across the bottom to help reinforce them. Once we get them into the field, we will space them every 15' straddling 2 rows of tomatoes and run wire the length of the row connected to the top of our "X"'s. The tomatoes are supported with twine connecting from the plant to the wire above. The plant will then grow up the twine, hopefully to the top of the trellis. We have never tried this before, but we think it will work. We did install one in our "experimental" garden, where our heirlooms are planted.



Our tomato trellis

Yesterday, we got our chicken coop delivered to the farm! It is a 4x4x4 cube, which can hold up to 12 chickens, but we will probably only have 5 chickens. We have started looking for layers on craigslist; we are really looking forward to the fresh eggs (and manure)! It is very sad how chickens on large scale farms get treated; beaks and wings clipped, no room to turn around, etc. If you can grow your own or find someone who sells them off their farm, I would highly recommend buying them this way. Even some of the "free range" chicken eggs you can get in the store have their beaks clipped. Chicken beaks are like our fingers! They use them to explore the world and pick stuff up. Also, farm eggs or free range chicken eggs are MUCH healthier for you. The chickens eat food that is more natural to them, grass, bugs, worms, etc and their eggs are much higher in Omega fatty acids (the ones that are super good for you). If you can't buy eggs from a farm, then at least try to buy the ones at the store that are free-range, because these chickens do have the opportunity to go outdoors.


One side of the new coop


The other side, which you see inside the roost and laying boxes

Things are going good in the greenhouse and many things are really ready to go out in the field! I feel like somedays, our tomatoes double in size in the green house. We are hoping to start our cucumbers and melon seeds soon. We will grow Armenian cucumbers, french cantaloupes, "regular" cantaloupes, pickling cucumbers and English cucumbers (more your standard cucumber). We are really looking forward to eating these crops!!


The early girl tomatoes, which are looking great!

Other than that, not much has been going on. Brian and I have been getting out on more road bike rides, doing anywhere between 14 and 25 miles. Brian brewed his 2nd batch of "all grain beer" and we have been enjoying drinking his first batch. Kazy is doing lots of hunting of voles and mice -- up to 3 in a day!

On our own now!

This is a picture of the farm we run from a-far with the pond!

Well, its been way too long and I sort of lost track of time with my blog! Sorry!

Brian and I left our internship at our last farm a little early, on Christmas. We left because we got an offer to manage a three acre farm in Woodside, which has been in existence for 9 years, for a bay area restaurant group. After seeing the property and the unique opportunity, we could not say no. We felt we had learned enough at our farming internship to try it ourselves! The farm is in the Santa Cruz mountains, within the rural area of Woodside. There are three acres of farmland set on a 600 acre cattle ranch. We can see the ocean from the house and farm and are surrounded by redwoods! Brian and I will run the farm and sell vegetables to three bay area restaurants. We have about 40 to 50 varieties of vegetables planned for the season. We live on the property in a barn that has been converted to a very nice house. We have our own kitchen and an indoor toilet (at the internship we just had a port-o-potty). There is also a beautiful pond that we are really looking forward to swimming in on hot days!


The barn, which we live in the left-hand third of. The center is actual barn, and the right hand side is a garage.


The pond, which ducks live in and we intend to swim in!!

After leaving our internship we went back to Mexico, this time to the Yucatan. We drove, had an amazing time visiting all the ruins and cenotes, and racked up 10K on our trusty Subaru! It was a great trip.
We moved out to our new farm on March 1st and have not been able to get into the field yet since we have had SO MUCH rain, which is a good thing. We have been planting a ton in our greenhouse (which is a hoop house made of PVC and greenhouse plastic, which is 40' long and stuffed to the gills). We have over a thousand transplanted tomatoes, a lot of kale, chard and cauliflower. We also have some eggplant, basil, and herbs started. We are now just waiting out all these rain storms to actually plant in the field!!


A shot inside the greenhouse.

We have also built some "New Zealand Compost Boxes" and are making plans for a chicken coop. It is time, finally. We want to get between 5 to 10 mixed purpose chickens to have around. We also have a small garden area that is not far from the house (separate from the 3-acres) in which we planted heirloom tomato starts and potatoes. It is our test garden. We want to try some things before planting a ton of it and then not liking it! Oh, and not to forget, our cat Kazy, has been helping us to reduce the population of voles and mice around here!

I will really try to keep this thing updated this time, but we shall see. Hope it's a great growing season this year!

This is a shot of the field a bit more "up-close"; from our deck.