Onions in the Ground

These is now about 1/7th of an acre planted in onions and garlic to be used by the restaurant this year. I finished planting on April 1. Hopefully we can get through all of them now that we have a larger processing space.
The cover crops of oats and peas are in the ground that will provide the amendments for the mangels, squash, and corn that will be planted, hopefully with a no till method.
Tomatoes got transplanted, but we are out of space inside the house under lights, so they are going to be risked outside in the lean-to greenhouse. It looks like there are going to be lows in 30s over the next couple days, so hopefully some of them survive.
Our bigger greenhouses are going up now and hopefully they will be ready for summer planting in by may. We will fill them up proper quick.

What we do with the food that we grow.

October 23, 2011

Pressing grapes

Those gewurtz skins are tough

Tank

Three new pressure tanks to make more champagne.  Let 2011 harvest begin.  Will is cleaning the inside of one.  They are from a beer operation and the tanks all stink like college on Sunday morning

Reaching back

Farming has been the hardest thing in the world to learn.  It takes time and patience combined with land and money.  None of those things are currently available to me. 

never been so proud of myself to kill something

After weeks of trying, I finally caught/killed my first gopher. I didn’t check the traps from a couple days while it was raining. Low and behold when I finally pulled the cover off one of my traps it felt like death. Life loves death, and gopher was completely decimated by maggots, and there was a peculiar white fuzz growing in the hole. This made it hard to clean the trap, but immediately after it was cleaned it was reset and placed in another hole.
The next day there was a dead gopher just laying belly up in the middle of my field. I don’t know what killed it, but I like the trend.
Everything it being planted, weeded, and fertilized on a pretty consistent basis right now. The CSA starts in about 3ish weeks and will be ready. Plants are alive, and now wash sinks need to be set up, and we will be ready to rock.

Bound to Happen

The first round of tomatoes were started indoors under a grow light. Since my greenhouse is finally holding heat, today is the day that I am going to move them out of my house. Our cats must have known. Last night they decided to use the seedling flats as a litter box destroying some of precious pepper starts. No one said this would be easy.

If it is still Thursday.

This has been a pretty crazy week for farming. It began with my continuing demonstration as a terrible carpenter. I got one wall of the greenhouse up and covered with plastic. The other wall is made of straw bales. Laziness is only part of the reason I did this. The greenhouse needs to be opened up in mid summer anyway to let the wind pass through to cool it down. I can just deconstruct the straw bale wall when I need it to be cooler in the greenhouse. The straw is local and no-spray, and it will also be used as mulch over the course of the summer. I need to be adding as much organic material to the soil as possible anyway. This straw will be used as mulch to prevent water evaporation from the soil surface.

With one wood and plastic wall and another made of straw this greenhouse can finally hold some heat. For a little extra oomph I am putting a couple of heat sinks in the greenhouse to maintain temperature for better germination for all the summer crops. With the greenhouse all sealed up, it was time to plant hard. Ten styles of tomatoes went in, about 144 total starts. This will add to the 150 tomato starts started some 3 weeks ago. One of the tomatoes, Big Red Italian, I am growing for seed for Baker’s Creek Heirloom seeds. MarketMore 80 cucumbers, Peppers (sweet, spicy, and hot), heirloom Melons, Watermelons, Winter Squash (Marina Di Chiogga, Delicata, and Georgia Candy Roaster), Summer Squash, basil, summer savory, and lettuce of course.  Eggplants have been started indoors, and the primary variety is Millionaire.

Somewhere in between all the greenhouse action I was inspected for my organic certification from Tilth. This actually took place on Thursday afternoon.  It went well, I learned a little about the vagueness in the system, and because of said vagueness I would probably be issued a non-compliance.  The inspector told me I would just have to comply.  I would not lose my certification and it would not mark against me on the great big bureaucratic board.  The inspector actually told me that I was more organized than most.  Stunned and always feeling like I am wading in disorganization, I did a doubletake, said, “really?”, and thanked the man.  I must throw in a proper thank you to the Small Farms Extension at OSU.  If not for their countless classes, I would have never have been adequately prepared for my certification.

As I saw it, Friday looked like a fine day.  The whole weekend was shaping up. I gave a quick call to my new friend Michael.  He is a very nice man that we met at a Small Farms class,  a neighbor to the field that I am farming, and he is also the owner of a tractor.  A tractor is becoming a very important tool to have available.  Until I work hard enough to earn the money to buy my own tractor, I currently have to beg, barter, or work harder to be able to borrow someone’s equipment.  As it happened, Michael was home, he agreed to some work trade, some starts, and some wine, and then we got the tractor up and running.  Having this tractor at my disposal allowed me to turn the compost pile, move the drum fish fertilizer closer to the injector, and till.  I tilled about  1/2 acre that over the next week will be planted in kales, cabbages, broccoli, bok choy, carrots, onions, lettuce, raab, and potatoes.

While all this is being managed with systematic and strategic organization and forethought, I enjoy spending many a day making sure I get my allowance of chaos.  Watching two two year old does just the trick.  Oy Vey is an understatement.

Where the farm is as of today

April Acceleration

This month seems almost over.  So much is happening at once.   All the fertilizer for the year has been purchased.  There is liquid fish, liquid kelp,  and pelleted chicken fertilizer.  I use some bone meal here and there, but these are going to be the primary amendments (besides mulches and compost) to the soil over the course of the growing season.  All the liquid fertilizer is going be used with a fertilizer injector.  It will be a whole new technique for me to learn; the dilution rates, and the ratios to use for the amount acreage under irrigation so I don’t burn through a years worth of fertilizer in a couple months.

Planting is the name of the game.  Soil mix is made for all the summer crops, direct seeding is going on every three weeks, and lettuce transplants are being planted every other week.  On Thursday turnips, beets, dill, lettuce, scallions, chard, radishes were all direct seeded. On the harvest side of things, lettuce will finally be ready for sale in about two weeks for the restaurant accounts.

The greenhouse is still a pain.  I really need to insulate it down to better germinate all the summer crops.  I have a couple big water storage containers to use as heat sinks in the greenhouse, and I am about to buy straw bales to use the end caps.

I did end up buying some no spray straw to use as mulch, as the weeds are strong, and I need to apply efforts to other things besides weeding daily.  The perennial crops all were mulched.  While I mulched the strawberries I discovered a multitude of gopher runs.  While I have been setting out, and checking traps regularly I have not caught a single varmint.  I am planting back-ups upon back-ups of crops just in case the gophers decide to molest my farm.  I just received some of those underground noise makers to deter them as well.  I will use every tool to rid myself of this problem.

Since restarting a small farm from the ground up the field still doesn’t look like much as of now.  But below, and just above soil level there is tons going on.  Things are growing, and the rain mixed with hot sunny days of spring in Southern Oregon is helping the plants along.  About a half of an acre, everything that is tilled, has been planted with much more on the way.  Next week will hopefully involve more tilling, as transplants need to go in the ground.  Here are some pictures of the field as of today.

This goat just had kids, and Sadie loves baby goats

Puppies are lucky.

The goat is not mine.

Planting sticks

Sadie helped plant about 200 Zinfandel cuttings today. These will be potted up next year after they root in the sandy soil. Then two years from now they might make their way into a vineyard like setting of a mixed use small farm. I want to get another 200 Tempranillo cuttings as well.
Round 2 of carrots were sown today. Three varieties were planted: Baltimore, Parano, and Scarlett Nantes. So far everything that has been direct seeded has germinated rather quickly. Root crops are well on their way for the beginning of CSA.
The cover crop of Oats and Peas are knee high. The pea tendrils on the regular field peas are delicious; so sweet.
The lettuce transplants in the greenhouse are about two weeks out till harvest for lettuce mix.

But the challenges of gopher trapping and weed eliminating are proving difficult.  All part of the fun I suppose.

Lastly, there is the dreadful job of plucking off all the strawberry flowers.  Over the past 2 weeks I have picking the flowers off in order to promote root growth on all the strawberries that were transplanted.  There will be strawberries eventually.

In the Tub