Now THIS is what farming is all about!

HARVEST:

And crops growing crazy big:

And finding out we have our own little Cabbage Patch doll in our summer squash:

OK, maybe Chad just put Sadie into a squash plant, but we can pretend.

I have been out of the field for a while, so everything looks so amazing to me! The squash are massive, and both rounds of corn are looking great, and our cucumbers are starting to take off, and I just can’t believe we started all those tomatoes from seeds:

Now if they would only turn red… At this point, our definition of the color red is changing to be more…well, green with a hint of orange. But when you haven’t had a real honest to goodness tomato in 8 months, then yes. That definitely becomes red.

We are going into our 5th week of our CSA with potatoes, green beans, the last of the turnips, and the beginning of massive amounts of summer squash. We are selling more lettuce mix to a local restaurant, and we got another shareholder for our CSA–so we are up to 8 1/2 boxes a week! And I have 2 more weeks before I can be a full participant in the field work, but that is kind of OK because look who I get to hang out with instead:

Pretty cute, huh?

Squash of Summer & Sunburn

A quick post to brag and show some sunburn.

UFO Squash:

The side with Shade:

Shady Side

Without SPF 50

But the color we’re really waiting for is RED (and orange, pink, purple, “black”, and blood…) Talking about tomatoes of course. Our Thai Pink Eggs are probably going to be the first ones to transition, as they already have a slight pink hue to them. But the others are just gaining in size.

Meanwhile, it’s yellow and green with peppers and squash. We’re snagging the sunburned ones for ourselves as they aren’t good enough for our loyal CSA members. A quick brainstorm also decided that for next year we’ll use a fertilizer with a bit more N in it to promote leaf growth for shade on those blazing afternoons.

Irrigation continues to twease our peace with busts and the like. The t-tape is doing well, but our hops will need tending to. We replaced a giant stretch with our last geyser because the water pressure had expanded the line almost a full size (we could fit the new line into the old one). Then a few days later, that line blew while Ben was in the shower soaped up, so a quick rinse and a curse and a walk down to the field revealed that the hops will have to be watered with hose until the replacements arrive. A friendly call to our irrigation peeps got us the information that we should turn the whole system off at the well-house. 300′ of bunk irrigation tube later, we call that a valuable lesson.

Other than that, it’s hot, smoky from area wildfires, and tomorrow we’re gonna float down the river a bit before a fun family bar-b-que. Chad’s making pork belly.

Irrigation Schmirigation… and an article

Just a quick update here as things are still in full swing and the heat wipes us out man! It sure takes a lot out of you when you have to get up extra early to start the watering and try to accomplish as much as you can before the sun beats you down. Chad finds himself up at 5:00 am with time to water in peace. The fields are on for two hours of drip irrigation… then when its off there’s a little time for repairing tiny puppy teeth

holes in the drip tape. We’ve had a few blows when joints pop out of their connections, which are a pain, but still easy enough to fix. Then one day Gabe was coming home and spotted a good sized geyser. Old Faithful.

When stuff like this happens we have to drop all of our master plans and take however long it takes to fix the damn thing. Water is that important with the heat we’ve been having. But our irrigation problems are common so at least we have that going for us.

The potatoes are looking really good now, so we’re putting those in our CSA baskets this week, and we think we have enough eight ball squashes for everyone and the last of the radishes for now. And we’re finally into the summer herbs - with enough basil to go around and some other tasty things.

Chad and Gabrielle are also featured in an article from the OSU (Oregon State University) Agriculture Weekly, along with some farmer friends over at Blue Fox Farm. Check it out here. And while you’re at it check out Blue Fox Farm’s blog.

And Sadie is growing.

3 weeks in

This Friday marks our third week of delivering CSA boxes to our 8 customers. They are looking good, and finally filling themselves with fresh veggies. This week we delivered 1/2 of mixed greens, carrots, three types of beets, three types of turnips, two types of kale, 1/2 lb of shelling peas, herbs, and radishes. This might be pittance compared to what some other well established farms are offering at this time we are totally proud of ourselves. Going from absolutely nothing when i got here in october of 07 to now, we are feeling good about our progress.
There are still many obstacles to overcome here at Mud Puddle, but we are trying to overcome them without going crazy. Right now our water system is acting up, and that could cause real problems because our baby and plants need water. It is really dry and hot
this is where we rest when the heat of the day overcomes us. There are two hammocks up right now, and one more that i need to put up. they are great for everything from sleeping to resting. Even reading is possible in these hammocks but rarely does it last too long.

It is a bit early for potatoes, the flowers on the plants haven’t totally bloomed yet, and the leaves aren’t dying away. These are the indications that the potatoes are ready to harvest.

This is just out of Control

And we love it, every damn bit of it.

this is my new daughter Sadie. She is absolutely amazing. With her arrival, she is the beginning, and everything else is following suit. Our farm, after much patience and slow growing has taken off. Everything is green, everything is growing. We are fulfilling, although haphazardly, what we came to do. And just in time for Sadie. She is an awesome person. YEAH.
Even though Sadie cannot see the best in her infancy, what we are doing is for her, cause she is us. But this is what We see.

These are our hops. Along with barley, they will make beer. As of now we have not planted barley, but it will take until next year for our hops to reach production size. Even though we lost some, the ones that are growing are growing with vigor. But for hops, vigorousness comes with vertical growth. And boy howdy do we need to get stable trellising to support our hops. Baby needs beer, damnit.

Our peas, after much calamity with Pea Leaf Weevil (asshole), the struggle for the survival of our peas have produced delicious results. We could have had more peas if it was not for pests, but what we do have is enough, and we are happy with the flavor. So sweet. We tried to put these is our CSA boxes but we forgot. Oops. Our members will get their comeuppance this week.
Speaking of our CSA, this Friday will mark the 3rd, count it 3rd, week of our CSA. Our members are happy, and they are going to get it (vegetable-wise) pretty soon here.

Because

this here is around 150 plants of tomatoes, between 15 and 20 varieties. Can you say, “Oh Snap!” Hooray for local production. Take that you salmonella laden, mono culture, corporate agribusiness piece of shit tomatoes.
and peppers, oh my

Finally if there was not enough birthing between babies, and vegetables. PUPPY!

way better than peas…

Everyone, meet Sadie Camille Hahn

Born June 16, 2008 at 10:44pm in Grants Pass, Oregon

7 pounds, 15 ounces

Oregon didn’t fall off the face of the planet…We promise!

Hello, everyone. It has been AGES since we have gotten anything up here, and we are really really sorry about that. We have just had so much to do with the farm, and getting ready for the baby, and everything else.

I had to check and see what all we had written about last, just so I can tell what we have done since then. And it is ridiculous that I haven’t written in nearly a month. So, we have expanded the field. Over doubling the size of what we were working with in just the orchard area. And Chad borrowed the neighbor’s Kubota to distribute the new round of compost we had ordered (by the way, when we ordered this time around we paid about 25% more than we did the first time. This was due to increased gas prices, and time of year being more conducive to gardening…Bottom line: buy all that you need the first time around. Argh.), which made things go much much faster setting up the beds than last time when Chad did every single load of compost by hand  with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. We erected the fencing around the field expansion in sweltering heat, and in a rush to finish because the sun was going down and that is when the deer come, and also it was a Monday, so Chad and I had to get our butts to birthing class to practice labor positions and relaxation techniques. We were working so fast and it was so hot–Kirby and I were nearly passing out and at one point had to have Chad hose us down so we could keep working.

On Memorial Day, Kirby, Chad and I planted 104 tomato plants of various sizes and 12-14 different varieties.  We treated each transplant with Dr Earth’s transplant fertilizer, and then some fish bone meal. This was important because to get your plants to fruit, you have to add a high phosphorus fertilizer. Tomatoes also vitally need calcium to avoid blossom end rot, which of course you find calcium in bones… So we added that, got the tomatoes in the ground, and then top fertilized with organic chicken manure fertilizer.

We planted around 70 pepper plants, both sweet and hot peppers, then a few dozen eggplants. We filled in the row with quite a few different basil varieties.

So those are the 3 most Northern rows in the new section of the field. The eastern half of the next 3 rows were our second succession planting of sweet corn. To fill in the these rows, we got 4 kinds of cucumbers planted (pickling and slicing), summer squashes (including my luffa gourds! I am so excited! I have to give a shout out to my Aunt Chris and Uncle Jerry for always growing these and processing them into sponges–Thanks guys!)

The next rows are all winter squash and pumpkins. These plants take up a lot of room eventually, but in the meantime, we are interplanting lettuce and flowers to maximize our space and our irrigation.

Chad has spent a lot of time getting a permanent irrigation system set-up, speaking of. He has poured over catalogs and consulted with so many people, and drawn sketch after sketch of our whole field to make everything easy and make sense, and also have it be expandable for when we grow.

We’ve rotated our chicken tractor a few times, and they love it. We have a few bugs to work out with it–like the watering system and the nesting boxes. But they look like real chickens now! The other chickens are big enough to be allowed out into the yard area of the coop. They like it a lot.

Our peas have bloomed, have started forming pods, have filled out, and are just about ready to harvest. We probably won’t get as many as we should have–stupid weevils.

Our first round of lettuce greens has been harvested and sold to a restaurant in town. Our broccoli raab was harvested and sold at market. We have been getting tons and tons of strawberries (Kirby says this is her  best year ever for strawberries)–we have given some away, and we have gotten to keep some too. The best ones are the ones I eat while I am picking them straight out of the patch. We have sold a couple more rounds of french breakfast radishes. And our CSA membership is up to 7 shares! We are putting out our first boxes for them this Friday. We will be including turnips, peas, greens, kale, strawberries, herbs, radishes…And whatever else we can get that looks good.

Our blueberries are formed and ready to ripen; we need to protect them from birds. Our corn is about 6-8 inches tall, which rules. Beans are fighting the weevils way better than the peas did. I think that’s because they have the warm weather on their side. We pulled up a beet to peak at its progress, and it was a tiny little red beet! It was awesome. Our sunchokes are doing great–probably close to 2 feet tall. The carrot tops look wonderful, too–we can only hope that the roots are forming well. Same with the potatoes. By all assumptions based on their greens, we are going to have one hell of a potato harvest…They are looking so so good!

So, things are going pretty well around the farm. We have gotten fall seed catalogs in the mail, and need to think about late summer planting, both for fall harvest and for overwintering for early spring harvest. Bottom line? There is ALWAYS work to be done.

That is OK though, because Ben is only 30 minutes away as I type this. He will be such a huge help around here. I feel so relieved that Chad will have someone to rely on for farm assistance because I am getting lazier and lazier (hello a month between posts…)

Speaking of visitors, my mom gets here tomorrow! This will also be great so we can do all the last minute things we need for the baby. And then she can be here for the arrival of her first grandchild, so it is a win-win situation for all of us.

OK. Pictures to come. Soon. Of our chickens, and our tiny tiny tomatoes forming, and one more of me before I get to hold the baby in my arms!

City Mouse, Country Mouse

(post by Ben)

There are countless versions of the fable: it’s either a cat-dog-mousetrap-maid that scares the mice cousins out of the pantry-cupboard-cellar-restaurant… but the moral is generally the same (this one being my favorite): “Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.”

In case you forgot the story, a city mouse goes to visit his cousin in the country and helps him work on his farm. The city mouse is a little lazy, and complains a lot about the food and the work and how there’s not a lot of “people” around… then the country mouse goes to visit the city mouse and is amazed at how plentiful the food is, the “people” (human and rodent) only to be scared back to the country by the dog-cat-trap-maid which leads him to his moral.

Why is the country mouse judging so harshly his own food culture (what’s wrong with beans and bacon?) and saying that city food culture (where’d they get the ingredients for their cakes and ale anyway?) is almost worth dying for?

—-

The inspiration for growing our own Mud Puddle Produce happened in Chicago, a city famous for cakes and ale (okay — famous for hot dogs, baseball, “Chicago-style” pizza, beer… and the “Best Restaurant” in the country, Alinea) and also “famous” for fear (okay, a lot of cities are… but Chicago has the most infamous gangters and gangstas; the first serial killer; and the most recent elevated train derailment).

Almost one year ago (20 June 2007, I saved the email), Gabrielle, Chad, Jason, and me were sitting outside eating some fancy food with some surprisingly un-fancy ingredients: grilled monk-fish (”poor man’s lobster”) with a tasty corn and pork-rind relish. It’s too perfect as a background to such an ostentatious first year of farming. I had just gotten back from a month couchsurfing in France and Ireland, Chad and Gabe were about to go to France and Italy for a month themselves; I became obsessed with French Breakfast Radishes (our first harvest!). Gabe’s old apartment overlooked a police station and also overlooked the WORST intersection in Chicago (while cat-sitting I saw/heard five accidents over one weekend). Here we were just wanting to grow stuff to eat and get out of the city.

And here we are doing it.

Take a group of city friends with unlimited culinary and business skills and throw them at the most beautiful county in Oregon and let them grow as great a variety of fruits and vegetables that the deer, the heat-waves, and the notorious Pea Leaf Weevil will allow, and see what happens. For the good of the earth and all of those on it, for our own sanity… and to make new friends and get acquainted with the ones we haven’t seen in awhile.

What I’m gettin’ at is this country x city mouse is gettin’ home while the gettin’ is good…

(Also, it’s almost time for your first CSA box! You better get ready!!!)

Rage Against the Deer?

Because of the heat we have been having, last night we decided not to close up the greenhouse. It isn’t getting much below 60 at night, and I figured the plants could use the fresh air. The deer, I thought, would be too timid to venture past all the crazy stuff we have in there.

This morning Chad was up and out of the house at 5:30am to do some measurements for where we are putting the new fence posts in (for what? Deer fencing, naturally) because our neighbor Roy has a nifty Kubota tractor that he has an auger attachment for, and he offered to come help us dig the holes rather than making Chad do them all by hand again.

SO–I was lazy and slept another 45 minutes, and then got up and fed the dogs, and checked on the baby chickens in their coop (when we moved the bigger ones to the tractor, the little ones got moved to the coop Ben and I repaired. They still seem to be kind of freaked out by all the space they suddenly have:

But I think they will work it out just fine.) And then I took feed down to the big chickens, and went to start to get things watered. Chad and Roy were fixing something with the tractor, lubing the auger, it looked like, and I went over to say hi. Chad said to me, “You aren’t going to be happy this morning.” I thought Uh-oh, but thought that maybe something was wrong with the tractor, and we weren’t going to get any digging done or something. So, I asked why, and he said, “Deer got in the greenhouse. They ate the tomatoes.” At this point, I am worried. We have over 100 tomato plants in there, to say nothing of peppers and herbs, and squash. I am wondering how much they got to, and also kicking myself for thinking that anything with nature would go like I expect it to at this point. Haven’t I learned anything from the 4 months I have been out here? Then Chad says, “And your avocado.”

WHAT??! My one lone avocado that I started from a pit out of an avocado we ate like you do in a grade school classroom? And that took 3 weeks to even show any signs of life, and then took another 3 months to grow a big long root and then had just gotten leaves so I was FINALLY able to plant it in dirt in a pot? Two weeks ago, it looked like this:

Yesterday, it looked even better. It loves the warm weather and the rabbit manure I put in the soil for it. The leaves were at least doubled in size from this picture. Today, it looks like a 3 inch stem stuck in some dirt. God damn those deer. Action must be taken. I am watching Caddyshack, to brush up on Bill Murray’s retaliation methods against gophers, and trying to translate that into something suitable for deer. OK, maybe not dynamite, but something really bad needs to happen to those animals.

They got a few of the tomatoes. They seemed to prefer the biggest ones. Which is great, because there goes all hope at having early tomatoes this year. I got some fertilizer into the pots, and we just have to hope they all put out new, and stronger leaves.

Tonight, the greenhouse is shut up tight. And the fence post holes were dug, so as of Monday, those deer are going to have even less area around here to graze on. Hopefully they get the point and begin hanging out somewhere else entirely.

Let’s end with pictures of the latest wildflowers on the property while we think calming thoughts of the ocean, or beautiful sunsets, or legs of venison spit roasting over a giant fire…

This one is called Pussys Ears.

Don’t know this ones name.

Don’t know what this one is either, but it looks vaguely orchid like. Maybe a wild variety?

The blue lilies are up as well, but I forgot to take a picture of that one…Next time, I promise. And they really are everywhere. It is crazy–like a sea of blue wildflowers in parts of the property. Must be deer resistant…

Heat Wave

We are in the midst of some record high temps here for so early in the year. Yesterday Chad and I drove past the Fairground thermometer and it said 104…Yikes for us! This has meant long, lazy days where I hide indoors and try to stay cool. Well, actually, we get up and moving really early, and then at 11am when it is too hot for me to be in the sun anymore, then I move inside and try to get stuff done around the house. It is just so hot though… The cats lay all sprawled out, and I follow suit. Then, in the evening, when the temps are a little more humane, I make the rounds again, and see what needs more water and how the plants and animals are functioning through the heat.

On Monday, we got a chicken tractor built with some help from RJ over at Blackberry Lane. This is a shot of me inside installing nesting boxes. Yep, go ahead, make “nesting” jokes…

Then Chad and I got chickens moved in. They really love being able to scratch in all the grass. The first night was a little nerve-racking for me, because I kept envisioning going out the next morning to remnants of a fox or coyote buffet, but all has been well for them. They pant in the heat, and I am trying to keep them as cool as possible, but when I can’t even manage that for myself, well…

Pretty neat, huh? So the theory behind this is based on Joel Salatin’s grass farming at Polyface Farm, where I first heard about the whole concept of pastured poultry. It turns out, as with so many other things, this is not a new concept at all… But one we are really excited about having in place around here. Hopefully the predators stay away, or else we will have to get a guard llama!

Also on Monday, Chad planned out our irrigation needs for what we have planted right now, and got it all ordered. On Wednesday, it arrived, and Thursday morning, we got up really early and laid the lines for it.

Those black lines you see are the drip irrigation lines running off the main line. Chad had a really good time putting it all together. I helped, but got really distracted by our baby corn plants:

Of course, there are a million pests for these too, so we have to up our protection methods for all our plants. Sigh. I didn’t particularly like bugs before, and NOW, well, let’s just say I am very fond of things like frogs and turtles and birds…

Oh! Speaking of birds! I will just say that the big scoreboard for my life is currently at Birds 2 Gabrielle 0. After the great chicken escape of a couple weeks ago, I had yet another encounter with a fine feathered fellow, but this time it was inside the house. I was sitting at the computer, and I noticed that Amelia was behaving very oddly with our little wood burning stove. Normally, she isn’t even really around the thing, but this day, she wouldn’t leave it alone. After about 15 minutes of her clawing at it, I was finally fed up, and I went over to grab her and make her sit in my lap. As I got close to the stove, I heard a little noise from inside. Well, I opened up the door enough to peak in, and there was one of the barn swallows we have been seeing around the house lately. I slammed the door shut really quickly and went about what I was doing. I took Chad lunch a little bit later and asked if he was ready to tackle the next problem of the day, and told him about the bird. Well, he said, if it is still in the when I get home from work tonight, we will take care of it. We went back up to the house a little but later, and while he was on the computer, I decided to have another peak inside the stove. The bird was calmly sitting in the back corner, and I once again closed the door. I went and got a box, thinking that I would open the door, and the bird would try to fly out, and I would have the box there waiting, and smoothly transfer the bird back to its outside life. Right. The bird wouldn’t come out, and while I had the box tilted away from the opening to get my hand inside to shoo it out, THEN it flew, and didn’t fly neatly into the box, but proceeded to fly around the living/dining/kitchen area.

The cats, by the way, thought this was fantastic. They were running around the floor right under the bird like laser guided missiles, so the game became “try to shoo the bird out, and not trip over a cat”.
I opened the 2 sliding doors, and had Chad open the front door. The bird would perch on the top of the door, and then swoop right back inside. After a few minutes, he finally made it out the front door, while Matilda and Amelia sat with tails swishing at their loss. I went back to washing the nesting boxes for the inside of the chicken tractor, and Chad went back to the computer. A couple minutes later, Chad poked his head outside the door and said, “Uhm. I think we have a new pet.” I could only groan and ask what had possibly happened at this point, and he said, “The bird is back in the stove.” Obviously, they are trying to make a nest and the wire that should be on the chimney is not… Well, this time, Chad dealt with it. He opened the stove, stuck his hand in, caught the bird, brought it outside, and let it go. (That would be Bird 0 Chad 1. I need to take lessons.) It has yet to come back. Hopefully we traumatized it enough that it will pick another nesting site…