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.

Joys and Sorrow

Finally, the tractor support came in the middle of the month. The soil at the new place is really sandy, and in a super sunny location. It drys out quickly, and there was a window this month to carve a couple rows. My friend Ted, who has a tractor, drove it down from his property up the road. Three hours later I was returning the tractor and tiller. I was overjoyed with efficiency. They were right, tractors were made for a reason.

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The tractor carved 5 ft wide beds. I have 4 ft wide beds in my farm plan, but I will have to work with what I have. I immediately planted the beds with rows of spinach, beets, turnips, carrots, radishes. There were enough beds carved in this first tillage for this first round of direct seeding, then a second similar round of direct seeding, as well as a large round of brassica and lettuce transplants.

This Earthway seeder is nice, but not very precise.

I have a greenhouse full of the second and third round of seedlings, and I am about ready to start on the fourth round of lettuce. I am keeping up the schedule of planting lettuce every twoish weeks for the rest of the year.  I got to make some green.  I planted the first round of tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse.  Even though it still doesn’t have any endcaps on it,  the field gets so warm in the mornings, and it should be enough to germinate these warm weather crops.  Those transplants were then covered with another round of plastic to help insulate them from the cold and heat them up even quicker in the morning.

After the event of direct seeding my first round, I made bet on mother nature providing some moisture.  I lost.  The irrigation had to be lined up on the field, the pump in the river reset,  and the water inlet cleared of debris so I could water the seeds in.  All of this was new to me. But after a days worth of work we had water flowing to the field again.  Everything seemed happy.  The next day I came out and turned the irrigation on, and it started up right away.  Upon walking up the field I noticed a river making its way over the remay covering the peas, and across all the rows I direct seeded.  A line had popped out in the middle of field and cut a foot deep trench in my peas, sprayed dirt all over the remay, and destroyed a bunch of my rows beyond that.  I quit farming for the rest of the day. A 10 hp pump can do a lot of damage.

I came back and cleaned up the mess.  Moved the remay, replanted as best as I could, and fixed the pipe.  I check the joints everyday now before I start the pump.  Good ole trial by fire.  Then just today, I noticed the gophers; they have been eating my garlic.  This is not going to be easy.  I must rid the farm of them.

There were peas planted there.

There is a reason for tractors.

Trying to obtain a tractor for a couple hours worth of work is proving more difficult than I had anticipated. I need to pull about 15 beds. I have been tilling everything by hand with a hoe, but the work smarter not harder mentality is nagging at my current work ethic. Lots of plants need to bed down shortly. Direct seeding a large first round of veggies is ready to happen.
There are still lots of spots in CSA that need to be filled, and are looking for people to enjoy this season’s bounty with us. There are other obtainable markets for fresh produce, but we really feel that the CSA is the best way to advocate closing the system on consumer producer relationships.

Greenhaus

The greenhouse has almost completely come together. I am not sure how the end caps will go on, so it might just be a hoop house for the time being. It still gets hot enough for the lettuce and onions to germinate. Gotta love south facing slopes in the Applegate.
A large portion of seeds being planted are being contracted out this year. Wolf Gulch farms planted all of the first succession of lettuce and brassicas.
For all the seeds that I am starting, we are using homemade compost and homemade seed starting mix. I sort of follow the Eliot Coleman recipe.
Lastly, I am contracted to grow orach as seed again this year. I planted the orach that I seed saved from last year, and planted 200 starts of it. CSA members may get some in their salad mix.