After returning from a much-needed and -enjoyed early January trip to visit family and friends, we’ve launched ourselves into number of important winter projects.
Mid-winter work
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Category Archives: Farm Projects
December office work keeps the farm going
Even a fundamentally outdoor, physical career like farming requires a fair bit of indoor work to maintain, and early winter is when this work really catches up to us. Every year December brings a tension between trying to work on outdoor offseason projects (such as logging, mulching, infrastructure repair/construction, meat butchering) and seasonal indoor needs of the business. Here’s a quick look at the projects and necessities that keep us tied to a computer or desk for much of this month, often competing for limited access to our single terminal.
Financial reconciliation
With our sales pretty much complete, we have to close the books before end of year. We go through invoices and bank deposits to ensure nothing is missing or unpaid, match earnings to deposits, and so on. There are always cases where we paid a business expense with personal funds, or vice versa, either through mistake or circumstance, and need to reconcile those situations in our accounts (determine which entity owes the other money and remit it). The farm also needs to pay us rent. With our fiscal year ending Dec 31, there are all sorts of these account issues to handle, which take time and concentration to get right.
Seed order planning
Seed orders for the following year need to be completed in early winter, as (a) the first seeds are started in early February, and (b) with the ever-rising demands for seed from small farms and gardeners, specific varieties sell out faster and faster (this is especially important for a certified organic farm which is supposed to use certified seeds, though there are various ways to wiggle out of that requirement). This year we set ourselves a goal of completing our seed order by Dec 31, which means a lot of time spent on planning documents and maps. In doing this, we’re juggling rotational considerations (keeping crops of the same family from following each other), CSA planning for the full year to keep distributions even and manageable, restaurant interests, workload balance throughout the year, predictions/hopes for weather, and more. Part of the challenge, too, is to maintain economic efficiency by not ordering more than we need or will use, thus saving money and waste. It’s a very complex process to plan for the almost 200 varieties of food plants we grow. Getting the order done early helps ensure we get the varieties and quantities of seed we want, and/or that we can substitute effectively from another source if something does vanish quickly. It also takes a weight off our shoulders in the new year when many other tasks come on quickly (like taxes, organic certification paperwork, and spring seedlings).
Website work
There are always website updates to make, but this year especially, we’ve taken on the project of completely rebuilding our farm website for CSA service. We built our original site to advertise a market farm, intending it to act primarily as a static online brochure where customers could learn about our methods and products and then seek us out at the market, with a separate blog to serve more actively interested folks. As we move into CSA, we’re far less interested in outright advertising to the general public, and far more interested in serving our paid members with useful content and features that relate directly to their CSA experience. Thus we’re redesigning the site with more dynamic content like recipe collections, member surveys, farm events calendar, indices of blog-postings on various relevant topics, and more. We’ll also be porting this blog itself over to WordPress (the platform on which we’re building the new site), so that all our online content is available in one place. Though our focus is on CSA, we do also want to build the site into a useful reference for others interested in our style of homestead farming, and will be working to build a very informative site that in part pays back all the online help we found when starting this place ourselves (and fills some gaps we couldn’t find). All this takes a lot of computer time on the programming and content-development end, and again this has to get done in the winter because we sure don’t have time once spring comes.
CSA planning
Though we’ve done much of the basic setup work, and have our membership complete, there is still a lot of background work to be done in getting the CSA truly ready to go, especially with our first distribution intended for mid-January. We sent out an initial member survey to capture information like delivery preferences & addresses, and are exploring different delivery routes that will serve us all most effectively (every member has both a preferred day and location to get their share). The January share will partly act as a test of this system, but we still want a sensible first draft to work from. We’ll also be working on planning out different farm events given interests expressed on the survey; so far workshops like cheesemaking and food preservation are high on folks’ requests.
Sharing tasks
Most of the work above falls into Joanna’s purview; I may be the face of the farm as its salesman and public voice, but she’s really the core engine at its heart. She does most of the seed planning, accounting, and computer programming that keep us running year-round. I tend to handle the writing and photography, which means I get the glory, but it should really only reflect off me from her. In return, as in most of the year, I handle much of the routine daily work like animal chores, housecleaning, cooking, laundry, and more to allow her the physical and mental freedom to focus on these important and time-consuming tasks. I also work on second-hand projects like house repairs, woodworking, firewood management, and as much logging as I can do within earshot of the house (for safety reasons). It’s an excellent partnership, but one that doesn’t always give her the credit she deserves.
Blog writing
What this means for the winter, especially, is that I get very little time on the computer and so blog-writing naturally suffers. I usually need a break by this point anyway; though I have lots of policy and farm-related topics in my head, I get a bit burned out on developing them all into unpaid content. Though we’re much more confident in the farm’s future and the value of our online presence than we were last year, there will still be a significant drop-off in blogging for the next month of two. For the rest of this month, we’d like to get to our remaining Food Preservation posts, and one on our hog-slaughter setup, but after that it will mostly be occasional light-duty updates, especially until the new site with integrated blog is up and running.
Happy winter
So our winters are not so much a time off, though we do work shorter hours than summer, but a time to focus on different work and recharge our outdoor farmer batteries for the all-too-soon return of the growing season. It’s generally a pleasant time, with Joanna doing comfortable computer work in a home office with natural lighting and a fire in the stove, and me puttering about comfortably on house & farm projects that I can do alone, including some especially interesting cooking now that I have time and a full set of food preserves that I can play with. May your winter be as enjoyable as ours usually is.
Market plans (November 12) and other farm happenings
We will not be at market this weekend, following our biweekly fall schedule. We intend to sell at the final outdoor market next weekend (11/19), the last before Thanksgiving, and then be done for good. Restaurant sales continue to be strong, with a nice set of deliveries this week to Sycamore, Red & Moe, and Uprise Bakery.
As usual, the decision to skip market partly reflects other seasonal needs on the farm. This weekend opens hunting season, and I don’t think we’ve ever gone to market that weekend. I’ll be in the woods along with a hunter friend, and Joanna will be doing farm work and waiting for the sound of fresh meat. Deer have been quite active here for months, a large population that could use some thinning to lower pressure on the woods and fields, and I’ll be happy to replace wolves for a few days.
Also happening on the farm (apologies for no photos; it’s been too busy to remember the camera):
Following our fourth CSA tour, we are now nearly full for 2012 (with two tour attendees still contemplating their decision and two more households on a waiting list in case there is an opening). This is a very good feeling. We are looking forward to the efficiency of a system that provides a home for everything we grow; no more bringing home 30% or more of our harvest from market. The 2012 CSA will be smaller than we need for long-term economic stability, but we’re willing to take a lower income next year in exchange for less stress and more on-farm and product efficiency. We (and members) will judge the results at the end of next year and decide where to go from there. We’ll certainly be in the spotlight, with little room for disappointment, as we have 3 Columbia-area food bloggers signed up as CSA members.
Winter preparations continue to move forward, as we remove infrastructure, hoe final weeds, mulch beds, seed late cover crops, plant overwintering alliums, maintain compost piles, and more. We had one load of clean straw delivered; it’s amazing how quickly a few straw-mulched beds can make a farm look tidy and attractive.
Food preservation is an ongoing feature of life this time of year. We recently took a delivery of six bushels of organic apples from Blue Heron Orchard in NE Missouri. Three of these were intended for friends and neighbors who wanted access to organic apples, and three are for our own preservation and winter storage. We held a marathon apple-processing session on Tuesday afternoon-evening, in cooperation with the neighbor, working together to turn a bushel each of our apples into canned applesauce and nine trays of dried apples. We also made and canned apple butter, and another round of green tomato-apple pie filling, a great winter treat. We’ve been drying large quantities of green and partially ripe peppers, and will be starting soon on fermenting sauerkraut. We have more food preserved this year than ever; with no more shelving space, we now have full canning jars lining the front of most of our bookcases. A winter project for me is building more shelving/storage area in the kitchen for such preserves.
We’ve now had close to 3″ of rain in the past week, a delightful occurrence. Our stream still has no flow, an indication of just how desperately dry the ground has been. Many tasks are easier now, such as pulling t-posts from beds and moving portable animal fencing. The pig is now doing a much better job of turning up ground than he did in the bone-dry months.
We continue to rotate animals onto new pastures as long as the weather remains nice. Our goat population is larger than usual, with the temporary addition of a buck for breeding purposes. We moved the pig on Thursday to fresh pasture where he can turn in more fescue now that the ground is actually moist. He later escaped after battering down a cattle panel gate, and we found him happily trotting along near the house. Fortunately, he’s quite friendly and can be lured anywhere just by running in front of him; he follows behind like a well-trained dog. And fortunately he didn’t get into any growing areas or cause any other problems while he was out. We redid the gate with more reinforcement, as befits a large and powerful hunk of live pork. Can’t wait for the cool stretch of days we need to start the processing (a goat and many young roosters are on the list, too).
I’ve finally gotten started on our new chicken house, a larger building intended to overnight-house our growing laying flock in a more secure and convenient setting. Its location will allow the birds access to multiple acres of pasture and woods, including our developing orchard. I’ll be sneaking time to work on this when possible, but at least have the foundation done and the frame up. We intend to move the birds in by early December.
Logging is on hiatus as my chainsaw developed an attitude and is in the shop. Just as well, there’s more than enough to do as it is. Still, I’m itching to get back to one of my favorite jobs.
Then there’s the weekly restaurant sales calls, harvest, and deliveries, along with market prep and attendance (probably) by the end of next week. Things don’t really slow down here until well into December.
Fall farm status & projects
Fall is just as busy, and sometimes feels busier, than summer. The growing areas are managed just as much, with the addition of all sorts of other cool-weather seasonal projects. Slowly things calm down as given areas/tasks are finished for the year, but it really takes until nearly Thanksgiving for us to feel the effects. Here’s a wordy look at some of the different things we’re doing this time of year on our very diversified farm. Though it seems like a lot, we enjoy most of it, and it all ties into our fundamental goals of personal independence, active outdoor work, and excellent food.
Final harvest
As much work as regular weekly harvests for market and restaurants are, there’s a large pulse of salvage work that comes with the hard freezes. We are very serious about minimizing waste, and refuse to just dump or abandon food we worked hard to grow. It takes extra time to strip most of the usable immature peppers, green tomatoes, and more from plants; bring in all winter squash and other crops; and do what we can to preserve them. From freezing and canning lots of relishes and preserves, to regular batches of food dehydration, to simple space management in our storage areas, fall harvest creates a lot of extra work. Below, a small portion of the pre-freeze harvest extravaganza
Growing area cleanup & prep
As individual crops finish for the year, any remaining plant material is pulled out and either fed to the animals (e.g. beans, peppers, corn/sorghum) or hauled off for composting (e.g. tomatoes, zucchini). Below right, frost-killed tomato plants waiting to be pulled along with their trellising. Irrigation lines are pulled, drained, bundled, and stored in the barn rafters for next year. In some cases we’ll spread and incorporate aged goat manure, depending on the past and future crop & fertility rotation in that bed. We don’t like any growing areas in bare soil for long, so when possible beds are either planted in winter cover crop like rye, vetch, and/or oats; or mulched with straw or aged leaves. We’re moving aggressively to limit our off-farm straw purchases, so raking fresh and spreading aged leaves becomes a more important fall task every year (see below).
Leaf mulch collection
Mulch is a very important aspect of our farm management, especially as we refuse to use plastic sheeting for weed control (too much oil, too much money, too much waste). Natural soil covers like straw or leaves help retain moisture, suppress weeds, add organic matter to the soil, and protect against winter freezing of soil and winter crops. We’re trying to limit our off-farm straw purchases for financial and agricultural reasons (last year we spent $1,000 on local straw, which carries a lot of obnoxious weed seeds and is still grown under conditions not entirely known to us). So every year we spend more time in the autumn woods, raking tracts of leaves into piles which are allowed to sit for a year, gently decomposing into a much denser, nutrient rich material that is more efficient to collect, handle, and spread. This leaf mold (after being aged for a couple more years) also forms a core component of our homemade potting mix (again saving money). Above left, a lovely pile of this condensed material.
When we calculate the time we spend raking and managing leaves, compared to the off-farm cash flow of purchasing large amounts of straw, it comes out close to even, without considering the side benefits of (a) a clean, known source for the leaves with few weed seeds and no unknown additives, (b) better soil nutrients from decomposing leaves than straw, (c) less fossil fuel use for short truck runs of leaves from our own woods than the large machinery needed to plant, harvest, bale, and transport straw from off-farm, and (d) a more reliable commodity that’s less subject to price, weather, and demand fluctuations.
General cleanup
There is a surprising amount of overall cleanup to do on the farm before winter comes. Collecting various tools, hoses, and other items that might be sitting around; moving equipment under cover; collecting and stacking T-posts, trellis panels, and other infrastructure; collecting all bits of trellis string; staging hay and feed where we want them; preparing winter quarters for animals; tool maintenance and storage (cleaning, sharpening, oiling, etc.), and more.
Overwintering crop planting
There are many items that can be, or need to be, transplanted or seeded in fall to achieve the proper growing season. Garlic is an obvious example, but there are various other alliums (some onions, garlic scallions), greens (collards, kale, sorrel), and others (strawberries) that we manage in the fall for spring or even summer harvest. Winter cover crops are another important category. So even while the farm overall is shutting down, we’re still putting new crops in the ground into November. Below left, a decent stand of oats that will eventually winter-kill into soil cover. Below right, ex-pepper and -edamame beds that have been manured and readied for fall garlic planting next week.
Seed saving & cleaning
We save our own seed for a growing list of crops & varieties, and many of the tasks related to seed saving occur in the fall. Some seeds (such as dill and cilantro) were collected over the summer, set aside during the busy season, and now need to be winnowed with a fan to sort the seed from stems, dust, etc. Summer squash seeds need to be scooped out from the hard, winter-squash-like baseball bats that we intentionally allowed to grow to absurd size, even as we shuddered each time we looked at the monstrous overgrowns (or realized that we could still sell them for $1/each at market…). Melon seeds that we set aside from perfect melons, rinsed, and left to dry need to be packed up. A selection of the best onions that we grow need to be selected and set aside to replant for seed next year. Tomato seeds from a variety that we really like need to be fermented and saved, just in case we can’t buy more seed for it. Our winter-keeping tomatoes need to be set out carefully on shelves to store, so we can save seed from the longest storing ones come mid-winter. With some crops, such as cowpeas, the seed and the food are one and the same, and a nice selection of seed simply needs to be separated out from the eating supply. Below, saving summer squash seeds from a mature specimen.
Logging
Every fall and winter we work to clear more overgrown land (mostly cedars), seeking both to bring pasture back into production and to generate the lumber and firewood we need to maintain and build the farm. Much of this work also has environmental benefits, from increasing bird/wildlife habitat and plant diversity to decreasing soil erosion through thicker ground cover once the dense cedars are gone. Last year we had an extra push to get started on logging, as I needed fresh lumber to build our goat/dairy barn before winter weather arrived. This year I have a similar goal, to build a bigger and better chicken house that can accommodate our growing flock. I have a milling date set with our portable sawmill folks at the end of the month, and need to get enough ground cleared and enough logs down to be ready for milling, then construction. This includes pouring the foundations while nights are still mostly above freezing. There are many more areas to work on over the winter, but the chicken-shed-specific work has a high priority right now. Below, the future site of a long-term chicken house and pasture.
Goat breeding
If you want goat milk, you have to get goats pregnant (rather, a buck has to). We try to breed our goats in November, aiming for an April kidding date. This involves hosting a buck for a month, as goats only go into heat for a day or so every three weeks. Pasturing the does with a buck for a month generally gives us two shots at successful breeding. We don’t actually have to handle the herd much differently, but it is another management item to pay attention to this time of year.
Butchering preparations
As on all traditional farms, fall and early winter are meat season. We do all our own meat processing on the farm, because we don’t want to pay anyone else to do it, like the ability to make cuts just the way we want, can use more of the interesting parts this way (like saving hog casings for sausage), and minimize any stress on the animals since there’s no transportation or fear. We’ll only be doing one goat kid this year, as the other two are does which we intend to breed as future milkers. But there’s a much larger pig than last year, several rounds of developing roosters, and one or more deer once the season opens in mid-November (given how many we’ve seen in the last few weeks, I’m quite antsy for this). Prepping for this work includes making enough freezer space for all the meat, ensuring we have freezer paper and other supplies on hand, and watching the weather for appropriate multi-day conditions. We also try to have most other weather-dependent farm work done, so we can take advantage of butchering weather without competing needs.
Firewood moving/winterization
Just getting the house ready for winter takes a bit of time. Collecting and moving firewood into position, having the chimney swept, moving storage foods (onions, potatoes, garlic, apples, etc.) into the back rooms which we don’t heat and which stay at a nice stable 40 degrees all winter, changing out sets of seasonal clothing, etc.
Cheesemaking
I’ve been putting extra time into making rounds of hard cheese to store over winter; we already have more wheels of these waxed and aging than years past, with up to two more months of milking to go. We also freeze milk to get us through the non-milking months; this works well enough for basic cheeses, yogurts, and baking.
Normal farm work
Among all this seasonal stuff, we’re still harvesting regularly for biweekly market and weekly restaurant sales, including all the container washing, produce handling, calling around, etc. that accompanies these jobs. There’s still weeding and watering to be managed, various daily chores, and so on. Like I said, fall is just as busy as summer, just with shorter days. Longer nights can mean more sleep, but also unintentionally late nights as we stay up trying to get cooking, office work, and housework done now that daylight is too precious to waste. That’s life.
March-April farm projects & happenings
With the beginning of April, we’re now in the official busy season of the farm. March was our cutoff for late winter non-essential/non-vegetable projects, and we made reasonable progress on most of these. Fencing on our two main pastures is close to completion, garden fence upgrades are done, we’re been hard at work preparing & planting early spring crops, most of our brush piles have been chipped or burned, the packing shed infrastructure improvements are 75% complete, the orchard is underway, and more. Here’s a tour through some of what we’ve been doing, and what’s coming up through April.
ORCHARD WORK
We finally fulfilled a long-term dream, getting the first apple trees established in the orchard area we’ve spent the last few years clearing. These are various good homestead varieties, such as Arkansas Black, grafted onto rootstock specifically developed to handle the heavy clay soil and moist conditions this site offers. Hopefully they do well; we intend to slowly add trees each year so as not to over commit ourselves (we have 30 sites laid out overall). The plan for this orchard is to produce at least enough fruit to feed ourselves in a bad year, and surplus to sell/distribute in a good year.
SEEDING & TRANSPLANTING
We’ve been managing lots of seedlings indoors, waiting for decent weather to come for outdoor transplanting. And waiting. Finally we could wait no more, and started taking advantage of some reasonably dry conditions to start setting out onions, lettuce, and brassicas, while direct-seeding peas, radishes, carrots, beets, and more. The poor transplants had a miserable first few days, enduring everything from a hard freeze their first night to a subsequent high of 89ºF and 40+mph winds, then back down below freezing again. At least we didn’t get the hail we feared from a recent strong storm system, but that’s still a lot of stress for young plants. We’ll see what happens. Below are a young pea plant coming up, and Joanna setting out scallion transplants.
GOATS & MILKING
Overall the goats are doing well, though this spring has brought more medical/management issues than past years, including a sick newborn kid that needed to be carefully nursed to health (he’s now doing great). One of the doeling triplets died recently, in a fence entanglement that we probably could have avoided but thought we had sufficiently prepared against, leaving her sisters (above) as virtually guaranteed keepers for breeding this fall and milking next year. This kind of incident really hurts, as it’s something you play over in your mind looking for something to do differently, but as any parent or farmer knows, you also can’t prepare for every possible stupid thing a young one does and you can’t watch them constantly. In larger herds, this would barely matter. In a small homestead herd, it’s a big loss and a hard learning experience for what to change in the future. There is always a silver lining, though, and in this case the remaining two (and the mother) are happier without three kids fighting for milk from two teats. Overall we’re getting a good supply of fresh milk from our two adult does, plenty to keep us in fresh cheese and yogurt, and the remaining three kids are now healthy and growing fast. These two are friendly and have a good lineage, so we’re looking forward to keeping at least one for a long time.
OVERWINTERING CROPS
We planted or maintained several crops in overwintering beds, some as usual (like garlic) and some as tests (like parsnips, sorrel, and spinach). The parsnips and sorrel were a definite success, with excellent quality and flavor come spring (we just sold a batch of sorrel to Red & Moe, along with chives, green onions, and cress). We ran a test on the garlic, too, experimenting with using aged leaves instead of straw as mulch. Straw is an expensive and problematic input which we’d really like to move away from, whereas leaves are better for the soil and can be collected and managed during our non-busy times. So far, we can’t tell the difference between the straw-mulched garlic (below left) and the leaf-mulched garlic (below right), but won’t know for sure until harvest.
SOIL MANAGEMENT
Many of our management methods are aimed at improving long-term soil health, and spring certainly brings on a lot of interaction with the soil as we hoe beds, turn in manure as needed, cut and chop in cover crops, spread wood ash and other basic soil amendments, and overall prepare the ground for growing. Finding lots of big, healthy earthworms like the one above is always a nice sign that we’re on the right track.
OTHER UPCOMING PROJECTS (NOT PICTURED)
- Finishing fence-building, including stringing wire, hanging gates, and running electric where it’s needed.
- Moving goats permanently onto pasture for the growing season, including setting up pasture shelter .
- Preparing to start two pigs, including an inspection and permit process from the Missouri Department of Agriculture so we can legally feed leftover vegetables & whey from the farm (stupid but apparently necessary).
- Lots more indoor & outdoor seeding, transplanting, bed prep, and general field work.
- Preparing for start of our market season in late April/early May, including final packing barn upgrades and updates to market signage, materials, and plans.
- Starting restaurant deliveries.
- Finalizing plans for farm workers; we’re still working out the best way to handle this in 2011. The most likely model will be a pseudo-CSA work-share arrangement in which people work 3-hour shifts for regular shares of produce and possibly eggs/milk. If you thoughts on this, let us know.
Late winter farm projects
Now that the snow has melted and the weather is moderating somewhat, we’re trying to get back on track with all the winter outdoor projects that have mostly been on hold since November with near-continuous frozen ground and/or snow cover. We effectively have until the end of March to do non-vegetable work, as once April comes we need to be in full produce-farm mode. Here’s a mostly complete list of our potential and desired projects.
Starting this year’s mushroom logs
Last spring we inoculated 26 fresh oak & maple logs with shiitake spawn (see above). We got our first small flush in the fall, and expect/hope for production for the next 3-5 years. We’ll keep adding new logs every year; this spring we’re doing around 40. I hope to offer more detail on the methods and considerations involved in a later post. We did 20 on Monday, and will do 20 or so more on Thursday.
Preparing for goat kidding & milking
Above is a very wide goat. She’s only a few weeks away from kidding, maybe less, and I have a few cleanup/organizational chores around the goat barn before that happens (getting a sink set up, preparing a kidding kit, etc). We’ve been present for every kidding on the farm so far, though sooner or later we’re going to miss one, especially as they’re now farther from the house and thus out of earshot. But we’re very excited to see this year’s results, as we desperately want a doe (female) after years of nothing but bucks. We even bred to a dairy-breed buck this year, to ensure we’d want to keep any females that resulted. Spring means more goat chores than simple winter feeding, but also the return of fresh milk for us (we’ve been getting by on our aged cheese and lots of milk frozen in the fall). With both Frankie & Garlic pregnant, we expect anywhere from 3-5 kids this spring.
Preparing earliest spring crops
Onions are already started indoors, and we’ll start seeding radishes and lettuce outdoors soon. Other indoor seeding will begin soon as well. The first small hoops are going up, to start warming and drying out the soil. Several overwintering crops should also start to regrow, including collard greens and spinach (below), possibly allowing for some early sales. The beds in foreground are garlic.
Clearing fence lines and building fences
This is a big one. As we continue to expand and improve our pastures, mostly cleared from overgrown/abandoned fields, we get to the point that putting in permanent fencing becomes practical. Long-term this will save a lot of management effort over rotating our temporary reel and net fences around, and is high on my priority list to help make livestock management more time- and cost-effective. So far I’ve nearly finished clearing the lines of our two top-priority pastures and will start building fence very soon (I need the ground to dry out some so I can auger corner post holes). We’re also working within these pastures to thin out the existing trees and brush to achieve a better balance of shade, mixed habitat, and lusher ground cover/goat browse. The photo above shows a typical fence line project, establishing a boundary between the established forest (to the right) and the brushy cedar scrub (left) within the pasture.
Cleaning up brush
Clearing naturally means disposing of the results. We chip what we can for mulch, and use larger logs for fenceposts, firewood, and lumber. But there will always be lots of scraggly top branches, dead wood, and other scrap that needs to be burned. Even here we try not to create waste; every fire pile like this gets sealed in with soil once it’s burned down, choking off the oxygen to effectively make biochar, a form of charcoal. This makes an excellent soil amendment, richer and more neutral than wood ash, returning many of the trace nutrients that trees draw from deep underground to the surface soil where vegetables can use them.
Rebuilding the garden fence
This was supposed to happen last year but the season (and another harsh winter) kept us from finishing. We’ve pushed back the thick cedars on the south side to get more sunlight into the lower beds, and want to expand and improve the fence on this side to allow us more room, and to be more deer-proof. This will involve taking down the existing one (digging the chicken wire out of the fescue & mud), felling one remaining large cedar that’s going to fall into the garden, then trenching and building the new fence in its proper location.
Packing barn improvements
I built our walk-in cooler last year, but our main packing barn still needs more infrastructure to reach its potential. This spring I intend to build/install a stretch of sinks/basins and washing tables along one wall, with parallel moveable work stations in the middle of the floor, to allow larger-scale and more efficient washing and handling of produce. We’re also intending to install a small water heater and hand sink in this barn to allow proper hand washing, and to finish cleaning up the rest of the barn so we can gravel in the remaining dirt floor. I also hope to take down a few trees that are preventing us from establishing a turn-around at this location, which would make tractor and truck movements easier at this busy site.
Pasture/landscape burning
There are multiples areas we want to burn off, to encourage native plants and discourage invasives. The photo above shows us burning the northern fence line of our bramble/berry area, but we extended this burn up through the rest of the orchard. There are several pasture areas we’d like to get to as well, though we may wait until May for some of these to get the proper timing for specific plants.
Orchard & tree work
Every year we increase our fruit plantings, seeking to slowly establish enough production to feed ourselves in bad years and make some sales in good years. We recently thinned and pruned all the brambles (blackberries and raspberries), and are chipping hardwood branches & saplings to generate mulch for our blueberries. Later this spring we’ll be establishing our first five apple trees higher up in the orchard, and will need to finish preparing those sites. Strawberries and asparagus will be needing attention before we know it. We also ordered bundles of saplings from the Missouri Department of Conservation, including mulberry, osage orange, and pecan, that we’ll be trying to establish in various parts of the farm.
Time budget
There’s more on the list, including lots of little projects like cleaning and sharpening tools, tractor/equipment maintenance, updating/changing market supplies, finalizing employee plans for this year, and…oh yeah, taxes.
There’s more on the list, including lots of little projects like cleaning and sharpening tools, tractor/equipment maintenance, updating/changing market supplies, finalizing employee plans for this year, and…oh yeah, taxes.
We sat down to do some estimates of project times, and came up with 50 person-days from now until end of March for just the outdoor infrastructure work (that doesn’t include any work on actually growing produce, like bed prep, seeding, irrigation setup, and so on, or other mini-projects). From mid-February to end of March, assuming we work 7 days a week, there are about 80 person-days. So once you factor in the reality of runs to town, occasional days off, personal/household chores, produce needs, and so on, it’s not clear we’re going to get all this done. One item that has already been temporarily stricken from the list is a new and larger chicken shed, to accomodate a hopefully growing flock. That can wait if it has to, and so it will. So can the hoped-for improvements to fences on other parts of the farm. We’ll reassess our situation at the end of March and decide what else can be cut or added from the list.
Weather will certainly play a huge role; the forecast for the next week of continuing rain and storms doesn’t make me happy at all. On the other hand, it’s wonderful to finally have my ideal working temperatures (40s), some sun, spring birds passing through, and a general sense that 2011 is finally getting underway after a long winter that made me very antsy. For better for worse, we’re on our way into this very important year on the farm.
Welcome to spring at Chert Hollow.
Dairy goat barn
One of the larger projects this fall has involved building a permanent barn to house our goats in the winter and our dairying operations & hay year-round. We used portable and/or temporary shelters for the first few years we kept goats, partly for budgetary reasons, and partly to gain experience that would allow us to decide (a) whether we wanted to do this in the long run and (b) what management methods and setups worked best for us. Three years later, we’re pretty comfortable sticking with the home dairying and are ready to establish a better setting. Enter the nearly finished dairy barn:
Sited just north of our main vegetable field, at a central location to most of our pastures, this will make life far more efficient. Goat living space is in the eastern half (this view looks roughly east), with the western half devoted to milking space and hay storage. More hay storage is in the loft (I haven’t yet added doors to the open gaps you see). The south extension (closer to the camera) houses a frost-proof hydrant and tool storage, along with a covered sunning area for the goats. The north extension will be fenced away from goats, allowing for general tool/supply storage there. Below, you see two residents enjoying their hay rack:
And here is a view of the not-quite-finished milking area, with hay temporarily on the milking stand. I still need to install a basic sink in the corner under the windows, build some shelving, and so on. But it’s usable:
As may be clear from the photos, the entire structure is built from our own cedar lumber cut and milled on-farm. All we purchased was the concrete mix to pour our own footings, some hardware like bolts and brackets and hinges, and the roof. The windows are reused plexiglass panels from a set of old storm windows a neighbor gave us years ago. The metal roofing was purchased from Martin Metals in Versailles, MO, a local company which custom-manufactures its own metal roofing and siding to order. I called in my order at 10:30 in the morning and had the panels delivered, custom-cut to the inch, by 3pm that afternoon. And the price was effectively equivalent to standard, non-cut panels from a big-box store that I would have spent a lot more time cutting to size (and potentially wasting the leftovers).
This barn won’t house goats year-round, as we keep them rotating onto new pastures from May through October to avoid a buildup of parasites which are the main health concern with goats. Taking them to the same home site all the time would destroy that; we use portable shelters during the grazing season. But it will house them during the winter when the need for comfort outweighs the parasite risk, and will allow for clean, convenient, and weather-proof milking year-round.
We’re looking into other ways to make the most use of this building, including housing young pigs in the spring once the goats are turned out to pasture. Based on our experience this year, very young pigs are really nervous and jumpy and need time to become tamer; they also fit through most fencing. Housing them in this barn post-goats would allow them to settle down in a secure, easy-to-manage setting while contributing extra manure to the winter’s pile for later composting. Once they grow large enough for other fencing, and are more manageable (about a month) we can turn them out onto pasture as well. Poultry are another long-term possibility.
All this may seem a large project just to avoid the convenience of buying milk, cheese, and yogurt from a store or farmers market. But beyond the highest-level food quality we get from this, there are two more benefits. One, everything we do for ourselves is a form of farm insurance against product loss or other disaster. If we have to buy all our food, then we have to earn enough to do that, which puts more pressure on us to grow more and earn more to make that happen, exposing us to higher risks. We can exist with a much lower gross income than a farm buying all its food (and building supplies) from the outside world. Two, as we’ve tested this year, these products can be used to pay employees and possibly even to complement a future CSA (vegetable CSA with optional hog share, anyone?), thus also generating value for the farm that does not involve money we have to earn with all the benefits listed above. And this structure is designed to allow for herd expansion, whether dairy or meat, if we ever decide to.
We’re going to have to work long hours on a farm no matter what; we’d rather that a larger percentage of the work directly benefit us with no middleman than work just as hard to sell twice as much to go back and buy all this stuff with the narrow profit remaining. It simply makes more sense to us, though I think we’re pretty rare in that respect. Just too bad that most of this won’t let us earn anything directly, as it doesn’t get us any closer to legal cheese-making or on-farm meat sales. Oh well.
Mushroom success
This spring we started another of our many experiments in different ways to raise food and make a living; this time it was raising shiitake mushrooms outdoors on logs. We harvested and prepared over 20 oak and maple logs, and spent a day inoculating these with shiitake spawn before stacking the logs within a low-lying cedar grove which we hoped would provide shade and conserve moisture.
We ended up not paying as much attention to these logs as we would have liked, and were concerned about maintenance of log moisture and signs of a competitive fungi. From our reading, we knew that it could take a full year for the first mushrooms to appear, though it was possible that a few mushrooms could show up in the fall of the first year. And that’s just what has happened. A few weeks ago, shiitakes started appearing (triggered by September rains) and we’ve enjoyed several small flushes of early mushrooms since:
Joanna has never liked mushrooms, while I love them. This was my best chance to prepare really good mushrooms in a way that might convince her otherwise; we’ve often found that we learn to like a previously scorned food when it’s sourced fresh from the farm and prepared well. I’ve gotten much more tolerant of zucchini and asparagus, while Joanna becomes ever more fond of meat.
A nice collection of truly fresh mushrooms like these, only minutes off the log, can be prepared in a variety of easy and excellent ways. Sliced or chopped and sauteed in butter, they’re just the right texture with a great flavor; the stems add great flavor to stocks and soups. We used a batch on fresh pizza where they really stood out, and also made an excellent shepherd’s pie of fresh potatoes, parsnips, carrots, onions, and mushrooms with a scratch-made biscuit topping. Heaven.
These logs should produce mushrooms for 3-5 years with proper maintenance. We still have a lot to learn about the details of outdoor shiitake cultivation, but it’s nice to have a literal taste of success. Having seen that we can produce something with a manageable amount of work, we’re now intending to double the number of logs next spring and work toward building up a market-worthy quantity. That would be a nice diversification of income, but at the very least it’s another source of on-farm food for a minimal investment of money, relying mostly on farm-sourced materials and labor. Just our style.
Farm projects, late June
Here are some of the many tasks occupying us this time of year:
–Weeding. This is never-ending, especially with the abundant rainfall this year. Mostly we’re on top of it, though some of the aisles between beds are looking pretty jungle-like. Employees have been a big (and good-natured) help on this front. Overall things look pretty good.
–Harvest. We’re past the once-a-week stage that characterizes spring, when you just have to cut lettuces, pull radishes, and so on before market. Items like peas, green beans, edamame, squash, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and more need to be checked regularly to get things at peak freshness and quality. We generally follow a 36-48 hour harvest schedule, though summer squash will need to be near-daily. Sunday-Tuesday items go to restaurants, and Tuesday-Friday items go to Saturday market.
We’re about to begin the garlic harvest, which is a major undertaking over about three weeks. Each variety is pulled, sorted into four grades, bundled, and hung to cure. Overall we have a couple thousand heads in the ground, about a quarter of which will become this fall’s planting stock. For the next few weeks we’ll bring fresh green garlic heads to market, then transition to cured heads once the harvest is complete.
–Preparing fall plantings. Believe it or not, it’s already time to start planning for fall, as many of the things we’ll be selling September-November need to get started soon. Fall is a major sales season for us, and takes a lot of mid-summer work when it’s too hot out. Working out the exact planting plans, and starting the first transplants indoors, is now on the agenda.
–Finishing other projects. I’m almost done building the much-needed walk-in cooler, hoping to have it operational on a trial basis by this weekend. We still have three geese to butcher, though it’s too hot right now. We’d like to finish mowing/trimming the roads, paths, and aisles around the farm, which we can do bit by bit before getting too hot.
–Food preservation. We’re now entering the season of abundance, when along with all the farm work we need to put in time preserving our winter food supply. We’ve already been freezing peas, beet greens, and so on, but now that squash are arriving with tomatoes, beans, and more on the way, canning & freezing will take more and more time. We also rely on local sources for the vast majority of our fruit, so for much of the summer I’ll be coming home from market with loads of cherries, peaches, apples, and so on to preserve. This is often an uncomfortably hot task in a hot summer kitchen, but needs to be done.
–Irrigation. As recently noted, I eventually need to start laying out and hooking up irrigation. Procrastination and irrigation are virtually synonymous in my brain.
Dealing with irrigation
Of the various infrastructures needed to make a vegetable farm work, irrigation systems are my least favorite by far. They’re nearly essential, but just a complete pain. This is partly because of certain ethical/business choices we’ve made, which I will discuss below. Otherwise I just don’t like fussing with lots of components that need to fit and work just right, take a lot of time, and aren’t always necessary.
The source of water for irrigation matters a lot. County water lines are most reliable and give good pressure, but cost money which can really add up at the acre scale. Private wells are nice, but very expensive to drill if you don’t already have one, and have you at the mercy of the pump and other conditions. Drawing water from ponds is cheapest, but still requires some form of pump (gas, electric) which will also cost money to run and may be unreliable when you need it most. Ponds also put you at greatest risk of contaminated water, such as if wild or domestic fowl use your pond frequently and that water is piped right onto your lettuce. This is also true for farms that wash produce with water from a similar source. For organic certification, you have to do regular water tests to prove your water is clean, unless it’s coming from an already clean source like county water lines (which we use).
Irrigation in the field can be achieved in many forms. Easiest are the various forms of sprinkler, which can be set up with a simple garden hose and arranged to cover a wide area, then moved as needed. Multiple sprinklers, larger area covered. The major downside here is water efficiency, as they will lose a lot to wind, evaporation, and spotty coverage. Plus, it’s impossible to avoid watering aisles and other areas that don’t need it, and hard to target specific crops. Sprinklers are a great option for a small home garden, but can use a helluva lot of water at the acre scale. This is both an ethical concern, and an economic one if your water costs money of any form.
Various forms of drip irrigation are another answer. These involve plastic hoses with holes in them to let water out. The simplest really are just holey; fancier ones have pressure regulators at each opening so that the same flow emerges along the entire length, rather than losing pressure along a long line. These also come in various lifespans, from cheaper drip tapes that need to be thrown out every year, to heavier-duty hoses that can last up to five years. Here, too, are the ethical/economic concerns: do you save time and bother by using the cheap disposable hoses every year (acres of vegetables take a LOT of plastic hose), or do you invest in the long-term stuff which is far more work to carefully roll up in the fall and store properly every winter, but keeps your dumpster empty? Longer-term hose is also more subject to frost damage, a particular concern in our frost-prone valley.
When we started the farm four years ago, we invested in enough heavy-duty irrigation line to handle the market garden area. In 2007, this was a great call, as we had a very dry summer in which the farm recorded no meaningful rainfall from mid-June through mid-October. Since then, we’ve had two straight cool/wet years in which we never needed irrigation other than using hand-held hoses to moisten new seedbeds & transplants. This year, I fully expect to need irrigation at some point as I think it will be a hotter and drier (more typical) growing season, and we’re expanding our growing area significantly every year, so we’ll have some things to figure out.
When it comes to farm management overall, we absolutely refuse to use disposable materials like black plastic, one-year drip line, and so on. We’ve proud of the minimal waste stream coming off the farm, and of the smaller budget that results from not buying such things. So our irrigation choices will likely involve some combination of heavier-duty drip lines and sprinklers. We also use other methods to minimize water loss and need, such as heavy mulching on many beds to hold in moisture.
Still, as we enter a long hot spell, I can’t put off dealing with irrigation much longer. It’s always tempting to keep waiting, hoping for rain, in order to save a lot of time and effort. That’s what happened the last two years. With 1.5 acres under cultivation, though, we need to get this year’s system set up before it becomes an emergency and we spend all our time standing out there with a hose. So that becomes a looming project very soon.