Category Archives: Updates

Farm update, late July

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The last few weeks have been the busiest of the season for us, as will be the next few weeks. We have a great deal of produce coming on, particularly items which need to be harvested nearly every day to ensure their quality. This is especially true for our green beans and edamame; right now we’re spending hours a day picking these. They’re worth it, but still a time sink. Below, you see Joanna and our friend Laura harvesting Fin de Bagnol green beans.

There is always weeding and maintenance to be done, and with this cool, wet summer the weeds are growing fanatically. We’ve been trying to focus attention on the most needy areas, and so there are always areas which get left behind. It’s a constant battle, and one of the real challenges of organic management.
We are also in the middle of our best window for seeing most fall crops, such as greens, radishes, beets, lettuce, and more. If these wait much longer they’ll start pushing up against first frost dangers, but they can’t be done too early or likely August heat will affect them. So we’re working to get all these new beds seeded as soon as their summer crops (like potatoes and beans) are finished and we can clean out the bed and reseed. This work is also timed around rain chances, to ensure that the soil conditions are proper and the newly seeded areas will get some moisture.
Overall, it’s been a fantastic growing season for us so far. We have had to do almost no irrigation, with enough rain to keep things happy. Cool temperatures are keeping things like tomatoes and peppers back, but are really benefitting our large crops of green beans, edamame, potatoes, and more. We went heavily into beans this year and are seeing excellent yields. The potatoes have been really nice as well, though we’ve only sold smaller amounts because we intend to store many for our own winter and spring use. Below, you see the yield from one red potato plant.
In addition to all the vegetable maintenance and harvesting, the animals are taking up a fair bit of time. We make rounds twice a day (morning and night) to do their needed chores, which take 30-45 minutes each time. For the goats, we move their net fences once a week or so to bring them onto fresh browse, and bring them some hay and fresh water twice a day. We milk Garlic once or twice a day, along with feeding her some grain. All the birds (chickens, ducks, and geese) are let out of their enclosures in the morning and herded back in at night, with daily checks on water and grain. They spend the day ranging within the confines of fences, and we collect eggs daily. We also have our younger birds to manage, who have recently been moved into an outdoors enclosure and are now happily foraging for bugs and other natural feeds while still having access to their basic cracked grains. These, too, are locked away at night and need their grain and water checked daily. They’re great fun to watch chasing down protein:

We’re also working on another never-ending but very important task: putting up food for winter. With green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, and more really producing, we have to find the time to process, freeze, and/or can these items. We’ll be grateful all winter for these, but there’s not enough time in the day right now.

And, of course, there are the weekly tasks. Fridays are completely taken with market preparations, and Saturdays are taken with going to market (especially as we’re getting busy and large enough these days for both of us to be beneficial at the stand). That leaves us five days a week to manage all the other needs, and for the last few weeks we’ve been going 6am to 10-11pm almost non-stop. We did take a rare night off on Monday to go see Food Inc, and very much noticed the lost time in terms of work not done. More on that film later.

So that’s life right now. Should stay about the same through August.

Agriculture stories from NY state

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I spent part of last week on a quick visit to western New York, visiting my mother & brother to celebrate their retirement and high school graduation, respectively. Joanna worked hard to keep things under control on her own while I was gone, and we’re both grateful for the current cool weather so we can catch up on weeding and other chores.

While there, I was able to visit several farmers markets and travel around some. This week’s blog will be dedicated to some of the interesting things I learned, saw, and heard while there, including:

- observations from markets in Brighton, NY and Ithaca, NY, and on the diverse and (relative to MO) robust nature of western NY local agriculture.
- discussion of a NY program that dedicates funds to specific checks that low-income folks can use to directly purchase fresh produce solely from farmers markets.
- some hair-raising stories overheard from an Iowa chicken CAFO employee on the train back home.

Meanwhile, back on the farm, we’ll be catching up with the weeds, starting our planting of fall produce, doing a lot of manual harvesting of fresh beans and edamame, and working out the best management strategies for our fast-growing young chicks and turkeys. Look for edamame at market next week, and at Main Squeeze and Sycamore, both of whom have expressed interest in sourcing it from us.

Farm update, early July

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As summer arrives, our attention is shifting to the main field, where beans, corn, okra, potatoes, sorghum, tomatillos, and more are coming on strong. Above, you see a healthy set of edamame plants, already setting their pods. We’ve been harvesting the first potatoes and green beans for ourselves, and enjoying them immensely. Look for both at market next Saturday.

The market garden is in transition, with virtually all the spring crops out and summer items getting started. Tomatoes, peppers, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, and cucumbers are all growing, but not yet ready for harvests. We always get a late start on these items because of the cooler conditions in our valley, and this year were set back even more by some trouble with our indoor starts. In some cases, too, transplanting/seeding summer items in the garden is delayed by waiting for spring crops to finish. This was especially true for our beet beds, which took forever to mature, delaying the tomato transplants that were intended to follow. Right now the market garden looks strangely barren, with so many beds in transition, and with all the garlic beds temporarily empty now that we’ve finished the garlic harvest.

There are many updates for the animals as well. We finally got around to a long-intended project, moving the goat’s paddocks and hoophouse up onto a brushy ridge over our vegetable field. They’re now in heaven with lots of fresh browse to eat; we’ll be rotating their area every 3-4 weeks through the summer to keep providing fresh food and to help manage worms.

We’ve added four young ducks, intending two for summer meat and two for future eggs and more ducks. One Ameracauna hen is sitting on five eggs, which are due to hatch sometime next week. We also got our summer shipment of chicks and turkeys in, adding another 25 birds to the rotation. Below are the turkey poults:

And here are the chicks:

These are all from Sandhill Preservation Center, a fantastic small family outfit in Iowa that specializes in preserving rare heritage breeds. In this batch, we have more Black Ameracaunas to match our existing flocks, plus two varieties of Rhode Island Reds. Last year, we felt our one RIR rooster was the best tasting of any breed, and they’re supposed to be decent layers as well, so we ordered more. These are straight-run, meaning mixed genders, which we like because the young roosters become our winter meat supply and we can keep the hens for laying. We’ll be writing more about these later, including our new trial methods of brooding chicks on a more natural diet than processed chicken feed.

Other projects have including running a temporary water line to the main field in anticipation of normal drier summer conditions, and another up to the goat’s new paddock. We’re still finishing the fencing on the main field, including stringing electric wire along the top now that the corn is beginning to form tassels and raccoon season can’t be far away.


And, of course, lots of weeding, hoeing, bad-bug-squishing, and all the other day-to-day tasks it takes to keep this place running. The weather has been really cooperative, with rain timed once or twice a week and recent temperatures quite enjoyable. So far it’s really been an excellent growing season for us, and we’re looking forward to delving into the heart of our market season with the full garlic, edamame, potatoes, and more.

Very busy week

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This blog will be inactive until Friday’s market report. We are taking advantage of the unseasonably cool weather and using all our time to try to get ahead on work before heat returns. Enjoy your hiatus from daily ramblings.

Oh, hail

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We’ve had a rough few days here, weather-wise. Several rounds of storms brought around 5″ of rain early in the week, followed by a brutally muggy Wednesday that was crying out for strong storms to break out. And they did.

Lightning started crackling around us by late afternoon, and we soon had a very energetic thunderstorm building right over us. While I’ve seen worse storms in Texas and elsewhere around the West, this was the strongest we’ve had on this farm, with constant nearby lightning strikes, high winds, and heavy rain. The power kept flickering on and off, then finally died. Worse, pea-sized hail began to fall and kept up a pretty steady pelting for 10-15 minutes. Interspersed in this were larger chunks up to quarter-sized, bouncing impressively. Listening to our crank-radio, we heard reports of a funnel cloud being spotted along Highway 63 just southeast of us, and a tornado warning ended up being issued for parts of Callaway County, further along the storm’s track.

This storm dumped another 2.5″ of rain in less than an hour, on already saturated ground, producing another impressive flood on the stream and really causing problems for our produce, as this much water can drown roots and/or cause plants to topple over. But the real damage was from the hail, which shredded leaves and knocked down plants, while also punching plenty of holes in the row-cover fabric we use to keep insects off more susceptible items like squash. Here’s a photo tour of the damage:

Many scallions were knocked over, broken, or otherwise damaged. This one shows multiple hits that broke the upper two stalks, while the lower stalk looks like it took a direct hit that split it open like a bursting gun barrel. Not sellable.


Sturdier items like beets have some holes and broken leaves, but should be ok, especially as they’re nearing harvest. As we pull them, though, I suspect we’ll find some bruised roots that took direct hits on their shoulders. Given that we sell our beets with greens on, for extra food value, this will diminish the value of many.
Beans, too, are relatively resiliant to small hail, though like any other plant the holes and shredded leaves weaken the plant and make insects and disease more likely. This is a particular problem for organic growers who rely strongly on healthy plants to fend off problems on their own.
Hardest hit was zucchini, because these plants rely on upright, delicate stalks and large, tender leaves. These guys really got hammered, with the stalked broken and flattened and the leaves shredded. They’ll probably recover, but zucchini are so susceptible to insects and disease already that this will really increase their risk down the road.

Out in the field, we lost some young sorghum and corn to direct hits, while all the beans and potatoes are showing some shredded leaves. Still, it could have been worse, as I expect most things to recover. Very little was truly destroyed as it easily could have been if the hail had been any worse.

So we’ve now had around 8′ of rain this week, with another round of strong to severe storms expected Friday. For context, I looked into our blog posts from last year, and found a long article from June 26, 2008 lamenting the heavy rains and storms that were causing problems for us. It’s an interesting read for comparison; back then the whole state was getting pounded and rivers were rising fast, whereas this latest storm just impacted a narrow swatch of mid-Missouri.

It’s nice to not worry about irrigation so far, but this is far too much. I’m staying indoors today, with an expected heat index well over 100F; I’m not adjusted to this yet and nearly gave myself heat stroke yesterday working to finish a new goat hoop in our upper pasture.

UPDATE
And here is what hail-damaged peas look like:

Our market stand may be pretty small this Saturday.

Farm tour recap

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GETTING READY
We put a lot of effort into preparing for this first farm tour of 2009. We worked through a two page checklist to make sure the tour would be as safe as possible, especially for children. This included walking the tour route, making sure it was clean and safe (no tripping hazards, tools left out, etc.), and in some cases working to improve the route. We collected all tools and other hazards and placed them out of sight; this was especially important given that we expected several families with kids. We planned out what we wanted to say where, to keep it moving while hitting all the important topics. We cleaned up the house and the prep shed, and even did some mowing. Overall, we spent the bulk of our time Saturday through Sunday afternoon getting ready.

THE TOUR
We started in the market garden, explaining our core approach to integrated intensive organic growing. Then we moved up to the fruit plantings and discussed our active logging efforts and how that work fit into the rest of our farming. From there, we cut through some woods, over a ridge, and down into the main vegetable field, to talk about our expansion into larger-scale production. We finished by visiting with the farm animals as a nice, fun close. Afterwards, we served samplers of farm-fresh flatbreads with our fresh-made goat cheese and produce while answering any remaining questions.
I felt we had a great time, as those who came seemed to really enjoy the walkthrough and the discussion. It was a good first experience for us in giving an organized tour (as opposed to just hosting individuals by request). We’ll probably shoot for late July or early August for our next tour. By then, we’ll be in the peak of our summer growth, though the weather may not be as comfortable as the glorious day we had this time.

Weekly farm life

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Now that market sales are ongoing (we’ve been at market about two months), our lives have settled into a form of weekly routine. I thought it might be interesting for customers and readers to consider what that routine looks like. Our week really centers around the Saturday farmers market, so that you could consider a new week to begin on Sunday, but often that day still ties back into the day before, so I’ll start here with Monday.

DAILY SCHEDULE
Every day I get up between 6 and 6:30, this time of year relying on just the sun. I tend to wake up naturally earlier than Joanna, who is always up by 7. One of us gets dressed and goes down to deal with morning animal chores, which include opening the goose & chicken sheds, refilling water and hay, and most mornings doing the milking. We’ll also usually open the gates to the nearest grazing paddock. Whoever isn’t handling the animals tends to make breakfast, usually a rotation between homemade granola, yogurt, eggs, oatmeal, scones, cornbread, and so on. I make a point of finding time to read multiple sources of online news and check email; staying educated and aware is something I take very seriously (we also get over ten magazines that we read at meals, bed, snatches of time).
We usually eat lunch around noon, and are working toward shifting to a summer meal schedule in which lunch is the main meal followed by a rest, to avoid the hottest part of the day. This allows us to have a quick meal of leftovers for dinner, so that we can maximize use of the cooler evening hours. During any given day we’ll be coming back to the house every few hours for water, snacks, tools, or whatever, and take a lot of mini-breaks to balance the long workday.
Evening chores including feeding grain, checking hay and water, and locking animals away for the night. Chickens go into their shed, mother geese and goslings go into theirs, and we usually lock the kids away in a separate compartment for the night to allow Garlic to accumulate milk for morning. Milking once a day eases the burden on us, and provides fresh milk while allowing the kids to nurse during the day. We try to shower and be in bed by 9:30 with sleep by 10. Both of us do far better with a full night of sleep.
MONDAY
Since late winter, I’ve been working one day a week at Goatsbeard Farm, the excellent dairy & cheesemaker about 11 miles west of us. We’ve had a good relationship with them for a while now; our goats came from there and we’ve bred with their buck. I wanted to gain more experience with commercial-scale dairying, goat management, and cheese making, and it’s helpful for them to have reliable workers. Any steady paycheck is nice these days as well. So every Monday morning I head over there by 8, and come home in the afternoon whenever they’re done with me. Meanwhile Joanna tends to use Mondays to really focus on produce tasks and organization, since she’s the primary architect of our plantings. Having me gone means she can devote all her attention to her primary interests, tasks, and planning.
TUESDAY-THURSDAY
These days are generally open for whatever needs to be done, including planting, weeding, infrastructure projects, moving the goats, and so on. This time of year, harvest is becoming a daily task for fast-ripening items like peas, and later for green beans, cherry tomatoes, and okra. Weather plays a large role in determining the daily work, as the temperature, wind, rain, and soil conditions really dictate what we can and should do. We’ll often end up planning a few days in advance based on the weather forecast, trying to maximize our efficiency with comfort. For example, we’ll try to reserve physical tasks for mornings or cloudy days, while targeting easier tasks for afternoons or hot days. There are always indoor tasks, like updating our records, office/business needs, cooking & preserving, and so on that we try to reserve for rainy or hot days.
FRIDAY
This is our main harvest day for market, as we prefer our products to be as fresh as possible. We’ll usually start first thing in the morning, with a steady progression of harvesting product, washing, sorting, bundling, & packing it, then storing it in refrigerators. So far we’ve generally been finishing this around midday or early afternoon, after which I’ll pack the truck with all the non-produce market items (tents, tables, scale, etc) and try to have everything ready for Saturday morning. Most weeks we wash the truck out on Thursday, one of the many, many practices we keep records for as part of maintaining our organic certification. Whatever time is left on Friday when everything’s ready for market goes into the general labor pool of tasks.
SATURDAY
I get up at 5 on Saturdays, which gives me enough time to load all the produce into the truck and eat a quick breakfast while skimming news. I leave by 6 in order to get to market by 6:30, and setting up the stand usually takes me until at least 7:30. Sales start at 8, and I’ll start packing up around noon. Right after market I go to bank to deposit the day’s take, and then do whatever errands we need around Columbia, including small grocery runs for things like butter and juice. I get home any time between 1 and 4, depending on errands, usually fully exhausted. The rest of the day and evening I tend to lie around; for some reason selling at market thoroughly drains me of energy.
Saturdays for Joanna follow a similar pattern to Mondays; a day in which she can focus on her primary interests and projects. Whenever I get home, we tend to take the rest of the afternoon/evening off, relaxing with magazines, watching a movie, taking a walk, or whatever.
SUNDAY
Sunday tends to follow the same pattern as mid-week, a general work day that can be dedicated to whatever needs doing. I tend to still be moving slowly in the morning, so we often make a nicer breakfast and get off to a late start. Otherwise it functions as a kind of transition between weeks, as we unload and clean the truck and market containers (if we didn’t do it Saturday) while getting started on the next round of work.
OUTSIDE RESPONSIBILITIES
Serving on two boards (CFM and SF&C) means that I generally have multiple evening meetings per month, as well as a fair amount of email and/or computer work to take care of, as I maintain both organization’s websites. I really don’t like being gone in the evenings, as I get home late and take a long time to settle down, but that’s the nature of the commitment. I fit the office work in wherever I can, often in snippets of time while I’m resting between outside chores.
COOKING
Probably the largest chunk of non-farm time we spend relates to cooking. We don’t cut corners in our cooking; food is just too important to us. So I estimate we spend several hours a day preparing daily meals from scratch, plus the time we put in preserving food nearly year-round, making basics like bread, yogurt, and cheese, butchering meat for fresh consumption or storage, and so on. It sounds like a lot, but is still less time than the average American family spends watching TV, and is far more rewarding while saving us a lot of money.
TIME OFF
Rarely do we take full days off; about once a month we’ll pick a day to stop everything and go do something fun, usually exploring some part of mid-Missouri by back road, foot, and/or canoe. We try to take shorter breaks here and there, like a few hours to fish in an evening or a half-day trip somewhere combined with farm needs like an auction or purchasing trip. We have far more flexibility in our daily schedule than most careers, such that we can take an hour or an afternoon here and there as needed to rest or recuperate, and that makes up for the otherwise 24/7 nature of the work.
BLOG WRITING
And, of course, there’s writing this blog. I’ve developed a system that works pretty well for me, in which I sit down over the weekend (usually Sunday evening) and write up a series of posts that are pre-cued for the following week, a process which usually doesn’t take more than an hour. I don’t view this blog as a instant news source, just a steady diet of information, ideas, and updates that can be written ahead of time in most cases. I’ll often pre-stage ideas as saved outlines, then fill them out days to weeks later when I have a chance. Then on Thursday evening I’ll find a few minutes to write up the Market Plans post for Friday morning, which I’d like customers to start using for pre-market information. I’m consider shifting this to Thursday morning to give folks more heads-up on product, but I like being able to make last-minute decisions about what’s ready to harvest.
MAKE IT THIS FAR?
So that’s our weekly life in (somewhat) brief. It’s a busy and tiring schedule, as are all small businesses, but with all the benefits of independence and variety that make self-employment.

Mid-May update

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As of mid-May, we’re a few weeks behind schedule on the infrastructure work we’d intended to be done by end of April, but otherwise are right on track for the year. The prep shed is 1/2 built, just needing to finish the roof and walls, but is already functional. We were able to wash & pack in it last week, which was a great relief. We have all the posts in place for our main field’s new fencing, and will hopefully finish that task this week. All our permanent beds in the main field have been established and are ready for planting with a little more hoe work.

Produce-wise, we’ve hit the peak of our spring production and will probably be winding down for a few weeks. We have 1-2 weeks of radish harvest left, and probably the same for lettuce. Warm weather is hastening the end of those items. Late spring onions are coming on, and our beets are being very slow but hopefully will be ready in a couple weeks. Peas are growing nicely and starting to flower. Garlic continues to look very healthy and we’re expecting scapes to start forming within a few weeks; look for more on these fantastic items when they arrive.
As discussed Monday, we’ve been holding off on our summer plantings, in part to avoid just the sort of late frost that we got over the weekend. This week we’ll probably start on summer in earnest, beginning to seed corn, beans, sorghum, summer cover crops, and more, and will start considering transplants of tomatoes and peppers fairly soon.
Eventually we need to start getting ready for the arrival of new birds; we have another batch of chicks coming along with some turkey poults. We’ll need to brood them and then introduce them to grass as soon as possible. In the meantime, we’re continuing to rotate the goats to different pastures while starting to draw milk off Garlic (when the kids haven’t taken it all). We have a goose brooding eggs right now, and will be interested to see if she hatches anything within a few weeks (first-year eggs aren’t always fertile).

Wonderful farm multimedia piece

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As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had a wonderful MU graduate student in photojournalism following us around since February, doing a project on tracking a small farm’s transition from winter to spring. I think she’s about wrapping up, and we’re looking forward to her final product and CD of images with great excitement.

As a teaser, she gave us the link to her photo blog, which included this very nicely done multimedia slideshow/montage of images, interviews, and sounds from the farm. In my opinion, this is by far the best media product we’ve seen about what we do, in our many interactions with local journalism. She’s really captured things nicely and the slideshow flows very effectively. Thanks, Cat!.

The show is embedded below, or you can visit her blog for a larger version.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4203194&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Chert Hollow from Catherine Szalkowski on Vimeo.

This is very much a teaser for us, as we’re really happy with this small product and can’t wait to see what else she captured.

No freeze damage

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We recieved no damage from the early week’s freezes. Everything looks healthy and ready to start growing again. Such conditions do set us back, as much of the lettuce, beets, and radishes have not grown appreciably in several weeks due to the cold weather, but they’re alive. Now with more temperate conditions on the way, I hope they’ll get back to work. This will delay our real market products a few more weeks, but that’s better than losing them.

The temps here never dropped to a damaging level; our thermometer read 29 both mornings. Even accounting for the frost pocket down at the valley bottom, that’s not enough to damage what we had out. Still have no idea whether fruit growers were hit; I’ll look forward to making some inquiries at market on Saturday.