This year Peaceful Valley is happy to announce our selection of four new farms as part of our continuing Freshman Farmer program! We were overwhelmed with applications this year, a healthy sign that more and more people are pursuing a livelihood of organic farming and sustainable food production. We hope you’ll enjoy learning from our Freshman, Sophomore, and Graduate Freshman Farmers as you build your own backyard garden or organic farm. Good luck everyone! ~ Peaceful Valley | GrowOrganic.com
My favorite part of winter farm work is the part that happens indoors… planning for the year to come. For me, this involves the following steps:
1. A crop by crop review to determine what changes should be made in the year to come.
2. Updating the harvest plan – when and how often to I want to harvest X crop for X market?
3. Updating the planting plan – to achieve the above harvest, when do I need to plant each crop, and how much should I plant each time?
4. Taking a seed inventory – How much did I really use of each variety?
5. Making the seed order – Choose varieties based on the crop-by-crop review and what the catalogs are offering. Comparing this year’s planting plan with last year’s (& with the inventory) to see if seed amounts need to change. Seek out organic varieties; compare prices.
6. Update the crop rotation map – how many beds/rows of each plant family will I be growing in Spring? Summer? Fall/Winter? Overwinter? How does this fit into the multi-year plan.
I’ve now completed all of these steps for the 2010 season, and in the next couple posts I’ll share some of what I’ve come up with.
Getting an early harvest is often a real plus for farmers. The prices for the produce are higher, and boosting the diversity of your early farmer’s market table can attract customers and draw sales. For my CSA, getting an extra-early start on some of the longer-maturing crops means that I can begin sooner in the year with a good spread by matching them with later-planted short season crops.
Getting that early harvest usually also means putting in some extra work. One of the techniques I’ve adopted is to amend and shape raised beds in the fall before it gets too wet, and then cover them with a black plastic mulching film. Then, in mid-winter and early spring I can pull off the plastic and have beds that are soft and ready to sow or plant into. I sow the seed, then put down hoops and rowcover to protect the crops form cold and rain impact. I’ve been doing this for the last four years with good results.
I sow snap peas and carrots first in mid-January and again in early March, and they give me an extended harvest beginning in late May. If I were to wait ’till the ground was dry enough to plant in spring (most years not until early April), I wouldn’t be harvesting these crops until late in June.
The main drawback is that is does require using more plastic that ends up in the landfill. None of the biodegradable plastics hold up long enough, and sturdier reusable sheeting is not practical at my scale. But I remain conscious of this, and limit this technique to a relatively small area.
Well… It’s been a great, long season of harvests; and now it’s over. We kept it coming for 32 weeks this year, which is longer than any of the CSA farms in the area, and longer than I’ve ever kept it going before. For the 6-week Winter CSA add-on we had 94 member-households. The harvests were abundant and diverse, and folks were pleased to be getting farm-fresh produce long after the Farmer’s Markets had ceased.
But I’m glad to have stopped when I did. There is still a lot of produce at the farm, but the diversity of the offering is going way down. While the serious locavores might be thrilled with a late-winter harvest of Chard, Kale, Cabbage, Leeks, Potatoes, and Beets, many of my members would get a bit tired.
A realization that I’ve come to is that our climate is not all that great for a late winter CSA. We have enough cold that the crops need to be hardy, but then we get warm, wet stretches that cause roots to rot, leaves to mold, and plants to start bolting long before spring. It seems that the best climates for all-winter CSA’s are those that are either warm enough for crops to keep growing, or consistently cold enough for the field to become like a refrigerator.
Anyway… it’s been a great season, and I’m truly grateful to all who supported me in the farm’s first year!
The time of rest is still here…but ensuing high-paced activity is on the horizon. Already next week we will be starting kale, broccoli, cabbage, and onions in the greenhouse. We will start planting some potatoes in the field (we’ve got some beds prepared from the fall – and when it dries enough we’ll plant them) – maybe as soon as next week. We hope to knock out the bulk of paperwork by the end of this month. After that, we’ll have less and less time to do so…and it won’t get done until next fall.
So, the pressure is on to finish the indoor work, while the outdoor work looms high overhead.
Triumph.
We hit our first milestone of the year today. All of the seeds for 2009 are ordered, paid for, done. Check that off the list.
We order from Peaceful Valley (of course), and also from a handful of other companies.
The grand total was…a lot…let’s not talk about that now.
While planning for seeds, Logan and I made a detailed planting schedule to figure out the quantities we will need. The last step in this chain is to place all of these successions on field maps – once that happens, we’ll be unstoppable!!!
That’s a far cry from last year, already. Of course, we had a rough estimate of how much of what we would plant, but that changed a lot at planting time. It was totally arbitrary because we didn’t know how much each of our markets would buy. This year, we have a good idea how much of what we can sell in any given place (plus, we plan a tad optimistically).
It took a full 6 days of geeking out on the computers, side by side, to make the planting calendars and decide what, how much, and when we are going to grow everything (like I said, we only need to figure out WHERE it all goes now).
Choose your seeds carefully,
Andrew
The calendar has turned and we are happy to call our straw bale field shed project complete. Of course, things are never complete, and the interior walls still need to be finished, but the building is winter-ready and is sound and stable. In addition, we’ve got a 2400′ vegetable field and two orchards planted with cover crop and some additional unplowed field sown with mustard seed, part of our ongoing efforts to amend and improve our soil and improve drainage by breaking through hardpan. And, we have made a big dent in our composting infrastructure.
Dan
Yesterday, Andrea and I drove through the CA Central Valley; south though Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto, Merced, and to Fresno.
As a younger person, drives like this were not impressive; stip-mall towns and cities mixed with flat farmland…about as far as the eye could see (or until the smogg stops you from seeing).
As an older young person, after immersing myself in farming the last 4 years, I see the valley differently. The flat farmland is a luxury my eyes soak in. I long for it. I also long for solitude, clean air and water – all of these things the valley has forsaken. Here’s what I learned on our 4 hour trip south:
1. Some farmers actually cover-crop their land in the winter – this is a step that I am pleased to see. However, most don’t, and the muddy fields, slashed by disc imprints point to an irresponsible land stewarship that we as a people should not tolerate. My thoughts point to the fact that we won’t be able to apply magic chemical fertilizer every spring in perpetuity and expect the plants to grow with vigor.
2. The valley is smogg-ridden. Deisel tractors, trucks, pumps and gasoline everything is turning this place into a very bright place (read: the glare of the sunlight off the smogg makes you squint). Those things, and a little wintertime inversion layer compromise everyone’s health.
3. 99% of agricultural products in the nation are conventionally farmed. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that the percentage in CA is similar. That’s a lot of chemical usage, and, observing the city-dwellers here, I’d say the effects are dramatic and evident. I know it’s not just the agriculture and the resulting pesticide residues, but as our agriCULTURE goes, so goes the rest of the CULTURE and vice-versa – ie, its a sick culture and we’re masking it with anti-depressants, cholesteral regulating drugs and others (ie herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc). It’s weird for me to see the parallels (and maybe I’m reading into this a little bit 
4. California is huge and the amount of arable land is immense. We are so lucky to have this…let’s be aware of this and be thankful for the bounty.
Happy holidays,
Andrew
First of all, I am so, so sorry for falling behind on the blog here. I just got addicted to using facebook…you can check out all of the pics I’ve been posting by becoming a fan of Four Frog Farm on facebook. It’s actually pretty sweet.
Facebook is pretty manic-it’s all about the one-liners because our society has fallen into ADHD as our default-mode. Whatever…I guess if you can’t beat them, or change em, then I’ll just join em. And, I’m hoping, people will follow the farm to find out what’s going on every day, and what we’re taking to the Farmers’ Markets at any given time. Since people get these feeds from Twitter and Facebook on their cell-phones nowadays, they’ll know instantly if we’re taking turnips (or not) to the market (pretty hot stuff). And, since I know you’re all dying to know about our turnip supply, this is enhancing your life in ways previously unthought-of (note: I’m being a little sarcastic).
Anywhoo, Logan and I are engaging in marathon paperwork sessions. We’re getting very precise about all of our crops this year. We can do that now, because we know, after a this previous year, what our local markets are like, and how much of everything we can realistically sell. So far, we know how much of and what we’re growing for the spring and summer, but not yet for the fall. Once we plan out exactly where in the field this is all going, we will be money!
If anyone is interested, when we’re done with this, I can hook you up with our complete cropping plan. I’ll probably post it here on the blog or on facebook -give me some feedback if you’re interested. I guess we should be selling it…but not yet -this year it’s free and maybe it’ll help someone become profitable, or at least contribute a bit. Anyway, it’s a good example of one farm and what we’re doing, if nothing more.
Lastly, I’m going to make an effort to post twice a week here. The posts will be longer than they have been – if you want ADD posts, then become a fan of Four Frog Farm on facebook.
Happy last night of Chanukah,
Andrew
That’s a little dramatic, especially for a community that actually likes to watch the grass grow. But yeah. We had some trouble locating OMRI approved gypsum. My dad, who works alongside us, rolled his eyes at this. “Organic calcium? You have got to be kidding.”
Peaceful Valley used to carry OMRI-listed gypsum, but the manufacturer no longer packaged it in bags. Our dear friends there special ordered a pallet of the Righteous Powder and we were very grateful. We rented a BCS walk-behind tractor and turned the stuff in on the two orchards and the vegetable field.
The soil at our place save the 400 square feet of test field and 600 linear feet of irrigation trench has never been disturbed by a shovel. It has more clay in it than the carpet at Mrs. Lang’s daycare center. It has grown oat grass, rattlesnake grass, and various other bovine delicacies since dirt was invented. It was tough going with the BCS 712, the smallest of the tractors, albeit with the 8 hp engine. If we had any more water we would have had tough ground and traction problems with the mud. Dan and I hope that after some proper soil building this will be less of a problem. We’d like to stay away from heavy machinery solutions if possible. Since our vegetable to fruit tree ratio will be low, and assuming we can do what we need to for the trees with sod buster cover cropping and surgical shoveling, we might be okay.
We came to the realization a while back that our environment is best suited to tree fruit and we will be adding another dozen trees this February. Still, we will be increasing our vegetable field from the 400 sf test field to 2400 sf. While the primary goal is to condition our soil, we will be trying out dry farmed tomatoes and intersow basil as a companion crop. Basil did very well last year and was unmolested by the rabbits.
Dry farmed tomatoes are supposed to like clay soil. I have the process in a file, and will get into the details when we actually do it. But from memory it goes like this: You start out with a cover crop and cut it down for mulch a couple weeks before the last rain. Then you work the soil with a broad fork (I gave one to Dan last Christmas. I am one romantic guy.). Meanwhile you grow your starts in a greenhouse and pinch the leaves to make them leggy. When it’s time to transplant you dig the holes some inches down to give the roots access to the moisture deeper in the soil. Irrigation happens at the beginning of the growing season and again only if the plants look really withered.
We’ve read a couple sources on dry farmed tomatoes but want to get a few more in as part of our winter reading before we start. Meanwhile we have our cover crop seeds in on the vegetable field as well as the orchards.
We’re on the finish coat on the field shed and have about 3 more work days until it’s complete. There’s a couple that live in Alaska by the name of Jill and Aaron Bork. They built their cabin miles off the road and had to hike their materials in. This included 8 80# sacks of concrete among other things. They also get to peel logs and do the rest of their building stuff with loaded side arms in case a bear comes by for lunch. They do all of this in the snow. On the weekends. Yah.
Come see: http://www.alaskaantlerworks.com/Alaska_log_cabin_%20starting%20out.htm
Our son, Dave, will be home for Winter Break from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks in a few weeks. We’ll do some infrastructure stuff, like woodwork inside the field shed and hopefully put in the new water tank. We should have something to show him when he comes home next summer. Unless he decides to stay in Alaska and build a space station out of pine cones and musk ox femurs.
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