Yep, Time to irrigate. Yesterday was all about the water. Most of the morning was spent on dialing in our greenhouse setups. We still have alot of work to install our new drip emitters on our grow bag set ups but it will be time well spent. We also pulled t-tapes on a couple of new sections we just direct sowed. As warm and dry as it's been, Ill go ahead and give an overhead watering just to ensure good germination. Overhead watering all of our beds at the home farm as well, except for the garlic which has already received too much water from all of the rain and is suffering from basal plate rot. Bummer. It was looking so good. It's not a total loss but we won't know till harvest, which actually wont be too long. Time is flying. not enough hours in the day.
Today is harvest/ delivery day for our commercial accounts and market harvest as well. I'm out at first light.
Cheers
Farmer John
Friday, June 25, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Growing Local
Well now look what we have here, my god man, is that the sun? We actually broke a sweat yesterday. Hallelujah! Everything in the field is loving it. Yesterday we noticed the first baby summer squash's on the plant. It wont be long for zucchini! Strawberries will be on next week they are loaded. Some tomatoes on the vine but mostly flowers. Corn and beans are growing fast and everything is looking good. I can honestly say our quality this year is about as good as I've ever seen. Feeling very proud of what we are taking to market. Despite being slighty off schedule from the weather we ar having a great year.
It's funny how one year can vary from another. Each year seems to have it's challanges and pay offs. One big change this year is that we are seeing a substantial increase in our commercial accounts. More restaraunts and our current accounts are ordering more produce. I think its safe to say it's a pretty clear indication of the economy which from my view does appear to be improving slightly. Traffic on the island appears to be brisk. Ironically, our market sales are down. Go fiqure. It's hard to tell what's happening for sure. Is it that we don't have strawberries and some of our higher volume crops on yet? Are people tiring of the market? It's hard to say. It feels like to me, we have less traffic coming through. I hope this is just a glitch. There are great deals at the market and a vibrant, fun atmosphere. Come on down!
With the sun comes respnsibility. Watering is a big issue and takes up alot of our time. We use mostly drip irrigation. Works great and uses less water. The benefits of being able to turn on a valve and water your beds far outways the hassle of laying drip tapes. It can take several hours to set up a field but this is generally a one time deal per crop issue. We do overhead water some things but then you become a slave to moving the hose. We're on the go most of the time and this becomes a more difficult issue. Easy is good. We like easy.
speaking of which, take er easy.
farmer John
It's funny how one year can vary from another. Each year seems to have it's challanges and pay offs. One big change this year is that we are seeing a substantial increase in our commercial accounts. More restaraunts and our current accounts are ordering more produce. I think its safe to say it's a pretty clear indication of the economy which from my view does appear to be improving slightly. Traffic on the island appears to be brisk. Ironically, our market sales are down. Go fiqure. It's hard to tell what's happening for sure. Is it that we don't have strawberries and some of our higher volume crops on yet? Are people tiring of the market? It's hard to say. It feels like to me, we have less traffic coming through. I hope this is just a glitch. There are great deals at the market and a vibrant, fun atmosphere. Come on down!
With the sun comes respnsibility. Watering is a big issue and takes up alot of our time. We use mostly drip irrigation. Works great and uses less water. The benefits of being able to turn on a valve and water your beds far outways the hassle of laying drip tapes. It can take several hours to set up a field but this is generally a one time deal per crop issue. We do overhead water some things but then you become a slave to moving the hose. We're on the go most of the time and this becomes a more difficult issue. Easy is good. We like easy.
speaking of which, take er easy.
farmer John
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Quiet
It's been a whirl wind around here so no blog posts lately. It's kind of like the hush that comes to the table as folks begin to eat. Busy chewin, not flappin their jaws.
Market was dismal yesterday. Not for sure what happened. Beautiful day, lots of produce but not too many people. Things will improve as more product comes on. We had baby arrowhead cabbage yesterday and next week will be the first broccoli and fava beans. One thing I'm seeing and need to keep in perspective is that since our CSA members shop off our table at the market and we have increased our membership we need to bring more to market to satisfy the demand and still have enough product to keep an appealing display and have enough product on hand to allow us to maximize our cash sales. I've found that once your display starts to look depleted sales decrease. We can sell a hundred bunches of radishes but those last six never seem to leave the table. Marketing is a bigger deal for a small farmer than most of us realize.
We've been trying to stay ahead of the weeds. Good weather for pulling thistle but not as good for hoeing and tractor cultivating. Just a little too wet. We've been planting out about as fast as we can. The wet weather has slowed the field prep down so once again (as always) we are short on space. I will say that even though the weather has set us back a bit it has also helped us. I like the rain and so do the crops. Everything is just beautiful, so verdant and full of flavor. Water truly is the vehicle that delivers the nutrient to the plant. It's obvoius after a period like we've had that we probably don't water enough during our normal conditions.
Sunday morning is over, time to work a little.
Ciao,
Farmer John
Market was dismal yesterday. Not for sure what happened. Beautiful day, lots of produce but not too many people. Things will improve as more product comes on. We had baby arrowhead cabbage yesterday and next week will be the first broccoli and fava beans. One thing I'm seeing and need to keep in perspective is that since our CSA members shop off our table at the market and we have increased our membership we need to bring more to market to satisfy the demand and still have enough product to keep an appealing display and have enough product on hand to allow us to maximize our cash sales. I've found that once your display starts to look depleted sales decrease. We can sell a hundred bunches of radishes but those last six never seem to leave the table. Marketing is a bigger deal for a small farmer than most of us realize.
We've been trying to stay ahead of the weeds. Good weather for pulling thistle but not as good for hoeing and tractor cultivating. Just a little too wet. We've been planting out about as fast as we can. The wet weather has slowed the field prep down so once again (as always) we are short on space. I will say that even though the weather has set us back a bit it has also helped us. I like the rain and so do the crops. Everything is just beautiful, so verdant and full of flavor. Water truly is the vehicle that delivers the nutrient to the plant. It's obvoius after a period like we've had that we probably don't water enough during our normal conditions.
Sunday morning is over, time to work a little.
Ciao,
Farmer John
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