Still Frosty

May 12th; Heavy frost this morning after a very rainy day yesterday. Quite unusual. After looking at a satelite pic it is all quite clear. basically a huge front passed us with an unstable cold trough following. Unfortunately there's another one coming right on the heels of this one. We were drying out fast too and I was feeling hopeful we might get a break. Not to be.

This is starting to turn into a situation and not a good one at that. Maybe we should use remay?:) I'm not even sure what to do at this point. We have alot of things to direct sow and alot of things to transplant but only a very small amount of space to do anything. Germination has been so spotty so far this season so I guess I'm leaning towards transplanting but that will make us short on some crops later in the early summer. Conundrum. Still we have it better than most other places in the country right now so I can't really complain too much.

One good thing is we basically finished our fencing project this week. Just a couple minor details to attend to and we're there. Next, we'll focus on wrapping up the new greenhouse. It's still quite wet at the site and I have a little more tillage to do. We have some drainage issue's we need to address there but I think we can get a handle on it. I'm shooting to have the project completed by the end of the month. This house is getting planted out in Tomatoes and there's no way I'm putting them in before June 1st so the timing should not be an issue. This is going to be a late tomato year but we will have them.

I think the big thing for us right now is to just carry on and not get too excited about the weather hype. It'll come around eventually and we'll have a great year when it's all said and done. Definately a slow start. Hopefully we'll have a long fall.

That's it for now.

Keep well,

Farmer John

Are We There Yet?

Or more aptly, "Dont Make Me Turn This Car Around!" We've had a couple of nice days here and there and things are drying out faster between storms but mostly it is still very wet and the soil has not really warmed up much.

We've experienced quite a bit of "failed" germination. This is new territory for me. Normally things pretty much pop out of the ground. We cant even seem to get a decent stand of radish's going. Yesterday, We made the deciscion to wipe the slate clean and start over. This meant taking out about 6 beds of salad greens. They just did'nt look like something we would want to put our name on. Bummer? yes, but I refuse to put out second rate product. We'll be re-sowing today. Greens, beets, rads etc. As much as we have room for. That is still the biggest issue, lack of dry growing space. We did get a few more potatoes in the ground yesterday as well, about 3,000 row feet. German Butterballs, Red Thumb Fingerlings and Satina's. We still have a couple hundred pounds of seed to plant. Where is it all going to go?

We need to get our sunchokes in too and a we have hundreds of flats that are ready for transplant, perhaps our eyes are too big for our stomach? Strawberries? We don't have the new ones in yet. Same story, no space. It may be too late?

Market starts on Saturday. We'll have a little produce and a lot of starts.

Still working on infrastructure projects. Had to take a break due to wetness and other pressing issues.

Dawn is here, oh look, it's raining again! Yay!

Keep well,

Farmer John

Sheesh

Enough already on the rain. There is possible snow in the forecast for today and it's pouring right now and about 40 degrees out. Looks like another indoor day. We'll just keep potting up toms and sowing flats in the greenhouse's today. Late start, long lunch and quit early. Might as well take advantage while we can.

We're all ready for our plant sale/open house this Saturday. Just hoping the forecast for "mostly sunny" prevails. Come on out if you're on island and take a look.

Not alot else to report at this time. Perpetually stuck in this No season thingy thing.

Take care,

farmer John

Looking Good

This Saturday and next we are having our annual open house and plant sale. We'll have lots of veggie and flower starts for you garden and fresh pizza coming out of the oven and some live music from the boys in Spoonshine. Looks like the weather is going to hold and might even be sunny! Come on out and see what we've been up to.

One good thing about having an event like this (or company) is that it motivates you to tidy up. It's a good thing. We've been busy mowing, weed wacking, weeding and spring cleaning in general. The property is looking good. I love it when it's all spiffy. The only bad thing is we've spent all of outr time here on the home farm and are neglecting our other "in-proccess" projects like building fences and finishing up the greenhouse. It's OK, things are still drying out there anyway.

We've been building new green house tables this week too, something I've wanted to do for a long time. the new ones are way more space effecient than our current system. I think they'll work better too because we are using a mesh top so the roots coming out of the bottom of the flats can air prune which may be more important than I know. They also just look nice. This will be an ongoing project as time and money allow. We need about 40 of them. I've got the proccess down to about 30 minutes per bench and they cost about $30 each in materials. Hopefully we'll get at least ten years out of them.

Fields are still too wet to work so it's another big week in the greenhouse's. We moved about seventy flat's to our "showroom" solarium up at the house for this weekend's sale so we have a little more room for more flats. If it stays dry, we may be able to transplant on Friday? Needless to say, we're pretty backed up and we need to get some plants in the ground. Honestly though all the plants we've transplanted to date are not growing too fast, it's just been too dammned cold and windy. We're gowing to continue to plant the same as normal, eventually things will pop.

We've been making a few deliveries these last few weeks. Slowly getting back into the harvest/delivery schedule. Market starts soon! May 7th, Hope we have produce:)

That's the news from here, hope to see you this weekend.

Keep well,

Farmer John

Working Around The Rain

The weather is still giving us fits. It almost dries out, then comes a big rain and puts us right back to where we were. This has happened time and time again. I beat it yesterday by about 5 minutes and was able to chisel plow some of our tight ground at the home site. Certainly not dry enough to till but the chisel plow travels beneath the soil without disrupting too much. The "chisels" ride about a foot deep and break up the hard soil below. This can help open up chanels for the water to pass through more readily and can let some air in. I'tll be some time before we can really do much tillage at this spot. Glad we have the diversity of multible plots to farm on.
That said, we're at a stand still everywhere else right now as well as far as tillage goes. We are planted out on every plot that will allow. Things will have to dry out before we can do final tillage and bed shaping. So for now we're back to sowing flats in the greenhouse's. Over the last week we have been able to plant out quite a bit so at least we have a good amount of space available. We're also potting up plants that need to come out of trays and go into a bigger container. That's the theme for April. Yesterday we started this proccess for the tomatoes, always an exciting time. We have about three thousand plants to pot up.

Speaking of tomatoes brings up a concern we're having. Clearly it's setting up to be a difficult year for tomatoes. What's potentially going to set us back is the delay the rain has caused in tillage of the new greenhouse. I have made one pass and not been able to get back in. It takes about five or six times to get the soil roughly workable. We'll have plants that need to go into the ground before the site is ready. Waying our options, the easiest solution may be that we go ahead and pot them up in to one gallon pots rather than the standard 4" pot. This could buy us some time. Other options include changing our planting plan and put the toms in the greenhouses here at the home site or grow them in grow bags. Considering we've never successfully grown toms in containers, option two seems like a big gamble. The one gallen pot option takes more soil and creates space and handling issues but could be the easiest way in the end. We'll keep you posted on that one. We may have similar issue's with other crops like squash.

So the rain and cool weather is making our lives a little more difficult and we are ready for sun as are most people I know. It'll come. Trying not to get too worked up about the things I can't change.

Keep well,

Farmer John

In Between

We're just farming whenever the weather will allow us to do it. Yesterday was a good day, despite the coolness we were able to get a few beds transplanted out. I don't know how they'll do but we just have to get going. Some of the stuff we put out earlier looks OK and some looks stressed. Beds we direct sowed like a month ago are spotty. Some are up but not growing. Some failed. It should be dry enough today to re sow. We'll keep sowing in the grennhouses's too just to have back up stock if things fail. Fickle. We really need some heat. At least we've been keeping up on lots of little projects here and there. We were able to do a nice Kale harvest too. It actually looks and tastes great. Nice and stalky, very sweet. It's my favorite time of year to eat kale. I like it better than broccoli. It is still very wet everywhere but the short term forecast has it being dry for the next couple of days. With any luck at all we'll be able to get a few more beds worked up but I'm not holding my breath. After today we'll have all of our available space planted out. From here on out we are at the mercy of the rain gods. Please be kind. We gave out daffodils in town yesterday too. It was fun. I just needed to do something good. I'm sick of all the bad news. And most importantly it was a good day because Katie said yes when I asked her to marry me. Keep it real, Farmer John

Double Down

Our annual plant sale / open house now has two dates. We'll be open on Saturday April 23rd and the following Saturday April 30th. Come on out and take a look. We'll have the pizza oven fired up and lots of other good eats. Live music by Spoonshine from Anacortes and of course, lots and lots of plants for sale for your garden. Come on out, have a good time and help us kick off our season. This time of year we are busy bees here planting and getting ready for the season. The weather has been very difficult this year but despite that, we are making progress. We have a few things in the ground outside in our driest areas, peas, fava beans, greens, radish's, potatoes, garlic, leeks and kale. We have a few beds ready to sow and will probably be on that as soon as the weather dries out a bit. It's still on the cool side for things to pop but waiting is difficult. We can still transplant in the rain and are doing so as the seedlings in the flat trays mature enough to go out. We have our greenhouses all planted out and also filled with tables to accomodate the flats. We really need to get some things into the ground soon just so we can make room for all of the potting up thats getting ready to happen. This is our last chance to get any last minute equipment maintenance and setup done. Mowing season is basically here and we're ready to cut some grass! We have alot of new tools and another cultivating tractor on line this year. Our newest and most exciting addition (for me) is our new Jang tractor mounted multi row seeder. We can sow three rows at a time now without having to walk a country mile to do it. Some would consider this a luxury. I see it as just being effecient with our time, plus I have been having problems with and old injury to my lower leg and ankle and frankly it's getting harder to walk comfortably so being able to sow without walking back and forth three to six times up and down a 2oo ft bed just makes sense. I'm scheduled to have surgery on it this winter but for now, anything I can do to reduce my walking mileage is a good thing. Until recently, one would have had to pay around $10,000 to get a decent tractor mounted preciscion seeder. The Jang's are a nice option for about a third of that. We've been using a single row unit for a couple of years now and I really like it. We've made good progress on the greenhouse and have done the intial tillage. I'm waiting a bit longer to put the endwalls and cover on so I can have full easy access with the tractor. We're shooting to plant out around mid May. It's pretty wet at that site so we would like to see it stop raining and dry out. Fencing is in progress and we are working on it as time allows. That's all from here for now. Thanks. Farmer John