It Is Not Fall

Lets not rush it here. Last night I actually came home a built a fire in the woodstove. It was'nt really cold out but it definately felt fall like. If nothing else a good chance to check out the stove and make sure it's in proper working order. Soon it will be lit and pretty much burning 24/7 til May. Just two days ago we had maybe the hottest day of the entire year. Nothing too unusual for this year as there has been no rhyme or reason to anything it seems.

Despite the weirdness, it's actually shaping up to be a pretty good year for us. The tomatoes have really kicked in and have been just great. Good production and great flavors. Some of our old favorites like Paul Robeson, sungold cherry and stupice have out-performed as always. Some new varieties this year have also done well . Arbrason, mountain crest and persimmon are earning permanent slots in the line up. The highly touted and expensive "Temptation" turned out in my opinion to be more hype than go. You never know about toms. It's always fun to try some new varieties and we'd never find favorites without experimenting. Tomatoes are my totem veg.

Lots of other goodness happening now too. A little later for us this year than normal but none the less, the summer bounty is here. I think all of the farmers in the northwest are hoping for a long and mild fall season, I know we are. We have late sowings of peas, squash and many others that we are hoping will hang on into October. Lots of late fall and over-wintering varieties in the ground too.

Some fields are getting wrapped up and cover cropped for the winter as mature crops are harvested. Actually hoping for a little rain to help the newly sown seed to germinate. We are still sowing a few things, winter greens, over-wintering carrots and beets and more.

That's all for now, time to roll.

farmer john

Big Week

Thanks to everyone who lent a hand last week, We were able to get a lot done. Another big couple of weeks around here coming up too. Lots of transplanting and sowing which also requires quite a bit of tractor work to prepare new beds. Weeding, watering and cultivating is also big on the list. Add to that a busy harvest and market schedule and you've got yourself a full plate. I'm feeling pretty good about where we're at right now. We have our work cut out for us but we're on it. Not a lot of time for goofing off though.

The weather's been much better. A little cool in the night but toasty in the day. Tomatoes are coming around. They'll be full on soon. I'm expecting a short timeline for harvesting but there's lots of fruit on right now. Lookin good. Potatoes have been great and we have lots more to harvest. It's been a bright spot this year. We'll be cover cropping as we go. Just waiting for a little rain to sow the seed so we can do it without irrigation.

Thats all for now, returning to bed!

Farmer John

August

Wow, here we are already at the end of July, It's been a busy, scrambled year for us here. A year where we appear to just be finding our groove. Consistently we've been about 30 days off of normal due to the poor weather we experienced in the spring. But alas the tomatoes are starting to ripen and things are growing well in the field. Other Summer crops like squash and cucumbers are coming on too. Hopefully with any luck, we'll have a long fall/winter season. Most of what we are doing right now is efffectively planning for just that. Lots of newly sewn seed in the fields and this week we'll be busy transplnting seedlings into the fields. This has been a year that has given us experience that hopefully we won't have to fall back on in the future. I've talked to many of the old timers and they all say they cannot recall a year like this. So This year has been different that what we were hoping for and I'm hopefull we don't have another like this but am confident we can ride it out and perservere if we do. The one lesson I have learned is that consistency pays and try not to beat yourself up too much over issues that are out of your hands. Patience and a positive attidude basically. So enough is enough about lamenting the tough year. It's time to move on. We've got work to do!

Farmer John

Rockin

There is a lot going on right now. Mostly working on getting planted out. We are finally working all of our land as things have dried out. By the end of the week we should have most of our plots planted out. Some transplanted, some direct sown. At this point we're thinking about our summer and fall crops. We have summer squash planted in one of our greenhouses that'll be ready for harvest next week. We have a second main sowing outside that's just in and another sowing planned for the 1st of July. Winter squash should be direct sown today and we'll have our new planting of strawberries in. It's late to be putting them in but we'll reap a nice late summer & fall harvest. Late seems to be the theme this year. We have alot of crops in the field slowly growing and just waiting for some warmer weather. The weather is still cool but it's been dry. We're irrigating most of our plots but not all. We have one plot of potatoes in a field that has no water source at this point so I'm hoping we'll get a little rain here and there. Irrigation takes us a good bit of time to set up and maintain, we often refer to it jokingly as "irritation" We use drip tape which works great but we are constantly setting and re-setting beds to take them on or off line.

Despite the slow season, things are looking pretty good in the field. You've heard me say many times by this point, that its been a difficult year. We're slowly working out of that and hopefully the slow start will soon be a distant memory. It's been making me feel quite introspective. What have we learned from the experience? How could we have handled it differently? What are we going to do in the future? The weather has been throwing us some curve balls in the last few years and I think it's a fair assesment to assume this is our new future. We're going to have to adapt. On the same hand I feel we're going to have to adapt to this new economy. Things are changing despite the fact our leaders are telling us we're out of the reccession and this latest down turn is only a blip. I'm seeing it a little differently here from my view as a small business owner.

Yesterday, we began sowing our earliest fall and overwinter crops. We'll be working at this for a bit. We're starting a little earlier this year to adjust for the cooler temps. Having product in the shoulder seasons is a big deal for us. It often represents our profit. Good planning and solid execution are key. Having some good fall weather is a bonus. It's safe to say all the farmers in the northwest are hoping for a long, mild fall season.

It's a new day out there, better get an early start.

Keep well,

Farmer john

The Tide Turns

The absence of any recent blog posts should be a hint that perhaps things are ramping up a bit. We still don't have a ton of product coming out of the fields but at least we have a decent selection of spring greens. Much of our field area is still too wet to work but should be dry by this week. At this time we have all of our dry beds planted out and are just waiting so we can really get planted. Honestly it's been a frustrating season. We're a good month off of normal and I have so much too do there is just simply not enough time in the day to accomplish all that needs to be done. Sales have suffered from our lack of variety and quantity. This weeks market was much better than earlier and traffic appeared to be normal.

Big news for this week was we got the cover put on our new greenhouse. We still have some work to do but at least we're covered and planted out. We filled this house up with tomatoes and basil. Looks good.

Outdoor sowings have performed poorly so we're still mostly transplanting. Soon we'll be direct sowing most of our beds. Potatoes are up and looking good.

So in general, not a lot of details, just hard work and persistence.

Keep well,

Farmer John

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