This One

As we prepare to make our last deliveries, we reflect on the harvest and create ideas for the future. The last Vermont Valley Community Farm CSA harvest is near, as (hopefully) everyone knows. We keep so busy getting each week’s delivery accomplished, there seems to be little time and energy for contemplation. But an era for us is ending and it most worthy of reflection.

Every year has been a challenge in one way or another. Easily this year’s primary challenge has been the relentless rain.  Mud, mud and more mud! Week after week, day after day, putting on rubber boots and rain gear; harvesting with one slimy step at a time. We are committed to make every last delivery as bountiful as we can. That is reflective of how we have approached everything we do and have done on this farm. Whether it is the harvest or the member events; our goal for our CSA is to be the best. When we started 24 years ago, there was a common misconception that it was ok for organic vegetables to be “less good”. We rejected that immediately. Our vegetables were going to be better than the non-organic! Granted, this is farming, and things go wrong, but our goal has always been unshaken. We have communicated our trials and tribulations and your responses have been wonderfully supportive.

This fall the ground is so saturated we will likely not get our fall cover crops planted for the first time ever. Even though the vegetables are ending, we will continue to care for the land. Our commitment to organic farming, and by extension your commitment, has been key to our success. We do not use the system fungicides and insecticides that make conventional produce cheaper to produce; instead we have to be better farmers. We would not have even considered giving you vegetables loaded with pesticides; we preferred them to be loaded with flavor and nutrition. Organic agriculture is changing all of agriculture, but will only continue to do so with your support. Belonging to an organic CSA or shopping at the farmers market or buying organic products at the store are choices you can make. You make a huge impact by choosing organic!

Over 10,000 households have committed to Vermont Valley over the past 24 years; many of you for lots of years, and some for all 24 years. It has made literally all the difference; we did not exist without you.  Please give another farm the same chance. There are many good CSAs and organic farmers in the area.

Thank you for all of the comments we have received, please keep them coming. Your stories about the farm are precious to us. We are forever grateful to you for choosing us to be your farmers.

Your farmers,

David and Barb

 

And Then There Was a River

This is getting a bit old; all this talk of rain, rain, rain. We knew it was going to rain all day Monday, and we simply can’t take a day off from harvest, or it won’t all get done so we came up with a plan. The leek beds were right next to one of our hoophouses. If we could harvest the leeks, we could bring them into the hoophouse and clean them. If… David wasn’t sure if he could get the undercutter, which is pulled behind the tractor, through the mud to lift the leeks but he did! For the harvesters it meant dodging the torrential downpours and avoiding being out in thunder and lightening, which seemed to go on for 24 hours with minuscule breaks. The sound of the rain beating on the plastic structure blocked out all other sound, so we worked in silence. We spent all morning and half of the afternoon at this daunting task, but finished. Then, as we were cleaning up, someone looked out the door and said, “A river!” The water was cascading over the driveway and rushing the entire length of our field. Whoa! But the path of the water did not run through any crops. There’s always a silver lining.

Barb

Leek harvest in the rain.

Ryna hauling leeks to the hoophouse.

A river formed while we were cleaning leeks.

Cleaning leeks in the ‘dry’ hoophouse. Notice none of us took our rain gear off all day.

View from the door of the hoophouse. We are looking towards the crops we will be harvesting the next day, no matter what! And we did.

Wednesday morning collard harvest. No rain, just mud to walk through.

A pallet on the tractor was loaded with crates of leeks. The tractor is the only vehicle that will be able to make it through the fields for the rest of the season. If any other vehicles tries, it will get stuck (I know!).

 

Beating the Rain

We did it on Tuesday! The prediction was for rain in the afternoon, at about 3:00 pm, and we put a lot of faith in the 100% prediction. The fields are getting quite saturated and not drying off between rains. David had to finish the potato harvest. There were potatoes in two fields. Monday was a failed attempt with both fields, just too darn wet, the machine that digs the potatoes is not meant to deal with heavy, wet soil. Tuesday morning was going to have to be it. David in one tractor pulling the potato harvest machine, Jesse in another tractor pulling the wagon and four people riding the harvest machine to pull those clumps of dirt and grass out of the rollers so only the potatoes would be conveyed up into the wagon. As they were harvesting the potatoes, five of us were in the same field bringing in the kale. Both jobs done before lunch!

Now let’s head across the valley and bring in the winter squash and pie pumpkins, and get it done before the rain. Several bins filled before lunch. A much needed one hour break then all hands on to clip, pick up and count them into bulk bins before that 3:00 rain deadline. We were working in the valley with an amazing view to the west where the storm clouds were mounting and moving our way. As a bin filled Eric hauled it by tractor to the shed. At 2:30 it began to rain, a nice gentle rain which felt good to our warm bodies. Almost done, and at 3:00 the sky opened and began to pour! The last bin was filled, we all ran and climbed into the back of the pickup truck for a wet ride back. Soaked to the skin and happy to return to the packing shed, we spent the next two hours washing squash. Eric, in full rain gear, drove back and forth with heaping bins.

This afternoon everyone is out harvesting sweet potatoes to get ahead of the next rain.

~Barb

Watching the potato harvest go by as we harvest kale.

Bins of Carnival squash. Jesse uses the skid steer to move bins around the field .

Here come the storm clouds as we harvest winter squash.

Kale harvest, notice the mosquito net Sophon is wearing!

 

More Rain and Mosquitoes

Why does it always come down to weather when I sit down to write? I guess if we worked inside it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but we all work outside all the time. It rained on Tuesday and believe it or not, it was a welcome event. The 1 inch we received was perfect for the plants, the ground was beginning to get dry. Remember a couple of weeks ago I said if we didn’t get more rain this fall we would have to irrigate, well we were getting close to that point. The rain came down gently all morning and we worked in it all morning! Although most of us had on rain gear, we all felt and looked like soaked little puppies after four and a half hours. We surprised ourselves and harvested lettuce, kohlrabi, celery and kale in that time. Rather an ambitious haul for one morning. I think all just hunkered down and got it done.

And then there’s the mosquitoes! On this farm we have never in 24 years even come close to experiencing such an invasion. They hang over us in clouds. They are relentless and their bite is nasty. We all cover up completely, keeping only our faces exposed, but somehow, on two occasions, a mosquito made its way under my glasses and stung me on the eyelid. First my left eye then the next day my right. Both of my eyes are all swelled up. When Jesse saw me yesterday morning he said, “What happened to you? Looks like you lost!”

The vegetables in the fields are all fine and happy although we need to wait until the ground dries to finish potato harvest. The ground needs to be dry for that activity so we have very small windows between rains and the time it takes the ground to dry.

I guess I know why I talk about weather so much!

Barb

Kale harvest on Tuesday morning. We had already been working in the rain for four hours by this time. We were getting cold and bitten up by mosquitoes, even kept going into our lunch hour so we could finish!

 

Potato Time of Year

We grow a lot of potatoes. We dedicated nine acres to potatoes this year, more than any other vegetable we grow on the farm. In addition to growing spuds for our CSA shares, we also produce potato seed for other farmers. Our seed is double certified – certified organic and certified disease free by the Wisconsin Seed Potato Certification Program. During this busy week of CSA harvest, David, Jesse and Eric spent a great deal of each work day harvesting potatoes from our land in Arena, near the Wisconsin River. We’ve been waiting for this dry weather to be able to access the fields with our tractors. There was still a fair amount of mud and Jesse managed to get a tractor stuck. Luckily we use two tractors in the harvest process so David was able to tow him out with the other tractor. The guys brought in French Fingerling, Carola, Peter Wilcox, Goldrush Russet, and Magic Molly varieties this week and the potato cooler is getting pretty full. When the entire harvest is done we will be storing over 200,000 pounds of potatoes on this farm through winter and spring. If you ask any of us what our favorite vegetables are, potato is pretty high on the list, usually number one.

~Jonnah

David and Jesse drive tractors side by side and Eric pulls debris off of the potato digger.

A dewy morning in the potato field.

Jesse hauls crates of dropped potatoes out of the field.

The potato digger drops potatoes into the potato wagon.

Potatoes get dug then ride up a belt. Dirt and stems get separated from the potatoes.

Eric, Jesse, and Yun empty the potato wagon into bulk bins to be trucked back to the farm.

Dream Lens Media photography

 

Another Rainy Week

I really can’t remember weather like this. Not only the rains, but the fog and humidity for such an extended period of time. Many of the vegetables are responding positively to so much water and others are not so happy. The fall crops like cabbage, kale, collards, lettuce heads, radishes, carrots are all happy enough with the water. Then there are the crops it has posed a challenge with. The beans were all knocked over and suffered in quality, although the taste is still great. The corn was knocked down and had to be harvested from the ground. The salad mix had a good many leaves effected with black spotting, we did our best to pick them all out of the mix. The tomatoes, which always get hit with multiple diseases, got an excessive dose of diseases that brought the outside tomato season to a halt several weeks sooner than usual. But, the hoophouse tomatoes are beautiful and will be harvested for many weeks to come. The peppers are happy and thriving, turning big and red.

We do our best with the weather we get. We haven’t had to irrigate for some time now, saving us a lot of time, but we have not put the irrigation equipment away, there are still seven weeks to go and believe it or not if it stops raining we may need to irrigate.

And then there’s the mud! As long as we wear rubber boots and keep the trucks on the gravel drives, all is OK.

But it’s sure good to see the sun today!

~Barb

Monday morning fog and pepper harvest.

Abby and Eric slogging through the mud as they harvest mix.

Then the crates of salad mix need to be carried to the truck.

I wonder how long Jesse’s green rain pants are going to survive. Last week they were duct taped together, now they are looking rather skirt like. Farm fashion is definitely like no other.

The crew spent a bit of time cutting the tips off of the corn to get rid of corn ear worm damage. Although the worm is perfectly safe (a family member said: it just eats corn, so probably tastes like corn), no one really wants one. But if you do find one, cut it off and enjoy the rest of your corn.

 

 

The Farm is Fine!

Unprecedented rains fell in northwest Dane County. Our neighbors in Black Earth, Mazomanie and Cross Plains were hit hard and many had to evacuate as flood waters came into their homes. The flooding in those areas was caused by the rising waters in the Black Earth Creek. This farm escaped the tremendous flooding! Yes, we did get many, many inches of rain, but no standing water in any of our fields. Water rushed through in areas, mainly in grassy waterways. The fields are very muddy, making access to them by foot or vehicle difficult. The driving rains did knock over a sweet corn field and shredded the red lettuce for our salad mix. But we do what we can and only harvested the green lettuce for the salad mix this week.

As many of you may know, we also have a large field in Arena where we grow most of our potatoes. That field goes under water frequently. As David and I drove to Arena Monday night to check out the field, we first drove into Mazomanie to witness the roads in the village flowing like a river. We got stopped at Hwy 14 because of water over the road and then wound around through high back roads to get to our field. Wow, no standing water. The potato field was spared!

Employees had a hard time figuring out how to get here on Tuesday morning, their routes disrupted by water over roads. Everyone eventually made it!

My heart goes out to all of you who were impacted by the flooding in Madison, Middleton and beyond. Mother Nature throws some pretty crazy stuff at us sometimes and then we pull together and do what we need to do to get through it.

There will be a bountiful array of food delivered this week!

Barb

Tuesday morning, 6:45. Jesse and Eric look at the peppers that were pushed over by the driving rains. Eric, Jesse and Barb were the only three in the fields. All other employees were struggling to get to the farm over flooded roads.

Sweet corn harvest Tuesday afternoon. We could get tractors into the fields.

The wagon carrying the corn was sinking as it was pulled along. At one point the tractor was almost stuck. Yikes!

Salad mix harvest in the mud Wednesday morning.

Jesse slogging through the mud and carrying full crates of salad mix to the truck

Going to get that salad mix to the truck!

This is the intersection of two roads that we came to as we were driving to our field in Arena.

 

Time Well Spent

Every morning at 6:30 a crew of about 10 people heads into the fields to begin harvest. We harvest vegetables 4 days a week and spend one day packing the boxes and delivering them to you. We try to spend the afternoons in the packing shed, out of the hot sun, washing and bagging. In between harvest we squeeze in weeding, greenhouse work, planting, trellising and much more. It’s a balancing act dictated by the Thursday deadline and the weather. We don’t leave the packing shed on Wednesday until it’s all done. We work well together and enjoy what we do. Enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of our labor!

Misty morning zucchini harvest. Many of our mornings are very foggy in our valley. Foreground: Abby and Jesse

Cutting the tops off the newly harvested fresh onions. Jon and Matt are Monday morning worker shares. Jesse and Abby are always here.

Washing those onions in the packing shed at the brush washer. Neing, Phalla, Abby, Yun, Ryna.

Swiss Chard harvest on a beautiful morning.

 

Welcome!! To the 2018 Bounty Season

The season is indeed starting out with bounty. Much thanks to all of the rain and hot weather; plants do respond positively to both of these things. Everything looks great in the fields. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons and all of the summer crops are flourishing. Although we did have a dry period last week and needed to irrigate. Crazy how that works, so much rain then none, the plants need consistent water.

Green beans were one of the bounty crops this week. They are as beautiful as can be. We harvest green beans with a mechanical harvester, then bring them into the packing shed and run them over a bean cleaning machine. Many people stand in front of a conveyor to take out any debris (stems, leaves) that may have come in with the beans.  This cleaning process takes about 3 hours. The mechanical harvesting takes about 2 hours. This process allows everyone to work standing up and eliminates crouching over bean plants for an entire day.

We acquired this bean machines about 15 years ago, bought it from a farm near Green Bay. It was winter and I took our old Jeep pickup truck and trailer to get the machine. I had stayed in a hotel the night before and woke to a blizzard, loads of snow had fallen during the night and was still falling heavily. I headed to the farm on a completely snow covered country road. The farmer successfully loaded me up, strapped down the machine and off I went. The interstate was no better.

Now this old pickup truck was a piece of work. The gas gauge didn’t work, the head lights were mediocre at best. I kept track of mileage to estimate when to fill up, but pulling a trailer with a heavy piece of equipment of course uses more gas. The snow covered interstate was as horrible as conditions get (blowing snow, semi trucks, low visibility). I knew I was getting close to needing gas so exited on Hwy 151 and ran out on the off ramp. Was able to coast to the side of the road. Now these were the days before cell phones. I ran up to a car on the off ramp and hitched a ride to a gas station; a mom, two girls and a fresh box of pizza.  I filled a container with gas and started to walk the mile or so back to my truck, not seeing anyone at the gas station I felt comfortable asking for a ride. As I walked in blinding snow and below zero wind chill back to the truck, a man and his son pulled over and gave me a ride. I did what I needed to do and got home pretty late and in the total dark. When I asked David if he was worried, he said ‘No, should I have been?’ I guess not.

Barb

David drives the tractor and skillfully operates the harvest machine while Jesse monitors the beans dropping from the chute. The machine harvests the entire plant. All of the plant matter gets blown out of a chute (between the tractor and the stack of crates) and the beans drop through another chute.

 

Many hands picking through the beans to eliminate leaves, stem and such. The machine sits in the packing shed addition where we get nice air flow and sunlight under the shade of a roof.

Many hands picking through the beans to eliminate leaves, stem and such. The machine sits in the packing shed addition where we get nice air flow and sunlight under the shade of a roof.

 

 

 

Spring Into Summer

The spring has run its course, and now it is time for the sun and heat of the long summer days to bring us Wisconsin’s bounty season.   The summer and fall (yes fall) crops are growing wonderfully. I cultivate every crop every week, eliminating the weeds we don’t like. This is my time to see up close the development of everything.

• The winter squash is already flowering with tiny fruit visible.
• Several of the potato varieties put on a beautiful flower display, which has just begun. This coincides with the first baby potatoes underground.
• The earliest planted sweet corn is almost too tall to cultivate, meaning it is on schedule for early August harvest and the Corn Boil event.
• The sweet potato slips, which look like a green stick when planted, have come to life and begun to put on leaves and shoot out roots.
• The first green bean plantings are looking great; unlike last year when we had lots of germination problems; so lots more beans this year, one of my favorites. Even the edamame germinated perfectly, breaking our 2-year run of crop failure. Deer have been nibbling at the edamame, but not too much damage yet.
• The pumpkins and gourds have sprouted in uniform rows, meaning another great Pumpkin Pick event is in store for October.
• Several broccoli plantings are in the ground and have a good start; the evil flee beetle has had little impact this year on all the brassicas.
• All the crops under row cover are lifting the cover towards the sky, meaning they are doing great and are asking to be uncovered soon; bring on the melons, cucumbers and summer squash.
• We had a successful hand pick of Colorado Potato Beetles off the eggplant, their favorite target.
• This is also the time to catch up on the always needed hand weeding; a slow tedious process, but that’s part of organic farming. The first planting of carrots got their final hand weeding today; they are already beginning to size up. Garlic, onions and leeks are looking great, but need hand weeding attention also.
• There is a lot of work to do with the tomatoes, putting in stakes, getting the plants trellised, and some hand weeding.
• The rains have been a bit much, but on the bright side, the irrigation chores have been negligible. However, a droughty period always shows up, so there will be lots of work to do to keep the plants watered.
• The bulk of the greenhouse work and transplanting is over, but some work lingers into August.

There is much yet to do to prepare your first bounty season box of produce in July.  We hope you’ve enjoyed the early spring season delights, and do look forward to more great food from your Farm.

David

Barb planting sweet potatoes

Dandelion harvest for the final Spring Season delivery

Yun tucking in the lettuce before the rain comes