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

 

A Good Week to Be a Vegetable Farmer

After a week of intense heat, humidity, and mosquitoes, we were all very happy to work these past few days. We had a busy schedule of harvest for the Spring Season shares and early summer planting continues. In weather like this, everyone is eager to be outside and work seems to get done faster. Yesterday morning we had a short thunderstorm that sent us running for the packing shed only to get back out into the field 20 minutes later. It’s hard not to love your work during weeks like this.

Jonnah

Morning spinach harvest before the sun gets high in the sky.

Barb walking crates of spinach out of the field.

A beautiful stand of scallions. Pulling these out of the ground is one of my favorite jobs on the farm!

Jesse counting as Jon harvests.

Jesse and Barb, son and mother, figuring out the best way to remove the row cover.

Fresh garlic harvest. The smell of garlic was so amazing while we were pulling it up!

 

What a Week!

We, and the plants, all made it through this record breaking May heat wave! We worked outside Monday and Tuesday, sweating like crazy and drinking lots of water. The end of May is the busiest time on the farm so no matter that the temperatures are soaring into the 90’s, there is tons of work to do. We harvested outside and in the hoophouses. We transplanted zucchini, sweet corn, melons and David spent a lot of time on the tractor planting many seeds. We wished we could have spent more time in the packing shed, but this week’s work kept us outside for most of the days. Wednesday was a gift, with cooler temps and rain! We worked outside until the rains came and then harvested in the hoophouse. We knew everything outside was getting well watered. Oh yes, the mosquito population is a bit crazy this year, adding to the fun!

Barb

Monday Morning salad mix harvest.

Followed by spinach harvest. You can almost see the heat hanging in the air.

Tuesday afternoon we headed into the rhubarb jungle.

Wednesday morning was spend in the hoophouse in the fennel jungle. Notice Sophon is wearing mosquito netting. It is pouring rain outside and we are happy inside, although I think all of the mosquitoes decided to get out of the rain, too.

Ryna planting tomatoes in the hoophouse. After a crop is harvested we replace it with tomatoes. Lettuce heads were in this spot on Monday.

 

Spring Magic

Spring is such a beautiful and magical time on the farm. Different hues of green everywhere are soft and varied and brilliant. Rains come hard and the wetland turns into a pond, only to recede the next day. Sandhill cranes are vying for nesting territory. Fog rolls through the valley in the early mornings, muting the colors and bringing with it a mystique. Dew hangs so heavily on the tall grass that you feel as if you are swimming when walking into the fields. Planted crops are thriving, despite all of the crazy weather.

Through it all we work hard. Bodies ache and grow weary. But then we look up at the beauty all around us and are reminded how lucky we are to work in such a magical place. At times we work silently and at other times we chatter and laugh. The days pass and we accomplish much.

Enjoy the spring magic in your box this week!

~Barb

Rhubarb harvest Tuesday morning. If you have never used a rhubarb leaf as a hat, give it a try. It cools your head an looks quite fashionable!

Heavy rains caused our wetland to turn into a pond. Our stream is that straight line of water in the middle. The spring vegetables are planted in far the field. The following day the waters receded and the vegetable fields are in great condition!

Last Friday we were working in the hoophouse during a downpour. The water decided to come under the edge and start flowing like a river. David is doing some water re-directing. All is well with the plants!

Harvesting salad mix Monday morning. Heavy fog and mist outside.

I stepped out through the open side wall of the hoophouse to capture this picture of our leeks, onions and garlic in the mist. They are enjoying the spring and growing well.

The sun sets on the stream behind our big field.

 

Welcome to the New Season

Yea, spring finally came, and along with it the needed warmth for vegetables to grow. We’ve had a lot of fun harvesting greens from the hoophouses. This year we are growing more than twice as much food in those hoophouses and needed to be creative about how to squeeze it all in. We decided to make the paths between the beds of greens a bit narrower. Weeding and harvesting and maneuvering in a 12 inch row is not the easiest thing to do, and all without stepping on the crop that’s flowing into the row. For the past three days, with sore backs and lots of laughs, we harvested our way through beds and beds of greens. The sunshine makes the houses warm and when it’s raining outside somehow the rain manages to leak in, creating a slick muddy walkway. A balancing act all around.

Welcome to the Spring Season!

Barb

Sauté Mix harvest in those 12 inch rows! Note how we need to balance the crates on a bucket since there is not enough room in the row to place the crate. Casey and Yun harvesting arugula. Sophon, Ryna and Neing harvesting different beds of kale and mustard greens.

Ryna, Yun, Casey harvesting spinach. We pinch off one leaf at a time. This way we can leave the smaller leaves on the plant to grow bigger for next week.

The hoophouse a couple of weeks ago. The red lettuce in the foreground is what was delivered this week. It even looked like this when there were piles of snow outside. A lovely place to be.

Wednesday night after all of the employees had gone home Eric, Barb, Jonnah, Jesse and David (all with the last name Perkins) rallied for another hour to get every little bit done. We were all on our 11th hour, ready to be done yet still having fun! Balancing a phone on a sawhorse was the only way to capture the moment. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to grow your food.

 

The Cold Spring

The thermometer reads 70 degrees Tuesday and there are still a few piles of snow strategically distributed around the farm, lest we forget we had a blizzard only a few days ago.

The crew is planting onions this week; the onions that were diligently cared for as they patiently waited to be planted. For the past 2 weeks, on each day that was above freezing, we would carry them into an unheated plastic structure to get hardened off (toughened up) and then carry them back into the heated greenhouse each night. This went on until last Friday when we decided they could stay out all night, along with their friends spinach, lettuce, dandelion greens, sauté mix and scallions: 36,800 cells total. That night the temperature dropped lower than expected. At 10 pm it was 32 degrees and I knew I wouldn’t sleep until we somehow protected those plants. David and I decided to double row cover them and put a space heater below the draped row cover. It looked so cozy when we were finished I thought I could just crawl under and fall asleep. I resisted and slept well in my own bed, knowing the plants were going to make it through the low evening temperatures. They did.

The other vegetables that made it through less than ideal conditions were the lettuce heads and spinach transplants which were planted into the field just days before the first snow fall. We studied the weather predictions and figured they would be protected under a blanket of snow until it melted. We also knew if we didn’t plant them before the snow came, it would be way too many days before we could get them out into the fields. We weren’t too crazy about the ice that accumulated prior to the snow storm, but plants are tough. The snow from the first storm hadn’t even melted off before the next storm hit. Now they were really covered, and hopefully as cozy as a lettuce plant under a blanket of snow can be. The snow has melted and the plants look fine! They didn’t do too much growing under the snow, but now they can get serious about that. Happy Spring!

Barb

Planting onions on Tuesday, that gorgeous 70 degree day. Sophon and Ryna in foreground.

Walking down to the greenhouse on April 19. Yes, the greenhouse is bursting with life inside.

Here we are inside the greenhouse. Quite a contrast from the snowy day outside.

All of the plants that were moved into an unheated structure to ‘harden off’ or get tough and strong before being transplanted into the field.

At 11pm last Friday night David and I were out in that hardening off area double row covering the plants and placing a space heater beneath the covered plants. The temperatures were dipping more quickly than expected.

The survivors. Here are the lettuce and spinach plants that weathered 2 snow storms! We knew they could do it!

Here comes the garlic! Planted last October. So much to look forward to!

Spring Season plants growing happily in the hoophouse. If you haven’t signed up for the Spring Season yet, you still have time.

 

Season 24 …Here we come!

Planning and planting are underway! Yes, I did say planting. Last Monday Eric and I planted 7,872 seeds and they are already poking their little green heads above the surface of the soil. Winter is an exciting time on the farm and not as long as most people imagine it is for us. The same week that we finally got snow and I can do what I love most in winter, cross country ski, was the same week that we started planting seeds for our upcoming season. Now, that is a short winter. The lucky thing is I still get to squeeze in skiing between my other winter farm tasks, a pure joy.

Jesse and Jonnah spend a lot of time in the barn office. Jonnah signs up new members, works on our marketing plan, organizes our winter conference schedule and handles member communications. Jesse keeps busy with the farm’s seed potato business. They and their kids squeezed in a vacation to California to visit friends, play on the beach and run.

David has just finished taxes and compiling greenhouse plans and field plans. He and I had a fantastic vacation to the Galapagos Islands in January.

The seeds have finished pouring into the farm via UPS and are all nestled into their bins and files.

Winter is a wonderful combination of work and play for us. March 1 marks the return of employees and some serious work as the greenhouse gets fired up and many tens of thousands of seed potatoes get bagged. Soon, in about 8 weeks, we will be planting outside. We better get in as much winter play as we can in the next few weeks.

See you all soon!
Barb

Eric, in the greenhouse potting shed, filling flats with potting soil.

Barb operating the seeding machine. Note we are all dressed very warm. This building is about the same cold temperature as outside.

The flats of seeds are germinating in one of our walk-in coolers, turned germination room for a few weeks.

 

One Short Season Complete

Yesterday was a gorgeous warm, overcast day as we harvested the last of the greens for the Spring Share. We experience beginning and ending three times as we prepare for, plant, harvest and deliver the different shares we offer. We divide our growing season into three seasons in order to give you, our members, choice. Early season greens, main season a bit of everything, late season roots.

Along with completing the harvest we also transitioned the hoophouse from a bounty of greens to a tomato house. The tomatoes had been planted alongside the greens, but not until we had all of the greens out and all of the weeds out and all of the trellis poles up could we see the impact of this transition. Then we layed the drip irrigation alongside each row of tomatoes. The tomatoes get watered from below and the greens got watered from above. The last thing we did before walking out was turn on the irrigation. There are already tomatoes on the plants!

Thank you so much for participating in our Spring Share season. You may not know this, but ALL of the vegetables we grow on this farm are delivered to you through our CSA (except potatoes which we also grow for our seed potato sales). Let your friends know that we still have CSA shares available for the rest of the season.

Barb

The last harvest from one of our hoophouses (the one we call “The Colossal”). The crops pictured are sauté mix and arugula.

Abigail and Eric harvesting lettuce heads between the rows of tomatoes.

Tonny and Eric (J-Mo) harvesting fennel.

Five hours later………No more vegetables or weeds! And the tomatoes are getting happily irrigated with the drip irrigation.

Another view of the tomatoes.

Rhubarb harvest in the smallest of our rhubarb beds.

 

The Promise of Things to Come

As I drove around the farm today, I was completely taken by its beauty. The air is heavy, waiting for rain to fall. The spring green on the hillside is soft and gentle. And the fields are full of promise. The peas were standing in beautiful rows of bright green. The potatoes are under the ground, covered by hills. The plastic mulch has been laid, waiting for squash to be planted. The greenhouse is bursting with transplants; each week thousands of plants are transplanted outside and thousands more are started. So much new life, so much promise. I feel fortunate to be able to immerse myself in such a cycle of life.

Barb

The farm road into one of our fields. Ahead are peas and to the right under the hills of soil are potatoes.

The peas. These peas were started in the greenhouse and transplanted into the field. We do this to guarantee a solid stand of peas. If we plant the peas directly into the ground and then there is a lot of cold, wet conditions, many of the seeds will rot. (We are certified organic; we don’t use fungicide treated seeds as the chemical agriculture farms do).

Plastic mulch, just laid. We use plastic mulch for many heat loving crops. The plants get planted directly into the plastic. We mulch the bare dirt heavily with alfalfa hay. Irrigation hose runs under the plastic. The plastic acts as a weed barrier and holds the moisture in.

Rhubarb harvest for the Spring Share.

 

It’s May on the Farm

It’s 10:00. The trucks just pulled out laden with spring greens; a crew of 6 is out in the fields transplanting cabbage, Swiss chard, spinach, kohlrabi and fennel; David is on his tractor planting radish and turnip seeds, Eric is in the potting shed seeding popcorn. We packed 225 Spring Shares and cut 1,000 pounds or so of seed potatoes. The squash, watermelon and sweet corn transplants were moved out of their cozy warm germination chamber into the greenhouse and the salad mix transplants were moved into the area where we harden off the plants to prepare them for transplanting. Now what?

The transplanting will continue most of the day, the delivery drivers will pull in around 3:00, Eric will stay busy with farm tasks, David will likely be on his tractor all day, Jesse will be planting potatoes and Jonnah and I get to catch up on office work.

We couldn’t have been happier to see the sun come out yesterday and the soil begin to dry out and warm up. We spent a cold rainy Monday in the damp potting shed seeding all day. We spent a cold windy day Tuesday harvesting in the hoophouses. We totally enjoyed Wednesday as we continued harvest and started the week’s transplanting. It’s May on the Farm!

Barb

Watercress harvest. The watercress grows in a little spring fed stream on the border of our wetland. The most fun and challenging part of this job is figuring out how to set up the harvest to avoid stepping knee deep into muck. We’re not always successful, Sophal slipped off and filled his boot with water.

Washing tot soi. We all stand around the tub of ice cold water rubbing off dirt and removing bad leaves. Barb, Yun, Ryna, Eric (J-Mo), Neing, Phearo.

Sorrel harvest. Sorrel is a perennial and is one of the first plants to come up in spring. It’s cut, then washed and spun dry and bagged.

Harvesting Red Russian Kale, one of the greens in the sauté mix. Notice how the crew has to work around the tomato plants. We inter-plant tomatoes in our hoophouse alongside the greens. Once the greens are all harvested the house turns into a jungle of tomatoes