Behind the Scenes: Government Farm Programs Stuck in Limbo
Today’s blog post is going to be about some government farm programs that we participate in and that help farmers and farms like ours and are being affected by executive orders in D.C. I’m going to try to keep this as matter-of-fact as possible and allow you space to judge whether or not these programs should exist and to what extent they should exist. I’m also only going to write about programs that we have direct experience with. Here we go.
Alright so the first program I want to talk about is tucked away in the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) called EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program). As usual, there’s enough alphabet soup in government agencies to feed a family of 5. I digress. EQIP has whole host of management practices that it provides funding for and one of the management practices is the use of high tunnels. NRCS through EQIP provides funding to construct high tunnels for farmers across the nation. We applied for an EQIP high tunnel in December 2024 and the application seems to be stuck. We’re guessing that the funding was frozen as a result of the recent executive orders but we aren’t able to get information other than our application is pending. We’ve reached out to our congressperson to try to get more information.
One of the high tunnels on our farm. High tunnels allow us to grow more and for a longer period of the year.
The second program I want to talk about is called “produce bucks.” Here’s how it works. Produce Bucks is a way that folks who receive SNAP benefits can further their benefits. When participants use their SNAP benefits at the farmers market they get matching “produce bucks” to spend at the market. So if they spend $10 of SNAP benefits they get an additional $10 in produce bucks for a total of $20 that they can spend on healthy produce from local farmers. It’s a win for everyone. Sadly, “produce bucks” is frozen as a result of the executive orders from D.C. This means that SNAP recipients (who, as far as I know, are still able to use SNAP benefits) don’t get that additional matching money for fresh fruits and vegetables. A loss for both them and farmers.
Broadband. I’ll be upfront and say I don’t have all the information here. What I do know is that one of our local Internet Service Providers received a grant to install fiber for our house among many others in Waseca County. There are several potential sources of funding from both state and federal government. We don’t know for sure but there is a good chance that the funding for this project is frozen as a result of executive orders from D.C.
How is broadband a farm program? Well technically it’s not but if you think about modern life and modern farming you soon realize that the internet is another necessary utility to run a farm. We have internet connected temperature sensors. We use the internet to communicate with our community in various forms including social media, emails, website updates & more. Having fast, reliable internet is necessary for modern business.
My take on all of this is as follows: the funding for all of the programs mentioned here was ALREADY appropriated by congress through various acts including the infrastructure plan, the Inflation Reduction Act and others. If the executive wants to remove this funding then, per the constitution, congress needs to vote to remove or change that funding.
I think these programs are good. They help rural communities be stronger. They help farms and farmers build their businesses so we can feed our community. They help both farmers and folks with food insecurity. These are all wins for our communities.
Behind The Scenes: CSA Edition
I think one of the reasons many folks enjoy our newsletter is that we go behind the scenes on certain aspects of our farm operation. One area we’ve never really gone behind the scenes on is our CSA Farm Share program. People have written entire books on Community Support Agriculture so it will be nigh impossible to condense that down into a digestible newsletter but this will get us started.
To put it succinctly: planning and executing a successful CSA program is extremely complicated. We’ll break it down into some easy to think about categories that will shed some light on the inner workings of our CSA.
I love the contrast here between the orange carrots and their green tops set against the charcoal colored soil.
Type of CSA Matters
Did you know there are tons of different types of CSAs? Everything from the traditional farmer choice CSA to our totally customizable CSA is possible. We chose a customizable CSA because we know that almost everyone has that one vegetable they just don’t care for. And even if you do like every vegetable you might get tired of a vegetable or have too much of it stocked up in your fridge. We want our CSA members to get the produce they want, need and like week after week to minimize the amount that goes unused.
Customization Needs Software
Running a totally customizable CSA, in our opinion, requires software to handle the logistics. Imagine taking 100 different orders every week, harvesting for the changing quantities of produce per CSA member requests, and packing 100 different shares every week while also juggling members vacations, missed share pickups, and all of the other things that come up during our busy lives. We decided that software could be the solution to all of this and we now use GrownBy for our CSA.
GrownBy handles all the ordering, label printing, and rescheduling things that come up during the season. All I have to do is put in an estimate of what I think we’ll have available, give our CSA members a day or two to customize their share, and then GrownBy prints out a list of what I need to harvest AND generates labels for us so we can pack 100 shares where no two are the same. On top of that, GrownBy offers the ability for you to change your pickup location and claim vacation days if you’re going to miss a pickup.
GrownBy is our trusty farmer-owned CSA Software.
Deciding What To Plant
I think this is a case where constant iteration has made what is a complex system into something very manageable. Through a combination of record keeping on harvest dates and totals, survey responses, and interaction with our CSA members we have a good feel for the crops people want and in what quantities. Couple that with building slowly starting with 8 CSA members back in 2015 (up to 100 now) we’ve been able to refine and iterate on our crop planting so we’re growing the crops our CSA members want.
Marketing Our CSA
This amounts to telling people about our CSA and how it can make their lives better. I’m not a salesperson by nature: I don’t feel comfortable being pushy, I’m honest, and I genuinely care that people feel like the CSA is valuable to their life. So when we talk about our CSA we talk about it in a way that highlights the positive ways our CSA has impact our CSA Members lives and we try to help potential new CSA members “self select” so that the new members we get have a high chance of enjoying the CSA.
The truth is that CSA is not for everyone. If you know that you don’t enjoy cooking at home and have no interest in learning how then a CSA share is probably not for you. If you’re gone regularly during the growing season on vacation and away from a kitchen then CSA probably isn’t for you. If you’re not willing to learn new recipes, cooking techniques or ways to prepare and eat vegetables then CSA is probably not for you.
Just a small sample of all the wonderful produce we grow.
A Sneak Peak into a CSA Week
Assuming all of the above goes well then we can jump into what the week of the CSA looks like from the farmers perspective. Early in the week (Monday or Tuesday) we do a visual assessment of our crops so we can make an estimate on what will be available for that weeks CSA. Once we have our estimate we add that information to our inventory list in GrownBy, our CSA software. Then, an email is sent out automatically to all CSA members reminding them that it’s time to customize their CSA share. Our CSA members use GrownBy to craft the perfect share before the share customization deadline.
Once the deadline hits we have a concrete list of exactly what we need to fill the CSA shares for that week. We then create a harvest list and head out to the field with our Farm Hands to bring in the harvest. This happens the day before you receive your CSA. Then, on CSA day we print out labels for all of our CSA members and setup our CSA packing station and get to work packing your shares. It’s a tight deadline: we pack all 100 CSA shares the morning of the delivery day but with the help of our Farm Hands and our CSA software we’re able to accomplish this with relative ease.
So there’s a little glimpse into the behind the scenes of our CSA. Is there something we missed or something you’d like to know more about? Drop us a line in the comments below or reach out!
What’s in Store for 2025
2025 is here and in about a month we’ll be starting the first seeds of the season. As we’ve gained experience we’ve settled into a bit of a pattern and the year to year changes don’t always feel as drastic as they used to. Here’s what we’re looking forward to in 2025 and what we’ll be switching up or changing to improve our farm.
New Farm Manager position. We’re excited to announce that we’re planning to hire a Farm Manager position for this season. Now that our family has grown we’re recognizing that for both health of the family and the farm that it makes sense for Lara to take a step back in the summer. Lara had essentially been fulfilling this duty from June - August: making sure the daily task list got done on time and in accordance with our quality standards. But as the farm grew we now need this role fulfilled in May, September & October as well.
New Scallion, Broccoli, Cabbage, Snap Pea Varieties. We switch up some varieties almost every year. Usually if we feel a crop under performs or we notice that it doesn’t have the disease and/or pest resistance we look for. This year, we’re trying a new purple scallion that we’re really excited about. Green Onions/Scallions have been a hit so expanding on this made sense to us. In both the broccoli and red cabbage in particular we were unhappy with the disease resistance from last years varieties so we’re switching these up and we’ll see how it goes. We also want to grow more snap peas so we’ve added an early variety and another mid season variety. We’re hoping for TONS of peas this season!
Dropping A Few Crops. It’s always hard to stop growing a crop. With everything we grow we’ve heard from at least one customer that they love the crop and we hate to disappoint. But, the crops we’re dropping are incredibly unpopular and/or labor intense to grow OR have unsuitable replacement variety options. Crops we’re dropping this year include daikon radish, arugula, and french breakfast radish.
Entry Level Harvester positions. We’re adding a new entry level position where the only duty will be harvesting some of the more tedious crops to harvest like green beans, peas, & strawberries. We see this as a great opportunity for a high school aged person to get some on the job experience. We envision having a small harvester crew of 3-6 people who would work morning to harvest crops in season.
Self-Serve Farm Stand. We’re going to test out a self-serve farm stand this season to see how it goes. It will be pretty straightforward: we’ll have a small stand in the shade at the end of our driveway that’s stocked daily with fresh produce from our farm. We’re a little skeptical that this will work since our farm is located on a gravel road and is located 30 minutes from any larger city. Still, we’ve heard from enough neighbors and through our Facebook/Instagram that we think this is worth trying.
New Winter Tunnel. We’re planning to construct a new “winter” tunnel sometime in the next 1-2 years. We’ve got an application in with the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) for one of their programs that can help with the cost of constructing the tunnel and depending on how it goes construction could start as early as spring 2025. This tunnel will be designed for winter growing in mind and will be equipped with a double layer of greenhouse plastic for better r-value, a heater, and passive ventilation. We have very high demand for winter crops like lettuce, spinach, green onions and more and for most of these crops it’s just a little too risky to attempt to grow them without supplemental heating for the coldest nights.
My favorite photo from 2024: our tunnel tomatoes after a pruning session. Look at all those tomatoes!
2024: Poignant Photos From a Transformative Year
As I revel in the New Year I am called to reflect on the previous year. 2024 marked a year of growth, unprecedented hardship, unprecedented gratitude and excitement for the future. We made some huge changes to our farm which felt very scary but ultimately were some of the best decisions we’ve made. Join me as I reflect on 2024 through photos and words.
We Bought A Cargo Van!
One of the biggest changes we’ve made on our farm was the decision to drop our Tuesday CSA Delivery & Farmers Market to allow a better work-life balance. That decision turned out to be amazing for our farm and family: we had better work-life balance and more flexible time on the farm to focus on crop care.
Since we were now delivering 100 CSA shares in a single day along with our market inventory and wholesale orders we needed more cargo space. We purchased this van and put some money towards wrapping the van with our name, website, and motto. We love the van, the flexibility it offers and the additional cargo space!
Off To A Good Start
Our early season crops were absolutely amazing! We had beautiful carrots, broccolini, green onions, radish and of course lettuce available in May and early June.
It felt like the season was getting off to a great start. We were even lucky enough to witness the aurora borealis. It was magical and inspirational but then…
Unprecedented Rain, Flooding & Hail
In May - early July we received more rain than any point previously recorded. We had massive flooding, crop losses, delayed or missed plantings, increased disease pressure and to cap it all off on June 22nd a freak hailstorm absolutely decimated our field tomatoes & peas and caused significant damage to other crops. We were getting 2”-3” rains every 2-3 days. It was almost impossible to get our field work done.
I was broken. Hopeless. Looking for a city job. I thought it was all over…
Our Community Stepped Up
Just when we thought it was all over our CSA community and the greater Mankato community stepped up and helped out. We had so many CSA members offer to forgo their CSA share or reduce it’s size to help us out. We had community members who saw our photos on Facebook and Instagram show up to the market and literally bought everything we had brought. We had our friends over at the Wooden Spoon and South Central MN Food Recovery who bought hundreds of pounds of seconds, damaged crops, and the rare surplus crops this year. We are so grateful to be a part of this wonderful community.
Things Got Better
The rain finally stopped in July and things just got better from there. The crops that survived the flooding and hail did well. Especially our tunnel tomatoes! Our new day neutral strawberries were delicious and a huge hit! We’re doubling the amount we’re planting in 2025. We had a long streak of our busiest markets ever and our wonderful staff did an awesome job getting things harvested, washed and packed for market, CSA and wholesale!
We Got Away From The Farm
We always take a family vacation in early August and despite the hardship this year we still took our vacation. It was great: Addie and I went fishing and boating and we roasted marshmallows over the fire, slept in a tent, played in the water and went out for ice cream!
We Were on the Cover of Agriculture Magazine!
This was one of my favorites from this year. We were on the cover and had an article written about us in Agriculture Magazine - a publication sent to Minnesota Farmers Union members.
The article described our farm and the sort of “boots on the ground revolutionaries” our farming and food system needs. We’re proud, honored, and thankful to be a part of this.
p.s. - You should consider becoming a Minnesota Farmers Union member. You don’t need to be a farmer to be a member and they do a good job of advocating for farms like ours.
Our Staff Are the Best
We had our annual staff appreciation supper late in the season and this year we were even more appreciative of our staff than ever before. They all stepped up and came to the farm with a great attitude despite the difficult situation the farm was in.
Their smiling faces greeted you at the Farmers Market and when you picked up your CSA share. We’re so lucky to have great staff here!
Our Farm and Family Grows in 2025
We can hardly wait to welcome baby Zimmerli to our family this month! Addie is already practicing putting diapers on some of her stuffed animals and babies in anticipation of becoming the best big sister ever.
Our farm will grow too. Not just vegetables but people too! We’ll be adding a farm manager position and expanding our farm crew to keep up with the produce that this little farm grows.
Thank you for being with us in 2024 and we can’t wait to share 2025 with you!
Happy New Year!
What do you do in winter?
“What do you do in winter?” It’s a common question I get this time of year and the answer is a lot! It’s true that winter is a much slower time of year for us here on the farm but we stay pretty darn busy. Especially now as our winter offerings have expanded. In this weeks farm update I’ll go through what we do here on the farm each winter season.
A couple seed catalogs!
Planning!
I'm a planner and I love putting together a good plan and look forward to executing the plan each season. The biggest and most important piece of the planning work I do is our crop plan. We grow over 90 varieties of produce and each year I go through each variety and assess if it's meeting our expectations for flavor, consistency, yield, and overall appeal. Some things get removed entirely from our crop plan (daikon radish, I'm looking at YOU). Others get replaced with a different variety. I also look at the timing of our successions and ask myself if I think we can grow something earlier or later? Did we run out of something consistently? I tweak our planting dates and quantities accordingly.
We also look at our financials and put together our financial plan for the year so we have an idea of how much we need to grow and how much help we need to make it happen. Once the financial plan is done we work on our plan for our farm crew for the summer.
The first photo is a couple of our seed catalogs from a couple years ago. There are hundreds of varieties to consider which seems like a lot but I love pouring over the catalog and thinking about what's possible and what you all would love to see us grow. The second photo as a screen grab of part of our crop plan. The blue bars represent the "off season", the thin grey bar represents when the crop is in the ground but not ready for harvest, and the thick grey bard is the harvest window for the crop.
Seed catalogs!
Winter Crops!
We've been dabbling with winter growing for the past 3-4 seasons as we've built out tunnels and other infrastructure on our farm to allow for some degree of year round growing. The crop care is A LOT less demanding in the winter. We generally don't have to deal with weeds in the winter and most of the work for our winter crops is done in the late fall.
Spinach is our main winter crop. It's incredibly cold hardy surviving temperatures well below zero. It's also incredibly delicious in the winter as the plant creates more sugars to help it deal with the cold temps. We're harvesting, washing, packing and selling spinach for most of the winter!
Microgreens! Micros are a relatively new crop for us but they've been a big hit. We grow these completely indoors in our heated pack shed so we have a continual supply of them year round.
Storage Crops: Carrots, Beets, Potatoes, Cabbage! These crops are stored in our walk-in cooler at optimal conditions allowing them to be stored well into the winter.
Experimental Winter Crops: Lettuce, Green Onions, Bok Choy, Mizuna, Tat Soi, Celery, Komatsuna and Kale. We're testing these crops out this year trying to understand what the extremes are for these crops.
The winter tunnel in early fall.
We slow down.
There's no two ways about it; there just isn't as much work to do in the winter. That's ok. We work REALLY hard from May-October to bring fresh, sustainable, delicious, produce to you and so we're ok with slowing down a bit during the winter.
We are especially looking forward to really slowing down once baby number 2 arrives in January. We'll soak up new baby snuggles and give Addie extra attention. There may be more daddy-daughter donut days in the future!
Daddy-daughter time!
Hobbies!
Winter is time for hobbies. Two of my biggest hobbies are woodworking and video games. Woodworking for me is both a creative outlet but also another way to keep moving in the winter. I like to build furniture and larger pieces but dabble in smaller work from time to time.
Video games are a bit of a vestige of my younger self and how I stay connected to some life long friends. I find them to be relaxing. It's fun to play a video game where at the end of the day your choices within the video game don't really matter. A welcome reprieve from small business ownership where your choices DO matter monumentally.
My latest hobby project - solid white oak kitchen chairs
The Great Garlic Mulching of 2024
Pretending I’m thrilled to be itchy! All kidding aside it was a beautiful day to be outside taking care of a crop we love!
Garlic Mulching either marks the beginning of next season or the end of the current season. I’m not sure which. This year, it was the absolute last outdoor field project we’ll do this year. It’s also the capstone to planting garlic which is the first crop we plant with intent to harvest in 2025. Either way, it’s a big project and I’m happy that it’s done. Here’s why and how we mulch our garlic.
Mulching garlic is a way to provide some extra thermal protection to the garlic cloves we planted just a few weeks ago. We all have experienced how climate change is making extremes more extreme and temperature fluctuations seem to roller coaster all over the place these days. Mulch helps insulate the garlic and provides some thermal regulation from the extremes we experience.
We have heard that it’s possible to grow garlic without mulching and it’s something we’ve considered but ultimately have decided that the mulch is too beneficial to not use. For us, the main additional benefits include weed suppression, moisture regulation, and the addition of more organic matter. Weed suppression is kind of a no brainer: - the less weeds our garlic has to compete with the better it grows and the less time we need to spend hand weeding it. Mulch also helps regulate and retain moisture which is particularly important in dry years. The mulch helps keep the moisture in the soil and greatly slows down how fast the soil dries out. Finally, the additional organic matter is beneficial to our soil. The vast multitudes of soil microbes feed on soil organic matter. The more organic matter we can feed them the better as they help improve our soil by adding nutrients, improving water infiltration, and reducing runoff. As we like to say: healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people.
We use either straw mulch from wheat or oats or cornstalk mulch from baled cornstalks for our mulching material. This year it took us about 40 small square bales to cover our garlic plot in about 4” to 6” of mulch. It’s a pretty labor intensive process. The small square bales we use are about 40# each and they are all torn apart and spread by hand. We stage the bales over the garlic plot and then tear them apart and spread them out. It’s slow, itchy, and tedious work but it’s worth it to keep our wonderful garlic tucked in for winter.
Garlic has become a very important crop for us and it’s something our CSA members look forward to every year. Not only is garlic delicious but it’s also very healthy including some evidence that it can help lower cancer risk and has anti-inflammatory properties among many others. Check out this article from the Cleveland Clinic regarding the health benefits of garlic.
Ok! That’s the last blog post on garlic for a little while. We’re excited to continue to offer this pantry staple to our CSA Members, our online store and our farmers market stand!
The finished product!
Garlic Planting 2024
Garlic is the first crop we’re planting for our 2025 season and will be one of the very first crops to pop up in bright green rows early next spring. We’ll walk you through why we plant garlic in the fall, how we plant it, and why we’re excited to continue to offer garlic as part of our CSA and farmers market offerings.
Garlic emerging from it’s mulch in mid-April.
So why do we plant garlic in the fall?
Planting garlic in the fall gives us a number of benefits. First, and most importantly, it improves the average size of the garlic bulbs by around 30%. We frequently get comments about how large our garlic is and planting garlic in the fall is one reason for the large bulbs. Second, it’s nice to check something off our planting list ahead of time. The spring is an extremely busy time of year for us and the fluctuations in the weather can have a huge impact on our farm and the ability to plant things on schedule. Having garlic planted going into the season helps reduce that workload and reduce the risk that we might not get a garlic crop. Finally, we’re less busy in the second half of October which allows us to get this job done without worrying about what other jobs need to be done on the farm.
Garlic cloves ready to plant.
How we plant garlic.
Prep The Soil We prep the soil by preceding the garlic with a cover crop. About a month before we want to plant prepare the soil by spreading fertilizer and then incorporating the fertilizer with our tiller. The tiller has several important functions in that it incorporated the fertilizer into the soil, chops up and incorporates residue from cover crops, and leaves the soil light and airy so that we can plant the cloves easily.
Mark Our Rows We use a “dibbler” attachment for our wheel hoe to mark both where the rows of garlic should be and where each individual clove should be.
Plant! It’s a slow process but we plant each clove of garlic individually. This is because the orientation of the clove is important. The root side of the clove must go down for optimal growth.
Mulch! Before deep winter sets in we apply a layer of mulch to our garlic. We typically use straw or corn stover to apply around 4-6” of mulch. Mulching our garlic helps protect the garlic from extreme temperature swings and acts as a weed barrier.
These straw bales will be evenly spread in a 4-6” layer to mulch our garlic.
Why we’re excited about garlic!
Garlic is an important crop for our small scale farmers market and CSA farm. Not only is garlic absolutely delicious in so many applications it’s also really good for you. Don’t take our word for it, check out this blog post from Cleveland Clinic regarding the health benefits of garlic. Garlic can help with everything from helping to prevent some forms of cancer to anti-inflammatory to managing blood pressure.
We do believe that healthy soil grows healthy food that when consumed makes for healthy people.
Our storage & organization hack!
One of the least glamorous but most important jobs on the farm in the fall is cleanup, storage, & organization. It’s a huge undertaking every fall but everything we’re able to do now is time saved in the spring and less wear and tear on our equipment, supplies & tools.
Fun fact: storage & organization is my jam. I love to have everything neat & tidy and for everything to have a home so that I always know where something is. But with the hustle and bustle of farm life during the midst of the season things get jumbled and cluttered. The best example of this is with our landscape fabric.
Landscape fabric is a tool we use a lot on our farm but it’s one that can be difficult to manage in storage. You see, we have a variety of crops that we grow in landscape fabric that have different spacing requirements which means that we have landscape fabric with different hole patterns for different crops. Nothing is more frustrating than grabbing a run of landscape fabric and bringing it down to the field only to realize the spacing isn’t correct for the crop you’re planting.
We developed a labeling system but we still had piles of landscape fabric in random locations in our storage shed so we decided to solve that problem. We built some shelving out of scrap lumber on the farm and built these great shelves. Then, we went through all of our runs of landscape fabric and sorted them into their respective hole spacing. The result tickles my brain in all the right ways: a neat, organized landscape fabric area in our storage shed where anyone could quickly figure out what’s what.
It feels good to have this project checked off the list and to have this system in place for seasons to come!
Seeding, Weeding and Thanksgiving Shares!
Wow! Where did May go?! It’s been a busy month here on the farm and we’ve been working on a lot of different projects. We’ve also been working on a new holiday share for Thanksgiving. Read on to learn more!
Direct Seeding
Our push seeder with row marker.
Direct seeding refers to planting seeds directly into the field and relying on the soil and rain to germinate said seeds. This is opposed to transplanting which is where we plant a seed we started indoors in a more controlled environment. More on that below.
Unsurprisingly, May is by far the busiest month for seeding for us. This is for a couple reasons. First, we utilize succession planting so that we have a steady supply of vegetables throughout as much of the season as possible. This means that even though we can plant things like lettuce, spinach and radish in April, we usually have more successions of plantings in May and even June. Additionally, we’re planting some of our warm season loving crops in May which include basically anything that grows on a vine like watermelon, cucumbers and squash as well as sweet corn, beets, carrots and more! These two factors contribute to May being a super busy month for planting.
Transplanting
Brussels sprouts, napa cabbage, herbs and cabbage transplanted into landscape fabric which serves as a weed barrier.
Transplanting is an important part of our crop plan each year. We transplant certain types of vegetables for several reasons. First, starting the seed indoors in a controlled environment gives our seeds the best chance at getting off to a really good start. This is especially important for crops like lettuce and broccoli that have a hard time out competing weeds. Second, it affords us a longer harvest window for crops like peppers and tomatoes which are typically ready later in the season. Indeed, some crops like peppers would not produce anything at all if it weren’t for starting indoors. Finally, we because we are planting in a controlled environment we can achieve extremely high germination rates meaning we waste less seeds.
The biggest tradeoff for transplanting is that it’s much more labor intensive. This balances out some with reduced labor from weeding but it is still a factor. Other tradeoffs include increased cost since we need trays to hold the plants, growing medium, and a place to put the plants after they’ve germinated but before they’re ready to be planted outside.
Our transplant tunnel which holds our transplants until they’re ready to be transplanted outside.
May is a big transplanting month as well. We transplanted several successions of lettuce and broccoli as well as cabbage, brussels sprouts, napa cabbage, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. I haven’t done the exact math but it’s well over 3000 transplants so far this year! Crazy!
Weeding
Weeds are always an problem that we face on our farm. Because of the shortage of rainfall in the first half of May the weed pressure was pretty light. However, the second half of May produced adequate rainfall and the weeds sprung up as fast as our crops did! We’ve been hard at work keeping the weeds at bay using a variety of cultivation tools including our wheel hoe, walk behind tractor, long and short handled hoes and as a last resort good old fashioned pulling weeds by hand.
Our walk behind tractor with finger weeders. The yellow fingers flick small weeds out of the rows without damaging well established plants.
We’ve talked about our walk behind tractor before but it’s worth bringing up again because of the impact it’s have on our farm. We are already reducing weed pressure by utilizing the walk behind tractor and, as a bonus, it’s easier on our bodies as well.
Chicken and Pasture Update
Our chickens are acclimating really well to their new co-op and pasture based life. Admittedly, it took some time and training for the chickens to realize there’s plenty to eat in the pasture and for them to get used to the automatic door on their chicken coop but now that they’ve learned their new setup they are looking healthier than ever and laying TONS of eggs!
Our chickens LOVE the grass!
Our pasture that we seeded in early May is also looking really, really good. The field has gone from a bare field to a sea of green. The rainfall in the later part of May really helped the pasture grow quickly and we think that in a month or so that we will be able to move our chickens onto the new pasture where there’s plenty of clover, grass, bugs and more for them to eat. We feel really good about converting convention farmland into perennial pasture!
Our pasture is GREEN! Now it just needs to get big.
You might be wondering where our chickens are if our new pasture isn’t established yet. The answer is that we have around an acre of CRP land between our produce field and a drainage ditch that runs along the township road. This is where our chickens are currently and although the CRP land isn’t 100% ideal it’s a lot better than being confined into a chicken barn!
Holiday Shares
And now for the most exciting news; we are raising turkeys for a special, one time holiday shares that will be a nearly complete meal for your Thanksgiving gathering! This share will include one pasture raised turkey that we estimate will be between 12 and 18lbs, potatoes, carrots, beets, winter squash, lettuce, garlic, carrots, and more. Plus, this share will be fully customizable so you can tweak your quantities to get the perfect amount for your gathering. These shares will be delivered to your residence the Saturday before Thanksgiving or available to pick up on the farm. To sign up for your share today visit this link: https://www.harvie.farm/farm/cedar-crate-farm/signup
Mmmmm turkey!
Spring has sprung! Here's what's happening on the farm!
Wow! It’s hard to believe it’s the end of April already but here we are. It’s been a busy month on the farm and we’ve been tackling a variety of projects around here. Here’s what we’ve been up to this Month.
Planting
Caitlyn helped us get the first potatoes and green onions planted back in early April. This is the earliest we’ve planted potatoes since our farm started! We planted three kinds of potatoes for you this season including our popular and beautiful pink fingerling potato, our early red potatoes and our “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” white potatoes.
Dan was also able to start direct seeding some of our early season crops including radishes, arugula, spinach, lettuce, kale and more. New this year are hakurei turnips which are also known as salad turnips. We hope this will spice up our early season offerings.
Transplanting into the Tunnels
We’ve also been hard at work transplanting crops into our 3 caterpillar tunnels. We’ve transplanted our first two plantings** of lettuce and kohlrabi. We’ve also direct seeded lettuce, cilantro, peas, spinach, carrots and beets into our tunnels.
Setting Up Irrigation
No doubt about it; it’s been dry this April. We’re lucky to have a quick recharging well and excellent equipment for irrigating our fields. A lot of farmers are concerned that this season will be a season of drought. We are too. Luckily, we made an investment into some irrigation infrastructure that will allow us to water the majority of our crops in the event of drought.
Setting up irrigation is a bit like building with Legos and Dan has tons of experience building with Legos. We have several components of our irrigation system including our mainline which runs from our hydrant the length of our farm. From this mainline we’re able to connect in both drip irrigation and overhead irrigation.
The Chicken Coop
This has been a project that has languished this year but we’re happy to share with you that it’s nearly completed. As we mentioned in our last blog post this coop has several improvements over our last coop the biggest of which is that it’s on wheels allowing us to easily move it around our pasture!
Speaking of pasture, Dan also seeded our pasture. We are converting roughly 2 acres of what had been corn and soybean rotation for decades into permanent pasture for our chickens and whatever future livestock we decide to add. This was a fairly big project requiring nearly a full day of tractor work. First, Dan had to work the rough cornstalk ground with a small tractor mounted field cultivator. This broke up the large clumps and helped level the ground. Next, Dan spread about 1 ton of fertilizer using our tractor mounted fertilizer spreader. Then, Dan added the pasture mix to the spreader and spread the seeds over the pasture. Finally, Dan took a harrow section and lightly worked the ground one more time which helped get the pasture seeds incorporated into the soil.
