Meet Our Staff Part Two
Every year we hire a small crew to help us with the work on our farm. Our staff not only work on the farm doing tasks like harvesting, weeding, and transplanting but they’ll also be present at our Farmers Market stand and help with our CSA pickup locations and delivery route. You’ll likely get to know them a bit over the course of this season so we’d like to take a moment to introduce you to two more of our farm staff.
Meet Dalton
My name is Dalton, and I’m currently studying geography and soil science at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Working outside is my favorite way to spend my free time, so I’m most excited about getting to do just that on the farm this summer. My favorite vegetable is asparagus!
Meet Sarah
Hi I'm Sarah and I'm most excited to have hands-on learning experience with sustainable agriculture! I'm interested in how crops are strategically planted and cared for based on the specific seasonal planning. I also hope to get involved with the local farmers market community, meet lots of new people, and make some friends!
Perennial Crop Spotlight: Rhubarb
Here we are at the end of rhubarb season and I’d love to send it a fond farewell and talk about the importance of perennial crops on our farm. Rhubarb season lasts from early to mid May through early to mid June in most cases. The rhubarb yield was on the lower side this year. I think that’s attributable to both the intense rainfall we had in the first half of last season and the lack of rainfall we had in the second half. Many perennials “bank” energy in their roots that they use the following season. Without this banked energy the yield can be lower.
Last year we attempted to expand our rhubarb patch from about 4 plants to around 40 plants. We bought the crowns, transplanted them in mid-May and then they were obliterated by torrential rain. We only had about 3 plants survive of the 35 or so we planted. A major disappointment and a waste of money, labor, and energy. We thought we’d try again this year and here’s what we’ve got so far:
Each yellow flag marks a rhubarb plant. Almost all of them made it!
Our rhubarb planting was a big success this year! We have near 100% of the crowns we transplanted emerge and if the weather is halfway decent this season we’ll be well on our way to have an abundant rhubarb supply! You may notice some spindly grassy looking stuff in between our rhubarb rows. That’s a winter rye cover crop we planted to help keep the weeds down while the rhubarb gets established.
Why are perennial crops important?
Before we get into why perennial crops are important let’s go ahead and define what a perennial crop is. Perennial crops are crops that come back year after year without having to replant each spring. Some perennial crops you may already be familiar with are asparagus, raspberries, and strawberries.
There are two big reasons perennial crops are important. First, because they come back year after year we end up not having to till or disturb the soil around them. This helps to improve our overall soil health and especially in the areas where our perennial crops reside.
The second reason is that we have some obtuse areas on the farm. That is, spaces on the farm where the beds and rows aren’t uniform length and where we have other farm infrastructure set up. It’s difficult to get our tractor and many of our tools in these spaces and it’s difficult to approximate harvests with non-uniform areas. That’s where perennial crops can come in. We can plant perennials in these obtuse spaces to make use of these spaces and not have to deal with the headaches mentioned previously.
The space along the north end of our tunnels is obtuse and perfect for perennials!
Climate Adaptation: Waterway Mix Seeding
In 2024 we experienced catastrophic flooding on our farm. We received a years worth of rainfall in just May and June. You may recall the nearby Rapidan Dam failed, downtown Mankato homes and businesses had flooded basements and many farmers experienced significant crop loss and difficulty accessing their fields. Unfortunately, climate models predict that these types of storms will only happen more frequently as the planet continues to warm.
This year we took action to help adapt our farm to climate change. We decided to take more of our lowest ground out of production and plant a cover crop that consists of a mix of species that can better withstand wet soil conditions. To compensate for the lost ground we took some of our pasture land into vegetable production.
The cover crop mix will provide a variety of benefits to the farm and the environment around us. First, it will help to reduce soil erosion during heavy rainfall events resulting in less soil ending up in the waterway. Second, it will help to reduce the amount of nutrients from our soil that are leached into the waterway. Finally, it will help suppress weeds and be relatively low maintenance - requiring mowing only a couple times per year.
A bit of history on our farm. Before the mid 20th century there was a creek that ran right through our farm. See the photo below. The powers that were decided it would be a good idea to move the creek such that it was square with the section. It wasn’t a good idea. Every time we get a heavy rainfall the creek is formed anew and precisely where it had been. Mother natures wants her creek back.
The green rectangle is where our farm is located. The dark wiggly line intersecting the green rectangle is where the creek was.
Back to the waterway mix. Below is a photo collage of the steps I took to seed the mix including a picture from last year that shows the flooding and if you look into the background of the photo you can see the “creek.” Also, not pictured is the first tillage pass I made to loosen the soil and knock down weeds.
Today, as I write this, it’s raining softly and steadily which will be perfect to get the waterway mix seeds germinated and growing! We can’t wait to see what it looks like in a couple years when it’s well established!
Weed Control 101
Weed control is something every farmer has to deal with. On our farm, we don’t spray chemicals on our crops or use pre emergent herbicides to control weeds which means we have to work really hard to control weeds on the farm. It doesn’t take long for weeds to get out of control and choke out the crops you’re trying to grow. Here’s how we do it.
Flameweeding
We use our flame weeder to burn small weeds just as they’re emerging from the soil and before our crops emerge. Because many weeds will germinate and sprout before our crops come out of the soil we can give our crops a head start by burning the weeds off. It’s been an effective tool for us especially in carrots and cilantro which have relatively long germination periods.
Our flame weeder.
Finger Weeding
No, not your fingers (although we do hand weed too). Finger weeders are discs with polyurethane “fingers” that spin and flick weeds out of the soil when they are young and vulnerable. This tools works particularly well on transplanted crops where the crop is vastly bigger than the weeds.
Finger weeders in yellow. Notice how the fingers penetrate into the soil in the row.
Tine Weeding
Tine weeding is a type of blind cultivation - that is, cultivation that is “blind” to the crop rows - that uses many small wires that vibrate in the soil and help to uproot very small weeds.
Closeup of the tine weeder.
Hand Weeding
Hand weeding is the most expensive and slowest weeding on the farm. All of the tools above help us reduce the hand weeding we have to do. We won’t completely eliminate hand weeding but in many cases we can reduce the time we spend hand weeding by 70% to 90% by using the tools above at the right time.
Finally, we take all of these tools together and apply a couple principles to them and we arrive at our weed control methodology.
Cultivate after every rain/irrigation session.
If you can see the weeds, it’s already too late to be most effective.
Stack cultivation tools as much as possible. Stacking tools means you use more than one method on each crop as often as possible.
Never let a weed go to seed.
Plant cover crops in fallow ground.
A Nice Spring Rain
We had a very much needed soaking rain over the past few days. My rain gauge said about 2.4” of rain and we needed every drop. It probably comes as no surprise that we’ve been busy planting and transplanting the past few weeks. We have a lot of seeds in the soil that were in very dry conditions and since seeds need water to germinate and spring to life we were eagerly anticipating the rain.
We do have irrigation but you may recall that last week we had a very, very windy week here on the farm. We had winds of 20MPH plus and some days as high as 45MPH which makes our overhead irrigation very ineffective. Most of the water evaporates or blows away before it hits the ground. So even though we have irrigation we could use to try to get our seeds to germinate we weren’t able to use it effectively. Further, we planted so many things in the last few weeks that we simply don’t have enough irrigation to water the entire farm. Thus, a rain was very welcome. Not to mention rainfall is always more uniform and seems to germinate our seeds much better than overhead irrigation.
Once things dry out we’ll have a flurry of tasks to complete that have been delayed because of the rain. We have a couple thousand transplants to get out into the soil, we have our next round of direct seeded crops to plant, we’ll need to make a cultivation pass across the entire farm to stay ahead of the weeds and we’ll need to continue hand weeding our crops. Luckily, we have a great farm crew this season and the weather is looking favorable for the next week or so!
Our overhead irrigation in action. You can see how a strong wind would make this very ineffective.
Meet Our Staff Part One
Every year we hire a small crew to help us with the work on our farm. Our staff not only work on the farm doing tasks like harvesting, weeding, and transplanting but they’ll also be present at our Farmers Market stand and help with our CSA pickup locations and delivery route. We’d like to take a moment to introduce you to some of them with additional introductions coming in part two.
Meet Katey
My name is Katey and I’m a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota. In my free time I enjoy anything outdoors including hiking, golfing, fishing, planting flowers, and especially feeding the birds! This season I’m most excited for the Farmers Market. My favorite vegetable is sweet corn!
Meet Maggie
Hi! My name is Maggie I’m currently at South Central College in North Mankato going for Agribusiness. In my free time I enjoy fishing, gardening, baking, and playing cards and games with family! This season I’m looking forward to learning more about sustainable practices. My favorite vegetable is green beans!
Spring projects continue here on the farm and it’s great to have the extra help getting these projects done.
Landscape Fabric
As a team building exercise and also a necessary job the crew laid down landscape fabric yesterday. This job was extra difficult because the wind was a little stronger than we like for installing landscape fabric.
We use landscape fabric in several ways on the farm. Landscape fabric is made over woven plastic “threads” that allow water and air to pass through but smother weeds. We use it on crops that will be in the field for a long time and are difficult to cultivate like tomatoes and peppers. We also use it on our lettuce which helps it to stay cleaner by limiting the amount of soil splash up from rain and irrigation and smothers the weeds. We’re also experimenting with using landscape fabric on our winter squash this season. We’ve always had trouble keeping the weeds out of the winter squash and we hope that the landscape fabric will make our winter squash more weed free!
Direct Seeding and Transplants
We’re on schedule with our direct seeding and transplants as we continue to experience dry weather allowing us to get a lot of field work done. The farm crew transplanted lettuce, bok choy, kohlrabi, napa cabbage, red cabbage, green cabbage, broccolini, and broccoli.
On the direct seed side I planted the next round of sweet corn, beets, carrots and cilantro as well as our vine crops including cucumbers, honeydew melon, watermelon, cucumbers, summer squash and zucchini. We really need a good shot of rain to get these seeds going.
Potatoes Planted (finally)
This week we finally were able to plant our potatoes. This is pretty late in the season for us. Most years we’ve had our potatoes planted by mid-April but the weather had other plans for us. In this blog post we’ll go over the 3 varieties of potatoes we grow, how we plant them, and why getting them in this late really isn’t too big of a problem.
Potato Varieties
There are hundreds (maybe thousands?) of potato varieties world wide. We grow three of them. Our goals are to provide something familiar but more flavorful and also have something new for you to try while having potatoes available for as much of the season as possible.
Red Norland
This is your typical red potato. They’re soft and creamy and one of the first potatoes available in the season. Our ideal size is somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. They are great any way you prepare them - I personally like them mashed or fried the best.
Cascade
This is your typical white potato. Very similar to a russet but with a much thinner skin. We like to grow these larger than red potatoes with ideal size being somewhere between an oblong baseball and softball. Because of their lower starch content these tend to fry up the best but are also great with any preparation method.
Amarosa
This is a fingerling potato which have become quite trendy in the culinary world in recent years. Fingerling potatoes are less round and more oblong and resemble fingers and their namesake. Amarosa fingerling potatoes have a pinkish red skin and pink flesh and they are absolutely divine roasted. They also make really good mashed potatoes. Our oldest daughter, Addie - 4, loves pink mashed potatoes!
How We Plant Potatoes
Prepare the soil: We apply fertilizer and use our field cultivator to prepare the soil for planting.
Make the furrow: We use our potato plow to dig a furrow.
Plant the potatoes. Did you know that the “seed” for potato is actually potato tubers from the previous season?
Cover them up!
We used to do almost all of this by hand but by making use of our potato plow and disc hiller attachments for our tractor we are able to drastically reduce the physical toil of this job!
Planting Late
The reason we were so late to planting potatoes this year is largely on account of the wet April we had. After about April 10th it was too wet to get out into the field with our tractor to plant potatoes. We decided to work on other tasks like transplanting onions and taking care of our tunnel crops while we waited for things to dry out.
This won’t have too big of an impact on timing and availability of potatoes this season. The potatoes will grow quickly now that it’s warm and we pre-sprouted them to help them get a little head start on growing before they went into the ground. We anticipate beginning to dig potatoes in mid-July starting with our red potatoes.
Improving Seedbed Prep
This week we’re going to go over a deep dive into seedbed preparation and go over some steps we’re taking this year to try to improve seedbed prep. Seedbed preparation is critical to the success of the farm. Optimal seedbed preparation gives the seeds we plant the best chance at becoming healthy and productive plants.
Historically, we’ve used a rototiller for our seedbed preparations. There are some big benefits to rototillers as well as some really huge drawbacks. The biggest benefit is that after rototilling you are left with a smooth, flat, and “fluffy” soil that is easy to work with. Unfortunately, that comes with a major drawback. Tilling is incredibly destructive to the soil as it essentially takes the top layer of soil and runs it through a blender which destroys soil health and structure. It also increases the chances that after a heavy rain fall our soil will crust over making it more difficult for our seeds to sprout.
Our tractor with rototiller attached.
We are planning to address this issue by using a different seedbed preparation tool: a field cultivator with harrow section. A field cultivator has many shanks with shovels (sometimes called sweeps) at the end of each shank. The shanks vibrate, dig up, and loosen the soil. While it’s still destructive it is much less destructive than the rototiller. The harrow section runs behind the shanks and levels the surface so it’s a little easier for us to use our seeders. We like to have a relatively flat surface because it makes all the follow-up work like weeding much easier.
We had this small field cultivator that my grandpa had built. It didn’t have a harrow section so we scoured the internet and found a company in Wisconsin that made a small harrow section that would work with our field cultivator. We’re planning to put this to use this year in an effort to improve our seedbed prep.
Field cultivator with ‘goosefoot’ shovels and harrow mounted on back.
The end goal is that we will preserve more soil structure while still having a seedbed that’s easy to work with our manual push seeders. We’ll know if this is successful or not by experience and observation. As we’re planting this spring we’ll be asking ourselves if our tools are easier to get through the soil or not. We’ll also be observing what happens after rain events. Are our seeds able to push through the top layer of soil easier or not?
We do foresee a couple problems and a couple additional benefits. One problem we might encounter is when we’re dealing with plant residue from last season. The rototiller does a good job of chopping up and burying old plant residue. We expect that the field cultivator will not work as well in this case. On the other hand, the field cultivator will be faster allowing us to cover more ground in a shorter period of time and with less fuel.
Our New Winter Tunnel Project
Those of you who have been following us for awhile know that for the past 4 or 5 years we’ve been dabbling in winter growing here in Minnesota. We’ve made some important observations and gained a lot of experience over the past few years and we have a good feel for which crops could survive our sometimes harsh winters and which do not. Combining that experience with work from other farms and farmers like us we’re planning to construct a new high tunnel designed specifically with winter growing in mind. In this post we’ll go over the features of this new tunnel, the crops we expect to grow, and the areas of uncertainty we have with this project.
Our biggest tunnel on a cold winter day.
There are several features of this winter high tunnel that will separate it from our other tunnels on the farm. Let’s go over them.
Double plastic layer. Our winter high tunnel will have two layers of plastic and be equipped with a blower to blow air in between the layers of plastic. This will give this tunnel a small amount of insulation to help the heat stay in the tunnel on the coldest of nights.
Swedish Skirt. This is an additional insulation layer around the perimeter of the tunnel designed to help keep the frost out of the tunnel. We’ll bury foam insulation board around the entire perimeter. The ground is an incredible heat bank and by slowing or eliminating frost from getting in the tunnel we’ll be able to continue growing further into the winter.
“Minimally Heated.” Over the past few years of winter growing we’ve discovered that many crops will survive temperatures below freezing. Crops like lettuce, scallions and bok choy can survive temperatures as low as single digits. By utilizing a high efficiency propane heater, convective tubing, and row cover we will heat the tunnel to 30-35* to keep these crops alive throughout the winter with minimal heating costs.
We’ve touched on this already but the crops we plan to grow include some of our most popular crops like lettuce, scallions, bok choy, cilantro & kohlrabi. Our goal here is to hit the best intersection of popular, high demand crops and cold tolerance. The ultimate goal then is to offer a all winter CSA that combines storage crops like beets, carrots, potatoes, onions & cabbage with winter crops like spinach, lettuce, bok choy to offer a really well rounded share even in the depths of winter.
Winter crops inside our biggest high tunnel
There are some unknowns here. First, we basically no experience with a heated tunnel which brings up some concerns. First, we’ll closely monitoring condensation inside the tunnel which can be a vector for disease for our winter crops. Second, we’ll be closely monitoring pest issues - last season we noticed aphids in our crops and we think that our mild winter combined with the protection of our tunnel allowed the aphids to survive when they normally wouldn’t. Finally, we’ll be monitoring heating costs - we’ve run the numbers through a thermal unit calculator which indicates it will be relatively cheap to run but the numbers are just an estimate and real world experience is what really matters.
Weather Forecasts: The Unsung Hero of The Farm
It should come as no surprise that we check the weather forecast multiple times per day here on the farm. This weeks blog post is going to be a deep dive into how we use forecasts on the farm for our decision making and how that plays a critical role in our ability to grow healthy, sustainable produce for your family.
Before we get into the decision making side of weather forecasts we need to understand a few basics about how meteorologists create forecasts in the first place. I am by no means a meteorologist nor an expert on the intricacies of forecast models but I’ve spent enough time reading weather blogs (thanks Updraft from MPR News) to understand more than the average person.
All forecasts you see come from complex supercomputer models that are constantly fed observational data from weather stations across the globe. These models spit out weather forecasts based on the observational data fed to them. That’s why weather forecasts constantly change day to day and why the further into the future you try to forecast the less accurate that forecast is.
3 different snapshots of a weather forecast for this weekend. Notice how all models are in agreement that the area just southeast of Mankato - where our farm is located - is not favored for the heaviest snowfall.
You can see a list of the models, courtesy of Wikipedia, here. The two that are referenced the most in the Updraft blog are the GFS model and the European Model. What’s useful about this is that the models aren’t always in agreement on what the forecast is. When the models ARE in agreement it signifies that whatever weather they’re predicting is significantly more likely to occur.
A little sidebar about GFS; this forecasting model is owned and operated by the United States Government under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service which was recently cut significantly by Elon Musk and his goons at DOGE. Obviously, we care deeply about having the best, most accurate weather forecasts available so we can make good decisions on our farm and we are wholly against the cuts to the National Weather Service among the other agencies on the chopping block.
Anyway. Now that you have a basic idea of the behind the scenes on how weather forecasts work we will dive into which weather forecasts we use the most and how we use them to make decisions on the farm.
My favorite weather forecast tools are the Updraft from MPR News, weather.gov, and Weather Underground on my phone. Of the three I find Weather Underground to be the least accurate but it’s useful for seeing forecast temperatures which are usually pretty accurate and its radar is good for day-of storm tracking. Weather.gov is great for a couple reasons. First, it has a graph view where you can see the probability of various weather events like wind speed, wind direction, temperature, precipitation potential and more on an hour by hour view. I particularly like this when I try to determine if we should set up our canopy tents at the farmers market or not. Finally, Updraft from MPR News is my favorite because they not only give you a forecast but they talk about the “behind-the-scenes” science that informs the forecast as well as talking about the differences in the GFS and European forecast models.
Knowing wind speed, timing and directions can help us avoid costly mistakes like this ripped tunnel plastic. $800 in plastic and half a day of labor for 4 people required to repair.
To put a bow on this weather forecast blog post let’s talk about the different types of decisions we make based on weather forecasts.
High Tunnel Management: Our tunnels require accurate weather forecasts for proper management. We need to know wind speed and direction to know where we should vent tunnels to minimize risk of damage. We need to know temperature and cloud cover to know if we should open our tunnels, close tunnels or apply shade cloth. We need to know when a storm is coming so we can shut our tunnels completely if a severe storm is forecast.
Planting Dates/Times: Our planting schedule is complex and long and in order to have as consistent supply of our produce as possible we need to plant on schedule. Knowing that it’s going to rain for a week allows us to plant our crops before the rain comes so that we can stick to our schedule as much as possible. We also need to know if we should set up our outdoor irrigation or not and weather forecasts allow us to do that. Knowing there’s a 80% chance for rain means we don’t need to spend the labor setting up irrigation.
Staff Safety: Knowing when and where a severe storm will hit allows us to keep ourselves and our staff safe during severe weather. Further, knowing temperature and heat advisory allow us to plan ahead and start work early to try and beat the heat.
Canopies at the Market: Knowing wind speed, direction and timing allow us to set up our canopy tents at the farmers market more safely. Often if a forecast calls for high winds it’s likely that the winds won’t pick up until the afternoon so knowing precise timing of when winds are forecast to increase to unsafe levels for our canopy tents allow us to make the best, safest decision regarding our canopies.
Rainbow over our farmers market stand after a short rainfall just before we opened for the day.