First Frost Of The Season!
As I sat down to write this latest farm blog post I noticed my most recent post was about the fall heatwave. Funny that less than a week later we experienced the first frost of the season! That’s a nearly 60 degree temperature swing from our high of 90 on Friday to the low of 32 overnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Crazy!
We actually managed to save our bell peppers and sweet peppers from the frost using a irrigation method we read about that orchards sometimes use in the spring. We got up in the middle of the night and turned on our overhead irrigation on our peppers on Tuesday night and let that run through until the next morning. The idea being that because it takes a lot of energy to do the phase change from liquid to ice you can protect your plants from the cold temps. It seems to have worked! With a rather pleasant forecast for the next week or two we should continue to have bell and sweet peppers available!
This first frost was not unexpected - we typically plan for about October 1 for the first frost so that’s about on schedule. We didn’t lose any crops we weren’t prepared to lose and it actually helps improve some of our fall crops flavor. Crops like lettuce, carrots, cabbage, broccoli & kale all benefit from a light frost. It makes them sweeter and can improve texture as well. This happens as a defensive function from these crops: increasing the sugar content in the plant cells decreases the temperature at which the cells will freeze and burst potentially killing the plant. Pretty neat!
A frosty morning last Wednesday, October 8th!
Fall Heatwave And Its Effects
We’re in the midst of a fall heatwave here on the farm and basically everywhere in the upper Midwest. Highs today and tomorrow are forecast to be in the low 90s and it’s the first week of October. That’s around 20-25 degrees above the average. This kind of heat has an effect on our crops here on the farm and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Some crops benefit from this heat while others suffer. Let’s break it down.
Crops That Benefit
Our summer-loving crops like green beans & peppers benefit from this heat. The green beans continue to produce as do the peppers. In fact, this heat is a bit of a blessing for the peppers. Our peppers were a bit delayed this season in ripening and since our average first frost is around October 1 (but could come sooner!), this heat has really moved along our peppers in terms of ripening. We’re picking pecks of perfect peppers weekly and they are just stunning this season!
Crops That Suffer
In particular the crop that we’re having the hardest time with during the heatwave is our winter spinach. We seed spinach from roughly late August through early October with the intention of having spinach available for CSAs, online orders, and our farmers market stand from Early October all the way through winter into early next spring. Our first planting of spinach didn’t germinate well at all. So much so that we had to terminate that planting. This is because spinach is very sensitive to soil temperate: it prefers cool soils for optimal germination. Our second planting from early September came in a bit better but we needed to interseed additional spinach to justify the space in our winter tunnel. Our late September planting of spinach came in much better and we’re excited about that planting.
Our 3rd planting of spinach came in well!
Fall Cover Crops Emerge!
Healthy soil is the foundation of our farm. We believe healthy soil = healthy food = healthy people. One of the ways we make sure our soil is healthy is by planting cover crops. Cover crops have a variety of benefits including protecting the soil from erosion, adding organic matter to the soil which feeds the soil, providing habitat for insects and scavenging nutrients that future cash crops can use.
We had a very nice rain last week totaling just over a half inch just a couple days after I had planted our fall cover crops. This combined with nice weather caused our cover crops to emerge quickly. The forecasted continued warm weather will ensure our cover crops get off to a good start and provide maximum benefit before they succumb to the inevitable cold.
Our fall cover crop mix consists of oats, peas and faba beans. This mix of cover crops main benefits are preventing soil erosion, adding organic matter to the soil and fixating nitrogen, a critical plant nutrient, from the air. The oats are great for protecting the soil and breaking up any compaction. The faba beans will fix some nitrogen and have a tap root that can penetrate hard pan. Finally, the peas will fix nitrogen so we have more nutrients available for next seasons crops!
Cover crops emerge!
Topping Tunnel Tomatoes
The signs of the inevitable season change are mounting. One of those signs - the topping of our tunnel tomatoes - came this past week. What is topping tomatoes? Why is it important and what is it’s purpose? We’ll go over the reason we top the tomatoes and the results we hope to see.
As a refresher, the tomatoes we grow in our tunnels are an “indeterminate” variety meaning that they will continue to grow until either the frost gets them or they succumb to disease. We’ve written about how we manage that growth in several blog posts over the course of the season.
So what is topping tomatoes? It’s basically exactly like it sounds: we cut the top of the main stem completely off so that no further vegetative growth is possible. Why would we do such a thing?!
A topped tomato plant. Notice the flowers (fruit truss) just below the cut stem.
We know that the first frost is approaching. Most years we see that happen in the first half of October and usually closer to the beginning of October than the middle. Because of that, we waste plant energy and vigor in trying to continue the vegetative growth. By topping the tomato plants, we force the plants to focus their remaining energy on growing out the last of the tomatoes for the season.
We’ve left enough tomato fruit trusses to allow about 4-5 weeks worth of tomatoes. We figure we will get about one truss worth of tomatoes per week per plant. It’s a little bit of a moving target as the daylight decreases day after day and the temperatures fluctuate more so this time of year. Both of these, have an impact on how fast tomatoes will ripen!
So while the signs of seasonal change mount we will still have about a month of tomatoes left. Summer isn’t quite over yet!
Recap: Lobbyist for A Day
I’m back from my trip to Washington D.C. to help the Minnesota Farmers Union lobby for policies that benefit farmers and rural America. Politics has been a touchy subject for quite some time and I’m guessing this blog post might stir up some feelings or opinions and even disagreements. I’m hoping to write from a place of fact or at least facts as I understand them. Feel free to disagree with me and the Minnesota Farmers Union about what policy priorities for farmers and rural America should be. In fact, I’d love to hear your take because I bet I can learn something from you!
I went as part of the Minnesota delegation for the Minnesota Farmers Union which is part of the larger National Farmers Union. Their slogan is “for farmers sake” but really it should be “for everyone's sake”. After all, the slogan “Agriculture is the foundation of manufacture and commerce” was one of the first things I saw as I entered the USDA building. Without agriculture cities aren’t possible and we’d all be back to hunter-gatherers.
I’ll summarize the main policy priorities we had briefly below:
Restore Local Food Procurement Programs. The now defunded Local Foods Purchase Assistant program was incredibly popular across the country and even across political ideology. We advocate for a house and senate bill introduced with bi-partisan support to restore funding for a replacement program.
Break Up Corporate Ag Monopolies. Did you know that just 4 companies control something like 80% of all beef, pork and poultry processed in this country? They disguise this by selling their products under different brand names and different labels giving the illusion of choice.
Pass A Farm Bill. The Farm Bill is a collection of programs that benefit farmers, rural communities and folks experiencing food insecurity. The farm bill includes things like SNAP (food stamps), crop insurance and conservation programs.
Tariffs/Trade Policy. End blanket tariffs.
Biofuels. Expand use of ethanol and biodiesel with a nationwide E15 program.
Meat Labeling. Country of origin labeling for meat. Not everything labeled “product of USA” is an animal that was grown or raised in the USA.
Before I get into my take on these policy priorities and reflections I wanted to just say that the Minnesota Farmers Union delegation I was a part of was a diverse mix of growers. There were several vegetable growers, livestock producers, cut flower producers and more. That’s something I really like about farmers union: we’re a diverse mix of growers advocating for farm policies that work for all farmers.
We met with either the congressional members themselves or their staffers and in some cases both. I personally met senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith as well as representatives Angie Craig, Kelly Morrison, and Betty McCollum. I also met with a staffer from representative Brad Finstad who is my representative here in district 1. Our group also split up so we could meet with staffers from Ilhan Omar, Tom Emmer and Michelle Fischbach’s offices respectively.
Here are my take-aways from the meetings. First, the meetings are so short and so brief that it’s really hard to dive into the nuance and details of various policy issues. Democratic representatives seemed largely supportive of our overall policies priorities while Republican representatives were more muted in their responses. Reading between the lines we know Republican representatives see the problem brewing in the rural economy but they were very hesitant to offer up solutions.
Another takeaway is that it seems there is bi-partisan support for enacting a Local Foods Procurement Program similar to the Local Foods Purchasing Assistance Program that was canceled under the Trump administration. There are currently bi-partisan bills in both the house and the senate that would re-create this program.
A third takeaway is that both Republicans and Democrats recognize the problem tariffs have created for farmers. The problem boils down to this: China buys basically 1 out of every 3 rows of soybeans produced in the United States. Further, China buys a large amount of pork (which is fed crushed soybeans) from the United States. Usually, by this time of year contracts are signed for China to buy a certain amount of soybeans but this year there are no contracts. Soybean prices, and most commodity prices in general are depressed.
Democrats see this as a self-inflicted wound while Republicans are both hopeful a better trade deal will come and also recognize that a single buyer, China, buying that large of a percentage of U.S. commodities is a weakness and that we should diversify our exports. I think both are right, it's just too bad it’s coming at the farmers profit.
Both Republicans and Democrats are skeptical that a farm bill will be passed by the end of the year. Tina Smith described the farm bill as the “grand bargain” where democrats who support strong social safety nets through the SNAP program and republicans who support a strong farmer safety net could come together to pass a bi-partisan bill. The problem is that Republicans drastically cut SNAP benefits in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act without Democrat support through the reconciliation process. Both Representative Angie Craig who is ranking member on the House Ag Committee and Amy Klobuchar who’s on the Senate Ag Committee foresee difficulty getting democratic support for a farm bill because democrats will be unwilling to vote on anything that doesn’t restore SNAP benefits. Likewise, some republicans will be unwilling to vote on a farm bill that includes SNAP benefits due to budget concerns.
My own view is that it was either incredibly short sighted for Republicans to vote to cut SNAP and expect to pass a farm bill in the future OR that Republicans really don’t care about passing a farm bill. Given the muted response overall from Republican staffers it seems to me that this whole farm economy is designed to bankrupt the small commodity farmers. The big will get bigger and the small will whither.
Our farm, Cedar Crate Farm, is lucky. We are not reliant on government programs like subsidized crop insurance or direct payments from the government. We can’t be forced out of the market by low commodity prices, a lack of an adequate farm bill (which really doesn’t do much for us), or slow government payments. Despite direct marketing being significantly more work we largely operate outside the government agricultural system which gives us a good bit of resilience when it comes to poor trade policy and congressional infighting. One tidbit I picked up that I find interesting is that a commodity farmer that was on the fly-in with me shared that about 25% of their gross farm income comes from direct government payments. And remember, that doesn’t include crop insurance premium subsidies.
The last thing I’ll hit on is bio fuels. My initial reaction is that biofuels are not the best idea ever. It seems like we as a country are over producing commodities and trying to drum up new ways to use these commodities by subsidizing new markets. If gallon for gallon ethanol and gasoline were equal it might be a different story but my own experience is that I see a 10-30% reduction in mileage in my vehicle when I use the highest ethanol blend my vehicle supports. I do see how a gallon of ethanol is more environmentally friendly than a gallon of gasoline since there’s some amount of carbon that’s offset in the production of ethanol. That said, the biofuel issue is not a hill I would die on and if it helps my neighbors then it is something we might as well do.
I walk away from this fly-in and my experience in Washington D.C. with a mix of feelings. First, I feel a little more patriotic than before not only being in DC but also participating directly in the democratic process at the federal level. It’s hard to be in DC and not feel patriotic. Conversely, I feel pessimistic about Democrats and Republicans coming together to work on policies that benefit farmers and rural America. I feel proud that my farm is able to function without government support. I feel jealous that commodity producers get so much government support. The experience was intense and intimidating but I learned so much. I’m grateful for the opportunity and was glad I had a chance to make my voice heard.
Lobbyist For A Day
About a month ago I was invited by the Minnesota Farmers Union to attend their fall “fly in” event where I will join farmers from across our state and across the country too to lobby for farm and rural policy in Washington D.C. It’s a busy time of year for our family with back to school, the farm still producing in full swing and the seasons changing but I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. It’s not everyday you get an invite to potentially meet with your congressional delegation to advocate for yourself.
In the prep call that the Minnesota Farmers Union held they emphasized telling a personal story as it relates to farm policy. There’s a lot of federal farm policy that doesn’t support farms like mine. Most of the money, most of the programs, and most of the investment in farming goes to corporations, large corporate farms, and commodity farms (in that order). One of the few programs that helped and benefited not only farms like mine but our community more broadly was the Local Foods Purchasing Assistance (LFPA) program. Essentially, you can think of it as the Federal Government subsidizing local food production in a similar way to how commodities like corn and soybeans are subsidized.
Sadly, LFPA was canceled with the new administration which we talked about and described earlier this spring. I understand that tucked into the new farm bill is a version of LFPA which I intend to encourage my representatives to support. Not only does LFPA benefit farms like mine but it also benefits businesses that purchase goods from our farm to process into ready to eat meals for a variety of people including children and food insecure folks. Further, LFPA really helped us last season when we experienced catastrophic flooding and hail. It allowed us a market outlet for our seconds and produce that wasn’t fit for our market stand or CSA boxes giving us a much needed source of income when many of our crops were flooded out or damaged.
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to share my story, our farms story, and the impact these programs can have on our community. I look forward to writing the follow-up blog to let you all know how it went!
Why Farm Fresh, Local Produce Tastes Better
Or why grocery store produce doesn’t taste good.
When I started Cedar Crate Farm back in 2015 I had one distinct problem that I wanted to solve for people. The problem is that grocery store produce doesn’t taste good. I knew that because I had grown up eating produce fresh from my mom’s large garden. I knew what fresh produce was supposed to taste like. I knew that the grocery store was selling an inferior product. I knew that I could grow better tasting produce and share it with this community in south central Minnesota.
Why Grocery Store Produce Doesn’t Taste Good
The reasons for that are many but we’ll go over a few of the key reasons briefly here. The first reason that grocery store produce doesn’t taste good is that the produce varieties that grocery stores carry are varieties selected for their ability to withstand shipping and shelf life. This is almost always at the expense of flavor.
Take our incredibly delicious and incredibly popular Sungold cherry tomato. It’s known for it’s incredible sweet flavor that’s almost like candy. It’s also known for it’s propensity to crack during shipping. Because of it’s propensity to crack you’ll never find it in any grocery store but you will find it in your CSA shares, our online farm store, and our farmers market stand.
The second reason grocery store produce doesn’t taste good is because it isn’t fresh. Most produce in most grocery stores (even some food co-ops!!) isn’t local. It isn’t even grown in the Midwest and in some cases isn’t even grown in this country. If you think about the steps the produce takes it could be a week or more since that produce was harvested and when it ends up on your table. Here’s what it might look like:
Produce is harvested and spends time on the farms harvest, wash & pack line. 1-2 days.
Produce is shipped to a distribution center. 1-2 days.
Produce is shipped again to the grocery store. 1-2 days.
Produce is in the grocery stores receiving area/walk-in cooler. 1-2 days.
Produce sits on the grocery store shelf until it spoils or you buy it. 1 - ??? days.
Best case scenario is the produce is 5 days old when you purchase it from the grocery store but probably a lot longer. No wonder it doesn’t taste good!!
Our farm solves this problem by growing the best tasting varieties of produce we can find! Further, we always harvest, wash & pack your produce the day before we deliver ensuring you always have the freshest, best tasting produce possible!
How We Dig Carrots
Carrots are one of our most important crops on our farm and something we’re known for. Each year we grow literally thousands of pounds of carrots for our CSA members, online store, farmers market & whole sale partners. When you’re digging that many carrots every season you need a better, faster and easier way to dig carrots than a simple shovel, broadfork or potato fork. We use a tractor attachment called a bed lifter to make digging our carrots much easier.
The bed lifter is a simple tool overall. It works by digging underneath the depth of the carrots and loosening the soil. This enables us to easily pull the carrots out by their tops for harvest. It greatly increases the amount of carrots we can dig and it’s a lot easier on our backs as well.
There are a couple tricks to using the bed lifter. It needs to be deep enough that we don’t slice off the bottoms of the carrots but not so deep that the carrot cling to tons of dirt and mud. The angle of the cross bar at the bottom needs to be gentle enough to not break the carrots but steep enough to loosen the soil. And the soil conditions need to be right. If it’s too dry the soil breaks apart in huge clods breaking carrots and not greatly improving the speed. Conversely, if it’s too wet we aren’t able to use the bed lifter because we’d either get the tractor stuck or not have enough traction to pull the bed lifter.
Why Cover Crops Are Important
Farming in a sustainable and earth friendly manner is one of our primary farming values on our farm. We seek to not only maintain but improve the land we farm on over time. In the grand scheme of things, the time we spend farming this land is pretty small and we want the next generation of farmers to be able to succeed. Not only that but we also want to protect the soil, air and water so that our farming footprint stays confined to the acres we farm. One of the key ways we work towards this goal is by planting cover crops. Today we’ll go over why cover crops are important and what cover crops we plant on our farm.
First, we should define what a cover crop is. For us, a cover crop is a crop that we plant whose primary purpose is to improve our land. Further, a cover crop is not planted with intent to harvest and sell a product.
Our summer cover crop mix. The plants with white flowers are buckwheat. The long slender leaves that resemble corn are millet.
Cover crops serve a variety of purposes on our farms and many farms in general. Their benefits include reducing soil erosion, suppressing weed growth, providing habitat for beneficial insects, and improving soil health. Our primary goals for our cover crop mixes are to suppress weed growth and improve soil health. That’s not to say the other benefits are not important - they are. It’s just that when we look at which cover crops to plant we are seeking to achieve those goals primarily and the other benefits secondarily.
We have two mixes of cover crops that we use on our farm to achieve the goals of improving soil health and suppressing weeds. In summer we plant a summer mix of cover crops. That is, crops that grow well in the heat of the summer. This mix includes species like buckwheat, soy beans, sun hemp, sun flowers, millet & more. In the fall we plant a mix of peas, oats & phacelia. These crops grow better in the cooler temperatures of fall and can grow later into the season than our summer mix. Our winter mix is capable of withstanding frosts.
To suppress weeds we seed our cover crops pretty densely and lightly incorporate the cover crop seeds into the soil. With a little rain the cover crop comes to life creating a thick mat of vegetation that crowds out weeds. In our experience, we’ve observed that the areas where we plant cover crops are generally much easier to weed the following season.
Cover crops improve soil health in a few primary ways. First, some cover crops like peas can pull nitrogen (a primary plant nutrient) out of the air and store it in the soil for future crops to use. Cover crops in general also contribute to soil organic matter which microorganisms in the soil feed on. These micro organisms then metabolize the cover crops and leave behind nutrients future crops can use.
Many of our cover crops also achieve our secondary goals of reducing soil erosion and providing beneficial insect habitat. Because we’re planting pretty densely and minimizing fallow ground by using cover crops we are reducing soil erosion. Additionally, buckwheat - one of our primary summer cover crops - flowers quickly and the bees love it. Buckwheat provides habitat and forage for the bees!
Cover crops are an important part of sustainability on our farm. We’re always looking for new species and new mixes of cover crops to help improve our soil and improve our farm!
Addie (about 2yrs old) and I sitting in our oats & peas cover crop mix!
Our New Vacuum Seeder
We made a large new purchase for the farm recently: a new electric vacuum seeder. This purchase is a huge upgrade for us and today we’ll go through exactly what a vacuum seeder is, how it’s different from the seeders we currently use and the crops we plant to use the vacuum seeder on.
What is a vacuum seeder?
A vacuum seeder uses suction with air to hold the seeds to a plate. The plate rotates based on spacing needs and the vacuum is cut when the plate rotates to the position where the seed is supposed to be dropped into it’s furrow. Our particular vacuum seeder has a multitude of different plates with different spacing and hole sizes to accommodate a wide variety of seeds.
Vacuum seeders have much better seed singulation. That is, making sure a single seed is dropped at the designated spacing instead of a multitude of seeds. That’s because the suction of the air holding the seeds against the plate is easier than trying to have a single hole size that fits a the variability that comes with seeds. Not all seeds are the same size even within the exact same crop and variety!
Our new vacuum seeder! First crop seeded with it was beets.
How are other seeder types different?
Our other seeders, the Jang and Hoss seeders both work similarly. Each have a seed plate or seed puck that has holes drilled into it for different seed sizes and spacing. Instead of air suction through vacuum holding the seeds in the plate/puck only gravity allows the seed to fill the hole. Because the holes need to accommodate the variability in seed sizes even within crops you inevitable end up either jamming seeds or dropping more seeds than necessary.
Which crops will we plant with the vacuum seeder?
One of the things we love about the vacuum seeder we bought is that it can be used for a number of different crops. We plan to use it to seed peas, green beans, popcorn, sweet corn, beets, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash & melons.
In particular I’ve been very frustrated with our Hoss seeder in our popcorn & sweet corn. The Hoss is just not accurate enough to singulate seeds nor does it achieve the desired spacing. We end up with lots of doubles, triples or gaps which is a problem because we’re either spending labor thinning doubles and triples or spending labor weeding gaps where there are no crops. The vacuum seeder will solve these problems for us!