Harvest Days on the Farm

I know, long time, no posting!  We've had plenty to write about, but to be honest, this summer has been extremely rough in terms of weather and workload, so we only now are starting to have time to breathe (and eat and blog).

Since our last post, it pretty much rained from mid-May to mid-July (20 inches over 7 weeks--during those 49 days we had rain for 45), and then stopped raining and became cold--like veggies stopped growing 'cuz it was in the 40s at night sort of cold.  Things are still cooler and the summer crops are ripening slowly, but overall, we are feeling a bit more normal now.  We have a long blog in the works on our thoughts about this summer, but it's still a bit too fresh for us to write on it without excess profanity!  Short story, the lessons from this summer are that rain is worse than drought, bugs wash away in floods while plant disease washes in, and hoop houses are our next big investment!

But as things are steadying out a bit, we do have time to start posting again, and thought we'd get back in with some pics from harvest days, since some folks have been asking how the day goes!

We harvest 90% of our crops on Tuesday and Friday mornings, for our Tuesday and Friday CSA and our Saturday market.  With tomatoes starting, we will sometimes harvest them the day before, because it's such a long process to wipe off the organic (late blight deterring) copper from the fruits.  On Monday and Thursday evenings, we cruise around the field and check out what's ready.  Most years, there will be 20 or 25 available crops, and we choose 8 to 12 for the CSA.  This year, we have typically had more like 10 to 15 crops ready, so it makes CSA choices quicker (though more annoying--we like having more options!).  We try to mix things up a bit so folks get a range of salad, root, fruit, and greens in their shares.  We have twice as many CSA members on Tuesday than Friday, but since we have the market Fridays, the two harvest days take about as long (though we also harvest more on Saturday mornings for market).

We prioritize crops for the CSA over the market, since we really appreciate the up-front support from our CSA members.  Most years we have plenty for both the CSA and the market, but this year we've been saving lots of crops just for the CSA (like our potatoes).

We start harvesting anywhere from 5:30 (if it's hot) to 7:30 (if it's wet) in the morning.  We start off with crops like lettuce and greens that don't like getting hot, and then finish off with things like tomatoes or cucumbers where you want the plants to dry off before you get in there and handle them.  We have started getting into the bad habit of sleeping a bit late this year since it's been so cold and wet (and we don't want to spread plant disease around by harvesting damp plants)!

We usually harvest crops in batches and then haul them back to the cooler in the wagon (our most utilized tool on the farm).  Most crops get washed in super cold water to lower their field temperature and get off the dirt, though some things like tomatoes just get wiped down.

We have dreams of a real wash line for next year, but couldn't afford the whole building set up this season, so we are improvising a bit.  Matt did take the first step for a wash shed by putting a new door into the garage.  The walk in cooler is right inside the door, so this saves us the time of walking through the garage a zillion times each harvest day.  Since it has rained or been super cold this season, it hasn't been a problem yet for not having shade on the line.  We use two tanks and a series of drying/spray tables, and have landscape fabric underneath to keep the mud down.  Last year we had a mobile setup (with a tent) that we rotated around the yard.  This year's improvement of an actual line saves a chunk of time each harvest day.  Matt build a PVC tank filling valve, and we drain the tanks often to keep the water clean.

We pack CSA shares in the garage using folding tables.  Last year folks might remember our CSA bags, which were cute but a hassle to pack (too floppy), handle (hard to quickly grab the handles), and stack (you couldn't).  This year we switched to boxes, which means we can pack 4 times as many shares per hour than we could with the bags!  It's been nice to see how small changes make a big difference in efficiency!

Hopefully the weather stays "normal," the late blight stays away, and frost holds off until October so that we can re-start posting regularly!

Building the Mobile Coop and the Hens Arriving!

We are excited to have animals on the farm this year!  The first arrivals came Tuesday--100 pullets that should start their laying hen careers in the next few weeks.  We are pasturing the birds using a mobile coop and flexinet electric netting (which theoretically keeps predators out). This year we went with nearly full grown birds (rather than raising them from chicks) since we don't really have good indoor facilities to brood baby birds in.  We plan on getting chicks this upcoming fall to brood over winter for next year's addition to the flock.

Matt's been busy building the coop this past week.  We had hoped to use an old hay wagon base, but couldn't find any old bases near us, so we decided to just run it on skids.  The skids work fine and it moves easily with our tractor, but we still would like to get our next coop up on wheels.

It's pretty cozy for the number of birds that we have, but we felt like this would work well since it's just a seasonal pasture coop.

We needed it to be heavy enough to be stable in the Fenner wind, but light enough to move around easily.  The solid base should anchor it (in combination with some heavy duty anchors for storms), and the greenhouse top has very little weight.

The sides are 3/8" plywood to help deter predators.  We based our plan on this great Blackbird Organics design we found online:  http://theruminant.ca/2012/03/30/farm-glance-blackbird-organics-mobile-chicken-fortress/  The one change we made was to add the base for better wind resistance and to keep out any digging predators.  We've seen fox, coyote, racoons, random dogs, and mink on the farm, so we wanted to protect our hens as much as we can.

Here you can see the boxes before the swinging access doors were added.  We have 24 boxes for 100 birds, but can add another row if this seems to be too few.  The openings all have 1/2" hardware fabric stapled over them against mink and weasels.

Here's a look at the finished interior.  It's mostly just a place for the hens to sleep and lay eggs, since they will be busy outside eating grass most of the day.  We shortly moved all these waterers up onto blocks so they stay clean.

This is the transit box Matt built to go get them. We kept it fairly small so that they would be close to each other and not slide around in transit.  It worked really well, and the birds seemed fine upon opening--they were snug and warm despite the icky day!

The chickens spent their first afternoon recovering from their busy day in the coop, figuring out things like how to roost and bonding with their new home.

Here's a picture of the completed coop.  We used a silver reflective tarp, thinking that would keep things cooler.  In this picture, the rain is keeping the hens from venturing out.  They've been pretty hilarious in the yard as they learn how to run, eat grass and bugs, and discover their wings.

A few intrepid ladies are venturing out in the rain to check out other food options.  We hope the rain will break soon so the grass starts growing faster for them!  We should have eggs starting in a couple of weeks, once the layers start getting some spring grass!  We'll have more pictures of the hen exploits on our Facebook page (Hartwood Farm).

Resting and Regrouping!

After a busy fall on the farm, we've been silent on the blog for a few weeks as we work on re-tooling the website and regrouping from the season.  We are working to get the 2013 CSA sign-up material up (hopefully this week)... it's held up as we decide which additional farmers market to add for 2013, since we try to space out market and CSA harvest days!

Folks have been asking what happens on the farm in the winter, and our answer is, "A lot!"  First, we do relax a bit, sleep in (well, farmer sleeping in, which means until 6 or so!), and eat a lot more farm food (since we have more time to cook).

We do still have a few things going on in the field.  This week's warm spell will likely be our last harvest window to get in the final turnips, radishes, carrots, and beets.  After these crops all come into the walk-in cooler (which now doubles as a root cellar), we will roll up all our protective row cover and call the vegetable fields done for the season!

Wood is a big winter project--right now we are bringing in the wood cut late last winter to split and dry further in the greenhouse.  We need wood for our house, for our greenhouse (we are switching from propane heat to a wood/oil boiler this winter), and for boiling down maple syrup.  Right now, we are just cutting wood at the south edges of the fields (which will reduce shade in the edges of the growing area) and in a section where some of the trees have lots of galls.  As the maples grow larger, we will start doing more selective thinning to improve the sugar maple stand (but that's a few years off!).

Out of the woods, we are working on a few building projects, including a permanent wash stand and storage area, a new hoophouse, a better potting area and propagation chamber for the greenhouse, and a slew of smaller construction activities.

The most important work we are focusing on now is in the office!  Besides working to revamp and improve the website, we are assessing how things went this past season to see where we can improve things for next year.  After this assessment is done, we start working on our crop planning.  This is a huge task since it essentially entails figuring out the timing of every planting of each variety of crop we grow--which for some crops is up to 20 plantings and 15 varieties!  We need to complete this by early January in order to get our seed orders in.

We'll get some more winter pictures of the fields up soon!

Chilling Out...

... in our new walk-in! Things have been busy at the farm with harvesting and flipping beds from spring to fall crops (not to mention the endless hours each day spent on irrigation).  But we (well actually, just Matt) finally did the big push on installing our walk-in cooler!  We haven't finished off the exterior yet, but so far, it's working great!

We use recycled 2 to 4 inch foam panels to insulate an 8x10 framed box (we did floor, ceiling, and walls).  There is a plywood floor.  Matt hung 2 layers of panels in opposite directions (so there are no gaps for cold air to escape) and used spray foam insulation to fill in any gaps.

We bought the panels from a place in Oneonta that recycles material from cold storage facilities (like apple storage warehouses).

They were pretty easy to work with.  It took Matt about three full days to build the insulated box, install the door, and set up the AC.

We just used a standard exterior door since it was easier to work with than a real walk-in cooler door.

For refrigeration, we used an air conditioner and a Cool Bot (check out their website here).  It's basically a little box that tricks the AC unit to go really low (like down to 32 degrees).  We went this route over a standard refrigerator largely for cost reasons.  First, the Cool Bot is much cheaper than a compressor (like a quarter to a tenth of the cost, depending on the compressor).  Second, it's cheaper to operate since you are essentially just running an AC unit rather than a whole large compressor.

So far, everything is working great.  We are excited at how much more efficient this should make our harvesting (and it will help us bring even higher quality produce to market!).  Plus, in the winter time, we can reverse the whole process and use the space as a root cellar so we can extent the CSA season!