Early December Photo Gallery

Here's a mix of photos from around the (mostly sleeping) farm on this warm, sunny day!

Early June

We are all over the place now!  This time of year, it's all about keeping as many balls up into the air at one time as you can.  For example, this week we:  direct seeded, ordered more seed, transplanted, started more transplants, blended more potting soil, weeded by hoe, weeded by tractor, changed around the tractor, roto-tilled, laid out beds, rock-picked, harvested, and... ...well a whole lot more.  Hence, the somewhat random photo montage of today's blog!

This weekend will see us at the Cazenovia market with a whole bunch of crops, and next week are our FIRST CSA distributions!!!

Click on any pictures below if you want to see them close up...

End of May Work Photo Gallery

We've been rushing between storms, heat days, and projects to get the bulk of the summer plants in the ground.  Here are some pics for the last few weeks... we will have the remaining transplanting pictures up next week! Included are pictures on:  pea trellising, irrigation, rock picking, pepper planting, clay, and more!  Click on the thumbnails if you want to see the picture in a larger scale.

 

Tillers and Peppers

Big day on the farm... First Rototiller Pass 2012The tiller arrived, so now we are set to plant!  Of course, *today's* weather is not quite so planting-encouraging as the last few weeks (so we are holding off for a few more days... not that 17 degrees in the air will chill that deeply into the ground).

Here's Matt making the first pass on the right.  There was definitely good news in that the tiller seemed to handle the soil and corn stubble fine (we were a little worried about that, since there's some pretty serious stubble, and the tiller, believe it or not, is actually a bit undersized for our tractor).  But things worked up nice!  On the bad news, however... there were certainly a few more ROCKS than we anticipated.  Not that we can't handle rocks (we did come from NH), but we were hoping they were a thing of the past!!

Here's a close up before/after of what one tiller pass looks like.  Matt choose to try the tiller on one of the rougher areas of the field... it had been pretty compacted by previous field traffic (it's right by the entrance to the field).

What you see on the left (before) side is soil that has a fair bit of wind erosion going on... not an uncommon thing on a windy site with some slope that's been in a pretty "clean" (read:  weed-free) corn field for most of a year.  What happens is the wind whips through exposed ground and removes the "fines" from the soil (all the little tiny parts), leaving the larger gravel pieces exposed on the surface.  One of our main operational goals is to reverse the process.  This is much easier in a diversified produce operation, than for folks growing corn.  We will protect the surface fines by keeping the soil covered up more--either under plants with more leaf area than corn, or by cover crops (particularly in the windier off-season months).  To build up the soil more, we ultimately hope to add composted manure.  But until we have animals (or a source of local manure), we will focus on cover crops.  This summer we will be using a mix of buckwheat, red and white clovers, and a range of grasses.

Other big news on the seed starting front (besides the fact that we are living overnights with something like a hundred flats in our house... we will appreciate getting our greenhouse up next week!):  peppers are planted!  We intensively seed them in open flats and then pop them on the heating pad at 85 degrees.  We planted about 3000 plants this year, of a mix of hot, sweet, and unique varieties.  Check out the varieties HERE.

Peppers (along with eggplants and tomatoes) really like an extra boost of heat in order to germinate.  Since we have limited space for seedlings on our heat mat, we start one crop each week, and then rotate them off as they germinate.  Peppers grow the slowest, so they get a head start (followed by eggplants and then tomatoes).

It's been hard these past few weeks to control ourselves from planting more things early, but we have.  Last night as the temperatures started to drop, we were glad we hadn't jumped too far ahead of ourselves!  There is actually a crop warning for the next couple nights for our region for growers to protect things like trees that are prematurely blossoming.

One last pic before we go... herbs are germinating GREAT!  In the past, they have been tricky for us (they each are particular in their needs), but this year, they are doing really well... even the rosemary and lavender (my two personal favorites)... can't wait for them to be in the CSA (and at the market)!