By Farmer/Chef Andrea
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| A sunny day in the valley & a view of our gorgeous garlic crop! |
Here we are in the first week of June and it’s FINALLY starting to feel like early summer! Strawberries will be ripening soon and the zucchini plants have the cutest little fruit on them. We’ve had a good, yet cold and wet start to this year. Every good chat with a farmer should include some talk about the weather, so here’s our report. In April & May we had 8 inches of snow plus some hail, 11.25 inches of rain and only 12 dry days! Through it all, our crew has been fantastic! We had some days when it was too wet to do field work, so some crew took a little time off. As soon as the weather cleared and the fields dried out just a bit, they were back out working hard with focus and determination to get things planted, cultivated, etc. They’ve worked some longer days when necessary as well as some weekends to help keep us on track. In Richard’s own words, “Considering the conditions we’ve had, I think we’ve done darn good!”
Despite a few weather delays, we’ve been able to get things planted in a timely manner. Our greenhouses are pretty empty right now, which is exactly as it should be if we’re on schedule with transplanting. Last week we were biting our nails as our beautiful tomato plants grew taller and taller in the greenhouse while it rained outside. It’s easiest to transplant them when they are short or we risk breaking them. Thankfully, we were able to get them in the field by the end of last week and we didn’t lose too many to breakage! By the end of the day Saturday they were standing up tall and looking perky with a nice bed of straw mulch lining the wheel tracks.
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| There's a wolf in the field! Oh wait, that's a pumpkin! |
Last Friday, we pulled out our second water-wheel transplanter and had a second crew to transplant our first melons and watermelons. As if we didn’t already have enough to transplant, we also knew our first shipment of sweet potato plants was on its way. When they come in, they need to be transplanted as soon as possible. UPS delivered them late Friday afternoon and within less than an hour the tomato planting crew was ready to move on to their next mission. Tomas came in to get the first few boxes of sweet potato plants and they hustled to get some planted before the end of the day. On Saturday morning, the other transplanting crew joined them and collectively they were able to plant them all with a little extra time to also plant jicama and pumpkins! We’re expecting another shipment of plants to arrive this Thursday, so hopefully we’ll have the field totally planted by the end of the week! While they don’t look like much right now, we’re crossing our fingers for an awesome sweet potato crop!
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| This year's potato field, freshly cultivated! |
While we’re talking potatoes, I might add that our potato field looks awesome! We were able to utilize the dry fertilizer applicator on the planter this spring which allowed us to apply fertilizer in the furrow as the seed was being planted. It was worth the extra effort as the plants are growing nicely and look very healthy. The cultivating crew has stayed on top of weed control, which also makes this a lovely field to see. Look for some delicious early potatoes in your box coming up in July!
Speaking of lovely fields, I need to mention our onion field. Not only are the onions looking really healthy, but we’re already on top of hand weeding so the field is clean. When you see the field you might say, “Well it still looks like there are a lot of weeds in between the beds!” Wrong! The green in between the beds is actually white Dutch clover and creeping red fescue, short stature cover crops intentionally seeded between the beds. This is a new technique Richard is implementing with crops planted on beds covered with plastic mulch. There are several reasons for this. First, it’s always challenging to control weeds in between the beds. If it gets too wet, we can’t get in to cultivate. If the onions get too tall, we can’t pass through with a tractor or we risk damaging onion tops. So one reason is to compete against weeds. Another reason is to establish a good root system to hold the soil in place. If we get hard rains, the water drains off the fields by running down the wheel tracks between the beds. Unless we have something to hold the dirt in place, the water will wash it away. Lastly, any cover crop will add to the health of the soil.
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| Onion Field with Interseeded Cover Crop |
What else do we have to report on? Well, the first crop of green beans are up, fenced to keep the deer out and look like a really good stand. It’s always challenging to germinate the first crop when the soil is cold and wet, but we managed to get a good stand the first time out! Our first crop of sweet corn is also up, although it’s a bit of a thin stand. Some of the seed simply didn’t germinate in the cold, wet soil. Don’t worry, we have second plantings of corn, beans and edamame already planted and up!
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| This week's cilantro crop....as far as the eye can see! |
While we’ve been busy getting crops planted, we’ve also been harvesting early season vegetables for your boxes as well as selling what we have available to our wholesale and retail partners. We’re happy to have more to offer and are pleased our first few crops of radishes and cilantro are yielding well! These are some of our major “bread and butter” crops. In addition to harvest, it’s also haymaking time! Over the weekend we cut our first planting of hay, got it dried and baled before Tuesday morning’s rain. In addition to hay, we have some other nice fields of cover crops that are ready for their next phase. Some of the cover crops we planted last fall will be harvested for use as mulch in other vegetable fields. In other fields, we’ll chop the cover crop plants back onto the field and then incorporate the plant matter back into the soil. This is called “green manure.”
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| Richard standing in a field with four different cover crop plants |
I walked through one field with Richard and the rye grass was nearly as tall as him! In addition to rye grass, there were also thin stalks of cereal rye as well as hairy vetch and mammoth clover. Why so many plants in the mix? Well, each plant has a purpose. Vetch and clover are nitrogen fixing which means they extract nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it to nitrogen that is bioavailable to plants. Rye serves as a scavenger crop meaning it takes nitrogen from the soil and stores it. Before the cover crop was planted last fall, we applied compost to the field. At that time, only half of the nitrogen potential was bioavailable. The rye, through its root system, scavenged and took up the remainder and stored it for us. Now, when we chop the plant and put it back in the soil, it’s there for us to use! Thankfully, even some of our late planted fields of cover crops did really well and have produced very rich crops.
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| Strawberry Blossoms and Tiny Strawberries on Healthy Plants |
Well, this is by no means the entire report of what’s going on at HVF, rather a little glimpse of what’s happening here. If you’d like to see it for yourself, join us for our upcoming Strawberry Day event! Our annual event is on Sunday, June 16. We’ll enjoy a potluck lunch before we do field tours which will end in the strawberry field. You can pick (and eat) strawberries to your heart’s content. Of course, we’ll celebrate the day with our traditional strawberry ice cream. You can mosey around the farm, visit with the animals, and just enjoy a little time in nature. We hope to see you soon!
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