June 2023: Late Spring Farm Update

By Richard de Wilde & Andrea Yoder      

Onion field with cover crops planted 
in the aisles between the beds

Our world of farming, and all the decisions that face us on a daily basis, are often sculpted around the weather forecast.  As we look back on the past few months, we have to admit it has been a bit of a wild ride!  We had some nice, warm, sunny days back in March and early April, making it look like a promising start to the season. Overwintered parsnips and sunchokes were ready to be harvested, the mulch on the garlic needed to be loosened, and the greenhouses were filling up with plants that needed to go to the field. The only problem was we didn’t have our field crew!  Our H2A visa crew members were delayed by about two weeks this year. Delays with visa processing are commonplace this year and we’re just thankful they made it here without further delay! 

While we waited for our guys to arrive, we continued to do the best we could with our small winter crew and there were a few days when we were all in the field (Andrea and Richard included) harvesting parsnips! Rafael did some of our first direct seeded plantings as conditions were looking good.  Then, on March 31^st a storm passed through and nailed us with hail! We have never seen hail as big as we saw that day and by the time it stopped falling from the sky, there was a solid layer of hailstones accumulated on the ground. Unfortunately, the hail was big enough that it punctured holes in all four of our greenhouses which have sheets of plastic for covering. While we usually don’t see too much wind in our valley, the month of April was unseasonably windy.  With holes perforating the greenhouse plastic, it was hard to keep the houses inflated and the plastic was whipping in the wind. We did the best we could to patch the holes, but there were limits to what we could do. Thankfully, we were able to secure all the houses and keep them intact while we waited for more crew members to help us change the plastic!

June 13, 2023:  Frost on frozen strawberry leaves!

Shortly after our field crew arrived from Mexico, we were blessed with about 10 inches of heavy, wet snow!  It was time to harvest ramps, so there were a few days when we had to wait for the sun to come out and melt the snow before we could go harvest! Once we got past that snow event, we were able to carry on with our field operations.  We started putting transplants out in the fields, continued with some early spring harvests, did our direct seedings, and hoped everything was moving in the right direction. We had some warm days, but no rain. No rain, no problem (well, less of a problem), we’ll get set up to irrigate when and where we can.  But then on May 25 there was a threat of overnight temperatures dipping below freezing! What happened to our standard of the last frost happening by the 15^th of May?!  We scrambled to put covers on vulnerable crops for frost protection. Thankfully, our efforts paid off and we saved the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil. After the frost, the temperatures shot back into the 90’s and then we were scrambling to get the covers off, so we didn’t cook the crops!  We made it through that fiasco, but it was a little too close to disaster for our comfort level!  We thought we were past the point of frost, but earlier this week we woke up to another frosty morning!  This one took us by surprise and thankfully, no crops were damaged.  The strawberry leaves did have frost on them though!

Overhead irrigation using sprinklers to water 
a new planting of rutabagas so they'll germinate!

We are now in a state of dryness, as in one of the driest springs ever. Everything we have planted needs water, but we only have irrigation capabilities for some properties. We’re also limited by hours in the day and equipment.  So we’re doing our best to keep all of the crops in the game and we’re thankful for any bit of rain that may fall from the sky!

Despite the wild weather wave we’ve been riding, most of our crops look quite nice!  This has been a pretty good strawberry season with great tasting berries, one of the benefits of a dry year.  Our onion crop is also looking quite nice as is this year’s garlic crop! Garlic harvest will likely be happening within the next month, which seems unbelievable!  As you can see by the contents of your box this week, we’re at that point in the season where we’re starting to shift to more of the summer greens (kale, chard, etc.) as well as some brassicas (e.g., kohlrabi) and soon we’ll have some root crops coming in.  Beets and carrots are right around the corner! Despite the fact that it is technically not yet summer, some of our summer crops are starting to make their way into our harvest schedule.  For example, the zucchini in this week’s box and the cucumbers that just might make it into next week’s box! As for other summer crops, we have three plantings of corn in the ground, with two more planned. We have some nice crops of green beans and edamame, and our first tomato field looks great!  The melon and watermelon field look quite nice. Sweet potatoes are in the ground and have taken root, so cross your fingers that we have a bountiful harvest in 3-4 months!

June 2023:  First tomato planting!

In the midst of farming, we’ve also found some time to continue rehabilitation work on a new piece of property we are leasing.  We’re also doing some experimentation with planting a variety of vegetable crops into no-till soil.  We planted our fall pumpkin crop as part of this experiment, so be certain to come to the fall party and see how it turned out!

Yes, it’s been a wild, whirlwind of a ride this spring, but there’s one thing we can always say with 100% confidence—Mother Nature will always take care of us and keep food on our table!