Late April Farm Update…What Might Be in the First CSA box?

By Richard de Wilde & Andrea Yoder

April 23, 2024:  Transplanting Onions

Looking back to February and March when we had gorgeous sunny days with clear skies and temperatures in the high 50’s and 60’s, all indications were that we were going to have an early spring.  The garlic pushed through the mulch and was taller than we’ve ever seen it that early in the season.  We worked diligently to stay on top of the greenhouse planting schedule to make sure the plants were ready for the field as soon as our field crew returned from Mexico.  And speaking of crew, we did everything in our power to keep the visa process moving along to ensure a prompt arrival, with a goal of no later than April 1.  Well, we succeeded, and the first group of field crew started work on March 25!  

We dug parsnips and sunchokes, transplanted celeriac seedlings into larger trays in the greenhouse, and did our first harvest of overwintered spinach.  On April 1 we sent our first planter out to the field to seed cilantro, red radishes, dill, baby bok choi and baby white turnips.  We were on a roll!  And then the temperatures dropped, and snow fell from the sky.  By Wednesday, April 3 the spinach field was covered in snow, and we called off work for most of our crew because of poor road conditions.  We cancelled spinach harvest for the rest of the week because the daytime temperatures were never high enough above freezing to melt the snow!  Thankfully the sun came out over the weekend, the snow melted, and we were back out harvesting the following week.  

April 11, 2024:  Washing 
Overwintered Spinach

We’ve done our best to take advantage of windows of opportunity to get our outside work and field work done, but it has been a challenge at times!  We’ve had snow, rain, hail, lightning, high winds, freezing temperatures, and finally this week we’re starting to see the temperatures rise and have had mostly sunny skies!  Is it still early spring?  Yes and No.  As mentioned, we were able to plant on April 1.  April 1 is always our goal for the first planting, but seldom do we get that opportunity to actually be in the field that early.  Those crops that were planted on that day will be ready for harvest on the first of May, likely just in time for that first CSA box!  Our overwintered spinach crop definitely came in ahead of schedule by a few weeks, an indicator of an early spring.  But the cool weather held back the ramps to a more “normal” start of the harvest season.  We had hoped to start transplanting some plants in the field earlier in the month, but rain and freezing temperatures caused delays.  We aren’t too far behind schedule, and we’ll catch up quickly, but we are a little late.

April 11 2024:  Silvestre seeding cover crop
seed in the Asparagus field

Thankfully, we’ve been able to get quite a lot of field work done despite the weather challenges.  We were able to get minerals spread on all our fields at the end of March.  We’ve also been able to spread compost on most of the fields that needed it and we’ve been working on making new compost and turning our piles.  We’ve also managed to do three plantings of our lineup of crops we strive to plant weekly.  These crops include the ones I mentioned above (red radishes, cilantro, baby bok choi, etc.) as well as our baby greens including salad mix, baby arugula and spinach.  We’ve also been able to plant beets, carrots, chard and just this week we managed to complete our parsnip and burdock plantings!  The field crew has been busy laying plastic mulch and drip tape in preparation for many of our crops that are transplanted.  Thankfully we were able to start planting onions and shallots earlier this week and will definitely finish by the end of the week.  The leeks are planted, along with the first plantings of broccoli, cauliflower and spring cabbage and kohlrabi!  By the end of the week, we should have the first planting of kale and collards done as well.  The potatoes are planted, and we even managed to put in a new strawberry field earlier this month!  

First Radishes of the Season!

In addition to field work, we’ve been busy with other projects.  We’ve done oil changes on tractors and field vehicles along with changing filters, checking brakes, lights, etc.  We’ve also checked wheel bearings on all the harvest wagons, so they are ready to go to the field!  We finished some cleanup from a riverbank repair project we were working on last fall.  We had cleared some box elder trees that we burned this spring.  We took the charcoal and added it to our compost windrow, our own biochar!  We are also working on some improvements around a beautiful spring on one of our properties, taking time to clear away honeysuckle and prickly ash so we could plant some ramps in the area.  We also planted another two acres of pollinator plants!

Mini Romaine Head Lettuce......coming 
to CSA boxes in mid May!

The first CSA boxes will go out for delivery May 9/10/11 and it looks like they are going to be nice boxes!  We’ll have to see how ramp season plays out, but we’re crossing our fingers that the season will extend long enough that we can put ramps in that first box.  We anticipate including baby arugula, fresh red radishes, nettles, overwintered parsnips and sunchokes as well as some potatoes we squirreled away from last fall!  We’re also feeling like we may see asparagus pushing through any day now, especially if the temperatures warm up as predicted.  Asparagus for the first box?!  We’ll take it!  Plus, we have a crop of cilantro that overwintered from last fall, a side benefit of a mild winter!  We can’t recall ever including cilantro in the first CSA box, but it looks like it will be in that first box as well this year!  We have a crop of mini romaine head lettuce planted in one of our greenhouse tunnels and hope that will be ready for the second or third delivery.  We’ll be putting together herb packs later this week with plans to deliver them with the third & fourth delivery weeks.  

Oscar & Luis laying drip tape in the 
new strawberry field

As in every year of farming, there are opportunities and challenges and if we play our cards right, we can turn those challenges into opportunities to succeed!  While April has brought us a variety of conditions to work with, we’ve also had a lot of productive work and have made great strides towards the start of what we hope will be a very prosperous growing season!

While deliveries are just around the corner, we do still have plenty of CSA shares remaining.  In fact, we would like to pack another 200-250 boxes each week in May!  So, if you have not yet signed up, please submit your order soon so you don’t miss out on any deliveries!  And for those of you who are already signed up, please tell your friends, neighbors and anyone else you can think of who might be interested in delicious vegetables!  Remember, we offer referral coupons to those of you who help us recruit new members, so it’s win-win all around!

We hope your spring is off to a great start and we look forward to sending delicious vegetables your way very soon!

Always Learning……

Transplanting Watermelon's 
on a sunny spring day!

By Andrea Yoder

Winter is our time to reflect on the previous year as we ask ourselves many questions.  What challenges did we face last year?  Where were we able to overcome and where can we make improvements for better outcomes in the future?  What worked really well last year?  What important lessons did we learn?  As farmers, we have many things to manage including weather, soil and plant nutrition, plant disease and pest pressure, weather (oh, sorry that is already on the list), time, resources, and the list goes on.  In the course of any given day, we collectively make hundreds of decisions, pivoting as needed so we can continue moving towards our end goal.  What is that end goal?  To produce high quality food and maximize the overall genetic potential of our crops, i.e. we hope to have high yields so we can feed more people and so our farm may remain sustainable.

Winter is also the time of year when we attempt to catch up on some reading, which recently led me to the stack of articles from the Acres U.S.A publication that I had been accumulating since last summer.  There were two articles in particular that caught my attention.  One was written by Gary Zimmer, a Wisconsin farmer, farmer educator, hands-on agricultural researcher, author, and longtime friend of Harmony Valley Farm.  The article he wrote was entitled “Managing Change:  Soil health management is a farm management decision.”  The other article of interest was an excerpt from a presentation by Dr. Don Huber, Professor Emeritus of Plant Pathology at Purdue University.  The article was entitled “Distressing the Stressors:  We can manage plant disease by managing plant nutrition.”

Cover crop planting in between rows of melon 
plants, a management technique to add
fertility and prevent erosion.

Both of these gentlemen emphasized the need for management, often requiring change, on the farm.  As much as we’d like everything to stay the same, the world around us is constantly changing and this impacts all aspects of our lives, including our farming decisions.  In these two articles, the focus was on nutrient management, both in the soil and in the plants, in order to maximize the genetic potential of a crop.  But Gary made an important observation: “Forty years ago, when I was teaching agriculture and was introduced to biological farming, we didn’t seem to have these extreme weather events we’re experiencing today.  …But these extreme weather events we see today have allowed us to change our management practices as a necessity.”  Dr. Huber stated “So, what we’re doing when we’re farming is managing an ecology.  It’s an ecology that involves the plant and also the chemical and physical environments, and especially the dynamic, biological environment of the soil, which then impacts both the plant and the pathogens and pests.  As we’re trying to make the conditions as favorable for the plant as possible, and we’re trying to reduce the opportunity for those pests and diseases to have an impact and to diminish the plant’s genetic potential.”  

Temperature probe in a 
compost windrow....a delicate
balance of temperature, time & 
microbial activity!

As farmers, we fully realize we are lifelong learners.  We will never “figure it out,” for just when we think we’ve mastered farming, something in this dynamic system will change.  Temperature, moisture and heat impact the bioavailability of nutrients in the soil as well as the ability of a plant to take them in and utilize them.  The presence or absence of one nutrient can impact the balance of other nutrients and biochemical pathways in the plant’s metabolism, either enhancing or impeding the genetic potential.  And then, as if things weren’t complicated enough, the nutrient needs of a plant change depending on the stage of growth.  So, what is a farmer to do?  

Well, I think it boils down to the fact that our job of being observant, humble problem solvers will never end.  For instance, as we move forward into a new year, we will be looking back at last year’s sap analysis results to guide us in making decisions and choices for how we’re going to manage crops this year.  Sap analysis is kind of like a blood test for plants.  We collect leaves from the plants and send them to a lab so they can measure the nutrient levels in the plant at that stage of growth.  The results help us better support the plant when we understand what the plant needs at that time.  For example, we’ve had problems with our zucchini plants in the past few years.  The plants are gorgeous with dark green leaves and a strong, healthy appearance.  Production is strong, harvest yields are high, and then they start to yellow, production drops off and within a few days the appearance of the field makes a dramatic change.  We’ve learned that at this stage in the plant’s growth we need to support it with additional iron and manganese. The yellowing leaves are the outward symptom of nutrient deficiencies that we can correct by delivering nutrients to the roots of the plant through drip irrigation, a process called fertigation.  This is where I’m reminded of my love of biochemistry and nutrition as I find it so rewarding to understand the “why” behind a symptom and then be able to intervene in a way that is beneficial to the plant, but also to the human being that eats the fruit or vegetable produced by that plant.  We support the plants, and the plants support us.

A field of healthy zucchini plants, the result of 
sufficient nutrition!

Changes in the climate and our environment can also impact pest populations, migration patterns, etc. which in turn can have a huge impact on our crops in some years.  As an example, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in Japanese beetles over the past few years.  In fact, they have become so much of a problem that within the last two years we invested in over 100 Japanese beetle traps that we placed on the perimeters of fields that contained plants the Japanese beetles seem to prefer.  In 2022, our worst year, we collected over 500# of beetles!  Somewhere along the way, there was a change in the ecology of the system which allowed these beetles to thrive and increase their populations.  As farmers, we had to respond, or we faced the reality that these little beetles would defoliate acres of plants that would certainly affect the quality and yields of these crops.

Rafael, checking the germination
of newly planted seeds.

So, as we go into another growing season, we do so with the confidence that we have a lot of experience and lessons learned from past growing seasons that we will take with us into a new year.  But we are also embarking on a new growing season with an open mind, observant eyes, and a desire to continue to learn and try new things.  Rafael experiments with and research better ways to manage weed pressure.  Richard is brainstorming more efficient ways we can stimulate and build healthy populations of important soil microbes that will help our plants better defend themselves against pests and plant disease.  And every year our observant crew members continue to contribute valuable observations that they make every day in the course of their work that led to improved systems, greater efficiency, and ultimately a more sustainable Harmony Valley Farm.  We know we have our work cut out for us this year but be reassured that we will do the best we can to manage the ecology of our farm with the intention to provide you with the highest quality, most delicious vegetables we can grow!