by Farmer Richard
Do you remember the three foot deep
snowfall on October 29, 1993? I do! I remember harvesting carrots by hand in the
melting slush of that snow, not fun! We
love the cool, sunny days of fall, harvesting roots to take us through late
fall and early winter boxes and wholesale sales. Planting garlic, horseradish and sunchokes
for next year after first selecting our seed pieces. Preparing fields for winter by chopping crop
residue, composting and planting cover crops—have to get ready for a new year!
We have a long “to do” list and time is quickly slipping away. The reality we face is we need 2 to 3 weeks
of dry weather to get everything finished!
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| Austraian Peas already doing their job, growing nitrogen fixing nodules! |
Four weeks ago we were caught up,
every available acre was composted and cover cropped, some 60 acres of very
nice cover crops with the Austrian peas already producing impressive nitrogen
fixing nodules on their roots. They were
planted into very dry soil, but came up nicely with the first rain. But then it rained again, and again… We’ve had 6.42 inches of rain in October
alone. We still have about 30 acres of
fields that need to have cover crops planted and we have fields to clean up
including removing plastic and tomato stakes from the tomato, eggplant, pepper
and basil fields. Last Saturday afternoon
we started planting our garlic fields, but only got 2 beds planted before the
end of the day…and then it rained another inch that evening!
Do you sense some urgency
here? Some nervous apprehension? We do!
We can harvest greens and herbs in the rain or wet soil, but those crops
are almost done. The warm weather of
September and October (still no frost) has sped up the maturity rate of all
crops. We did some late plantings of
beets, red radishes, cilantro, baby bok choi, etc knowing they might be a
gamble if it got cold earlier. We’re
harvesting those crops this week and many will be finished for the season by
the end of the week. We’re thankful to
be able to continue these harvests this late in the month and we’ve saved huge amounts
of time and the expense by not having to put covers over crops to protect them
from frost! We expect our first frost to
be more of a freeze (lower than 25°F), but by the time we see that, all of the
vulnerable crops will be out of the field.
Now that it’s getting colder, the soil isn’t drying out as fast as it
does when it’s warmer. With more rain in
the forecast, we’re concerned we won’t see the two weeks of dry weather we need
to wrap this season up.
The harsh reality is winter is
coming. As I sit on the back porch
writing, I can hear the coyotes howling on the hillsides. I love it!
They too sense the coming winter!
But we still have that garlic field to finish planting, plus most of the
burdock field, parsnips, carrots, radishes, turnips and rutabagas to harvest
and almost 2 acres of sunchokes to both harvest and replant! This fall is much different than last
fall. Despite the challenges we face
this fall, we’re thankful to have such a plentiful harvest in contrast to the
crop losses we had last fall. When we had
extra crew time last year, we gambled and planted extra sunchokes and
horseradish, with hopes of having a really good harvest this fall to make up
for some of last year’s losses! Well,
our strategy worked and these crops have done well and sales are good. But we still have to harvest and replant so
we can do it all over again next year!
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| Rufino, Luis, Jose Antonio and Alejandro coming to the packing shed with broccoli romanesco, cauliflower and broccoli. |
Earlier this week on Monday, we
mudded out some more daikon radish and finished our first fall carrot field. I only got stuck in the field one time while
pulling out a load of carrots, but despite the mud the harvest went pretty
well. We also went through our last
three broccoli fields to find the small heads that continue to grow off the
sides of the plant. The pieces aren’t
big, but they are tasty! The broccoli romanesco
field looks great! This crop will
survive a frost as low as 20°F and will actually sweeten a bit with the frost
so we aren’t in a big hurry to harvest them.
There are still Brussels sprouts coming too! We’ve intentionally held off on harvesting
them because we want them to have a few frosty nights to sweeten them up. We plan to harvest cabbage before the weekend
freeze-up when our temperatures are forecasted to be 27°F. It can sometimes be colder in the valley, so
we’ve already started preparing so we aren’t caught off guard. Irrigation pumps, filter trailers, etc are
all drained and put away for the winter.
Bins of firewood are in place and I am back on winter wood stove
duty. We have a beautiful fire burning
in the fireplace as I write. It sure
helps to take the chill off on cold evenings.
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| Some of our crew 'cracking' garlic to get ready to plant! |
Or crew is anxious to return home
to their families and they are waiting for our final decision as to when they
can start booking plane tickets to go home.
While some crew members have asked and volunteered to stay late this
year, others are anxious to make it home in time to be with their wives when
the babies they’re expecting are born!
Others have fields of hay on their family’s farm waiting to be cut and
baled. There will be coffee and corn to
harvest, and of course there are anxious kids counting down the days until
their dad comes home. It’s hard to
predict when our workload will lessen, but we do our best to make estimates and
work efficiently. We are trying to make
the most of our time, spending frosty mornings and rainy days cracking garlic
for planting, cleaning garlic and onions, trimming root crops stored in the
cooler, washing sweet potatoes, etc. But
the bottom line is that we need those dry, sunny days! Wish us luck and lets hope Mother Nature
offers us a brief reprieve with some nice weather!
