April Farm Update

By Richard de Wilde & Andrea Yoder

Strawberry plants poking through the straw mulch.

Before the month of April slips away, we want to fill you in on what’s been happening in our quiet valley!  The past month has been a bit of a whirlwind with CSA orders coming in by the piles, more crew members joining us, the start of field work, and in the midst of it all we continue to navigate the pandemic.  So here’s a little insight into our world.

In the first few days of April we uncovered a nice field of overwintered spinach, which had been under a big field cover for the winter.  We also removed the cover on the garlic field and just recently, the strawberries as well.  After the covers came off we had to walk the garlic and strawberry fields with pitchforks to tease and loosen the straw mulch where it was compacted in some places.  This made it easier for the plants to push through.  We’re happy to report that it looks like we had a very good survival rate over the winter!  In fact, we’ll likely start harvesting green garlic as early as next week!

Transplanting onions!

Our first actual day doing field work was April 8.  With only our small winter crew, we prepared 2 acres of plastic covered raised beds to plant onions and shallots into.  We like to lay the reflective silver plastic mulch about two weeks in advance of planting so opportunistic weeds that might sprout will be smothered by the plastic before we poke holes in it for the plants.  Despite a bit of inexperience, they did a very nice job!  The field looks great with straight beds covered tightly on the sides and on the ends.  A critical detail that keeps the plastic anchored when we have high winds.

While we continued to do greenhouse plantings, accept CSA orders, and do the initial field work to prepare for the season, we also waited with uncertainty to find out if our experienced, skillful seasonal field crew would be granted visas and be allowed to travel from Mexico.  Thankfully, in the evening of April 8 we got the good news that 31 healthy individuals were en route to Wisconsin!  We all breathed a huge sigh of relief knowing they’d be joining us soon, for without them farming this season would have been an even bigger challenge.  We were so happy to see them, although we haven’t actually seen most of their faces as they arrived with face masks and have them on nearly all the time they are at work!  We have learned that you can tell a person is smiling by looking at their eyes, and we’ve also noticed the familial resemblance many of our crew members have to their uncles, nephews, etc.  If you put a mask on Antonio Cervantes he can easily be mistaken for his nephew, Jose Manuel.  They have the exact same eye features!

Planting a new field of asparagus!

While we were thrilled to greet these guys, we also knew we had to be prepared for a higher level of management in order to navigate the necessary precautions related to the pandemic.  The last few weeks have been filled with new procedures and practices on the farm along with extensive training (with a professional Spanish interpreter) in an effort to maintain a safe working environment.  We now have three groups of crew members that each have their own lunch area, designated bathrooms, and guidelines for which buildings on the farm they are permitted to enter.  We all continue to limit our movement in the community and are doing our best to do what we can remotely, electronically and with as little contact with the outside world as possible!  We actually started communications with our crew members several weeks before they ever left their homes in Mexico.  We let them know what was happening in the USA and advised them to self-isolate as much as possible, practice social distancing, and do everything they could to keep themselves in good health.  They did a great job and took preventative measures all along the way.  They all arrived totally healthy, not even a single cold!  Now our goal is to continue to be diligent about maintaining preventative practices so we can all remain in good health!

Now that our crew is back in action we’ve been making great strides in getting things done in the fields.  We did the first planting of radishes, salad mix, cilantro, arugula, etc on April 18.  Some of these plants were emerging, so we went ahead and did a second planting last Saturday.  We need to get more direct seeded crops planted, but it takes time to prepare the fields with applications of compost, minerals, trace elements, etc.  Today we're planting peas and parsnips.  Before the week is finished we hope to complete plantings of beets, carrots, burdock, chard and then, shortly after, sweet corn and green beans.

Field of freshly transplanted dandelion plants
enclosed by a deer fence.

The greenhouses, which just 2 short weeks ago were nearing capacity, are gradually looking more empty.  Onions were the first crop to go to the field and after three days of transplanting they were finally all in the ground.  The transplanting crew immediately moved on to broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi and cabbage followed by dandelion which is one of our major wholesale crops.  The deer seem to enjoy a nice field of tender dandelion plants, so we immediately put up a fence to keep them out.  Our first parsley field is planted and all 30,000 celeriac are standing up like rows of soldiers in the field.  We started off this week by loading fennel plants.  Despite some breakthrough rain showers in the morning, the crew was able to continue planting and when the sun came out in the afternoon they moved on to our first planting of kale and collards!

We have already started some of our warmer weather crops in the greenhouse.  The pepper seedlings look beautiful.  The zucchini and first planting of tomatoes pushed through the soil over the weekend and we planted watermelons earlier this week!  We’ll keep these plants snug and warm in the greenhouse for a few more weeks until we make sure the threat of frost has past us.

Nettles, Sorrel, and Chives happily growing in the field.

In between field and greenhouse work, we continue to wash and pack vegetables.  Overwintered parsnips and sunchokes along with spinach, ramps and burdock root are part of our weekly line-up.  We’re in week two of ramp harvest and crossing our fingers that Mother Nature will bless us with at least two more weeks if not three!  It all depends on the weather, but we must admit the weather has been more cooperative thus far than in some recent springs.  The jet stream seems to have moved north, so cooler air with less moisture.  Maybe this is the bright side of the pandemic?  Reduced economic activity has greatly reduced pollution and carbon emissions.  Maybe nature will give us an immediate reward of nice weather.  We can hope!

Our CSA sign-ups are up about 20% over last year and we have a lot of new members joining us for this season!  We are at about 70% capacity for the season and we are still accepting orders.  Kelly, Gwen and Amy are doing their best to get orders processed and welcome packets distributed before the start of deliveries next week!  We normally spread our order processing work out over several months, but with the state of the world orders have been compressed into just a few weeks!  We’re doing our best to get them processed as quickly as possible, but appreciate your patience.  We started sending Welcome Packets out last week and will continue to send them as we process your order.  Please, Please, Please take the time to read the important information contained in these packets.  The “C” in CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is very important this year in order for everyone to have a positive, safe pick-up experience.  We’re looking forward to the start of a new CSA season and we’re grateful for every member who has committed to join us on this journey this year!

June 2019 Farm & Crop Update

By Farmer/Chef Andrea

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.” 

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.

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!

April Farm Update

View after the April 18th snowfall and new 
crew members below that we hope 
won't be staying around too long!

Well friends, if we had to choose one word to describe April it would be “Challenging!”  Over the course of the past forty years of farming, we are typically able to start field work and planting late March or the first of April.  Sometimes the weather is still cool and things grow slowly, but at least we can start marking things off the planting list.  Historically, April 18 was the latest date we started field work which means we’ve set a new record this year for the latest spring!  Here we are on April 19 with nearly a foot of snow (although it looks like it could melt fast)!  Back in March it looked like we were going to have an early spring and we pushed hard to secure appointments with the consulate in Mexico so our crew members could get their visas and return to Mexico by the first of April.  We are thankful to have 29 of our crew members back at the farm.  They are ready and willing to work and have helped us get caught up on our greenhouse work as well as tackle some big cleaning and repair projects.  Unfortunately, they’ve had to take some days off as there are limits to what we can do on days when it’s snowing, raining or just too muddy and cold to do what needs to be done in the field.  They’ve been advised to rest and take advantage of the down time as we have some long days of work ahead of us as soon as this snow melts!  In those years when we were able to start our field work earlier, it didn’t necessarily mean crops were ready much earlier.  As mentioned, things grow more slowly in the cool of the spring than they do when they are planted later when the day and night temperatures are higher.  It is helpful though when we can get things in the ground, even if they grow slowly, as it spreads out our workload.  Now we’re facing some long days and the time crunch to get it all done!

Head lettuce transplants in greenhouse

While we enjoyed some gorgeous sunny days and warmer temperatures in March, April has definitely proven itself to be wet and cold.  Last week we had 2.75 inches of hard rain accompanied by hail.  That was followed by about 8 inches of wet, heavy snow over the weekend.  Much of the snow had melted away, but now our valley is once again blanketed in white.  We know, all too well, that sometimes Mother Nature trumps us despite our best efforts to overcome weather challenges such as these.  There isn’t much we can do aside from being prepared to hit the ground running and put forth our best effort as soon as the snow melts away and we can get into the fields.  We’re preparing machinery, getting seeds ready and making sure everyone is ready to go when the conditions are favorable.  With a few warm, sunny days, the picture could change and we just might get a window of opportunity.

Herb Packs 

Our greenhouses are nearly full and the plants look really good right now.  The onions and our first plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale and collards are residing in our cold frame greenhouse where they enjoy breezy days and chilly nights with temperatures dipping down into the 40’s.  Our goal is to keep them on the cool side to toughen them up and keep them growing at a moderate rate so they develop into strong, sturdy plants.  The peppers and celeriac plants were transplanted into larger cell trays last week and they look very good.  Earlier this week Leonardo, Lupe, Miguel, Pepe and Leon spent a sunny day in the greenhouse planting herb packs for you!  We are planning to deliver them in mid to late May so you can plant them in your own garden space or put them in pots on your patio and enjoy fresh herbs throughout the season.  Our pollinator packs are also looking really good!

Celeriac seedlings in the greenhouse

We were scheduled to plant zucchini this week, but we’re planning to delay that planting a week or so.  Zucchini grows very fast and when it’s ready it needs to go to the field.  We are hoping to transplant some head lettuce into our tunnel greenhouse next week, if the weather is a bit more favorable.  The goal is that we would have mini romaine head lettuce by late May, a few weeks ahead of lettuce that will be transplanted into the field.

Perky pepper transplants

French Breakfast Radishes

CSA deliveries start in just two more weeks.  What does all this snow mean for the start of our CSA deliveries?  Good question.  The early boxes may be limited in variety, but we’re hoping to fill them with delicious overwintered spinach, parsnips, sunchokes and ramps!  If you’ve been with us in previous CSA seasons you know that we often struggle to have overwintered spinach and ramps in our early CSA boxes.  Sometimes these crops come in early in April and are nearly done by the start of CSA.  We’ve even had years when we aren’t able to include ramps in May boxes.  Perhaps the silver lining in this year’s late spring will be that we get to enjoy the luxury of more ramps and overwintered spinach in our early boxes!  That’s not such a bad tradeoff!   Yes, the early boxes might be more limited, but we do have our perennial crops to rely on until we can start harvesting spring planted crops such as radishes, salad mix, bok choi, etc.  Some of those perennial crops include asparagus, sorrel, chives and nettles.  We will also have green onions that were planted last fall to round out the selections until the green garlic and spring scallions are ready.  This is the adventure of eating and cooking with the seasons.

Chives

This week we welcomed a new crew member to our team.  Gwen has joined us in the office to help Kelly and Andrea with a wide variety of tasks.  We’re very happy to have her on our team and look forward to teaching her the ins and outs of managing the many details of a vegetable farm!  On April 30 we anticipate our final eleven crew members will arrive for their first day of work.  We’ll be welcoming four new crew members to our team this year and are anxious to meet them. 

Our CSA numbers are still down and we still have plenty of shares available.  If you haven’t sent in your order yet, please do so soon!  We appreciate the referrals we’ve received and ask that you continue to share your CSA experience with your friends, neighbors and co-workers.  We’re looking forward to getting this growing season underway and thank you for your continued support of our farm! 

Spring Farm Update!

By Farmer Richard and his sidekicks Andrea & Captain Jack the Dog

Spring is different every year and as we write this update temperature is on our minds.  We were happy to see the snow melt away towards the end of March…..and then woke up to a winter wonderland on March 23!  Once the snow melted again and things dried out, we were able to dig overwintered parsnips and sunchokes….just before it rained!  After some rainy, cold days, we were thankful for warm days in April which allowed us to get some field work done.  We planted all the parsnips as well as the first beets, carrots & peas.  The transplanting team worked hard to plant all the onions and then moved right into transplanting the first crop of head lettuce, fennel, basil, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi.  They also managed to get the parsley and Brussels sprouts in the ground!  Thankfully everything was in place before the next wave of rain.  This past week has been cool and wet.  In fact, it’s downright chilly today and there is a chance of frost!  Don’t worry….the crew covered the strawberries yesterday to protect the blossoms so there should be plenty of strawberries to pick on June 21 at Strawberry Day!  (Mark your calendars!)

Weather talk aside, we’ve had a pretty good spring and have a lot of good field updates.  First, our asparagus and rhubarb crops are producing beyond our expectations!  Both of these perennial crops take about 3 years to establish before we can do any substantial harvests off them.  Over the past few years we’ve put in new rhubarb and asparagus plantings.  Richard & Jack have been waiting patiently (Andrea not so patiently) for our new fields to become established and this is the first year we can harvest from all of these fields!   Despite the cool weather we’re still seeing some impressive asparagus harvests.  The rhubarb field is also producing well and the bright red stalks are gorgeous!
As we look ahead to June, we should mention that our first two pea plantings are in and looking good.  Sugar snap and snow peas should be ready for the first to middle part of June.  The pea vine looks like it might be ready as early as next week.  The strawberry field is blossoming and the plants look healthy.  We do watch the weather closely though (that darn weather topic again).  The blossoms can’t take the frost, so we’ve covered the field with our giant field blankets to get them through the week…just in case Jack Frost pays our valley a visit.

Anyone interested in garlic?  We’re happy to report the garlic crop appears to have overwintered nicely with about a 99% survival rate!  We’re planning to harvest green garlic next week….and before we know it we’ll be enjoying garlic scapes and fresh, juicy bulb garlic.
Our pastures are lush and green and the cattle love their days grazing the hillsides.  Our goat pasture is full of young energy with nine new kids and more on the way!  We’re also happy to report we have pigs roaming our pastures again!  Last week we got 15 piglets.  It took them a few days to acclimate to their new home, but it looks like they’ve adapted well.  They’ve also grown accustomed to the nightly deliveries of compost from the packing shed. Just like us, they are enjoying many spinach salads for dinner.  The chickens moved to the pasture with the pigs. They’re a little more vulnerable to pesky predators, but are learning to defend and protect themselves. Manuel and Juan Pablo have done five plantings  of “salad greens.” This is our first week of harvest from our spring-planted salad greens.  We should have salad mix, baby kale and more baby arugula coming soon!  We’re also learning how to use a new vacuum seeder we got this spring. We’ll use it to plant our cilantro, dill, bunched arugula, baby bok choi and radishes.  It was fun having a shiny, new piece of equipment.  It’s dirty now, but seems to be working well and we’re thankful to have it as it will help us fine-tune the plantings for greater precision.
Jack is happy to have the field crew back from Mexico so he can play ball at lunch time.  Richard has been hunting for morel mushrooms in his spare time and Andrea is having fun cooking them along with asparagus, spinach, ramps and all of the other tasty green things available now!
Kelly & Beth have been busy in the office preparing for the start of deliveries.  Lately they’ve been working on processing orders for maple syrup.  Our friend and neighbor, Alvin Miller, had another pretty good year for making maple syrup.  If you haven’t taken advantage of this offer yet, don’t wait. We’ve extended our deadline until May 20th, but that’s the absolute last day for orders!  Alvin needs time to bottle the syrup, so make sure you send your order in as soon as possible so Alvin knows how many bottles to fill!   We’re happy to have another season of CSA underway. While farming isn’t easy, we are blessed with great customers and a great crew!  Our crew has been practicing flexibility for the past several weeks.  On warm, sunny days they stay late to get the work done.  On rainy and cold days they help in the packing shed and greenhouses doing whatever needs to be done.  Without a hard-working crew, we couldn’t be the farm we are today.  We’re glad that you’ll be sharing with us in the bounty of this year’s harvest.  Rest assured we have a lot of delicious food coming your way!