I am learning how to post pictures, and didn't succeed at my first attempt. This is the picture of the little onions starting to come up.

Check out the February Greenhouse Parade

I wanted to update everyone on the growth in the greenhouse. Over the weekend we started seeing little onions start to poke their green little shoots out of the soil. At first it starts as just a few here and there--you sometimes have to look really hard to find them. We have continued to uncover them during the day so they don't get too hot when the sun comes out, but we cover them with their blanket at night to trap in heat and keep them warm. One of the most exciting times of the day is when you roll back the cover in the morning and get to see what's been happening all night. Well, this morning we discovered little Bianca joined us in our world--bianca is an Italian variety of early white cipollini onion that we usually harvest as green top instead of dried. Rossa lunga di frienzze is another Italian onion (purple scallion) that decided to make an appearance today. We also have Red Goddess, Ishikura, Nabechan, and Oasis--all early scallions. My favorite picture of the day was the one I'm going to attempt to post. I think it is amazing to see the little shoots, which seem so fragile and delicate, exert enough strength to push up the ground above them as they grow. So what you are seeing here is our little Parade onions pushing through and lifting up the soil that covered them and kept them warm. Cheers from the Harmony Valley Farm Greenhouse--Stay tuned for the latest updates! Andrea

Planting Has Begun!!!

Greetings from our snow-insulated valley! Last weekend we had about 7 inches of snow, so our piles around the farm continue to build. Word on the street is that more snow is in our near future. Thankfully we now have a warm farm oasis to retreat to when we want to try to forget that is still winter.....our greenhouse!! Last week the crew worked hard to get the greenhouse washed, sterilized, and set up. Yesterday Hector and Simon worked all day planting onions. I am anxious to see the little green shoots start popping through the soil. We have been ordering and inventorying our seeds, germ testing them, and working on the field plans for the year. This weekend some of us from the farm will be attending the MOSES organic farming conference in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Richard is still working with the FSA associates to improve the NAP insurance plan and complete our claims for last year's flood. It's a long process, but Richard has been very persistent and we look forward to the day his hard work pays off not only for Harmony Valley Farm but for other organic farmers as well.

We have also been hard at work receiving applications and interviewing people for our job openings. There never seems to be a dull moment on the farm!! Stay warm and well!

Andrea

New Twin Cities CSA delivery sites!

We just confirmed THREE, count 'em 3! New Twin Cities Delivery Sites!

Eden Prairie!

Minneapolis Whittier Neighborhood (26th & Blaisdell)!

St Paul Macalester/Groveland Neighborhood!

Sign up now!!

Happy Valentine's Day

xoxo

What do you do all winter?

People always ask me what we do at the farm all winter. We don't grow anything in the greenhouses (or in the ground) so how do we employ people year round?

This year is very different from other years because of the flood this summer. We lost about half our acres to the floodwaters, much of it our late season crops! Usually we can keep the packing shed busy washing & packing veggies for sale to stores and restaurants at least through February. Then in March it's time to start growing again. Last year at this time we still had beets, carrots, onions, parsnips, rutabaga, soup mix, turnips, and winter radishes to clean and pack. This year, we only have burdock, crosnes, garlic, horseradish, dried chile ristras, dogwood & willow, shallots & turnips - in limited quantities. So the packing shed crew is busy cleaning totes and preparing small orders.

This is Adelina, someone we'd like to employ all year round, washing totes this morning. The tank is full of soap & suds and she rinses, stacks and stores the totes to use next spring.

We have a small office staff comprised of Richard (farmer/owner), Brian (accounting), Andrea (seed database/meat coordinator/packing shed supervisor), and myself (CSA coordinator/marketing).

I am getting ready for the 2008 CSA season, preparing a member 'Welcome Pack', answering questions from new & incoming members, finding a couple new Twin Cities delivery sites, recruiting new members, preparing a member survey, and updating the website. We also have a pretty good benefits package for our employees (health insurance, health savings account & retirement plan) that I will maintain and administer. We're working on job descriptions for everybody too, so we can do performance reviews and the like. Fun, fun, fun!

Richard and Andrea are looking at seed catalogs and planning next years plantings. We have some delicious and nutritious items (some with very funny names: Mellow Yellow carrots, Skywalker cauliflower, General Lee cucumber, Bull's Blood beets, Orion fennel, Freckles salad mix, El Jefe jalapeño, Dagger & Javelin parsnips, Crocodile spinach and of course, Lancelot Leeks!) for you next year! Andrea will update you soon!

Brian our bookkeeper/accountant, processes all our incoming CSA orders & is working on our 2008 customer database, a complete overhaul of what we had in the past. He does payroll & pays all the incoming bills, too.

Our shop crew will be maintaining and winterizing all our equipment. The wagons' wheel bearings get lubed, chains get tightened, machines get cleaned and stored. They still have goats to look after and they're still clearing trees from the creek & river banks too.

The packing shed staff is also working on updating our Employee Manual. It originally came about as part of getting organic certification so it goes into a lot of detail about sanitation procedures, weed & disease control, and harvest & handling. Plus lots of information on our water management practices, crop outlines & planning, seed germination and general storage information. It's all about how we do it & do it well at Harmony Valley Farm.

We get a vacation week at the end of January. Where should I go?

FSA flood insurance!

Last week I met with head of Wisc FSA, Ben Brancel and his #1, Russ Raeder and Wisconsin Department of Ag, Laura Paine and #1 in my eyes, Will Hughes. Will has some connection with Ben, Will had read my analyses and understood it, he directed the meeting. True to form as government employees, Russ and Ben digressed and passed the buck to Washington! Will took down names, 'Who do I talk to?' Price!, needs a big change, Unharvested factor! off by at least 50%, planting periods!, I think Russ and Ben flinched, after all they have had since 2000 to get them right!, I wrote them in 2004 and went home and rewrote them in the exact table they use, all they have to do is click send! Maybe there is some hope on this one for 2007 disaster application!, about $20,000 difference if they get it right this time! That is about all I can do.

I am holding out hope that Will can pull some strings! Will and family were original 1993 CSA members and had a pick-up site at their house for many years and has since moved up the ladder at Wisc DATCP and totally gets it! He made it clear that this is not only about HVF, but this is a good test case. If it does not work here, then it does not work for anybody!

There are two options being considered, if this fails, #1, get at least 500 CSA families to e-mail the government officials and demand they do their job! (A bit of insight!, the FSA officer who is doing my low interest emergency loan appl. told me that his predecessor and himself have given so few loans that the taxpayer would be better served if USDA just gave away some grants to those in need, rather than paying all these big salaries to employees who do not make any loans or payments for disasters) .

Or to digress further, but maybe quite accurate. Why do tax payers allow government employees to work in the interest of big business, rather than to protect citizen taxpayers, ie, FDA approval of drugs without sufficient studies, FDA and USDA approve untested GMO crops for the sole benefit of Monsanto, without protecting the public! It is about to happen again with a GMO sugar beet which will pollute most of the remaining food supply. They got corn and soybeans which make up 70% of food products and now with GMO sugar there will be no conventional food left that does not have some dangerously untested GMO component, they win, the consumer losses and the Goverment officials who are responsible for a safe food supply have completed the sell out!

Have to send a note to Ronnie Cummings, Organic Consumers Union, thought he had this GMO beet covered, but the CEO of Crystal Sugar just did a 180 turn, I wonder? Did they threaten his family or just offer money or both?

Anyway, got home from the FSA meeting and had a message that the 'Sow the seeds fund' was sending a $37,000 check, we do know who our friends are! So that leaves us at squeaking by, still in business, a fair FSA insurance payment would mean business as usual, employee raises, replace broken equipment, fix stream bank wash-outs, etc. Richard

Note to Self

• Don't enter the cow's pasture empty handed, especially if they are hungry and you are wearing a red hat


• You can't run very fast when you're wearing snowshoes in 6 inches of powder

This afternoon I wanted to check on the cow's hay because it looked kind of low in the feeder (from a distance). I usually work in the office but I am more than happy to bring buckets of food to the animals on the weekends or other days off - I am in charge of the animals for only a couple days a month. The feeder is across the creek from the bunker (what I like to call their table) where I put their delicious organic grain.

(okay, okay, I'm trying to sell you some beef. We still have beef for sale. They are rotationally grazed, finished on organic grain. Buy some! Here! Next delivery in January!)

So I decided to walk over across the water in my snowshoes for a look-see at the feeder, 'cos Richard said Dan had put 10 bales of hay in the feeder the other day, but I thought it looked low (from a distance).

As I opened the gate, the cows came close 'cos they know me as good for feed by now. I used to think it was cute how they scampered around like puppies when I came in with buckets of food. I bypassed the "table" and they followed me across the creek. There are definitely leaders and followers with these cows. The first two led the way across the creek, right behind me, while the others followed more slowly. Then the slow ones paused. I stepped to the side and I tried to coax them on because I didn't really want to follow them too close behind, much less cross their path. But they stopped. So I crossed behind two, ahead of four cows. I kept telling them that it wasn't lunch time, I was just checking in, look - no bucket of food, but they kept advancing. I made a wide berth around the feeder 'cos it was very poopy and I could see clearly that it wasn't very full of hay. They sped up and #13 gave me the eye. She pawed the ground, looked at my head/red hat and kicked up her heels!

(This is that same feeder, found down stream, after the flood.)

As I made my wide berth, I realized I was right next to another food bunker and I had no food! The cows kept coming! I kept thinking about how bears and dogs can smell fear and tried to remain calm as I made my way to the next fence, about 25 feet away (which I think, I hope, is electric). As I said, one cannot run wearing snow shoes in six inches of powder. I moved as quickly as I could and I rolled under the fence and the cows kept coming. As I walked away from the fence (way more slowly than I would have liked), I saw #13 sniffing the wire & under the wire and make the wise decision to not try to follow. I ended up taking the long way home, across the creek again & across the fields. It took me almost an hour!

Richard and I went out later to give the cows some hay & that was another (reluctant) adventure. He pushed 8 bales out of the barn & we piled them into the bucket of the skid steer (like a Bobcat or Mustang - a machine with a fork or a bucket for carrying stuff. Ours has chains on the back wheels now, for getting around in the snow). I met him Richard at the gate & reluctantly got on top of the bales for the trip/ride to the feeder. (I didn't want to walk with the cows!) The snow was very, perhaps unexpectedly, deep & Richard struggled up the creek bank while I hung on for dear life, with cows looking on. OMG I was so scared!

We got to the feeder bin & I had to cut the rope binding the bales & pile it into the feeder below. The cows were at it in no time. I was still up in the skid steer bucket when I took this pic.

I'm scared of the cows now. Kinda like the goats - never turn your back. Don't laugh! I'm a city girl. This is all so very new to me.

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year!