Currently viewing the tag: "Farming"
Continue reading »
One of the things that drew me into farming in the first place was the fact that I could wrap my feeble brain around the basic transactional level of it.
The popular perception is that organic farmers are at a disadvantage most when it comes to dealing with insect pests. But in reality it is weeds that can bring an organic farmer to ruin in short order. 
October is Bat Appreciation Month, and with the celebration of Halloween this week I thought I’d take a moment to share with you some of the awesome things I learned about bats while earning my degree at UCSC. 
The turkeys are back. Through winter, spring and most of summer we were down to one forlorn tom we called “Lonely Pete”. It was hard not to feel sorry for him as he stood on our back hill calling out to his lost companions and receiving no response. That is until a few weeks ago. As I passed by our blueberry patch I noticed a commotion out in the middle of the field and heard the clipped, chirping calls that turkeys make when they are scared.
Continue reading »
For the past 20 years, we have been both farming and raising children. I’ve come to the conclusion that these two endeavors have a lot in common. Here are some of my basic tenets of farm-rearing. 
The giant high pressure zone that caused the intense heatwave at the end of last week has slid off to the East allowing the normal on-shore flow of cool air to resume here. There was hardly a breath of wind last Friday and Saturday and record highs were set for both days—well over 100 degrees. Here at our home site, we came through it better than I had hoped.
Continue reading »
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that this profession really rewards those who are able to think and plan well in advance. Strawberries are a good example of this.
One of the truest things my Uncle Jerry ever said was shortly after we bought our home farm back in May of 2000. “The one thing about living on a farm is that you are always surrounded by your work”, he said. So in the late stages of a long, hard season it is sometimes nice to have a quasi-legitimate excuse to get off the farm—if even just for one day. So when the notice for a fairly promising auction to be held in the west side San Joaquin Valley last Friday came in the mail, I was ready to go.
Continue reading »
We sell our organic strawberries at our farm stand and in farmer’s markets for what I consider a very reasonable price, but we occasionally have people who ask why they are so expensive relative to the $.99 pints they can find in their grocery store.
I could tell them that they usually get what they pay for—in my opinion those $.99 berries are worth just about that. Large scale growers choose varieties that are hard enough to withstand shipping long distances and pick them when they are only half ripe. Additionally, the high analysis synthetic fertilizers they use result in higher yields but sacrifice flavor even further.
Continue reading »
Like all California strawberry growers, we grow out our berry plants each year from strawberry crowns that we plant in the fall. These crowns are runners trimmed from mother plants grown at high-elevation nurseries. We place our orders for the varieties we want early in the year and the plants typically arrive the first week in November—dry root and neatly packed, 1000 per box. Until recently, the most frustrating part of being an organic strawberry grower was that, no matter how sustainable my fertility and pest control practices were, I still had no other option than to use crowns from conventionally produced plants, along with everyone else.
Continue reading »
