Farm Notes

We’ve had a busy couple weeks off, catching up on paperwork, preparing the farm before the rains, chasing escaped goats, and fixing fences. (I have a new respect for the occupation of cowboys riding the fence line. It seems that there’s always some place the animals can manage to get out if they want to.) The drainage system on the hoop houses at our Lewis Rd. ranch is working well, and the three parcels we farm all came through the last deluge just fine. It looks like it will be a wetter winter than last year, which will be good for filling reservoirs, though it might make for some muddy harvesting days.

We’ll be calling the crew in to plant next year’s strawberries as soon as the field dries out enough, probably early next week. We wait longer to plant than conventional growers do. Strawberry starter plants are grown from runners at high elevation nurseries where they accumulate more hours of “chill” during the growing season. Most growers keep their plants in the cooler an extra week or two, to give them extra chill hours—we keep our plants almost a full month in the cooler before planting. This tricks them into thinking they have gone through winter, so when they are planted out in the temperate areas close to the coast they start leafing out, grow vigorously, and begin to produce berries usually by early April. The extra chilling time gives them extra vigor when they do get into the ground. This balances out the super-high nitrogen fertilization that the conventional growers use, and it can actually mean that the field comes into production earlier.

Thank you to those of you who have already paid for the 2013 season. The income is very much appreciated now and we are using it to pay for our strawberry seed plants and our Redman property lease due in January.

If you are signed up for the winter CSA, enjoy your first winter box this week (see the note about pick-up times below). This newsletter goes to our entire list, so if you are not getting winter boxes, please just disregard the veggie information. We will be sending out this newsletter only on delivery weeks. Please see below or contact Sarah with any questions about the winter CSA or 2013 deliveries.