Farm Notes

It was great to meet several of you at our Spring Farm Tour last Saturday. It’s nice to put faces to our CSA members, and you always seem to have the most interesting, engaged children! We seem to have entered our summer weather pattern with fog in the mornings burning off to some sun later in the day. This type of weather is actually what makes our home farm and the Redman ranch so perfect for growing so many crops – including lettuces, greens, and strawberries–that do not do well with summer heat. We grow the summer crops that do love heat on our Lewis Road ranch. Even though it’s only 10 miles inland, this property is quite a bit warmer through the summer. The high tunnels that we put up on part of the farm help to further increase the temperature for those crops that really need it, like tomatoes and most peppers.

We are very fortunate to live in a place where we can easily take advantage of these microclimates to grow the diversity of vegetables and fruit that contribute to a well-rounded CSA box. We also use the Lewis Road site for much of our early spring planting because of its soil type. The sandy soil there dries out quickly after rain, allowing us to get in with the tractor to work up the ground for planting. Our home farm, by contrast, has mostly heavier clay soils, which can take weeks to dry out enough to work in without damaging the soil structure with our equipment. But these heavier soils have their advantages too, holding moisture and nutrients better. Having the three locations (Home Farm, Lewis Road and the Redman ranch) allows us a lot of flexibility to plant each particular crop under the best conditions we have available. It also keeps farming interesting—a farmer needs to get to know the individual characteristics of each part of his/her farm, and make decisions based on these and the changing weather conditions from season to season. One thing that we’ve learned in our 14 years on our Home Farm property is that there is always more for us to learn about farming and about the land we farm. bee on pear blossom

Last week, Keith Kimes of Kimes Apiary harvested some honey from the chemical-free bee hives he keeps on our Home Farm and our Lewis Road property. He was initially uncertain that he’d get any honey this spring because of the drought. However the late winter storms brought out a bloom of trees and flowers, and the bees have been busy making honey for the past several weeks. (There have been a lot of honey bees on the early pear blossoms in our orchard – see picture.) We have put a limited quantity of this delicious honey on the webstore.