Farm Notes

As we approach the official end of summer, things are really getting dry out on our grassland and the surrounding hills. There’s a sprinkle of rain in the forecast — hopefully much more will come. While the slough we live beside (Harkins Slough) has maintained its water level due to some upwelling groundwater, the other fingers of the Watsonville Slough system are getting noticeably drier every week.

We are hopeful that a good rain year may recharge aquifers and extend the life of our well at our home site, which has been losing water pressure steadily throughout this year. This well is quite shallow, and for the long term we will have to look at drilling it deeper. The neighboring 350-acre farm has abandoned some of its wells that were at the same depth as ours and are mainly depending on the one deeper well they have on the property.

This summer we planted winter squash on much of the ground here, which we watered on drip. Steve cut off the water a few weeks ago, and these fields are now dried tangles of vegetation spotted with butternuts, carnivals, delicatas, spaghetti, hokkaidos, and pumpkins. Other fields are already bare, waiting for cover crops to be planted (we’ll plant cover crops before the first forecast of a real rain so that they won’t need to be irrigated) or for the 3 acres of strawberries that we’re rotating in for 2015. We use a 5-year rotation for the strawberries, so that once a field has been in berries, we don’t plant them in that spot again for at least 5 years.

Our Lewis Road site presents a different picture, where we have lush green fields of beans, lettuces, carrots, and bunching greens, and the hoophouses of tomatoes, peppers, and basil. The well there has plenty of capacity and the crop division has worked quite well. While we always have different things going on at this transitional time of year, it’s usually not so starkly divided by site. This is another example of how diversity — of crops, soil types, microclimates, and even access to water — has served us well as a small farm. Going from one ranch to the other is like driving from summer to fall in a few short minutes!