Farm Notes

The farm is in full summer swing now. There are yummy summer vegetables (beans, peppers, cucumbers, and eggplants) growing nicely. The apples (and even some pears this year) are formed on the trees and starting to size up. The blueberries have slowed down, but we’re still able to put a few in the mystery shares each week. The strawberries are plugging along nicely. In this year of learning about our new Lewis Rd. farmland, we decided to not take a chance with the tomatoes. The Thomas Farm has been growing wonderful organic tomatoes for decades, so we asked Josh if he would plant enough to supply our CSA for this summer. Reports are good from the Thomas’ fields—the tomatoes are running late for everybody in the area this year, but we expect to have some for you soon.

We had a photographer out taking pictures of the farm last week for the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service). We have worked with NRCS grants over the years to implement environmental improvements on the farm, including hedgerow plantings, irrigation water-saving techniques, planting an eroded gulley to make a vegetative buffer strip for water run-off, and native seed plantings in our habitat restoration area. The photographer spent a couple hours walking around our home farm — taking pictures of the rows of lettuces, spinach, beets, mustard greens, padron peppers, kale, chard, cilantro, arugula, and squash; walking through the pear orchard; checking out the strawberry field; heading over to the blueberry patch; hiking down to the apple orchard and the potato field. A trip to the Redman House field would have yielded more potatoes, greens, cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, celery, fennel, and romanesco. On to the Lewis Rd. ranch and he would have found more types of squashes, three kinds of beans, parsley, cipollini onions, leeks, green onions, cucumbers, eggplants, carrots,  mei quin choy, and basil. The photographer was joking that he didn’t need to go to any other farms now because we had some of everything. He asked if it was hard to grow so many different things.

Yes, it is hard to grow so many different things, and do all of them well. It’s hard to keep track of the needs of all the different crops –all needing weeding, fertilizing, and water on varying schedules. It’s hard to learn all the nuances of growing each type of crop (through research and experience). But a diverse farm also has great benefits. It guarantees that we can easily rotate crops to maintain good soil (and plant) health. It minimizes insect pest and fungal disease problems too. Pests love nothing more than 100 acres of their favorite food all in one place. Diversity in crops (and our abundant native plant hedgerows) allow for diversity in insect life, providing habitat for predators who keep the pests in check. And if not every planting is successful, such as when we lost most of an early spring carrot crop to root-knot nematodes, our diversity means that such a loss doesn’t result in losing the farm. The damage is limited to a small area and there are enough other crops growing that we can balance out that loss with a successful crop of another vegetable. Our CSA model of selling our vegetables means that our customers can wait for the next planting of carrots to come in, while enjoying the spring fava beans or onions instead.

One of the best things about a diverse farm is that it keeps life from ever getting boring, for us or for our crew. The field crew has a variety of tasks to do in any given day, instead of hoeing one field of greens for the entire day, or harvesting beets from dawn until dusk. So, while Steve could certainly use a little more “boring” in his life sometimes, diversity keeps things interesting for all of us, and we wouldn’t want to farm any other way.