Farm Update

This is the third straight year that we have had a prolonged dry spell in the middle of winter and, according to the latest weather report, there is no meaningful rain in sight. In some respects it has been helpful. Because most of our ground has dried up, we are well ahead of schedule getting ground worked up, and doing our first plantings. Harvesting for the CSA and the Farmer’s Market is always much easier when things are dry as well. But underlying this feeling of good fortune on the one hand, is uneasiness about what it means for the big picture on the other. The well water that we use at all three sites that we farm on is mainly recharged from local rainfall. Here in the Pajaro Valley saltwater intrusion into the aquifers near the coast has become a real problem—one that lack of rainfall only makes worse. Heavy rains at the end of February and into March last year brought our yearly totals close to normal here in Watsonville. That is still possible for this year, but those late rains made our early spring much more difficult last year, so we would much prefer the more typical winter rain pattern. But enough complaining about the weather. (Jeanne has inserted a random picture of our newest goat kid.)

The radishes, arugula, lettuce and spinach in your box this week are all being harvested out of the high-tunnels at our Lewis Road field. This is the time of year when the hoophouses really pay for themselves, and the lush, tender leaves attest to the warm and sheltered conditions inside—even with the cold overnight temperature we have been having lately.

Elsewhere on the farm; we have been finishing up our new greenhouse, gathering up all of the portable irrigation pipe on the farm and changing out the rubber gaskets (something we do every three years or so), pruning our pears, apples, and blueberries, and catching up on maintenance projects with our trucks and tractors.

Last week I went to an auction in the Central Valley town of Ripon and was fortunate enough to find a four-row precision vacuum planter—something I’ve been wanting for some time. True to their name–these planters are much more precise than the planter we are currently using and should save us a lot of time that we now have to spend on thinning. Because they use seed much more sparingly, it should cut down on seed waste as well. The crops that we are most likely to use it on are lettuces, beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, mei quin choi, and broccoli. It was set up for large-acreage plantings in The Valley (most likely cotton) and it will take some doing to chop it down to size and rearrange it to suit our purposes, but it is in excellent condition and we got it for a fraction of what it would have cost new. Buying things at auction and adapting them is a great way for farms our size to adopt equipment that would be hard to justify buying new.

We have just over a month before the regular CSA season begins! Please sign up now to make sure you’re on the list for first spring delivery March 20/21.