Farm Update

We are entering the final stretch for this season. The seeds I am setting out to be planted in the greenhouse will be the last we plant until we start up again in November and December for next season’s transplants. Most of these late plantings are the veggies that can stand the cool temperatures and wet soils that usually occur over winter—like leafy greens and things in the brassica or cabbage family. The last plantings of the season are usually about twice the size as the earlier successions so that they will last into the rainy months when we can’t get into the field to plant with our tractors.

As most of you are probably aware, a large “El Nino” event continues to be predicted for this winter. Although I’ve lived through too many false predictions of this sort to get too excited about it, it is still something we have to consider when making our fall plans. We take the steepest fields at our Lewis Road location, where the soils are sandy and erosive, out of production early so that we can get cover crops established before the hardest rains fall. This year we will do so earlier than normal—setting pipe out to water them up around the third week of September.

For those who might be new to this idea, a winter “cover crop” is grown solely to improve the soil, reduce erosion and outcompete weeds. We generally use a mix of bell beans, peas, vetch and oats which grow during the wet (hopefully) months. The legumes (bell beans, peas, and vetch) “fix” nitrogen, taking it in from the air and storing it in nodules on their roots, through a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium. The oats provide scaffolding for the viny legumes to climb. In the spring, we mow down the cover crop and incorporate it into the soil, adding a lot of organic matter, nitrogen and other nutrients which become fertilizer for next year’s food crops.

Here at our home farm the water situation has become increasingly tenuous. The well on our neighbor’s property, from which we have been borrowing water since our own well went down, is now starting to falter. Yesterday they pulled out the submersible pump and are planning to bail out any dirt and sand from the bottom of the well and to scour it in an attempt to open up perforations. On a positive note, we now have a stake in the ground where our new well will be located and wheels are finally in motion. The new well will be much deeper than either our old well or the neighbor’s well we’re currently using, so we’re hoping for a solid source of good water when that is done.