Happy Mother's Day weekend to all of you moms out there!
Here on the farm, we're all ready for the cold nights coming this weekend. We've been putting row covers on our tender hoophouse tomato, cucumber, pepper, and basil plants for a while now, but with the temps forecasted to hover just below freezing at night this weekend we'll be running the portable heaters again to help insure there's no cold damage. Several of our hoophouses have electricity, so we can use portable heaters with blowers in those houses. In the other houses we rely on portable radiant heaters to keep plants warm on the coldest nights. Hopefully after this weekend, we can put those heaters away and just count on the 2-3 layers of row cover to keep plants warm enough, but we won't be taking any chances.
Before I go any further, we've got some big news - everyone who works here at Great Oak Farm has been vaccinated now! You will start to see our smiling faces once again in these Farm Happening pictures, so I wanted to let you know why we're not masked. It feels a little strange being around each other without masks on after over a year of wearing them, we're such creatures of habit.
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This week was a busy week of seeding, seeding, seeding. We started another round of cucumbers to replace some plants that were munched by a rodent in our hoophouse (if it's not the cold that gets 'em, there's always something else!), as well as started over 7 thousand winter squash seedlings in the greenhouse. Above, you can see Farmer Sean with the vacuum seeder working with some delicata squash seeds. The vacuum seeder sucks one seed onto each hole in the plate he is holding, then when he turns the seeder over the flat below and turns off the vacuum, it drops one seed in each hole. It's a mighty slick little machine! We use it for most of the transplant seeding we do here at the farm, and it's got to be one of our favorite spring tools.
We also got the first of three plantings of field carrots in the ground this week, plus the sugar snap peas. The next crops to be seeded outside are the first of 4 plantings of sweet corn and first of 7 green bean plantings next week. Wow, it feels like summer is really coming fast when we're talking about seeding those summer staples, doesn't it?
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Out in the fields, we FINALLY got all 120 THOUSAND onions transplanted this week! It's a slog, I won't lie, but we keep telling ourselves that we only do this one time each year, then we're done for 12 months. Below you can see Farmers Alex (L) and Ryan (R) plugging away on those onions. When we finished, there were 2 more 400' beds to the right in the picture below that were also filled with onions. SO. MANY. ONIONS. Sometimes transplanting onions feels like we're transplanting blades of grass - those thin wispy onion leaves aren't very substantial yet.
In the background, you can see the tractor pulling our sprayer which we are using to water in the transplants. In spite of some low spots, this field has been drying up fast. It's funny how dry this spring has gotten already in some places here on the farm, while other fields are just now dry enough to get the tractor through without getting stuck. We could tell the onions appreciated the drink - it looks like it will be a while till Mother Nature gives us some rain again.
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Now, I know what you're thinking.... "A sprayer?? But Chris, I thought your farm was ORGANIC?!" Not to worry: we ARE Organic, AND we have a sprayer!
In addition to using it as a 200 gallon water tank to give thirsty crops a quick shot of moisture, we use it to spray biological and organic compounds on our crops to help them stay healthy and fend off pests and diseases.
For example, instead of fungicides, we rely on "good guy" beneficial microorganisms to fight off fungal pathogens, as well as plant extracts (interestingly, one from Japanese Knotweed, an invasive species) that helps boost a plant's immune response when challenged by a fungal pathogen. None of the inputs we use are "silver bullets" to control problems, but we keep a big toolbox of biological, mechanical, and management tools handy to address pest and disease problems from a variety of angles. The sign on the back of our sprayer sums it up pretty good:
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Whew - that's it for now. It's back to work for me. We've got to finish getting a field ready this week so next week we can start transplanting over 3 thousand little broccoli plants, plus all of the brussels sprouts, PLUS the first round of early summer cabbages. It seems like no matter how well we plan or the tools we invest in, getting all the fields ready for spring planting is a big task. We're thankful that the weather this year has been relatively dry and agreeable so we can stay on track.
Have a wonderful weekend, and thanks for making us your farmers!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
