It's hard to believe February is nearly here, but somehow we're already about a month into the New Year - where does the time go?! Thanks to our above average snowfall this season, this winter most of us veggie growers have been busy each week removing snow from hoophouses - an important task for several reasons. Firstly, keeping snow from building up along the sides helps the houses shed snow (it can slide off the house onto the ground instead of piling up on top with no where to slide, which could collapse the house!) and secondly, with the low angle of the sun during the winter, snow that has accumulated along the south side can really reduce the amount of light inside the house. That severe reduction in light can slow plant growth as well as keep the house "shaded" and reduce daytime temps inside, so we use tractor loaders and of course good old fashioned shovels to make sure those sides don't get too deep. Just last week, after a few particularly windy days, the few inches of snow we had gotten created a drift so tall on one hoophouse here that when standing on the drift I could see OVER the top of the hoophouse! After a few hours of shoveling, the drift was back down to a more manageable 6 ft high on the east side, but that house is about 14' tall!
In a few more weeks, that hoophouse will go from frozen tundra inside to a sea of green when we fire up the heater and begin to start the seedlings for the coming growing season. Below is a teaser of what it will look like once we get growing in there. You may notice that there is a little space in the back and long the side where the benches end. Usually, these spaces are planted to early tomatoes, but this year in order to rotate crops and prevent the buildup of tomato-specific pests and diseases, I'll be planting a bunch of early peppers instead. Taking advantage of every square foot of protected growing space (especially precious heated growing space like this!) is critical to making sure we can grow as much food as possible with the infrastructure we have in place. With any luck, we should have peppers about a month earlier than usual for the summer veggie CSA boxes this season!
When we are not shoveling snow, we all have been working on planning out our fields for this year, and ordering seeds - lots and lots of seeds! Our seed bill typically runs somewhere between 2-3 thousand dollars each spring here at Great Oak Farm, and includes many different types of seeds. A few weeks ago, our carrot seeds arrived - all 5 gallons of them! You can see they are coated in a clay pellet, which helps our seeders articulate them when planting to about 1" apart all along the row. Raw carrot seed is so small, it's pretty difficult for most seeders to plant them evenly, which leads to sowing a stand too thick and that needs to then be thinned. Planting pelletized seed helps ensure the row is planted evenly and saves a TON of time spent crawling along pulling carrot seedlings to thin the beds. My knees are thanking me just thinking about it :)
Like these carrot seeds (most are the variety that we grow for storage called bolero) the majority of seeds we order are old standbys for us - varieties that taste great and have performed well despite the variability in the weather from year to year. As a certified organic farm, choosing plant varieties that are disease resistant is a big priority, and like nearly anything we buy, the better the seed (and more disease resistant the plant is) the more expensive the seed becomes. Thanks to their extensive disease resistant package (which means they don't need chemical sprays to stay healthy when environmental conditions get challenging), some of the tomato seeds we order cost nearly a dollar each! Remember tomato season...? My mouth is watering just thinking about it!!
Other seeds are ordered in smaller batches, often new varieties to us that we'd like to trial against our usual suspects. This year, we will be trying out several different carrot varieties to see how they perform in a hoophouse for early bunching carrots (you'll get to taste test them sometime in June/July!), as well as evaluating several butternut squash and broccoli varieties for disease resistance. The past few years have been particularly bad for butternut and broccoli diseases, and I'd love to get more of those in your boxes. I am also going to trial some brussel sprouts this season - they will be something we haven't had in the CSA boxes for quite a while now, and assuming they grow well you'll be able to add them to your boxes this coming fall. One of my favorite things about farming is that there's always something new to learn - and eat!
Speaking of learning, this weekend is one of the few weekends you will EVER find me away from the farm! I am attending the Organic Vegetable Production conference down in Madison WI, and it's become a highlight of my winter season. Each year, growers from across the upper Midwest gather and take a deep dive into organic vegetable production. This year, detailed crop production workshops will include peas, sweet corn, beets, and brassica (the plant family that includes broccoli,kale, collard, cabbage, brussel sprouts, etc) disease prevention and control. The conference is relatively small, which allows for a lot of in depth conversation with each other - it's an inspiring way to kick off the growing season, and I always learn some great tips and tricks from fellow farmers.
I'm looking forward to a great growing season ahead! If you haven't signed up for a CSA share for the 2020 growing season yet, we'd love to have you back again. Knowing ahead of time how many families we are growing for really helps with our winter planning, seed and other input orders, etc. so head on over to the Bayfield Foods website and sign up! And as always, deep gratitude and heartfelt thanks to all of you for your commitment to eating locally grown food from the farms in our Bayfield Foods Cooperative. It's an honor to be your farmers!
Yours in community,
Chris Duke
Farmer, Great Oak Farm
CSA Manager, Bayfield Foods
