Author: swfupdates

Farm Update May 7, 2016

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We are still planting our summer crops; it is a bit late on some and quite late on others, but we are chugging along. The tomato plants are finally in the ground – went in last week. They survived the high winds of the last few days and look like they will be fine. The variety is Verona, a delicious plum tomato type that we have planted for a few years. They do well in the heat and are prolific producers.

This week we plan to get all the chiles and peppers into the ground, which will free up a lot of space in the hoophouse. The year we will double our planting of corno di toro Italian sweet peppers as well as the small lunchbox peppers. We also have jalapeños, and will be trying two New Mexico chile varieties – Jarales and Sinahuisa. Our poblano seeds germinated very poorly and I haven’t had time to replant, but will do so this week. So the poblanos won’t be ready until late in the season, but they will be ready in time for the chiles en nogada for Mexican Independence Day on September 16.

For two more weeks, we will be continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. If you are not a CSA shareholder, please consider it. The program will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested. Thank you for your consideration.

White sage blooming
White sage blooming
Rainbow Swiss chard
Rainbow Swiss chard

Farm Update April 30, 2016

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The sweet potato slips arrived! They came in a box in the regular mail. I put them into a cup of water as soon as I unpacked them. As you can see in the image, they aren’t much to look at, but they will quickly start to grow once they get in the ground. Sweet potato slips are pretty tough and will grow into fine plants even when they are in rough shape. We will prepare the bed by ripping it deeply and amending with peat and sulfur to help lower the pH of the bed, along with some very well-aged goat manure. The slips then will be planted about 18in apart in a bed that is between our two red potato beds so that when the regular potatoes are harvested, the sweet potato plants can spread out and have plenty of room to grow. The plants will spread out to cover an area 8 feet on either side of the bed. Then in about 4 months we will dig the bounty! This planting should yield a thousand pounds of sweet potatoes or more if the environmental factors cooperate.

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We are continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested.

Farm Update April 23, 2016

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The blackberry bushes are now blooming. We finished the trellising of the canes yesterday. A little blood was spilled due to interaction with the thorns, but that is the deal with blackberries – you have to bleed a little to get the delicious reward. The new canes are known as primacanes and the 2-year-old canes are the floracanes; these are the ones that bloom and produce the berries.

The potato plants are poking up through the soil. Soon we will be hilling them for the first time and in a couple months we will be harvesting new potatoes.

We are seeking summer helpers. If you are interested in helping on harvest days (primarily Tuesdays and Saturdays) or if you know of anyone who might be interested, please email or pass along my email. We are also looking for at least two more people to work this summer in exchange for room and board. If you know anyone who is interested, please have them contact me. Thanks!

We are continuing the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA share program. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot or if you have any friends/coworkers/neighbors who are interested.IMG_0315 copy

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Farm Update April 16, 2016

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We harvested the entire French red shallot crop on Tuesday. Wow! I didn’t weigh it yet, but I think the weight is somewhere between 200 and 400 pounds. We have shallots drying on many makeshift horizontal surfaces, as you can see in the images. And that is only about half of them; the loft of the Tiny House is also full of shallots as is two more temporary surfaces above what will be the living room. In 4 or 5 weeks the shallots will be cured and we will be able to reclaim those spaces and move the shallots into cold storage.

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Our small hoophouse is now full of seedlings waiting to be transplanted into beds in the field. The images show some tomatoes, chiles and peppers.

This week we will continue the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot.

Tomato seedlings
Tomato seedlings
Chiles and peppers
Chiles and peppers

Farm Update April 9, 2016

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We had some rain last night! The first measureable precipitation in a while – 0.20in. It is cool and fresh out here this morning. The creosote bushes smell lovely and are all clean and green. They started flowering about a week ago, so they are especially fragrant this morning. To steal a phrase from Gary Nabhan, the desert smells like rain this morning.

Yesterday we finally planted the potatoes, variety Colorado Rose. We put in 640 row feet. I dug the trenches by hand with a shovel yesterday afternoon as the rain was moving in; we got the seed spuds planted and covered in the failing light as it was starting to sprinkle and blow. Now we wait. In 80 days or so we should have some delicious new potatoes – nice red ones.

This week we will continue the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week. of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot.

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Spearmint
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White sage

Farm Update April 2, 2016

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So… it is spring, but it didn’t feel like it this morning when I stepped out into the 30 degree air. The farm looks like spring, though. The blackberries are getting pretty leafed out, the pomegranate trees are greening up, and there are lots of flowers everywhere with bees buzzing around them.

We are in the middle of the spring planting season; yesterday we transplanted our plum tomato seedlings into larger pots and we will be doing that with the chiles and peppers later today. Early next week the Colorado Rose seed potatoes go into the ground. We will also soon be planting green bean, squash, cucumber, jicama and many other types of seeds.

Another harbinger of spring on the farm is the round-tailed ground squirrels; they are out of hibernation and darting from burrow to burrow. So far none have been seen in the field, although they will likely be getting in soon. We maintain a cleared 10-foot no-squirrel zone around the field. There is also a chickenwire fence around the field and a 3-foot-deep rock-filled trench. No squirrels have tunneled under the fence. They get in by scaling the fence. We have had help with the squirrel problem lately by a pair of roadrunners who are amazing rodent predators. We have a little agroecosystem going out here and it seems to be working. As soon as the snakes are active, they also help with the rodent control.

This week we will start the sign-up for the late spring/summer CSA. It will consist of 16 weeks of deliveries to the markets starting the third week of May and continuing into September. The cost will be $250. We will have the signup forms at our farm stands and available online. Please let us know if you’d like to reserve a spot.

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Goat manure composting
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Blackberry bushes
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Composting operation

Farm Update March 19, 2016

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We are pretty excited to announce that we are now supplying produce to AgustÌn Kitchen www.agustinkitchen.com; we made the first delivery this week ! So if you would like to taste some of our ingredients in a prepared form you can now sample them there in addition to Proper and The Coronet.

We will grow Colorado Rose potatoes again this season. They worked very well for us last year and we are looking forward to some delicious spuds in a couple months or so. We are preparing two beds for planting potatoes ñ twice as much bed space as last year.

The blackberry bushes are greening up ! This year we should have a fairly large harvest – last year’s harvest was 38 pounds and we are hoping for about 100 pounds this year. That’s enough for a lot of cobbler !

Our late spring/summer CSA deliveries will begin in mid-May and run through mid-September. We will start signing up shareholders in about 2 weeks. Additional CSA information will be forthcoming in the newsletter.

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French red shallots
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Garlic
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Leeks

Farm Update March 12, 2016

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Yesterday we finished planting the new bed of asparagus crowns, doubling the number of asparagus plants at the farm. The images show some of the stages of the process.

The trench is about a foot deep and 2 feet across. The soil in the trench is a mix of organic compost, peat and native soil. The crowns are a year old, which gives us a head start as compared to seed. In two years we can begin to harvest the crowns we just planted.

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I am hoping to put in additional perennial crops this year. We currently have the asparagus, pomegranate and jujube trees, one fig tree, and blackberries. I am planning to plant about 15 more fig trees, a few more pomegranates and about 30 table grape vines. In a few years we should be harvesting all of these !

Thank you for supporting local, sustainable agriculture !

Farm Update March 5, 2016

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It seems that only a few short weeks ago I was writing about the cold and its effects on our crops. Now it is the HEAT !!

This ongoing extremely warm spell (heatwave?) has most of our greens bolting as you can see in the images. Bolting often occurs due to stress or heat. The plants quickly send up a flower stalk and then seed. Sometimes it doesn’t affect the taste and texture, but often the effects on the plants are negative; they get tough, stringy, the flavor changes.

Most of our greens varieties still taste fine after initial bolting and the flower buds and flowers are good to eat. With Hakurei turnips, after they flower, the roots get woody and bitter and are essentially ruined. If you harvest them before they fully bolt, the taste and texture are fine. Some of ours have started to bolt, but we are hoping that this heatwave doesn’t cause the entire bed to go to seed.

When arugula bolts, the buds and flowers are very tasty. In fact, last summer we sold arugula buds and flowers in the market and Kris Vrolik, the chef at Proper, pickled about a pound of them and they were delicious. The pickling process also preserved the look of the flowers.

OK, I am headed back out to the field to replant some of the greens that have bolted. Probably just in time for the upcoming winter storm and some freezing temperatures – talk about extremes!

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