No one expects the CCOF!

Actually, I did.  I had been looking forward to our annual inspection and it was worth it.  Debbie was our inspector and she went through our operation.  I got to talk about our farm for an hour to someone who really likes this sort of thing.  She looked at our labels and my farm records.  Some days I can have trouble digging a hole, but by golly can I file records!  We had a great talk and Coyote House Farm got the thumbs up for another year.

During our walk around the place I was realizing for the fifteenth time that our cover cropping approach was not making it.  We need to get a lot more aggressive with the manure and gypsum.  It’s too late for this season so we get to play in the clay for another summer (Yay.), but come fall we’ll have our amendments in a row.  Neighbor Dave has several cubic yards of manure we can have when Neighbor Kevin comes out with his Kubota and moves it to our place.  The thing about free manure is that you don’t get to complain when it’s late.

This is not vegetable country.  Debbie had other inspections to do in the area, and they were all for cattle.  Our best move, as we have already figured out, is to focus on our trees and grow some veggies as we amend at a sustainable rate.  We get EVo rates of .25 and .30 for extended periods in the late spring and summer, and all the water has to be pumped.  The veggies are here to amuse us until our trees produce, and to fill in between fruit harvests for some product line breadth.

Aside from the inspection, it was about the fences this week.  While I planned to do the rabbit fence for the vegetable field, I noticed that the deer had been into the fruit trees.  I cannibalized the t-posts I planned to use for the rabbit fence to set up the deer fence.  Last year we tied 80 pound test fishing line between posts around the vegetable field and it kept the deer out.  They can’t see the fishing line and it freaks them out.  It does nothing for rabbits, though, so it’s fencing for the veggie field.  The soil is good now for pounding t-posts, and the deer fence went up fast.  I was on my own since Dan was with Robin at 4H Sectionals Presentation Day at UC Davis.

I also got to see another failed method for irrigating seedlings on a timer.  I went and got a bunch of micro-sprayers and mounted them upside down on a section of PVC pipe above the seedlings.  I increased the frequency and duration of the watering.  We’ll have to see how it goes.  We might have to go with organic seedlings from Peaceful Valley this year, but I WILL SOLVE THIS PROBLEM.

Ahem.

No one expects… The CCOF!

We had the inspectors from CCOF (California Certified Organic Farm) out yesterday to look at the farm for our brand new application.  Everything went very well and we should get our certification letter in a month!

As I’ve said, our operation is just starting out and even if we do some fill-in at the farmers markets we won’t make back the application fee and inspection fees this year.  This was an expense we were willing to take on for a few reasons

1. Bureaucracies, no matter how well-intentioned, are frequently run by overworked and time-impacted people.  Their calendar rules.  If we wanted to be certified for our farmers market sales, we would have to get it done ahead of time or sweat the schedule.  And in our target markets, the CCOF certification is a big deal to customers.
2. As I’ve mentioned, we try to make our mistakes when they are as cheap as possible.  I would really regret putting up a fence with PT corner posts only to find out that a buffer zone shrank my growing area.  Some of this is researchable beforehand, but it is the Unknown Risk that nails us.
3. I thought it was going to be a lot harder.

It was easy to pass when you haven’t done a lot yet.  Well, that’s not fair.  We have a building, an irrigation system, a field shed/office under construction, 16 trees, a vast 400 square foot test field, and another 5 acres begging for green manure.  The inspectors liked our fertility plan and a frank discussion let us know we were on the right track.

So now that’s pretty much in the can.  The sky has been agreeable and I’m going back out to fiddle with the irrigation main assemblies and put some seeds in the ground.  We have some work to do on the field shed this spring and summer, and several hundred square feet to amend and double dig for green manure come fall.

Our puppy, Jim, is ecstatic about his gig as farm dog.  At four months he chased off two of the neighbor dogs and is learning to stay out of the growing field.  He even managed not to pee on the fruit trees when the inspectors were over.

One last thing:  When you get inspected, bring a puppy.

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