It’s the 9th of November and the hardest work is behind us.  All of the fields are cover cropped and we’re just waiting for it to rain now.  All the Garlic is in, as of last week.  250 lbs!!!  Quite a bit.  We planted a little later than optimal, but, hey, it’s in, it’s growing and there’s no stopping it now.  It added up to about 1/2 acre and we applied 12 tons of compost to that area to ensure a good stand of Garlic.  In fact, 150 lbs are for seed garlic for, who else, Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply.  2 varieties: Dujansky and Capathian - both are beautiful, striped red hardnecks.

Story time…

First a huge shout out to Pilot Peak Winery for loaning us 18 MacroBins to help out with the winter squash harvest a month ago.  That saved us, big time - thanks a ton you guys!

On friday, Logan and I had to harvest for the co-op and the Saturday Morning market.  We thought it would just take a few hours and somehow we put it off and put it off.  We were resorting garlic, taking trash to the dump, cleaning bins and delivering bins - everything except for harvesting.  I guess we had started to take our employees for granted!.  Finally, we started harvesting - a large list: radishes, beets, carrots, peppers, winter squash, shallots, strawberries, celery, lettuce, potatoes.  We had to leave on the early side also, to get our co-op delivery in.  So, we ended up not even harvesting mustard greens, turnips, arugula, nor spinach.  oops.  Moral - if it’s not a pressing need, don’t do it on harvest day.  We learned - we’ll be on top of it this week.

Let’s all hope for some rain, okay.

Andrew

We are very excited to announce that applications for next year’s Freshman Farmer program are now available here. We want to see more organic farmers nationwide supplying their local communities with seasonal, organic produce. In order to help do this, we will help new farmers offset initial financial costs by allowing selected applicants deep discounts.  In exchange, Freshman Farmers will maintain a blog, take photos, post financials, shoot video footage. We hope that by doing these activities,… Read the rest of this article »

 I didn’t realize it, but, we had a lot of cucumbers for the market today.  It was a surprise.  I’m looking forward to re-juicing the CSA with the cucs.  We tried celery at the market today.  Some sold.  I cut individual stalks, not the whole plant, so a lot of shoppers didn’t even know that it was celery.  So, I realize that it must be labeled very well in the future.  Also, it is a lot darker green than store celery, so…yeah.  I like it.  I guess that counts for… Read the rest of this article »

It’s getting to be that time of year, to transplant onions.  I am going to do it during the later part of October here (zone 8).  I have already started thousands of the little guys in flats (although germination was erratic due to high temps).  I started the first flats around the 15th of August, and plan to give them a couple of months to grow out before transplanting.  The rule is, transplant before they’re the diameter of a pencil or larger.  These transplants will mature to… Read the rest of this article »

I am so sorry to you guys, my avid readers (are you out there?).  I took a vacation this week.  My superman/stupid man status has ended.  I went to backpack in the Sierras with my dad this last week.  It was great.  I really needed a vacation, so badly. Ry and Chris held down the farm this week.  I am so thankful to them.  They did an incredible job.  Thank you to them. So, I’m back and I’m doing a market tomorrow (Saturday).  I was reading a lot of “Managing Cover Crops… Read the rest of this article »