Obviously, summer means different things in different places.  In coastal Mendocino, it means it’s warm enough to plant basil (in a sunny sheltered spot or unheated greenhouse), and… fog!  Summer solstice was a lovely, sunny day, and for those of us still scraping off winter’s moss, it was a welcome sight.  Then through today… mostly fog, overcast, and a balmy 60 degrees.  Ahh, coastal summer.  We’ll still have nice, sunny days, but they are scarce enough that we really appreciate them!

Here are the promised financials from our recent work.  The project was to remove vegetation and till on a new field of about a quarter of an acre, fence against deer (still not finished - or even started, to be honest), and then remove grass and till up as much of the already-fenced area as possible. 

$100 - Brush mower rental, 24 hours

$400 - Tractor rental (24 hours = 8 operating hours), delivery & pick-up

$65 - Diesel fuel can, extra fuel and fuel surcharge

$250 - Deer fencing (three 100 ft. x 7 ft. rolls) and 20 tree stakes

TOTAL - $815

One side of the field has fence posts already, so we didn’t need as many stakes.  We decided to use tree stakes because a) lightweight plastic deer netting doesn’t need much physical support and b) they are far cheaper than steel t-posts.  We’ve used tree stakes before, and they’ve been fine for semi-permanent lightweight fencing (and are still standing after a year-plus).

We still need to amend the soil in the new areas, which will start with cover crops in some areas, and liberal application of compost in others.  More on that when it’s all planned out.

We recently had ravens start stealing eggs from the chicken coop (or so we strongly suspect).  Today Matt installed bird netting over the area directly adjacent to the coop.  Hopefully this will be enough to discourage the thieves; otherwise we’ll have to net in a larger area.

hey it’s sara here. The spring in the Pacific Northwest is notoriously fickle and this spring has been no exception. It was definitely cooler, windier, and wetter than last year, which just makes things a bit more tough.  Summer comes on like a switch though, so we’re plugging in drip tape all over the farms and mulching to warm the soil for the tomatoes, eggplant, ground cherries, peppers and tomatillos that we will be planting over the next couple of days. As we soldier on, we have… Read the rest of this article »

The beginning of september has been busy - just like the rest of the year.  We have been thinking and doing a lot about having vegetables in the fall. In mid August we planted a large stand of carrots.  Since then we have planted broccoli, lettuces, turnips, beets (a lot), spinach, arugula, cilantro and we plan on doing a little bit more of the shorter season things (turnips, arugula, lettuce, cilantro, spinach). We are beginning to have less production from our summer crops.  It is… Read the rest of this article »

I’m beginning to feel the bounty of mid-summer.  I  live up on the North side of a hill with an incredible view, and the farm is down below my house where the terrain levels out and the exposure is better, but it also means that the cool air collects down in that hollow.  There are two streams on either side of the field which cool the air a bit, so at night it is always about  five degrees cooler at the farm than at my house.  It’s definitely not the best location for quick summer… Read the rest of this article »

So I’ve been holding down the ‘fort’ this last week and for this next week as Jared is on a tour. Before he left we tried to get as much done as possible, since while Jared’s gone, it’s a lot harder to get forward progress accomplished when I’m all by myself. Last week the Puget Sound region had record breaking heat in the high 90s-low 100s, which, by comparison to other parts of the country will make me sound like kind of a wuss, but we hardly ever see that kind… Read the rest of this article »

Sorry for the departure.  We’ve been working sun up till sun down and it’s been above average temps here in the pacific northwest.  All the farmers around here have a glow of joy about them as we’re actually getting a summer (and a tan!).  Our csa has enjoyed our heirloom variety tomatoes now for three weeks.  Although that’s great news and we’re stoked to be filling our CSA shares with those vine ripe goody balls, we’ re missing the income… Read the rest of this article »

We’ve been really trying to get as much done as we can since Jared will be leaving for another tour on July 27th for 2 weeks. So along with our CSA days, and market day, we’ve taken out all of the peas in greenhouse 2, and replaced them with the peppers and eggplant. We’ve harvested, bundled and hung all of our garlic, and there’s also been lots and lots of weeding! We’ve been seeding heat tolerant greens, quick growing summer crops and crops for fall transplant, as… Read the rest of this article »

Hello Everyone.  June has arrived and our CSA has started.  We just finished our first week.  We have 60 members in our CSA right now and hope to elevate that number to 90 within the next couple of weeks.   The first zucchini of the season is here as well - a herald of the summer upon us.   We also are going to three farmers markets per week, soon to be six.   All told, we are planted up around 6 acres, with about 3.5 left to plant.  Those will be filled up with more peppers, winter squash,… Read the rest of this article »

Summer has arrived, more or less, and it’s high time that we plant out all of our tomatos, peppers, eggplant, melons and get our corn, squash and ensuing successions of beans and cucumbers out there.  We have been preparing 6 acres for a month now without having completed the job.  No one told us that preparing 1st year ground is this hard.   The sod layer on 7 of the 10 acres here is unreasonably thick.  We would have done well to turn the earth last fall and let the enormous root mass… Read the rest of this article »