Well, some of you might laugh and shrug us off on this one but here on the farm we are playing our plants music. There is a cd called Sonic Bloom. I honestly don't know a whole lot about it but basically it's classical music combined with certain tones that plants are proven to respond to. You can laugh at us if you wish. It's one of those things that if you believe in it, it will work. I do have to say the plant health on the farm in general this year is better than I have ever seen. We have been foliar feeding with kelp emulsion which has numerous trace elements in it. We have also been using a product called azomite this year. It comes in a granular form and we combine it with our regular organic fertilizer. Normally, I apply the fertilizer's as I sow using a small side dressing attachment on our Earthway seeder. It lays the fertilizer right in the furrow with the seed. It seems to work great. As for the Azomite, I am sold. I can tell a difference. The main benefit is that Azomite contains numerous trace elements and minerals. If you've been up on what's happening with the soil you will know that vegetables now have less nutrtion than they once did. This de-nutrifrication is caused by a couple of reasons. First, our soils are being depleted by over-production and the heavy use of nitrogen based fertilizers. The second reason is that with the use of the nitrogen., the plants are forced to grow rapidly and simply do not have the time to absorb the minerals from the soil. By using the Azomite I feel that we are at least adding back to the soil what we take out and hopefully a little more. Azomite is derived from volcanic ash from apparently only one known place in the world. Anyway, I like it and will continue to use it.
What else is growing on? Heat lovers! Tomatoes are looking good. we are just starting to see some ripening. In a couple of weeks they should be on in full force. Once again we have alot of space and time dedicated to tomatoes. The past couple of years have been sketchy. We have taken pro-active measures this year based on our previous experience. Hopefully we (and you) will be rewarded handsomly. Summwer squash and beans should be on in the next few days as well. It's all about water right now. We are dumping it on as fast as we can. The pond is going down fast! I would love to see a little rain. The heat is needed and welcomed but it also makes things a little more difficult. It's harder to get salad greens to properly germinate when it's as hot and dry as it has been. We had one entire sowing that failed. It's my fault. With all of the new sites that we are farming there are nuances to each one. Especially with the irrigation. I will be re-sowing those failed beds today and changing the way the drip tapes are laid so the seeds will get as much water as possible. Basically the tapes have to be laid right in the furrow where the seeds are. We then have to come back and re-set the tapes so they do not interfere with plant growth. Just a small learning curve. The bigger problem is that when we have a failure it has the potential to really set us off. We are for all practicle purpose's out of greens right now due to my error. That cost's us money and bruise's the ego more than a little. We are known for having the best greens ever and it's hard to explain why we don't have them. Live and learn farmer, live and learn.
Fall and overwintering crops are going in. We are going big. It's going to be a bountiful year. It's looking to be an epic fruit year too. Lot's of plums!
Take care peeps.
Time to water.
Farmer John
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Happy fourth of July! What a beautiful day. So nice to have a day to work but not have to scramble or be on someone else's schedule. Maybe the ultimate independence. I've been busy sowing new beds and getting the last succession of some things like summer squash and beans into the ground. I've also been getting fall crops in and thinking about the months ahead. i'm not for sure why but I have this little voice in the back of my head that is telling me that this may be a good year to be well prepared and independent from some of the services we take for granted such as ferries and shopping at the grocery store. I'm generally not fear based thinker and i'm certainly not acting on fear now. I'm just enjoying and celebrating my independence in my own fashion. I like being prepared and feeling like I can have some control in my destiny if the shit hits the fan. So yes, we will be rich in beets, carrots, onions and overwintering brassica's. Not to mention the lowly parsnip and the oft forgotten kale.
Suffering from grass polen allergies makes this a hard time of year for me. Fortunately, they were not so bad this year and I can feel them beginning to wane. My energy is returning to normal and I am again excited about being out in the field. From a farmers eye, or from mine at least, this feels like a seasonal change as we move into sowing our fall crops. I can feel the crisp air of the late summer and early fall days and see the bountiful harvests of pumpkins and apples. It recharges me and I am excited for the challenges that lie ahead. Life is always changing. Sometimes seasonally but sometimes change in a greater scope. I'm glad. Stagnation does not work for me.
Yes, I will celebrate independence and meet the new times with open arms and mind.
Choose love,
Farmer John
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I was fortunate to not have to work off the farm for the last couple of days. It allowed me to catch up on some much needed field work. Despite suffering from severe grass polen allergies, I just had to mow. It looks so much better. I have to admit I was getting a bit discouraged with the way things were looking around the home farm. When the grass is overgrown and there are weeds everywhere the farm tends to look uncared for. So with a morning of mowing and a full day of weeding things are starting to look nore like they normally do. In addition we also got the peppers and eggplants planted out in the greenhouse and the drip irrigation installed. I was also able to till and set new beds that are slated to be re-sown today. It's time to put in more greens, beets and carrots. We also brought in a huge harvest of peas. They are coming on so fast I'm sure we'll have another big harvest on Friday. I love it when we can take large quantities of an item to feature at the market. Last week it was carrots, this week it will be peas and hopefully strawberries.
We've had some extra hands this week too and I can't express enough my relief and gratitude. I have been exhausted lately and yesterday gave me just a bit of a breather. I layed down for a little cat nap at about 6:30 and slept right through the night, fully clothed! So much for a wild night of solstice celebrating. I think I needed the rest more than I realized.
Today is harvest day for our commercial accounts. Business is picking up around the island and it directly affects the size of the harvest. We'll have a big day picking, packing and delivering. We are harvesting the first succesion of broccoli today along with greens, carrots, beets, pea shoots, kohlrabi, gailann, scallions and strawberries. The bounty continues!
For those of you who may be interested, we also have the very first certified organic cherries of the season. We are storing them in our walk-in cooler for our friend/grower Bruce Spencer. They arrived yesterday from the Wenatche area. We have about 800lbs in the cooler right now. We'll have that many more coming in for the next few weeks. They will be for sale at the market or you may special order them directly through us here. I think they are around $7.00/lb and boy are they tasty.
Well, It's time to ro;;. I need to get get a good jump on the day here. Happy summer.
Keep well,
John the farmer
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In all of my years of farming, I have never seen a crop of peas like we have this year. Simply outrageous! They are so prolific and coming on so fast it's unclear how we will be able to keep up with picking them. Not a bad problem I suppose. I think this year the weather has just been perfect for peas. Not too hot and good amounts of perfectly timed rainfall. We'll have to dedicate an afternoon this week for harvesting. I would'nt be surpised to see 100 pounds. Strawberries are coming on strong too. They are perfect. big, red and juicy. Just the way we expect. It won't be long for fava beans as well. They are forming large pods and maybe need another week or so. Fava's are a bit of a maligned crop. They take a lot of prep to get even enough for a simple side dish but the work is well worth it. I myself was never a big fan of fava's until last year. We dedicated a couple of hours towards shelling, steaming and peeling the inner shell. We then placed the beans in a food proccessor and added a good amount of olive oil a little salt and fresh garlic. The result was a kind of thick pesto. Really great on pizza's or a spread for bruschetta. I now have a new respect for them and eagerly await their harvest. I hope the good folks of Orcas will agree. We have a ton of them in. Don't be scared. Give them a go.
We are just a day away from solstice. It's 4:30AM: and already light enough to work. There is so much to do on all of our sites. Weeding and setting irrigation is the general theme. We have some extra help on the farm right now so I fully intend to take advantage and hopefully get caught up. It's an off-farm work day for me though so I won't be able to get some of the things that really need to be attended to. Maybe I can take advantage of the long daylight hours? Right now allergies have all of my energy zapped so it's hard to carry on. Can't wait until they are over. The farm looks like hell because I can't mow.
We are getting closer to being fully planted out. We got in the final round of winter squash Yesterday. Just in time. Too much longer and they would'nt have time to mature. Looks like we have a couple of failed greens sowings so I'll be re-sowing some of those beds. I have my fingers crossed on some of the other beds I recently sowed. It's gotten really dry and getting seeds to germinate properly this time of year can be tricky. Overhead watering works best, but we do not have that option on our off site locations due to low water pressure issues. We use drip irrigation which works great once things are up but is not ideal for keeping a moist soil bed for prime germination conditions. Would be tickled for some rain but i'm dreaming.
Gotta get cracking.
keep on keeping on,
The farmer
John
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Yesterday's harvest turned out to be more substantial than I expected. This often happens. You begin thinking early in the week about what will be available for market harvest after all of our commercial orders have been filled. Sometimes you look around and wonder where the harvest will come from. Once you get into it, things start to come together. We have worked hard to nurture our restaurant accounts and to gain their confidence that we can be a consistent supplier. Over half of our business is selling to local restaurants. We try to fill their orders as best as possible with the highest quality products we have available. Often times that leaves us with not as much as available for market harvest as we would like. Market day is the showcase of the week for us and we love having an impressive amount and variety of fresh island grown produce on display. We have been successful at growing more product than ever before but sometimes it feels like we are still falling short. Demand still outways supply. I guess that's a good problem to have. The last few markets we have literally sold everything we have taken. That simply tells me we are not bringing enough. We should never sell out. My take on this differs from most of the other farmers I know whom mostly think that selling out is a good thing since they don't have to re-handle the remaining produce. With our walk in cooler we have the ability to hold product into the next week while retaining the high quality. If we sell out on Saturday we just left money laying on the table.
Today is the solstice celebration on the village green and the market will be cranking. We have the potential to have a huge day but sales will be limited to product on hand.
I certainly wish we had more to offer. This is that semi tricky time of year when summer crops are just starting to come on but not quite in full force yet. That said we will have a larger amount and variety of produce than we've had all season. Here's a sample of what will be at market.
salad greens, braising greens, snow peas, sugar snap peas, broccoli, gailann, strawberries, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, spinach, pea shoots, scallions, eggs and kale.
Not bad, we have a plethera of carrots and beets and salad greens. It will be impressive.
Solstice is one of my favorite celebration. Today will be a blast.
Keep well,
farmer John
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