Dribs and drabs

Casey cutting potato seed to prepare for planting.

As Casey and I have returned to being a family farm without any hired labor, folks have raised their eyebrows many times and either said aloud or wondered to themselves: “How is that going to work?”

Hey, it’s a good question. One that I think we’ve been feeling out a bit as we go, although we set plenty in motion to make our 1.5 person farm work. The big picture changes were to cut back on what we’re trying to do — I wrote a few weeks ago about cutting back significantly on our acreage. Our animal operation is much smaller now too and getting smaller (the last of our hogs head to the butcher on May 2). The overall size of our CSA is a bit smaller this year too. All this trimming down on our expectations of the farm means that there is overall less work to do of course, which is good since there are fewer of us out here doing it than in the last seven years when we did have hired labor on the farm.

And, of course, the labor that we provide on the farm is substantially different in quality than anything we could hire. That’s not a criticism of our employees — it’s just the reality of small business operation. The owners will always know the most about the Big Picture and All The Moving Parts and therefore be able to be efficient and productive in their work in ways that folks hired for a season just never can be. It’s just the nature of the system, and one that we are embracing now as we scale back so that the work matches our available labor.

But still, there’s plenty for us to do on our farm! We still have a 90+ member 45-week long CSA! And we sell to local restaurants! And we have animals and perennial fruit to tend! Yes, we have plenty to do.

So, how are we getting it done? What we’ve discovered this year has become a bit of a happy motto for us: We get it all done in “dribs and drabs.” Seriously. We’ve stopped thinking of tasks as Big Things. Planting is no longer a task that piles up until it’s an all day activity. Instead, if Casey has an hour free after restaurant deliveries, he’ll check the biodynamic planting calendar and see if it’d be a good day to go sow or transplant a few rows. Or, he’ll jump on the tractor and work up two more acres of ground. In the morning when he wakes up early before the rest of us (which for Casey means waking up at 4 am), he’ll fill a few flats with soil mix and sow transplants in the kitchen. The same strategy applied to other projects, such as pruning the orchards and managing the greenhouses this winter. Casey even hoes in nearby greenhouses while filling our animal watering tank at the well each morning. Dribs and drabs, here and there, the tasks get done.

It’s been a big shift in how we think about our work, one that really does work best when just the owners are responsible for getting it all done. There’s no time lost in explaining a task or setting up. We know what to do and can just dive in fully for an hour or two. It’s been really satisfying and has kept our work from piling up into daunting, over-whelming lists. Certainly our weekly rhythm still contains a few solid dedicated chunks of time to our regular tasks — Tuesday morning is always spent on restaurant harvest, Wednesday is spent on the CSA harvest, Thursday afternoon is the CSA pick-up. But much of the rest of the time is used in shorter bursts of attention that add up to some majorly productive work!

We’ve been applying that same “dribs and drabs” approach to planting this spring’s potatoes. Since we received them a few weeks ago, they’ve been laid out in indirect sunlight in our greenhouse in order to “chit,” which is a word to describe allowing some light to stimulate the growth of buds at the eyes. This gives the potatoes a head start when they are finally planted, because they are already awake! Once the potatoes were chitted and we had ground available to plant, Casey started watching for “root” transplant days on the biodynamic calendar we use. On Monday, he and the kids made use of the first open window by planting 1250 row feet of potatoes. Today, we went at it again and planted five different varieties in 2500 row feet. We still have some potatoes left to plant, which we will save for the official “potato planting party” coming up (see note below about date/time change!), but we’re getting it done in dribs and drabs in the meantime.

But, speaking of our potato planting party, we need to update our plans! When we originally scheduled it, we read our biodynamic planting calendar a little incorrectly (it was a “root” day but not a transplant day). We don’t really understand it, but we’ve really seen that planting by our calendar makes a profound difference in our crops (which is a topic worth a whole other newsletter), so it’s worth moving the potato planting day to match the calendar. Unfortunately, the new day may be a little more challenging for some people to join us for. On our end, that’s ok! Even if just one or two people come out, we will enjoy their company and appreciate their help! The last two years this planting party was a hoot, and the resulting potatoes grew beautifully and abundantly!

Here’s the new plan:

• Potato Planting Party ~ Monday, May 16 ~ potato planting from 4-6 pm, followed by a potluck supper at our house

Please make the change on your calendar, and we hope some of you can join us! The work of planting potatoes is fun and accessible for folks of many abilities and ages. Kids are welcome (with parental supervision of course!).

Also, while I’m sharing upcoming May dates with you, I also want to invite you to join the McMinnville Women’s Choir for our spring concert:

• Water for Our Soul ~ 7 pm, Saturday, May 7 at First Baptist Church, McMinnville ~ Tickets $5 (kids are free) and available at Oregon Stationers now

I’ve been singing with the choir for two years now (this will be my fifth concert!), and the choir is full of wonderful women from our farm’s community and beyond. We’ll be singing songs from many traditions — all of them inspiring! The concert would make a great Mother’s Day weekend outing for you or your mother (or mother of your children).

Before I sign off I of course should provide a little update on my mom. Her surgery went well last Thursday and she returned home from the hospital two days ago to continue her recovery process. There is still some uncertainty about what comes next, but we are so glad to have her home! Thank you for all your prayers and positive thoughts for our farm family.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

~ ~ ~

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Strawberries — Of course, by now you know what last week’s surprises were: strawberries and zucchini from the greenhouses! (Can I just say how much we have been loving our greenhouses this spring? Overall they don’t represent much acreage on our farm, but they are crazy productive and fun for filling in the gap between the winter storage crops and field-grown summer crops). This week we still have a limit on one pint per share, but we won’t make you choose between strawberries or zucchini this time!
• Apples — We’ve been doing a happy dance in our house lately that this year we had enough apples to make it through to the start of strawberry season. For us (and our kids) this means that we’ve been able to meet our own fruit needs all winter and into spring.
• Zucchini
• Fennel bulbs
• Broccoli & purple sprouting broccoli — Limit one item/share this week! Thank you!
• Kale
• Rainbow chard
• Winter squash
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Green garlic
• Eggs — Limit half dozen eggs/share (you are welcome to buy another half dozen to make a full dozen! We just want to make sure we have enough eggs for everyone who wants some!).

And this week’s extra goodies from the farm:

• Eggs — $6/dozen
• Bratwurst! — Artisan-made without any added nitrates or sugars. $12/package (one lb packages).
• Pork — We have a few remaining roasts and shanks for $8/lb. More hogs heading to the butcher early in May!
• Ground beef — $8/lb