Sun & seeds

(CSA Newsletter: Early Season Week 3)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

What an absolutely gorgeous week! I’m sure everyone out there agrees: the last week’s sunny weather was out of control. Our high temperature this week at the farm was just shy of 68° — in the shade! Today when we harvested carrots, we were surrounded by bees (drawn by the beautiful little blue Persian loose-leaf blossoms dotting our weedy bed). Even the chickens & cats seemed to enjoy the unexpected warmth. We kept having to stop & remind ourselves that it’s still February rather than May.

Although the sun made us want to just lie back & relax (which we did a few times), dry weather on the farm means time to work! We were finally able to work on some tasks that had been delayed during our long wet January (the only dry weather in January also froze the ground solid!) … we finished weeding our garlic & some of our over-wintering onions. On Sunday, Casey ‘worked up’ a few empty beds using our cultivating tractor: rather than rototilling (which generally requires a much drier bed), he used two hilling disks aligned between two shovels. The result was a ‘fluffed’ bed that will suffice for a few early spring sown items but that won’t lead to compaction or excessive weed germination (we hope). We then sowed a few beds of radishes, spinach, fava beans and peas. And, on Monday morning we finally back-filled ditches that have been sitting open since the last dry spell. Things are looking much cleaner & tidier around here these days!

In addition to ‘farm tasks,’ we also planted a few dozen trees we purchased from the Yamhill SWCD native plant sale. In addition to the laurel hedge we’ve planted along the west and south sides of the property, we’re hoping to establish a taller, native tree buffer on our north property boundary. To that end, we planted there several Douglas Fir, Bigleaf Maple, and Oregon ash. We were so excited to plant these trees: trees are so much more long-term than vegetables. Planting these trees makes us feel like we’re going to be around awhile. That’s a good feeling.

Although we made good use of the last few days of sunny weather, we actually spent the first few sunny days inside: we attended an organic seed conference in Salem last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. After months of dark days, it was difficult at first to be cooped up inside on such stupendously beautiful days, but fortunately the conference made it worth our while.

The conference was organized by the Organic Seed Alliance — a non-profit advocacy, research & education body out of Port Townsend, Washington — as well as WSU, OSU and the Center for Sustaining Agriculture & Natural Resources. Seed growers and farmers from across the country attended & shared their knowledge & ideas on what it means to grow seeds organically (& how to, which was great for us newbies).

What did we learn? Everything — nothing was review for us at this conference, since we haven’t even dabbled in growing seed before (with the exception of our garlic, but that’s a pretty different process than other seeds). We were grateful to learn the basics of how to grow seed & challenged by the more ‘advanced’ discussions. Of particular interest to us was the ongoing discussion of why organic producers benefit from using organically grown seed varieties rather than varieties bred for conventional production. We were also inspired by conference speakers’ call for a decentralized, regional-based, smaller scale, diverse seed production system. We had never considered that we could be a vital part of a seed system at our limited scale — many growers & speakers attempted to persuade us (& the other attendees) otherwise: small growers can & should be a vital part of developing & growing seed for the organic system.

In fact, we’ve been so persuaded that we’re hoping to save some seed this year — not for sale, but just to practice & see the process through. As some of the seed growers noted, we fresh market vegetable growers often haven’t seen many vegetable plants grow to true maturity — instead, we cut them off when they’re just beginning their life cycle. Many plants, such as lettuce or carrots, take many more months to produce viable seed beyond the fresh harvest peak moment. This year, we’d like to watch that process with a few items. We think we’ll begin with some leeks & castelfranco (a chicory similar to radicchio) — both of which we have over-wintering in the field right now.

Of course, it won’t be simply a matter of watching the plants grow. We’ll have to tend them, water them, & then harvest the seed. To add to the complexity, many vegetable types ‘cross’ with each other over distance, requiring what seed growers call ‘isolations’ for true seed production. For example, the beet family of vegetables can cross with each other up to five miles away! To grow true seed with such large isolation requirements mandates cooperation between professional seed growers. Even with agreed upon distances between seed fields, there’s still some possibility of crossing at times, which is why many organic seed growers were concerned with GMO seed crops and the potential for cross contamination. Of particular concern to growers here in the Willamette Valley is the newly introduced GMO sugarbeet seed. Much to think about.

As we experiment with seed growing on a micro scale this year, we hope to be responsible citizens & find out what seed crops are growing near us so that we don’t potentially ‘mess up’ someone else’s important crop while we ‘play’ with our own. Seed crops are a vital part of the Willamette Valley agricultural economy. We heard a statistic at the conference that 500,000 acres of the 1 million acres of farmland in the valley are in seed production. Wow. That makes sense when you realize that number includes grass seed, but it’s still striking. The conference certainly made us more aware of how we as farmers can have many kinds of affects on each other. We’ve been concerned before with issues of chemical drift & simple courtesies between neighbors, but now we’re much more aware of how letting rainbow chard (the same species as beets) go to seed in the spring could affect a seed crop as far as five miles away.

And, as with most conferences, the absolutely best part of the three days was meeting new people. We met many other young farmers from the northwest who are already producing seed or thinking about it. We also enjoyed hearing the founders & growers of different seed companies talk about what they do & why: especially Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed & Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seed, both ‘renegade’ growers of the seed world who decided to market outside the existing networks of seed companies.

At the end of the three days, we came home inspired, challenged, exhausted and sore from sitting so much. We spent the better part of the next day getting back into farming’s rhythms and stretching our backs a lot. (How do people sit all day?) But, just in case we don’t have enough new ideas yet, we’re headed to another farming-related retreat this next weekend. The event runs Sunday through Tuesday, effectively cutting into our entire CSA harvest & pick-up period. Rather than put off the harvest into later in the week and risk folks forgetting, we decided to just take the week off. So, remember: no harvest or delivery next week, February 26! The CSA will resume again on March 4 as normal.

I imagine it’s too much to hope that this nice weather holds through to our upcoming retreat, but you never know. Either way, we hope you all have been enjoying the sun as much as we have! We will see you all again in two weeks — enjoy the vegetables!

Your farmers,

Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics

P.S. We owe a huge thank you to the Organic Seed Alliance & other sponsors for providing us with a scholarship to attend last week’s organic seed conference! For those of you out there looking for more ways to support a local, organic agriculture system in the U.S., consider donating to the OSA. They do great work, ranging from planning this amazing biennial national conference to holding smaller field days for farmers throughout the year. For more info, visit: www.seedalliance.org.