(CSA Newsletter: Week 10)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
This was a busy week on the farm. After a cold and drizzly spring, we finally received enough warm dry weather to begin our spring planting! We planted on Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and managed to plant just over one acre total.
For those of you who are growing weary of the same old winter vegetables (I know we are), have faith! Here are just a few of the tasty things we transplanted this week: white salad turnips, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, bok choy, tatsoi, fennel, green onions, fava beans, beets, peas, and more. In addition, we direct sowed: carrots, more spinach, radishes, shelling peas, and more beets.
Obviously, it will be a little while before we can begin harvesting even the earliest of these new crops, but they are on their way. With the mild weather we’ve been having the last few days, I’m sure they’re growing quickly already. In fact, Casey and I both swear that the day after we planted the lettuce and turnips, both had already grown bigger. These spring crops are speedy (but certainly not instantaneous).
As part of our first planting, we broke some new ground. This year, in addition to our own land, we are farming 3.5 acres of our neighbors’ land. In total, that means we’ll be managing about 16.5 acres (only about 13 acres of our own parcel are tillable) — only 5 acres of which will be in vegetables this year. Initially, we were planning to simply put our neighbors’ land into a solid cover crop for the year, because we weren’t feeling up to actually growing more acres of vegetables. But, we soon learned that the sandy low ground in that field dries out faster than any of our land, so we changed plans and put our very earliest plantings there. We’ll still cover crop the rest of the acreage this year and plant all our remaining vegetables back in our own field.
The added acreage won’t significantly change the scale of our farm this year — we’re only growing about .75 more acres because of it, for now. But, it will add to our workload, simply because more land to manage is more work — even if it’s in a low maintenance cover crop. Just another reason we’re glad to have two highly capable interns arriving later this month.
Despite our attempts to keep things as simple as possible this year, we also have two new enterprises to take care of. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve planted a small diverse fruit orchard at the southeast end of our land. This year, the maintenance will be minimal, but we will need to be conscientious about mowing the roadways and irrigating the trees regularly.
We’ve also planted our first vegetable seed crop: one bed of castelfrano chicories, the winter-hardy lime green chicory related to radicchio. Ever since we attended the Organic Seed Alliance’s conference last winter, we’ve been hankering to try our hand at growing seed. We’ve been grateful to other farmers who are involved in producing good quality seed for organic production (particularly Frank and Karen Morton of Wild Garden Seed), but the need continues to grow for more varieties of farm-selected organic vegetable seed.
So, when we had an uncovered planting of castelfranco partially survive our 13° weather last December, we decided this was the time to try growing a seed crop. Many of the heads died in the extreme cold weather, but we wanted to save the seed from those that survived beautifully without any rot at all. A few weeks ago, Casey and some friends walked the planting and flagged all the good-looking heads, and then last weekend they dug them up and transplanted them to a clean bed nearer the house.
The castelfranco will begin to bolt in late spring and it sounds like we’ll harvest in mid- to late summer. In the meantime, we’ll have to patrol our property and the surrounding area for rogue wild chicories to avoid cross-pollination (which is unfortunate, because wild chicories are some of the prettiest weed flowers of the summer). We’re not sure at this point what we’ll do with the resulting seed, but it will be a good experiment and learning experiment I’m sure.
Maybe we’re crazy, but we’re also considering another farming experiment as well. Since last year, we’ve been buying meat chickens from Mike Paine of Gaining Ground Farm for our own eating purposes. They are tasty and delicious, but we find that our favorite part of the cooking experience is making soups and broths. To that end, some of the older fashioned bird varieties can actually be better suited to those kinds of culinary uses (even though they don’t roast up as well). So, we’re thinking about borrowing a CSA member’s incubator and hatching some of our chickens’ eggs to raise for meat birds. Since it’s definitely an experiment, we’d only begin with a batch big enough for ourselves. But we’re intrigued by the possibilities of these birds.
Our friends Chrissie and Koorosh Zaerpoor of Kookoolan Farms have been writing lately about their own experiences growing meat birds and some of the difficulties. For sure, one of the biggest difficulties with all poultry production right now is the feed. Organic feed is expensive and difficult to procure locally. Plus, the standard breed used for meat bird production (the Jumbo Cornish X) is not a very good forager bird, so even on pasture you need to meet most of its nutritional needs through milled feeds.
Our own old-fashioned laying hens breeds, on the other hand, are fabulous foragers. They scratch, eat grass, and enjoy a wide variety of vegetable scraps. We like the idea of being able to possibly produce healthy meat for ourselves with fewer off-farm inputs. So, we’re going to see how yummy our hens’ offspring might be. We know we won’t be enjoying big tender chicken breasts off of them, but we might get to eat delicious stewed meat and soups.
Much to think about. Much to do. Much to build. Much to plant. The season is picking up, and we are so excited! After a long restful winter, the sun is most welcome, as is the busier pace. The longer days help give us enough time to tackle the growing ‘to do’ lists, and the warmth helps keep us energized and alert. It’s amazing how much easier it is to harvest when it’s simply 50° (rather than 34°). As I write this on early Monday evening, the weather is being typically spring-like: blustery wind and showers followed by gorgeous, crystal clear sunbreaks (followed by blustery wind and showers …). The fruit trees on the island are beginning to bloom (a few weeks later than normal), and bees fill the air. Enjoy the vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
