(CSA Newsletter: Week 14)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
Wowza — last week I wrote about how we’re busy, and this week just proved the point. In brief, this is how we spent the last seven days on the farm:
As you know, last Tuesday, we harvested for the CSA and restaurants and distributed veggies at the CSA pick-up. We also prepped the ground in our new field house to prepare for planting tomatoes and peppers and pulled the tomato and pepper plants out of our greenhouse so that they could start to “harden off” for planting (exposure to wind and fluctuating temperatures helps the plant material literally “harden” so that it can take more stress in the field). Upon arriving back home, Casey moved our tomato and pepper plants into the field house to protect them in case of overnight frost.
Wednesday, Casey, Jeff and our newest employee Lucy planted the tomatoes and peppers! Casey prepped and marked the beds. Then they planted like mad, strung trellising wire and strings, and began trellising! It was a busy but productive day that ended with an intense three-hour meeting related to the quarry application at a neighbor’s house. After we came home well past our normal bedtime, Casey went out in the dark and set-up and turned on overhead sprinklers on the tomatoes because there was a frost advisory in effect. (Yes, the tomatoes were planted under cover, but we wanted to be sure they’d survive below freezing temperatures — those plants represent many months of work!)
Thursday, Casey and Jeff did a bunch of maintenance fieldwork — weeded spring crops, trellised the peas, sowed more lettuce, and more. That evening, we all headed into town for the 7 pm hearing at the Yamhill County Courthouse. Another agenda item preceded ours, so we visited with neighbors in the hall until 9 pm, which is when the hearing for the quarry finally began. Casey and I testified and stuck around until about 11:15 pm, which is way past our normal bedtime. However, there were so many folks there to testify in opposition to the quarry that the hearing adjourned at 11:30 pm with plans to pick up where we left off at the next planning commission meeting in June.
Friday morning we ran errands in town, and then Casey spent the rest of the day on the tractor. He used the chisel plow and disc to work on three of our large fields for planting. Rusty and I took a nice long nap together (we were tired after the late night at the hearing!).
Saturday morning Casey jumped on the tractor again, while I hung out with Rusty all day. The weather pages were all predicting rain at the end of the weekend, so we figured it was time to really get busy with ground prep! Lots of our big plantings still needed to get in the ground! Casey began by mowing and then used our Lely Roterra rotary harrow to work on the same fields he’d worked up the day before. That evening, he took a break to enjoy a dinner at our house with a friend (who thankfully brought the main dish!).
Sunday was an even earlier day. Casey started working at 5:30 am. Before Rusty and I were even out of bed, he had worked up the ground and marked beds for the sweet potato planting. He was planting while Rusty and I got ready for our day and had the irrigation going by the time my parents came out to join us for a Mother’s Day brunch.
After a nice visit with my parents, Casey jumped back on the tractor again and did final bed prep and marking for our onions. Then he carefully separated out all our bare-root onion plants to prepare for planting. At 4 pm, Lucy showed up, and the two of them worked until 8:30 pm planting onions. It was almost dark when Lucy left, but the onions were completely planted!
Today, Monday, before beginning any of the CSA harvest, Casey and Jeff prepped the ground and planted 19 beds of potatoes. The CSA harvest consequently went later in the day than usual, but now we only have one more immediate spring planting that needs to get in the ground: the leeks! Hopefully the dry-ish weather will hold out until Wednesday so that Casey, Jeff and Lucy can plant them!
After that, we’re ok for a few weeks. Eventually, as it warms up, we will focus on getting some more of the warm weather crops in: more peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, melons, sweet corn, winter squash, and green beans.
But it’s still quite cold out, even when the sun does show itself. The soil is still cool to the touch most of the time, so we’re not even going to worry about those crops until that changes. Hopefully by the end of May, the weather will be warm and dry enough that we can plant those crops without too much of a headache (or too many extra full busy weekends of work). Thanks to Casey’s diligent tractor work this weekend, however, the ground should be more than ready by then.
This is how May goes. Even though we’re getting closer and closer to summer, it’s still an unpredictable spring month. But it’s also the time of year when a huge portion of our fields gets planted. So far, every May has involved some sort of scrambling and intense tractor sessions.
I’d say what makes this May unique for us is that I (Katie) am not out there planting alongside Casey and the crew. This is a big change, and I certainly miss contributing to this month’s big push. But Rusty and I get out there to visit the farmers whenever we can — we’re certainly still a part of it all, even if we both have clean hands at the end of the day while Casey’s are stained and cracked from work.
Anyhow, this week’s share contains some of the hard work Casey and crew did in prior months. More and more of each week’s share is fresh spring veggies. This week we have some delicious Asian greens and the first of the green garlic (commence drooling now!). Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
