(CSA Newsletter: Early Season Week 11)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
‘April is the cruelest month.’ When I first read those words of T.S. Eliot’s, I adamantly disagreed. My experience had always been April in the Northwest, which is typically just shy of paradise. Flowers bloom in profusion; the sun shines more days than not; warmth returns. By April my Winter Blahs have usually been replaced by Spring Fever.
This April, however, has been cruel indeed. Snow in mid-April can only be described as a cruel joke of nature. Or something like that, anyway.
Drama aside, this week we’re doing ok here at the farm. Ok, anyway. Last week we took advantage of another ‘extended’ dry spell to plant some more (we’re at about one acre planted now) and work up more ground for later planting. Thanks to those few days of very successful work, we’re at least moving towards our spring goals.
But this weekend’s weather was a shocker. Fortunately, we were prepared: everything in the field is row-covered (thank goodness for such a simple, useful technology!) and the sensitive starts are all still in the greenhouse. We moved the especially sensitive starts (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants) all back onto our hot bench and row-covered them as well, so they’re doubly protected from the cool weather. So far, everything seems to be ‘holding’ fine, but nothing is growing at the rate we expect of April’s long days. It’s slow out here.
Admittedly, we expect late frosts here on the island. We’ve been told by ‘old timers’ to expect frosts as late as mid-May. But we usually associate April and May frosts with clear sunny days — not overcast, snowy, cold days. So, even though late frosts are typical, the average daily temperature right now is far below average — and that’s what we’re more concerned with these days, since the average daily temperature directly affects plant growth rates.
But, as I said, we’re making progress, in spite of the slow downs. While Casey worked on ground prep, I started serious planning for this year’s farmers market, which opens on May 29. Each year we’re at market, we’ve tried to refine our display. The first year, our goal was simply to have vegetables to display. Last year, we tried to increase the volume of vegetables on display. This year, we’re trying to make our display more attractive and appealing to the eye. We’re still not entirely sure what that will look like — we may need to make another field trip to the Saturday PSU market in Portland to get tips from the pros. But for starters, this last week I ordered a new canopy (we broke two last year) and worked on new typed price signs that are easier to read than our own hand-written ones.
And, this weekend, between snow, rain, and hailstorms, Casey planted out the last of our new perennial field with Jerusalem artichokes, cardoons, and artichokes.
We’ve also had the opportunity to participate in some fun off-farm events this last week. Last Thursday, we were the guest speakers at an OSU course called ‘Topics in Organic Farming.’ Normally we avoid speaking engagements this far into spring, but we couldn’t resist the opportunity to interact with a room full of students who are passionate about organic farming. We shared our experience as young farmers with a short slide show of pictures from the farm, and afterward the students asked some fabulous questions. We drove home feeling excited about the future of farming!
On Saturday, Katie took the afternoon off for a jaunt to used bookstores in Salem with a friend — a pleasant outing that culminated in finding a print copy of the Soil Survey of Yamhill Area. I suppose it makes us official farm nerds, but finding this was super exciting — since all the same information is available on the web, the USDA no longer publishes print copies of the soil survey, and we love looking at it. I also picked up some other fun titles, including some books about small house design, more Wendell Berry volumes, and — very important — a book about cats. Incidentally, our cats we discovered are Turkish Vans. Truly important farm knowledge to have.
We’ve also spent a lot of time at my parents house lately. My mom, Kris Bledsoe, is currently running for Yamhill County Commissioner, which is a huge task. She’s impressed us with her dedication to the campaign, and we’ve been doing what we can to help her. Since I almost majored in graphic design in college (I like to say that I learned just enough to run a small business without ever having to hire someone else for graphics), I’ve been helping my mom with some of her campaign materials: brochures, postcards, and ads. This last week I helped her set up a simple website — www.krisbledsoecommissioner.com. We used a blog layout for her new website, somewhat similar to our farm’s, so she can use it to communicate frequently with voters in the county. Helping with a campaign has been a new experience for us, but it’s a great source of perspective on our own farm work. With such an intimate experience with a campaign and with a media frenzied presidential run-off, it’s definitely been a more-interesting-than-average election spring for Casey and me.
We ended the weekend by sharing dinner with our friends Sheila and Andre of Growing Wild Farm. We walked their place again for the first time since last May and were struck by the many changes in just one year. Their fruit trees are larger; their lambs have been replaced by adorable hogs (they’re still in the cute stage — soon to be in the ‘yummy’ stage); the chicken flock has unfortunately been dwindled by predators; and the garden soil appears to be improved from their efforts. As we’ve noted all spring, it’s been a tough year, but Sheila and Andre are actually feeling ahead of this time last year because of their expanded knowledge of their land and their infrastructure improvements (they added a small greenhouse this year which has improved their starts program — the starts in the house looked great!).
Even with all the differences in our operations, it’s always wonderful to visit with other farmers throughout the year — to check in on the season and get ideas, feedback, and inspiration. When we were speaking to the OSU class, that was one of the important aspects of our experience we emphasized: how much we value the strong community of farmers here in Oregon. Especially in tough times like this spring, our farmer friends are a huge part of keeping us positive. Hot coffee helps too. Seriously.
We hope that you and your family have found your own sources of warmth and optimism during this ‘winter-that-never-ends.’ We also hope that you’re still enjoying the continued winter vegetables. We know that the selection has been somewhat stagnant for awhile (fitting with the weather), but change is hopefully on the horizon … we’ll just have to be patient while we wait for spring to truly arrive.
In the meantime, enjoy this week’s warming winter vegetables!
Your farmers,
Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics
