Our animal plans!

What a pretty face! This is one of Bob Bansen's producing Jersey cows -- our heifers will have the same sweet, smooth brown faces someday (right now they are a bit wooly from a winter spent in lush pasture!).

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Purple sprouting broccoli — We’ve been watching these sprouts develop over the last few weeks, eagerly anticipating broccoli abundance … and, now it is here! These buds are more closely related in genetics and flavor to broccoli than to “rapini” (which is more often used to refer to mustard-y plants). Rusty loves to eat it raw, but it’s just as delicious cooked (although the purple color somewhat fades when cooked).
• Rapini
• Kale/chard — It’s sometimes difficult to remember that when first start our CSA, these greens were a hard sell. Folks have clearly been won over, because we hear no more complaints, and people seem eager for their cooked greens at pick-up!
• Cabbage
• Marina di Chioggia winter squash — Once again, our biggest of big squashes! We recommend baking this on a pan until cooked through and then working with the cooked flesh to make squash bread (use a pumpkin bread recipe), soup, or just mashing up with some cream and cheese and reheating in a gratin dish!
• Carrots
• German butterball potatoes
• Green onions — Well, it may feel to us like spring is taking its time arriving on the farm, but there are signs of it even in this week’s share: the purple sprouting broccoli is a good sign, and so are these green onions! While we planted these last year, they usually don’t size up until early spring. We love to have bunching onions for the awkward period between the end of the stored onions and the start of early summer sweet onions. While we still have a few storage yellow onions left, they are soon to be gone, so we hope you enjoy green onions too!

This morning at breakfast, I asked Rusty what I should write about in the week’s newsletter. He paused for a moment and then replied, “Green.”

Yep, hanging out with a two year-old is an adventure in dada-ism at times, but given that we’re farmers, probably any topic would satisfy his request for a “green” newsletter.

But, how about instead I write about “brown”? As well as red, gold, black, and white. Because those are some new colors that will soon be joining the proliferation of “green” already on our farm — brown cows, red hens, gold and black bees, and white and brown sheep!

Finally, after so many months of planning and scheming, we’re getting serious about bringing animals onto the farm. No, they’re not here yet, but we’ve put plans in motion to get them here when it is more appropriate. Here is the line-up:

In April, we pick up our five bee hives on “bee day.” This is just the start of our hopes and dreams for bees on the farm, but we figured five would give us enough to feel serious.

We’ve found that if we don’t add new enterprises in earnest, it’s easy for something “small” to get pushed aside amidst the summer full of work. So, to that end, we no longer “trial” new vegetable varieties by planting just a few rowfeet — instead, we’ll add a whole row or bed. Yes, it makes for some big flops at times, but it’s never because of lack of attention!

(In fact, this theory of adding “enough to be real” but not our final goal applies to all of animal plans for 2012 — the numbers of animals and types will go up in future years, but these plans feel substantial enough to qualify as being “serious” about animals!)

Our friend and CSA member Justin is finishing up building the hives this week (the one he completed already is sitting ready to go in my parents’ cherry orchard!). Since Justin is a builder by trade, it’s been awesome having him contribute so much to this project — there’s no question the hives are sturdier and better built than if Casey had knocked them out. We’re pretty good at “get ‘er done” farm carpentry, but it sounds as though bees like their homes to be built more carefully.

Next, in late April, we will be adding two Jersey heifers, who are due to calve in May. We visited our potential heifers at Bob Bansen’s dairy in Yamhill last week, which made the future addition feel more real. Rusty was blown away by seeing so many “huge” cows in one place and has been talking about it ever since.

As part of the preparation for the cows, we ordered some new electric fencing supplies from Premier 1 this weekend. The fencing we ordered will also work for other animals we are adding, allowing us to more efficiently move animals around the fields in small, migrating paddocks. Our goal is to move the cows twice/week, followed by our next new animal enterprise …

Sheep! We are taking over management of over half my mom’s existing flock of Katahdin sheep (a breed of so-called “hair” sheep, raised for meat rather than wool). Depending on the final numbers, we may end up with 12 or more ewes, plus a ram, and several young ewe lambs and wethers. We plan to follow the cows with the sheep through our fields, which right now are lush with oats and red clover.

With our plans more concretely in motion, Casey is now wishing he’d sown something more diverse and pasture oriented, but last year when we took over management of the land, we really just wanted to get a cover crop established quickly — and oats are great for that. We will establish some more long-term diverse pastures this spring. We have about 100 acres to “play” with, so there will be no lack of “green” things for these animals!

We’re also ordering laying hens — still trying to get in touch with a local hatchery, but if that fails we’ll order from the reliable (but more expensive) online guys. Our goal is to have 300 chicks arrive here on the farm sometime in April so that they will start laying by early fall. That will be a lot of eggs! Oh my!

Those are the firm plans for now, but there’s at least one other possible addition in the works.

Lest you think we’re biting off more than we can chew (we think that sometimes!), let’s remember that we are also adding one more set of reliable skilled hands to handle all of these new enterprises.

In the meantime, we’re trying to work out all the final kinks with necessary infrastructure on the new land — primarily getting our well up and running in a fashion that will allow us to easily water the animals. For the record, both of our new wells currently work, but we also need to move the panels for both a bit higher (the prior farmer actually removed the panels every fall before the floods came, but since we want to use water year-round, we had to build a high water platform and move them up!). Then, we need to figure out the best solution for taking a very powerful, high output well and make it possible to just run a hose for a watering trough. There are several solutions to this, some of them more expensive than others.

As I’ve said before, it’s quite an exciting time of change and new problems to solve on the farm. But, even though spring has arrived, the farm is still mostly enveloped in cold wet air (we had a nice sunny break this weekend though!).

Casey and I were remarking very early this morning (two farmers up with insomnia — oh my!) that this time of year is stressful simply because we have laid out so many plans and have a greenhouse full of starts … and yet we just have to wait for the season to arrive on its own time. It feels a bit like being a cheetah coiled up, ready to spring — except for days and weeks at a time. There’s a certain level of inevitable tension that builds up in the body and soul, and we know we have to be careful to keep a sense of perspective as we wait and simultaneously keep working on what we can (harvesting for the CSA, preparing infrastructure, etc.).

Once the warmth arrives for good, and plants are in the ground, and plans are actually in motion, and our season routines are place, then we will feel that tension lift — by July we often have a whole new outlook on the farm, one based in the fact that we can see progress in the season (and are sleeping well at night thanks to physical fatigue from the day).

In future years, of course, having animals on the farm will change the nature of spring as well — we will always have seasonal planning to do, but we will also have lambing and calving to consider. Perhaps animals will provide that needed perspective that sometimes feels missing as we sit, crouched, waiting to pounce on the “green” promise of spring.

Either way, we look forward to their company on the farm and the precious food they will provide!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
… and the rest of the farm crew!

~ ~ ~

Next week’s vegetables (probably!):

Rapini • Purple sprouting broccoli • Cabbage • Celery root • Potatoes • Parsnips • Leeks • Onions