Planning, planting, & more

(CSA Newsletter: Week 2)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

Last week was a big week here on the farm. As you know, we had our first CSA share of 2009. The harvest and pick-up were successful, and it was great for us two farmers to get back into a weekly work routine. After three years, starting each week with the CSA has become habit for us. Even though we enjoy our time off, we are always glad to return to a normal work schedule in February.

And, the excitement just continued after Tuesday. On Wednesday evening, we audited a session of on ongoing new farmer course sponsored by OSU. The evening’s topic was ‘Labor on the farm,’ and we attended to help inform our own first-time preparation to hire labor on our farm. For the last three years, the two of us have been the only main farm workers. We’ve had much appreciated help here and there from CSA members, but Casey and I have done every harvest by ourselves and most of the field work.

We’ve held off on hiring people for several reasons: for one, we didn’t feel ready to bring other people into the farm until we had a better idea of how we wanted the farm to function. Every year, we continue to develop our farm systems and methods, and it’s been much easier to go through that process with only two of us involved. We also appreciated being flexible with our finances — payroll can quickly dig into a farm’s budget. It’s been hard at times to be a two-person farm, but it’s been really good too.

But, during our January break we talked a lot about the farm’s future and where we want to go from here. Do we want to continue growing the CSA bigger? Do we want more time for each individual task so that we can perform them more carefully? Do we want to provide opportunities for other people to learn about farming? Do we want to continue increasing the community aspect of daily life on the farm? The answers to all these questions: YES!

And, we’re finally feeling ready to take on the responsibility of another body on the farm. Even though it’s only been two of us out here most of the time, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how another person would fit into each task. We’ve talked with other farmers about who they hire, why, and how they integrate those people into their farm. Adding labor will certainly add an entire new dimension to our roles as farmers, but we now see that dimension more clearly. We’re excited about the potential for new energy and extra hands.

We posted an application on our blog a few weeks ago (and an ad on a farmwork database), and we’ve already heard from several applicants. The fun has begun! And, as we read through the applications and talk with prospective hires, we’re continuing to learn from other farmers as well — hence attending the course Wednesday evening, where we learned about ‘Fatal hazards on the farm’ (and how to avoid them!!!!!!!) and heard from Jeff Falen of Persephone Farm about his experience with farm labor over several decades. So much to think about!

But we haven’t had time to dwell exclusively on employment, because the excitement of the week continued Thursday morning when we drove to pick up 90 of our new orchard trees from Meyer Nursery in West Salem! These trees were the culmination of several years of planning, so we were anxious to finally get our hands on our first batch of trees (we’re picking up more from Northwoods in a few weeks).

We had already prepped and laid out the entire orchard site in advance, so thanks to perfect planting weather and help from a friend, we were able to easily plant all 90 trees that same day. After we plant the remaining 35 trees, we’ll have a small but diverse orchard of apples (12 varieties), plums (five varieties), pears (four varieties) and figs (one variety). We chose the fruit types because they’re our favorites, relatively easy to grow (compared to peaches and cherries, for example), and easy to harvest and store. We spent hours pouring over the different variety choices, looking for trees that are particularly well suited to organic management and that mature over a long period of time (so that we’ll have fruit for several months rather than just a few weeks).

What are we going to do with all of this fruit? We don’t know right now — we just knew that we needed to plant an orchard in order to have a producing orchard someday. Most likely the fruit will end up being a part of the CSA in some fashion. Fortunately we have several years to figure it out before we’ll need to make a decision. Also, we’ve learned not to ‘count our chicks before they’re hatched’ (or in this case: ‘count our fruit before it’s picked’), so we’re hesitant to make any plans or promises about fruit that absolutely doesn’t exist yet. But we’re hopeful that it will someday!

To finish the week, on Saturday we sowed our first seeds of 2009: 63 flats total! Most of what we sowed will be planted and harvested this spring and early summer: lettuces, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Asian greens, turnips, green onions, etc. But we also sowed leeks to be harvested in late fall and next winter!

The leeks in this week’s share were sown this time last year — talk about planning in advance. The seasons just keep on turning. Spring will be here before we know it, but in the meantime, enjoy this week’s delicious winter vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

P.S. Reminder: We will have a normal share as usual next week, and then the following week (February 24), there will be NO harvest or pick-up. We will be away at a retreat that week and unable to harvest for the CSA. (This week was not included in the price of your CSA season.)