Spring farm notes

Last week during a downpour, Casey and Emily transplanted lettuce and other crops in our nice dry and cozy fieldhouse. You can see the rising waters in the lower field behind! What a spring it has been!

Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Rapini (lots!) — We were planning to make salad mix this week, but then a few factors changed our minds: 1. Since we are down an employee until Jesse arrives on Thursday, I (Katie) helped harvest, and I love bunching rapini! 2. The fields are full of rapini right now — so full! 3. It seemed a shame to pinch off the top of the rapini for salad mix when there is also a long, tender, leafy stalk of yummy below. 4. You all proved to be hungry for bunched greens — last week we ran out, even though we brought what we thought was a lot! So, rapini! If you’re hankering for a salad anyway, taste your bunches and find a milder one. They’re perfectly tender for chopping and dressing — in fact, we enjoy doing that in our house! We also enjoy roasting them so that the stalk gets soft and the leaves get crispy. So delicious!
• Butternut and Orange Dawn winter squashes
• Celery root — We’re nearing the end of the stored carrot supply (oh no!), so celery root will be making a more regular appearance for the next few weeks. This is the time to experiment broadly with this delicious root veggie. We’ve heard rave reviews from members on a blended soup with butternut squash, celery root, and leeks. Apparently the celery root helps mellow out the squash’s sweetness without adding too strong of a counter-flavor or texture.
• Yellow Finn potatoes
• Beets
• Parsnips
• Leeks
• Garlic

When it was warm and mild on Groundhog Day this year, I didn’t think much of it. I haven’t before put too much stake in that particular  “superstition” and wasn’t convinced that we’d be seeing more winter just because February 2 was sunny.

Well, in the future I might pay closer attention to that old tradition, because this year certainly has been an experience in extended winter. Spring arrives this week, and yet the weather we’ve had has been through and through winter.

A friend of mine recently joined me in lamenting the recent dark, wet, stormy, cold, snowy weather and commented that “this time of winter is always hardest.” While it’s true that in this year, this time of winter is hard,  I have memories of very different Marches here on the farm. Our first few springs here on Grand Island, we transplanted crops in March and April — and they grew beautifully thanks to warm, sunny spring weather. We had to set up our irrigation system as early as April in one year!

In retrospect, I think those years we had early springs. Probably something in between those two experiences is closer to “average” for our region — early spring is nothing if not variable anyway! Hail one minute and sun the next!

Either way, I agree with my friend that the end of this winter has been hard, especially since I keep expecting (consistently) sunny and mild weather to follow behind those opening daffodils in our yard. Everyone here on the farm is anxiously awaiting this upcoming turn in the seasons — obviously there is a great deal of rain still awaiting us before the summer drought arrives (usually in late June or July), but a few extended windows of warmth would be most welcome!

In the meantime, we’re still keeping busy and productive here on the farm. Rather than writing an extended essay this week, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on various farm news (or “notes”!):

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As of this week, our employee Emily is gone for almost a month — she and her husband are traveling south to go on a three week rafting trip in the Grand Canyon! They’ve been planning this trip for months, and we wish them a very happy and safe adventure.

Our other employee Jesse is returning to the farm this week after spending winter quarter at OSU finishing up his degree in physics. We are so glad to have him back (and he reports that he is eager to be outside in the fields again too)!

We’re also actively working on adding a new member to our crew. We’ve been accepting resumes for a new team member and have just begun doing interviews. As always, we’re pretty blown away by the awesomeness of our applicants. It’s going to be a challenge deciding which individual will be the best fit for our farm, especially when we really just want to hire everyone!

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Even though we haven’t been able to do any field work yet (not even cultivate the garlic, which needs it badly), Casey and Emily have been actively planting and tending to our two field greenhouses. One has peas and various direct-sown crops and Casey transplanted a wide range of crops in the other this week. These greenhouse grown crops will help fill in the gaps when we are finished with the over-wintered and stored crops but aren’t able to start harvesting from the open fields yet. Even though we prefer growing the bulk of our crops “outside,” we are always very grateful for these two greenhouses — they are productive and give us a nice jump-start on the season.

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We’ve also been paying more attention to infrastructure considerations on the new land. Casey built a “high water” platform (i.e. stairs to a landing) near one of our new wells so we can get a panel installed and use it this year to irrigate our new orchards and other crops. Of course, as always, there are unexpected kinks with every step we make with infrastructure, but we are slowly working through those problems as they arise.

For example, it’s possible Casey built the platform “too tall,” so depending on the final verdict from PGE, we have to either lower the platform some how or put in a taller power drop pole — not impossible, but it’s amazing how many times in the history of this farm, we have had to “redo” things simply because we can’t always anticipate every factor ahead of time!

At the very least, we’re grateful to not have a serious time crunch with infrastructure over there — we have goals, but they are somewhat flexible and still months out. Even though I’m sure those deadlines will seem to fly up, it’s still so much more relaxing than those first few years when everything needed to be done yesterday. Whew!

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We have also been working on some of the more “portable” aspects of infrastructure — namely new animal housing. Casey is about 80% of the way done with a new, very large chicken house on wheels (future home of hundreds of laying hens). And, our friend Justin just finished the first of our “top bar” beehives, with four more in the works — so we’ll be adding five hives to the farm next month!

We’ve been talking in detail about adding animals since mid-summer last year, and it’s begun to feel like all we are ever going to do is talk, talk, talk (which I think is just another symptom of a long winter, since obviously we need to wait until the season is appropriate!). Having these structures in the works feels like a tangible step toward our farm’s diversification plans! Plus, again, it has been nice to take the time to prepare properly before the new creatures actually arrive. There’s a special kind of chaos of bringing animals onto a farm before spaces have been readied for them.

As part of the preparation process, we’ve also touched base with a local custom haymaker about cutting some of our new land for haylage. Haylage is a form of silage made from hay materials like our oats and red clover (and then stored in big round bags — you might have seen it around the county stacked up near barns). Since we have such dewy nights here in the valley, haylage is an easier form of feed to make. Apparently, it also has more appeal to a wider range of animals — yes, cows and sheep will love it, but we have heard that so would hogs and chickens.

Since our goal is to feed all our animals from crops we produce here, it is important for us to make sure that feed is in process before bringing those animals onto our farm. This is another point on which we must by necessity move slowly, but it will be worth it to wait to bring “grass eaters” onto our land until the haylage is made (May is most likely — of course, at that point, we’ll have plenty of grass in pasture form too!).

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And, yes, the weather has been wacky out here lately. We have had a few moments of mild and warm weather the last few weeks (two Fridays ago, I even pulled my sandals out of the closet and wore them to town!), but the defining weather moments have been stormy and cold. We had some big wind last Monday, followed by intense rain and snow (with more wind).

Thanks to the big rain, we’re now experiencing another round of high water on the island. The Willamette reached just below “action stage” this weekend and is predicted to come back up to the same level in a few more days. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that it doesn’t get any higher — at this level, there is water on all our lowest ground, but if it comes up a few more feet, there will also be water in our greenhouses (the same ones that have happy growing plants in them right now!).

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

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

P.S. The second CSA payment (for those of you “paying as you go”) is due by Monday, March 26. I sent out email statements and reminders, so if we have a functioning email for you, you should have heard from us. If not, email me to get your address in our system: farm (at) oakhillorganics (dot) org.

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Next week’s veggies (probably!):

Fingerling potatoes, Marina Squash, salad mix, purple sprouting broccoli, green onions, carrots