(CSA Newsletter: Early Season Week 13)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
It’s finally warm out! Monday was the first day of the year that I felt hot even when I wasn’t working. Hoorah! We celebrated other fun signs of spring’s real arrival this week too:
For example, a sure sign of spring in Oregon: when it’s time to mow! One of the daunting aspects of owning 17+ acres of ground is taking care of all that space, whether it’s planted to a crop or not. We’ve been working towards establishing permanent buffers and roadways around our fields to help with that task, but they still need to be regularly maintained in order to be useful and to prevent weeds from overtaking the grass/trees/etc. This last week, I (Katie) spent the better part of two days just mowing. I mowed the grass on the edges of our property, the future orchard site, the remainder of unworked ground in our east field, and parts of our over-wintered field that we’re done harvesting now. Things sure look tidier now, which gives us some mental clarity and sanity in looking towards summer.
Our hens are also signaling spring these days as five of the 21 got ‘broody’ this last week — i.e. ready and inclined to sit on eggs. We found them sitting in their nest boxes one evening last week, and when we tried to collect their eggs them puffed up their feathers and almost growled at us. Motherly instinct in action.
Since we have a rooster and we’ve seen him ‘do his work,’ we decided to let them take a try at hatching some eggs. We’re inexperienced with this whole animal thing, so we’ll see how it goes. We haven’t set up special brooding boxes as we’ve been advised to do (going against experienced advice is a bad move, we know), but we don’t particularly have the time or energy for that task right now. We figure if they hatch successfully on their own, then that will be wonderful — if not, we’ve just lost a few days/weeks of eggs production from a few hens. It will be an interesting spring experiment anyhow.
And, in true Oregon spring style, we irrigated for the first time this weekend! Irrigation (or as we’ve sometimes called it: ‘irritation’) is not usually sometime to rejoice over — for the last two years, setting up and maintaining our irrigation systems has been frustrating.
Why? In 2006 and 2007, we were very water limited. Our sources were limited and unpredictable, creating constant anxiety about both whether we’d have enough water and whether our system would even work from day-to-day. Both years, we also set up a limited system that we had to move every time we wanted to irrigate a new section of field (which should have been every day, but was often less frequently than needed).
As we’ve mentioned before, we’re hoping this year will be different. After eighteen months of work, we finally have a functional, legal irrigation well. We’re also hoping it will be reliable, but this is something you cannot know until after months of use. As we mentioned weeks ago, we also upgraded our irrigation system so that we have enough pipe to have a ‘solid set’ of lines in our field, which means that we’ll only have to move pipe when we first plant a field or when we need to cultivate/work up ground/mow — but not when we need to irrigate. The difference should be significant.
Anyhow, we’ve said all this before, but we’ve been using the phrase ‘if our irrigation system works as planned’ a lot this spring. Two seasons of farming has taught us not to be certain about anything until it’s been tried (there’s good farming reason behind the phrase ‘don’t count your chicks before they hatch’).
Given the seeming uncertainty of a new pipe system and a new well all working together perfectly, we decided to try irrigating before we really needed it. We wanted a low pressure situation for a first set-up. And, hoorah! It worked!
The new set up actually exceeded our expectations, as we were able to easily run five 200’ lines at a time rather than the three we had hoped for. With five lines running at once, we’re irrigating just under an acre of planted ground — exactly what we have planted right now. So, on Saturday, we irrigated all of our beds, which should help them grow faster during this mild dry spell we’re having.
To celebrate/further observe the arrival of spring, we finally sowed our first ‘cucurbit’ seeds Saturday evening: summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and melons. We had been holding off sowing these veggies because they grow incredibly fast in the greenhouse, and we like to get them out to the fields as soon as we can after they put on their first true leaves (sometimes less than two weeks after sowing). The cool weather has slowed down our bed prep process and created a less than ideal environment for these warmth-loving plants. Now that we’ve entered a dry (still not very warm) period, we feel ok about getting them started.
Casey is outside doing more ground prep as I type, so hopefully this week we’ll be able to plant the next large round of transplants, including our onions, more succession veggies (lettuces, broccoli, etc.), and maybe our potatoes.
Even though we feel better today than we have all spring, it’s been a strange season. We’re still so new to farming that it’s been difficult to tell the difference between things we can control (sowing timing, harvest planning) and things we can’t control (temperature, rainfall, freak snowfall in April). The old serenity prayer certainly has had its place as we’ve worked hard to discern these differences.
We’re not out of the woods yet, either. Plants are finally growing, but slowly. The peas are several weeks behind last year (sorry!), and we expect similar results from other long-season crops. To try to accommodate the slower season, we’ve sown more short-season, cool weather crops (bok choy, mustards, radishes, lettuce) to hopefully fill in early summer. As always, we’ll see.
In the meantime, you’ll notice a distinct shift to spring in your CSA share this week: we’ve begun harvesting from our spring planted fields finally! Enjoy a Big Green Salad this week along with your continued delicious over-wintered greens and alliums (onions, etc.). Enjoy the vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. What’s your payment/sign-up status? Not sure right now where you’re at with your 2008 CSA payments? We always have our computer with us at the pick-up and will gladly check your account. We can also remind you of what seasons you’re signed up to participate in at this time.
Dates for your calendar!
