Oooh, Baby!

Succulent. Snappy. Juicy. Luscious. Bright. Juicy. Tender. Mounds of baby ginger, dug fresh and scrubbed clean, test the marketer's thesaurus. An artist might be better equipped. See for yourself:

An enumeration of features we adore about this tropical rhizome extends from its otherworldly beauty to its lush growth in the greenhouse, its sweet, powerful flavor, and its extraordinary versatility in the kitchen. Happily, members of our CSA and now a growing number of restaurant and wholesale customers share our sentiments. Really, who doesn't love a beautiful baby?

In our third year of cultivating fresh ginger—plus a test plot of turmeric and the bright purple ka chai dom (Thai ginseng)—it seems we're getting the hang of coaxing an abundant tropical harvest from our upstate New York hoop house.

Here's how it's done: We buy in organic seed from Hawaii (order early; our supplier sells out every year), and keep it cozy in crates of damp potting soil stashed in the warmest corner of the farmhouse—in the laundry room. Sometime in April, when the the soil in the hoop house has warmed to 70°F, we plant out the rhizomes, two rows in each bed with a thick layer of wood mulch to keep down weeds and hold moisture in the paths. For the next six months, we flood the ginger beds regularly with captured rainwater, feed the emerging plants with fish emulsion and compost tea infusions, and mound soil—amended with fluffy, composted horse bedding—around the sprouts to encourage robust rhizome formation. To optimize quality of this rather perishable product, we dig, wash, and deliver baby ginger on the same day.

Melissa Bahret of Old Friends Farm in Amherst, MA, developed the system we've adopted back in 2006, with funding from a SARE grant. In our area, we share the niche with Muddy Fingers, The Good Life, Shelterbelt, and Humble Hill farms. This year's big ginger innovations at Tree Gate Farm feature a bubbler (as in: jacuzzi jets). Throughout the growing season, a repurposed hot tub motor blows air into our compost tea (a project worthy of its own blog post) and during harvest season into a dedicated set of pipes and tanks in our wash station. It's noisy, but a tremendous boon in terms of labor and water conservation.

The Tree Gate Farm ginger story wouldn't be complete without a shout-out to the folks at Regional Access, a wholesale food distributor founded in 1989 by a local farmer. My uncle worked for Regional back in its early days and introduced me to an array of specialty food products unknown in my mother's kitchen. Fast-forward two decades: Our farm is an easy five-minute drive from Regional's warehouse and their catalog features our baby ginger available for shipment throughout New York State.

If you haven't yet tasted baby ginger, ask around at your local farmers' market or get in touch with us to place an order. The season is short, intense, and ooh, baby, is it delicious!

Brief farm update

Hello friends of Tree Gate Farm. Sorry to all those who don't follow the farm on Facebook and have missing out on the updates there. Since we've neglected the blog for most of the summer, here's a quick rundown.

We're only holding one farmstand a week this season. We can be found outside of Red Feet Wine on Thursdays from 4–7 (starting at 3:30 this week due to overwhelming demand). Harvesting and going to market on back-to-back evenings really wore us out last year, and since we've doubled our CSA membership from last year AND increased sales to restaurants...and are providing crops for Crooked Carrot (more on that relationship below), we thought it was in our best interest to slow down our pace just a bit.

And in that vein, we've bought a used greenhouse (30'x96') that we'll install this fall, picked up a well-worn walk-in cooler (10'x12') for $500 -- which we are in the midst of rebuilding and repairing -- AND we'll be building a new root cellar thanks to a grant we applied for last year. That's our idea of slowing down on the farm.

Of course this time of year there are (not quite literally) tons of produce we bring to market.  Piles of yellow crookneck summer squash, rainbow chard, cukes, and fancy French green beans. The sweet corn is basically done, so maybe we won't bring any tomorrow. One of the crops you won't see at market is paste tomatoes. They don't sell well at the market, and this year we are growing them on contract for Crooked Carrot, a local business making all kinds of lacto-fermented pickles, kimche, and a fantastic small-batch tomato-basil sauce. And I'm not saying that just because we got a jar tonight to taste before it even gets placed on store shelves. So awesome to have a local company using so many local ingredients right from the farms.

A jar coming back to the field for a visit

Not only can you get Crooked Carrot's great creations through their Community Supported Kitchen, but now the Piggery and GreenStar have them on their shelves too!

One of the great features of the farm's relationship with Crooked Carrot has been working with Silas on varieties and timing. Silas was the field manager at Stick and Stone Farm (where their kitchen is) before launching Crooked Carrot. So he really knows the farmers' view of growing, harvesting, even delivering the produce to their operation. Which REALLY makes a difference when there is a late harvest due to a cool summer, or a short season due to some pest or disease. Also, he knows the coversations about the next year's plantings begin now...not a few weeks before you want the produce.  At this time of year, a farmer is already thinking about which cover crops to plant this fall so that next spring the beds are ready for certain crops at the right time. Or preparing additional soil amendments for specific crops. Few chefs or bulk food purchasers think with that kind of lead time.

We've been lucky. Our main commercial customers, The Piggery, Just a Taste, and Felicia's Atomic Lounge are run by farmers or great gardeners who understand seasonal produce and appreciate the bounty that this area provides, and when it is available. I guess I'm feeling particularly appreciative of all of our customers these days when reading about the difficulties so many other beginning farmers have finding suitable land and good markets. We have a CSA loaded with people who appreciate the effort it takes to bring food to their table and we enjoy hearing about the great family meals we've been able to contribute to.

I also just noticed how late it is, and that we have to get up at dawn to harvest everything for market. Hope to see you under the tent.

T is for Transplant

Much like fashion professionals, farmers with hoop houses get to work a good bit ahead of the rest of the world. There may still be snow on the ground, but we're thinking spring. Spring finally breaks and we leap ahead to summer. Come fall, we're eking out even more vegetables after the first frost has cut short the outdoor season. It's amazing what the sun and a sheet of plastic can accomplish!

This past weekend, we transplanted tomatoes and peppers we started back in March into one of the hoop houses. We won't be able to transplant the paste tomatoes in the field for another month—and by then the varieties in the hoop house should be at least a foot tall.

Because we start all of our tomatoes from seed—once you start a few, you may as well go for volume—we offer transplants for sale to home gardeners, as well. We favor indeterminate varieties, for their grace on a trellis, and with each plant we sell, we offer a little tutorial on tomato transplantation and pruning.

This year, we'll offer nine varieties, in nearly every color of the rainbow:

Black Cherry: Purple and perfectly round, a rich burst of flavor in one bite. Beautiful in a salad of mixed cherry tomatoes.

Cherokee Purple: A beefsteak-style heirloom whose brownish-purple, one-pound fruits retain their green shoulders even when ripe. 

Garden Peach: As fuzzy as its namesake—and similarly colored—this salad-sized fruit is mild and juicy. Picked green, it will ripen indoors after the first frost has blackened its vines.

Gold Medal: Bright gold, one-pound fruits streaked with red. A juicy, sweet sunset on your plate!

Green Zebra: The name says it all, but for describing its incredible flavor. Never red, but the best tasting salad tomato you'll try.

Peacevine: The organic, non-hybrid answer to the Sweet 100, a prolific and delicious red cherry.

Pink Brandywine: Famed for its challenging disposition in the garden and its extraordinary flavor, this thin-skinned beefsteak averages one-pound fruits.

San Marzano: a sweet, low-acidity plum prized in Italy for its meaty flesh, easy peeling, and sparse seeds.

Sungold: The only hybrid tomato we offer, this brilliant orange and prolific cherry boasts the sweetest fruit we've tasted. Even sweeter dried for winter snacking.

Yellow Perfection: A perfectly round, thin-skinned and versatile saladette that fruits early and yields heavily throughout the season.

Of course, there's more to summer gardening than tomatoes (we've heard) and so we'll also have available at market: certified organic German butterball seed potatoes, Diablo brussel sprouts, Prisma red shallots, Ping Tung Long and Rosita eggplant seedlings, King of the North sweet and Hidalgo serrano hot peppers, and purple tomatillo plants for sale. Perennial offerings include potted sage, valerian, and an heirloom yellow primrose. We'll offer licorice and horseradish pre-order, only.

Market starts on May 15. Look for us every Thursday from 4–7pm under the red tent in front of Red Feet Wine Market in the Franklin Plaza.

S is for Support

As this bitterly cold and blustery winter howls on, the Tree Gate Farm CSA is living proof that while the acronym CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, the relationship between members and farmers is about more than money. Here at Tree Gate Farm, the material support our members furnish comes with phenomenal and unstinting moral support. Lucky, lucky farmers we are.

The latest reminder of that support was the CSA fair, a marketing event hosted by Tompkins County Cooperative Extension in a local middle school cafeteria.

Early each March, we update our brochure, put together a slide show of farm photos, assemble an array of colorful produce, display some of our handmade soap (a special gift for new members), and get ready to talk. Over the course of three hours, a few hundred prospective locavores wander through, visiting with purveyors of everything from apples to zucchini (ha, ha), picking up brochures, and asking a LOT of great questions. 

Tree Gate Farm drew a spot between a sprout CSA (best salad ever!) and a mushroom CSA. Also represented: hard cider, bread, pickles, even bison meat. Was there ever any question that we live in the absolutely most fabulous place to eat local?!

Perhaps the highlight for us was the number of participants from our 2013 CSA who came by to say hello and renew their membership for 2014. I can't remember the last time I got that many hugs! Or maybe the highlight was their many friends, family members, and colleagues who explained that one of our members had sent them to learn more about our quirky model for providing affordable access to fresh fruits and vegetables, pastured meat, even cut flowers, vigorous garden transplants, and handmade soaps. Wow -- we're honored!

Once again, we printed so many brochures we were sure we wouldn't run out -- and then we did. So for folks who didn't make it to the fair or who missed out on the text version of what we offer, click here.

Dinner on the farm

On Sunday, we went to Remembrance Farm to help out with the Health Food For All dinner. Some volunteers help organize, greet, or wait tables. We wash dishes. By pitching in, we support an effort we believe in, (Tree Gate is a participating farm) and I don't have to interact with too many people. ;-)

This time, we got to meet the chefs from the Carriage House Cafe and taste some their wonderful, locally-sourced food. Growing up spending time in the back of the house at the Tarrytown Conference Center, I remember dad creating stunning plates heaped with delicacies "born" from the impenetrable walk-in cooler. At least it was scary to me since I couldn't reach the door handle, and the fear of being locked in was instilled by my big sister, who occasionally threatened to lock me inside .... uh, more on the childhood traumas some other time perhaps.

Anyway, even though the busy summer season is in full swing, we do try to sneak in some good meals with all of the produce coming out of the field. Tonight we gussied up one of our favorite meals, home-made pizza, with some chanterelle mushrooms, kale, and oven-roasted garlic. Each of the four pizzas had something different. One with our hot serrano peppers. They haven't turned red yet, but still probably a three on the Scoville scale. Another had local sauerkraut in place of the tomato sauce. Sounds totally weird, right? Sooo goood.

But now that dinner is done and the chickens are put to bed, it's time for good little farmers to go to sleep, too. We're harvesting tomorrow, starting shortly after dawn, and then off to set up our farm stand outside of Red Feet Wine Market. See you there?

Rhubarb!!!

Holy cow -- the rhubarb my mom divided for us three years ago has exploded this year. Lots of composted manure, sheet mulching with cardboard, and a mountain of wood chips has really paid off.

It's great having all this rhubarb to fill out our booth at market and as something special for our CSA customers early in the season. Among them, Felicia's Atomic Lounge, Just a Taste, and The Good Truck can go through 30-40 lbs a week too!

The pigs moved into their second pastured area yesterday and the chickens are enjoying hanging out under the Mirabelle plums, which have just finished blossoming. Fingers crossed that this year, we'll have fruit!

The bread truck we're borrowing from Red Tail Farm is parked behind the shed these days, while we build out a homemade cooler in the back for our mobile market. The CoolBot -- a high-tech hack that transforms an air conditioner into a veggie cooler -- arrived in today's mail. This weekend, we'll pick up the rest of the components and finish framing and insulating the back of the truck.  Pictures to follow when we have our grand opening -- or at least when we get it washed off. It's been sitting for a while and looks a little grimy.

Time to get back out and finish planting and transplanting. We seeded all of the sweet corn yesterday for our fourth season of Three Sisters planting trials (Here's a link from 2010 where we describe our trials). We're growing 2,000 row feet this year with three different corn varieties (thanks to Michael Glos of Kingbird Farm, for the consult!). After the corn is established, we'll plant a menagerie of squash and beans.

Half an hour until the next wave of rain comes our way and the beet seeds are calling my name . . .

Send in the Reinforcements!

Early in spring, we labor primarily in the greenhouses, where a few swipes of a hoe are all it takes to prepare the soil. That's the joy of the permanent raised bed system we created. Swaths of soil alternate with the strips of grass where we walk and drive. Thick mulch blanketing the planting beds insures that the earthworms and other mini soil movers deep in the dirt have plenty of fluffy organic matter to aerate. Since we keep our heavy feet and the equipment tires in the grass, we refrain from needless soil compaction and the veggies get the benefit of loose, rich soil in which to set their roots.

In the pasture, however, it's another story. To work that soil, we bring in the real digging experts:

Piglets -- and the hogs they'll become over the next six months -- are incredible earth movers. They seem to take no greater joy than rooting about in the perennial weeds that are a legacy of our land's long history of corn and hay harvests. By using electric fence to keep them focused on one plot at a time and moving them frequently, we give the pigs plenty of self-serve salad and tubers to supplement their diet of organic whole and milled grains and they give us weed eradication. They leave behind fresh manure, which we til into the soil before seeding such crops as buckwheat, peas and oats, and winter wheat to further aerate the soil with their roots. And then the following year, we plant potatoes -- or tomatoes, corn, cabbage, kale, tomatillos, or any of the dozens of other veggies we harvest each summer.

But at the moment, we're talking piglets:

Aren't they super cute? That dark skin and hair is no accident. The farmer who raises them knows we need heavy pigmentation for critters who will spend a full summer in the sun -- so much better than pharmaceuticals for killing germs and promoting health -- so he makes sure we get the pick of his darkest colored litters. A white pig with a sunburn is a deeply unhappy creature. And can you imagine putting sunscreen on a hog? Talk about catching a greased pig! 

When their job on the farm is done, the pigs will weigh about 300 pounds -- the perfect size for a butcher to transform into bacon, chops, ham, roasts, and sausage. There's no mistaking the flavor and texture of pastured pork for "the other white meat." For details on how to fill your freezer with this delicious product, e-mail us: treegatefarm [at] gmail [dot] com!

Its CSA Fair season

Our friends at NOFA-NY posted a calendar of CSA fairs throughout the upstate area. In Ithaca, Cooperative Extension sponsors the local event -- this Saturday, March 2, at Boynton Middle School from 12-3pm. We'll be there to tell people about our new CSA pick-up option -- our mobile farm stand will be outside The Piggery and Red Feet Wine on Wednesday evenings. We'll also continue with our Friday happy hour market at Felicia's Atomic Lounge. This year we'll be parked across the street from Felicia's in the Ithaca Foreign Car Service parking lot. Why across the street? We're hoping to leave the pickup truck at home and sell out of a converted 24-foot bread truck equipped with an insulated area that keeps the veggies cool using an air conditioner and a Coolbot.  Here's a picture of Sharon working on pulling out some old plywood and styrofoam insulation, early in the construction phase.

We still have a long way to go to frame in the cooler area and insulate it, but first we need to seal up the old skylights and other holes in the roof, walls, and floor. The truck belongs to our friends at Red Tail Farm and it's a joint project to get it up and running so that both of our farms can use it to haul more to market. Unfortunately for them, the truck is too large to park at the Ithaca Farmer's Market, so for the time being Tree Gate will be the primary user of the truck.

One of the reasons our farm has been able to flourish and expand each year had been through the wonderful mentorship and resource sharing from other local farms. As beginning farmers, we really didn't have the experience, knowledge, or bank accounts to launch a fully functioning farm on our own. So each year we've worked a little more of our land and borrowed a few pieces of equipment from other farms, sometimes for just a few hours or in the case of tools that had been languishing in a hedgerow or at the back of a barn, on very extended loan. We have some friends who've borrowed heavily to launch their enterprises more quickly than we have. For us, our slow progression has allowed us to grow into our learning curve as farmers and ponder how to best steward our land.

Here's one more photo from earlier in the month. Over the past year or so, I've been taking regular pictures from the back porch to give a sense of our progression season-by-season and year over year. This is a shot from that series, taken just inside the back door.

The layer of ice on the glass and the 50mph wind gusts convinced me that working on the year's seed planting schedule -- at the computer -- was of more importance on that day than tractor repair or fieldwork. I'm clearly getting soft in my old age. Those used to sound like the perfect conditions for cutting out of the office to go camping in some remote national forest. Now I get all that and more just walking out the back door. :-)

Seeds and snow

Morning temps in the negative degrees (F) and the last seed order submitted with a group of farmer friends. We're ordering from four seed companies this year (Johnny's, Fedco, Seed Savers, and High Mowing, with some Seeds of Change and Kitazawa seed packets leftover from last season). Fingers crossed that none of the 'winning' varieties are sold out. We spent a lot of couch time over the last few weeks debating disease resistance, customer appeal, and how certain varieties might grow well with others.

We'll again experiment with several combinations of corn, beans, and squash in our fourth year of "three sisters" trials. The Native American tradition of planting corn in mounds, surrounded by trellising bean varieties with squash on the ground at their feet, is one of the multi-species plantings that we're working on. We'll try some recently released varieties of sweet corn that are specifically bred for organic production, as well as some less aggressive vining beans and even a section with fancy soybeans in place of the traditional climbers.

Not much outside work getting done this week. Too cold to replace the Jeep's brake lines in the unheated and windy three-sided shed. At least the chickens have a heat lamp at night in their insulated coop and a well protected area inside and beneath the pig shelter. They also have an electric water heater to keep their water from freezing up. They haven't liked the 40-plus mile per hour wind gusts the last couple of days, but they cluster in the shelter and occasionally peek out to make noise whenever they see me out.

I used a plastic kid's sled to skid a bag of organic chicken feed and whole grains from Oechsner Farms to give them a little extra something to scratch for amidst the hay on the floor of the shelter.

The other fun thing we're doing with our indoor time is gathering together with other organic farmers at NOFA-NY's winter conference. It will be good to catch up with our farmer friends, share dreams of the coming year, see what we can learn to improve our methods, . . . and wait patiently for the seeds to arrive. :-)

Snowshoeing to the winter greens

Ok, so we didn't actually strap on our snowshoes just to visit the high tunnels, but at the end of a trek down to the back field and timber barn, we did stop in to drape additional row cover over the winter greens.

The bundles of twine hanging from the ceiling are a remnant from the summer's tomato planting. We're going to try and reuse them for this year's tomatoes. Having screwed up my shoulder during a dismount from the rings years ago, I try not to make extra work that demands holding my hands above my head.

The blanket of snow on the tunnels (and the additional row cover) kept the greens from freezing last night, despite the low temps dipping down into the teens. The plants' roots are still growing, albeit slowly with the limited day light during the short days of winter. As the days get longer, they'll pop into high gear. It looks like we'll have a decent early spring greens harvest of claytonia, mache, kale, bunching onions, and spinach.

One of the other temperature-modulation approaches we're trying is incorporating more thermal mass into the hoop house. Because of the USDA rule attached to the grant we received, we're not allowed to use any mechanical venting, heating, etc. in the tunnels. So we put a 300-gallon cube of water (visible just inside the doors in the photo below) in the north end of one of the tunnels. Despite the low outdoor temps, the tank has barely a crust of ice along the edges. This extra mass might add a critical degree or so when the outside temps really plummet.

Now that I've let out and fed the chickens, checked the high tunnels, and come back indoors for breakfast, it's time to go snowshoe down to the back fields and check a gate, or something... :-)

Or maybe I'll harvest some more brussel sprouts, if I can find them.

Farm to pan

With my back flaring up again, I took a walk down to the timber barn and actually stretched out in the hammock for a bit. Farming is tough on the back and I'm finally learning to pace myself—sometimes.

This was my view— late afternoon (just before seven deer started grazing through the field) through the south barn windows, looking over the winter wheat that Thor planted in our fields this past fall.

It makes the fields seem so lush and green compared to the mottled brown of the uncultivated pasture, even though the wheat is just getting established. Come spring, it will have a good headstart on many of the weeds. Thor's wheat often goes to Farmer Ground Flour, and some of that flour finds it way down the road to Wide Awake Bakery, and sometimes, a lucky loaf ends up back on our farm. :-)

If you will be around Ithaca the evening of the 19th, I definitely recommend checking out their open house. The bakery is really interesting, especially the huge wood fired oven. Oh, and did I mention: there will be bread!

Everybody thinks we generally eat the freshest food among our friends. How could we not, when we frequently go back into the fields (sometimes with a headlamp) to fix dinner. But on Wed. Sharon found a bag of chard in the trunk left over from last week's CSA dropoff. With the cool temps lately, the chard looked better than anything we've seen at the grocery stores. So into the fry pan it went. Mmmm. Good addition to a quick lunch. And nice to know that the rainbow chard holds up so well after more than a week being "refrigerated."

Winter Fun

Well, not exactly playing-in-the-snow kinda fun. There's been precious little frozen precipitation of any kind so far this winter.

Instead, we've been cutting hemlocks from the back woods to build a covered wash station and doing some overdue house repairs. We even took an afternoon and sketched out how we want to debrief on this year's growing season and how to plan for next year.

Our farmers' markets are over for the year and we only have two more weeks of CSA pickup left for the year. It seems like yesterday we were tilling the fields during a surprisingly hot January, then losing all the fruit blossoms to a late frost, then hurtling into a drought -- ill prepared, to boot. But we still managed to grow more veggies than we did in the previous two years we've been farming and now the pasture is lush with young winter wheat plants that our friend Thor has planted. Despite not bearing much fruit this year, the orchard put on plenty of new growth -- including buds for the crop of 2013 -- and our winter cover crops look solid.

The farm's lead hunter just took a doe and a young buck to the butcher and we're getting ready to hunker down by the fire to enjoy a favorite all-Tree Gate cabbage/potato/onion/pork sausage dish when it comes out of the oven. We've also been taste testing a few of the winter squash varieties we tried out this year.

Butternut, Hubbard, spaghetti squash, and a pumpkin heading for the oven. Last year we read Carol Deppe's The Resilient Gardener and learned that in some cases we weren't letting our squash sit in the root cellar long enough to get sweet. Now we're more discerning about which squash get eaten first and which can hang around till the spring snows have begun melting. We'll also keep a good stash of potatoes for ourselves this year and not sell them all in early winter. Among the simple rewards for all of the hard work that went into growing all this food: We sure do eat good.

Preparing for winter

While were only a few days past the end of summer, the farm is in full swing to prepare for winter already. It fell to 43 degrees the other night, so we've put the end walls back up on the high tunnels and have been busy preparing and planting beds for overwintering.

We have additional row cover for protecting the plants this fall, but if we're serious about overwintering plants in the high tunnels we're going to need to purchase more. More pictures of the newly planted beds tomorrow.

Dean

Pigs and chickens and veggies, oh my.

It's been a hectic August. Equipment issues have had us scrambling once again to make do with the few pieces that are working at any given time. Among the more frustrating has been the Kolpin system, the combination of gadgets that turn my 1995 Jeep into a tractor. On its second day back in the field after a long delay waiting for a new part, it broke again. That meant we lost the use of one of our most important field tools, critical for preparing the beds for winter planting. We're again waiting for a replacement part; in the meantime, out came the walk-behind rototiller and a hoe.

Happily, two significant rain storms fell here in recent weeks, making August the first month with normal precipitation levels in 2012. The USDA still considers our situation a "moderate drought," but we're irrigating as many of the crops as possible using a combination of captured rainwater and what we pump from the well. Crazy what a difference water makes!

The pigs are busy tearing up a section of the old farm driveway and weedy undergrowth beneath the trees to the west of the field. With the recent rains, the top few inches of ground are damp enough that they can dig a little easier. European Corn Borers (ECB) have begun invading the last of the sweet corn and those ears too cosmetically challenged for sale get turned into farmer food. We steam the ears whole, slice off the kernels for the freezer, and give the cobs to the pigs. Everyone wins.

Getting a good picture of the herd can be difficult, as curious little snouts can't resist inspecting the camera (and camera woman), despite all of the corn provided for distraction during the photo shoot.

With minimal voltage in the lower wires of the electric poultry fence -- due to wet grass and other factors -- the overly-free range chickens (ORCs) have helped themselves to bugs under mulched beds all over the farm. For some reason, repeatedly putting the mulch back around the plants brings to mind chicken soup. And stew, and dumplings, and . . . A day of aggressive mowing and clipping in the orchard, where the birds are currently pastured, seems to have improved the fence's function and increased their access to bugs closer to their coop. We're thinking of the effort as a stitch in time -- and with the light fading and days getting shorter, efficiency is an ever higher priority.

The irrigated beds are producing plenty of veggies these days and even the cut flowers have bounced back. We're awash in kale, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers, onions, and leeks. Since we have so many veggies, we're trying a wide range of dishes using as many ingredients stacked on the counter as we can. Last night's stuffed zucchini was particularly tasty.

Sharon made a few jars of dill pickles earlier in the day, which helped make more space in the house cooler (our stand-in for a refrigerator). Now that we're able to irrigate the high tunnel where the cucumbers, ginger, sage, licorice, and lemongrass are planted, we're seeing loads of lush new growth. Lots of blossoms on the vines -- now taller than I can reach -- give us hope for a few more weeks harvesting the cucumbers.

Time to get back out there and see if I can't get some of the equipment working. It's turning out to be quite a year for learning about engine repair. All of this quiet time in the tractor shed has been a great opportunity to contemplate our plans for 2013 -- what we'll repeat, what we'll do differently, and how to further our resilience.

Some happy harvest news

One of the brightest spots among this year's efforts is the condition of the interplanted rows of corn, beans, and squash (aka Three Sisters). We only know of the Kerr Center as others who are experimenting with the three sisters plantings in rows. This will be our third season with 500 row-feet or more. Here's how it looks so far:

At this scale, we were able to lay drip irrigation along the center of each row; the plants are also heavily mulched with hay cut in 2010. We water when we can and most everything seems to be ripening well. We should start harvesting sweet corn for market this week. We picked one ear for a corn-tortilla soup last night. The ear was a little unusual, but tasty all the same.

Since the squash seedlings are transplanted after the corn and beans (both direct sown), they get a little later start than if we were planting them on their own. Even so, we had the first zucchini for lunch and expect to pick plenty more in coming weeks.

Elsewhere on the farm, it's dry, dry, dry. Despite some heavy rains in the area this past weekend, we received just .11 inches. Happily, we've successfully installed an old jet pump in a well that the previous owners dug and now have the capacity to pump a few hundred gallons daily. It's enough to keep things going in the high tunnels, maintain some of the field crops, and make sure the pigs have plenty of drinking and wallow water. Since we don't know a lot about its recharge rate, we're taking things slow and steady, cautious of depleting this season's third irrigation system before the autumn rains.


There have been a good number of tomatoes and cucumbers coming out of the high tunnels and we harvested a decent sweet onion crop. Cabbages and leeks are holding on. The storage onions are sadly stunted and the potatoes, grown without irrigation, have almost completely died back. The yields on these plants is a fraction of our spring projections. We hilled more heavily the two rows of spuds we planted late, and they seem to be holding up. So maybe we'll have some storage potatoes for sale this winter after all.


Here's a picture of the sunflower, dahlia, and calla lily beds that didn't get irrigated -- we've always privileged food over flowers, whether it's watering or weeding.

All of these should be in full bloom this time of year. A heavy mulch, about a half inch of rain over the last two weeks, and one or two days of irrigating have jump-started them from not-dead to something more promising, but actually harvesting blooms for market won't happen any time soon.

Guess we'll just have to drown our sorrows in a big, fat Striped German tomato or two (the one below was 1.5 pounds!).

When we look at pictures of the baked corn fields out west, we feel quite lucky that while our fields are dry, the produce that has survived looks pretty terrific!

When the rain passes by...

Ahhh, a little rain is finally falling on the farm.

While we're not as dry as some areas of the country, parts of upstate New York are now officially designated as drought-stricken, according to the official US drought monitoring website (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/DM_state.htm?NY,NE). The berries are pretty sparse and we've lost a few rows of crops, but mostly we've irrigated the high tunnels and vegetable rows as best as we could. First we used the rainwater capture tanks and when they were depleted (in June), we began pumping water from the creek with a small sump pump. When the upper creek dried up, we found a spring feeding a tiny pool further down the creek bed. That dried up last week and we've been trying to install an old jet pump onto one of the wells out in the field (where we're off-grid, so the project has also alternately included a borrowed gas-fueled generator and a daisy chain of several very long extension cords). Luckily, one of the rain storms didn't completely miss us last week and we got .21 inches of rain. That put some rain in the barrels and moistened at least the top of the ground.

Several of the recent storms have passed frustratingly nearby, but manage to miss our place, leaving many of the planting beds too dry to work in preparation for fall crops. I grabbed a screen capture of the radar this morning as evidence.

See the kind of triangular shaped (beige) field, slightly to the right and below (south) of the highway? That's our field. The green designates a light rain and the yellow a slightly heavier rain... we did get some rain here and there... and for that we're very, very relieved. As we head into August, I'll be working to get the well pump running and this winter we'll be thinking about how much we can invest in a more robust water storage system. Either finding bigger rainwater capture tanks, building a pond, or buying some solar pumps for the wells that the previous owners had dug.

If the effects of climate change are going to increase the likelihood of extreme weather events and more hot dry spells -- interspersed with torrential rains like the 9 inches we got in one week last fall -- we'll have to find ways to make our farms as resilient as possible, in our case within the budget of a small startup.

For now, I'm just happy that the water tanks aren't empty, the pigs have wallow water I didn't have to carry to them, and most of the crops will rebound with today's light rains.

Firing up the new cultivating tractor

Firing up- re: making the final connections to the battery bank and engaging the throttle
New- re: 1949 Grand Haven tractor (for an old ad, look here)

So some of you knew that I've been working on converting an old cultivating tractor to run via an electric motor. Those who didn't, here's the basic info:

Nearly two years ago I found the Grand Haven, near buffalo, listed for $175, with no motor, but otherwise in good condition. I hauled it back to the farm, and then later lugged it over to our local BOCES to have the students build a battery rack for me. When it finally came back, it still needed painting and then installing the motor, controller, throttle, and various electrical components. That's taken me almost a year to get around to, but with the growing season in full swing, we really needed to get the tractor into use.

So yesterday, I made the final connections to four 12 volt batteries, and with a fair amount of trepidation pushed the throttle forward. Anyone familiar with the roar of firing up a farm tractor, particularly when hand cranking an old farmall, would appreciate the quiet click of the contactor engaging and then just the hum of an electric motor as the tractor pulled out of the shed. Since it's basically a souped up motor for a golf cart, you get the idea. Here are a few pics that Sharon took while I tested how it handled running the hilling discs on the leek beds. 

Yes, the steering looks like something off of a windsurfing board. It gives you a clear line of sight to keep an eye on how close the cultivators are coming to your crops. I couldn't imagine doing close cultivation with the tools behind me and virtually impossible to see.

I'll post more about the conversion process later, but for now, here's some other exciting news. Our friend Thor Oeschner has started tilling the rest of our pastures and will be planting rye this year. We have our hands full with the acreage we manage inside our fenced area, so having Thor come with his big tractors and manage the rest of the field is really exciting for us. It's been weedy, rough pasture for a long time. So even with the big tractors, he's got his hands full.

Oh, and I almost forgot, we've started picking the Haricot Vert (fancy green beans) in the high tunnels, and soon we'll have tomatoes and cucumbers!!!

Yeah summer!

Deer inside the fence

Shortly after dawn, while chewing on some very spicy horseradish stems and picking nettles for our Spring cooking green mix, I noticed some deer droppings along the hedgerow between the wild elderberries and the rhubarb patch. Since this spot is within our inner fence, I was a little bummed that the deer had pushed their way through the thick brush where I haven't been able to close up the fencing yet. It was on my winter to-do list, but unspooling 50 feet of five-foot-high woven wire by myself just wasn't happening.

Anyway, as I filled the harvest basket, I worked my way to the edge of our dense blackberry thicket. And as I ripped out invasive garlic mustard plants (edible, but even we don't eat them) and gingerly picked the nettles (thick gloves are critical at the harvest stage, until they lose their sting off the stem), I looked down into two VERY big eyes gazing up at me.

Momma deer had found a good spot -- away from the neighborhood dogs and too close to the constant activity on the farm for the coyotes and foxes. I called Sharon over for a viewing, then we went back to picking flowers and greens for the salad mix with smiles on our faces. Hard to be mad at the doe for finding a well protected spot to rest her newborn -- just as long as she doesn't start wandering into the field toward the greens. Guess I'll be finishing up that fencing project after the fawn finds a new bedding spot.

Pigs on pasture: TGF 2012 edition

Our eight little pigs headed out of the wooden-fenced area for the first time this afternoon. They've become accustomed to the electric netting fence along the inside of one wall of the wooden fence. So today I put up one of our small net fences outside their pen and let them get out to dig some fresh ground. In the ten days that they've been here their eight little snouts have torn up every last piece of grass or edible root in the top few inches of soil. One particularly ambitious snout had been working on a hole about eighteen inches deep when I came to check on them after lunch.

Here's a few pictures of them discovering tall grass, taller than them in some places, and plowing through a section of an old wood chip pile.

I counted three who tested the new fence with their noses and one who was so engrosssed in going after a particular root that she worked her body around till her rump was pressed against the fence. I tried to warn her, but the next pulse caused a little skriek and she jumped away from the fence. I didn't feel too bad when her snout was immediately back into the ground and she just kept digging -- this time heading well away from the fence.

I worked nearby for hour or so, just to make sure all of them have learned to move away from a shock, and not charge ahead as their natural instinct seems to be... An electric net fence couldn't handle even one of these piglets if it were really inclined to charge. The piglet might get tangled for a bit, but eventually it would pull down the fence. Having them learn to stay away -- and back up when they accidently touch it -- is the only way to keep them moving around on the pasture.

In other news, Sharon got most of the peppers, plus much of the licorice and sage, planted in the greenhouse with help from her dad; meanwhile, her mom helped label the hundreds of eggplant, tomato, pepper, cucumber, flower, and herb transplants we'll have for sale at the Trumansburg Community Yard Sale on May 12 and the plant sale at the Ithaca armory on May 19. Perhaps happiest news of all: more than 600 gallons of water stockpiled for our irrigation needs, the mower is fixed, and the tomatoes have already started blossoming!

Good fences make...

I know. Good neighbors. Blah blah blah.

Good fences make sane farmers.

A few hours after the piglets arrived, they took themselves for a little jaunt around the farm. Someone (with a snout) jiggled the gate just enough to pop out the tiny bolt I had hastily slipped into the two large eyebolts that comprise the latch. As I came around a corner, I got to watch the last two piglets leap, then wriggle through a slightly larger gap between the second and third rails to join their fellow escapees heading for the orchard. After a frantic phone call to Sharon (on the farm, when we get a signal...cell phones are as good as walkie-talkies), we gently guided the herd back around to the shed. Luckily, at this age they are still staying close to each other and with a little coaching they casually strolled back into their pen, en masse. We did some quick reinforcing of their wooden pen and substituted a longer bolt for the gate latch and they seem to be staying put. (Knock on wood!)

When the piglets first arrive on the farm, we spend a little extra time with them every day so they can become familiar with us and get used to our coming and going, heralded with a whistle to reduce the startle factor for creatures even more near-sighted than Sharon. Maybe our friend Chuck can outfit them with glasses? We also supply a little treat now and then, which will make moving them from paddock to paddock much easier.

Since the goal is for our pigs to be pasture and woodland raised, our next step is introducing them to the electric netting fence. When pigs get shocked or stung by a bug, their instinct is to barrel forward. So when we're first training them to the electric wire, we put it inside the perimeter of the wooden pen that (theoretically) they've already learned not to go through. Makes training easier on everyone: Being tangled up in an electric fence while getting intermittent shocks isn't fun. Just ask the farmer who got tangled up one evening when putting the chickens to bed...

Speaking of chickens, a few of them have taken to flying over their electric net fencing. We have a few sections of 42" fencing we bought from a friend enclosing a large area around their portable coop and the shelter that houses their feed tray and provides extra shade. Most days they stay in just fine. But right after we move them to a new spot, a few will try to return to their previous location. And then the chicken herding commences. It wouldn't be so bad, but they seem to really like to scratch and hunt for bugs in the freshly mulched-loose soil around plantings like the garlic and baby fruit trees. Finding young garlic cloves half excavated from their rows makes us less happy with the chickens. We love selling their eggs, appreciate the fertilizer they spread for us, and welcome their aid reducing pest pressure, but we had to break out our old 48" fencing to hold them in a smaller area while we planted potatoes yesterday. They couldn't resist coming over to visit us and look for bugs in the freshly turned soil. Happily, the 48" fencing seems to be working for the time being.

As we expand and reconfigure the main growing enclosure this year, electric fencing won't be the only kind we're moving. We'll also move and extend some of the eight-foot-tall woven wire fencing and twelve-foot black locust posts. We're expanding our fruit and vegetable production and with all the deer we have passing through the field, the only way to protect the crops is with a BIG fence. If anyone wants to come out and help string fencing in June, let us know. We always welcome help on large tasks like that.

An update on the high tunnels: All of the tomato plants are in, as well as the ginger, cilantro, and cucumbers. Peppers, eggplants, etc. are almost big enough to transplant as well. We had to open all the sides yesterday for the first time, as the temps were approaching 100° before noon.