(A site overhaul is on the way, but is also slow going.)

July 15, 2010

Recently, I’ve been slowing down a lot every time I drive by one of the three — no four — wait no… let me think a second… SEVEN — different patches where we’re growing tomatoes on the farm. For the last week or so I’ve begun to see little glimmers of red among the leaves. I’ve peeked into the cherry tomatoes a few times and spotted one or two ripe tangerine-colored Sun Sugar tomatoes, which may well be my favorite food in the whole world.

We’ve been picking tomatoes from our hoop house for the last two or three weeks and it’s now pretty loaded, serving as a great sneak preview of what’s to come. Yesterday we even picked about six baskets (in other words, no more than some spare change) of the first heirlooms from the field to sell at our roadside stand. But most of the tomatoes we have are still green and growing.

It’s my first year working at PVF, but everyone who was around last year has repeatedly warned me that I haven’t really experienced this farm until tomato season is it full swing. They tell me we’ll spend entire days doing nothing but picking tomatoes. They tell me we’ll have two or three extra people working at market, just to keep the tomatoes “under control”. They talk of eating four or five tomatoes whole, over the course of an afternoon. Given all the pretext, and the massive quantities of green tomatoes bulging in the fields, I can feel it coming. It feels just like when we felt the pressure drop and saw the rain clouds finally coming in from the west last Friday evening, just before the sky opened up for the first time in about two weeks.

For now, things are pretty calm. We have lots of food, but nothing that’s overwhelming us. Spring crops like kale, peas and spinach are completely over. We are just finishing harvesting one last planting of lettuce. Our first planting of summer squash and cucumbers has passed it’s peak and the second one is just starting to kick in. We are continuing to harvest a steady flow of okra, beets and chard. Eggplants and peppers are starting to pick up in abundance. We’ve also begun digging potatoes and will soon finish harvesting all our alliums (onions, shallots, and garlic).

Almost all our summer crops are in, with the only major exception being our tomatoes.

Even with our full-fledged CSA starting last week, everything seems to be under control. We’ve done a few more tomato stringings this week, and this afternoon three of us actually had time to weed the celery and celeriac. Things are calm enough right now that we’ve got a pretty comfortable routine. We’re just bracing ourselves in anticipation of the tomato bonanza that’s about to begin.

Izzi, Zeke and Becky planting tomatoes

April 30 was a great big benchmark day. Our first round of tomatoes, somewhere around 1400 plants, went in the ground! This will be our first of three tomato plantings that will sustain us through the season. We planted Celebrity, Cherokee Purple, Pink Beauty, Sweet Tangerine, Juliet, Sun Sugar, and Favorita. Not a bad start! We also have a few more varieties in the hoop house–our second attempt at PVF West for really early tomatoes. If all goes well, we may have A FEW tomatoes as early as the fourth of July! Other exciting vegetables in the ground right now include broccoli, peas, beets, chard, lettuce, kale, fennel, onions, garlic, spinach, arugula, peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, and eggplant.

Tomato plants under Reemay

Once the plants are in the ground, we can’t just forget about them until they get big and juicy. Some of the more tender plants, like the tomatoes, summer squash, cukes, peppers, and eggplant, need a cover to keep out the sneaky frosty nights and keep in the warm. We’ve been trying to tuck those crops under a cover of  fabric called Reemay. We place a series of support hoops along the length of the row, typically about 5 plants apart. Once in place, we begin at one end and work to the other end of the row with the Reemay. First we anchor the end of the cloth with dirt. Then a team works to pull the cloth tight over the hoops–along both the length and width of the row–and anchor it in place with more shovels full of dirt or bags filled with dirt, working one hoop at a time. When the team reaches the end of the row, the cloth is cut and the end is anchored with more dirt clods. We’ve also used this cloth in the past to keep the deer from making a snack of our crops, but our exciting new deer fence seems to be doing the trick.

Mulching tomatoes with hay

Other crop tending tasks are mulching with hay and weeding. Mulching is a multi-purpose task. First and foremost, it keeps down the weeds. It also adds organic matter to the soil and keeps the fruit  clean. And, though the greenhouse work has slowed a bit, keeping a good rotation of plants is integral to having a long, productive growing season and enough to sell.

And markets! All of PVF West’s markets are in full swing. Stop by the Saturday morning Leesburg or Arlington Courthouse markets or the White House Market on Thursday afternoon to say hello and sample the fruits of our labor!

On Monday we cut up 700 pounds of “seed” potatoes (they are grown to be used for seed not food). They look just like regular potatoes, but they have been certified to be clean of any diseases.

We are attempting to get one “eye” (growth point) per piece of spud. We have been greening up these potatoes in the greenhouse so that the eyes are short and green - instead of long leggy and white like they get sitting in your cupboard. That way the eye will stay put through the handling of the piece and start growing sooner in the field. The new plant will grow using the energy stored in the potato flesh itself, just like a seed.

Now, out in the field, I have tilled the soil and run a cultivator through that makes a little furrow where we want to plant. There are two furrows per bed (the ground that fits between the tractor tires). We drive a planter across the field and place by hand the potato pieces into the furrow.

Okay, now we have to cover the spuds with soil so they can grow roots and extend that shoot. For this I will put on the hiller. Now the trick is to drive straight and hope the hill happens right over the furrow! It works most of the time, but not always…

Here’s the whole patch waiting to be hilled

Here’s the hiller at work

It was getting dark as I finished, so that’s all the pictures I have! Total time spent on spudland so far =

obtaining seed = 1 hour

cutting seed = 10 hours

field prep = 1.5 hours

planting = 7 hours x 3 people = 21 hours

hilling = 2 hours (including set up)

TOTAL = 35.5 hours and various equipment and diesel to plant 700 lbs of seed into about one half acre of ground

I’ll keep you posted on how this turns out. There are at least two more hillings to go, and maybe one or two biological (spinosad) sprays to put on, some irrigating maybe, and then DIGGING. In other words, we’ve just begun to invest in this crop!

As I journey toward comfortability with my new role as Soil Consultant, I must learn first hand about some basic fertilizer products. The most interesting load to arrive so far was today’s semi-load of Tennessee Brown Rock Phosphate. Upon studying my latest soil tests, it appears that this land could use more Phosphorus. The most sustainable/organic way to get good clean natural phosphorus is to use a mined rock that is high in P. It made sense to order a whole semi load to get the price down, and so I have enough to sell to my friend, customers and neighbors. A semi load is 22 tons. The rock phos is in one ton totes or bags that are on pallets. The truck stopped in Pamplin yesterday to drop 4 tons off at Ali and Lisa’s farm. The rest came here at 8 this Sunday morning.

I was stressing about the load as my device to move the pallets was untested. My trusted mate the skid loader does not have the capacity to handle more that 1750lbs at a time, so these ton totes were out of the question. So, with the help of my friendly neighborhood IH dealer, Browning Equipment, we obtained some pallet forks for my underemployed Kubota M6950. This tractor has not made itself loved on the farm so far: kinda big and clunky, it hasn’t had many jobs. So, we put the loader assembly back on to it, and added the forks.

With much coaching from the wonderfully friendly truck driver from NH, the good old M6950 JUST BARELY lifted those totes off the flat bed. They hydraulics seems just a bit weak, but it worked. I put a flail mower on the back of the tractor to add some more counter weight. (The fluid filled rear tires act as excellent counter weight as well.) My handy husband Richard helped guide me to pick up each pallet - as I couldn’t see the actual fork tips!

All is well, the load is tarped and covered against rain. Now, to get that rock dust into the new compost piles….not sure how that will work yet. I’ll keep you posted.

Blueberry Hill volunteers help clear the snow off the top of one of the hoop houses.

It takes a lot of sliding, pulling and flapping to move the hose over the ribs on top of the plastic.

More volunteers help coax the snow off the very top.

We used bamboo poles with tennis balls attached to the ends, but still, occasionally we poked some holes.  Much easier to patch small holes in the springtime than to rebuild the whole hoop house…

If you subscribe to PVF-West, please read all the new information on this website.  There are changes — we have one share size and one season length now.  Much simpler.  PVF-East continues to maintain its complicated structure, with three share sizes and two seasons.  Read all about it.

We have been resting and getting energized for the next season, going to conferences, reading seed catalogs, reading the regular newspaper.  We don’t mind cold, wet weather in January one bit, since it keeps us inside and guilt-free.  We are looking forward to spring, but we are in no particular hurry.

Here’s a photo from that tremendous snow of late December. We went out over and over to keep moving the snow off the hoophouse so it wouldn’t collapse. That puts a whole new meaning to snowstorm. We also turned the heater on in the big greenhouse for the same reason. All structures survived the weather. I always think that these super cold nights are freezing our insect enemies in the ground. That’s another way to enjoy the winter, especially when I can stay inside and watch.

You can see the trickle irrigation tape running down the center of the bed. Now that we can see what is what, it’s time to bring in the beloved Bartschi root digger. The driver keeps the machine moving very slowly straddling the bed, while two people “birth” the roots behind.

Stephen and Zeke are catching the roots as they become unearthed, making sure they don’t get reburied by soil, or fall into the abyss that the root lifting blade creates. Now the rest of the crew can come in and calmly and quietly collect the sweet potatoes, separating them from the vine.

Unlike sweet potatoes from the store, these roots come in every possible shape and size. Some of the biggest are over 4 pounds! As long as it’s edible, we consider even strange ones food too. So, from about 3000 plants, we harvested 235 green pony baskets of potatoes. That’s about 6000 pounds of goodness.

How’s everyone enjoying their veggies this year?

This is what a happy hen looks like. We keep only hens, no roosters, so we call them the Ladies. I’ve learned from my hip young workers that the slang for vacation is Vakay. Thus the topic of my post. The ladies, all 183 of them, have been out in the field all spring, where the variety of greenery was a bit slim. So, last week we brought them over the a very diverse and interesting area for a little vacation. This spot has weeds of every ilk, wood chips, hay bales and piles of leaves for the ladies to play in. They are so busy all day scratching and pecking that they can barely look up when we drive by. They live in this deluxe hen house at night safe from Mr. Fox. They lay eggs in the morning in the nest boxes, then party the rest of the daylight hours outside.

The fencing is just to keep them from eating crops or getting out on the road. They have lots of room to roam and express themselves. For me this is the most important part of being a chicken keeper - keeping them happy. The ladies also have access to real DIRT for giving themselves dust baths.  This dust is important for keeping parasites and lice off their skin and feathers. Yet another reason to support free range chicken products! Enjoy.

We have a fairly loose plan of where different crops will go as the season begins. Then, the actual on-the-ground factors come into play. “Where is it dry enough to plant?” becomes the key question. Remember that any given field needs to go through a series of processes to go from covered with plants (winter cover crop of rye) to ready to plant a crop. Each of these steps requires dryish soil conditions.

Luckily, this season I have such excellent teammates that we have managed pretty well to continue to plant and sow in the given 10 minutes of perfect soil moisture - quick quick before the next rain comes. It also requires all machines work properly during that exact window of opportunity. So far, no major set backs, just things being on the late side.

Last Friday we enjoyed a full 5 hour pre-market harvest in the pouring rain. This is when you really find out how effective that rain gear actually is. As I told my folks, I’m pretty chipper with mudboots, a felt hat with a brim and rain pants. I get grumpy when the moisture reaches my core (chest and underarms) and then it’s pretty lousy out there. In order to not get stuck in the mud, we picked the load into a trailer (no need to protect from the hot sun). What an beautiful load.

And then after we pick, we need to wash all these greens and pack them up for market. That was two people for 2+ hours! The rest of us picked peas in the mud. My core got wet just in time to call it a day. We were a gorgeous bunch of farmers.

One of the hardest concepts for consumers is the idea of patience. We have now been trained that our every whim can be satisfied within seconds (just ask wikipedia the definition…) or with in minutes (just drive to the store and get it) or within hours (order on-line, get it next day). But in farming you just have to wait. Seeds take as long as they please to germinate, plants take weeks to become mature enough to eat or at least to become grown-up enough to start mating (making flowers and then fruits!).

Let’s just track the lettuce that will be your dinner this week. The seeds were started in the greenhouse in early March. They become cute little plants in the greenhouse. They sat outside for a week, got ready for the “real” world of full sun, heat and cold. We transplanted them into the field on April 27.

Today, 5 weeks later they are big enough to become dinner. Lettuce is pretty much one of the fastest crops: only 8 weeks from start to finish. Other crops like tomatoes and eggplant are at least 4-5 MONTHS from seed to first fruit. And then our fall favorite, celeriac, is the grand champ of patience, 6+ months of growing time.

So, please understand, it takes time to grow food!  We do employ a few tricks of the trade, but they can only buy you days, not weeks or months.

Now, try to imagine planting fruit trees:  3+ years from planting to the very first harvest! Now, that’s a whole other take on patience. Thanks for your anxious questions about when something is ready. We’re having a nice long spring trying to make your wait as short as possible.