Hey Everyone:
The field is draining very quickly. I anticipate that some beds may be ready to
work in about two weeks. This is a great
head start for me, last year the snowpack lingered for some time.
As mentioned in a previous post update, last fall there
was some tractor work done in the east half of the field to prepare for this
year’s pigs. This spring I noticed that
the field was not draining in the way it has done in previous years, and
assumed that the tractor work has altered a natural drain.
Now that the snowpack is clearing, I can see visually where the drainage is blocked – the land is not quite as level as it
used to be.
This can be fixed once the field is dry enough to support the tractor.
Of particular concern is the way the snow melt pooled in the same area where the garlic is planted. Prolonged exposure to moisture will cause the garlic cloves to rot.
The water that had pooled around the garlic has now receded significantly. Presumably the ground is thawing enough to absorb more water, and allowing the sub-surface flow to drain toward the fens south of the farm.
A prolonged period of rain might still saturate the
garlic beds more than it can tolerate.
For those of you who have been part of Whitsend farm
for previous seasons, stories such as this will be quite familiar. We have had several close calls, dodged
bullets, potential failures, and gloomy predictions.
So much can go wrong very quickly. Many times, I have thought ‘Oh well, what do
I do now?’ Or ‘There’s nothing I can do
(about something) now.’ Worrying,
panicking, etc. won’t help. All that can
be done is make notes for next time and carry on.
At Elmtree Farm, Tom always used to stress the
importance of being upfront with the customers about potential problems. He felt that it was essential to inform the
customers about both positive and negative developments, partly to reduce the
impact of bad news.
More importantly, Tom suggests that withholding the
difficult aspects of farming from customers is a disfavor to both the customers
and for the farming community. One
should not portray an unrealistic picture of the craft of farming, for it
creates an unrealistic expectation.
The model of craft farming, or small scale mixed
vegetable farming, that I practice is suited to mitigating a lot of risks. Being small allows me to react quickly to
challenges that arise from time to time.
(In this case, fifteen minutes of tractor work will likely resolve the
drainage issue). Growing a very wide
variety of crops allows me to make a quick substitute when one crop appears on
the verge of failure, with only a loss of a small portion of the overall
harvest.
In this case, it is still too early to tell what the
outcome will be. I’ll hope for the best,
jot down some notes in my journal, and carry on.
I checked the condition of the soil under the straw
mulch and found it was still frozen. The
optimistic interpretation of this is that the cloves were not subjected to a
large quantity of moisture.
As a precaution, I started some short season leeks in
the nursery, in the event that we wind up with a poor garlic harvest. At least we would still get our dose of
allium (onion) family chemistry.
Speaking of the the nursery, the beets have sprouted. Most root crops are directly seeded when the
spring weather is settled. For one, the
act of transplanting often disturbs the tap root and grows an oddly shaped crop, this happened the first time I did daikon radishes. Beets,
however, are one crop that can tolerate transplanting. In the past I have usually direct seeded our beets. The results have been inconsistent. I’ve seeded too thinly (not all germinate, too few for everyone); and I’ve seeded too thickly (and then needed to thin a lot of them out – wasted seeds). On at least two occasions, I’ve thinned the beets out too late and the plants did not grow to their expected size.
I wanted to make certain that I got it right this time, at least for the first beet harvest.
There is another reason I am starting the early beets in the nursery, but ‘succession cropping’ is another topic altogether, I will revisit that in another post.
The finished product. Striped chioggia beets (visually attractive, quick growing, leaves , suitable as a spinach/chard substitut), and detroit dark reds (good flavour, tend to be larger than chioggia). Look carefully, and you can see a couple of watermelon radish and some leftover turnip, these are on the verge of being roasted and enjoyed...
Here is the thyme starting. Another plant with tiny primary leaves.
Below is the latest (as of Sunday April the 5th) photo of the celery and celeriac. A very slow grower!
Still a couple of little details to see to in the period remaining before the field is ready to work, I'll be a very difficult person to pin down for the next week or so.
One last note, I heard the other day that California’s drought is now considered a ‘Twelve hundred year drought’. Do some homework and find out what percentage of North America’s grocery vegetables are grown in the golden state.
Bob