Welcome to those of you who are checking out this site and our
farm for the first time.
There is a lot of information about the farm on these pages. If you have any questions, feel free to
contact me, the number and email addresses are at the bottom of the page.
We are accepting renewals and new customers this season, our as
our field, farm, and experience continues to expand. Space is finite, so contact me soon.
I’ve been asking the following question of a few of my customers,
as I thought I was short some space.
After working out some details (the calculator gets a lot of work at
this time of year), I have found enough room for a decent amount of all of
these crops.
All the same, if you are taking part in this year’s eating season,
let me know how you grade these crops in comparison. I was a bit surprised by the answers I received
so far; in particular, cucumber has proven to be more popular than I expected. As a result, I will be planting more of this fruit next year, and increasing the quantity of onions.
To accommodate the extra cucumbers, I'll be planting fewer squashes. That's fine, as I underestimated the yield of the winter squash last year, and we had a considerable surplus.
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Zucchini
Cucumbers
Onions
Eggplant
Sweet Peppers
Lebanese zucchini (also known as Kusa),
Mid winter is a busy time
of year here at Whitsend. Out at the
barn, work continues on the all-weather nursery. The framework and roof components are complete. I am currently working on the door frames;
two of four of these are finished.
 |
| Fox tracks |
Outside, the field is revealing all of the nighttime activity that
goes on behind my back…mouse, cat, and fox tracks in the snow, for the most
part. Our household Kale is standing up
well to the arrival of the cold.
Other than a bit snow blown in through a few cracks, the shed is
keeping the field equipment dry.
Most of the farm work is taking place at the house.
There have been a few changes to the Canadian organic standard; I’ve
been going through the documents to see how these changes impact Whitsend’s
operating procedures. Little to not at
all, so far.
I’ve looked over my options for reusable canvas bags for produce delivery. Next step is to start asking for quotes. I expect more details soon…
Then there is the annual updating of all the promotional material. Clarifying a couple of poorly drafted paragraphs,
changing dates, etc.
Pulling together the receipts and related papers for the accountant,
and adding up (or subtracting) how much money I made last year.
All this is starting to feel routine, so I must be ready to take
on something new…
The hardest task is always checking and adjusting the production
plan for next season. So many known
unknowns. Was the record yield of
potatoes two years in a row a fluke, or a new normal? Clues may be gleaned from looking at yields
for other crops that grow in a similar part of the rotation pattern, comparing weather records, and scanning journal entries - even comparing where in the field these crops were from one year to the next is revealing.
One challenge that I have been experimenting with over the past
few years is how to accommodate customer requests. This sounds easy enough, when I first started
farming; I thought it was a no brainer, why don’t other farms make their
production more flexible for customer choice?
One problem is managing all of the information. This was easy when I started out with ten
customers. As we grow, keeping a binder
full of individual requests at the prep station and checking it while
harvesting and packaging interrupts workflow a lot.
The paper records tend not to last very long; it is inevitably smudged
with soil or get wet.
Even more challenging is trying to fit requests into the
production plan. As discussed in
previous posts, the production plan is based upon the crop rotation pattern,
which is designed to develop soil fertility and maintain crop health. I’ve also set up my plan to improve workflow
in the field.
An easy example: A customer requests no tomatoes, but wants extra
turnips. Both crops are very dissimilar,
and require a different place in the rotation pattern. So planting one less tomato plant and planting
the extra turnips in the same space will not work.
If I were to plant the extra turnips elsewhere, then I have to consider
several criteria.
Turnips are a short to mid season crop, they require about fifty
days to mature, plus two to three weeks prior to planting for bed
preparation. So they can only fit in a
bed that will have another short or mid season crop before or after.
Turnips are a root crop, so will have to go into beds that are in
their “root” year in the rotation pattern.
If I place them in a leaf bed, they will have small roots and lots of
foliage; if I place them in a legume bed, they will be following last year’s
root crops and will not have sufficient nutrients. As well, the following leaf crops will not
have enough nitrogen fixed by the legumes that the turnips replaced.
So the extra turnips are going into a root bed. This means they will have to displace carrots,
celeriac, parsnips, rutabaga, daikons, radishes or beets.
Celeriac, parsnips, and rutabaga are long season crops; if I were
to plant the turnips in one of these beds, I would have to manage an extra few
feet of bed differently for much of the season, if the turnips were planted in
mid summer for a fall harvest, the seedlings would be shaded by their older neighbors.
Planting turnip with radish, a short season crop, creates the opposite
problem.
Beets growing time is similar to turnip (fifty to sixty days), so
there is an option there. I just have to
ensure that when the same bed was producing leaves, the leaf crop was not a close
relative of turnip, such as arugula or kale.
So I have been thinking along these lines and looking at how to
tweak my production plan to allow for some pre-season requests. I even had a chance last season to do a bit
of experimenting. Here is what I have
come up with so far:
Parsnip OR
extra carrots; Celeriac OR extra carrots
Not perfect matches. The extra
carrots in the celeriac and parsnip beds will be out much earlier than the other
crops. It’s possible that some extra
radish could go there, but the radish must follow the carrots (cabbage family
crops such as radish have a detrimental effect upon most crops that follow
them, including carrots). So someone
requesting extra carrots would have to get their extra carrots earlier in the
season, probably on top of another carrot delivery.
Rutabaga
or Daikon Radish
The Rutabaga/Daikon option has similar issues. Moreover, our variety of daikons grow better
in the fall (at least that’s what the seed house claims), so the daikons would
have to be planted under some large rutabaga pants. The daikons would then be growing in soil
that has been hosting flea beatles all season, which are attracted to cabbage
family crops. The mature rutabaga simply
outgrows the flea beatle damage, but a fresh daikon sprout would be quickly eaten. If I can grow daikons in the spring, when the rutabaga is planted, then I can place the two together, but the daikon will leave behind some empty bed for the next sixty days, when the rutabaga is harvested. Inter planting might be a possibility, though this may interrupt the rutabaga's root system.
Turnip OR
Watermelon Radish OR Osterguss Radish
I tried this twice last year; the last time around I also added
the Osterguss radish. So I am happy to accommodate
anyone who wants less turnip in return for another cabbage root crop. All crops have almost the same dates, same
nutrient requirements, and are closely related.
Why can’t everything else work out this elegantly? (So much for the seed house who suggested
that Watermelon radish is a fall crop…)
Brussels
Sprout OR extra broccoli shoots
Exchanging brussels sprouts (long season cabbage) with broccoli
shoots (short season cabbage) creates similar problems. However, the broccoli shoots like the early
spring weather, so could be inter planted with the brussels sprouts and
harvested as the brussels sprouts started to grow large enough to shade out the
broccoli shoots. This means someone
requesting broccoli instead of b-sprouts will have a smaller delivery later in
the season and a little more in their delivery earlier.
Fennel OR
extra celery
Fennel and celery are interchangeable in my field, so this one
works out; my only difficulty is getting my head around someone else’s distaste
for fennel…
Lettuce OR
celtuce
With lettuce or celtuce, the dates work out ok, nutrients mostly similar,
but celtuce requires five times the space to grow a serving. So I can’t do a one for one exchange.
Arugula
and mustard greens OR pac choi, tatsoi, and vitamin green
Very easy to manage, both types of crops have similar growing dates;
they are closely related and require the same nutrients. The choi’s
requires a little more space than the arugula, so I either have to squeeze them
together (this makes them ‘leggy’ as they all try to grow tall while competing
with each other for sunlight), or accept a few less plants.
There are some encouraging ideas here, worth considering after
some good nights rest.
Talk to you soon,
Bob
PS: I once overheard the scornful remark that farming is a career
with no brainwork. That memory makes me
laugh as I re-read this post.
Instead of a post, I have spent time working on the 'Introducing the 2016 crops' page. You can learn more about the crops, types, and varieties of most of this year's produce. That page will continue to be updated through the winter, so stay tuned.
