Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

The days have warmed up now, mostly around 60-70°F (15-20°C), but the nights are unusually cold, dropping sometimes to freezing or a few degrees above. Frost burning off in the early morning sun is pretty when you don’t have anything in the field for it to kill, which I don’t… Let’s see: broccoli, cauliflower, radish, carrots, spinach, chard, beets, peas, parsnips, all-lettuce mesclun, tatsoi-mustard-arugula-bok choi mix… Nope, no worries there. (Funny thing, while pea plants are hardy, I believe the pods aren’t… I’ve never seen that in action, fall peas haven’t worked for me so far, and I don’t think there’ll be frost 40 days from now when this year’s first peas come in…). Meanwhile in the unheated greenhouse, although I’ve only fired up the kerosene heater once, just to be safe, row cover goes on all the tender stuff (toms, eggplant, peppers, and now, cukes, pumpkin, melons and squash, just about to poke up): on in the evening, off in the morning, better safe than toasted!

No real farming action today, but here’s an alternate entry from 2-Oct-2007—never let a perfectly serviceable post go to waste!: On my way to seed saving, I tend to let things go to seed! Here, the secondary shoots in a bed of Early Dividend broccoli have exploded, the tiny green beads turning into a gently rolling sea of miniature flowers on long thin stems. Unfortunately, the eventual seed from this hybrid variety wouldn’t be reliable…but it’s a step in the right direction! Also going to seed around the field: lettuce, radish, cauliflower… There’s some cleaning up to do. :)

One broccoli (Early Dividend), one cauliflower (Early Dawn), but what’s that Violet Queen in the middle? The EDs are standbys, the VQ is new. It looks like broccoli, cooks like broccoli, tastes like broccoli, but it’s in the seed catalog as a purple cauliflower?! The VQ were transplanted really late, and I didn’t actually expect to see a harvest from them. But they showed up recently, and a couple of days ago, Bert, who buys lots of veggies here, saw them and decided to try a couple. “They’re broccoli,” he said. “Um, I believe they’re…cauliflower,” I said, while for the first time looking closely at ‘em. “Don’t argue with him, Bert, Mike knows what he’s talking about,” said Helen, his wife. Last night, we steamed some for dinner. BROCCOLI. Today, I harvested samples for a formal close look, but really, there’s broccoli and there’s cauliflower, it’s not hard. Broccoli. Next, a call to the seed house, where extremely knowledgeable head man Bill assures me that it is…CAULIFLOWER. It beads up more than some varieties, he says. So, I’m confused. It may not sound like a big deal, and it’s not at this time of year, but it does point up yet another aspect of market gardening: knowing what you grow. LOTS of talking about veggies goes on every market day, and I NEVER say things just for the sake of it. I name varieties, explain when I’m very familiar with a particular veggie, or when it’s new to me…honest conversation, although it’s “sales talk” as well. And people trust you to…know stuff. Anyhow, I just looked up Violet Queen online, and it’s indeed, apparently, cauliflower. I’d swear it’s broccoli, and I’m pretty positive that you would, too! Maybe I’ll grow more next year, for when I feel like sounding like a lunatic! :)

After the long holiday weekend, I did a quick new harvest for the handful of usually-on-Monday CSA shares. We have three CSA pick-up days, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and harvest for the last two can be mostly combined on Sundays. With kinda cool and cloudy weather today, veggies could be left outside on the table for a few minutes—in full summer heat, they’d quickly start to get toasted. I’ve tried to reduce PLASTIC to a minimum (tiny farming has somehow made me averse to much packaging, especially with plastic). The tomatoes need to be kept together, they’d be crushed if let loose in the final shopping bag. And the greens, well, no other easy solution (I’m looking into reusable cotton salad bags that could be put in the fridge, another future project; I’ve moved to paper bags this year for potatoes). As for the shopping bags, I’m considering reusable tote bags, two per shareholder, that could be swapped empty-for-full each week, but the extra BAG MANAGEMENT I know would be fairly, let’s see…time-consuming. Details…

On this bright and shiny Sunday, we finally released the last of the season’s brassicas from under row cover. The flea beetles have almost vanished and the plants need all the light they can get if they’re gonna make it to harvest. It’s still a bit of a long shot for the broccoli and cauliflower, but the early and prolific Red Russian kale should do fine. For what it’s worth, the long range forecast calls for a warm September—I’m still starting to slip into frost watch mode!

Newly released from row cover, five new beds of brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale) get ready for Fall. Beyond, tomatoes (and beyond that, the farm across the road, they gather honey). In front, a vacated section that contained the season’s first planting of peas seeded way back in April, and is now awaiting a mid-August green manure cover crop of…oats! And still, no rain…

The harvest is still small: snap peas, broccoli, mesclun, the last of the garlic scapes and spring spinach, beet greens, the first few, baby beets. With 50 CSA shares to fill this year (around double from last year), plus the farmers’ market, a couple of local outlets, and the farm stand, I’ve really upped the ante. Even with PEOPLE at work in the field, I’m concerned about quantity. Where bad germination and losses from pest damage here and there have been no real worry so far, now every little setback seems…dire. Probably, most of this is in my head, endless millions of small farmers have done it before and are doing it now. Still, staying tiny and diversified at my particular scale seems tougher than before. It’ll work out, and for now, any uncertainty keeps the adrenaline on a steady slow drip! :)

Conall, the all-new organic grower, is back after being unexpectedly called away two and a half weeks ago. That happened after we’d worked together for seven days straight. For me, making the transition from essentially solo tiny farming to having regular help was that quick. Having everything bouncing around in your head, with little need to explain it, is a luxury and efficiency of sorts. On the other hand, if you have people who you can sync with, sharing the gardening in an ongoing way seems like even more fun. And you can grow MORE STUFF with LESS WEEDS!! :) It’s a really welcome return. FREAK FROST: Three nights ago, according to the min/max thermometer, the temperature bottomed at a little below 0°C (and there was no reported cold snap or hard killing frost), but some of the brassicas (Brussels sprouts—see the whitish spots on the leaves on the right of the pic, bok choi, cauliflower) and two out of three varieties of peas got fairly toasted, burnt by the cold. Many of the pea leaves were totally killed off. I only noticed the extent of the brassica damage when we took off the row cover today. This is something I’ve never seen, and Bob, with 40 years of farming, hadn’t either, especially with peas, which can grow in the snow. The additionally odd thing is that some varieties (one of the peas, broccoli) weren’t affected at all. These are all plants that can normally take an overnight freezing and bounce back no problem—temperatures around zero should be nothing. Weird. My random theory: a very rapid temperature drop, many degrees in a few minutes, that didn’t give the plants enough time to adjust…? Anyhow, everything’s recovering just fine! The crazy weather effects continue…

Conall, the all-new organic grower, waters in transplants. Today we set out three more beds of brassicas—so far, there’s cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choi—prepared beds for a dozen more crops, set up the irrigation pump for the season, cleaned out the winter storage area of the barn, turned the composting windrow….and more. Still, it’s the rush-to-get-it-in-get-it-done time of the year, and the days never seem long enough (although, they’re getting longer!!).