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

This year for Earth Day (a Day I don’t usually…observe), I gave a talk on small-scale organic farming for an audience of three in the airy designer meeting room in the Upstairs at Loblaws zone. Here’s the view from…upstairs (this is the same super-sized supermarket mentioned from another recent trip to town). It was fun! To be more accurate, though, this wasn’t actually an Earth Day event, it just happened to fall on it, as part of an on-going series of talks and cooking classes and stuff that happen all the time, an effort of the giant Loblaws chain to be more community-oriented, engaging, one-stop. A veggie customer at the farmers’ market had suggested me for one of the slots way back last September or so, they called me up, I said OK, and a few months later… Yesterday, the coordinator called to say there were only six sign-ups (it’s free registration), so I could cancel if I wanted. Apparently, at least at this location, attendance can be low, with as little as one or two sign-ups for some, and 15 is a crowd. Since I had no expectations in the first place, I made my I-don’t-drive transportation arrangements and there I was. It was actually really interesting, talking to people who weren’t as predisposed to organic food and…greenness as most everyone who tends to shop at the stand at the farmers’ market or sign-up for CSA. I’d decided no presentation, just questions. It only took a minute to get things rolling: I asked everyone (all three), why they’d come and what they were expecting (”to learn more about organic food…”) and took it from there. It was a non-stop extended conversation, lasted 90 minutes without a pause or signs that any of us had had enough, until I took a natural exit point and casually wrapped it up. It was kind of a live, concentrated version of this blog: explaining what I do, giving what larger contextual background on agriculture I have—all directed by the flow of questions. The cool part was seeing another first-hand example of how people don’t seem so much PROGRAMMED to be driven consumers, as not given any CONVENIENT alternatives, like cheerful, enthusiastic, interesting-sounding, first-hand info, delivered to them live and direct (I had briefly considered bringing in a bag of partially composted cow manure to provide a bit of…flavor)! At one point, talking about how tiny farming and local food seem quite workable, and also ENJOYABLE for everyone involved, all people have to do is try, I said it’s like the audience in a movie theater: everybody watches the screen, it’s the easiest thing to turn around and look elsewhere, but even when the movie’s terrible, no-one bothers to look away because there’s usually nothing better to see… Does that mean that good tiny farming is at least one part entertainment?! I guess so… ;)

The end-of-March scene in the greenhouse is a lot different than last year, when the growing area was neatly filled with early lettuce. This time around, the early effort has turned into a much more spotty affair. The lettuce started WAY early at the end of January, and held back because of extreme cold earlier in the month, grew and REALLY stretched in the trays, and I only put about half in the ground, just to see what’ll happen. Filling in, there are a couple of beds of direct-seeded, all-lettuce mesclun. The idea of making it to the first market day (this year, it’s Saturday, May 3) is fine if everything else is humming along, but given the slow-leaving winter this year, chances are I’d rather be in the field or doing some other outdoor stuff on the farm at that point than spending a good part of a May day at market with a small quantity of greens, just for show. With this year’s early lettuce and the weather, I’m no longer in such a rush!

Took a trip to town today. During the winter, I get in once every 3-4 weeks, so it’s a bit of a novelty. This time in, we checked out an agricultural show, 28th year, filling the new fairground’s 45,000 sq ft of indoor exhibition space. It was quite busy, geared to the bigger conventional farmer, with aisles and aisles of heavy equipment, commercial seed, bank financing,… Outside, some even bigger machinery, like the combine harvester in the pic—it’s set up for soy—that could run over my entire garden in about 10 minutes (although the wraparound view from that air conditioned cab looks mighty inviting for a hot summer’s day in the field!). Inside, it’s mostly men in and around their 60s, with some wives scattered in. These guys were here with their fathers three decades ago, discussing new gear as family farms passed from fathers to sons. Now, the sons are the old farmers, and the next generation is nowhere in sight. Quite odd… Oh well, on to the super-sized supermarket, a Loblaws’ Wal-Mart killer, a huge deal with a produce court half the size of my market garden (not literally, but it’s pretty big), bakery, meat and fish counters, endless aisles, automated mini-bank, wine shop, tobacconist, full pharmacy, a whole section of clothing and housewares, and acres of convenient parking outside. It’s the old General Store, scaled up! I seldom do the grocery shopping for the farm, so when I do hit a supermarket, I head straight for the veggies first (I still kinda laugh at myself doing a “professional” veggie appraisal, this is the LAST situation I would’ve imagined myself in not too long ago). I bought some groceries: a bit of “fresh meat”, “fresh-baked bread”, a tub of mixed baby salad greens (and mine so soon to come!)… Only $200! Then, a quick fast food stop at A&W, not a guilty pleasure, or even a pleasure, just an old habit, a town routine… And there it was, a trip through the OTHER local food chain, 12 miles (19km) and a whole world away from the tiny farm. It’s a little surreal. Back to the seedlings… ;)

Around two weeks after showing up, the first set of curly parsley is putting out its first true leaves. This is Krausa Market, a “triple curled” leaf variety. Aka moss-curled. There’s also double-curled leaves, like the Forest Green and Green Pearl, also in the trays. Single-curled? Don’t think so… I still have a little time to leisurely examine seedlings and wonder about such things. I started thinking about the farmers’ market and all the SPEAKING that involves (on a busy Saturday, it can be practically 6 hours of non-stop veggie talk), and the gazillion kinda BASIC details there are to know about every single crop. What are the main types of leaf lettuce? Are muskmelons the same as cantaloupes? What’s the difference between slicing and pickling cukes, or American, European and Middle Eastern cukes? How do you pronounce Chioggia beets? Stupice tomatoes? How do you cook ____? The possibilities are endless! Of course, I don’t need to know any of these things. I don’t even have to know the names of the varieties. Veggies grow regardless. When questions come up, I could shrug and say, “Dunno” or “Good question!” Still, I’d rather have some answers, pass on whatever I’ve picked up along the way. Right now, I’m still wondering about triple- and double-curled parsley, but that’ll pass… :)

This morning, there was a phone company tech at work on the junction box at the top of the drive into the farm. I’m not sure what the guy and his logo-truck were up to exactly, but the picture made me think about tiny farming and the Web. Right now, Bell and an independent telecom company are in an extravagant, introductory-offer battle for subscribers to the newly available DSL broadband service. High speed Internet access has been in this area for years, in towns and even villages, but dial-up was the only easy, painfully slow connection for most farms (we’re on the edge of a village, so we’ve had cable modem all the while). Now, word-of-mouth is that people are signing up for DSL. This could be interesting because, out of 30+ vendors at the farmers’ market, I think this farm is still the only one with a web site. An odd situation, considering that online is really the only practical place for small producers to let people know what they’re up to. With the novelty of DSL, maybe more farms will finally get around to getting online, which is probably a good thing, because it takes more than a few people to make a local market thrive. Just as Tiny Farm Blog has rapidly become embedded in my farming life (BTW, TFB isn’t the farm site), maybe this technology, where you sit in front of a screen and TYPE, is what it takes these days to hook people up in the communities where they actually live… I suspect, in some ways, to at least some people, you’re not all that REAL if you’re not represented online… Even if you’re practically next door! A little weird, but whatever works!

Every year so far, there’ve been two or three major projects that I’m sure just HAVE to be done. They’re usually EXPENSIVE (at least, expensive in the world of tiny farm finances!), which means, they take some thought. We’ve had the seedling greenhouse, excavating the pond, the Milkhouse Extension, the tiny tractor, the first full-time field hand (Conall!), and a few other steps… So far, so good. For the coming year, I have in mind a few more…important upgrades. I was reminded of one of them in the drive shed today, where the stakes used for my semi-effective semi-sprawl method of tomato support are stored, along with some of the couple hundred (largely useless) home-style tomato cages. For a while, I was dreaming of moving up to the basket-weave method—lots of twine and…weaving—although I have a hard time picturing all of that suckering getting done. What I REALLY want is BIG CAGES made from concrete reinforcing mesh…but it seems so expensive. Rough pricing: about $7 a cage times 500 cages, plus a fair bit of labor setting them up and taking them down. I know the method works well, but will it work well HERE, this year? Is it worth the money? For the same cash, I could almost build a second, production-size greenhouse. Or put more into drip irrigation. Or build a cooler for better short-term storage. Come to think of it, does growing dozens of varieties of tomato really make sense, couldn’t I just sprawl two or three big, round red varieties that would be easiest to sell…? In fact, I could grow a lot more of a lot less, cut out many varieties and entire crops, concentrate on the trendy best sellers, and get on the waiting list for an upscale farmers’ market in the big city. Top dollar! Maybe try for a bank loan for a bigger tractor (hey, there’s more acres in the garden field!) and a refrigerated truck?! If this is a (tiny) farm business, that seems to make sense: GROW! Yet somehow I’m heading in the OTHER DIRECTION. Stopping the city CSA to go local. Trying more crops and varieties every year and figuring out ways to buy stuff for them, like big tomato cages… It seems so…contrary. Which, in tiny farming, is something I guess you gotta like!!

The mildly ambitious veggie outpost experiment of earlier this year has returned in pieces. The stand came back today, courtesy of Conall, who took it apart and dropped it off (you can’t help but notice, he’s pretty thorough when it comes to taking things apart…). In any case, a nearby coffee shop wanted to sell a small, choice selection of organic veggies. They were buying upfront at normal prices and marking them up a bit. Our part was to harvest once or twice a week, and deliver (only 12 miles)—building the stand was basically a last-minute favor… Why it didn’t work came down to that simple consideration that supermarkets are built on: SHELF LIFE. The coffee shop couldn’t get a handle on how to keep the veggies perky and fresh. I heard about an attempt to revive baby eggplants, shriveling after a day in the sun, by misting them like salad greens. Yikes. I would’ve helped if I could’ve, but I have zero experience with storage in a store-type situation. I’d kinda assumed that, since they prepare and sell food, they were equipped to figure it out. Not so. At the farmers’ market, I start in the cool early morning, it’s only six hours, and the veggies move quickly, so it’s all fine, without refrigeration or cooling, even on the hottest summer days. But keeping displayed veggies perfectly presentable for even a couple of days is a whole other specialized thing. Anyhow, after six weeks or so, we stopped. There was no ill will or anything, and we continued to supply mesclun for their salads for the rest of the season. The bottom line is a lesson I learned long ago, but failed to act on in this case: when you’re involved in something NEW, if there’s no plan that clearly deals with the DETAILS, chances are there will be…TROUBLE. I look forward to tackling this particular puzzle—how to handle daily fresh veggie sales—next year, when we FINALLY open the farm stand. ;)

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! :)

A great last day at the market! We were packing in the rain at 6am, drove in through a drizzle, and by the time I was set up just after 7, the rain had stopped! Despite the dreariness, it was quite warm. So far, so good. I didn’t particularly expect a big turnout, and was happy to find two and three people waiting at a time for a good deal of the peak fall hours, from 9:30-11:30. In the pic, it’s around 8:30, few people around as the weather sorts itself out, time to drink coffee and wander around a bit to chat. Soon, a steady stream of mostly regulars. It’s hard to explain the pleasure I get from this part of the people equation, so at this point I won’t even try. Growing food for people and delivering it directly is simply…great! The stand set-up didn’t change over the season as intended, it’s pretty barebones as it’s been from the start. I’m already renewing plans for a new and improved version for next year. On we go!