I began writing an essay this morning about farmers markets, and transparency, and blah, blah, blah, zzzzzzzzzz. Too many words and not enough time to get rid of them. As Mark Twain once said, “If I had had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” So I’ve put that bit of logorrhea on the back burner and instead will regale you with some farm news.
The first thing I’d like to report is that our former farming partners Larry and Michelle Lesher are doing phenomenally well, running a small farm of their own in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and blogging about it here. We could not be more excited for them.
The biggest piece of news this week is that our CSA, after much weather related stress and worry, has finally started. Somehow, we have 115 members this year – only 15% more than the absolute, no-way-we-can-do-that-many-people limit we set for ourselves. Sometimes, it’s really hard to say no to people. Our first week went well, considering the dearth of vegetables we have right now. In the box last week, we put two heads of romaine lettuce, a half-pound bag of salad mix, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of spinach, and 3/4 lbs of the most amazingly delicious spring leeks ever. The improving forecast is alleviating, somewhat, the ongoing pressure of ensuring 115 bunches and heads of so many items each week.
Beyond the CSA, we finally have some good weed killing weather, and the beds badly need it. Onions are the crop that’s always the most difficult to keep weed-free. They are transplanted earlier than anything else, and they spend the first few months of their life growing very slowly during a time of the year when weeds grow quickly and are hard to kill, because the soil is so damp. This Saturday, after the harvest was finished, I decided to try using our little walk-behind tractor to till the walk aisles of our onion beds. Ordinarily, walk paths are less important to keep weed free, but the grasses and buttercup had so long to get established they had begun sending runners in amongst the onions.
So there I was, tilling away when the tiller suddenly leapt from the earth, pulling me with, all superman-like horizontal with the earth, it right into the onions I was trying to save. Intern Paul estimated that the wheels of the BCS tractor and I were 3 feet off the ground. I came away with a pretty bad cut/bruise on my leg when I crashed into the BCS and I killed a few dozen onion seedlings, but we’re otherwise ok. Thanks for asking. How did this happen? Well, the tines of the tiller spin 16 times faster than the wheels… when the force the tines generate overpower the friction of the tractor weight on the ground, it can lurch forward unexpectedly. In this case, it did so in a very dramatic fashion. Yikes.
In more upbeat, less dangerous news, we have begun spraying microbes on our plants…. seriously. Ok, so one of the most misguided questions we get at the farmers market is, “do you spray?” I’ve always answered, no, because we’ve never sprayed anything on anything. But we have also always intended to start foliar feeding our plants. This year, I can now use the Socratic method to answer the spray question, “spray what?” After reading the book Teaming with Microbes (pun!) we were inspired to buy a compost tea brewer and start raising our own little beneficial biota. So Saturday evening, after brewing the tea for 24 hours, we diluted it with water and started spraying it on our little plants. The potatoes got it first, as they are about to flower and that’s the best time to feed potatoes. The tomatoes got it next, and the brassicas are next after that.
And that’s all the farm news to report.
115!? Amazing. A big “congratulations!” (and a little “good luck!”) Sorry you got BCS’d.