Gull Harbor Farm

July?

2011-07-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

Oh, darling CSA-er's... I've left you stranded with nary a recipe for far too long. My deepest apologies, things, as you may have guessed, have been a little out of hand around here lately. I hope you are finding ways to get all these greens into your bodies. They are so healthy and versatile.

One way I found kale and chard to be delicous is baked right on top of a homemade pizza! Here's the recipe I use to make the dough. Pizza was a frequent dinner around here until I had to go dairy free recently. (Any suggestions for cheese-less pizzas?)

Thin Crust Pizza:

3 C flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast (1 packet)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
1 C warm water

Mix 1 1/4C of the flour with the yeast and salt and oil. Add all of the water and mix vigorously for a couple minutes. Stir in as much flour as you can, knead in the rest until you have a firm, elastic ball of dough. Split in two, let rest 10 min. Roll out, bake on a pizza stone or cookie sheet for 10ish minutes at 425. Remove, add toppings and bake for another 8-10 minutes. To incorporate your greens, toss with oil and salt and pile on top of pizza. They will reduce significantly. Sliced garlic is a yummy addition, as are carmelized onions.

When in doubt, any of the veggies we distribute will be delicious stir-fried or roasted! If you ever need guidance on how we use them around here, please ask! I'm obviously a terrible blogger and emailer these days, but will talk when cornered ;)

Quick update from around the farm..... Jon dug up our garlic last week and it is now hanging in the distribution room to cure. Once it's had a chance to dry out, we'll be sending it your way!

Last week I found a few amazing little treasures in the jungle that is the tomato patch....

Sadly, not enough to distribute, but I think it shows some promise for future tomato harvests, especially if we can ever get them pruned up! The plants are so bushy, what little sun we've had isn't reaching the few fruits that have developed. Lots of flowers out there though, so here's hoping...

We're in an odd mid-season lull, where the veggies that would normally be flourishing this time of year have not yet quite come around and a bunch of spring-time veggies have come and gone. I hope to have some cabbages and cilantro coming up in the next week or two and I'll have to see what kind of damage the deer have done on our bean patch...I've been avoiding looking being that there's not a whole lot I can do about the deer at this juncture. Fencing is so darn expensive. But, hopefully we'll have a lovely late summer and get lots of goodies!?

Yesterday, after a particularly challenging morning trying to harvest and keep the wee babe happy, I was feeling a little frustrated. Serendipitously, Jon met a young lady on the bus who is studying sustainable agriculture at Evergreen State College and looking for a place to stay for the next three or four weeks. She's willing to trade work on the farm for a roof over her head! So, I'm meeting with her this afternoon to see if she'd be a good fit to help out for a spell. We're at a point where we can push hard and finish strong, or things can just get totally out of control. We're hoping to finish strong! Hopefully this girl will be a cool lady and give us the extra oomph we need to get there. If not, (or even if so..) how do people feel about a work party/potluck in the coming weeks?

Hope you stayed dry in this soggy July!

Eliot chills out with some kale on our day of summer. If nothing else, kale is good entertainment.

Ready, Set, CSA!

2011-06-10T10:58:00.000-07:00

Season two is a go.

Week one's distributions have been made and the sun is (well, was..) shining. I'll take that as a good omen for the coming season. Now if we could just get a good rain. I know! It finally stopped and now we want to buy some time before we have to set up our irrigation. You just can't please a farmer with the weather.

Some pics of this week's pick up, now indoors, sheltering the veggies from the sun and us from the rain.......

Eggs, radishes and a weeee bit of broccoli

Spinach & Kale

The pink foam insulation really adds a homey touch, don't you think?

Some tips on your veggies:

: : Lettuce will keep in your fridge for at least a week, if not more.

: : If your greens wilt, put them in some water in the fridge, or just a cool area, and they'll perk right up.

: : Radish tops are edible, but a bit prickly. Try cooking them into a stir fry or steaming them along with other greens. The radish itself is great fresh in a salad or cooked gently in a stir fry, in which I have found them to resemble the texture of a water chestnut.

: : Kale is not the enemy! Jon and I developed an affinity for the misunderstood leafy green this winter. We got the following cooking technique from his step mom and if she can't make something taste good it's just not worth eating.

Gently steam kale until wilted. (Stems can be removed or not, up to you and your affinity for crunchy stems. Our dogs love to eat kale stems!) In the meantime, chop up several cloves of garlic, depending on how well you like garlic. We often use as many 4 or 5 cloves but we love the stuff. Put in a small bowl and cover with lemon juice (balsamic vinegar or something equally tasty will work too). Let the juices mingle. Add salt and olive oil, stir it up well and dress steamed kale. We can't get enough of it.

We also have dressed it with this homemade version of Annie's Goddess Dressing and it was DELISH!

Staci's Goddess Dressing (heehee)
7 tbsp oil (we usually use safflower but use what you've got)
1/2 C tahini (like peanut butter but it's sesame seed paste instead)
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 C water
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 or more cloves garlic
3 tsp sesame seed
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
chives
parsley
Blend all ingredients and adjust to taste. I usually have to tweak it a little to get a good consistency and just the right flavor. Play with it to see what works for you. I often end up adding more water and soy sauce.

Some great cooking resources are epicurious.com and Mark Bittman's book How to Cook Everything. Feel free to share how you prepare your veggies! I will try to share recipes each week. Maybe even before Friday rolls around.

Elsewhere on the farm, things are growing slowly but surely. Here are some of the show-offs.

Pea blossom. Snow peas coming soon!

The best garlic we've ever grown, hands down. We'll plant way more next fall.

Weedy, but healthy potatoes. Anybody looking for a new hobby? Weeding can be quite therapeutic!

Lettuce, pre-harvest

For those of you who are new to the CSA model, here's a blog by our dear farmyfriends out in Montana who are far better farmers and writers than we! http://www.prairieheritagefarm.com/2011/06/stress-of-community-supported.html

Have a great weekend out there!

Year 2

2011-05-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

An unchanged blog header is right once a year.

Spring is in full swing here and is starting to even show hints of summer. We're working hard, being pulled in multiple directions and are showing hints of insanity. Case in point: trying to run a CSA with a newborn in the mix.

None-the-less, big progress is being made thanks mostly to Jon working his tail off, both at work and on the farm.

We started seeds way back in January and have been planting ever since.

Garlic planted last fall

Bok choy and peas

We have in the neighborhood of 300 tomato plants, approximately a third of which were transplanted into the garden last weekend. We've expanded the amount of ground under production this year and based on last summer's weather, have invested in varieties that are supposed to produce well in cool, wet conditions. About 70lbs of potatoes have been planted along with oodles of cabbages, broccoli, peas, etc.

We also scored on a source of free, delivered horse manure this year! A sweet fellow who lives close by has two horses and has started bringing us a trailer load of manure every month. This will be a huge help in building up our soil fertility.

No spring is without its challenges. As you can see in the photo above, there are a lot of open cells in the trays with the squash starts. We owe a big thanks to some little mice who came through and diligently dug up seed after seed in the quest for a lovely dinner. It wouldn't have been a big deal if they had taken a few seeds here and there, but they went and demolished entire varieties, even biting off the seedlings that had sprouted. They also managed to find varieties of which we had no more seed (including every last awesome watermelon seed and plant...see flat next to watering can. We were left with two random zuchinnis I'd planted to fill in the last few cells. Nice.). So, we've attempted to start another late round of cucurbit seeds to replace those lost. Hopefully they can catch up.

Our most amazing sprout also requires the most energy. So worth it. Just look at that face. Cabbages never get that cute.

The sun is showing it's shining face with increased frequency giving both the plants and me a great boost of energy. Corn is next to be planted, along with the rest of the tomatoes and the next round of salad greens, carrots and beets. More updates to come soon.
Here's hoping for a great season #2!

The End.

2010-10-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

Today was this season's final distribution. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a good deal of relief to have the season more or less behind me. There were successes and failures, frustration and relief. All in all, I pulled it off. All in all, I learned a lot. And I mean A LOT.

Here are some photos from the today's distribution. Which I think was a pretty good one to end on.

Here are a few things I've learned this season.....

Start seedlings earlier than the first week of March. You can get away with that here.

Do not seed cover crop directly under the squash. Especially when said squash is planted in crappy soil and will likely not grow well and get out competed by the clover.

Plant squash in better soil.

Stick to beans and potatoes in poor soil in the back of the garden until fertility is built up.

Plant more potatoes. And peas, brassicas, squash, carrots and pretty much every thing else so I actually get to eat/preserve some veggies next year. (Putting up food for the winter is my raison d'etre in my garden!)

Cover all brassicas in reemay, or else feel the wrath of cabbage root maggots.

Starting corn indoors was a good idea this year. Do this every year as back up.

Stick to a strict schedule of crop successions so as not to have gaps in things like carrots or lettuce.

Get rich and buy a hoop house, greenhouse, rototiller and lots of cover crop seed. It's frustrating to know what needs to happen, but not have the resources to make it come about.

Frost is not the enemy here. Lots of rain is.

Artichokes actually grow pretty well here.

Have stricter observed veggie pick up times and/or stick to boxing veggies to avoid folks taking more than directed. Perhaps these were honest mistakes. Perhaps I don't count well. Perhaps people took some liberties. However it came about, it happened with some degree of regularity.

Perhaps keep CSA members better informed of what's going on in the garden. Offer specific garden tours or work days periodically through out the season, maybe.

Farming without a buddy or two is way less fun, but still a pretty good gig. I'm probably just crazy enough to try it again. I'm sure come December, curled up by the fire, all the promises of the seed catalogs will inspire and excite me into throwing myself into the soil for the sake of good food once again.

Thanks to all the CSA members for enduring the first season and to everyone else who helped and supported my efforts, whether by working in the garden, contributing extra veggies to the CSA (or me!), or being a sympathetic ear!

Have a great fall and winter!

Well, well, well...

2010-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

What have we here?

Little golden nuggets of perfection, that's what.

And more where that came from, to boot.

Take that, "summer!"

So long summer?

2010-08-31T15:53:00.000-07:00

15 down, 5 to go.

This has been a challenging season to start a farm. Have I mentioned that? (ha!) Just last week was the first time I was able to distribute tomatoes! They are ripening, but awfully slow and the weather is not looking particularly promising...mid 60's for the forseeable future last I checked. NOT tomato/pepper/corn ripening weather!

Today's harvest was a rainy, blustery one, but far more enjoyable than I anticipated it being. I put it off as long as I could, hoping the rain would clear, and while it let up some, it surely did not stop and if it weren't for my trusty rain coat and pants and rubber boots, I would've been soaked to the bone! The best part of today's harvest was the mass of swallows swooping around the garden. The theory around the farm is that they're gearing up for their migration. The days are getting noticably shorter and today was oh-so-very fall like. It was really amazing to be in the middle of it.

Anyway.....

Today's bounty....lettuce, chard/kale, basil, tomatoes/artichokes/summer squash, beets, cabbage, beans, hot peppers, onions! (Celery and potatoes are on hiatus so I can be sure not to run out before the end of the season and can spread the love... Perhaps I'll bring potatoes back next week? Lessons, lessons everywhere...)

Hot peppers...the sweet bell peppers are not very big and the Jimmy Nardello's are no good when green and haven't ripened yet! So hot peppers it is...counter intuitive for the season, eh? I think I spelled Anahiem wrong...anaheim...anahiem...huh. Maybe not. Either way, you know what I mean! :)

Summery grab bags of tomatoes, artichokes, cucumbers, summer squash and zuchinni.

Artichokes growing like mad in the garden. These have been a great success, I will definitely plant more next year! If you're interested, I believe the variety was Imperial Star from Fedco Seed in Maine. They are intended to be grown as an annual crop in northern climates and I'm impressed with their production, even in this cool summer. How are you CSA-ers liking them?

Chioggia and golden beets

Corn, a few weeks ago. The ears are about 8 to 12 inches long now and are starting to fatten up. Hopefully we'll get some ripe ears before too long! The plants are about 8 feet tall and looking strong and healthy!

Corn and sunflowers blowing in the blustery wind today...look closely, you can see some ears!

Hope you all are enjoying these last days of "summer"!

Whoooaa-oh We're Halfway There!

2010-07-27T15:05:00.000-07:00

And yes, some days I do feel like I'm living on a prayer. Prayers for my tomatoes to produce heavily despite the fact that they are looking slightly ill. For the new seeds tucked snugly into the soil to germinate well. For the deer and rabbits and mice to stop munching my crops and for the weeds to just disappear....

Since we've reached the halfway point in the CSA season, I thought it might be fun to play a little game called "PRESTO CHANGE-O!" This is where we look back at where the garden was a short/long couple months ago and marvel at where it is now.

Let's begin the virtual visual feast.

Chard...I'm a sucker for pretty colors.

Onions and leeks...remember the hail storm that threatened to pummel the poor things to death? I do.

They survived.

Itty bitty potato plants

Yukon (better than) Gold 'taters

Yellow Finn flowers...

Cherry Red flowers...

Pole Beans...waiting for germination

Tomatoes! Freshly transplanted...

Growing tall, though they've got something not so great going on with their curly leaves...

But there's fruit! This is a Black Krim, one of the tastiest slicing tomatoes you will EVER EAT. So you all had better say a little prayer for a bumper crop because I won't be shy about hoarding these buggers ;)

Principe Borghese...good all around,(paste, slicing, popping in your mouth whole) though a little small.

Blue Beech..fabulous paste tomato, though needs a long season.

Corn...

The spading fork, looking a little superimposed here, is about hip high on me...

Celery...a few weeks after transplanting

I'm always amazed by the way things grow. I mean, you just stick 'em in the ground and off they go! People like to compliment the growers, but I really don't like to take too much credit. The vegetables are beautiful all on their own.

Except for when things like this happen.........

And then you find these, no bigger than your thumb....

It's a good thing for them I'm a sucker for baby animals. I disturbed three field mouse nests while harvesting todays CSA boxes (well, bags this week...I'm out of boxes since folks seem to have a hard time remembering to return them...ahem....time for a trip to the grocery store.) Mama field mouse came over with her big eyes and let these little critters nurse while I was standing right there watching. They had been calling their high pitched squeaks for lunch, which is how I found them. I know they are veggie munchers and potential disease carriers, but I just don't have the heart to kill them... I wish I could loose the cat and she'd leave the birds alone. Unlike me, she has no qualms about killing rodents.

Anyway, I mentioned to some of you we'll be having a break from the lettuce...the patch I'd been harvesting from finally bolted (started to go to seed...they get really bitter at that point) and this is the next crop coming along. There's some bok choy in there too. Should be ready in a couple weeks!

So there's your half-way-through-the-season update! I hope everyone is enjoying their shares, I'd love some feedback on how you're feeling about the shares so far.

This week...

2010-07-21T09:45:00.000-07:00

A little sampler of what's ripe this week....

Red cabbage.... I think all veggies are beautiful, of course, but red cabbage is exceptionally so.

Romaine lettuce

And shelling peas! But sorry, I grew these puppies just for me. But they're just so darn pretty I had to share!

To see what else cropped up on the farm this week, click here :)

There goes June

2010-06-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, I'll write an update. Writing a blog entry is kind of like calling a friend. The longer you go in between, the more you put it off because, how could you possibly give an update on everything that's going on? "What's new?".... "Not much." or "Same old." When really that is not true at all.

SO, I'm picking up the phone, dialing even. And I'm gonna give a whirlwhind June update to the best of my ability.....

Shares are looking a little bit like this these days and getting bigger each week....

There should be another round, maybe two of scallions coming soonish. I ran out of seed and have yet to order more....

This week I decided instead of setting stuff out and waiting for folks to come get it, I'm going to be boxing things up and letting everyone pick up their box at some point during the afternoon. This way things don't wilt as quickly and I don't have to wait for folks who may or may not show up during a productive time of the day.

drip...drip...drip irrigation! I'm slowly getting all the lines set out as the weather has dried up.

Peppers are budding and being transplanted. Got one bed done yesterday, need to prep another! Tomato cages are actually quite useless for tomatoes, but work rather nicely for peppers. Our Anaheims got too big for their britches last year so hopefully the cages will keep them upright this year.

Tomatoes were trellised this weekend... it's a never ending battle trying to keep my 'maters up off the ground.

Celery!

Remember after the hail I said at some point I'd look back at how scraggly the poor little onions looked and laugh? Well that point has arrived.

My brassicas got hit hard this year by cabbage root maggots. Wilting with yucky little grubs burrowing into their roots. I was ready to pull all of them out when they started to perk up. So far production has been kinda crappy so imagine my surprise when two or three of the plants popped up with a head of broccoli like this one! There unfortunately isn't enough to distribute to CSA folks, but I'm impressed there's any at all!

Winter squash growing up big and strong.

Bush beans sprouted with a vengence with a little sunshine and dripping water!

Corn is getting bigger everyday... may not be knee high by the 4th of July, but damn near.

Phew! So that's a quick run down of the goings on at the farm! Hope you're enjoying the sunshine!

Mystery Solved....

2010-05-31T10:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past week or two I have been noticing that something had been messing with seedlings in the greenhouse.

It did a helluva number on my flower seedlings in a wooden flat.

Dug into my nasturtiums in the hanging baskets.

Uprooted a few seedlings in their trays and did some serious munching on the corn seedlings I'm growing inside. (Which I'm very glad I've done since it's been raining so much! The corn surely would've rotted right in the ground, which I think my beans have already done.)

After finding yet MORE damage to the corn seedlings I decided to put Lucy the mouse slayer on patrol for the night.

She'd been in the greenhouse during the day a few times, but clearly that was not doing the trick, since I kept finding more disturbances. So, I put some food and water out there for her and brought her up to where the plants are growing. She immediately wanted to get up on the table and I thought "Great. That's where the action is." So I moved the wooden flat of flowers to make some room. As I was moving the flat to another table, I noticed some prints in the soil. I looked closer. They were pretty big prints. Surely not a mouse. Nor a squirrel. I furrowed my brow and looked over at the cat on the table to see her picking way across the table. I looked back at the prints. Definitely feline. I looked back at the cat.

Looked back at the cat. Chewing on my corn seedlings.

I scolded her, "Lucy, NO!" She put her ears back, scrunched down closer to the table, narrowed her eyes, and took another bite. I scooped her up off the table and half laughed at, half scolded her as I lugged her back into the house for the night. No longer will she be spending sunny afternoons lounging in the greenhouse. At least not until my seedlings are gone!

One down, Nineteen to go

2010-05-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

The first CSA pick up was tonight and all eight people participating in Tuesday pick ups showed up, collected the veggies and met the goats. The were very popular and will undoubtedly become more so come July when they've kidded! All in all a great success.

This morning's harvest.

Sorting the greens

The Matheson's selecting their veggies.

Hope everyone enjoys their veggies, let me know how they're working out for you and I will try to make any necessary adjustments!

First CSA!

2010-05-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Well, the big day is finally upon us! The first CSA pick up is tomorrow evening!

I've already assembled and dropped off 3 boxes to folks who live out of town. There are lots of greens, and a few radishes.

I've never had any trouble growing radishes and always end up asking myself what the heck I'm going to do with so many radishes. Year one of growing for others, enter the root grubs. Ugh. A good majority of the radishes I pull up either have bark beetle type designs chewed into them, or straight up have little grubs munching away. So, the bad news is folks won't get as many radishes as I had hoped. The good news is there are two solutions.

The first, is to cover the rows of radishes with row cover, aka Reemay or Agribon. It's a light, gauzy, white material that lets light and water in and also provides a couple degrees of frost protection if needed. I'll be using it to grow my radishes, arugula and other plants that have a tendency to get attacked by flea beetles (like my poor bok choi) and the grubs. The physical barrier prevents the flies the grubs turn into from laying their eggs in the soil and the flea beetles from jumping onto the plant and chewing little holes in the leaves. The holes are harmless and the plants are still totally edible but they aren't very pretty.

The second, are beneficial nematodes. They are small, unsegmented worms and include yucky parasites like pin worm or roundworm. However, there are a bunch of them that are harmless and happen to be great for an organic garden! They are voracious predators and chow down on juicy grubs and other little garden pests within 24 hours of adding them to the soil. So, I will be ordering some this week to introduce to Mr. and Mrs. Grub.

This weekend we had a dear friend of ours out to visit the farm. Lyle Baker is a farmer and rancher from Choteau, Montana. Jon and I went to school in Missoula with his lovely daughters, Ivy and Holly and we love all those crazy Bakers!! So, we finally got Lyle out here for some salmon fishing and he spent all day Saturday helping me transplant tomatoes, do a bunch of weeding and dig a trench for my irrigation system in the works.

Lyle and Jon with newly transplanted 'maters

Lyle watering in the tomatoes, Jon collecting rocks to weight down the plastic

I grow the tomatoes (and peppers) in black plastic to keep the soil warm, control the amount of water they get and increase the amount of tomatoes I can get to ripen. I have mixed feelings about using plastic in farming, because it is just such pain in the butt stuff. It never breaks down (except to the point where it is no longer useful) and just ends up sitting around in landfills and floating around in oceans and crap like that. But it also helps me produce good, healthy local food. So. Hm.

Anyway, here's the scoop on this weeks' shares!

>The bagged salad mix (and any other loose greens..spinach, chard, kale, etc...) will NOT have been washed. The greens keep better this way. I will harvest early in the morning while they are nice and crisp and keep them cool and damp all day, but they will need to be washed prior to eating.

>The heads of lettuce will have been rinsed to remove big chunks of dirt from the bottom of the heads, but I would recommend a more thorough rinsing before eating. Same goes for any radishes.

>Plants: For those of you selecting a tomato or squash plant to take home, they have been hardened off, meaning, they are used to being outside and can be planted immediately.

Those of you taking home a pepper plant, they have not been set outside at all yet and are going to need to be hardened off. This simply means setting it outside for increasing periods of time over the course of a week, starting by being out for an hour or two and culminating in leaving it out all day and night for one or two days. This allows the plants to get over the shock of the full sunlight, wind and cool nights before having to deal with the root shock that comes with transplanting. At this point, it can be planted outside in the ground or in a pot. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions about this process or if you would prefer I did the hardening off and gave you the peppers next week.

I hope you all enjoy your first round of veggies! Here's to a great start to the season!

Crunch Time

2010-05-19T10:41:00.000-07:00

Hello, all.
So.
First share distributions...next week.
First farmers' market...also next week.
Yep. Feelin' a little bit of excitement/stress.
It's crunch time.

I'm not entirely sure what May's rush is all about. I mean, today is a perfectly fine place to be without having to skedaddle on to tomorrow. Clearly, my opinion matters not to time as it passes at its own rate with little regard for the rest of us.

So, needless to say things are extremely busy around here. Projects include, but are surely not limited to:
Irrigation. Drip tape and necessary accouterments arrived late last week. This week I've been running all over town with our good helpful and knowledgeable neighbor Larry to gather parts to run a line directly from the 5000 gallon water tank to the garden. Right now we have a single hose running from the single spigot on the back of the house. I am not inclined to lug our heavy overhead sprinkler all over the garden this season for two reasons. One, it is extremely time consuming. Two, it is highly inefficient. So a 1 1/2" pipe will run from the bottom of the tank, across the back lot in a shallow ditch that has yet to be dug, and pop up again 100 feet later next to the garden with three faucets coming up out of the ground so I can run a couple sets of drip tape plus a hose for washing veggies. It will be a HUGE improvement once it's done. It's getting it done that's the trick. (To answer Sara's question from the last post, it unfortunately does not generally rain enough during the growing season to avoid irrigation entirely....but we get a break from it from time to time!)

Bed Prepping. Aisles are being dug out in between beds, weeds removed (always...), soil prepped by breaking up large chunks, removing rocks and adding amendments. And, pole bean supports built! Jon and I raided the enormous burn pile in the north pasture for branches to make suitable bean tipis. I may need a step ladder to harvest some of these. Beans will be planted today!

Planting and growing. Celery transplanted, potatoes are up greens are getting big and tomatoes are begging to be put in the ground!

Celery

Tomatoes..pre-hardening off

Hardened off and waiting patiently to set down roots.

Lettuce

Red cabbage

Salad mix

Potatoes...this was taken a few days ago, they are much bigger now and are growing at an exponential rate!

More beets and radishes and greens have been seeded...some with the new seeder that arrived yesterday! Still working out the kinks on how to make it work best...but it still saved lots of time! I bought it used on eBay and saved about $40. Wondering if it was the best option. I expected to be a little dirty, but upon arrival it was quite dirty and smelled weird, which the dogs thought was great. I was less impressed. Get what you pay for, I suppose.

Some assembly required.

The little plow on the bottom makes a furrow and the chain drags behind, covering the seed.

Different sized plates dispense different seeds.

Also in the process of seeding cover crops, buckwheat and white clover.

25lbs of buckwheat (out competes weeds!) and 5lbs of white clover (nitrogen fixer) to seed in the pathways and beneath plants.

Buckwheat, left...clover, right

Tonight is the vendor meeting for the farmers' market and I have lots of things to gather to be ready for it. I am not entirely sure what I'm going to need, hopefully I can figure that out tonight!

So there's this week's update, I'm off to the garden! Hope you're well!

Gear Shift

2010-05-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

This weekend I swear I physically felt things shift into a higher gear. Maybe it was the roar of the tractor. Maybe it was the sunshine. Maybe it was the tripling of the amount of land I had turned over in a matter of hours. Whatever it was, something clicked. With that click came some serious waves of what I will call "spring anxiety." Will I have enough veggies for everyone? Will there be enough for me to put up for the winter? How the hell am I going to keep all this space from getting totally overrun with weeds? Am I totally CRAZY for trying to pull this off on my own?

Spring is love/hate. When everything is getting set up for the season. When you still have some control and you haven't messed anything up yet. When 70% of the work goes in without any immediate edible reward. Come August, what's growing is growing and what's failing is failing and there's not much to do about it except harvest what's ripe.

Today I was able to get ahold of myself as I crouched in the field, tucked under the blanket of clouds, methodically burying my fingers in the soil as I transplanted the rest of my onions and leeks. It was a perfectly peaceful afternoon with nothing but the birds and my breath filling my ears. The past week was very noisy, both literally and figuratively, and I needed the quiet. I love sunshine, but sometimes it's overwhelming. A well placed cloudy day can be soothing and allows the eye to take in the landscape without anything being bleached out by the sun. Do I sound like a Pacific northwesterner yet? Good grief. At any rate, it was a good day.

Floppy, newly transplated onions.

Two beds of onions and leeks. (With newly tilled field in the background)

Over the weekend, one of our neighbors and his friend helped us till up the rest of the field and then some. For the price of diesel (and potentially a flat tire repair...). Tractor, tiller, labor all in one. I have mixed feelings about tractors and rototillers and the like. They are very disruptive, killing lots of poor worms, breaking up the soil in a loud and violent manner, increasing the chance of a shallow hardpan forming. Not at all like the sweat and spading fork turning over the soil and shaking out the weeds that prepped the beds over the past few weeks. It was a very personal process in that manner. However, in two days, the tractor completed what would've taken me months to do and if I want to grow on a scale at which I can produce for others, I'm not sure I have much of a choice but to use machinery at least sometimes. (I'll have to study up on permaculture, I guess!)

Now the stress of whether or not I would have enough space for my seedlings and to grow enough food has turned into the stress of how I will ever manage to keep up with it all. The garden went to being about 1/3 of an acre to what is close to a full acre. With corn and artichokes and a million tomato and squash plants I'm sure I won't have much trouble filling most of it up.

Wish me luck....and lots of energy.

Funion with Onions. Or. What the Hail.

2010-05-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Onions are the latest plant to start setting roots into their permanent home. They are pretty cold hardy and could have been set out earlier, undoubtedly, but their bed was not yet ready! So they have been waiting patiently in their flat, getting bigger and bigger despite the cramped quarters.

I am planting four varieties of onions and three varieties of leeks this year. Three of the onion varieties are storage onions...Patterson, Copra and Red Bull (we're still eating our onions from last year's garden!)...and one, Cippolini, is for frying though we had some that kept pretty far into the winter. Onions come in lots of different varieties depending on what you're looking to get from the onion and where you live. Yep, that's right, we can't grow all onion varieties this far from the equator. Here we grow what are called long-day onions. These kinds of onions put the vast majority of their energy into growing big, green shoots up until the summer solstice. At that point, as the days start getting shorter little by little, they shift gears and start directing their energy toward developing a nice big bulb...the part we like to eat! The size of the bulb is generally proportional to the size of the shoot, so if you're starting onion from seed, like I do, you want to get your seeds growing really early on to get nice big onions later on in the summer. I'm not entirely sure how the short-day onions work their magic but I imagine they need a longer growing season.

Transplanting onions and leeks is much like transplanting individual blades of grass. I began this tedious process yesterday in the midst of a pretty seriously blustery day. Branches were snapping off trees in the woods beyond my garden and the black plastic I laid out to kill some weeds and warm up the soil for my tomatoes and peppers was flapping in the wind, straining to lift the large rocks securing the edges and take off in search of calmer weather. Transplanting waif-y little onion seedlings in a wind storm is not advisable. So I retreated to the warm greenhouse to transplant the peppers into four inch pots.

I tried once again today to get the onions in the ground. I got a good chunk transplanted and came inside for a quick bite to eat when I heard something strange and looked out to see this happening:

If you live in the area, I'm sure you experienced this wonder as well. Not rain. Not gentle snow. Pea sized hail. The kind that threatens tender little seedling leaves. I dashed out the door to check on my plants, saw they were surviving, and that there was nothing I could really do even if they weren't, scooped up the flats of seedlings waiting to be transplanted and tucked them under the large hemlock tree to wait out the storm. As my husband said to me this evening over the phone, "Welcome to farming."

I kind of figured when I left Montana I'd also left the unpredictable spring weather behind. Wrong.

So, needless to say there are still many onions awaiting their transfer to the garden bed. But they are happy where they are for now and will find their feet in the loose garden soil soon enough! They are probably happier than the ones who not only endured the shock of being transplanted, but of being pelted by hail for 15 minutes. Poor things were looking pretty ragged and plastered to the ground, but they'll perk up, no doubt and as I'm harvesting softball sized onions in August and September, I'll think back in amazement to when they were poor bedraggled little blades of grass.

Hopefully the weather will permit me to finish up the onions tomorrow and move on to prepping the next beds!

Only a few more weeks until the first shares will be distributed! Woot!

Welcome!

2010-05-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks for joining me here at Gull Harbor Farm! This blog is intended to keep interested parties up to date with what's going on at the farm and to serve as a weekly news letter to accompany CSA shares. Information on what CSA members will be receiving each week as well as suggested recipes will be found here. I hope it will be a useful and entertaining source of information.
First CSA shares will be distributed at the end of this month!
Here's to a great season!