High Tunnel and Snow!

We've been neglecting our blog a bit (in favor of Facebook, where we have loaded the Hartwood Farm page with pictures from this past season if you want to check them out!), but with our ongoing website overhaul (lots of new photos up in the gallery), we are trying to get back up on the blog horse and keep it more updated this next year! This summer of 2014 was another fairly crazy growing season here in Fenner/CNY in that it rained and rained and rained yet again. Unlike last year when we had tons of rain in the beginning of the summer and then it dried out, this summer it was constantly wet Mondays through Thursdays, before drying out a bit each weekend. The problem became that things would just barely dry out enough over Friday and Saturday so that we could get in the fields to till, cultivate, or seed on Sundays, but the rain would start all over again on Mondays. This made for *extremely* busy Sundays, somewhat weedy fields (since we prioritized planting over weeding!), and a fairly high rate of plant disease (since most plant health issues thrive in the cool, wet weather we saw).

We decided that it is essential for us to have some protection against all this rain and that we need to start investing in some high and low tunnels. This fall our big project was the high tunnel (which is essentially a greenhouse frame without any heating system). We bought a 30x96 Rimol Nor’easter frame, and as of yesterday (where we had to shovel about 5 feet of snow off of it!) we are pleased with it’s weight bearing capacity!

We put the house in the flattest spot in the fields (the “advantage” of slightly rolling ground is that we had limited options of where the tunnel could go, so it was easy to place!). It’s aligned east-west, so the long side faces the rough south wind. (Oddly enough, we find the summer winds out of the south the harshest and most destructive here on the farm, so we wanted to protect against them. In theory, when the wind gets really bad, we can lower the sidewalls and it will flow up the arch of the tunnel.)

It probably took us 20 person days to get the tunnel sited and built, but we were doing it around the CSA and market harvests, so it might be possible to do future ones faster? Putting on the plastic was the hardest part (Fenner is a little too windy to unfurl a 150' x 48' sheet of plastic), but we had 8 AWESOME neighbors come and help with this exciting stage (THANK YOU all!!!).

This winter, we have a rye/pea cover crop in the tunnel and are learning how it holds heat and handles snow. So far, it’s taken 50 mph gusts of wind, but we suspect we’ll get some 70 mph gusts before the winter is out. We don’t have power in the field, so it’s just got one layer of plastic. Judging from how it’s shedding snow (which is poorly), it may be worth investing in a second layer of plastic and some solar charging next year, since that will help it shed snow and wind better. We also see a snow blower in our future, since the sidewalls are quite a job to keep clear with a shovel!

Our main goal with this house is to get an earlier and healthier crop of tomatoes for the CSA, then pull out the tomatoes in time to replant for next year's November and December winter CSA and farmers market greens harvests. Over the long run, if this house survives Fenner conditions, we would like to add several other high tunnels, and rotate our hens through them for winter housing (and fertilization!) since the chickens are not fond of walking in snow.

We plan on starting our tomato transplants in the house sometime between April 15th and May 1st, depending on how daring we feel. The house does not have any supplemental heating, so we probably won’t push it too much this year, but we would love to get some nice ripe tomatoes by July 4th!  We'll have more pictures inside the tunnel as things warm up in the spring!

March Snows Bring Warm Aprils?

Hopefully!  (With 10 to 18" coming down, our fingers are crossed that this will come true!) Either way, spring is on it's way at SOME point this month, and thus, seed starting (and Growing Season 2014's official start!) are underway!  We'll get going back on our normal blog posts now (we didn't have much going on during our much needed winter break) since summer is gearing up around the farm FAST!

This week's news includes seed starting, greenhouse prep, CSA shares, and translating chicken...

First the fun news!  Seed starting is under way--onions, early leeks, shallots, scallions, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and some flowers are in their flats and getting ready to germinate!  As you can see from the picture below (and our cramped seed starting pics on Facebook), we have them in the house on vast numbers of tables now set up in the living room and kitchen.  It's funny, 2 years ago we swore we wouldn't have this many seed flats in the house ever again after we upgraded our greenhouse heating system.  We are eating those words so quickly for two reasons--first, we wanted to start getting away from buying in all our onion plants and try out some new varieties from seed (and onions need to start a few weeks before we want to fire up our greenhouse).  Second, we were oblivious to propane supplies and prices early in winter and all of a sudden, cohabitation with ten thousand seedlings for a few weeks seemed like a quite reasonable prospect!

The greenhouse is also looking good--we'll have details and pics on that in our next post.  We have fired it up a little bit (though we are waiting until this weekend for the official heater start day), have it mostly cleaned out, and are working on this season's upgrades (new floor and watering system!).  It's been wonderful working to prepare the house this week--even without the heater running, things get toasty during the day!

We do still have CSA shares available--Tuesday in Fayetteville, Liverpool, and Syracuse, and Friday in Fenner!  Give us an email or call if you want to learn more about the CSA or signup online.

And we promised you some chicken translation... Well, we are pretty sure we made out some F-bombs to the chickens clucking this morning.  The poor ladies were relishing the sun and warm temperatures as they managed to excavate some actual grass and dirt in their dooryard this week.  However, they are extremely under-impressed with this big snow and have been squawking to make their displeasure known (though the good girls keep on laying!).  We have promised them grass (and possibly a new house?) sometime in the next four weeks!  The farmers are also under-impressed with this storm, which is the first one blowing from due north, so it deposited a thigh high drift in the yard between us and the hen house.  Spring is coming, isn't it?  Our next blog will be set in the spring-like greenhouse at least!!!

Harvest Days on the Farm

I know, long time, no posting!  We've had plenty to write about, but to be honest, this summer has been extremely rough in terms of weather and workload, so we only now are starting to have time to breathe (and eat and blog).

Since our last post, it pretty much rained from mid-May to mid-July (20 inches over 7 weeks--during those 49 days we had rain for 45), and then stopped raining and became cold--like veggies stopped growing 'cuz it was in the 40s at night sort of cold.  Things are still cooler and the summer crops are ripening slowly, but overall, we are feeling a bit more normal now.  We have a long blog in the works on our thoughts about this summer, but it's still a bit too fresh for us to write on it without excess profanity!  Short story, the lessons from this summer are that rain is worse than drought, bugs wash away in floods while plant disease washes in, and hoop houses are our next big investment!

But as things are steadying out a bit, we do have time to start posting again, and thought we'd get back in with some pics from harvest days, since some folks have been asking how the day goes!

We harvest 90% of our crops on Tuesday and Friday mornings, for our Tuesday and Friday CSA and our Saturday market.  With tomatoes starting, we will sometimes harvest them the day before, because it's such a long process to wipe off the organic (late blight deterring) copper from the fruits.  On Monday and Thursday evenings, we cruise around the field and check out what's ready.  Most years, there will be 20 or 25 available crops, and we choose 8 to 12 for the CSA.  This year, we have typically had more like 10 to 15 crops ready, so it makes CSA choices quicker (though more annoying--we like having more options!).  We try to mix things up a bit so folks get a range of salad, root, fruit, and greens in their shares.  We have twice as many CSA members on Tuesday than Friday, but since we have the market Fridays, the two harvest days take about as long (though we also harvest more on Saturday mornings for market).

We prioritize crops for the CSA over the market, since we really appreciate the up-front support from our CSA members.  Most years we have plenty for both the CSA and the market, but this year we've been saving lots of crops just for the CSA (like our potatoes).

We start harvesting anywhere from 5:30 (if it's hot) to 7:30 (if it's wet) in the morning.  We start off with crops like lettuce and greens that don't like getting hot, and then finish off with things like tomatoes or cucumbers where you want the plants to dry off before you get in there and handle them.  We have started getting into the bad habit of sleeping a bit late this year since it's been so cold and wet (and we don't want to spread plant disease around by harvesting damp plants)!

We usually harvest crops in batches and then haul them back to the cooler in the wagon (our most utilized tool on the farm).  Most crops get washed in super cold water to lower their field temperature and get off the dirt, though some things like tomatoes just get wiped down.

We have dreams of a real wash line for next year, but couldn't afford the whole building set up this season, so we are improvising a bit.  Matt did take the first step for a wash shed by putting a new door into the garage.  The walk in cooler is right inside the door, so this saves us the time of walking through the garage a zillion times each harvest day.  Since it has rained or been super cold this season, it hasn't been a problem yet for not having shade on the line.  We use two tanks and a series of drying/spray tables, and have landscape fabric underneath to keep the mud down.  Last year we had a mobile setup (with a tent) that we rotated around the yard.  This year's improvement of an actual line saves a chunk of time each harvest day.  Matt build a PVC tank filling valve, and we drain the tanks often to keep the water clean.

We pack CSA shares in the garage using folding tables.  Last year folks might remember our CSA bags, which were cute but a hassle to pack (too floppy), handle (hard to quickly grab the handles), and stack (you couldn't).  This year we switched to boxes, which means we can pack 4 times as many shares per hour than we could with the bags!  It's been nice to see how small changes make a big difference in efficiency!

Hopefully the weather stays "normal," the late blight stays away, and frost holds off until October so that we can re-start posting regularly!

Getting the Veggies in the Ground!

... between the raindrops, that is! We've not had much time to post since our last big rain event because it's been raining on and off since then, which keeps us really busy trying to squeeze crops into the ground and stay on top of the weeds (which LOVE wet weather).  We can work around the rain but it's a lot harder--your boots get so heavy with mud it's like walking through quicksand.

The last month or so has certainly been up and down. It's been quite a challenging spring this year--what makes the challenge most impressive is that we have had pretty much every spring weather situation occur here that could be a challenge in NY:  a cold, late start, a drought period with constant high winds, deluges, cold nights, and more.  And we actually were somewhat lucky here at the farm--we missed the mid-May snow that hit the upper Midwest, the late May snow that reached NH and VT, and the remnants of Andrea that dumped on the Hudson Valley!

Because we are new to our land, these challenges have also brought some learning opportunities as to how our soils and site can handle things.  On the positive side, 2012's drought was a powerful lesson in irrigation, so we are definitely better on that front.  We also better utilized our hedgerows as windbreaks this year, which was a huge help on some of the days where it hit 60 mph.  Our row cover investment lets us get almost an acre under row cover, and has definitely paid off--reducing pest, wind, and water stress on all the crops lucky enough to be under it.

On the negative side, we have been facing one huge challenge.  We have this beautiful lower field that we've been prepping since last year to hold 3 acres of our summer and fall crops (which is half of the acreage we grow).  We've spent hundreds of hours working on getting this ground ready, including a huge chunk of time in the last 3 weeks.  However, after getting more rain in just over a week than we did all summer, we learned that some of our fields are slower to drain than others.  Specifically, these 3 acres just aren't drying out.  After waiting and trying to work it and waiting some more, we realized we had to radically change our cropping plans in order to get the summer crops into the ground.

Fortunately, we had an area in the northern field that we had seeded down to oats to rest and rebuild for the 2013 season.  We realized that we needed to pull out the oats and get those summer crops in there.  We are lucky that we had this overflow option, but having to prepare these extra few acres has definitely strained our time resources (and our backs!).

We ended up tilling these beds and they look really good.  The soil seems very nice (and most importantly is DRY!).  We fit the beds for summer crops with black plastic.  We aren't huge fans of using the plastic, but it does a great job of warming up the soil (which is key for peppers, eggplant, melons, and tomatoes), keeping down weeds, and trapping in moisture.  We are also lucky enough to live in Madison County, which does recycle this at our dump.

Before the rain Monday, we finished off all these beds!  It feels good to have these crops in the ground, and now we have time to assess that tricky lower field and learn what will work for using it.  Since that big rain (4" over a couple days) that flooded the field, the ground has been slowly drying out, and it seemed to handle our 2" rain storm well, which gives up hope that it will be fine in the future with some more moderate weather!