Hop Planting!

Between harvesting and dragging hoses everywhere around the farm, we haven't had many chances to blog... so we will try to catch up over the next few days with posting pictures showing everything that's been going on around the farm, starting with our first hops getting in the ground! Here's Matt working on the bed (the white stuff to the left are broccoli plants under row cover insect protection).

We bought virus free plants from Madison County AED, and hope to propagate out 120 to 200 hills next year from the 60 plants we are putting in this season.  The virus indexed plants were more expensive than standard rhizomes, but since we are going to attempt growing these organically, we thought it would make sense in the long run to try to minimize potential problems from the start (hops have some challenging disease issues in the northeast).  We didn't get them in last week due to the hot and dry weather, and we learned during this time that hops do not coexist well in close confines with their neighbors (this mat of hops took a half hour to untangle!)

We planted them into a nursery bed, which is just a temporary bed for them to grow in this first season.  Next spring, we will dig them up, divide the clumps of roots and rhizomes into 2 or 3 plants, and replant them at wider spacing in the hop yard.

Right after planting, we trained them up on their temporary trellis (which is only six foot posts).  In a real hop yard, the plants can grow 20 or more feet high, so the trellis is a lot more serious (think telephone poles).  We are starting small so we have time to save up for the trellising costs!

We laid our drip tape the low tech way today (rather than using the bed maker implement).  Matt just used one of his carpentry clamps, which anchors the roll on pretty much anything.

Here's looking back to the near complete nursery bed over the south field's fall crops.

Hopefully the weather continues to cooperate and we get good plant establishment this season so that we have more plants for next season!

More pictures and posts from the field will follow in the next few days!

Chilling Out...

... in our new walk-in! Things have been busy at the farm with harvesting and flipping beds from spring to fall crops (not to mention the endless hours each day spent on irrigation).  But we (well actually, just Matt) finally did the big push on installing our walk-in cooler!  We haven't finished off the exterior yet, but so far, it's working great!

We use recycled 2 to 4 inch foam panels to insulate an 8x10 framed box (we did floor, ceiling, and walls).  There is a plywood floor.  Matt hung 2 layers of panels in opposite directions (so there are no gaps for cold air to escape) and used spray foam insulation to fill in any gaps.

We bought the panels from a place in Oneonta that recycles material from cold storage facilities (like apple storage warehouses).

They were pretty easy to work with.  It took Matt about three full days to build the insulated box, install the door, and set up the AC.

We just used a standard exterior door since it was easier to work with than a real walk-in cooler door.

For refrigeration, we used an air conditioner and a Cool Bot (check out their website here).  It's basically a little box that tricks the AC unit to go really low (like down to 32 degrees).  We went this route over a standard refrigerator largely for cost reasons.  First, the Cool Bot is much cheaper than a compressor (like a quarter to a tenth of the cost, depending on the compressor).  Second, it's cheaper to operate since you are essentially just running an AC unit rather than a whole large compressor.

So far, everything is working great.  We are excited at how much more efficient this should make our harvesting (and it will help us bring even higher quality produce to market!).  Plus, in the winter time, we can reverse the whole process and use the space as a root cellar so we can extent the CSA season!

Lots of Post 4th Pics!

The theme of the month continues to be dry... as we head into the 6th week of only 3/4 inch of rain... total.  Looking on the bright side, weeds aren't really a problem, since they need water to grow.  On the challenging side is getting enough of that water to our crops! We wrote a blog for the National Young Farmers Coalition's Bootstraps Bloggers about our water and irrigation solutions (and challenges)... you can see that (and a ton of awesome posts from other Bootstrap Bloggers and from the NYFC) here.  For more pictures of this week, check out below!

Busy, busy, busy

We've been falling behind in our blog posting as the season heats up, but we promise to keep up now!  This week marks the third week of the CSA and our sixth week of farmers market.  We are starting to get in the groove and balance out the farm work, harvesting, and off-farm work, but it still seems like a lot of balls to keep up in the air at one time! What's been complicating things is the near complete lack of rain.  For May and June, our fields received about 2 inches of rain.  Total.  There's been storms around, they just aren't reaching us.  On the plus side, we can totally justify the irrigation system investment the farm made this spring.  On the down side, we spend a couple hours a day just managing water (which takes us away from other tasks we'd rather be doing).

So far the plants are holding out fine, but you will notice a lot of dry ground in today's pictures!  Spring harvests went well... spinach and lettuce mix are wrapping up this week, but peas (and more rounds of head lettuce) are just starting and would love a good overhead soaking:

Beyond harvesting, we are still getting later rounds of plants into the ground.  Today we are finishing up seed starting for 130 flats of fall crops (things like late leeks, broccoli, cabbage, herbs, and more).  Other plants (melons and lettuce) are waiting for a good transplanting day:

As frustrating as the droughtiness has been, there is one distinct upside, especially in crops that we use drip irrigation on:  a near complete lack of weeds!  We are trellising tomatoes this week, and you can see below that our cultivation pass almost isn't even needed!

Fortunately, there was enough soil moisture to germinate and grow all of the more sensitive pasture grasses, but in the field, we are turning to the drought hardy buckwheat for a summer cover crop.  Here it is starting growth in our first planting of lettuce mix (already tilled in).  This is 5 days after seeding, and you can see how bone dry the ground is.  After we harvest for the markets, we will get some water on this section to help things out!

More news and pics to follow... until later, please everyone start doing a rain dance.  So far the irrigation pond is holding out and the crops are fine, but we'd prefer not to challenge it too much!