Week 7 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Monday, sunny, highs in the mid-50s; Tuesday, sunny, highs in the mid-70s

What did you worry about today? I can tell you what's been on the minds of farmers across southwestern Michigan today and what's going to rouse them from bed in the middle of the night tonight. A potential freeze. Earlier in the day, the weather service was predicting temperatures for our area as low as 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Diane, John, and I abandoned our plans for the day to drag big, filmy sheets of row cover fabric out of the shed to drape over our plants in order to protect them from such an extreme drop in temperatures. The wind did not make this an easy task, but we got it done:

I think we've protected our plants as well as we can, but other farmers around the area will be setting their alarm clocks for the middle of the night tonight to check temperatures and turn on wind machines and sprinkler systems if necessary to try to protect their crops from the cold.

Weather will be a factor in what we do on the farm this week as well. If the lake field is dry enough to till tomorrow morning and my Dad can get on it with a tractor and multivator, we'll start making beds down there Monday afternoon with the hope of getting onions, broccoli, lettuce, and early tomatoes planted yet this week. John is also planning to bring grafting supplies with him, so if we can't get on the ground right away, we might spend some time grafting. I'd also like to give you a little time to care for the bed you planted in the hoophouse. And there's always that quackgrass to pull!

Week 3 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Monday, 70% chance of rain, high of 58 degrees F; Tuesday, mostly sunny, high of 53 degrees F.

Well, folks, you are certainly getting a taste of one of the most challenging aspects of farming life--the weather! For the third Monday in a row rain and chilly temps are predicted. And it sounds like the wet, cold weather is going to follow us through most of the week. If it doesn't warm and dry up soon, this weather is going to make it very challenging for us to get our spring crops in the ground in time to begin our scheduled CSA harvests at the end of May.

If it's not actually raining while you're out here, I may have you help us lay cardboard sheets around the perimeter of a couple of our growing areas as a quack grass control measure. (Since we don't use herbicides, we have to rely on physical means to keep weeds out of our growing beds.) If it is raining, however, I think we'll work inside the hoophouse. We got the new plastic put on this afternoon, so it will give us some shelter. I've reserved one bed for you to play with, so you can practice using my favorite tool of all time, the broadfork, to work it up. You'll probably want to work in some compost and fertilizer and then you can decide what you want to plant.

We've got a small amount of soil-blocking to do this week (broccoli), so if any of you want a little more practice with the soil-blocker, you can work on that as well.

See you all soon!

Week 1 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather Forecast: highs in the mid-30s, chance of snow and/or rain.

I'm looking forward to introducing all of you to the farm this week, though I wish I had some nicer weather to do it in. We had some lovely sunshine here this afternoon, but already tonight the wind has picked up and temperatures are dropping quickly.

I still hope to be able to take you on a hike around the property, so please dress warmly. I'd like to give you a sense of the land and its history, since the ecology of the surrounding landscape affects how and what we're able to grow. I also want to share the history of my business with you and to go over our plans for the coming year so that you can get a sense of how your few hours of work here each week fit in with the bigger picture of what we're creating.

I shared our field maps and production planning spreadsheets in previous blog posts. We'll take a look at them together this week so that you can ask any questions you may have about how we plan our planting schedule for the CSA. If you've looked at the spreadsheets, you can probably tell that it's pretty intensive! I'm also going to post a copy of our business plan. I hope that you'll take the time to read it through, as it will give you a sense of our both our mission and vision and the actions we're taking to make those manifest.

Weather permitting, I'd like us to collect soil samples this week as well. We'll sample four or five different growing areas and send the dirt off to MSU for testing. In a couple of weeks, the soil lab will send us reports which detail the soil nutrient levels and pH in each plot. We can then talk about what actions might be necessary to create more optimal growing conditions in these plots. There may be certain soil amendments that we'll choose to add based on these results. Unless any of the nutrient levels are way off, though, it's more likely that we'll just continue to add compost and to use cover crops to build up the organic matter in the soil and to support the growth of beneficial soil microorganisms.

The longer I grow vegetables, the more convinced I become that encouraging diverse and healthy soil ecology is the key to everything. So I want to help you get a sense of how to assess and work with soils. Here's a chart that shows you the basic make-up of healthy garden soil: Soil Composition Chart. Note that 50% of this soil area contains air and water! This fact sheet from Penn State Extension goes into more detail regarding soil composition, including why that air and water space is important and how to create it: Soil Quality - Introduction to Soils.

I wrote a blog post a little over a year ago on soil health entitled Ground Work. When I re-read it tonight, I was surprised to see that I mentioned the 2012 Farm Bill near the end of the article. At that time, the Senate Agriculture Committee was drafting the 2012 Farm Bill, since the 2008 Farm Bill was due to expire in the fall of 2012. Well, last fall came and went and now in April of 2013 we still don't have a new Farm Bill. The fiscal cliff negotiations at the beginning of this year didn't help matters, as agricultural funding was tied up in that as well. The National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition has an article on the affects of the fiscal cliff deal on ag. funding: Congress Includes Awful 2008 Farm Bill Extension in Fiscal Cliff Deal. If you don't know what the Farm Bill is, check out What is the Farm Bill? And if you don't know why I'm concerned about it, read this article by Tonya Tolchin: The Farm Bill: Why Farmers Need to Be Activists Too.

See you all soon!!