Week 10 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Highs near 70, mostly sunny to partly cloudy.

Well, this is it folks, week ten, our final class meetings on the farm. On Monday we'll be joining some local junior high school students to tour a local farm which produces fresh organic herbs. Then we'll head back here to give the kids a farm tour and, if there's time, work on some weeding and mulching.

On Tuesday, I hope that the soil will be dry enough to resume planting. We'll be making a big push to get the rest of our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in the ground and mulched that afternoon.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with Saturday's party! A good time was had by all.

Week 9 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Highs in the mid-70s/mid-80s. Tuesday: 60% chance of rain. Wednesday: 30% chance of rain. Thursday: 10% chance of rain. Friday: 40% chance of rain/chance of severe weather. Saturday: 40% chance of rain.

I hope all of you have had a great Memorial Day weekend! Big thanks to Alice and Christine, who came out on Sunday to help shop for next Saturday's Strawberry Party and to work on the duck run. The run looks great and we're hoping that perhaps those of you planning to come out on Wednesday will lend a hand with finishing it up.

I had hoped that we'd have a big planting day tomorrow, however, after looking at the weather forecast, I don't think that's going to be possible with the predicted rain since we've already received enough moisture today to make the ground pretty sticky. After conferring with John and Diane, I think the priority here on the farm tomorrow will be to use the rainy day to clean up my house and the porch in preparation for Saturday's open house.

Since our Monday group already missed their farm day due to Memorial Day, I'm going to propose a much more flexible farm participation schedule for this week instead of holding an "official" class day tomorrow (Tuesday). If any of you really want to help us clean, you are more than welcome to come out tomorrow afternoon. But if you'd rather use that time to catch up on other work so that you can come out later in the week to help with planting, strawberry bed prepartion and/or duck run construction, that's okay too.

You are welcome to come out any time during the day on Wednesday or Friday. Caroline was going to reserve a car for folks coming out on Wednesday afternoon, leaving campus at 1:30. If you want to come out at a different time, let me know and we can reserve other vehicles. It looks like Thursday is actually going to be our best planting day and I'd love to have you here for that, but I don't want you to miss out on the opportunity to visit Elder Fire Farm. If you are planning to go on that visit, please make sure you've let Janelle know!

We will need people here on Friday or early on Saturday to help set up for the party. We will need to set up the tent, table, and chairs on the lawn, as well as tables for food in the porch. We will run through the strawberry planting procedure so that you can help others plant throughout the afternoon. We'll need people to take responsibility for various aspects of the afternoon--everything from helping people park to getting the bonfire going in the evening. If you are planning to come and would be willing to lend a hand with some of these things, would you please let me know as soon as possible? Thanks!

Weeks 7 & 8 Photos

I didn't do a very good job of photo-documenting weeks 7 & 8. Sorry! If anyone has better photos, feel free to share.

Week 8 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Highs in the 80s, 50-60% chance of rain.

Not long ago you were hearing me talk about all of the problems we were having due to too much rain. Well, now things have swung a bit in the opposite direction as we've got seeds and plants in the ground which could really use a drink. Diane, John, and I have been hauling bucketfuls of water out of the lake to sprinkle on the tomato, broccoli, lettuce, and onion plants we planted last week and I can tell you that that much hand-watering is getting old fast! We don't want to start up the irrigation system until we've got a few more of our lake garden beds planted, since if we soak the unplanted beds, we'll have to halt our planting for a day or two until they dry out again.

I'm happy to have rain in the forecast this week, since nothing can take the place of a good thunderstorm for getting seeds germinated and plants growing. But we've got lots of plants and seeds I'd like to have in the ground before the rains come and so we'll be making a big push to get those in on Monday morning and early afternoon. A generous neighbor donated a heaping truckload of composted horse manure to us over the weekend, so we'll be spreading it on the beds, working it in, laying paper mulch, and planting more tomatoes and our earliest beans. I may also ask some of you to start mulching the plants we've already got in the ground with hay. This will help retain soil moisture so that we don't have to water as often and also protect and feed those soil microbes we keep talking about.

Bring rain gear if you've got it. We'll work outdoors in a light sprinkle if we have to, though a thunderstorm may drive us inside to soil block winter squash.

I finally updated the farm blog with a new post this weekend. If you'd like to check it out, here's a link: Harvest of Joy Farm Spring Slideshow

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 5 Photos: Planting Brassicas

Photos from Week 4: Mulch!

Week 5 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather Forecast: Partly cloudy, highs in the 70s

It's the week we've all been waiting for!! Or at least the week I'VE been waiting for, as we're finally going to get to plant a few things outside of the hoophouse. According to our planting schedule, the cabbage, kale, and kohlrabi should have been in the ground two weeks ago, but as you've seen, it's just been too wet.

It's still too wet in the back strip where we intended to plant them (that's the area where you laid mulch last week). I attempted to work up a few beds back there today and found standing water under the mulch:

The water table has risen so high that it's actually coming up to the surface under the beds. So, we're going to have to re-configure our carefully wrought plans at the last minute in order to contend with this reality. We'll be transplanting the brassicas into the somewhat drier beds behind my house rather than into the back strip  and John will be discing up some land on his property tomorrow morning in the hopes that we can shift some of the crops that were supposed to go into those beds over to his place.

So that's the plan for class this week--you'll be broad-forking the beds, raking them out, working in some fertilizer, and tucking our little plants into the ground. I'm really looking forward to seeing some green out there in the garden area!

Also, I found my first tick today, so be forewarned that you might bring home some unwelcome hitchhikers--if you feel the need to use tick repellent you might want to bring some with you.

Week 4 at Harvest of Joy Farm LLC

Weather forecast: Monday, high of 65 degrees F, mostly sunny; Tuesday, high of 58 degrees, 80% chance of rain.

Well, the story of this spring seems to be wet and cold. Eight inches of rain fell last Thursday onto ground that was already saturated with moisture. So not only did the ground not dry out any since you were out last week, it's significantly wetter than it was last Monday and Tuesday. We are a full week behind in our planting plans and I can't imagine that we'll be able to get anything into the ground until the end of this week at the latest, but there's not much we can do about that! At this point it looks like we may have to delay our CSA harvest season until the first week in June and try to run it later into the fall instead. And that's assuming that things are going to dry up and warm up after this week. If this weather keeps up into the first part of May, I'm not sure what we'll do.

But we'll do something. This may seem like a crisis, but this sort of challenge is a normal part of farming. Last year area farmers contended with an unseasonably warm spring, followed by several hard freezes and then the worst drought we'd seen in years. We make extensive and detailed plans, but have to be prepared to change them at a moment's notice depending on the growing conditions of the year.

I'd hoped you'd be helping us work up beds and put seeds and plants in the ground this week, but it's far to wet for that. Instead, we'll focus on grass control around the perimeter of our smaller growing areas. Our biggest challenge is a grass called quack grass, which spreads itself by underground runners. Every year they try to sneak under our fences and into the rich garden soil and every spring we dig, pull, and smother them. I actually find pulling quack grass somewhat cathartic and I wrote a post on the farm blog last March in which I muse about pulling quack, foraging for wild edibles, and the state of organic agriculture. You can read it here: March Meditation.

We may also do some seeding of lettuces in plug flats and apple grafting, especially on Tuesday when we've got that 80% chance of rain. Please come both days prepared to get muddy.

Garlic plants poking through the snow Saturday morning