Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. May Day, May 6th
We’re hoping that many of you (all of you, if that would be possible!) are planning on coming out for our “May Day” on Saturday, May 6th. This is also a great time to have friends who might be interested in CSA come to the farm for a visit. As always we’ve ordered up generous portions of sunshine—a perfect spring day, in fact. But also as always, we’ll take what we get and be thankful for what we get.
The time of our May Day activities is from noon to four, with the “May Pole” event starting at 1:00. There should be plenty to interest you, and we’ve got a couple of new “attractions” this year that I’m sure you’ll like.
What’s on hand? Well, we’ll have the trailer rides going throughout the four hours (except at 1:00 during the May Pole time). Wayne and Marcy will have the Belgium team hitched and ready for hay rides. And the antique tractor club will be here providing a plowing demonstration throughout the day, and giving rides on their antique-tractor-drawn trailer. Wendy and I will be here and we’ll each give a tour of some part of the farm, as well as being available to talk to people and answer questions.
We have a special guest who will be joining us for our May Day. I’ve grown a lot of heirloom tomatoes over the last ten years, and I’m always experimenting, but I never thought I’d have the chance to meet the man who bred one of the greatest of all tomatoes. But I did meet him, and he will be here on May Day to give a talk on tomatoes. His name is Tom Wagner, and he has spent a life time breeding literally thousands of varieties of both tomatoes and potatoes. Mr. Wagner will be talking about tomatoes (and potatoes) immediately following the May Pole event (which starts at 1:00).
Again this year we’ll be having a seed planting activity for the kids. We’ve also started some tomato plants (Sun Gold cherry tomatoes) for members. We’ll have to see how they do between now and May Day; I’m not quite ready to make promises about how many per membership.
Beyond that, the farm will be open and we hope you’ll have some bit of time to stroll the paths and see what we’re doing.
So, don’t think twice, just plan to be here!
2. Work-Share meeting on afternoon of May 6th
We are planning a meeting for those who are planning on or thinking about doing a work share this year. If you’re a returning work share, you are welcome to join us, and we hope you do. But if you are a first timer, this is an important meeting that we hope you can and will attend. We’ll have the meeting in the loft of the barn at 3:30. If you can’t make it but would like information or an application about the work share, please drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com).
3. Start of Late Spring Session this Wednesday
We are just about to start the last of our six-week Sessions prior to summer. This Wednesday is the start of our Late Spring Session, and you can still sign up (on-line at www.jubileefarm.org). You’ll need to contact us by Monday noon to get in on the first week; later than that we’ll have a box for you the second week (with a prorated cost).
4. Wanted: drivers for late spring/summer delivery
We are looking for someone who would be interested in driving our vehicle on Wednesday mornings to deliver CSA boxes. We need someone reliable, and able to commit to this, although we do have other people who can take the route in emergencies or planned vacations. If you have an interest in doing this on a regular basis please let us know (jubileefarm@hotmail.com).
We would also like to find someone who is good at and would really like to ride our riding lawn mower around the farm. It’s easy and relaxing. As with the drivers we would pay or trade for your membership.
5. Summer sign-up, delivery, date of first summer pick-up, and a reminder about “recruitment.”
We’ve had a lot of summer sign-ups lately, for which we are very pleased! But we still have a way to go, so if you haven’t signed up yet and intend to, we’d love to hear from you. Remember that we are delivering this year again—details are on the web page. Remember too that we are offering an “incentive” for those of you who help us with finding new members. Be sure that when they sign up they put your name in where it asks how or from whom they heard about our CSA.
We will be starting our Summer 2006 CSA on Tuesday, June 13th, with farm pick-ups on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday of that week. Deliveries will be on Wednesdays.
6. Minerals, balanced soil, and nutrition
This spring we have been undertaking a pretty major mineralization project. After conducting 28 soil samples last fall, we determined that we needed a little over fifty thousand pounds of minerals to achieve cation and trace mineral balance. Just handling that much material is a huge job—we were able to get some in bulk, but most of it is in 50 lb bags. Because we have a lot of variability in our soil, each field calls for a little different treatment. So the mixing is quite time consuming. At this point we are about 30% done.
Why do we go to this expense and bother? Well, obviously we think it is worth it. Soil tends to get worn down over the years. A farm that is well managed with consistent composting can maintain mineralization balance. That assumes it was balanced for optimum production when you started. Our soil was pretty much unbalanced when we started. And although we have good fertility and we can grow pretty good crops, we can do better. That “doing better” ultimately translates into healthier plants that provide better nutrition.
We all know that “conventional” agriculture (chemical farmers) provides only those minerals (phosphorous and potassium) that are absolutely necessary to make vegetables look good. And, of course, they usually use synthetic minerals that are harmful to the microbial life of the soil. We are adding, along with P and K, calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, boron, and sulfur. The minerals we use are all mined, and, of course, approved for Certified Organic growers. This is a tremendous undertaking, but we believe it’s better just to do it now rather than to drag it out over years.
7. A new intern
We were joined two weeks ago by Gerad, a young man who is interested in learning about farming. Gerad has been studying environmental science in a graduate program at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver. He’s taking a year off to “get his hands dirty,” and we have guaranteed him we can help him with that! One of his particular interests is in bio-diesel, and our goal is to start production of BD at some level this year.
8. Farm Chatter: what’s going on at the farm?
This has been quite a spring. It’s been overshadowed by our major mineralization project, which I mentioned above. But we’ve also gotten off to a great start in a number of other categories this year. Yesterday, on the 22nd of April, we finished planting the last of our five tomato houses. That’s an accomplishment—it’s at least two weeks ahead of our previous “earliest planting” date—and it’s good to have it done. I have to admit, though, that seeing a little frost on the ground this morning was a little worrisome. I didn’t sleep well at all last night, and maybe it had something to do with knowing it was going to be cold. When the tomatoes are still in the propagation house, there is something I can do if it gets cold (cover and heat them). Now they are on their own. We are a week past our “last frost” date, so it’s unlikely we’ll get a hard freeze.
We also had good success this year with our pea crop. We’ve tried so many different ways to plant them, but this year we just did it the old fashioned way—by hand! We first soaked the seeds over-night in a water/microbial solution, and then four of us spent about four hours hand-seeding. I know a farm our size is supposed to have “better ways” of seeding, but peas can be difficult, and, well, it worked. Yesterday we gave the peas their first weeding, and they look great--our best stand ever. Last year we replanted on the 29tth of April, so we’re very pleased with having them up and going already. Peas don’t have much problem after they’re established, so we’re hoping to be harvesting peas on or even before our first CSA pick-up.
Another spring project has been the grapes. We know that some of you really like the concord grapes we have, but they are a little tart (a kinder word than “sour”!), and they have seeds. So this year I took the chainsaw and cut about three-quarters of them to the ground. We did save enough so that those of you who love concords can get what you need. What happens to the ones we cut off? Well, if you’ve ever grown grapes, you know that soon there will be many shoots coming up from the stump. While the plants were still dormant this winter we took scions (budded branches) from our very best grapes—they are in the cooler, being kept in a dormant state artificially. When the new shoots get big enough, in a month or so, we’ll graft our dormant scions onto the growing shoots. The end product will be a “new” grape plant with a well-established root system. Of course we have given up production for those plants for this year, but we should get fruit as early as next season.
The other big project associated with the grapes (and the kiwi and the thorn less blackberries) has been building a permanent trellising system. That has involved mixing 4800 lbs of concrete and sinking the end-posts into three-foot deep holes. We’re still not quite finished, but we’re close to seeing some closure on that project. We also need to start replacing our arbor. I noticed last year some of the cedar poles I drove into the ground about ten years ago are rotting, and I would worry about the safety of our kids if we don’t do something this year. Rather than replace the whole thing this one season, we are going to replace the rotted poles a few each year. If any of you are really up on what is available in the way of environmentally friendly “treated” posts, please drop me a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com). I won’t use the old arsenic-laced posts, but I think there are acceptable substitutes available; I just haven’t researched it yet.
We are still hopefully watching our winter grafts on apples, plums, and a couple of pears. Right now we’re at the stage where most of them look good. But that can give false hope. Only a certain percentage of the grafts will actually take. We are getting better at it, but we don’t want to set expectations too high! Our over-all goal is to establish reasonably sized orchards of apples, plums, Asian pears, and peaches. We’ve had the apples for a long time, as you know. The plums are well on their way, with the 50 trees we planted three years ago. We should get our first fruit from them this year. The pears and peaches we haven’t done a lot with, but we have started. We also bought root stalk and planted it in our fruit tree “nursery” (just south of the pepper cloche) for grafting next winter.
Wendy had some help recently on the dahlias and they are now about sixty percent planted. They are a lot of work—way more than any of the other flowers. You really have to keep track of what is what. They all look the same when they are just a pile of tubers! But Wendy’s patience and attention to detail, along with our purchase of some new varieties a couple of years ago, has led to a substantial upgrading of our u-pick dahlias.
Our regular pre-last-frost-date crops are all in, at least the early rotations. Lettuce, carrots, beets, spinach, greens, and potatoes are all on their way. We planted 3,000 strawberry plants this year, and the raspberries are looking very good this spring. In all I’d have to say it’s been a very good spring.
Guess that’s it. Now it’s 80 degrees out, and the frost from this morning is a distant memory. We’re looking forward to our greatest seasons ever, and are glad you all are going to be with us.
See you all on May 6th.
Erick and Wendy Haakenson