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| Picture from Dave's Garden. |
Catalogs under my belt so far: High Mowing, Johnny's, Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek, Harris Seeds. Waiting on a few more, but it's a start!
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Bring it on, 2012!
Catalogs under my belt so far: High Mowing, Johnny's, Seed Savers Exchange, Baker Creek, Harris Seeds. Waiting on a few more, but it's a start!
Sunday, November 13, 2011
I'm a certifiable farmer!
Just basking in the glory now. And expect more frequent posts here on out -- or at least more frequent than every 3 months or so (sorry!).
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Update, with Squash
Time for an update!
My ICF rotation just finished, and I think I took a lot away from working with such a large farm. (They're nearly 50 acres, and serve a 500 member CSA with about 10 full time employees.) Crop rotations and management practices, harvesting and washing, IPM and weeding. Seeing the efficiencies of working at that size was interesting too. Would I want a 500 member CSA? Probably not, but both of the head farmers there said, when they were starting out, they had that same answer. And I can see the benefits of having a large CSA: a larger member pool, at least at this farm, cultivates a sense of community and activity that a smaller, 20 member CSA might not. People hang out after they pick up their farm shares, children play in the lawn, people go out to pick their own beans, flowers, or raspberries. There's also the benefit of providing really healthy, fresh food to more people, and at affordable prices, even to lower-income families via worker shares. It's worth thinking about, at the very least.
Now I'm on to my next 5-week rotation: marketing! This will entail managing our farmers market and our farm stand (soon to be located on UVM's campus, outside the library). It'll mean harvesting, washing, and packing produce. It'll mean finding strategies to sell our produce, via flyers, the internet, and word of mouth. We'll also be taking a variety of field trips to businesses and farms, and I'll be summoning my long-lost math skills for keeping tabs on our costs, profits, labor, etc. This is much more the "how to run a business" side of farming, which I think I'm really going to enjoy.
Lastly, the farm is awash with zucchini and summer squash! We have so much produce out there now, I'm sure we won't be in any want of things to sell come our Thursday market.
Zucchini, for those that don't know, is incredibly fast growing. Harvesting at the grow site takes place every other day: we pick anything that's the size of your hand or larger. Those 3-inch zucchini that look adorable today will grow to the size of a baseball bat within a couple days if left unpicked.
We've also got plenty of winter squash coming right along! One of our pumpkins is already bigger than my head (even as swollen as it is, with all this farming information!). There's also some hefty sized acorn squash out there too. All this intense heat is really moving the season right along! Can't wait for the tomatoes to turn, although I've been enjoying more than one cherry variety already. Yum!
My ICF rotation just finished, and I think I took a lot away from working with such a large farm. (They're nearly 50 acres, and serve a 500 member CSA with about 10 full time employees.) Crop rotations and management practices, harvesting and washing, IPM and weeding. Seeing the efficiencies of working at that size was interesting too. Would I want a 500 member CSA? Probably not, but both of the head farmers there said, when they were starting out, they had that same answer. And I can see the benefits of having a large CSA: a larger member pool, at least at this farm, cultivates a sense of community and activity that a smaller, 20 member CSA might not. People hang out after they pick up their farm shares, children play in the lawn, people go out to pick their own beans, flowers, or raspberries. There's also the benefit of providing really healthy, fresh food to more people, and at affordable prices, even to lower-income families via worker shares. It's worth thinking about, at the very least.
Now I'm on to my next 5-week rotation: marketing! This will entail managing our farmers market and our farm stand (soon to be located on UVM's campus, outside the library). It'll mean harvesting, washing, and packing produce. It'll mean finding strategies to sell our produce, via flyers, the internet, and word of mouth. We'll also be taking a variety of field trips to businesses and farms, and I'll be summoning my long-lost math skills for keeping tabs on our costs, profits, labor, etc. This is much more the "how to run a business" side of farming, which I think I'm really going to enjoy.
Zucchini, for those that don't know, is incredibly fast growing. Harvesting at the grow site takes place every other day: we pick anything that's the size of your hand or larger. Those 3-inch zucchini that look adorable today will grow to the size of a baseball bat within a couple days if left unpicked.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Transplanting
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Playing with fire...
On Friday we got to mess around with:
Electric fencing...
A tricked out weed wacker...
And a flame thrower.
The flame thrower was insane, I definitely see how it could repel zombies. Sadly, our target was quite a bit smaller. We were attacking weeding the carrot bed with it, pre-carrot germination. Carrots take a solid couple weeks to come up when direct sown, and the weeds will overtake them very easily unless thoroughly weeded beforehand. Hence, the flamer.
Just another day in the life of a farmer, I suppose. ;)
Electric fencing...
A tricked out weed wacker...
And a flame thrower.
 |
| Our flamer wasn't quite military grade. Just as much fun though! |
Just another day in the life of a farmer, I suppose. ;)
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Hidden Blog...
Morning all! Thanks for all the well-wishes yesterday, they did some good: I had an awesome B-day full of sunshine and cake! C:
Running off to ICF in a few minutes (one of the host farms) but wanted to share a link to the "official" Farmer Apprentice Program before I forget: http://learn.uvm.edu/farmerblog/
The marketing rotation will be updating it periodically, starting this week, so watch out for some new posts!
Running off to ICF in a few minutes (one of the host farms) but wanted to share a link to the "official" Farmer Apprentice Program before I forget: http://learn.uvm.edu/farmerblog/
The marketing rotation will be updating it periodically, starting this week, so watch out for some new posts!
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I have had lots of little adventures lately, and now have a few pictures to share! First and foremost, here is our little plot of land (soon to be expanded):
It's hard to see just how much we've planted because of the angle of the picture, but there's lots of already-planted goodies there (and more to the north and south, outside the picture frame).
We're getting our irrigation source hooked up tomorrow, so in the top picture you can see a water tank hooked up to the tractor. We were watering in plants this day since it was incredibly hot (upper 80s at least) and dry.
The second picture there shows out little shed where we store all our tools, and the southern corner of the plot.
Today we were double digging some of the beds, which is definitely labor-intensive. Double digging just means digging down, by hand, about 2 feet (most small rototillers can only penetrate the top foot - if that). While you're down there, you can add compost to improve soil fertility, and increase the air space available to plants with spades and digging forks, while maintaining the soil structure (rototillers don't maintain those strata). The result is soil that can support twice the number of crops that would otherwise have gone in there (potentially even more). That's a HUGE increase, and on small farms, it's definitely an interesting option for increasing production, despite all the labor that goes into it. We'll be comparing these beds with others that are already planted, to see if there is any return on our labor-investment, later on.
We also found out our rotations today! I'll be at ICF Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next 5 weeks, and I am SO PSYCHED. They have a huge CSA, and while the size of their farm (near 50 acres) is a little larger than what I'd aim for (5 acres), I would like to learn lots about that marketing strategy.
Speaking of marketing and selling, Diggers Farm gets to cruise around in a mobile farmstand! I would totally chase this thing down the street in place of an ice cream truck.
We're getting our irrigation source hooked up tomorrow, so in the top picture you can see a water tank hooked up to the tractor. We were watering in plants this day since it was incredibly hot (upper 80s at least) and dry.
The second picture there shows out little shed where we store all our tools, and the southern corner of the plot.
Today we were double digging some of the beds, which is definitely labor-intensive. Double digging just means digging down, by hand, about 2 feet (most small rototillers can only penetrate the top foot - if that). While you're down there, you can add compost to improve soil fertility, and increase the air space available to plants with spades and digging forks, while maintaining the soil structure (rototillers don't maintain those strata). The result is soil that can support twice the number of crops that would otherwise have gone in there (potentially even more). That's a HUGE increase, and on small farms, it's definitely an interesting option for increasing production, despite all the labor that goes into it. We'll be comparing these beds with others that are already planted, to see if there is any return on our labor-investment, later on.
We also found out our rotations today! I'll be at ICF Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next 5 weeks, and I am SO PSYCHED. They have a huge CSA, and while the size of their farm (near 50 acres) is a little larger than what I'd aim for (5 acres), I would like to learn lots about that marketing strategy.
Speaking of marketing and selling, Diggers Farm gets to cruise around in a mobile farmstand! I would totally chase this thing down the street in place of an ice cream truck.
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