By: Julia Holup, Assistant Farm Manager Success in farming takes careful planning. In the winter, while the crops are at rest, the farmers are at work: Noses in books. Eyes on excel sheets. Hands on keyboards, tap-tapping away at annual reports and year-end analyses. There are binders full of colorful tabs, notes in black pen …
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When we’re mapping out our fields, we try to consider each crop’s specific needs – timing of planting, spacing of seeds, ideal temperature for germination, irrigation needs, and on and on. As vegetable gardeners know, planning for a long list of crops can become quite an involved process, made a little easier with the right …
Winter on the farm has a slower pace than the rest of the year, but I’m finding that the days and weeks are flying by as we work our way through a giant winter checklist of all that needs to get done before spring. This month, we are building greenhouse benches, moving wood piles, cleaning …
A few books we’re really enjoying at our house right now: The Holistic Orchard by Michael Phillips Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto I just finished The Dirty Life and I’m tempted to pick it up and read it again! Farmer …
The sun is out today, and the winter rye we seeded in early November is still trying to grow! I just walked the perimeter of our fields again, double-checking my measurements. Now that I’m actually sitting down to calculate how many seeds to order, I need to know how much cultivated bed space we’ll have …
Boxes from seed companies have been showing up on my doorstep this week. Opening them up is almost as good as getting a care package at summer camp! Heirloom and open-pollinated varieties are becoming a bigger percentage of my seed list each year, as I gradually seek out heirlooms that have the characteristics I’m looking …
It’s crop planning time, a task made a little less daunting with a few new-ish farm planning tools I’m thinking about trying out this year. First, there’s the super-handy CD of spreadsheets that comes with Richard Wiswall’s The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook. I also decided to try out a new Target Harvest Date Calculator, a …
Thanks to our nice neighbor and his tractor, we now have three acres plowed up! The plow didn’t turn up many rocks, which is a nice surprise. The next step will be to drag a harrow through the fields, and try to even things out a bit. Pretty soon I’ll need to start forming beds …
At this time of year, I always feel just a little bit impatient. I’m planting seeds and watching them sprout, but it just seems like it will be soooo long until we’re finally eating lots of our own fresh greens again – I can’t wait for giant green salads, and big piles of sauteed kale …