This week on the farm we harvested hot weather vegetables including pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, red and yellow tomatoes, and patti pan squash to name a few!  It’s been hot and smokey due to the east winds but the tomatoes, squash, peppers, and eggplant are finally starting to ripen.  With greenhouse temperatures reaching 120 degrees during the day, we’re glad we captured all that rain water back in the spring!  Even though tomatoes and peppers do love heat, they don’t produce fruit if they get too hot and dry.  We irrigate sparingly in the evening to conserve water and discourage fungus.  Gardening tip:  For ripe tomatoes, hold back on the irrigation.  Lack of water will stress them and cause the fruit to ripen before the first frost.

We’re placing our garlic order this week to begin planting by mid-September.  Seedlings of winter lettuces and mustard greens have sprouted and will be transplanted out in a couple weeks for winter harvest.

Our farm animals are enjoying the summer weather and since we feed the damaged vegetables to our chickens and pigs they’re pretty happy on harvest day!  The pigs prefer brassicas like cabbages and cauliflower while the chickens love damaged cucumbers.

A note on egg safety:
Remember to cook eggs using safe handling instructions!  Even though our chickens are raised free range on pasture and fed certified organic feed, it’s still important to keep eggs refrigerated, get rid of any that are cracked or dirty, and cook them thoroughly.

The honey bees are doing well this summer.  After a rough spring due to rainy days and cool temperatures, they’ve come back from the brink.  They spend a lot of time near the pond in the tall fir trees, but we’re not sure why.  This time of year they feed on wildflowers like fireweed and flowering native plants like Douglas Spirea.  We’ll smoke them and check the hives this weekend to determine the honey harvest.  Yum!

We’ve been working on our biodynamic and organic certification for the vegetables and we should be submitting the application by this fall- more to come soon….

This spring we planted nasturtiums and sage near the cabbage plants and we’re amazed at how well they keep cabbage loppers to a minimum.  In previous years we planted a few nasturtiums, but this season we planted many more as well as sage plants.  Pests- including cabbage loppers- are deterred by the smell exuded from these beneficials.  Companion planting is an attractive and organic solution to managing pests.

Gardening tip: Plant nasturtiums, sage, poppies, marigolds, and yarrow around vegetables to keep pests under control without having to spray pesticides.  Flowering plants like borage are also helpful to honey bees!

We planted pole beans last week and used bamboo poles to trellis them.  We grow our own bamboo varieties including golden, black, and timber.  It’s easy to grow bamboo in this climate and really convenient to harvest poles whenever we need to trellis tomatoes or beans.

We’ve had record heat this week with temperatures in the upper nineties.  Hand watering heat sensitive plants like lettuce in the morning or evening is keeping evaporation to a minimum.  We captured rain water earlier this spring in order to conserve well water all summer.

One of our honey bee hives swarmed but we were able to capture it!  It looks good so we’ll be able to harvest more honey next season.

The layer chickens are shaded in their chicken tractor which we move regularly on pasture rotation.  Every time we move the chicken tractor to a new patch of pasture we plant clover.  Clover is a favorite of the honey bees, cows, pigs, and sheep.

The Jersey cow and Dexter bull are keeping cool in their forest shaded field.  We’re expanding their pasture this week so we won’t have to import as much hay this winter.

The pigs are growing fast in their new pasture.  Last season we incorporated rich farm-made compost into the field so they have plenty of seasonal grasses to root up.

We’ve started construction on our “cool bot” which is an efficient cold storage room for crops like potatoes and sunroots.  Pictures to come!  Stay tuned…..

With rainfall totals ranging from 2-3 inches in lowlands & 4-6 inches in the headwaters just this week, we’re bracing for a very wet summer.  Forecasts show the wet pattern continuing through the remainder of June.  It looks like rivers in the valley will remain below flood stage but rise enough to cause more crop damage.  June will be warmer than normal with thunderstorms, July will  be a bit drier but August has a chance of La Nina bringing cool temperatures.  So what does this mean for the farm?  Greenhouse production!  This week on the farm we planted the early producing corn transplants outside & managed to keep them out of the flooded section of field.  The potatoes are not in the best spot though, & we’ve had to pull them & replant a few times to keep them from rotting.  On the bright side, the mustard greens in the greenhouse are doing well because they thrive in wet grey weather & the greenhouse structure protects them from flooding downpours.

Gardening tip:  In extremely wet conditions directly seeded crops will flood, causing rot.  To avoid significant crop loss- plant healthy large transplants into raised beds composed of well draining compost & bark mulch.

We’re planning on feeding extra to the honeybees next week since the blackberries aren’t flowering yet & it’s been way too cold for them.  They’ve been flying during brief sun breaks but generally they just huddle at the front door of their hives, so we’re definitely concerned.  On a positive note we’ve installed 33 hives so we should have enough for a good honey harvest in late summer.

The livestock are just as depressed as we are about the constant rain, but we’re doing our best to keep them well fed & dry.  Even the coyotes & skunks are trying to seek shelter from the weather!  We recently discovered a skunk family in the barn trying to get into the organic feed bins so there’s been quite an increase in pests like rodents & crows.

Our biogas digester is too cold to produce fuel right now, but by July we should have an update- stay tuned……:)

This week on the farm we harvested salad greens, stir fry greens, kale, tatsoi & broccoli raabs, scallions & altaglobe radishes.  The steady rains over the last few weeks kept the broccolli and tatsoi from bolting, however they will probably go to seed as we have hotter weather the end of this week.

Gardening tip: to prevent broccoli heads from flowering prematurely, hill up compost around the base of each plant.

Now that the forecast finally calls for more sunny skies we can finish planting the seed potatoes and tomato transplants.  While we wait for the soil in the garden to drain, we’ll finish transplanting the tomatoes, peppers, & eggplants into the cold frame greenhouse.  Leek & onion sets have been transplanted & corn, cucumber & squash have  been seeded in 4″ pots to be ready for transplanting in about 3 weeks.  We’re also planting hanging baskets in our greenhouse with a tomato variety called “glacier”, an early season producer.

The layer chickens are busy eating spring grasses while protected in their new chicken tractor & we haven’t had any coyote predation.  The cold & rain have been difficult on the new chicks but now they are doing better.  Chicks need to be at about 85 degrees in the first few weeks so we have them under heat lamps to prevent chill.  The piglets are growing steadily but we don’t dare feed them until about 10:00 a.m. as they prefer to sleep in!

The honey bees have been doing great, they’re a variety called “carneolans” & they’ve been flying everyday that’s been above 50 degrees.  At this rate we should be able to harvest 15 lbs. by 6/15.

We continue to work on the forms for out Demeter certification so we can get the vegetables certified biodynamic/organic by this summer.

Oregon Institute of Technology has notified us they’re looking for farms & nurseries to participate in a biofuels research project.  We’re so happy to be involved because we use biofuels including waste veggie oil, waste crop material, & waste from damaged native trees.

Recently on the farm we’ve had extremely wet weather along with high winds.  Some of our seeds were flooded and seedlings that were transplanted two weeks ago have water logged roots.  We transplant seedlings into raised beds of compost and normally they drain well but with so much rainfall it is getting quite soggy!  Our greenhouses are keeping the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and early spring transplants of broccoli, kohlrabi, scallions, and kale protected.  We’ve seeded flats of borage, calendula, poppies, anise hyssop, and dill.  All of our beneficials will be transplanted throughout the garden to keep pests at bay.  Our earliest varieties of tomato seedlings were transplanted into the cold frame greenhouse and they seem to be doing well.  Gardening tip: high winds dry out the soil, so remember to carefully hand water transplanted seedlings to prevent stress damage. It’s been so wet we haven’t even been able to plant the seed potatoes.  Hopefully the weather will turn around soon and we can continue transplanting lettuces, mustards, and chard as well as direct seeding more peas, radishes, carrots, parsnips, nasturtiums, marigolds, turnips, beets, and pac choi to name a few!

Well the chicks are not pleased with the cold and rain but their heat lamps and orchard grass bedding seem to help.  As soon as they have their full feathers and the weather cooperates we can put them out on the pasture in their new chicken tractor.  Our Jersey cow, Mocha, seems unphased by the weather and she continues to enjoy the new pasture grasses growing in her field.  Three weaner piglets arrived this week and they have been burrowing in their straw bedding to avoid the cold.  We feed them certified organic feed plus extra vegetables and when they’re big enough to avoid coyotes they’ll be put on pasture to free range.

This weekend we’ll be attending a barley growing workshop so we can grow more of the chicken and pig feed right here on the farm.  If we can stop importing feed from off the farm we can definitely shrink our carbon footprint.

Our new nucleus of honey bees arrived last week and they have been flying during brief sun breaks, but the cold weather is definitely a concern.  We’ll make a sugar syrup for them to feed on from their bee boxes if they’re unable to fly out next week.  Stay tuned!

This week on the farm we had warm temps. in the upper 60′s which sprouted radishes, broccoli, lettuce, onions, peas, leeks, kohlrabi, swiss chard, nasturtiums, marigolds, and mustards to name a few!  We prepared the raised beds for the potato planting next week and continued weeding the strawberries.  In the greenhouse we discovered a creeping bent grass matt and we had to spend all day removing it by hand.  It’s almost warm enough to seed carrots and transplant the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants from the hot house into the cold frame greenhouse.

We’ve started using the bokashi cycle fermentation system to aid our on-farm composting process.  We’ve had some pests like crows and mice getting into our compost lately and the bokashi cycle will deter them.  The bokashi cycle is made of rice bran and beneficial microorganisms and it pickles the food scraps so insects, rodents, and other pests are no longer interested!  Effective microorganisms or “beneficial microorganisms” are comprised of phototrophic bacteria, yeast, and lactic acid bacteria.  The bokashi cycle encourages them to work together to pickle the food scraps quickly and when it’s placed in the garden, the soil microbes do their part by continuing the process leaving a highly nutrient soil base that plants love.  The bokashi cycle ferments all food scraps, including waxy vegetable skins and meat scraps.  Using it means we are lowering the amount of waste we’d normally send to the landfill which significantly reduces our carbon footprint!

The layer chicks are growing quickly and soon they’ll have enough feathers to move outside of their brooding house into the chicken tractor where they will enjoy green grass and crunchy bugs.  The cornish cross meat chicks have already gained weight even though they’re only 10 days old.  We feed them certified organic chicken feed comprised mainly of corn and soy beans and when they’re feathered out we’ll put them on pasture too.  Our Irish Dexter bull, Toro, has been really frisky lately so we’ve had a lot of fence to fix but he’s loving the new pasture grass and even snacks on the Douglas fir needle tips!

Warmer weather means our biogas digester is starting to work again.  We’ll do a test run in a few days- stay tuned…….

This week on the farm we harvested spring vegetables and herbs including baby kale, scallions, arugula, lettuce, and rhubarb to name a few.  Challenging weather conditions with high winds and driving rain reminded us of how essential the greenhouses can be!  Neoprene gloves helped insulate our fingers from the ice rain while we harvested out the salad mix.

Gardening tip:  To protect tomato and pepper seedlings from late frosts, simply cover them with a floating row cover (winter weight) available at Portland Nursery.  If the seedlings are in containers just bring them inside at night.  When a hard frost is in the forecast, irrigate the evening before.

The layer chicks stayed cozy under their brooding lights in the insulated chicken coop.  They seem to enjoy their certified organic chick feed and orchard grass bedding.  They are quite frisky at ten days old, but they still need to be protected from predators like the red fox and barred owl.  As soon as they have developed their flying feathers we will put them out on pasture to eat bugs and grubs, some of which are beneficials & some not.  It’s all about keeping the farm in balance.  Mocha and Toro (the Jersey cow and Irish Dexter bull) are chowing down on the spring grasses and their winter coats continue to protect them from the icy winds.

The beneficial herbs we’ve planted are starting to come up!  They include marigolds, nasturtium, yarrow, sage, and Carraway thyme.  The seed potatoes have started sprouting and we will plant them over the next few weeks.  We store them in the farm house to keep them from freezing at night.  It’s funny having four hundred pounds of potatoes in the living room!

Coming soon: weaner piglets!  Stay tuned…….

This week on the farm we made an interesting discovery.  We found a small millipede in our compost rich garden beds.  At first glance we were very concerned it was a symphylon, a small arthropod that is very destructive.  Upon further research we realized it was a polydesmid commonly referred to as the flat backed millipede.  They eat decomposing organic matter, like compost, & don’t pose a threat to garden vegetables the way symphs do.  Phew!

We planted more marigolds, broccoli, leeks, and onions too.  We are incorporating more beneficials into the garden plan this season.  Companions like sage, thyme, yarrow, nasturtium & marigold will be in almost every bed this year.  Garden tip: marigolds (calendula) resist unwanted pests like bad nematodes.  They attract spider mites & slugs but that can be a good thing because then the farmers can find them more easily & pluck them off.  They also deter white flies.  They are antagonistic to beans, so be sure there is some space between them.

We have begun to shift away from purchased potting mix to using our own made on the farm.  Commercial potting soil, even organic, contributes to the depletion of the world’s peat supply.  It is worth the effort to make our own potting mix especially with our focus on farm made compost.

The layer chicks arrived, including Rhode Island Red & Golden Sexlink.  They are much more active than the Cornish Cross meat chicks we’ll be raising in April.  They have to be kept under heat lamps for a few weeks & once they develop their feathers we can put them into the chicken tractors.  The chicken tractor design we are using this season will allow the birds to free range on pasture but stay protected from predators in the sky & on the ground.  We can put 10 birds per tractor & move them to a new patch daily.  They’re built out of lumber we milled from right here on the farm.

Weather was a bit extreme this week with temps ranging from a low of 25 degrees to 70 degrees a few days later.  The greenhouse reached almost 100 degrees, but the soil was cool enough that the spring scallions & kale didn’t bolt.

We’ll begin working on our biodynamic/organic certification in April- stay tuned…….

This week on the farm a low of 25 degrees surprised us after such a warm, sunny afternoon.  We were lulled into thinking we didn’t need to follow the afternoon checklist & left the hot house door ajar.  The next morning we checked all tomato & pepper seedlings for frost damage & because we watered everything thoroughly the day before, there didn’t appear to be any damage.  However, the mustards might have some stunting because they were the most exposed.  This is a great example of why succession planting is so important in the spring.  We always follow our frost date calendar, but sometimes we push the limits & have to replant:)  Stay tuned…..

The potato seed arrived!  We order from Rocky Farm in Colorado & they’re shipped just in time for St.Patrick’s day planting.  The varieties we ordered this season are: German Butterball, Yukon Gold, All Blue, Sangre, Atlantic, Bintje, Nicola, & Russet.  Gardening tip: potatoes can be prone to disease & blight.  An organic solution is to practice good garden hygiene & consistent crop rotation.

The greenhouse kale, scallions, broccoli, & lettuce have exploded in growth due to the beautiful sunny weather we’ve been enjoying lately.  Soon we will transplant seedlings of leeks, onions, mustards, salad mix, & herbs into the greenhouse for quick turn around & plentiful harvests for the May/June shares.

In bee news- an amazing thing happened, much to our surprise.  One of the hives actually did survive the winter.  A few weeks ago we were convinced of their destruction from a combination of yellow jacket robbing & the Arctic blast of early winter.  But when the warmer weather arrived this week, we were able to inspect each hive more carefully & indeed some survived.  It is possible that a wild hive moved in, but we’re happy either way.  There is plenty of nectar for them from the quince, apple, cherry, & plum trees buds.

We are building some new “chicken tractors” this season for our free range layer chickens & meat chickens.  The “chicken tractors” are portable aviaries that keep the chickens in free range rotation on pasture while protecting them from owls, raptors, red foxes, & coyotes.  It is a great way to let the chickens scratch through the garden, eating potential pests like cabbage loppers.

Coming soon:  farm distillery news & a biogas digester update.  Don’t miss it!

This week on the farm it unexpectedly snowed two days in a row!   The mustards had already sprouted, but since we stored them in the greenhouse (just in case of frost) they didn’t get clobbered after all.  We’ll check the peas as soon as the snow melts to determine if they were damaged.  They were protected under floating row covers (called Agribon) but they had just sprouted too so we might need to re-plant.  Farming can be pretty tricky at this time of year!  We decided to spend most of our time in the greenhouse weeding vegetables like scallions, kale, pac choi, broccoli, and lettuces which was much easier than weeding strawberries out in the field under two inches of snow.  In the hot house we seeded lovage, marjoram, summer savory, nasturtiums, and marigolds.

This season we’ll be planting a lot of beneficials including: stinging nettle, valerian, chamomile, dandelion, oak tree, borage, poppy, caraway, dill, flax, petunia, calendula, sage, yarrow, and Russian sage.  These herbs and flowers can be used for teas as well as “traps” that distract pests away from vegetables and fruits.

We’re getting fifteen Rhode Island Red chicks and fifteen Golden Sexlink chicks in two weeks and forty Cornish Cross chicks the first week of April.  Our neighborhood pig farmer will have a litter of Duroc weaner piglets ready by the end of April.  We’ve thought about raising our own sows and boar but we don’t have the infrastructure at this time.

We love the late season honey we stored over winter and it seems to help with allergies too.  We’re looking forward to keeping bees again this summer for the honey supply and the pollination.  Our nuke supplier has extra hives we’ve offered to store on our farm where they’ll have plenty of forage for food.  Bees love forage and we have a lot of that!

Gardening tip: now’s the time to remove blackberries using hand loppers and flame weeders.