Rehoboth Homestead

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. As usual consider this an Epiphany letter. Beth just can’t get her mind into it until things slow after Christmas.

Beth took a week off after Christmas to visit Heather and family.  She was fortunate to be picked up at the airport by and have dinner with niece Julie and family, then spend the night and be ferried to Heather’s by niece Dawn and family. Tony’s sister-in-law invited his sister and husband to dinner the night before she flew back so she got to have a little time with all the family and also visited a couple friends.

Tony held down the fort again while Beth spent four days at the NOFA-NY winter conference – full day on food safety, another day on hoophouse growing, and then two days of shorter sessions. It was excellent, and a good lift before driving home to a -22 degree night. Then Tony got to go to Nebraska, and spent over a month building cabinets for his niece and visiting Heather and family.

It was a snowy, snowy winter. That was good for the soil and perennial plants. The first layer chicks arrived in February, and went into the basement because the snow and cold made it hard to clean the brooder house out for them.  Another notable winter thing was that we got a “new” tractor, a 45 hp 4wd Kubota with bucket, forks, and toolbar. It was supposed to be Beth’s, but Tony’s old John Deere hasn’t seen much use since we got the Kubota.  It is an OK trade-off since Tony doing things around the farm with it.

April and early May were wet and cold, but Beth enjoyed it. Not being able to work outside actually took pressure off and let her concentrate on keeping up in the hoophouse. Another farmer lent us a raised bed maker/plastic mulch layer during a brief dry spell, two days before things got really muddy.  3700 feet of raised beds saved the spring for us.  We had crops several weeks before most others around here.

Most growers east of the Rockies describe this as the “season from hell”. The soil alternated between mud and concrete and insects and disease were much worse than “normal”. Either muddy or concrete was almost impossible to weed, and it could be too muddy at 9 am and hard set concrete at noon. Then we had over six weeks without any rain. I am used to being able to transplant and water once or twice. This year the crops just sat there hoping for water rather than growing.  Hurricane Irene brought us relief.  The crops sucked it in and stood up.  Irene was quickly followed by Lee, which the soil and crops liked even more. Then it kept raining more than needed and brought in lots of fungal disease. Though we didn’t have all the crops we wanted when we wanted, we had enough of enough to keep the CSA content. I had been dismayed that though our membership numbers increased from 56 to 77, over half chose the small share so the income was almost identical.  In hindsight, God knew what he was doing when he arranged that because we would not have had enough variety for more full-size memberships. Financially, we are OK. We bought a tractor and a hoophouse and our checkbook is right where it was last December. Whew!

We were supposed to get a second hoophouse in late September, to plant to winter spinach.  It didn’t come until the beginning of November, so it is ready for summer tomatoes and next winter’s greens.  It is 20 feet wide and 120 feet long

This fall Tony had fun residing a church steeple.  He also enjoyed visiting very good friends in western New York helping their son-in-law’s church with a new ramp/stairs/entry. Of course he brought venison back from hunting camp, without firing a shot.

Beth went to the New England Vegetable and Berry Conference in December.  Just finding out she can cut the roots right off the leeks rather than leaving ½ inch and scrubbing that ½ inch may save enough labor and increase comfort (reduce time outside getting wet) to pay for the conference.

After an amazingly mild fall, winter has set in.  Even on below freezing days, if the sun is shining the hoophouse is a really pleasant place to be. We have markets going through the winter, but it is much easier to just deal with the hoophouse crops and take things out of storage, so the markets are a good time to socialize and they keep the checkbook more level.

We hope your year has been as uneventful as ours and you are well. If you want to keep tabs on us, check our farm Facebook page and website.

Beth Spaugh and Tony Barber

Many of you ask how my life changes in the winter.  Monday was the first weekday that I didn’t have a market or market to get ready for AND couldn’t do much outside.  I say “much” because I could pick up and pack away summer chicken waterers and various other things that could be put away or thrown out.  As it warmed  up ——

Friday was a hectic harvest all cabbage that was mature enough but not freeze damaged, harvest what I thought was enough leeks to last into late January, harvest as many brussels sprouts as I thought I could sell this month, harvest kale, harvest Napa and pac choi from the new tunnel, put row cover over the spinach seedlings in the new tunnel and a second layer of row cover over everything since that tunnel has only one layer of plastic and open end vents, harvest spinach, chard, and salad greens from the old tunnel, and get ready for Saturday farmers market.

Saturday was our last Trilakes Harvest Market of the year.  It was a good market with our regular great customers.  We will continue through the winter taking orders online with deliveries to Green Goddess Foods on 2nd and 4th Wednesdays. It was nice to put the tables out of the car and away (except for the small ones I’ll keep using in Plattsburgh).  Just nice to put closure to one time consumer for several months.  A good, profitable time consumer, but still a recurring deadline that I won’t miss for several months.

Sunday the sun shone some so I did some clean up in the hoophouse.  I needed to get the older dead leaves out to prevent fungal disease.  Made good headway.

Monday’s priority list was phone calls: to take the old pickup truck off the insurance and add the new hoophouse; to make an annual physical appointment; to make an annual eye appointment; to check up on some income tax preparation; order seed potatoes; order ginger “seed” (new crop for next year!!); call to get info on a Fuf chair for winter reading and knitting; etc.  About 3:30 I remembered why I don’t even try to do this in the summer – I was wasting the day waiting for return calls.

Tuesday’s sunshine made the hoophouse wonderfully toasty and I harvest spinach, arugula, chard, and salad greens. Sure wish the contractor had come this fall to do “dirt work”, including digging a trench for a frost-free hydrant in the hoophouse.  It would have been very pleasant washing the greens out there, and the light would have been much better than in the garage. Tuesday night we finally moved the hens into the winter hen shed.

Wednesday was spend getting ready for market tomorrow. We have lots of orders so I got almost all of that packed. Then tonight I took time to figure out how to make a photo album on the website, and put some photos up. It needs organizational work, but is a start.  Hopefully tomorrow I can harvest more spinach since it looks like we have ample and it is gorgeous, and leeks, kale, etc outside.  I went down today, and should have taken my camera to photograph the frost on the kale leaves and broccoli. I expect the rain washed the frost off/warmed them up a bit.

Have a Blessed Merry Christmas!

Things are looking pretty good for Thursday.  I washed and packed carrots, potatoes, celeriac, kohlrabi, turnips, sweet potatoes, etc Sunday afternoon and Monday morning and harvested leeks (left them with dirty roots soaking in some water) and brussels sprouts since it may rain Thursday morning. Thursday should be warm enough to harvest salad mixes and chard from the tunnel.  Even if drizzly/muddy I should be able to get kale out of the field.  Cleaning the leeks will be a little pain if it is raining, but so what.

I am at the New England Vegetable and Berry Conference.  I asked today about keeping leeks and brussels sprouts since everything I was finding at the professional sites online was discouraging.  I was told leeks keep well in the cooler but turn yellow if they don’t have light.  We won’t put light on because we need to keep the potatoes dark, but another grower has done this and said people are just happy to have organic leeks in January and February, yellow leaves or not. I also thought I might have to dig brussels sprouts plants and put them in roots/dirt and all, but others said they have cut the stems and kept them in root cellars into February.  So, those two tips lighten my load.

The talks are centered around topics, and I mostly went to two “winter growing” sessions, but skipped out for one strawberry talk.  Really glad I did because the speaker was keeping strawberries on plastic for two or more years, and staggering June-bearers with everbearers to have a long strawberry season.  I think I’ll order more plants for a long season for you.

I got some REAL good info from the winter growing sessions – 10 1/2 pages of notes.  Since the new tunnel came so late I didn’t get it planted when I was “supposed to” in August and September.  One grower shared that he starts lettuce really late so they just sprout or have one set of true leaves, and they will overwinter and provide early lettuce/salad mix.  He also plants carrots in mid-November.  If he plants them earlier they turn woody and send up seeds in the spring, but by having them only very young around the winter solstice, they make carrots.   I have seed for broccolini, but haven’t bothered with it.  Another grower said it can be planted January 1, transplanted into hoophouse in late Feb,  and will produce starting in May and will keep producing all summer.  I’ll get that seed out when I get home!

I got a lot of “dates’ info.  Since I try to plant as late as possible to kill as many weeds as possible before planting, it is helpful to see when others plant (I really need to plant earlier).  There were a lot of examples of what folks plant outside, under row cover, under low hoops, in small hoophouses, and in large hoophouses, when, and when they harvest.  Good info for my crop planning this year. I know my kale is getting frost damage, but one speaker shared that they successfully cut all their kale around Thanksgiving and put it in the root cellar for sale into January.  It is dormant (most years) so keeps well.

One guy grows during the summer but his only “sales’ are to a winter CSA.  He buys from other farmers to provide a wide range of veggies, meats, staples. I have thought of that, and might scale back to that in a few years. Obviously there was more, but these were easy to mention highlights that stuck out for me.

Sunday afternoon I did get row cover on the strawberries and garlic.  I want to pound some fence posts around the perimeters and crisscross rope across to catch it if the wind works the row cover off the weights.  The weather forecast for Friday before I left was pretty good so I REALLY hope to get the row cover and plastic on the spring onions.  After listening to how some folks seed things outside under row cover now and early January, I’ll try to get another set of hoops up over some raised beds Tony made and seed them to carrots, beets, chard, carrots, radishes, salad mix, etc to germinate early spring.  I had been thinking of doing this all fall but wondered if the mice/voles would eat the seed.  Maybe we’ll get the chance to find out.  Or maybe the ground will freeze before I get that far.

Hope you’ve had a good week and I see you Thursday at the market. OHHHH !!!!!  We have decided to keep the market going through the winter.  We’ll take a couple weeks off and then start back up – tentative date is January 12.  We are all still too busy to really get together to firm this up, and a couple folks send employees to the market who can’t make these decisions. So keep tuned.

Sure glad we got the carrots out.  At this time of year, the plants (where there are plants) don’t suck much water up so the ground stays wet.  We gave up on having the clearing and shaping we expected to have done in September and Tuesday brought the bees back from friends who had been keeping them since we thought the bulldozer was coming. The warm weather has kept them active so they have eaten most of their stores.  I put jars of crystallized honey in for them, and hope I’ll have enough to get them through the winter. They eat very little when it is really cold, until late March or April when they start gearing up again.

Spinach in the hoophouse, December 2011

Monday I harvested leeks, brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, and chard.  I like to do it closer to market, but this was the best weather forecast and this time of year these crops are pretty dormant and last a couple weeks in our cooler.  The tractor is still acting up, and Monday looked like the best day to use the golf cart.  While I had the golf cart down there I hauled rock bag weights down to where I need row cover and plastic over the spring onions and strawberries. I got the golf cart down the hill but had to drive around on Route 9 to get back up.   Wednesday I found beautiful pac choi and Asian greens outside, light enough to carry up the hill.  Also harvested spinach from the hoophouse.  Have beautiful mini-lettuces in the hoophouse as well as some lettucy salad mix to harvest Thursday morning before market.

Mini-lettuces in the hoophouse, December 2011

Sunday afternoon and Tuesday I mostly worked on the garage.  Getting the garage ready for winter (making space to work inside and park the golf cart so we can leave the batteries in) means sorting lots of things, layer by layer, packing things up into the attic, etc.

Seed catalogs have come so I have been comparing varieties among them. I did come across some encouraging tidbits in them.  Seems that cold hardy savoy cabbages and a few cold hardy lettuces will overwinter in Maine and head up early in the spring.  I have some of each in the hoophouse as an experiment, but thought I put them in too late. Not according to the catalogs.  The challenge will be harvest timing – the catalogs say they mature in May or early June, but I want them out of the hoophouse in early April to make way for tomatoes. I can put tomato plants between the cabbages and lettuces, but I want to put down manure from the chicken house for the tomatoes and can’t do that with lettuces or cabbages in close proximity.  We’ll see how it goes.  Maybe harvest at “teenage” size.

Tony helped me bring the shelving unit in from the walk-in cooler to set up as a plant stand and start micro-greens and wheat grass for January sales and salad mix greens for setting in the hoophouse in January if I can figure out how to acclimate them to the change from house to hoophouse.  I will have space in the hoophouse because the first planting of lettuces has gotten powdery mildew.  I need to get them pulled out so they aren’t producing spores.  I did set up the supports for the row cover in there – on days like Tuesday I do lots of little things for variety.

Inside hoophouse, December 2011

Monday I get to go to the New England Vegetable and Berry Conference in New Hampshire.  Though the Thursday sessions look really good, we’ll come back Wednesday night to get ready for market Thursday. Why oh why is the forecast for sun and 40s while I’m gone????  A nice thing about markets this time of year is that I can harvest all but the greens ahead of time so this is feasible. Most of the speakers at the conference are farmers sharing their experiences, so I hope to pick up good ideas. The session I’ll miss Thursday afternoon is about using netting to exclude insect pests so I hope to find someone who will take good notes for me.  We will not do the online ordering next week but I should have a full table at market.

Hope to see you at the market Thursday, and have a good weekend.

The day started inauspiciously – the tractor which died in the field last night when I wanted to load the crates of carrots and bring them up, was still cold dead this morning.  Tony recently replaced the battery, thinking that was the problem, but apparently we need alternator or generator work.  The day quickly improved though. I drove the RAV4 around and carried 14 milk crates of carrots to it and brought them up. Let’s back up and do a week in review for you though.

Tuesday was the early Plattsburgh Winter Farmers Market.  Wednesday I spent the WHOLE day housecleaning.  I had started doing some every evening, but after a summer of farming long days there was lots to do. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with my nephew and his wife visiting from Rhode Island.  They have become local foodies and brought Rhode Island oysters and clams with them. I just may have to visit them!  Two plus days of only doing chicken chores was quite a break from the routine around here.  Friday we planted spinach in the new hoophouse and I got ready for the Saturday Trilakes Harvest Market.

Saturday I got home from the TriLakes Harvest Market with it turning dark as happens this time of year.  Checked the weather forecast and panicked about all the carrots, beets, and turnips still to be dug.  We took off from church early Sunday and started what had been an easy pulling job.  I expected the snow to have melted but it hadn’t, so we were pushing snow off the carrots and having to use the digging fork in the mud.  I started with the small summer carrots that folks love.  But, they don’t have real strong tops for pulling, and since they are small it takes a lot of digging/pulling to get many carrots.  I was thinking of just abandoning the four rows (250 feet each) of other carrots but went over to see how bad they would be.  They pulled easily.

So Monday and Tuesday I went down and harvested kohlrabi, turnips, small chard, bunches of kale, pac choi, broccoli,e tc and carrots.  It is amazing how much the soil can dry overnight.  Also, we had not weeded the winter carrots as much as we did the summer carrots, so their ridges were higher and drier, and they are a little downhill of the summer carrots so I think the ridges/trenches between had intercepted some water. Anyway, they pulled easily though it was a long day.   Tuesday I finished by pulling the red and white carrots as it got dark.  The white ones pull real easily but the purple/red ones had to be dug. Went to move the tractor down the row to pick up the milk crates of carrots and, you know the rest.

Monday afternoon as I was digging I was blessed with a volunteer that I set to washing carrots inside the hoophouse out of the wind, and a little warmer, and psychologically pleasing with all the greens.  Bless Peter, he came back Tuesday, again Wednesday, and plans to finish the last 4 crates of carrots for me Thursday while I prep for market.  We snapped the tops off as we pulled them, because 1) the tops get nasty and hard to rinse off in storage and 2) snapping the tops close enough to get the growing point is supposed to make them store better.  But all had soil clinging to them, and most were downright muddy.  In a season that had more insect and disease problems than we have ever seen the carrots were a bright spot.  As I was cleaning this evening I saw one with carrot rust fly feeding damage.  I paid attention and in all found 15 with a little feeding damage and one with really noticeable damage.  Out of literally thousands of carrots. Last year it seemed like almost every carrot had feeding damage.  I am happy about the way the carrots look this year!

Evenings I’ve been taking inventory of my seeds and entering that info in a farm management software that I am beta testing.  It has great promise to help me improve my management, but all the data entry is cumbersome, and the beta testers exist to help test things out – how the workflow goes, bugs, etc, so it is taking a “bit” of time.

It is 8:30 p.m. Wednesday evening and my fingertips are still numb and tingly from washing carrots.  I finished almost two hours ago.  But, a day around 50 at the end of November !!! What a blessing.  I really pushed to finish tonight because I think it will be less pleasant spraying a hose tomorrow.  Tomorrow I will harvest the arugula and salad mixes.  There is spinach to harvest, but since I have to bunch/pack other things and organize for market, spinach harvest may have to wait a week.

So, the status of the field: I can still easily harvest more turnips since they sit on top of the ground.  All the kohlrabi is out and rinsed. All the celeriac is in boxes, dirty since it stores much better that way.  All the beets are out, such as they are (small).  The mice beat me to the wonderful Lutz long keepers.  I finally gave up even looking for uneaten ones, so beets will be in short supply this winter. Carrots are all out.  Leeks are staying in the ground as long as possible, and I hope to cover them and leave them there since they turn yellow quickly for me in storage.  Brussels sprouts also stay at least until I get the cooler reorganized.  They should store a few weeks in the cooler. Have a half dozen or so pac choi in the field, and moved a bunch into the new hoophouse. Had a major broccoli harvest this week – small heads but lots of them. Cabbage can stay a little while, and again waiting to reorganize the cooler before bringing more in. Little red cabbage, savoy cabbage, broccoli, etc that were stunted by the summer drought are trying valiantly to mature.  Crops are amazingly resilient.  I have moved some into the new hoophouse just to see if they will make it.  I am not mowing them down simply because they do provide some soil cover and organic matter.

We still need to put row cover over the garlic and strawberries, put row cover over some flower plants, transplant some parsley to the hoophouse, build low hoops over the young onions for next spring, and hopefully build a temporary hoophouse over the leeks.  Tony did make some raised ridges right before the snow that I can either cover with low hoops (my preference) for early spring planting (or plant seeds now but I’m afraid the seeds will be eaten) or just to have high dry beds for early planting next spring. WE got lots cleaned up, but still have to take down deer fence.  I saved leaky drip tape to use to tie down the low hoops, so if I don’t get them made will need to pack up drip tape that is lying in the “road”.  Need to clean the garage. Would love to reorganize the storage van. Need to clean/oil/sharpen tools.  Etc etc etc.  The person who was supposed to come clear the north edge of the field so we can plant a windbreak and intercept/move water off the field, pull stumps, build pad for washing station, dig trench for frost-free hydrant and power to future washing station, dig trenches for manure for asparagus, take out small dam in the drainage ditch so our road won’t be so muddy, etc in September still hasn’t gotten here.  I am wondering if it will happen this fall.  We were also trying to get our poultry compost on this fall so we wouldn’t be waiting on it in the spring, but I think it will wait until spring since we can’t disk it in now. All in all though, we are in better shape then usual when winter sets in.

So, hope to see you Thursday at the market.  Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Hope all is as well with you as it is here.

Chickens don’t like snow.  They will venture out on packed snow, but really don’t like it when their feet sink in.  Usually we start out with a light dusting and they are curious, hesitant, but figure it out.  They are still in their summer campers, and usually will spend rainy days underneath the campers. With 8 inches as our first snow fall of the year, I don’t think a one of chickens ventured out.  Even the ducks and geese went in for the night, which is rare.  The geese were out most of the day, but didn’t go far from the winter henshed where the ducks were hanging out.  The “puddle ducks” – golden cascade and welsh harlequin – took a walk twice.  The muscovies were enticed out a few feet for water. That was it.  A quiet day in the yard.

Not so quiet in the house.  Family came tonight.  Very welcome but the house hadn’t been cleaned since spring.  I actually resorted to paper plates this summer.  My preference would have been to use the snow day to clear up the garage to make the space more usable, but the inside took the WHOLE day.  I have spinach seed that is sprouting that I need to plant before the roots get too long and tangle up. Hopefully will steal some time tomorrow morning when the hoophouse warms up.  Lots of cooking to do, but there should be some down times.  Actually, other than duck I haven’t thought much about what all we’ll cook.  We have enough selection around that we can throw something together.

Ummm.  Nephew and wife came up from Rhode Island, and brought oysters and clams with them.  I had fixed sweet potato fries and greens.  They had brought some incredible olive bread – crunchy crunchy crust and soft insides – totally yummy.  It will be hard to top tomorrow.

Hope all have a relaxing, grateful Thanksgiving.

I used to go to market in a Subaru Legacy wagon.  Other vendors would sometimes stop what they were doing when I got to market to come look to see how much I had packed in.  I’ve had more space with the RAV4, but it still takes a system to get stuff in, and sometimes I have to leave some things out.  I can fit two rows of my aqua totes three high behind the front seats. One side can have three stacks, the other two stacks. Then between the wheel wells two rows of the smaller blue totes.  Depending on how many coolers, I can usually have two rows of blue stacks. Coolers are a challenge.  Bulky things like cabbage, brussels sprouts, winter squash frequently get stuffed into t-shirt bags to fit in smaller/odd spaces. In the summer, trays of tomatoes stack behind a backseat. Thanksgiving prep week is a time to take as much as possible to market.  The photos don’t do it justice, but thought it fun to try.  I should have taken my camera to market and taken a picture of the stacks after I unloaded.

Hmmm.  The weather forecast was amazingly warm, but changed quickly today.  I put some things off because it looked like we had pleasant field weather, but that may have been a mistake.  We are ahead of schedule on cleanup, and I am still using hoses as I dig things up and put them into the new hoophouse to see how long they will stay good, or maybe grow, but the hoses will be a lot harder to wind up when stiff from the cold (the hoses stiff, not us).  As far as plants in the field, I have several large areas I want to mulch — tender perennial flowers, garlic, strawberries.  Others will be OK for a couple more weeks – carrots, beets, turnips, brussels sprouts, leeks, cabbage, kale.  But I don’t last long out there when it is this cold, even if sunny, and teenage helpers aren’t as committed to the farm as I am.  I have mentioned before that harvest, packing, and marketing takes more time than production. I am impatient when I end up at market, or preparing for market, on a warm sunny day.  Those days I’d rather be working around here!  But I am very grateful for the market opportunities and for you who support us. The forecast for the weekend into early next week is warmer, and I hope it holds true, though I have a market on Saturday so that will take up Friday and Saturday.  So, I’m hoping for really nice weather early next week.

I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving.  I read an article today about the value of having a grateful spirit. Give thanks all the time. Almost everynight I express thanks as I crawl into a comfy, warm bed for the shelter and comfort we are blessed with.