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
