Rehoboth Homestead

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.

They arrived about 11:30 from Penn Yan.  The truck,  trailer, and one of the Penn Yan men who works with these hoophouses.  We had two helpers, plus Chico Braun and helper Andrew came over, since Chico also had a hoophouse in the trailer.

This is VERY different from our other hoophouse.  This one had welded side panels which bolt together and sit on top of the ground.  It will be held down by large screw anchors.  The sidewall panels are 5 feet high and 24 feet long.

The arches also were welded together.  They are 20 feet wide. The bottom sides drop into holes in the top of the sidewalls.

We unloaded, then had lunch and they left to deliver Chico’s, probably about 1 o’clock.

Amazingly, here is what it looked like at 3:30. I say “amazingly”, because our other hoophouse started with laying out a perfect rectangle, pounding 2 1/4″ posts into the ground, bolting metal tubes onto them, then putting up heavy curved tubes and joining them at the top while they wiggled around.  It took several days to get to this point.  There is still a lot of work to do here.  Tony put the purlin up later this afternoon – a metal strip fasted to the center top that stabilized the arches in position.  Next is drill holes in the top sidepiece to screw metal channel for “wiggle wire” that will hold the plastic in position.  And drill and place eye-bolts to hold webbing to hold the sides close to the frame.  And the plastic.  And the endwalls.  But, this is definitely the easiest hoophouse to put together I have seen of heard of.  It is made by a farm family near Penn Yan.

I may actually be able to plant into it early next week, though it is late for anything to grow this fall.  There are some head lettuces in the field that have just been sitting there, not growing noticeably.  I may dig them up and see if the warmth of the hoophouse gets them going.  I have a lot of lettuces in plug trays in our other hoophouse that were waiting to be planted, but I think most of them waiting too long.  We’ll see.

Anyway, this made for a very good day.  In spite of the fact that I said I’d feed them lunch and the soup did not get warm on “Simmer Select low” chosen to keep it from scorching, and the bread was not done yet since I was busy in the field and didn’t start preheating the oven until after 11.  They were gracious about it and ate cool potato-leek soup.

I actually end up peeling layers off when the sun is shining and temps are in the 40s.  The broccoli plants are so incredibly much healthier now that it has dried out and cooled off. The Napa cabbage and pac choi are maturing.  The savoy cabbage, red cabbage, broccoli, cabbages, etc that just hunkered to stay alive in the dry late summer are growing very nicely.  I don’t know if they will size up in time or not, but they are definitely trying to.

It has been an interesting week.  My internet started acting up Thursday or Friday – sometimes on, sometimes not.  Then as of Saturday morning until about 8 p.m. tonight, no internet.  On the plus side I realized how much time I spend doing things that seem important to do, but keep me from doing other things.  But by today, I was really needing some phone numbers, to make payments, to send out reminders of the farmers market, etc.  We had planned to start the online ordering for the market last weekend with pickup this week, but with Charter down, postponed it to next week.

Our new hoophouse, which we expected about six weeks ago, is finally set to arrive tomorrow noonish.  So, I harvested things that will keep (leeks, beets, chard, broccoli, Napa and pac choi, carrots, head lettuce) today.  Friday I am attending a food processing workshop to find ways to use our excess summer produce, and Saturday is the TriLakes Harvest Market, so we probably won’t start putting the hoophouse together until next week.  I am harvesting several plug trays of lettuce transplants as salad mix because they are “stretching” from being in plug trays so long, and with short days probably won’t mature before freezing sets in.  We did plant one bed of the old hoophouse with the lettuces yesterday as an experiment.

We are busy trying to get things cleaned up – folding up ground cloth, pulling up plastic mulch, testing drip tape to see what can be reused next year.  Also need to mulch the strawberries and garlic, and plant more garlic.  I have some flowers that are a real long shot to overwinter, but hope to mulch them in hopes.  Amazingly, at least to me, the statice is still blooming.  The other flowers are done for the year.

Many commented with the end of the CSA last week that I must be glad it is over for the year.  What I like about it being over is getting things out of the living room – totes with bags, signs, markers, check in sheets, paper towels, etc – put away.  With the last of the fresh chickens, the display cases go away and the white towels get a final washing and storage.  Just a lot of “stuff” that I keep around during the CSA/market season that we trip over all summer.  With the indoor markets I am down to one small box of “market essentials” – money, a small box of laminated signs, tablecloths.  At Lake Placid we can store our tables, bags, and even squash, so the packing is much easier.  The Plattsburgh Recreation Department supplies tables for the Plattsburgh Winter Farmers Market, so packing the RAV4 is much much much easier without the tents and tables. I am having second thoughts about having two farmers markets all fall.  Put in anything else, such as the food processing workshop, and my time is over-allocated.

Field work is slowing.  There is a lot to be done still, and some just won’t get done because it was so wet for so long.  I get a slow start and a quick end this time of year – try not to do field work before it warms a little, about 9?  And usually quit field work as it cools down quickly by 3:30.  I try to harvest some things late that will hold overnight in the hoophouse and clean it first thing in the morning since the hoophouse warms up faster than the outside, plus it protects from breezes. But, being down to 6 or 7 hours of field work time really does slow the process down.

It is getting late so I’ll close.  The field looks wonderful. It is drying down enough we may be able to disk to clean it up.  I love fall gardening!  Hope to see you at the Plattsburgh Winter Farmers Market!