Bang-a-rang! Summer's Here!

Morning lettuce plantout

Time has been passing so quickly! Today, while hoeing some celery, I suddenly realized that this weekend marks July 1^st,  and I haven’t updated in weeks!  Food is in the ground, big time.  We’ve been planting, hoeing, harvesting and getting back into the groove of our usual weekly routine, which, for the most part goes like this:

Monday’s- mornings of wholesale/Tuesday Market harvest and packing out; in the afternoon our delivery driver Kelly Goodwin takes the wholesale into town, the rest of us spend afternoons finishing up in the packout, hoeing, RCM, maybe poo slinging

Tuesday’s – Lisa + someone go to Tuesday Market, the rest of us spend mornings of hoeing, planting out, soil mix making, flat filling, odds and ends; afternoons hoeing or seed sowing, Row Cover Maintenance (RCM), maybe some poo slinging

Wednesday’s – mornings of CSA/Thursday Market harvest, CSA box packing, hoeing, planting out; afternoons hoeing and seed sowing, RCM, maybe some poo slinging

Thursday’s – mornings of wholesale harvest and packing out, hoeing, plantout; Stuart leaves for Thursday Market at 11:00, Ashley leaves for wholesale/CSA deliveries at 12:00 and the rest of us spend afternoons finishing up in the packout, hoeing, RCM, and maybe some poo slinging

Friday’s – mornings of Saturday Market harvest and packing out; afternoons packing out and hoeing, RCM, preparing for Saturday Market, doing odds and ends like flat washing or a Dump Run, and of course, Pie Friday!

Hoeing some cilantro

There are amazing looking plants out in the fields right now, just waiting to make it to our tables! Personally, I’m looking forward to the upcoming harvest of carrots and broccoli, but all the while thoroughly enjoying the radishes, arugula, spinach, chard, kale, garlic whistles, and cookies that Hallie makes. 

Barn life has been trying with all this rain.  Bill and Debra’s house has been in the process of ‘foundation replacement’ for the past month or so which has added a little extra excitement as well as challenges to farm life for all, especially since it’s been that long since the washer/dryer has been in service.  Not that I’m complaining, in fact, most of us have found the hand crank washer quite effective.  (Though, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been hitting up my friends in town and Lisa’s machine down the road). 

Two weeks ago we had some visitors which was also exciting.  Hallie’s boyfriend Ken stayed for the week and kept us company, also helping out in a major way in the packout and fields.  Then Bobby and Rita (apprentices from last season) came out to visit for afternoon hoeing and Pie Friday!  It was a great surprise to reunite with those guys who always bring exuberant amounts of joy and laughter to the fields.  They were astonished by the new additions and improvements made to the kitchen and we reminisced about the old wooden-pallet-curtain-less-solely-solar shower of last season.   Visitors are always welcome and appreciated out here, especially when you live with the same 8 people day in and day out. Not to say that we don’t all like each other, it’s just that it’s nice to hear a new dirty joke from time to time. J

Wow.  It’s 7:30 and I think I’m gonna head to bed. One might find that hard to do in the height of summer when it doesn’t get dark until 9:30 pm, but working out in the sun all day makes falling asleep pretty dang easy.   

Check.

-Rachael



Kathy Roschek's Reflections

Dear Farmies...Visiting Horton Road Organics in the fall of 2011 and again in the spring of this year, I've seen both harvesting and planting seasons. As I looked over the fields in their precise rows or wandered the lane from packout to barn, memories of my own childhood would randomly pop up, such as: In 1947, the year I was born, my Dad was a master machinist, working in a factory 5-6 days a week, making precise engine and machine parts. He had been raised on a large Michigan farm, one of 8 children, so he also knew farming from the time he could walk. Mom stayed home to raise my younger sister and I, as did most women at that time. In the spring of 1950 we bought a house on one acre outside the Battle Creek city limits with livingroom, kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a room that Dad made into a bathroom the first winter. So, for the first summer and fall we had our own "pee alley" and a bucket/chamber pot in the house during the night. Top priority that first summer was the garden. The back half-acre of grass and weeds was ploughed under and disc harrowed, then Dad laid out straight and even rows with stakes and string, and did all the planting with seeds. Even as I got older and was expected to help with household and outdoor chores, I was never allowed to plant - that was Dad's job. However, I was expected to weed, and it was a daunting task for a few years until I learned to recognize seedlings from weeds. Straw went down on the walking paths and Dad rototilled this in every so often, then new straw was laid. Vegetables included leaf lettuce, cabbage, carrots, green peppers, radishes, beets, potatoes, beans, peas, several squash and pumpkin varieties, tomatoes (always too many, I thought) and sweet corn (never enough). Fruits included rhubarb, strawberries, red raspberries, blackberries and watermelon. On the acre when we moved in were various fruit trees: six cherry, four apple, and one each of peach, sweet cherry, plum and pear.

Other expected summer and fall work was helping to harvest and preserve the produce. And even when the garden produced very well, Mom would still buy bushels of tomatoes and peaches. At that time only wealthy people had chest freezers so we canned 'til the cows came home. When Mom thought we had done enough stewed tomatoes, there was always tomato sauce and tomato juice to can! I remember peach juice and tomato juice running down my arms as Mom and I scalded and peeled. I was also in charge of pitting cherries with a little hand-crank machine that clamped onto our picnic table. I fed the cherries into a chute with one hand and cranked with the other hand, getting a good rhythm going. But, no matter how diligent I thought I had been, it was a family joke that with every cherry pie Mom made, if there was still a pit in a cherry, Dad always got that slice! We never composted the garden with table scraps, but each fall Dad would plant rye grass and each spring the rye, along with all stalks and stems left in the garden, would be ploughed and disc harrowed again. Soon the soil became rich, dark and friable. The table scraps went into a worm bed that Dad built for his favorite fishing bait - night crawlers. He dug a huge hole and faced all sides with parts of old doors, then refilled the hole, added worms, and closed the hinged top. The worms took care of composting. In later years when he no longer fished, Dad built a greenhouse on the back of the house and used this worm bed compost for his seedling and flower beds.

 With much love and few complaints, this, and much more, was done by my parents and Lisa Roschek's maternal grandparents, Willard "Jess" and Elizabeth Harrison. Her Grandma Betty is especially happy, saying that Grandpa Jess is looking down, smiling, proud that his love of farming and the outdoors continues in his only granddaughter. Love, Hugs and Kisses to You All, Kathy Roschek. I'll be back....

cultivation joy

By Friday all but three were crossed off!  Luckily we have the
time right now in the season to focus on cultivation.  As the
season goes on, we spend more of our time harvesting and
prepping for markets, CSA, and wholesale.  The weeds
think it's pretty great.

Last week we busted out cultivation like it was our job.  Which, in actuality, it is, but anyway...  because it had been so rainy the week before, we'd gotten behind on the weed situation in multiple beds.  We spent some full days with our hoes in hand, moving from bed to bed with the promise of a fufilling 'check off' of our acomplishments on the cultivation board.  Our crew has lots of common ground and checking things off lists is definetely one of them.  At the end of the day we gather around excitedly to 'cross off' - a scene that makes me really happy because in those moments I see that we all share an enthusiasm and are invested in the work we do.

Just FYI....
On the cultivation list in the picture you will note some short hand.  'Q1' (2, 3, 4)  are beds in the four front quads of the farm.  'SD' stands for 'South Dakota' (beds to the south) and 'B40' are the 40 beds all the way out in the 'back'.  H.H. stands for 'Hand Hoe' (meaning the task requires a hand hoe), 'Timely' is code for a bed that has been planted within the past two weeks and needs it's first standup hoe job.  'Standup Hoe' is any bed that needs a second (or more) go with a standup hoe.  'QHW' is a 'Quick Hand Weed' and Weed Whack is not a code.  :)





Ashley checks out the weed sitch in the basil...lotsa smartweed

Check.
-Rachael

Dawn Sows Adult Lettuce Seeds

My 'Chickens and Cats' Soji

Since most of the interns and staff who work on the farm live together in the barn, we all share cleaning tasks and other chores (known on the farm as “sojis,” which means “chores” in zen practice). This works out quite well as a way of keeping the farm cared for. These chores rotate monthly. This month, one of my daily chores is taking care of the chickens (17 total) and barn cats (4).

I enjoy this chore because a) it gives me more incentive to get out of bed in my cold room in the early morning, and b) I like taking care of animals and collecting eggs. In the morning, I feed the cats, feed the chickens, let the chickens out of their coop (where they sleep for the night for protection from predators) and give water to all of the animals. At noon I collect the eggs (we get between 8 and 11 a day) and wash them. In the evening I shut the chickens in the coop, feed them, and water them again. I also feed the cats again. It’s simple but satisfying as a daily routine.

In other news, the weather today was disappointingly rainy. We had the afternoon off due to the very wet condition of the fields and the intermittent rain showers. We decided to make muffins this afternoon, and Rachael just ate about 8 or 9 of them. I guess work on the farm makes you hungry!

-Check.

Hallie

Another example of farm work making you hungry: The 24 Carrot cake cookies with cream cheese frosting that Hallie  made were gone in less than 2 days.