Living in an Amish Paradise

Skeeter farms has a new baby.  It's actually a new Wheel Hoe, and, like a new baby, everyone instantly loves it, can't stop talking about it, and cannot imagine their lives before it. 

Weeding is possibly the most time intensive activity on the farm. It has usually included an upright hoe, or being down on your hands and knees pulling things out by hand and shuffling along the 100 foot rows.   The Wheel Hoe (yes, it deserves capitals) is about ten times as efficient. Ten. Times. As. Efficient.

"God Bless you Wheel Hoe" - Patrick Kitchen

The Wheel Hoe is made by Hoss, and it's crazy to imagine that everyone with a garden doesn't have one of these.  Interestingly, the Hoss website says that "In the 1910's, 20's, 30's, and 40's the wheel cultivator ruled the gardening world", but that they disappeared as people developed herbicides in the 50's.  Eliot Coleman, author of the New Organic Gardener, seems to be single-handedly bringing them back though, as every web reference to wheel hoe's seems to reference Coleman. 

What's great about the Wheel Hoe is that is greatly reduces labour, but not at the expense of the environment - as it burns no fuels.  It just uses simple mechanical principles and is made of long lasting materials that are easy to clean and repair.  In fact, the handles are made from "Amish-crafted #1 red oak". 

So, this little baby should make weeding out at Skeeter Farms a lot more enjoyable and fast, leaving more time for other important things, like harvesting - which is coming up soon!

 Colleen

PS:  "Amish-crafted #1 red oak" made me think of the Wierd Al song 'Living in an Amish paradise' (set to Coolio's 'Gansta's Paradise'). So, just for fun, here are the Amish Paradise lyrics. I don't recommend trying to read them at work, as I did, because they are pretty funny and you might spit out your coffee (as I did).  

As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain

I take a look at my wife and realize she's very plain

But that's just perfect for an Amish like me

You know I shun fancy things like electricity

At 4:30 in the mornin' I'm milking cows

Jedediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows, fool

And I've been milking and plowing so long that

Even Ezekial thinks that my mind is gone

I'm a man of the land, I'm into discipline

Got a bible in my hand and a beard on my chin

But if I finish all of my chores, and you finish thine

Then tonight we're going to party like it's 1699

We've been spending most our lives living in an Amish paradise

I churn butter once or twice, living in an Amish paradise

It's hard work and sacrifice, living in an Amish paradise

We sell quilts at discount price, living in an Amish paradise

Experimenting with Mulches

A long, cold, wet spring like the one we had this year means one big thing for us veggie farmers. Lots of weeding! Some how those weeds are much better than our crops at growing big and strong in the weather we've been having.

Up until last week it felt darn near impossible to keep on top of them. Things are looking better now, thanks to lots of people power, and the use of some different mulches.

A mulch around the surface of your crop can serve multiple purposes - yes it helps to keep weeds down, but it can also help to regulate soil moisture and soil temperatures, provide a nice environment for soil organisms and depending on the mulch you use, can add organic matter to your soil once turned down (all good news for a veggie farmer).

Around Skeeter Farm we are using four different mulches, each in small quantities. I imagine that if we have good results with any one, we'll go ahead and use it more widespread next year.

Duck compost, which we are very fortunate to have access to from FVDG, is made up of the composted duck manure and wood shavings that the ducks are grown on.


Black plastic mulch is good for warming the soil (something that melons love) but isn't exactly great for the environment as it probably takes thousands of years to decompose. We limit our use of the stuff.

Straw is something that we have used as a mulch around our garlic to keep it from experiencing the extreme winter temperatures that we can get in the valley.

Something new this year is the use of sheep's wool as a mulch. We were fortunate to have some given to us and we are experimenting with using it as a mulch around some flowers. It looks beautiful and smells delightfully sheepy!

Skeeter Open House - June 18th

The farm is holding an open house from 10-2 on Saturday June 18th for anyone who is interested in checking out the new place!

If you'd like to come, and maybe even help pull a weed or two, please RSVP to skeeterfarm@gmail.com for directions!

Yikes. It's a good thing we aren't squeamish.

Growing things without pesticides and chemicals means that sometimes you have to get creative when it comes to pest control. 

Pesky little wire worms have taken a liking to the tomatoes in the hoophouse – they crawl inside the stems and suck up the nutrients that the plant needs to grow, eventually leading to their demise.  Bummer! Usually they attack potatoes, but this is a rare case of them attacking tomatoes (how exciting?).

So Amy and Patrick found a creative solution online: stick whole carrots into the ground next to the tomatoes and hopefully ‘distract’ the worms into eating the carrots instead. Like so:

  

That’s step one (and it worked!). Step two is pulling up the carrots each day and pulling out the worms by hand!  

It helps if you aren't squeamish! Then proceed to do this every day and hope for the best! 

 

Afterwards (and after a thorough hand washing), we deserved a treat and ate peanut butter cups. I made them and I they were great, but this photo suggest otherwise! Maybe she's still thinking of worms...

-Colleen

A Lovely Spring Recipie

Hi everybody! In my quest to eat local as much as possible, I've been coming up with many alternatives to eating the quintessential spring foods: rhubarb, asparagus, new potatoes... now, even though Skeeter Farm is growing everything under the sun, asparagus is still up in the air for us. Soon, though, I trust you, it will come to fruition. Anyway, as stated before I am all about supporting my local farmers when I can, and my husband and I enjoyed making (and eating) this lovely soup! Give it a try! (Sorry my pic couldn't load properly)

Creamy Asparagus Soup

2 1lbs asparagus chopped
1 large onion chopped
a pat of butter
5 c vegetable broth
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1/3 c heavy cream
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Cook onion with butter, salt and pepper until translucent. Add asparagus and thyme and sauteed until tender. Add broth and continue to cook for about 5-10 mins. Puree soup with a food processor, put back on heat and add cream and juice of 1/2 lemon. Season further to taste.
Enjoy!!

Recipes concerning Skeeter Farm veggies are on the horizon. Stay tuned for some additional ideas......

A Reason to Farm

Hi everyone, I haven't done any blogs in quite a while, but as you might have guessed, the balance of full time work and farming has occupied my time in a big way. And of course, the workload of getting crops started really has distracted me from doing posts lately, but we are ahead of the game now, and I can now start to slow down a bit.

So, my title, A Reason to Farm. I should explain more about this. While doing some planting today I was talking to Amy about my reason to farm. While I didn't get too much into the actual reason earlier today, I will now.
I think everyone has their own particular reasons for choosing farming as a career, or hobby, but my reason to get involved in this local farming venture is because of the food. A simple statement to be sure, but the food is more that just eating the fresh peas from the field. It is, for me, the pride and joy of growing something yourself that tastes absolutley fantastic and healthy. The tomatoes are not imported from Florida, and the kale is not from California. The real flavor and taste is natural and explosive, not bland and unripe. The act of eating in season and local is affordable, challenges the creative palate, and when fresh out of the field you know it has all the nutrients.
In addition, the act of supporting local farmers is truly a great thing for the community. Like people supporting Skeeter Farm, I like to support other local farmers. It keeps people working and food accessible.

On days like this, hot sunny days, when the day consists of 12 hours of planting and potting, farm chores and watering, tommorrow at my day job, I can think of that great productive day and know that I am giving back and doing something great for my local community and that also makes tasting that local tomato even better. Or even local celery!

Lil Farm Update

This was written for our May CSA newsletter, but I figure it can do double duty as a blog post:

Setting up the farm

The first season farming at a new site is special because we essentially get to design our farm. What does that mean? Well we design and set up our irrigation, design our field and planting beds, create a crop rotation and figure out where other important farm infrastructure like our washing station will go. It is a season to be creative and it is also a season of hard work because all of the set up happens at the same time as planting.

These times are not without their challenges…

Take, for example, the set up of our hoophouse, which spanned over a couple of months and involved several days of hard work (okay so the boys worked really hard…we just worked hard). The final step was to put on the brand new plastic, which we decided to do in a bit of a storm the day before Amy went on a week-long trip. We were so excited to finally have the hoophouse done and to get our light starved transplants out in the sunlight. Well…just hours after we finished the plastic, the wind kicked up, and needless to say our brand new plastic tore and was flapping madly in the wind. Guess we should have spent some more time making sure it was secure…

(Thanks to Joe for the somewhat heartbreaking photo).

Despite hard work there are several things that we are extremely excited about.

One thing is the new irrigation/water system. Those of you who have been with us for a while may have heard about our water set up at the old farm. The old system involved us dragging a 60 lb gas water pump up and down a steep embankment every time we wanted to turn water on. This often was done in office work clothes in the early hours of the morning. Get this…the new system can be turned on in a heartbeat by merely flipping on a valve. Amazing eh?

Another thing that is really quite exciting to us is the fact that our field is a regular shape (cheap thrills). Seems simple, but after farming in an oval shaped field that was shaded on one side, the new field is a dream come true. With a regular shaped field that is not shaded, we have planned out a 6-year crop rotation based on 6 separate planting beds. What this means is that every 6^th year, the same crop family will be planted in the same area. Crop rotation is a critical aspect of managing pests and diseases as well as maintaining high quality soil for our style of farming.

]Speaking of soil, our little tractor, Benny, is having a much better time tilling up this nice sandy soil compared to the heavy clay we have farmed in the past. With only 12.5 horsepower, we were quite underpowered and had a very hard time doing our field preparations. Field prep has gone much more smoothly this year thanks to the big tractors from Fraser Valley Duck and Goose and our little Benny.

Another nice blog post about Skeeter Farm!

It's pretty fantastic to have CSA customers who also blog....
We've been so busy in the field lately, there's almost no time to spend on the computer (and I am not complaining at all).

Aimee and Mykol, two classmates of mine, came out to the farm at the end of the season last year to help with our last harvest - thanks friends!

Aimee, 6 months later, posted a nice story and pics of us:

http://abrisebois.blogspot.com/2011/04/scooting-around-skeeter-farm-and-kick.html

Nice plug from a CSA customer.

Amber and her family came to visit Skeeter Farm last year in November. She is an avid blogger and wrote a nice little story about us.

http://www.strocel.com/talking-to-a-small-farmer/

Thanks Amber!

The farm - our other, needier, life partner.

A couple of years ago...before we really knew what it was all about, we probably would have answered "access to land or equipment" or "how to actually grow things" as the answer to what our biggest challenge is (a question we find we are asked frequently).

These are challenges that are certainly present for new farmers, but in our case, have been relatively easily overcome. They are challenges that you can do something about....like take the steps to gain the knowledge you need to confidently plant a seed in the ground and take it all the way to market. Accessing land and equipment, well, yes it is a challenge if you don't know where to go to find it, but in our experience there is no lack of people willing to help a new farmer out. So if those aren't the biggest challenges...than what is it?

For us, it is time. Hands down.

Time is what limits our ability to do the things we do, restricts how much we can take on as farmers as we dream of bigger and better things, meddles with our ability to have a normal social life, be spontaneous, and spend time with the people we want to spend time with.

When we started out farming, we made the decision to do so on a "part-time" basis. By this I mean that we decided to not quit our day jobs (part-time in quotations as 50 hrs/week on the farm has not been uncommon). In a lot of ways, this was the right thing for us to do. For one, starting a farm while continuing to work another job has allowed us to alleviate the risk involved with taking the plunge into farming by continuing to receive a steady income while we learn how to farm and be profitable. We have relied on our own incomes (i.e. no loans or outside sources of funding) to get our farm going, and it feels good knowing that we don't owe any money.

On the other hand, not fully taking the plunge has resulted in a crazy last few years and some frustrations with not having the time to do things carefully, and in the way we want to. We feel like we are always playing catch up....and it's pretty clear to me that this means of farming will not be something we will be able to continue into the future. At some point there will need to be a decision made: grow vegetables full time and really make a go at it OR settle for farming as part of a lifestyle and not a means of income.

Reading back through this post (which I started to write back in March and never really got to it)...this is sounding complain-y, which is not what my intent was at all. The intent was to shed light on an important decision that all new farmers face - start slow and build up the business while supporting yourself elsewhere, or jump in feet first, take on the risk but have time to make your farming dreams come true. This is a decision that we have struggled with, and still do. Finding the balance between achieving our business goals and maintaining our other life commitments seems to be a perpetually moving target.

this photo has no relevancy to this post other than it a pic of the Vedder River by the farm. What I wish I had was a photo of us driving our little tractor to the repair shop (multiple times) last year at 7 am all dressed up in my office work clothes with overalls overtop with Hannah following me in the VW bus. That would have been perfectly relevant, and amazing.