Shared Earth Farm's Snippets

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Week 2 Update

Congratulations! We all made it through the first week of pick ups. We were happy to see so many familiar faces again, and pleased to meet new members, many of whom were eager to try meats, eggs, and cheeses from other local producers. We have been so focused on growing veggies here (in addition we had a family member in the hospital last week), that we haven't made our usual late spring contacts with other local farmers. I intend to make as many contacts on Monday as I can, and will fill in with others as soon as possible. I will update you all each week about what is available.

This week during your pickups, we will have samples of lemonade, green tea, and black tea lemonade for you to try from Apple Valley Creamery. If you are interested in purchasing their products, you must contact me, Amy, by sundown Monday. Browse their website to see if there is anything you would like to try. They offer milk, cream, and butter from their pastured cows; grain-fed beef; raw milk cheeses from Whispering Brook Cheese Haus; lemonade and teas; plus things from producers near them. I usually mark their items up to the nearest dime or quarter to avoid the nuisance of pennies.

Bug Report: Shiela saw the first Japanese Beetle of the season yesterday. Last year we had very few Japenese Beetles, and hope that this year is a light one as well. They always eat our early corn silks and ruin our first few pickings. A couple of Squash bugs are in the greenhouse on the squash seedlings, but we have been able to squish them before they lay any eggs. The population of Colorado Potato Beetles are increasing, but we are still below the threshold to apply a pesticide to save the crop. Cabbage moths have been busy laying eggs on the cabbage, broccoli, and kale. Now those eggs are hatching and the tiny caterpillars are beginning to feed on the leaves. Once this pattern of rainy muggy weather passes, we will spray them with a bacteria called Bacillus Thuringiensis.

Disease Report: Late Blight has been reported in Maryland already, and after the devestation that it caused last year that we are watching closely for any signs. The wet weather patterns that we are having is ideal for culturing the spores and spreading the disease. We are keeping up to date on the status of it in Central Pennsylvania. If it gets closer to us, we may consider applying a fungicide. If it comes to this, we will ask what you all prefer before taking any actions.

Wildlife Report: The deer are still making tracks through our fields. They seem to stay away from electric fencing, so we are learning how to setup in electric system that we can run around the perimeter of our fields. We think that will help them to stay away from things like lettuce, fennel, and green beans. As far as the bird spottings go we have seen: Barn Swallows and Tree Swallows buzzed us while we were mowing the grass, a Barn Owl called as it flew away from our property, Indigo Buntings are calling from the tops of brush and weeds. Groundhog babies are out and about. This past week we saw a few butterflies: Black Swallowtail, Tiger Swallowtail, Cabbage White, and Silvery Blue were spotted in passing. I tried to identify a skipper of some sort and I suspect it was a Least Skipper. Red Admirals keep turning up in the greenhouse. We aren't sure yet why they seem to like it in there.

This coming Saturday we will host a working Saturday and our annual potluck will follow it around 10:30. Come join us around 8 to pull some weeds, and bring a dish to share during the potluck brunch. Our farm will supply the drinks, plates, cups, and cutlery. Let us know if you will come, so we can be sure to have enough seating for everyone.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Potato blossoms

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Sunday, June 6, 2010

Week 1 Update

We hope you all had a very enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. We did lots of farm work and had a quick picnic with our family. It was a relaxing time.

Earlier in the week, we were beginning to worry about the dry spell that we were having. We had been running our sprinkler on the corn to try to get it to germinate well. We havent used a sprinkler in the past, so it has been somewhat experimental. It seems very effective, though it doesn't conserve as much moisture as using drip irrigation. We often have trouble with keeping the drip irrigation in place until the crop that we are watering emerges from the soil enough to keep the tapes in place. So we sprinkled and hoped for rain. And did we ever get it. Thursday evening we got 2.5" of rain and then Friday night we got another 1.25" along with pea sized hail. It has drizzled on and off throughout the weekend so far, which is just keeping it wet enough that we can't really get in the fields to pull weeds. We feel like we are getting behind on planting some of the late summer crops like spaghetti squash and watermelons. We are finishing the tomato planting today.

One bad thing happened last week. We discovered that the housing develpment being built adjacent to us has increased the deer pressure on our crops. Sunday night they mowed down 400 feet of freshly planted lettuce, one being a variety of enormous oakleaf and the other was our virgin attempt at a red leaf type that is amazingly pink and green instead of the usually ruddy bronze. We will definitely try that one again. They didn't disturb some of the other varieties that we had planted. We covered the older rows with deer fencing and that seems to be preventing further damage. We are investigating methods of erecting simple deer fencing that will protect our entire garden. The deer are sampling some of the crops that we haven't covered.

Bug Report: We have seen a decrease in the flea beetle population. We still have our cole crops covered tight, and the heat doesn't seem to be overtaking anything yet. Once the flea beetle pressure subsides we will remove the covers and let the plants get more energy from the sun. The Colorado Potato Bugs are increasing in numbers in our potato field, and we will keep watching them closely. Once they are a problem we will spray them with an organically approved pesticide.

Disease Report: so far so good as far as the plants go. Shiela mostly kicked her cold, and is getting back into the swing of things.

Wildlife Report: We have already mentioned the deer. We have seen some Chimney Swifts flying about in the evenings. A Baltimore Oriole has been dining on mulberries near our shed. It seems as though a Killdeer might be nesting near our fields. We always seem to disturb them when we go out to our farthest field. Killdeer nested on our farm when I was a little girl, and we hadn't seen them in many years. It is nice to have them back. Eastern Kingbirds have made a few brief appearances. They usually sit on the posts of the tomato fence, so I anticipate their return once we get the posts pounded in. They are excellent at catching flying insects. Groundhog babies have been spotted a few times. Hopefully they will stay away from our sweet corn. We might put up an electric fence to deter both deer and groundhogs.

This week it is our goal to weed the kohlrabi and the flowers, plant lima beans, more flowers, and some of our dahlias. We will also seed a few more fall cabbages.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

We have officially begun the larger animal grazing program. These are sheep.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Alas. The beginning of prose posts for 2010.

Oh, there is so much to tell you all. We have been working on getting your shares to you since the seeds arrived in February. The weather has been more cooperative this season than in the past few years, though I was beginning to wonder if the snow would melt in time to plant potatoes and onions. It did eventually. April was just the best April that I can remember. We were able to get our usual crops planted like onions, potatoes, peas, carrots, kale, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, radishes, pak choy, and endive. We even had enough days without rain to get our beets, chard and spinach planted. The above average temperatures made us think that we might even get ahead of schedule (something that would thrill me to no end). The onions popped right up and grew so fast, I feared that they might be too big to give out as scallions as we usually do for the first six weeks of our season. May has been a different story altogether. Temperatures have been at least 10 degrees cooler than normal for most of it. All the crops that we had planted and had seemed to show such amazing promise in April, hunkered down to bear the 30's and 40's of early May. And I mean hunkered down. The earth holds heat better than air, so for that string of nights when we all thought about adding blankets back to the bed or turning on some heat, the lettuces tried to squat low to the earth to gain as much heat from it as they could. We did cover them with row cover which seemed to help a bit, but they are still smaller than I would like to see at this time of year. The cabbages and their relatives (kale, broccoli, pak choy, mizuna, radishes, kohlrabi) are doing very well. This is perfect weather for them. This is April weather, frankly. I want to be sure to check the average temperatures for this May and compare them to the normal for April.

Many people are asking me when we will host our first pick up, and as of today, I can't say exactly. I had planned for it to be the first week of June, but if our lettuce doesn't shape up, I may push it back a week. Other farms are reporting the same delays in their crops, and one has pushed its first drop date back two weeks. We will try to speed things up with fertilizer. It may be that the heavy rains we keep getting have leached some of the nutrients down beyond the reach of the plant's roots. I will apply a bit of nitrogen this week in hopes to wake them up a bit. I'll keep you posted on the progress on this front.

Onto the Bug Report... We had a severe infestation of flea beetles on our pak choy, which we had left uncovered for a few days - silly mistake. Those beetles like pak choy more than any person I know. We sprayed them Pyganic, a pesticide that is derived from chrysanthemums and is approved for organic growers. They either died or left the pak choy plants, and then we placed row cover over our crop to keep the beetles away. That has worked beautifully. The outer leaves of your pak choy might have a few holes, but the centers are beautiful. The other crops in the field that are usually plagued by insect damage are also row-covered, so for now cabbage worms are not a problem either. The greenhouse is a different story. The eggplants that are growing in the greenhouse until they are big enough for us to plant them outside were targeted by the flea beetles and suffered some damage. We covered the plants in the greenhouse and then they got too hot. Some even got burned. The Colorado Potato beetles also found the eggplant and are trying to lay eggs under their leaves. We have been picking these off by hand. Monday I will move the plants outside and put row cover over them. That should help them to rally back.

The Disease Report...So far we have no diseases in our crops. Shiela currently has a yucky cold/fever that Ethan had last week. She has missed two days of work so far, and we hope that she can kick it soon so we can plant your cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and summer squash this week.

Wildlife report...We have noticed many interesting migratory birds on our property including, a Hermit Thrush, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a pair of Blackpoll Warblers, some Prairie Warblers, and the usual Cedar Waxwings who only come for the under ripe mulberries. As of yesterday, I noticed that many of the European Starlings have fledged from their nest and lots of other birds are still building nests. There were a pair of Eastern Bluebirds in the yard last week, and hopefully they will find an appropriate place to raise a family. Within the next few years it is my hope to put up a bluebird trail around our fields for insect control. The group of deer that we saw over the winter are still around, and though they are making holes in our plastic mulch, they aren't eating our crops. I am grateful for that. They do walk through our fields a lot and have stepped on a few plants here and there. I do not want to have to erect a deer fence, because that may deter insect eating birds. We will monitor this all closely. A few groundhogs have been spotted near the region that we wish to plant our sweet corn. We will be setting traps to eliminate these corn lovers ASAP.

This week it is our goal to: plant cucumbers, zucchini, some tomatoes, and peppers; plant our first round of sweet corn to harvest in August; finish laying the plastic mulch so we can plant more tomatoes, watermelons, sweet potatoes, and a few other hot weather lovers. We also will weed the peas, cabbages, broccoli, kale, and chard. Mom will transplant lettuce into bigger cells so we can let that grow bigger before planting it in the field, and probably seed some of our fall cabbage crops.