June 29, 2009: Week 5+

This week my wife decided to give away half of the vegetables and we still had about two bags full. We received some zucchini and squash, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, and more napa cabbage. We really need to understand how to cook according to the seasonal harvest. I think having any vegetable that we want at the supermarket is extremely convenient; yet I think it’s that convenience that has dulled our need to use the harvested vegetables when they most abundant and fresh.

June 23, 2009; Week 5

Last week Erin was kind enough to allow me to work a weekday afternoon instead of a weekend. It was 4 hours of straight weeding. First I used the push-plow weeder for the 200 ft rows and then the scuffle hoe for in between the plants. Weeding in between the plants take the most time to complete. It’s too easy to work hurriedly, and miss the weed roots or hack a young seedling. Finally I weeded out an aggressive patch of thistle weed invading the rows of fennel. I will remember these thistle weeds…large, invasive, very spiky, and deep-rooted.

June 21, 2009: Week 4+

[Note: Since these entries are made a few days after receipt, my accounting of the weekly harvest is only an approximation and it is mostly based on my wife saying," look at the head of lettuce," or "smell these mustard greens" or "see how fresh this broccoli is"]...This week's share was more salad greens (mizuna, mustard greens), a beautiful head of napa cabbage, more red lettuce, more turnips and snap beans, some broccoli and another kohlrabi. My wife is very excited about the possibility of making kimchi from the napa cabbage. I do not share her enthusiasm and am patiently waiting for the "vegetables from a flower" like peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, squash...

June 20, 2009: Week 4

It was raining on Saturday when I arrived at Mud Creek and I wondered what I would be doing. I mean, how much does the rain put off farming duties? Anyway, I immediately got my hands dirty as I filtered the dried horse manure to make potting soil. I took out the large clumps and sticks and rocks (I am still unsure it was only horse manure) and mixed it with the soil with the white dots in a wheelbarrow. Then we added dried blood, jersey Green sand and something else, and mixed it well. Next came the water and it was ready to for filling the seed containers. We were planting rutabagas from seeds. Initially we were going to plant over 600 rutabagas and then Erin re-considered trimming down the numbers for a proposed yield of 2-3 rutabagas for 2-3 weeks in October. Similar to my ignorance about the kohlrabi vegetable, I have no idea what a rutabaga is, and yet I am very excited. (Hey! I have no idea what this is, but I'm growing it anyway!). After the seed planting, we de-cluttered the greenhouse a bit, and cleaned the floor of walk-in cooler of dirt and water. Erin tried to plant cucumbers from seed, but the rain just would not let up, and came right back to the greenhouse. She told me that walking on soil would compact it down, and if the sun dried up the footprints, the soil would be flattened, making water difficult to seep down. Seems reasonable enough.

June 14, 2009 - Week 3+

This past Sunday the whole family visited the farm for our pickup. Erin set up a "pick your own beans" sign for the customers and walked with my daughter to the farm. My daughter filled a small bag with sugar snap peas for our family and for another family whose share we were picking up. It is fun to watch her getting involved like this. Anyway, this week's share was 3/4 lb of salad greens, 1-2 heads of lettuce (green & red), 2-3 zucchini, more turnips, and a kohlrabi. It was raining the whole week so I am wondering what the harvest will be like next Sunday...

June 13, 2009 - Week 3

The first assignment today was harvesting the kohlrabi. I didn't even know this vegetable existed. It looks like an alien pod after it is pulled from the earth, and it has stalks that come up from the sides like tiny celery. The stalks and base are cut, and what is remaining is a cream colored pod-thing with finger-like stalks from the sides. I am sure that people have eaten this all over the world...just not me. . I am so impressed at the amount of variety that is grown here. Next we started to weed the onions and then switched over to carrots. The weeds were more abundant than the carrots so this task was very delicate. I must admit I hacked a few of the seedlings as I was using the hand weeder. Erin and I weeded the three rows the whole way (about 175 ft). We finished by weeding the beets by hand like the carrots. Then she introduced the concept of thinning right as I was recovering from losing about 4 carrot seedlings. Now I had to purposely the remove the overcrowded plants! This created a stumbling block for me because I was unsure of pulling the "right" (or in this case, the "worst") beet sprout from the ground. Of course it is necessary to thin the plants to maximize one plant's "fruit" but I imagined a potential beet on the end of each plant that now can never be. Erin, on the other hand, was quite quick to thin the rows. I guess this is all in the day's work for a farmer.

June 7, 2009 : Week 2+

Oh, we received our first week of harvest (really it is the second week but never made the trip back down after the first day to pick up the first week's bounty). The bags were full of 3 bags of spinach, some turnips, 2 heads of green lettuce (one normal looking; one funny looking, but still edible, i think), 1 head of red leaf lettuce, some bokchoy, some other greens like mizuna. I like greens but am waiting patiently for other vegetables that are less like a rabbit's diet.

June 6, 2009 : Week 2

For week 2, I came slightly more prepared with cheap cloth gloves and a blue handkerchief wrapped around my neck. The previous week my neck was a little red from being in the fields for all afternoon. I still only have a baseball cap, rather than a wide brim hat. The good ones are close to $10 and the cheap ones are, well, cheap. I may continue to put off buying one until I really need it. The sun was shining but it was also breezy. I saw a bird (don't know which...yet) fluttering in the ground and then found blue speckled eggs in the field. I also found a frog in the cracks of the earth near an irrigation line. There is wonderful life in the earth and I need to re-gain an appreciation for its beauty. It was mostly a weeding day. I started weeding the turnips (by hand), then ran a few irrigation lines again, and then went back to wedding. Erin had this Planet Jr walking weeder device that was so old school (literally made in 1920) that i really felt like a farmer. We also weeded the squash and zucchini, which were grown under a white fabric to prevent insect infestation. One more week, says Erin, and they will be ready...

May 31, 2009: Week 1

May 31 was my first day of working at Mud Creek Farms, a new Organic CSA formed in Victor, New York. In exchange for 20 weeks of work at 4 hours a week of farm work, I get a weekly share of the organic food that will be grown. The first thing i saw was about 1.5 acres of planted farmland, and another 1 acre or so tilled for future sowing. I was amazed that 1.5 acres can feed about 60 families for the summer and fall season. This is wonderful and mysterious to ponder. Anyway, the 1.5 planted acre had 5ft spaced rows with planted crops in the middle. Some crops had multiple rows between the 5ft spacing; some, like the tomatoes, just had one row of crop. My first job was to spread straw (hay?) around the tomatoes about 4" to 5" inches up the stem. This was to keep the weeds away, as well as to maintain moisture (if i remember correctly). Then I helped run irrigation lines down the 200 ft (?) rows and make sure the water dripped well. Finally I planted tomatoes from the potted plants. I was told that tomatoes could be planted deeper than I thought, actually up to the first branch; it just seemed so weird placing the stem so far in the dirt...