The beginning of the farming year

In the original agreement, Farmer Bill was supposed to retired in 2020, the same year I would retire. In reality, he wasn't quite ready to give up farming. So here we are in 2023 and while the farmland & business are on the market, we haven't had a buyer make an offer yet. What happens if the business doesn't sell is still somewhat under discussion and a topic to cover for another post. This post is the first in a series that I realized needed to be written, detailing the farm year for a specialty crops grower like Farmer Bill.

Our farm year starts in late January or even February, with the annual pruning of the apple trees. The ultimate goal is to prune every tree every year, and the goal is met most years. When we first needed to do serious pruning, Farmer Bill invested in a battery-operated backpack pruner that made the job much simpler for whoever got to use it (mostly Bill himself). That original pruner has since worn out and been replaced by 2 backpack pruners, 2 handheld battery-operated pruners and 2 mini-chainsaws, along with manual pruners, loppers and full-size chainsaws. Pruning happens on 'nice' winter & early spring days when the sun is shining and the temperatures are bearable. Sessions are 2-4 hours long, depending on what staff is available. This year the main pruning crew has been teens, an especially good group of young people who work hard and willingly. They have been inspirational and exhausting for Farmer Bill. He has a hard time keeping up with them, but always welcomes the challenge.

Also during these months, on days when it's snowing or too cold to work outside, machinery is getting pulled out of winter storage and readied for the summer. 

The Reigi is a weeder/de-thatcher that is prized by produce growers in the know. It's a simple machine that attaches to the PTO with a series of pulleys & belts that turn 2 discs fitted with tines. It's super great for weeding new strawberry plantings. One person drives the tractor down the row and a second person sits on the seat of the Reigi. Two handles allow the second person to move the turning tines around new plants, tearing out small weed seedlings; it can be used as often as staff and time allows until the new berries send out runners. It is also used to uncover the straw mulch from the strawberries. In that operation, only one person needs to drive the tractor down the rows with the Reigi tines held in place close together. The turning tines flip the straw off the plants and into the aisles, leaving the emerging strawberry plants uncovered. 

The multivator is a great tool for creating a loose, even planting bed before transplanting strawberries (among other crops). It works like a powerful rototiller, powered by the PTO of a tractor. Multivators come with a varied number of heads, but our has four. The driver goes up and down a field that has been plowed, disced and/or dug and the multivator heads churn the clumps of soil into loose bits. After the strawberry harvest, the multivator is also used in the renovation process. Strawberries are cut off close to the crown of the plant and the multivator is used to turn under the straw in the aisles and narrow the rows. Left unchecked the strawberries would send out runners and fill in the aisles, making a huge matted field of strawberries rather than the orderly rows needed for a pick-your-own operation.

Straight River Farm has two John Deere gators. Ours have 6 wheels and dump beds and are used for more tasks than can be easily mentioned. However, both of them are old now and have been dinged & dented, repaired and jury-rigged until their workings hardly resemble the originals. But we are hopeful that we can keep them running yet another season - they haul people, supplies, boxes of berries & apples, brush & trash to the burn pile, and so much more that they'd have to be replaced with something.

The farm has five tractors: two John Deere 790s, two New Holland 4430s, and an International 340. The 790s are used for the multivator, Reigi, boom sprayer, and rotary cutter, among other tasks. One New Holland is used for heavier tasks, plowing, discing, digging, blast spraying, and running the irrigation pump. The second New Holland is called 'the project tractor' because it doesn't regularly run. When it does work, it gets parked down by the river to power the irrigation pump, leaving the 'good' New Holland free for other tasks. The International is our 'poor man's skid loader.' It has a lift on it, with forks like a skid loader's and is mostly used to move pallets. When supplies are delivered on pallets, we have the drivers park at the end of our driveway and use the 340 to unload the pallets to the road, because it's virtually impossible for a semi-truck to turn around in our farmyard. Farmer Bill also uses it during the winter to lift a platform to the roof of the machine & apple sheds, allowing him to rake snow off the solar panels.

We have two lawn mowers. One is a 6-foot zero-turn mower and the other is a 4-foot zero turn. The 4-foot mower has a bagger and is used in the raspberry and blueberry aisles to avoid spraying cut grass and weeds into the plant rows. It also gets used to pick up leaves in the autumn. A rotary cutter is used to do rough cutting - chopping up the small brush after pruning, and cutting grass when we, inevitably, fall behind in mowing. It's also helpful for mowing the edges of fields, which are often too rough for traditional mowing, but need to be kept mowed down.

All of the machinery needs to be greased, tightened, blades sharpened, belts, cylinders and hoses inspected, etc. so those are tasks that are done in the autumn before machinery is put away for the season, and if time doesn't before the snow falls, then done in late winter/early spring before the farming work heats up.

Bumblebees - added for the first time in 2022 - are ordered. Bumblebees will fly in colder weather than honeybees and are actually more efficient pollinators. They are scheduled to arrive in early May when we hope there will be enough weeds and wildflowers emerging to feed them while we wait for the apple trees to blossom. Last year we had a very good pollination rate and we believe the bumblebees helped with that, so we're bringing in a couple of colonies again this year. 

Our participation in an Apple IPM data group is set up. We will put out traps in the orchard to monitor for 7 insect pests and the serious fungal disease called apple scab. A data logger, with an attached leaf wetness monitor is put out on April 3. Normally it would go out on April 1, but we had a serious snowstorm on April 1. The logger tracks temperatures and degree days. The leaf wetness monitor tracks how long the orchard is wet. Scab spores are activated by warmth and wetness and the tracking information will tell Farmer Bill when it's time to spray for apple scab. That one spray may be enough to keep the disease at bay for the year, but at most he'll do two sprays. 

Future posts will detail other work and activities. This year I'm determined to get photos and videos of some of the specialized equipment and processes as they happen. I've already missed using the Reigi to uncover the strawberries, but there may be a touch up uncovering done at some point soon, so I'll try to get it then. And Farmer Bill is planting one last strawberry field this year, so the Reigi will almost certainly get used to do some initial weeding.

Rice County & Faribault

When Farmer Bill & I announced we were buying a farm outside Faribault, my mother thought that was so neat; the family circling back to Rice County. Both her parents had grown up in the countryside around Faribault, in rural Rice County. My grandfather's family, of Bohemian and Irish ancestry, had lived in the Veseli area and later moved to Richland Township. There are distant cousins from his side of the family still living in the area. My grandmother, whose family was French and had come to Minnesota via Canada, grew up on a farm in Warsaw Township. There are probably some cousins in the area from that side of the family, too, but none with my grandmother's surname. Our little farm is in Walcott Township, which is between Warsaw and Richland. 

Grandma was born in 1899. She had 9 siblings, 3 brothers and 7 sisters. She was the middle sister, with 3 older and 3 younger. I grew up hearing grandma's stories about life on the farm. She talked about milking cows twice a day, and how she hated cleaning the separator; about raising a big garden and keeping chickens for both meat and eggs, and canning everything in sight. How her parents kept the farm a showpiece, with flowers, fruit trees, and a large vegetable garden. [By the time I was born, the farm had long been sold and nothing remains of the house, buildings, or orchard.] Her father worked off the farm - at least sometimes. He apparently knew blacksmithing; his uncle had a blacksmith shop where he worked (although to hear Grandma tell it, it could have been her father's shop). She liked to suggest that it was possible her father had shoed horses for the James Gang as they came through Rice County... An uncle who was a barber in St. Paul was reported to have shaved Dillinger and/or other gangsters of the prohibition era. 

Grandma talked about boarding in town during the week while she was in high school. She said they lived far enough outside Faribault that getting in and back each day wasn't feasible. So Grandma boarded in town during the week and spent weekends at home on the farm. She talked about bringing things from the farm for the boarding house: a chicken, eggs, other produce or canned goods, and how much the town folks appreciated the good country food. 

Grandma's family attended mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the French Church in Faribault. There were 3 Catholic churches in Faribault at that time: Sacred Heart was the French church; Immaculate Conception the Irish church, and St. Lawrence was the German church. As time went on and people married into families that attended different churches, those designations became less obvious, but Grandma and her family remained strong supporters of Sacred Heart. In the early 2000s, the three churches were combined into one, Divine Mercy, which bought land and built a new church on the very southern edge of Faribault. [The Sacred Heart building was later purchased by an evangelical Protestant church.]

Beginning about the time we moved to the area in 2003, a wave of Somali immigrants came to Faribault. A previous wave of Latino immigrants, primarily from Mexico, had come before we did and were well established. As new immigrants do, the Latinos and then the Somalis took jobs in the canning factories and turkey processing plants. And as time went by, they moved into other work around the community, including setting up their own businesses, earning college degrees, becoming teachers, accountants, nurses, truck drivers, construction workers, etc. African-American and Hispanic groups make up 27% of the population according to the 2020 census (13.7% and 13.3%, respectively), with Caucasians still making up 73%. The historic downtown has numerous buildings with stores on the ground level and apartment homes above & many Somali families currently live there. Somalis tend to be social and gregarious. The women do a lot of their socializing indoors, or at playgrounds while watching the children. The men spend a lot of time on the benches downtown, talking and visiting with each other (and intimidating white folks with their very presence). Both groups operate businesses in town: a halal market, a bakery, restaurants, a Quinceañera dress store, a clothing/fabric shop featuring the bright colors & prints the Somali women wear, a gift shop, etc..

Long-established businesses still remain downtown, including sewing & vacuum shops, an independent shoe store, dry cleaners, antique stores, and more. The last drugstore downtown closed a decade ago, as did a traditional bakery. A traditional diner-style restaurant (with very average food but a counter with stools for the old guys to hang out & drink coffee) closed in the early 2000s and a Tex-Mex chain restaurant is in the space now. A group got together and reclaimed an old movie theater, turning it into an arts center, where they put on plays and host acts from music to comedians, as well as having gallery shows for local artists and art classes for adults and children. A small bakery/sandwich store operates 4 days a week (and is excellent). There is a community center with a senior center, pool, exercise equipment and classes attached to a large building that houses the public library and meeting spaces (although I could live without the 10 commandments carved in stone on the front lawn). It's a fun and fairly vibrant little downtown but not tourist-attractive in the manner of downtown Northfield.

My grandmother would be appalled at some of the changes in Faribault. But then, my grandmother was a bigot. The city is a mix of cultures that she couldn't have imagined, and there are struggles to get along and work together that occur in many places across this state and our country. When the wind is in a certain direction, and at certain times of the year, the smells from the canning factory and turkey processing plant can be strong, and unpleasant. Although two rivers converge just outside downtown - the Straight River flowing north meets the Cannon River flowing northeast, there is not much use made of the riverfronts downtown. The housing ranges stock ranges from classic painted ladies and Victorians (some in stone) to tired-looking 1890s-1930s to 1960s-1980s split levels and ranch-style to 2000s-era moderns, with several manufactured home parks scattered throughout. You can find almost everything you need for farm & home in the city, but not a wide range of items. The 'mall' is next to and overshadowed by Walmart and houses an ever-changing assortment of stores & restaurants, with plenty of empty spots.

Grandma, as I mentioned, had 9 brothers & sisters. Only 3 married and had children. But all of the girls graduated high school. Two became nurses, one a legal secretary, another worked in her husband's greenhouse business. Grandma herself went to art school - she was in the first class of the Minneapolis College of Art & Design & we have a collection of her work from that time period. Then she met Grandpa at a dance, got 'in the family way' and married. Her oldest sister was a nurse, who came back from the Twin Cities to care for her mother and never married. Her oldest brother wanted no part of farming and moved to the Twin Cities as a young man & never looked back. Another brother was drafted during World War I and was invalided out. He returned home to recuperate and went to the mailbox one day to find a letter telling his family he'd been killed in action! The Des Marais line in Faribault petered out decades ago, but there are still Payants (Great-Grandma Des Marais' maiden name) in the area.

Grandpa had 12 siblings: 5 brothers & 7 sisters. My mother remembers visiting them only once or twice, and not ever really knowing the numerous cousins - 37 by one account - on that side of the family. The most she understood was that there may have been disagreements over inheritance, and that Grandpa Neil didn't talk to his siblings. But several of the family names are still known in Faribault: Delesha, Dusbabek, and Thom among them. Grandpa's family was Bohemian (originally his name was Dolezal, changed at some point to Delesha) and Irish (his mother's surname was Gilmore).

Farmer Bill & I have now lived longer in Rice County than either of us lived in any other place. While we are trying to step back from the berry & apple farming, we would like to continue to live in our little country house just outside the Faribault city limits. How that pans out remains to be seen.

The time has come,

' the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'

My mother, 95 in June, can still recite in their entirety many poems she learned in school. I can recite 1-4 lines of maybe a dozen poems that I've read or heard along the way; we didn't memorize poetry when I was in school. The lines above are the lines I know from The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll.

I'm sitting at Bill's computer in our farm office (my computer is currently downstairs in my quilting space). The office is a former dining room, with a sliding glass door out to the deck, and a view of the farm buildings where there is a lot of activity this morning.

Last year, when we weren't sure what would be possible for selling our produce during a pandemic, Bill only planted a few melons as an additional crop. Even so, the work of taking care of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and apples was at times overwhelming. It was rewarding, though, as he had a good strawberry season and an apple crop so good that he left apples on the trees because he ran out of cooler space for them. The melon crop was fine, but each crop adds a level of complexity - as well as more work - to the growing season.

In the fall, Bill told me he was putting his remaining hoop house/high tunnel up for sale at the auction site he uses. [A larger hoop house was severely damaged several years ago by high winds and had been dismantled and stored in the machine shed.] I was surprised and not surprised. We've been talking about retiring from farming - I retired from full-time work in December 2020 - selling up and moving to a house with less work and maybe closer to our children & new grandchild. Selling the hoop house meant no tomatoes or melons since that's where the plants went to harden off when he picked them up from the greenhouse.  And then last week the remaining pieces of the larger, damaged hoop house were sold and picked up by the new owner.

Today, there has been a steady stream of machinery and other equipment being loaded onto trailers and driven off to the auction house. A machine that made raised beds (to plant annual strawberries), a plastic layer, a planter that planted through the plastic, trusses for low tunnel coverings, posts for electric fencing (used around sweet corn fields to slow down the raccoons), electric fencing wire, battery-operated current transmitters, and more have been hauled out of the buildings. A pickup loaded with apple wood cut last spring stands ready to go to the Nerstrand butcher who uses it to smoke various meats.

So far Bill says it feels freeing - he can't imagine going back to trying to juggle so much work in maintaining so many different crops. Since he's retreated from the idea of selling the farm (for now - more on that later), I'm very glad to see that he hasn't retreated from the plan to simplify the operation.

Along the trail - Part 1

As I drive to work I often cogitate about the landmarks I pass. My commute is 38 miles each way. It's about 7 miles from the farm to the freeway, 25-odd miles on the freeway, and about 5 miles from the freeway to work.  There are several routes I take to and from the freeway, but one that I use most of the time and places along that route that I look for each day.

On Tuesdays I work the evening shift, which means I come through Faribault 9:15-9:30 p.m. - in the dark except about 6 weeks in mid-summer. Quite a few years ago now, there was a house on my path where a group of musicians would be playing or practicing in the front window every Tuesday night. It was fun to check for them and guess what piece they might be playing. When they stopped appearing in that window on Tuesday nights, I missed them, with an odd sense of loss, for a long time. I didn't and don't know the family living in that house, but it felt warm and welcoming to see the group playing their instruments as I passed by.

Another house on my usual path was home to an older couple. I would often see the woman of the couple out walking in the morning, or occasionally mowing the lawn. In the late afternoons and Tuesday nights, the television would be on, visible from the big living room picture window where the drapes were rarely pulled. I rarely saw the man of the couple, except a fleeting glimpse of someone sitting in a chair watching TV. About December 1st each year, a Christmas tree still goes up, and January 1st it comes down. For more than 2 years now the television has been dark most afternoons and evenings; sporadically at first but always over the past year or two. Until this past summer I still occasionally saw the woman in the yard or walking, but no man in the chair watching television. On weekends now different cars appear in the driveway. I assume the man died, his wife is still living in their longtime home, and children/grandchildren are taking turns coming to help out and visit on weekends. I expect the next big change will be seeing a 'for sale' sign go up.

October

A couple of times this past week I was standing out on the deck, at about 10:00 p.m.  The weather was chilly, but not really cold, with just a little bit of wind. That part of the deck faces south & normally on a quiet evening I can hear the Straight River as it winds its way along the southern-most edge of the farm, along with other nighttime sounds: owls, rustling that could be raccoon, skunk, or the neighbor's half-wild cat, dogs barking, etc. But this is October. On a clear October evening what I hear from my deck is the sound of combines. It's a low roaring sound that carries a long way. And as I looked south I spotted headlights across the river. Our farm flows downward more than a quarter mile towards the river, with the house on the highest spot. Then there's the river, a small bit of flat river bank on the other side (which belongs to our farm, according to the surveyors), then a steep hill up to a large field that is planted alternately in corn and soybeans. We've had a long stretch of mostly dry weather, but rain is predicted for the end of the week, and I'm sure every farmer who is able is out in their fields hoping to get their corn picked before the rain. It's possible I'm hearing the roar of multiple combines.

Night noises are one of my favorite things about living out in the country.  In spring after the snow melts the river runs fast and loud, and the frogs peep a loud, piercing chorus. In summer, the river is slower and quieter and insects make most of the nighttime noise - and the fireflies dance across the yards and fields (they don't make much noise but are really cool to watch). By late summer or early autumn the crickets are in full throat, and depending on the amount of rain we've had, can completely drown out the river sounds. The Great Horned Owls call all year round - although you won't hear them every night - but are particularly enchanting in the cold still of a winter's night. I've only seen an owl once in all the years we've been here, but I hear them often.  I never actually hear a skunk, but know one's been around occasionally.  There are bats who've taken up residence in our soffit on the north side of the house & I hear them scrabble as they fly out to hunt in the warm months; sometime we'll have to remove them and seal up their entry, but they eat so many mosquitoes... Late this summer I started hearing a new night sound that might be a fox - we've seen foxes around over the years - but it could be something else, since my naturalist skills are limited to what I know lives in our area and can find sounds for on the internet.  Occasionally coyotes will set up a ruckus, which of course makes every dog in the neighborhood go off. Sound carries a long way in the country - the neighborhood can be dogs (and coyotes) that are well over a mile away.

I hope the farmer, working long into the night this week, got his corn picked and into bins or delivered to the elevator before the rain.

Sweet corn, melons, and tomatoes, part 1

A couple of years into the farm experiment, Farmer Bill started planting melons and sweet corn. He's also experimented with tomatoes, peas (shelling peas, peapods, and sugar snap peas), and probably a few other things I have blocked from my memory.

Our strawberry fields have a rotation. The first year is the development year. We plant the plants and tend them - weeding, pulling blossoms off so they put their energy into growing strong plants, not fruit. Years two, three, and four are picking years. We try to keep the weeds and insects and diseases at bay and pick the fruit in June. At the end of the fourth year, the plants are tilled under and weed control done for the rest of the summer.  The entire next year the ground lies fallow - maybe planted with a nutrient-rich cover crop for plow-down. OR, you can plant melons, sweet corn, tomatoes, peas, or something else in that ground instead.

One year Farmer Bill made a lot of money on tomatoes.  Several years he's done really well with melons. But he's yet to show me a profit on sweet corn.  About the only positive thing I can say about sweet corn is it makes dinner really easy: boil some water, toss in 3-5 ears of corn (1 is for me), make him a BLT and he's happy as a hog in mud.  He'd eat that meal 3 or 4 times a week with no complaints.

I grudgingly admit that the corn does give us cash flow in July & August - when we're between berry and apple crops.  And it helps us keep staff busy (and employed).  But it's a lot of work for the return. And did I mention that the return has never yet been on the positive side of the ledgers?  I've heard our farm management consultant say that he doesn't think anyone makes money on sweet corn. For a number of years I've been campaigning for Farmer Bill to quit growing sweet corn and use the time spent on it to better care for his money-making crops. So far I haven't been successful - although in recent years I have gotten acknowledgment of my reasoning - and I doubt that I will ever be successful, so I limit my comments to the very occasional & try to imbue them with some humor.

And we do get to eat some really great sweet corn, as fresh as it can possibly be.

Blueberries and raspberries at Straight River Farm

In the spring of 2010, Farmer Bill bought 22 acres that adjoins the original 30-acre farm.  That piece had been planted in a rotation of corn and soybeans for years - about 17 acres of it is tillable. We purchased the land from a family named Van Erp, so I call it the Van Erp addition.  One of the first things to move into part of the new ground was the raspberries. Raspberries have always been the neglected stepchild of our farm, but Bill is sure that they can be a good crop if he can give them some time and attention.  A fellow fruit grower - Lorence Berry Farm in Northfield - has raised strawberries and raspberries for several generations.  But 2 years ago, Sean took out his summer raspberries and committed to fall raspberries only.  [Sean and his wife have school-age children and they decided that having a break between strawberries and fall raspberries to spend some summer time together as a family was important enough to make that change.]  So Farmer Bill decided he would grow only summer raspberries and began work on rebuilding the raspberry patch.  But he didn't reckon with the Spotted Wing Drosophila.

Spotted Wing Drosophila - or SWD - is a fruit fly accidentally imported from Asia. It looks similar to the fruit flies you get around your bananas or your compost container in your house. The major difference is that SWD feeds on ripening fruit rather than overripe fruit. It burrows into a ripening raspberry and lays eggs, which hatch into tiny white larva that feed on the fruit and grow into flies and go off to repeat the process.  There are no OMRI-approved methods that effectively deal with this pest. So, in order to have any raspberry crop without fruit fly larva you must use a conventional spray. And, because the flies are not from around here, a really cold winter is good, too.  In other parts of the country the fly is even more of a problem because it gets into any soft-fleshed fruit: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, peaches, nectarines, cherries, and grapes to name a few. The fly has about a 3-week life cycle in which a female can lay hundreds of eggs - so in warmer climates there can be anywhere from 4-7 generations.  SWD don't get into strawberries much in Minnesota because of the timing of the strawberry season, but they are definitely a problem for other fruit.  Our 2013 raspberry crop had to be abandoned when the SWD caught up to our farm and were in every raspberry within a week.  The 2014 crop was better, because we had a harsh winter 2013-14 and many SWD didn't survive. This year the raspberries are better yet, but there are still things for Farmer Bill to learn about them - e.g., tarnished plant bugs cause strange dried-up gray-brown spots on raspberries - they need to be treated at blossom.

In 2011 Bill planted about a 1/2-acre of blueberries out on the Van Erp addition.  Blueberries are currently a popular fruit for their health benefits as well as their taste. They need acidic soil to grow, and central and southern Minnesota soil tends to be alkaline so the soil has to be amended where they are planted, and the acidity has to be maintained. Peat is  acidic, so a large load of peat was brought to the farm.  A hole was dug for each blueberry plant, peat added to the hole, the plants put in and the hole filled.  If he'd been planting more area, some mechanization of that process would have been done, but since it was only 1/2-acre, Farmer Bill & the crew just did it by hand.  The blueberries have drip irrigation (as do the raspberries now) through which we can put soil nutrients as needed.  If necessary, overhead sprinkler irrigation can be set up in the blueberries and the raspberries for frost protection. Blueberries are very slow growing plants. This 4th year after planting is the first that we've had a consistent production of blueberries and so far the interest from the consumer seems to be there.

I don't know whether Bill will ever go to pick-your-own for the raspberries or the blueberries.  You have to have a very consistent crop to do PYO, and his patches aren't there yet.  They also might not be big enough to do open PYO as we do for the strawberries.  For example, it might have to be by appointment, which adds a whole other complication to the process.  We continue to toss around ideas on how to possibly manage PYO in the raspberries and blueberries, but so far no firm conclusions.

Personally, I am excited about the 'pretty good' crops of both fruit this year.  Raspberry jam is good stuff, and blueberries both in and on our pancakes and waffles are a treat.  My favorite is a fruit compote poured over angel food or pound cake, but I also like a bowl of lightly sweetened fruit all on its own.  Farmer Bill makes himself pancakes about 5 days out of 7 during the winter months, and fruit on top is just as popular with him as maple syrup.