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 That original pruner has since worn out and been replaced by 2 backpack pruners, 2 handheld battery-operated pruners and 2 mini-chainsaws, along with manual pruners, loppers and full-size chainsaws.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.