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.

Strawberry season comes around again

We had a long cool, wet May. It's often been a struggle for the farmers to get field work done in between rainstorms.  But the strawberries love this kind of weather; they grow lush and the berries develop good size and flavor when they develop slowly in cooler temperatures.  The first berries were picked today while I was at work.  Some of the berries that were picked will go up the freeway to Twin Cities Local Food for drop off at 6 locations in the Twin Cities.  The rest are going to the Burnsville Farmers' Market.

As chance would have it, rain is expected for tomorrow and the next day.  Originally the weather service was predicting torrential rains, with amounts as much as 5-6 inches over 2 days.  The numbers have since been scaled back to amounts from 2-4 inches and I'm pretty happy about that. For 5 years now, we've had water seep into our basement whenever we have more than 3 inches of rain in a week.  So tonight when I got home from work, the first order of business was cleaning the gutters and clearing all the downspouts in (possibly vain) hopes of avoiding having to vacuum up water in the basement.  We've ascertained that the water comes from the raised water table during unusually high rainfall periods.  There's no water damage on the walls so it's not running down the foundation and coming in through cracks in the walls.  It's coming in where the foundation walls meet the floor. We're working through a series of possible fixes, starting with the least intrusive and least expensive.

This spring I paid the farm crew to pull out all the foundation plantings, pull up the landscape fabric and the rock the previous owner had put down. I've hated that rock from the beginning, so I'm not unhappy to lose it - and many of the plantings had reached the end of their lives, so that's not a huge loss either.  It looks pretty rough right now, though.  A landscaper has been contracted to come and grade the dirt around the foundation - a huge pile of black dirt is sitting outside the house waiting for enough dry days in a row to do the job.  Once that's done, the plan is to cover it with natural mulch, keep those gutters clear, and see whether that solves our problem.  If not, we'll have to look at some other kind of drainage project.

I'm in favor of keeping the water out of the house by putting French drains or something similar outside the house.  It's expensive because it requires excavating to the foundation base to lay drain tile. The other option is to catch the water when it comes into the house, by putting a drain system around the perimeter of the house inside. That seems harder and more expensive since the basement walls are finished.  And it just seems wrong to deal with the water once it's already inside.  We'll see. It's definitely a problem we have to solve over the next couple of years. Spending days vacuuming up water and then 2-3 weeks dealing with mold and insect hatchings isn't much fun - I'd much rather do almost anything else.

So strawberry season begins with a few rainy days, but the extended forecast is for cool daytime and overnight temperatures, which is great.  Our live-in help arrives this weekend, so it behooves me to try to bring some order to the house by then. If I'm not vacuuming up water in the basement, I'll probably be able to do that.  Right now it behooves me to take a quick shower (cleaning gutters is dirty work), and try to get some sleep since I'll be up about 6:00 a.m. to take those berries north.

1st quarter 2015

In December, our son let us know that his marriage was ending.  He was married a bit over 5 years to a woman that we all knew and liked.  About 3 years ago they moved to Portland, Maine, where Aimee had gotten a new job that she was pretty excited about.  Will was working for the St. Paul Public Library, but was willing to let the job go.  Unfortunately, the economic slump hit Portland hard and continues to impact the area. Will was unable to find permanent full-time work while he was there. The stress of chronic under-employment took its toll on their marriage.  Will has since moved back to Minnesota, where he has both family and a network of friends. So far he hasn't found permanent employment, but is actively looking. He is also applying to colleges in the Twin Cities, looking to finish his baccalaueate degree in the next year or so.

In March my sister Laura's health deteriorated again. She's been ill with depression and chemical addiction for more than a decade, but her physical health had been pretty good - despite developing breast cancer, which she successfully fought and beat.  Over the past two years, Laura battled a series of serious health issues, coming to the brink of death more than once.  The fight in March was her last.  I loved Laura.  She was the sister closest in age to me - 22 months older - and we shared a room growing up. As children we often fought, but we mostly got along and spent a lot of time together.  We had our children at the same time, my son Will, then Laura's Sam, and then my daughter Ellen.  The 3 kids spent a lot of time together when they were young, at family gatherings and at each other's homes. When the kids hit the late elementary years, they started to drift apart a bit as their interests changed and their network of friends in their home communities grew.  And Laura and I drifted apart, too. In my partial defense, Laura lost many connections with family in those years, as depression and alcoholism took over her life.  [We come from a family with addiction and depression on both parental sides. Many of my siblings struggle with this to one degree or another.  My personal struggles are with tobacco and food.]

I miss my sister, but mostly I miss the Laura we knew before she got really ill. She was smart and funny. She cared about other people. But she wasn't perfect. She could be cutting, sharp words came with her sharp mind. She was progressive in her politics, and had many a heated argument with our conservative brothers. She embarrassed and angered her son, by sometimes being a falling-down drunk, and by not being able, or seemingly willing, to kick that addiction. She was unkind to and disparaged her husband, himself a recovering alcoholic, who nevertheless stuck by her and cared for her until she died.  But still, she was a sister, mother, aunt, wife and daughter and her place, her role, in our family dynamics cannot be replaced.

Julene

My Auntie Julene is dying. She has a rare auto immune disorder with no known cause and limited treatment. The surgical treatments aren't an option because Julene's heart isn't strong enough for surgery. Other treatments have been tried, but are excruciatingly painful, and not guaranteed. Julene pulled the plug on further treatment about a week ago.  She is now in hospice care.

Julene is my mother's sister-in-law. She is the mother of 6, the grandmother of many, and recently became a great-grandmother. Her baking was famous in our family - and among everyone who knew her. She loved to cook and bake and even did catering for a while. When I was about 12 or 14, she gave me a recipe card file with a starter set of recipes; I loved it. I no longer have the box, but I still have the recipes, on 3x5 index cards, in Julene's beautiful handwriting.

When I was growing up, our family spent Christmas Day with my mother's two siblings and our cousins on that side of the family, rotating locations between the three households. Because my birth family is so large (11 children), my dad would ferry us to the festivities in 2 groups. Even in those days of no seat belt or car seat laws, we couldn't fit all of us, gifts, and food in one car. I loved going to both places, and looked forward to seeing all of the cousins. Jim & Julene had 4 boys and 2 girls. One of the boys, Jeff, is just 2 days older than I am (that age difference was a source of consternation when I was young - now I'm willing to let him be my elder), and the oldest girl, Lynn, is about 18 months younger. Jeff was a huge tease, but never really mean. Once we got over our shyness - seeing each other only a couple of times a year we had to re-introduce ourselves each time - we had a lot of fun together.

Twice when I was in elementary school, about ages 9 and 10, Auntie Julene invited me to stay with their family for a week during the summer.  We did ordinary things: baked cookies, went swimming, played outside for hours, and more.  My Uncle Jim was appalled that I didn't know how to ride a bicycle yet at age 9. At my house, there were only full size bicycles available & they belonged to my older siblings, who weren't interested in teaching us younger kids how to ride. But Jim & Julene had smaller bicycles and Uncle Jim put me on one and followed me around their large flat driveway until I was able to wobble myself around a bit.  Over the rest of that week, I spent many hours riding in circles on the driveway.  When I felt homesick, Auntie Julene would feed me cookies and talk about the family, what outings we might do, and anything else she could think of to distract me.

When my own children were young, we lived about 6 blocks from Jim & Julene's home for a couple of years.  Every 6 weeks or so, I would call Julene and the kids & I would walk over to visit her. Julene had many irons in the fire in those days, but she always made time for me; I think she remembered how hard it was to be at home all day with small children and no grownup person to talk to - even more so in the 1980s because so many moms were working outside the home and the kids were in daycare.

A thank-you card seems like the right thing to send her now.  I'll look for one tomorrow morning before I go to work.

Thanks for the memories, Auntie Julene. I love you.

Vice President in Charge of Compliance

Yup, that's my newest title at the farm.  Sunday morning I spent an hour or so looking up Worker Protection Standards (WPS) and what Farmer Bill (and I) needed to do to be in compliance with same.  WPS was set up to protect workers from contact with pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides).  Mostly common sense, there were enough non-sensible events in the past to prompt this legislation: crop dusters spraying fields filled with pickers, growers not respecting the Re-Entry Interval (REI) as listed on pesticide labels, workers being fired for not wanting to enter a recently sprayed/treated field, etc.  The libertarian in Farmer Bill sometimes get frustrated by the regulations - it's very difficult to keep up with them all - and the left-wing commie pinko in me supports them and wants us to comply.  After looking through the MN Department of Ag website, I decided to go ahead and be certified as a Trainer for WPS, which took me just over an hour to register, go through the training materials and take the exam.  I passed with 93.33% on the first try, so like I said, it's mostly common sense.

In terms of the WPS, Straight River Farm has always been essentially in compliance.  Farmer Bill totally respects the REI for his pesticides.  Ditto for the Pre-Harvest Interval.  He keeps a record of what and when he sprays, and wears appropriate safety gear when applying pesticides.  Where SRF is not in compliance is not having a training session for the employees to tell them what all the abbreviations mean, why they can't go in a field sometimes, and what/how to report any concerns they might have.  It's a simple fix, and we'll take care of it for the coming growing season. Even though the libertarian and the liberal sometimes battle a bit inside Farmer Bill, he would never knowingly put himself or his workers - or his customers! - in danger.

Who brought the rain?

The day after my last post about rain and irrigating, we got 0.94 inches of rain at the farm.  I was at work during the day - where there was no rain.  Driving home I saw no evidence of rain until I turned down the gravel road that leads to the farm.  For the past few weeks while it's been so dry, the dust from the gravel road has gotten progressively worse, covering everyone's vehicles in a layer of dust.  That morning I had run my car through a car wash, even while I thought about what a waste of time & money it was, given that I'd be covered in dust again that evening. But then as I drove down the road Monday night, I realized that there wasn't much dust.  Then I saw a place on the edge of the road that had washed slightly.  Then I saw actual puddles.  Apparently it rained steadily for about 45 minutes - that almost inch - but there was a definite line where the rain had and had not fallen. The city of Faribault hadn't gotten any rain; our farm was, apparently, just within the northern edge of the system.  This is pretty exciting stuff for a farmer.

However, there is some contention about who brought the rain.  Farmer Bill doesn't currently have any way to water his apple trees with the irrigation system.  The long dry spell - and the lack of certain rain in the forecast - had him sending one of his crew out to water the trees manually.  They use a huge tank (500 gallons I believe) mounted on a small trailer; the tank has hose outlets and a crew of 1 to 3 people can haul the trailer to water anything not accessible by the irrigation system.  One of our guys was out giving each tree a drink - parking the trailer at the end of the rows and hauling the hose up and down when he felt sprinkles.  He called Farmer Bill to ask whether he should keep watering & Farmer Bill looked at the sky, looked at the radar online, and told him to keep going - the real rain was going to miss us.  So Michael kept watering.  Just like washing your car generally brings rain that day or the next, so does watering.

So, what brought the rain - me washing my car or Michael watering the trees?  We'll never know, but we'll always take the rain!