Reinforced, extra-shock fencing

Putting water in the piggy "spa"

Loading hay for vegetable mulch

The big project in the garden this week was to catch up on weeding and put down hay mulch around the potatoes and tomatoes. We still need to get around to the peppers. All these crops really appreciate the moderating effects of mulch. It will help hold moisture in, cut down on weeds, cool the soil temperature, and reduce pest pressure. Pests that particularly like tomatoes, peppers, and potatoes-in particular the potato beetle, are unable to navigate the jungle created by mulch. They tend to get lost in the hay instead of finding the plant. Unfortunately the same is not true of pests for other plant families. Mulch around squashes is a bad idea because this provides the ideal habitat for squash bugs to wildly proliferate.

Flowers in the potato patch

This Monday and Tuesday we didn’t get to work in the garden quite as much as we had planned because we were busy with an experiment. We were testing the idea that our single electric line fences for pigs only work when the pigs are happy. It turns out that when the pigs decide that they are unsatisfied with what’s inside their fence they have no problem going through it! In the last 48 hours the pigs have more or less operated as if there were no fence-extremely exasperating (especially to the poor horse who is pretty sure that the pigs are after her when they get out!). Last night we were finally able to address some of the issues. Turns out the pigs were just plain hot. Who can blame them for being grumpy when it’s almost 90 and humid? So we ran water for a nice big wallow-they loved it! We also added some electric lines to their fence so it looks a little more intimidating. Today we will find out if our changes worked. Update: The pigs decided that the fence doesn’t apply to their situation right now. William added one more electric line to help prevent these particularly athletic pigs from sailing over the fence. They are staying put now. Thank goodness.

Barn Rafters of Garlic

Happy summer! Yesterday marked the sun’s nothernmost track in the sky. For a few days the sun will stay in relatively the same place on the horizon, before slowly working its way back south.

Last Monday we harvested all of the garlic. Last week you received fresh garlic in your box. This is a bulb that we dug up, cut off the stalk and passed along directly to you without curing it. The rest of the garlic we have sorted and hung up to dry, or cure in the rafters of the barn. This will ensure that the bulbs dry down slowly so they can keep for as long as possible without rotting. Cured garlic can store for a very long time in a cool, dark, dry place.

When we hung the garlic up we carefully selected the largest, best formed, most even bulbs of each variety to set aside as this fall’s seed garlic. We cure these bulbs along with all the rest and just kind of forget about them. Then, in October, we will pull them out take all the cloves off the bulb and push them into the ground to start the cycle over again.

This is about half of it!

Garlic is an interesting plant because it is planted in the fall in October. In the sprouts up to about 6 inches then waits dormant for the rest of the winter. In the spring it takes off, quickly becoming the tallest, most lush green plant in the early spring. Their growth and vigor begins to slow in May when they start to think about flowering. This is when they send out their garlic scapes. The scapes are the closed blossom of garlic. Garlic reproduces both vegetatively and sexually. However, if it is allowed to fully flower and create seed it invests far less energy in the roots, the part we want to eat. So we cut off the flowers before they open, this is what was in you box several times in May. After the flower is cut the above ground portion of the plant starts to decline. The tips of the leaves begin to yellow and no new growth is seen. Meanwhile, the plant is working to make its bulbs as large as possible to give thee, energy to regrow the next year. Once several leaves have fully died on the stalk we know it is time to dig them up.

In a few weeks, we’ll pull down the cured, dried garlic and put them in your boxes. We’ll have several exciting varieties to taste and enjoy.

Flowering cilantro. Look closely to see all the pollinators it attracts to the garden.

Baby cucumbers for August fruit.

A bumblebee visits our Echinacea

Pig Wranglers and a Sweet Potato Jungle

Last Friday, our big afternoon project was not out in the vegetable field, but with our young pigs.We played pig wranglers with our youngest batch for several hours-they almost made us tear our hair out! The pigs in question are twelve piglets we purchased form Warren Wilson College about 6 weeks ago. When we first get piglets we keep them in a corral because they are so small they will slip through all but the smallest gaps in a fence (several of these actually developed a habit of worming their way through the gaps in a pallet we use as part of the fence!). After about a month of eating they are big enough to learn about electric fences. We string up a double line and hold training sessions. We let them into their electric fence area and watch to make sure they don’t run through the fence. After about 3 practices they generally know what the fence is and they don’t want to have anything to do with it. Now they are ready to go to a paddock in the woods. So we trimmed back some of the brush that has grown up this spring and strung up some electric line. Now comes the fun part; moving the pigs to their new home. Usually pigs herd relatively well. We can get them all moving in one direction out of their old area and toward their new area. Not these pigs, they wanted to go in every direction except the one we wanted them to go in. To top it all of many of them confidently explored the woods alone. It took us about one and a half hours of crashing through brambles to move these little guys thirty feet to their new paddock! Every time we got them close to their paddock they would decide that that was the least interesting part of the woods and scatter in all directions around us. Boy was it frustrating!But in the end they got tired and a little more cooperative. Now they are happily rooting in the woods.

He looks innocent now!

This week we also planted sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are an interesting crop because you actually grow miniature plants from last year’s roots to transplant. It all starts the previous fall when you save out your best potatoes for “seed” potatoes. You then store them in a dry cool area with some airflow until about April. In April you “wake” you potatoes up by allowing them to get warmer. Once the outdoor temperatures are safely above frosting, place the sweet potatoes in a pile of mostly decomposed mulch or very loose soil. Within about a month small green sprouts will begin appearing. In about another month there is a sweet potato jungle! Each sweet potato will send out up to a dozen sprouts, called slips, from one end of the potato. Once these slips are about 6 inches tall (ideally anyway, Mine are always bigger because if you neglect them for a week they grow from 6 inches to 16!), snap them off at the potato and plant. The little slips typically have begun to send out small rootlets of their own. When placed in the soil and watered well they will establish themselves in about a week. After that, watch out, because sweet potatoes are related to morning glories and they will take over! They are a long season crop that appreciates warm weather, so after about three months of patient waiting we should be able to dig up our sweet potato treasure.

Harvesting spring onions

You can't see the forest for the dill!

Zinnias

What does chemical free mean?

In the garden this week the weeds grew. It is amazing how we turn our back on the weeds for a week or two and they are suddenly knee high! In some ways the dry, hot days have been helpful. They make the weeds grow more slowly and die more easily when hoed out. In the paths of the big field we had planted a clover cover crop. In some areas it has done well, outcompeting weeds and blooming nicely (the blooms help attract beneficial insects). But in others the clover didn’t take as well and the weeds quickly filled the void (nature does not like bare ground). No the weeds are kind of like a cover crop as long as we don’t allow them to seed, so we mowed them all down. Many weed seeds can survive for up to 7 years in the soil without germinating. This is called the weed seed bank. Every time you till seeds are brought to the surface to grow. This is like a withdrawal form the bank. If you allow the weeds to seed this is like a deposit. Unlike most accounts, this is one where you don’t want to make any deposits. Overtime, if no plants go to seed we can reduce the number of weeds we have to contend with.

Depleting the weed seed bank is the primary weed control strategy available to organic farmers. In the short term we can weed, cultivate, and mow. But in the long run that is time consuming and tiresome. By eliminating the seeds we can prevent a problem before it occurs. Weeds are such a challenging problem that even farmers who have reduced or even eliminated pesticide use cannot imagine giving up their herbicides. This has led to some confusing labeling in the marketplace. Is “pesticide free” the same as “chemical free.” In either case is the farmer still using chemical fertilizers? (because the fertilizers don’t typically come into direct contact with the plant many farmers will say “chemical free, except fertilizers”). There are responsible and irresponsible ways to use many of the chemical tools at our disposal at farmers. But, as confusing as this sounds, never assume that a broad statement like “chemical free” means the vegetables were raised in anything like a balanced organic system. Always ask.

At Bluebird Farm we raise all of our produce following the organic standards for fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and all other growing techniques. In addition we strive to work with the ecology of the soil, our plants, and insects instead of against them. We work to establish patterns that encourage our vegetables instead of discouraging weeds. We try to increase beneficial insect populations instead of eliminate pest insects. In other words we are trying to build a positive ecological system of growth rather than a negative system of suppression.

May?

Where did May go? Here are some updates on May happenings on the Farm. Photos to follow:

May 25th

It has been a great week here on the farm. We completed the final major spring transplanting sessions with a round of herbs and flowers planted Thursday evening. We interplant certain herbs and flowers with vegetable “friends” to help them with various pests. The technique of planting different combinations of vegetables, flowers, and herbs together for mutual benefit is called companion planting. Sometimes we know why we do it, for example marigolds are supposed to repel a harmful root eating nematode that harms tomatoes; and sometimes we don’t, we planted dill with cucumbers because” I read it somewhere, I’ve seen other farmers do it, and beside it tastes good!”

Friday evening we welcomed all newly transplanted plants into the field with a fertilizer mixture of ground fish, liquid calcium, and some liquid potassium (all nutrients we are short on in the field). We are especially excited about our fish fertilizer because we found a western North Carolina source. There is a company in Murphy that raises trout for food. They have recently added a fertilizer sides to the business to eliminate a waste stream. By the end of the evening we smelled like trout ourselves!

While we planted and prepared for summer crops we harvested another week of delicious spring greens. This week you will enjoy kale, swiss chard, baby spinach, head lettuce, and lettuce mix among other things. Remember, spring is the season to eat all the green you can, because before you know it they are out of season! Believe it or not, spinach is a finicky plant to grow. It lets you know when its happy and pouts when it is not. We are trying to keep it happy so that we can extend the harvest in this humid weather. Its harvest window is short and sweet like strawberries and asparagus. Enjoy!

Each season brings a new round of delicious vegetables and fruit, but unless you ship food cross country, it also marks the end of another food. The food industry has tried to convince us that this is a terrible hardship and that no one should go without tomatoes in December or lettuce in August. But eating in season ensures that you always get the best flavor as well as health. Why eat a January strawberry when the only indication that it’s a strawberry is that it looks like one?

There is an interesting article in the New Yorker a week or two ago about PepsiCo that a CSA member brought to our attention. The article goes into detail into how PepesiCo (a huge conglomerate that includes beverages such as Naked and Gatorade, food products like Quaker Oats brand and Frito Lay, as well as their more traditional sodas) is shaping our tastes for the future. PepsiCo is making food products with the express purpose of convincing us that they are what we should eat. They are dreaming of one day even manufacturing “quasi-medicinal” food products to improve our health! Just think one day we can be healthier because we eat the right PepsiCo product.

Until then, we hope you will enjoy our truly medicinal food made using only the finest sunlight, soil, water, and air available.

Your farmers, William and Marie

May 31:

Every day around the farm now comes with several cleansing sweats. On Monday, Marie got a little taste of dizzying heat exhaustion after 2 ½ hours of hoeing weeds from kale plants. And it was only 10:45 am! Even William admitted to still feeling tired from the previous day’s unintended dehydration when we were harvesting veggies this morning.

Because of this uninviting heat, our schedules around the farm have shift slightly the past 2 days. During the 12:30-3 lunch “siesta”, we eat a healthy farm lunch, take a 15 minute power nap, make phone calls, box eggs, purchase animal feed at the mill and think of more projects outside! I’m even writing the newsletter now, instead of at 11 pm! After the siesta, we’ll check up on the farm animals and head back out for more garden work.

The life of a pea plant is ephemeral. T he vigorous vines twirl upward and the little tendrils unfurl, revealing delicate white flowers. Will Coffey, CSA member and volunteer extraordinaire, ate one of the first 3 peas that we harvested last Wednesday. We had to search hard for those first peas. Today, just one week later, we harvest 30 pounds of sugar snap peas from the plants! Enjoy them while you can- we don’t think there will be much of a harvest next week due to the suffocating heat killing the flowers.

Beautiful Spring Light and Broccoli

We have been busily preparing soil and transplanting baby vegetables. It is best to transplant young plants after the heat of the day. This gives them the evening and night to get over some of their shock, allowing them to cope with the next day's heat better. Sometimes it is tiring to be out in the field that late, but we are often rewarded with wonderful sunsets or clouds that we would otherwise have missed. Enjoy!

Marie cultivates a bed.

Baby kale in sunset light.

Cover crop in stormy sunset.

The sun set underneath the clouds shining on the bottom land and the South mountains.

Will Coffey and Marie plant kale with our new back saving tool-the hatfield transplanter.

Baby broccoli getting a drink (see the sparkling water droplet coming out of the irrigation tubing?)

Planting Season on Bluebird Farm

Wow, March just flew by. The arrival of spring brings a whole new level of activity to the farm: soil preparation, seeding in the greenhouse, animals out on pasture, and transplanting. Everyday as we work in the field we can practically watch the grass get greener and the blossoms on the trees open up. One morning I noticed that the flowers on our magnolia were looking full and ready to burst. By that afternoon the trees were practically in full bloom. It is amazing to see and smell the plants waking up.

Misty the horse, Sweet Pea the sheep and Clyde the (very fast growing) Sheep-Horse-Dog

Some of our early vegetable starts just a few weeks ago. Some of these are already in the ground!

Beautiful Crabapple blossoms on the way to our garden.

Happy meat chickens on grass!

Row cover protecting young lettuce transplants from the vagrancies of spring weather.

William and a volunteer-Jenny. She has been a great help getting plants in the ground on time! This was just last week in full coats and hats on a wet chilly day.