Our storage & organization hack!
One of the least glamorous but most important jobs on the farm in the fall is cleanup, storage, & organization. It’s a huge undertaking every fall but everything we’re able to do now is time saved in the spring and less wear and tear on our equipment, supplies & tools.
Fun fact: storage & organization is my jam. I love to have everything neat & tidy and for everything to have a home so that I always know where something is. But with the hustle and bustle of farm life during the midst of the season things get jumbled and cluttered. The best example of this is with our landscape fabric.
Landscape fabric is a tool we use a lot on our farm but it’s one that can be difficult to manage in storage. You see, we have a variety of crops that we grow in landscape fabric that have different spacing requirements which means that we have landscape fabric with different hole patterns for different crops. Nothing is more frustrating than grabbing a run of landscape fabric and bringing it down to the field only to realize the spacing isn’t correct for the crop you’re planting.
We developed a labeling system but we still had piles of landscape fabric in random locations in our storage shed so we decided to solve that problem. We built some shelving out of scrap lumber on the farm and built these great shelves. Then, we went through all of our runs of landscape fabric and sorted them into their respective hole spacing. The result tickles my brain in all the right ways: a neat, organized landscape fabric area in our storage shed where anyone could quickly figure out what’s what.
It feels good to have this project checked off the list and to have this system in place for seasons to come!
Seeding, Weeding and Thanksgiving Shares!
Wow! Where did May go?! It’s been a busy month here on the farm and we’ve been working on a lot of different projects. We’ve also been working on a new holiday share for Thanksgiving. Read on to learn more!
Direct Seeding
Our push seeder with row marker.
Direct seeding refers to planting seeds directly into the field and relying on the soil and rain to germinate said seeds. This is opposed to transplanting which is where we plant a seed we started indoors in a more controlled environment. More on that below.
Unsurprisingly, May is by far the busiest month for seeding for us. This is for a couple reasons. First, we utilize succession planting so that we have a steady supply of vegetables throughout as much of the season as possible. This means that even though we can plant things like lettuce, spinach and radish in April, we usually have more successions of plantings in May and even June. Additionally, we’re planting some of our warm season loving crops in May which include basically anything that grows on a vine like watermelon, cucumbers and squash as well as sweet corn, beets, carrots and more! These two factors contribute to May being a super busy month for planting.
Transplanting
Brussels sprouts, napa cabbage, herbs and cabbage transplanted into landscape fabric which serves as a weed barrier.
Transplanting is an important part of our crop plan each year. We transplant certain types of vegetables for several reasons. First, starting the seed indoors in a controlled environment gives our seeds the best chance at getting off to a really good start. This is especially important for crops like lettuce and broccoli that have a hard time out competing weeds. Second, it affords us a longer harvest window for crops like peppers and tomatoes which are typically ready later in the season. Indeed, some crops like peppers would not produce anything at all if it weren’t for starting indoors. Finally, we because we are planting in a controlled environment we can achieve extremely high germination rates meaning we waste less seeds.
The biggest tradeoff for transplanting is that it’s much more labor intensive. This balances out some with reduced labor from weeding but it is still a factor. Other tradeoffs include increased cost since we need trays to hold the plants, growing medium, and a place to put the plants after they’ve germinated but before they’re ready to be planted outside.
Our transplant tunnel which holds our transplants until they’re ready to be transplanted outside.
May is a big transplanting month as well. We transplanted several successions of lettuce and broccoli as well as cabbage, brussels sprouts, napa cabbage, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. I haven’t done the exact math but it’s well over 3000 transplants so far this year! Crazy!
Weeding
Weeds are always an problem that we face on our farm. Because of the shortage of rainfall in the first half of May the weed pressure was pretty light. However, the second half of May produced adequate rainfall and the weeds sprung up as fast as our crops did! We’ve been hard at work keeping the weeds at bay using a variety of cultivation tools including our wheel hoe, walk behind tractor, long and short handled hoes and as a last resort good old fashioned pulling weeds by hand.
Our walk behind tractor with finger weeders. The yellow fingers flick small weeds out of the rows without damaging well established plants.
We’ve talked about our walk behind tractor before but it’s worth bringing up again because of the impact it’s have on our farm. We are already reducing weed pressure by utilizing the walk behind tractor and, as a bonus, it’s easier on our bodies as well.
Chicken and Pasture Update
Our chickens are acclimating really well to their new co-op and pasture based life. Admittedly, it took some time and training for the chickens to realize there’s plenty to eat in the pasture and for them to get used to the automatic door on their chicken coop but now that they’ve learned their new setup they are looking healthier than ever and laying TONS of eggs!
Our chickens LOVE the grass!
Our pasture that we seeded in early May is also looking really, really good. The field has gone from a bare field to a sea of green. The rainfall in the later part of May really helped the pasture grow quickly and we think that in a month or so that we will be able to move our chickens onto the new pasture where there’s plenty of clover, grass, bugs and more for them to eat. We feel really good about converting convention farmland into perennial pasture!
Our pasture is GREEN! Now it just needs to get big.
You might be wondering where our chickens are if our new pasture isn’t established yet. The answer is that we have around an acre of CRP land between our produce field and a drainage ditch that runs along the township road. This is where our chickens are currently and although the CRP land isn’t 100% ideal it’s a lot better than being confined into a chicken barn!
Holiday Shares
And now for the most exciting news; we are raising turkeys for a special, one time holiday shares that will be a nearly complete meal for your Thanksgiving gathering! This share will include one pasture raised turkey that we estimate will be between 12 and 18lbs, potatoes, carrots, beets, winter squash, lettuce, garlic, carrots, and more. Plus, this share will be fully customizable so you can tweak your quantities to get the perfect amount for your gathering. These shares will be delivered to your residence the Saturday before Thanksgiving or available to pick up on the farm. To sign up for your share today visit this link: https://www.harvie.farm/farm/cedar-crate-farm/signup
Mmmmm turkey!
Spring has sprung! Here's what's happening on the farm!
Wow! It’s hard to believe it’s the end of April already but here we are. It’s been a busy month on the farm and we’ve been tackling a variety of projects around here. Here’s what we’ve been up to this Month.
Planting
Caitlyn helped us get the first potatoes and green onions planted back in early April. This is the earliest we’ve planted potatoes since our farm started! We planted three kinds of potatoes for you this season including our popular and beautiful pink fingerling potato, our early red potatoes and our “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” white potatoes.
Dan was also able to start direct seeding some of our early season crops including radishes, arugula, spinach, lettuce, kale and more. New this year are hakurei turnips which are also known as salad turnips. We hope this will spice up our early season offerings.
Transplanting into the Tunnels
We’ve also been hard at work transplanting crops into our 3 caterpillar tunnels. We’ve transplanted our first two plantings** of lettuce and kohlrabi. We’ve also direct seeded lettuce, cilantro, peas, spinach, carrots and beets into our tunnels.
Setting Up Irrigation
No doubt about it; it’s been dry this April. We’re lucky to have a quick recharging well and excellent equipment for irrigating our fields. A lot of farmers are concerned that this season will be a season of drought. We are too. Luckily, we made an investment into some irrigation infrastructure that will allow us to water the majority of our crops in the event of drought.
Setting up irrigation is a bit like building with Legos and Dan has tons of experience building with Legos. We have several components of our irrigation system including our mainline which runs from our hydrant the length of our farm. From this mainline we’re able to connect in both drip irrigation and overhead irrigation.
The Chicken Coop
This has been a project that has languished this year but we’re happy to share with you that it’s nearly completed. As we mentioned in our last blog post this coop has several improvements over our last coop the biggest of which is that it’s on wheels allowing us to easily move it around our pasture!
Speaking of pasture, Dan also seeded our pasture. We are converting roughly 2 acres of what had been corn and soybean rotation for decades into permanent pasture for our chickens and whatever future livestock we decide to add. This was a fairly big project requiring nearly a full day of tractor work. First, Dan had to work the rough cornstalk ground with a small tractor mounted field cultivator. This broke up the large clumps and helped level the ground. Next, Dan spread about 1 ton of fertilizer using our tractor mounted fertilizer spreader. Then, Dan added the pasture mix to the spreader and spread the seeds over the pasture. Finally, Dan took a harrow section and lightly worked the ground one more time which helped get the pasture seeds incorporated into the soil.
March Farm Update
March is a time of excitement on our farm. The snow has mostly melted, the first plants of 2021 have been seeded indoors, we’re finalizing our plans for the 2021 growing season, and getting our equipment ready for another year of growing for you This March has been unique for us. Lara’s maternity leave ended at the end of February and I have begun caring for Addie full time while also trying to keep up with things on the farm. For a first time dad it’s been a little tough but I have been loving the quality time with Addie and I can’t help but think about having her help with all of these farm tasks in the future!
The biggest project we’ve had so far this month is starting our seeds. We have a robust seed starting setup with several key components. The first is our germination chamber which we built with a reclaimed upright freezer, a couple crock pots, a temperature controller and a humidity controller. This keeps the space inside the chamber at a steady 78 degrees Fahrenheit with 95% humidity which are ideal conditions for starting seeds. We have lettuce, thyme, cilantro, oregano, kohlrabi, broccoli, tomatoes, cabbage and peppers all up and we have a goal of transplanting the cold tolerant crops like lettuce and kohlrabi into our tunnel around the first week of April.
You can see the germination chamber in the upper photo with some of our seed starts. Notice the crock pots at the bottom of the chamber that help keep our temperatures consistent. Below is a recent photo of lettuce and cilantro on our grow rack. We hope to transplant the lettuce sometime during the first week of April!
End walls and plastic on the first tunnel back in early March.
Another big project we’ve completed with the help of our farm hand Caitlyn is getting the end walls and plastic over our caterpillar tunnels. This project involved waiting for a very calm day as even a 10mph wind is enough to cause a the large sheets of plastic to blow uncontrollably. This can be difficult in March as the seasons change. It seems we have more windy days than calm days this time of year!
Finally, we’ve begun construction on our new chicken coop! We’re making some improvements over the first chicken coop we built including building the coop on the frame of a trailer so that we can easily move the coop to fresh pasture. Unfortunately, the skids on our last coop did not work well. It was very difficult to move with the tractor and we ultimately left it in one place. Other improvements include a mesh floor so that the chicken poop will fall onto our pasture fertilizing it and keeping the chickens clean! We’re hoping to finish building the coop in the next 2 weeks. Stay tuned to Facebook for more pictures!
What's happening on the farm in February?
There's no doubt about it: during the winter there are way less "Instagramable" moments on the farm but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy! Read on to see what we've been up to this winter.
Baby Addie
Our precious baby Addie was born on December 22nd in 2020 and we've just been loving every minute with her. She's growing so fast and somehow is getting cuter every single day. Addie is keeping us very busy and we're so lucky to have this slow time of year to spend with her
Crop Planning & Seed Order
We spent a lot of time updating and adjusting our crop plan for this season. We've added two new 16' by 100' tunnels to our farm which more than quadruples the amount of tunnel growing we will be doing this season. As such, we had to develop a plan for which crops will go into those tunnels and which crops will be planted after the previous crop is harvested. We keep track of all of this using Google Calendar and Google Sheets that are updated yearly.
Equipment and Supply Orders
We have been ordering the necessary supplies and equipment to make our 2021 season a success. One of the things we're most excited about is our new walk behind tractor and cultivation setup. This tool will help us reduce the amount of hand weeding we have to do on our farm saving us time and our backs! Check out this Youtube video below:
We've also ordered components for an irrigation system since we finally have a well on our farm. This system includes both drip irrigation and overhead irrigation. We use both forms of irrigation on our farm in strategic ways to enhance the quality of our produce. Other supplies we've ordered include tomato stakes, packaging materials, and fertilizer.
Marketing
We've also been hard at work getting our CSA shares marketed and sold. We increased our total shares from 50 up to 80 this year and have about 25 left to sell. They're going really fast this year so if you have a friend or neighbor that's considering signup up, they should do it soon!
We're excited to be starting plants in just a few weeks. It will finally feel like winter is coming to an end and that spring will be here soon! We love the slower pace of winter but we can't wait to get our hands dirty again!
Thank you for supporting our farm this season!
June Farm Update: Weeding, Planting, and Pack Shed Progress!!
Wow! Where does the time go? We’ve been so busy on the farm planting, weeding, and setting things up for our season that time just seems to go by so fast. May and June are very critical months of the year on our farm. The work we do now helps ensure our season is successful. We are usually juggling multiple important farm tasks such as weeding, planting, and setting up infrastructure and each task usually has a set of weather conditions that work best.
Take weeding for example. We have multiple tools and strategies to deal with the inevitable weeds including flame weeding, plastic mulch, frequent shallow cultivation and hand weeding. Our flame weeder works best when the weeds are very small and when the wind speed is less than 15 mph. It’s been fairly windy this spring so we haven’t been able to flame weed as much as we like. Cultivation requires dry ground and for the most part we have had that. By killing weeds with cultivation and flame weeding now gives our crops a chance to establish themselves and out compete future weeds. Furthermore, by killing weeds now we ensure that the weeds don’t reproduce and add even more weeds to our fields.
Planting is another very important task for obvious reasons. There’s a lot of thought that goes into when we plant crops, where we plant crops both in relation to what it’s planted next to this year and what was planted in that spot last year. We keep a Google Calendar of our planting dates to help make sense of everything and compare year to year.
Our new pack shed is also coming a long nicely. Our posts are set, the rafters are up and they are beginning the work that will go into the floor including setting drains, raising the grade and installing pex tubing for our heating system. We expect the shed to be finished around mid July and hope to start using it then as well as it will greatly improve our farm efficiency.
Early May Farm Update!
It’s been a busy couple of weeks here on the farm. From seeding to building and planning we have some updates we’re excited to share with everyone. This time of year, especially this year, is a nice return to normal for us. With how crazy life seems when you tune into the news, we feel really lucky to have at least some part of our life seem like normal. Getting our hands in the dirt and seeing our seeds sprout to life is comforting in these uncomfortable times.
Seeding
We already posted about how we started planting our seeds about two weeks ago but this week we did our second round of seeding. Unlike conventional corn and soybean farms who usually plant once a year in the spring, we are continuously planting all season long to keep a steady supply of produce available in our CSA shares, Farm Stand, and farmers market. In fact, the last seeds we plant each year are usually in September! To be fair, we are definitely a lot more busy seeding in the spring and the amount of planting we do is certainly less during the summer.
Almost all of the first seeds we’ve planted are up and overall things look pretty great! We’ve got excellent stands of peas, carrots, lettuce, arugula, beets, cilantro, spinach, and kohlrabi. We’ve even got some sweet corn up (though it might not survive the frost). We haven’t planted any warm season crops like cucumbers, peppers or watermelon yet but they will be planted in the next 1-2 weeks.
Building
Many of you know that we sold our house in March this year which also means that we sold our washing and storage building (our old garage) and that our new facility is not done yet. Since we need somewhere to store our veggies between now and when our new pack shed is done, we’ve had to construct a new temporary walk-in cooler which is well under way. We finally have power at our farm site and within the next few weeks we should have running water and have begun construction on our new pack shed. We can’t wait!
The frame of our walk-in cooler.
Weather
You can’t be a farmer, or a Minnesotan for that matter, without talking about the weather. Overall, the weather has been pretty great (with a few exceptions) this spring. We’ve had fairly warm temperatures overall and we’ve never been able to plant as early as we did this year. That said, the weather has not been without it’s challenges. We’ve had days where it’s been so windy that we were unable to do any work in the field and the plastic on our tunnel sustained some damage. We were able to repair the plastic but it is very likely that we will need to replace it by the end of this season.
In addition, it’s been pretty dry this spring. We could really use a good shot of rain in the neighborhood of one to two inches of rain. The rain is necessary to get our seeds to sprout and to make sure our transplanted crops get well established. Finally, and most damaging of all, the multiple freezing nights this weekend are damaging our tomatoes and peppers which are currently in our tunnel. It’s actually so cold that even the tunnel is not enough protection for them. We’ll see where we turn out after this cold, but it’s likely we’ll have to purchase new plants (if possible - many farms are sold out) or have our tomato and pepper crop be delayed by a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted on how we turn out.
Broiler chickens!
Lara and I miss raising livestock (we had to sell our flock of laying hens to facilitate our move) so, for a couple of reasons, we’ve decided to raise around 100 broiler chickens (meat chickens). We are very interested in incorporating livestock into our operation and broiler chickens are a relatively low cost way to get started. We are also able to process up to 1000 chickens on our farm without inspection from the department of ag and with all the scary stuff in the news about meat packing plants closing, we thought we’d do our part to help provide healthy, sustainable meat to our community.
We will be ordering our flock for the early part of August with an anticipated processing date of late September. We’ll be taking pre-orders for our birds on our website with a deposit of $5/bird. We will butcher the birds for you on our farm and they can be picked up at the Mankato Farmers Market, with your CSA, or on the farm. We’ll also show you how to cook them perfectly every time whether in the oven or on the grill and we’ll show you how to get the most out of every bird. Lara and I are able to turn one chicken into nearly a weeks worth of meals.
An Exciting Time of Year: Planting 2020!
We couldn’t have asked for better weather this past week. With warm temperatures, sunny skies, and a nice breeze we planted the first round of our direct seeded crops this week. As an added bonus, we started planted about two weeks earlier than the past couple seasons. Hopefully, that translates into some of your favorites being available earlier in the season! To cap it all off, the week ended with a little over a half inch of rain which is the perfect amount to get our recently planted seeds to sprout.
Unloading one of our fertilizer super sacks.
Our farm direct seeds most of our crops. For those of you unfamiliar, direct seeding refers to planting the seed directly into the ground. The alternative would be to start plants in a greenhouse, indoors, or high tunnel using seed trays and potting mix and transplant them into the ground (we do some of this as well). One of the advantages of direct seeding is that it’s fairly fast compared to transplanting. The disadvantage is that we don’t get that head start that started plants get. This week we direct seeded potatoes, onions, peas, cilantro, radish, arugula, lettuce, spinach, beets, kohlrabi, swiss chard, and sweet corn!
Our Hoss seeder. Simple but effective.
We were also able to pick up our cold tolerant started plants (lettuce, thyme, parsley, cabbage, broccoli) over the weekend. This year, because of our construction projects and move, we outsourced our started plants to our friends at My Minnesota Farmer. We are lucky to have a group of farmers and friends who are willing to help each other out! We’ve already got most of them transplanted into our tunnel!
It’s been a busy week and to cap it all off we got a half inch of rain last night which will help our recently planted seeds to sprout in the coming days. We really couldn’t have asked for better weather.
With all of the craziness going on in the world, things felt like normal here on the farm. This time of year always makes us think of the hope involved in planting a seed. We hope that it doesn’t get too cold or too hot. We hope that it doesn’t get too dry or too wet. We hope that it doesn’t get eaten by insects or wildlife. We think that message of hope is more important now than ever before. And just as our seeds will sprout and bear their fruits despite whatever nature has in store for them, we too will overcome the adversity of this pandemic.
How We're Adapting our Farmers Market Stall and CSA For COVID-19
I’m not sure there’s a single industry out there that hasn’t had to adapt in some way for COVID-19. Farms are no different and we’ve been hard at work listening to webinars, consulting with state officials, and learning from our peers on what the best methods are for mitigating the risk of COVID-19. We’re going to go through the changes we’re making this season.
Farmers Market
Social Distancing: We will be offsetting our market tables about six feet from the front of our stall and tying a rope across our canopy legs to create a physical barrier between us. You’ll still be able to see all of our produce but you won’t be able to touch it before purchase. We will also be marking with chalk 6 foot intervals in front of our stall space so you’ll be able to easily see safe distancing.
Contact-less Payment: We’ve been using Square for years now and have decided to purchase a contact-less payment chip reader. If you have a card with a chip, Apple Pay or Google Pay then we won’t have to touch your card. This will be our preferred method of payment this season.
Online Pre Order: We’ve setup an online Farm Stand we’re you’ll be able to pre-order items each week and pick them up at the market. We recommend scheduling your pickup time for Tuesday or Thursday as they are usually lower traffic days. To sign up visit this link: https://www.harvie.farm/farm-stand/cedar-crate-farm
Hand Washing Station: Our market has invested in several hand washing stations that will be located throughout the market. One will be adjacent to our stall.
Face Masks: Luckily Dan’s mom is a gifted seamstress and made us cloth masks for use this summer. We will be using them at market while that recommendation remains in place.
Sanitizing After Handling Money: Any time we handle cash or touch a shared surface we will sanitize our hands and that surface.
Farm Shares/CSA
There has probably never been a better time to be a member of a farm share. This is a great way to have food security, minimize your exposure, and support small businesses like ours. While our CSA was already very safe we’re taking these additional steps.
Mankato Farmers Market Pickups: We’ll still be packing your produce into crates BUT you won’t be able to take the crate home with you this season. Instead, we ask that you bring a reusable bag and will ask you to pack your share into your own bag. The crates will then be left idle for 1 week before re-use. Current studies suggest the virus does not persist longer than a couple days on surfaces.
Saint Peter Food Co-op Pickups: We will NOT be packing your produce into crates this season. Instead, we will be using wax boxes which we will re-use after they go through an idle period of one week.
In General
Employees and/or family members who are sick will not be working while ill and will follow all CDC and MN Dept of Health guidelines for returning to work. This was true before as well but it’s important to reiterate.
If COVID-19 is contracted by someone on our farm our market sales and CSA drops will pause until the person is recovered while meeting all CDC and MN Dept. Of Health guidelines.
Our existing food safety plan before COVID-19 is also effective for COVID-19. You can read about that from an early blog post here.
Food safety has always been very important to us and it is even more so during this pandemic. We will do everything we can to minimize and eliminate the risk of transferring the virus to protect vulnerable populations. Thank you all for supporting our farm this season!
Our Farm is Here for You
I’ve been really struggling with how to write about how our farm is dealing with the coronavirus. I’ve had no less than 3 different drafts of blog posts that I decided to scrap because they just didn’t feel right.
Really, what we want to say is that we are planning on planting everything we planned on before the coronavirus spread to the United States. We’re planting all the same seeds, in the same or greater quantities than before. We are still planning on constructing our new pack shed. Our farm will carry on this year and how we get our produce to your kitchen is just details.
We are ready, eager and prepared to grow food for you. We are here for you and because of you and we will find a way to make sure you can access our produce.
Thank you all for your support. Stay home, stay healthy and stay safe folks.
Conference Season: What We Learned This Year
We’ve attended a number of conferences this winter including the MOSES Organic Farming Conference, the Sustainable Farming Association Annual Conference, and the Northern Growers Conference. You could say we’re eager to learn and are always looking for ways to innovate on our farm. We’ll go through some of the highlight of what we’ve learned during this winter season and what impacts our knowledge will have on our farm.
Nutrition
One of the most interesting and exciting things that I learned (or really reaffirmed, as I already knew this was true) is that pastured production of broilers yields more nutritious poultry. One talk at the Sustainable Farming Association was able to compare several poultry production systems and even had grant funding to have their poultry analyzed at a nutrition lab. What they found was that pastured poultry on all nutritional metrics measured was significantly more healthy than what the USDA says a standard serving of chicken nutrition is. Vitamin E content was significantly higher, the Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acid ratio was significantly lower and so on for everything they tested.
This wasn’t a surprise to me but it' sure is nice to have a study to back up what I know is true. I also imagine this can extend toward not only any pasture meat production of beef, pigs or layers but also to vegetables grown using organic forms of fertilizer such as animal manure and compost. This is a great affirmation for why we do what we do: it’s healthier for you and better for the environment.
You can read the study summary in the MN Dept of Ag Greenbook 2019 under the Livestock Section Page 138: https://www.mda.state.mn.us/sites/default/files/2019-09/greenbook2019.pdf
Diversity
Just like many organizations push for human diversity, diversity of production on farms is extremely important. Many of the talks I’ve gone to involve cover crops (cover crops are crops that are grown to enhance soil quality but are generally not harvested and sold) and most studies conclude that a diversity of species in cover crop mixes yields better results. In addition, diversity on the farm can also include a multitude of crops grown for profit - something we’re already really good at! It can also include incorporating livestock into farming operations. Basically, the more you can do the better off your farm will be!
The image in this section is a photo of some of our cover crops. This particular mix is our fall and winter mix that includes radish (bottom left), clover (bottom right), sudan grass, and kale. We have a summer mix as well that includes things like buckwheat, sun hemp, soy beans, cow peas, sudan grass, and more! We’ll keep experimenting with cover crops and building our soil!
We have a vision of adding more livestock to our farm starting next season. We’re interested in poultry both meat chickens and laying hens, pigs and beef cattle. We likely won’t add all of those at once but we’re excited to incorporate more livestock into our farm.
Early Winter Update and CSA News!
2020 will be a year of changes for our farm. We’ve been hard at work planning for these changes and are hopeful that they will lay the foundation for what we dream our farm to be someday. Read on to see what changes are in store and what we’ve been working on.
Our New Land
If you’ve been following along with our blog posts the past few months you’ll know that we recently purchased 7 acres of land adjacent to our produce field. We intend on building a new pack shed that will house our wash lines, packing tables, and walk-in cooler. We’ve been hard at work on planning this shed, securing bids from local contractors and filling out grant applications to help cover the cost of this project. Of particular note is the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Value Added Grant which, if awarded, would cover up to 25% of our project cost. We’ve spent several months filling out the application and supplying the correct supporting documents. We’re hopeful we will be funded but won’t know until March of this year.
New CSA Software
A spring full share.
We’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with Harvie (https://www.harvie.farm/) to help our CSA members get more out of their CSA membership. We’ll have more details and sign-up live by the end of January though there are several features we wanted to let you know about now.
More Customization Ability - Harvie will allow you to have even more control over your CSA share on a week to week basis. You’ll have the option to customize each share each week to suit your preferences.
Reschedule CSA Pickups - Harvie also lets you easily reschedule a pickup if you’re going to be out of town.
Add more items to your CSA - Harvie also lets you add more beyond what you’d normally get in your CSA. Need extra sweet corn to freeze? Harvie will let you add more based on our availability and it will automatically get added to your share!
Sign up for next year - Harvie also has the ability to auto-renew your CSA membership so you don’t have to wait for our email next season.
We hope that you’ll find that Harvie improves your CSA experience and we will be eagerly awaiting your feedback as we move to this new system.
Beef Shares
Mmmm….steak :)
Last month we introduced our Beef Shares and we’re excited and encouraged by the response we’ve had so far. Partnering with my parents to offer beef shares helps build the bridge on where I came from to where we’re going with the farm. We love that we’re able to offer beef that is raised on the farm I grew up on and that we’re able to offer people food that’s fresh from the farm!
Our House Is For Sale!
In addition to the new pack shed we’re also building a new house on our new land and, as such, our house near Kasota is for sale. We’ve really enjoyed living here and we absolutely love the location but in order for our business to grow we need to be closer to our field and have space to expand into more livestock as well as the ability to invest in infrastructure like greenhouses and irrigation. If you know of someone looking for a solid starter home or empty-nesters looking to downsize our listing can be found here: https://search.truerealestatemankato.com/idx/details/listing/a359/7022977/58105-243-Street-Kasota-MN-56050-7022977?widgetReferer=true
Cedar Crate Beef!!
Earlier this week we announced that we’re partnering with my parents, Mike and Diana Zimmerli, of Wabasso, MN (about 1.5 hours west of Saint Peter/Mankato) to sell beef shares! We expect the beef to be ready in late winter/early spring and will be processed at the local butcher shop in Wabasso. Check out our new Beef Shares page for all the details and reserve your beef today!
About our cows
Some good lookin’ cows!
My dad raises cattle the same way he always has and the same way my grandpa did: in a large fenced in area with access to windbreaks and shelter as well as their food and water. His cattle are fed a mixture of silage, ground corn, and additional vitamins and minerals as needed.
To be clear, these are not pastured or grass-fed cattle unless. We would like to provide grass-fed beef or some kind of hybrid approach in the future but we’re not there yet.
One of the advantages of silage fed beef is that they are ready to butcher more quickly than their grass fed counterparts. What this means for you is that it is cheaper to produce than grass fed beef because there’s less labor involved so it’s cheaper for you to purchase than grass fed beef. Another benefit of silage fed beef is that is has higher fat content meaning more marbling in your steaks and better flavor overall.
Why are we adding beef?
We feel really strongly about supporting local farmers and local businesses and think this is a great way to tie together what we’re doing with our produce and my dads farm. We also love that we will be supporting the meat market in Wabasso instead of the large, industrial meat packing facilities where most super market meat comes from. This helps revitalize rural Minnesota and helps keep jobs in rural towns. Finally, we are excited to partner with our family. Farming and family go hand in hand and this is just another example of how farm families work together to produce delicious food for you!
Click the button below to learn more about our beef shares and to reserve your share today!
We Bought Land!!
The grove of trees in the background is our new land! Our pack shed will go in the clearing in the center of the photo.
We’ve been working on this for awhile and we’re happy to announce that it’s official: we purchased 6.7 acres in Waseca County adjacent to our produce farm! You may or may not know that our farming situation for the past 5 seasons has been a little different than what you’d expect. We’ve been driving about 30 miles southeast of Mankato to our 2 acre vegetable plot and hauling all of the produce we’ve harvested back to our home near Mankato for washing, packing and temporary storage until it ends up in your Farm Share, our Farmers Market Stand, or the Saint Peter Food Co-op.
This farming setup hasn’t been without it challenges. We’ve had to be very diligent about the amounts of produce we harvest. Going back for more produce because we didn’t harvest enough wasn’t really an option for us because of the time required. In addition, we spend about an hour every harvest day driving. That’s a lot of time we could be using for weeding, harvesting, washing and other farm tasks. The weather also poses a challenge; the weather at our house isn’t necessarily representative of the weather at the plot and we’ve had a lot of issues with jobs that require certain conditions that were hard to predict. In addition, we’ve had to haul coolers and ice on our harvest days to help keep our produce cool. You get the idea, farming like this was really hard. We spent a lot of extra time because of the distance between our home and our farm.
What’s Next?
The land by itself doesn’t really help us solve any of the problems mentioned above. That’s why we’re investing into infrastructure and a brand new pack shed. Our pack shed will be a dedicated building for washing, packaging, and storing produce and it will be located on our new land. Our pack shed will have a number of features that we’re really excited about:
A rough, to scale, sketch of our pack shed floor plan.
Floor drains: We wash a lot of produce and floor drains will help us keep our shed clean, dry and safe by moving muddy wash water out of our shed.
Insulation and heat: Our last harvest of lettuce was on November 8th this year with temperatures hovering around 30 degrees, just below freezing. Insulation and heat will help us maintain comfortable temperatures as we continue to extend our harvest season.
Larger walk-in cooler with space for another walk-in cooler. We maxed out our 8’x8’ walk-in cooler several times this season. Our new pack shed will have a 12’x12’ cooler with room for a second cooler if needed.
On site bathroom: this might seem silly but it’s going to be really convenient to not have to walk up to the house to use the bathroom. It will save time and help keep mud and dirt our of our house.
We hope to start on the pack shed first thing in Spring 2020 with an anticipated completion date of early August 2020. We have a lot of work ahead of us but we’re so excited to be making this investment into our farm, our community, and into providing great tasting, healthy, sustainable produce for you!
p.s. If you know any electricians, plumbers, masons, or other contractors let us know! We’re working on gathering bids for our project and any additional leads would help us out a ton.
2019 Slightly After Mid Season Update
The bright green and red are our lettuce mix! Ignore the weeds :)
It’s hard to think we’re over half way through our farming season with back to school this week. But here we are nonetheless. As I write this we are in the middle of week 11 of our CSA. We like to keep everyone updated on how things are going on the farm and while we’ve been active on Instragram we haven’t been able to keep our blog updated. This seems to happen every year and really it’s just the reality of the prioritization of tasks on the farm. That said, we do have a mid-season recap and some news about what to expect for the fall.
Year of Plenty*
This season has been unbelievable so far. We’ve had better crop yields on nearly everything we grow and that surplus has been showing up in the CSAs this year. On average our CSAs this week contain about 15% more value of produce that last year! One of the things we love about the CSA model is that we all share in the successes and failures of the given year. With farming, it only takes one weather event to completely ruin a crop or group of crops and the CSA model helps us, as farmers, to withstand those types of events. The return for the risk that our members take is that in years of plenty we share in plenty.
Our tunnel has also helped us this year. We’ve produced more varieties of lettuce more consistently than we have in the past. It’s also an investment that paid for itself in the first year of use! We’re really excited to have taken the step into season extension and look forward to adding more tunnels in the future.
The asterisk is for a couple areas of failure on our farm this year. We generally always seem to have something that doesn’t work out for us in a particular season and this year it was two crops whose yields are lower than we were hoping. First is onions - they got over grown by weeds which drastically reduced their size and the quantity of onions we have available this season. The second is garlic - we lost about 25% of our crop from flooding in March and another 10-15% from our mulch being washed away which cause the weeds to get overgrown in the garlic. That’s not to say that there won’t be onions or garlic in your CSAs just that there will be a lot less of each than we intended.
What to expect the second half of the season.
Our late season crops like tomatoes, peppers and winter squash are looking good, especially our butternut squash! You’ll start to see tomatoes in your shares in the next couple weeks with winter squash to follow in September and October. Our melons look ok. We don’t expect a bumper crop of watermelon or honeydew melon but we do anticipate having enough to include them in your shares. We will also continue to have carrots, green beans, beets, herbs and potatoes. In addition, some of our spring favorites will be making a return; we recently seeded spinach, radish, cilantro, kohlrabi, and lettuce mix. If the weather continues to cooperate we’ll have a really nice selection of produce available this fall.
Year end pot-luck
In the past, we’ve hosted a CSA season end pot-luck at our home. This is a private event for our CSA members as a thank you and a chance to come together and get to know each other better. Also a chance for you to ask any burning questions you might have about our season and what our plans are for next year. We usually grill burgers (and have vegetarian options as well) and leave the sides up to you. Those of you who pick up on Mondays know we’re a little tight for space at our home so we will likely have this event at an alternate venue. Stay tuned for more information in the weeks to come.
Planting!
We were finally able to squeeze in a few days of planting outside of our tunnel over the past weekend. We put in several long days but we were able to get completely caught up on planting. Over the weekend we planted the following: potatoes, onions, peas, carrots, spinach, beets, kohlrabi, kale, arugula, popcorn, sweet corn, lettuce, swiss chard, and radish. In this post, we’ll go over a few of the tools we use for planting.
Tractor & Tiller
Our tractor and tiller, brand new in late 2016.
We use our John Deere tractor and tiller to prep the ground for planting. The tiller helps to break down residual matter from the previous year and to help soften the soil so that we can plant easily into it. It also helps us kill the first flush of weeds that started growing (though it also brings new weed seeds to the surface).
Tilling is a destructive means by which to prep soil. We try to mitigate the destructive potential through a variety of means. First, we only till very shallowly - about 2-3” deep so that we don’t disturb the deeper soil structure. Second, we plant cover crops as much as possible. Cover crops have amazing potential to help rebuild soil structure as well as many other benefits such as attracting beneficial insects, fixing nitrogen from the air into the soil, and suppressing weeds. We also use animal manure as our fertilizer source. Animal manure helps rebuild soil structure by introducing rich, organic matter in a form more stable and available to plants. Finally, we minimize our fall tillage (we use a chisel plow in the fall) to only the areas not under cover crop. These areas are where we have long season crops like winter squash, popcorn, and most melons.
Push Seeder
One of my favorite planting tools is our Hoss Tools push seeder. The seeder has individual plates with holes of varying sizes and spacing to accommodate the various sizes of seeds we plant. It works by a drive wheel that rotates the seed plates and drops the seeds into the ground. The seeder also has adjustable depth.
I like the seeder because it’s so versatile. We have multiple plates and can plant nearly any type of seed. Not only that but we can get blank plates - that is, plates without pre-drilled holes, that we can use to create our own size and spacing! This gives us a lot of flexibility at a minimal cost and saves us hours of labor.
Wheel Hoe w/plow Attachment
We also use the Hoss Wheel hoe with plow attachment for onions and potatoes. Seed potatoes are just quartered potatoes - they’re too big and bulky for our seeder so we have to plant them by hand. We plant onion sets which are onions that have grown to about the size of a marble, then harvested and dried to be replanted the following year. We use the wheel hoe to plow open a furrow for planting. After we planted, we flip the plows around and cover the furrow.
Misc. Tools
We use a few other miscellaneous tools to help plant. We use an iPad for our record keeping, recording the date and row feet of crop planted. We use fence posts with string to help keep our rows straight an evenly spaced. We use a measuring wheel to help us make accurate length of rows.
Seed starting and our first tunnel.
It’s hard to believe all the snow we had this winter is gone! Even harder to believe is how quickly it melted. We really couldn’t have had better weather for melting the snow and helping our spring along. We’ve been busy in the past month getting prepped for seed starting and starting seeds! In the next few days we’ll even plant our first transplants outside! It’s an exciting time of year filled with hope of another bountiful season. In this post we’ll go through our seed starting setup and talk a little about how the setup of our first caterpillar tunnel went.
Our indoor seed starting setup has several important components. First, we have our basement prep table. This is where we fill our trays with organic potting mix. Trays have individual cells for each plant and come in a variety of sizes. We use two sizes that accommodate 50 and 128 plants. Once we’ve filled the trays with soil we plant each seed individually. We’ve already planted over 2000 seeds this year with many more to come!
The next component is our germination chamber. This is a new addition to our farm that we made this spring out of a recycled upright freezer, a couple crockpots and a temperature and humidity controller. We’re really excited about this because it will allow us to control the two most important factors in seed germination: temperature and humidity. We’ve already seen great improvements in our germination rates especially with parsley. In the past, we’ve been lucky to be above 50% germination. That is, of the total number of seeds we planted we were lucky to have more than 50% of them germinate. This year, with the germination chamber, we’re over 90% germination on parsley! Side note: our other crops germinate much more consistently with rates approaching 100%.
Finally, we have our grow racks. We bought one on Craigslist and the other we put together using parts we purchased from Home Depot. Simply put, it’s a series of shelves with lights on timers that simulate day and night cycles for our plants.
Once our plants are established in their trays we’ll begin the process of “hardening off.” This process acclimates our little plants to the more harsh conditions they’ll face outside. The hardening off period allows the plants to adapt to full sunlight, wind, and greater temperature fluctuations before we plant them outside.
Bonus: Caterpillar Tunnel Setup
This was our first go at setting up a caterpillar tunnel and overall it went pretty well. We started by measuring out where our tunnel will go so that we could set the corners. Then we pounded large rebar stakes into the ground every 5 feet on both sides. Next, we constructed the bows that support the structure from 3 pieces of curved metal tubing secured with tex screws. Then comes the plastic - we rolled out the plastic and pulled it up and over the bows. The plastic is secured on either end by metal t posts pounded into the ground. To tighten the plastic a series of crisscrossing ropes are installed and pulled tight in between each metal bow. Finally, we placed sand bags around the structure to secure the plastic to the ground in the event of wind. The whole family got in on the set up. Kit, our cat was very interested in the tools we were using and Axel, our dog just wanted to be near us!
What'd we learn at MOSES 2019?
Lara and I attended MOSES 2019 in La Crosse, WI this weekend. For those who are unfamiliar, MOSES (midwest organic and sustainable education service) is an organization that promotes organic and sustainable farming and hosts the largest organic farming conference in the United States. The conference is huge, with well over 3000 attendees, tons of presentations from farmers, scientists, PhD students and more as well as film screenings, research presentations and round table discussions. It’s sometimes hard to choose what to do at the conference because there are so many good options! We attended talks on subjects ranging from managing tomato diseases to pasture raised pork to stress management. In this blog post we’ll go through some of our big takeaways.
Soil
I attended several talks on soil - it’s the foundation of everything we do - so I like to prioritize learning more about soil as much as I can. One big take away is scientists have a very small understanding of how soil works. In one acre of soil there is the biomass equivalent of 8.4 cows in things like bacteria, fungi, worms and other living creatures. Of that biomass scientists have only documented and named about 20% of those creatures. What does this mean for the farm? For us, limited understanding makes it hard to trust anyone that says x is the thing to do for your soil. Instead, we will try to mimic nature as closely as possible; this is what most agronomists would suggest. This includes using mixtures of cover crops to simulate the diverse species of plants you see in nature. Applying animal manures and compost to mimic the natural way animals fertilize soil and we will try to minimize tillage as much as possible. Lara also attended an introduction to soils class and found the current research continues to support the practices we are using.
Tomato Diseases
The big take away here is that we really need to invest more in caterpillar tunnels and high tunnels. We can reduce occurrences of tomato disease considerably which will increase our yields considerably. We’ve held off on investing in this infrastructure until we move to the land where the majority of our veggies are located. We’re making progress on this! We purchased a small caterpillar tunnel this season for use at our home (though we’re using it for lettuce production instead of tomato production). Other things we can do for our field tomatoes include things we’ve already been doing - crop rotations, pruning, laying mulch down, and applying organic copper at regular intervals to slow the spread of disease on a regular schedule.
Pasture Raised Hogs
I (Lara) have always had a great interest in livestock. Convincing Dan to raise chickens has proven to be a great way to diversify our CSA and get free nitrogen rich manure! There are some great benefits to be gained were we to raise pigs. First, we would be able to sell high quality meat to our customers adding economic benefit to our farm and diversifying the CSA. Second, we would get free pig manure to enrich our soil. We would also get some low grade free tillage on our land as the pigs have a tendency to literally "root” around! They love eating plant roots high in sugar and will turn up soil in the process. Dan and I are interested in farming on a closed loop system which means anything that comes from the farm goes back into the farm - we wouldn’t have to pay so much to purchase outside fertilizers. In addition we want to farm in a way that mimics the natural symbiotic relationship of plants and animals. There is also the bonus of pig companionship! They are smart creatures with funny personalities. We are excited to invest in pigs in the next couple years!
Stress Management
Lara attended a short session on women managing stress in agriculture. The tips provided in the session are applicable to all humans working in agriculture. Farming has one of the highest rates of suicide in the nation; many factors contribute: low wages, debt, isolation, intense labor. One way to manage the stress of the job is to plan vacations where you can focus on slowing down and resting your body and mind. Dan and I always take a one week vacation mid-season. It keeps us healthy! Other suggestions included making time for your hobbies, eating healthy, and taking care of your body (your greatest tool in farm work). The key message is farming will be stressful and having a plan to mitigate the stress will ensure a successful long term business.
What does this mean for you?
Better produce, more options for your CSA, healthy farmers, and healthy land! The things we learn at the conference are things that directly affect you. We apply the techniques and recommendations we learn to get better at producing healthy, great tasting produce and animals that will nourish you and your family. There are always things that we can do better and we always try to learn the best techniques to ensure everything we grow for you and your family is healthy, delicious and sustainable!
What's new for 2019?
One of the things we love about farming is that no two years are the same. This is true on multiple levels: the weather is never the same, the crops we grow constantly change and the way we grow them progresses through iterations of improvement every season. While we can’t control the weather we can control which varieties of crops we grow and our methods for growing them. Read on to learn about the biggest changes we’re making for our 2019 season.
Our first caterpillar tunnel!
What is a caterpillar tunnel and what is it used for? Caterpillar tunnels are a form of season extension that are made with really large sheets of plastic draped over metal ribs that are anchored in the ground. They offer protection from the wind, rain, heat and cold giving us a slightly longer growing season for the things we grow inside them. The most popular produce to grow in them are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and lettuce. We intend on using our tunnel to produce lettuce which leads us to our next change for 2019.
Season long lettuce experiment.
One of our favorite things to grow is lettuce and it also happens to be something people really love. Dan took an online class over the winter to learn about strategies for producing lettuce all season long. We’ve developed some systems and invested in the necessary infrastructure to grow lettuce all summer long. This is very much an experiment year that we will use to hone our systems and ensure the lettuce we produce is sweet, crunchy and not bitter. Ultimately, our goal is to have lettuce available every week from mid May through October and perhaps even into November. Don’t worry, we won’t overload lettuce in your CSA box though it might take some time to figure out the correct quantity.
Establishing new perennial beds.
Our current strawberry and raspberry beds are getting pretty old and thus their production and quality is deteriorating. Raspberries and strawberries take a couple years to get established and we have been reluctant to establish new beds at our current property for fear of moving before they’re established. Recently, we’ve made some progress towards buying the land we farm so we’re going to be investing in new raspberry, strawberry, asparagus, and rhubarb beds this season. We hope that in a few years we’ll be able to provide all of these perennials in our CSA boxes and farmers market stand.
Meet Zack
Hello!
I know it's been awhile but I promise these will be more regular from now on. Today I want to share with you about our farm hand - Zack. As we know farm work is never done and when you get bigger there is more work to do! This calls for more help; we began hiring extra labor last year and just loved Lindsey! We are lucky again this year to have our good friend working for us three full days per week. Zack's experience is varied - he spent some time in the business world and is currently pursuing his MFA in Fictional Literature at MSU in Mankato. When he's not busy writing Zack loves to bake and cook - he has a knack for both. Running is another serious endeavor Zack commits to. He has run several 1/2 marathons with goals to increase his speed each race. Though Zack's farm experience is limited, his work ethic is not. He is such a huge asset to us - keeping up with us weeding, hoeing, putting up tomato cages, and harvesting and preparing produce. Zack does all these tasks with care and efficiency - he never complains - even on days when it's 95 degrees and we ask him to pound posts. We enjoy Zack's company and humor. If you ask him what kind of vegetable he would be he'll tell you brussel sprouts because not everyone likes them and you have to do a little work to get the vegetable from the stalk. Needless to say Dan and I are fans of the brussel sprout (Zack)!
