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

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 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

Seeding, Weeding and Thanksgiving Shares!

Our storage & organization hack!

Spring has sprung! Here's what's happening on the farm!