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“Organic farming appealed to me because it involved searching for and discovering nature’s pathways, as opposed to the formulaic approach of chemical farming. The appeal of organic farming is boundless; this mountain has no top, this river has no end.” – Eliot Coleman
Hello friends and farm-ily,
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Quick Reminder: Current CSA members have until this Friday, July 29th to receive our WHF Winter CSA sign-up priority. We already have a handful of folks on the waiting list so be sure to sign up and/or get your deposit in this week to secure your spot! Check out the link here: https://workinghandsfarm.com/winter-csa-sign-up/
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We hope you are all doing well. The hot heat of summer’s past has greeted us again with some extra toasty summer days! Over the weekend we powered through the heat and planted another round of fall brassicas: kale & collards (2100 row ft)! Next up on the ol’ planting list is cabbage, beets, fall/winter chicories, another round of romanesco, cauliflower & broccoli! It’s definitely going to be a few solid weeks of jam packed days for us (to avoid planting in the heat of 90 degree weather or should we say “wither”) but we’re making a big push and getting it done one thing at a time. We’ve been getting up with the sun rising in the east and heading back in the evening when the sun heads out in the west – taking a siesta around 4-6pm to eat an early dinner and enjoy a respite from that hot summer sun.
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“But the real products of any year’s work are the farmer’s mind and the cropland itself.” – Wendell Berry
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With the summer sun comes bumper summer crops! Sweet corn (the sweetest we’ve ever grown), tomatoes, bell peppers, frying peppers etc.. and soon other hot weather crops – eggplant, hot peppers, melons will join in on the harvest. The heavy summer harvests are definitely here (our backs can attest!) and as we near August they will only get heavier!
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Feelin’ Inspired! This time of the year the ol’ to-do list is so plentiful that it never feels like you can get up and over it. But after so many years of farming, you just know it’s coming so we have a much different (more seasoned) attitude about it. Sure, things in the summer can be stressful at times but we know that everything always gets done, even if it’s not as you expected it to be… it gets done… and if it doesn’t you learn to let it go and do better next year. It helps when we can get ontop of weeding, seeding and transplanting all the Fall crops. All the mistakes of Spring have mostly been turned back in to the soil… Its that time of year when it feels like we’re breathing new life into the season and into your farmers, which feels amazing. The Upswing as we’ve called it seasons before.
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We are finding that systems are so important on the farm and we are constantly asking ourselves, “what is the most efficient ways to do this job”, “what is the best way to move this crop from field to customer” etc As a farmer you need to be efficient as possible for many reasons… especially if it’s just two of you managing the day to day farm tasks. The working smarter, not harder is the key to it all. How many times do you pick something up, how many times do you harvest any one crop during the week (can you harvest it all at once)?, how many times do you hand weed a crop etc etc. The past two years we’ve felt less set in our established ways and more open to change. Sometimes you choose it and other times it becomes necessity otherwise it just won’t work out anymore… This old proverb comes to mind…
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“Necessity is the mother of all invention.” – English proverb
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Over the past two seasons we’ve incorporated many new methods and systems into our small farm to make the land and work more efficient (and things we are still learning about as we go along).. hydrocooling and storing the produce with our coolbot cooler, harvesting and moving the vegetables with our CSA trailer & new farm cart, pre emergence flame weeding, direct seeding crops with our precision jang seeder, prepping beds with the compost spreader and fertilizer drop spreader, making dibble marks for planting with the transplanting (for ease of planting, equal measurements and uniform planting), stalebedding before planting, cultivating with the chalmers, investing in organic compost (40,000 lbs per acre!) and custom blended amendments for the soil, building a permanent pick up area for the CSA members, building a new pole building for storing winter crops/wash pack area/dry place for tools & implements/curing crops, building two new high tunnels for winter production etc, These efficiencies seem to be working as we’re able to grow food for over 140 families (over 450 individuals) as two farmers on 6 acres of cultivated land. As we hone in on the efficiencies we are also us thinking about productivity…. How to make the land more productive and that has been inspring us to invest more heavily in the soils.
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“To be a successful farmer one must first know the nature of the soil.” – Xenophon, Oeconomicus, 400 B.C.
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SOIL! We have been talking a lot about our soil since we moved to our new (to us) farm land in the 2013 season.. how we feel the crops are doing after farming here for 4 years, after 2 seasons of applying our custom organic fertilizer mix we blended in the Spring (based on our soil tests), the extra compost, our tilling and watering methods, etc. Every season we are diving just a little bit deeper and understanding more clearly of what our soil needs are specifically to this piece of land. We are excited to really hone in on soil fertility and to see how much the land will change for the better over time. It all starts in the soil and we really just want to become better soil farmers. We both love talking about soil science. So much in fact that we’ve helped a few farmers friends interpret their farm’s soil test with recommendations!
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Bit by bit and season by season.. we learn, grow and build. It’s easy to feel connected to the farm, the food and soil when you can look at a plant and decipher what it’s needs are just by observing. As farmers, we measure success by the quality of the soil. It’s all about feeding it well and all those amazing microbes so it in turn can be taken up by the plant. We will continue to give, give, give and it too will return to us a bountiful harvest year after year. Same goes for our pasture that we planted in the Fall of 2013. We’ve seen this little slice of land improve with every season we’ve been here and we look forward to observing, cultivating, stewarding and caring for it for years to come…
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Oh! It’s been a while since you all have signed up, read the member agreement and purused the the website so, as a refresher, be sure to check out our FAQ page for any questions about the CSA, pick up etc that you may have!
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We hope you all have a great start to the week and hope to make an appearance sometime soon once the July/August madness subsides… at some point 😉
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With kind regards,
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Your farmers
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Jess & Brian
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dirty hands, clean hearts
working hands farm 
