As we feared might happen, hot weather killed the English Pea Crop. I always take crop failures bady. This one is no exception. They do happen, quite often on the farm and one simply has to keep going. The container garden is still doing nicely.

We are replacing the old crop with Southern Peas. The variety is Top Pick Pinkeye, a selection ot of Early Scarlet released by the University of Arkansas Southern Pea Improvement Program. It is a very good purple hull pea with a reddish to light purple hull and a tan colored seed. Very tasty. We will grow these as long as we can through out the summer. The hybrid sweet corn we have used for the last few years has had a second failure for us as well, which accellerates our plans to swap to Evergreen, a tight shucked, long milk stage dent corn that is an heirloom. We intend to use heirlooms wherever possible in the future.

So, with our big crop gone, we will not be at DFM this month. We have alwys relied on the southern pea crop anyway because that is what we are really about, Southern Peas.

The hot Texas summer is still ahead of us, but the spring samples have already arrived. There is adequate moisture in the soil, and our winter cover crop residues are conserving much of it. It has gotten us through 3 weeks of below normal precipitation.Since we are dry land farmers, moisture is critical. Last minute repairs to the one row picker need to be made and we will be ready to pick. In about 12 days or so we should have English Peas. It is supposed to rain today and it couldn’t come at a better time.

The Big Jack will be leaving us soon to a new home in Arkansas.We don’t really need it yet. I can see us needing it if we get into the sweet corn business on a large scale. I like that machine because it is so versatile. The one row Bean Stalker is currently the ideal machine for us, as we are farming less than 10 acres.

Tomatoes are growing nicely in Nathan’s container garden and we have yellow squash. Peppers are also coming along nicely and a little bit of sweet corn. When the peas are done, Purple Hull peas will replace them. No edamame this year.

We are very concerned about the economy, and we are concerned about food safety. You will notice that no food contamination cases have come from small or organic farms.Industrial ag requires a small army of migrant workers if you are raising produce. We use machines wherever possible to do this work. All the hand labor on our farm is done by the family. We are intimately connected to each piece of produce we sell.

I hope to see as many of you as we can at the Dallas Farmer’s Market or at the farm starting in about 12 days. Time is getting near and the English peas will be here then gone for the summer.

Snow kept us off our early planting date for English Peas. Had it not been snow the fields were way to wet to plant. The weather has moderated a bit and we hope to be in the field within a couple of weeks.The first crop will be English Peas, followed either by green beans or southern peas depending upon the weather. If it is too hot, we will delay those till the fall.

More to follow in a week or so…

It is snowing in Percilla, Texas. Zone 8B. Our English Pea experiment plot has done exceptionally well. I wish I had planted the entire place now.We have to wait out the snow before we can do anything. There is much that needs to be done outside but I have suspended all outside activites for the duration.

I will post a better update later on, much is happening in the world of sustainable ag as well as our little farm. So stay warm, spend time with family and dream of spring. Lord knows the Ground Hog saw his shadow this year!

for a while so unless it is a frost tolerant crop, I expect not to plant early this year. The system plan using the cover crops won’t permit that anyway, because the winter peas and rye have to be in the early bloom stage when we roller crimp them.

We are anxiously awaiting the results from our soil samples. We have no idea what is going on with fertility out there. There are places where the rye is very green, indicating good amounts of nitrogen, and places where that is not the case. 

It is January. It is cold and gray. We welcome the moisture and await the coming spring.

The January quotation comes from the almanac. “A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.” –May Sarton

How a Bean Picker Works

Mechanical bean pickers use a picking reel that looks a lot like a hay rake. It is a cylinder that rotates one direction, combing the beans off the vine and onto a conveyor belt. The beans are then conveyed into the rear of the machine, past one or two powerful cleaning fans that vacuum out any stems or leaves, blowing the refuse out the side of the picker. Cleaned beans are then delivered to the hopper or rear bagger. A Pixall one row will pick 1.5 bushels per minute in a good stand. The larger self propelled machines will pick much more.

Since the entire crop is picked at the same time, maturity has to be even. Modern varieties mature at or near the same time, and set the crop in a way that enables machines to pick more efficiently. These modern varieties are not genetically engineered, they are selectively bred and are chosen based on taste, nutrition and harvestability. You probably already grow many of these varieties in your home garden and don’t realize it.

Damage vs. Crop left in the Field

Using “mule trains” to harvest will save you the cost of a machine and they will pick cleaner beans. On the reverse side, many, beans will get left in the field, in some cases, because there was not enough time to pick them, or they were just missed by the picking crew. Hand picking is slow and requires more people to do the same job as a machine. Produce is time sensitive. Hand picking crews usually will not work in dark or wet conditions. Humans sanitary problems are increased 100 fold by using hand picking crews. Machines are always dependable, always productive. Hand picking crews go where the work is. If there is not enough work in an area to keep them busy, they will move on.

Any damaged beans are generally removed in the culling process and losses are miniscule compared to increased productivity. Bottom line, the producer sells more beans.

On Our farm we firmly believe “waste not, want not”. We strive to make the most of available resources and to produce food that is clean and undamaged. That said, a crop left to go bad is a crop wasted.

S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 could expand the FDA’s power to oversee agricultural production, a function historically done by the USDA. What this means to small producers, CSA’s and other market garden operations is unclear. In its current form, it will impose a $500 fee on all food productions facilities no matter the size, even farm that minimally processes the produce at an on farm facility. Shelling and washing peas, for instance may be interpreted as processing.

The bill is still incomplete as it works its way through the system. Some changes to the draconian original version have been made and is somewhat more palpable. If you are a certified organic or Food Alliance grower, you are already familiar with the paperwork and record keeping. It just seems to be too much to ask of small farms and CSA’s. As well the contamination episodes in the food supply of recent years did not originate in the Sustainable Ag community. Indeed our cultural practices and hands on approach to farming eliminate many of the contamination sources.

“The controversy within the broad agriculture community is to what degree the ultimate legislation will increase the ability of the FDA to regulate farmers on how to produce food safely or who minimally process their products on-farm facilities. Many agricultural groups have been trying to modify the legislation to limit or carefully constrain the ability of the FDA to expand its regulatory authority over agricultural production. The major argument is that the source of the food safety problem is not with farm production practices or smaller limited often on farm processing, but rather with very large food processors that process high volumes of product.” Background and Resources on Federal Food Safety Enhancement Act, National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service, November 23rd, 2009http://attra.ncat.org/food_safety.html

I urge you to be in contact with your legislators and remind them of your concerns. We in the sustainable Ag community have already had an impact on this legislation. We must stay the course and keep fairness in the system.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are passed! Whew!

Our cover crop continues to grow nicely. We may add a little organic P and K in a couple of weeks, but other than that, all can we do now, is wait. We hope to plant green beans in early March. We may split the crop and plant green beans, pinto beans, Kentucky Wonder beans and spring carrots and a little sweet corn. These will be followed closely with purple hull peas.

Next winter we are going to experiment with fava beans if we have a suitable market for them. If anyone out there is interested in fava beans, let me know, I’d like to have you on our address list. We do want to extend our growing season into the winter, because summer is really hot and dry and we can raise a few things in our version of fall / winter.

Hopefully next Thanksgiving we can offer fresh sweet potatoes and green beans to complement the Thanksgiving meal. We are attempting to expand production on the farm and our biodiversity. Watch the web site for new pics.

Happy Thanksgiving! All is well and quiet on the farm this winter. The cover crop is growing the machines are being maintained. We took delivery of a 1991 Pixall Big Jack for Sil Meier, keeping it to demonstrate to potential buyers. For our efforts, we get to use it next year.

We own, operate and love our one row bean picker and despite some claims, it does not damage the beans. The Big Jack is much bigger than we are used to, but if we expand to larger acreage it may become necessary to acquire one of our own. The one row is essentially a 10 acre machine. It’s a 10 acre machine because that’s about what one can harvest before the crop starts to go bad. It picks one row at a time at 3.5 mph, maximum. The Big Jack will handle much more, with its 120” picking head and 9 ton dump capacity.

We hope the next growing season will be favorable. Starting next year, we intend to extend out growing season deep into winter, growing crops that are tolerant to cooler weather. East Texas is somewhat warm in the winter, rarely seeing temperatures below 15 ° F. Our average rain fall in the fall is much better than late summer, and rain has been a problem the last couple of years.

We have much to be thankful for here, in the heart of the Piney Woods. We pray for our brethren who are less fortunate. Have a most excellent Thanksgiving, and we look forward to seeing you all at the Dallas Farmers Market next spring!

Attempt at Food Safety may Jeapordise Organic Farming.