Walkers Fresh Veggies

We have seen a steady decline in sales in the summer, there are so many new Farmers Markets in our area and only so many mouths to feed. We have decided to cut back on how much we grow and make an effort to do more variety and have some fun growing things for the Farmers Markets, with less emphasis on our veggie stand. Mark will need to take a full time job for us to make ends meet, so we will also cut back on our CSA memberships. We had 110 members this past year and it is a full workload for one person (without a full income) so for 2017 we plan on limiting our membership to a more reasonable 30 members so that he may be able to hold his evening job and do the CSA's too.  We are hoping this is a better more stable balance of time and income, and will also allow us a more open schedule to take care of crops etc.

We have Early Girl tomato seedlings ready to transplant into pots to grow on in the greenhouse for extra early tomatoes this year. I am planning on setting the fairly large (by that time) plants into plastic mulch with a low tunnel over each row early in May (maybe even late April , if weather is warm).  We want some early tomatoes this year and are willing to go the extra effort to get them!

Happy New Year to everyone!  

We had a great turn out for our early subscribers with the 5% discount for subscribing before Christmas.  We still have room for more return subscribers and even for new people that want to join our CSA in 2016.  I would really like to have a full house by mid-March if that is possible, it would be great to know what everyone wants us to grow and just how much of everything to plant.  We start seeding early crops in around 5 weeks and this year we think winter may end sooner than it has the last few years and so we are ready to plant some tomatoes way early for a change. It would be great to have the first tomatoes by the second week of July!  We might have to pot them in the greenhouse so they can grow big and then cover them with plastic tunnels out in the field to get and early start. 

It is a great time now to sign-up for the coming season CSA distributions! We are offering a 5% discount for early sign-up --this is good for members and for us as farmers too! It helps us get our orders in early for seeds and supplies for next year and helps us avoid running into sold out conditions on our favorite seeds.

We will begin offering Summer Shares for those in our community that would prefer just the warm weather crops like sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons or those that wish to keep their share price down to a lower level but still want to enjoy the bounty of summer!

This weekend is the start of Daylight Savings time  --we are projected to start warming up next week and the snow will soon be gone. Time to get ready to start planting the early stuff.  I plan on seeding enough flats of greens and flowers and early tomatoes and Cole crops to fill one greenhouse entirely! This is the most efficient way to use the heat required.  I will seed Romaine lettuce, mixed leaf lettuce, kale, broccoli, cabbage, pak choi, and some other Chinese greens, early tomatoes, and an assortment of flowers.  We have had a very good response for CSA share sign-up with 54 members enrolled by the end of February.  We are looking for around another 80 to 90 people to sign-up in the next 3 months. If we get that many we will need to look at limiting the total number so we are able to handle the picking , packing and delivery.  So far none of our greenhouses have collapsed this year, although the oldest one is bowed in at the west side from the snow weight.  This is easily fixed and away we go !

The day after Christmas I was able to finish up my fall plowing!  What a change from last year -- I have 21 of our 26 acres chisel plowed this year. I use a tool bar with five heavy spring shanks spaced around 16 inches apart,  with wide sweeps and go around 10 inches deep. This leaves the field in ridges that work well for winter. The crop residue decomposes well and the soil is mellow in the spring.  It takes around 10 hp per shank to pull the tool 10 inches deep at around 3.5 to 4 mph.  I have an old 2240 John Deere that is around 50 hp that works well. 

I feel we are off to a good start for next season with most all the ground ready for spring! 

Like every season we have ever had , or will likely ever have it was one with many ups and downs. We had a lot of rain --more frequent rains than I can ever remember --until August when we had no rain for three weeks, and it got hot and dry(short summer!).   Everything did OK except watermelon and cantaloupe --these needed more heat.  Root crops did better than they ever have --we had some carrots that weighed over a pound each. Our red potatoes did very well too yielding 1/3 to 1/2 again "normal".  The white sweet Spanish onion plants we ordered turned out o be yellow Spanish instead --but they were sooo good!  They got very big and tasted so good --I am planning on switching to yellows from now on.  Sweet corn is our backbone and it was great this year --no worms , and very good.  We had on plot  of green beans that went over 7000 lbs. harvested in one picking on 1.3 acres. These were Blue Lake and we sent them to fill a contract with the Food Bank of South Central Michigan.  We had a bit more labor than we would like, mostly due to my being down three weeks with retinal surgery ( I suffered a detached retina and had to have surgery in the end of June).  Check out our Facebook page to see some new photos I have posted of our packing crew for CSA shares. 

We are moving all the kale, broccoli and cabbage plants out of the greenhouse today. We will put them on a large flatbed trailer to harden up so we can begin planting them in the field Monday.  If you want to see pictures of the plants in the greenhouses as the look today you can go to our Facebook page and see how they are doing.   Just click on the Facebook icon on the top right of the main page of this listing.

We put in nearly a half an acre of early spring veggies Saturday. We set out 1800 White Sweet Spanish onion plants, and we planted 6 rows of onion sets. We also seeded 3 rows of beets, 5 rows of Spinach, 6 rows of carrots, a row of turnips and a row and 1/2 of radishes, 3 rows of mixed lettuces, and 3 rows of dill.  These rows are 300 feet long, and this ground has available irrigation with trickle tape.   Next we will be planting  potatoes - we hope for this week.

Everyone have a great day! 

Now we have all the greenhouses up and running with all new hoops and new floors, with a new cover for number three.  We also have number two full of broccoli, cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts, romaine and mixed leaf lettuces. We have a few odds and ends  like Rutger and Roma tomatoes, wax peppers and Jalapenos and basil.  These are germinated and in some cases ready to transplant into bigger cells.  All in all we have around 13000 plants in that greenhouse.

The tomatoes and peppers are doing well but are still at Wentzel's for the time being.  We will bring them home starting next week. 

We have started working up the ground and have the fields where the sweet corn and early green beans disked, and we have the garden in the back and the field across the road field cultivated.  Next we will work up the potato ground and the partial field where we will plant all the early stuff.  Green onions and onion plants, carrots, spinach, beets, radishes, lettuce and romaine, kale and early broccoli and cabbage will go in that field.  It is around 90' X 300' in size, and is irrigated with trickle irrigation.

The weather this past week was very good and the ground is beginning to warm up fast --it was even a bit dry in the field where we plan to plant sweet corn --we can use the rain we are getting today. 

One greenhouse up!  Two more to go -- We should have the second one up this week. We are also going to start pulling up black plastic mulch from the newly rented field this week. The guys are done pruning grapes and need work --as the snow is finally melting away we can use the time to remove all the old mulch that was left behind from the previous crop two years ago (flowers).  Then we will have a clear place to get started with this years crops. We are going to plant all our early stuff here, lettuce, radishes, carrots, beets, spinach, kale, onions and early broccoli.  We will also plant around 6000 tomato plants and 5000 peppers.  Later in the season we will put as much of the cantaloupe and cucumbers as we have room left in.  This is a field we are able to use trickle irrigation on and the main crops and sensitive crops will be grown here this year.

The first greenhouse survived really well --we only need to splice the ridge pole and patch two minor holes in the plastic.  The second one had more snow pilled on it and may need a couple of hoops replaced.  The third one is still got thick snow on it --but we don't need it right away thankfully.

All the early green stuff including lettuce kale and broccoli have been seeded -- Peppers will be next, then tomatoes.

Winter just is relentless here in Southwestern lower Michigan this year!  I am sure it is much the same in much of the country.  Our hoop houses are still buried and it looks like they may be for another couple of weeks. We have decided to have a friend of ours that operates a larger greenhouse start our seedlings for us.  They will be about two or three weeks old when we bring them home in 512 cell plug trays to transplant into our 72 cell flats.  We think by the second week of April it might be safe to plan for our hoop houses to be repaired and ready to receive plants.  This gives the plants until May 15 to May 25 to be ready to transplant into the fields.  I am hoping it will be dry enough by then to work ground and plant! (and warm enough for plants to grow!)  There are always challenges every year in growing veggies and it seams no two years are ever the same. What really counts is how well you roll with the punches and work to counteract the challenges as they appear.  It is what makes farming interesting (the glass half full mentality --better yet the glass is ALWAYS full of something -- even though that something might just be air).

We have started ordering seeds for this coming season. This is actually when we have to make the decisions on what we are going to plant this year. You may ask why we order so early –the weather out is so cold, how can you possibly be thinking about spring time now?The answer is we are actually already late in ordering –the reason I say this is that two varieties of kale we wanted to order from Seedway are already sold out—we had to order them through another seed company and pay a higher price than we would have if we had ordered a month ago and were able to get them at Seedway.Some seed houses allow us to order and pay when the seed is shipped, others want a check at time of order. Either way it has been a long while since we have had anything to sell and so we must borrow to buy seed for now or wait longer (until some CSA subscription money comes in) to order.If we wait much longer we will have many other varieties of seed that are Out of Stock, and we also run the risk of not having the seed we need delivered here in time to plant for the greenhouse.We begin seeding lettuce, kale, broccoli, cabbage and tomatoes in just 7 weeks from now.

Many people ask me what do you do all winter?I have a job working for a large grape grower near Lawton –I and a couple of the guys that work for me during the summer are pruning grapes this winter.There is about 100 acres of vineyard to prune and we will be very busy trying to get that done before spring.The weather has not been the best this year and some days it is just too bad out to be able to prune.

We are looking for more land in our area to grow veggies on.If anyone knows of any available farmable ground to rent, please let me know.We would like it to be near enough to access with our tractors (they only go about 12 to 15 mph on the road).We are set with enough ground for CSA shares, but would like to be able to provide much more food to the Food Bank of South Central Michigan. We are a Farm to Food grower for that Food Bank and have been participating the last three years and would like to be a bigger provider than we currently can be due to a shortage of available farmland.