JustPicked Farms

We had our first ever booth at the Emporia Farmer’s Market this Saturday.  The weather was warm and beautiful.  The market opened at 8:00, and I had a customer waiting at my booth for the opening bell in order to buy radishes.  Our offerings at this first market included strawberries, Romaine lettuce, All-star red and green leaf lettuce mix, radishes, an assortment of herbs and mints, and of course, eggs.

A lot of planning and preparation went into this market – getting a table,  tablecloth, baskets, and basket liners ready, getting our canopy and learning how to set it up and take it down, not to mention growing, picking, washing, and bagging all the veggies.  My goal for our first market day was to at least earn back the $25 annual market promotion fee that each market vendor has to pay.  We more than made that fee back, and had sold out of what we brought by 9:30. 

We expect to have about the same items for sale next week, with the possible addition of iceberg lettuce and oregano.  The peas are blooming profusely, so we’re looking forward to having peas at the market in a few weeks.  Our broccoli and cauliflower have heads about the size of quarters, so we’re looking forward to being able to offer those at a future market.  Our cantaloupes, Crenshaw melons and watermelons are sprouting and full of promise.  We hope our garden continues to produce well, so we can expand our offerings, and eventually open our Saturday afternoon farm stand location on South Avenue.

We learned a lot at this market.  We learned we need to plant more, so we can bring more, so we don’t sell out by 9:30!  We learned that our price signs need to be taller, made out of something stiffer so they don’t curl, and written in something besides water soluble ink.  We learned that we need to have some sort of display for our eggs, because people don’t realize we have them under the table in a cooler.

If you stopped by our booth this weekend, Thank you!  We hope to see you again next week.  If you didn’t stop by our booth, be sure to check out our offerings next week.

Cheryl

I went out into the garden this afternoon to try to get some things done on the only non-rainy day we’ve had in a while.  I was fairly productive, and got corn, beans, and zucchini planted, and got the mulch fabric laid down for the melons.  The ground was really too wet to be planting, but I feel like I’m so far behind I needed to do it anyway.  As we were laying the mulch fabric, one end of the garden was so wet it felt like we were stomping grapes rather than walking on dirt.  Our footprints filled with water as we walked.  As I was planting the corn, so much mud was sticking to my shoes that they must have weighed 5 pounds each.  I finally took them off and went barefoot instead.  The mud didn’t stick quite as much to my feet as it did to my shoes, and besides, it was nice to feel the cool, squishy mud between my toes.

We picked our first strawberries of the season this week.  There was just enough to top a bowl of cereal, but they are so much sweeter and juicier than the grocery store strawberries.  We’ve been eating lettuce out of our garden for a couple of weeks now.  We have a nice leaf lettuce mix that includes both red and green lettuce and looks really nice in the bowl.  The cool rainy weather has been good for the lettuces.  We should have enough to sell at the farmer’s market in another couple of weeks.

The chicks have outgrown the brooder house, so we’ve moved the broilers and turkeys into one of the hoop houses.  They are enjoying having fresh grass and bugs to eat, as well as having extra room to move around.  The little barred rock pullets are still in the brooder house, but we’re starting to let them out to range in the evenings.  The first evening we let them out, they didn’t know how to get back in, so we were chasing them down with a net to put them back.  Soon they will be able to find their way “home” by themselves.  The ducks are fully feathered now and love to swim and play in the pond we’re building next to the garden.  They have their big duck quacks now instead of the little duckling peeps.

Here’s to big duck quacks, sweet juicy strawberries, and squishy cool mud between your toes!  Life just can’t get much better.

This has been a very productive week at JustPicked Farms.  On Thursday morning, I got a call at 5:30 am from the postoffice saying my chicks had arrived and I needed to pick them up.  When I got there, they handed me a box about the size of a shoe box.  “Is this all?”  I asked.    I peeked inside the box and saw that it included only the 25 barred rock chicks, but not the 50 cornish cross chicks and 6 turkeys that I was also expecting that day.  They assured me that was the only box that had come for me.  I took the chicks home and got them situated in the brooder house, and then went to work.  At 8:00 I called the hatchery to see if the rest of the chicks had been delayed.  “No,” they assured me, “they all shipped yesterday morning.”  The rest of the morning I worried that they had been lost by the postoffice.  I went home for lunch and found a message on the answering machine from the postoffice – the rest of the chicks had arrived on a later truck.  I went back into town, picked up the chicks, went back home again, and began unpacking the chicks.

For those of you who have never purchased chicks, there are two steps to unpacking them.  The first step is to count the chicks as you are taking them out of the box.  Of course, you want to make sure the hatchery didn’t short you (although I’ve never had a hatchery short me), but also because hatcheries generally throw in a couple of extra chicks just in case of losses during the trip or first few days.  In this case, there were 52 chicks, and 6 turkey poults.  The second step after counting each chick is to dip its beak in the waterer, so it knows where the water is.  That gets them drinking quickly after they’re unpacked.

On Saturday, Japheth and I went to Spring Hill to pick up a package of bees.  When we got them home he helped me put them in the hive.  They come in a wooden box with screened sides, with the queen in a separate cage inside.  There are about 10,000 bees in a three pound package.  We took the queen cage out, removed the cork that kept the queen inside, and placed the cage inside the hive.  Then we turned the box with the rest of the bees upside down and set it on top of the bars, leaving a space so they could crawl down inside.  We left them alone for an hour or so, and then we took the box off the top, put the lid back on the hive, and left the box leaning up against the side of the hive so any remaining bees could crawl out and find their way into the hive.  Nobody got stung during this process, and we weren’t wearing gloves or veils.

We also rented the small tractor and tiller from Waters, and tilled the corn patch, the melon patch, Japheth’s patch, and inside the greenhouse.  I was able to get some tomatoes transplanted, and some carrots and broccoli planted.

There’s always something to do on the farm.  It keeps us from being couch potatoes.

Until next week…

Cheryl

The weather this weekend was absolutely gorgeous, and perfect for working in the garden.  Japheth came over to help, and was setting out my lettuce and broccoli seedlings and planting cauliflower in the raised beds while I tilled up new ground for planting peas.  Our tiller is one of the walk-behind type, and I have named it “the beast”.  It is fairly powerful, and can till up even the hardest compacted clay soil (which is what we have).  However, using it takes some muscles, a certain amount of determination, and a little common sense.

Starting the tiller isn’t too bad.  Once it’s started the first time each season, it starts reliably after that all season long.  The fun starts when I actually begin tearing up new ground.  I walked the tiller over to the plot of ground that we had plowed and disked the weekend before, which was now a sea of hard clay clumps the size of baseballs.  I put the tiller in gear, and it immediately bucked and ran about 10 feet down the row with me racing along behind.  Then I remembered to let go of the handles and it stopped, growling menacingly as if daring me to try again.  That’s where the determination comes in.  Not willing to let the beast win,  I backed it up to the beginning of the row again, planted my feet, leaned back, and put it in gear again.  That’s where the muscles come in.  This time, I was able to get about 5 feet tilled before it bucked and ran away again.  I continued like this over and over again until I had made one pass over the whole pea patch.

Common sense would have helped, if I had any.  I finally realized that there was a tilling depth adjustment, and it was set at the deepest setting.  I changed the tilling depth to the shallowest setting, and was able to make another pass around the entire pea patch with the beast only bucking once or twice.  Another notch deeper, another round.  Another notch deeper, another round.  And so on, until I had made what felt like was 20 rounds around the pea patch, but was probably only four or five.  Now the clay lumps are about the size of marbles.  By this time I had been tilling this single pea patch all morning long.  Japheth had planted all the lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower, and I still didn’t have soil that seemed fine enough to plant in.

We took a break for lunch, attached the auger to the tractor and planted three new fruit trees and a few windbreak trees.  Then I broke open six bales of peat moss and spread them over the pea patch.  Martin came to my rescue and ran the beast, incorporating the peat moss into the clay-marbles while Japheth and I mounded up the rows for the peas.  By 5:00 we finally had the peas planted.

Martin had asked me on Friday if I wanted to rent the small tractor and tiller from Waters Hardware so we could get the tilling done fast.  At over $300, I had said no, let’s try it with our own tiller.  Next time I think I’ll say yes.

All in all, although it took WAY TOO LONG to till the pea patch, between the three of us we got a lot done anyway – six trees planted, and all the lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and peas.  And, we got to spend all weekend outdoors in the great weather!

Keep your sunny side up,

Cheryl

This week has been dramatically eventful at JustPicked Farms.  Last week while I was at work, my daughter called to tell me that something had killed two of our free-range hens.  She didn’t see what killed them but at first she thought it was a hawk, because she saw one picking at one of the carcasses.  Personally, I believe the hawk was just getting an easy meal, and it was actually a dog that killed them (not mine, she was indoors).  Both chickens had been bitten at the necks and had their necks broken, and only one looked like anything had actually started to eat it.  This type of killing for sport rather than food seems like the work of a domestic dog to me, since coyotes or foxes would have eaten or carried off their meal.

With that sad event, I had to make the difficult decision to no longer let our hens free range while I’m away from home.  We quickly got one of our new hoop houses ready, since their existing henhouse would have been a little small for them to be spending so much time in.  This weekend we built nest boxes to go inside the hoop house.  I still plan to let the hens out whenever we’re home and working outdoors, but I’ll keep a shotgun a little nearer by in case of predators.

This past weekend we were back and forth to Kansas City on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for a conference, so we didn’t have much time to work on the high tunnel or poultry hoop houses, other than getting the nest boxes built.  However, while Martin was in his conference sessions, I was free to shop!  I stopped in a Tractor Supply store to buy some feed for the chickens, and found that they had chicks and ducklings for sale.  I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so I bought 6 new ducklings.  The sign on the bin said “assorted”, so I don’t know for sure what type they are, but by their markings they look like Rouans, which when they grow up look like a large mallard.

Ducks should be a good addition to the garden, since in addition to eating slugs, snails, and other pests, they won’t damage the crops as much as chickens would.  And, they’ll give us occasional yummy duck eggs!

Mourning the loss of the hens, celebrating the arrival of the ducklings,  trying to keep all things in perspective -

Cheryl

As I write this week, I'm sitting in an airport on my way to a conference for my "day job".  Although the conference should be interesting, I will miss my family and my "critters"; my dog, Ellie, and my hens who have no name, except for the New Hampshire Reds which are collectively called "Lucy".  The conference couldn't come at a worse time for my "real job", that is, my market garden.  If I were at home this week instead of at the conference, I would be working with Martin to complete the high tunnel, tilling the area where I will be planting peas, and starting more seeds indoors.

The celery seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are slowly germinating, with one or two small, spindly plants per pot.  The lettuce and broccoli I started a couple of days ago are already sprouting, seeming much stronger and more vigorous than the celery.  The under-cabinet fluorescent light that shines on them as they sit on my kitchen countertop is probably not bright enough to give them a good start.  I’m thinking I’ll have to set up some sort of makeshift cold frame on the south side of the barn in order to give them some warm spring sun and protection from the wind and the chickens.  After all, I don’t have any more room left on my kitchen counter, and I have LOTS more seeds to start!

During the short, cold days of winter, spring seems to take forever to arrive.  Once it’s here, everything seems to be in a rush.  Seeds rushing to sprout, and us rushing to get things ready for them; everyone rushing to enjoy the first warm sunny days.  I’m looking forward to the extra daylight in the evenings once daylight savings time is here. 

Standing inside the new high-tunnel-in-progress, as I looked up, the arches seemed like a whale skeleton around me.  This garden sometimes seems to me like I’ve hooked a whale on 10-lb test fishing line.  I’m excited, scared, and I feel like I’m in way over my head.  I’ll just have to learn to take things as they come, one day at a time.

Keep your head above the water,

Cheryl