Aug 31

Wow. Seems strange to write that date! August is OVER!

There is still a lot going on here on the farm, but gears seem to be shifting again. I noticed it before, when we shifted from planting and weeding to weeding and harvesting. Now, there is actually not much weeding going on (well, the collards could use a little attention, but...) and the harvesting is finishing for some crops. One row of cucumbers has been tilled under (there is one more that is being very fruitful...the full-share CSA's got 6 in their boxes today!). A row of yellow squash and zucchini have slowed production considerably. (There are two more short row of zucchini, green and yellow.) The beans, which have been the bane of my existence (OK, I guess that's a bit of an exaggeration...) are done for the year.

The poor, poor tomatoes, also. They have had the deck stacked against them almost from the beginning. We were delayed in getting them trellised, we were delayed in getting them mulched, they were overcome with weeds, completely saturated with 2 occasions of +5" of rain and many others of lesser amounts, most accompanied by high winds...the poor things were fighting a losing battle. And, after the hot spell we had a couple weeks ago, shortly after they were really coming into full flower production, I learned  something about tomato plants I didn't know before. If the overnight temps don't fall below 70º, the flowers will drop off the plants. No flowers = no tomatoes.

Whether it's a good thing, or a bad thing, most other area farms are experiencing the same fate with their tomatoes. Featherstone Farm is a large CSA farm located in Rushford, MN, just south of I90, between Rochester and La Crosse. They estimate they've lost $130,000 in crops this year from weather-related issues alone. Obviously, our troubles are nothing compared to that! But, the weather has certainly taken it's toll.

As some crops finish, though, there are other things to take their place. The collards, for example! And, we've planted more successions of leaf and head lettuce. There's more plantings of broccoli, cabbage, cilantro and dill. We haven't even gotten into the winter squash yet, and, oh gosh. I can't even remember what else is still out there. It's different, though. And some rows are done for the year. They will be getting cover crops planted soon, so the weeds don't move in! (The cover crops she has chosen will stay in the ground for the rest of the season. The frost will kill them off, but, they'll stay on the ground to protect it from erosion, etc. The dead plants will be tilled under in the spring adding organic matter to the soil.)

This coming Thursday will be our last "Pizza Night". We will be open, with pizza available, on Saturdays, from 11:00 to 6:00 throughout September and October, though. It will be more of a "harvest" festival kind of atmosphere. Hopefully, if that works into peoples' schedules better, we can get some folks out here!

Aug 24

Well, a little behind again. I always have great intentions about keeping up....

The week is going well. Yesterday was hot, but today, much better. Even so, lots of short, easier to accomplish tasks makes me feel like we're accomplishing things. The row of squash that has always been such a pain to harvest is slowing down in it's "old age". The beans as well. There are newer rows of each, but they are shorter rows and feel easier to manage. I never realized I was so susceptible to "Jedi Mind Tricks".

Got the CSA boxes packed today. Actually finished packing before noon for the first time since C left. Another rainbow of nutrition: White garlic; yellow beans & squash; green kale, broccoli, cukes & zucchini; purple eggplant & beans; red peppers, watermelon & tomatoes. Doesn't it make your mouth water?!?! Throw in an herb share with parsley, rosemary, basil and oregano and I'm in heaven!

We were inspired for dinner: Buschetta with fresh tomato, basil and garlic and some "research" into possible appetizers for the upcoming family vacation to Madeline Island.

Tomorrow is delivery of the CSA boxes. I'll be helping out this week, since H can barely fit all the boxes in her van, and this week there are watermelons, too! I volunteered for the Winona delivery and will be having dinner with A while I'm there! Can't wait to see him!

Aug. 20

Another successful Pizza Night last night. 124 pizzas! Not a record, but a good night. We were all a little delirious by the end of the night. There were several larger groups. One was a company party with 11 pizzas (which we knew about ahead of time) and there were a couple others with 5-7 pizzas each. It all adds up. And, with her new addition this year of a beer license, people are able to, ahh... occupy themselves with some grown-up beverages while they wait for their pizza.

She is also taking advantage of the wait times with a couple of "appetizers". We're serving chips and salsa in a little paper boat, and for the last couple weeks, a melon bowl with fresh,  naturally grown cantaloupe and watermelon. If they tell you when you order that your pizza that it will be an hour-and-a-half wait, but would you like some chips and salsa or a melon bowl?!?! What are you going to say? Ah, Yes, please! And a couple extra beers! Woo hoo! Suddenly a $24 order becomes a $39 order. No brainer.

Today, Friday was a little laid back. Late start, then only a couple of tasks. Harvest beans from the newer lanes (that only took until 12:45!!) and try to get through the summer squash/zucchini and cukes. Got through some, but then had to get up to the Cities.

An uneventful drive home (always good!) and a fun evening with Erica, Shane and John.

Erica & Shane have officially given notice at their current  place and, after months of minor conflicts that are starting to accelerate, are moving their stuff in here. Will make for a full house, but, semper gumby, right???

(Semper Fi... the motto of the marines, "Always Faithful"??? Semper Gumby is "Always Flexible"!!)

Aug 17

Today's laugh comes from one of the crazy roosters.

This guy is quite the athlete. He can get up and over a 8'+ fence by a kind of combination of running and flying up the fence. Quite a site to see, actually. When he is on one side or the other, though, the place he wants to be is the other side. He tries to make you feel sorry for him, but he is perfectly capable of getting up and over any time he wants.

Today during afternoon chores, I gave them some fresh grain in the feeders inside. Then, I went out into their yard to check their water. He was up on top of the fence, pacing back and forth. All the other chickens had gone inside to get some of the grain. The little guy on the fence was acting all insulted that they were having some kind of fun without him. He was squawking away, going back and forth, back and forth. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore (or no one was paying any attention to him), and, he works up the courage fly down and see what all the excitement is about. Except, he completely mis-calculates, and smacks head-first in the the side of the barn!

Probably not very sympathetic of me, but I literally laughed out loud at that!

He fell back, ruffled his feathers a bit, (almost as if he was saying "I meant to do that") and made his way, uneventfully, into the barn to get his dinner.

And put a smile on my face.

Aug 15

Last week was simply too hot and humid to think about anything, other than just getting as much of the to-do list done as possible. And, even that was difficult.

The weather has broke now though, and I'm looking forward to a much more pleasant week!

Looks like I'm two weeks behind on Pizza Night updates.... August 5th was another record-breaker! 160 pizzas! I still can hardly believe it. A&K were here. They arrived just before 8:00 he said, and they could see how crowded it was, so they ordered right away. Each pizza is numbered, so a quick check of the last pizza out of the oven, subtracted from your order number gives you how many are in line ahead of you. Times that by the 2 minutes to cook each pizza, and you've got your wait time. They got their pizza at 10:00. I heard some people arrived after they did, but decided not to wait and went somewhere else.

There wasn't live music, but it had been a nice day. And, maybe being a few weeks after 4th of July, and a few weeks before Labor Day was a factor...people looking for something to do. We've given up trying to figure out WHY people come when they do!

Speaking of WHY.... Even with the weather forecasters carrying on about the heat index of over 100º last Thursday, the 12th, we still had 60 pizzas. I know. By comparison, that's pretty minor, but I can't imagine wanting, on a day like that, to be just hanging out, outside, eating a hot pizza. Ugh. Oh well. To each his own, right?

A big storm came through early Friday morning. I first heard the rumblings of the thunder a little after 3:00 a.m. Woke up a few times as the storm crashed through, and when I got up at 6:00, it was starting to let up a little. We got 5-1/2" of rain!

Through the pasture is a gully, or waterway, they purposely "sculpted" I guess is the best word. It runs from one end of the property to the other, with the purpose of diverting excess rainfall. And, yes, it works! Friday morning outside my door, was a river. All the animals were safe, but some of the fencing posts were being overtaken. We unplugged the fence and moved the ones we could get to. There's a lot of branches and other debris laying around the area. Also, the flour mill next door is in the process of adding a warehouse, so there is a large section of their property that isn't graded. With all the water rushing toward the end of the shared driveway and out to the road, some of the farm's section of the drive was washed up pretty bad. But overall, minimal damage.

I stayed on the farm this weekend, and had a couple nice quiet days. (H and her boys went to a cousin's lake place for a couple days.) I'm thinking of going home next weekend. And looking forward to our annual vacation to Madeline Island over Labor Day. Then, we'll be full into September, and I imagine here on the farm we'll start thinking about fall crops and frost dates. Wow.

Aug 10

Miserably hot and humid, but the CSA must go on!

This week, for a full share, from left to right:

3 summer squash

3 Regular cucumbers

3 pickling cukes

1 large head garlic

4 sweet peppers

2 large bunches kale

1 large eggplant

8 ears sweet corn

3 zucchini

2 lbs tomatoes

1-1/2 lbs carrots

1 cantaloupe

1 large cabbage

1 patty pan

Aug 4

This week's CSA boxes were beautiful (again!). Carrots, cauliflower, summer squash, zucchini, cukes, perpetual spinach (it's actually a variety of chard, not spinach), sweet corn and tomatoes! Yum!

This week is Cynthia's last week on the farm. We will all miss her and her hard work. We've had some great conversations and lots of laughs together. I guess it is customary for the interns to pick the menu for one of their last dinners on the farm. She chose a vegetable lasagna with white sauce, garlic bread and cheesecake for dessert. It was all so good! For the lasagna, we used an Alfredo sauce with ricotta cheese melted in, and layered it with slices of eggplant, zucchini and tomato, and a sauteed mixture of corn, peppers, onion, garlic and shredded carrots. All the veggies except the onion and peppers were from the farm! "Eating Local" doesn't get more local than that!

Oh, and the homemade cheesecake had a raspberry sauce with berries from the farm, too! Delicious!

The weather forecast for tomorrow is: Beautiful. Less humid, mostly sunny, a little bit cooler. We also have live music scheduled, so we are expecting big crowds for Pizza Night. We're thinking of planning for 120 dough balls. We'll see if that's enough!

Cow Adventures

I was at the farm by myself this past weekend. I guess I mentioned that before, but it's important to note it again as I retell my cow adventures from Saturday.

Everything was going well. After lunch I decided to indulge in a nap. When I woke up, I wanted to start on a new apron I'd been planning in my head. I found my material, got the machine set up, and when I glanced out the window of the door, there was a cow looking it at me. Being able to see the cows in the pasture from my window is not unusual. This cow, however, was RIGHT outside the window. Not in the pasture, on the other side of my door. Pardon my language, but the first thing out of my mouth was, "Oh, shit."

There are 6 cows on the farm. Three of them are about 2 years old. Three of them are just a few months old. The guy outside my door was one of the big ones. His head is about as high as mine, he out-weighs me by, oh, about 500 pounds, and he has horns. Heather grew up on a dairy farm and has told stories of how dangerous the bulls/steers that they had occasionally could be. She says they can even "smell" (or sense, somehow) certain hormonal fluctuations in a girl. Yikes. Now I've got three of these beasts wandering around loose.

They were already moving along by the time I got my shoes on and came out the door. I had several advantages: #1, cows don't normally move very fast. I suppose they could, if they wanted to, but they mostly just mosey along, #2, they're not accustomed to close human contact for the most part and tend to shy away if you get too close, #3, these guys have been together their whole lives, so they had no inclination toward scattering, #4, I'd just watched the movie "Australia" about a cattle ranch!

I wanted something big I could wave around to help guide them in the right direction (and to make myself look bigger). I couldn't find a branch or anything like that, but there was a plastic kiddie bat laying in the grass! One of those bright fluorescent-colored ones that are about 3 times normal size so little kids can hit a ball easier, you know? So, I start talking to them, in my sternest voice, waving this bat around, banging it on a tree or the ground, etc. to get their attention.

Well, there's only one of me, and I didn't have the benefit of being on horseback, like Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman did. So, they kind of just looked at the crazy woman with the bat, and instead of walking across the yard along the shortest route back to the pasture gate, they went up the hill, toward the house, and the gardens, which are behind the house. As they meandered their way out to the gardens, I tried to circle around to the side of them (through the prickly raspberry bushes, of course) and get them back down the hill toward the pasture.

I wanted them to be leery of me, but not too frightened. I don't know if cows have a "fight or flight" instinct, but I knew I didn't want to push it, just in case. They did head down the hill to get away from me (crazy human with the orange bat, again), but they went past the pasture gate and into one of the lower gardens.

That's when I saw that the llamas were out, too! Mama Llama is even more shy around humans than the cows, so she scurried when she saw me coming. I didn't see where she went, but later I realized she went back to the safety of the pasture the same way they all got out. The other llama, Rocky, is such a mamma's boy that when she took off, so did he. The cows found some particularly tasty stuff in the lower garden, (new green beans, it turns out) and that gave me time to run to the barn and get the golf cart (my trusty steed!!). At least I could move faster, now. Still armed with my bat, I went up the hill and came back down behind them, again trying to get them toward the gate.

I was having some luck! They were almost to the pasture gate! But, to my chagrin, the gate was closed!!! How did they get out?!?! I looked toward the wood shed, and saw that the small gate in there was knocked down. The llamas were right inside where the gate had been, so I ran there first and put a board up across the opening.

The three big cows were still fairly close to the main pasture gate, so I calmly (yeah) made my way around them to open it. That startled them, and they took off again, back to the lower garden. I did my circle-around trick again, and stayed on the golf cart, kind of zig-zagging behind them. With the gate open, they had an escape, and trotted to the safety of the pasture!

Ok, I tell myself, three cows and 2 llamas secured. In all the running around, I hadn't seen any sign of the baby calves or the sheep. Before the baby calves were put into the pasture with the "big guys" they got loose once. Jason, Heather's friend found them a little ways up the road! Oh, jeez, I thought. How would I find them out there?!?! If I did find them, though, I had an idea to get them back. Milk.

Yay! All eight sheep still in the pasture!

A quick spin along the back fence of the farm netted me 3 baby calves! Yay! At least they weren't wandering around the valley! I didn't want to startle the babies with the golf cart, so after I got close I went on foot to tempt them with the milk in the familiar (I hoped) bucket. One of them was curious about what I had and came to investigate. I got back to the cart before he could get too much milk, just a teasing taste, and started off toward the pasture holding the bucket out for him. Sure enough, he remembered the good stuff that was in the bucket and followed like a champ...for a while. I don't know if he got bored with chasing this bucket that was always just out of reach, or if he forgot what he was doing, or just spotted something more tasty, but every 50 feet, or so, he'd stop, and I'd have to show him the milk again, or even give him a little taste. It took some time, but I eventually got him back in the pasture. It was the same with the next two, but at least I could get them to follow the bucket together!

All in all, it took me about an hour to get everyone rounded back up and secured in the pasture!