Salad days

My salad days,
When I was green in judgment...

I've heard second hand that local growers believe direct-seeding salad in September is foolish. In my defence, I just try stuff that Eliot Coleman tries, adjusting somewhat to the fact that Maine is ~5 degrees latitude south of ours. I try to get local opinions when I can but usually I can't. But sometimes ignorance can be bliss.


Such bliss comes in the form of my low-tunnel salad green experiment which is vastly exceeding my limited expectations although partly because of luck. Pauline and I prepared the bed on a very busy Saturday afternoon in September, the 11th. We worked a little overtime that day because the forecast called for rain starting that evening which would be good for germination and bad for any subsequent attempt at seeding. The rain came and, after a couple days of soggyness, I put the hoops out and covered it with poly, which harnessed the limited sunlight to create extra warmth.

The first picture was taken on October 10th, a month after seeding; the second, on the 27th. Despite record September rains and typical rainy October weather, there's apparently been enough light to create a bit of a problem; too much growth. My plan was to harvest about 1200 heads of romaine sometime in February. But the seeder obviously dropped way more seed than one every 4". There are so many plants that they now threaten to start rotting since there's virtually no air flow between plants.

Solution: thin the plants to 4" apart (for now, later I see it will have to be more like 8" or 12"). I pull out the plants I don't want to keep, then cut off their roots, keeping just the succulent leaves. Then I call it salad mix and sell it to people and the health food store for $9/lb.

This post was meant to go out at least a week ago so here's an update. The thinning is pretty much complete which is good because Natureworks is having a hard time selling it. People at this time seem to be more interested in braising mixes and head-lettuce. With the constant daily loss of light, I doubt we will be able to harvest heads from these beds this calendar year but it could be a little earlier than my initial guess of late February.

We have another double bed with a low tunnel into which we transplanted all the lettuce and brassica plant starts that got too big to sell in the fall. They look great - and big - so I'm thinking we might start taking those off any time now.

Things are supposed to be winding down this time of year but we at Chorus Frog Farm are going bananas. First, since our 'thing' is the winter harvest, we have almost as much produce now to sell as we did in the middle of summer; which isn't all that much, granted. Still, our Tuesdays, in particular, are very busy.

Second, the tenants renting the property on which our farm sits, are probably going to be staying in the house for longer than they thought. Trying to make the best of it, they are making some aesthetic and functional improvements to the property and house that they hope will make living there more enjoyable. Because we are now embarking on the greenhouse project on the west side of the property, we all realized that there's no point in us continuing efforts on the south plot that currently only has some salad heads and the garlic so, after harvest, the land will revert to something other than row crops and the tenants will regain their uninterrupted southerly vista.

The tractor shack, however, is on the east side of the property. Once the greenhouse is built, not only will the tractor shack be even further away on average but it's not getting any prettier or studier. Hopefully this week I'll be able to construct one of those sketchy garages-in-a-box to house the tractor and other farm stuff in a location much closer to where it will be needed.

Third, we need to extend fence lines to incorporate the greenhouse. And while we were thinking about how to do that, we thought; why not use just a little more fence to enclose an area big enough to enable a small chicken operation? There's a shady 40' X 120' swath of grass in the northwest corner of the property that 25-50 birds would love to scratch in. Mary and Blair are both vets and animal lovers and have even offered to do some of the work (just letting the chickens in and out of the coop would be an amazing bonus to us). Then, we can offer eggs on the stand which would be a huge bonus to our clients.

Speaking of marketing, Pauline suggested we set up a table at February's Seedy Saturday (that would get her off the hook for organizing it, as she did last year). When I said I doubted we'd have very much produce to sell, it got me thinking about selling CSA memberships. And that led to a whole torrent of ideas that morning which I will write about in the weeks ahead. Nevertheless, the ideas will take some effort to plan and fulfil although they're good winter activities.

Fifth, Pauline's working at the SSI Conservancy 20 hours per week for the winter. Plus she volunteers at the Salt Spring Seed Sanctuary. And does contract work for a real estate agent. Her marketing work for Foxglove Farm will end soon.

I am the recently-appointed treasurer for the Centre School PAC and that has proven to be more work than I thought it would be. Now that I've got the system mostly figured out, the ongoing commitment should be reasonable. Famous last words.

And, finally, an update on the plowing for the greenhouse. The weather was sunny on the day of and the day after plowing but the soil was quite wet, too wet for safe plowing and for the health of the soil. Ron got stuck for a moment in one section. Two days later he was back to check it out but realized it hadn't dried out enough(hard to do when it's 90% humidity). So, last Thursday at 2pm with the 7-day forecast nothing but some form of precipitation, I started making calls for someone with a 4X4 tractor (which I though Ron had, whoops).

Seeing little chance of someone coming immediately, I got out the BCS with rototiller and started going at it. What a work out. The plowing had left furrows up to 18" deep that the BCS wanted to get sucked in to. Mostly, the rototiller-half kept the unit floating on top but it was still a major wrestling operation to get through the muck, especially after it had packed 75lbs of soil and stones between the tines and the housing. In any case, it did a very reasonable job and, in about an hour, most of the area was reasonably flat with little grass showing. I then rolled out a 24'X120' piece of poly in the middle of the tilled area to hopefully keep the rains from soaking the soil beneath it. If we get a few days of sun, I'll slide it over to allow drying from above. Otherwise, it will probably stay on until the greenhouse is up.

A Window of Opportunity

The exciting conclusion to last week's cliffhanger is...

...but first a general update on some stuff.

The Tuesday market went rogue last week. October 5th was the last Market in the Meadow of the season but, it turns out, farmers still have an awful lot of food to sell. What to do? Last Tuesday, a half-dozen farmers set up illegally on Ministry of Transport highway property to sell their produce. In reality, they set up on the sidewalk adjacent to a busy street or on the street itself near the busiest intersection on the island, right in downtown Ganges. The by-law enforcement dude came first but was rebuffed since the farmers weren't on municipal property.

But someone must have complained to the Mounties since they showed up and shut everything down in the early afternoon. Pauline and I had stopped by in the morning to show support but didn't set up a table since most of our revenue, bread baking, would have been at risk of being wasted if the market was shut down early. In any case, the farmers group has since gotten a special 2-Tuesday permit to set up starting tomorrow. In the mean time, all the important government-types apparently want the market to continue so they're working on making it permanent. Here's the front page article in the Driftwood. The town photographer loves Pauline so, naturally, she's in the photo. And he managed to not completely edit me out either.

And, now, to the news. We will be breaking ground tomorrow on a new plot that we'll be using for our new 25' X ~130' high tunnel (greenhouse). Two weeks ago, Ron, the tractor guy, finally made it out to cut the grass (which we've been raking up and using for mulch) and we were really able to see what the land looked like. Pauline's been pining for a greenhouse for next spring's sowing of plant starts so when she looked down into the valley, she pointed, "There". Like the obedient man-slave that I am, I immediately raked, tilled and plowed a portion, just to see what the ground was like. Turns out, not too bad. A little wet in places due to all the September rain but quite usable.


There's an awful lot of marsh grass root balls and, like tree roots and large stones, it makes using walk-behind tractor implements a very tiring, joint-separating adventure, one better suited to a 70HP 4WD tractor. Today I marked out the proposed footprint of the high tunnel. Ron, his brother (and the property owner) Don and neighbor and friend Paul stopped by at lunch to discuss every aspect of this project. Tomorrow, Ron will be back to do the plowing. There didn't seem to be as many stones in the test area I broke open but I've thought that before and been disappointed so I'll assume that there are just as many. Happily, we'll be chucking them along the nearby fence line rather than loading them up to take to a central location. Then, on Thursday, Ron will be back with the rotovator to break the soil up better.

And then Friday, rain, and who knows for how long. This past summer we probably would have had to wait until July to plow this area due to the rain that lasted into late May so getting this done now is a very good thing. Mind you, I'll have to install some drainage so the ground doesn't stay sopping wet all winter. And I've never really done drainage before.

One more first, among many recently.

Are we having fun yet?

According to my last post, I'm supposed to talk about crop profitability for carrots. Well I changed my mind. Sorry to disappoint.

Tuesday was Growing Up Organic produce pickup day. While Laurent, the produce middle man, was at the farm to pick up our stuff, he gave me an anti-pep talk, lamenting how the handful of growers on the island more than satisfied the limited demand for local organic produce. It's at least the third time he and I have had this particular conversation but each time I'm left with more of crisis of confidence than the last time. There's no money doing this stuff on the scale we're doing it on. And if you do mass produce something, you'll have to export it from the island, and/or sell it for almost nothing. Locals can't or won't pay the true cost of food. Et cetera.

While he's doing his spiel, I vow to him that I won't get bummed. He replies that he's not trying to discourage me, just stating the facts as he sees them. Then I tell him that he's just like me; always the devil's advocate. And then I vow privately to be a little less like us next time I'm in his position.

In between his visits, Pauline and I go on our merry way, spending an average of about 6 hours a day doing farm stuff. Sometimes we stop and ask ourselves why we're hand-weeding a lost-cause spinach bed or removing yet another ton of stones from a bed that already had ALL of its stones removed.

But usually the answer comes from a natural character; a gaggle of geese doing a low pass enroute the grassland next door, Paul and Christina's sheep baa-ing in the distance, an actual pacific chorus frog sitting on a dock leaf (and a garter snake sliding through the tall grass toward him) or a bank of low cloud hanging over the valley to the west. Priceless gifts that cost nothing but our time.

Other times the answer comes from the news. A story about another food shortage or contamination scare, a story about the risks of a sedentary lifestyle or a story about world finance, peak oil or climate change.

Then I remember that we didn't start this thinking we'd get rich. But several times throughout the summer we've looked at each other after a Tuesday market or after a good market stand day and say you know, we could actually make a living doing this. And then that must subconsciously lead to Look at us! We're making a living!, which then sticks in my head.

Until reality clunks up the driveway in his GMC.

* * *

I'm guessing that my carrot profitability analysis (when I get to it) will be less than encouraging. In the mean time, I've swung back over from the I'm-working-for-50c/hour mindset to the I've-got-a cool-inexpensive-hobby-that-I-really-like mindset. Plus we eat better than ever and someday all of this might be worth more than it does right now.

And, in the last few days, new possibilities have revealed themselves to us, possibilities that I'll write about next time. Probably.

The carrots will just have to wait.

A bird in the hand

I loathe carrots. What a terrible thing to say, you say? Indeed. But you didn't just go through 100+ lbs of mostly small carrots, separating those that were free of insect damage and still big enough to sell from those that weren't.

Why so many all at once? A combination of things, really. The carrots, although sweeter due to recent cold temperatures, were really starting to get damaged from wire worm and carrot root maggot (yum). It's one thing to throw out a small carrot too riddled with holes to sell but quite another to see a large one with the same problem. Best to sell what we could before they all got damaged.

The carrots seemed to be doing pretty well a few weeks ago; small but relatively undamaged. But our September got Saskatchewaned with probably one third more rain than the previous record. Maybe the rainfall (or lack of sun) promoted the pests. The low tunnel over the carrots was covered in reemay, which lets in rain and some air (but keeps out insects like the carrot rust fly) and is usually a good thing. After we got so much rain in the first two weeks of September, I replaced the reemay with polyethylene. But poly doesn't breathe and I noticed that the carrot foliage was starting to rot in places. A contributing factor to that was that the foliage was drooping over on its side. And the reason for that, I assume, was how close I planted them.

Way back in mid-July I started playing with my fancy precision seeder and, while I knew too dense would be a problem for some things, I remembered that Ray from Haliburton planted his carrots very close together so I did the same. Now I see some key differences. First, Ray used a lot of composted horse manure in his beds; all his stuff grew fast and strong and would be a worthy foe for any insect. Second, his carrots were in a high tunnel (poor man's greenhouse) with significantly more air flow, even with doors closed sometimes. Third, I don't think he planted them at max density; I probably planted twice as many just by using the inside sheaves on the seeder instead of the middles. Finally, I was probably remembering his early carrots, not the winter ones. A bed of carrots with copious foliage in the relative dry of summer would be much less susceptible to the cool, humid rotting conditions we experienced in September this year (but October in any other year).

While in Natureworks on Tuesday, I noticed that they had a fellow farmer's bulk carrots for sale. I spoke with produce guy Aaron and co-owner Craig about my carrot situation and they agreed to take them off my hands. Coincidentally, our bunched carrots were already in their display case but the bunching process, I thought, was uneconomical. It turns out that a lot of people simply prefer to have tops with their carrots even though the tops always get thrown out (to the compost pile in the best case) after they have sucked a little more nutrition, water and flavour from the edible root. But preserving the tops was very time consuming in our beds because the tops, which were far too dense, got tangled up amongst each other; pulling one carrot out often meant stripping some of that foliage off. It just seemed like it was way too labour-intensive to be profitable. If instead we could lift the whole bed of carrots at once, we would be more efficient, even considering that the resulting product yielded less money per pound and fewer pounds. We could have continued to sell carrots with greens 25 or 30 lbs per week but only by leaving them in the ground until they were needed, all the while a higher and higher percentage becoming unsellable. Or we could lift the whole works, get what we could, and more on.

While I had the lawnmower out on Wednesday, tidying up before the grass got too long and the rains too frequent, I made 4 passes over the 6' width of the double carrot beds. Just like that, most of the foliage was cut down to mulch. After raking it away to the compost pile, I got out the walk-behind tractor and attached the root digger implement. The root digger gets dragged behind the tractor and digs in underneath the carrots (or potatoes, beets etc) and lifts the soil up behind it, where a fan of tines lets the soil pass through before dropping the crop on top. In theory.

In practice, the soil was a little too moist so it didn't drop through the tines very well so that carrots got lifted but then mostly hidden. Because the bed-width was 30” and the root digger about 15”, some of the carrots on the outside edge got sliced. And the tractor is hard to keep in a straight line on uneven terrain so there were sections that were well-lifted and sections that weren't lifted at all. I made several passes and then went through on my hands and knees (with truant Hannah) and picked out carrots and, surprise, yet more stones. Then, with the soil nice and loose, I got out a digging fork and gently probed for more. And more. And more. Probably 120 lbs all told.

Then came the tedious sorting job. Then figuring what the hell to do with all the duds. I spent a lot of yesterday using the food processor to cut the larger duds into coins, which I then blanched and froze. I steamed, pureed and froze the very small carrots and the off cuts. I still have 20+ lbs to do. I've offered puree and coins to one of the parents at Laura’s school, for use in the soup hot lunch. Here's hoping. Maybe the local soup kitchen can take them unprocessed. I'll have to check.

Today I delivered 69 lbs of pretty decent smallish carrots with no tops. Craig will probably sell them for $3/lb; I'm hoping to get $1.75.

For next year, I will:

1. Seed them less dense. For the spring planting, I'll seed at less than half of the previous density by going 2.5” spacing in-row and 2.25” between rows. For the summer planting, I'll probably go 2.5” in-row and 4.5” between rows.

2. Plant the winter carrots no later than the end of June. It was mid-July when I planted them this year. As a result, there wasn't enough time for them to reach their full length. It couldn't be helped this year but next year will be different.

3. Be prepared to install a polyethylene cover before the fall rains come, even if they start coming in late summer.

4. Make sure the bed has a lot of nutrition. I suspect our first crop wasn't getting all the nitrogen it wanted. I assumed a grass field left undisturbed for so long would feed any crop well. I guess not, at least not at the density I had them planted at.

5. Instead of 2X30” beds separated by a 12” walkway a la Eliot Coleman, I'll go with a custom “root” layout: 3X15” beds separated by 2X7.5” “wheel-ways”. In this configuration, I hope to be able to straddle the bed with the tractor wheels in the wheel-ways while being able to lift the whole 15” mini-bed with the 15” root digger. I'll also do this with beets and potatoes and perhaps radishes and turnips. The downside is a 25% loss of crop.

6. Harvest root crops by the bed-lift process rather than by individual plants. I'm hoping the relationships we've been developing with our customers will mean that we can increase our sales enough to warrant the regular use of the tractor/root-digger.

Next post I want to go through a financial exercise on the carrot crop, using the profitability worksheet developed by Richard Wiswall whose book I bought earlier this year. I plan to do this with all crops since cutting out the losers and going all-in with the winners is what will make this more enjoyable and financially sustainable.