Frost Protection

We are getting a freeze warning tonight into tomorrow after 15 days of record high heat here in SW Ohio (and pretty much everywhere east of the Mississippi). All that record setting heat fooled a lot of fruit crops into thinking it was mid spring and time to flower and so they did. the heat also fooled a lot of gardeners into thinking it was mid to late spring and high time to plant crops out side.

That Ma Nature, wotta prankster she is. And boy, did she punk a lot of plants and people with her unseasonable (and if you ask me unreasonable) warm weather through most of the month of March.

So what to do if you have lots of fruit trees in full bloom? You can probably do nothing for most trees but you may not have to after looking at this chart. This shows that fruit trees can take quite a bit of cold before you start to lose most/all of the crop.

But what about other plants that are much smaller than fruit trees and may be much more tender. Plants like tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, potatoes (if they have not yet put up leaves they are fine), zucchini, cucumbers, etc., cannot take a freeze and must be protected or they will die. the good news here is if this does happen you have plenty of time to replant as for most of us in the freeze zone (zone 6b on north) should not have even been thinking about putting such crops out until late April at the earliest. So you will have plenty of time to replace the seedlings next month, you should even have time to grow all these things from seed (I just started peppers and eggplant, indoors, under lights today March 26). Most of the tender crops will get cold damage which will stunt their production usually by over 50% even with protection as they do not like it below 50˚F and even with protection they will be colder than that and while they won't die they probably won't be the same either.

But if you want to try and protect your tender crops than bed sheets, buckets and bushel baskets will be your friends here. If you have a lot of 3 to 5 gallon buckets put them over individual plants and the plants will be protected to about 20˚F, if you put a straw or leaf mulch in the bucket with the plants they are protected to around 15˚F, maybe even lower. Bushel baskets do the same thing as buckets. bed sheets are good for mass plantings or rows of plants. It is best to keep the sheet off of the plants by putting it up on sticks or chairs or anything that will keep the sheet elevated and not crush the plants. the sheet does need to hang down to the ground (cold air creeps along the ground and will infiltrate any openings near the ground and get inside the protection and freeze the plants), so put some rocks or bricks around the edges of the sheet(s) to keep them down.

Not everything needs protection. Early flowers such as daffodils and crocuses are very cold hardy and shouldn't be hurt by the freeze, even if they are in flower. Spring flowers like irises and tulips that have not flowered will not be harmed. But if they have flowered than they need protection and buckets are probably better than sheets. Crops such as garlic, onions, lettuce, spinach, peas and kale can take cold temps down to around 25˚F before they need any protection and than a simple bed sheet (or row cover if you have that) place over top should be enough protection. Spinach, onions and garlic are good down to around 10˚F before you get a lot of cold damage (which they will grow out of) or death of the plants with no protection.

I hope this helps you to save your plants in the case of cold after unseasonable warmth

We are in Acres Magazine!!

A couple of months ago a woman contacted me about doing an interview for Acres USA about storing food/winter CSA's. I said I would certainly be interested in being interviewed and a week or so later sent me a bunch of questions via email, I answered them. She sent some more a bit later, I answered those and below is the result.

I have long wanted to be in an Acres article and now it has happened. Life is good.

I did leave 1/2 the article out of this post as it does not concern Boulder Belt Eco-Farm and not important (and if you want to read the entire article you will have to buy a copy at a place like TSC).

I'm pleased with the article and I hope you are too. Enjoy

Printed in the Dec 2011 issue

A Brief History of Season Extension

I just read an article on the wonders of winter spinach in Illinois and the author of the article seems flabbergasted that one can grow anything in winter. Read this story here

I love newbies to the local winter growing scene, they are so cute in their wonderment and surprise that we can grow through winter. Funny how we rarely consider how people lived through winter 200+ years ago before had canning, refrigeration and other modern conveniences we have enjoyed for the past 100 years or so. But obviously our species was growing and eating through winter or we would not be here today

Growing on the backside of the calendar has been going on for over 2 millennia
 Some history from Wikipedia

The Roman gardeners used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. Cucumbers were planted in wheeled carts which were put in the sun daily, then taken inside to keep them warm at night.^[3] The cucumbers were stored under frames or in cucumber houses glazed with either oiled cloth known as "specularia" or with sheets of selenite (a.k.a. lapis specularis), according to the description by Pliny the Elder.^[4]

The first modern greenhouses were built in Italy in the 13th century^[5] to house the exotic plants that explorers brought back from the tropics. They were originally called giardini botanici (botanical gardens). The concept of greenhouses soon spread to the NetherlandsEngland, along with the plants. Some of these early attempts required enormous amounts of work to close up at night or to winterize.

So you can see we have had winter growing for a long time. Read old gardening texts and they talk about cold frames, hot houses, using compost to heat an area. Not to mention, erecting walls around the garden and enclosing it thus making a micro climate. All these things have allowed people to grow where there is winter for a long time. Granted most the food consumed in winter back in the day was dried-meats, grains, legumes, herbs, fruits, etc.. but people also grew some greens to get fresh food in the diet when it was scarce.

People also foraged for early greens starting when the snows melt. Take a look at the ground right now where there is no snow in the northern hemisphere and you will see all sorts of edible shoots-dandelion, chicory, chickweed, henbit are all growing here on Boulder belt Eco-Farm. And that is what is growing with no protection. The weeds (and cultivated plants) inside the hoop houses are growing fast. And remember we do not heat our structures but the protection the sheets of plastic give is more than enough to allow spectacular early growth.

The article talks about growing spinach in a hoop house and you can do that but we have found that spinach is so cold hardy that it does not need all the protection. A medium weight row cover will also do the trick. We planted 10 beds of spinach last fall (October, I believe) and we have been harvesting it since January (weather permitting-if there was more than 6" snow covering the beds than we could not access it. But it was quite happy under its' snow mulch and just waiting for better harvest conditions). We also have been growing cold hardy crops in our hoop houses like arugula, raab, lettuce, leeks, beets and spring mix (which is a mix of lettuces and mild mustard greens this winter as well.

This will be our 14th year doing so. And we do not use any fancy techniques to do this. Simple hoop houses which are literally metal conduit hoops with UV stable 6 mil greenhouse poly pulled over top and the edges secured in trenches dug into the soil and than the edges covered with said soil. I suppose our ancestors in the 13th century would say we are using very high tech materials as they would certainly consider the 6 mil UV stable plastic sheeting to be extremely high tech. But in the 21st century not so much. Instead in our century we are amazed at winter growing.

We marvel at locally grown spinach in March, Spring Mix before spring and yet this was something our ancestors took for granted. We have so much to learn from them, especially if we want to return to a sustainable local/regional food system.

Harvesting a Winter Share

We here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm have been doing the CSA (community Supported Agriculture) thing for over 12 years and for the past 4 years we have done a Winter Share. This year's winter group is quite small at 5 members. In past years we generally have 10 to 15 members and I was really hoping to do 20 this year. But due to the drought that hit us this past summer our winter storage crop harvest, especially the winter squash, was badly compromised. And it also made it very hard to do the late summer and early fall planting we must do in order to have crops to harvest in December and January.

We did a lot of hand watering this past fall and we ran the irrigation system a lot more than we were comfortable with (all water, including the water we use for household stuff comes from the same well-we do not want it run dry, ever). But it all paid off and we have been successful in growing enough food for our 5 Winter Share families (but not much more than that)

Eugene is harvesting Broccoli Raab (which taste nothing like broccoli, FYI) For the winter share. I picked most of it but since I own the camera I take the pictures. The purple leaves are rainbow kale. Normally the harvested leaves would be washed, than refrigerated before being bagged but our washing facilities are outside so in winter we generally skip washing and have no need to get the field heat off of the crops (if anything they need to be thawed) so they can go from field to bagging in one step.

Same broccoli Raab bed with the cover being put back on. We use row covers inside the hoop houses because it gives another layer of protection to the crops to keep them from freezing. Unfortunately the two row covers and being inside the hoop house was not enough for the broccoli raab and there was a lot of frost damaged leaves that had to be taken off the plants and tossed out. This is always the risk with winter growing-bad frost damage. We do try to avoid this by planting cold hardy crops, using row covers and hoop houses and putting heat sinks in the houses such as gallon milk jugs filled with water, 50 gallon containers filled with water, etc..

One of two beds of leeks. The leeks will survive out side of a hoop house but we have found the quality is a lot better (by orders of magnitude) and inside the hoop houses it is warm which means the soil is not frozen so we can get them out of ground. Even in the hoop house the leeks come out of the ground muddy and have to be cleaned up. I don't wash leeks as washing seems to bring down the quality. instead I cut off the roots (where most of the mud resides) and than I strip off the outer layers which are dieing off, et voila! Clean leeks. Our Winter Share members got 2 leeks each.

One of the two spring mix beds. This one has the mustard greens-arugula, mizuna, tat soi, etc..

The lettuce side of the spring mix. In winter due more to under 9 hours of day light rather than cold, the plants go almost dormant (if it is really cold and dry they will go completely dormant in Jan and Feb) which means very very slow growth. this means in order to harvest in order to sell the crops a couple of things must happen. One, the crops have to be planted at the optimal time so they are well established and at the size you need. With some things like spring mix the plants can be either too small or too big. With other things like broccoli raab and kale you want to avoid the plants being too small or there will not be much to harvest. Two you need to plant more than you would in spring/summer/fall because things are not growing much if at all so in order to get enough to harvest you plant more area.

Now this works very well in early to mid winter but in late winter we get our light back and the hoop houses get really warm, especially on sunny days so even though it may be a cold snowy March day outside the hoop houses, inside it is May and things are growing great guns and all that over planting so necessary in the depths of winter becomes too much of a good thing. So our solution is to simply move the hoop houses off of such crops and on to other things and that gives the over abundant crops a good dose of weather reality and they tend to slow way down.

In the end we were able to harvest enough spring mix for 6 big bags of salad (that would be almost 1/2 pound). 5 went to the winter share members and 1 went to us. We also harvested beets and chard from the 3rd hoop house but I took no pictures, even though the chard was very beautiful.

Winter Kale

As long time readers know we do season extension and one of our annual goals is to harvest all 12 months of the year.I don't know if this will be possible in the winter of 2011 but at this point in the season it is looking good. I present to you rainbow kale

Here we have a bed of kale that took two of us about 1/2 hour to clear the snow and ice from so we could take the row cover off of the bed

Freshly harvested winter kale for our CSA members

Here we have a row cover that is too narrow. This is because when we took it off the snow had collapsed the hoops that were supposed to be holding the covers off the ground and kale. But several inches of snow and ice flattened the hoops so when we got the covers off we reset the hoops and added more and found that the covers had frozen in such a way that they were too narrow to cover the hoops/bed. So we fiddled with the covers for a half hour and got most of the edges loose so that the covers would cover the area. One of the many differences between winter growing and farming the rest of the year

The Poor Man's Fertilizer

Like most of the USA we have been inundated by snow. I believe we have had around 21" fall this month and we still have a couple of weeks and at least one more snow storm to get through.

A hoop house covered in snow

So far we have not lost any hoop houses but it is not easy to get into any of them. The one you can walk to fairly easily has its' entrance covered with a 4' deep drift that extends about 10' out from the house. the other houses have no drifts in front of them but you have to slog through about 1/4 mile of beautiful powder in drifts up to 3.5' deep (and an average depth of 2'). So no one has been in them since I harvested greens for a customer and Eugene hoed beds the 4th of February. I suspect things are growing in the houses as the days are certainly longer and we have had several sunny days which means the hoop houses got above freezing (likely well above freezing).

Deep snow means you can't do a whole lot around the farm. We have started kale and lettuce seeds to go along with the onion, leek and shallot seedlings but other than putting the kale and lettuce germinants into 2" soil blocks as they germinate and watering everyone about every other day (over watering kills more innocent baby plants than anything else) takes maybe 4 hours a week. Fruit trees and brambles need to be pruned but at the moment that is an impossible task. We have to wait until the snow quits accumulating and starts melting.

The packing shed in winter

The snow melt is likely gonna be problematic. We have over 10" on the ground and there are a lot of piles and drifts that are much deeper all over SW Ohio. If we are lucky we will get warmish dry conditions and the snow will slowly and safely sublimate away. But what is much more likely to happen is rain which will clear away the snow in a matter of hours instead of a matter of weeks but this will also cause flooding. I am rooting for the quick fix and possible floods, otherwise we will not be able to prune, work the ground or transplant early crops until well into March and than we will be facing an overwhelming task of getting a lot done in a very short amount of time without a lot of help.

Betty in her element

The good news about the snow is Betty LOVES it. To her snow is the best thing since sliced bread. Little does she know that soon it will all be gone. of course when it goes away her bones and other toys will reappear and vole hunting will likely be easier. And there is likely to be a very healthy vole (and other small rodent) population this spring as deep snow is the perfect thing for small prey animals. iIt hides them from predators and it keeps them insulated from extreme cold and wind.

Chicken tractors just about covered by drifts. It's a good thing we don't have any right now, they would be miserable

The other good thing about the deep snow is it is keeping all our over wintered crops like the garlic and asparagus nice and cold. one problem with bare soil in winter is when if freezes and thaws you get frost heave which will heave bulbs and plants all the way out of the soil where they will die. A nice layer of snow stops this sort of thing from happening. Plus the snow will leave behind things like phosphates in the soil which are always welcome. Old time farmers call snow the poor man's fertilizer

Winter Farm Fun

I had a spring mix order to fill for tomorrow so that meant going up to the salad house and seeing what there was to cut. So Eugene and I went up to see what's what and among other things, found buried in the area that is supposed to have onion seedlings a deer leg. Nice.


So he moved the leg out of the garden and we proceeded on to the salad house, went inside and found it nice and warm-a good 10 degrees warmer than outside. Nice conditions for the arugula, lettuces, mizuna, mustard and weeds growing in there.

We keep row covers on everything to keep the risk of frost damage down and so far this winter it has worked well. Though, in past winters, even with row cover and gallon milk jugs acting as heat sinks, we have had major damage to the crops. But not this year and it has been real nice to be able to eat fresh greens in deep winter. But using row covers means we have to remove them to work the beds

and That is exactly what Eugene is doing here, removing the cover over the arugula and mustard bed. And you can see the beds beyond him and next to him have no covers over them because I took those off so I could cut greens.


While I cut Eugene hoed. Even in winter we have to do some weeding. But the weeds and crops grow slowly so it is relatively easy to keep up with them. This arugula/mustard bed was not too bad and the soil was dry enough to work


But this lettuce bed to the south of the arugula/mustard bed was quite wet and hard to hoe. But it has to be done before these weeds all flower and go to seed


and you can see already some of the winter hardy weeds are beginning to flower. That is because in the hoop houses it is already late Feb/early March.

So for about 30 minutes we hoed weeds and cut salad. I harvested a pound of spring mix in that time. In warmer months I would have easily harvested 15 pounds in a half hour of cutting and within 10 days the cut beds would have grown back. This time of year it takes about 8 weeks for the greens to grow back. though this will change in a matter of days, by mid month the crops in the hoop houses will have broken dormancy and will start growing again.


About the time we were all done with work in the hoop house and were debating whether or not we should call it quits or not (there was a little bit of hoeing that could have been done) betty makes the decision for us by appearing outside the hoop house-we heard a noise and the next thing we see black paws on the side of the house. Betty had escaped from the fenced back yard. how? We do not know.


So we leave the hoop house taking our harvest and tools with us and see what Betty is up to.


Betty is hunting mice because she remembered that yesterday she caught her first vole right out side this hoop house and she hoped to get more (and she will in the fullness of time). So We let her poke around the perimeter of the hoop house for a bit than eventually went back to the hiuse. okay Betty and Eugene went to the house and I went to the store to bagged the Spring Mix for tomorrow's order.

USDA's High Tunnel Study

Wow the USDA is giving us small diverse farmers a piece of the pie. I think Boulder Belt will have to look into this.

If you watch the video, those tunnels in the White House garden are NOT High Tunnels. Those are low tunnels made from row cover on small hoops. The USDA does not seem to know what a high tunnel is which is a bit worrisome but if they wanna give money to us farmers who have beem doing season extension on a small scale for well over a decade, than cool.

Subject: FW: USDA Release: USDA TO LAUNCH HIGH TUNNEL PILOT STUDY TO INCREASE AVAILABILITY OF LOCALLY GROWN FOODS

USDA TO LAUNCH HIGH TUNNEL PILOT STUDY TO INCREASE AVAILABILITY OF LOCALLY GROWN FOODS

3-Year Project To Verify Effectiveness Of High Tunnels In Natural Resource Conservation

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009 - Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan today announced a new pilot project under the 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative for farmers to establish high tunnels - also known as hoop houses - to increase the availability of locally grown produce in a conservation-friendly way. Merrigan and other Obama administration officials highlighted opportunities available for producers in a video posted on USDA's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07vtMJgp0no, which shows high tunnels recently installed in the White House garden.

"There is great potential for high tunnels to expand the availability of healthy, locally-grown crops - a win for producers and consumers," said Merrigan. "This pilot project is going to give us real-world information that farmers all over the country can use to decide if they want to add high tunnels to their operations. We know that these fixtures can help producers extend their growing season and hopefully add to their bottom line."


The 3-year, 38-state study will verify if high tunnels are effective in reducing pesticide use, keeping vital nutrients in the soil, extending the growing season, increasing yields, and providing other benefits to growers.

Made of ribs of plastic or metal pipe covered with a layer of plastic sheeting, high tunnels are easy to build, maintain and move. High tunnels are used year-round in parts of the country, providing steady incomes to farmers - a significant advantage to owners of small farms, limited-resource farmers and organic producers.


USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will provide financial assistance for the project through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the EQIP Organic Initiative, and the Agricultural Management Assistance program. NRCS will fund one high tunnel per farm. High tunnels in the study can cover as much as 5 percent of 1 acre. Participating states and territories are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Pacific Islands, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

To sign up or learn more about EQIP assistance for high tunnel projects, contact a local NRCS office.

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USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272(voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).


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USDA News
oc.news@usda.gov
202 720-4623

Wintry High Wind

Yesterday winter came storming in. The day started off with thunderstorms-thunder, lightning, heavy rain and heavy winds. By dawn the rain and thunder had moved eastward. The winds picked up so that by 9 am they were howling and we were getting gusts over 50mph with sustained winds around 30mph.

it was farm share day as well but since we were aware that the weather would be less than ideal for harvesting I got in what I needed the day before in cold but much calmer conditions. Eugene, on the other hand decided to get in kale, cabbage, red turnips and broccoli before the big freeze occurred.

Personally I avoid harvesting in high winds as the winds can do a lot of damage to harvested crops, especially to leafy greens if they are not well covered. I use towels to cover the harvest and they are not always easy to secure to the picking crates and will blow off (I have yet to have one blow away). But sometimes you cannot avoid unpleasant situations and this was one that was unavoidable.

So the morning was spent harvesting things that did not have enough protection to get through a 17F degree early morning. By around noon more and more time was being spent trying to keep the plastic on the hoop houses tight. Eugene was also spending way too much time trying to keep the row covers on beds-this will not work unless one takes about every row cover rock we have and puts them all on the 15 or so beds we have covered. Even than a lot of the covers will come open in high winds or rip themselves to shreds. In the past I would simply go and open all the covers and secure them to the ground so they cannot harm the plants they are protecting by being blown around in the wind.

This time I did not do that because Eugene thought it was a bad idea. And he was correct on that. if the covers were removed yesterday right after a rain even they would have ended up folded and frozen to themselves and the ground and would have been useless to use until the outside temp went above 32F. So now we hope that the covers did not blow off the beds and stick to the ground (but it looks like we will be well above freezing in a couple of days so we can use them again very soon)

After lunch (temp around 34F) I got to work putting together the shares for the Winter FSI and Eugene went out to harvest turnips. I could hear the hoop houses snapping and growling in the wind but up until 2:30 they all seemed to be staying together. I went back in the house around 2:30 and thought I had nothing much to do with the rest of the day. I reveled in that delusion up until 3:30 when Eugene came in and said he had to warm up for a while and than go back out and take in the rutabagas.

I looked at him and said "rutabagas? You mean the rutabagas in the hoop house?" he replied" yes the rutabagas in the hoop house". Than I said "I take it the hoop house is no longer covered with plastic" and he replied"pretty much".

And with all that I found a hat and gloves and put on a work coat and we went and pulled and topped rutabagas. it was interesting working in an area that was quite warm under an hour before we got there. The soils were still warmish when we started but but by the time we finished they were freezing up. As were the greens on the rutabagas, they looked so sad. The same could be said for the broccoli in the bed next to the rutabagas that had been coddled and protected up until yesterday afternoon. Fortunately we were pretty much done with the broccoli so its' demise is not a big loss.

And with the plastic off it will make it a lot easier to clean out the beds with dead green beans, dead broccoli and a scant few rutabaga runts. Than we can fill the beds with the lettuce seedlings we have ready to be planted somewhere. I don't know if that is what will actually happen but right now it sounds like a pretty good idea.

Frost Warning

Prefrost peppers and eggplant

Got back from the farmers market Saturday afternoon with every intention of relaxing for the rest of the day (farmers markets really take it out of you) but than realized that the weather prophets had issued a frost warning for Sunday morning. That meant we had to do something about what was left of the summer garden. The tomatoes and eggplant are pretty much over except the late tomatoes that in theory are in a hoop house but in fact are not (they have a hoop house frame over them but no plastic on the frame as Eugene did not want to dig in the plastic knowing that he would in all likelihood move the house to another crop such as broccoli or kale) but we had a lot of peppers.

The (probably) last pepper harvest. That's around 400 pounds of bell peppers

I have been picking the peppers green with just a bit of color all summer. I have discovered that peppers, like tomatoes, will ripen up off the plant just fine. And by harvesting them early, the peppers do not get hit badly by bugs or disease. Instead of losing 50% to 80% of the peppers when left on the plant to ripen I now lose under 25%.

So it is now around 3pm. We have eaten lunch, unloaded the van and put away everything from market and most weeks we would be preparing for a nice afternoon nap. But as i mentioned, the weather service was predicting frost Sunday morning. So we had to forgo the nap and go back to work. We started with the peppers. we took out 6 crates and piled them high with mainly green peppers. That took about an hour with both of us working.

Next we were on to the green beans and haricot verts. They needed to be harvested than covered with row cover. We got under 5 pounds of beans from both beds.

Next the spring mix and beets beds needed to be covered. That took very little time as the covers were already there. They just needed to be pulled over the hoops and secured with rocks. But we realized the broccoli also needed a cover. Granted, all these crops can take cold conditions but they do so much better if they have protection. So Eugene found a cover for the broccoli and put it over top of them.

Freshly harvested ginger

While he did that I harvested the ginger. Yes we decided to try to grow ginger in SW Ohio. And it worked decently. But ginger does not like temps below 50F (the poor plants had to deal with a lot of nights in the mid 40's). I figured 33F would kill them so I decided to dig them up and bring them inside. Now we have a lot of ginger plants that need more time in the ground to make more ginger. And we have about 4 ounces of finished ginger. While I like the idea of local ginger I think it makes a lot more sense to buy the imported stuff if you use a lot of ginger. Because ginger requires a 10 to 12 month growing season and needs to temps to be above 50F (I suspect 85F is where is it happiest) it makes no sense to grow this on any kind of commercial scale here in Ohio. I believe the carbon foot print of doing so would far out weight the carbon foot print of importing it since a lot of heat would be required in winter and that heat would have to be more than passive solar. That said it is great house plant. It is beautiful, smells good and if you can keep the plant alive (which is pretty easy) for more than a year you can harvest your own ginger and divide the rest of the roots to make more ginger plants.

So at dusk we had the garden ready for frost. We were exhausted and went in the house to eat and eventually go to sleep-nothing like a 12 hour day of hard physical work to make you feel tip top. The next morning I get up and find that the low temp is no where near freezing, it is 37F.

Now we are ready for cold weather in the market garden. Bring it on Nature, bring it on.

Getting Ready for a Winter Market

We have a farmers market this coming Saturday so we have spent the week getting ready for it. Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning we harvested greens. During the main growing season we would not think of harvesting so far away from a market but in winter cold gets in the way and if you can get a day of two of above freezing weather a week or less before the farmers market you harvest on those days. We can get away with this because we have found in winter, greens (and everything else) last a lot longer than thing harvested the rest of the year. My theory is that the bacteria that is on all fresh produce and will eventually cause it to rot is dormant in the winter. This means that lettuce that might last a week after harvest in summer will last about 3 weeks after harvest in winter. The other thing we have noted is in winter it is best to harvest greens late in the day. During the other seasons these are best harvested early in the morning. Winter is a backwards time to grow and harvest things.

On Monday I was making sure we have enough dried herbs and garlic powder ready to go. In doing that I discovered to forgotten products in the freezer-dried apples and dried cherry tomatoes. So I made up about 10 bags of each. Now we have two new products to offer at the farmers market and to the farm Share folks in April. Along with the tomatoes and apples I found we were short on dried basil and catnip so I made up more of those.

Wednesday I spent time going through all our table signs and tossing out what we no longer needed and making new signs for products that did not have a sign or things with a new price (we lowered a couple of prices) or new products. That took more time Than I though because the printer decided it did not want to print card stock paper (I have had this argument before with the printer and thought I had resolved it). Eventually I won the argument and got around to printing the pages I needed.

Today I went and bought a ream of paper so I can print out some more brochures and Farm Share Program fliers (which are about half way done). I also wrote and sent out an email to my 300+ subscribers alerting them to this market.

Tomorrow we will put spring mix, mizuna, baby lettuce into 6oz and 1/2 pound bags and about 100 pounds of parsnips into 1 and 5 pound bags. We also need to grade the leeks and put the small ones into bunches of 2 and 3. Than turnips and potatoes will need to be boxed up. That should take the two of us about 1/2 the day. But when it is all done we should be ready for a cold winter market.

The rest of the year we would easily do all of this work in about a day (actually about 3 or 4 times this much work) but cold weather really slows down the harvest

Winter Farm Tour with Cub Scout troop 511

Yesterday we hosted cub scout pack 511. Their leader, Stacy, had called 3 weeks ago to set up a form tour so the kids can get credit for some ecological/green living badge they are working towards. So I guess they thought a tour of a sustainable farm would fit the bill. Unfortunately they had to do this before the end of this month. So we did our first ever winter farm tour and it went swimmingly.

Around 15 kids, ages 8 and nine and 5 or 6 adults came out to learn a bit about sustainable farming. it was a warm day (50F) but messy because of all the melting snow. Of course, the boys loved the fact it was wet and muddy and they could be in it. We gathered everyone on the porch of the store and than set off to look at a hoop house a compost pile (which Eugene allowed the kids to turn using a potato fork. I wish I had remembered to grab the camera because the grins I saw on those faces was priceless). Than down to the bottom field where Eugene talked about nature and stuff with the kids.

I was blown away (I always am) with how receptive the kids were to all this new information. And I was happy to see the adults were also very interested in what we had to say about sustainable farming.

At the end of the tour we gathered on the store's porch again and I passed out heirloom lettuce seed packets to the kids along with boulder belt brochures and card with the information of the Oxford winter market. That really thrilled the kids (I had forgotten how cool it is as a child to get stuff to take home). Eugene explained to everyone how to plant the lettuce and I have a feeling that most of the packets will be planted this spring.

I had forgotten how much fun farm tours are and having one for kids was even better than adults. I think we will do this again.

The Last Winter Farm Share

This is the news letter for the last Farm Share of our Winter program

Greetings and salutations Farm Share Folk,

Here it is last winter share-we made it through despite the weather being a lot colder than is normally is in late fall/very early winter. I don't know about you guys but I am happy with the way things went. I would have like it to be a lot warmer in November and the first part of December so that the greens would be more varied. the kale took a big hit early on (and very unexpectedly as it is supposed to take cold down to -10 if protected) and I know some of you really really love kale. but this is a part of the becoming a member of a farm.

Overall though, the variety was good and the shares were always worth far more than the $25 a week you paid. Next winter I will likely double the share price and make the shares much bigger, especially since winter shares happen every two weeks and not weekly unlike the main season which will be weekly shares.

Okay, since the last share it got cold-our lowest point was -14F which means we likely lost a lot of over wintered crops as most are good to around -10F if properly protected but below that all bets are off. The good news is we harvested spring mix and heirloom lettuce heads before it got so sold. granted the greens are not fresh picked but in winter these things last a lot longer than they do in the summer. I suspect this is because they are not growing much this time of year and that inertia carries on after harvest so they do start rotting but at about 1/10 the speed they do in summer. I know I have some lettuce in the home fridge I picked for the December farmers market which is in fine shape and still tastes good. The spring mix you are getting superb-we have been eating it lunch and dinner (and one breakfast) for the past 9 days or so. The lettuce we have not touched because we have spring mix and like it more than plain old lettuce.

I still have not heard from most of you as to whether or not you want to join the spring farm share program. You can go month by month or sign up for the entire 31 week season. If you can get friends to sign up as well than you can divide up the driving duties. We do this with our raw milk share-there is another family in Eaton and we pick up twice a month between us so we only have to drive to Middletown once a month (we used to pick up milk weekly and had no one to divide up the driving with for about 2 years so we do know about the drill of driving to get local foods)

We hope to see most of you as members come April.

We sincerely mean it when we say thanks for your support on this trial CSA deal. We did a CSA for over 10 years and dropped it because we did not like where it was going. We were a bit uneasy with this winter farm share program at first because of the sour taste our old CSA left in our mouths. But you guys have given us faith that this form or marketing can work for us. Now we are very excited about the main farm share season. So again, thanks a zillion for your support

Okay, on that note, here is what I am planning on putting in each share

Lettuce
Spring mix-1 to 2 heads
Red onions-over a pound
Parsnips
Carrots
Garlic
Garlic powder-I make this from the 3 different garlic s we grow. If you have not had this before know it is a lot stronger than store bought garlic. It's powerful good
Honey (we do not raise bees but buy this from a crazy guy who lives about 5 miles from us and has organic bees, or as organic as you can get bees around here)
Red turnips
Potatoes-mainly red and white taters
dried Cinnamon basil
catnip-if you do not have cats this makes a nice soothing tea. just put some in a tea ball and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. If you have a cat than crumble a small amount in front of them and watch the entertainment start.

Recipe

Roasted Vegetables
Preheat the oven to 400F
Clean and cut into big chunks root vegetables such as garlic (leave whole) red or yellow onions, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips, potatoes, beets and celery (which is not a root vegetable) is very nice). Put everything into a roasting pan and drizzle a good olive oil over top and sprinkle some kosher or seas salt, cover and put in the hot oven for about 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. When you smell the veggies and they are soft it is done. Serve with a salad and a nice crunchy bread.

Frozen Mizuna

Today is a Friday when someone goes out and harvests things for the Farm Share members. Unlike past harvest days this time everything was frozen, even the crops in the hoop houses. Bummer.

I was hoping to supply the Farm Share members with fresh greens but after looking at the frosty lettuce plants and the icy Mizuna I knew there was slim chance that greens could be harvested today (or for the next several weeks as winter is making a cold statement for a while). I did hack off some frozen mizuna and brought it back into the house to see if it would thaw decently (many cold hardy crops can be harvested fully frozen and thaw out perfectly). It thawed and was not turning to green goo but was still kind of weird. I do not want to take the chance of thawing the Mizuna, putting it into bags and than having it start rotting after it is bagged. I have tried this with frozen lettuce and things did not turn out well at all. I believe Mizuna will do better but I want to experiment a bit more with it before foisting it upon my customers.

So the Farm Share members get no greens this week (and probably not the last week either) but will get a lot of other nice things to eat. This is pretty much par for the course with farming on the back side of the calendar. If we heated our hoop houses (which is not really possible with the design we are using) we would have a lot of things growing in them. All the cold loving crops need is for the houses to be around 40F degrees at night and at least that warm during the day (if the sun is out the houses will get over 85F when it is 25F outside). The down side of this is you have to use some sort of fuel to heat the houses-propane, natural gas, electric (from coal or other fossil fuels), electric (from solar/wind) or wood. Fuel costs money which adds to the cost of the produce and most fuels pollute which adds to our carbon footprint. So for now we deal with things like frozen mizuna in January and stay content knowing that the mizuna will thaw soon enough and we will have greens to eat come late winter and early spring when most gardens in Ohio lay dormant.

Holiday Farm Share

I see it has been a while since I last posted. Let's blame the holidays for that. And since I am still not quite in a writing mood I am posting the Holiday Farm Share email for all to enjoy

Greetings farm Share Members,

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas (she says, making the assumption we are all of christian backgrounds here). Eugene and I did next to nothing Christmas day. we took a walk around the farm with the dogs, ate pistachio's and had pastured lamb from the Filbruns for dinner (along with butternut squash, salad and fingerling potatoes, all of which we grew). we don't generally exchange gifts but my sister and I do give enough money between us to Heifer International to buy a water buffalo for some family somewhere in the tropics.

The farm has been quiet but because of the freeze & thaw action and high winds we have lost some crops. We took a huge hit on the winter squash. The store front building froze up and the squash did too. We were not expecting this as last year we spent $300 a month to heat the building so nothing froze out there last year. This year because we are cheap, we decided not to heat the building. So when it went below zero so did everything that was not in a fridge (those all stayed just at freezing which is fine for all the produce we have in them at the moment) froze. things like onions and garlic can take being frozen with no problems (as long as they are left undisturbed) but winter squash not so much. The small squashes seem to be fine but the Butternut we lost. So we have some squash for the rest of the season but not as much as I was counting on. I am really glad none of us are in the position of depending on the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm to feed us through the winter because this would have been a very serious loss. We also lost the napa cabbage (I am glad as I do not really like the stuff, it is a poor seller and yet Eugene keeps planting it-it will make a nice green manure crop though). high winds ripped the row covers off almost the entire bed and that was that for the Napa. We also lost a 1/4 bed of arugula for the same reason. But where the covers stayed on the crops seem to be in as good of shape as they can be this time of year.

What has happened is after 2 winters here (this is our 3rd) we still have not figured out where to store the winter food. The house is way too warm, the barn can get too cold and freeze things worse than the store and there are rodent issues now that we have lost another mousing cat this fall and only have the ornamental cat who is useless when it comes to hunting. the store can be heated but only at great cost at present.

We need to seriously rethink how we heat this farm-gas and electric are getting too expensive and are also the causes of wars and great pollution, etc.. We have been talking about getting an outdoor wood boiler to at least heat the store and barn and this would also heat any greenhouses we might build. If we can it will also heat the house. These boilers can easily heat something like 40K square feet of space. But such things are expensive and we are still addressing roofing and window issues (which are also expensive) and there is the mortgage that takes a nice chuck of change out of the monthly budget. but we are working our way towards being a much greener farm. We would also love to put up a wind mill/generator and a solar array. Eventually we want to be 100% off the grid.

Okay, on that meandering note here is what you guys are getting this week. Some of you are picking up today and some on Monday. Either way, the shares will be ready for you anytime after 2pm. They will be in the store and just go and grab your share (one bag). Oh, and don't forget to bring back your old farm share bags (and any other clean plastic or paper grocery bags sitting around your home taking up space and needing to be reused)

Lettuce-a 1/2 pound bag of mixed small lettuce heads
Carrots-1 pound of sweet and crisp carrots
Winter squash-You get a variety-expect 3 to 4 squashes in your share
Leeks-two kinds, you get a bunch of the skinny Lincoln leeks you have had all season and 1 or 2 King Sieg leeks which are the big, winter leeks and I think more flavorful
Garlic-a bulb of each kind we grow, German white, Shvilisi and Persian Star
Celeriac-2 celeriac this week
Apples-3 pound bag of Dr Matthew's Apples-these are crisp and sweet
Onions-red onions this week. These have been nice but a bit on the hot side

Next farm share pick-up will be January 10th and the last will be Jan 24th. After that we will start back up April 7th. I do need to know if you are interested (or not) in the main season Farm Share program ASAP so I can get things planned out.

Several members have expressed an interest in having a Farm Share Potluck dinner here at the farm. One suggestions was to do it inauguration evening which I believe is Wed Jan 21st. But we can do this about any evening. I will offer our farm to host the event and now we need a date and time. Dinners are a dynamite way for us to build community around the farm with which we all have an interest, i.e. we can all meet and get to know each other.

And on that note, we are now signing up new members for our Farm Share program. The Shares Start April 7th or 9th (we will have two pick-up days-Tuesdays and Thursdays). Cost and all the other details can be found on our Farm Share Page

Imagine if we can do such a good job on this Farm Share thing in the dead of winter imagine how good we are when the farm is producing at full speed.

Winter Farm Share Program Week 3

We are at the mid point of the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm Farm Share Program (like a CSA only more so...). So far so good. Between what the market garden is still producing and what we have stored there is still a very good variety and I am having some problem picking and choosing and letting the shares get too big (I don't think this would be much of an issue for the farm share members but if they shares get too big we start losing profitability).

As it gets colder and I am more and more tempted to start using things from storage like onions, potatoes, garlic, dried herbs, winter squash, etc.. But the garden, despite the early deep cold, is still producing a surprising amount of stuff so instead of using the easy items to fill shares Eugene and I go up to the garden and harvest things in quite cold and wet conditions. The kind of conditions where your hands are bright red and totally numb so you have to look at what they are holding to be sure you picked the item up because you sure as hell can't feel the item in your hands.

Oh the joys of gardening on the back side of the calendar. Farming this time of year is interesting as it is very hard to do. It is not at all pleasant to be cutting arugula or spring mix when it is spitting some sort of precip, the row covers are hard deal with because either they have frozen to the ground or they start to freeze while you have them partially off the bed while harvesting things. (That happened yesterday as the temps dropped quickly and in 15 minutes not only were my hands red, unfeeling chunks of ice but the row covers got almost too stiff to put back over the lettuce.) And because you are hunched over the bed your butt crack is exposed and the cold wind and rain becomes very hard to deal with (next time I will wear the coveralls not have that problem). But working in such conditions does make the harvest taste just that much sweeter.

So here is the list of what our members got in their shares this week (12/13)
3 to 4 celeriac
5 leeks
1/4 pound arugula
4 to 5 yellow onions
1 pound red potatoes
1 pound parsnips
1 bag fresh thyme
2 carnival squashes
1 pound chard
1 pound kale
5 pears

Not a bad haul at all.

Winter Greens

It is one of the colder and nastier Decembers in the past several years and yet, remarkably, we have leafy green crops growing just fine under row covers. What's even more remarkable is these crops seem to be doing far better than the crops in Hoop houses and under row cover. This gives them a lot more protection, in theory. Thus the hoop house crops should be doing a lot better than the crops that have only a double layer of row cover over top.

And yet they are not. I suspect that in Feb they will either take off and give us lots of high quality leafy greens or they will decide it is time to reproduce and bolt to seed and be unusable as food crops (but we will likely collect the seeds for future use).

I am not sure why this is happening to the hoop house crops but I suspect because they have been too protected and too coddled. The plants in the hoop houses have never been exposed to wind, full sun, rain or any other weather other than cold temperatures and the cold temps have not been good for a lot of crops in the hoop houses. The crops, especially the leafy green crops, in the houses are rather tender. In contrast the outside crops were exposed to all sorts of weather before being ensconsed in a double layer of row cover so these crops are much more hardy, much more as it turns out, as there is hardly any frost or wind burns on these things. This is good, because there is a farmers market this coming Saturday and I can harvest literally whole beds of small heads of heirloom lettuces that will probably not get any bigger than they already are. There is also nice arugula and mizuna along with spring mix. The Napa cabbage is not looking as nice but I will be willing to bet the cold conditions have made it much more yummy. Frankly, I don't know why Napa keeps being planted, we rarely sell any despite being told it is a very popular vegetable at the farmers market (if it is so damned popular why are we the only farm with it and why is it not selling at all?). And yet there it is in the garden, again.

I wish the hoop house crops were doing better and the crops not in hoop houses had all died because it is much much more enjoiable to go into a hoop house and harvest. In hoop houses, especially if it is at all sunny out, it tends to be spring like-warm, no winds, humid, nice. Contrast that with the plants outside that tend to be harvested in cold, windy wet weather, not nice.

But the outside crops have not died and are quite high quality so we put up with harvesting when the weather allows and doing it in generally pretty nasty conditions

This and That

So it's December and it is cold and dreary with a bit of snow. Not much going on in the market garden. Lots of things under double row cover we are hoping are not getting too damaged by low temps around 23F. We did have the kale in a hoop house bite the dust. No one put a row cover over top and it all got frosted. I doubt it's dead but it likely won't produce leaves until mid Feb. In the past the kale has done just fine with no row cover in a hoop house but in the past the kale was started outside and was toughened up by being exposed to the elements. This kale was started in a hoop house and was very delicate and could not take the cold. Learn something new, next time make sure the kale inside has lots of protection or do not start kale in a hoop house, start it outdoors and move a house over top in November.

We entertain ourselves with bad TV, cleaning popcorn, making beer, making cider, cleaning and cutting up the last of the peppers and freezing them. Pretty mundane stuff.

I have found myself spending more and more time on FaceBook. I love FaceBook. Through it I have found so many people I had lost contact with from as far back as high school. FYI I still see a lot of my high school friends as I still live in the same area where I grew up. But a lot of people got out of the great Oxford Metroplex. FB has been an incredible tool for connecting. It also is a great time waster. I have started a farm and have a super power, both take time. But time is something I have at the moment.

I have started working on a web page for our CSA/Farm Share Program. We don't like the term CSA as it either represents us as supporters of the Confederate States of America (which we are not, being born and bred Yankees) or it is simply a bad description of selling food shares. So we prefer "Farm Share". Any Hoo, I have started working on an informational page about the farm share program which will commence the first week of April. That outta keep me busy for a few days. So far, I have gotten the thing about 20% done and lost everything. That's okay, it was all replaced by better copy and design. If everything goes right, I should have it functional by the end of this week

Boulder Belt in Winter

Winter is here-it is cold, snowy and most everything that is not we covered is dead. This means things have slowed way down for us (yay!) It is nice to be able to kick back for a month or so before the 80 hour a week grinds starts again.

People want to know what we farmers do in the off season. For us, we spend a lot of November cleaning up stuff like the store, the garden beds, popcorn, catnip, onions. Crunching numbers on the various produce items we grow so we have an idea as to what is selling and what is not selling so we know what seeds to plant for the coming season. Eugene does not do much on the computer so it is me who keeps the blog and website updated and that can be time consuming, especially this year since it looks like Boulder Belt is back in the CSA biz and that means at some point I need to design an informative CSA page for the Boulder Belt Website.

December is too often spent removing snow from hoop houses and driveways. It is also the time we put in our main seed order with Johnny's Selected Seeds (our favorite seed house). In the past we have waited until after Christmas to put in our order but there are rumors that there will be seed shortages this year so I believe I will get at least part of the order in in early Dec. or even late November. December is usually the Month that we start the onions and leeks indoors, though this year I believe the onions will be started today or tomorrow (that would be mid November). The reason for moving up the date is due to the fact we have quite a few Copra onion seeds left over from last year and We decided that those should be planted to see if they have strong germination. If they do than we do not need to order more seed. If they do not than we will know by Dec 1st if the seeds are working or not and can get an order into Johnny's early enough to avoid the dreaded back order that can set one back several months.

If December, January and February are mild (which is the NOAA prediction for us this winter, but I will believe that when I see it) than the crops in the hoop houses will continue to produce pretty much all winter and someone has to go and harvest and package the crops periodically (weekly-as growth slows way down in the winter even if it is relatively warm and sunny). We than sell the greens, leeks, etc., at the Oxford Monthly Winter market and this year the CSA gets their share as well. We also sell through the store via email appointment and occasionally to a restaurant or Miami University.

If the winter months are cold with a lot of precip, than most things quit growing until Late Feb and cannot be harvested, the exception to this are the leeks and scallions. Than we sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting on the greens to come back to life. Okay, we don't spend much time thumb twiddling (but we do start craving greens in a big way and are delighted when things are harvestable again). If it is a snowy winter than we are spending lots of time removing snow from the hoop houses, otherwise they get flattened and are unuseable and have to be repaired or replaced. this has happened a couple of times to us and incredibly the crops under all the snow and plastic are generally unharmed and producing very well when we finally get to them

What we are doing by Feb is starting seriously seeds indoors. This starts out slowly with around 15 pots of onions and leeks planted in Dec/Jan. Those are followed by the brassicas-kale, broccoli, cabbages, etc., and lettuces in mid to late Feb. Those crops are repeatedly seeded indoors through April/May so we have a continual harvest April through June/July. By late March we are also starting early tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and melons to be planted in mid April in hoop houses. In April the main crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, parsley, flowers, etc., are started which fills up the grow room along with cold frames and hoop houses with thousands of seedlings.

Once the seeds are started we are tied to the farm. The seeds need daily tending-watering, fertilizing, pricking (this means to re pot into a larger container), making soil (we make our own soil mix for seed starting as we have a hard time finding soiless mixes that don't contain petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Add to that, we start seeds in soil blocks and we make our own soil blocks so the soiless mix has to be just so for it to work for us. Making our own soil blocks means we use very little plastic when starting our seedlings. It probably saves us around a thousand bucks a year as well (of course it increases our work load by at least 100 hours as we have to make a lot of soil and a lot of soil blocks.)

So you can see that we small sustainable farmers really don't have much down time at all. Some day, perhaps, we will quit this idea of winter growing and marketing and will shut the farm down in November and go to the Caribbean for 4 months.

Fall Garden Pix

The battery in my camera said it was dying so I figured a few shots should kill it and than I could replace it with a fresh battery. Well, after about 75 shots (many using the flash) the battery is still not dead. Here are just a few of the pictures I took whist trying to kill the battery yesterday evening.

Leeks, a hoop house full of melons and zucchini, leafy greens under the covers

As regular readers know we do a lot of season extension. here we have row covers and a hoop house that we have put up in the last 10 days. the hoop house is protecting melons and zukes which will be gone by the end of December (probably earlier than that) and than the hoop house will be moved over top of the leeks next to it. the row covers are covering things like spring mix and carrots. more for protection from pests and to keep the moisture in the soil (it has been very very dry here for the past 3 months. yesterday we got our first rain in over 3 weeks) than cold proection. Hoop houses will eventually go over the carrots and some of the spring mix beds (but not the one to the left of the leeks as it will be history by the time it would need such protection)

Lincoln Leeks, what we are harvesting at the moment. When you buy Boulder belt leeks they are nice and clean. They do not start out that way. when they are harvested they are covered with soil and have a lot of dead brown leaves on them that have to be removed.

King Sieg leeks. These will be used for winter harvest. At some point they will be covered by a hoop house so they thrive (not just survive) all winter.

Fall sugar snap peas, just about ready to harvest.

The sun sets on the garden

Nate (blonde), Arlo (black) and Danny (blonde out in front) heading home. Actually, they are hoping I am heading home and not about to do something that would prevent me from going to the house and letting the dogs in so they all take naps indoors. Unfortunately for them the camera batteries did not die after this shot so I continued taking more pictures as it got darker and darker. the cover next to the dogs is covering red turnips which we have been harvesting for a couple of weeks. Today I plan on puloing most/all of them and cutting off the greens so the roots will be able to store in the fridge for a month or more so we can sell them well into the fall. We will sell the greens too but they will last only a short time, not well into the fall (even though it is well into the fall already).