Flying Time

June 7? That was my last blog post?  I was thinking it had only been a couple of weeks!  So much for keeping up with blogging, I guess.

I suppose it's indicative of the season - there is SO much to keep up with this time of year that it's not too surprising I fell off the semi-regular posting wagon.  We are almost half way through the CSA season here at One Step at a Time Gardens, and have been busy visiting other farms around the state and hosting family.  We had Eli's 12 year old nephew (also named Eli) here with us for a week, and visits from Eli's sister and mom on either end of that week.  We're also wading through this heat bubble along with much of the rest of the country, and are finding that 10 hours outside in 100+ degree weather is enough to make a pair pretty tired at the end of the day.  Tack on on-going chores like bread-baking and jam making, and some things (like blogging) fall to the wayside.  Ah well.

We've really turned a seasonal corner in our crops over the last week as we saw the end of cool weather crops like lettuce, spinach, radishes, scallions and peas.  While we're sad to see those crunchy items go, I'm really excited to see the onset of more heat loving crops like zucchini, eggplant, peppers, potatoes, and, the summer vegetable star, TOMATOES.  Each CSA member got one tomato last week, we at the farm at BLTs 3 times, and we anticipate doling out thousands of pounds more of the juicy vegetable  over the next month or so.  Tomatoes just seem to sing summer is here!
  
The farm seems to be humming along. It feels really good to be here a second year and see crops through a second rotation - I have surprised myself a number of times this season with how much I've learned over the last year.  While there will always be more to learn, more to try, it is incredibly gratifying to see how much more I understand after just a season and a half.  I suppose the real test will come once we're forging our own way, but for now I'll take the sense of satisfaction that comes with knowing one has learned something valuable, however small the lesson. Time does fly, after all.

On Beginning

Beginning.  It's a word that carries a bit of weight for me. It is, after all, the meaning of my unusual first name.  From very early on I remember my parents telling me, and telling anyone who asked, they chose the name Genesis because they hoped I would represent and embody a new beginning in a broken world. The only specific new beginnings I remember references to are "beginnings for women-kind." A little vague (and maybe a little heavy?), but the general intention has stuck with me.  I admit to having felt a certain (self imposed. definitely self imposed) pressure every time I have a major beginning - will this job be it?  Will this friendship change my life?  Will I live up to this amazing but intense name my whole world identifies with me?  Can I make a big enough impact?

And I finally feel comfortable saying yes.  Yes, absolutely my impact will be big enough. Producing food and building local community and economy and health and wealth (of spirit anyway) will most certainly be enough. More than enough.  And the best part is I am still just at the beginning. The very very baby beginning of this impact.The truth is I'll probably still be at the beginning 5 years from now, but that is really okay. There is much to learn, and many hard, hot and long seasons to get through but I'm still so excited to have that in front of me.  You people are probably really sick of hearing me say that.


Most of this is spurred by a really fantastic field day that Eli and I went to on Sunday at Gardens of Eagen, a 50 acre organic farm outside of the Twin Cities.  The all day event was centered around market gardening for beginners, and featured two farming couples who both had been incubated by the mega-farm. The first couple has been farming for 8 years and are just starting to feel like they have a grasp on things, and the second couple is farming for themselves for the first time this year and are flying by the seat of their pants. But they are in fact flying, which is important.   It was really information and inspiring, though, and I left feeling really energized about our path and really ready to get a solo season under our belts. Next year will come soon enough.  

In the meantime, we are trying to survive the mid-August weather that is visiting us in June (highs close to triple digits) and getting more comfortable in the harvesting routine.  We're also continuing to fill out our own little market plot and enjoying more faces on the farm. As we've moved into the harvest and delivery phase of the year we've brought on more of the high season farm crew to help, and it makes each day a little different, depending on who we get around here.  Kind of a nice change of pace.

A couple photos to end the post - Eli tilling in a buckwheat cover crop to our little plot, and some lettuce waiting to get packed up for the CSA delivery.

Rhythm and Routine

June starts tomorrow, which means so do One Step at a Time Gardens' CSA deliveries.  All the number crunching and planning that Tim and Jan did over the winter and all the prep work the 4 of us have done since the beginning of April begin to culminate now.  It is the beginning of a 18 weekly deliveries of vegetables to various locations in Des Moines and smaller communities in North Iowa. 

It is the beginning of highly ordered frenetic activity that will probably border on chaos at least once. It is also the most routine time of the farming year.  The work just doesn't stop, nor does it even slow until well into September.  The to-do list will, reliably, never get done.  And yet,

It is so exciting!!

June means beginning the harvest each Tuesday and Wednesday morning first thing.  It means processing the bounty through cold flowing water, trimming roots and pulling discolored leaves. 
Weighing and portioning so each farm member gets their share of the loot.  Setting aside blemished or damaged produce for our own consumption.  Packing boxes and loading the van, sending Jan or Tim down the road to deliver the fruits (vegetables) of our labor to families around central Iowa.  Assessing which crops need weeding most urgently.  Moving chickens to fresh pasture each morning. Dragging hoses and setting up sprinklers. Finding the short in the electric fence. Going to market on Friday.  Trying to scrounge some end of the day energy to freeze and can for our own winter use. Sleep, stretch and repeat.

Rhythm and routine of work and satisfaction, work and satisfaction. 

Musings on the Middle West

For a long time I said with great conviction and depth that I couldn't imagine moving back to the Midwest.  I was never quite sure where exactly I'd end up, but I was sure I knew where I wouldn't end up, and that was the very region in which I grew up.

Even when we moved to Iowa last May, I wasn't ready to commit to being a Midwesterner again. Yes, I was ready to break from the Pacific Northwest, at least for a time. I remember explaining it to family and friends as a need to stretch my wings, just like I'd needed to stretch them 8 years earlier when I left my lifelong home in Indiana at 18. But rest assured, when folks around here asked where we were from I was quick to answer: Oregon.


It's not only far away, the state is known for something - for lots of things really. An outstanding and breathtaking array of outdoor environments and a thriving and utterly progressive urban population are two of Oregon's qualities that most readily come to mind, but there are countless other things that make the state so special.  And, for a kid from IndiaNoPlace, Indiana, being there for so long somehow felt like it made me more special, especially when I came home. I guess it's a little conceited to admit to such a feeling but I do so because I am certainly not the only kid from the Midwest who felt like they barely escaped a dull life full of euchre and macaroni casserole by getting out while I could.

Only, now that I've been back in the region for a while, I totally don't feel that way anymore.  Not even a little bit.  I feel excited to be here. I feel like I am bringing something really valuable to the region and like I have a lot to learn from other folks doing the same.  I feel like I get this place in a way I could never quite get the Pacific Northwest, yet I am seeing it through much more appreciative eyes. It's like a really good pair of shoes that I shoved in the back of the closet for 8 years and am now totally psyched to rediscover. Jeez Midwest, why did I write you off for so long??  Kinda makes me feel like an idiot. 

But at least I'm an idiot with a place to belong. I belong here because this is where I was shaped.  I belong here because I understand and appreciate the subtleties of Midwestern culture and life.  I belong here because I can actually withstand the heat and humidity.  I belong here because I have the option to make a quick weekend trip to see my family, no flight reservations needed.  But mostly, I belong here because I want to be here.

Middle West, I may not (actually, I probably don't) always agree with your conservative politics, your love for car racing, or your weight problem, but I will never dog you as a whole again. Thanks for welcoming me home - after 27 years I am finally glad to be here.

Hot and Busy. And ramps.

The former just today, and the latter since last Monday.

It's 7pm and weather.com says it is currently 100 degrees. The calendar still says it's May 10, but I could have sworn all day it was August 10.  Remember the posting about snow?  That was 3 weeks ago.  They say farming shouldn't be this hard. That it didn't used to be so unpredictable.  Welp. 

I'm not exactly sure what to make of it, but then again I'm not exactly sure what my middle name is either after a day like today, which followed a week like this week.  We started planting last Monday and I've been dreaming potato mounds, precision seeders, and broccoli transplants ever since. We had about 3 weeks of plantings to catch up on and while we haven't totally caught up, we have put a pretty good dent in the list. 


Many thousands of feet of potatoes, onions, leeks, scallions, radishes, peas, arugula, tot soi, bok choy, lettuce, spinach, and probably some other stuff made it into the ground.  now we just need some rain. But not too much! 

In other news, the woods across the lake have something very, very delicious to offer us: ramps. 

We foraged these wild leeks late last week and have been incorporating them into as many meals as possible.  They are wonderful added to scrambled eggs, and I made a pretty mean ramp pesto for lunch today.  They have a really distinct, almost sharp flavor that is reminiscent of both onions and garlic.  Two absolutely indispensable items in my kitchen, so this is basically a wonder food to me.   They grow wild all over the forests of the Midwest and Appalachia (maybe the East Coast too...not sure), though this is the first time I've even known to take note of them.  I do love the small tidbits of knowledge I pick up from country folk - such a different breed than city folk.

Here is one former city girl happy to currently be a country girl, even when it is 100 degrees in early May.  (I was not wearing all of those clothes today...this was a couple of days ago!)

 

It's early Sunday evening before our fifth week of work for the season, and it's a week I'm really looking forward to.  Spring has finally started to seep into the landscape here in North Central Iowa, and everybody is itching to get into the fields.  Even the corn farmers have been getting nervous about the on going cold and wet, sure that delayed planting will mean decreased yields.  We've seen a number of clear days, though, with more in the forecast.  Winds in the 40 - 50 mph range don't make it very comfortable to be outside but they do help the soil dry out.  Whoever said talk of the weather was boring was most certainly not a farmer.  It occupies much of my conversation and thought these days, and it hasn't bored me yet. 

The weather has put us over two weeks behind schedule here, so dry soil and clear days means one thing this week: PLANTING.  There are radishes, green onions, storage onions, peas, tomatoes, lettuce, spinach and broccoli my oh my SO much broccoli just begging to be plunked in the ground.  Our fingers are crossed that the weather will hold, the soil will continue to breathe, and our backs will be ready for some good old fashioned bending and hunching. Hopefully for the whole week.  Getting a little sore just thinking about it, but in a lovely I-just-accomplished-something kind of way. Oh, farm thrills! 


Speaking of thrills - my biggest thrill of the week came today, and it looked like this:

Asparagus! Finally!  We don't produce it commercially so it's not exactly the most well tended asparagus patch, but it's there and it is starting to grow, and I am oh so excited about it. 

Another consistently big thrill looks like this:

The man I love and our garden plot. It really, really is thrilling to be pursuing a common passion with the person you share your life with. I count myself lucky, 50 mph hour winds and all.    

Hoophouse Take 2

Just a quick note to say - we got the hoop house up!  Well, most of it anyway.  We ran short on supplies to put in the very last side panelings, but all the other parts are done.  End walls, roof, and the bottom of both long sides are tightly secured in plastic. And just in time, too. We finished up about 8pm last night after a 12+ hour day, and here is what the view was this morning - 

 

The new hoop house is on the left, and the existing one stands on the right.  As you can see, it is still not quite spring around here.   Just a little sleet and snow to make sure we really knew it.  

BUT, this does illustrate the importance of having structures like these on a vegetable farm.  Anything planted out in the field would have been total toast after a day like today, but veggies planted inside these babies stay nice and cozy and warm.  It was a balmy 68 degrees in there when this photo was taken.  Hoop houses really are crucial for extending the season, and extending the season is becoming more and more crucial to turning a profit.  Which is crucial for running a successful farm.  A hoop house just might be on my Christmas wish list this year.

Hoophouse Take 1

One of the biggest projects on the list for the last year or two here at One Step at a Time Gardens has been to get a second hoophouse built.  Tim and Jan bought the structure a few years ago, and its parts have been waiting patiently in a seldom used corner of the barn.  We started putting the thing up last fall, and have diligently continued working on it over the last 10 days.  So diligently, in fact, that just yesterday we finished putting in all the requisite parts so that it would be ready for just the right day. A day that dawns blue and warm, with (and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART) absolutely no wind. 

This is uber important because trying to maneuver 100 square feet of thick plastic over a metal frame 90 feet long, 35 feet wide, and 16 feet tall is complicated enough as it is.  Adding in the slightest breeze, the slightest excuse for that plastic to pick up all that wind energy and start flapping around, is everybody's nightmare.  At least around here.  

Anyhow, a spring day with no wind on the prairie is like a day with no rain in Oregon in January.  It happens, but it's super rare.  Imagine our surprise when Tim and Jan came knocking on our door early this morning to say, this is it! This is plastic day!  Holy cow, we thought - what impeccable timing.  We just finished getting the thing ready for this day yesterday!  So up to the hill we went, skipping and smiling all the while.

We got everything ready - rolled out the plastic, laid out the wiggle wire. It looked like this:

We tied softballs into the plastic, and tied long ropes around the softballs. We lobbed the ropes up and over the frame, scrambled to the other side to start heaving that 200 lb. roll of plastic up and over.  We got a great start!  It looked like this:

We got the two ends secured, and were poised and ready to start locking in the sides and.....WHOOOOOSSSSHHHHHH.

 
A big.ole.gust.of prairie wind.  The kind that makes you think you might get carried on over to Illinois if you're not careful.  Sigh.  The ropes burned our hands as it whizzed through. The plastic flapped. And flapped. And flapped. It was loud. And panicky for a few moments as we rushed around to undo what we'd already secured.  Holes in that baby would be bad, baaaaad news.  So we let the plastic flap itself on over to it's original side and sat in the tractor bucket licking our (figurative) wounds for a while.  It was not plastic day after all.

In fact, it turned into repairing fencing day.  Not a bad day to spend a Wednesday, but definitely not as good as completing a six month project.  At least the dry run is over!

From the Get Go: Season Prep 101

We’re back on the farm almost 2 months earlier than we showed up last year and getting a much bigger picture of what it takes to run a successful mid-size farm.  In 2010 we started work the last week of May, only 1 week before harvest and deliveries started for the CSA, farmer’s markets, and wholesale accounts.   That means that the bulk of the fence repair, tilling, bed prep, transplanting, direct seeding, and first big weeding flush were already done by the time we came on the scene.  The farm was already in full swing, and we jumped right in. 

This year, because we showed up at the beginning of April instead of the end of May, we’re getting some feeling for what the “warm up” to full swing production feels like. When we arrived 10 days ago, the farm looked and felt much as it did when we left at the end of October.  None of the fields had been tilled, nothing planted, no fences repaired.  This is not to say that work hadn’t taken place. Lots and lots of seeds have been started – both Jan and Tim’s basement and the basement at our Little House are full of seedlings at various stages of growth.  Broccoli, tomatoes, lettuces, spinach, cabbage, and a variety of herbs are inside getting a head start.  The lion’s share of the marketing and planning for the season were done over the winter. Conferences were attended, equipment was purchased. The time for the more cerebral parts of farming happens during “slow” winter season – ideally one wants to think through, plan out and write down the entire growing season well before it even starts. 

So, here we are at the very start of the season, almost 2 full months before we actually harvest and sell anything.  And boy do we have a list of things to do.  High on the priority list is to finish the hoop house we started building last fall.  The planting plan calls for tomatoes to be in the ground under the cover of this structure two weeks from now, and here it stands:  

Doors hung, frame built. Now we wait for the calmest of calm days to come around so we can drape the thing in a piece of plastic 100 feet long and 100 feet wide.  We’re also making compost piles with the heaps of manure that have collected in the barns over the winter from the chickens and the horse and trying to get some cover crops in the fields that won’t be planted until May or June.  Also potting on broccoli and tomatoes and steadily filling the greenhouse with bigger seedlings.  Definitely no shortage of stuff to do.  I realize as I’m writing this how utterly mundane and boring it could all seem, but want to assure all you lovely reader how cool is all is to us. Eli and I feel like we are in such a prime learning phase, and are pretty excited by it all. You should have seen the smiles when the compost pile hit 170 degrees this morning!

I’ll end with two pictures – the first is what a hand should look like at the end of the day, and the second is a sample of the exciting weather we had here last night (look hard in the upper righthand corner). Be well everybody!

 

Settling In and Reconnecting

After 5 transient months Eli and I landed back in Iowa at One Step at a Time Gardens last Wednesday and boy oh boy are we happy to be here!

I'm also happy to be back on the blogging bandwagon, though my first efforts last summer were definitely less than consistent...let's hope for a better showing this season.  With an independent garden going this year and farming for ourselves, by ourselves, close on the horizon I'm really gonna try to make this a more regular avenue of contemplation and communication.  I think giving this space a focus (what we had for lunch this week! how many hours did we weed?  How our market garden is progressing? Still trying to narrow down to something interesting...) might help.  For now, though, just some updates.  If anyone is still interested.  ;)

Our 5 months away from the farm was just what I hoped it would be – full of long family visits, trips to see old friends, new places to explore (hello Florida!) and a permeating sense of utter autonomy and freedom.  We had no deadlines, no schedule,  no employers expecting us back, no landlord needing a rent check.  We spent weeks on end with family we usually only see a couple of days a year. We visited childhood friends in their adult environments.    We set a new camping record, sleeping 34 nights straight in our tent.  We laid on some amazing beaches, saw some incredible wildlife (including a panther, we think!), and put over 11,000 miles on the car we bought at the end of November. We covered 26 states in 3 months. It.was.sweet.

Yet by the beginning of March we were a little road weary. A little ready for some structure and routine.  More than ready for some focus.  We attended the Midwest Organic  & Sustainable Education Services (MOSES) Organic Farming Conference at the end of February and got our farming fires totally stoked.  We spent 3 days trying to be as sponge-like as possible, and left the conference ready to dive head first into our second farming season.  But we had a month to wait – spring still hasn’t totally committed to North Iowa, and it was even further away back in February.  So rather than continue wandering the country we headed back to central Indiana for the month of March.  It was by far the longest stretch of time I’ve spent in my hometown since I moved to Portland 9 years ago, and it provided just the right amount of familiarity and comfort. We were able to regroup and refocus in a way that would have been tough(er) in a new or changing location.  We spent some good time thinking and talking about our future beyond this summer with Tim and Jan while still gearing up for this upcoming season in Iowa. In the end it was a really good decision to hunker down there, and it was great to get reacquainted with Indiana, and specifically Indianapolis - so much exciting stuff is happening there, and we do know some pretty fabulous people in those parts. 

So that brings us to the present. We arrived here last Wednesday, and finished our first full day of work today (Monday, that is – it will probably be Tuesday by the time I post this).  It feels .oh.so.good. to be back, on a lot of levels.  Most simply we are happy to know that we will be in one place for a while.  Happy to have some space of our own again.  Happy to not be concerned with every item in our possession, constantly evaluating things for their space worthiness.  Happy to see the farm in this brand new stage of the season.  Happy to know that we will move the farm through all of its stages from now until the end of October.  Happy to know that we are at the very beginning of a long season of learning, both literally and figuratively.  We are both so excited about this vocation and the chance to be apprenticing on such a successful farm feels like such a gift.  I don’t mean to wax too poetic here  - farming is hard, hard work and I may not feel so excited once the weeds, mosquitoes, heat and humidity set it, but I’m willing to let myself wallow in the positive feelings while they’re here.  

This season definitely promises to be a new and different experience.  Tim and Jan take their roles as mentors to heart and have put a lot of thought and effort into making this season a growing and learning opportunity for Eli and me.  We’ll take on more responsibility around the farm and will have the chance to be more involved in some of the day to day decision making.  We’ll participate more in CSA delivery drops and farmer’s market and will have certain tasks around the farm totally handed over to us.  It’s a great opportunity to get tons of hands on experience with the farm’s management and we are both really looking forward to the challenges and learning curves heading our way.  It’s still a perfect season, after all.  Just look at all this garlic poking up!  How can things not go perfectly when you've got such a good spring garlic start?

We'll also embark on our own little mini-venture, taking over a small plot of land to grow some things for market for ourselves.  It is a super small start, but it is a start nonetheless.  We're planning to fill out Jan's market table with about 6 or 8 items she usually doesn't have at certain points of the season and hoping to gain some experience and some confidence  along the way.  Perhaps that's the focus this blog will take?  We just dug up and prepped the first garden bed for this little venture  - planning to get about 10 feet of early carrots planted before the week is up.   Beets are next.  Here is Eli, hard at work (yes I know he is sideways...too computer illiterate and impatient to fix it right now!): 

So, that is the update for now.  More soon, I hope!