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!