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!

Procrastinating From Portland Central Library

That's right. Procrastinating. It's a good thing I haven't followed the legions of my peers into a public health graduate program somewhere because it seems I still have not kicked the procrastinating habit I developed (perhaps in the womb?) in high school. I have one medium sized task to accomplish before our 6 week stay in Portland comes to an end in about 2 weeks, and it's not done. Old habits die hard I guess.

The task seems like it should be relatively simple, but it is time consuming and slightly intimidating. It is a planting plan. Part of Eli's and my experience as second year interns with OSTG next year will include a small business venture of our own. We're planning to raise about a half dozen crops to complement the farm's booth at the North Iowa Farmer's Market. We'll grow some veggies they don't grow at all, and will experiment with some succession planting and heat resistant lettuce varieties in an effort to provide greens to the market all summer. Sounds great, right? I think so too - but I am still having a hard time sitting down with the calendar, the field map, the seed catalogs, and the Excel spreadsheet to lay it all out. We won't actually be putting stuff in the ground until March, so what's the big rush?

Why oh why did I inherit my mom's work habits instead of my dad's??

So, instead of knuckling down and busting it out I am updating the blog instead! Almost 2 months has passed since I last wrote, but I can't say much has happened. We left the farm at the end of October and high tailed it west through a terribly ferocious wind storm. What was supposed to be a meandering week long camping trip through the Mountain West turned into a 3 day marathon drive back to Portland against 50 mph winds and through the first dustings of snow in the passes. We moved in (temporarily) with our good friends Meg and Robb who live right up the street from our old place on Tillamook St. and have a spare room. We are splitting housing expenses for the time we're here and are super appreciative for the friendly and cozy place to stay. You know you have good friends when they don't hesitate (not even a little bit!) to let you move in for 6 weeks, and even seem a little sad that eventually we'll leave again. 6 weeks is a terribly long time to have house guests, but so far so good.

Eli is working super hard (shocking, I know!) back with Neil and Northwest Kitchen and Bath, installing high end tile, marble and slab in big houses all over town. I am babysitting here and there, but mostly filling my days with long walks about town, almost daily jaunts to the library, lots of cooking and baking, and a bit of knitting here and there. I am also reading a couple of farming books we bought over the summer, and scouring the interweb for interesting farming blogs and informational sites. Of these, I have found many, which is what prompted me to update this here blog. I figure if I am not actively working on this planting plan, I should at least be actively updating and inspiring myself about other related farming stuff, and it's definitely working. I'm still super inspired about this path. =)

I do think that we will be pretty ready to put down some roots, even if they're shallow, by this time next year. Everything I'm reading and all the farmers I've talked with stress the importance of each farm's (and farmer's) individuality. Every place is different, every farmer has their own ways. The best teacher is experience, and while we're gaining valuable and necessary experience as interns, it's not the same as farming our own land with our own time-tested methods in our own community. Portland is an amazing city, but it is not our place. Iowa is teaching us SO much, in so many ways, but it is not our place. I guess I'm not exactly sure how to identify where our place might be - but I'm hoping once we get there it will just feel right, and we'll know. Kind of like how we knew farming was it. It was just a feeling, really, but an undeniable one.

So, I can feel myself getting a bit antsy in that regard. We're not yet building the community and network that will sustain our (hopefully) long term business efforts because we are not yet located in our long term place. So much of this work is rooted in meaningful relationships, with people and with place, and I feel eager to start building those webs and networks and partnerships and friendships. The prospect of all these different kinds of relationships is admittedly one of the most alluring parts of farming for me, so I guess it's no wonder I feel really drawn to developing that stuff first.

It's a good thing Eli is more of a systems guy - maybe he can handle the planting plan!

Not sure when the next post will come - after the holidays maybe? We are heading to Indy for my brother's college graduation and Christmas, then to the Catskills for the New Year, and then it's a bit ambiguous until we return to the farm in late March or early April. A leisurely trip down the eastern seaboard seems like a good idea in theory, but I'm not sure it will be so pleasant in January and February. We are hoping to join Eli's brother and sister-in-law in the Florida Keys for a week or two, and a cheap ticket to Hawaii would be pretty hard to pass up. Other than that, options are wiiiiide open. And man, I have to admit that feels good!

Lots of love, and drop a line!

Hellloooo hellloooo hellloooo!

Ahem. I knew it had been a long time since I last posted on this here blog, but I'm a little embarrassed to see that it was almost a full two months ago. Wow. There is much to report, though, and I hope to keep this little online journal going, sporadic or not, for whomever maintains interest in reading about our little life journey.

We are still on the farm in Iowa, although not for much longer. Yesterday was scheduled to be our last day until plans changed just a bit and Tim and Jan asked us to stay on a couple of extra weeks. We finished up our CSA delivery season the last week of September, and are spending these last 3 weeks doing various clean-up and maintenance chores around the farm. They also wanted us to stick around to help put up the second hoop house (also called a high tunnel). This is a much bigger project than I thought it would be, and I can now add pouring cement and using various power tools to the skills I've learned this summer.

So, what next? The big news is that we've decided to spend another summer here in Iowa at One Step at a Time Gardens. We'd decided by about July that we'd like to do another internship next summer and had started tossing around ideas for locations, size of farm, etc., when Tim and Jan approached us and asked if we would be willing to stay on with them another year. It was a little out of the blue for me - we really hadn't considered staying here - so it took a little while to think through the pros and cons of staying here vs. getting to know another operation.

Ultimately we decided that spending another season here gives us a more realistic view and understanding of what it will be like to run our own farm someday. We'll get to participate (are participating some already) in the off-season data analysis and planning for next year. We'll get to see the crop rotation and participate more in CSA deliveries and farmer's markets. Eli will get to learn more about the tractors here and will take a larger role in bed preparation and cultivation. (I would too, if I fit on the tractors. They're all 1940s models and I would have to be a contortionist to reach both the clutch and the gearshift at the same time. Oh well.) I will get to participate more in the outreach and marketing side of the business. I loved how Eli's mom put it when we told her we are planning to stay on another year: Oh good! she said, graduate school for you both!

So that's where we are. The last month has been has been really exciting as Eli and I are settling into the knowledge that this is the path we want to follow. We want to farm, small scale and organic. We'll take our first steps next summer as Tim and Jan help us with our own small scale venture that will be just ours. We're not exactly sure what it will be yet (leaning toward doing our own market) but whatever it is will include a business plan. We'll set a budget, identify our market, keep a lot of detailed records, and hopefully make at least a little bit of money. Owning and operating a successful farm is as much about (maybe MORE about) smart business practice as it is about growing stuff. You can't do one without the other, people keep telling us. So we'll spend some of our time this coming year trying to become savvy business people. Ha. Who could imagine??

Not much grows in Iowa in the winter, however, so it does leave a bit of an employment gap. We're heading back to Portland at the end of this month where Eli has lined up some work with his old tiling job, and I'll try and pick up some restaurant work here and there. I think we'll be on the West Coast about six weeks before we head to Indiana for my brother's college graduation and Christmas, and then likely to New York for New Year's Eve with Eli's family. Then there are 3 big wide open months of nothing planned until we're due back at the farm the beginning of April, 2011. Anyone looking for a couple of good natured couch surfers??

Love, love, love to all reading this, and I hope it won't be so long between posts this time around! Hopefully we'll have some good road adventures to share about through the winter, and there will definitely be more stories to share from the Iowoasis for at least another year. =)

Big love!! And a photo of me supervising the hoop house construction:

Sitting and not swatting!

I am sitting on the front stoop of our little house in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

This is amazing. I mean, really amazing.

I haven't swatted a single mosquito for almost 10 minutes, and there is not even a hint of a sweat mustache on my upper lip. Granted, it is only 8:18 am, but this type of leisurely sitting-out-of-doors has not been possible for months, it seems like.

The farm is in full swing, though Tim and Jan tell us we are on the cusp of beginning to wind down. That is hard to believe as we are harvesting hundreds of pounds of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, sweet peppers, a little cabbage yet, potatoes, green and yellow beans, and the list continues. I'm learning that the amount of daylight dictates growth patterns more than temperature this time of year, so we should start seeing some ebb in vegetable production soon, despite the record temperatures we've had.

Eli and I did market by ourselves yesterday - what a cool feeling. The attendance was, ahem, underwhelming, but it was really fun to get up super early, do some last minute 6 am harvest, get the booth all set up, and then while away the morning chatting with folks. I made some baba ghanouj to take a sample, and we sold out of eggplant. We ate lunch at the only local foods cafe in Mason City and ran into quite a few people we had just talked to at the market. I am still kind of amazed at small town life - anonymity seems to be an unknown condition here.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that the weather stays this way - one gets acclimated to the heat and humidity to a certain extent, especially when out in it all day, but it is much more pleasant to be out and find lots of energy for work when things are a bit cooler. It also helps the moods of some of the folks who are only here a couple of days a week!

We are off to the state fair for the day - everyone has been saying for weeks we should go, so here we go. I grew up six blocks from the Indiana State Fairgrounds and only ever went to the mid-way for elephant ears and make-you-want-to-puke carnival rides. We'll at least try to squeeze in the Fiddle Championships and a wool packing contest today at the Iowa State Fair.

Much love and cool thoughts out to everyone in the big wide world reading this!

We are still here, and still working hard. Or hardly working? Depends on the time of day, I think. ;)

This week we are harvesting:

Cabbage - red and green
Tomatoes - so many varieties!
Kohlrabi
Onions - red, yellow, and white
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Beans - yellow and green
Kale
Chard
Eggplant
Bok Choy
Maybe some other stuff that isn't coming to mind right away. It is high season on the farm!

The farm's 15th anniversary party is this Sunday, and there is lots of preparation going on. I think I'll try to write an origin story for the place before the week is out. The bugs remain bad in the meantime, and so I shall say hello and goodbye for now!