Clagett Farm Notes

Mulching with straw

Mulching, mulching and mulching. We've been doing plenty of straw mulching this week. We finished mulching the two strawberry fields and the garlic field. We are about half way done with next spring's potato field. After that we are only left with the asparagus field, which is smaller than all the others and we'll deal with it rather quickly.

Above we see Joe, Kenji and Carrie mulching the garlic field. By the way, all the straw we are using was grown at the farm.

From the straw laden wagon Dave is tossing a bale on the future potato field. Dave worked in farms in Wales, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, so he has a lot of bale tossing experience.

   

Joe and Carrie with straw mulch in the next year's potato field. It is not a common practice, but Rob Vaughn decided to hill the potato field in the fall and then to mulch it heavily to protect the shape of the hills and to deter the weeds. This will expedite potato planting next spring.

Last CSA harvest of 2005

This past Tuesday, November 8, we had our last harvest day of the 2005 season. A bittersweet day. Everyone was cheerful and our team's customary wry and irreverent humor was in good form. And yet there was a tinge of sadness, too. After all, we will not be doing this again in a while and when we resume some of us will not be around. But that's what happens every year. There is continuity even in this end of season dispersion.

 

Here we are harvesting mixed baby lettuce for our CSA shareholders. In the foreground, on the left we see Carrie being productive as always and to the right a smiling Andrea Humm is being her usual gracious self, but Dave Vernon, in the middle, is showing obvious signs of work-induced derangement (the size of the image may not show that clearly, so readers will have to trust me on that).

A view from the other side: Gail Taylor and Megan Caine with the baby lettuce. It took a comically long time to harvest this tiny lettuce. Why? Because when we seeded them we didn't expect that we would be cutting them that small--otherwise we would have them closer together for a quicker and more efficient harvest. Incidentally, cutting baby lettuce is not the only exciting experience lived by Gail and Megan. Gail recently returned from a visit to Europe. Right before Europe she had some interesting adventures in Guatemala. Megan, after studying Spanish in Ecuador, hitchhiked through several South American countries. Every once in a while during her travels the farm would receive Megan's fascinating emails. Her traveling companion was Farah Fosse, another friend of the farm who frequently volunteers here. Before we knew her, Megan also traveled to China and South East Asia.

Back to the baby lettuce. Here is a batch of it being rinsed to get it ready for the shareholders.

Dave, Andrea and Megan working on the lettuce at the wash station. Dave is new to the DC area. Shortly after his arrival this summer he found out about Clagett Farm and has been a consistent volunteer ever since. He has worked on farms in his native Wales, and lived in South Africa and Canada. As to Andrea, all season she was a Tuesday volunteer whose dedication went above and beyond the call of duty. Neither cold rain nor oppressive heat ever managed to dent her gracious and gentle humor.

During Tuesday's lunch break Kathleen Davis came by to say hello and goodbye to us--her former farm teammates. We were happy to see her! Next week she is flying to her home in Hawaii. We wish Kathleen the very best, but for selfish reasons hope to see her back. Many of you know Kathleen, especially if you were a Saturday shareholder or worksharer in 04 and 05. Few people know, however, how much the CSA benefited from Kathleen's friendly and unassuming but very capable presence.

So here we are in mid-November. There are still plenty of things to do at the farm. But the dynamics of the work are quite different and fewer hands are needed.

A record of the 25 weeks of CSA shares in 2005

A few weeks before the season's end, we put together a chart of the shares you have received.  Perhaps it will help jog your memory so you can more easily fill out your end-of-the-year survey.  Or perhaps future members can look at this document to see what they missed.  Unfortunately, it's pretty big, so you'll need to zoom a few times to see it well.  Perhaps next year we'll come up with a better format.  In the meantime, I'm going to give myself a pat on the back, because I've resolved to become a better record-keeper, and this represents a real accomplishment. 

Thanks to help from CSA member, Fred Delventhal, you can see the chart in either of two formats.  Click on one below to check it out:

Download Adobe Acrobat version: sharelog2005.pdf
Download Excel version: sharelog2005.xls

NOTE: The sharelog does not take into account the veggies that members you-picked. For a quick explanation of you-pick, read the you-pick post, immediately above this one.

Planting garlic for 2006

We are planting garlic this week. We'll probably be done today. Then we will mulch the field with a fairly thick layer of straw and wait until spring. We are using cloves of several hardneck varieties: Bogatyr, German Porcelain, Music, Marino, Nova Scotia, Red Rocambole, Killarney, and Temptress.

For the curious, a bogatyr in Russian is an heroic knight-errant. Unconfirmed rumors have it that if you eat plenty of Bogatyr garlic you will become infused with the virtues of a legendary hero. We are not sure whether Music is so named because of the special melodic qualities of this tasty variety, but we do know that it originated in Ontario, Canada.

In our minds we associate garlic planting with cool weather and sweaters. Who would have guessed that on the first day of November we would be working with short-sleeved t-shirts?

Morning action: above we see Dave Vernon dropping cloves into dibbled holes set about five inches apart, while Carrie is walking to refill her empty container with garlic cloves to plant. In addition to the volunteer work of Dave, a new DC resident who hails from the UK, we also benefitted from the great help of volunteers Andrea Humm and Pat Burke.

Late afternoon: Joe getting ready to dibble more holes (two sets of rows per hill). Megan is dropping cloves and Carrie is covering holes.

Later still: Carrie and Megan planting with brio as the sun is setting lower and lower. The long days of summer are long gone.

 

One of the benefits of working outside. This is how it looked when we were ready to go home.

Sweet potato crop

Today for the first time since the very welcome rains we were able to use our potato digger to harvest sweet potatoes. Last week the soil was too wet so instead of a tractor we used forks and elbow grease to dig out the sweet potatoes. Below we see Kenji using the potato digger on a row that was already dug out. It was a quick second pass to make sure that we didn't miss any the first time. As you can see from the photo, the second pass yielded almost nothing.

The sweet potato crop this year is a meager one, especially when compared to last year. I guess the weather had a lot to do with it. In addition, deer consumed many of the sweet potato vines, which, of course, had a major impact on our yields. In contrast to other farms, we usually do not experience much deer pressure, but this year we did. Everything is interrelated: the dry weather forced the deer to look for food in new places and, alas, they found the vines and liked them.

What to expect in the rest of your shares

Many people have wondered what remains of their share this fall, especially given these dry conditions.  Let me give you my best guess. 
    We should expect a small to moderate harvest of sweet potatoes, which we're planning to begin next week.  You will probably also get a few more butternut squash, and lots more garlic.  Your broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower survived being transplanted, but they have been very slow to grow, and the deer and groundhogs have been using them and the sweet potato greens as an emergency fuel now that the dry weather is stunting their usual clover diet.  Perhaps they will produce small heads in October, or perhaps they will wait and produce bigger ones in November--it's hard to say.  The kale and collards are doing surprisingly well under the circumstances.  Everyone should continue getting a half pound or so each week, and much more if it ever begins raining again.  They also get a bit sweeter once the first frost hits.
      Your baby mustard greens, lettuce, spinach, arugula, carrots, beets, cilantro, dill, radishes and turnips were planted in August in two fields--a small one that can be irrigated and a large one that cannot.  We have not had a soaking rain since then, so nothing has germinated in the large field.  Only a bit of arugula, baby mustards, turnips and radishes have matured in the small field, and we will be doling them out carefully to everyone in October.  In September, when our grim circumstances were becoming apparent, we tore out some poorly-producing squash and cucumbers and dug some more beds near the washing station so we could seed more greens and roots that could be irrigated.  They have all since germinated in happy abundance, but I don't think they will be ready to harvest until November.  Carrots and beets need so long to mature that it didn't make sense to replant them, so I'm sorry to say that this is going to be a carrot and beet-free fall. 
     We still have some beans, cucumbers, summer squash, peppers, eggplants and okra.  You might have noticed that these summer crops slow down their production as the weather cools (the dry weather is contributing to their slow-down, as well).  All of the summer crops die abruptly with the first frost, which usually comes in early or mid-October.  It's been unusually warm, though, so perhaps we'll keep them a little longer. 
     We have planned for your last shares to be November 8 and 12.  November 18 and 19 (the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving) will be the gleaning weekend when you can pick all you want of what remains.  I don't think we'll need to make any changes to that schedule, but we'll certainly keep you informed if we do. 
    Autumn is usually my favorite season, and the farm's most abundant one.  It saddens me to have to eek out such a small share to everyone this October.  I deeply appreciate how understanding everyone has been.  Our customers seem to be taking this dry spell in stride, and that helps me relax and keep a better perspective on the viscicitudes of farming. 

Driest September in over a 120 years

On the farm it's not news that it's still dry out there, but it was interesting to read in the Washington Post that "the Washington area experienced the driest September in more than a century, and the heat and dearth of rain have produced parched lawns, dusty schoolyards and withered gardens." The article goes on to say that according to National Weather Service data this September was drier than the one of 1884, which held the record until a few days ago. To read the whole article, go to A Bone-Dry September's Wilting Toll.

As we mentioned before, August was rather dry, too. The August rainfall at the Reagan National Airport was only 68 percent of normal, but then it was only 3 percent of normal in September. This drought (as it was already officially labeled) is having a negative effect on our crops. You will still be getting yummy veggies in your shares, just not as much as is usual at this time of the year.

Let's hope for rain this week.

Sorting garlic

Although we have several weeks of harvesting left, the coming of autumn also means that it is time to start working on next year's garlic. The preparation of the field and the planting itself will take place in a few weeks, but first we have to select our planting stock (seed garlic) and then, right before planting, we do plenty of "clove popping."

Right now we are at the seed garlic selection stage. This means that we climb into the barn loft where our garlic is stored. Then we move from variety to variety and select the largest, healthiest looking bulbs for our planting stock. The bulbs that do not make the grade are slated for food. In other words, the best garlic is planted, not eaten.

Above we see Bei up in the loft sorting German Porcelain garlic. Bei is a statistician, so we are quite confident in her sorting prowess. 

The first one on the left is Todd, who is clipping the stems of garlic destined for food. The pile of stems behind him will eventually end up in one of our compost piles. Jennie, Olivia (with her back to us) and Nina are involved in the sorting. Tyler, back on the right, is also clipping, but his bulbs are the ones that were selected as seed garlic.

Once all our garlic has been sorted, the planting stock is "clove popped." That is, the seedbulbs are broken up and separated into individuals cloves, a process that can take some time to complete. By then the field should be ready for planting. After planting the cloves, the field is covered by a fairly thick layer of straw mulch. At this point the garlic cloves are ready for a cozy winter. One of the exciting signs of early spring is to see garlic shoots poking out of the straw.    

Dry weather

The little rain we got at the farm this evening was welcome, but it was just too small of an amount to make much of a difference. August was on the dry side for us, but September turned out to be much worse. On average the farm gets about 4 inches of rain in September. Counting today's rain, we probably got less than 1/10th of an inch this month. And this is affecting our CSA crops as well as the cow pastures. The grass is not growing so the cows are not getting enough of it. This means that unless we get plenty of rain within the next couple of weeks, the cows will end up eating hay much sooner than expected. As to fresh greens, we have much less than what shareholders usually get at this time of the year. But we've been busy laying down irrigation drip tape on many of our beds, so even if the dry weather continues our production of greens should pick up substantially before the end of the season.

Winter squash

Monday last week we harvested pumpkins, this Monday we harvested winter squash. By no means all of them. There are plenty more in the fields and we even didn't touch the butternuts, of which there are many.

We would gather them in piles and then load them up on the wagon as it drove next to the piles. Incidentally, black widow spiders love to shelter in the underside of pumpkins and winter squashes. Only yesterday we flicked four of them from the squashes they were sheltering in.

 

Going to the wash station. Carrie driving the tractor and Joe riding the wagon.