Warm February; workshop season for farmers; out-bid at the auction; voluminous record keeping; photos fill up the computer; raspberry path research; we're off to Canada to learn about farming

This week has felt quite warm for February. The high temperatures have been in the 50’s each day, with overnight lows in the high 40’s. Last week the highs were similar, but the lows were in the 20’s. We’ve had a few small showers, but not a lot of accumulated rain. The weather forecasts for next week are for similar weather, but a bit cooler and a bit wetter.

I have been busy in the two weeks since my last entry. Along with the work at the farm, I’ve attended three Livestock Advisor classes, taken a workshop on organic certification, visited with chefs and farmers at a Farmer Chef Connection meeting, and attended an auction with Chef Brian. I was holding off writing an entry here until I digested the information from all these meetings so I could share the highlights, but I’d better put that off till later.

Brian called me last week to see if I was interested in attending an equipment auction on Saturday. He was interested in several tractors, but mainly wanted to check out the cargo containers they had for sale. We have been talking about bringing containers to the farm for secure equipment storage and workspace. Brian is tired of hauling his tiller and other equipment around in his pickup and devoting a significant fraction of each work period to unloading and loading equipment. In the end, we decided that the ground is still too wet to support a trailer dropping off a container. I bid on a couple of other items, but both times the bidding went just past the limit price I had set. Brian did purchase a cut-off saw at a good price.

In the farm office, Ruth & I were happy to close the books on 2006 and send off all those tax payments on time. We’ve been doing our annual reevaluation of our record keeping systems and our project organization in QuickBooks. Up till now we have stored all our paid bills and other checks and bank records in a monthly accordion file. This year we graduated to filing alphabetically by vendor to make retrieving information more efficient. My scientific training pushes me towards keeping track of everything, just in case. However, what with growing 250+ varieties of crops and our many farm activities, I have to limit my record keeping by continually asking myself if there is a reasonable chance we will ever need the information once it is stashed away. I try to keep track of the time I spend on each of the different crops and my many other tasks, but my notes get less and less detailed as I get busier and busier and have more and more information to record.

When it comes to getting organized, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a wife who, as a professional tax practitioner and a small business accountant, is an Enrolled Agent  and a QuickBooks Pro Advisor. Carol tells me we are much better organized than most of her clients.

I’ve been working my way through a year’s worth of photos, picking out some to document the year in a 2006 scrapbook. I’ve picked out more than 300 photos and I’m not even done with October. The scrapbook will be digital, I doubt I’ll ever print out more than a few of the photos. For me taking photos is much easier than making notes, and the end product is much more enjoyable. I carry my camera with me at all times. All these photos have filled up my computer hard drive, so I’ll have to move them to a second drive.

Chris and I have continued to work on deciding on our advertising decisions for the year. We did send off our text for our Puget Sound Fresh  web page, although the website won’t be updated for a few weeks yet. Our ads will look similar to last year’s, with several refinements.

This week the crew finished up weeding the raspberries, blackberries, and Marionberries. Weeding the brambles is a big time-consumer for us, since the canes come up randomly in the row. We allow the pathway between the rows to grow up in the pasture grasses that were already growing on the farm. There are a number of reasons not to keep the paths as bare dirt. Vegetated pathways reduce soil erosion and provide habitat for many predators of possible pests. In addition, the grassy paths are much more pleasant to walk on while picking the berries. However, the grasses on the farm spread very aggressively into the rows of canes, and grasses are very difficult to eradicate by weeding without chemical herbicides. This year I’m trying an experiment to try to reduce the amount of weeding. We will be spading and tilling the paths and reseeding with new vegetation – probably a combination of clumping grasses and clover. I still have some research to do on the choices. If this experiment is successful, we will do the same in the blueberry patch and the apple orchard.

Enrique has just finished mowing the paths in the blueberry patch in preparation for pruning the bushes next week. We will still want mow the rows and around the bushes with the walk-behind mower and the string trimmers. After we finish the pruning, we will scatter some sulfur in the rows to lower the soil pH closer to the acidity favored by blueberries.

The work on closing in the new big hoophouse is coming along. We now have greenhouse plastic on the ends and are working on putting up the doors.

Luis and Enrique putting up the plastic to close off the end of our new big hoophouse.

We have covered the ends of the hoophouse with greenhouse plastic. You can see the big opening for the double doors. We have placed two ventilation louvers above the door opening. This is the south end of the hoophouse. We will place a big fan above the door in the north end to draw cooling air through the hoophouse.

Rob is back after a week and a day vacation. Carol & I will be away all next week at the convention of the North American Farm Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA). We always come back with some cool ideas for fun activities and ways to make visits to the farm more enjoyable. It’s also good to get together with farmers who are working to build similar farms. This year the meeting is in Calgary, Canada. As I write this (5:20 on Thursday, Feb. 8) the temperature in Calgary is 5 degrees F and snow is coming down. Outside my door it is 50 degrees, down from a high of 55.

While I’m gone, Ruth will attend “Rats and Mice” - the Livestock Advisor class that I will miss while I’m away. On Thursday, Rob will be attending a workshop on growing organic blueberries. I’m hoping to log in an entry or two from Canada. I guess we’ll see.

What’s playing in the Jeep CD player today? Tom Waits – Orphans