Visit with Farmer Roger

Where’s all the rain?

2007-05-19T17:49:16.8760000-06:00

It’s planting season; the greenhouse is still going strong; kids touring the farm to learn about seeds; dry season starts months early this year; looking forward to weeding season.

It has been a busy two weeks since I last made an entry here. We made our first plantings of summer squash, sweet corn, winter squash, and distinctive pumpkins. We planted more lettuce, greens, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Napa cabbage, bok choi, summer squash, herbs, and flowers. We did purchase about 300 new dahlia tubers to replace the ones we lost last year. We planted the new tubers in our relocated flower garden.

Danielle has been potting up all our tomato, eggplant, and pepper plants from the tiny starting cells.

Jaime and Enrique are preparing summer squash plants for planting with the tractor-mounted mechanical planter. We have found that the planting goes a lot more smoothly if we pop the plants out of the trays beforehand, so the operator doing the planting can concentrate on watching the machine set the plants.

Our other big push last week was to get ready for the kids’ spring farm tours this week. The kids learn about seeds and how they grow, dig through bins of assorted seed, look at little plants in the greenhouse setting, examine pea seedlings that we sprouted in seedling mix and pull out to show the roots & stem, plant bean seeds in a baggie to tape to their window at home as a mini-greenhouse, and plant pumpkin seeds in a flat for us to plant out later in the pumpkin patch visited by fall farm tours. We give the group a cherry tomato plant to grow up so they can harvest and eat the tomatoes and also see the seeds they produce. They dig around in the worm bin to find adult and baby worms and worm eggs. They also meet our baby chicks and learn a bit about various breeds of chickens. They visit our ducks and pygmy goats, and meet one goat up close. They walk through the raspberries and observe the bees visiting the flowers. They visit the apple orchard to see the tiny apples and climb on a small straw-bale pyramid – usually the spot for the group photos.

After all our earlier fussing about the wet spring and getting a late start, the weather has changed to dry. April was very dry and May is holding the pattern, although it looks like we’ll get a few sprinkles this weekend. Last night we received 0.05 inches – enough to dampen the soil surface. Today have been very windy – 10+ mph all day long – so the moisture has been stripped away. The surface soil is getting powdery dry already, although there is moisture still a few inches down. Dry as it is, I’ve been seeing some slug damage on the transplants out in the fields.

Peas are up and are taking off growing nicely now. The dry weather has held the weeds back some, but they are showing up now. We did weed out the peas a few days ago. We will start weeding in earnest next week.

Next week we’ll start planting out gourds, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, & pole beans, as well as more greens, flowers, & herbs.

Today’s CD: Adiemus – Adiemus III: Dances of Time

It's already Cinco de Mayo: Preparing the farm for Opening Day in June

2007-05-05T22:56:45.0620000-06:00

The blog is back; Crew review; Presprouting peas for planting; new tool of the week – the potato plow; Brian and his 29 tomato varieties; Dahlia disaster; Hints of things past and things to come.

It is now three months since my last entry here. There’s a lot to catch up on. As the weeks passed I’ve been more and more daunted by the idea of catching up all at once. Here’s the official break with that idea – I’ll try to jam in a bit of retrospective in each entry going forward, but I’m not going to try to put it all down in one document.

So, what’s new?

We are working towards our opening week. Our first farmstand day will be Wednesday, June 13. Our opening weekend will be Fathers' Day weekend, June 16 & 17. We plan to celebrate with a tractor parade at noon each day. We'll have our four tractors, the John Deere 4710, little Kubota, the Ford 8N, and the Allis Chalmers G. We'll also have Rob's Oliver 88 and Brian's Fordson. The tractors range in age from 3 to 60 years old.

We're calling our opening weekend "First Harvest 2007: Return of the Living Vegetables."

Our main field crew remains the same as last year. Enrique, Jaime, Juan, and Luis all have been working hard to get the farm ready for another season. Rob has been training them more on equipment maintenance; Jaime & Juan have taken particularly well to that.

Luis and Juan planting peas. This year we are trying heavy twine for the pea trellis. In the last few years we used metal mesh, a lot sturdier, but also very time consuming to put up and take down.

Planting presprouted peas. Our cold wet Spring ground keeps us out of the fields until much later than we would like for planting peas. We help things along by presprouting the peas – layering them in damp seedling mix for about a week before planting out in the field. These peas were timed just right. There is a good root and the leaves are just starting to show. Even with just the root on the peas you still have to be careful and gentle – more like setting transplants than planting seeds, but the tradeoff is worthwhile. One of our renters, Famai, actually transplants 2- or 3-inch tall pea plants, so he will have a couple of weeks head start over us.

I hired Evert back to run the starts greenhouse and focus on the tomatoes, root crops, and more, to help me reduce the number of different things demanding my constant attention, which gets spread pretty thin at times.

Evert watering vegetable starts. Evert joined the farmstand crew last fall. He also gave many of the weekend hayrides. If you visited the farm in October, chances are high that you saw him there.

Danielle has become another familiar face at the farmstand, where she started mid-summer 2004. On a number of occasions Danielle has stepped forward to help out in other farm tasks. This year she has started helping out in the starts greenhouse as the tempo builds. She has been transplanting the tiny tomato, eggplant, and pepper seedlings into larger containers where they will grow for a couple more weeks before we plant them out into the field.

As the starts greenhouses fill up we are also ramping up planting in the field. In the last couple of weeks we planted out peas, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choi, Napa cabbage, lettuce, spinach, potatoes and our first herbs and flowers.

Farmer-Chef Brian Scheehser is expanding his farming efforts to support his new position as Executive Chef at the newly established restaurant, Trellis. Opening date is now set at July 15. We are growing a number of his vegetable starts this year, including two dozen each of 29 (wow!) different tomato varieties.

This year Brian used his bottom plow to dig furrows for potato planting. I agreed it was a slick idea when Brian toured me around his field. For our potato planting we have been using a furrowing attachment with our walk-behind BCS tiller, which has worked well enough, but it takes a while. The following day Bill, the Herbfarm Restaurant farmer, showed me his new potato plow, basically a large-scale furrowing attachment for the 3-point hitch of a standard tractor. I don’t have a decent photo, but if you do a search online you will find photos.

On Friday I borrowed Bill’s potato plow to plant our potatoes. Now I want one of my own. The ground preparation was much faster than we needed in years past. We cut at least of couple of hours of the overall planting time for the crew of four. Right there that’s a third of the cost of a good quality potato plow.

Here Luis, Enrique, & Jaime are cutting potatoes for planting. Looks like they are cutting the German Butterball variety - one of my favorites. Juan was on the tractor preparing the furrows for planting.

Thursday I dug up a few dahlias for the first time. This year again we lost most of the tubers during prolonged wet season. I dug up about eight plants and found that only a few little finger-sized new tubers survived. The dahlia tubers came through winter just great our first three years. Last year was the first year with major losses. At that time I figured that one out of four years was good odds compared with the cost of digging the tubers each fall and storing them over winter. Now I’m thinking that three good years in five pushes me towards decided we have to invest the time each fall digging up the tubers and storing them over the winter. Any guesses as to our weather next winter?

I'm buying 250 new tubers from Duvall Dahlias, to be delivered on Wednesday. I haven’t decided yet if we can afford the time to dig up the few little tubers left in the ground.

Now all of a sudden I’m thinking if I just had a potato plow, we could use it in the fall to bring the dahlia tubers and sweet potatoes to the surface, saving lots of harvest time.

So what’s coming up?

One of next week’s big pushes will be to prepare for our first school tours coming up the second full week of May. We’ll be starting our Jack O’ Lanterns in the starts hoophouse. We’ll be planting out our first summer squash under low tunnels. We’ll be planting greens (lots of new varieties this year) and more herbs and flowers. I’m sure there is more that is not coming to mind right now.

So what did we miss hearing about? A sampling of a few of the topics I’ll try to cover later:

The garlic seems to have come through the winter wet & flooding ok. More later.

The raspberries and blackberries look to be coming along great this year.

We completed the covering of the new big hoophouse and have been using it for the majority of the transplants. We installed a big exhaust fan, but the soggy ground has kept us from digging the trench to bring electricity to the hoophouse. We did install roll-up sidewalls, which have worked great to keep the temperature under control. Of course, you do have to manually adjust them, so as summer heats up we will need the fan for when we aren’t around. I have some photos and more to say about the starts greenhouse.

We are moving the herb and flower gardens closer to the farmstand. I think they will attract more attention there. This also allows us to focus the herb garden more on culinary herbs and move the lavender and some of the herbs elsewhere.

Two new features this year will be our greens garden and our herbal tea garden.

What’s today’s CD? Linda Ronstadt – Mi Jardin Azul: Las Canciones Favoritas

(Today is Cinco de Mayo, after all.)

There's still lots of farming going on in the middle of winter

2007-02-08T19:02:35.9560000-07:00

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

Warm weather draws out the garlic and the honeybees

2007-01-23T23:46:57.2790000-07:00

A winter weather break; early garlic sprouting; busy bees; compost turning; hoophouse upgrade; taxes, taxes, & more taxes; a packed calendar; hopeful water news; farm directories

Last week we had a snow that stayed for several days before melting off. The crew took 2 days off from work since my last entry – it was pretty cold – down to 12 degrees one morning. We saw a warming trend starting mid week. By yesterday and today the high temperatures were just reaching the 50’s. Last night the low temperature was 47 degrees.

As a result the balmy weather, we are seeing a bit more plant growth. I was happy to see that the early garlic variety was poking through the mulch fairly uniformly. The other varieties have not reached through the mulch, although I have found a few sprouts where the mulch is thin. I still can’t say how much of the garlic stand might have been smothered by high water.

Garlic sprouting through a covering of straw mulch. This year we are again trying an extra-early variety called Chinese Pink. Last year I had a complete failure with this variety. I complained to Territorial Seed, who sent me replacement garlic to try again this year.

The honeybees came out of the beehive today to take advantage of the 50 degree January temperatures.

As the weather permits, the crew has been working on turning compost and putting ends on the new big hoophouse.

Here Enrique is using the loader bucket of the John Deere tractor to turn compost on the farm. This huge pile is mostly leaves brought to us by several lawn-care crews. They collect the leaves as part of their home yard care service. They are happy to bring them to us rather than pay the dump fee. Compost is an important part of our farm plan to improve and enrich the soil.

Jaime and Luis have been working on closing the ends of the new big hoophouse. We are putting in double doors, since we will use the hoophouse as a picnic shelter in the fall, after all the plant starts have been transplanted out into the field.

Today Jaime and Luis started work on the other side of the greenhouse. I’m hoping to get the plastic up soon, but first we’ll have to pick up the plastic and fasteners from Stuebers.

January is an expensive month. I’ve been working on monthly, quarterly, and annual tax reporting and payments. We have the 943 (Social Security & Medicare), the 940 (Federal Unemployment), the L&I (worker’s comp.), the Washington unemployment, the WA B&O tax, and the sales tax payments all due by the end of the month.

We are getting close to closing the books on 2006. I’ve got a busy off-farm calendar for the next couple of months – lots of workshops, classes & meetings. Tomorrow night start I start the Livestock Advisor training. Thursday night is a workshop on organic certification.

We had our monthly business meeting a week ago Saturday. We looked more at last year’s financials, our cash flow for the next couple of months, some new ideas for 2007 and talked some about our big challenges for 2007. More on these later.

Last Thursday I went to the Agriculture Commission meeting, which had been delayed one week due to icy roads. I heard one bit of encouraging news - there may be some movement towards allowing farms to collect rainwater in ponds to use for irrigation in the dry season. This is one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense, but is politically difficult. The State of Washington claims by law that each drop of water that falls from the sky belongs to the State, which has total authority on where that drop ends up. The right to use water is a complex and contentious issue in all the western states that has become even more intractable now that salmon that rely on the quality of the water in the waterways fed by the rainfall have been listed as endangered. There is basically a first-claimed, first-served policy, although the fish can take precedence. In most places there is not enough water to go around during the summer. It does become frustrating to have so much water around in the winter that winter crops are at risk. I’d love to be able to have a field where I could dependably grow crops for sale in the winter, where the rainfall is drained into a pond that I could draw from in August when there is no rain in sight. It will take some time and effort to be sure that this kind of use does not adversely affect other water users and to make the whole idea politically possible.

I’ve been working on the farm’s entries in the Tilth Producers and the Puget Sound Fresh directories. Both are good directories that have helped folks find our farm. The Tilth Producers is an organization for sustainable and organic farmers in Washington . The Puget Sound Fresh program was started in King County , but now covers 12 counties around the Puget Sound . Both publish a paper directory, but also have websites worth visiting.

What’s playing in the Jeep CD player today? Garmarna – God’s Musicians

Snow can make it easier to see

2007-01-11T16:14:11.8630000-07:00

The first big snow of the winter; weather station struggles with the snow; caneberry pruning; sheltering equipment; photos of the chef; winter is time for farming classes

We finally got some snow this winter, about a couple of inches at the farm. It took me 45 minutes to take the 6-minute drive home last night. A number of drivers had gotten themselves tangled up on the long slope up to my neighborhood. Most of the local schools are closed today. My dentist appointment was cancelled, and the Agriculture Commission meeting was postponed for a week, so I took some time to walk around the farm and take some photos for entry in this blog.

This is the first time I’ve observed the response of the weather station to snow.

Here’s our farm weather station the morning after a snowstorm. When I looked at the records in the morning, I noticed the station had reported no precipitation for much of the storm, starting at about 5:30. The first response finally showed up a bit past 11 o’clock, after the sun had been out for a while to warm up the weather station and melt the snow in the gathering cup. I also noticed that the wind speed and directional signals stopped reporting at about 5:30 and didn’t start up again until 11. The temperature did dip down to 22 degrees by early morning, as predicted. The temperature is now hovering just below freezing.

The crew came by this morning when the temperature was still in the low 20’s. They and Rob decided not to work today. We expect the cold and snow to linger into the weekend, so they will probably not work tomorrow either.

It looks like they did finish all the raspberry and blackberry pruning and cleanup yesterday. I posted a few caneberry pruning photos last year, but I thought I’d post a couple today, since the canes and trellises show up well in the snow.

The raspberries have been pruned for the winter. This is our block of Tulameens. You can see the two sides of the trellis forming a V shape. Each year we tie the newly pruned canes to the alternate side of the V.

We prune the Marionberries and the trailing blackberries differently than the raspberries and the upright blackberries. We cut the canes long enough to bend back to the ground. The tips are pushed into the soft mulch-covered ground where they will sprout roots. We use a single post trellis system for these berries. You can see the drip line for irrigation that we have attached to the lower of the two trellis wires. The blueberries and their tall trellises are behind and to the right of the Marionberries. The apples are in the back and to the right.

We have several hoophouses devoted to equipment shelter.

The John Deere tractor sheltered under a hoophouse roof. On the left end you can see where the plastic is separated from the end arch. This is damage from the big windstorm that we haven’t yet been able to repair. Rather than replacing the entire roof plastic, Rob & I think we can get a functional repair with a patch and some special hoophouse plastic tape, but we have to wait for better conditions before using the tape. The snow is starting to melt and slide off. Rob’s workshop hoophouse is also covered with shade cloth to keep the interior temperature from spiking up, a problem on sunny days even in the winter. I’m afraid we will have to take the shade cloth off, since it holds the snow in place. The accumulation of enough heavy wet snow can collapse the metal arches, destroying the hoophouse.

Chef Brian lost all his photos from the farm when someone stole his computer from his home. I’m collecting up some of mine for him to use in marketing his new restaurant. I’m also thinking about burning a bunch more CD’s of photos to store away from the office.

I’ve been thinking more on new ventures for 2007. I signed Rob, Ruth, and myself up for some classes given by the Snohomish County Extension. I’ll write more about them as they occur.

What's playing in the Jeep CD player today? Yoshida Brothers – Yoshida Brothers III

Windy, Wet, & Warm Winter Weather

2007-01-08T18:28:47.9420000-07:00

The rain keeps on coming; wind damage accumulation; soggy garlic; closing in the big hoophouse; WWHA; vehicle expenses

The new year continues the weather trend of windy, wet, & warm (relatively warm, anyway). We are still finding fresh wind damage after storms; mostly to the plastic on the hoophouses. The more recent wind gusts are finding weaknesses left by the bigger storms. The winter rye grain we planted as a cover crop has been growing, more evidence that the weather has been warm for January. We continue to get rain at rates much higher than average. The official SeaTac rainfall through yesterday was 4.4 inches, compared with an average of 5.1 inches for the entire month of January. Our measurement at the farm is 2.4 inches for the month thus far.

The amount of standing water on the fields at the farm also testifies to the unusually heavy rains. Thus far we haven't been afflicted by the river overflow flooding that has hit other farms particularly hard this year - our farm flooding results from the fact that the rainfall we get just doesn't leave the farm very quickly. You may remember my fretting about the possibility of high water killing off last year’s garlic planting. In the end all but one variety pulled through, although I still suspect the yield was affected. This year I planted the garlic in a drier area to avoid the water logging, but once again I’m wondering what we’ll see in the garlic beds come Spring.

The garlic beds show signs of flooding. The garlic is planted in raised beds. The beds are mulched with straw for the winter. Standing water in the aisles between the rows is not great, but I am more concerned about the dark areas of straw - sign the bed was underwater. We’ll have to wait until Spring to see if the bulbs are still alive, or if they drowned.

The crew continues working on the Marionberries and raspberries, along with repairing storm damage. Rob has been purchasing the lumber and supplies to start the work on closing in the ends of the new big hoophouse. I ordered double sliding doors for each end and a couple of louvered vents for one end. When things dry out some we’ll dig a trench to the hoophouse so we can install electrical service to the hoophouse. At that point we’ll purchase a fan for ventilation.

I’ve been working with Ruth & Rob to sort out priorities. Rob is planning two weeks off – one each in January and February. Ruth & I are still nibbling away at closing out last year’s records. I did get the depreciation up to date enough that Carol can check it over.

I’ve been going over my photos and selecting out the best and the representative for 2006. In the last couple of years I have put together a digital scrapbook for the year. So far they have only been shown at our annual business meeting.

On Thursday I went to the Western Washington Horticultural Association meeting where I attended the sessions on soils. I still need to digest the information, but I know I’ll be using some of it in the coming year.

We got back both the John Deere tractor and the flatbed truck on Thursday, along with bills for repairs totaling over a couple thousand dollars. The tractor now sports a new starter. The majority of the expense for the truck was replacing the motors for the electric windows.

The weather forecast is for snow and freezing temperatures later this week. We’ll see how much we can get finished off. We still have a fair amount of work to do to close out the books and records for 2006, but we’re getting close to the point that I can start pinning down numbers to a budget for 2007. I still have some mental logjams to break through on deciding on new projects for the year, but whatever we do, it will be exciting.

What's playing in the Jeep CD player today? Los Lobos – The Ride

“Root” and “canal” are both farm terms, but a “root canal” brings farming to a standstill

2006-12-31T00:19:20.4730000-07:00

New Year’s Eve, federal cider regulators, Nov-Dec retrospective, blackberry and raspberry pruning, the Oliver 88, garlic planting, record rains, snow storm, tractor and truck woes

We’ve reached the end of the year, so this is my last chance to catch up on all my entries for the year. We’ll see if I can’t do better at keeping up in 2007. It was a beautiful sunny day today, rare for this time of year. All in all a good optimistic tie up for 2006.

Yesterday we stopped by Minea Farm for some Pink Lady cider. Lee broke the news that they would no longer be selling us cider to sell by the glass at our farm. The state regulators are fine with the Mineas’ operation as it is, but the federal regulators are forcing changes. They justify their involvement with the Mineas due to their involvement in interstate commerce – their spiced cider includes cinnamon and nutmeg that are not grown in the state of Washington . The Mineas will continue their retail operation, but will no longer make wholesale sales. Another case where regulations put in place to control the giant national “food manufacturing” corporations drive the small, local, high-quality operations out of the business.

There’s not a lot of new farm news since my last entry. The crew is just about done with the Marionberry pruning. I covered blackberry and raspberry pruning quite bit in last year’s entries. If you are interested in details, you can search the entries.

Ruth & I are still working on the records. There’s still a lot to do, but I’m hoping to close the books on 2006 by mid January.

Here’s some notes from the gap I never covered in the blog entries.

Nov 8 - 14

This time was spent mostly on getting the farm ready for winter. We pulled the ground cover plastic from the fields, bundled up the row cover, started winterizing the hoophouses, collected the hoses, sprinklers & other irrigation stuff, shredded leaves for mulch, and spread and tilled in winter rye grain as a winter cover crop.

Rob was excited that he finally got his Oliver 88 tractor into use.

Rob’s Oliver 88 tractor: Here the tractor is put into use pulling the trailer. There is still a considerable amount of work, but the tractor is up and going. Rob says it pulls and maneuvers powerfully through our sodden roads where we haven’t dared to drive a car or truck for weeks and in places we even avoid with the John Deere.

This was the week the first 2007 seed catalog showed up in the mail.

Nov 15 - 26

Most of this time was spent continuing the same tasks of the prior week.

We planted garlic on November 16, two weeks later than my target.

We plant garlic in raised beds. We form the beds with a tractor-mounted bed former, but we have to plant by hand. The dibbler speeds up the process significantly.

We received record-breaking amounts of rain during the first half of November.

A sun break from the rain. Large areas of the fields were covered with sheets of water accumulated during the record rainfall of November.

We started pruning the blackberries the week of Thanksgiving. We took off Thanksgiving and Friday.

Nov 27 – Dec 3

On Monday the crew did some digging on the irrigation system. Rob has some plans to improve flow and pressure. They mostly worked on winterizing the flower garden. They pruned back perennials and mulched the dahlia beds with a thick layer of straw. The crew was scheduled to make significant progress on pruning the blackberries and raspberries this week. Monday evening a snow storm came in. On Tuesday and Wednesday the temperature in the morning was 20 degrees, so the crew stayed home. On Thursday and Friday it was not quite as cold, but even so Rob had them work on other tasks such as moving our remaining good straw bales into storage, clearing away the rain-sodden straw play pyramid at the Ranch, and hanging the bundles of row cover. Last year the mice got into and nested in the row cover during the winter, destroying several sheets. I’m hoping that hanging the bundles from the hoophouse arches will keep the mice out.

I managed to avoid most of the snow and cold. Monday evening Carol and I flew off to Las Vegas for a three day trip. Carol had several training meetings to attend and I went along for the ride. We were delayed quite a few hours on the way out due to the snow storm – Carol had one hour of sleep before she had to head out for her meeting.

On Friday we had our end of year lunch with the crew. As usual, they chose a Mexican restaurant. Friday was Juan’s last day until next season. He is heading back to Mexico to visit family – and escape the cold.

On Sunday we held our annual tea with the farmstead and education staff. In prior years we had met at the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle . This year to shorten the drive time we chose the Peach Tree Tea Room in Bothell. We did enjoy the tea at the Peach Tree, but decided it would be more fun to move the event to a new tearoom each year. There was some interest in forming a committee to visit candidate tearooms to make a recommendation for next year.

Dec 4 – 10

I pretty much lost this week to a root canal done on a neglected tooth. I spent several days pretty much drugged out. On Saturday we had our monthly business meeting. I was short on details, I did pull enough together to review the highlights of the year. I’ll try to put together an overview for an entry in January.

The crew spent most of the week pruning raspberries. We are pulling out 5 rows that are showing some root rot damage. Around here it is expected to show up in the 7^th to 10^th year, so I guess we’re on schedule. I have a scheme for a crop to alternate with the raspberries, but I need to work on convincing myself that this particular crop makes business sense. It would be a wonderful addition to the landscape and I know our visitors would love it, but it has to work financially also.

Dec 11 - 14

This week was spent almost entirely on raspberry pruning. I mentioned in my Dec 18 entry that the John Deere tractor was in the shop with an electrical problem. Monday Dec. 11 was the day it stopped starting. We did get it back last week, but the problem wasn’t really fixed for good. Apparently the starting problem was created by a different short.

I also neglected to mention in my last entry that the flatbed truck needs work. Enrique told Rob that the power steering fluid was dropping rapidly. On investigation, Rob discovered the power steering pump was missing two bolts. Since the Ford shop replaced the pump a few months ago, they agreed to take care of it. Rob & I dropped the truck off on Friday before Christmas. We’ll pick it up next week.

The big windstorm came in on the evening of Thursday, Dec 14. I covered the storm and the aftermath in my last two entries.

Concluding the year:

So, here we are, racing the clock to get this entry finished and logged in while it is still 2006. Where would we be without deadlines? There are many events, thoughts, and pontifications I didn’t manage to get entered in the blog this year, but once in a while I have to get some farming done so I have stuff to write about.

Here’s to 2006, a great year. May 2007 be even better!

What's playing in the Jeep CD player today? Clatter Bone – With a Twisted Grin