Motherless dog

I better start out, before I tell you the story about the poor orphaned dog,  the one with the excellent blood line.

One of those pedigrees that seem to go back to the beginning of time.  One of those things with generation after generation  of ancestors with names like 'King Mighty Dog' and 'Prince Bigger and Better than Anyone Else'. (not to mention 'Queen Loud and Very Ferocious').

Only  somehow, somewhere along the line our high born dog went astray and instead of being carried
around in one of those boxes,  or maybe they're called carts.

Anyway,  you've no doubt seen them in movies.  Those things that some important person climbs into and the four servants  hoisting it up, important person and all, with a wave of a hand, set off down the road.

And if its a woman inside the box,  she pulls back the curtain and makes eye contact with some handsome knight or something in disguise in the crowd.

Well, our poor orphaned dog has a lot in common with the woman being carried around inside the box.  They both have those bloodlines.  Long Pedigrees.

But before I overdo it way to much and before I tell you about the dogs adopted mother,  you'll see her if you come out to the farm.  That large Kabota  tractor.  But before I tell you about his relationship with his adopted mother the farm tractor.  let's do something important.

The more or less weekly Open Farm, Tour and Egg Giveaway!

Saturday March 10th (that's tomorrow)  as usual  11-1 or even 2 if you can't get here earlier.

Requirements.  This isn't mandatory but could you please bring all the egg cartons you can get your hands on.  We are now out of cartons and are having to resort to storing eggs in buckets.  (think what that does to the eggs on the bottom).

What else can you do at the farm besides get eggs?

Of course you can collect eggs.  We'll leave all of the eggs that are layed after noon today in the nests so there will be plenty of eggs to collect from right under the hens.

Tours.  If you haven't been out yet it will be a nice day (in the 50's) for a walk around the farm while I play show and tell and answer any questions you might have about the farm,  the vegetables,  the CSA.   What's it mean to be a shareholder.

Things  of note that are happening on the farm right now.

Such as:

The seedlings.  All of the heated tables inside our greenhouse are now full of flats with many seedlings already up and growing.

My guess without actually getting up from the computer and walking up to the greenhouse and counting is that we've planted about 40,000 seeds in 800 flats.  That means we're over half way there.  We've started the first go-round of things like broccoli, cabbage cauliflower, lettuce, arugula, mustard pack choi  and other plants like them with second  and maybe thirds to go (we're talking spring plantings).

We've also started most of the tomatoes. Besides five varieties the expensive greenhouse tomato seeds we've started maybe a dozen other varieties, a mixture of heirlooms brandywines to those tasty orange cherry tomatoes called sun gold.

This year we've spent a lot of time and money choosing  a number of recommended bell peppers for growing inside hoophouses as well as out in the field  (when you go to the grocery store and see all of *  those almost universally are grown in hoops and heated greenhouse.

And speaking of hoophouse peppers and particularly those brightly colored peppers you've seen in the grocery store I might as well meander a little and give you a some brightly colored bell pepper facts and trivia.

One year while driving around Sicily, Along the southern coast we passed literally thousands of hoophouses.

Many of them handmade by bending  some sort of pliable limb or vines to make the supporting ribs over which was put long sheets of greenhouse plastic.

Several times we stopped and jumped the fence to see what was growing inside.

What we found were huge pepper plants (I didn't know it then but peppers if grown in a warm climate are perennial and will live for many years producing fruit every year.

The plants in Sicily  were bearing large bells that had reached the stage where the green fruit begins to turn colors..

Brightly colored orange, red and yellow peppers.

Destined, no doubt, for the markets of the other EU countries and maybe even for US grocery chains.

Hopefully, this year, instead of getting bells that have been flown halfway around the globe, as they do, passing just a few hundred miles south of Greenland on their way to the shelves of Wholefoods or, these days, Walmart.

(several times, when flying home from Europe, I've looked out the window and seen the southern tip of Greenland almost right below the plane's right wing. . I imagine vegetables fly the same route to he US as people do).

Hopefully, this year,  instead of buying colored bells that were grown in Sicily or down in the Peloponnese  (just before the Greek economy fell through the floor) we  toured ruins, and took our rental car over dirt roads that weaved over mountains and several times while stopping to let goat herds complete with boys herding them and guardian dogs, just like our two great Pyrenees, we got out of the rental and looked at hoop houses full of colorful bells.

This year, hopefully, instead of your bell peppers coming to you via the airspace over Greenland we'll grow them right here at home.

(what does a bell pepper, anyway, need with all those frequent flier miles, especially since, with the new rules, they are not transferable).

And seeing the clock, I better finish this newsletter up and get it out to you or no one will be coming out with their own cartons to collect eggs Saturday.

So if you do  (come to the farm tomorrow) that dog, the one that's standing back a few dozen yards and barking.   (don't worry about him,  he wouldn't even dream of hurting a person.  he's actually a real sweet heart and if you stayed around long enough he would finally wag his tail and slowly, getting closer  and closer, would manage to get close enough that he could reach out his head with the hope that you would pet him, or maybe just scratch him behind the ears.

He'd really like that.

And if you come out to the farm, if you want I'll tell you about him and tractors.  Actually, about him and one particular tractor.  our larger Kabota.  And how he's, kind of, bonded with it.  At night, he'll be out there with the tractor.  No matter where we park it.

He'll be there.  Not sleeping.  But protecting.

JC,  that's what the woman at the rescue society/orphanage named him,  spends his nights with that tractor.

Protecting it from harm.  Watching over it.  Just like those livestock guardian dogs we saw in Greece acted towards their goats.

But maybe more on that next week.  The dog with the adopted tractor.

Or something like that.

Leigh

lightning strikes again

I was up and about first thing this morning, driving 10-20 miles to the south of our farm take care of some  chores and  everywhere were daffodils.

Blooming.

Full blooms.  Bright yellow.

And this is only March 2nd.

I know the USDA moved the hardiness zones up half a zone  (last year the farm was in a 6B zone and now we're in a 7a )

But still, daffodils blooming on the second day of March?

For all of the renewing shareholders out there, remember how we ended up starting the season a week earlier than usual because the vegetables were coming ripe a week earlier?  Well I think I will be doing that again this year only lets plan on it rather than letting it surprise us.  We'll start vegetable deliveries on the week starting June 4th rather than the next week like we normally would.  (don't worry about remembering that now, I'll be reminding you a number of times as we get closer to the first delivery).

Other things that have been happening out here?

We started seedlings this past week and many of the seeds are already germinating.  A rough guess is we've put between 30,000 and 35,000 seeds into flats.  That's about half way to what we will plant.

So far, some of the seeds we've started are: tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, kohlrabi, Italian basil, Thai basil, lemon basil, chives, oregano, thyme, sweet marjoram, tarragon, collards, kale, Swiss Chard, several mustards, tomatillos, endive, ground cherries, gooseberries  (not the perennial bush but an annual that looks like a large ground cherry) and probably a good dozen others that I'm forgetting.

We'll be transplanting most of the greens we've started already in a hoophouse as soon as they are large enough.

We'll be filling the two large high tunnels with tomatoes and taking four of the narrower tunnels  for hot peppers, bell peppers, eggplants and cucumbers as a way to extend their season.

I've been also looking into building a dozen or so raised beds as a place to grow vegetables like carrots that we've had problems with in the past.

Renewing for 2012.  If  you were a past shareholder and want to sign up for this year you should send me an e-mail soon to reserve yourself a spot.

Mushrooms.   We talked about something like a mushroom share at the end of the 2011 season and a significant number of people wrote back saying they were interested.  This is a note to say,  'I haven't forgotten.'  I have been doing research trying to figure out the logistics.  When I decide whether its worth the effort to go forward I'll put a notice in the newsletter giving a description of what the program will look like.  Right now I'm leaning to limiting it to just shiitakes this first year simply because I have experience growing those and unlike the other mushrooms Virginia is known to have an ideal shiitake climate.  After the first year, when I feel confident that I've mastered shiitakes I'll begin to add other mushrooms.

Though I have not yet made the move into investing in supplies and spoor.  But once I have a good grip on what its going to cost, I'll  put out a notice that will give those with interest in it an idea of the scope of this year's program and you can decide then if its something you want to sign up for.

Open house with free eggs for shareholders.  Saturday  11-1 as usual. While we have started selling them at $2 a dozen to non-shareholders they are free to all of you 2012 shareholders and to everyone that had an egg share last year.  I'll also show you around, give you a sort of orientation to the farm and answer any questions you have.

Be advised though. there's a prediction for an 80% chance of thunderstorms Saturday.  I know, living in the city, thunderstorms don't seem to be that big of a deal.

How many people have  been struck by lightning while strolling down K street?  Or for that matter,  Over on Quaker Lane in Alexandria?  Lightning doesn't seem to be all that dangerous in the city, or the suburbs.

Out here. though,  its a different matter.  Without all of those tall buildings equipped with lightning roods on their roofs lightning storms are dangerous.

Example - It was the first year we lived here.

1984, I think.

Back then I was a high school teacher and because I didn't have the  money to buy a  tractor and the fields and yard  around what then was an old farm house in serious disrepair.  I had read somewhere that goats did a great job eating weeds and cleaning fields.

So I looked in the local paper and found an ad for goats and ended up buying three  at $75 each which was about all I could afford back then.

The article was right about goats eating weeds.  As soon as I let them loose they started mowing down the weeds in the overgrown field in front of the house.

Unfortunately, though,  the article was more noteworthy for the things it had omitted about goats than they facts it had included.

One of the things the article didn't mention was that goats eat a lot more than just weeds.

 Goats eat just about anything, but they will go out of their way to eat certain plants while barely nibbling on others.

In fact if you were going to draw up a chart with the plants and trees goats really liked to eat at the top and the ones they only nibbled at the bottom it would look a lot a list  you had drawn up with the plants and trees you liked the most at the top and the ones you didn't like at the bottom.

Only, with your list the ones at the top would be plants we'd like to keep around.  Our list would start with flowers and plants that are nice to look at.  Or maybe trees that have some intrinsic value.  They produce fruit, shade.  Are pleasing to look at .

With goats the plants at the top would be the ones they eat.  (actually the term should be - kill).  The top of the list would be plants they kill quickly and the bottom ones they might just happened to nibble on as they happened to walk by.

That's why I was up in the far end of the field.  Repairing a fence.

(I didn't mention, yet, that goats also have an amazing ability to escape from even the best fence as long as there was a plant from the top of your list located, say, within a mile.

I had caught the goats down in my newly planted vegetable garden sampling the just emerged onions and had hauled them back up,  opened the gate to the newly encircled goat pasture, and got them through the gate when they quickly ran back over to the hole they had torn and were out again.

The next time I caught them, hauled them through the gate I beat them to the hole and started repairing it.

I was busy when the first roar of thunder echoed down the mountain side.

One moment its a beautiful sunny summer afternoon with a deep blue sky and the next was covered with threatening clouds and the goats were gone.

They had enough sense to retreat to their shelter.

Growing up in Arlington I can't remember anyone I ever knew getting struck by lightning.  Or coming close to getting struck.

So I kept on working.

Sure it was going to rain,  but what was getting wet compared to having to chase down those goats again.

The next thing I knew there was an explosion.

No more then ten yards away,  where there had been a hundred foot tall poplar tree something happened.

I looked up as spears of splintered poplar tree started raining on the ground around me.  Some of them sticking point down as if they had been thrown.

The top half of the tree was gone. and the bottom half was smoking.

It took me only a few seconds to digest what had happened.

I didn't even bother to pick up my tools.  I made a run straight for the house and if lightning struck again before I got there I was too preoccupied to notice.

And I guess the moral of that story, the practical lesson,  if we're having thunderstorms tomorrow before noon.  lets' not come out.  The eggs will keep in our refrigerators until the following week.

Leigh

As Dorthy passed overhead

Finally, a newsletter finished before Friday afternoon.

First -- open house again this Saturday.  Usual time  11-1. This weekend there will be  free eggs for everyone that comes out.

Besides free eggs we'll be doing our usual.  Taking the kids (and those who are kids at heart) into the chicken houses and gathering eggs.

 For the new shareholders (and anyone else who wants to hear me) I'll be giving the usual tour and talk about our farm and CSA.

Of course there is the offer of a walk or hike.

 I'll show you the various trails and gravel roads and maybe even leading a 4 or 5 mile hike down the valley towards the remains of Beverly Mill or to that quarry where they had that day long skirmish/battle back in 1862

(that quarry is the same place where, a few years back when hiking with some shareholders a 500+ pound black bear  rambled past us going in the direction we'd just come from.

When he got parallel to us, less than 20 yards away, he stopped, stood up on his hind legs (at least 7 feet tall) and sniffed the air.

Apparently not detecting us, he dropped back down and continued rambling in the same direction.,  I even had time to snap a couple pictures that are up on the webpage.

Other farm news.

A couple Saturday's ago, with our weather station clocking the wind in front of our house  at 39 miles per hour, (we're at 800 feet) we could hear a deafening roar up above us and when I looked I could have sworn I saw Dorothy's house in those thick clouds that were pouring over the ridge to the North-east (1100 feet) of us and then disappearing over the crest of Highpoint  (that's 1319 feet) to the west.

She must have been on her way back to Kansas.

I don't know what the wind speed is up there (I've been waiting for an owner of one of the half dozen 5000 or so square foot houses that have been built up there in the last decade, to get a weather station and then register its readings with wunderground.com so I can follow it on the internet and compare it with the weather we get down here in the valley.

Here's a sense of how it is up there, though. A few years back we were friends with a couple that built the large log house right on top above Hopewell Gap.  They said that when the wind blew like that,  when it blew so loud we'd hear a roaring donw on the bottom of the mountain,  they would have to batten down all of their doors and windows and hide in an interior room.

They said that during one of those wind storms,  not only could they hear the wind roaring as it cleared the mountain top but even with the shutters pulled and the windows bolted the house would fill with sand and dust.

They have since moved off the mountain  and the long house I think, is being rented out.

But back to the wind.

This happened, the Northeaster, to be at the same time we were getting ready to replace the greenhouse plastic on the large heated greenhouse.

Before we could put on the new  four year plastic the old sheets were taken off and left up in the woods leaving the greenhouses metal frame standing naked.

The new plastic arrived later that week in the afternoon when there was no wind so we quickly unrolled it and tying rope to two corners pulled it over the top and just before dark temporarily attached it.

The next morning just before we set about attaching it right another wind started out of the North East and at 9:10 the plastic ripped off and flew up into the woods.

We spent most of that day  putting it back on and this time attaching it so it wouldn't blow off.

Now that the greenhouse is up we've been busy starting seedlings

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant for the  hoophouses.***

***(As you probably know, we use hoophouses as season extenders. As a way of being able to grow and harvest these vegetables earlier than the ones that grow out in the field).

The greens we are starting now are also destined to grow inside.  this time so you can come out to the farm before the delivery season begins and harvest greens to take home.

Besides several varieties of lettuce we've started Swiss Chard, arugula, mustards, kale and collards.

We've also started a number of herbs herbs and several varieties of flowers that we'll be transplanting into 4 inch pots to give as part of the share during the season.

We've also started broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower in time to transplant in mid April so they will be ready for the June shares.  In the next several weeks we'll also be starting pac choi for June and then everything else that we gets planted in the field as a seedling rather than a seed..

One of the most often asked questions.  What are you growing that's new?

Last night I ordered seeds for half a dozen Asian vegetables I don't usually grow. Asian cucumbers. Japanese sweet peppers, edamame and two new varieties of bitter melon (yes, I know, not everyone likes bitter melon but we're trying several varieties that are popular and not as 'bitter' as the one we grew last year).

Soon we'll be planting a field of peas.  The problem with peas they ripen before the shares are ready.  This year we intend to grow them as a spring pick your own.  Something people can come out to the farm in May and pick.

Last year we didn't grow very much fennel. This year I've bought enough seed for everyone to have several weeks worth.

This year we'll be growing cucumbers inside so there will be more cucumbers and earlier than in the past.

More kale and collards than in the past.

Do you have any other ideas?

So far I've put in seed orders with over half a dozen seed companies spending, I don't know how many thousand dollars.

I imagine that by mid March we will have seedlings growing on just about every available flat surface in the heated greenhouse  (its 32 feet wide by 96 feet long).

Usually, that's in the neighborhood of 70,000 seedlings.

In early may we'll have our annual seedling day where we give away as part of the share just about 10,000 of those plants to our shareholders.  Is there a flower or herb you would like to plant in your yard or window box?

Anyway,  while Saturday is not supposed to be as nice as it is today come on out anyway.  It will still be nice when considering the usual weather for this time of the year.  See what's going on, gets some eggs and maybe go for a walk.ß

Leigh

Attack of the 7 ft tall 600 lb black bear.... Or protecting yourself with a flashlight a running shoe and a loud voice.

The attack of the seven foot tall, 600 pound black bear

or

Armed only with a flashlight, a pair of running shoes and a loud voice

How to protect your beehives from a large bear.

It was 3 in the morning when I finally woke up.  I think the dog had been barking for a while but in my sleep I had been ignoring him.

However, for the past five minutes  the barking had become more insistent  and more terrified.

So I was awake now, and dressed and looking around for my boots. which , of course weren't there, so I put the nearest things on my feet and was walking up the hill carrying a flashlight.

I went past the beehives, turned over and partly dismantled.  I could see bees flying around confused in the light and that's when I saw him.

Silhouetted by the flashlight.   A huge black bear.

Taller than I am. And heavy.  A lot heavier.  Maybe three times my weight.

A combination of the dog with is teeth bared and the shock of the flash light and the bear had run out of the apiary and was climbing an old oak tree --

I lost sight of him for a moment and was standing there, almost under the tree, shining the light up in the leaves and branches and for a moment, there he was, out on a limb,  about 20 feet up in the air.

and then,

there was a crash and something falling

 and standing their facing me, not ten feet away was the bear.

And how about I stop right there and talk about the farm news.

The first thing on the list is this weekend's gleaning.

Gleaning!   Starting at 10:30.  This is for 2011 shareholders only (now, if you want to sign up for 2012 I think we'll let you in, write me).    If you haven't been out in the past this is just about as popular as the seedling give away.  The gleaning is when shareholders can come out to the farm and roam through the fields and harvest the vegetables that are still out there.

How should you dress for gleaning?  We had almost two inches of rain on Wednesday and just under three inches last week  (more rain in the last ten days than we had for the previous four months). so wear shoes that can take walking in muddy fields.

What should you bring?  something to put your gleanings in to. Maybe the farm tote bag.  Maybe something larger.

Maybe a lunch.  We'll keep the gleaning open until most of the vegetables are picked.  That should be around  one or two.

What vegetables are still in the field?

We have a lot of greens.  Several types of lettuce as well as rows of mizuna, arugula and mustard

There are lots and lots of those blue string beans

All sorts of peppers.

Half a dozen varieties of eggplant.

a hoophouse with some tomatoes,

another hoophouse with young cucumbers.

a few okra, Thai basil, some Italian basil. parsley. I doubt if there are many sweet potatoes.  And there might be a few other vegetables besides the horseradish and  root crops that shouldn't be harvested until the first hard frost because they won't have any flavor until then.

Other news                                                                                     

Renewing for 2012-  If you have renewed and sent in your check for half the amount but have not picked up your comb honey I will have it at the farm.  Remember, right now and through the end of the month we will continue with the annual  'renew now and get the next year's share at this year's price.'

Details  I've said this before but here it is again.  The early sign up at 2011 prices works this way.  Tell me you want in the program now and send me the first half payment by the end of the month.  (I'll make that, like I usually do, the middle of November).  The other half is due in May of 2012.

This year we have a bonus for the first 70 signing up early.  A container of comb honey.

Right now it looks like I have 25 containers of comb honey left.  this includes the people who have signed up but not sent their checks or not picked up the honey.   If you haven't got your honey yet, see me Saturday.  (I will not be mailing or otherwise shipping the honey.  To get it you have to get it from me).

If the early sign up isn't for you.  If you haven't made up your mind about 2012 yet. or you might move, or have that large garden you've been promising yourself, I will also  take renewals in the spring.  Of course then they will be paying the 2012 prices, whatever they might be  (I'll decide over the winter and post them in late January).

Eggs.  We'll give out eggs this weekend to 2011 egg shareholders on a first come first serve basis.  After the egg share people have  taken their eggs then we'll give them to gleaners in general.  If you want your kids (or the kid in you) to collect eggs from the chicken house we'll be doing that in the afternoon.

Extra share.  If you missed a week or were eligible for  the extra week's share and didn't get double vegetables last week we will pick a dozen shares and set them aside.  See me for a share if you are eligible.

Apple cider -  for the people signed up we'll start making cider at about 11:30 (give me enough time to get the gleaners on the right track)  I still have to track down another half dozen bushels of cider apples but if you are signed up for cider making this weekend I will have a bushel of apples for you.

And now we can return to the bear.

The bear and I are staring at each other not ten feet apart.

Its dark,

and wet,

and windy

And before the bear could realize that he was three times my size and before I could think civilized type of thoughts, the sort of thoughts you think if people are standing around..

as in-  'I'm coming up out of the metro and up at the top of the escalator I run into a large black bear.  What do I do?'

Since I wasn't near a metro or a cop or anyone else I reacted completely different  than I would if I had.

I looked out for a weapon and not seeing anything I did the only thing I could.

I let out the loudest roar my lungs were capable of.

A sound that wasn't a scream, or a yell or a holler.

A roar.  Something from way back when humans did run into bears or other large animals alone in the forest.

And sound that was something else.

And it must have been because the bear. did not reach over and give me a little tap on the head that would have sent me flying twenty yards down the hill.

Instead, without hesitating, he turned and took off...

and ran for everything he was worth,

ran as hard as it could, as fast as it could.

And was gone into the night.

Soon I heard it crashing into the back gate.  I guess trying to knock it over.  trying to knock over the gate it most likely had previously climbed over or slipped around.

And since the gate didn't give

It began to claw and rip at the double plastic fence  that surrounds the farm.

Pulling at it and heaving up against it until it broke and he was through the inside fence and then tearing at the outside one.

and finally it was through that and  for the next five minutes I could hear it running.   At first madly through the underbrush and trees and then softly, off in the distance until gradually the sound of it escaping disappearing further and further into the wet, and still dark,

early morning,

forest.

Other farm news.  I did see the bear one more time.  It was the next night.

I had spent most of Saturday putting an electric fence around the beehives  so when the bear came back that night the fence must have worked because he left the beehives alone and instead went down to the van where I had several bushels of apples just sitting out.

  Just after midnight the dogs started barking  and when I went out there he was with a turned over bushel of apples.  Stuffing apples in his mouth two bites per apple.

When he saw the flashlight,  though, he got up and ran.

Not as fast as the night before.
But I watched him run around the side of the store house and disappear into the forest and (the fence hadn't been fixed yet) through the hole it had made the night before and disappeared into the forest that runs uninterrupted for three miles down to the mill and Interstate 66 at Thoroughfare Gap.

There's plenty of room down that way for him to have found a place to nap for the winter.

And I hope he has.

Since then I haven't  heard from him and the beehives have been left alone.  And hopefully, that's the way it will be out here on the farm for the rest of the winter.

Uneventful.

See you Saturday and then after that, in the spring.  Thank you for sharing this last vegetable season with me.

Leigh

Chickens and the Hawks

It's time to go out and lock up the chickens. Not only do I leave the electric fence - a woven fence, one that looks like its made out of cloth but each strand has little pieces of wire in the thread so when you touch it you are coming in contact with an electrical current. On one end an electric wire is connected to all of the woven wire and the electric wire runs along the ground up to the wood shed where plugged into an electric socket is an electric fence energizer. Anything that touches the fence while touching the ground receives an electric shock! ZAP! BUZZZZ! and then it lets go for two seconds. No shock Before switching back on again. BUZZZ. ZAP! Again it turns off. And again it turns on. BUZZ! Which is great for coyotes, or dogs, or fozes (I've seen skunks, though, carefully, using their front paws like hands lift up the bottom strand. thge bottom strand isn't electrified. It might rest on the ground and 'ground' out the fence. The skunk carefully reached in, picked up the bottom strand and scoot underneath. Not getting a shock. But how about a bird, an owl. landing on the top of the fence? Just like those birds on a wire, there's no ground. They don't get a shock. The fence doesn't work. At least the electric part of it. So who gets thorough the fence, when its on, and eat our wonderful sweet, deer pullets? Easy answer... A critter than goes through the fence without touching it. And who is that? Its not a skunk. Skunks would love to eat a chicken but they really can't do it. They aren 't fast enough. with big enough or sharp enough teeth. And while some of my neighbors might be able to out smart the fence I don't think any of them likes, much to butcher a chicken. THe idea of wringing a chickens neck and plucking all thowse feathers doesn't strike me as something

skunks in the eggs

What would you do if a skunk was in your front yard and wouldn't leave?

Or, how about,  you're coming home from work  and you turn at your apartment building and sitting up there at the top of the steps, just resting, is a skunk.

Not a large skunk,  but still,  a skunk.

And as you watch, her tail looks like its rising just a little bit  (of course you know,  a skunk lets out her stream of spray when she fully extends her tail straight up).

Or how about this...

As you walk up the steps to your building, there it is, the skunk.

She's standing, facing the door,  as though she's looking at her reflection in the glass,  her tail fully extended and her rear aimed right in your direction.

Or its kind of like that 'what's worse than finding a worm in your apple?' joke.

Instead of watching where your feet are going, you are thinking about something else, maybe its something that didn't get turned in on time at work, and then, belatedly, you look down and there's that skunk, with her rear facing right at you and her tail high in the air.

That's how it was for our new dog, JC (John Calhoun), sort of like that youtube video that's been making the rounds.

A stream of spray shoots out, aimed right at his eyes.

But before I tell you how we stopped the skunk from chasing down the poor pullets and eating all of your eggs, let's go through a highlight of the farm news.But first let's go through the farm news.

End of the vegetable season.

The season ends in two weeks.  Officially, the last week is October 14th.

However,  for the people that missed the first week, and for a number of  other number of other people we are going one more week.

I have a list of people getting that extra week and I'll  send you out a notice, in fact I'm leaning towards letting everyone pick up that extra week.

I'll write more about that next week.

Early sign up for 2012 at 2011 price.

This is the time of year we start signing up people for the 2012 season.

If you sign up for 2012 now you get your share at the 2011 price plus, like signing up to be a member of public radio this year we're giving a premium.

For the first 70 people who sign up early we'll also throw in a free pound of local comb honey.  (that's honey still in the honey comb).

Here's how it works.

E-mail me before the end of the season saying you are going to renew. for 2012.  Say what size share you're signing up for:

a one person share for $440
a two person share for $587

Then pay me half of that by the end of the season. ($220 of a one person and $293.50 for the two person).

Renewing shareholders will get the 20th week of vegetables this year  and the first 70 will get a pound of comb honey  (the comb honey isn't coming from me,  you have to put special honeycomb foundation in your beehives, but it is coming from another local bee keeper.  I came up with the number 70 because right now that's what he has left).

Apple cider.

We'll be doing apple cider again this year, starting this Saturday. A couple years ago I bought a cider press  and at the end of the season we've been having shareholders out to make their own apple cider.

If you are interested you need to sign up. (this is only open to our 2011 shareholders)

Five people this Saturday, October 1st, between 11 and 1.  Ten  next Saturday. (October 8th).  October 15th.  and the finally weekend October 22.

You can bring your own bushel of apples but I also will be providing them  (I'm buying cider apples--  you reimburse me.  depending on the apples either $10 or $15 a bushel.

A bushel of apples makes between 2 and 2.9 gallons of cider.  You'll also need to bring your own containers.  When you sign up I'll send you details.

Another premium for people who renew early,  They get to jump to the front of the cider line.


Gleaning. (2011 shareholders only)

This year's gleanings and last shareholder get together will be on Saturday October 22.  Gleaning is when shareholders come out and pick the vegetables still out in the fields.  More information about that coming up in a couple weeks.

You pick raspberries.

If you remember back to the beginning of the season you might remember  the raspberry patch I was planting.  Well after all these months the plants are starting to produce.  If you want to come out this weekend between  11 and 1 you can pick some.

Which brings us back to skunks.

Or in this case one skunk weighing in at about three pounds..

Now that the three pound skunk had removed the 150 pound guard dog from its path, it headed                                                  down the hill to the chicken pasture where several dozen chicken eggs were not unguarded.

So here's the picture.

A  little three pound skunk waddling along the path,  Followed, at a safe distance, by three grown men and one rather smelly dog.

And the question we were all thinking--

How do you stop a skunk without getting sprayed?

While we were trying to come up with an answer the skunk steadily made its way down the hill.

Came to the electric fence and instead of being stopped, gave the bottom electrified strand a look over and then without seeming to be bothered scooted down on the ground and was under the fence in a matter of moments.

Once inside the fence it turned to the nearest hen house and went inside.

And a few moments later came out, carrying an egg that it carefully placed on the ground,  cracked and began to eat.

After finishing the first egg it got up and went back into the same hen house.

And came out with another egg.

All this time we hadn't dared go any closer.  How were we going to stop it?  Even if the skunk only ate half a dozen eggs this trip it would be back.  And maybe bringing all of its relatives.

That's when Brian had the idea.

Waiting for me to run back up the hill and turn off the fence, he went inside the hen yard and picked up the large net we kept leaning up against one of the hen houses in case we needed to catch a run away bird.

He stood by the hen house where the skunk had recently disappeared and when it came out, carrying an egg he carefully took the net quickly threw it over the skunk.

Careful to pen the dangerous tail to the ground.

And then, still carefully, wrapped the skunk into the netting, and lifted it up.

From there it was a simple matter to carry our visitor up to the truck where we put the skunk and the net in the truck bed.

Drove out the gate, off the farm and several miles down the state road.

When we decided we were far enough away from houses, barns and any sign of people I stopped the truck.  We took the net with its skunk out of the bed and slowly unwound the net.

Before the skunk had a chance to realize it was free we had run back to the cab,  turned on the engine and I had hit the gas.

From fifty feet away we stopped and watched the skunk get up, look around and then run across the road and into the trees on the far side.

I hope the skunk finds a new home down the road and doesn't decide it's worth the walk back to our farm just for a meal of fresh eggs.

Leigh

Open CSA Shares!

Yes, Its going on the second week of May and we still have shares available.

One person share, Two person share, four person, Fruit shares, Egg shares.

Where?

Alexandria, Washington, DC (Dupont Circle area, Capitol Hill}

Falls Church, Arlington, Centreville, Manassas, Gainesville

To sign up, go to our website. wwwbullrunfarm.com

Deer Defenses

Here's a little farming history for you.

At least my history of farming right next to an over population of white-tail deer.

Or

How I went from feeding my neighbor's deer $15,000 worth of vegetable a year to making the deer find their summer feed somewhere else.

Like most things, it all started back in the good old days. My good old days consisted of looking out at any time of the day in any direction and seeing at least one deer munching away on our vegetables.

that's when I became an expert on what deer like to eat.

How they really love okra leaves, and sweet potato vines.

How deer have an hierarchy of desires when it comes to the varieties of mustard they'll eat. (southern curly is at the top of the list where giant red is down there at the bottom).

and how through trial and error I mostly tried every technique out there for keeping deer away and how I learned that when push comes to shove keeping deer out of your field of vegetables is a lot like keeping bank robbers out of bank vaults.

You can think of a lot of tricky schemes but in the end nothing works as well as an impenetrable safe.

What am I talking about? Well, here it is...

There was a time when I spent a good part of every week thinking of new ways to keep deer out of our vegetables.

This was, I guess, about ten years ago.

Back then if the deer weren’t eating the string beans they were eating they were in the sweet potatoes or the okra, the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, mustard greens, kohlrabi...

I think there are a few vegetables out there that deer don’t eat but I can’t really recall any right now.

I remember one time I had harvested a pile of squash, its been a while now so I don’t remember if they were winter or summer squash, but I do remember we had them piled up. 

A pile with about fifty in it.

And I went in for the night.

And when I came out in the morning the squash were gone.

Everyone of them. 

It was as if someone had crept out into the field during the darkest part of the night and, making a half dozen trips, had hauled them all off.

I started looking at the ground for tracks. I couldn’t really believe that a human had stolen on to the farm and had hauled off over four dozen squash.

But how else would they have disappeared?

I went out in the field again and looked around.

I still couldn't find any sign of the pile of squash.

I was beginning to doubt my memory. Maybe I had only thought I had picked squash. Maybe it had been a dream.

That was when I saw the tracks. Deer tracks. it looked like maybe half a dozen deer had been in the field the night before.

And there, right where I had first thought I'd left the squash were seeds. Squash seeds. trampled in the deer tracks. Maybe a hundred seeds but no squash, and no parts of squash.  

As much as it seemed impossible, it sure looked like that night deer had eaten up an entire pile of squash, and left nothing behind except for a few seeds they had spilled on the ground and stepped on.

And if that wasn't strange, a sure sign that deer will eat just about anything someone would want to grow, here's another one that happened about the first year of our CSA.                                                             

That year I had plenty of problems but growing large leafy pepper plants wasn't one of them.

Our pepper plants were huge, but the problem was that these huge plants were naked.

Tall plants with large leaves and no peppers.

It was late August and we still hadn't seen a single pepper to give to our shareholders.

And I didn't figure it out until one evening when I was standing out in the middle of the plants looking, trying to figure it out.

The dark was just coming on when I realized what was the problem. 

The plants didn’t have flowers.

Someone was picking every flower off of every pepper plant.

And if there were no pepper flowers, there were no pepper buds. and if there were no pepper buds there were no pepper...

From there on I actively worked at keeping deer out of the fields.

I started doing research into what other growers were doing. I couldn't believe that farmers just stood idly by while deer ate up their crops. and how do you keep a thief out of your fields if it goes and robs you, like a deer does, while you are sound asleep. that robs you while you are sound asleep.

You wouldn’t believe the number of articles on the subject.

How to keep deer away with rotten eggs.

Collecting tiger manure from your local zoo.

Apples quartered and tied with baling wire to an electric fence.

Suspending cakes of soap (some writes insist the soap must be ‘Irish Spring’ ) from tree limbs.

And one of my favorites. A walkman (this was before the days of Ipods). set up with a timer to play a recording of a Rush Limbaugh show out in the middle of your broccoli plants.

Of course none of these worked for more than a day or possibly a week before the deer became wise and either out smarted or ignored the strategies.

And yes, I see your hand up. I know what you are going to say. 'shoot them.' And my answer to that is how are you going to shoot them when they keep on coming. Night after night after night.

One year I went to the game warden and he gave me a 'nuisance' permit.

"Here," he said handing me the permit. We were standing at the gate to that first field on the left, the cemetery field. "I'll put down that you can shot 35 of them. But its not going to help. You can shoot ten times that number and there will still be others out here to replace them. and be here the next day eating your vegetables. You'll have to think of something else."

and he was right, not that I shot any deer (I'm not one who wants to spend his nights, and that's when the deer come out to eat the vegetables, shooting deer after deer after deer). The idea is to keep the deer out of the fields. to stop the deer from eating the vegetables.

Shooting a deer here, and a deer there doesn't do it. It doesn't accomplish the goal of keeping deer out of the vegetables. As soon as one deer has been shot and the hunter has picked up his target and driven it off to the butcher another has popped up and is hungrily eating a row of mustard greens.

I remember back over a decade ago when I had decided the solution was to pasture half a dozen hogs right next to a field of vegetables that were being particularly ravaged by the deer in the hope that the strange smelling animals would keep the deer from crossing the pasture on the way to eating the vegetables.

It didn’t work for much more than a week before the deer decided that the risk of being eaten by a hog was only minimal, especially when balanced against the pleasure of eating our vegetables.

Finally, though, while leafing through a mail order catalogue with products aimed at farmers I saw it.

A fence.

And not just any fence. A fence that was at least ten feet tall.

this wasn’t just any fence. In fact over the years I had played with the idea of several different fences. 

This fence was special.

It was one made out of woven plastic that I could nail to the trees surrounding our fields.

It came with metal hooks that could be hammered into the ground keeping the bottom tacked tightly down so deer couldn’t climb underneath. And the top was ten feet tall.

Tall enough that only the rarest of deer could jump over the top.

Maybe you have heard that saying about deer.

The one that goes deer: Deer can jump over something six feet tall if they are standing still.

Eight feet with a running start.

But the only time they can jump over ten feet is if they are really being motivation.

So if you haven’t noticed already, we have a ten foot fence surrounding about 25 acres of our farm.

And running free on the inside are our two Great Pyrenees.

A breed used to protect livestock from maundering critters. And while they do a good job of protecting our chickens they also are adverse to deer sneaking in and eating the vegetables.

All of this means that while ten years ago we were losing over $12,000 a year in deer damage to our vegetables, last year, and the year before and the year before that, our deer related loses were less than a hundred or two hundred dollars.

We do have losses due to ground hogs, pocket gophers, but that’s another story and one that we’re also working on.

So lets get on to this week's farm news.

Right now we are going as fast as we can, getting our crops into the ground.

So far we have planted over three thousand each of broccoli and cauliflower. We’ve planted a couple thousand cabbage. More Kohlrabi, fennel, beets, potatoes, mustard greens We’ve filled one large greenhouse with bell pepper and eggplants. Another smaller one with hot pepper plants.
Over 500 tomato plants in another green house.

In other words, we’re working as fast as we can and hopefully, if everything breaks our way, by the end of next week we’ll have the majority of our crops in the ground.

The bee packages we put into the hive boxes last week are doing fine. After work today Brian and I stood beside the hives watching worker bees come in from the fields loaded down with a pale yellow pollen. What flower do you think they would be working that would produce pollen that color? Next week I’m going to make a fast trip down to Georgia and pick up another ten hives, these, instead of being packages will be nucs, the difference, nucs are already established as hives, were the packages are a collection of three pounds of bees thrown in with a new queen.

Another point of interest for the week, today for the first time there were several small white chicken eggs in the hens’ laying boxes. This means that those chickens we raised over the winter, the White Leghorns, started laying today. By the time the season begins all of them should be producing eggs for the egg share. White eggs to go with the light brown, dark brown and bluish green eggs we’re already getting.

And I guess that’s this week’s round up. The 2011 shareholders received a separate notice about picking up salad mix, asparagus and eggs at the farm. This is our best year, I think, for early arugula and lettuce.

The red lettuce, I think, is exceptional this year.

Leigh

deluge.

Wednesday night while I was sitting at the computer I saw lightning strike the top of the mountain.

There's a window facing the mountain just to the left of my computer screen and two long lightning bolts came from way up in the sky and struck the top of the mountain ridge.

One on top of the other.

I immediately started to count.

one thousand one.

One thousand two.

one th....

... and there was the thunder. A double explosion loud enough to shake the windows.

A little over two seconds. How far away does that make the storm? (the cliffs, according to my gps are 6/10ths of a mile from the house).

That put the lightning right up on top, on this side of the cliffs.

And the storm was moving this way. I stood at the window staringout into the storm waiting for the next lightning strike. I could hear the wind picking up. Where are farm is located, storms suddenly appear from the west as the clear the mountain and then come rushing down over the forest.

When it happens there's usually not even enough time to run for the house. one time, back when we first moved out here, I didn't realize how dangerous it was and instead of throwing down whatever I was doing and running, I had stayed repairing the goat fence at the edge of the forest.

A lightning bolt came down not twenty meters from where I stood and split a tall poplar.

One moment it was an entire tree. The next it was a splintered wreck. Pieces flying through the air and then the remains of the trunk, began, with a horrible sound, to crack, I remember it smoking and shattered, wavered back and forth, and then falling in my direction.

This isn't something where you can get up and run out of its way. Before I could even begin to react, the trunk split wide open and from a spot twenty feet up broke and fell in my direction.

Missing me, but not by much.

The splintered stump of the tree, maybe rising no more than ten or twenty meters in the air continued to stand for almost another decade and everytime I'd walk by it would remind me just how much violence is in one of those afternoon thunderstorms.

Last night, It couldn't have been more than a handful of seconds before another flash of lightning. I didn't see it strike but I'm sure it destroyed a tree half way down the mountain.

And another flash, this time the thunder booming almost on top of it instantly followed by the rain.

A loud drum roll began to beat on our metal roof. and I was up and running around the house making sure the windows were closed.

A major downpour. Within fifteen minutes my weather station was reporting more than half an inch had fallen.

It was too dark to see the fields but it made me worry about the crops we had planted Wednesday.

Ten thousand onion seedlings. 3000 leeks. Beets, kohlrabi, fennel and two hundred pounds of blue potatoes.

Even more vulnerable to such a downpour was the fields we had just recently plowed and tilled.

With the forecast of a coming rainstorm we had spent Wednesday hurrying to finish, preparing several acres of land for planting and then Wednesday afternoon we had hooked up the plastic mulch attachment to our smaller tractor (the larger one does the plowing and tilling) and had rolled out several thousand feet of plastic mulch and irrigation drip tape.

Rolling the mulch out so the rows followed the contours of the land., hoping to limit the amount of erosion caused by a downpour.

That was the thought, at least, but that much rain coming down so quickly?

Our weather station says Wednesday nights storm fell at a rate, at its heaviest, hit
six inches an hour.

But then, fifteen minutes after the storm started, and 8 tenths of an inch of rain later, the storm had passed.

Dropping more rain in a few minutes than fell in any one month during last summer's drought.

And then there was this morning.

Another cloudburst.

This one could have been the heaviest storm we've had in years. In less than ten minutes the weather station reported 82/100 of an inch.

Watching the field below the house I thought it was going to wash away the plastic mulch.

I know that without those long sheets of plastic to hold the soil in place it would have eroded a gully across our fields at least a foot deep.

We came out of those two abnormally heavy thunderstorms in amazingly lucky shape.

This seasons onions seem to be fine. Hilled with the contours of the land the onions protected the fields.

The kohlrabi, fennel and beets also look in good shape. And maybe, even, if we don't get any more rain and if it doesn't rain again by tomorrow we'll be able to pull our waterwheel planter down the rows of plastic mulch, poking holes through the mulch and planting the tens of thousands of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pac choi, mustard, Swiss chard, arugula, and lettuce seedlings that are now ready to go into the ground.

Our planting season is ready to go.

Shareholders are invited to come out to the farm this weekend. (This is part of our CSA where paying members can come out and pick vegetables before the delivery part of the season. Right now we have greens (arugula, three different lettuces, a salad mustard and some stir fry a hot mustard called Giant Red), that grew in one of our greenhouses, plus asparagus, sorrel and herbs. Shareholders that come out to the farm also get free eggs. The details were sent out to shareholders in our newsletter.

What else happened on the farm this last week?

Honey bees.
Tuesday morning an e-mail came from a local beekeeper saying the ten packages of honey bees I'd ordered had arrived.

'Your bees are here. Come and get them.'

So I drove out to his apiary on the side of a mountain in Rappahannock County and got back to our farm just before dark. Not wanting the bees to sit in the cramped cages for another night I went to work on them in the dark (which it turned out is easier than doing it during the daylight).

We had set up the bees new homes several weeks before so it was simply a matter of opening up the packages, bees when being shipped like that are put into a wire cage with a queen in a queen cage plus a can full of sugar water.

I took the can out of the cage, along with the queen locked in her private cage, poured the bees into the hive, and, because I didn't want to traumatize all of the bees I, pulled out half a dozen frames of comb and put the cage with one side open into the hive,.

Then I pulled the cork from one end of the queen cage and put her into the hive too then closed up the hive.

In the morning I came back, opened up the hive, by now most of the bees were out of the cage and going about setting up house in the hive. I took the cage out and shook out any bees still inside, made sure the queen cage was in a good position. While I had pulled the cork there was still a thin barrier of candy keeping her inside. In a day or two the bees would have eaten the candy and released the queen.

I put the frames back into the hive.

I then put a feeder on top of the hive and poured in a mixture that is one part sugar and one part water. this gives the bees something to eat until they can go out and start collecting their own food. I also put a frame full of honey into each of the new hives so there would be plenty of food not only to feed the bees but to feed the baby bees as soon as the queen started laying eggs in a few days after she is released. by then we would have ten healthy hives building up for a season of pollinating our vegetables.

I noticed this morning the acre of red clover I planted last fall as a cover crop is beginning to flower. There should be plenty of food for our new bees to gather.

In two weeks I'm driving down to Georgia to pick up another ten bee hives. These, instead of coming in packages will be in nucs. I'll tell you more about that next week.

And that's it for the week.

Leigh

greenhouse

today as we filled the last empty space in the greenhouse Brian, one of the guys working to make our shareholder's vegetables happen, said. 'its really something how the plants are growing, you should post a picture everyday so people can see it.'

In at least concept that was a good idea. Here's a snapshot taken with my phone. tomorrow I'll try one with my camera and see if I can do a better job of it.

I haven't gone out there and counted each flat but a good guess is that's between 50,000 and 60,000 seedlings growing in the greenhouse. The long tables on the outside are heated. The new trays with recently planted seeds go there where the soil stays at about 80 degrees.

Once the seedlings are up and growing we put the trays on the middle tables which are at room temperature (in the daytime with the solar heat of the greenhouse we try not to let it go over 90 degrees. At night it drops to about 50).

We started planting back in mid February.

How quick disaster strikes! March 21, 2011

Today's story was actually written last week but wasn't posted, too busy farming, its title was  How quick disaster strikes. and then a real disaster came around, the on going catastrophe that is the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear meltdown/radiation poisoning and I suddenly felt like my problems are absolutely nothing in comparison, however...)

However lets first give the farm news and then the story.

First, the shares. We have now passed the 250 mark, approaching 300 shares spoken for which leaves about 200 one and two person shares to go.

Which means, at the current rate, we will fill up around the second half of May.

When do we usually fill our shares? About a month earlier than that. Mid to late April.

Why are we later this year? I'll give you a short answer this week and a longer one next. Actually we are way up on the number of shareholder renewals. We have more people returning than ever before however we aren't attracting as many as usual new people at our Dupont and Falls Church spots.

Why? In the last year or two those areas have seen an increas of new CSA's offering vegeables.

Answer. We are keeping more and more of our old customers but when it comes to selling our CSA to new customers there are more CSA's out there for them to choose from. (how does someone buying a share for the first time pick their CSA?)
We need to do better at telling people to choose us.

But that's enough of that now. If you know anyone who wants to sign up.... we have shares.

Free Eggs.

Last time I announced free eggs people came out and took away about fifty dozen. Well, I have 50 dozen again and..... and last weekend has passed and not only did people take away the fifty dozen eggs we had already collected, they took the 20 dozen that were laid over the weekend.

We'll be doing this, giving away eggs to shareholders at the farm, for two more months.


Last weekend I also gave away o0ur extra horseradish (horseradish gets harvested after the first hard frost, if you take it out of the ground before that it doesn't have much of a horseradish taste) and garlic.

Other farm news.

Big thing for me is I saw a bobcat this week. It was young not much bigger than a house cat, and I was just finishing up my farm chores a little after midnight. I was up in the greenhouse starting a fire in the boiler. Checking the chickens to make sure the electric fences were on and guarding them.

When I decided to drive out to get the mail.

I got in the pickup truck and zoomed down the driveway and there she was, right where that big old Maple sits and he was going up the bank towards the baby c hicks.

The headlights scared him and he ran down the hill and along the driveway, right in front of the truck.

I chased him for a hundred yards until he took off the drive and up the bank into a thicket of greenbriar.

Bobcats, even if they are around you seldom see one. They travel at night and are very quiet and clean. Its funny though, not to far down the drive from where the youngster took off into the brush I saw some scat that looked a lot like a bobcat only a month ago.

What I saw was from a larger cat, so I imagine a mother raised a family last summer, probably on our chickens and eggs. What I saw was one of her children out on its own.

How about next I answer some of the most asked question I get from visiting kids and their parents.

The all around most asked question is....

What determines the color of the eggs?

The simple answer is -- if you mean the shell that is determined by the breed of the chicken. It's a genetic thing. Barred Rocks lay brown eggs. Leghorns lay white eggs.

(or if you go to a grocery store chain to get your eggs the white eggs come from a chicken created by Monsanto, The Delta. Brown eggs are probably coming from a chicken like a Production Red. Chickens that were specially bred to lay the most eggs for the least cost while living in a confined space.

I'll write more about chickens, and our chickens later in the season.

Second most asked question.

What is growing right now?

Simple answer. Right now none of our vegetables are growing outside.

Why?

The thing that controls most things on earth. Water.

Vegetables, like most plants are mostly water. And unlike humans (which are also mostly water) vegetables do not carry around thier own heating system. Whatever the outside temperature is, that's the temperature of the vegetables.

When it drops to 32 or below water freezes , turns to a solid and expands. When water expands the vegetable breaks from the inside out and dies.

When do you start growing vegetables?

After water stops freezing at night for the year.

Around this area the average last freezing is April 15th.

That's when we start planting. But since sometimes there might be a light frost after that date we start off with our frost tolerant vegetables

Plants like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower and work up to our 'we like only warm weather' vegetables like tomatoes.

Ånd the third most asked question..

When am I going to get any tomatoes?

Tomato plants can live at a temperature above freezing but they don't like it and grow real slow until it warms up. Tomato plants like the soil temperature to be at least 70 degrees.

(an easy way to figure out soil temperature is to take the night's low temperature and the day's high temperature and average them. When it gets to be 70 or above for several days in a row the ground temperature is about 70.

Around here that's usually early May.

Then you have to add the number of days the type of tomato you are planting takes to grow from a seedling to a mature vegetable producing plant (this is usually printed on the side of the package.

Early tomatoes like Early girl take about 60 days. Those huge ugly but tasty large tomatoes like beefsteak take around 90 days.

So around here the first rather small tomato, if everything goes right, is ready to eat around July 1, the larger varieties ripen later in the month and in early August.

But I saw a tomato at the farmers market why don't you have one?

there are ways of beating the natural vegetable clock but they cost money. the first one is you can grow the tomato indoors. inside a heated greenhouse, or an unheated high tunnel. If I'm going to spend the money on fuel and lighting there is no limit to when you can have a tomato. heat up the potting soil to over 70's and turn on the lights so the plant gets the same amount of light as it would be getting during the long days of summer. One other factor, either find an insect that will live inside that likes to pollinate tomatoes or breed a tomato that will self pollinate without wind.

That brings up our hoophouses. These are unheated greenhouses. over the past half dozen years we've been putting a lot of our spare money into buying hoophouses. We now have six 96 X1 7 ft hightunnels

one 96 X28 ft and one 96 X34 ft hightunnel.

This year we plan on putting tomatoes in the 28 ft wide one, and in two of the 17 ft wide ones.

We'll put peppers in the 34 ft wide one, eggplants in one or two of the 17 ft wide, which leaves us two 17 ft wide ones to plant vegetables that take less time to grow. Vegetables like lettuce, squash and cucumbers.

I just spend $3500 on roll up sides for the 17 ft hoops, This will allow me to use them in the heat of the summer, otherwise it gets well over 100 degrees inside for most of the summer, hot enough to kill anything growing inside. If I can roll up the side it doesn't get hot.

Besides the hoophouse we have one heated greenhouse. And that's what the newsletter story is about.

How quickly disaster strikes.

Sunday evening, several weeks ago, I was bored so I went to the movies. (no movie reviews here).

I left the farm at a little after 7 with the rain still falling and the temperature just below 50 degrees and came out of the theatre around 9:30 and it was still raining, Not as hard. and the temperature, well, I don't have a thermometer in the van, but it didn't seem that cold.

Or at least it didn't seem that cold until I started approaching the mountains, and our farm.

I could build up the suspense telling about how dangerous the interstate seemed with a nasty cross wind that made the van want to jump lanes and the pools of water on the road and the 18 wheel tractor trailers hauling down the highway at much to fast a speed.

But the real problem was when I pulled off in Haymarket.

Sitting at the light at the top of the ramp it seemed like we were going to have another deluge again like the inch of rain that dropped in less than an hour around noon.

It was coming down that hard.

Earlier in the day the creek rose up enough to go over the top of our driveway. One to two feet were up over the top down at the culvert. and for a while I was afraid the road was going to wash away, however it survived. When I built it all the rock and clay, boulders, gravel and even a layer of logs all of that capped with asphalt seemed to make in stable enough to hold back the several hundred thousand gallons of water that backed up at our driveway during a major rain storm.

And now it was pouring again.

As I turned on to Antioch, that's the road that turns in front of the Bull Run Mountains, the rain was turning to sleet.

And then snow.

And by the time I got to the boy scout camp it was all snow and sticking to the road. 

That's when I started to worry.

Not about rain, or snow, but about the temperature.

Snow sticking on the road means freezing temperatures. and If it was cold enough down here for snow to stick to the ground what about up at the farm?

How cold was it up there? and more importantly, what was the temperature inside the greenhouse with a month's worth of seedlings growing inside?

I could just picture 25,000 baby plants dead from a frost.

I felt like speeding up but with the icy, narrow, curvy road...

I did up the speed just a little.

When I left home it was warm out. It had been a warm day and I hadn't been paying particular attention to the forecast and the thought of freezing temperatures was not on my mind.

I hadn't started up the greenhouse boiler.

But what about now?

I gave the van a little more gas but there was only so much time I could save by driving faster and with the curvy road I could only go so fast. Especially with the pavement already covered with snow.

Down around the vineyard someone had put up a set of those temporary Caution! High Water signs.

I slowed down and sure enough, right around the first bend the road was under water.

It was just over a foot deep and I waded the van through it and up the other side.

Now I was going up over Hopewell Pass.

This is where people slide off the road. Where vehicles like vans with the rear wheel drive get stuck with the wheels just spinning.

I was thinking what could I do if we lost the seedlings?

There was time to replace the tomatoes, the peppers and eggplant. but the early season crops.

I didn't want to think about it.

And now I was going up the steep side of the pass and trying to figure out how much time it would take if I had to park the van and walk in.

Forty minutes? 45? maybe more.


The tires started spinning and I let off the accelerator and got traction again.


And then I was up over the top and at the turn off to our gravel driveway. One mile to go.

The first part is down to where their once was a beaver pond until someone came by and shot them and left the bodies laying by the pond. That was ten years ago and now its been a meadow with a stream running through it and the remains of the old beaver dam.

I then the road goes up. First one short steep hill then the long part. The place where people get stuck and go off into the ditch.

While there was almost an inch of snow, I was the first one down the driveway and it hadn't been compacted into ice.

I make it up over top without any difficulties.

Now it was downhill until I turned to cross the creek. This is where it was flooded earlier in the day. My thoughts now were worrying about whether somehow the road had washed away. Its only half a mile to the house from there. Shorter to the greenhouse.

Water was still coming over the road but only a few inches. I drove right across and went up the driveway on the other side. In the distance I could see the lights from the greenhouse. I had left the florescent light on.

And then I was stopping the van right in the driveway below the greenhouse and running up the hill, along the path.

I opened the greenhouse door and...

It was still warmer inside than out, but not by much. I could shiver. I stuck my fingers into the soil of the nearest flat.

It didn't feel like ice.

Into the next, and the next and the next.

I didn't feel any ice but it was cold inside.

So I opened the door to the boiler and started putting in kindling, then some wadded up paper and then I lit it, closed the door and turned on the boiler fan.

It was only then that I took the time to look at the greenhouse thermometer. It wasn't real accurate but the gauge was hanging there right around 32. Maybe a little above.

I could still lose seedlings unless that boiler put heat on the seedlings soon. I didn't dare go down to the house and leave the seedlings alone.

I stood there in front of the boiler watching the gauge.

The water temperature was below 50.

I opened the door to take a look inside and smoke gushed out into my face and I closed it again.

It was another twenty minutes until the water temperature started to rise. 60, 70. 80 I turned on the water circulatory pump to send the heat out to the seedlings..

When the hot water in the 300 foot loops (there are six of them), came back from making its trip across the tables still warm I felt I was safe.

We weren't going to lose anything.

I still stayed up in the greenhouse for another half an hour, moving flats around and cleaning up but a disaster had been averted. No lost seedlings this time and next time I would think twice before leaving the seedlings home unattended.

Leigh