Since it has been a few weeks since we last checked in on the big greenhouse project I thought it would be good to update everyone on where it stands, and fill you in on some of the other activities we are up to. I’m sure you are all waiting with bated breath.
But before I do that I should remind those who have not signed up for 2021 to do so as soon as possible. Why not Secret Santa yourself with the great tastes of summer! All it takes is a down payment of $100 to secure your spot. There are many options for getting us the down payment including but not limited to sending a check, ordering from our online store, sending a down payment through PayPal using my email address or stopping by with a thick wad of $1 bills! We’ve had a great response so far but as always would love to see everyone return for 2021.
Don’t forget to tell your friends and neighbors. Have them put your name in the “Where did you hear about us?” section of their order and we will credit your account $25!
Farm News
We are mostly done with the reconstruction and electrical wiring of our greenhouse. There are a few odds and ends to finish up but not a whole bunch. We have 95% of the electrical finished. What remains isn’t critical so that may be why we aren’t finishing it yet. We’ve moved both the exhaust fan and the heater to their new locations. They are also connected and ready to run. We installed the new door — what a time saver! I’ve used it many times already. The panel is wired with most of the switches, dials and lights. We installed new lighting, a new faucet, and new horizontal airflow fans. These fans will keep the environment in the greenhouse more uniform by mixing the air inside the greenhouse. We’ve cleaned out the accumulated flotsam and jetsam from the last 18 years. The last major pieces are programming the control system, installing a fan to bring in warm greenhouse air into the cold frame on those occasional below freezing Spring days, and installing a touch screen on the control panel. Yes, a touch screen; we are really that sophisticated! Next fall we plan to replace the old benches with new ones, put in a concrete floor and replace the plastic on the greenhouse. By 2022 it will be like a greenhouse rebirth!
The other big project this winter is to determine ways to make our farm more labor efficient. As I discussed in the past, I was surprised how difficult it was finding help this season despite record unemployment. Who woulda thought? To mitigate this issue going forward we are investing in several pieces of equipment that should reduce some of the labor required. One of the most labor consuming processes on the farm is weed management — in particular hoeing. With the tractors we can cultivate the plants to around three to four inches on each side of the row. Any closer than that and we tear out a few of the plants. This cultivating takes about five minutes per bed. The last six to eight inches has to be done by hand. That doesn’t sound like a lot but when you multiply it by the number and length of our rows it adds up very quickly. If I remember correctly, the winter squash alone is 4800 feet. Add in the watermelons and it easily rounds up to one mile. Can you imagine hoeing for a whole mile? With a full contingent of good hoers we can finish the winter squash in a morning or two. With one hoer it takes significantly longer. And if past performance guarantees future returns (I’ve always been told it does not) we may not find more than one good hoer in the early part of next season.
So to reduce some of the labor we purchased a combination plastic mulch layer/bed maker/drip-tape layer. It does all of these in just one pass of the tractor (it slices, it dices it makes julienne fries)! Though many farms — including organic farms — use plastic mulch, I’ve been reluctant to use it on our farm. The big issue is disposal — the filling of landfills with waste plastic. However, living in Washington County, all our trash is now sent to the Recycle and Energy Center where it “is mechanically processed into a fuel that is used by Xcel Energy at power plants in Red Wing and Mankato to produce electricity”. So if they can’t recycle the plastic it will at least make a good fuel to generate electricity. Not a perfect solution but like all things in farming there are always trade-offs. We will still be prudent on which plants we use plastic mulch — mostly long term, warm season crops — and use other techniques and ideas that require less environmental gymnastics for weed management on the rest of the crops. But reducing our hoeing load will be exceedingly helpful.
Even if we decide not to use plastic this piece of equipment will prove to be very useful. I think the best feature is the ability to lay drip tape under virtually all our plants if necessary. One of the time consuming and irritating activities in the summer is watering plants. Moving sprinklers are a huge chore and close to impossible to move by one person — it take a village. On the other hand, those plants we can put on drip tape are fairly easy to water. Simply connect the tape to an underground water supply and turn on the spigot! Having most of our plants on drip will ensure we are giving them adequate water and reducing their stress level and we all could use a little stress reduction these days. Of course laying drip tape isn’t free and requires work to set up and remove but it will be work during the parts of the year we aren’t already overwhelmed with activities. Let’s cross our fingers that this works!
Now to take advantage of plastic mulch you need to figure out how to plant plants through it. You can slice holes and plant them by hand but this is very time consuming — we’ve borrowed a mulch layer in the past and tried it so we have experience. So to make planting through plastic more efficient we also purchased a water wheel planter. This piece of equipment has large “wheels” with punches on them that poke holes through the mulch at the designated distance between holes as you pull it behind the tractor. One or two people sit on chairs attached to the planter — one per chair please — and push transplants through the holes. The equipment also leaves a puddle of water in the hole that helps seat the plant and give it a nice parting gift as it leaves its previous abode for its new forever home. The planter has a lot of benefits compared to our past method of transplanting but the biggest benefit in my opinion is that if we are planting two row the rows will be perfectly parallel. They may not be straight but the will be parallel. This will aid cultivation in the summer if we are using it on bare ground. I assume, but won’t know until we’ve used it a few times, that it will be more comfortable for our planters as well. No more crawling around on the ground. I’m looking forward to farming with these two new pieces of equipment.
That seems like a good place to stop. As always, feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, share orders, jokes, etc. Have a Happy Festivus or whatever you celebrate this time of year!