June to July: the Difference a Month Makes

We are honored by the opportunity to observe the changes that happen on our farm every day, but we don't honor every change that happens by taking a photograph of it.  Why not?  Well, photography is not our primary job here - I think it has something to do with growing good produce and raising quality poultry.  If I'm wrong, let me know and we'll change the prioritization.

Still, we do manage to take some pictures that show the progression of how things change at the farm.  And, even more rare, we sometimes put out a blog post that shows some of the progressions and we often remember to give them the label before and after.  

The Raised Bed does its job!

A few years back we had another wet Spring and one of our responses was to put in a few raised beds so we could manage to plant SOMETHING.  Well, we've had a few wet Spring/Summer/Falls since that time, but these raised beds are still there.  Well, two of three are.  Two have been upgraded to corrugated steel sides.  The third has yet to have that treatment.

RB3 (Raised Bed 3) in June

 We used one of the raised beds to get some more lettuce into the ground when things were still way to wet in June to plant elsewhere (except the high tunnels).  About 100 heirloom lettuce plants were transplanted in.

RB3 in July

 And, as of last week, we had harvested nearly every head of lettuce in that bed.  The picture above is just after the first (light) harvest.  I guess I should have taken a newer picture so you could see a mostly empty bed - but that's usually not all that interesting to look at.

Casa Verde and its occupants

If you have kept up with our blog, you have seen the construction progress of Casa Verde - Home of Plantlings. 

Casa Verde in June

 Part of the motivation of this building was to provide a woodchuck-free zone for our little plants after the "Massacre at Valhalla" this Spring.  

The other side of CV in June

 If we still had even *some* of the plants the Dred Pirate Chuck Woody McChucksterface Woodchuck ate, the building would have required more 'shelves.'  But, he did eat them so we didn't need the extra shelves.  Even so, Casa Verde was pretty full.

CV in July

 There is now a good deal of space available in Casa Verde, though we are seeding another succession this week.

The Lettuce Tree

 The Age-Old Question: Will the Genuine Faux Farm get decent taters this year?

It certainly will not be without trying and putting our best efforts forward.

Beans and Taters in June

 We opted to use paper mulch in several other crops so we could concentrate our cultivation efforts on crops, such as beans and taters, that do not lend themselves to paper mulch.

Beans and taters in July

And... the Ever-Present Kitchen Project

When you live in a construction zone, it is tempting to say:
1. You've always lived in that construction zone and,
2. It will never get done / no progress is being made.

GFF's kitchen in June

 This repair effort has been going on for a long time, that is true.  And, both farmers are very tired of having to deal with hauling dishes to the basement to wash them, etc etc.  Anyone who has worked on a kitchen or bath in a house knows the drill.  Dishes in the bathtub (at least we put the old kitchen sink in the basement, so we haven't had to do the bathtub thing), a stove that moves back and forth depending on whether you are going to work on the kitchen or work on dinner and piles of tools everywhere that dishes, foodstuffs and place mats used to be. 

GFF's kitchen in July

The good news?  July has lots of days left in it.  Let's see how far we can get on some of these before we get to August!

July Newsletter

The Wall
There are stages in every growing season that I think most growers and many other folk will recognize.  At the Genuine Faux Farm, we have a couple occurrences of hitting the proverbial "wall."  One of them typically happens around the 4th of July when we realize that we've put in a year's worth of effort and we still have a few years' worth of effort to go until the season is completed.  Exaggeration?  Perhaps - but when you are talking about how we feel, I am not sure it matters whether it is an exaggeration or not.

This 'wall' might have something to do with the ridiculous push we had to put on just to plant everything and now we find ourselves needing to cram in three weeks of cultivation and weeding into two - assuming the weather allows it to happen.  We will not bore you with the litany of things we have on our 'to do' lists (also known as VAPs at the Genuine Faux Farm), but we assure you there is a fine variety of mental and physical tasks for each of us to do.

What makes it harder is that there are at least a couple of unforeseen circumstances every month that complicate our farm lives.  You could argue that they are not entirely 'unforeseen' because we have come to expect that we will experience them.  But, we have yet to read the entire manual on the crystal ball we picked up this Winter to help with that problem.

One of our most recent 'additions of flavor' to the farm is the not so neat little storm that backed in from the Northeast just as people were arriving for a PFI gathering at our farm.  Apparently, the Poultry Pavilion roof has decided that we are giving far too much attention to the other parts of our farm right now.  In a desperate attempt to gain our attention, the metal on the roof threatened to go flying around the farm.  Happily, the grounding wire for the lightning rods held on and the sheets of metal merely flapped around merrily in the 60+ mph winds.

Well, add that one to the VAP.

Weather Wythards
A typical Iowa June at the farm this year.  It was warm, it was cool.  It was wet and it was... less wet.  There was wind and calm and there were gnats!  At least the buffalo gnats have come no where close to last year's silliness.

June's Report
High Temp: 95
High Heat Index: 119
Low Temp: 48
Windchill (believe it or not): 46
Rain: 5.58"  (average: 4.96")


Year Report
High Temp: 95
Highest Heat Index: 119
Low Temp: -29
Lowest Windchill: -53
Rain: 17.3"
Wind: 60+ mph from NE
Barometer Range: 29.14 - 30.90
Snow: you know, we lost count.  It was a lot.


Veggie Variety of the Month -Pablo lettuce
This one seems a little odd for a selection, even to me.  Why?  Well, we have not harvested that much Pablo so far this year.  But, the few we did harvest were absolutely beautiful and had the great taste we grow this variety for.

Pablo is best known to us as a decent Summer lettuce as it falls into the Batavian class of lettuces.  We are very hopeful that Pablo will pick up where some of our cooler season lettuces are leaving off!  So, there you have it, we listed a veggie variety in hopes that it will come through for us.  But, that isn't so different than last month's selection of  snow peas.  Speaking of which, the peas didn't start producing until July 1.  I guess it is going to be a very short pea harvest this year.  Sure hope I didn't jinx the Pablo lettuces!


Song of the Month
Been a while since I've listened - really listened - to some U2.  How about One Tree Hill for this month's song?

CSA Openings Abound - And CSA Phase I has Begun!
We still have plenty of space in our CSA program, so we would welcome new and returning members at any point this month.  We could certainly still add people throughout the season, but we'd really rather start with you on board now!

We will enter Phase II of the CSA season when we enter the month of August.  Until then, current members are able to use their CSA "credit dollars" to purchase early season veggies.  Things like lettuce, turnips, peas and the first of the cucumbers!

Farm News and Announcements 
We were mentioning unexpected challenges in the introduction.  The picture below shows a plug that decided to have a problem in the Poultry Pavilion earlier this season.  Happily, the circuit breaker did its job and were able to trace down the problem.  The temporary fix, in that case, was to take out the plug and just wire through it for the time being.  We'll put a new plug in later.

Another photo from earlier in the season that deserved to be featured earlier is this one from Tammy's phone.  The eave on the portable building for the henlet flock is open.  When the henlets were smaller than they are now, they thought it was supposed to be the ultimate roost.  It was mildly amusing to look up and see these sleepy little birds looking down at us.

Speaking of little birds, it is amazing that we've actually had the turklets on the farm for a couple of weeks now.  Tammy did manage to get a couple of pictures on the day of their arrival at the farm.  They are much bigger now, but still quite small.  The great news is that they appear to have the normal turkey 'curiosity' that amuses us sometimes.  Unless they get out of the pasture and we have to look for them in the dark.  That is NOT amusing - at least not to the farmers.



The farm house kitchen project continues to progress one step at a time.  As we have mentioned before, we try to set aside one day a week to make some progress (usually Sundays).  The dry wall has been taped, sanded, top-coated and now painted.

Next up- cabinets!

 One of the things that happens when we hit the wall?  The farmer doesn't quite get enough gumption to go out and take pictures of the fields.  We have a few we can show, such as this one from July 5.

As you might notice, we've hilled a bed of potatoes and mulched a couple beds of beans.  We are also experimenting with grass mulch on one of the potato beds.  Here is hoping that we have success.  Sadly, we couldn't get the beans in on time again this season, so the Colorado Potato Beetles are causing us some fits again this year.  The two beds with minimal problems?  They are adjacent to the one bed of beans we got in on time!

And finally - East Bremer Diner is trying out purchasing some veggies from the Genuine Faux Farm.  It may not be much, but we've got to start somewhere!

The Born & Raised Burger at East Bremer Diner - July Special

We were able to sell the Diner an assortment of heirloom lettuces to put on this burger that features a bun made by the nearby bakery, wagu beef from Hansen's Dairy in Hudsen and cheese curds from Hansen's as well.  If you are inclined to visit the Diner, please consider going and supporting them, Hansen's and us by asking for a Born & Raised Burger during the month of July.  We've tested it and it tastes extremely good!  Success here can lead to more collaboration later!

Moving Day

The Genuine Faux Farm features two high tunnel buildings.  If you don't know what a high tunnel building is, you are soon going to find out (assuming you actually read this blog post!).  We have named the smaller of the two buildings (72' x 30') "Eden" and the larger (96' x 30') is called Valhalla.  A high tunnel is essentially a hoop building/structure that has a plastic covering.  The intent of a high tunnel is to grow crops in the ground under this structure.  Needless to say, the protection provided by the building can allow for growing crops earlier or later in the season AND it can help control the amount of moisture (most of the time) during wet seasons.

The cool thing about Eden and Valhalla?  Well, unlike most high tunnels, these two buildings MOVE!  And Valhalla recently had a moving day.

Valhalla was in its West position

But, we wanted it moved to the East position.

We admit that this move happened later than we planned, but the season has forced us to make some choices that lead us to this situation.  Tammy and I moved Valhalla on a Saturday with no other helpers.  It took longer than it has most years because there were a few roadblocks, but we figure it was time well spent.  We actually managed to take some pictures during the process this year which means we can FINALLY give everyone a moving day rundown!

Step 1, clear the tracks

 We are often able to spend some time prior to moving day getting the area around the tracks cleaned up.  That was not quite the case this year.  The weed whip came out and we spent time getting things out of the way.  If you have sharp eyes you might notice an irrigation line and a hose over the track as well.  It is usually NOT advised that you should leave such things on the track on moving day...

Step 2 - free up the apron plastic

We have all kinds of high tech methods for keeping the plastic down.  I sometimes wonder how technical we should get on our blog, so I am hesitating telling you about this part.

Oh, ok.  It's just some t-posts. 

 Now that we are no longer mystifying everyone with our clever ideas and techniques, we shall now discuss wind.  Lots of wind.  And the things wind can do to our high tunnels.

Step 3 - put the wheels BACK on the track

Both high tunnels have multiple attachments to the ground to keep it from getting away.  Even so, strong winds can move the building off of the track enough that we have to put those wheels back on the track before we move the building. We typically use a sturdy board as a lever to put these sections back on the track. 

Step 4 - Pound in the anchoring posts that secure the track

Unfortunately, the pictures I have of this just don't show what I'm talking about.  Suffice it to say that there are rebar stakes that hold the track to the ground.  These tend to pull up a bit over the course of the year, so they all need to be pounded back in with a 3 pound hammer.  If they are not put back down, the risers on the building will catch on them and you have to stop the moving process until they ARE down.

Step 6 - admire the crops currently in the building

One of the reasons for our delay in moving the building was the lack of dry ground to plant in on the farm.  We adjusted and put some of our crops into the side of the building that was going to be exposed after the move.  It's not our ideal plan, but sometimes you just do what you have to.

Tammy can be seen at the left cleaning up the track INSIDE of the building.  What?  You though we only had to clean the track outside the building?  Silly you!  Any obstructions on the track tend to cause difficulties during the move.  So, thank you, Tammy, for clearing the tracks!

Step 7 - take the doors off of each end

Step 8 - can you see the difference in this picture from the step 6 picture?

Remember, you can click on images to see a bigger picture.  So, what do you see that is different here?  Yes, the tracks are clean.  Good job, Tammy.  Maybe the crops have grown just a wee bit since the last picture?  

Step 8 - remove the T-Posts that secure the end walls

I realized AFTER I pulled the t-stakes that I hadn't really taken a good picture of them.  But, since the building moves, we have to be able to raise the end walls in some fashion to allow it to move.  When the building is in place, there has to be a way to secure those end walls to the ground.

Step 9 - take bolts out of end wall that attaches end wall flap

This is usually the step where one of us trudges back to the garage to get the socket set that we didn't bring out with us to take these bolts off.

Step 10 - take the poly-carbonate cover off the corners over the tracks

These little pieces of poly-carbonate keep the critters out in the corners over the tracks.  Unfortunately, you can't lift the tracks when they are on, so we have to take them off.

Step 11 - dig out the flaps

We throw some dirt in front of the outside (and inside) of the flaps to help hold them in place.  But, that means you have to dig that back out when you want to raise the flaps.

Step 12 - Raise the flaps and tie them up

And, step 13 - nest the roll up bars on top of these flaps so they don't create drag when you move the building.

At this point, the building is pretty much ready to move EXCEPT, we have yet to disconnect it from all of its anchor points with the exception of the end walls.  If the wind were to pick up at this point, we have the option of putting the flaps back down and closing the building up.

But, things were fine, so we decided to proceed.

Step 14 - disconnect the building from the track

There are several sets of turnbuckles connecting the building to the track.  These must be disconnected, which means loosening the turnbuckle and then opening the c-connector to free them.

Step 15 - loop turnbuckes onto hip 'board' to avoid making these an obstacle when moving the building.

 Laugh all you want that I give this its own separate step.  You won't laugh if you forget this step - we'll just leave it at that.

Step 16 - take off the turnbuckles that connect the building to ground anchors

 We save this one for last usually because these anchors could probably hold the building in place if a freak poof should come along at this point.  The idea is to have the building unsecured for the briefest amount of time possible without getting sloppy.  You might notice the orange tie to keep the turnbuckle up and out of the way of the wheels on the track.  We usually use duct tape for that task, but the roll we had with us was old and not meeting expectations.

Step 17 - inspect everything one more time

 THEN, HEY PRESTO!  Your building is moved.

See?!?

 I suspect many of you are now suspicious that I was tired of typing all of this out and I took a short-cut there.  No, that's not true.  At this point moving the building is pure magic.  We say the magic words.

"Please, Valhalla, will you move to the Eastern position that we have meticulously prepared for you?"

And then you....

Hook the building up to your tractor (Rosie) with a rope

Oh.  I forgot that part.

In any event, this process is slow and deliberate and usually includes several stops when wheels pop off the track or we identify a potential issue as we move the building.  

Oh look!  Valhalla DID move.  Yay!

The temptation at this point is to celebrate and go eat lunch, or some such thing.  But, the building is still not secured.  So, we need to reattach the turnbuckles to ground stakes and the track (there are ground stakes set for each position the tunnel resides in) and it is a good idea to at least put the flaps down before you have a sandwich.

After lunch, which was a bit late on this particular day, you get to put the building back together again.

The final steps?  Prep the soil and plant your crops.   

QED (?)

Always More to Do

The difficult thing about trying to share all of the things that are going on in a blog when you are farming in Iowa - during the month of June - is finding the time and motivation to take timely photos and THEN organize them into posts.  No time for creativity in writing for this farmer!  Just the facts, sir!  Ok, maybe there will be some additional exposition, perhaps a pun, maybe a speculative comment... but definitely some....

Chickens!

We asked the henlets if they would take some pictures.  They said, "no."

We asked the henlets for a volunteer to take some pictures on the farm and we were roundly rejected.  Instead, they just wanted the food Tammy was carrying at the time.  We asked Inspector, but he just looked at the camera and then walked away.  We'll take that as a rejection as well.  Soup spends most of her time sleeping, so that was a non-starter from the beginning.

The next solution?  Use pictures we already have from earlier in the month!

Capital idea if I say so myself.  So, here we are.

We made the decision this past Winter to go 'all in' on the paper mulch idea this year.  Now, when I say 'all in' I don't actually mean that every thing we grow will be on paper mulch.  There are things where we feel it will work well and then there are things where we don't think it is a very good match.  However, we are growing melons, winter squash, summer squash, tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower on paper mulch this season.

The photo at right shows some vine crops recently transplanted into paper.  We're using 3 foot wide paper so we can avoid weed pressure right next to the crop.  Our most time consuming weed control efforts are always in row, closest to the crop.  While we have cultivators to help us with the work, we have found that the last several seasons have been too wet for us to get out and cultivate when we need to.  The result is that the weeds get too big for the cultivators, so the effort becomes much more labor intensive.  While it is true that the paper mulch will eventually break down, the goal here is to get us past the heavy weed development season in June, July and early August.

 

The heavy planting push saw us using some of our equipment for long stretches of time.  The picture above shows our walk-behind tractor (Barty, in blue) and our tractor (Rosie, in red).  The mulch layer is attached to Rosie in this picture.  For those who figure that equipment like this makes the job 'easy' for the farmer, allow me to point out that Barty is not a small machine.  It takes some effort to keep him going where he is supposed to be going.  Rosie is a bit kinder, allowing me to sit down.  But, there is never a time when I spend long stretches in that seat - there is normally a good deal of climbing up and down to and from said seat.  Oh, and the you can really feel every bump wherever you drive.

Another, less expensive, piece of equipment that has seen time is the 'irrigation cart.'  It's a simple green cart that carries tools and supplies for setting up irrigation on the farm.  There is also a nifty holder that allows us to feed out drip tape for new rows.

It may seem a bit odd to be doing so much with drip tape when we've been so wet and we certainly see the irony in it.  But, transplants live in the top couple of inches of soil, which dries out quickly.  Until they expand their roots into the zones deeper in the soil, we have be prepared to support them with some extra water.  We have also learned that if you haven't got drip tape down, it will stop raining for.. like... three years or something.  Until you get the drip tape in.  Then it's ark time.  Not sure which way to go!

We were also graced with the presence of some fine people recently when three of Tammy's good friends from high school days visited the farm for a day.  It is always difficult to explain to people exactly what we do and how we do the things we do.  It becomes much easier when they can see some of it in person.  Seriously, a 200 foot row of any crop becomes much more real when you stand at one end of it!

Thank you to Angie, Missy and Lee for your visit!  It was good to see all of you.

We are also continuing with attempts to keep the farm house from falling apart this year.  We have been trying to designate some time on Sunday's to do some work on the kitchen and are now at the point where we need to tape the sheetrock.  Both farmers are getting VERY tired of not having a decent sink for doing dishes and no counter tops.  But, we remind ourselves that the old counters were falling apart, the floor was threatening to send us to the basement and the electrical was not, shall we say, the safest arrangement.  We just keep telling ourselves it will be worth it in the end.

Right?  Oh, c'mon... give us a little affirmation!

The farm house projects continue with efforts to try to get some help making our back entry a bit less precarious.

But, if you look more closely, you might realize that this old farmhouse is going to require a bit more than just some new steps....

Ah well.

It's all part of living in an old farmhouse.  Every home needs repairs over time, we just have this thing for acquiring 'projects.'  The good news is that the two of us are fairly handy and able to do a wide range of things.  The bad news is that Tammy is a teacher and Rob is a veggie farmer.  It's not always a good combination with home remodeling.  Here's hoping we can get a little contractor help with some of the more time-critical things on this project!

And there you have it - the things that popped into my head as I looked at pictures from earlier in the month.  I wonder if it will motivate me to go out and take more pictures? 

No, I think I'll go tape some drywall though.

Blink of An Eye

One of the most difficult things about June is that so much happens on the farm in one day that it is pretty difficult to actually believe that it WAS ONLY ONE day.  I was just looking at some of our 'most recent' pictures and I'm realizing they no longer accurately depict the current status of our farm.  Many of those pictures were taken... today.  Even harder to believe are pictures that were taken a little less than a week ago.  At least that's what the calendar tells me.  I don't really believe it - I suspect someone is pulling a fast one on us and it really is still May 15, 2006.... or something like that.

 It seems like just yesterday that the first iris were blooming on the farm and now we're looking at the tail end of the bloom.  There are more out there than one might think, of course, but we are clearly past the peak bloom.  Nonetheless, we have a nice bouquet in the kitchen area and there are still some nice blooms in the field.

Speaking of which, I did see some honey bees on iris flowers yesterday, so I'll call that a win from the perspective that iris are not usually known as a big attraction for pollinators.

We do regret that we don't have much time to just look at the iris and we wish we had the previous number of flowers we had ten or so years ago at the farm.  But, we remain grateful for what we are blessed with.


 We were honored with a visit from Torger last week and he helped us with some drywall in the kitchen.  Why?  Well, when you can reach the ceiling without a ladder, you could be handy when the sheetrock has to go on the ceiling.

 And I asked Torger, would you like to build a tongue for this cart?  And he said... ok.

As far as we can tell, Torger enjoyed his time at the farm - even if we did go to the 99 cent theater and watched a movie we all 'generously' gave 2 1/2 stars out of five.  It feels like Torger just got here - but he's now been gone since last Saturday.   How does a week go by that fast?

We are glad that some of the crops we pushed when the soil was still too wet to work are doing something.  But, clearly, they haven't loved life until the last week or so.  The cucumbers in this plot have been in there long enough that they should be much more visible in the picture.  They still live and they are starting to show signs of healthy growth, but they might have done just as well waiting in trays until this week.  Then, I went out later in the day AFTER the picture had been taken and the cucumbers were showing much more healthy growth.  Well, at least many of them did.  Some still look a little rough.

The sky decided to put on some of its bluest clothing, so I decided to show it off with a picture of... a portable chicken building?  Ok, not the best choice - but it's what I have for the blog.  We made a quick adjustment a few days ago and moved the henlets because we lost several birds in 48 hours.  The culprit?  Buffalo gnats.  The area was too sheltered and not enough sheltered all at once.  Too sheltered because the breeze couldn't get in there to knock the gnats down and not enough sheltered because gnats don't tend to cause problems inside of buildings.  A bit more breeze and different orientation for the portable building and things settled down for the henlets after that.

We executed this move early in the morning and we both looked at each other at 4pm today and asked ourselves, "When did we move that again? Was that today?"  Is it a good thing or a bad thing when your list of things you have done is long enough that you think the early morning stuff must have happened earlier in the week?  We'll get back to you on that when we figure it out.

The broilers, on the other hand, have their building moved every other day.  And, they are beginning to anticipate their trip to "the Park!"  June 24!  The countdown begins.  But, we aren't likely to get the countdown done because we can't keep track of which day of the week it is...  Heck, we can't even remember that moving the henlet building happened THIS morning.  Well, ok.  We CAN remember - it just feels like it's been longer, or shorter, or something different than it actually is.

Field prep and planting has been all-consuming for the past week since the soil has finally reached a stage where we can work it without causing more problems later (see the cucumbers for an example).  Part of the issue with cramming it all into a shorter time frame is that we have to figure out how to move resources around so they can be used and we don't bottleneck the work effort.  For example, on Friday we had four people available to do work.  You don't want any of them just standing around when time is of the essence, so you have to figure out how to keep people moving.  Sometimes, that leads to decisions that might not be what you would expect. 

Do you see the plants at the left of the picture above?  That is basil.  Why is the basil in before the tomatoes or the peppers?  Well, we needed our workers to be working and the tomatoes and peppers were going to be put on paper mulch.  We don't mulch the basil because our workers typically LOVE to weed it.

Speaking of paper mulch (we were? Oh, yes, we were!), we have decided to go with more row feet of paper mulch this year to cut down our in row weeding efforts.  Paper mulch also helps keep seedlings from drying out if the soil is rough - which is a good thing this year. 

Unfortunately, we have to pay for the benefits with more work on the front end.  Each bed has to be prepped so that the soil is loose enough to allow the disks on the mulch layer to cover the edges without pulling up huge chunks of dirt that make life difficult.  We also want the soil under the paper to be soft enough that we can plant through the paper and into the soil.  Once the soil is prepped, we lay the paper.  After the paper is down, we put drip tape down, using ground staples to help hold it in place.  Our drip tape has water emitters every 6 inches which allows a person to easily see how far apart to punch holes for the transplant.  THEN, we put the plants in the ground.

We're telling ourselves the extra effort will be worth it.

Meanwhile, the onions are starting to show a little more quality.  Here's a nice bed that has recently been visited by the flex tine cultivator.  It looks nice now!  But, we have a couple of rows that have some crab grass that the cultivator couldn't get with soil being too wet and 'rocky.'

The areas between our onion beds will be cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage.  Where are they?  Well, did we tell you about the Dred Pirate Woodchuck Chucky McChuckface?  I am pretty sure we did.  Well, that irritating creature took out our first two successions of those plants.  The third batch is looking good and will go in this week if the weather allows us to do so.

The final picture is another example of how quickly things have changed.  Here is a hayrack with about 60% of our squash seedlings.  They were probably some of the best looking squash plants we've put in at transplant time - so we did something right this year!  By the end of the day on Friday - that cart was empty. 

Here's hoping for a great squash crop in 2019.