Seed Saving - Quadrato asti Giallo

A couple of years ago, we grew out Napoleon Sweet bell peppers for Seed Savers, in Decorah.  It was a good experience, even if the season was a bit marred by the removal of my kidney early in the year.  The good news was, we did come up with some good seed production that year that had a high (95%) germination rate when we tested.  

We decided to give it another try in 2023 and grew out some Quadrato asti Giallo peppers and you can see some of the results above.

This time I was able to spend more time selecting plants and being more intentional with removing plants that weren't showing the best qualities for this particular heirloom bell pepper.  At the seedling stage we culled about 20% of the plants for various reasons and another 20% did not get transplanted because they were not showing the same vigor or they exhibited a growth pattern I did not like.

A few more were removed when the fruits weren't what we were looking for - and then I waited for the harvest.

When we grew the Napoleon Sweets, we took those red peppers to the Jorgensen Plaza kitchen and they cored them and returned the cap with attached seeds to us.  In return, they got inexpensive, Certified Organic, red bell peppers they could use fresh or freeze for later use.  This time, we cut them ourselves and sold the cut peppers to interested persons.  The rest we did not sell went to the chickens or the compost.  

Sometimes, you just have to do what you have time and energy to do.

I have to admit that I liked the taste of the Quadratos in this batch and I was pretty happy with the quality of the fruit in the harvest.  The next step is to do our germination test.  If it is acceptable, the seeds will go to Seed Savers to fulfill the contract.  If not?  We'll have to consider what might have happened with the pollination and go from there.

Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to grow more out for seed in 2024.  This is the sort of thing where a little success breeds confidence and a couple of repetitions means we've had a chance to improve some of the processes.

I suspect, even if we don't have a contract for 2024, we're going to be growing a few more things for seed - maybe for ourselves, maybe for others.  

We'll see.  But, we've got some success to stand on - and that's never a bad thing.

What's Next for the Genuine Faux Farm Veggies?

On Monday, I shared a blog that discussed some of our options for poultry at the Genuine Faux Farm.  As I think I stated in that blog, none of this is set in stone and it's all still being negotiated and considered.  After all, it is only November.  The planning processes have only just begun!

Adaptation IS figuring it out

The current phase of the existence of the Genuine Faux Farm started a few years ago, as a pandemic was altering everyone's lives and I was considering working "off farm" for the first time in many years.  It was a big shift, going from weekly deliveries of veggies and poultry products for most of the year to a model that had to integrate new responsibilities to an outside employer.

I would like to say that we've figured the transition out by now, but the truth is that we haven't.  It certainly is not for lack of trying.  The reality is that the Genuine Faux Farm is in transition every year, all year.  From season to season, things change and if you want to be successful farming, you must navigate your way through it all constantly.

It is also true that we haven't had the smoothest sailing the last few years too.  There have been some health issues that made working on the farm AND working off the farm difficult.  Each time we think we're going to be given the opportunity to really "figure it out," something pops up to remind us that adaptation IS figuring it out. 

Looking for positives over the past 3 years

Despite the challenges, we do have several successes that we can hang our proverbial hats on!  We have successfully grown out heirloom peppers (Napoleon Sweet and Quadrato asti Giallo) for seed each of the last two seasons.  We've made some significant produce donations to the food bank.  And our freezer and root/squash storage areas have been full each Winter.

And, because we still have our egg and veggie email list, we have been able to sell some of our produce to interested people.  While it is not what it was, it still means we maintain contact with a group of people we enjoy and we can provide them with some quality produce.  The additional positive is that we simply offer what we have, there isn't the additional stress of feeling we MUST have a certain amount of product to fill a contract, like a CSA farm share.

I have been privileged to have moments each season where I could look at what was growing and feel good about it too.  I've enjoyed some excellent harvests of squash, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes and numerous other crops during this period of time.  Never anything quite like what we were doing when the farm was my full-time job, but it would be silly to expect that.

Putting joy and satisfaction at the top of the list

I took joy in harvesting what was probably "too many" onions this fall.  We've discovered, over the years, that our farm has excellent soil for raising high-quality onions and that is hard for me to ignore.  But, the number of onions I planted clearly indicate how hard it is to scale down, once you're scaled up.  When you have a history of planting thousands of onion plants, it doesn't seem like much to plant just ONE thousand.

Certainly, there was a little stress trying to see that many onions through the processes of seeding, transplanting, cultivating, irrigating and harvest (and then cleaning and delivery).  But, I found myself remembering that I actually do like doing some of this work.  I just need to allow myself to put that attitude up-front rather than the "oh no!  I've GOT to do X with the onions or else!"

And maybe, I won't do one thousand onions next year too.  How about nine hundred?

Preliminary 2024 plans

I am looking at the coming growing season with the realization that we have done a better job with what we call "one and done" crops than we have "multiple harvest" crops - in general.  And, by doing better, I mean we've derived more satisfaction from those crops.  We love our green beans, for example, but they become a source of distress if we don't keep them picked.  Perhaps we can address situations like that by changing our attitude and our plan for those crops?  We shall see.

For example, we could intentionally plant green beans and harvest them during their first peak only.  We could then allow them to go to seed and harvest that seed for future season's planting.  It's not quite one and done, but it does manage our expectations.

The root of our plans comes form the food we want to feed ourselves and our families.  We love having corn, peas, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, tomato sauce, and even some zucchini/summer squash stir fry in our freezers - ready to go for meals.  We also appreciate storage crops like butternut and buttercup squash, potatoes and onions.  I find myself missing Golden Beets this year, so they go onto the list as well.

We have taken great pleasure in eating melons and apples from the farm this year.  And Tammy likes some fresh cucumbers and cherry tomatoes (Black Cherry, thank you very much), along with her Golden Treasure peppers to snack on through the Summer and into Fall.

And, we love our flowers.  They're great for pollinators and they're good for habitat.  And.... they're good for us too.

So, for now, our preliminary plans are to try to execute the plans we've had for the last few seasons - with adjustments based on what we've learned since 2020's big change.  There will be excess produce - so interested persons should take note.  The Genuine Faux Farm isn't done yet.  It's just adapting.

What's Next for the Genuine Faux Farm Poultry?

It's official, we've had several hard freezes at the Genuine Faux Farm.  We're down to only one flock of poultry (the laying hens).  The number of hours of daylight are less than the number of hours of darkness.

It is now time for Farmer Delusional Syndrome to kick in!

Yes, the season is starting a bit earlier for us than it has in the years prior.  But, that's simply a function of how we've changed the roles our farm plays in our lives.  At present, Tammy's job at Wartburg and mine with the Pesticide Action Network take up more of our time and energy than the farm does - whether we want them to or not.  We aren't doing much with season extension this Fall and we are soon going to take the excess of our long-season crops to the Food Bank.

So, that means we can start thinking ahead to 2024.

What's in store for GFF Poultry?

Our poultry flocks often come up first during our off-season planning sessions.  This is partly because we need to be prepared to order chicks and it is also due to the fact that poultry very much impact our ability to leave the farm whenever we wish.

We were pleased with how our single flock of 125 broilers did during the late season slot we chose this year.  They were healthy and the pastures handled them well.  It also meant that we didn't have the issue of competing priorities in May through mid-July, when vegetable crops are often in need of as much of our attentions as we can give.

On the other hand, we have some adjustments to make for our hen flocks and we did miss having turkeys this past year.  So, we will be doing things differently in 2024.

First, we will be re-introducing turkeys to the farm.  The flock will be much smaller than it was.  In the past we've started with 75 turklets, which usually resulted in 65-70 birds at the time we took them to "the Park."  Next year, we're going to keep the number low enough that we will only need to take one truck trip to the processor.  That's probably no more than thirty birds.

I liked how the late slot for broilers went, so we'll probably do that again in 2024.  But, if we're adding turkeys, I need to prepare a different pasture situation for the broilers.  While that's not horribly difficult, it does remind me (and anyone who reads this) that every decision we make probably has a host of implications.  And each implication probably involves a set of tasks.  And that's where we have to be careful, because we're not going to have access to much more time than we had this year.

The laying hen question

The broilers and the turkeys were actually the easiest part of our discussions this year.  We have a rough plan that both of us have agreed to, in principle. Though we could decide differently as we discuss other things.  It's the laying hens, surprisingly, that are encouraging us to explore a bit more this year.

On one side of the ball is the fact that we have now raised laying hens for twenty years on the farm.  They're practically a given.  We do still like to maintain contact with the good people on our egg and veggie email list and we do like selling quality eggs on a regular basis.  We also have a pretty good infrastructure set up to handle the birds, we have experience, and we have the appropriate skills.  And, we love eating our own farm-fresh eggs each morning for breakfast and using them in Tammy's weekly bread-baking.

On the other is this - the daily and year-round process of managing a laying flock can wear on you and encourage you to consider taking a break or explore ways to rejuvenate your interest.

One thing we placed back on the table that had been there many years ago was establishing a flock of laying hens that is a cold-hearty breed that can also be big enough for some meat production.  The idea here would be to begin allowing some of the flock to raise chicks so we can maintain our own flock, rather than buying chicks each year.

The down-side is that most breeds we would consider lay eggs less frequently than those we use for egg production.  So, we would either have to go with a much larger flock (probably not what we want) or we would scale back eggs sales or we would have two flocks.  If we went this direction, we might move to either selling some chicks (or young birds as they start to lay) to others.  I don't know - it's just in the idea stage.

Another alternative is to plan for a period where we either have no hens or we have a flock that is only as big as we need to supply our own eggs.  In some ways, it makes little sense for us to cut back to just a few birds for ourselves when our tools are set up to handle the current scale.  After all, you still need to care for the birds every day if you have five or fifty.  On the other hand, if we have five birds, we most certainly won't be washing five dozen egg a day and we won't have to track egg email sales.

The reality?

In the end, the reality of the situation is that we will likely have poultry on the farm in some form or another as long as we live here.  One key reason is that we do rely on the poultry we raise for our food.  We've both gotten so used to quality eggs and poultry meat that we have a hard time eating poultry sourced anywhere other than a place that uses similar practices to ours.

From the farm's financial perspective, poultry sales are not critical to our well-being.  However, it is true that our poultry meat and eggs become less expensive for us to eat if we also raise extra for sales purposes.  I think that's a pretty realistic and healthy reason to continue - just as it is healthy to consider HOW we should continue.

And so, that's what we're doing.  We're looking at our history and we're looking at options for our future.  As far as 2024 is concerned, it looks like our future (and maybe yours) will have some turkey, broiler chickens, and eggs in it.