The crows that plagued the corn maze last year are apparently off bothering some other farmer. It looks like we’ll have the full six-acre field with a good stand of corn for the maze. We do also have plenty of weeds in the maze field, but we’ve been working hard to control the pesky weeds before they get too big, and it looks like the hard work is paying off. I’m still waiting for the summer heat to arrive. That’s what we need to grow those 10+ -ft corn stalks. I’ve been thinking about this year’s maze theme and design, but I won’t be making any announcements about that for a while.

 The gourds, winter squash, and pumpkins are coming along nicely. I’ve been watching the first flowers appearing in the last couple of weeks. In fact, I’ve already found the first tiny gourds and winter squash forming. Now that we’ve accomplished the first big blitz on the corn maze weeding, it’s time to tackle the big pumpkin field before things get out of control.

 Our first planting of sunflowers is starting to form flower buds, so it looks like we are on track for our Sunflower Celebration in August. Just last Sunday I noticed the tiny sprouts from our last planting, so I’m looking forward to enjoying the sunflowers right up until our October frosts.

 I mention all this because it does seem sometimes that we can never catch up, something I’m sure I share with many of you in your own jobs and home lives.

That’s where our lavender and other herbs and botanicals come into play.

It’s difficult to spend any time in the herb and lavender plantings without pausing to enjoy the pungent aromas and observe the flowers, some subtle, others vibrant. No matter the season, a little time in the herbs can lift one’s spirit. I always enjoy spring in the herbs, as the plants awaken from winter dormancy and sprout new growth. The chamomile bursts into bloom early, drawing us back to the herbs with a cloud of tiny apple-scented flowers.

Then comes July and the lavender bloom, the crowning glory of the herb garden. Of all the herbs and flowers, lavender excels in inviting one to pause and just enjoy the moment.

Of course there is plenty of work to do in the herb plantings. We’ve been harvesting chamomile daily. Weeds are aways returning. The lemon balm, sage, rosemary, peppermint, spearmint, thyme, and probably several other herbs are nearing their first harvest of the year.

I have been concerned about the delay caused by the cold weather, but the Royal Velvet and Maillette lavenders are now blooming. We have already started cutting a little for our own enjoyment. They will be in fine shape this weekend for our Lavender Celebration.

This weekend we are opening the farm so you can come and share our enjoyment of the lavender in bloom. Take a break. Come on down to the farm for some fun and relaxation.

Enjoy the opportunity to stop and smell the lavender.

 ”Dr. Maze”

 (This is the intro letter from our July newsletter. Click here to sign up for the newsletter.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=URqJ2Z3N5qc

Crows in the Corn, the 2010 Corn Maze Photo by Cameron Lerum

The first aerial photo of our 2010 corn maze, Crows in the Corn, was taken by Cameron Lerum as he flew past the farm.

Why did we honor crows with our corn maze this year? Earlier this year when the corn sprouted in our corn maze field, we were happy to see the entire field beautifully filled in with tiny corn seedlings. Then came the crows. Flocks of crows. Sky-darkening hordes of crows. Crows that delighted in pulling our corn seedlings out of the ground to eat the seed. Not to give up, we replanted seed by hand into the barren spots. Once again new seedlings filled in the rows. The crows came back for more. We planted corn in flats in the greenhouse, grew the corn to a larger size and planted the seedlings out by hand. The crows pulled up many of these, but finally found somewhere else to feed.

All through this we tried ways to scare off the crows. Electronic crow alarm calls, shiny bird scare tape, balloons with big scary eyes painted on each side, endless walks through the field clapping hands and shouting, air horns, and probably more I’ve forgotten. I even went out an bought a remote control airplane to fly around the field and buzz the birds. I crashed the plane twice in the first two flights and an important repair part is still on backorder. All these methods worked for a couple of days, but crows are too smart to be deterred for long when they know the banquet is spread out for them.

As a result of all the crow feeding we spent many, many more hours and days working on the corn maze than I had planned. When the time came to choose a theme for the maze, the choice was clear. Crows in the corn was the theme of my summer.

In the end, we were faced with a number of areas in the corn maze where there was hardly any corn plants to see. This is usually not a good thing to find in a maze of corn. To make use of those spaces and to add to the maze-solving fun we embedded five additional walk-through mazes and two labyrinths inside the corn maze. This is, after all, Dr. Maze’s Farm.

The embedded mazes are all made of common farm items. The Flying Crow Maze and the Standing Crow Maze are walk-through mazes made with farm fence posts, recycled water drip tubing, and bird scare tape. There are three walk-through logic mazes; the Color Maze (made of hard irrigation pipe), the Number Maze (made of fence posts), and the No Left Turn Maze (made of hay bales). You may find yourself spending a fair amount of time figuring out these three maze.

You will have to decide for yourself how to interact with the two labyrinths. You can walk them as an aid to contemplation. You and a partner can each start at an entrance and race to see who will exit first. You can just hang out. The Hay Bale Spiral is made from 85 hay bales laid out in a double spiral. The Tunnel Spiral is made from row cover, a light fabric we lay over plants to protect them from pests and to give a bit of warmth. The fabric is stretched over the wire hoops we use to make low greenhouse tunnels in the fields. The wire hoops are duct taped to the tops of fence posts. Bamboo poles add rigidity. Water tubing adds a finishing touch. In honor of this year’s crow theme, we have painted numerous crows on the fabric for you to enjoy as you pass through the tunnel.

In the photo above can see the hay bale spiral and the tunnel spiral in the upper right corner, several people in the Number Maze in the lower left corner, and the hay bales of the No Left Turn Maze at center left. The sun glints off the Flying Cow and the Standing Crow mazes. The Color Maze is in the center of the corn maze. The maze entrance, covered by a white tent, is at the lower left of the maze. Compare the photo with the map seen below.

The photo also shows our green & white farm stand tent at the far lower left, and our hay ride wagon between the farm stand and the maze entrance. Our Pumpkin Patch lies between the corn maze and the road. You don’t see any pumpkins because they were all still green when the photo was taken.

Map of the 2010 Corn Maze, Crows in the Corn

The corn maze map may help you interpret the aerial photo of the corn maze. The black line is the path through the maze.

Be aware that due to an exceptionally cool summer and to huge flocks of crows feeding on the corn as soon as it sprouted, the corn stalks are not as dense as we would like and range in height from ok to very short. We think our corn maze still works very well as a maze and is lots of fun, but it will be a different experience from last year. So far, folks have been enthusiastic.

]]> http://drmazesfarm.com/farmerroger/2010/09/13/2010_corn_maze/feed/ 2 http://drmazesfarm.com/farmerroger/2010/04/09/broken-wrist-doubly-painful/ http://drmazesfarm.com/farmerroger/2010/04/09/broken-wrist-doubly-painful/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:11:01 +0000 FarmerRoger http://drmazesfarm.com/farmerroger/?p=585 I fell and broke my wrist a week ago last Monday. I figure this is a fairly good explanation for the lack of recent entries here.  I have several ideas for entries, but I’m not up to doing much typing yet.

Turns out there are a number of things I have trouble doing one-handed. I had to hire in an extra worker to help at the farm yesterday, so it turns out the broken wrist is also painful in the wallet.

The continuing series of rains has kept the fields too wet to work, so as the fieldwork falls behind schedule, at least I can blame the weather rather than my broken wrist.

I can mouse around on the computer and turn pages, so I’ve been doing more research on a number of topics, including possible herbs to add for essential oils or teas and additional plants to use as cover crops. I have been adding more tasks to my list at a much greater rate than I have managed to complete any.

I’m hoping that soon I can get back to shrinking the task list. There’s a whole lot to get done.

Every farm is different. The crops or livestock grown, soil type, climate, amount of cash available to invest, accessibility of water, farming style, zoning and other regulations associated with the land, attitude of neighbors, and many additional factors all affect the farmer’s choices. Even so, there are common themes and tasks, including planning and record keeping, planting, weeding, harvesting, animal care, maintenance, buildings, water, and crop sales. In this series I will look at our choices here at Dr. Maze’s Farm.

This is a good time for me to take on this series. I have been spending a lot of time recently contemplating just this question.

The year 2010 is a transition year for us personally. The partnership that owns the land and that has operated The South 47 Farm since 2000 has decided to step back from farming and make the land available to farmers to rent.

Since the partnership no longer needed me as a farm manager, I was left free to decide what exactly I wanted to do next. My wife Carol & I have grown a strong attachment to the farm and to the community working on and visiting and supporting The South 47 Farm. After much thinking and discussion, we decided in the end to take over some favorite projects of the many endeavors of The South 47 Farm and to continue them as our own venture, renting the necessary acreage at The South 47 Farm.

And so, Dr. Maze’s Farm was born as a brand-new family farm with a 10-year history.

We have spent much time thinking and planning the transition. Gradually the momentum of the new farming year has gathered. We are now starting the first farming activities of the new year. We have ordered and received three dozen varieties of pumpkin and winter squash seed. We have purchased tractors, hand tools, and endless other items. Chamomile is sprouting in the herb garden. Tomorrow I have two field workers coming in to help start weeding the herb plantings.

For this series on the tools of a farm I envision a series of small snippets, rather than trying to cover large areas at time. As the year progresses I’ll look at tasks such as planting or weeding. I’ll show how to create a corn maze and how to set a fencepost. I’ll show some photos and describe our equipment and why we made the choices we’ve made. I have some videos of equipment in action and I hope to put together and post a few videos. I am going to define “tools & techniques” rather loosely to include anything I find useful or necessary around the farm. We’ll see if I can keep writing when things get really busy on the farm.

I’d like to start out the series with two elements common to all farms, a farmer and soil.

A farmer's hand gets to know the soil.

Not really tools or techniques, I suppose, and perhaps it is obvious, but it is worthwhile to reflect that the person and the place both have tremendous impact on how the land is farmed. Organic or conventional? Bananas or boysenberries? Lamb or legumes? Wholesale or farm market? The list goes on. Just as the photo shows my hand, this series will reflect my own personal experiences and biases.

Here on The South 47 Farm this year there will be six farms-within-the-farm. Other renters include CSA farms, chefs, and farmers’ market sellers. All will be different. Different crops, different techniques, different styles, different ideas. How is it that Famai’s peas are always earlier than any one else’s? Will Brian’s experiments with paper sheet mulch and cover cropping between rows continue to prove effective? What refinements in tomato pruning with Claire come up with this year? I’ll be watching.

If I were to try farming elsewhere, I’d have to change my techniques. I might have to give up some favorite crops and try growing different things. How long should I go between waterings? When is the earliest I can expect to drive across the fields? How much heat can I expect in the summer? What crops will my neighbors want to buy from the farm?

I always try to put a photo or two into my blog entries, so when I decided on this theme I cast about for various ways to represent the farmer. The back & shoulders to represent work and perseverance? The brain for knowledge & curiosity? The eye or ear for the senses and information gathering? The mouth or ear for communication or enjoyment?

I was struck by how well the hand does at representing all these characteristics. Grabbing, holding, touching, hefting, lifting, nudging, typing, writing, waving, patting on the shoulder, patting on the back, shaking another hand, holding another hand; a hand does all of these.

I was also struck by how much easier it would be to photograph my hand than any of the other options I was considering to represent the farmer.

What then but to show the classic test for soil moisture, squeezing soil in the hand,  giving me the additional benefit of allowing me to show the soil and the farmer in the same photo. Camera in my right hand, grab some soil in the left, shoot a few different angles, and the job is done.

Efficient use of time and resources is another useful trait on the farm.

I’m looking forward to this year on the farm. I’d be pleased to have you along for the journey.

I had thought I would write next about tools for information gathering and record keeping, but I took a photo today of Famai’s tulips that has inspired me to write next about microclimate manipulation.

Stewart pruning tomatoes

Keith pruning tomatoes

Rosalio pruning tomatoes

The trellis for the outdoor tomatoes is horizontally strung twine. Inside our hoophouses, we can run the twine vertically, and the plants will respond and grow much higher.

Newly pruned tomatoes in hoophouse

We grow the hoophouse tomatoes in the ground, which we cover with a woven weed-block fabric.  The hoophouse tomatoes ripen a bit earlier, but the main benefit is protection from the fall rains, which splash soil on the plants, leading to a tomato disease called late blight and the rapid death of the tomato plant. In this photo you can see that the crew has removed quite a lot of the tomato foliage.

Tomatoes on pruned tomato vine

Here you can see the thick main trunk loaded down with tomatoes. Note the stubs where side shoots were pruned away.

Pruned cherry tomato plant loaded with blossoms and tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes respond exceptionally well to pruning. Here we see tomatoes forming near the base of the plant, with just a few starting to ripen. The higher branches are awash with blossoms.

Tomato pruning takes a sizable investment in time and labor. The benefits are several. The plants are healthier and less susceptible to pests and to fungal and other diseases. It is easier to monitor the health of the plants and the fruits. Picking is easier and faster, since the tomatoes aren’t buried behind foliage. One missed tomato left go to rot can bring disease to the plant, and is no fun to discover later.

You don’t need to be as obsessive as we are about tomato pruning to benefit from some pruning. Open that plant up and let air flow through.

The weather still swings between cold, rainy days and bright sunny days, but we are seeing more and more of the latter. Last weekend at our Welcome Back opening celebration, while I listened to Mary McRae sing and play Hawaiian music on her ukelele while the temperature approached 80 degrees, I was almost convinced that summer had arrived.  Today’s cold downpour has put that idea to rest for a while.

 We opened the farm the first two Saturdays in May to sell our vegetable plant starts, a new project for us this year. It looks like our timing was good; a lot of folks are planning to grow more food at home this year. We’ll have more veg starts well into June.

The farm and farmstand opened for the season this last Wed, (May 13) with mostly greens in the farmstand and a good turnout from the Farm Tots. We had lettuce, spinach, frisee, kale, collards, mustard greens, Vitamin Green, French sorrel, lovage, chives, tarragon, sage, oregano, and mint. We had also planted bok choi and salad turnips to be picked the first open week, but they were ready two weeks early. The bok choi, salad turnips and some early lettuce showed up on the menu of Trellis Restaurant and in The Root Connection Farm winter shares.

Planting has taken much of our time and attention, with much of the season’s planting well along. All the onions and tomatoes are planted out. The early kohlrabi is in the ground. We have done the first plantings of carrots, beets, sweet corn, and summer squash, the second planting of peas, and the second and third plantings of bok choi, lettuce, and other greens. We planted most of the potatoes on Sunday, and will finish planting tomorrow. We’ve planted more lavender, mint, and sage for our teas and essential oils. We still have all the flowers, the annual herbs, the winter squash, the gourds, the pumpkins, and the corn maze to go, as well as additional plantings of carrots, beets, lettuce, greens, summer squash, and more I’m not recalling right now. As the weather warms, we have to schedule more and more time for weeding.

Here Keith and Stewart are setting up the low tunnels over our field tomatoes. Keith joined the Veg Crew at the beginning of May.

Keith and Stewart install low tunnels

The low tunnels give the tomato plants some extra protection on cold nights. We pull the tunnels off when the plants grow almost big enough to touch the plastic. If the cool spring weather hangs on unusually long, the tomatoes sheltered in the tunnels may ripen one or even two weeks earlier than unprotected plants. The greens in the center of the photo are kale (near r0w), Vitamin Greens and collards (middle row), and young kale (far row).

Tomatoes under low tunnels

Last year we tried a new potato planting technique that we all thought a great success. In prior years we used the typical approach of laying the cut potatoes in a trench and covering them up with soil. When the potato plants were up and the weeds started to appear, we would then rake more soil around the potato plants, creating a mound and smothering many of the weeds. Last year, in place of covering the cut potatoes with soil we filled in the trenches with somewhat composted leaves collected the prior fall. Spreading the leaves was a fair amount of work, but the payoff was big. We had very little weeding, since the soil was covered by leaves. The potatoes were much easier to dig, and the spuds were excellent.

Juan had the excellent idea of using our row mulcher to fill the potato trenches. We purchased the row mulcher to mulch our raspberry plantings, but we also use it to spread compost on the fields, since we don’t have a proper manure spreader. Last fall’s partially composted leaves jam up the mulch thrower, but this year we had some leaf compost that had composted an additional year. The well-composted leaf mulch spreads beautifully.

Juan mulching potatoes

In a couple of hours Juan & Luis did as much work as four guys accomplished last year in an afternoon.  This is one of those ideas that is blindingly obvious once it is pointed out, but someone had to see if first. Raspberries and potatoes are not the only crops that respond well to an application of compost, but the row mulcher is particularly well suited to the way we grow the two crops.

April is the month when the farm starts to wake up from winter. It is also a month of unforgiving deadlines. I will attempt in this entry to relay what it is like to work through April at the farm. Everyone works hard, but there are many things to enjoy while we wait the arrival of the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors.

Apple bud starting to leaf out

In winter, the farm is just not very photogenic. April is the month when the fresh new green comes back to the land. The buds at the tips of the apple tree branches open up. The blueberry leaf buds open and start to obscure the red stems. The raspberry canes catch the eye with their bright green leaves; while the deep green of the thornless blackberries leaves demand a closer look. The winter rye planted in the fields as a cover crop grows thicker and taller. Most of our transplanted vegetables are covered with rowcover for protection from the cold nights, but the peas sprout vibrant green in their rows. And the grass everywhere turns thick and tall. Actually, now that I think on it, I’m not all that keen on the idea of getting the mowers out once again.

Hawk on perch

The wildlife has been at the farm all winter, but since we are out and about more, we can pay more attention. The hawk perch we put up last year is now used frequently. I’m hoping the hawks are doing their part to control the farm pests. The photo of the hawk on the perch is not very sharp, but it is the best I have managed with my little camera at maximum zoom. There seems to be quite a few weasels on the farm. I’m happy to see the weasels, since they also do their share to catch rodents. Weasels have lived in the raspberry field for years, but there have also been signs and sightings around several different hoophouses and also at Chef Brian’s hoophouse. There are always crows around the farm. The little songbirds and robins are everywhere. Every time I take the tractor out and till a field, I pick up an entourage of crows hoping to find something tasty in the freshly turned soil.  In past years a heron has been a frequent day visitor at the farm. This year I haven’t seen yet seen one at the farm. The Canada geese population varies widely through the year, this month they are nesting. The one nest we were monitoring was raided – nothing but eggshells left. We figure a coyote ate the eggs. We have seen several different coyotes. I think they are mostly passing through, but coyotes are not an unusual sight, and they certainly are not particularly afraid of people.

 As usual at the farm this time of year, we have had to push hard to keep on schedule. It seems to me that April and May may be the two most critical months for as successful vegetable season at the farm. If things go off track in March, there is still time to reschedule or to do things over. If you can’t keep up in April and May, you may have to face abandoning crops for the year. Some crops, like lettuce, we plant every other week all summer, so we are just losing two week’s production. Other crops, like the onions, need to be planted by a certain date or we may as well not plant at all. The big planting push will end sometime in June when we plant the last of the pumpkins. By then we will be in weeding season.

Claire and Stewart planting seeds in flats

This year Claire Thomas of The Root Connection Farm next door is dedicating a significant amount of time to teaching us what she has learned about vegetable growing. We call Claire our Vegetable Guru. We plan to almost double our vegetable production this year, as well as producing plant starts for sale to home gardeners, and her advice will be essential to meeting our plans.

heirloom tomato plant starts

Rereading my April 2 entry, I see it was all about the seemingly endless rain this March. Since then the rainfall totals have tapered off, and the periods between rain events have lengthened. We do still have puddles in a few areas, but we have fields we can prepare for planting. We started out April a bit behind, but with a good shot at getting solidly back on schedule.

We spent a lot of time in the first part of April checking the soil moisture in the fields and scheming how to adjust the planting plans to use the fields that were nearest ready to work. Meanwhile, the greenhouses were filling up with plants rapidly approaching their planting dates. Even so, once we got past the March rains, we managed to adapt and to get the field spading, tilling, fertilizing, and plastic mulch spreading done ahead of the planting schedule. We finished hand-weeding the raspberries and thornless blackberries and gave the rows a spreading of compost mulch.

Spring is also prime time for equipment breakdown, since we are using the equipment constantly. We haven’t done too badly this year. I can remember two episodes with the John Deere tractor, one with the spading machine, and one with the compost spreader. Of course, the equipment breakdowns happen on sunny days when we are just finally getting some fieldwork done, not when it is raining and we can’t use it anyway.

This year, in addition to the inefficiencies of repeated change of plans and extra work due to the weather we have two additional new complications. We are opening the farmstand 4 weeks earlier this year (May 13), which pushes all the planting schedules four weeks earlier into a time when the weather is much less predictable, except that we can assume there will be more rain. We are also starting a new project this year of growing hundreds of vegetable and herb plants for sale to gardeners. This soaks up significant extra time and greenhouse space.

In the last week we did hire in some extra help in order to break the logjam of backed up planting. Dang and his crew came down to the farm after working for Claire this week and planted most of the onions. Monday or Tuesday they will plant out thousands of lettuces and other greens waiting in the starts hoophouse. With that completed, we are hoping we can keep on top of things. We were already planning to hire another crew member to start at the beginning of May.

Meanwhile, there’s lots of other work going on.

We finally got electricity out to the large starts hoophouse. We’ve done without for two years, but with perhaps undeserved luck. The exhaust fan and thermostat in the starts greenhouse should prevent the utter disaster of walking into the greenhouse to find thousands of plants baked to death because we missed opening the greenhouse up by hand. After reflection, I decided to do the same, a year ahead of schedule, in the hoophouse where we will keeping the heirloom tomato plants and other vegetable starts we hope to sell in May and June.

The greenhouses keep filling up. In addition to the greens Evert and Stewart have been starting since March, we are now getting into the summer crops. The first seedling flats of summer squash are up and will be ready to plant out soon. There are flats and flats of gourds and winter squash germinating, next week we will be starting our fancy pumpkins and larger winter squash.

Summer squash in the starts hoophouse

We have been working on our new Free Choice CSA program, and have started to sell the memberships.

Our new website design is up, thanks to Chris and to Andrea Rose, who did the site design. And I finally have a functioning home for this blog.

Cindi, who runs our education program, is getting ready for school tours the first week of May, and the first Farm Tots on May 13 when the farmstand opens.

Michelle and Peggy, who will be running the farmstand as a team, are working hard to prepare for opening day, as well as the Plant Sale and CSA tour events on Saturdays May 2 and 9, from 10 am to 2 pm.

Many, many more details, but I see I have already written plenty for now.

As a relief from all the detail, and as one last get-away before the farmstand season starts, Carol and I will be going to the World Tea Expo on May 3 & 4. Just a hint of what you may see at the farmstand sometime down the line.

For a couple of weeks now the urge to get out into the field has been growing stronger each day. We had almost two weeks with nothing more than a trace of rain, very unusual for February. Some of the fields started to look dry enough to start the spring fieldwork. Every day I watched the fields dry out some more and got the itch to get the tractor out. Every day I counseled myself to have patience. More rain and possibly even snow were sure to come. Since Sunday we have received almost 0.9 inches of rain (or snow melt), but the total for the month, 1.73 inches, is well under half of a normal February.

If we start when the fields are too wet, we compact the soil and it dries out in brick-like chunks. If we wait for things to be perfect, we probably won’t have time to get everything done before it is too late to plant. Spring fieldwork is a daily juggling act. Every day we check the field conditions against our list of the tasks we need to finish. There can be significant differences in conditions in different fields, so usually we can find some place we can move forward.

Finally, on Monday, we will be back on the ground at the farm. I talked with the guys yesterday and they are all ready to come back to work. Rob, Evert, Luis, and Juan will be here at 8 am. I have a list of tasks to accomplish while we watch for the right soil conditions for the fieldwork. Evert will be doing the greenhouse work again. We need to prune the blueberries. We’ll be preparing a couple of hoophouses for early greens production. We’ll be pulling out some old waterlines and setting up a new area for U-Pick vegetables. I’d like to expand the north animal paddock. We need to prepare for our new cooler. Other spring tasks include repairing the roads, turning the compost piles, and checking out the equipment. As soon as we can we’ll be spreading compost and lime on the fields so we can get to the tilling on time.

For the last few weeks now I’ve been watching the daffodils growing just outside my office. They haven’t bloomed yet, but they look just about ready.

Daffodil in bud

Officially, spring starts several weeks from now on March 20. This year I’m starting early.