The Taste of Rain

Many elements in nature come together each season to affect the fruits of our labor in the fields at Old Plank Farm. The wind, the snow, the sun, the frost, the heat, the storms, and the various critters that cohabit our land all write a part of the story as told in the vegetables we harvest.

But the most defining of all, year after year, is the role that the rain plays. The rain is almost always at the center of my attention during the growing season. It's sudden coming and going captivates and perplexes me more each year. The rain is a partner in the growing of our vegetables, and the joy and heartbreak it brings with equal regularity is never ending.

This year I have been learning to trust the rain. At least, I think I have. Perhaps I am just pleased with it because it has mostly done what I asked. Will I trust it even when it doesn't give me what I want? Probably I still have more to learn from the rain.

When the rain first begins to fall as it is breaking a dry spell--like it did last Sunday evening--I can feel its energy surround me as if it were being pulled from my own hands and out of my fingertips. All stress dissolves as the drops begin to soak the parched land. Those are the times when we try to relax, eat pancakes, read books, play music, and rest. Any frustration felt during dry spells is almost immediately forgotten.

Meanwhile, the need for it not to rain is often as strong as the need for it to rain. Last night's two downpours landed on already saturated soil causing standing water in several areas of our field. I was concerned by the hail pounding the delicate vegetable plants. I was annoyed that my plans for the next day--digging garlic and cultivating brassicas--wouldn't be possible on account of the muck. And I was devastated to think we might lose our carrot seedlings for the third time this season to washout. Hard rain at the wrong time has a way of destroying crops. Despite all that, I loved the rain like I always love summer rain.

The sweetest form of rain…these cantaloupes are loving the sun, heat, and rain this season.

Whether or not it rains too much, or too little, or too hard, or too sideways, we just keep doing our jobs as farmers and we watch the rain do its job. It does what it can, and we do what we can, and our partnership carries on. I am most grateful for this partnership each season when I taste the melons coming out of our field, now only a couple weeks away from the first harvest. They drip with juice, which was once the rain before becoming the best tasting food around.   

Farm Vegetables and Fiddle Music at The Fig and The Pheasant

At Old Plank Farm we have decided to cancel all of our summertime Pizza Nights this season. Like everyone this year, we had to look at what our priorities are and what we are capable of doing right now. We decided our priority this year is to spend 100% of our time and energy in our vegetable fields. We also are prioritizing the health and safety of all our farm workers and members who receive our vegetables, so we'd rather not spend extra time among crowds of people if we don't need to. Finally, since we aren't a restaurant, we aren't set up to handle the heightened precautions needed to keep patrons safe when they go out to eat. Better if we leave that to all the established restaurants in town this season!

One great restaurant here in Plymouth that is serving up Old Plank Farm vegetables on their seasonal menu is The Fig and The Pheasant. If you go for dinner on a Wednesday evening (be sure to make a reservation), stay for live Irish/folk music starting at 7:30pm. Some Wednesday evenings I'll be there too, playing fiddle with the other wonderful musicians!

Early Crop Update

Perhaps you are eating a salad as you read this crop update. I just made a smoothie with beet greens before I sat down to write it. Because at Old Plank Farm it is greens season, and it is off to a good start. The lettuce patch is growing nicely, providing many weeks of fresh salad mix and head lettuce to our CSA members. We're able to irrigate it fairly well, so it may even survive another hot week like the one we had last week and the one that is predicted next week.

If you blinked earlier in June, you missed spring. We went from 30 degree nights in mid-May to upper-80s several times over the last few weeks. I've farmed in Wisconsin long enough to know that this is somewhat common, and it's not bad for many of the crops. The crops it is too hard on are broccoli and kale. These veggies, which we sometimes have for the early CSA boxes, are a total flop right now. They are sickly, small, taste terrible, and will most likely not make it into any of the CSA boxes in the coming weeks. I haven't spent too many tears on this failure though, because these and the other brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, etc) all get a second chance to be planted and harvested for the second half of the season. And I don't have any free-time for tears these days. I am too busy finishing planting, working on weeding, and starting with harvesting.

Many crops at Old Plank Farm are planted numerous times throughout the season. This gives us more chances for harvesting, longer harvest windows, and the grace to accept the inevitable failures that happen from time to time. The plan each year for broccoli is simple: try, try again.

Early sweet corn is a bright spot here right now. It has already grown past knee-high, which is a bench-mark goal for the 4th of July. We expect to start having ears to harvest in late July or early August.

Meanwhile, the greenhouses all look healthy and very full of veggies that are nearly ready for harvest. We'll start seeing cucumbers in the CSA boxes in the next week or two. Carrots as well, and green peppers and celery are not far behind.

One favorite field crop which I measure the progress of the season by is potatoes. So far it's a good season. We planted early potatoes in April, hoping for a late-June harvest of new potatoes. The cold April held things up a bit, so they are not quite ready to harvest this week. But we should be able to put them in our CSA boxes in the first week in July. Meanwhile, the fall potatoes are up and growing, too. They provide us with a lot of hearty food in September and October, and a lot of weeding and digging to do before we get to it all!

A few rows of early potatoes for CSA box week 4. Photo by Angelica Menzynski

Snap peas are probably the most exciting vegetable going in the boxes next week, and maybe the week after that, too. I sample them regularly in the field, to make sure they meet Old Plank Farm standards. 

Because we don't grow tomatoes in a greenhouse, we usually don't have these to put in the CSA boxes as early as other local farms sometimes do. But our field tomatoes are off to a good start. Sungold cherry tomatoes will be the first tomato of the season, and they will most likely start being ready to harvest at the end of July or the beginning of August. Slicers and paste tomatoes are never far behind.

One of these years I plan to write a crop update which includes a note about each crop growing at our farm. But that's more than thirty crops right now, and I don't have time to write a book! Overall, our farm is having a good start to the harvest season, with the best yet to come. We hope your own summer is off to a good start, with the best yet to come for you as well.

First Harvest Eve

The day before the first CSA harvest is a bit like Christmas Eve...from what I imagine to be Santa's perspective. As the farmer responsible for the day, I can relate to the stress that Santa must feel on Christmas Eve! This past Sunday was our First Harvest Eve at Old Plank Farm. I spent the early part of the evening making packing lists and checking them twice. And three times. And four times. And then printing them, with minimal swearing at the printer this year. 

Then I checked the lettuce out in the field to make sure that Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen weren't chowing down on the next day's harvest. No deer in sight and everything looked good with only 8 hours to go. 

Next I made sure the sleigh had a full tank of gas and the Anne Murray cassette was in the tape player. Our delivery vehicle doesn't need Rudolph or Christmas spirit to run, but it does need to be playing that old Anne Murray tape. A few years back, when we took the cassette out for the first time, the vehicle promptly broke down. Now I don't take any chances, especially on delivery days. There was plenty of fuel and Anne Murray was singing Snowbird for the eighty-millionth time when I turned the vehicle off.

When I went to bed Sunday night, I was so excited for the first harvest I could hardly sleep. I got up at dawn and ran out to the lettuce patch first thing. The lettuce was still there, without any deer damage. Off to a good start!  But looking at all that lettuce I suddenly felt that I was the Santa who would be giving everyone socks and underwear instead of the Red Ryder toy they really wanted. No tomatoes in the first harvest?! Not at our farm, no. Just lettuce?! Pretty much.

Happily, it'll be like Christmas every week now for 20 weeks, with a different variety of veggies in each week's box. We still won't have tomatoes next week, but soon enough the season will change and with it will come new and different veggies to harvest.

Oh, and it wouldn't be Christmas without a tree-falling disaster. In this case it was not a tree falling in a house. Nor was it a tree falling on a house. Rather, early Monday morning I discovered that our tree-house tree was falling. The floor of the house had collapsed and one of the main tree limbs had shifted and was leaning precariously close to our packing shed. We managed to add "harvest giant and dangerous tree branch" to our Monday morning list. (But no, we didn't put it in the CSA boxes!). 

All in all, it was a good first harvest here. Now, on to the next one!

Potato Planting Day

We got our main potato crop in the ground today, right on schedule, as are most of our plantings this spring so far. Although given the hot, dry weather this afternoon it felt more like planting at the end of July instead of the end of May. Now hopefully there’s rain on the way tomorrow (hooray!) and lots more ground to work before I loose the light today. So I’ll keep this short and leave you with the best Princess Bride joke of all time:

Cold Feet

The air temperatures are finally warming up, much to my relief! But five minutes of sunshine doesn't mean that the soil is warm enough to support healthy root growth for some of our veggie plants. With the lingering cold spring and hard frost last week, it is still too early to plant summer favorites like tomatoes and melons in the field (unless you can cover them, or you have a raised bed where the soil warms up faster). That is, we could plant these things early, but the result would be cold feet for these delicate crops. And like anyone with cold feet, it's hard to put on a good show! If we plant them in cold soil, melon plants sit in misery for weeks before starting to grow roots. And even when they do start growing they often don't perform as well as ones that were planted just a week or two later and avoided having cold feet. So we usually wait until late May or early June to plant heat-loving crops. They won't be ready to eat until August, but it's worth the wait.

So you might be wondering which crops can handle having cold feet? Which ones will be ready for our first CSA delivery in June? There's lots of options! Things like salad greens, snap peas, and scallions are usually in our first boxes. There is also carrots, beets, and garlic scapes that will be ready in June, to name a few. These are the stars of the show early on, happy to jump on stage and show off, without succumbing to cold feet.

The other question many farmers and gardeners in this area might be asking is: are we going to have a late frost? It’s not likely, but it is possible, or so I’m told by some of the wiser farmers who have seen it happen before my time. This is the sort of year to have it happen, based on other weather patterns, so we are prepared for it. Weather sure keeps us on our toes, but neither our toes nor our feet are cold. We’re just thrilled to have another season underway, and a great show of veggies coming up on the horizon.

Fueling the Farm

A friend and I were discussing the farm's fuel consumption last weekend. With the cost of fuel so low at the moment, he recommended that I fill our on-farm diesel tank now. We primarily run two tractors throughout the season, both diesels, in order to prep soil, pull our planting wagon, cultivate, and pull our harvest wagons. Sometimes I feel like I'm always on a tractor, but in reality we don't use them that much. (Sometimes I feel like I'm always on my hands and knees pulling weeds too, but that's not really true either. I'm a live-in-the-moment sort of person, which just means I am dramatic when using the term always!) 

I told my friend that I had already gotten our yearly fuel delivery a few weeks back, when our local oil company delivered the usual 150 gallons to our bulk tank. I said I didn't want to fill the tank any further because I didn't think it was a good idea to store fuel for much more than a year.

150 gallons a year? That's all you use?! My friend asked. We were on a bike ride at the time, and the surprise slowed his pace a bit. I was behind as always, huffing and puffing and wishing I had a diesel motor on my bicycle. So I was glad of a chance to catch up and discuss this a bit more. I had thought it seemed like a lot of fuel, because I'm very conscious of the farm's ecological footprint (and because I feel like I'm always filling the tractor with fuel!), but when I thought it through more I realized that's actually pretty low for the scale of production here at Old Plank Farm. After all, we grow weekly veggies for 250 farm members each year. So that's less than a gallon of diesel per member per year. Home garden rototillers use more fuel than that, my friend said! Rototilling is fuel intensive (because it is slow and requires quite a bit of power), on top of being destructive to soil tilth and microbiology. We'd probably use 50% more fuel if we rototilled regularly on our farm, but we manage to prep nearly all of our veggie beds without tilling. Additionally, our main tractor is a 1970s Deutz, which is a very fuel efficient tractor. Plus, it runs on Christmas spirit.

Rudolph the Deutz, dressed to the nines for Plymouth’s Christmas parade a few year’s back.

So what else fuels the farm, besides a bit of diesel and Christmas spirit? Some other fossil fuels of course, including gas for delivery vehicles and propane for spring heat in the seedling greenhouse. But the largest sources of fuel for a farm like ours is the many hands, hearts and minds putting in time and effort to tend the land. So what fuels us? Our vegetables, of course, among other things. And like Rudolph the tractor, spirit helps fuel us. Spirit from a love of our land, our health and the people we serve. As this virus mess continues to linger in our lives, I hope the offering of fresh vegetables in a little over a month can be one small part of what helps keep your spirits up these days. It certainly does for me.

Picking the Perfect Tomato Plant

Time away from society draws out different ambitions from everyone. For instance, Shakespeare wrote King Lear while in quarantine during the plague. And during our coronavirus quarantine Angelica is teaching her dog to play dead when she draws a fake gun in a duel. 

Whether or not you're as ambitious as Shakespeare and Angelica, perhaps one of your plans this season is to plant a garden. Say, that's mine, too! 

Perhaps we can help with your garden. At Old Plank Farm we've started some veggie bedding plants for you. We raise them organically and they are usually very nice healthy plants! Just like children, plants need lots of regular TLC when they're young in order to become healthy and productive adults. The better they are cared for in the nursery, the quicker they mature and the less needy they are at later stages of life. This is especially true for tomato plants, our best-seller. We have a dozen tomato varieties to choose from this year, including paste tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, and heirlooms of all colors. If you are perusing plant sales or garden centers this spring, here's a couple things to look for when deciding which is the best tomato plant to buy. 

1. Color of the plant. Of course it should be green, right? Well yes, but I'm always amazed at how many plants I see at garden centers that have yellow or purple coloring too. These off-colors are from stress, usually related to moisture or fertility problems. Pick a tomato plant that is a vibrant and generally uniform green color. 

2. Thickness of the main stem. A tall tomato plant is NOT better than a short one. It's not necessary older or more likely to give you tomatoes to eat any sooner than a short one, either. A tall plant was probably just stressed out by neighboring tomato plants crowding its growing space (tomato plants think social distancing is a great idea!). They grow tall but weak under space-stress. Instead of tall, look for stocky stems with lots of bushy leaves surrounding it. 

3. Fruit on the plant. It may seem like fruit on a potted tomato plant that you buy will mean that you'll have fruit in the garden to harvest earlier. But in the long run you'll have a much lower yield from that plant than one that's not already making fruit while still stuck in a pot. Because once the plant starts making fruit, it won't have nearly as much energy to spend on it's own growth, limiting it's ability to set fruit later in the season. So the key to having a bountiful tomato harvest is to raise a young tomato plant to a large and healthy size out in the garden before it starts making fruit. We take great care to sell young, healthy tomato plants that are full of potential for high yields. This makes the gardening work easier for you! 

All of our plants, including tomatoes, peppers, melons, squash, broccoli, kohlrabi, herbs and more will be available for sale at our farm from May 16-June 5 or while supplies last. This year you can pre-order plants on our website's Little Shop of Plants page. You can also stop by our farm-stand from 9am-8pm any day between May 16-June 5 to buy plants. 

But if you'd rather stick with writing epic plays or teaching your dog to duel, you can leave the gardening to us! Just sign-up for an Old Plank Farm CSA box this season. 

Old Plank Farm’s tomato plants for sale…all of them are healthy!!

A Farmer's Cardboard Box

One piece of advice for any small, diversified farmer is this: when considering purchasing equipment, only do so if the new tool serves at least two purposes on the farm. 

At Old Plank Farm we often follow this advice, and we're very good at making the most out of our limited equipment and machinery. One of the most handy tools now, as we plant the first crops of the season, is an old Buckeye Bed-maker. It's an implement pulled by the tractor that we used to use for shaping our fields into raised beds. But as we scaled up our production, we found it was no longer useful for making beds. We have more efficient ways to make our beds now. So I pulled some parts off the implement and turned it into a potato planter (I don't own an official potato planter, since it would only serve one purpose—planting potatoes one or two days each year—and that does not fit the rule of small-farm purchasing!).

Planting the first peas last week on my bed-maker/potato planter/pea planter….!

My homemade potato planter works as well as any. I can sit comfortably with a 50 lb crate of seed potatoes and drop them in the ground a foot apart while the implement digs the furrow and then buries the seeds. When I'm done the rows are straight and I am not tired at all. I can plant at least 1000 lbs of seed potatoes in a day and have plenty of energy left at the end of it. This same tool, when it's parts are shuffled around again a bit, makes a great pea planter. Shuffle parts around again and it's a leek-hiller. Shuffle again and it  loosens the edges of root-crop beds to prepare them for digging at harvest time. 

This tool saves me hours and days of tiring labor. However, it doesn't look like much of anything to someone not very familiar with farm implements. So when trying to explain its many uses, I always feel a bit like Calvin with his cardboard box in the following “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip:

I Made a Bed For the First Time This Year

Today was summer in Wisconsin. First a sunny morning, then thundery storm clouds passing to the south in the afternoon, and finally bird song being carried on a warm breeze all evening. I enjoyed it and I hope you did too! If only we didn't have to plunge back into winter in a day or two... We planted sugar snap peas today in the field, because they can germinate even in cold or snowy weather. Meanwhile, the greenhouse is alive with newly sprouted broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, beets, and spinach seedlings. 

After I made the first beds in the field today, I was very pleased with the tilth (the physical condition) of the soil after working it. Moisture and soil particle size was perfect for planting crops. Never mind crops, I wanted to snuggle up in one of the beds myself, because it looked so soft and fluffy! We sometimes struggle with good tilth at planting time, because I strive to prep beds without a rototiller. From a biological perspective, rototilling is the worst type of cultivation equipment around (even worse than a plow), because it pulverizes the soil and kills beneficial microbial life. But so far we are off to a good start this year, with many beds now ready and waiting for the next round of crops to be planted in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, I think I'll just sleep inside in my unmade bed. It doesn't have a pillow-top mattress like my garden beds, but at least it's dry and I won't ever be woken under a blanket of snow!

If You Can Dodge a Wrench

I was putting away harvest and packing supplies in the packing shed the other day when a new bag of rubber bands caught my eye. The bag proudly proclaimed "RUBBER BANDS. Holding your world together." I dunno guys, I thought to the rubber bands, you might be over-promising a bit, in light of recent events...

But it got me thinking of all the businesses and community leaders and political leaders trying to offer confident and reassuring declarations about  what our future holds, and how they can help, during and after we battle the coronavirus. What can Old Plank Farm promise its community? Vegetables! But what else? I don't want to over-promise or offer glorified messages about my outlook on the state of our world right now because I, like everyone else, have never been through a situation like what we currently face. 

However, as a local farm that has been serving it's community for twelve years, it’s my belief we are already set up to be one of the safest and most reliable sources of vegetables for this season and in the future. And as farmers, we've seen and adapted to many crises and disasters over the years because we have to work with nature all the time. We constantly face uncertainty, and we learn to adapt and be resilient and grow from the challenges thrown at us. So I might claim, as the classic scene in the movie Dodge Ball goes, "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball," and while we've never seen anything like Covid-19, Old Plank Farm has successfully dodged its share of wrenches and balls over the years. 

For instance, there was Snowvid-12, the snowstorm in 2012 that collapsed our greenhouse. I watched it go down, as I was on my way out to it. Or Dryvid-12, the year of the deadly heat and drought (deadly to vegetable plants that is, not many people, so it didn’t get much news coverage). Then there was Castvid-17, when a tractor accident in 2017 left me with a broken arm that I dragged around in a cast for 5 weeks. And there was Torvid-18 when a nearby tornado brought winds that flattened a sweet-corn planting in seconds. And don't even get me started on Deervid, the plague of all plagues for our lettuce crop last year...this year all our lettuce will be planted in a field where we can be helicopter parents to it!

The universe throws us a lot of wrenches, but we're farmers and we keep going. We grow vegetables, we harvest them, we deliver them.

Of course, in the movie the poor guy gets hit in the face with a wrench...so make what you will of this metaphor, but I think of that scene every time something new is thrown at me! But my declarations for the future of Old Plank Farm are sincere. I don't think that a CSA membership can "hold your world together," but I do think you can count on our vegetables to help keep you healthy during whatever lies ahead.

My Neighbors in Qatar

Spring has reached Old Plank Farm at last. The air smelled warm today and the breeze was inviting rather than biting. Our daffodils are up, the clover is greening in the field, and of course the seeding greenhouse is a tropical paradise. Growing vegetables absorbs most of my time and energy, which is nothing new. But my spare energy is anxious, constantly aware of the many people struggling due to the coronavirus and related shutdowns. One thing I've been pondering this week is the effects--both good and bad--that technology has on everyone during these times and in normal times, too. 

It is strange the way technological communication connects and isolates us all at the same time. This month, I believe that telephones and internet will help people feel closer in their relationships to other people, a very good thing for dealing with this global crisis. After all, it is one of our only options for being in touch, so one can't be too picky! Suddenly our friends in the next town are no closer, no more reachable, than people who are halfway across the world. I hope all our members can feel connected to our farm thanks to technology; we'll keep up with our blogging, newsletters, website, and Facebook posts in order to share the start of the growing season with you. Your virtual presence is highly valued by me and Angelica, your farmers.

On the other hand, too much screen time sometimes just fuels our problems, including loneliness and feelings of isolation. Yesterday I visited briefly with an Amish man when I was picking up farm supplies at his place. His theory, in good times or in bad, is that people should take their phones and throw them at their TVs, breaking both and thus solving the root of their problems. He said this in good humor, and I think he (and certainly I) know that it is not actually a solution for most people in today's world. Even so, I relate to this man's perspective and find it to be an inspiring way to help people live in the moment. In-person relationships, real relationships, and real activities are vital to human well-being. I don't think anyone should literally follow this Amish man's advice, but we should all definitely consider the wisdom behind his words.

So during these coming weeks I'm trying to balance making use of the technology I have along with letter writing and lots of solitude in nature, too. Just yesterday evening I enjoyed talking on the phone to my dad who is currently living in Qatar. It was the middle of the night there, but he was awake to talk to me. I had been playing my fiddle when he called, so after I picked up the phone I told him I'd play him a tune. I set the phone on the kitchen table and played my favorite bluegrass waltz. What fun to think he might be able to hear it all the way in the Mideast. When I was done playing I picked up the phone again and asked if he heard me. "Heard you?" he said, "Yes, and I think you woke my neighbors, too!" Oops, sorry for the racket, neighbors in Doha...but three cheers for my flip phone!

Updates from Old Plank Farm

At Old Plank Farm, Angelica and I are thankful to be able to go about our daily work with little interruption from the Coronavirus outbreak. This week we've been busy cleaning up around the compost yard and seeding in the greenhouse. The seedlings are oblivious to COVID-19; I envy them, but I'm grateful that our plants are unaffected. Life on the farm, especially this time of year, is generally isolated anyway, so we aren't experiencing any setbacks. With my couple of social activities cancelled, I'll just spend more time working. 

As I write this, I feel as though I am gloating but that is not my intent at all. Rather, I want to assure all our farm members that we are well prepared to have a great growing season at Old Plank Farm. Good food is essential to good health, and you can continue to count on vegetables from Old Plank Farm this year. I am experiencing anxiety and sadness as I follow current events, just like many people probably are. And I worry when I think of people in my life who are at risk whom I can't see now for quite some time. But I'm able to use all of this energy to fuel me to do my best work for our farm and our community. Even in the midst of upsetting emotions and experiences, there is room for—and a very great need for—finding joy in life and sharing it with each other. I hope that the prospect of fresh vegetables from Old Plank Farm just over the horizon can be one thing that helps keep you feeling upbeet this spring.

If you aren't yet signed up to be an Old Plank Farm member, there's still plenty of time to get your share of our veggies. Visit our website for more details and online sign-up information. We will post updates about our increased food safety plans once the delivery season gets closer. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this lovely photo that Angelica took this morning in the greenhouse. Cold, snow, and Coronavirus isn’t hindering these scallions, seeded only 15 days ago. They sure look appeeling to me!

Old Plank Farm Awarded NCR-SARE Research Grant

There's no better way to kick off the growing season than by finding out that we've been selected for grant funding! Last fall I applied for a research grant through the USDA NCR-SARE (North-Central-Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) organization. The project that I proposed to work on at Old Plank Farm involves making and using Actively Aerated Compost Tea for fruit and vegetable production. Our project was accepted and I am eagerly waiting to work on it this summer.

Actively Aerated Compost Tea (or AACT) is a liquid soil amendment that is full of beneficial microbial life. Microbial life is often seriously lacking, if not completely missing, in agricultural soils in our region. Without microbial life, plants are more susceptible to pests and disease, and they require soluble fertilizers to feed them. (Kind of like if our gut microbiome is weak or missing then we are more sickly and we don't process food very well).

Soluble fertilizers, even if they are organic rather than conventional, aren't great for the environment, and that's what we want to avoid using at Old Plank Farm. With beneficial microbial life restored in the soil by applying compost tea, plants can grow and thrive as nature intended. This is the heart of our belief that the best organic farming style is "farming in nature's image." It is my hope that the outcome of my work will help show that using compost tea can compete with other more mainstream organic practices of today.

The only real downside of using compost tea is that it's hard to work with unless you have some biological training and have a microscope to use, neither of which is very common on farms around here. Thanks to NCR-SARE's grant funds, I'll be able to consult with other soil-life experts around the country, sample their products, learn more details about effective AACT production and use, and share all this with farmers in this region!

The research that we'll be doing at Old Plank Farm this summer compares the productivity and profitability of vegetable crops treated with AACT vs vegetable crops treated with an organic soluble fertilizer product. I'll post updates here a few times this season as the project progresses. For now, you can learn more by reading my full project proposal on NCR-SARE's website:  https://projects.sare.org/sare_project/fnc20-1206/

Seedling Season and the Return of Fritz

Sign-up season is well under way at Old Plank Farm, and our growing season is now on the horizon, too. We kick off the year when we start onion seedlings in the (heated!) greenhouse just 12 days from now. Onions are started first because they take a long time to reach a size suitable for transplanting (10 weeks growing in the greenhouse; broccoli, for example, only takes 5 weeks to grow from seed to transplant stage). Also, onions are cold hardy so they can be transplanted into the field as soon as the soil can be worked in spring.

Another reason we like to start onions as early as possible is because they take a long time to seed. Each onion seed produces one onion, unlike each tomato seed which produces many, many tomatoes! So while we only need to start around 1,000 tomato seeds, we have to start over 10,000 onion seeds in order to have enough to supply our members with many onion deliveries throughout summer and fall. 

Each seed is placed by hand into potting mix...that means Angelica will handle 5,000 onion seeds and I will handle 5,000 onion seeds on our first day in the greenhouse. Actually, Angelica usually ends up doing 6,000 and I do 4,000 because I get distracted fussing with our heating system! Early March is a great time to spend an entire day in the greenhouse plopping seeds into trays and listening to a book-on-tape (I think Pride and Prejudice will be this year's first pick).

If you too like planting onions, but don’t have a heated greenhouse for getting them started in March, you can buy plants from us in May. Mark your calendars for our annual spring plant sale and open house, Saturday May 16th. In addition to all the seeds we start for our own fields, we have a selection of tomato and other vegetable and herb plants for sale to fellow gardeners. We’ll put out a list of what’s available later in spring.

For the past two seasons, onion seeding day has also marked the return of Fritz and his wife, a pair of Sandhill Cranes who have lived at Old Plank Farm for the last six or seven years. Nothing says spring like having your hands in fresh potting mix and hearing the first calls of the cranes as they come in for landing. They always make quite a racket when they first arrive; I imagine they are arguing over whether or not they’re at the right exit. Let's hope they've put it on their calendars again this year! I am eagerly awaiting their arrival, and the arrival of all things green and alive in the coming months.

Past year’s onions on their birthday. Can’t wait for this year’s onion babies!