It has been a long time since I posted in my blog! Sometimes life, work and other priorities just get in the way of finding time to sit down and write!
This year has been tough for growing food or just about any work we are accomplishing outside on the farm; extreme cold in the spring (late frost in May), and a fair amount of rain this summer, along with some very hot and humid days! We also had a little excitement on the farm; a lightning strike hit a downed tree on the edge of one of the fields! We ended up calling the local fire department as we had no way of getting water up to the fire to extinguish it! Yet, despite natures best effort we are seeing some results. When I planted the garden, after the late frost, I thought we were back on track, but the seeds I purchased this year turned out to be terrible! Literally, nothing came up from all of the seeds I purchased! After two weeks of not seeing any production I went back to the company where I purchased our seeds and they replaced everything! I have purchased seeds from this company for the last four years and have never had this problem? They knew I was not some stranger and happily took care to replace the seeds.
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| Grapevines after late frost |
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| Lightning strike on a down tree near one of our fields |
To help the garden this year, after the seed fiasco, I started making manure tea with our cured horse manure; it really has helped speed up the growth of the plants. I take dried horse manure and place it in an old sock and let it steep, covered, in a bucket for a week. The result is water filled with nitrogen to feed the plants. I carefully pour the liquid gold down near the plants; being careful to not get it on the leaves (I didn’t want the leaves to burn in the hot sun from the nitrogen).
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| Beets and just to the left underneath the blue bucket is my horse manure tea |
Last fall I planted garlic for the first time in our garden and yesterday I harvested the garlic; we now have 34 beautiful garlic bulbs curing! The garlic really took in our sandy soil with the addition of other nutrients added to the bed. We now have beets, carrots, swiss chard, and tomatoes flourishing in the garden. The good news on those bad seeds and the late replant is that all with the exception of the swiss chard can be harvested after the first frost. Thus, the time lost in getting started won’t be too impacted; we just may not have the large carrots and beets we normally dig up. Now that I have dug up the garlic bed I will be planting some lettuce and spinach in the bed to continue using it for the growing season.
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| 34 bulbs of garlic harvested! |
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| Garlic bulbs hanging for cure; we will cure them for about 3 weeks |
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| Swiss Chard |
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| Tomatoes (yes, I know they need to be pruned and tied up!) |
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| Carrots |
The grapevines this year took a really hard hit in the late frost; every single vine was hit with the frost! For the remainder of the season we have been working to not create too much distress for the vines and held back on some of the pruning. It seems to be working but now we are faced with the scourge of gardeners; the Japanese beetle! Those mother#*$&@$’s are working on decimating the leaves on the vines! A while back I heard that if there are soybean fields nearby the beetle population explodes; our neighbor to the north of us planted soybeans this year and guess what? So….now I am on the hunt to come up with a plan to go after the beetles! There are a number of ideas out there but the problem with most of those ideas is the rain; with lots of rain, you have to apply whatever solution you did before the rain. We used to go up and pluck the suckers off into a container full of dawn dish detergent but with this population that will be tough. I have heard of spraying with soap and water but again with rain you will be at it every day! I have heard of traps but the problem with the traps is they actually attract more beetles to the area! So…stay tuned I really am not sure how other than spraying we are going to beat these bastards!
We took on a couple of projects this year with the help of our son William; one of which he hopes to produce income for the farm. We are harvesting down trees in our woods for firewood, or campfire wood or specialty wood for those who might like to craft their own creation. There is enough wood that we will not have to cut any live trees and for the project and if we start any live tree cutting we will bring in a forestry expert. The woods near the farm are important to the farm and to just go in and randomly cut would be foolish beyond belief! The beauty of this project is it is helping us clean up the woods. One just has to look around and you can easily find trees that have fallen on to other trees (they are tricky to cut down) and removing them for future wood sales. William had this grand idea that we could remove a number of trees, split the wood and sell it but has quickly learned that one tree is a lot of work! Despite the heavy work load it is coming along slowly and we are getting the downed trees out while managing small areas of the woods. One of the species of trees that has plagued the woods and is slowly making its way out into one of our fields is the black locust; this tree is a fast growing tree and the wood is incredibly hard! It takes a toll on the chainsaw! They grow incredibly tall in a very short amount of time and as fast as they grow they get blown down in heavy winds; unfortunately they fall onto another tree pushing that tree down as well! It is our hope to get to the trees that are doing this damage and help the other trees to prosper. In doing so, we uncovered a beautiful maple that we will be able to tap for syrup next spring!
The second big project is one that William took on his own; he is removing the brush trees and fencing that connect two of the fields. Years ago someone put up a barb wire fence between the two fields and separated them but now William has gone down the row and removed the fencing, and pulled the scrub trees out. This will be good for the two fields and the current tenants of both fields will be able to connect them and increase their crops. All of this work has occurred on some very hot and humid days!
Our foraging for food this year has gone well; Sara found a nice patch of morels in our woods. We have never had any luck finding morels in the woods but this year the conditions ended up being perfect! She spotted the tasty fungus around a dead elm and we noticed that the bark was falling off of the elm; it seems that might just be the key? Sara also did an incredible job bringing home asparagus this year; we must have consumed over 20 pounds of fresh asparagus this year! Plus the asparagus bed in the garden this year produced a nice bumper crop as well!
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| Tasty morels from our woods this year! |
I am always amazed at how quickly life on the farm can take a sharp turn into an abyss of chaos or unforeseen difficulties; fortunately for us, our work in growing food, is primarily for our consumption. Thus when difficulties arise it is about learning and how to approach the problem that can best solve the problem. The respect I have for those who are selling their vegetables or working their farm is something we all should have! Consider the following facts:
· Small farms made up the majority of the 800 farms that disappeared from the Wisconsin landscape in 2014, according to new national agricultural data. http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/number-of-small-farms-in-wisconsin-continues-to-drop/article_2760181d-ae69-517f-b5e2-d1871dd823fe.html
· Current laws and other legislation are in fact hurting small farmers, whether it is the water use, or the ability to compete with large industrial types of farms.
· Not a single word of the small farm plight has been discussed by any politician in this election cycle.
Our future in having locally sourced food from small farms is something we all should be concerned about. Supporting a local economy is by far better than buying into a global idea that only benefits large industrial farms. When you purchase produce at the farmers market you are feeding more than just your family, you are feeding the family who sold you the food. My lessons this year have taught me the importance of perseverance and realizing what this could have been like had it represented the whole farm on a larger scale! Imagine how Wollersheims felt knowing that the vines were not going to produce grapes this year due to the frost or an entire field destroyed by fire or pests! We are very lucky in the sense that our issues were not going to cause us financial ruin but instead were only minor setbacks for our own food source.
