CSA Spring Newsletter: May 14th, 2024 (Week 4/5)

Here is where the puddle was forming, and the new drainage is being added in! This field has been in pasture for 46 years, now is tillable land with beautiful soil.

Hi Folks,

This is the 2nd to last week of the Spring CSA.  We are glad we haven’t had any very cold nights again as we have very many temperate crops harding off in the cold frame and we are just planting out now planting out our first successions of these tender crops to the field.   There are so many strawberry blossoms in the strawberry fields.  The crew has been eyeing the berries with trepidation, just thinking of all the hours of bending over to harvest berries for a full three weeks.  It’s one of the hardest fruits to endure the physical strain of harvesting the berries so low to the ground.  When we first started farming we had our local tractor and tractor implement vendor show us the strangest implement.  A little bed that looks like a skinny massage table, you know with the hole in the top to rest your forehead when you are lying on your stomach.  Well it was a strawberry picker.  Andres, sent Chris a youtube video of a tractor pulling an 5 gang bed.  Wow!  That would be rad!  We don’t have this implemented yet, but Chris and I got the hint that Andres and others sure would like it if we got it!  We have to look into this some more.

We are currently making some water movement improvements on the farm.  Chris and Andres are the most excited about the permanent 2” header we are installing in the North and South fields.  This is being buried 4 feet in the ground to avoid any freeze damage.  With above ground lines, we have clamps breaking and lines bursting or tractors running over pipes or valves, which is always super time consuming and a lot of back and forth checking one line and the next.  Also another great improvement is drains.  We have been doing this slow and steady over the last 5 years.  We are putting in drains to help move surface water that sits on the fields.  These drains keep the fields dryer when we have big rain events, and keeps the water moving and not back logging and having the plants sit in water.  We are most excited about the work being done in a beautiful field that has been in pasture for at least 46 years, that we have in a strange corner of our property. We haven’t worked this field due to a big puddle in the middle of the field.   When we were looking at the drainage ditch we noticed a super deep layer of topsoil, about 15” of beautiful dark loam!  This is ground that we have kept in sod due to it being so wet, but now with this drainage work it can become a part of our growing ground rotation.  It will be a wonderful addition to Who Cooks tillable acreage.  We are thinking asparagus could do very well here.

Cheers,

Chris, Aeros, & The Who Crew