Cherry Ridge Farm

Columbus Day is for Garlic Planting

Everyone in the Northeast remembers Columbus Day Weekend as the first weekend for the last half of the summer where we had three beautiful days in a row.  Perfect for getting the garden together for the 2012 planting season.  A big thanks to Team Feikens, Tony and Tim, Naaz, and Francesca and Caroline, who all spent time down in the garden doing a tremendous amount of work.  In Dave’s case, he also sacrificed his knee to a sledgehammer, but that’s another story.

The day started with this pile of 120 landscape timbers and 21 12-foot lengths of rebar.

This last year we let the garden fallow…just didn’t have the energy, needed to recharge after the loss of my mom who was part of the inspiration for much of the planting we do, a million other reasons.  I’m glad we did, for the above reasons but also because this was one of the rainiest seasons on record and it would’ve been a tough year to be organic.

Dave got to work on the rebar, Tony and Tim drilled holes in the ends of the landscape timbers.

Lucy provided encouragement:

After a couple hours, we had enough rebar cut and timbers drilled to head down to the garden to get started.

Loaded up the Kubota, with the rototiller on the 3-point hitch.  This machine has saved the day a hundred times on the farm, it’s the best purchase I’ve ever made for farming.  I managed to get it stuck almost immediately in a deceptively dry-looking corner of the garden which was actually soaked, unfortunately no pics of Dave and Tony helping me put boards under the tires to jimmy it out.

This is jumping ahead a few steps, but you can see what our plan was.  Five 40’ x 4’ planting beds in each section, this particular day we were working on the northeast and northwest garden quadrants.

Once I’d measured/marked and rototilled the beds, we set down the landscape timbers, and drove in 1’ rebar in either end with a sledge.  It was during this time that Dave decided to put his knee between the sledge and the bar he was trying to hit.  It looked like it hurt.

This first bed next to the raspberries is the garlic bed - Julia and Lee shucked all the garlic from last year up top:

And then they planted it all.  Naaz showed up to help.  Stars!  You can see the beds taking shape here.

By the time we got to the end of the day, we were all beat and ready for the Michigan game.  I wasn’t sure Dave was going to move, he stayed in this position for a *long* time.

It was beer o’clock by this point, I went up and served up brats on the grill, beans, and Creamery ice cream, and we all took in the Michigan game.

Meanwhile, the weekend provided some of the finest views of early fall from the garden.

Frenchie (and Caroline) came out on Monday and we finished up the back three beds.  There are still two beds to do before winter, if any of our other csa members want some fine weather and work in the coming weeks.

We’re also planning on planting green manure - probably winter wheat - in each of the beds, that’ll probably happen the weekend of October 22.

I drove to the store to get lunch…not a bad view over Warwick Valley, down by Manos’ farm.

The final evening of the weekend gave us this sunset.  All in all, a great Columbus Day weekend, full of work, but very satisfying to get our hands in the dirt and wind up with a great framework for next year’s CSA.

Installing a package of bees

For my first farm post since last fall, a video of me installing a package of bees into a new hive.

History of a Farm Dog

RIP Spotty.  November 1997-August 21, 2010.

From a friend who knows Spotty’s history from the shelter:

“Dear Sally,

Everyone who knew and loved Spotty dearly joins me in expressing our most profound sympathy at his passing.  My heart aches for you and your family, as I can say honestly that I know the depth of your sorrow & pain that the loss of this truly special fellow brings to you all.

Spotty was one in a million.  He certainly had a “colorful” youth to say the least.  His original owner was a lunatic, who while always professing her love for him, never took proper care of him.  He survived endless strolls through traffic on **** Avenue, a housefire, being illegally abducted from the shelter & arrested by police and dining on God knows what!  And yet, he took every experience in stride with the utmost grace & composure!

I know that he thoroughly enjoyed all his impoundments at the shelter.  He would eagerly jump into the truck whenever we picked him up!  For Spotty, each impoundment was like a spa treatment - he would be pampered, bathed, groomed, have a pedicure & be smothered with love & attention by the staff & volunteers.

It was a truly glorious day & wildly celebrated when he officially became ours.  We just adored him.  He was the sweetest, most mellow, good natured guy, an old soul who liked everyone he ever met and who taught us all a great deal about living with adversity & maintaining a joy & zest for life.

It was nothing short of a blessing when you adopted Spotty.  We knew that his life would be glorious & that he finally had a normal home & family & that he would be well cared for, loved & treasured as he so well deserved.

We are forever grateful to you all for opening your hearts & home to Spotty & giving him so many years of joy & happiness & love.

We so hope that you will find comfort in the infinite memories of all the joy, love & laughter that you shared together.  he will be forever in your hearts, as he will always be in ours.

With deepest sympathy and immeasurable gratitude.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  Thanks for the memories, Spotty!

Processing honey, Cherry Ridge Farm-style

June 20.  Hot - 85 degrees and humid.

Today is one of my favorite farm activities - collecting honey and processing honey.  I have to hand it to Sal for coming up with this idea four years ago.

We’ve got a successful hive that made it through the winter (one of two, the other is brand new), and the older hive has been churning out honey for several weeks now.  Today I went into the hive and got four more honey frames like the one above…fresh from the hive.

First - the outfit (on an 85 degree day, this takes it out of you).  Smoker on my hip, new honey frames in my hand (wood frames with beeswax foundation, painstakingly assembled).  Plastic trash bags for putting the finished honey frames in, and the orange bee tool for pulling the hive apart.)

First we check the new hive.  Still building this hive out, so not too many bees.  On top of the frames below, you can see “Bee-mighty”, bee food full of protein that provides lots of food for new brood (new bees), who may not have had time to make much honey yet which they need for food.

Can you find the queen on the frame below?  Look for the blue dot on her back.  There’s only one in every hive…or there’s a fight to the death.  Now imagine trying to find the queen if she’s not marked like this one is.

The capped cells in the picture above contain brood.  In the middle of the frame, see what looks like a white cream center in most of the cells?  Each of those is a baby bee.

After checking out the frames, I sugar the bees with powdered sugar.  This knocks off tracheal mites that can choke and kill the bees;  they can’t hold on, and they slip off and fall through a screen on the bottom of the hive, where they can’t jump back up on the bees.  This is the organic method of beekeeping (most commercial honey producers use chemicals).

After putting the finished honey frames in a plastic bag, putting in the new frames and foundation to replace the old ones, and shaking all the bees off into the hive, I take everything back into the house.

Now I’m going to work on frames we took out last week.  I haul these out of the freezer (honey frames taken out of a hive immediately go into the freezer for 48 hours, to kill anything that doesn’t belong there).

These frames then get transferred to the honey trays;  as they unthaw, they start to drip honey, which we naturally collect and save.

Next, we cut the honey from the honey frames.

And then put it in the honey boxes.

Tell me that doesn’t look good.

Look at all the honey on the tray below.  We save all that, as well as the beeswax (for candles).

Comb honey is eaten wax and all…you cut off a piece, put it on your toast, die, and go to heaven.

Four frames of honey gives this many boxes of comb honey.

And now I start getting calls from friends who want some :)  But first, they go to members of our CSA…everyone gets at least one.  We should have close to 150 boxes of honey from one single hive by the end of the season…four frames of honey equals 20 boxes of comb honey.

Picking cherries

One of our favorite yearly activities is picking cherries.

This year, the cherries came *way* early.  Any trees that were hit by frost (such as our lower cherry trees) aren’t really putting out any fruit.  The early heatwave we experienced in April really messes with the trees schedules.

Today C & C are in the bucket of the tractor, about to be hoisted up to pick some cherries up on the ridge.

This is our oldest cherry tree.  It’s gotta be 35-40 years old, at least.

We really only get one picking on this tree - the birds and groundhogs get the rest.

I love these spring evenings.

Planting weekend - May 29

Today’s the day we put plants that we started in March in our basement in the garden.  Last year we made the mistake of putting out 120 tomato plants on the Saturday before Memorial Day…two days later was a full moon, and a killing frost (see my post further down the page).  Not repeating that mistake this year - it looks clear from here on out temperature-wise.

Lots of helpers today - Savocas, Cairns - mostly working on getting the tomatoes in.  Tomatoes are heat-loving plants, so we plant them in solar mulch (the black plastic in the picture below).  That heats up the ground, kills the grass around them and under the plastic, and makes the tomatoes pop.

The process is pretty simple, once the mulch is down (thanks to Dave Feikens, Tim Reid, and Tony Cellini for help with that).  Dig a hole, put in some alpaca compost, put the plant in, tap it down.  The plants spent the previous two weeks being set outside during the day…and then the night…to harden them off.  If you take plants right out of the basement/grow lights, and plant them, they’ll fry the first sunny day…they need time to adjust.

Pretty much anything will grow with full sun and water.

Notice the row-cover (Agribon) in the foreground.  We plant almost everything that rabbits like under row cover…kale, chard, beets, beans, carrots…the plants are happy to have this semi-permeable membrane over them, they grow fast and strong, and most importantly don’t get eaten by bugs or bunnies or groundhogs.

The raspberries are kickin’ it at this point…

150 tomato plants / 14 different heirloom varieties planted:

All solar mulch down…and squash / pumpkin / melon / corn all planted (plus early corn is up)

Sour cherries already.  Amazing.  Almost four weeks early.

Next week we harvest honey. Stay tuned.

Early planting weekend - May 23-24

May 23 - partly cloudy, no wind, 73 degrees

The last two weekends in May are big ones for gardeners.  Things that overwintered (garlic, berries, grapes, etc.) are well up by this point, and annuals like greens and peas are ready to pick.

The swallows are back, and nesting in the barn…everything is bright green.  I really love Spring.  In the flower garden, the peonies are out this year - waaay early.  In fact, almost everything is early this year, by at least 2-3 weeks.  This wasn’t good for our cherries, because they bloomed and then we had a frost which killed the flowers.

Potatoes are in…corn is in…beans, carrots, brussels sprouts, kale, chard, beets (golden and chioggia red), parsley, and peppers are all in the garden.  Next weekend our plants go in.

Garden weekend - June 19

Saturday, June 19.  Hot - 85 degrees, but a stiff south wind blowing.  Sweat bees around.

Yesterday turned out to be a great garden day.

On hand - Tim, Naaz, Scott and his brother Jeff (thanks!), Carolyn, Sal, and me.

We spent the day weeding and mowing.  Above, Scott’s in the onion and greens section.  The onions look amazing.  The garden itself looked rough when we went down to get started, and pretty amazing when we left.  That’s the beauty of a CSA - everyone pitches in, and everyone benefits.

Here’s Scott picking the last of the salad (before we turn it under and replant):

You can see the tomatoes have made some progress:

Weeding the beans:

Tim watering corn transplants.  We only grow Johnnyseed Delectable corn, it consistently does great in our rocky, clay-filled soil.  We plant several rows at different times, so it doesn’t all ripen at once.  Note how we plant corn in between the squash (black mulch) rows.  This is the concept of the “three sisters”, an Indian concept that suggests growing beans, corn, and squash together.  The corn comes up first, then beans climb the cornstalks, and squash snake in between the rows.

If it worked for the native Americans, it works for us.

Sal in the beans, this is our best-ever bean crop.  Largely because we planted all the beans under row covers.  It’s easy…just drag the row covers over the beans, and weight the edges down with some rocks.  Leave it there for two weeks, and presto - perfect beans.

Jeff putting up training wire in the concord grapes.

Tim walking between the squash, corn, and pumpkins.

Weeding the beets…

And finally, part of the day’s bounty - garlic scapes.  These will last until Christmas in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator.  Best grilled, or chopped and cooked in butter.  You can make pesto out of them, or put them on burgers.  They’re even great pureed in mashed potatoes.  Their taste is very mild, but decidedly garlic.

Salad daze

Sunday, May 16 - 68 degrees, light breeze

Greens do best when the nights are cool/cold, and the days are warm.  Warm nights make greens bolt, and the alternating hot/cold moves the sugar around in the plant.  Plants send their sugars down into the roots during the day, and up into the leaves during the night…that’s why it’s always best to pick vegetables first thing in the morning (higher sugar content).

The garden doesn’t look like much yet, other than the garlic, which is coming along great.  This time of year, I look at that garden and have to remind myself that a scant month from now, things will look entirely different.

Planting potatoes

Saturday, May 15 - 65 degrees, light west wind

I’ve been a little slack on keeping the blog up to date…so I’m taking Father’s Day and catching up a bit.  We’ve really had a fantastic crew of people this year for our CSA - nearly ten families, and several dedicated individuals, have really made it a good year for us.

Going back about a month, this is what the garden looks like in mid-May - a sea of grass, waiting to take shape.  Today is potato planting day.  On hand - Tony, Tim, and Amy.

Planting potatoes is pretty easy;  once you’ve got the potato trenches dug.  For the last several years, we’ve done spot rototilling as in the pictures above.  Spot rotolling means that you need to either mow between the rows during the summer, or mulch with newspaper and straw - but we find that doing this keeps retain water in the soil during the dry season, and in addition, it looks nicer and is more pleasant to sit in while weeding the actual rows.

So -dig a row, cut the potatoes in half and lay them in the row, then turn in some alpaca compost (above), which is full of worms and all the good stuff gardens need.

Look at the color of those potatoes!  They are Adirondack Reds…they make amazing mashed potatoes in the fall, and we have enough to throw them in the frig and keep them through mid-February.