We got over five inches of rain last week with about 2.75 inches just on Tuesday. See Andrew’s rain gauge above. (Dry) January is over! We were all glad to get some rain, though it meant some cold, grey, damp days, even with rain coats, pants, and boots. On rainy days, the goal is to pick and pack what we need for CSA boxes, orders, and farmers markets and then head out, no other field work.
Instead, we had to fit as much of that in before the rain arrived. The last couple days of January were a blur of activity with almost every working tractor in use. The picture above shows three tractors all in one shot! The one on the far left (almost impossible to see) is a cultivating tractor weeding established plants. The tractor in the middle is transplanting fennel, and the one on the right is direct seeding alyssum (like in the photo below), which attracts beneficial insects that will hopefully prey on aphids and help keep them in check. We got several rows of transplants in: lettuce, chard, fennel, and cabbage. The lettuce should (hopefully) be ready by early April, the chard by mid-May, and the cabbage a little later.
While the transplanting was going on, another tractor was prepping beds for transplanting flowers and another tractor was taking out one of our blocks of peach trees. It’s quite a dramatic shift from a field of established trees to an almost empty field, save for a few piles of trees. 23 years of growth gone in a few hours! The trees had reached the end of their lifespan and it was time to take them out, but still feels sad. Fields of knocked over trees are a fairly common site in our area, though it’s a bit more dramatic when you see 100+ acres of giant walnut trees all pushed over. Once the ground dries out, the next step is to use a ripper on this ground and then we will plant a cover crop, then eventually row crops.
We’ll see when that is though. We’ve got more rain in the forecast and the ground needs to be dry to do any soil work. But it’s sunny today (Monday), perfect for harvesting tulips!
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
