Theme: fall

News from the Farm | September 19, 2022

September 19, 2022

Rain! It rained on and off Sunday and as of Monday morning, it’s sunny but the ground is damp and our rain gauges report 0.75 inches. There’s still some rain in the forecast for later today, but those forecasts have shifted quite a bit so we’ll see what the grand total ends up being. A burst of rain in September before returning to late summer/fall for another month isn’t unusual, but it still felt like a surprise, especially at this point in the long, hot summer. The rain washed off the layer of dust covering everything, making the plants and trees look more vibrant, and while the air is heavy and humid, it also feels cleaner and smells nice too, not like dust and overripe tomatoes. [Read more…]

News from the Farm | November 29, 2021

November 29, 2021

Kosuke and Andrew  —  

It is crazy for me to realize that my time at Full Belly ends in two weeks. I remember the first day, July 6th, 2020 when I spent that day and most of the week harvesting potatoes in the blazing summer heat.

The last year and a half has flown by and has been so enjoyable. Many days I could be doing a variety of tasks. Some days it could be everything from harvesting, planting, building a cooler and then ending with loading the delivery trucks. I spent many hours harvesting sunflowers, eggplants, peppers, and so much more. There were many days of planting transplants as well as seeding crops. In the spring, I spent every Sunday taking care of the greenhouse and watching the plants grow and learning how to take care of them with Andrew Brait’s advice. This summer, I was in charge of our sunflower harvest and bunching efforts. [Read more…]

News from the Farm | November 22, 2021

November 22, 2021

Carrots!

We’re closing in on the end the year! After this week, we’ve got two more weeks until our winter break, with a teaser this weekend when most of us have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off –– the exceptions are the Saturday farmers market crew, our hard-working delivery drivers, and the folks who care for our animals, who will be working.

[Read more…]

News from the Farm | November 15, 2021

November 15, 2021

Dear Gentle Readers,

On a very special shelf in the Full Belly Farm office sit almost two-dozen binders that hold the dedicated archives of this newsletter. Coined The Beet in the late nineties the binders are a treasure trove of over 1,200 articles, interviews, opinion pieces, political sentiments, children’s essays, and guest editorials. One person has been responsible for the editing, proofreading, gentle deadline reminders and 90% of the written words over those past 25 years and yet not ONE article has captured the essence of who she is and her vital role here at the farm as partner, mentor and friend. So, this article is dedicated to Judith Redmond and not a moment too soon, for she will be stepping down in a month’s time from her daily duties here at the farm and opening some exciting new doors for herself in 2022.


Judith at this fall’s Grateful Harvest Gala

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 8, 2021

November 8, 2021

This past Thursday was our 2021 olive harvesting day! It was an all hands on deck effort to get our olives off the trees and turned into olive oil. Even some of us in the office chipped in a bit. A small crew stayed in the wash and pack area to take care of CSA boxes and orders, but everyone else grabbed tarps, ladders, hand rakes, and poles and headed out to the olives in three teams. Each team laid down tarps and then proceeded to pull, rake, and whack all the olives off the trees. Many larger olive oil operations use mechanical shakers to get the olives off of the trees, but we do it by hand. The olives on the tarps are emptied into small harvest bins which were dumped into large macro bins which were ferried back to the shop when full to be kept cool until we finished. It was a long day of work, but it was a true team effort and we had great weather.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 1, 2021

November 1, 2021

Weather is often the subject of conversation, and this is even more the case in the farming world where we’re constantly talking about it and glancing at the forecasts. For a good reason! It impacts what our day-to-day tasks look like, more than many other professions. We found ourselves talking about the weather even more than usual this past week. How could we not after receiving 6 inches of rain in 24 hours and about 7 total in just a few days? We didn’t have any flooding on our farm, a testament to the care and attention that we give to the health of our soil, and the ground soaked it all in very quickly, with only a small amount of standing water in some fields on Monday morning, which was gone by that afternoon. Or maybe it shouldn’t be surprising given that we’d gone 18 months with almost no precipitation. During last year’s “rainy season” we only got 5 inches. With so little rain, not much vegetation grew on the burn areas from the 2020 LNU fire, so there were some mudslides (including one that shut down Highway 16 further up the Valley) and a lot of debris in the smaller creeks that feed into Cache Creek.

This storm was warm, it woke up and invigorated the plants, different than our usual cold front storms from the north which usually halt plant growth for a bit. All of the germinating seeds, recent transplants, and established plants look better already, more brawny and certainly bigger. Even the few remaining summer crops which are slowly petering out look happier and healthier. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 25, 2021

October 25, 2021

The news from Full Belly Farm is: RAIN. Between Thursday night and Monday morning, we got about 7 inches of rain, with 6 inches coming between Saturday afternoon and Sunday night.  That is a lot of rain to receive all at once and is more than we received last winter and spring. Right now (Monday morning) there’s some water in the creek, muddy roads and lots of puddles everywhere, but most of the standing water in the fields and orchards has already started to sink it. Still, it’ll be a while before we can get tractors out into the fields; we don’t want to get them stuck or compact our soil. There was a lot of frenetic work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday last week to finish the walnut harvest, sow cover crops, transplant onions, flowers and almost 20,000 anemone and ranunculus corms, and everything else that needed to happen before it rained and it seemed like that was time well spent!

Creek, by Anna Brait

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 18, 2021

October 18, 2021

Being on the farm for the last 15 months I have come to learn the seasonal rhythm of the farm. After being here for over a year, when I see the change in seasons, I know what it means we are going to be doing. Summer is busy with lots of harvesting. As soon as we get to August, we start transplanting lots of fall crops. In the beginning of September we plant strawberries for next year and we continue to transplant and seed crops. Then as October begins, we plant garlic. Later this month will be getting flower transplants, bulbs and corms in the ground. At the same time as we are planting, there are lots of other crews working on harvesting and weeding. While summer is definitely the busiest time of the year there is so much to do the rest of the year and there is always so much going on: harvesting, weeding, and the never ending project list. It seems once one thing on the project list gets finished, we add at least two more things, ensuring we are never not busy. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 11, 2021

October 11, 2021

This past week was walnut week – marked by the hum of the machinery and the clouds of dust emanating from the orchard and full trailers of nuts. We aren’t completely done with our 2021 walnut harvest, but we’re almost there, having harvested two of our three walnut varieties and most of our 12 acres of trees.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 4, 2021

October 4, 2021

NOTE: Farming is both physically and emotionally difficult work; it’s filled with plenty of heartbreak and sadness to accompany the positive and awe-inspiring moments. In addition to produce, we also raise animals and this brings even more emotional highs and lows. We don’t always talk about those harder moments and instead often focus on the cuteness of the babies or on how they help our soil fertility. But we think it’s important to talk about the whole experience. Kendall, one of our interns, wrote this week’s News From the Farm about her experience working with our animals. If you aren’t comfortable reading about animal death, we would recommend skipping this week’s News from the Farm.

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At the beginning of May 2021 I was welcomed into the Full Belly Farm intern family. It’s been a crazy and educational five months so far and I’ve loved (almost) every second.

Kendall attending to a happy member of the flock.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 27, 2021

September 27, 2021

It definitely seemed a little quieter in “downtown Full Belly Farm” this past week. But the slightly lower level of hustle and bustle compared to a month or so ago was deceptive. Plenty of work was still being done, just different work.

Some folks were clearing out summer fields (collecting tomato stakes and winding up drip tape) and others helped out the regular kitchen crew cooking winter squash and making our 2021 batch of hot sauce! The major focus of the week was getting transplants and seeds in the ground. Andrew and others zipped around on tractors with seeders or transplanters on the back. Putting seeds in the ground is a solo act but transplanting (this week, mostly cabbage and lettuce) requires a team of folks to help. Once the tractor work is done, the plants need some help to get going. The irrigators come in next. The transplants need water to keep from drying out and seeds won’t germinate without it; most of our fall and winter crops are irrigated with sprinklers, which can cover 6 rows at a time and then are moved to the next set of rows. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 20, 2021

September 20, 2021

The last line of peaches, Autumn Flames — small but tasty  —  

It seemed to me that all of a sudden the gentler light, a cool breeze and a bluest of blue sky were announcing a change in the season. After another remarkably hot week, the nights are cooling down. As you walk through the walnut orchard, you have to make an effort to avoid stepping on the walnuts that have fallen from the branches and if you listen for a moment you will hear more of them falling to the ground.  Fig leaves are piling up in my garden and soon the peaches will be showing some fall color.  Persimmons and pomegranates are starting to look pretty ripe.  The heat of the sun doesn’t seem quite as intense.   [Read more…]

News From the Farm | September 13, 2021

September 13, 2021

Andrew recently declared September to be the April of the fall. He meant that like April, this month is a crucial time to prepare for the next season. In April, we’re always busy getting ready for the summer. Right now, seeds must be sown, transplants put in the ground, and new plants watered and weeded in order for us to have crops in the fall and winter. All of these are key tasks over the next few weeks while we also continue to harvest our late summer produce. But this week had had accents of April even in the hot (106 on Tuesday and Wednesday) and dusty weariness of September. Why? [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 2, 2020

November 2, 2020

Harvesting Olives  —  

Living on a farm brings Nature’s timetable to the forefront of daily cycles.  In the summertime much of the focus during the day is on selling, harvesting and packing the bounty from the fields.  Now, in the early Fall we are still selling a lot of produce but pods of activity on the farm are devoted to various crop harvests that will hold us through the winter months and a lot of energy is devoted to getting fields planted and the farm prepared for the winter. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | October 12, 2020

October 12, 2020

Last Week’s Box: gloriously cold greens and warm yellows, orange and reds! by Maria Grazia — 

I tend to work a lot in the busy Full Belly office which is one of the farm’s most important information and communication Hubs, providing its own frame of reference in terms of News From the Farm.  This is where the daily work of selling crops, providing service to our CSA members, taking care of bills and invoices, managing payroll, and keeping up with the comings and goings of our 90-member farm crew are just a few of the activities on the list.  We have definitely moved on from the days when all of the phone extensions on the farm picked up into one (or maybe there were two…) party line and we had heated discussions around whether or not the farm should be accepting credit card payments. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | December 2, 2019

December 2, 2019

Dru at the Farmers Market (photo by Lauren Betts)  — 

One delight of our Thanksgiving week was the remarkable change in weather. On Wednesday evening the temperature dropped to 28, freezing pipes, nipping the last leaves on the apples, peaches, walnuts and almonds; and frosting the last of the summer’s non-frost tolerant crops like potatoes and summer flowers. (Potato tops are dead and the spuds are resting in the soil until we harvest them later this winter.) All manner of summer frost-sensitive crops are now dark and done. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 25, 2019

November 25, 2019

Thanksgiving News From the Farm — 

We recently had a meeting of our Crew Supervisors and listened to them echoing themes that we ourselves have been discussing:  “There are not enough crew members here on the farm to do the work.  Each of our crews needs at least 5 or 6 people, and we often have only 2 or 3 people trying to do the work of 6.  The only solution is to cut back crop production 20% across the board.”

Basically, our crew is pointing out to us the fact that every year we hopefully plant, irrigate, weed and care for our beautiful crops, but often leave too many of them in the field because of the labor shortage that so many other farmers are also experiencing. The crux of this labor shortage has to do with the fact that the majority of US farm workers are immigrants, they always have been immigrants and most future farm workers will be immigrants as well.  With the current crackdown on immigration from Mexico and Central America, and the lack of public policy that would allow immigrants to work in the US legally, the stress on US agriculture is increasing.  Construction and Landscaping, which also rely on immigrant labor are in the same quandary.  And the labor shortage can be especially difficult for organic farmers growing labor intensive fruits and vegetables and often needing proportionally more labor because of a greater amount of hand weeding on organic farms. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 18, 2019

November 18, 2019

Hello Fellow CSA Members,

As the year draws to an end, it is once again time for a report from the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic (CMC) which provides free integrative health services to low-income women who are living with a diagnosis of cancer. The produce boxes donated each week by Full Belly Farm and its CSA members who donate a skipped vacation box or add a box when they renew are visible manifestation of support and kindness, and they are received with joy. 

Earlier this year CMC moved into a beautiful, welcoming new space. The rooms are light, airy, and bright with color. During each shift, when they arrive for their acupuncture, bodywork, herbal healing, or other services, CMC clients can pick up fresh FBF produce to take home for themselves and their families.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 11, 2019

November 11, 2019

One has to love a bargain- it may be a personality virtue – re-use, recycle, repurpose. Or maybe it is a malady that drives profligate hoarding or the accumulation of another’s junk; or being blind to eyesores; or an overactive imagining about future time that will be allocated for turning straw into gold. In my troubled view, my straw is generally junk steel. 

Admittedly, I have gone on a spree of imagining about good deals for too long.  As a result, my steel resource pile is a bit too big, the list of get-to-it projects enough for a couple of lifetimes.  The good ideas to be built from that pallet of auction junk become magnificence in my imagination as I raise my hand.  When I get it back to the farm, the filing system for my expanded resource base has not been well organized.  Where did I put that widget?  I know that I have one around here somewhere! [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 4, 2019

November 4, 2019

We are enjoying dry, mild weather with only light winds and wonderful crisp cold nights and warm days. A walk around the farm still reveals signs of all the wind we experienced last week, with twigs and trash needing to be cleaned up. The lovely Fall weather we experienced this week is very much appreciated. 

Many seasonal crew members have left the farm, returning to lives in Mexico, about which I know very little. Despite our best intentions of rounding out the work cycle, we still love to grow those tomatoes, melons and summer crops, all of which require that we increase the number of people working here during the 6-month busy season. Our year-round, permanent crew knows that the work days are getting shorter — a mixed blessing for them with more family and personal time, but lower take-home wages. [Read more…]

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