Organic Vegetables, Fruit, Flowers & Wool
We are on the cusp of an explosion — but you, our CSA members, might never know it from the boxes. The only hints are the summer squash and the arrival of basil. Every year, right around this time, there is a sense of expectation as the tomatoes flower and start to set fruit, the onion and garlic crops are harvested, and we check the progress of the first melons starting to swell and sweeten on their vines. [Read more…]
Sometimes we know that our members get way too many emails, and our weekly newsletter is just one more added to the pile. This week News From the Farm takes the form of photographs that we hope bring you closer to the food we grow for you and the community that keeps the farm healthy and sustainable. Andrew snapped these photos all around the Farm during his busy week.
One of the photos is of Full Belly owner Dru and our Harvest Manager Jan planting flowers. Dru is on the tractor, which spaces the seeds both linearly in three rows along the bed, and at a specified depth under the soil. Jan is checking the depth and will make fine-tune adjustments as needed. [Read more…]
Spring is a wonderful time in the Capay Valley… if you have time to enjoy it. Energy rises — from all the orchards with baby fruit hinting of future sweetness… to the baby chicks protected in their nursery… to the flowers in bloom at every turn. Mild weather, blue sky with puffy white clouds, and a farm full of plans, projects and expectations.
We have been transplanting seedlings into the ground on an almost daily basis — crops that our CSA members may see later in their boxes. We have been mowing and cleaning up edges to try and tame the grasses that have already gone to seed everywhere. We have removed protective covers from several plantings of tomatoes and been astonished at how much the plants have jumped since we put them in the ground and covered them up to protect them from cold. We have said goodbye to the 2018 crop of asparagus and hello to our new potatoes. [Read more…]
What was most notable about the farm this last week was how a series of gently warm afternoons created just sufficient enough enticement to inspire many plants and crops into an explosion of blooms and young leaves. The nights and mornings were cold, which meant cold fingers in the packing shed when the first of the day’s harvested crops arrived to be rinsed and packed. But by early afternoon the days were warm, and the blessings of life were impossible to ignore in this beautiful Valley.
At this time of year many of our fields are growing cover crops. These are crops that we grow to feed the soil — we don’t harvest them for sale. Cover crop roots harvest deep nutrients and bring them to the surface for future crops. Cover crop leaves harvest nitrogen from the air. When turned back to the soil these crops build organic matter and feed microbial life, and those microbes in turn play a miraculous part in feeding the crop roots that follow in our fields.
We have a wonderful crew of interns, keeping the farm energy young and inquiring. Every year our interns retrace the learning steps from times past. Here they are on their way to our June 9th pizza night. Next chance for you to come to pizza night is Friday July 14th. Wood fired pizza, salads and homemade farm fresh ice cream — all in a picnic setting at Full Belly!
There are times that we look at each other in despair, saying, “there’s just too much going on around here” —! With everyone going in a lot of different directions life can be pretty overwhelming. Carefully planned days can easily derail into a race chasing down one unexpected loose end after another. Happily, every once in awhile we do get a hint that our efforts may be circling around an internal logic, not actually about to spiral out of control.
One of the biggest themes of the week continued to be to complete the spring transplanting. Last Monday we transplanted our third planting of tomatoes, this time 60,000 seedlings, all in one day, into a 6-acre field. The field has been growing hay for decades, so the soil is well prepared to grow some delicious fruit. Later in the week it was flowers, celeriac and direct seeding of dent corn, melons, beans, squash and cucumbers.
Above the crew is transplanting tomatoes [Read more…]
Full Belly is busy! Crews are mowing down cover crops, bedding up fields, spreading compost, burying drip tape and transplanting seedlings.
Despite all the hustle and bustle, Amon and Jenna made time to start a kids garden. In the photo above are several bins containing soil and compost. The kids planted a few melon and tomato seedlings, as well as seeds of cucumbers, eggplants, okra and other summer vegetables. In a few days, the bins will be moved to Guinda, just outside of the Corner Store. [Read more…]
January 9, 2017
This photo of the flooded creek was taken Sunday afternoon. The bushes that you see poking out of the water are normally the bank!
I hope that a few photos of farm activities will give CSA members a sense of being just a little bit closer to where your fruits and veggies are coming from. These are nothing too fancy, just simple photo-snaps taken with phone cameras by various Full Bellies as we do our work.
Several times a year, Jenna and Amon and several other farm chefs put together a “crew lunch” so that we can all have a sit-down time together. The lunch usually features Full Belly-grown products. [Read more…]
It has been a busy week at Full Belly! Summer came a’knockin with full force and brought the arrival of melons, tomatoes (we picked our first heirlooms!), more peach varieties, plums, apricots, eggplant, cucumbers, and corn – hooray for summer flavors! For most of us at the farm, we hold off eating summertime fruits and vegetables until they are in season which makes this time of year especially mouthwatering. In addition to the new harvest, we also welcomed our first group of summer campers to the farm yesterday – eager youngsters who will spend the week working, playing, swimming, laughing, and farming. Their first task: to care for the 11 new piglets born less than 24 hours before their arrival.
These little piglets are busy eating – and growing! Their mother, Blueberry, will provide milk for them for a little over a month before they start to eat Full Belly grains and veggies! [Read more…]
What’s happening at Full Belly Farm, as June and the official beginning of Summer approach? A morning’s walk around the farm reveal a patchwork of activities, just like the patchwork of fields — all getting sewn together to form the season’s quilt. Young tomatoes, corn and melons in clean fields, as yet untouched by the onslaught of daily harvests. A crew pounding stakes into the ground, preparing to trellis the growing tomatoes. Netted fence that has been put up around the orchards to protect the ripening fruit from hungry deer. Onions in burlap bags sitting in the beds, curing. Trucks, forklifts, backhoes and tractors, all at work on various projects. We’re expecting some hot weather in the next few weeks, so the pace is likely to kick into even higher gear very soon.
Yesenia Gaxiola Vega, Wendy Arita Paz, and Maria Machado Castro harvesting garlic. [Read more…]
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