Theme: farm update

News From the Farm | August 15, 2016

August 15, 2016

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.

crew lunchSeveral 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…]

News From the Farm | July 25, 2016

July 25, 2016

We will start this Beet article with the cooing of the morning doves that at dawn begin their amorous calls to one another in a repetition of cadence and tone – 3 soft notes repeated 3 or 5 times, and then answered by another and another. A day break song welcoming the promise of another morning – softly, thankfully.

They begin the energy of awakening, as each moment of the change from dark to grey to sunrise is marked by another voice in the chorus.  Finches, sparrows, hawks and mockingbirds all add their calls to the day in a progression that is millenniums in the making and shall be so in the coming ages. A song beyond our time, from before our time – a gift given for the appreciation of the listener.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 27, 2016

June 27, 2016

We know that many of you are wondering where the tomatoes are and why you are “still getting beets and cabbage in your boxes.”  We also note that some of our members are happy to continue getting something green for awhile, like a cabbage…   As one of our members commented, “every single selection is someone’s favorite or someone’s least favorite.”  Even though the CSA boxes sometimes have the same vegetables in them for a few weeks, taken as a whole, the variety of fruits and vegetables in the boxes from season to season results in a remarkably diverse cuisine, providing healthy inspiration to your creativity and ingenuity in the kitchen.

June is always a month when the CSA boxes reflect a transition from cool weather crops to summer crops. You can follow that transition from afar… In June, the summer crops are growing so fast that you can see changes from day to day, but on the other hand, the spring crops are slowing down and starting to be a little peaked. By the end of June, the greens are long gone and the first ripe tomatoes and melons can be found if one goes on a determined search from one end of the row to the other.  By July, the yield of tomatoes is growing exponentially, from one or two cherry tomatoes, to a few boxes that go to farmers markets, to enough that we could literally fill your kitchen with them, multicolored and vibrating with summer heat and energy. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 20, 2016

June 20, 2016

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. 

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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…]

News From the Farm | June 13, 2016

June 13, 2016

The weekend has nearly run out on me – 9pm on Sunday evening and a Beet is due by tomorrow morning at 6am. There is simply a lot to report in the short space of a few paragraphs… The farm update: Spring is done and Summer has arrived. Our early peaches, though small, have been pretty tasty. We have run through the first four varieties with another 12 or so to go. The Royal Blenheim apricots are a couple of weeks early so you should see them in your boxes – at least this week. We have Santa Rosa plums, basil, beans, the first sweet corn is ripening, summer squash, goddess and orchid melons – all so early, and, the crème de la crème, the first pick of cherry tomatoes. It is getting too hot for the collards, kale, chards, lettuces, broccoli, cabbage and carrots. Spring has sprung out of here and summer is upon us. 

We have the ongoing tasks of preparing ground for late summer plantings – last tomatoes, summer cover crops, flowers, winter squash, leeks, celery root, and the final melons will go in the ground until the first of July. Planting will then take a break for a month as we focus on harvest. Indeed, we often have so much to do during the summer months that we are challenged to get it all picked, sold, packed and shipped. It is a period when the farm earns about 40% of our annual income as all of the springtime work of planting crops shifts to the harvest. This season it seems that things are a couple of weeks early so we are shifting to a yet higher gear to bring it all in.  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | May 30, 2016

May 30, 2016

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.

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Yesenia Gaxiola Vega, Wendy Arita Paz, and Maria Machado Castro harvesting garlic. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | February 15, 2016

February 15, 2016

It may be time for your seasonal check-in here at Full Belly. It is always fun to inform you of the day-to-day processes of farming. As you open your box each week to see what the farm is providing, the produce reflects work done and decisions made 90 to 120 days ago. We are busy this week transplanting and planting for spring boxes. The break from a wet January has us in all of the fields, tilling in weeds and some of our cover crops while we set up our work and harvest schedule for the spring.

This past week we were watering flowers, onions, and our new lettuce and broccoli transplants.  We are starting to water things like our strawberries, carrots, garlic, peas, broccoli, greens and lettuces planted last November. The produce that you are receiving in your boxes was generally planted as seed last November. Growing slowly in the late fall and cold winter it gathers strength as the days lengthen and average temperatures warm up. We do gamble a bit as we plant in the fall. There have been colder years in the past when December temperatures have all but freeze-killed even our hardiest crops and the months of January and February have ended up being pretty bleak. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | November 2, 2015

November 2, 2015

What is happening at this time of year in Full Belly Farm’s fields? Our CSA boxes give a hint of changes, containing cool weather greens alongside the last of summer’s harvest. Does the change in season bring a change in rhythm to the farm?  We still have a big crew working every day, and one person who can answer these questions and who is very important in organizing the day’s work, is Juan Jacobo Berrelleza, known to us all as Pancho. 

Pancho lives a few miles up the road from the farm with his wife Nina, and two kids Joel (16) and Julia (12). He has worked at Full Belly since 1992 when he was 18, with only a short break for several years when he farmed with relatives. 

I asked Pancho to talk with me about his work so that I could share some of his story with our CSA members. He was a bit reluctant to take time away from a long list of things that he was hoping to get done. This interview wasn’t on the morning’s list. After talking with him, I understood that he carries in his head, knowledge of all of Full Belly’s equipment, the crews, the fields and their condition, and a timeline of what needs to be finished in the window allowed by our climate and cropping plans. [Read more…]

New Farm Sign

August 31, 2015

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Amon and Rye Muller digging post holes for the new Full Belly Farm sign that has gone up at the top of our road.  Next time you visit the farm, you will get to see it!

News From the Farm | August 3, 2015

August 3, 2015

“Here in California

The fruit hangs heavy on the vine

There is no gold

I thought I’d warn you

And the hills turn brown in the summertime”

So wrote Kate Wolf in the early 1980’s.  This song was, and remains, one of my favorite folk songs of all times. Having spent my childhood roaming the green hills of verdant Vermont in the summer, California came as a shock to me upon moving here in my late teens.  It was as if winter was summer and summer was winter, in some strange disorienting fashion.  In fact, thinking of it in these terms has helped to reorient my California seasonality these many years later.  The summer hills here are dry brown, akin to the dead of winter in a January Vermont below-zero season. Things die and are reborn in the spring there; here it is the dry summer that is reborn with the life giving rains in the fall. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | June 1, 2015

June 1, 2015

Vegetable seasons are sometimes blurry at their beginnings and ends and June is often a month that really makes that point. It can be an awkward month, between spring and summer.  The asparagus is all gone but the melons are a ways off. We call it the ‘June doldrums’ when the farmers market table is piled high with a lot of food staples, and we keep telling the customers how ‘sweet’ the onions are, and how ‘creamy’ the potatoes taste when really all they want to eat are nectarines and tomatoes.

The calendar says that Summer season begins on the Solstice, June 21st, and until then the heat of the day will drain the tenderness from spring greens like chard and collards. Finally the heat will build up enough, and we will have to abandon the spring crops and make way for the explosion of summer.  At this time of year chefs ask us to add a box of cherry tomatoes to their order, because they know that the cherry tomatoes are around the corner, and they keep hoping that they can scoop all the other chefs by ordering ahead. [Read more…]

News from the Farm | January 26, 2015

January 26, 2015

It feels as though there is so much to write about at this moment in time: the blooming almond trees, the 75° weather, winter/spring cooking, and our new farm babies.  We got news yesterday that our neighbors at Pasture 42 welcomed a beautiful little girl into the world.  Delphine Louise joins Arlo Alois Muller (4 months) and Teodoro Rodriguez Ochoa (3 months) in the one and under crowd here in Guinda, CA.  Since our newest little farm boys have not gotten an official Beet welcome, here they are with their ringleader, Rowan.  We are elated to introduce them to you.

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[Read more…]

News from the Farm | January 5, 2015

January 5, 2015

Happy New Year to all of our Full Belly Farm CSA members. We are happy to be back in action and ready to deliver your delicious boxes for 2015!

Here are a few notes from the field, observed over our break. 

At this time of year we usually have young plants growing in our greenhouses, prepared for transplanting to the field at a stage in their lives when they are less vulnerable to weed and weather pressures than if we grow them in the field from seed. This year, we have probably the largest set of transplants in the greenhouse (lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, greens etc) that we’ve ever had before. But December presented a challenging greenhouse window. Our climate is usually sunny even when it rains, but this year there were more than two weeks of very cloudy, cool, humid weather in December. This created the perfect conditions for rot and mildew diseases in the greenhouse that we have not typically had to deal with. With additional ventilation and care in watering, we were able to pull through and will be transplanting into the field in the next week or two. [Read more…]

News from the Farm | July 21, 2014

July 21, 2014

July Photo Round Up! 

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We woke up this morning to cloudy skies, cool weather, and a few drops of precious rain. It wasn’t enough to do any damage to our summer crops, but enough to remind us of what it smells like after a rain and keep the dust down for a few hours. These tomatoes are just flowering. Can you even believe how many there are?! [Read more…]

News from the Farm | June 2, 2014

June 2, 2014

Summer Transitions

There are periods of the season when we get caught between the ending of one crop cycle and the beginning of another. The end of May and beginning of June is perennially one of these times. We are in the middle of transitioning from spring to summer as we find interesting crops with which to fill your boxes. 

Bound by weather and temperature, the slowly disappearing hard C crops –kalecollardscabbagecarrotschard – make their exit from your boxes along with lettuce, other greens and leafy veggies. These will return next October. I think that most of us are about ready to not be missing these veggies and are looking forward to tomatoes, melons and fruits – the full expression of summer.  [Read more…]

News from the Farm | May 12, 2014

May 12, 2014

A Flower Explosion! 

Last week was our biggest flower sales week in the history of our farm! Our team of flower harvesters and bunchers made well over 3,500 bouquets of flowers last week – each one unique and beautiful and sent off to brighten someones day. We grow a little under 15 acres of fresh flowers on our farm, all of them are varieties that we love. Right now, we are in the thick of larkspur, godetia, and sunflower harvest. In the next few months, zinnias will begin to pop up everywhere on our farm. 

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[Read more…]

News from the Farm | April 21, 2014

April 21, 2014

Springtime at the Farm

Full Belly Farm is bustling with spring activities.  We’ve had plenty of warm weather and within a few days after the last rain, the ground was drying out and the fields were busy.  This is the time of year when the cottonwood trees along the creek start cottoning – so billows of the white fluff, full of cottonwood seeds, blow in the air and settle in every corner.

[Read more…]

News from the Farm | February 24, 2014

February 24, 2014

Signs of Spring!

Everywhere we look, Spring seems to be popping up!

photo 1We had the most beautiful baby pigs born at the farm last thursday. Our sow, Candy, was bred with a wild boar so the piglets were born with a wide array of colors and markings. They are as fast as can be, and some have almost doubled in weight since their birth!  [Read more…]

News From the Farm | Week of January 13, 2014

January 13, 2014

Or rather, winter farm?  It’s been so warm that even the bees think it is time to come out and look for flowers.  They are finding the odd mustard flower and a few wildflowers, but it is slim pickings.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhen I was little, growing up in New Mexico, an artichoke was a huge treat.  My family of five would get one artichoke, and carefully divvy up the leaves and the heart.  The first time I ate artichokes at the farm, I was floored when a huge steaming platter of them was brought to the table and everyone ate at least 3!  It is still a huge treat, and I can’t wait for these little babies to be ready. [Read more…]

News From the Farm | Week of November 4, 2013

November 4, 2013

At this time of year, as is the case year round, the harvest of crops dominates daily activities for many crew members, but we also have time to get a lot of projects done.

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[Read more…]

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