Cant Trust April

Spring Break for our Montgomery County kids was last week and we had over 500 visitors to Mountainside and the greenhouse. Of all the activities we hosted the harvest session was by far the most popular.  Kids love to eat what we are growing and they were excited to take home pepper plants.

My activity was to take kids on a hike and to Notice!  With young adults so absorbed by their cell phones our society is becoming oblivious to their surroundings.  I had the children notice things like vines growing on a tree, erosion in deep ravine, tree tubes that need to be removed from our riparian buffer and a few deer bones along the way.

Ten days ago I bought a tiller and got started on the garden but Nick has determined that a deep till is necessary and we need Jason Wood to bring out his plow to bust up the soil more than our equipment is capable.  It delayed planting but with freezing temps predicted for tonight it is a good thing that we were were forced to wait. April is so unpredictable! It was darn near 80 on Friday, going to hit 70 today and temps are going to fall into the 20's tonight.  The standard rule is plant in mid April and despite a mild winter it looks hold true for this year as well so all of those seedlings that are ready to go in the greenhouse will stay there until the end of the week

Mountainside is a bevy of activity right now.  We have the concrete guys repairing the basketball court, the building construction finally underway,  painting in the pool house and pool rehab with new tiles and coping stones so when my grandson Mason came down to visit pop pop on the tractor he was in hog heaven.  Little boys love heavy equipment and with all the activity he was transfixed.  He rode with my on the tractor while I was tilling had he has decided that he wants to operate heavy equipment and be a farmer.  He even hopped off the tractor periodically to pick rocks off the garden

There is a lot to be said for working outdoors and seeing the impact of your labors change the landscape everyday.  Go for it Mason.

Rookie Farmer beginning year 3

So I am not sure how to change the title of 57 year old Rookie Farmer when I will turn 60 this October and I am a two season veteran.  But I will keep the name so that everyone can find my posts.

The biggest news from the winter is that Farmer Josh has left for Washington State and Nick Miller is my new farmer.  I will provide more information on Nick as the Spring advances but he brings a lot of knowledge and as much as we will miss Josh I am confident that Mountainside will not miss a beat.

All winter Valinda and Nick have been visiting our after school programs as part of Harvest Club with stunning success.  More than 40 after-schoolers signed up at Rachel Carson and Kensington Parkwood and we are developing a legion of engaged students and parents.  The kids have been planting seedlings, making pesto, and learning healthy eating habits.  All during a dormant growing season. As March advances to April the kids will begin to visit Mountainside and the growing season kicks into high gear

This Monday I am purchasing a Roto-Tiller to mount on the back of my tractor and we will till the entire acre garden area.  Cover crop will be planted and we will re-till in April to mix in the organic plant material as well as compost.  Nick and I have agreed to start modestly this Spring and we will focus exclusively on the greenhouse and garden area.  No mushrooms until everything else is under control.  Josh and I were guilty of over extending ourselves last year and we had as many failures as successes.  Once we have the garden under control and we can find more help we will look to expand.

Old man Winter sent and unwelcomed reminder that March is still within his grasp, and Nick spent all of Friday protecting our seedlings in the greenhouse and brought as many trays into the office as would fit.  Still... it looks like an early Spring and we should have a jump on the growing season.

Teaching is as much a focus as growing at Mountainside and we hope to fill 4 weeks of harvest camp this summer.  With over 250 kids participating in the harvest club program this winter we have already

cultivated a healthy following.  We will see.

2015 Summer Report Card
So How did we do?
I got back from Maine last week and finally had a chance to catch up with Josh.  The gardens are dormant and the last of the veggies are kinda done in the field.  The greenhouse is popping and a new crop of tomatoes, lopes and zucchini's are coming in.  What is really interesting is the tomatoes on the vine in the greenhouse.  Some of them are beautiful.  Some of them are splitting, some of them look beautiful but when you go to pick them they are rotting underneath.  We ended up tossing out a lot of tomatoes that otherwise looked promising.  But we are going to be picking tomatoes into November. With less activity in the garden Josh can spend more time correcting problems in the Greenhouse.

Last year we had crates of cucumbers and squash that we struggled to sell or to convert into pickles.  This year the harvest was a fraction of 2014.  I think it was a combination of trying to grow too much, not being able to oversee everything when problems arose, and planting beyond the garden in soil that was depleted. The sweet corn was not as sweet as we had hoped and the seeds were a gift that were a year old.  Next year we will be more selective on the seeds that we will buy and limit the acreage so that the bugs and deer are kept in check.  The lessons learned is that we need to stay within the garden fence, prep the soil more fully and try not to take on more than we can handle.  Farming is trial and error.  Leaning from success and learning from failure and....there is always next year.

The areas of tremendous success was with the potatoes, mushrooms, and with the abundant harvest of fascinated children.  Beyond the 40 campers that signed up for Harvest camp in week 7, we had more than a hundred more campers in the general camp help in the last weeks of the summer season.  So much more than interest, fascination is a more appropriate description.

And....Harvest clubs in our school year programs will begin on September 14th. Our goal is to have 20 to 30 children out each day from our after school programs from Monday thru Thursday and Friday will be devoted to bringing the farm to our programs that are too far away geographically make the trip in the limited timeframe of 3:30 to 6 pm.  Our goal is to run Harvest Club until the first week of December.  That is the beauty of a having a high tunnel. (greenhouse)

Unlike other farms, at Mountainside, teaching and learning outweigh the growing and picking.  The most learning is happening with yours truly, and this years mistakes will be shared along with next years corrections.

last post before the family reunion

So you might be tiring of potato picker photos but the potato patch truly garnered the most enthusiasm from my campers this year.  Everyone has seen corn grow.  Lots of people have a tomato plant on the back porch or in the family garden bed.  But... my kindergarten boys group seeing potatoes emerge out of the soil that I had just turned over, was akin to seeing gold doubloons on a treasure hunt.

The greatest benefit to having a vegetable garden at a summer camp is giving children a first hand, first time look at growing food.  Virtually every child who has visited Josh at the gardens this summer had seen something they had never seen before.  Heck I am 58 and I never picked a potato out of the ground until this year.  What is so compelling is the universal reaction of excitement.  Excitement is a strong word but it applies to what I have witnessed.

Granted, kindergarten boys digging in dirt mounds is always going to be a winner of an activity.  But I listened carefully to what the boys were saying and they said a lot.  When they found a pea sized fingerling the comment was "aww I found a little baby potato should we leave it in the ground?" Other comments went like this. "There is another one" "look at the size of this baby" "Oh my gosh there is a cluster of five I just found".  Most compelling was the fact that everyone was excited.  Not one child was bored or sat out.

Having been in the summer camp business there are a few universal facts I have learned.  1.  Swimming pools are essential to camp success. 2. You can never go wrong mixing children with a puppy. 3. Lasting memories are created when you expose a child to an activity or experience for the very first time. 4. With the right staff you can make any and every activity fun.  5. Campers enjoy seeing where their food comes from, especially those who do not grow up on a farm.

Summer is winding down.  This is the end of week 8 and Mountainside sends all of the summer camper home next Friday.  The good news is that the garden continues to grow and we will host Harvest clubs with our after school kids in 3 weeks.  Rock on.

Why my harvest camp is the best!

Though the title of this blog may seem a bit immodest I will attempt to justify the claim.

Firstly :(is that a word?) I have not 30 but 39 children signed up for harvest camp and added 3 campers who switched from the amazing general recreation camp here at Mountainside.  Unlike other camps most of the children are recipients of a scholarship or pay a nominal fee to attend.  Our parents have seen the value of what we are doing and have paid handsomely for their children to participate. Now if I can find a way to get scholarships for deserving kids for next year.

Secondly : I got Josh, or perhaps I have Josh, or I have Josh as an employee.  This is posted publicly and my Journalism teacher God rest her soul would haunt me with improper usage.  He really is amazing with food and with children.  Valinda, AJ, Sam and all the other counselors and JC's keep the kids engaged and moving.  Oh yeah (not proper English) and there is a ton of stuff to do and pick.

Thirdly : I mentioned Valinda but she gets a second prop (also not proper English) because she makes such wonderful food from that which the children just picked.  Those curly cue fries yesterday would beat the heck out of Thrashers at the beach.  The Salsa the day before would make any Mexican restaurant proud.

And the Kicker :  I have a pool within 100 feet of the greenhouse.  Yesterday felt like summer in DC. Low 90's, humid, little air movement, and the heat index close to 100 degrees.  As excited as the kids were to see the potatoes popping out to the ground they were good for 45 minutes tops.  Potato picking is fun and you are supposed to get really dirty.  However fumbling thru dusty mounds in searing heat was good for only one row of potatoes.  These campers started wilting in the sun like my petunias.  Solution,  a hop in the pool not once in the day but twice.  We split the campers into groups of cookers and pickers.  The first group went swimming minutes after picking and then they went a second time after cooking.  Wanna (not a real word) keep children excited about farming, give them a break and let them cool off.  All I could think of were kids learning about farming somewhere else that was equally hot.  With no pool, there would be far less enthusiasm and productivity sprinkled in with a little misery.  Even if you took the children to a local pool it would be a one shot deal and a lot of time lost.

Look, parents want their children to learn and have unique experiences in the summer months now a days. Playing with friends and making memories is no longer enough.  Of course "Harvest Camp" is appealing to them.  But they are working in an air conditioned office somewhere cool and comfortable and don't care if their kids are hot and miserable.  They are not out there sweating and dirty.  They do care about sunburn, but that is it. Our campers learn, eat extremely well, learn how to cook, make friends, get to swim and have fun all in the same day.

I challenge any other Harvest Camp to top that!!!!

Everything is coming in at once

Today Josh had me hook up the one plow blade on the back of my tractor and had me follow him the to potato field.  He told me to center the tractor right over a row and put the plow down, and drive.  Now this is actually my second year of farming and I am not a rookie anymore but I have never harvested potatoes before.  My question to Josh:  Won't the plow destroy the potatoes?  Answer: Rookie!  That is how you dig them up.  You could use this pitch fork thingy but that could destroy a lot more potatoes than the blade on  the back of a tractor and would take 10 times longer.

Because harvest camp is not until Monday we only did a sample digging on each of the 6 rows and evaluated the yield of each variety.  We have fingerlings, purple Peruvians, Yukon Gold, and a few others with the understanding that some varieties would out perform others.  The Purple Peruvians were the most disappointing, and the fingerlings are abundant.  We had three camper volunteers help pick thru each trough I dug with the intent to leave the bulk of the harvest for our Harvest campers next week.  It is easy to find volunteers and the three of them had so much fun.  Man are those kids going to be busy next week.

Cucumbers, peppers, sweet corn, potatoes, tomatoes, egg plant, onions are ripening as I write and we have to get everything out of the ground or off the vine as promptly as possible.  Valinda is at the ready to make the veggies delectable and of all the weeks to do harvest camp next week will be the best.

I am truly gratified that the farm and harvest camp is exceeding expectations but all I can think about is how to get underserved or impoverished children to benefit from this endeavor.  Next year I am going to work hard to find scholarships or grants to allow for 5 or more weeks of harvest camp with at least 2 of those weeks dedicated to deserving and disadvantaged children.  I will cut the overall tuition for those kids but I cannot afford to absorb the entire cost.  The way I am currently thinking is that $7500 per week would enable me to host 30 kids.  I provide the transportation, provide lunch and teach them that they never need to go hungry.

The farmers markets are going well but I think we will target Kensington, and Bethesda for next year.  Our farming associates at Linganore and Frederick farmers market tell us that is were the real profits are.

     

Apologies for no posts

Ok so much is going on and I haven't had a post in 4 weeks.  Not cool.  In fact we have concluded week 6 at camp and our last week of Harvest camp starts Monday.  35 campers are signed up and I won my bet with my son Joe that in at least 1 of the 3 weeks of Harvest camp we would enroll 30 campers. It is a bet he was happy to lose.

The corn is over 11 feet high.  I would like to say that I have never seen corn stalks this tall ever, but I have never lived so close to a corn field before.  Still I have never seen corn stalks this tall.  So much early summer rain and now abundant sunshine will truly make for a bumper harvest for the field corn.  We planted two varieties of sweet corn with one a 65 day variety and the other a 80 day.  There were supposed to be 6 rows of each surrounding my house and only three rows germinated.  No matter, we have so much corn to pick it will be a challenge to sell and eat all of it.

One of the true joys of summer is the smell of a corn field ripening.  There is a sweetness that fills the nostrils.  It only lasts for a couple of weeks but it is unmistakable.  Put that crop within 20 feet of your bedroom window and I savor enjoy every inhalation.

One of the other oddities with the corn crop is that the view of my camp from my patio has disappeared.  Three weeks ago I noticed that I could barely see the soccer field.  Then the baseball fields fell out of view.  Now I can only see the top of my son Drew's house.  We are completely enclosed and will be until October.  Last year, our first year in the house we had soy beans.  I feared that corn could cost me the view and it certainly has, but at least I am not claustrophobic.

So this post will be about the corn and I have another coming about everything else that is growing.