Bring out the reinforcements

There is so much going on this time of year.  We have more than doubled the area we are growing compared to last, and there just is too much to do.  Helping hands with the MAC kids, our garden clubs who really do pitch in an work (not just learn) are all essential if we are going to be successful this year.

Yesterday we brought out the "Calvary".  Jason Wood, this kid who is rapidly becoming a good friend was out with help to get our pumpkins and melons started.  Jason is my guy with supplying me with corn for my furnace and he also dug the trenches for our rain garden project last week.  He is also the one who grows the field corn and will plant our sweet corn this year.  I really can't do very much without him.

Anyways, Josh wanted to plant the the melons outside of the enclosed garden area.  They spread out and take up so much space and we do not need to protect them from deer the way we need to with other vegetables.  So instead of one tractor we had four.  We deep tilled, disked the soil and had to bush hog the ground before we got started.   It is remarkable how farmers help one another.  Lawyers and politicians should learn how to work together the way farmers do.  Bottom line; if all goes well we will have 5 times the number of watermelons as last year and a bunch of pumpkins for our Fall fest.  Having said that the reality is that farming comes with no guarantees.  As much work as we are putting in we are still dependent on the weather and subject to insects and disease.

As as newcomer to all of this I have yet to experience the disappointment of a lost crop,  food and income.  Farming is a labor of love.  With so much effort and anticipation I am beginning to realize the sense of loss when nature turns against you.  Mountainside is not dependent on a successful crop the way most farmers are but we start the season with hope and roll the dice like everyone else.
The Greenhouse is the only area that we truly can control and the tomatoes are kicking it.  But the area is so small compared to the acres of crops everywhere else.

The farm is teeming with life and visitors

We are moving into the very best time of the year.  The unpredictable month of April is behind us and the forecast for 80 degree temps is consistent.  Jason Wood will be planting field corn this week which will include roughly 2 acres of sweet corn surrounding our home.  The reason for putting the sweet corn so close to the house is with the hope that my useless dogs will keep the deer away.  I did not know this previously but deer don't care much for tasteless field corn but will decimate the corn you and I like to eat.  More than likely I will be the one protecting the sweet corn while the dogs sleep.

The mushrooms are popping, the high tunnel is flourishing and Josh could not have enough hours in a day to do all that needs to be done.  I hope to have produce within the next two weeks which will make me happy to not need Giant for the majority of my groceries.  If only we could grow avocados.
We are finishing up our web site for the Mountainside CSA and farmers markets start on the 17th. We might actually be able to start paying the company back for all this stuff within the next 2 weeks.  Having said that, our farm operation is still very much a labor I love.

For me the most exciting goings on at the farm is all of our visitors.  Last week we had a local High School magnet program out to install rain gardens, two elementary schools doing stream studies, our harvest clubs out every afternoon, youth from the Frederick County department of social services spending the weekend, all adding to Mountainside After School club children and the local little baseball and lacrosse league on our ball fields. Oh yeah we also had a Bar Mitzvah on Saturday evening.   More and more people are seeing the potential benefits Mountainside has to offer and Summer camp is still 6 weeks away.

The High School students are part of a Magnet program that focuses on Global Ecology.  They were studying the potential benefits of rain gardens but had no place to actually try to install one.  The very best way to learn is by doing.  Of the many topics we teach, "Slowing the Flow" of storm water into our wetlands is one of my favorites.  We showed the students the conventional storm water management practices that were implemented at Mountainside when it was initially constructed and why those practices are failing to protect our watershed.  Then we dam up some culverts and trenches and we planted blueberries and asparagus.  It was a fantastic opportunity for these students with the prospect of doing dozens more in the coming years.  Included is a time lapse.

PHS Global Ecology Day 2.AVI

Farmer? Proud Parent? Babysitter?

So Monday morning we had 70 2nd graders out to the farm to and poor Josh was more than a little nervous. They toured the high tunnel, planted seedlings they grew in their classrooms, created a compost bin, hiked the stream and woods identifying habitat of our two, four, six, eight and our hundred legged neighbors and pulled weeds in the garden. It was the pulling weeds in the garden that had Josh on edge. Of the many job responsibilities Josh has at Mountainside, the primary one is growing food, the other big responsibility is teaching.

Often teaching and growing conflict with one another. You never have enough time to take care of the tasks at hand and teaching can consume some of that precious time.  Teaching can also mean that plants are mistaken for weeds and weeks of effort can be undone by one class.  I am happy to report that most of our plants are still in the soil and not compost.

But observing Josh on Monday was a bit of a revelation.  He really looks after his seedlings as if they are his babies...thousands of them.  As tedious as weeding is, he tenaciously keeps bully weeds away from his family.  Last night with the temps falling into the 30's Claire (a teen volunteer) and I helped him spread covering over his tomato and pepper plants in the green house no less to keep them warm and healthy. It is a labor of love and when he snips a leaf of swiss chard or spinach to give me a taste his eyes brighten with pride. It really is compelling.  So much effort for the satisfaction of a flavorful salad or side dish.

Babysitter is not adequate to describe what the produce means to Josh.  Eat what he grows and you can almost almost taste the love that goes into what he does.  It really does taste better and I will never take a salad for granted ever again.  Proud parent seems more like it.

Our Annual Springfest

So we have been hosting a Springfest/ Earth Day celebration every Mid April for the past 7 years.  The idea is to showcase some of the environmental practices on the property, bring out vendors, have live music and let people use the Ziplines and high ropes.  More people on the property means more campers, and more business right?  Not sure it is worth all the work and expense but yesterday was amazingly beautiful and we still had hundreds of visitors.

For me I wanted to showcase Josh and the great things he is doing in the high tunnel and in the gardens.  Charlie my mushroom guru was there and with my assistance we did a mushroom log demonstration with the hopes that some mushroom lovers would make logs and pay to take them home.  So he takes wood dowels and inoculates them with mushroom spawn.  Drill holes in a log, pound the dowels in and voila! You have mushrooms for years to come depending on the girth of the log. Not surprisingly most people were more interested in the vendor tent and zip line.  I have to remember that I am crazy interested in the farm but most people do not share my enthusiasm quite as enthusiastically.  We still have thousands of inoculated dowels if anyone is interested.  We are also seeing Oyster mushrooms blooming in our mushroom shed.  We picked about 10 pounds today.

Mid April is a pretty busy time and the high tunnel is already showing a lot of promising plants.  Tomatoes should be ready for picking as early as May so I will not have to wait until August to enjoy a great tomato sandwich.  Josh is also growing Wasabi lettuce.  I do not think that is really where Wasabi comes from but dang if it does not taste just like Wasabi.  There has to be a market for it.

Speaking of markets, our job is to insure that we have plenty of customers to sell our produce to.  The idea is to market to our 2000 Bar-T families and to local restaurants and farmers markets.  Our web site is still a work in progress but the veggies are on the way and we will be picking before we know it.

The last item for this post is the "Life Cycle of a Plant" field trip we are hosting this week.  Six 2nd grade classes are coming to visit our garden and greenhouse and transplant the seedlings we helped them to start at their school 5 weeks ago.  It will be the culmination of several weeks of work and months of planning.  Our hope is that these students will have a much better grasp of what it takes to put food on the table.  Most children think that food comes from a grocery store.  Little do they know, but these kids will come away with knowing lots.  Pics and a report on the lessons will follow in the next blog.

I was afraid to post pics with my first blog so here goes

Pics of the plant trays and the mushroom shed.

November farming

Ok I am no longer 57 but I am still technically a rookie.  My rookie farmer year began in March so I am a rookie thru February.

Currently we have 4 Bar-T Kid Clubs and the MAC kids working in the greenhouse as we move to the inclement weather months.  The kids have planted lettuce, kale, carrots and beets in the greenhouse and we are already seeing sprouts.  The children spend time picking the late fall crops that are still growing in the garden, they are monitoring the seedlings in the greenhouse and they spend time making salsa or baking sunflower seeds.  It is amazing to me what is still growing in the garden and I am acquiring a taste for Kohlrabi.  I hope some of you don't know what that is because I had never seen it before much less tasted it.  What is so engaging to me at this time of year, when every yard, plant, and tree is going dormant, is that there is still so much to grow and harvest.

The beauty of all this is that when we approach schools with curriculum that ties into the "life cycle of a plant" we will be able to grow plants regardless of the season.  We have not chosen to heat the greenhouse at this time which will mean that January and February will force us to shut down.  But planting seeds in the classrooms or after school programs can begin in early February and those seedlings will be greenhouse ready by the first of March.  My hope is that we can get at least two 6 week growth cycles in the greenhouse before June, and harvesting will progress throughout the summer.  Josh has promised me that we will have August tomatoes in May.  The five school pilot program totaling 70 students should be able accommodate 18 to twenty schools with 200 or more participants this Spring.

Additionally (do you start a new paragraph with additionally?) we will have a full on mushroom production facility that will run all year long.  As a kid I never cared for mushrooms but I can't get enough of them now.   I have been told that mushrooms are gone within the first 2 hours of any farmers market.  I would love to have the children who are helping grow mushrooms, join Josh and Charlie at the markets and help them sell them as well. They might leave the market with a few dollars in their pockets.  We will call the program "Dirt to Dollars" or "Mushrooms to Money".

The cold weather may not be great to be picking vegetables in.  If you look back at some of my older posts, we have kids wearing tee shirts or bathing suits in the garden.  Last Friday it was flat out cold, heck it was almost painful to be in the garden.  What is important to note is that the interest and enthusiasm the children have is the same.  

burning corn?

Ok so the greenhouse is up, irrigation installed and plants already popping out of the great indoors.  Light get installed by Thursday which is critical because it is flipping dark by 5:15 now.  We have 4 after school programs visiting either Mondays or Fridays and the kids are really excited about the gardening club.  All is good.

More interestingly I have a mushroom expert, Charlie setting up a commercial mushroom growing operation that should be producing a variety of mushrooms as early as 3 weeks.  The task will be to find a market to sell to and to get kids involved.  My thinking is that an interested MAC student could adopt a string of mushroom pods.  Oversee the growing process and if we can get the parents on board, take the mushrooms to a farmers market with Josh and Charlie and the student and let him or her
make some money.  The idea would be called "dirt to dollars" or "crops to cash".  The possibilities at Mountainside are truly endless.  We need to inspire some kids and see where all this takes us.

I need to digress for a minute and examine a debate that has evolved with one of my employees.  I am very proud of the fact that I can heat my home with wood pellets or corn.  Last year I went thru 8 tons of pellets and when wood pellets could not be found anywhere in mid March I purchased bags of corn to keep the furnace going.  The biggest problem with pellets is that they must be packaged in plastic bags.  From mid October till March I had to dispose of over 350 plastic bags plus the plastic that covered the pallets that were stacked on and dispose of the pallets.  Hardly minimizing the carbon footprint.  Corn is something that can be grown on my property, it is completely renewable and with the gravity bin wagon I purchased this fall I can eliminate the need for plastic bags and pallets and such.  For $300 in seeds I have been able to secure 16,000 pounds of loose corn stored at Southern States which should last me the winter.  $300 bucks to heat my house for the winter!! As long as I can grow corn I have fuel for my furnace.  I never have to worry about oil prices or Natural Gas or other sources to heat my house.   Great huh!!

Not according to my good friend Debbie who hails from the midwest.  She was appalled that I would use a food source as heating fuel. I am not burning the cobs or the husks, I am burning the kernels.  It burns hotter and cleaner that the pellets and I have a pleasing smell that emanates from the furnace.  During a good harvest I would be using between one or two acres of corn to heat my home for the winter.  So is this the right thing to do?  I am interested in anyones opinion.  What do you think?