2019 Year End Reflection
And so concludes the sixth season of CSA here at Winterfell. This was my third season farming on our own Land and the longest I have ever farmed in one spot. I felt a deepening and knowing that I haven’t experienced on other Land that I have farmed. I would consider this year the end of the honeymoon period with our sweet Land and now, hopefully, moving into some comfortable, steady years. I am beyond grateful and humbled by this meaningful work I get to do every day with my hands in the soil. Our soil quality has risen and been lovingly maintained, my vegetable production has increased and happily plateaued and our family has grown with our 14 month old, Tillee Mae.
I also felt incredibly overwhelmed at many times of the season this year. I didn’t hire enough help and maintained the same number of CSA families as 2018 (when I had plenty of help) and it was another very wet year. Midway through the season, Travis and I sat down to look at the numbers and tried to figure what I could cut out. Frankly I was doing TOO much between being a work-from-home mom, taking care of myself and maintaining the CSA and my chefs vegetal needs. So I reluctantly let go of some crops, the ones that require a lot of weeding and cultivating to get a good crop like lettuce mix, carrots, beets, etc. I focused on the high value, important crops like tomatoes and peppers and fall crops that fill the CSA boxes. I also bought a paper pot transplanter (see below) to ease my weed pressure and reduce my time spent transplanting. It wasn’t ideal but I am formulating a plan for next year to avoid these issues. Some years, you just do the best you can and 2019 was that kind of year for me and many other farmers.
Overall, given the challenges and circumstances, I am really happy with how the season turned out. Each CSA share got more than what they paid for in high quality, organic vegetables and that is always my goal. I love my work and I am eternally grateful for my supportive family, my fantastic worker shares and child care crew and my CSA families and chefs. Love you all!
What else am I grateful for this year?
· I joined the ranks of mother-farmers before me- farming many, many days with my daughter on my back.
· I, along with my crew, grew 22,500# of produce on our 1 acre of production for 114 CSA member families and loyal chefs! That’s 500# more than last year on 16% less acreage.
· Google updated the aerial shot of our Land and it BLEW ME AWAY.
· The CSA was sold out by March 2nd- again, our earliest sell out yet!
· Me and the vegetables survived the cold and stress and wet of a late April snowstorm and un-ending May rains.
· We harvested hundreds of pounds of asparagus, strawberries and raspberries from our young orchard. Maybe next year we will even, have a few apples and apricots!
· I got very creative as a work-from-home mama and breastfeeding my daughter in unusual places around the farm.
· I finally invested in two important pieces of equipment that I have been dreaming of for years to increase my productivity exponentially: a plastic/paper mulch layer and a paper pot transplanter. Both easily paid for themselves in one year.
· The farm, again, had the best year financially yet!
Crops that Did Well
· Brussels sprouts: We had SUCH an amazing year of brussels that I probably put more in each share than I ever had. I’m sure some folks had seen enough of them towards the end. This is a classic “burden of abundance” situation that Travis and I often deal with around the farm: there’s a lot of perishable produce that needs to be eaten or preserved or it will go bad. What a joy to have plenty!
· Fennel: Woah, fennel, woah! After entering my harvest log into Excel, I scanned for any crops that did remarkably well compared to 2018 and fennel was a clear stand out. With the same number of plants (600 plants in 1 bed worth), production increased by 200#! The only thing I can think of that I did differently was plant into black plastic mulch. Apparently fennel loves that warm soil and low weed pressure.
· Melons: every single CSA share got a melon this year! For the first time in Winterfell history the Nibblers got a mini melon. It might have been a late ripening in early September, but it happened!
· Onions: Usually do pretty well but my soil must be getting better as we had 150# more this year on the same number of beds!
· Peppers: Wow what a great year for ripe sweet peppers and I have no idea why! It seemed like every week in September I was pulling in hundreds of pounds of peppers. Looking back at my harvest log, I definitely was.
· Strawberries: every single CSA share got at least one pint of strawberries this year! Again, a first for Winterfell. Yum :)
· Tomatoes: I grew 1000# more this year than 2018 with one less bed in production. Plus with the wet cool spring, the first ripe tomatoes were a few weeks later than usual. All I can say here is it’s got to be my soil quality going up. Sure, I am probably just getting better at understanding what these crops need as well.
Crops that Didn’t Do Well
· Cucumbers: It’s not that they did bad, it’s just that I expected them to do much better. In 2018, I noticed my high tunnel crop was significantly more productive than the field varieties. Part of that is because I trellis the high tunnel crop up into the rafters which makes it easier to harvest and reduced disease pressure. So I dropped my field cucumbers and doubled the plantings in the high tunnel. But the high tunnel production was still 120# less with twice the number of plants. Part of my winter research will be learning more about how to increase the warmth of the soil in the high tunnel prior to planting my summer crops in there in early May. I think that will help a lot.
· Greens: to be honest, this is my 2nd year in a row of poor greens harvest. I could come up with some excuses but I won’t. I plan to paper pot transplant all my greens next year which will help me stay on top of the weeds and maintain a good stand weekly greens.
· Potatoes: Sigh… oh potatoes. 2017 was my best crop yet. 2018 was the year they all rotted in the field before I could get in to harvest them. And 2019 will be known as the year that the seed potatoes rotted in the field before they even sprouted. I even purposely planted them in a drier plot. I remember flame weeding them during a thunderstorm and feeling completely defeated. But I will try again next year! I am grateful there are other organic potato growers who I can buy them in from.
· Sweet corn: I really struggled to find enough dry-ish ground to plant into in the spring and I definitely prioritized the most important crops like sweet potatoes and winter squash. Sweet corn is really a special treat and I certainly don’t grow it because it’s profitable. I grow it because I love putting it in the CSA boxes once or twice. So getting this planted was a lower priority and the corn was exploding out of their tiny cells in the greenhouse by the time I got it planted. But it was just too stressed to produce well. I am hoping with my new paper pot transplanter that I will have better luck getting this planted in the ground on time and stress-free next spring.
· Winter squash: It was not so much a bad year just not the spectacular year like we’ve had in the past. Most of this is due to a very wet spring and barely finding room in a dry enough plot to plant into. Zucchini suffered a similar fate. No plants really grow well in a saturated, beach-like soil like mine was this spring.
What’s in store for 2020?
It’s a bit too soon to tell for certain… But we have a real, fancy outbuilding build planned for washing and packing veggies. It will include a concrete floor (!), a real reliable cooler and an underground root cellar. It will also be home for a wood workshop for Travis and a space upstairs for future workshops and meetings. I am stoked!
Another thing we are considering is scaling back the CSA a bit to better serve our CSA families and to take one field out of production. If two very wet years of farming taught me anything, I’ve learned to listen to the Land. Part of our climate resiliency strategy has been to just not farm wet fields. We also had a berm built around the north side of my fields to reduce the water runoff from our pack shed and home. I want to be the best farmer I can be and all of these things come into consideration for me.
