2020 Year End Reflection
Photo by Melanie Renee Photography
2020 is soon coming to a close and I think we are all welcoming 2021 with open arms. This year has been incredibly challenging for me (not production-wise but rather socially and emotionally) as I know it has been for most people.
One of the challenges I experienced was very limited childcare throughout parts of the growing season us trying to do our best with COVID. My mom watched Tillee 2 days/week and my good friend, Heidi, watched Tillee 1-1.5 days/week (my dad even was able to watch her a few days in the depths of tomato season). The rest was mostly me and Tillee and it wasn’t always easy. I have to say when she was under one-year-old in 2019, I could just wear her in a sling on my back and she was content. But this year, she was so much more active and running all over the place (and getting into trouble!). Thankfully, I had a crew of awesome worker shares and my amazing employee, Olivia!
Another challenge was the huge reduction in restaurant sales. Traditionally, about half of my business is CSA and the other half is sales to local restaurants and chefs. We all know how difficult times are for restaurants. I did my best to pivot to other outlets. Thankfully, 2nd Harvest received funding to buy local food for food pantries in Dane County. Another outlet I found was through Landmark Creamery in Paoli, who started doing home delivery immediately in mid-March. They list my products (and other local producers), I deliver to their shop and then they deliver to your home! Anna and Anna (the owners) just announced that since March, over $85,000 worth of local products have been delivered by them! Isn’t that amazing?
Thankfully, 2020 did not include the very wet weather we had in 2019. I don’t know if I would have made it if that was the case! We had an absolutely near-perfect season weather-wise and for that, I am incredibly grateful. Besides a bit of powdery mildew on the tomatoes and a not-so-hot squash year, there were no major crop failures!
Every year has it’s challenges and you never know what you’re going to get but overall, I am really happy with how this season went. The farm produced over 11 tons of produce on 0.8 acres and, again, had the best year financially yet. Each CSA member 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 and appreciate you all!
2020 Highlights:
We grew a bit over 22,000# of produce on just 0.8 acres for 72 CSA members, local chefs, local food pantries and Landmark Creamery home delivery. That’s the same as last year on 20% less acreage (for the 2nd year in the row)!
We built a barn and I officially came out of the dark age of farming! With concrete floors, 3 different coolers/root cellar, a lean-to for washing veg, 48 solar panels, a workshop and a studio loft. I feel like one spoiled farmer.
My first harvest of the year came in early March- definitely the earliest yet.
The CSA sold out the earliest yet too (early February)!
I wrote a blog post about “Climate Resiliency and your CSA Share” that means a lot to me.
Our first fruit trees blossomed! And then we got a mid-May freeze and lost them all. Hopefully we will have our first fruits in 2021! We also had a decent honey berry harvest, our first hazelnuts and 5 pounds of honey.
Tillee and I enjoyed our stellar crop of peas this year!
It was the year of GIANT veg and giant turnips. Seriously… I’ve never seen a turnip that big!
Crops that Did Well
Cilantro: this is one seemingly simple crop that I LOVE! Like L-O-V-E, love. I would put cilantro on everything if I could. The hard thing about growing good cilantro is that is takes days and days to germinate which means direct seeding is really challenging to make sure I stay on top of the weed pressure. In addition, cilantro bolts in the summer really quickly. The paper pot transplanter has changed all of that. I now am able to seed cilantro twice a month in the greenhouse and then transplant out once its true leaves pop about a month later. No weed issues and I was even able to put it in the CSA shares a few times. That has never happened before!
Peas: I finally have this crop dialed in and this year grew about 50# per 100’ row which is about twice what the seed catalogs say you should expect. Keep in mind the last few years, I only grew 10-25# TOTAL! A few things have contributed to the huge success this year: 1) Starting these in the greenhouse in paper pot cells and transplanting out in early April. 2) Landscape fabric in between the rows as weed pressure is always high in spring. 3) Growing varieties that are bred for organic farms and produce a lot in a narrow harvest window. This makes it easier to harvest just a few times to get hundreds of pounds of peas for the CSA shares!
All roots (carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, etc.): Roots have always been a challenging crop for me as a beginning farmer but now, in my 7th season on my own, I think I am getting the hang of those root crops. Some need careful flame weeding and then hand weeding with their slow germination, like carrots. Some just grow well as long as you plant in the later summer/early fall, like radishes and turnips and rutabaga. Some, like beets, really do well with the paper pot transplanter system. It’s a joy to have all the storage space I need post-harvest for these beauts.
High tunnel tomatoes: In the years since we built the high tunnel, my tomato production has gone up every year and I am not really sure why. Perhaps I am really honing in on my amendment applications (high tunnel soil microbes are voracious little guys in the tropical summer climate)? Regardless of why, I sure am glad for all the beautiful, early tomatoes in July every year! I get to harvest cherry tomatoes in the high tunnel from late June until late October some years :) Lucky farmer!
Crops that Didn’t Do Well
Most cucurbit crops (cucumbers, summer squash and winter squash): After several seasons of spectacular squash crops, it doesn’t surprise me that 2020 is the year they do poorly. Not sure if my CSA members could tell or not but it was definitely a light cucumber and squash year. Our soil here is excellent for all cucurbits with it’s high sand content and low disease pressure so here’s to hoping next year is better!
Ripe Peppers: I think perhaps 2019 was just a really good year?! Green bells weren’t down a whole lot but ripe peppers were down almost 650#… I think that shows the ripening challenges this late summer posed to peppers.
Strawberries: Was is the mid-May freeze? Was it the three-year-old plants? I am not sure but we were down 350# of strawberries this year. How sad; one of my favorite crops! I usually plant another 300’ of berries every fall but the fall Tillee was born, I didn’t have time. I am wondering if that contributed as the 2nd year of production is usually the best. Rest assured, we SHOULD have strawberries next year!
What’s in store for 2021?
If you can believe it, I am already deep in planning for 2021. I am ordering my seeds early as I am uncertain about some crop seed availability and don’t want to risk my favorite seed suppliers running out. There was a huge surge in gardening last spring and many commercial seed suppliers had to stop selling to the public to make sure they had enough for their farmers.
I have a rough budget that looks very similar to 2020. I am planning on increasing the CSA a bit and hiring extra help or maybe even a farm manager apprentice. I want to prepare for the possibility of having limited childcare again next year.
Another thing in the works for next year is, after 10 years, I am planning on making another pilgrimage to my teacher’s village and in the mountains of Peru! This means I will likely be dropping the CSA to 18 weeks (instead of 20) for next season to account for my being out of the country the 2nd half of October. I won’t be raising CSA prices due to that. Of course, this is all assuming things with the virus are under control and it’s safe to travel.
-Farmer Beth
