One of our big projects at the moment is planning our farm stand.  We will have all kinds of delicious produce at the farm stand once the veggies start coming out of the ground.  So even if you didn’t make it into the CSA this year, don’t worry– we will still have lots of good fresh veggies, fruits, flowers, and herbs for you at the farm stand.  Lately we’ve been working on figuring out all the logistics for that to happen- the technicalities such as driveway and parking, but also the fun stuff like orchards, picnic area, and pick your own herb gardens.  We will be opening the farm stand in the spring as soon as we have produce to sell.

We’ve also been putting together a crop plan.  This means sitting down and thinking through each crop, figuring out when we need to plant it in the greenhouse or the field, what varieties should get planted when, where in the field it should go,  and how much we should plant.  We’re working our way through the veggie alphabet.  Yesterday we started with Beans, Beets, and Brussels Sprouts, and got through Fennel.  We’ve got some work to do before we hit Watermelon and Zucchini.

And finally, Alida has arrived from California! She’s excited to be joining the on-the-ground farm team at last and has jumped right into all the planning.

As some of you may have already noticed, I’ve started a Twitter account that displays in the sidebar here on the blog. I’ve been posting mini-updates on the greenhouse progress as well as some pictures. Here’s a pictorial recap of the week’s work (although some pictures are repeats from Twitter).

We started by stringing out the footprint so that we would know where to drive the foundation posts. Hours obsessing over fractions of an inch and perfectly proportioned triangles made us all a little cranky.

Mel, Rory and Kevin obsessing over fractions and angles

cranky Mel

Then we pounded each of the 26 posts 2 feet into the ground.

Rory pounding posts

Pounding in one of the last posts we hit a large boulder, which slowed work for the day as we tried various workarounds.

the boulder

Once we had solved that problem, we began setting in the rafters. It was exciting to see our painstaking work of the previous few days unfold into a series of dramatic archways.

Kevin, Kate and Mel setting in rafters

We finished the framing by setting in and fixing baseboards to the rafters, then started attaching the hardware components that will secure the plastic.

Kevin setting baseboard

Ours will look something like this when it’s finally finished in the spring.

Gale Woods Farm is part of a large park district in the region and is home to the district’s educational farm programs. The newly-expanded education center/barn houses all the farm animals–chickens, pigs, turkeys, cattle, sheep–as well as teaching space and a small farm store, where they sell farm-raised vegetables, eggs and meat. Thousands of school kids come through each year to learn about how farms produce food, as well as basic kitchen skills and wool crafts with wool from Gale Woods’ sheep.

Mel’s part of the farm–the vegetable growing operation–works with a group of 14- and 15-year old Youth Farmers from the Minneapolis metro area. The Youth Farmers spend 22 hours a week for 10 weeks over the summer learning how to grow vegetables and receiving leadership training.

While we were there Mel showed me her large chicken tractor, the Henabago. A chicken tractor is not a tractor per se, but a mobile chicken coop that allows the hens to be moved across pasture over the span of many weeks.

As they move through each patch of pasture they fertilize, eat bugs and lightly till the surface of the soil. The Henabago is out of commission for the winter, but usually houses about 50 chickens.

Nearby is the Gale Woods turkey pen, holding about 35 Bronze-Breasted and Eastern White turkeys. As we were watching them, we noticed a smaller bird on the far side of the pen, but outside of it. Looking more closely we realized that this was a wild turkey, not a farm-raised turkey.

Although stymied by the electric fence, this turkey wasn’t trying escape from the pen, but trying to get into it–not a wise move for a turkey a few weeks before Thanksgiving.

Back in Mel’s vegetable fields I admired her brilliantly-shaded Red Russian kale and enjoyed some of her amazingly sweet spinach.

Cold weather brings out sugars in greens like spinach as the plants try to protect themselves. Minnesota-grown spinach is an experience unto itself–I’ve never tasted spinach this deliciously sweet!

After a thorough discussion of cover cropping tactics for weed suppression, we went home to feast on kale and half a dozen winter root vegetables that Mel and her band of Youth Farmers had grown.

Mel eating spinach

Fox & Fawn Farm, a 10 acre farm with about 1 acre currently in production,  has 16 CSA members and supplies two local restaurants with beautiful produce. Red gave Mel and me the full tour and fed us a delicious lunch while I peppered him with questions about their operation.

I was particularly curious about their packing shed–the design, the plumbing setup, the tables and counters he built, and the cost of the whole thing. As we at Langwater Farm start thinking about the setup and design of our packing area, I want see what works and what doesn’t and get plenty of ideas from other farmers. 

The work tables that Red constructed out of 2x4s and hardware cloth were very functional, easy to build, and excellent for wet harvest bins. He built the counters (some made of finer mesh hardware cloth) around wash sinks that he found used or free and plumbed the sinks so that they can drain back onto the farm and the water can be used again.

Red also turned the basement of the farmhouse into a multi-room root cellar. They grew a ton of potatoes this year and wanted a good place to store them for the winter and for planting again next spring.

In one room of the root cellar they had lots of yellow onions hanging for drying. Some of these onions were amazingly large– I’ve never seen onions this big!

Henry, Red and Nina’s  energetic 10-month-old puppy, was great company as we walked through the fields checking out their beautiful kale, leeks and cabbages. Red and Nina are planning to expand their CSA next year and put in more perennial crops (like asparagus and strawberries) and fruit trees as well.

Visiting farms and talking with other small farmers this fall has been fascinating and we are so grateful that small farmers are so generous with their time and their knowledge!

If you are a MN resident and would like to get in contact with Fox & Fawn to join their CSA or ask a question, please call them at 952-353-1762.

Because of the climate in Massachusetts, garlic is planted in the fall, overwinters in the ground and then sprouts in the spring. Kevin’s going to mulch the garlic thickly with straw later this week to help insulate it this winter and prevent weeds next spring and summer.

For the bulk of the crop we bought a little over 5o lbs of organic hardneck seed garlic from Still Point Community Farm in Amenia, NY, right on the Connecticut border. We chose a variety called Music, which is known for its excellent, slightly spicy flavor and its big, easy-to-peel cloves. It’s a good keeper and is considered a specialty garlic.

We’re also planting a much smaller quantity of a softneck garlic called Silver Rose. Softneck varieties are good for making garlic braids.

That 50 lbs of hardneck should turn into thousands of fat heads of garlic when we harvest it next summer. Then we’ll cure it in the sun or in the greenhouse for about 6 weeks. After we’ll clean it up a bit, knocking the dirt off and trimming the roots, it will be ready to go into CSA baskets and out to our farmers markets. We’ll hopefully be able to save plenty for planting again next fall.

]]> http://langwaterfarm.com/2009/10/26/music/feed/ 6 roryodwyer Michelle and Kate planting garlic kevin raking garlic beds http://langwaterfarm.com/2009/07/29/farm-pictures/ http://langwaterfarm.com/2009/07/29/farm-pictures/#comments Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:30:51 +0000 roryodwyer http://langwaterfarm.wordpress.com/?p=53 ]]> Recently Kate and Kevin went out to the farm and took a bunch of pictures while Charlie McNamara, the farmer who has been haying the fields for several decades, was doing his first cut of the season. That’s him on the tractor–He’s on the largest field (16 acres), which is on the south side of the property. Here’s a shot of the other side of that field:The far treeline in that picture is the edge of Langwater Pond, a long skinny pond that forms the western border of the farm. The eastern border of that large field is this beautiful old stone wall

Here’s the farm road running along the northern edge of the next field over, the Post Office field. The Post Office field is smaller, about six and a half acres. We’re contemplating an acre or two of pumpkins there for next year.

The property also has about 40 acres of mixed forest. These are all deciduous trees, but there’s also a fair amount of Eastern White pines in other spots. And here’s Kate! She took all these great photos (and more that we’ll be posting soon).