Here’s Ian, stringing up the garlic to cure. The garlic needs to dry down at high temperature and low humidity for at least 6 weeks in order to dry it's paper, and that is the garlic’s own protection against intrusion of mold. Then you’ve got a solid 6 months of storage life.
Early fall cover crop of rye taking hold, as the Brussel sprouts size up in the waning sunlight. Who’s that out there on the left? A scare crow. Gotcha!
We did not create a website until the year 2021. That’s late in the age of the internet! So as we seek to exemplify all our life time worth of efforts building this farm up, it’s hard to know how best to portray it, in hind sight. The farm in 2021 is an adult version, where as the farm of the past, no matter how wonderfully we may remember it, was a child. Many of our fields have changed shape, roads have moved, trees have been planted, but most of all, our farming practices have changed, drastically, and for the better. There is an inclination to only show it as it is now, but all of it has become part of what we are now. I mention this here now, only to clarify the difference between our stated practices (no till, etc.) and what you may notice in many of these photos.
We farm mostly on a shallow ridge of lighter soil, that extends from our house at the north end, to our blueberry patch at the south end. On the left is the primary farm lane, traversing that distance. 80 percent of activity on our farm happens from this road. As humble a thing as it appears, it represents years of trial and error, and a lot of investment in long term improvement. Below the road is a 2 inch water main, with a valve at the corner of each section of field, in order to custom irrigate. The 6 inches of gravel we finally put down means no more spinning out in a heavily laden carrot harvest on a wet October day.
Thanks to the NRCS grants, we are up to one acre under plastic. Tomato production is a some what obvious benefit. Ginger and turmeric are our secret to success, with cheating the climate. But where all the tunnels really shine, is in producing greens all winter long, with no input of heat. Just sun, and management of airflow.
Similarly, onions need a lot of dry hot air to dry down and close their tops to the outside world. This is how they are protected from mold for up to an 8 month, even 10 month storage life! Here you see them the day they were pulled from the ground, around July 30th.
No-till beds of carrots, beets and garlic. In the background is the farm that originally owned half of our land (the land you see here). It is on the other side of the road, and sold this land to the neighboring farm about 70 years ago. So we own what was about half of each of those two original farms.
This was a long old time ago. If I knew then how different this landscape would look….
We’ve come a long way.
