“Black-throated wind keeps on pourin’ in”
You know what they say … April showers bring May flowers. It seems the saying rang true for us because as of this morning, the Deschutes Basin is sitting at 112% of average snow-pack for the last 10 years. We must have gained at least 30% just over the month of April. That is great news, as our area was in desperate need of precipitation to fill up our water reservoirs.
It has been a very overcast, snowy and extremely windy April in Central Oregon with winds continuing to hit over 25 mph almost every week. Working in the wind makes our bodies exhausted, a constant nagging in your ear that keeps knocking into you. Our eyes + noses full of dirt. The gusts create these “dirt tornadoes” around the farm, evidence of erosion and keeping our crops dry and brittle. It is still cold at night, so all of our tarps and frost cloth we are using to keep the plants warm are difficult to keep down. Trying to put silage tarp down when the wind is only at 10 mph, is damn near impossible. It is daunting, to say the least. The snow had also been dumping up in the Cascades, which actually, brought a fun late ski season to the community this month. Down on the farm, we had a couple of all-day snow blizzards during mid-month, which was very late in the season for snow. All we did was stare out the window, and wait. “Can we farm yet…?”
We can only hope that May will bring us some sunshine, a light breeze and warm nights. We want to see our plants thrive! They had grown rather slowly in April due to these harsh weather conditions. Thanks to our high tunnels we have been able to grow during these cloudy and chilly conditions and will have some flowers and vegetables available next week!
Another cool weather advantage we have is our newest and favorite tool — the PaperPot Transplanter. This tool has been our most significant purchase to date and has already proven its worth. With the transplanter, we have been able to get peas, beans, carrots and spinach started much earlier than if we were to direct sow them into the ground. This process allows us to germinate seeds in the controlled environment of our propagation house. and then transplant those perfectly germinated seeds into the field where they can grow until harvested. This is handy since many veggies like peas and carrots can grow well in cold weather, but their seeds do not germinate very well In the cooler temps.
April was also good to us for many reasons, but perhaps the best reason is that we welcomed our full-time intern Bobby to our team! As you may recall, Bobby worked with Aaron at Quackenbush Farm where they interned through Rogue Farm Corps. Bobby’s sense of humor, dedication, hard work and useful input have already proven invaluable. We have definitely increased our productivity as well as given us some deserved time off.
Since our vegetables start going out this month, one of our biggest projects for April was building a “state-of-the-art” wash and pack station where all of our vegetables will go from the field to the cooler to your plate. It was really awesome to be able to have a blank canvas for this project as we were able to design it with functionality and efficiency in mind. We are most excited about our new salad washing setup where after being washed, the salad will be spun in a washing machine converted into a salad spinner before being put on a drying table with 2 box fans pointing down from above. We are going for the world record for longest lifespan for salad mix. Aaron is thinking we can reach 14 days, no problem.
One final update is regarding our egg-laying hens. Yep! You read that right! Within the past couple of weeks, the hens that we have been raising since they hatched January 2 just started laying eggs. They sure are growing up to be some pretty admirable girls. They are super friendly chickens; they let you pick them up, hang out with you and they follow you wherever you go and when they see us working in the field they always come to the fence to say “hi”! For now, the eggs are still pretty tiny but we are hoping that by the time Market rolls around the first week of June, they will be sized up.
Now that we finalized all of our projects this month, we are ready to move forward into the transplanting and harvesting season. We cannot wait to see our customers old and new at the markets and at our farms and to share our bounty with you this season.
