Previous Notes from the Farm

Spring 2005 Notes

With the warmer weather of early spring, it's planting time!

This week, we planted escarole, frizée, radicchio, butter lettuce, leeks and romaine. If the weather stays warm these will be ready for harvest in about 3-4 weeks. In the greenhouse, we have started more leeks, parsley, fennel, onions, butter lettuce, thyme, dill, basil, and heirloom tomatoes along with some flowers.

A big order of organic seeds has just arrived from Johnny's Seeds which includes many summer vegetables including Sungold cherry tomatoes and red and yellow Brandywines. The Brandywines are especially tasty heirloom tomatoes which are a little tricky to grow in this area because of the cool nights. This year, we are going to try them under cover for the early part of the season to give them some additional warmth.

Our new crop of baby carrots, which were planted in the early winter, are now tender and sweet. Chiogga beets are also big enough to pick. They're the ones with stripes inside and are very sweet this time of the year. The escarole and frizée have done very well and are now forming big heads and are very flavorful. We've pulled a few of the new leeks, but most are still too small. The garlic crop is looking very good this year and has just received its last feeding for the season. We are growing a variety we call 'French Cream' because of the beautiful cream color of the inner skins. We found this variety in the Perigord region of France a few years back.

The broccoli raab bolted because the weather was too hot so we plowed it under and planted more strawberries in its place. Luckily, there is an abundance of Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

The currants are just now leafing out and the fruit trees are beginning to flower with plums leading followed by peaches, then cherries and pears. The apples will start blooming in a few weeks with the Gravensteins coming first, then the Yellow Delicious and lastly the Romes, which are a late apple.

Sebastopol, once a prime apple producing area, has lost many of its orchards to houses and grapes. Our response has been to plant a hundred new fruit trees-apples, plums, cherries, peaches, pears and figs-as a gift to the future. We've also planted more raspberries, strawberries and currants.

We mulched the new fruit trees and berries with rice straw to keep them from drying out and to reduce weeds. We probably overdid it by planting so many berries, but the desserts will be great this summer and fall!

With the warmer weather, the violas used for garnishing salads have come into full bloom and there are now plenty of flowers for picking twice a week. I've been experimenting with drying them like the French do with candied violets. This will make a nice addition to winter desserts.

The bees have taken full advantage of the warm weather and are packing away a new crop of honey. This week, I went through all the hives and gave them more room if they were crowded. You can smell the new honey evaporating from a long way off and its sweetness is intoxicating. (The bees store the new honey in cells and fan it with their wings to evaporate the water out of it so the scent wafts from the hives.) In addition to gathering honey, the bees have been busy raising new workers so we'll have to start watching for swarms soon, especially if the weather stays warm.

Next week, we're off in the dump truck to the duck farm to get compost, which is plowed into the soil prior to planting. (We buy fresh ducks and composted bedding from Reichardt Duck Farm in Petaluma. The bedding has been composted for over a year, but is still high in nitrogen so we can't use it with tomatoes or other crops that are sensitive to excess nitrogen.) This trip necessitated some repair work on the dump truck because the signals weren't working and the heater was leaking so on Sunday I was thrashing around behind the dash board. After a few skinned knuckles, some work with the soldering torch and voltage tester, everything is working so we're ready to go!

It's alarming how charming it is to be farming!