Eatwell Farm News

Pouring Concrete

At 6.30 am this morning the concrete started to pour out of the first truck. This is a footing that will tie the sides of the retaining wall for the earth cover on the house. More pictures later...

Apples From Coco Ranch.

Coco Ranch is just a couple of miles from Eatwell Farm as the crow flies. Greg House grows delicious apples which we have been putting in our Eatwell Boxes for the past month. The apples are picked straight from the tree into bins and delivered to us on Mondays. That is just about as free and direct as you can get. Anna and Isabel weigh and bag the apples before putting them into our cold storage for deliveries that week.

Coco Ranch has a website with information about what they grow and how to take care of fruit. Take a look.

Sugar Snap peas and Fava Beans

Last Friday Jose took out the seed to the field to plant our first sowing of fava beans and peas. We mix the seed with a soil micro fauna inoculant. Root living bacteria fix nitrogen from the air and form nodules on the roots of the peas and beans. This is free fertility which helps that and subsequent crops.

We will continue to plant these crops every two weeks or so until late February as the weather permits. Harvesting begins in Early April.

Preparing Seeds for Planting.

We buy seed for planting on the farm from three sources; Johnnys Selected Seeds, Lockharts and Snow Seeds. When the seeds arrive I check them all and put all but the large bags of seed into 1 gallon ziploc bags which we use for storage and identification.

Roberto plants all the seeds in the field. I prepare them in groups as often we are sowing multiple varieties on each bed. For example; our lettuce planting consists of three varieties at the present time, Lettony, defender and Firecracker. Each variety goes into two seed units and sows a total of four rows. The machine sows twelve rows per bed. I put all the seeds for that bed into a plastic bag and write on it how many beds we need to sow. Then comes the paperwork, I record what we sow and when for our own records.

We go through a great deal of seed throughout the year. I like to buy it as fresh as possible. I keep the seed in coolers inside a dead freezer. This protects them from the temperature fluctuations of the seasons.

Green Roof Farmhouse...15 Year Energy Payback

The truck carrying the frame of our farmhouse arrived last Thursday. There was 7.5 tons of steel on board. When you combine that with all the concrete needed to build the structure it does not at first sight seem very green.

When you look at the energy use of the home per year then it all starts to make sense over time. The soil thermal mass surrounding the house keeps the house warm in the winter and then going into the summer keeps it cool. The times we will need any energy are in late February and if we installed cooling in September. Over the year this house typically will use only 25% of a regular home of the same size.

So if you calculate how much energy went into the production of the steel and the concrete we come out ahead after 15 years. The house is very strong and will survive 200 years, we are told. It will also be a very comfortable place to live in an area that at sometimes of the year can be an uncomfortable place to be.

There are more pictures of the house on our facebook page.

Grain CSA Update

My plans to start our grain CSA this month have been delayed. I have not been able to book time on the hulling machine that removes the hull around the seed of the Farro, Oats and Barley. On top of that our dry beans are still in the field. We were a little late planting and the 4 inches of rain almost three weeks ago caught us unable to harvest. I am hoping to get these into safe storage later this week.

Please be assured that I am working on it. I am excited by how many of you have expressed interest. My plan is to have a weekly share that goes with our Eatwell Boxes. So this will be a small regular amount of grains, beans, rice, flours rather that a monthly delivery.

This week my goal is to get all the seed I need to plant next years harvest of grains in June. Watch this space for more details.... Nigel

Grains 101... That is Barley in the picture it is two row variety called 'Metcalf'. It is the one Sierra Nevada are using in their own home grown beer now available in some stores.

Apium graveolens and Gophers

Known to those that love it, including me as Celery. we have been working hard over the last couple of years to work out a system to grow this crop in our hot dry summer.

We tried growing the plants ourselves but it is just too hot here. we now buy our organic seedlings from Headstart Nursery in Watsonville. The plants easily cook in the intense heat ounce planted in the field even if we water them constantly. Now we erect mini shade structures over them and then sprinkle the water on. After we cultivate for the first time we do not replace the shade. We keep them very wet give them a light sprinkle daily or every other day.

Now we have a wonderful crop of celery and celeriac which we will have for our Thanksgiving Eatwell Boxes.

Gophers also like the celery as you may notice in the bottom left corner. These delightful furry creatures like to eat the roots of the plants. We have installed an owl box to help the owls raise families on nice fresh Gophers.

Keeping Up Egg Production

These girls in the picture above are 'Black Stars' and I hope will be producing in late January. The flock that is front of them and should be already started producing are 'Red Stars'. 'Should' being the operative word here, not one single egg yet. Our usual breed for our replacement flocks are locally produced Production Red which is a cross between Rhode Island Red and White Rock. I wanted to change because of identifying the flocks of different age. In the past we have used colored spring leg bands. These, on rare occasions have caused a chickens leg to swell. We catch the bird and cut away the ring.

So I tried to solve one problem and now have falling egg production. We need the girls to produce about 60 dozen eggs per day. As the day length decreases and the age of the existing flocks increase production has fallen to 45 dozen per day. I have instigated a schedule to deal with the shortage. There is no really truly fair way of doing this when we have people getting eggs of different schedules so please accept my apologies.

The replacement flock sizes have been increased from 500 to 800 but if they take longer to lay then that does not help us in the short term. We they do start laying then we will be set for the winter.... Nigel

Give Me Some Shade...

Last Spring we spent over $8,000 on shade cloth to protect the peppers and the strawberries from the intense summer sun. We are happy to report that it worked wonders on the peppers and ok on the Strawberries. I can say that we harvested more usable peppers, enough to pay for their shade cloth. The strawberries will take a couple more years to pay for theirs.

The cloth reduces sunlight by only 30% but it is enough to stop sunburn on the peppers. Now we have to roll it up and put it away safely until next year. The sheets are 20 feet wide by 300 feet long.

How Heavy Rain Makes It Hard For Seedlings To Emerge.

The four inches of rain that fell two weeks ago pounded the soil. It all soaked in but left the surface hard and brittle. Now the soil has dried it has cracked. the emerging seedlings can have a hard time breaking through this compacted layer. Jose has spent the day irrigating these beds to soften the soil allowing all the young plants to push their way through. Four inches of rain in eight hours is too much for almost all soils. Roberto will weed these beds with his brush hoe after the irrigation to break the crust completely and remove any weeds between the rows.