The arrival of the first plants of the year

I received a call today from the Kube Pak plant company in Allentown, N.J. We get our transplants from them because they do a great job at less cost and time than I can do it myself. Our lettuce and spinach plants are ready for pickup and so on Saturday Dad and I will take the hour or so ride up to Monmouth County and pick them up.
Like an expectant parent, I have been preparing for this moment for the last two weeks. The ground has been prepared, the biodegradable mulch is on its way, the hoops for the low tunnels are waiting to be made and the Agribon sits patiently in the shed. The only thing needed now are the stars of the show and it's only a matter of time before they are here.
In addition to the many things listed beforehand, one of my other preps for this moment has been to patiently read the Farmer's Almanac to check on planting dates. Last year I started to plant by the Zodiac signs and I have found much truth to this method. Grandpop was a believer in it but he never confided in me about it. Dad remembers Pop talking about it and using the method.
Anyway, the Almanac says that we can plant the stuff as early as this weekend. The only problem is that I would like to harden the plants before setting them out and if we pick them up on Saturday, as we plan, that will not be sufficient enough time. The other issue is that it is supposed to rain all day Saturday so that would make it impossible getting into the field. Depending on the amount of rain, walking around in wet dirt is not good for the plants or the soil. That is a topic for another day.
 Hardening transplants is important as it gives the plants time to acclimate to the outdoor temperature and culture since they have spent their early life in the comforts of the greenhouse.
That being said, the Almanac points out that the next good Zodiac planting dates will be a week from Sunday, March 11. That is the date that I will be shooting for as it gives me more than enough time to harden the plants. Also the biodegradable mulch should be here and I can patiently plan out what I am going to do.

"The (soil) doctor will now see you"

If there was ever time to be thankful for the Internet, I think it was yesterday.
I spent about four hours researching soil, soil test results and soil amendments on the World Wide Web and I have to tell you, I don't know how I could have gained so much information in such a short time. It was just a few years ago (or so it seems) that I would have spent days and hours on the phone and at the library getting the information I needed that I found so easily yesterday.
At any rate, I am now more educated about my soil. Let me start with the soil sample analysis that came back. It showed some things I suspected (low organic matter), some things I did not expect (an average of 6.9 for my PH level - no liming this year!) and some things I didn't know (extremely low sulfur and boron).
We had our analysis done by A&L labs in Virginia. They do a nice job of interpreting everything. I started by going to their website and printing out a fact sheet on how to read my analysis. They also have a nice tutorial on elements in the soils and what their jobs are.
I sat down with the big yellow legal pad and went to work. I was a soil detective and doctor all in one sitting. I found out that ammonium sulfate would solve my sulfur problem and that Borax would amend my boron woes. I also realized at this point that I don't need my 10-10-10 that I had ordered so I will call my distributor and ask him to cancel the order and hold my money in escrow for future purchases. Luckily, I didn't get a custom blend otherwise it would get into a sticky situation.
In addition to the sulfur and boron, I needed a boost in calcium, manganese and potassium. At this point, I wanted to see how I could combine my leaf compost with the elements that were missing or in need of improvement. I could have had a custom blend of commercial fertilizer ordered but that would have presented more dilemmas. For example, string beans are susceptible to boron poisoning. Since I needed boron in my soil levels to be higher, I would have felt uncomfortable using a custom blend with added boron on one of my main crops. Therefore, my decision was to add the amendments to my compost to control the situation better.
So I started to track down products that I could mix with the leaf matter and use as a compost for my vegetables.
That's when I came across a product made by a company named Coast of Maine that is called "Bumper Crop". It is a compost mix that was highly-regarded by several reviewers and had some things in it that not only seemed to fit the bill but it looked easier to work with.
Dad and I caucused on the situation and decided we'll try the "Bumper Crop" to see how it works. Stay tuned.
In the meantime I had come across a biodegradable row cover made by Weed Guard Plus. I mentioned it to Dad and he purchased a roll that we are going to trial this year on our head lettuce.
It was a profitable weekend for a couple of other reasons. The blackberry patch is now finished with its haircut. I need to go back in and dig out some root systems that are where they shouldn't be and move them into a new row for cultivation.
The mailman was nice and brought me a new soil thermometer and a soil analyzer that analyzes the PH and moisture in the soil. Two handy instruments that will help me make better decisions on planting and irrigating this summer.
Finally, I sat down and laid out the logistics for the carrots and peas that will be going in the ground in two weeks. The peas are a last minute addition that I know Deb, one of my best customers, will appreciate. I will plant two varieties - a snow pea for stir fries and a regular shelling variety.

The curse of the blackberry

Yesterday, Anna and I spent time masculating what is known as our blackberry patch. Thank God the blackberries are thornless. It was a tangled mess that reminded of my wild teenage hair that I used to let grow long back in the day.
It was my fault to let the patch go to such extremes. I haven't given it a good pruning in two years. Frankly, I had become indifferent to it. But given that we have had such a mild winter here in New Jersey this year, I had some time and the motivation to get out and clean it up.
The patch is four years old. It has produced some beautiful fruit in spite of my inattentiveness. I shouldn't be surprised. Blackberries are indestructible.
Ironically, blackberries are the last link to my great grandfather Ciro, who started the farm in 1911. He grew what we called black diamonds. Black diamonds were all over that farm in dark corners and on along the roadway when I was a child, courtesy of the animals and birds that ate them and then deposited the droppings along the way.
I am told that my grandfather also grew them because they sold well. But the nature of the plant, with its nasty thorns, finally got to him one day and he pulled them all out because he got tired of them scraping and scatching not only him but the rest of his family, including my mother, who was a child then. So the blackberry lived on as a wild plant around the farm and still does in spots.
Some of my earliest memories are of my grandmother taking me for a walk down Landing Road and me picking the blackberries to eat. I couldn't have been more than 2, 3-years-old.
One day about four years ago as I was getting into this heirloom thing, I had the idea that I was going to take the wild plants and cultivate them into a patch that we could use for the markets. That's when Dad stopped me and said, "They raise them thornless now. Why don't you just buy a few plants that way and raise them."
And so yesterday I was thankful for that suggestion as we hacked our way into shape the plants for this year's crop.
I have read many ways to prune blackberries and keep them. But I have found that appealing to their wild nature, I prune back the good canes to knee's length, cut out the dead wood and let them go. Grandpop used that method on the raspberries we used to grow and so that is what I have been doing. Some berry person is probably shaking their head but you know what, blackberries are what they are - persistent when it comes to survival. So we shall see what comes of it.
The day was chilly and we had some wind but for a late February, it wasn't too bad. Anna and Dad pulled the remainder of the cabbage, broccoli and Brussels Sprouts that were left from last season. Amazingly, the Brussels Sprouts were still growing with tiny balls that were ready to be picked!
That parcel will be worked into a fallow field this year with some sweet clover to be planted for soil enrichment.
I give Anna credit. She worked hard and did not complain which is what most 13-year-olds would do. But Anna is like me in that she is apt to be a pleaser. So she stuck to it for four hours of work. In the long run it will do her body and her mind some good.

How much tilling should be done?

As users of the Earth, we get mixed messages on how much manipulation of our soil we should be doing. Grandpop would put the three-bottom plow on the back of the John Deere 70 and have a go at it every spring, turning over what was on top and then planting over it.
I did the same thing for years. Then I started to use a six-prong subsoiler and disc harrow. Then it was just a disc harrow and a field conditioner. Now it's just a rototiller. Talk about extremes and the learning curve!
I just finished an article in the March/April issue of Hobby Farms that talked about the tools that one would use on a small parcel of land to get ready for the planting season.
First, I must comment that most people (myself included) would be incarcerated if we treated our bodies like we treat the soil! Ripping and tearing and going over the same area over and over again. Imagine doing that to a living organism. It's chances of survival would lessen each time that we did it. Your soil is the same way. It is a living organism! Yet, we exhibit this kind of behavior through ignorance. So before doing anything, understand what you are doing. Growing food is not just planting something and watching it grow.
I love my father dearly but if it wasn't for this article, "Till the Sun Comes Home", I don't know what I was going to to do. I would just about scream every time I saw him jump on the tractor the last two years and go out with the new rototiller we bought. He was caught up in the moment of a new piece of tillage equipment that was doing a great job in his eyes.
Dad and I were talking the other night and he mentioned that he read the article in his issue and said, "I guess I better back off with the rototiller." Ya, think? Of course, I had been making overtones to that effect but the old adage about believing it when someone else says it certainly proved prophetic here.
In the article, Dr. Harold Van Es, a professor of crop and soil sciences at Cornell, says something that I really grabbed ahold of. "Every time you till, you remove a little money from the account. Eventually your checking account will need to be balanced. Same goes for your soil. That doesn't mean you can't till, but you need to balance tillage with adding organic matter, such as compost, planting a cover crop or rotating with perennial crops to build up the soil.
"The more you disturb the soil, the more you break up the natural aggregates and the more you mineralize or lose organic matter and tilth. While not initially apparent, several years of excess tillage will show soil degradation."
Then there were these pearls of wisdom from Joel Dufour, owner of Earth Tools in Owenton, KY. He said, "Over-tilled, beat-up soils may feel good to the hand, but you've destroyed the capillary action, annihilated the earthworms and damaged the microbiological soil life."
That's some great food for thought. Every time I read stuff like this, I go out to the farm with new respect for my land and how I am going to treat it.

Has organic farming reached the "slope of enlightenment" phase?

Last week I read a very insightful article in the New Jersey Farmer by Lynne Finnerty of the American Farm Bureau. It's impact was such that I felt the need to contact Lynne and she graciously allowed me to reproduce the article here in my blog.
Lynne's comments echo something that I have felt for the last few years when it comes to organic farming. I think that the euphoria of what organic farming produces has reached a new stage, one in which people have accepted it as a norm of our culture instead of a phenomena. With that being said, the people who jumped into organic farming a few years ago to make a big buck are finding that the high prices that they charged a few years ago are finding fewer takers each year as eating organic vegetables becomes a lifestyle for those who believe in its values while most find that they could not keep with the economics of living that lifestyle and have either dropped out or incorporating some of the culture but not all of it.
As I said in an earlier post, agriculture should be a partnership of many cultural beliefs and inputs, a marriage of technology and common sense. I believe that is the essence of what is known as sustainable agriculture, the kind of agriculture that is the goal of Spinella Farm as we carry forward in the 21st century.

Farmers May be More Organic Than People Think

Farmers may be more organic than people think
 By Lynne Finnerty

Ever heard of the hype cycle?
Created by Internet consulting firm Gartner, Inc., the theory goes like this. New technology goes through a cycle, including a “technology trigger” phase, in which it generates excitement and press coverage; a “peak of inflated expectations” phase, in which the hype leads to unrealistic expectations; a “trough of disillusionment” phase, in which the technology fails to meet expectations; followed by a “slope of enlightenment” phase, in which the hype has subsided but some businesses continue to use the technology for its actual benefits; and, finally, the “plateau of productivity” phase, in which the practical benefits become accepted as part of normal business.
For example, “cloud computing,” the use of computer programs and data storage over the Internet, has been a subject of media buzz. It’s supposed to save businesses money on computer software they won’t need to buy if they can get the same services at no or low cost via the Web.
Gartner says cloud computing is coming to the end of the “peak of inflated expectations” and is headed toward the “trough of disillusionment.” Recent news stories have pointed out that information entered into a Web-based service could be compromised. Of course, people will continue using cloud computing, just with their expectations less in the clouds.
What does all of this have to do with farmers? The hype cycle is an interesting way to look at what’s happening with organic agriculture. Organic food has been the darling of the news media, with stories about how it was going to save everything from small farms to the planet. Then some organic food companies got big and some already big companies, seeing consumers’ willingness to pay premium prices for organics, jumped on the bandwagon. Some of the same people who were early fans of organic food tend not to be fans of big companies, so they started wondering if buying local was more important than buying organic. Then, the recession hit and the growth in organic food sales continued but slowed. Organic milk sales dropped.
However, some organic practices have practical benefits and farmers across the agricultural spectrum are adopting them. For example, specialty potato grower Brendon Rockey of Colorado has started growing “green manure” crops to build up his soil quality to the point where he doesn’t need commercial fertilizers or pesticides. He considers himself a hybrid of organic and conventional farming. Jay Yankey, a Virginia fruit, vegetable, corn and soybean grower, uses beneficial insects to control pests and cover crops to prevent erosion, as well as no-till farming to retain soil moisture and nutrients. But Yankey also uses pesticides. He says farmers use the practices that work for them and more organic practices are becoming the norm.
That sounds like the “slope of enlightenment,” which means the “plateau of productivity,” in which farmers use a mix of methods and modern technologies to achieve all of their goals – maximizing yields, reducing costs, satisfying consumer expectations, caring for the land and meeting growing food demand – with less division between those who wear this or that label, might be around the corner. That’s good news for all of us.

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Lynne Finnerty is the editor of FBNews, the official newspaper of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

A good farmer farms with money, not for money

Dad and I talk every day and as it gets near farming season, we talk even more so. Our latest talk centered around finances. It the time of the year when money goes out the window faster than you can say God Bless You. Dad is nervous at such times and I think I would be too. He's probably more so because he is in charge of the ledgers. I like it that way because then I can't see what comes in or goes out and as long as the tractor doesn't sputter and stop in the field, then I know I'm OK.
Like any business, farming takes an extraordinary amount of money based on the size of your operation. A fellow farmer here in South Jersey once summed it up the best: "I don't need to go to Atlantic City. I gamble every day when I'm on the farm." He's right; in order to make a living at farming you have to make smart business decisions, and then, and even more so, you have to be lucky.
Dad likes to say that farmers make money because of some other farmer's misfortune. There's a lot of truth in that. If you look at farming any more on a commercial scale, it has become a national and sometimes international phenonmena. The latest example I can think of is peaches. We had a neighbor who farmed hundreds of acres of peaches here in Winslow Township. He suffered through some really bad years. A sign that a farmer is hurting financially (and probably physically and emotionally) is when they start to sell off their ground to help pay the bills. When it gets to this point you feel for the guy. Anyway, that's what this gentleman did. He sold some land to the state for farmland preservation and some to developers. Finally, he ended up selling the whole thing. The next year peach farmers in New Jersey, after a decade long losing streak, hit it big when the crop was destroyed in the South due to bad weather. As a matter of fact, it was a couple of bad weather years that made peach farming profitable here in New Jersey. By then, the farmer was in retirement and his son was driving a truck for a living. He was a good farmer too. His crop was always well cared for. But he was at the mercy of the market.
Sam Brick of Marlton told me one time that his Dad's favorite saying about farmers was that the good ones farmed with money, the bad ones farmed for money. There is a significant amount of truth to that. You have to understand what your situation is and know how much financial tolerance you have. The bottom line is that you can't spend over your head and that you can't think about how much money you want to make. That's why a good accountant is a farmer's best friend. We have one in Bill Lemons of Hammonton.
When Grandpop died, we inherited his equipment. I will say this about Grandpop. He grew up during the Depression and he came away, like a lot of people who suffered, with the utmost respect for money and its effect on your life. Grandpop literally kept things going with the proverbial spit and bailing wire. We would laugh about two things when it came to Grandpop and money. One was the story about the tie rod bushings on the John Deere M. Grandpop would find some way to keep that tractor going even with the wheels about to fall off. One day we got tired of them breaking every other time and went out to John Deere and bought new bushings. Grandpop was mad that we fixed his work but he never complained after that.
The other story involved his Agway discount. Grandpop had bought shares into GLF (Garden, Lawn and Farm or as Sam Brick used to put it, Good Luck Farmer!) when it first came to Berlin. Evenutally Agway bought out GLF but Grandpop was still a share holder. As such, he was entitled to a discount on his purchases there. One day I went for chicken feed. Grandpop's big thing was to remind the clerk that he received a discount. Well, it was one of my first trips by myself to the feed store and I forgot the damn discount. When I got home, Grandpop looked at the bill and said, "Where's my Agway discount?" I told him I forgot to get it. He got pissed off. I said, "How much was the discount?" He told me it was 35 cents. I couldn't believe it - he was upset over 35 freakin' cents! I reached into my pocket and took out 35 cents. He refused to take it. "It's not the actual money," he told me, "it is the principal of the thing." I just shook my head.
I will say this. Even as frugal as Grandpop was, he knew where to spend money and he used cash instead of credit. We never had a problem being short on fertlizer or spray. Grandpop prioritzied the things that needed to put you in a position to make money. A tie rod bushing on the tractor was not high up on the list. But making sure that the tomatoes or whatever was well taken care of, that was top priority. And the philosophy worked. We had nice stuff. That's another way you can tell a farmer that farms with money and one that farms for money. I knew a guy who bragged about his apples. I took one look at them and saw how small they were and knew right away that the guy had a cheap operation. Anyone who knows anything about apples knows that apples take an extraordinary amount of spray to produce a good crop. This guy was cutting corners with the spray and you could see it in his fruit.
We've had to upgrade the operation just about every year that Dad and I have been farming together. When it comes time for a piece of equipment Dad has never said no. When we needed a tractor to run the hay and vegetable equipment, Dad went out and bought one. He traded that one for a new one a few years later and he paid that off in three years. Working with someone of that mind set is a God send. Like the existence of a  marriage, if you argue over money you are dead in the water.
Do we make money farming? That depends on your definition of financial success. Every year we order what we want and grow what we want to make the farm better than the year before. To my way of thinking we have a successful operation.

We love to eat what we grow

Along with the marketability of heirloom fruits and vegetables, you can't beat the taste and versatility in my opinion. Heirloom vegetables are what people should be looking at today with the rise in home cooking and buying and eating local.
While everyone thinks of tomatoes when it comes to heirloom vegetables, we have grown some really great looking, tasty heirloom varieties of other crops. Black seed Simpson lettuce, Banana melons and Pink Banana winter squash have all been very profitable and very good eating for us. Again, I point to diversity and the fact that these varieties were developed with taste in mind and not to sit around on a store shelf.
In order to stay up in a niche market with competition from the number of rising tailgate markets, Dad and I have become readers of food pages and watch a number of food shows. I think Dad is probably more into it than I am but the point is that if people are using it on TV to cook with and it has a following, then it is worth exploring when it comes time to grow it.
In addition, we always eat what we grow. Coming from a big Italian family I think that goes without saying. But it is a bonus to be able to tell your customers about your experience with food you grow, especially if you have a favorite recipe. Grilled asparagus comes to mind as a food that fits that bill in recent years.
One of our best sellers has been fingerling potatoes. Up until a few years ago, only very fashionable restaurants were serving these little spuds. They are great because you don't have to peel them. You can just cook them and they are versatile, being used for mashed potatoes to potato salad to breakfast home fries. We have sold a lot of them because Dad knew the history and the utility of the vegetable and was able to pass it along to the customer.
In addition to having fresh vegetables, people appreciate it when you give them ideas on how to prepare them. I think people have been swept up in the locavore tide and want to get out and experience what fresh local food is about. That means trying new things such as fingerling potatoes or another good seller for us, heirloom Zucchino Rampicante. If you can give them an idea along with a recipe card, they will not only be back for more, they will be your best customer. Time and again, we've made sales with people who bought the stuff the week before crowing to other customers how good it was.
Another winner for us has been French filet string beans. Again, you usually find these in a good restaurant that caters to higher end customers. These string beans are slender and their flavor lasts longer than the Blue Lake beans. We usually sell out of them each time we get them to market. Last year we had a severe deer problem as the wild creatures took more than their share. So along with the customers and the wildlife, we get high marks for French filet beans.
We live in a Golden Age of food right now. As a farmer, I have got to use that to my advantage, especially with the small acreage that I cultivate.
I often wonder if my Grandfather would have liked what his farm has become. My uncle Sam, Grandpop's oldest son, says he would. I know that if Grandpop knew that heirloom vegetables could sell, he would be doing just the same as we do.