1588 pounds...

Our hoophouse shipped yesterday! We should see it on Monday morning, all 1588 pounds of it, which we are responsible for offloading from the truck. One pallet alone is 1,200 pounds! So we paid a little more so they will send a truck with a lift gate to help us unload it. They are also sending it in a stubby truck, so hopefully it can get up our driveway...

It will be good to have, as soon as we get it set up. I have hundrends of lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage starts in my basement which would be fine in a less heated space... The tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and basil still need a little more heat... It did come with a propane heater, but we will need to wait and see if we actually need to set that up this year, it may be late enough we don't have to...

Learning weekend...

This was a good weekend.

On Friday, my husband went to a hoophouse workshop. We are getting ready to purchase a 16x28 heated hoophouse for our starts (so, unlike last year, we don't have to bring them in and out of the barn twice a day!) so we wanted to make sure we were on the right track.

But the coolest piece of information we got was not about hoophouses but about about grafting. All your fruit trees are grafted, and most grape vines, and I guess in Japan lots of vegetables are to! What we can do is take an heirloom start and graft it onto a non-heirloom rootstock. This way we can get lots of the dieses reistance of the non-heirloom plant and still get the fruits of a heirloom. And since there is no genetic transfer or anything like that you can still save seed from the fruits. This is VERY cool stuff. I don't know if we will be able to try it this year, but we are definatly intrested in cool technologies like this.

On Saturday we sat in a panel for a lunch time discussion with farmers who are considering starting a CSA at a workshop sponsored by the Countryside Conservancy. And if any of them are reading this now, Thanks to everyone who said they read the blog, and liked it! That is SO nice to hear! And I will reiterate what we said yesterday as our primary advice... Start small and grow slowly.

Today is house cleaning and some more field planning!

Frosts...

Jack Frost has definitely been nipping on the farm this week! We have had a frost almost every night, and the garden is showing the damage. Eggplants are the worst hit for sure!

But all the summer stuff is gone. Peppers, tomatoes & squash, all finished. But in early September we planted a load of frost tolerant stuff and it is still growing! Pac Choi, lettuces, turnips, greens, and radishes all doing well, especially those we put under our hoops!

Now we just hope that it grows enough, does not die of a hard freeze, and that we have stuff to offer (besides winter squash and kale) at the Peninsula Holiday Market we will be attending on the 17th of November.

Cold frames in....

We managed to get 40 feet of 32" hoops done today. Combine that with the 24 feet of 30" hoops we already had and we were able to put plastic over about 60 feet of rows, given that we are averaging 4 rows in a bed that is 240 feet protected! Even if it does not work this fall it will be nice to have these in the spring...


We did discover in the garden today that we defiantly had our first frost last night. October 27 was the day for us this year. Our poor eggplant looked great this morning, but by afternoon the damage was obvious! There is still a little growing time left, so we ask our members to stick with us for a little longer!