13MAY27

Greetings from Baker Heritage Farms;

This weekend was indicative of being a resilient farmer. Murphy's law was alive and well.

We finally had some good weather and Donald, wanting to take advantage of the nice weather, went down to the production fields Friday evening to start tilling the 1/2 plot for the tomatoes (2C) and the full plot for the peppers (3A). Plot 2C only needed one tilling as it had already been prepped, so Donald started on this plot Friday evening, as he was short of time. While it was a muddy task (this plot was still very wet), things were going well until two rows from the end, when the tiller started acting up. Thinking that it just needed a good cleaning, he decided to pack up and start early Saturday morning.

Saturday morning, after finishing some work in the office, Donald was back down to the production fields intending on starting the initial tilling of plot 3A. He cleaned the entire tiller, only to find out that the problem was not fixed. As he started to take the tiller apart, he noticed that a bolt holding the wheel onto the axle was missing. Off to Ron's Hardware to get another bolt (fortunately they were very helpful and found exactly the right part in a very short amount of time, Donald bought three, just in case). Back to the farm. The wheel was fixed in a short amount of time and tilling was started ... and then it decided to rain. Donald is not too bright at times, and decided he would keep on tilling, thinking the rain would stop. It didn't, so he quit when he could no longer see the tiller (he only got two or three rows tilled). He packed up and came up to the house for lunch. After lunch, he went back down again but did not take everything with him as he did not want to have to worry about more rain. As a result, he ran out of gas and had to come back up to get gas. He did finally get the first tilling done.

On Sunday afternoon, Donald went back down to the production fields (after church and mowing the front yard) and starting cross-tilling plot 3A. Things were going excellent when, about two-thirds of the way through, the recoil rope broke on the tiller. That ended work in the production fields for the weekend.

Donald hopes to get the recoil rope replaced as soon as possible, but with our current schedule, who knows.

In the meantime, our Standn' Plant tool came in (a great tool, we hope, for planting transplants) and we plan to go ahead and plant tomatoes and peppers as soon as possible where possible. Donald will drag what has been tilled and we will go ahead and start planting, either this coming weekend (depending on weather and schedules) or the following weekend.

The turkeys are growing and doing well. The chickens are also growing and doing very well (and got fresh hay Sunday). We have a couple of escape artists. They like to jump up on the gate, and now are jumping into the back yard rather than their pen, so Donald put up a barrier hoping that it will stop them, at least until we can do something more permanent.

This was a quick update as our time seems to be quickly disappearing. One valuable lesson we learned this weekend (we actually learned several) is that we really need to make the farm more efficient, which means having an equipment shed down in the pasture so that we do not have to make so many trips up and down the hill for tools, equipment, etc.

Until next time,

Blessings from Baker Heritage Farms

"The Sky is falling!" - Chicken Little

12OCT28

Greetings from Baker Heritage Farms;

It was a slow week on the farm.

We ordered the Brinly-Hardy drop spreader we discussed in last week's post. Ended up ordering it from Home Depot, as it is an internet special item only. Hopefully it will be delivered this next week and we can get the rest of the lime down on the production fields next weekend.

David has started work on the chicken coop again, getting the fence posts up. After looking at the turkey run for the last several months, we think we finally came up with an inexpensive, but hopefully effective, way to keep ground animals out. We will be stringing a fence wire around the base approximately 4 inches above the ground. We were having problems trying to figure out how to secure the wire to the fence. The salesperson suggested using hog nose rings, so we purchased a box, as well as 200 feet of fence wire. We also purchased several tension fasteners we hope will help keep tension on the wire. We will be using this method on both the chicken coop and the turkey run, and will be placing rock around the base of the fence as an additional safety measure (we have enough rock around here to build several low walls).

Donald spent the weekend working on the planting schedule for the production fields. Data has been compiled on the vegetables we hope to plant, as well as cover crops (both summer and winter). The data includes the crop and family it belongs to (for rotation purposes), method of planting (seed or transplant), dates for planting (as well as starting seedlings), germination range, temperatures required during germination, and average harvest period, as well as additional information. He will be using this to establish a planting calendar for next year so that we can plan our crops to take advantage of as much of the year as possible. Once the calendar has been completed, we will start assigning crops to each plot. Several of the plots will be planted in cover crops to start improving the soil, which will reduce the amount of production crops we will be able to grow. As we improve our rotations and start seeing improvement in the soil, we will be able to plant more production crops and less cover crop.

We have not yet determined if we will be able to plant winter cover crops this year or not. We had our first frost this weekend so we may be behind schedule. We want to be sure of what we are doing so we are taking our time and performing the necessary research before we jump in feet first and waste money. Cover crops are necessary in our operation, as they will help breakup the soil, add nitrogen, control weeds, and provide beneficial insects. Cover crops will be used in place of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, and will eventually reduce or eliminate the need to till, in keeping with our goal of being good stewards of the land.

After we complete the planting calendar, we will start working on the irrigation issues. While most backyard farmers will not normally face the same irrigation issues (we have no access to water in our back pasture, except the pond), small-acreage farmers may very well face the same issues we do. We will be researching the use of drip irrigation versus the use of soaker hoses. If you have any thoughts, ideas, or experience with either of these two methods, we would be glad to hear them. We need to find out which system will be the most effective while containing initial purchase costs as well as the cost of water.

Next week we will most likely mow the test garden down and start work on preparing it for next year. We will till in the residue as green mulch as everything we planted was organic. We will be expanding the test garden in 2013 and plan to use most of the space.

Until next week,

Blessings from Baker Heritage Farms.