Owosso Organics

We stocked the bee hives this afternoon. Went at the end of the day yesterday to pick them up from Jon Anthnoy’s Bees in Lennon. The place was crazy; thousands of bees flying in the air, people all over to pick up their hives, the barn stocked 15′ high with many thousand boxes of bees and the noise…sounded like a high-pitched chain saw. The Anthony men and family were trying to keep order but it was chaos with the people and bees. Those working there  totally ignore the bees being so accustomed to them. At one point one of the women handling the orders ruffled the neck of her shirt and a dozen bees flew out or her  neckline, another woman brushed her hand carelessly over her hair and bees flew out of her bun. It was like a Twighlight Zone episode. At one point I had to walk in the barn to sign my order form and me (who swells up like crazy when I get stung) stepped gingerly, trying to act calm made a quick gesture in disguise of a signature.

After working all day, hoping for the sun to come out when the bees might be calmer we stocked the hives. Our friend/farm worker Leah manned the camera (thanks Leah!) Pics below.

One bee box

One bee box , one queen and many thousand bees. The queen is in her own little box. The workers won’t leave the hive as long as the queen is in there.

In they go!

All dressed up and safe we open the box and find the queen. We uncork her little box and make sure that she gets in the hive then dump the box full of bees in the hive and the air fills with bees.

Shake the bees out of the box

We try to work quickly but calmly which can be difficult with bees buzzing all around you.

Hoophouse #4 garden

We put up support for the first planting of peas.

Over wintered Kale plants gone to flower/ seed.

The Kale plants in the field of dreams over wintered but quickly flowered. They are beautiful. We hope to collect the seeds.

Me with my Sony A350

Have a great day everyone.

There has been much work going on around the farm since my last post. We have been planting a dizzying amount of seeds in the nursery greenhouse; all the peppers, eggplant, most of the flowers and we are just finishing up the last of the field tomatoes. It is getting hard to walk around in the nursery greenhouse and we are quickly filling up the Quonset greenhouse. Last week we planted the first planting of radishes, more spinach, lettuce transplants and kale in hoopehouse #1 and #2. Just a few more weeks and we will be at the Meridian Farmers Market with some early greens and transplants. Looking forward to seeing all our “market friends.”

We also took a huge plunge (in a particularly unromantic way to spend loads of money, like new tires for you car or a new roof ) and laid down drain tile on the East side of the farm and dug drainage relief ditches on the west side in efforts to mitigate some of our standing water/killing crops issues.

Thanks all for your CSA memberships. We are still planning  mid-May for the first distribution. Here are some picture from this weeks work.

Men with big machines

This is the drain tile on the East side of property to catch the water that falls on the Spelt garden, the trailor garden and from the barn.

Digging the trench

400 feet of drain tile were laid that day

Nice and dry now

What a mess!!

Digging the drainage reliefs

Meanwhile on the West side of the farm long deep ditches with gentle sides we hope to plant in wildflowers help direct water on that side.

First outside planting

Normally we would be putting this first lettuce planting of lettuce in the greenhouse but it was so hot we switched and put them outside.

Pony rides on Easter

Our wonderful neighbor brought over her new pony to the farm and gave us pony rides.

Even Mom gets a ride!

I am deliriously happy here. If I could have put that pony in my pocket and kept it I would have. I have wanted a pony like that since I was 8 yeard old!

puppy love

Happy Spring everyone!!

 

Some folks have been inquiring about this intriguing question in the last few weeks so we thought we would address it now. We have two size shares. Standard shares typically feeds a family of two for the week and Premium share is designed for a family of four or a vegetarian family of two .(premium share is basically double the size of the standard share.) You can’t always go by head count when choosing you share size though.  We have had couples with premium shares want more veggies and had families with kids have trouble using up their veggies in a standard share . Chose you share size based on your personal habits. Some things to consider are:

1. Do you have the time to cook for the weeks you will receive your CSA boxes?

2.Can you freeze or can extra produce you might get in your boxes?

3.Are you willing to try some new veggies you are unfamiliar with like Kale…Swiss Chard……(this would be good to consider regardless of your box size.)

Summertime is when we like to do many things that take us out of the kitchen so making full use of your CSA box takes a little more planning and organization. One long time CSA member budgets time the day after they get their box to prepare some large meals using their CSA veggies and freezes what they know they won’t use in the week. I try to post recipes during the season to give you ideas of what to do with some of the veggies, especially some of the more unfamiliar ones. If you look through some of the blogs from the 2011 season you will find some pictures of standard size boxes. I think there are 6 or 7 pics: early/mid and late season boxes to give you a visual of what you may find in your boxes. My favorite metaphor for being involved in a CSA is that CSA membership is like playing the guitar. I mean who doesn’t want to play the guitar. But after shopping and buying the instrument you have to practice or it just sits in the corner and you feel bad about the whole thing. Make sence?   Good luck and thanks again for supporting local organic agriculture.

We did have a couple of bummer things happen this last week. We were notified from one of our main seed company, Johnny’s Selected Seeds that a carrot seed we ordered failed to pass a seed purity test. Seems the carrot seed also contained a noxious weed called Dodder, quite a nasty invasive weed. The situation became worst because we had already planted it…..in our greenhouse. Long story short we had to remove the seed and the surrounding dirt and destroy it all. One step forward another step back. By the end of the day the seed and dirt were out of the greenhouse, replaced with good soil and replanted with spinach. Then this weekend with the strong winds on Sunday night,  the poly on hoophouse #4 ripped and was pretty much destroyed. A surprise because the poly wasn’t that old in that house. May have been some flying object hit the plastic at just the right place. Once the plastic has a rip, with high winds the thing is a gonner.

In the meantime we have been busy seeding in the nursery greenhouse, playing with the puppy and planning this years crops. Thanks for the CSA memberships. Richard saw a Robin yesterday….spring is here!

Richard and Dustin clear out bad seed and soil

 Scoop by scoop careful not to spill any, the seed and soil get cleaned out.

Early seeds in the nursery greenhouse

 Leeks, onions, kale, Swiss chard, some early lettuce…tiny little hopes of spring.

Baby plants

 Early season work…..we will plant the warm crops next week.

Wind damage

 Mother Nature always has the last say.

A nice tidy slice down the top of the house

 Once you get a tear in the plastic the whole thing is trashed.

Look at that face!

 He slept in the greenhouse most of the day on Monday while I seeded.

Cody and puppy!!

Enjoy these warming days…….

It wasn’t as if we all had been talking, planning and discussing getting a new puppy (which is odd because we plan and carefully calculate  much of our farm/family dealings) ; but clearly it had been brewing in our collective conscienceness as a family. Our beloved male Rhodesian Ridgeback Woodly has been gone now for almost 3 years and his ever faithful companion Layla still pines away for him. The time was right. I found myself on the highway early Sunday morning driving to Royal Oak to get this little guy.  We are all quite smitten. Looking forward to all our Owosso CSAers meeting him this spring.

Last week we seeded in the onions, leeks, snapdragon, lettuce, kale, swiss chard and early greenhouse tomatoes. They are up and growing in our chilly early spring greenhouse. I’ll post pics next week. Richard continues to work on putting down drain tile. He and Dustin laid down a couple runs on the greenhouse sides last week. They seem to be helping with directing the water away from the greenhouses. This recent snow will be a tell-all.

One of my great winter delights is baking all our own bread. It’s kind of a challenge once I start baking in November not to buy any bread until we get too busy in the spring/summer.  Thanks for your recent CSA  memberships. Helps with the seed orders and all this tile work. We still have lots of space left.

Look at that face!

After many days of brain storming names, some getting stranger and stranger we call him Ranger. See his beautiful mask? (Think Trigger)

We go to Ann Arbor over Presidents Day Weekend.

A beautiful sunny Sunday, we took Cody back to Ann Arbor and stopped to visit the Law Quad, the Natural History Museum and treated ourselves to dinner at Sevas. Yummy!

I love love love these buildings!

I am throughly enchanted by this place. I did not want to leave.

In the kitchen

My favorite part of my kichen.

Winter kitchen

The sun coming early in the morning. Bread anyone?

The Mighty Viking Mixer

 My 7 quart mixer. Makes 4 loafs of bread at a time.

Ready for the table

 I still do a fair amount of hand kneading.

A week worth of bread for the family

 Enjoy this last part of the winter everyone……spring is right around the cornor.

Here are some pics of what has been going on at the farm over the last few weeks. We have been taking advantage of the mild weather to re-built the winter greenhouse that was partially destroyed in an early 2010 winter storm. It’s all ready to be covered in poly the next chance we get. Richard went to Morgans Compost and picked up our soil for starting seeds, three big bags of it. The leeks, onion and snapdragon seeds arrived this week and will soon make their way into soil. We are almost done with the bulk of the seed order. As certified organic we have a commitment to search out organic seeds and often that takes quite a bit of research. It also pays to do price comparisons with organic seed company because the seeds can have widely fluctuating prices. Thanks goodness for calculators.

I’ve been playing music with my friend Jim Spring  since last summer. We are playing at Foods For Living this Sunday Feb 12, 2-4. unfortunately no place to sit and listen but the folk there are oh so nice.  We are going into Glenn Brown’s studio to do a demo (which I accidentally called a demo TAPE and immediately felt like a real dinosaur) next week and record 3 or 4 tracks.

The membership form is here on the website. I’m going to mail brochures out in a couple of weeks. Spring is right around the corner. Until then. love this snow we are finally getting!

Richard and Dustin working on the winter greenhouse

This was the second greenhouse we built. A huge 30×130 structure. Now after the re-built a more managable 30×90. We may in the future convert this over to nursery production, then during the summer for a veggie packing house. First tho it needs some drainage work but again, what part of the farm dosn’t need drainage work?

Careful on thoose ladders you guys.

 Almost complete.

 This will get us started. We may have to go up again in June. The seed starter 101 is lovely stuff.

 This is the way the kitchen table has looked for over a week. At meal time we just push everything to the side.

Seed catalogs everywhere.

We use Johnny’s Selected Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, Seedway Organics and Irish Seed company as our main seed companys

Little Buddy Bernard keeping us company in the kitchen

The CSA season officially begins today. Look on top of the website and you will find the membership form. Also note we have changed a few things this year. We have for the first time in 10 years raised our prices (so sorry), we are combining the farm pick-up and the East Lansing/ Okemos pick-up to Mondays 5:00 to 6:00 (let us know if that is too tight a window of pick-up for some of you), and we have tweaked the pick-up dates to more realistically reflect the growing season. Depending on how the weather cooperates we are planning  to have 4 early season pick-ups, the last two weeks in May and the first two weeks in June, then take two weeks off and begin again the first week in July straight to the first week in October for an 18 week season. We have struggled for years with a dirge of veggies in late June when the spring crops are done but the summer crops have yet to really kick in. Hopefully this will make filling the boxes more abundant and joyful.  So tell your friends and neighbors about the CSA. We will take memberships until April 15 or all the spots fill up.

Before the weather turned to the winter side, Richard spent the day filling the manure spreader and laying a nice layer of nutrients over a couple of gardens; at least the ones we didn’t get stuck in. Fill, fill, spread, spread, get stuck….pull out; fill, fill spread, spread….get stuck. And so it goes.

fill. fill. fill

This is from last week before the weather turned. We were lucky to get this day in, however the fields were wetter than we thought.

Spread, spread, spread....

stuck

Farmer superman!

 Able to leap over manure piles in the greenhouse.

End of day

 The last of the lettuce from fall plant. We won’t overwinter this house.

Winter music

Taylor is learning how to play the banjo! An instrument everyone should learn to play!

Thanks for all your recent inquires about the 2012 CSA. We will finish with the seed orders this week. It all begins very soon.

Who would think that on January 10 it would be so nice outside that we would be spreading compost and digging trenches? Richard, Dustin and Adam worked their tails off today digging trenches inside and outside the greenhouse and laying drain tile ( while I took pictures and cooked all morning) in our most recent effort to try to move water away from the inside of the greenhouses. Every year (I know I’ve said this before) we lose a substantial amount of crops due to water. As the saying goes, “to little water will hurt you, too much water will kill you.” Also early this morning we got a load, 40 yards, of compost and as I write, in the dwindling hours of daylight, Richard is hauling tractor loads of compost into the greenhouse and some gardens. Who says farmers get their winter off! With hopes of another stellar January day we will try to do it all over again tomorrow. Another couple of greenhouses and we will have a run of tile on each greenhouse. yeah!!

Early morning compost delivery

 Early this morning before the ground got too soft he unloaded this pile of magic!

 He made it just before things started to soften up. Now it’s a race to get it all spread before the snow starts.

Dig....shovel...dig...shovel

 The day got warmer…..oh my aching back!

Moving sod.....5" deep.

 T-shirts in January!! These guys are really working. Noone ever said farming was easy.

Close up

 You can almost smell the dirt and sod.

Finally the tile goes in.

After the tile goes in it gets covered with soil and a light layer of sand. Thanks you guys…you did great work! Are you looking forward to tomorrow?

Closing up the greenhouse in the evening.

Evening in hoophouse #1

Welcome, hello, thanks for finding our website. This blog entry ushers in the 2012 farm season. I hope to regularly blog so folks can see and read about our plans for the 2012 season. As we wait for winter to start in earnest (as we haven’t had much snow yet this winter) we are busy pouring over seed catalogs, talking, crunching numbers and planning for the season.  I haven’t blogged since ( what?) November in part to take a break and in part because I got hit with the spam monster. Thanks to my good friend Doug Berch (musician and instrument builder extraordinaire; hopefully I can figure out how to link his website here) he was able to catch and cage the spam monster but in doing so I forfeited all my comments. Thanks the bad news, the good news is I am now able to view any comments you might pass my way henceforth. So please forgive if you commented and I haven’t replied and please do so in the future.

This week on the farm we are expecting a 40 ton load of compost from MSU surplus. We are so hoping it can get here by, like tomorrow, as the first part of this weeks weather is looking very good.  We are also making some head way on decisions on the drainage work that we so desperately need done here.

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. We start taking CSA memberships on February 1 2012. I still need to make some changes on the membership form for this season. We are planning on tweaking the dates of the CSA and possibly the cost as we haven’t raised our prices in about 7 or 8 years.

owosso organic

Greenhouse #3 waiting for longer days and some good rich compost

Owosso Organics

 The sturdy kale plants, still harvesting!!

The quonset greenhouse in winter wood storage mode

Stacking up wood for the long winter…..when will winter come?

My favorite part of Christmas....the cards!

 Still haven’t taken down the cards yet…I love hearing from so many friends so far away.

Ahhh remembering the little purple wedding last summer. A taste of summer.

 I ordered the lisianthus last week. They will be here in only 15 weeks!

Hot peppers

Oh what fun we had with the hop peppers last summer. We still have our special hot sauce. We will have it at the spring market. Enjoy the slowness that winter brings.