Rain, planting, update.

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Cycle Farm

A couple weeks ago, we spread out a flower seed mix including a native wild flower mix, bee balms, phacelia, borage, marigold, sunflowers, a cocktail of every good thing. Cosmic chaos. The seeds were mixed with soil and then broadcasted through the orchard and the insectary, mainly.

So we tossed seed all over and then, as if on cue, it started raining. We got about 5” over the course of five days earlier last week. Spearfish creek reached 700 cfs. Heavenly. The rain has felt great. The soil is sucking it up. Transplanting is easy. The weeds are on full blast – but easy pulling. And it gave us a good, occasional excuse to duck inside and process some greens into pesto (somewhat non-traditional: radish greens, sunflower seed, Parmesan, olive oil and much much garlic).

Planting and transplanting. In the rain. With friends. Quite nearly so dreamy as a .. bouquet of unicorns.

The birds have been occupied conducting studies in surface hydrology. Or otherwise passing the slow days making wishes on dandelion poof balls and eating their fill of wiggly things.

Our barley experiment isn’t doing so hot. The intent was to get a strong crop of barley growing that would out compete the bindweed. The barley would then be threshed and laid back out as mulch in time to plug in sweet potato slips. Instead, the Creeping Jenny is growing taller now than the barley. We’ll see how this progresses.Here are just a few more images from the farm these days. Marcus, chief hop wrangler, helping with trellising; peas; and garlic; the field; and sequestering carbon.

Lolita’s hive is doing alright. They are a joy to see around the farm, though certainly noticeably fewer bees around this year with only one hive (vs last year with three). They are active building comb, collecting pollen, and nectar. We’re keeping an eye on Lolita these days. Her laying pattern seems a bit off (a healthy queen will lay eggs in tight clusters of cells – an aging/off queen might lay in a more shotgun-like pattern). Also we found three new queen cups building built. Here’s a photo of the queen herself (in PLSS, she’s in the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 section).

And finally: Are you filling in your home garden beds? We have starts for sale! Basil, oregano, thyme, sage, broccoli, romanesco, cabbage – and MORE – give us a call.

Wishing you well, Trish and Jeremy

May farm update. The heat is on.

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Here’s a brief update on good things growing, long days working, warm sun shining on the farm these days. We planted potatoes and started filling in the herb bed (planted so far are the echanachia, johnny jump-ups, calendula, borage, and mints, other culinary herbs are headed out soon). And long days of weeding and bed prep for CSA crop rows. Peas have sprouted, radishes and beets, turnips are just starting to poke their leaves up. We’ve begun transplanting into the back field: mustards, collard greens, cabbage. The flea beetles have already found our mustard greens, bok choy, and tat soi. These little guys decimated our mustards last year. We’re dosing our tender greens with diatomacious earth and a good pep talk, this seems to be working so far.

Lolita’s hive is doing well, building comb and collecting pollen – right now the bees have mainly crazy orange dandelion pollen, but there are also bees about with a lighter yellow pollen (cottonwood?). The pears are in full glorious bloom. We did not get fruit from these trees last year, so we can’t speak from experience, but hear-say is these pears are exquisite. Qi bombs. The plums and crab apples have also just started to flower. The hops are doing their fun sort of cobra dance, snaking around in the air looking for something to climb. And as also regards snakes, the garter snakes on the farm are all sorts of amorous these days. Everywhere you look, dexterous, tangled. Entirely uninhibited. It’s mesmerizing.

We are trying to keep the greenhouse cool. With outside temperatures in the 90s this is a challenge. We have lost a few lettuces, but in general the little green things are toughing it out alright.

Our peppers and tomatoes are stoked.

Here’s a quick no-till bed prep report.

-Hoeing and hand pulling the quackgrass rhizomes takes about 6 hrs/bed. We’re tried different variations along this theme, but that’s generally where we’re at with this. So far, we’ve done this to 12 beds. After weeding, these beds are immediately covered with a thick layer of straw.

-Perennial rows (insectary and asparagus) have been (and will be) weeded by hand. With these beds we can’t manage extracting weed roots without damaging our plants, so we are essentially mowing. By hand. Pulled grass is layed right back on the bed around the asparagus/flowers as a mulch. So far, this is time consuming but surprisingly effective.

-Scything and mulching with a long roll of 100% recycled craft paper and straw. This technique is embraced with smiles as it allows for standing and moving, and swinging the scythe, a brilliant tool.

-Storage crop rotation rows are all a go (we have a four year rotation on potatoes, winter squash, beans, corn – partially for soil nutrient cycling, partially for pest management). Eight rows (potatoes) were mulched with straw early in March. This has done an awesome job suppressing weed takeover, we have potatoes in and they should do alright out-competing the wheat kernals from the straw mulch that decide to pop up. Another eight rows (beans) were manually weeded, pretty thoroughly, then heavily mulched. Those will be planted in a few weeks. We intercepted an incredible lot of empty barley bags from the trash bin at the brewery, thick brown paper bags. Those were layed out over yet another 8 beds (corn) and weighted with straw mulch. (where we ran out of barley bags we spread out a thick layer of old newspapers. Hope is this will set back/knock out weed growth underneath. And we’ll either cut into the bags for planting into or remove the bags, strip the weeds, mulch and plant. And then, in the squash rows (8 rows for these too) – this is exciting – Jeremy planted a cover crop of winter rye last fall. It’s up, growing tall, totally out pacing the quackgrass. Just like it’s supposed to. So we should be able to fold this down and plant squash into this in a few weeks. (Yes! score one for the farmers!)

Commonly small farms will use a sheet of plastic as an easy, efficient way to manage weeds. We are not using plastic for mulching, solarizing, or ‘burning’ the weeds, because it generates an awful lot of garbage. Our intent is to minimize our off-farm inputs, and make the farm as ‘sustainable’ (arrg, this poor word…) as possible. We’ll keep trying. Lots of experiments.

With all this in consideration, both the health of the soil and the labor involved, we are putting much thought into the merits of tilling (eeep!). Our neighbors have a field, over 8 acres, they are able to glide over with a tractor in approximately 3 hours. Meanwhile we are bent over a 30″x70′ bed for 6 hours pulling weeds. That’s just one row. This doesn’t make sense: fiscally this seems incredibly irresponsible, and while great for soil health, it’s ultra tough on the farmer (hands, back, morale). We are transplanting and filling beds as they are cleared, but we are still behind. At what point does the energy consumed by the tractor become more efficient than the energy we are consuming as two people working the land? Seems to me like we might be cutting it pretty close. So we’re decided to play out as many no-till ideas as we can this year. Give it absolutely the very best we’ve got. If we are stuck in the same position next year, it may be time to consider renting a tiller. This soil is phenomenal. And resilient. If we can get a hold on our weeds, establish a cover crop immediately after a single go at tilling, bring the farm into a manageable state, quality of life for everyone (the soil, our crops, us) will be significantly improved. But for now, the jury is still out and we’re still no-till.

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And lastly, here are a few links we’ve been accumulating for a little while, things people have passed along to us and we would like to share.

Another strong argument for no-till. A BBC article discloses: Fungus plays role in plant communication: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22462855 Much like the tin can-string set up the farmers use here at Cycle Farm.

Undoubtedly, you’ve also been hearing/reading a lot about the alarming, distressing bee problems. Here’s a bit more, http://e360.yale.edu/feature/declining_bee_populations_pose_a_threat_to_global_agriculture/2645/

This is absolutely incredible. Data. Google Earth has stitched together nearly 40 years of satellite imagery, here: http://earthengine.google.org/#intro/. How did they do this?! You can travel through time and space, while sipping tea at your desk – search for Spearfish and watch ag land be eaten up by houses. Zoom in on any part of the Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh – ! lose yourself in channel pattern evolution and sediment transport, so glorious. Alternatively, search Fort McMurray, AB Canada and zoom out a bit and pan north a bit. That one may give you a stomach ache.

And here’s an interesting article regarding ribbon farms (vs section, 1/4 section farms) and contemporary American transportation, community: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/how-a-quirk-of-medieval-farm-shapes-led-to-the-american-psychology-today/ Cycle Farm is a “ribbon farm”, 100′ x 1/4 mile – relic of Spearfish Valley’s agricultural heritage.

For those of you who know and use Latin names and appreciate work cited and in-text referencing, get a load of this. http://botanistinthekitchen.wordpress.com/ SO GOOD. Prepare to fall even more in love with asparagus.

With warm, happy smiles – Trish and Jeremy

Work party, cob wall, quackgrass, fine dining

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Farm update: The tomatoes and peppers are back out to the greenhouse, and the living room has been reclaimed, once more, for human habitation. The birds are enjoying the increasingly greening grass and growing bug populations. Snakes continue to spur all manor of entertainment, as did a clutch of very baby rabbits. Lolita’s hive is more active everyday, no doubt enjoying the onset of the dandelions and other early nectar flow. We had a wonderfully productive work party descend on the farm this weekend like a troop of superheroes. Cobbing in the greenhouse is off to a good start. After several slightly different recipe ratios, we’ve finally nailed down just the right proportion of clay – sand – straw for a good, solid cob wall. And the asparagus we planted last year from seed have started shoving up. Peas, radishes, turnips, parsley, spinach are now all in beds in the back field. And we’ve just begun harvest of radishes and arugula from the greenhouse.

There must have been a right quick ladybug hatch after the snow cleared. There were several who found us and cheered us on while we flexed our forearms in fisticuffs with the quackgrass this weekend. One significant downside to the no-till sod-flipping technique has been the weed resurgence, especially with the quackgrass which dominates the back field (here is a description of our no-till bed prep method from last year). Quackgrass is a natty-rooted, rhizome-spreading grass. It does a fantastic job of growing quickly, protecting soil from erosion, building soil structure. It’s especially hardy and drought tolerant. But it’s troublesome in our beds. A conventional way of dealing with this weed is to till up the soil. A lot. And/or spray it with glyphosupertoxicate.

In order to help preserve soil health, we will use other methods to try to manage this. Currently, we are hand hoeing or digging out the quackgrass, trying to preserve root integrity, removing the rootmass (as best we can), and mulching heavily in rows where we will direct seed crops. Rows that will be transplanted into, we will blanket in thick newspaper, followed by straw mulch. This struggle will be ongoing. If you have ideas or experience to share, please let us know. Ultimately, we will need to establish a good mulch/covercrop in the walkways between beds as well. Otherwise, we don’t stand a chance – the rhizomes can grow up to 1″/day which gives our freshly weeded vegetable beds (30″ beds surrounded by walkway rows of quackgrass) approximately 2 weeks of liberty from the clutches of quackgrass.

And finally, heaps of thank yous to our incredible friends, Avery, Craig, and Iggy, who came by the farm this weekend and set immediately to work. In just a weekend of focused energy and merry camaraderie, we were able, together, to tackle several tasks from our ever-growing better-get-this-done-in-a-hurry list… and still make time for siesta.

The best bits of the weekend include lots of muddy hands building a cob wall; good friends who work tirelessly …and joyfully; having hot coffee delivered to us during early morning weeding; an ever so inviting pathway through the new herb garden; call and response worksongs, little ditties featuring our favorite good farm dogs; rain tapping on the greenhouse roof during a fancy feast of roasted homegrown chicken and happy birthday ginger peach pie. Many thanks to you, we are feeling super lucky – pert near blessed – to have such generous, inspiring, and insightful friends.

Check out our new herb bed walkway, brick work by master rock artisan, Craig:

…Avery and Iggy, however, are clearly more impressed by the wicked cool tricycle ice cream vending cart our good friend John brought by full of birthday growlers:

And here’s a shot of Cycle Farm’s new fancy fine dining locale:

Farm to table, with love.

Spring happenings in the greenhouse.

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Here are a few photos from the greenhouse last week:Spinach, cracoviensis lettuce (seed we saved!), johnny jump-up blooming, view of the greenhouse.Thyme, green onions, bed medley, tiny lettuces.Tomatoes, mustards, johnny jump-ups budding, asian and mustard greens.

Red cabbage, white russian kale, radishes, broccoli.

If you have questions about the varieties we grow, where we source our seed, how we save seed – let us know, we are excited to share.

Snow, seedlings, serious.

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Little green things in the greenhouse are faring the snow and cool temperatures fantastically. Radishes are just starting to bulb up. Lettuces are thrilled. Spinach and arugula, standing tall. And the potatoes are on exhibition, lined up like glowing, spring-break sunbathers reclining on sun-kissed, sandy beaches.

We did, however, end up bringing the tomato starts inside. After watching the temperature in the greenhouse continuously fall earlier last week, and because we haven’t finished building the north cob wall (no thermal mass), and we don’t have a door on the east end, we finally tucked our chins and shuffled the tomato trays inside. It’s tough playing chicken with mother nature, nerves of steel, she never swerves. The tomatoes would likely be absolutely fine in the greenhouse. If the potatoes are alright, the tomatoes should fare well too. Everything is under rowcovers at night, wrapped snug in a blanket of good intentions. We are no doubt being unduly nervous. Weak nerves partner well with lack of experience and fierce desire to share a bumper crop of tomatoes with our wonderful CSA members. (We still have a few CSA shares left, please contact us soon if you’d like to join us for a season of farm fresh vegetables).

So for the meantime, this is our living room.

And our roommates.

We are feeling very grateful for the surge of moisture. In planting fruit trees last week, it was unnerving to see how dry the soil was. Hopefully, our rich, healthy, no-till soil will work some magic moisture retention and keep going strong for our early plantings, before the irrigation ditch is turned on in May.

The snowy, inside days offered us a good chance to process honey. We collected honeycomb from Anna and Lara’s empty hives a couple weeks ago. The combs were cut off the top bars and collected in 5-gallon buckets. We ended up with almost 80 lbs of honeycomb. The next step was crushing the comb to release the honey. Larger operations will use a machine called a ‘honey extractor’, a barrel centrifuge that spins the comb around, pulling honey out. But, on our scale, crushing the comb works just as well and is five hundred million times more fun. The comb is crushed by hand over a sieve which separates the wax comb from the honey. The honey drips down into a bucket. We’ll offer the crushed wax bits with relic honey back to Lolita; the bees should be able to clean up whatever honey is left.

We have loaded up flats of starts of bee-friendly flowering plants. If we have enough food sources here for our bees, it may reduce the amount of time they have to spend foraging off-farm in areas where neighbors in the valley might be chemically treating their lawns and gardens. We need to do a better job encouraging/educating folks to avoid using neonicotinoids and similar chemicals that harm honey bees, native pollinators, and other insects. And plant bee balm and Phacelia instead. But how do you do this when people have been treating their lawns since forever? and they love their thick, green manicured grass, mowing it, faithfully, every weekend? and the TruGreen lawn care truck is cruising the neighborhood, sprayers drawn like sabers, a fierce knight defending the neighborhood lawns from the dragons of a flawed green mat? Please don’t treat your lawns. The decline in bee populations (honey bee and natives) is a serious and urgent issue in terms of food security and land health. Not to mention honey production. They need our support. So please, plant for the bees.

Other recent farm activities include: fence repair, filing farm taxes, tool maintenance and repair, cleaning the garage and Pemberly, rescuing the bags of chicken feed from an onslaught of hungry mice, more fence repair, digging holes for fruit trees, seeding successions of lettuces and brassicas, weeding in the greenhouse, research into health insurance plans and cool-bot refrigerator designs, coochi-cooing the chickens. And fence repair, again.

Almost entirely unrelated: It’s occurred to us that the website has become a repository of pretty farmy photos and cheery stories. We don’t do a very good job of conveying the especially trying parts of our days. We try to be honest, I think we do a good job. But, by nature, Jeremy and I also are both more comfortable focusing on the positives. So we post photos of vegetables.

Transparency is important, but it’s also easier to communicate face-to-face, face-to-farm – it’s harder to write about. There is a remarkable amount of stress associated with growing food and running a small business, it seems everyday we’re discovering new aspects of this stress. Farming involves more aches and aggravations, more worries, uncertainties, and disappointments than either of us has ever dealt with before. It’s frustrating and humbling and utterly exhausting. On the flip side, this is also absolutely the most rewarding work we’ve ever done, the most challenging puzzle. It is always the best way to spend a day. Working with nature to grow food feels sacred and uplifting. And as food producers and land stewards, we are able to engage with and serve our community in a way that’s pretty damn magical.

So as regards full disclosure, here’s a list of some of the things we don’t have pretty pictures of: The deer are inspiring mutterings of full-spectrum colorful language these days. We have just laboriously installed a very expensive, yet, it seems, entirely decorative, deer fence. We could really use some lessons in marketing. And fence construction. The greenhouse is nearly twice as expensive as we initially budgeted. We have bare-root trees that need to go in the ground immediately, and we have 2′ of snow. The male guinea is bullying our hens so badly, most have beaten tail feathers and bald backs. We’re considering guinea stew. Or kebabs. Farm financial feasibility study is in review, needs serious work.

Of course, having said all that: the eggplants have sprouted, Jeremy is making some incredible bread these days. And we have honey. More honey than I’ve ever seen before.

sometimes ups outnumber the downs.

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Cycle Farm

We checked in on the hives last week. This winter we lost Anna Karenina and Lara. Lolita is doing alright.

In looking through the hives, we inspected each bar closely and took lots of notes. It’s not clear to us exactly why the two hives didn’t survive the winter. Starvation of the hive during overwintering is a big concern. For this reason, and not knowing how much honey the hives would need, we left the bees with all their accumulated honey reserves. We were unable to locate a remaining brood nest in Lara. There were a few unhatched brood cells in Anna, but they were in close proximity to honey reserves.

We did find a few varroa mites in Lara’s hive. Varroa mites are a parasite that attacks both adult bees and the developing brood, weakening the hive. It is common for beekeepers to treat hives to control varroa mite outbreaks. This treatment most typically involves using an insecticide to attack the mites. Trouble is, bees are insects too. We do not and will not treat our bees with miticides, medicine, or synthetic chemicals. Continuously treating hives perpetuates weak bees. Instead we will encourage bees to grow healthy, evolve to be strong and naturally resistant.

Russian Carnolians (our bees) are a variety that have been bred to be naturally resistant to varroa mites – We would like to replace these two hives. We’ve checked into ordering nukes, but they are extremely hard to come by, as everyone is suffering losses especially this year. Our best bet may be to keep our eyes open and try capturing a local swarm (please let us know if you find a swarm, we’ll come pick it up).

On warm days, we had been watching bees go in and out of all three hives. It turns out, Lolita’s hive has been poaching honey reserves from the other two unoccupied hives. Anna and Lara both have several full honey combs. We’re feeling pretty blue about the loss of Anna and Lara. But also pretty damn proud of Lolita, she’s proven resilient and resourceful.

Jeremy and Marcus (mainly Marcus) have been toiling on completing the deer fence around the orchard area. We’ve ordered bare root fruit trees which will be arriving soon and, with the number of deer we have, a fence will be essential to giving these little trees a chance at survival. The fence posts are leftovers from the hop trellising we set up last spring, the posts are set in 3.5′ holes. On the west end of our field, the delicious valley top soil stops at about 1′ and meets with a hardpan clay layer, sometimes gravel. In order to power through this, Jeremy and Marcus are soaking holes to soften the clay. Because there is no access to water back there, Jeremy built a smart Bicycle Bucket Brace with which he can carry four 5-gallon buckets of water from the pump out to the field. This will also serve useful this summer when we are watering trees.

Seed trays are filling up and multiplying, special things planned for our CSA share members (there are still a few shares available, call us quick!).

This part is ridiculous fun. There is something about spending time with young vegetable plants, a raw optimism that is completely contagious.

Some random notes: Calendula seeds are my new most favorite seed as they bear striking resemblance to ogre toenails. Totally gnarly. Jeremy and I have found drilling holes for native pollinator habitat to be very therapeutic in light of our recent loss. And I’m trying to salvage some Dester tomato seeds “saved” from last season. The rotten tomato mush got neglected in a yogurt container for too long and may have prematurely germinated or rotted the seed, we’ll see.

Here are a few photos from our preparation 500, many thanks to friends at Meadowlark Hearth Farm in Scottsbluff, NE.

And it’s official: the first vulture of spring is here.

Spring. Pie and guineas.

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Hooray for pie! and pi! Big thanks to everyone for helping us celebrate such an important day and for your generous support of the Spearfish Bicycle Cooperative. There were a couple quiches standing tall for the savories, but sweet pies dominated. Get a hold of this line up: a smoked salmon and a chipotle mushroom quiche. Pudding pie, peanut crisp apple pie, ginger rhubarb pie, mocha creme pie, peach pie, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, blueberry pie. Whipped cream. And gluten free brownies. Mercy. So much fun to meet new people, tour around the farm, and eat. Thank you, friends. Cultivating community proves again the most rewarding part of farming.

Pi/e Day also inspired a furious bout of spring cleaning at the farm. We’ve decided that celebrating Pi/e Day should occur annually, if only to encourage us to tidy up after a long winter hibernation. It’s remarkable how piles of remay and tools, seeding trays and buckets seem to grow in corners when you aren’t looking.

Our most favorite big, fuzzy Amelia came by for a quick visit last weekend. She and her man, Barton, helped us get started on pruning the fruit trees and put in our very first plantings in the greenhouse (early potatoes, radishes, arugula and spinach).

We planted a small field of barley, in the area where we had garlic last year. This area is thick with Creeping Jenny (I wrote a song about it). This year, our plan to deal with this is to get a good thick stand of barley which will germinate at a lower temperature than Creeper Jennifer and out compete it. As soon as the barley is harvested (mid- late June), we’ll 1-2-punch the Creeping Jenny with another smother crop, this time in the ring: Creeper Jennifer vs. the hometown favorite Sweet Potatoes. TKO. Take that, Jenny. We’ve never grown sweet potatoes before. They thrive in warm soil – and sweet potatoes in SoDak can be done as our good farming friends at Bear Butte Gardens demonstrated last year). By planting later in the season, soil temperatures will be welcoming for them, and hopefully we’ll have left enough time to get a good yield of potatoes. And we’ll keep up the cover crop punches, weeding out that creeping Jenny.

Already now the greenhouse is growing things. Little radishes, bold and determined. And, radix, seemingly ever so appropriate a beginning for a new greenhouse.

The chickens have two new coopmates. Our wonderful friend and neighbor Holly brought over two birds last week. Guinea hens are fierce insect predators, excellent grasshopper and tick eaters, organic pest control. They are still acclimatizing to their new home and family. They seem pretty comfortable in the coop, although they did spend one night perched, sleeping up on the apex of our neighbors garage. It turns out they are even harder to herd than the chickens, and they will not be picked up. They are completely wicked looking and gorgeous, and they sing so sweet. We’ve named them Opal Fly and Annette Hanshaw after our two most favorite skrawnky jazz singers (if you’re interested, check out Ms. Fly and Ms. Hanshaw). Thank you Holly. Thank you, thank you.

Other fun bird news: a mottled java caught a snake the other day. That kept the whole bunch of them busy for the entire afternoon. It was a wily, tireless game of keep-away. No teams, every hen for herself. Blood thirsty pile-ups, flapping and screeching. Flex offense and fast cuts. The unnerving part is that they found a snake out and active in March – but as I’m writing this, it’s back down to twenty degrees and we are getting a good dose of snow. It’s March Madness is all.

Happy happy spring!

Oh yes! and Cycle Farm was in the newspaper this week. Local farmers lobby for aid in D.C.

Farmer Fly-in

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Early last week I (Jeremy) had the opportunity to travel to Washington, DC as part of a Farmer Fly-in organized by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC). NSAC is an alliance of grassroots organizations that advocates for federal policy reform to advance the sustainability of agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and rural communities. The fly-in brought together more than fifty farmers, ranchers, and others working towards more sustainable food systems. In just two days there were over one hundred meetings held with Senators and Representatives, especially those on the House and Senate Agricultural Committees. The fly-in meetings focused on a few different topics, including ensuring that programs which support sustainable agriculture are included in the 2013 Farm Bill, and returning funding to programs left stranded by the fiscal cliff Farm Bill extension. I was in DC as part of a contingent from the National Young Farmers Coalition. Our main topic during our meetings was restoring funding to programs that help new and beginning farmers get started in agriculture, most notably, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, the Value-Added Producer Grant, and the Farmer’s Market Promotion Program.

The week started Monday with a morning of meetings with the NSAC staff about what to expect during the hill meetings, specifics about the programs and policies, and an overview of how the Congressional process is supposed to work. After a short lunch break everyone dispersed to the respective meetings. I attended meetings along with the Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), Lindsey Lusher Shute. We had very good meetings with both Senator Thune’s and Senator Johnson’s offices on Monday and then met with Representative Noem on Tuesday.

Overall the meetings were supportive of the programs that we were lobbying for, but finding funding for them is still a big concern. Lindsey and I were a good partnership in the conversations, she has more experience and knowledge with the political process and also, through the NYFC, a understanding of farmer issues nationwide (she and her husband also run a 600 family CSA in New York state). I was able to bring the perspective of a very new farmer and being from South Dakota I had a story that held special meaning to the SD Congress people we met with. Part of what made the meetings so positive may have been from lobbying for the sustainable agriculture programs through seeking general support for the next generation of farmers, not specifically organic, or small scale. Everyone was aware that we have an aging population of farmers, large acreages set to change hands, increasing land and infrastructure costs, and a lack of training programs for interested future farmers who were not raised in agriculture. Regardless of politics, this situation needs assistance if we want to have a viable food system in the next 20 years.

For more information about the fly-in, the Farm Bill, the stranded programs or sustainable agriculture policy, check out the NSAC website, http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/farmers-travel-to-dc/ or the National Young Farmers Coalition http://www.youngfarmers.org/blog/2013/03/09/young-farmers-take-to-washington/

As a side note, while exploring Washington, DC on Sunday afternoon before the Fly-in, I found this sticker on a parking meter.

2013 CSA and Mr. Smith goes to Washington dc

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Hello hello. We are now filling 2013 CSA shares! Please let us know if you are interested in joining us this season, or if you would like more information. There is a brief description of Community Supported Agriculture on our website here and a write up about our CSA plan in a newsletter here. We are looking forward to our second season, learning more and figuring things out. And we are so very grateful to be able to share our farm and produce with such a wonderfully supportive community. Thank you everybody!

Jeremy returned from running some errands a couple evenings ago, and got a photo before unloading – it’s worth sharing. These are bags of potting soil, each of which weigh out at between 35-40 lbs. Ten of them make this a 350-plus pound load. What a smart bicycle.

Bicycles. Human power. Hooray for a healthy planet. On the other hand, the heaps of potting soil here are industrially blended, wrapped in plastic, and have been trucked across the country. Sourcing a potting soil we are happy with has been a challange for us. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. Ultimately (hopefully), we will have a healthy compost supply, have the proportions worked out, and we’ll be using a living homegrown seed starter substrate. Until we get there though, we are importing potting soil from off-farm.

We’ve done a fair amount of research on what’s available, what the ingredients mean, where it comes from. Our primary choice was an OMRI certified soil, full of all sorts of happy things like aged PNW tree bark, coir fibers (coconut, not local but reasonably renewable), worm castings, and inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi. However in ordering this, we discovered it could not be shipped to South Dakota as the company doesn’t have a license to sell here. So instead we got a starter mix that includes perlite and peat moss. Neither of which we’re terribly happy about. It is organic, so it’s free from chemical fertilizers which are all-around high impact – but we can do a helluva lot better than that. We’ll plan ahead next year, and work on a homegrown substrate that grows healthy seedlings and is less carbon intensive in both production and shipping.

Potting soil rant aside. Here are a few other shots from the past couple weeks. Trying to make the most of our last winter days indoors.

Roald and squash, first pair of socks, Radish – number one good farm dog, farm fresh eggs, onions and leeks, ginger plum jam on ciabatta, learning to spin – whirling dertrish, sticker modifications.

Other very exciting news: farmers are descending on the capitol! This weekend, along with farmers from all over the country, Jeremy is headed to Washington, DC. A group of farmers representing the National Young Farmers Coalition will join a large contingent of farmers from National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition member organizations to fly to Washington, DC to meet with Senators and Representatives. Because Congress bungled attempts to fix the Farm Bill, they are going to meet face-to-face to let them know what their farmer constituents need. So heads up Thune, Johnson, and Noem.

Don’t worry, we’ve discussed this: he’s not bringing a pitchfork.

Warm days and a fierce headwind

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Cycle Farm

Last week we had a few days in the 40s and 50s. We took advantage of this and finished the short cob wall on the south side of the greenhouse.

The snow-free days also allowed us to inspect the state of our cover crop trials and prep several rows with straw mulch. In checking on the state of things, we discovered that quack grass in the back field is already on a roll. Rats. And early onions planted last fall have survived and are going strong (there’s a photo, below). Jeremy got to try his hand at cutting glass for the coop window. It’s an old pane from the Smith’s house. The glass itself might not be from the original construction of the house (late 1800′s) – but it’s still pretty brittle and took a fair amount of tender, delicate, James Bond-style breaking and entering finesse to cut without shattering to bits. The birds are enjoying the extra light in their coop. They are also enjoying spent grain (photo below..) from Crow Peak Brewery down the street.

Despite all this attention: the additional light, their certified organic feed, malted barley, and our daily dotings, they are producing 4-5 eggs a week. It seems the birds have become a very expensive hobby – at least until the days lengthen and egg production picks up.

Our seed orders were placed just a few weeks ago, and already we’ve been getting packages in the mail. Onions and leeks have sprouted. And trays of asparagus are germinating. Last year we experimented with planting green onion seeds in clusters of 7-8 seeds together. This method allowed for quick, easy transplanting into the field and harvesting, washing, bunching – chop chop. This year we’re going to try out this cluster seeding technique with bulbing onions as well, with 4-5 seeds together. We’ll see.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the hives during the unseasonably warm days these past few weeks. There has been limited activity outside the hives, a bee or two will fly out, sometimes one will scoot in. Lots of dead bees below the entrances to the hives. This is not terribly pleasant, but it suggests that the queen is still laying, and they are just keeping the hive clean.

We have not yet opened the hives. By looking around inside, we can get a better sense of the health of the hive: is the queen laying well? how much honey reserves do they have left? do they need supplementary honey to hold them over before spring flowers set? So it might be smart to check out what’s happening inside.

However, by popping open the hive, we are breaking the laboriously installed propolis the bees have sealed their hive with. Bees do an incredible job maintaining temperature and humidity in the hive, to keep the queen and brood healthy. By opening the hive, we fuss with this. So we’re not going to fuss with this. (I’ll just bite my lip and hope they are keeping on ok). We did not harvest honey from the hives last year. Instead we opted to let them keep everything as reserves for winter – hopefully this will be enough to carry them through. If there’s anything left in the spring, we’ll collect some for ourselves.

And lastly a fierce headwind from Pierre. Here are some examples (links) of what happens when legislative action is made without involving long term or whole systems thinking. South Dakota state legislature on net metering and on uranium mining.

So we will continue to make phone calls. And write letters. We might even keep on with our wishful thinking and faith in democracy. But more importantly, we’ll sharpen our shovels. Ride our bicycles. And grow food for our neighbors. If we can’t demand conservation or good stewardship, maybe we can inspire it?

Cycle Farm

Growing food and bicycles in South Dakota