News
MORE DISASTER!
12/5/6
In the brush shelter of our house, we got down to about 28 Friday
morning, 12/1/6. In the exposed fields, it was almost certainly mid-20
and perhaps low 20s. All hope of recovery for tomato/eggplant/pepper
is lost. I failed to pick greens for Saturday market on Thursday,
planning to pick Firday. Pretty sever damage to radish, chard,
mustard, broccoli, beets. Only moderate damage to arugula. Low to no
damage to spinach.
Pleasant cold weather hours spent around our wood-burning
house-heating stove and the light cooking we do on the stove leads me
to the following editorial comment:
The media tell us of "hunger in America" and I wonder how this is
possible in this rich country where food is so cheap. In grocery store
checkout lines, I see "Lone Star" food stamp cards being used for all
sorts of expensive convenience foods and I wonder if our tax dollars are
being spent efficiently on welfare. Personally, I/we do not need to be
concerned about the cost of food. Yet, many low cost foods are in our
diet by choice. Here is an example of one or our favorite dishes
(simmering on our wood stove as I write this):
8 lb dry pinto beans about $3.50
2 large onions about $.75
several cloves garlic about $.20
about 1/2 lb bacon pieces about $.75
several jalapeno peppers about $.15
total less than $6
serves 20-50
Conclusion: a "hungry person" can be fed (WELL fed with appetizing
food, IMHO) for less than $1/day. No comments on gaseous emissions
accpected.
11/17/6
DISASTER!
Not un-expected, but disaster none the less.
Heavy frost this morning. Not a "kill to the ground freeze", but the
top half of all at risk crops were frosted. We got most of the
anywhere-near-mature peppers picked two days ago, but only did normal
picking of eggplant and tomatoes. We will be doing some salvage
picking the next few days, but after that we will have no tomatoes,
peppers, and eggplant for about two weeks. If ever.
As usual, the forecast was not dependable. We semi-expected a frost
night before last but I was surprised to find such a heavy frost this
morning. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. We were down to
about 35 deg at our brush protected house and there was little wind.
The forecast "cold" morning, it was only 40 deg.
Our (young) winter crops were completely unaffected: arugula, mustard,
spinach, beets, carrots, onions, chard, peas, garlic.
11/9/6
New crops are coming along nicely. We should be picking purple
mustard next week and spinach probably the week after. Chard is doing
well, but is several weeks from picking; we continue to pick last
winter's chard. Arugula continues; two new plantings, one about ready
to pick and plenty of older arugula. Beets, carrots and several
plantings of spinach are well up. Sugar Snap peas are poking up but
onions are still rare. The first garlic planting is near to being
harvestable for "green" garlic. Made the second planting today.
The star crop right now is multi-color bell peppers, we are picking
15-20 bushels a week. While plowing old potato rows, I noticed and
left a couple of rows with a fairly high density of volunteers; if the
weather stays warm, maybe we will get some potatoes.
But, we are on borrowed time. Reviewing "news" columns from previous
years tells us the following about first freezes:
1999 about 11/2
2000 11/14
2001 about 11/29
2002 12/5
2003 about 12/1
2004 12/1
2005 10/25
NOW I wish I had been keeping "news"/logs since I started this in about
1981! Just as I rue not taking "before" photos of the land across the
road.
OH! Eggplant! We are getting several bushels of eggplant every week.
And, I found a great way to use it. Baba Ganoush. Google it up. I'll
try to get a recipe posted, but there are plenty of them on the web.
Tahani (sesame seed paste) is fairly hard to find, but peanut butter
substitutes well.
10/30/6
The okra quit producing a week or two ago. Thankfully. Much of the
fruit had dark specks which made it un-marketable and most of the
leaves dropped. Probably a disease encouraged by wet weather, cool
temperatures, and shorter days.
Over the past couple of weeks I have made plantings of onions, carrots,
broccoli, spinach, arugula, chard, beets, and sugar beets. Arugula,
spinach, chard are doing well.
We seem to be at our peak pepper production. Doing lotsa bagged multi
color bells.
With wet weather, asparagus is producing a little. Not much, but some.
Juliette tomatoes have perked up. Big tomatoes not yet producing much;
they are waiting for the first freeze.
We are still cleaning up the last of the Purple Hull and Blackeye peas.
We had an almost complete persimmon crop failure this year. Only three
trees (out of about 200) had any fruit. But that variety (Izu) was
well loaded and we got about ten boxes.
I have about decided not to do the Georgetown/SunCity/RoundRock markets
next year. Smoking vendor problems there. I've been selling some hay;
I'm thinking of moving to hay and pecans as age forces me to cut back
on heavy demands of truck farming.
We've had several weeks of regular rains. Plenty for crops, but no run
off; tanks are all still low or dry.
10/1/6
Once again I have been remiss in posting here. Apologies.
I've lost both my interpeter and my barn packing person, so I've been
doing all the packing and not communicating well with my field hands.
A hectic time. I do several packing sessions during the day, starting
at 4 or 5 am and ending at 8 or 9 pm. 7 or 8 days a week.
The recent cool spell gave me hope that the okra would give me some
relief, but it was not to be; it's turned hot again and okra continues
to produce well. Damn it. I've had my okra picker go from an every
day schedule to every second day. The not-okra days they work on the
blackberry patch, which has been sadly neglected due to the pressure of
dealing with summer crops.
The recent rain gave us some asparagus; 30-40 bags altogether. But it
has stopped producing again with the dry weather.
I found some time to plant some onion, carrots and garlic. I continue
to search for time to plant mustard, chard, spinach, broccoli, and
other cool weather crops.
I had hoped to have large quantities of okra-shaded bell peppers by
this time. I live on hope.
The Sunset Valley Market continues to do well. I have dropped the
Georgetown and Sun City markets due to un-controlled vendor smoking,
low demand, and my time shortage. I am supplying a stall at the
Wednesday afternoon Manor market, which is doing moderately well.
Juliette and Porter tomatoes have not yet recovered from the rigors of
summer, but I have hope. A minor summer planting of SunMaster tomatoes
looks good; they will probably start producing just before the first
freeze.
8/29/6
WOW! It's been much more than a month since I've posted here! And not
from lack of happenings.
Big recent news is that two of my field hands wrecked another of my
Isuzu pickups. They wrecked the first one a couple of years ago.
Another of those midnight drunken things. My most trusted guy was
involved. After the first truck was wrecked, I started extracting a
property deposit from the workers, payable on departure. But I
exempted the long term and trusted guy. My bad.
Okra floods in every day. I am getting some of it processed into "Hot
Garlic Pickled Okra". 100-200 quarts a week.
Tomatoes are down to almost nothing, though the Porters, Improved
Porters, and Juliettes continue to look promising. Newly planted
SunMasters look good, but are still months away from producing.
Peas have been doing well for the past couple of weeks; I have more
than can be sold at farmers markets and am selling to grocery stores.
Speaking of farmers markets, the Round Rock market was again closed for
the season as we were peaking in sales there. The Round Rock market
has an excellent location for peak summer heat. With little logic, the
Georgetown Farmers Market Association closes the most pleasant and
promising market and leaves open the hell hole in the parking lot near
downtown Georgetown. Sunset Valley market continues to do very well
for us; we do nearly half our weekly sales there.
Bell peppers (shaded by alternate rows of okra) are doing very well,
but producing poorly in the heat. The heat is now breaking and I hope
for better pepper production in coming weeks. Speaking of heat, this
has been a bad season. Over 100 deg for more than 30 days; many nights
with lows of 80 deg.
The single watermelon planting is finished now, but the second and
third plantings of cantaloupe are producing some very fine quality
melons.
We are doing a lot more arugula this year; it seems to do well year
'round here. This due to a grocery store customer that takes 100
bunches a week. Every week. Until recently, we have been picking at
least a little chard every week. I think the heat has finally stopped
it from growing. Hope for more as Fall comes.
I have had Direcway satellite for more than a year now and I have not
been satisfied. We have a wifi provider and I had been considering
hooking up to them, but they are both high priced and un-cooperative.
So, I am now trying Wild Blue satellite. Got a very poor installer
from Wild Blue. He asked if he could use my Direcway dish mount and
cabling. I said "Yes, but only if you commit to not leaving me without
internet access". I was without a satellite connection for more than a
week. Spent many hours on the phone. Wish I had just stayed with
Direcway.
Very dry here, just like the rest of central Texas. We have plenty of
water out of our aquifer, but it takes a lot of labor to get it
applied. We need to be getting more water on blackberries and peaches.
Blackberries are also in need of weeding and pruning. Can't do it as
long as I'm short on labor; gotta pick the saleable stuff first.
7/15/6
Peas are coming in. Right now, we are getting Cream, Blackeye, and
Purple Hull; more Purple Hull than the others. I expect supply to be
continuous and fairly good as long as we have hot weather, maybe 2-3
months.
Okra is also in good supply; right now, we're getting about 3 bushels
each day and I expect that to rise to 5-8 bushels a day. Again, we
should have okra as long as the hot weather persists.
Blackberries are essentially gone; we are picking less than a gallon a
day.
Peaches are completely gone; we sold our last peach at the Georgetown
farmers market two days ago. None at all for this Saturday's markets.
Recent rainy period ruined many tomatoes and about all of the squash.
I expect the large tomatoes to taper off to nothing over the next
several weeks while the supply of Juliettes and Porters increase. The
wet weather has provided us with more canning tomatoes than we have
had recently.
We are getting some very nice and very large bell peppers. Sadly, most
are ruined by sun exposure. As is normal. This year, I planted
alternate rows of okra and bells with the intention that the okra would
provide some shde to the peppers. So far, the okra is not tall enough.
I do have hopes for reduced pepper damage in late summer. Both the
okra and peppers look very good; I may post some photos.
6/28/6
We just closed for PYO blackberries. Still have some supply, but
demand dropped off to near zero. We will continue to sell berries at
farmers markets and grocery stores for at least a week, probably two.
Grasshoppers are terrible. They have ruined a lot of the very few
peaches we have. They ruined nearly a whole row of very large white
onions that I was late in harvesting. I find them in the barn eating
harvested crops.
We started cutting watermelon after noticing that coons were getting to
them. My "makes noise like a mountain lion" devices are not doing a
perfect job; they seem to keep the coons 100-150' away, but not
300-400' as they are supposed to do.
One of our last peaches is Hawthorne, a Louisana variety that normally
makes great quality Harvester season peaches. Grasshoppers have ruined
most. Also, LaWhite is late this year due to lack of chill; they are
making a few small peaches and the grasshoppers are ruining many.
We are getting a few tomatoes out of our second planting, but a
disappointing amount. Rainy spell seems to have cut our squash
production way back.
No peas yet, but they're close.
6/6/6
We are now finishing the three peach varieties that followed
FlordaKing: LaPercher, GoldPrince, and Delta. All were low yielding;
I'm guessing that over all we have 5-10% of a full crop. Coming are
SouthernPearl, Idlewild, TexRoyal, and LaFelciana. Only LaFelciana
looks vaguely promising.
We didn't get enough early tomatoes planted. We continue to be short,
but are up to about 3 bushels every two days. I MAY start offering
just a few #2s in the near future.
Okra has started. Green beans are generally more trouble than they're
worth. Buggy and low yielding. We're getting a few asparagus/long
beans. Cream peas may be only a few weeks away. We continue to plant
blackeyes and purplehulls as time allows
There are some cantaloupe in the field.
Carrots are almost gone.
Beets are gone.
We are trying to get all the onions and potatoes harvested and stored.
Blackberries remain sluggish. Some days we get 15 gallons, some days
only 6. I expect that we will peak out around 30 gallons a day in the
next week or so. Previous years, we have done as many as 140 gallons
in a day. The low production is a result of mowing the entire patch
last summer. Last week, we opened for PYO 9am-11am Tuesdays,
Saturdays, and Sundays. That schedule should continue for 2-3 more
weeks.
We had a week of wet weather than gave us less than an inch of rain,
but it is dry again now.
All the new asparagus is up and apparently do well; wish I had planted
more.
5/9/6
High winds took most of the remaining FlordaKings; we will sell the
last of them at the Sun City market today. Two or three other
varieties are nearing ripeness; perhaps another week. Heavy weather
has been hitting us every few days for the past two weeks. It seems to
have over-thinned most of the peaches. A few branches are down; a big
Post Oak by a tank is down. Everything is green, though. And, our
rainwater tanks remain full.
Tomatoes are starting to trickle in; three bags going to Sun City
today.
I got a few of the new asparagus crowns planted; hope to get the rest
planted today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.
Early blackberries also continue to trickle. 9 pints to Sun City.
It will be at least a week before we open for pick-your-own, probably
two weeks.
The Georgetown market got a great writeup in the local newspaper, The
Sun, last Wednesday. The first market Thursday was pretty good, with a
new location and some new customers. Round Rock, the following
Saturday, was a disappointment.
A lightning stike in our yard killed a big Post Oak several weeks ago.
Knocked much of the bark off. The same happened to an enormous
Blackjack Oak out in a field about 15 years ago. The recent strike
took out my wired LAN link between the house and the barn area where my
satellite internet connection is. I diddled with it for some time, but
couldn't figure out what is wrong. I now have a wifi link over that
~2000'. I am considering getting wifi internet access; we have a local
wifi ISP, but they don't seem to be very interested in selling their
service.
5/2/6
A small fraction of FlordaKing peaches did get dinged by hail, maybe
10%. FlordaKings are about gone now.
Picked the first tomatoes today. Three with rotted spots. May be in
the tomato business in a week or so.
Sold the first pint of blackberries today at the Sun City market. The
early berries look un-promising. I don't expect to have a significant
quantity until the Kiowas start in 2-3 weeks. Berries are early this
year.
1000 asparagus crowns arrived today. This afternoon, we had an
unexpected thunderstorm with a little rain. So, I hope to start
getting the asparagus planted tomorrow.
Georgetown and Round Rock farmers markets start this week.
4/20/6
HAIL!
We had 5-10 minutes of pretty large hail. We were worried, but there
seems to be little damage. Trucks sitting in the open have no new
dents. Transplants waiting to go out have only a few broken stems.
Transplants in the field look OK. Almost certainly, we have some
dinged peaches, but that won't be obvious until they grow some more.
We have been digging potatoes, one row at a time, for several weeks.
There are large tomatoes, but no sign yet of color. Picking some
squash. We have been picking a few FlordaKing peaches. So far, only
about 1/2 bu. Looks like total FlordaKing crop may be 5-6 bu. Maybe
10-15% of a crop.
Orka up, green beans up, long bean up. More tomatoes and peppers going
in.
Asparagus is selling so well that I will put in some more in the next
couple of weeks. Really, too late. I will plant more this winter.
Blackberries are coming along. Early ones are not doing well, but we
will have a fair supply of the later ones. Haven't found time to get
them weeded, etc.
3/25/6
Freezes the past two nights did more than expected damage. Potatoes
are about half frozen back. Even under cover, tomatoes and squash
were noticeablly frosted. Nothing was killed, however. At the house,
it was about 30 deg both mornings; no doubt, it was colder in the
fields.
Cold weather has postponed the end of the spinach.
My weather station died a few days ago; perhaps you have noticed
"What's the weather in Dale" no longer shows current conditions?.
I have a "Dallas 1-wire" system ordered as a replacement for the
dead LaCrosse.
3/23/6
The first significant rain in 6-8 months came a few days ago. I
measured 1.4" at the barn, though neighbors report up to 2.5" within
1/2 mile. We now have our rainwater tanks about 3/4 full; we will be
in good shape for another 4 months.
We have a threat of frost for the next several days. Tomatoes are
growing out of their tunnels; I haven't noticed any fruit yet. Some
squash is well up. Spinach will be finished in a week or so.
Asparagus is coming well, 5-10lb/day in warm weather. We are pulling a
lot of garlic, beets, carrots. Also, we've started cutting lettuce. I
dug enough new potatoes for a meal yesterday.
It's time to get serious about planting more tomatoes, peppers, okra
squash.
2/24/6
Still almost no rain. Though, "they" dropped the local burn ban. I
need to work up courage to do some burning.
All tomatoes were moderately to severely damaged by the mid-20s freeze
we had more than a week ago. Potatoes have sprouted back and show some
promise. We're now pulling some beets and quite a few carrots. There
is plenty of spinach to pick out there, but I have only one picker and
not much demand.
We're looking at our third bad Sunset Valley market tomorrow. Oddly,
customers don't buy much when it is cold. Or wet. Or wet and cold.
It's only been wet enough to ruin markets, not to provide soil
moisture. Bah. Hummbug.
2/8/6
We got about 6/10" of rain more than a week ago. Put more than 1000
gallons in the tank.
As I mentioned below, I have transplanted tomatoes under re-mesh tunnel
(which will support the plants as they grow throuh it) under perforated
clear plastic. They have repeatedly frozen and been re-planted.
After yet another damaging freeze yesterday morning, we put the
"spunbound" fabric over the rest of the plastic. We now have about 500
feet out; that would be about 250 plants. 3oz fabric is supposed to
provide 10 deg or more of frost protection. The direct seeded tomatoes
under un-supported spunbound are sprouting.
The first planting of potatoes are about half up and are getting
frosted regularly; I may put some spunbound over some of them. We are
now putting in the second potato planting. The second planting
includes small amounts of odd varieties: "All Blue", "Russian
Fingerling", "German Butterball", and "Carbola". Of course, my main
variety is "Red LaSoda" with my large supply of un-sold sprouted
potatoes.
Spinach finally started a week or so ago. I have only one picker, so
my production is limited, but then so is my market. We can probably do
as many as about 400 10oz bags in a week.
We have put some water on the asparagus and are picking a very small
amount, maybe 3-4 lbs/week. In previous years, it has peaked at around
20 lbs/day.
1/27/6
Well, I guess it's time to do something here. I've decided to maintain
this form of the news/blog rather than use phpbb.
A most unusual winter we're having! Exceedingly dry. We are down to
about 3,000 gallons in our household rainwater storage; out of about
11,000 gallons. We have only 6-8 weeks worth left. Hope for rain
tomorrow just as we hoped for rain last week. I'm not a stickler for
obeying burn bans, but we have been unable to burn crop debris in both
old vegetable fields and the asparagus patches. I finally shredded
down the asparagus patches last week; that will make burning less
effective if conditions allow.
In "normal" years, we are picking asparagus at this time. The
asparagus plantings are stimulated to sprout by moisture.
I have one field of potatoes planted; they have not yet emerged. Since
I have a surplus of un-sold and sprouted potatoes, I planted whole
potatoes fairly densely. A second potato field is scheduled to go in
soon.
I have one row of tomatoes under re-mesh tunnels covered with
perforated clear plastic. I lost to frost and replanted quite a few,
so now I have them covered with remay type material on top of the
plastic. I have one row of not yet emerged direct seeded tomatoes
under the remay type stuff. The idea is that we will transplant many
of them bare root.
Spinach is doing poorly; we have picked almost none in the oldest
plantings. Those are unprotected and I suspect deer depredation.
The deer also seem to be eating broccoli. They are leaving only
onions, garlic, and arugula. The spinach we are picking is in newer
plantings in the protected area.
I'm working a little on pruning peaches. I've noticed scale (small
insects that are stationary on the bark) and some bacterial canker.
Bacterial canker is the primary cause of peach tree death in this area.
I'm preparing to plant fours rows and replant two rows of blackberries;
all Chickasaw.
I'm making plans to plant alternate rows of bell peppers with okra this
year. The idea being that the okra will partially shade the peppers
and reduce fruit loss to sun scald. I have heard that okra may have a
supressive effect, other than shade, on the pepper plants. We will
see.
12/11/5
I see its been awhile since I posted here.
Unusually cold weather. We had a killing freeze several weeks ago and
we've just come off of a several day cold spell; low about 22 deg. We
had about 15/100 of freezing rain and it stayed below freezing for
nearly two days with everything covered with a thin layer of ice.
Winter is not yet officially here and we have been colder than we've
been in the past few years. We continue very dry; we've been getting
less than an inch less often than every two weeks.
Nothing much to sell. A little broccoli, plenty of arugula, the deer
have left me just a few carrots, though we have quite a few carrots
coming that are planted in the protected area. I'm pulling a few
bunches of green garlic even as we continue to plant garlic. Still not
enough spinach to pick.
I shredded down the okra a few days ago and we are devoting our efforts
to preparing ground for planting, both winter and spring.
Potatoes in storage continue to decline in quality and I look forward
to beginning to plant them in a month or so; since I have such a good
supply of seed, I'll make a very early planting. The small amount of
Fall potatoes I planted produced nothing; Not many came up and those
got frozen down before they made anything.