Thanks to you, our customers and fans

The thing that keeps me going when times get really hard are all of you who are out there supporting us. Fans, customers and supporters – anyone who stops by the farmers market and says that what we are doing is a good thing, that you love what we are growing, that you want us to continue.

Some of you have shared your blogs with us and I’d like to pass those links along- you are all so creative!

Here are some of the wonderful folks who keep Big Head Farm going:

http://theartofdelicious.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/a-csa-season-in-review-part-1-what-we-got/

http://secondcityslicker.blogspot.com/

http://sosavingtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/06/break-out-overalls.html

I’d like to just say- thank you. We are looking forward to growing for you next year!

A whole year gone? Already?

OK- so farming isn’t really conducive to blogging…it’s a lot of daily work and not a lot of free time. Most time is spent keeping up with chores like weeding, cleaning, mowing and watching for pests and diseases. We have gone through an entire season and I have not had a chance to blog about it at all!

So, to sum up… we farmed a new plot this year and it was wonderful! We invested in a tractor, a Farmall C and a drip irrigation system. Turns out, we didn’t need the irrigation this year because we were hit with 400% more rain than was normal for our area- CRAZY! That rain caused us to have exponentially more problems with bugs- grasshoppers, hornworms, beetles of all sorts and with mildew and blight.

We planted hundreds more plants this year and had great luck with potatoes. The leafy greens did well early on and the carrots struggled a bit but the last crop came out pretty good. Squash was abundant as were the hot peppers again. I really wish the tomatoes had survived the rains better, we lost a ton of fruit to rot, grasshoppers and worms.

We are now in the planning stages for 2012 and are really getting a handle on higher production, better crop rotation and succession planning. We are going to have an awesome year, I just know it.

Winding down…2010

WOW! what a season. We had our ups and our downs but we made it through with a better understanding of what we can improve upon next season. It is clear that we need to plant more and plant earlier. We had so many inquiries about joining the CSA that I felt horrible telling people that we just couldn’t add them! So, next year will will expand. The challenge now is determining how much more we can grow and how many shares it will support!

It’s almost time to get all our seed orders in and I hope I don’t get carried away again! We will slim down and keep to the staples with heirlooms being a focus. I also want to expand the herb garden and add more fruits. We are even thinking about chickens…just a few to start to make sure that we can keep them alive!

If you are interested in joining our CSA visit our website, or for any CSA near you, please visit localharvest.org – it is a great online resource for anyone wanting to support their local agriculture markets and farmers.

I have posted some more photos on our facebook page that I finally recovered from the camera. I hope to have some more of later in the season too if I can find them!

I cannot believe that it has been so cold lately, it seems to me like the summer just got started. I feel like I finally know all of my customers on sight- and sometimes even their relatives! I look forward to getting feedback on how we did and if we met expectations for our first year of CSA. I know some weeks were slim harvest but others were great. I sure would appreciate any and all feedback- and don’t worry, criticism will only help us to improve. We had car challenges, communication challenges, weather challenges…I’m sure there is more. Thanks to everyone for your support!

Is there really time to blog about all this?

Wow. I cannot even express appropriately the amount of work that this farm is. Jody and I have been working non-stop since we finally got moved to the farmhouse back in February. The cold in April froze some of the squash and potatoes, the potatoes came back but the squash didn’t. So, we invested in floating row covers…then it turned into summer!

I still get really excited when the seeds start coming up. For example, today I found the beans and corn that popped up in the last week. More radishes, lettuce and celery are up and getting bigger. The tomato plants that we started early in the high tunnel are already producing fruits! I am seeing some cucumbers beginning to develop on the vines and some early peppers are peeking out.

The first CSA shares were delivered last Saturday, I was hoping that the boxes would be a lot more full but many of our radishes were attacked by something that ate into the roots and we lost half the crop. The greens are doing well and this week I will harvest the Italian salad mix “insalata odorosa” and the romaine heads. I think we are close to the beets being ready and there is also some cilantro getting close to harvest.

It seems like sometimes things just are taking too long to get growing, but I suppose that is because I don’t know what to expect. The seed suppliers all provide estimated harvest dates for things but I guess that is based on the ideal conditions for growing. Our conditions are a little rough, we are in zone 6, we are growing organically so no pesticides, herbicides and lots of fertilizers are not allowed. The land is overgrown and hard to keep clear enough to walk through the beds.

My to do list every day includes, planting new seeds, weeding existing beds, checking e-mail, answering the phone, making sure I pay the bills, feeding us, walking the dogs, cleaning something, more weeding, watering, checking all the plants for any new bugs or diseases, keeping track of everything that is going on and planning for the next days activities.

Well, time to get a little sleep before the weeding and watering and planting tomorrow!

April showers bring…snow?

Yes, you read it right, snow. Well, it is April in Southwest Michigan, I suppose this is the norm. We have frost all the way into May- this year the last frost is predicted for May 5. After that we go into high gear production!
We are already in production, starting seeds in our makeshift hot house (the garage, emptied of all contents except those related to growing). The high tunnel, that Jody picked up at bargain price from Craigslist, has really been amazing. We put in six raised beds with some nice organic topsoil and compost and already we have cucumbers, peas, radish, broccoli, spring mix lettuce and swiss chard coming up!

We had to transplant the squash: pumpkins, acorn, sweet dumpling and black beauty, to peat pots because they were already outgrowing the starter trays. Now they are ready for when it warms up enough to put them straight into the ground! If they all make it, we will have bumper crops of squash later this season.

So, back to the snow. Yesterday it was very cold and it had been raining for several days. We went outside to check on the baby plants to make sure they were warm enough and we realized we needed our winter coats and hats again! After checking on everything we came to the joint decision that we had to invest in a heater for the high tunnel or we might lose the baby plants overnight. So, it was off to the hardware store in the snow!

This morning everything looked just fine and made it through the very cold night. We are glad we decided to get the heater because losing all those plants would have been a big season setback.

Well, I have to get back to the seed plan. I need to make sure we have enough beds to plant the variety of seeds we have planned throughout this season. I am very excited about the chick peas that just arrived!
Cheers!

Getting growing!

Hello and welcome to the first growing season on Big Head Farm!

O.K. so we have discovered some interesting things about growing from seed. Pumpkins, and almost everything else, WANT to grow. That’s nature. We saved a whole bunch of pumpkin seeds from pumpkins grown by our neighbors last year. We planted them. We though, “hmmm, well it’ll be great if a few come up!” Uh-huh.

ALL of them have come up! Every last one of them. Um, yeah, that’s like 400 pumpkin plants. With about ten fruits per vine, we’re talking 4000 pumpkins! HECK YEAH!

I love pumpkin, sure, I love squash. Any kind of squash. Maybe that’s why I’m growing so many of them!

Well, I also have tomatoes, peppers, leeks, celery, basil, collards, more peppers, more tomatoes, more squash, and plenty of other stuff just getting started in the hot house. Can’t wait to see the fruits!

We are about half way to being sold out of CSA shares for 2010. I’m very encouraged by the response. I am working really, really hard to insure that each week a good variety of produce will be delivered to our customers.  Once I have the season plan in place it will be much easier to plan for the next years. I am building a data base of information on the seed and root stock that we have this year so we can order in subsequent years. In case you are wondering, we ordered most of our seeds from Seeds of Change and Abundant Life Seeds.  Both have really great websites and lots of information on the seeds they sell.

I am excited to have feedback from our CSA customers on produce that they are interested in having delivered in their shares. Mushrooms, kohlrabi and Chinese radishes are some of the varieties that have been requested. YUM! I am doing research on the mushrooms, might be easy, might be hard, I’m willing to give it a try!

By the end of this week we will have all of the onion bulbs and potatoes in the ground. And, the strawberries. YUM! When I was little my mom and dad used to take us to the strawberry patches in Eastern Michigan to “pick our own” and I had a blast.  I love strawberries too.

We are working on our blackberry patch too. Hopefully it will yield lots of fruit this summer. Last summer it did produce berries that were small and tart. I will be pruning and cleaning it up so it will produce some great fruit this year!  AND, while we were cleaning it up I almost stepped on a quail on her nest. She flew away and I was alerted to the nest, I found four eggs! I backed away carefully and left the nest undisturbed. I checked later and she was back on her eggs! GO quail! or, as Jody said “nature is happening” around us. Very exciting. This is why we want to let nature grow things and not chemicals. I will stay as organic as I can, all the time.

Speaking organically, I was the victim of food poisoning- YUK! From produce I purchased at the local food mart. BUMMER! I am pretty sure this was the source. The difference from my dinner and my husband’s dinner was my veggie burger with lettuce versus his hot dog. Everything else was the same. So, looks like the lettuce was the culprit. I admit, I didn’t wash it. My fault, I know. Darnit.

Sick for a few days. UGH> was not fun. I don’t wish food poisoning on anyone, ever. So, I hope all of our produce will be as healthy as we can grow it. No chemicals, No pathogens, Nothing but vegetable goodness.

Here’s to the 2010 growing season and all the goodness it brings. Cheers!

The first full season begins

We are very excited to begin our first full growing season here at Big Head Farm! We have been working hard over the past few weeks moving all of our stuff from Chicago to our new permanent home in South Haven, Michigan. Last fall we got the garlic in the ground in our first “official” bed and we laid out the frame for our hoop house just last night so we can begin the seed starting process.

We are thankful for all of the support that we have received as we set out on this new path. Jody is busy as a correspondent for the local papers and his photos have already been features on the front pages of both the Herald-Palladium and the South Haven Tribune.

I have been busy working on our growing season plan, applying for the farmers markets and getting all the documentation and record keeping in order for our organic farm. I have also set up our first order form for our CSA program and wanted to invite you, if you are in the local Chicago or Southwest Michigan area, to sign up for a share. There is a lot more information on the CSA program on our website here: www.bigheadfarm.com. There are limited shares available since we do not want to over promise in our first year so if you are interested just give me a call! There will certainly be a learning curve but we are hoping for a very successful year on the farm.

Cheers and thanks for your support!

Auction pick up day

So, Sunday night, after finding out that we won a stainless steel sink from an online auction, at about 10 PM we grab some clothes, a toothbrush, the dogs and leave a full bowl of food for the cat. The pick up time is Monday from 10 am to 4 pm. The plan is to borrow dad’s truck, go pick up the sink and then stash it in the garage at mom and dad’s until we can pick it up with our trailer to bring back to the farm. The trip out was fairly uneventful because it was late, no snow and not many folks on the road.

A side note…one trip to the farm in the middle of the night we were joking about driving through one of the weigh stations. As we approached I looked over and saw a car parked with its headlights on in the weigh station off ramp and in front of those headlights a VERY naked man walking along the shoulder. No socks, no shoes, no hat…nothing. I had a very nice view of his butt. Now we look for him every time we drive by.

So, back to Detroit, we made it in good time and slept for a few hours before getting up for breakfast with mom. She made us the most amazing whole wheat buttermilk pancakes! YUM! It was snowing and so we cleared off the truck. We decided that going across Eight Mile road to Schaeffer was the best route. No problem getting there and finding the place. There were several large trucks in the alley loading up equipment and several guys walking around. I had my money and my email confirmation and walked in looking for someone to offer direction. Most of the people just looked at us, didn’t say anything and so we just wandered around. Finally, we entered a room with a table full of people, smoking and making some deals, and when they got up to leave they said we should go through the other set of doors for the auction folks. We entered the office where two people were shuffling through piles of paper. They said “hi” and then looked at us. I finally asked if they were the ones who we should pay. I offered up my email confirmation and she matched it to their paperwork. She seemed surprised when I offered cash for payment. So, we paid and got our two copies stamped “paid” and she said just go out to the warehouse and give one copy to the guys there to pull our item.

Well, we went back to the warehouse and figured out that no one was working that we could find so we wandered around looking for the sink. After about five minutes of looking we were approached by a guy who asked if we were looking for something. I gave him my paid receipt and he had the “guys” pull it from the upstairs.

It took a while and as we waited we met Jeff. He asked if we were starting a restaurant, as we stood there in our Carhartt overalls and muck books. We told him that we were starting a farm. He asked what we bought and Jody told him it really wasn’t what we wanted. That we got a small sink but we wanted a triple sink. He said they should have one that we could buy and he yelled over to another guy asking if he had a triple sink for us, that we were “poor, just farmers.” He told us to go upstairs to the second rom on the right and check it out. So we did and it was perfect! I went back down and Jody went to find the restroom. While I waited, Jeff came over and asked why we had a farm called “Big Head Farm” and I started to tell the story. He asked how many acres we have and then he said that we have to grow Jewish Mallow (which I looked up to be Mulukhiyya in Egyptian cuisine) and also garbanzos. He said he’d get us the seed, one kilo, and we’d grow it and he’d help us sell it and we’d all make money. Woohoo! Turns out Jeff grew up on a farm in Lebanon and he goes back there often. He also said “we got you that sink.” Turns out Jody did some dealing while I was outside and he picked up the triple sink for only $400! Again I say, woohoo!!!!

So I got Jeff’s phone number, we got two sinks and quite a story to tell! I love auctions!!!

AH! The snow!

Yes- it is really amazing when you see it- snow falling for days. Snowshoes at the ready to take the dogs out for a walk. Winter in Southwest Michigan is something to see.

PLEASE SUPPORT US! Just a short comment on this page: http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/?business_id=75a648b7fd2341bce42aac17f3844566 Make sure that in the Step 2 box it shows Big Head Farm in South Haven MI. Then add your short comment in Step 3! THANKS BUNCHES!!!

We didn’t get the hoop house up- but we are getting ready to do it as soon as we can clear some snow. It will be a bit more difficult in the cold but we need to have it ready to start the seeds in the spring.

We recently had an adventure in Detroit. I found an online auction, actually I found several, but one was a restaurant supply in Detroit (that’s where I grew up) that was closing. We need a fridge and a stove for the farmhouse and I love to cook so I got crazy excited about possibly getting one of those professional stoves with six burners and a griddle and two ovens. Needless to say, I was WAY outbid on those, of course they started at $1 but ended at over $500! I also found sinks- stainless steel, multiple compartment, really nice for cleaning vegetables! So I went ahead and bid on some of those as well. Again, I was out bid by a long shot on all but one. Thus begins the adventure!

I received confirmation after sitting with my computer refreshing the page and crossing my fingers that I would win something, ANYTHING! I settled on winning a stainless table with a bottom shelf and a small sink on one side. This piece also had an overhead shelf. I ended up winning it for $140. That was on Sunday night after I got done working all day. I then told Jody (who was sitting next to me on the couch, frustrated with the whole online auction process) that we were going to Detroit tomorrow to pick it up!

I called mom and dad, who still live there, and told mom we were coming to town tomorrow. She thought I was crazy and offered to go pick it up for me. I told her that I didn’t want her to have to do that so we just asked them to leave a light on for us cause we were hitting the road!

Next up… the auction pick up experience!

Website is LIVE!

OK OK – I am WAY behind on updating this blog. So many other things going on and a really full work schedule don’t help! BUT- things are good and moving in a positive direction. We have a contract on our Chicago condo- hooray! The garlic is in the ground. Our first beds!! AND our website is LIVE!!

If you have not already figured it out you can find it here: http://www.bigheadfarm.com

We will be renting the farmhouse across the street from the farm-lucky us it was recently vacated!

We got some good deals on a snowblower, used from a neighbor, and a Troy Bilt Horse tiller from Craigslist. We’ll start there and do a lot by hand I am sure. I wanted to get a hoop house up but that might not happen before the snows start.

We have CSA shares available. The first year we don’t want to take on too many commitments so the available shares are limited. We will base the drop off/pick up point on the addresses of our customers- wouldn’t make sense to drive into Chicago if we don’t have any customers!

Working on the plan to submit for the EQIP funding. I have to have something on paper, plans, etc. to get approvals for funding. We will probably be doing a pollinator program on the open area that adjoins the farm to our north.

Speaking of the farm to our north, we met one of the owners and they are (of course) really great people! So glad we have such great neighbors all around!!

As we get growing in the spring I’m sure there will be work if you want to spend a weekend getting down and dirty as a farm volunteer. It’s not quite agritourism but it can be fun.

I’ll try to remember to add pictures and video (of the first bed being tilled) a little later.