The Rare Posting from the Elusive Farmer Davison

Hello Friends!

We’re approaching a major life and farm transition … Noah starts kindergarten in three weeks. Our little baby boy is growing up! Sniff sniff. Actually, we’re just so happy for him. He’s totally ready for the next big step in life.

As for the farm, when Noah goes to school, Ben will become our littlest farm hand. He will start staying home from preschool on Tuesdays and Fridays (as Noah has for the last two years) to help with the harvest. He may enjoy farming more than Noah – he is very eager to please us lately, and he truly loves vegetables and eating them! You should see him in the green beans. Somewhat like a very big Japanese beetle but without the hard shell. Ha!

I’m including a picture of our boys in their new sun hats. We purchased them from a company called Sunday Afternoons. The hats are rated for maximum sun protection. Bill and I have had similar hats for a long time, and they’re amazingly light and comfortable. I let the boys pick the colors. After all, it’s important for kids to control what little they can in life. When I showed them the colors available online, Noah immediately picked his favorite color … bright blue.

Ben then had to choose from sand, dark grey, hot pink, and lavender/pink. He immediately chose the lavender. It was one of those parental dilemmas … do I say something about the fact that a pinky purple is, in many people’s opinions, a “girl color”? I asked him, “Are you sure that’s the color you want?” No hesitation … “YES!” Then I just had to ask him (based on the fact that I was spending $25 on a hat that I can’t afford for him to suddenly decide is unacceptable), “What if the other kids say it’s a girl color?” He looked truly puzzled for a second and then said, “But it’s beautiful!” And that was that.

I’m also including a photo of a ginormous onion with boys for perspective. This is Bill’s banner onion year. If you haven’t eaten any, you’re missing a real treat.

And now a word from the farmer himself …

I have a confession to make. This will be our first poor tomato year in 6 years of farming. After walking through our large hoophouse tonight, I can no longer deny that our bligh-infected plants are only going to yield a quarter of their normal production. (Fortunately, the tomatoes we will harvest will TASTE GREAT!) Since tomatoes are our best selling crop, this really hurts. I have been taking care of these plants since March. I have invested a tremendous amount of time, mental energy, and hope on these plants and they are now nearly dead. I kept thinking they may still produce despite the fungal infection that steadily crept up from the bottom of the plant and now has browned the leaves up to the top ¾ of our 10 foot tall plants. Hundreds of full size green tomatoes sit in a state of suspended ripening, waiting for nutrients the plant cannot deliver because it has almost no green leaves. Their photosynthetic capacity reduced to near zero.

Our field tomatoes are in better shape, but many of them have the same blight due to our rainy growing season. Of course, I have been breaking a cardinal rule of farming by trying to grow the same crop in the same space for three years in a row. You are always supposed to rotate your crops to prevent diseases from building up to the point they destroy your crop. Such is the allure of tomatoes! It is hard not to keep planting them in the hoophouse because few other plants can produce $60 worth of income from a single plant.

You tomato lovers may be asking yourselves what I am going to do to recover from such a tragedy. Do not worry. I have a plan. I am going to research the possibility of grafting tomatoes onto disease-resistant rootstock and planting those in the hoophouse. I am also going to research the possibility of creating mobile hightunnels in the field. They will consist of fabric rowcovers over wire hoops and a layer of plastic over pvc or re-bar posts above the rowcover. I may also lay down plastic mulch to help warm the soil and prevent soil from splashing up on the leaves. That is how the fungal spores get transmitted from the soil to the plant. All of this work will partially re-create the near perfect tomato growing conditions of the larger hoophouse but will allow me to rotate my tomato plantings. Of course this entails much more work, but my early tomatoes are worth it!

I learn so much every year and this year is no exception. I am already on my second 50 page field notebook. I take the time to write down everything I see and learn that I think will help me improve next year. As a result, I continue to get better every year. So, rest assured I will do everything I can to ensure a tremendous abundance of tomatoes next year. The poor yield of this year’s tomatoes is very disappointing, but learning to overcome such challenges is also one of the reasons I love to farm. Mercy tells me I am obsessed with vegetables. She may be right, but I think there are worse obsessions in life.

While I am filling you in on our challenges this year, I may as well let you know that we will have a gap of a couple of weeks in our head lettuce production after this week. I switched from transplanting lettuce to direct seeding and I lost track of time and did not plant lettuce seed soon enough, hence the gap in production.

I planted fall crops today and I am so glad to see the rain this evening! I planted winter radish, daikon radish, arugula, choi, lettuce, tatsoi, kohlrabi, turnips, mesclun, beets, rutabaga, and ruby streaks mustard greens.

I have included a picture of a winter squash blossom with its biggest enemy (the cucumber beetle) and its greatest ally (the bee). I'm also including a picture of a young butternut squash. The plants look good and they appear to have potential. I will spare you all the details of what can go wrong with winter squash. Let’s just hope for the best.

And back to Mercy …

Wow. I’m exhausted after reading Bill’s posting! I usually don’t know this much about what’s going on, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. He usually makes it look so easy!

Here’s what we’ll be bringing to the market this week:

Head Lettuce
Green Beans
Eggplant
Beets (Traditional, Golden, and Chioggia)
Kale
Parsley
Basil
Swiss Chard
Summer Squash/Zucchini
Cucumbers
Carrots
Garlic
Bulb Onions
Leeks
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Okra
Fennel

On Tuesday evenings Bill delivers produce to Common Ground in downtown Bloomington and to the Garlic Press in Uptown Normal. So if you miss a market or just run out of veggies mid-week, head to Common Ground! And if you need the veggies prepared into a fabulous meal, Garlic Press is right down the road.

We’ll see you at the Downtown Bloomington Farmers Market on Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. – noon. BRING YOUR BAGS!! We’ll also be at the Trailside Market in Uptown Normal, every Tuesday from 3:30 – 6:00 p.m.

Please let your friends know about the blog. We plan to put out the email sign-up sheet during the market season again. Call us at 467-9228 or email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com if you have questions.

Thanks!
Mercy Davison