February 10th, 2024 Farm Planning

2024 Farm Planting Plan
(Click for a larger image)

 January is a time for planning; the weather is horrid. It is cold, and mud is the normal condition of our soils, the days are short, and it is hard to get out of bed before eight in the morning. By the time we're ready to work it is ten A.M. and daylight ends at three-thirty. Not much gets done once you sneek an afternoon nap in.  The world doesn't lend itself to doing things, so we don't. If we were Daoist, this would be a Wu Wei thing. To bring about action without acting; an effect without a cause, without any reaction. 

Wu Wei means a great deal more.  Most people simple say "Wu" to mean the natural way, or in accordance with nature's mandate. Our farm uses completely natural processes to bring produce into the world wherever it can. No-till gardening, despite having large inputs of labor in the beginning phases, uses the least amount of labor over time so as to minimalize the negative effects of labor on the land. If we were to try working the land in the depths of Winter, we'd only make things worse. Mud would get deeper and soils more compact.

Despite all of this philosophy stuff, when there's a break in the weather we wind up doing something to clean up the apparent mess on the Farm, even if it is going in the wrong direction. We move carefully and try not to over-do.  We leave most of the plants in the dirt in late Fall as part of our organic no-till plan. We also leave whatever weeds springing up to grow as much root material as we can in the dirt. Things get to looking pretty bad by the end of January. It's hard to sit back and wait for Spring to come. It has rained nearly every day since early December. So a lot of naps . . .

Last year's Farm planning was the fourth year of planning to make a dollar on farming, but the first year of our no-till plan in action. We spent the Spring building new rows and laying things out. Our greenhouse plan, buying seeds and making planting soil, was not going to change much from the previous year. Our Greenhouse was already in place and the stuff we needed to do early planting already bought.  This year we will add ten feet to the Greenhouse and move it to better ground once we shrink the chicken run and move it to better ground.  We knew how to make soil and plant seeds going into last Spring and we got great responce, so all we need to do is scale it up a bit.  

Last year we made a map of our planting plan using what we knew from experience. But as we went along in building rows we found that our building plan was quite a bit more in size and diversity than we could maintain. The plants did well, but the produce wasn't as successful than in the previous year. We expected the change in method might take a bit to settle in, but we didn't get the results we expected and the weeding was awful. In 2024 we will concentrate on fewer varieties of plants.  The new image (above) shows more melons, less corn. and a change from bush beans to pole beans.  We're adding Russet potatoes to the spud line-up. We eat more potatoes than we sell and, despite  our wonderfully flavorful potato crop, standard bakers are a good thing. 

2023 Strawberries

The pest control plan we used last year worked very well and will largely stay in place. I am adding onions to our barrier plant plan. Though we don't really want to get into frowing onions we can use them and we're told that onions might keep the rabbits and squirrels away. Our crop rotation schedule will change only in locations used. Crop rotation is part of the pest control plan since no-till replaces soil nutrient faster than it can be used.

Last year we added some trellising when it became necessary and the one effective style we found last year will be used everywhere we need trellising this year.  We are removing a few of the rows to allow better access to some of the plants that need more constant care, more sunlight, or that need picking more often. There will be many more flowers in our rows this year, fewer varieties. We sold a lot of flowers last year and this was suprizing.

Getting ready to inprove our Produce Stand operations is part of the planning this Winter. I have a good trailer to build a new Produce Stand on and a place where it can go. The new stand won't be mobile, will have refridgeration, and a roof. There will be a parking area off road and a gate that can close, but this will take some time to put together. There's no rush, but we will try to get this stuff done by next Fall.  

649 baby berries

We've had a few days of partial sunshine this past week so some of our rows have been cleaned up. Our two fifty-six foot strawberry rows are cleaned up and the six hundred baby plants we took out are planted in flats in the Greenhouse will allow us to increase out strawberry planting by five rows. Eventually we might have enough to operate a Upick patch for five months of the year.  The Farm will be much easier to plant and pick this year. Soil, pest, and planting, plans are mostly made. All that is left to do is the doing. 

In other news:
Our chickens are producing enough eggs now. We did not heat their coop this year, opting to let them rest their egg makers a bit. We only had to buy eggs once this Winter, they were organic, from Costco, and fairly dissappointing. We're getting a half dozen a day now. 

Our kennel plans are made and we have quite a bit of it done. The Dog House still has a ways to go. . .  We're planning two or three litters in 2024 and have females in season today. Lilly is first up to breed. Then it will be Abba Zabba's turn. We are letting Taffee do her own thing and hope for one more litter from her which is not as well planned except that it will be Clarke's last turn as well. Breeding is a big part of our income, but boarding is becoming a helpful part of our farm business too. Dog coats are done for the year, but our dog coat plan is in place and did fairly well last year so we're hoping for better next Fall. 

All in all things are going along as they should. There are still a few issues needing resolved, but all things happen in their own time here at Creekside Farm. 

November 28th, 2023, Our Rocketdog Winter Coats are for sale

This is Rocketdog Rockford Rhoades in last year's coat. 

About four years ago we got tired of buying dog coats at the feed stores. Their coats were okay, but they never really worked easily and usually broke down in a year. So we started messing around with making our own. It took a while. . . .

The first attempt used reclaimed parts from all of the older coats and a used cheapo Singer sewing machine bought on Craig's List. We had received a nice "picnic" blanket from a client some years earlier and this had a nice flannel side and water resistant coating on the other. The results of that first effort were good at first. But we hadn't counted on the totally destructive nature of Basset Hounds at play.  They shredded their new coats in just a few days. The best part was that as they tore the black waterproof layer the red flannel layer showed through. Our Hounds look like the victims of an axe murderer.  But the basic design of the coat was good. Re-using strapping to hold the thing together got us into the warmer months despite the horror show. We resolved to solving the problem before the next Winter came.

We found a nice Buffalo Print at the fabric store and I bought new straps and buckles and laid out a pattern based roughly on the previous year's effort. The result was a good coat, though a bit smaller than we liked. And though we have changed the pattern a few times, and changed the way our coats were made, those early attempts are still working fairly well. We use them for our guests or use parts from them to make new coats for our dogs. But the process got easier and the coats came out better nearly every time we made one. 

Two  years ago we decided to sell our Winter Coats to those people we knew who had  adopted our puppies. So we began letting them know we had coats available and sold a few. Then last year we let a few more people know about what we were doing and  we sold a respectable number of our coats around Christmas. It seemed we had a good thing going after that.

Don't click here

This year we sold as many on our first week as we had in the previous year once we let people know about it. But this presented some new problems. Shipping them cheaply had to be figured out. A box to send them out it had to be found. We had the coats pretty well settled, but the details needed worked out. And we did it. But while we worked out the plan we found that one of the steps, the part where we put the parts into the box the coat would eventually be shipped in, offered another possibility. So we began thinking about selling the box full of parts to those interested in sewing their own coats.

We had to come up with instructions. And then we had to find a way to handle the increased traffic. But eventually we got it all working. Today I put out the first advertising for our expanded Coat project.  We're selling four sizes of Ready to Wear coats and Do It Yourself Coat kits, along with an option to make Coats and Kits for other sized dogs on an ad hoc basis.  We have a good way to handle the transactions securely and now all we need is for about fifty customers to show up and participate. 

Creekside Farm has always been pretty wide open as to what we would eventually become as a business. Coats may or may not work out. But the journey is the thing. We have out first really good product and it is being sold to the public. There's really no telling where this may go. But we're looking forward to getting there. 

If you need a coat. Head on over our Rocketdog Bassets Blog.

September 8th, 2023 Summer Winding Down

 Summer is still with us for a few more weeks. Today it is a wonderful seventy-five degrees and clear skies. While this isn't very good for farming veggies, it is wonderful for working in. We have a lot to show for all the work this year. 

We got the Tiny Home Cabin(s) moved a few weeks ago. The project was planned years ago and there were some significant issues we needed to address to make things work out.  We needed to expand the electrical, water, and septic infrastructure to make the tiny home(s) usable once  we got them moved. 

On the left is the Tiny Home Cabin we moved to the Farm back in early Winter of 2018.
On the right is the same space (note the telephone pole in both pictures) as it is today.

Since we have a serious iron problem with our water we have built our water system with house water is very well filtered. This house water system had to be tapped into to provide good water the the Tiny Homes (now called the Guest House and Kennel). Then we had to expand the electrical system to provide power to the Guest House and Kennel as well.  While we did the electrical work we also included inlets, outlets, and switching to bring in generator power when it is needed. And finally we needed to put in piping to remove septic waste. Each of these projects was difficult to accomplish, even if not very expensive.  Once we got all the preliminary ground work done it was time to separate and move the two Tiny Homes to their permanent places behind the Farmhouse.

The new Farmhouse layout.

When we built the first trailer we did the work in the driveway of our home in North Plans and towed the thing out to the empty lot that would become the Farm (pictured above).  A few weeks later we built the second half, making ours a double wide Tiny Home Cabin. We lived in the Cabin for nearly four years as we cleared the land and built our new Home. Taking them apart was not the biggest part of our plans when we built them it took some work, as did moving the small garden and accumulated stuff added to the place after it was built.

Moving these two large trailers took an entire day using a large rented tractor. Towing them was a tricky proposition once they were separated. But once we got them moving it came down to jostling the two halves into their permanent places. This  proved to be the most difficult part of the job.

The Guest House eventually settled into a place where the front facing side ran parallel to the Farmhouse Porch. The Kennel side eventually came to rest immediately behind the Farmhouse on the back wall where there are no windows. Both buildings needed the eight foot pass through hole sealed up against the weather, so we are installing sliding glass doors to keep the rain out and the heat in. The piping and wiring were the easy parts and once we had the two trailers jacked up and level. Eventually, the end of the largest temporary part of our early plans for building our farm came yesterday, when we moved my brother's camp trailer to it's new place near the Utility Shed.

A Wooly Bear Caterpillar.
This one say it is going to
be a long, cold Winter.

So now the entire area in front of the Farmhouse is cleared out and cleaned up. We hadn't been able to see the front of the Farm from the Farmhouse until just yesterday. So this is a major change in how things look. Perhaps more importantly, the view of the Farmhouse from the Road is now much cleaner.  Now the place looks as it should. 

I remodeled the Guest House interior during the cold months last Winter. Putting the glass door on it allows me to finish the job and do some upgrades on the exterior, including a fresh coat of paint. Eventually I will put skirting on both buildings to keep animals from playing around underneath them and refinish the Kennel building to make it useful. We will also put in a fence to contain our tangle of hounds behind the Farmhouse and reduce noise a bit out front.  But for the present, the job is mostly done until Farming winds down and we settle into Winter month projects.

Farming this year has been quite good. We have been selling produce for many weeks and eating quite a lot of it ourselves. While we haven't  had the growth we wished for, we have done roughly ten times more planting than we did last year. No-till gardening is really a great way to grow things and our planting and pest control plans have all performed much as we expected they would. A few weeks ago we have our expected flea beetle infestation, but instead of them stressing our tomato and potato plants they attacked the Nasturtium plants we had planted as a pest attractor. We dusted the Nasturtiums and the problem was solved in a few days with little actual damage to our paying crops. And we got some really goods crops.

We planted three flights of potatoes this year, each a few weeks apart. The first flight came up easily and the spuds are absolutely wonderful to eat. Rich flavors, perfect flesh. Our cucumbers and tomatoes have thrived this year and we had put quite a lot more of them in the dirt. They are heavy with fruit  and sweet. Tomatoes are selling like hotcakes. The peppers haven't done as well as we expected, but our cool peppers are doing very well and selling out as quickly as we can pick them. The Corn crop has been disappointing. We put in so many and got so few ears out of it. The Corn cobs we did get is smallish, but the flavor is wonderful and we are enjoying eating it despite not being able to sell it.  Melons are doing very well and selling out for the most part. So the gardens are producing well even if we do need to make some changes next year. 

Lemonhead Lucy

We think Taffee is pregnant with our (planned for) Fall litter of pups, but we won't know for sure for a few weeks. This will be Taffee and ClarkeBar's last litter and they will be retired after this. We love having puppies around and are really looking forward to the work raising puppies brings.

Our newest addition to the kennel is Lemonhead Lucy, a wonderful little white and red female. She is well accepted to the Hound's social group and is quite well liked by everyone who she meets. Lucy is very chatty, with a great many expressive howls and barks that make her unique in our kennel.

We have had loads of visitors this Summer. Some coming for the produce, some just to visit. All are welcome. So if you find yourself on the Highway and looking for some place to stop by, think about stopping by and seeing all the changes at Creekside Farm. We are making constant improvements and it will be nice to have you see it all. We have plenty to keep us busy here as Summer begins to close down. We look forward to the change in seasons and are ready for whatever comes. 

In the middle of this image you will find the telephone pole seen in the upper images.
This is the place before we found it, taken from a real estate advertisement.
Taken from the Western edge of the property, where the Market Garden is today.

This is the same telephone pole.
This picture taken on the first day we came to the property, but from the back of the place.
This is approximately the angle seen from the Bathroom window of the Farmhouse.

This is the same telephone pole.
Just before we brought the first tiny home here.

August 6th, 2023 Deep Summer

 It has been nearly perfect weather since my last post, and a lot got grown and done since then. So much has been done I really haven't had much time to write.  Summer has caused an explosion in growth here.. No-till gardening has solved nearly all of our soil fertility problems and the produce we are getting is exceptional. In the next week or two, once our produce is ripe and ready, we will be opening our little produce stand in an attempt at making a dollar. 

The stuff we have planted is roughly five times what we planted last year. But our much larger plan is still not quite large enough. We might be able to grow twice the amount we have in the ground next year, but we will need to plan for a much bigger grow. We put in seventy melon hills this year, where there were only fifteen last year, and the plants are doing quite well, but I think we could grow five hundred just as easily so that's the plan going forward. We put in five times the cucumber plants too, and a trellis to hold them all up. Next year I think we will need to tripple the cucumber grow and we certainly have the space for it. Our squash and pumpkin grow is also quite a bit larger, perhaps double last year, and the results are extraordinary. But I'm pretty sure I could still do five times the amount with little trouble.  And our corn crop is easily eight times the number of stalks we grew before, might be more, but we have space for double this number right now. 

Since all of this year's plan involved converting to no-till gardening and drip irrigation, planting is much easier, harvesting is half the work, and watering is a snap. Also, the sort of weeds we usually have are tough to handle. Thistles and berries are difficult to pull out of hard pan clay. But in a no-till scenario these sorts of weeds don't do very well and pull out of the ground easily. This is not to say that there are no weeds, crabgrass has really done well this year, but crabgrass and the other worts growing in the garden are relatively easy to chop off and when we let them rot in the ros they make a mighty good mulch which blocks sprouting. But there's other reasons why weeding isn't really so much of a problem now.

The drip-tape irrigation system I put in only waters the top of the rows, not the spaces between. So weeds don't get all the water they have in previous years and grow slowly. With far less growth potential we can work the spaces between rows quickly using a stirrup hoe knowing the weeds will not grow back quickly. Most of the weeds we have don't have energy storage, so most won't grow back at all. This new way of growing is half the work, or less, so our days aren't as long and there's plenty of time for other projects.

Our new house plan.

We are on the cusp of moving the tiny homes to space behind the Farmhouse. I had always envisioned moving them to the edge of the Farm, near the back fence line, but actually looking at the project seriously made us change the plan. While we prepare for the move I have upgraded our electrical power plan to include two generators and enough wire to service the two new outbuildings behind the Farmhouse. Each will have water and power and the stuff is already buried in the ground ad waiting for the move. My Brother, visiting while planning his retirement moves, has a large camp trailer which currently is placed near the tiny homes. When we move the tiny homes he will also be moved to a new place where I recently put in power and water connections. The only thing left to do is septic hook ups, but these have to wait until we actually move the buildings. And there's so much more to do than just this.

Our Farm is exploding in growth. Fruit is ripening and will soon need sold. So there's much to do. 

Our Produce Stand is in fine shape and the area where it will be accessible to the public is currently parking for all of our cars and trucks. So we will spend a few days shifting things around and cleaning places up to get ready for opening day. This year's plan is to tow the Produce Stand to the end of the road five days a week and sell produce down there. But the Stand will be parked outside of the fence where it was last year when it is not at the end of the road so some allowance must be made. We should be opening in a week or so. 

 I thought of another new thing to try. Our government has added some burdens to the Organic Farm movement and I have recently run into it while talking to food buyers about taking on some of our produce. 

Pirate Organic Farming

In order to call ours an organic farm we must become Certified. This involves a lengthy application process and about a thousand dollars in cost borne over and above the cost of actually growing things. What this does, and my central argument against it, is that what is expected is a loosely governed branding process where a farmer pays a certain amount to be able to say they grow food without the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides,  fertilizers, and seeds. These factors of producing food are already in place and we do these things, but applying for the certification has some other hoops to jump through and costs to be borne, not the least of which is a thousand dollar fee.  We are allowed to sell our produce without these hurdles, but we would not be allowed to use the term "Organic" in any form. Not just this, but grocery store buyers require the certificate, as do farmer's market administrators.  If you have read this BLOG I stated early on that these were just the sort of regulatory things we would not wish to participate in.  So we will not. And for some very good reasons.  So we are now going pirate organic.

We will no longer worry over using the term "organic", instead we will fly a flag I designed (above) and trust that our buyers will get what it is we are doing.  It might be a good conversation starter.  A sort of rebellion against being regulated.  This is the only change to how we have been doing things. We will still produce our fruits and veggies without chemical inputs, we will still be using very sustainable farming practices, and our produce will still be of the highest quality we can grow at this scale of production. But we won't even try to call it "organic". 

In other news, we delivered all of our puppies to their new homes since the last journal entry and brought what may be our last puppy home. Lemonhead Lucy is a wonderful little "lemon" Basset female. She is full of life and has become central tour tangle of seven hounds. We have always planned to be out of the dog breeding business in under ten years to make room for the wedding business. So Lucy will likely be the last breeding female in our kennel.  This year we have had a bit of trouble with fleas where we have never had this sort of trouble before.  So we do spend a lot of time washing dogs and vacuuming them in between washes.  It will take a bit of time, but we will get the problem licked before Fall. 

Life here has been very good for a long time now. Our house is spacious and comfortable. Once the tiny home's are all moved the way the Farm looks will change drastically. Our dogs will soon be moved to a place where they don't have much access to the people coming to the Produce Stand too. So much has happened here since we started. And there's a lot more that will.