The Dirt (our blog)

Here is a video of the guys bringing in a load of kohlrabi from the field. Before it can go to market the have to trim off excess leaves, wash all of the veggies, pack it in crates and then store it in the cooler until it is ready to get packed onto a truck destined to either a market or a CSA drop site. Every vegetable gets the same treatment and, as always, is handled with care.

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Here are the tomato plants as of this week. Over the past week they have shown a lot of growth, and even are producing baby tomato fruits. they are still about a month away from harvestable maturity, but, nonetheless, are looking healthy and early compared to years past. Who knows, with the way that everything else has been coming in early this year, maybe tomatos will follow suit, fingers crossed!

Kale is an enormously leafy plant before the leaves are picked off, but after the guys have been through a field and picked the stalks clean, what is left behind on the plant looks kinda cool. The curly kale looks a little bit like a palm tree without its bulk of leaves, and the lacinato looks  like something you would find in the age of dinosaurs (maybe thats where its nickname of “dinosaur kale” came from).

Here is Patrick’s newest video of how things work on the farm. This time the video shows you how we start up our corn crop and get it from seed to field.

The tomatoes have now been staked and are really ready to start growing quickly. After that healthy rain earlier this week the tomato plants are looking healthy and have shown significant growth since last week when I posted pictures of them.

Our tomato plants are in the ground, but there is still a long road ahead before they are ready for the market tables and restaurant fridges, but wouldn’t it be fun to know how your tomato plants are doing as they mature in the loamy White Hall soil? Over the next month and a half I will take weekly pictures of the tomato plants as they grow so that all of our customers have the ability to watch them grow in the field along with us. Below are the first pictures of the plants. They are about a week old and are ready to really start growing. More pictures to come as they grow bigger! Also take note of the picture of the drip tape valve that is turned on or off to regulate the amount of water that let through the flow valve to directly water the plants without any waste of water.

Every field needs compost, the organic way to naturally fertilize the fields so that our crops can grow to be healthy and strong against disease. While conventional farms use chemicals and fertilizers that are overpowering to the soil, our fertilizer is 100% natural, coming from; hay, decomposed vegetables and a mixture of manure. Our manure comes from cows, chickens and pigs and is gathered from either our farm or the farms around us. Below are some pictures of Andrew using the new Bobcat to load up some compost into the spreader so that it can be spread over the field so that the incoming crops have healthy soil to grow in, Eazy was there in the truck to help out with the action.

Now that the wedding has come and gone we can now switch our focus from wedding preparation to other jobs around the farm. It does not seem as a coincidence that as Sarah   Norman moves on to a new era in her life as Sarah Travers, the bride of Mark Travers, that the farm now open a new chapter in its operations as well, meat being a new name in the game. Now Andrew and I start preparation for the fifteen pigs coming to One Straw farm. Over the winter the idea came to us, why not provide the opportunity for customers to buy some One Straw pork if they want it, as we all know pork is the perfect complement to kale or collard greens. So come one, come all, we now begin operations in the meat market for the taste buds of our ever loyal CSA customers!

-Andrew