Dewane and Sarah 2 moved Rat out of his stock tank home in the barn and released him into the pond behind the CSA garden this week. Rat walked into the live-trap carrier, ate apple wedges during transport, then stepped out onto the bank of the pond. He dove into the water and swam around, investigating his new digs. There are lots of cattails for food. An abandoned muskrat den, if s/he chooses to refurbish. Or he can built a new home to suit. 

He doubled in size over the winter, came out when his name was called, stood up on his hind feet to accept apples and carrots. We weren’t sure he wanted to relocate, but it is the best thing for him. Sarah will leave apples in the spot where they let him go. A varied diet is always best.

We planted 500 asparagus crowns in five long composted trenches. We also started 1000 asparagus seeds. We will set them in a nursery plot, then transplant into ten new rows next to this first five-hundred. The goal: next May, 2013, and every May after that, we’ll have  .....asparagus for the early veggie deliveries!

We transplanted 6,000 onion seedlings last week, plus summer leeks, early Chinese cabbage and Pac choi seedlings.

We planted pumpkins and winter squash in pots. In the garden we planted the snap pea called Penelope—our experiment in non-staking peas. We planted radish 2 and bunching onions. The sugar snap and snap peas are coming up; the snow peas are almost ready to climb onto the chicken wire support fence.
   
In pots in the hoophouse, the melon, summer squash and outdoor cucumber seeds all germinated. We moved the peppers and eggplants outside to get used to direct sunlight and wind.
 
The Japanese cucumbers will be ready soon to go in the ground, so we’ll need to empty the hoophouse soon. It’s a delicate balance, for we’re not out of frost danger yet. Basil, melons, tomatoes are tender plants.

We have rocks to pick, as usual. Head lettuce seedlings are ready to be transplanted. So are the Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi 1, and cabbage 1. Spinach 2 , baby lettuce 2, pickling cucumbers 2 will get planted this week.
 
The two new honeybee colonies are settling in their new hives. The main garden hive has used only a half quart of dark honey. The new high tunnel hive just polished off their second quart. We think the garden hive is getting sweet nectar from the flowering wild plum and crabapple trees bordering the cow yard. Dandelions are in full bloom in the garden driveways, yielding ample protein-filled pollen for brood rearing. The high tunnel hive has access to dandelions, but is a mile from the plums and crabapples.
 
This is our theory. For now.
 
See you soon!

Seed packets with ‘treated’ seed come with a warning to not let birds or babies eat the seed. The fungicide is…not healthy. We’ve sow lots of seeds in flats and pots—broccoli, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew melons, zucchini, yellow summer squash, cucumbers, okra, fennel, kale, kohlrabi, Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, broccoli raab, head lettuce.

Outdoors we planted sugar snap peas, snap peas, French breakfast radishes and beets 1. We hung the chicken wire for the peas to climb. Today, we’re sowing in flats seeds of cabbage 2, cauliflower and Swiss chard.  I’ve never started Swiss chard early in flats and transplanted it, but I was doing some research. Transplanting is an option for chard. In the past we’ve had so-so germination because we were eager to get it started and the soil was not warm enough for the chard seed to be happy. Transplanting chard will be an experiment. I am confident the germination percentage will be much higher, with flats of seed in the cozy, temperate hoophouse. The tricky part will be the transplanting. We can’t let the seedlings get too big before we set them in the garden.

I experiment every year. Some ideas, like transplanting chard, come from reading. Others are ah-ha’s. What if we try this? Our pea planting schedule has two ah-ha’s this season. The first came when Sarah Tyler and I were drafting our planting schedule. We raise a great variety of snow peas. The pods are 4-inches long, the flowers a gorgeous purple. We’ve always planted peas on days with a fruit emphasis. Pea pods hold the fruit of the pea plant—peas. My ah-ha was to deemphasize the push for pea formation, slow down the formation of peas so the succulent pods would linger in that perfect, dots of baby peas state for a week longer, maybe more.  We’ll see if my idea bears fruit. (ouch)

The second pea experiment came from studying seed catalogs. I like old-fashioned pea varieties that need a support fence. The last time I tried a non-climbing snap pea variety, I was hugely disappointed in the harvest—less than 10% of the Green Arrow variety we’ve been saving seed from for 15 years. I talked myself into trying a new variety of non-staking snap pea. We’ll plant this seed this week.

We’ll also set in 500 Mary Washington asparagus crowns. Dewane dug 5- 150-foot long furrows last evening before it rained. Tomorrow, we’ll spread a layer of fine compost in the bottom of the furrows, set the crowns 15-inches apart in the furrows and cover with soil. We’ll trickle irrigate and mulch. As the plants grow, we’ll gradually fill in the furrows. They’ll establish this year. We can harvest some in 2013, and then pick heavily in beginning May-June 2014.     

Mary Washington is an heirloom variety noted for its longevity—15 years is common. (We’re shooting for 20 years. All-male hybrid varieties poop out much sooner.) We’re also starting 1000 Mary Washington seeds. We’ll set these in a nursery plot, then extend the asparagus patch next spring.
           
Another experiment is sweet potatoes. Last December, Sarah T and I ordered 25 expensive northern-adapted sweet potato tubers to learn how to grow sweet potatoes. (for you, Monique D.!) Sweet potatoes are a southern crop, but northern varieties are been developed. We’ve reserved 25-feet in the high tunnel for these sweet potatoes. If they like us, we’ll do what we did with the garlic—multiply out the crop and replant a bigger row in 2013 with sets that matured in our Zone 3 season. Like okra, we’ll probably never be able to raise huge quantities of sweet potatoes, but what a treat if we can grow some.

I’m experimenting with a slightly later seeding of cauliflower seeds this year. (We’re sowing cauliflower seeds today.) Three weeks later doesn’t sound like much, but last summer’s intense heat came on just as our main crop of cauliflower came on. Cauliflower hates hot weather. By holding off just a bit on sowing, the main crop will mature when the balance of cool morning and hot afternoon hours will be more favorable. 

We’re experimenting with pickling cucumbers this year in a new garden plot. My pickling efforts last season reminded me that varieties claiming to be all-purpose—pickle when small, slice when large—do not make great baby dills. Picking pickling cucumbers is an intensive endeavor. We’ll put some in your veggie boxes, bagged separately so you can identify them. We’ll take special orders for 5-gallon bucket quantities of organic baby, smalls, and mediums as a separate purchase. The first 100 pots of pickling cukes are germinating now. We’ll have garlic and dill, too.
 
Experimentation is an aspect of gardening that I love. I love trying new varieties, extending the season, amending how we do things for better results, listening to your requests and finding a way to fulfill them. I also love listening to the garden when it whispers, “Try doing it this way.”

USDA climatologists say the growing zones have shifted half a zone north. We can try growing things impossible in years past. Spring arrived early this year, giving us a jump on working outdoors days, but the trees and the birds and the soil say not so fast. We’re pushing as fast as we can, both long term and immediate.

I expect to do our first early-season delivery of spinach, baby lettuce, arugula, radishes and lemon sorrel in two or three weeks. I can’t call it exactly yet because we’re having so many cloudy days. The plants in the high tunnel are buffered from extremes, but they sit still during prolonged overcast spells.       

I’ll know for sure next weekend, so watch this newsletter. We’ll deliver eggs and bedding plants at the same time. So if you haven’t mailed in your veggie registration form, do it.
           

Also mail May installment payments to:
ML Hershberger
1551  32nd Street S  ste 103
Fargo, ND 58103.
 
Questions: call Anne 218-252-5858
          

Spring is a busy season for farmers and gardeners. Dewane and Sarah Tyler are braving the wind and cold to finish planting our oats and barley. The barn calf steers are being introduced to a big field pasture. Violet and Squirt, our two Jersey milk cows, are dry. They’ll calve again in late August and early September. Until, then, there’s no need for them to be summoned up to the barn twice a day to be milked. They know the routine and, being cows that thrive on routine, they will remember.

Lucy, Lola, and Lizard are our young milk heifers. They will learn the milking   routine when they freshen in a year and a half. Until then, they need to be in daily touch with—and be touched daily by—us, their human handlers. To do that, we’ll move them around the farm and house yards and along the lush grass that borders the long driveways to the fields and high tunnel garden. We’ll carry pails of fresh water for them to drink, and scratch their ears and necks. Why do we want to keep them tame? They’ll be 1000+ pound milk cows in a year and a half. We’ll milk them by hand or squat down beside them with an old-fashioned Surge milker. No robot-run milking parlor for these dames. We want them to be cows kids can sit on. Cows that come to be milked when you call. Cows whose raw milk is creamy rich for making butter or yogurt or cheese. Or quark, if you’re from Switzerland.

We transplanted tomatoes into the high tunnel last week. Five long rows in between the rows of spinach and lettuce. We’re protecting the plants closest to the walls of the high tunnel from cold seep with hotkaps, the white hat-like covers. By July, the tomatoes will be 5-feet tall and we’ll start harvesting tomatoes. We’re so excited!

You have to tread carefully in the high tunnel now. It’s crowded. But it’s wonderful to have the high tunnel do what it’s meant to do—get crops to mature early. The spinach and lettuce seedlings are getting their true leaves. With sun and more moderate temperatures (the unscientific way to describe growing degree days), they will resume growing and soon you’ll be enjoying fresh CSA salads.

We did more seed sowing this week. Broccoli, flowers, fennel, Chinese cabbage 2, head lettuce 2, kohlrabi 2, kale 1. Tomorrow, we’re starting melons, zucchini and summer squash, outdoor cucumbers, and okra. The hoophouse cukes, still in pots, are about to get their first true leaves, but we started them on April 10th.

We’ll sow radish 1, bunching onions and beets 1 this week. The weather is too unsettled to plant carrot seed. We’ll plant cauliflower and late cabbage in flats, and move the onions outside for their final acclimation before transplanting into the garden.

The snow peas are germinating. I dug up a few and saw the emerging green sprout. We’ll hang their chicken wire support fence, and plant the sugar snap and shell pea seed.

No word on when the bees will arrive. The hives that wintered over are hatching brood. While we were setting tomatoes in the high tunnel, I watched a noontime pre-flight orientation session for young bees the other day. The bees clung to the face of the hive. In small groups, they let go and tested their wings. Always facing the hive, they hovered in mid-air, then practiced landing. Then they crawled up and practiced again. Fascinating!

Wait one!

Sorry for the pause. I just had a fresh reminder of why we are lawn-pasturing the milk yearlings. Lizard just broke the clasp of her green nylon collar and was leaping around the yard and ended up under our deck. I managed to back her out without cracking my head more than four times. She raced me to the gray horse trailer, then stopped to rub noses with Lucy. She stood still while I slipped a temporary chain around her neck and hooked it. Then I managed to attach the other end to the trailer before she tried to scamper away again.

Yesterday morning, two of the 400-lb beef calves Dewane had shepherded into the barn broke out. I found them butting heads in the middle of the road in front of the farm. RDO is planting potatoes now, and big trucks with seed and chemicals are zooming back and forth. The road is not a good place to play. Hannah and I herded the steers with the red truck down the driveway and up to the barn. I knew we didn’t dare get up close and personal. They’re black Angus calves, not tame Jersey calves.

It was a good thing Lizard was willing to let me catch her. She’s going to make a good milk cow.

Before working at Midheaven, she had really never thought about farming or gardening at all, "And that was part of what I was beginning to recognize as a problem. I had a total disconnect about the food I was eating. I had no idea what was in it, where it had come from, at what cost it had been grown. I saw this same disconnection in many people close to me."

Sarah spent most of the 2011 season in the garden. This season she is looking forward to having more peaceful moments there, as well as learning more about proper pasture rotation, all things tractor, and cows, cows, cows. She is very excited to continue working with and caring for our fledgling dairy herd, including making and using natural medicines for them.

-Sarah Tyler and her friend, Elyse.

We are looking to train young farmers and gardeners, especially those who may want to take our farm to its next level. Interns start in the garden with hands-on training in all aspects of vegetable production and CSA management.

Anne manages the CSA garden with three full-time and three part-time co-workers. She also has an on-farm business, The Secret Garden (est. 1985), that creates and markets dehydrated soup, entrée and seasoning mixes.

Dewane runs the farm. He grows hay, oats, barley, and winter wheat, and generates all the feed for our animals with the exception of a small amount of organic soybean meal supplement for poultry. Beef cows and their calves graze from late May until November on rotational warm season native prairie grass and cool season grass pastures. He stirs BD 500 and 501 with a 120-gallon stirring machine and sprays all open acreage every year. Supplemental valerian and equisetum applications are stirred and sprayed by hand.

Further training for co-workers interested in comprehensive farm operation emphasizes time management, application of biodynamic preparations to get tangible results, operation of haying equipment, making and using compost, crop rotations, prescribed burning of prairie pastures and forestland, general maintenance of equipment, soil tillage, the planting, cultivation, harvest and storage of crops, and harmonizing the CSA gardens with the total farm organism in a financially and environmentally responsible way.

Our goals for the next five years are to increase the number of CSA shares to 200, to donate a portion of the garden and cropland to the Yggdrasil Land Foundation, and to form a 308B Cooperative that would allow non-voting members, individuals and businesses to make financial investments in the farm.

Dewane and Anne have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about operating a farm and a CSA on finite resources. “Farming is fun,” Dewane says. “The work is hard. The satisfaction immense.”

The primary requirement for any co-worker is heartfelt interest in, and genuine commitment to, Biodynamic gardening or farming. For more information, please e-mail a written resume with three references. Farm visits are encouraged.

You can also visit the North American Biodynamic Apprenticeship Program (NABDAP) at:

http://www.biolynamic.com/north-american-biodynamic-apprenticeship-programnabdap@biodynamics.com

                                                                                                                                                             We raise everyone’s favorite vegetables—bi-color sweet corn, green beans (8 varieties), tomatoes (15 varieties), red potatoes, onions, radishes, broccoli (6 varieties), cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, melons, beets, zucchini and buttercup squash.

We also grow veggies that are interesting and unusual—purple cauliflowers, stalk celery, Brussels sprouts, tomatillos, nasturtiums. We raise long, thin Japanese eggplants, as well as round Italian eggplants. We raise white, yellow, indigo and red cherry tomatoes. We put edible flowers in bags of baby lettuce. Did you know borage blossoms taste like cucumbers, and radish flowers taste like radishes?

We raise ten varieties of sweet peppers, and ten hot peppers of varying heat intensity. Italian Florence fennel is delicious raw or baked, and has a mild anise flavor.

A head of heirloom Deer Tongue lettuce fits in your hand. Its leaves are shaped like a deer's tongue. We grow red and green romaine lettuces, oakleaf lettuces, looseheads, Buttercrunch, and looseleafs. My favorite is Nancy, a large round Bibb with soft, buttery leaves. Just-picked CSA greens help replenish your body’s stores of vitamins and minerals.

We’d grow spinach all season if we could. (One chilly summer, we did!) Hot weather prompts spinach to bolt (go to seed), so we raise kale and Swiss chard until the fall harvest of spinach is ready.

In addition to regular zucchini, we raise yellow summer squash, round zucchini and ribbed heirloom Romansque squash. (Dewane likes the yellow best.) We also grow a plethora of winter squashes. Delicata are not typically found in grocery stores, but CSA members have voted them #1 four years in a row. Red Kuri are nutty and dry, outstanding with lots of butter and a sprinkle of brown sugar. Carnival squashes are light and sweet like Acorns. We're trialing a new short-season Butternut, a smaller Spaghetti squash, and a new gold and white acorn squash called Jester.

We grow yellow and red onions from seed for their superior keeping quality. Ailsa Craig Exhibition is a sweet, softball-sized onion from England, especially suited for our long summer days. Red of Tropea early onions are long and torpedo-shaped, and have red flesh and a wonderful flavor.

Each share gets red and black raspberries when they are in season. We raise a big bed of Genovese basil for members to make pesto. Other herbs include parsley, cilantro, mints, tarragon, cinnamon basil, oregano, cutting celery, sage, marjoram, and lemon balm. Members can come and pick tomatoes for canning. Free.

New in 2012: special orders of pickling cucumbers, dill, garlic, kraut cabbage.

Members receive an e-newsletter each Sunday that lists the produce coming in your share box, recipes and serving suggestions, observations and anecdotes of farm life. For now, visit our Seasonal Availability Chart for specifics on individual harvest seasons.

            It is good that the baby head lettuces and spinach in the high tunnel are hardy, tolerating the fluctuations between sun and snow. These will be the first CSA greens you eat. We’re expecting they will be ready mid-May-ish; it all depends on the weather. As soon as they are harvestable, we will schedule a veggie delivery that includes eggs for egg share members. We will then deliver every two weeks until the main season begins and we deliver weekly.

            The hoophouse is filling with pots of peppers and tomatoes. The tomatoes are the greenhouse tomatoes, which we will set in the high tunnel in a week or two. The plants are doing very well, but will be even happier when they are set into the ground. The picture didn’t show the 45 flats of happy onion seedlings. Cabbage 1, the Oriental cucumbers and the Brussels sprouts are also in the hoophouse.

            Soon to make the move from our basement to the  hoophouse are the pots of eggplants and outdoor tomatoes, and flats of purple and green kohlrabi, assorted head lettuces, stalk celery, Chinese cabbage, and Pac Choi.

            Some of the garlic rows seem to be slow to grow, but the lack of snow cover could be the reason for gaps. The rows that are up are looking mighty fine.

            We planted snow peas on Friday and pounded in the fence posts that will support the chicken wire fencing for the peas to climb. Today’s rain will help the pea seed germinate right away. We’ll plant the sugar snap and snap peas next week. Indoors, we’ll plant seeds of broccoli, cabbage 2, Florence fennel, okra, pickling and slicing cucumbers, cantaloupe, and zucchini. As soon as the ground dries enough to form beds with the tractor, we’ll plant bunching onions, radishes, arugula, mesclun lettuce and other early outdoor crops.

            Two new packages of bees should arrive soon. Our two live hives are doing very well. The bees are flying every chance they get. They’ve come inside the high tunnel and hoophouse to visit the plants and to drink off the condensation on the poly.

            The horseradish survived last fall’s drought! It was impossible to dig any roots last fall, and we were worried the roots we had divided and transplanted last spring to expand the patch had perished for lack of rain. They are all coming up, and this is very good news.

            The 500 asparagus crowns we ordered will arrive soon. They will go in next to the high tunnel. We should be able to take a light first harvest in 2013, with more in subsequent years.

            Sarah 1, Benton and I finished mapping the garden plots this week. As always, we took into account rotating crops and requests for amounts and varieties. In other words, making you—and the earth—happy.

Full Value Share $725 for four adults or home canning for winter meals. A 1-1/9th bushel box, similar to a big box of apples or oranges.

Plenty Half Share $425 for a veggie-loving family. Comes in a 5/9th bushel box, about the size of a crate of peaches.

 Eatin’ Good Share $375  for small households and weekend chefs. A ½ bushel box, which is slightly smaller than a lug of pears.

On harvest/delivery days, we pick every fruit, root, flower, and leaf that is ripe and ready. We cool, wash, drain, bag or bundle what we’ve harvested.

Eatin’ Good Share is nice assortment of just-ripe veggies – e.g., a bag of baby lettuce, a small bunch of carrots, one head of broccoli, one cucumber, one zucchini, a pint of cherry tomatoes, plus fresh springs of the herb of the week. Weekly delivery averages 5 to 9 lbs of produce.

Plenty Half Share contains all vegetable and herb varieties ready to be harvested, packed carefully until the share box is full. Weekly delivery averages 10 to 18 lbs of produce. Plus, by reservation and as available, there will be basil for pesto, okra, tomatillos, and tomatoes for canning.

Full Value Share is a bounteous assortment of everything ripe for harvest. For large families, value conscious members, and those who want to put up food for next winter. Weekly delivery averages 20 to 36 lbs of produce. Plus, by reservation and as available, there will be basil for pesto, okra, tomatillos, and tomatoes for canning.

Winter Veggie Share will not happen in 2011. Our potatoes (anchor crop for a winter share) failed due to utter lack of rain in August and September. We're sorry.

Share prices are determined by dividing the cost of raising and delivering the vegetables by the number of shares to be sold. See the CSA Economics page for budget details.

2011 was a short season, dictated by the weather.  The graphs below offer a visual comparison between our CSA's share prices, and equivalent amounts of produce purchased at the Park Rapids farmers market or at regional grocery stores. The graphs reflect 2011's 14-week season.

A normal CSA season is 16 weeks. Weekly cost of a CSA share based on this normal 16-week season is

Full share- $45.32

Half share- $26.57

Eatin share- $23.44

In 2012, we will start the season in May with bi-weekly deliveries of salad greens and spinach grown in our high tunnel.

Click here to download full share chart for better viewing.

Click here to download 1/2 share chart for better viewing.

Click here to download Eatin' share chart for better viewing.