The good and the bad (no ugly yet)

Well hello there! It's been a while, I know.  My sincerest apologies but things are really gearing up here.  We'll start with the good stuff...

Dylan wearing an asparagus boutonniere

Delphinium

We had our first farmer's market in Prescott on Saturday morning and it went great!  All five interns were in attendance, plus Cory and Shanti.  The snooze button started getting pushed at 4:30, but we hit the road on schedule with a full trailer of goodies to sell to our excited customer base.  We sold out of asparagus in the first hour and rhubarb soon followed.  Japanese salad turnips, radishes, spring salad mix, mesclun salad mix, braising mix, rapini, heads of lettuce, bok choy, tatsoi, chard, kale, spinach, cilantro, basil, sage, mint, oregano, thyme, bunches of delphinium, dried chilies and eggs also made appearances.  Before coming to Whipstone, I held a variety of customer service positions in the restaurant industry and thusly enjoy interacting with people and selling them a product in which I believe.

Olive hiding in one of our harvesting baskets

Something completely new to me, however, is harvesting produce in mass quantities.  To make it just that much more fun, almost every vegetable is picked in a different way with different tools and bunched in different sizes.  For instance, with salad mix we use large snips, or scissors, to cut whole sections of rows that contain each of the different varieties of lettuce then take our overflowing baskets to the washing shed to be cleaned and weighed into bags.  In the past I highly enjoyed picking root vegetables because of the awe-inspringness of plucking something out of the ground.  I continue to enjoying pulling beets the size of my face out of the earth, but I my thoughts are now plagued by focusing on finding the largest beet in a clump, fighting not to pull up the roots of the smaller beets in the clump, creating the right size bunch that will look good, and finally not snapping my rubber band as I secure the greens together (beet greens- YUM!).  Therefore, I am currently most enjoying cutting head lettuce.  This requires a lettuce knife, a quick snip - really more like a jab - at the base, then a quick clean up of any left over stem or yellow leaves.  As with much of our produce, we must rush these items to the washing shed before it starts to wilt in the baking sun and they most of the harvesting is done in the morning before the heat of the day.

Fixing the roof of the greenhouse

Steph planting tomatoes

Most afternoons, in between picking for the markets and weekly CSAs, major plantings are happening. Over 700 pounds of potatoes went into the ground at the new property, along with acres of pinto beans, some corn, summer squash, and, my personal favorite, TOMATOES! We did plant some early tomatoes in the big greenhouse that are almost ready, even though the roof ripped off in the wind.

Bringing me to the bad: as we attempted to re-roof the plastic this morning, the wind strength slowly picked up.  Just as the forth side was being fixed into place, another mean gust of wind ripped it right off again, negating hours of work and hundreds of square feet of plastic.

so many tomatoes

Sigh... so it goes.

Here We Go!

Steph giving Cooper a delicious Japanese Turnip

Happy Birthday Steph! Pick that
asparagus!

Green Garlic

Things are swinging into high gear at Whipstone, Nation!  We have been busy picking produce for our first CSA (community supported agriculture), which is this Tuesday.  Cosmically, May 1^st happens to be the day Our Gal Friday was born 25 years ago.  Happy Birthday, Steph and also to her pops, Steve!  As a gift from the farm, she will be accompanying Shanti to the CSA drop-off point in Prescott.  Our items will include a variation of the following (read- these are not guaranteed items):  salad mix (8 varieties of lettuce), green garlic, spinach, asparagus, radishes, rapini, eggs, chives, basil, sorrel, cilantro...

Basil

Rapini

If a CSA member cannot pick up their share on Tuesday, s/he may stop by the farm on Wednesday and grab their vegetables from our new farm stand...

 Nearly a half year in the making, our farm stand is almost complete thanks in large part to Kohlrabi King and the many others that assisted on the project: Senior O’Brien for his formidable carpentry skills; Russell Crawford and his dad for building the beautiful interior shelving; Ryan Bort, a cohort of yours truly from the UDub days, who helped with staining the edifice over the course of multiple days during his short tenure at Whipstone; and, of course, the whole Whipstone family.  Those desiring fresh grown produce at any point in the season, regardless if you are a current member of the Whipstone community, may now visit the farm stand to fill up on goodies.

Jasper, Cooper and Olive helping with the farm stand.

Wedding Flowers

Five bridesmaids' bouquets,
one bride's and a crown.  

Shanti building the arbor.

Wedding season is officially upon us, folks.  Shanti is booked to do the flowers for four weddings this summer (with the likely chance of more to come).  The first one was yesterday - congratulations Brian and Emily!  It was outdoors at Juniper Well Ranch and champagne was the color we worked around.  We used tulips, ranunculus and daffodils grown at Whipstone, which Shanti supplemented with roses, eucalyptus, succulents and Queen Anne's Lace.  Lots of wire and flower tape was used.

Eight boutonnieres plus an extra and four
corsages before being wrapped in ribbon.

Arranging the table settings.

Crisis on the Farm!

The water has stopped working.  Imagine the catastrophe: in addition to keeping the greenhouse and all of our planted beds watered, Steph can't even cook dinner... Not to mention the wedding that Shanti has to arrange flowers for tomorrow.

RIP Ranunc

In other news, a valued member of the Whipstone family passed in her sleep late last Saturday night.  RIP Pigeon - you will always be a puppy in our eyes; even at 12 years-old.

We also plowed under the Ranunculus in the OG (original greenhouse).

Dahlias

Huntin' Wabbits

Much to my chagrin, the other Whipstone interns are dropping the ball on their blog posts.  In their defenses, Dylan has made two bro-friends in the form of the new interns: Andrew and Shane - nicknames to come - and Steph is constantly getting distracted by the adorable blond babies streaking through the house.  I can't blame either of them since Our Gal Freitag has an admirable confidence with children cough*willbegreatmother*cough and Kohlrabi King loves playing music and hunting rabbits with the boys.


In any case, it is up to Super Stix to Save Our Blog.  Let's begin with Dahlias!  As they lack seeds, these beauts are one high maintenance flower.  At the end of last season, Steph, Shanti and Piedad dug up tubers from the dahlias planted in the field and separated each one.

tuber: A swollen part of a stem or root, usually modified for storage (sugar, energy, etc.), and lasting for one year only, those of the succeeding year not arising from the old ones, nor bearing a position relative to them. Examples of such perennating organs are the stem tubers of potato (Solanum tuberosum) and the root tubers of Dahlia. Root tubers develop from adventitious roots and stem tuber may be distinguished from a root tuber by the presence of buds or 'eyes'.

Dahlia cuttings rooting in foam

Cuttings-to-be in together in their box

After they are washed, the tubers are individually wrapped and stored in the walk-in cooler until ready to be planted the next year.  At the end of February, Shanti took most of the tubers and planted them in large boxes in the greenhouse to grow cuttings.  The rest were put into their own flower pots to be sold at the farmer's markets later in the year as whole plants.  The process of taking cuttings is not so cut and dry (so to speak).  When the plants start to sprout out of the buds they are cut directly above the growth-origin.  To combat last year's problem of the cuttings not sprouting roots, we are experimenting with first putting them into foam cells that are specifically made to encourage rooting.  Once the roots begin popping out of the sides and bottom of the foam, they can be transplanted to regular plant trays - put on our heated tables.  and will hopefully continue to expand inside of these new cells.  We began this third step on Monday and will continue to fill the trays with each of our twenty or so different varieties until they are finally ready to be transplanted to the field, hopefully in early June.  Unfortunately, we will have to wait until August to start picking these floral eye candy.  For the moment, we are blessed to have tulips, daffodils and ranunculus to fill our bedrooms - oh and to sell, of course - so I am not complaining.

Each variety gets its own tray, no matter how many cuttings are rooted.  Different types do better than others for reasons unknown...

Back right: boxes of planted tubers
Back left: rooting cuttings
Front: in their trays and ready for transplant

Happy Easter

Jasper with our asparagus, daffodils and tulips

The meanest chicken in the bunch

Another week, another 18-pack of Keystone (or six).  And what an exciting one it has been!  My new chore for the month of April is to take care of the chickens and sheep.  The latter get about a quarter of a bail of hay twice a day – then they lay by the bay – and enough water to keep them baaing ‘till the cows come home.  They may be dumb animals, but at least they’re cute; the chikens on the other hand are ugly as fungus.  Their feed box of grain gets refilled about once a week, new water each morning, and those pollo locos also get our delicious compost from the house.  Three times a day I enter our free-range coop (not as oxymoronic as it sounds) to nab the delicious future babies of 150 angry hens.  They may peck a bit, but they are more annoying and smelly than anything.  In fact, the most annoying factor is when they escape and you have to run around the coop acting like an idiot.  The secret to wrangling chickens is a solid team of four humans intimidating the poultry into corners and grabbing them or chasing ‘em back into the coop.  Anyone who knows me is aware of my animosity towards fowl, but those fresh tasty eggys are worth it and we are raking in 125 a day on average.  Speaking of animals, we finally got our caterpillar tunnel built!

The chicks flocking as I walk up to the coop.

Also known as a hoop house, this simple construction of arched metal, plastic cover and knotted string is a quasi-mini greenhouse.  It covers three beds and is located in the field proper.  While it took weeks of work, as soon as the tunnel was up, we had sunflowers, poppies and sweet peas planted within an hour.    These flowers require more heat and protection from the elements than the average transplant.  This will allow us to harvest flowers sooner than would otherwise be possible and should bode well for future roadside flower stands...

$8 for a bunch of Renonkulous. Just in time for Easter!

Pre-farmer's market roadside stand proudly offering eggs,
asparagus, dried chillies and three different types of flowers

My Fingers Hurt!

Beautiful day on the farm y’all!  Low 70’s, sunny with a light breeze.  We are doing our best to enjoy it while we can. After a morning spent picking daffodils and tulips, we enjoyed some succulent leftover ribs for lunch (see Dylan’s post on beef and flowers).  But farming isn’t all flowers and sunshine.

It's Always Sunny in My Room

For four glorious hours, Steph and I picked rocks out of the Abyss (one of our seven fields, which includes our new property, official as of yesterday).  As most of you know, rocks provide no nutritional value to plants, displace organic matter in the soil and basically suck in general- except when they’re at the British Natural History Museum.  The last time I picked rocks out of a field was in 8^th grade for a friend’s parents in Mazomanie, Wisconsin.  I vaguely remember coming out $20 richer, but I will never again put baby oil on my skin before spending an afternoon in the sun. 

I didn’t burn my skin off this time, but my fingers hurt!  Digging those SOB’s out of hardened soil is no fun.  Steph and I passed the time quoting our favorite movies, discussing our shared passion and strange satisfaction that is gained by throwing and talking to the rocks – we went a little delusional at times.  We piled up anything bigger than the size of a golf ball, then took the Cushman around to collect them and finally dumped them into the ever-growing rock piles around the fields.  There will be pictures to come, but I can barely type, let alone walk and take pictures of rocks; I’m sure you understand.

Beef and Flowers

Good Morning America,
I would like to start off my blog post today with a SHOUT OUT to Wade Caslin of Wades Custom Meats and Processing. Wade is a life-long butcher and a member of the whipstone family. If anyone out there has meat they need processed or animals to be slaughtered, Wade is your man.
For dinner last night we indulged in some big beefy beef short ribs. THey came from a grass-fed beef that we purchased with wade, which we then feed out with corn for the last couple months before the slaughter. This is our personal preference for taste, and when one finishes off a beef with corn, you get that yummy marbeling and fatty texture. they were some seriously good eating. i browned them in the cast iron, braised them in a  yummy braising liquid, and once the meat starts to fall off the bone, i finished them on the grill. it was so good.

And now for the flowers. There has been a lot of expanding and experimenting with fowers at the farm, especially within the last couple years. As a result, we have a variety of flowers blooming now, between the green house and the field, and man are they beautiful. It is tricky to create a market for flowers, or veggies for that matter, early in the spring before the farmers market or the CSA starts. Shanti has been posting up at our csa pickup location on tuesday afternoons with flowers, eggs, and dried chiles. and maybe, as we have more and more produce earlier in the year, we can start to develop a viable spring market. FLowers: Ranunkulous, daffodils, tulips. Chiles: dried and dried smoked chilepenos, jalapenos, habaneros, sugar chiles, chile de arbol, cayanne, (theres more and my spelling is terrible, but i have to go to work!)

Real Quick; transplanted brassicas yesterday, which is a plant family that includes broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and lots more. our cauliflower froze when the plant starts were put outside, so we were only able to scrounge two beds worth, but there are five beds of broccoli and five beds of cabbage. Drip tape, sand bags, row cover... and pretty soon those little, yellowish, not so healthy looking transplants will turn into big beautiful green plants. 

Ok America, it is 8 A.M and i am officially late for work, but i had to get the word out to my readers. This is the kohlrabi king, signing off. Good day and Good luck.

Peppahs!

Well, here it is, the world premier of a Stephani Freitag blog post. Emily's weeks of nagging finally paid off. From here on out, we are attempting to make one small post daily between the three of us. Wish us luck! It's easy to get lost in the farm.

The lovely Piedad, seeding away in the greenhouse.

Whipstone takes great pride in it's pepper production, due in most part to Cory's adoration of the spicy fruit. It was almost two weeks ago now that Emily, Piedad and I had a pepper seeding extravaganza in which we began the life of over 10,000 pepper plants. Some like it hot, and peppers are no exception. Last year, we wrapped the seed trays up for extra warmth. This year, however, we were able to make good use of our new, fancy, water-heated propagation tables.


These tables have small (1/2 inch in diameter) PVC piping running underneath a big piece of sheet metal. Heated water runs throughout the pipes and circles back to be reheated and used again. The hot water in the pipes heats the sheet metal and we place the seeded trays on top of the metal. We are able to set the water to whatever temperature we desire. This allows us to heat just the water and not the entire greenhouse, saving on gas usage (score!). A project for next year is to install solar water heaters;
no more gas for the greenhouse and less greenhouse gases!

Piping that runs under the sheet metal.

Reflective, insulated tents.

To beef 'em up even more, we built tents made of a reflective insulation in which we cover the tables at night (when sunlight is no longer available). This aids in decreasing heat loss. Bottom line: perfect new beginning for a little pepper plant. Just a few short days after seeding, with a dash of sunshine and a sprinkle of water, it's cotyledon city.

DEFINED: 

cot·y·le·don

  [kot-l-eed-n]

noun Botany .

Kind of boring, I know. I can just see the image from my BIO101 textbook in my head. The little leaves that live within in the seed and pop out of the coat at germination. The idea put me to sleep when lectured in school, but is actually pretty incredible to witness in the real world. It's a beautiful thing to look down 2 30-foot tables, and see them completely filled with little bitty pepper plants.

Corny biology textbook drawing.

Cotyledons with seed coat still attached.

Peppahs!

Pepper germination looks great this year, thanks in most part to our wonderfully efficient propagation tables. I can't wait until we get them in the ground in May so I can be eating delicious fresh guerritos come August. Yum.

The Storm: Act II

Hey America, Kohlrabi King here, bringing you inside the world of a whipstoner, giving you all the latest news, grooves, and gossip from the heart of Arizona's most visited city, yup, you guessed it, PAULDEN!
I have had some time to reflect since the last time we spoke, and i have come to a conclusion. Although the snow slowed us down some, we actually didn't get behind too bad. now is the time to plant some of our crops for a second time, and after checking some dates from last year, we were only a few days behind on our Greenhouse tomatoes. There was a point last season when we had planted some things too close together and our succession was not as fluid, which can be just as bad as being late. So, you could say the snow kept us on track, somewhat.


The other thing that is funny about the snow is this: plants that are established LOVE IT!! Its hard to be too upset after a storm, because everything is just so GREEN!! One chore we knocked off the list was cutting down all of the perennial growth on the asparagus plants so there is plenty of room and energy for those new shoots. And believe it or not, its already coming up!

Left: Dont worry America, this asparagus came up and then froze. there will be plenty of straight plants to come. 
Right: Then I ate it.

So as plants are popping out of the ground, rabbits are nibbling them the next day, and weeds get bigger. But it is an exciting time of year, and i dont know about you America, but i am ready for another kick-ass season from the people who bring you everything from Japanese Salad Turnips to Winter Squash to Sweet potatoes (new this year!) to Chilepenos to Swiss Chard. Until next time, this is your host, the king, signing out.

Dont be Ranonkulus

The day of the daffodil is upon us

The Storm of the Century: Act 1

The youngest son looks out, pondering the fate of his family's farm in this post-storm state.

ATTENTION: This is your author speaking. Real Name - Dylan Walsh O'Brien IV. Code Name - Kohlrabi King. Reporting from the remote desert regions of Paulden, Arizona. Current Location - Whipstone Farm, Latitude: N 34° 51' 33.0833", Longitude W 112° 29' 34.8173" Current Star Date: March 25, two thousand and twelve.


Dear America: Im sorry it has taken me a week to get this blog post out into the world, i am a procrastinator by nature. 

Just when we think we are on schedule...The instant we think that nothing can stop the massive-farm-momentum we have spent weeks building... The moment I think, "what could possibly slow us down now?" We have a snow storm, and the all-important field work is put on hold until the ground is dry enough to get the tractor back out there. We squeezed in a planting of carrots, green onions, and radishes before the squall hit, and rolled out burlap to help keep moisture in the soil for the seeds that take a long time to germinate. 
So with rubber boots on our feet, we set out to find other projects where mud wouldn't be a factor. there is always lots of seeding to be done for our future transplants. It is not an easy task managing the succession dates of our various crops; this being an ever-evolving process, we are forced to constantly rethink when, how, and where to plant and not plant. we keep plugging away on the new greenhouse, trying to get it ready for our early tomatoes. The sooner the better. There is a mountain of paperwork that seems to be growing bigger with each day, but at the peak is a new piece of property! If all goes well, we could be breaking ground in the next week or two.


SIDENOTE: I am passionate about my work on Whipstone Farm, and i strongly believe in the local food movement and providing people with fresh, local veggies. That said, there are times when i wished we didn't have to be so dependent on fuel or plastic, but these are the choices we make to provide as many people as possible with local produce in the system we have created. i certainly cannot imagine being at this scale of production without a tractor or plastic mulch or drip irrigation. In case you are wondering where i am going with this, here it is:

BROADFORK-A tool used to manually break up densely packed soil, like hardpan, to improve aeration and drainage. 


We have had issues with drainage from our raised beds in the big greenhouse, along with compaction and high clay content.  So i took our broadfork and loosened the soil in order to prepare them for our first planting of tomatoes! As i forked around for a few hours, sweating profusely and cussing at the hard spots, i felt a certain satisfaction from using this tool that came before the tiller, disc, or plow. It was nice to not feel bound to some form of fossil fuel. It was refreshing to connect with the more primitive roots of farming. I hope we can continue to try and reduce our carbon footprint, but i believe if this is the system we are apart of, it is a heck of a lot better to buy your food locally.