What’s Growing This Week:   Carrots  French fingerling            Potatoes Tomatoes Apricots Watermelon Onions (M, L) Cucumbers (M, L) Basil (M, L) Garlic (L) Squash (L) Peaches (L) Wed/Thurs Cherries in all sizes Fri more tomatoes Sweet corn in small Cherries in only large box

BAH

Following up on my winter newsletter regarding the opportunity for a livestock farmer:  As I write this newsletter, there are several dozen sheep grazing the field outside my window.  Conveniently enough, it turned out that our new office assistant Terry had a herd of sheep in need of some grass.  We are working together to  see if Terra Firma can offer grazing opportunities for a long enough period to make the relationship work for both of us.

  The sheep are currently feeding on a 7 acre field of Sudangrass, a tall, fast growing hay crop.  To keep the sheep in the hay field and out of our vegetable fields, Terry uses an electrified fence that the animals quickly learn means “stop, go no further”.   As it is, the grass is growing faster than they are eating it, so there doesn’t seem to be much reason for them to venture elsewhere, anyway.

  We grow Sudangrass and other cover crops as a way of resting the soil and returning lost nutrients.  The other options available to us for accomplishing these goals are using composted manure or processed manure fertilizers, both of which require trucking and other fossil fuel use.  But turning a large amount of grass into soil nutrients requires quite a bit of petroleum, as well — or biodiesel, anyway.   Sudangrass can get over 6 feet tall in a month or even less.  Returning the crop to the soil takes lots of horsepower, both to mow it and to plow it under.  It also takes time — at least two weeks — for the grass residue to decompose to the point where we can plant the next vegetable crop into the field.  Sheep do much of this work for free, with less fossil fuels, and they do it more quickly.

Cows and sheep — ruminants — are amazingly efficient at turning grass into manure while using little or no petroleum and producing a marketable product.  Manure is much more quickly incorporated by a health soil ecosystem than grass stems and roots are, and the nutrients are available much more quickly to crops planted into the soil.  By substituting sheep for tractors, we will be saving a hundred gallons of diesel per acre or more in the process of growing a cover crop.

  Did I say “cover crop”?  Livestock growers and ranchers call the crops they grow to feed their animals “Hay” (if it’s harvested when dry), “Sileage” (if it’s harvested when green), or “Pasture” if it’s still growing when the animals eat it.  Historically, growing hay and pasture were  ways for farmers to rotate their crops, give the soil a rest and add fertilizer to it, all while producing a cash crop — the animals.  Even now in California, alfalfa grown for hay is rotated through fields between crops of grain or vegetables.

  Since we’re not livestock farmers, though, I think I’ll stick to my original term.  As I mentioned in my first newsletter on this subject back in the spring, I have little interest in adding animal husbandry to my “to do” list any time soon.  However, if any carnivore TFF subscribers are interested in securing a source of free range lamb that grazed on our fields, you can email Teresa at <Teresaanncamacho@hotmail.com.>

  In the meantime, I really just enjoy the sight of sheep grazing in a green field.  I took some pictures recently and will put them on my blog as soon as I get a chance, http://terrafirmafarm.typepad.com/pablitos_blog/

DROUGHT, WHAT DROUGHT?

The Governator might have declared a statewide drought last week, but here at TFF, we actually had a normal — if a bit compressed — rainfall season last winter.  Our two water sources, the underground acquifer and Lake Berryessa, received adequate rainfall to recharge them, so we remain one of the most water-sustainable vegetable farms supplying the San Francisco Bay Area.

In fact, the Winters area has supplied fresh produce to the Bay Area for over a hundred years due to its relative abundance of water.  Even before the advent of electric pumps and later, dams, farmers were able to grow fruit orchards here without irrigation because of the relatively high annual rainfall.  And Putah Creek’s large drainage in the Coastal Range made it a reliable source of water and made the farmland around it a natural choice for the earliest irrigated agriculture in the area.

IN YOUR BOXES

Tomatoes for all this week!  The earliest varieties from our fields are small and medium size red tomatoes:  Early Girls, Stupice, and others.  There is also the medium sized Orange Blossom.  We have also begun harvesting a smattering of early heirlooms, but there will be many more as we get closer to July.

After starting off with a bang, our Sweet Corn field has followed up with a whimper — we are currently between plantings but will have more in your boxes next week.  Meanwhile, we are at the peak of our spring Green Bean harvest, with multiple plantings being harvested at the same time.  Our season goes until July 4th, give or take a week, then resumes again in September when the hottest part of the summer is over.  Very high temperatures in July and August cause the bean flowers to abort, causing low yields.  Also, any beans we harvest during the hottest days of summer tend to be tough and  less tasty.

Apricots are finished for the year at TFF, and this is our final week of Cherry harvest.  With those two fruits finished, you’ll be seeing a corresponding increase in the amount of Peaches and Nectarines in your boxes.  The peaches will be augmented or supplanted occasionally during the summer by Figs and Plums.

The other mainstays of our summer fruit production are melons and watermelons.  Fruit in our earliest fields has already begun to ripen, accelerated by the heatwaves of late May.  The first watermelons are in this week’s Large boxes, and they will find their way into Medium boxes next week.

Once again we’re sending along a bag of freshly dug, unwashed New Potatoes.   Remember to keep them in the fridge, and if possible, wash just before using.

Thanks,  Pablito

Please make sure to include your account name, the one on the sign off sheet & on the box, in every correspondance to Valerie

Recipes............................

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Vacations & Billing Inquiries
We need seven days notice before a vacation hold or other change of service.
Contact Valerie through voicemail at (530) 756-2800, or e-mail Goldenbell@aol.com.  Include your account name in full (what's on the sign off sheet).

Account Balance Inquiries The account sheet is hiding under the sign off sheet each week with your account balance on it.  Mid month I've been e-mailing statments, so if you're not getting it send me an e-mail requesting to be added to the list. To be able to read the statements you need to be logged in as an administrator on a PC, and virus programs may corrupt the file. Some Mac operating systems do allow the file to be viewed.  We can't resend them, and it wouldn't work any better the second time anyway.

MAILING ADDRESS:
Terra Firma Farms, Inc
P.O. Box 836
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 756-2800
www.terrafirmafarm.com
Goldenbell@aol.com

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