Kurt’s Field Notes September 28, 2024

i gave my crew the whole weekend off! They needed it. They’ve been pulling some late nights and long work weeks for a whole month. This coming week we get a break from harvesting fennel for wholesale. While they rest, I’ll be inside doing computer work all weekend.

The crew poses for a picture after harvesting carrots for last week’s CSA box.

I’ve got a BIG project that I’ve been putting off — namely a new food safety protocol. Because we are lining up future official contracts with Whole Foods and (hopefully) Chipotle, they require us to have a higher standard of Food Safety than we currently have. Most of the things they expect we are already doing, but I don’t have a “manual” with SOPs to document it all. This means I’m researching food safety manual SOP templates, looking at checklists to make sure my document has all the elements I need in it, and (most important) actually following the SOP the way it’s written. Then I have to organize the document, reorganize all our logs, make some new ones, and then actually implement the changes that we make — all before October 11th when the inspector comes. This will likely be a full day inspection — looking at my pack shed, wash bay, coolers, watching my crew harvest the 3 crops in question, interviewing them, reviewing my SOP binder, asking for logs, quizzing us, etc. It’s a big deal. Unfortunately we wasted a bunch of time last month creating a massive SOP manual for a “Primus” audit — only to find out last week that we actually need to use a different auditor. Turns out this was a good thing because that manual was full of so much lawyer talk, I could barely understand my own document. This one will be much more user friendly and fit our farm better.

Sunset on Wednesday.

Let’s talk about the weather this week. We got a nice amount of rain — not too much, just right. I was worried it was going to rain every day, but it didn’t. It gave us a nice break from the regular irrigation schedule. And it allowed me to sleep through the night at last — normally I get up twice a night to check the irrigation heads. It was very windy this Friday night as a front came through. Every time we have a big wind storm, we my black crate stacks fall down — makes a big mess.

The pixie crunch apple is one of the “elite” apples from Quarry Hill. Super crunchy and sweet. Did you like it?

The crew has been harvesting lots of tomatoes for our bulk orders in their spare time, as well as peppers. I’m watching my fields empty out. We should have enough food to get us through week 18. I’m not sure how much I’ll have left for a Thanksgiving share, though! We’ll see. It’s a good feeling to see all the stuff you’ve planted getting used. Sweet potatoes will be ready by the final week’s share. Plenty of carrots to come, and winter squash is curing in the greenhouse.

This funny picture — our new kitten “Nut Job” scaled this electric pole after Daisy chased her. She is quite a climber!

This week you get some of my garlic! This will probably be the only time you get it this year. I need to save it for seed next year. We’ll be planting next month. I also won’t be able to give you any spaghetti squash unfortunately. My cousin who grows it had a crop failure, so you won’t see that this year.

I had to rig a special stand to hold the scaffolding of the new hose.

The other big story this week was I unspooled our new hard hose for our irrigation reel. This spring I ordered a new hose for the water reel. The thing is, when it arrives, it comes wrapped and spooled, but you can’t just “cut the tape” and uncoil it. The tension in the hose would snap as it unwinds and probably severely injure you. So instead, they ALSO send you a bunch of lumber, built to spec. You have to construct this lumber to create a wheel — Corinna says it looks a lot like a windmill — then put the hose on this wooden frame and connect it to your steel irrigation reel to start the transfer. (see picture). The problem was that I needed to mount this wooden scaffolding on something secure. So I called in my buddy at Andersons Irrigation to come out and problem solve it with me. We ended up getting a big metal pipe to mount on a base, which I set up on the ends of two wagons. Then I had to tie off the hose to my truck with a yellow rope, to act as  ‘brake’ in case the wheel started to uncoil too fast.  In the end, it all worked, but it was quite a process!

Here is a picture of the wing they are building.

On the home front, Jed and Josiah are building a HUGE airplane. I mean, it’s going to be huge. It has a wingspan of 8 feet. It’s actually very light. They say they have a big enough motor to get it up in the air. Every few days, something arrives from Amazon or some other Rocket company with a new part. Jed announced the other day, “I’m going out to buy some metal.” (Not something you hear every day from a teenager.) This week they say it will be ready for a maiden voyage. I’ll be sure to document it! Do you think it will fly?!…