Now the Fun Begins: Practicality meet Creativity

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The decrease in sunlight and heat during the winter season creates some interesting relationships in the greenhouse.  Although all growth slows down, some plants are much more sensitive to these climatic changes than others.  By observing these growing patterns over time, we must adjust our seeding patterns to increase the ecological and economic efficiency of the greenhouse.  Each week The Captain and I get together and sort through a list of all the open soil beds that were prepped and rested for at least a week; these are beds that are ready to be seeded.  In order to keep a lively and healthy soil system we maintain a rigorous crop rotation that ensures we never seed the same plant family in the same soil bed twice in a row.  Once a plant family like a lettuce (Compositae) has its final harvest, we move on to a new plant family which may include a carrot (Umbelliferae) or a spinach (Chenopod) for example.   To be doubly sure that no pests or pathogens can multiply or develop colonies in the soil, we make sure to rotate in at least 3 other plant families before we go back to a lettuce.  One complete cycle may look like this:  1st a carrot, 2nd a spinach, 3rd arugula and once all three of those crops have been seeded and harvested respectively we can start thinking about planting another bed of lettuce.  With 7 different plant families and plenty of diversity, this rotation offers a lot of options.  In winter the amount of weekly open beds is somewhere in the 4 to 6 range, in summer it's generally up in the 12+ range, so a major difference here.  When deciding what to plant, we take many factors and people into consideration.  The amount of sunlight, the phase of the moon we are in and the phase of the moon we are approaching, the rate of the seed's germination and growth, the plant family, the restaurants that we want to sell to and the market we want to be prepared for.  Each of these factors help us determine what and when we should seed.  After many years of observing and experiencing, The Captain has a great understanding of how we can proseed (too easy) most efficiently.  So here in January and February we know that certain vegetables such as...

From the Garden to the Garden: Chamomile tea an all-natural, chemical-free solution to prevent fungal development

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One of the beautiful things about working on a farm focused on sustainable, regenerative agriculture is the emphasis on the living system.  The plants we grow are only as strong as the soil they grow in and in-turn depend on the thriving ecosystem of microbiology found in the soil as well as the added nutrients used to increase soil vitality.  This provides a strong base from which plants thrive and produce healthy, delicious food.  Understanding that, we are focused first and foremost on buildling the strongest and healthiest soil possible.  During Fall, Winter and Spring transitions, many people become more susceptible to disease and I've noticed that the soil also faces these same challenges.  Unlike my ENT who likes to just hand me a bunch of antibiotics and walk out the door, The Captain uses some very effective old school methods of boosting the soil's immune system and this way there is no need to toss relatively new chemical solutions at an age old problem that has already created it's own solutions long ago.  The best part is so many of these all-natural solutions are found right in our own backyard.  Although the soil we are working in at Stone Barns has a healthy base of organic matter through compost and other natural soil amendments like Kelp, every fall and winter season there seems to be an onset of fungal and moss issues as the humidity and cool weather combine to be a haven for these infestations.  In order to counteract this, we use a number of all natural solutions, one of which is chamomile which can be found growing all summer in the terrace garden.  This comes in handy, not only for hot tea on cold winter nights, but as a great...

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Have you ever picked a strawberry in winter?  Almost, almost.

Keepin' it Real, Real Seasonal: Sweet Curry Parsnip Soup with a sauteed leek and crispy bacon garnish

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Patience is a virtue as they say, and with the winter weather not quite setting in as expected, it's been tough to get into winter soup mode.  Nevertheless, it's been almost a year since the parsnips were seeded out in the field and there's no better time than late winter to get harvesting.  Just like carrots and spinach, parsnips help protect themselves through the colder and darker winter months by converting the sun's energy, usually stored as starch, into sugar.  This makes for extra sweet and delicious parsnips, perfect for a rich, creamy soup.  My first instinct was to look online for some recipes, but with such incredible food resources roming around the farm, I decided to put my faith in a passionate culinary school grad/Livestock apprentice and housemate, Sam, who broke down all the basics of how to make a great root veggie soup in a few easy steps.  Throw in some extra spices and this was one of the most

Winter Greenhouse Systems Part I: Reemay Revisted

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How can you grow vegetables in the winter?  Don't you need to burn a ton of fuel to keep the greenhouse hot?  These are some of the questions I often hear when I tell people I work on a farm in the middle of January.   I think one of the most interesting and common misconceptions about winter greenhouse farming is that the greenhouse needs to use a lot of heat to grow food.   The truth is plants are incredibly resilient and creative organisms that find ways to not only survive in cold temperatures, but thrive in changing environments.  Spinach and carrots for example go through a process of converting starches to sugars to adapt to the fewer hours of sunlight during peak winter months.  This produces a healthy plant and creates an even sweeter taste that is more attractive to people.  What I find most incredible about the greenhouse I work in at Stone Barns is that even though the soil is directly in the ground and not in soil pots or benches, the deeper soil levels naturally maintain a temperature roughly in the 45 degree level where as the ambient temperatures can reach below freezing if not heated.  Understanding these basic soil facts allow us to work with earth's natural heat to create an ideal growing environment while maintaining a very low energy input usage.  We are attempting to produce produce that is best suited for the natural environment we are growing in and by keeping the surface levels of the soil just above freezing, we can grow fresh food all winter long.  So how do we keep the soil levels above freezing if the ambient temperature can drop below freezing?  Last year we discussed the benefits of...

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"But I can only show you the door.  You're the one who has to walk through it"

What's Your Favorite Vegetable?: Winter days with spinach

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One of the most enjoyable parts of winter farming is the pace, although only a fleeting moment, the December/January growth slowdown has offered me an incredible opportunity to not only observe, but to truly dwell in my relationship with the greenhouse.  Upon further reflection, it's amazing to think about how much I overlooked during the summer, between getting acclimated to this new lifestyle and simply trying to keep up with the summer burst of life, there were many times when I forgot to really look.  Obviously I saw and experienced an incredible amount, but as Fred Kirschenmann, President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture references in his book of essays, "Cultivating an Ecological Conscience," "it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning."  The summer was a blur, although I was working with many different plants and plant families, it was difficult to create a solid relationship with any one plant since every bed required so much attention.  Now, here in the dead of winter, I have started to dwell and build these relationships.  After 7 months as an apprentice on top of a year and half of volunteering/Beet Reporting, it can be easy to take for granted the incredible information that opened my eyes to the extraordinary world of plants in the first place such as our method of harvesting spinach.  During this year's winter months, the greenhouse is covered in spinach.    Every week I spend a few hours cutting spinach leaves for local restaurants Blue Hill restaurant, Sweetgrass, Tomatillo and the occasional winter green market.  As illustrated in the picture above, we can clearly see that the spinach leaves get smaller as you get closer to the center of the plant.  What does this tell us?...

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Fire in the sky