Yesterday High & Dry Farm was honored by the visit of our congressional representative Kim Schrier.
Representative Schrier was the first customer at High & Dry Farm’s new farmstand. Talk about a grand opening!
Kim Schrier visits our farm
Funded!
Our USDA EQIP high tunnel grant application didn’t get funded initially, but then USDA found some loose change behind their sofa cushions and belatedly awarded the grant to us. Follow us as we race to get our 30’x95′ veg cathedral completed soon enuf for a Fall crop.
Here is a list of some project milestones:
- Grant contract signed -Done
- Rototill site – Done
- Fed approval of contract – Pending
- Set position of 4 corner posts and check for square
- Order high tunnel kit from Oregon Valley Greenhouse
- Site visit by archeologist and NCRS Cultural Resources approval.
- Preassemble bow assemblies.
- Rent stump grinder to remove 3 stumps
- Roughly level site (max 5% incline allowed) and sculp drainage channels along sides
- Set 4 corner posts
- Install perimeter landscape fabric
- Set side posts
- Mount bows
- Install diagonal bracing on sides
- Construct endwall frame
- Cover endwalls with polycarbonate
- Attach baseboards and hip boards
- Attach wigglewire channel
- Mount poly skin
- Install side roll-up devices
Walk-in cooler and wash/pack building
Our new walk-in cooler and wash/pack buildings are now nearly complete. They are fully functional and just need a little trim work.
Infrastructure
Making progress. The site has been leveled and forms put into place to pour a concrete foundation. Our trusty farm truck has hauled big loads of construction materials. The base and 4 walls for the walk-in cooler have been constructed and await assembling on the concrete foundation when it is complete.
Dry Farming
This was our first experiment in dry (non-irrigated) farming. And what a test it was! This was one of the driest summers in recorded history, with a total of 0.7″ inch of rain-fall July through September. Yet a single 100′ row produced 150 lbs of winter squash! The key, I expect, was that we had one of the wettest Junes in history, creating a reserve of soil moisture that lasted all summer.
WSDA Grant Awarded to High & Dry Farm
Our request to the Washington State Department of Agriculture, for a Local Food System Infrastructure Grant in the amount of $26,416.00 was awarded in full. This will allow us to upgrade our vegetable wash station and install a walk-in cooler for food storage.
Persephone
In northern (or southern) latitudes, vegetable growth virtually ceases when day-length becomes less than ten hours. Days are shorter than ten hours for at least a few days any place on the globe above latitude 30 or below latitude -30. This includes almost all the United States except the most southern parts of Texas, Louisiana and Florida. The calendar months during which there are fewer than ten hours between sunrise and sunset have been dubbed the “Persephone period” by Eliot Coleman. Although plants grow little during the Persephone period, mature plants may remain healthy. Thus, winter harvest of many salad greens is possible if they are planted in Fall, allowing enough time for them to reach maturity before the beginning of Persephone.
Johnny’s Select Seeds has published a chart that helps chose, depending on the date at which Persephone begins at your latitude, the best Fall planting date for various salad greens to allow winter harvest. However, the chart is awkward to use. Based on this chart, I have created a free database that automatically calculates the best Fall planting dates for your location. To use it, sign up for a free Airtable account here. Once you have signed up, download a copy of the Fall Planting for Winter Harvest to your Airtable account here.
Launching our Farmstand
Fresh vegetables are now available from High & Dry Farm’s new farmstand. Vegetables should be pre-ordered, with payment by credit card here, and then picked up the following day at our farmstand at
32814 120th St. SE, Sultan, WA 98294
And did I mention we have had rain every day except 5?
Farming Software – Organic Farmer 3.0
Maintaining organic certification requires keeping complete, extensive and detailed records about all aspects of farm work, and requires keeping copies of receipts for all purchases of seeds, fertilizers, etc. Even market gardeners that do not seek organic certification must maintain extensive records to be compliant with food safety laws as codified in the FSMA. As I am an intrinsically disorganized person, I have created a relational database to facilitate keeping and maintaining the required records. The database is now on its third iteration of improvement. The beauty of the database is that it runs in the cloud on Airtable, which allows access by smartphone from the field, as well as via web browser from a laptop or desktop computer.
Annual recertification of an organic farm requires an inspection that typically takes two to three hours, with most of this time devoted to auditing farm records. During High & Dry Farm’s most recent certification inspection, Airtable allowed me to power through the audit, which was completed within one hour, with no significant issues reported.
We am now making this database system, Organic Farmer 3.0, available to farmers completely without charge. Sign up for a free Airtable account here. Once you have signed up, download a copy of the Organic Farmer 3.0 database to your Airtable account here. Detailed instructions for use of Organic Farmer 3.0 can be found here.