End of the Season
Except for bagging up popcorn, I have not been doing much farm work. This time of year the labor does not involve heavy lifting. It’s the end of the year and I’m spending time reflecting on this growing season. Thinking…
Category Winter
Getting Gifts Together
It is the gift giving time of year. I’ve been busy making most of my holiday gifts. It can be tough to figure out what to give friends and family but I have always found handcrafted items bring a smile…
Cleaning Up For the Season
After a bit of a dry spell, the rains are back. In December this hauls any fieldwork and sends this farmer inside to stay dry. But there is plenty of farm work to do like organizing everything in the barn,…
Oh Drip Tape
I’ve been doing a lot of mowing and removing a lot of irrigation. This is the early winter work involved in putting the field to bed for the season. It’s typically this time of year that I realize there is…
Farmers Love Books
As a farmer with winter coming and farm life slowing down, now is the perfect time to stay inside and get cozy with a good book. Books make great presents this holiday season either as a hostess gift or a…
Family Help
Recently I have had a lot of family visiting. When these visits were planned way back when, I figured we would spend our days sightseeing and occasionally visiting the farm to do some weeding or greenhouse work. But with the farm…
An Early Spring
The weather has been so sunny and warm it’s hard to remember it’s February. Here in Sonoma we have gotten very few rain storms this month but it’s not the lack of precipitation that worries me right now, it is…
Regeneration
Last week I was down in Pacific Grove at the annual EcoFarm conference. I find this conference to be almost a pilgrimage, I leave before dawn and travel to a space filled with people involved in sustainable agriculture some I…
Starting the Crop Plan
This week I started working on my crop plan for the 2016 season. This begins by looking at what I grew last year, what sold well last year, and what new things I think I might want to add to…
Popcorn Research
While visiting family over the holidays I had the opportunity to go to the National Agricultural Library in Maryland. The National Agricultural Library is one of four national libraries of the United States and houses one of the world’s largest…