Comment/Response? 
Daily activities of the owner of a 20 acre Organic Farm plus
observations, notes, and comments on a wide variety of topics.
| 1 | Mowed off the weeds in the
remaining onions and potato rows as the plants are all done. Roto tilled, planted and watered the last row of ornamental sunflowers (I wanted to see how late in the fall I could have cut sunflowers to sell - this planting was about 3 weeks too late - next year I'll have all my sunflower planting done by the middle of August) |
| 2 | Dug up the last of the onions and some potatoes. Also harvested the first pumpkins of the season. |
| 3 | Prepared for the Farmers Market. |
| 4 | Worked a Vendor booth at the
St. Joseph, MI Farmers Market. Watered ornamental sunflower seedlings. |
| 5 | Plowed East Meadow central where the first cuke and pickle field was. |
| 6 | Did the last bagging of Sunflower Seed Heads. Due to the large number of
sunflowers growing this year, in August I
bought bird netting for the sunflower seed head fields. There wasn't enough
netting for all my fields, so I planned on using the netting for the fields with the best
yield and used onion bags to protect the seed heads from birds in the other fields. Next year, rather than having several fields with sunflower seed heads, I'll use a single large area. Our East Meadow is the best suited for this. The soil is good quality and it currently has some old grapes which we leave for wildlife. I will mow and plow the paths between the grape rows and as time permits, I'll remove the grapes and plow their rows. I should have enough bird netting to protect this entire area. |
| 7 | Finished plowing the East Meadow. |
| 8 | Started building extra shelves in the greenhouse to dry sunflower seed heads. Normally, the greenhouse has shelves at 2,4 and 6ft for plants. Shelves at 1, 3, 5 and 7ft provide increased area so the drying seed heads can be laid out in a single layer for better drying. |
| 9 | Built more storage shelves
in the greenhouse. Mowed the weeds on 2 rows of potatoes in the Grapes SE Field. Wanting to rotate the potatoes to another field next season, I planted a couple rows in this field to see how they would do (they did fine). |
| 10 | Prepared for the Farmers
Market. Watered the ornamental sunflower seedlings. |
| 11 | Worked a Vendor booth at the
St. Joseph, MI Farmers Market. Built more shelves in the greenhouse. |
| 12 | Built more shelving in the
greenhouse. Started cutting sunflower seed heads for drying. |
| 13 | Bought more fence material for use as greenhouse shelving. Finished building shelves in the north bay of the greenhouse. Cut more sunflower seed heads. |
| 14 | Built the bottom shelf - greenhouse south bay. Cut more sunflower seed heads. |
| 15 | Built more shelves in the greenhouse south bay. Cut more sunflower seed heads. |
| 16 | Removed the summer shade
from the greenhouse roof. Sorted and stored the cut sunflowers. |
| 17 | Prepared for the Farmers
Market. Caught two 12 year old boys in our pumpkin field, smashing pumpkins. They had come to our property from the adjacent mobile home park (which has no boundary fence on our side). While they admitted to destroying 2 pumpkins, I later found about 12 had been damaged to the point they could not be sold. |
| 18 | Worked a Vendor booth at the
St. Joseph, MI Farmers Market. Built more shelves in the greenhouse. |
| 19 | Finished building extra shelves in the greenhouse. Finished cutting, sorting, and storing sunflower seed heads from the Grapes NE & NW Fields. |
| 20 | Harvested the largest sunflower seed heads from under the netting in the East Meadow SE & SW Fields. Not being sure how many seed heads I can store in the greenhouse, I want to make sure the largest are brought in first (most expensive and will take the longest time to dry). |
| 21 | Watered ornamental sunflower
seedlings. Mowed the walking paths around the farm. Sorted and stored sunflower seed heads. |
| 22 | Harvested all the winter squash. |
| 23 | Plowed the fields for the
winter squash and late pickles and cukes. Also plowed Grapes NE & NW where the
sunflower seed heads had been harvested. Cut sunflower seed heads in Ease Meadow SE. |
| 24 | Prepared for the Farmers
Market. Cut sunflower seed heads in East Meadow SW. |
| 25 | Worked a Vendor booth at the
St. Joseph, MI Farmers Market. Bought lumber to build end shelving in the greenhouse. Although the extra shelving in the north and south bays added considerable storage space, they are almost full. I may have to add a section of shelving spanning between the north and south bays where I normally have my potting bench. (As it turned out, I didn't need to build this extra shelving this year) |
| 26 | Finished harvesting and
storing sunflower seed heads. Took some photos and updated the Web site with seed heads in the greenhouse. |
| 27 | Watered the ornamental
sunflower seedlings. Started taking down the sunflower seed head bird netting. |
| 28 | Rolled up 2 sections (each 14ft wide by 200ft long) of bird netting. Decided to build a net rolling device - so I did. |
| 29 | Rolled up the last netting section from Grapes SE and started taking down the supports. |
| 30 | Took down 4 bird net sections from the East Meadow SE Field. |
Comment/Response? 