Farm Diary

End of strawberries

Kevin — Sun, 25 May 2008 12:59:00 GMT

Well, we are rapidly approaching the end of our strawberry season. I don't think we will make it to the very end of May as we had anticipated, but we did get an early start and the weather is turning hot. We have been very successful this first season and are very happy with the community's response to our strawberry patch. Lara and I have been run ragged and are looking forward to a short break to recover. But before that break, I will mow down the strawberries and plant the cantaloupes so we can get the second crop produced before next fall's strawberry planting operations have to start. The plant disease issues that so alarmed us early on turned out to be very manageable and we prematurely lost only 100-200 plants. That is not so bad considering we started with 14000 plants. Our pond is down about 1 foot so we should have adequate water supplies to carry us through the summer...hopefully. We will break ground shortly to expand our strawberry field and that may require more water consumption. More later...

Great week

Kevin — Sat, 03 May 2008 02:35:00 GMT

Tomorrow will be our 2nd big Saturday of picking. Business has been steady with the early part of the week relatively quiet and the latter part of the week building up to a big weekend. We are working hard to keep the field producing at its maximum. Early this week we had a huge rain event dump nearly 3 inches on us. It was great for the young sweet corn plants but not so good for the strawberries. At this stage rain is undesirable and is the cause for a number of diseases that require spraying to control. One benefit of the rain was it helped put the brakes on a serious spider mite infestation that had spread throughout most of the field. These critters are tiny spider looking mites that suck the juices out of the plant leaves. They are about the size of the sharp point of a needle and require a 10x magnifying lens to see. But they can devastate a field. Unfortunately, there presence has required us to add a miticide spray to the fungicide spray program. Letting them take over the field would result in the total loss of the plants and we hope to get 4 more weeks of strawberries.

Our customers have been fantastic and we have received many nice comments on our field. We are usually at work in the field right after dawn, mowing, irrigating, fertilizing, weeding, spreading fresh straw, followed by opening up when the first customer arrives around 9 am, then we stay busy running the farm stand, picking pre-pick strawberries and the greens for sale. After closing at 7 pm, we clean things up, restock, and zip up the tents, and on some evenings we spray the field at dusk after the bees have settled back in their hives. Every spray has a different requirement on dosage and how long the field must stay closed for picking. We try to coordinate the sprayings and required field closures with an afterweekend shutdown to let the berries ripen. Of course, the most important factor is what plant trouble or insect problem we are dealing with and the need to control it before the field is damaged.

We are a professional operation now; we just added a porta-jon. After a few kids came running up with a painful expression on their faces, we decided the porta-jon would likely avert some disasters.

Hopefully our field will stay healthy and continue producing sweet strawberries through the month of May.

We're in full swing now

Kevin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:58:00 GMT

Our field is really producing nicely now. The Camarosa strawberries have developed excellent sweetness and flavor when allowed to fully ripen. The Chandlers strawberries are producing like crazy and are extremely sweet and juicy. The plants are currently healthy and vigorous with an abundance of berries ranging from green nubs to half-ripe to fully ripe and a full canopy of new flowers. Our customers have already picked 1/3 of the minimum expected gross production of the field so it looks like we may beat our expectations if the weather keeps up for us. It has been too hot the past two days, so a cool off is much desired. So far we have not had to spray any insecticide. We have a very large population of lady bugs which are controlling the bad pests very nicely. The weekly fungicide spray program seems to have arrested the fungal disease and hopefully the plants will stay healthy.

About mid-week one of our beehives decided to swarm and I found an enormous swarm of bees on a willow oak branch about 7 feet in the air above the hive. Jim (our neighbor beekeeper) and I cut the branch off and lowered it, swarm and all, to an empty beebox doused in sugar water. The bees decided that would make a nice new home for them so Jim now has added one more freebie bee colony to his collection.

We're currently irrigating the field as this hot weather has made the plants thirsty. I also have the garden vegetables under irrigation as the tender lettuces really suffered in the heat today. I'll go out at 11 tonight and redirect the irrigation water for a couple more hours.

First full day open

Kevin — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:18:00 GMT

Today is the 3rd day we opened and the 1st where we had enough berries to stay open all day long. It started out rainy but that didn't stop our customers. Some of them really got a soaking in the morning. Mid-day it really poured on us for a while, but in the afternoon it cleared up and we continued to harvest ripe berries.

We already are having to separate very clearly the 25% Camarosa section from the 75% Chandler section. The Cams just aren't sweet at all until they are blood red, almost maroon in color. This variety is what is commonly purchased at grocery stores. The Chandlers are sweet as soon as they are mostly red and the fully ripe Chandlers practically melt in your mouth. We are really looking forward to some solid sunshine to fill these berries with sugar. We have been directing most customers to the Chandlers, especially those with kids. For the adult customers, we explain the more rigorous picking requirements of the Cams and let them choose what variety they want to pick. I feel bad if they get a semi-sweet berry so have emphasized the need to pick the Cams beyond red.

Unbelievable, looks like we are going to get 2 nights of probable frost next week. We will probably cover the field again Monday afternoon and leave the covers on until Wednesday morning. I thought we were done with the frost protection, but Mother Nature has one more winter blast for us.

Good news and very bad news.

Kevin — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:54:00 GMT

Yesterday we had our first customers come pick the very early ripe berries. The field was picked clean by late morning and we were forced to turn away customers. We closed the field until Thursday, hopefully this awful cloudy weather pattern will break and we can finally get some sunshine. We appear to be way ahead of other strawberry farms in the area, probably due to our prompt planting Oct. 1 as well as the winter application of row covers that accelerated the growth on half the field. It will likely be at least another week of sunny weather before the entire field starts producing.

Now the very bad news. We are seeing more than a minor number of total plant collapse in some areas of the field. I pulled a couple collapsed plants and after examining the crowns am quite sure that we have an anthracnose crown rot infection issue (The Glo). This fungus is a terrible problem for strawberry plants in our region and an entire industry has been developed in Canada to grow strawberry plants that are free of this disease. Last fall "The Glo" was diagnosed in many plants throughout the Carolinas originating primarily in North Carolina grown plant material. We learned this spring that some farmers lost up to 50% of their strawberry fields last fall due to infected plant material. This represents thousands of dollars/per acre in plant cost that is wasted, not to mention the loss of all the potential income. We learned that our own plant supplier experienced terrible losses as did several of his farmers who purchased his plugs. Fortunately, we experienced no losses in the fall and all of our plants appeared healthy and normal. Until now. Plants are wilting and dying. All that we can do now is remove the wilting plants from the field to prevent the fungus from infecting neighboring plants and hope that our losses will be in the single digit percentages. As the weather warms up and the plants are stressed by heat and fruiting, we will certainly experience more losses.

All I can say is that strawberry farming is not for the faint-hearted. Between droughts, freezing weather, fungus, and creature damage, it is a wonder that strawberries can be raised profitably at all. We do everything in our power to combat these enemies, but some of them still get you one way or another.

We are finally opening!

Kevin — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:01:00 GMT

Tomorrow April 7th, 2008 we open to the public after a full year of planning, purchasing, farming, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. We have had a very bad week of weather, nothing but rain and overcast skies, but there are a few ripe berries out there ready to be plucked. I even pumped a little water into the pond yesterday, but the big rain missed us and it was mostly wasted effort on my part. I took the big truck to Locust, NC, to buy 50 bales of barley straw from a cattle farmer. We'll have to spread a lot of that in the middles to give the pickers a little traction on that slick mud.

I hope that our limited amount of berries does not hurt the customer's perception of our operation. I've been encouraging phone callers to delay their picking date by a week or more so that there will be plenty of berries in the field when they arrive. But there are enough out there now that they need to be picked or they will spoil. And there are some super sweet, gigantic berries ready to be picked. Soon enough the field will be sinking under the weight of ripe strawberries and then we'll be in full swing.

Freezing weather.

Kevin — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:07:00 GMT

The frost never materialized last Friday so the row cover work was wasted. Better safe than sorry. But Monday night we put them out again and the temp dropped to 29-30. The next morning one section of 3 rows that we didn't have enough cover for had dead flowers from the freeze. We left the covers on again for the expected frost Tuesday night but it never dropped under 40. This morning I frantically worked to finish up version 1 of the rowcover reel and we tried it out. Lot of trouble with the covers snagging anything sharp and difficulty with the reel evenly filling up with the cover. We did half the field, then stopped because we were tearing the covers too much. Manually removed the other half, then spent the afternoon modifying the machine. Tried version 2 on the 2nd half and it worked much better, but still had some snag areas that caught the covers.

The field is loaded down with green strawberries and we are picking a few handfuls a day now. We are looking good for an opening the second week of April, maybe even the first weekend.

Now I have to build a shielded sprayer to go after all the weeds cropping up in the middles. Killing off the ryegrass in early winter was a big mistake as it allowed the weeds to germinate in the middles this spring and now they have to be dealt with.

Frost advisory

Kevin — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:02:00 GMT

We covered up the field this evening in anticipation of frost early next morning. I cut out all the steel for the row cover reel today and will do all the machining work tomorrow, maybe start welding. I'd like to get it finished soon so I can put it to use.

Yesterday we had a brief rain and I managed to pump the pond up about 3/4 inch. I modified the discharge piping to make it easier to hook and unhook the pump as I can't leave it in place for fear of theft. Every time I make a change to equipment to simplify something or speed up a process I am usually out at least $50 in parts.

I picked up the first batch of used fryer oil from the country club chef today. It tested excellent; I will be able to achieve nearly 100% conversion to biodiesel with it. I told him I'd bring him some of the early ripening strawberries next week as there won't be enough ripe to open to the public until early April.

Hillside Orchard Farms made the first truck delivery of ciders which we will sell as frozen slushies at the farm stand. Unloaded a pallet full with the forklift.

Biodiesel oil partner

Kevin — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:09:00 GMT

This morning I made the 3rd week fertigation, 21 lbs/acre of ammonium nitrate and 15 lbs/acre epsom salts. Mailed in the 3rd week tissue sample. Some of the Camarosa berries are starting to get red and quite a few Chandler are turning red.

I am filtering the pond water with a pair of Netafim disk filters in parallel. It is much cheaper than a sand filter and works fine, but the filters clog fairly rapidly and I have to clean them out often. There is also too much pressure drop across them when they get a little dirty and I don't get enough pressure drop across the regulator to run the fertigation injector. I have to run 1/2 acre at a time and clean the filters after each 1/2 acre.

Last week I met with the head chef of Longview Country Club in Union County to discuss supplying his restaurant with fresh vegetables and strawberries. We set up a great barter that benefits both of us. He is going to give me his used fryer grease in exchange for fresh veggies. I will use this steady source of grease in my biodiesel conversion operation. I will be able to increase the use of my "home-brewed" biodiesel in the farm tractors, saving me $$$ and helping our enviroment a little bit in the process. With fuel approaching $4/gallon, it will be a great savings opportunity for the farm.

First ripe strawberries!

Kevin — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:33:00 GMT

We picked the first couple ripe strawberries this weekend; these were some very early bloomers that somehow got an early start. The rest of the field is way behind. The plants that spent time under row covers over the winter are way ahead of the rest of the field. One variety has a significant load of berries already formed. The entire field is blooming heavily now and the bees are having a heydey.

The first tissue analysis came back from the state with warnings of low magnesium and sulfur and scary comments about low pH conditions or bad plant roots. Then the lab called on the telephone and said a retest of the same sample showed everything was on target and said to maintain the regular nitrogen fertigations. I've injected 100 lbs of calcium nitrate so far and will send in another tissue sample mid-week.

Got another good inch of rain, but the tractor was all set up with the water wheel planter as we were in the middle of the spring planting of leafy stuff, the pump was still under the shed back home, and I just wasn't in the mood to get wet, so I skipped the pumping and just enjoyed the rain.

Cold weekend.

Kevin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:58:00 GMT

Another good rain came through a few days ago. Set up the pump again and raised the pond level almost 2 inches. It's now less than 20 inches down so we should be in good shape for the summer. Last night set out the row covers. Got down to 26 degrees. Left them on for tonight...29 degrees expected. Forecast shows warm weather for the next week.

Great rain tonight!

Kevin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:10:00 GMT

I was finally set up in advance to pump water into the pond when the rains came this evening. I pumped for about 3 hours, almost continuously. Stayed out in the rain from 3 pm to 7:30 pm. Thank goodness it wasn't too cold. Brought the pond up 5-6 inches. It is now less than 2 feet from full pond. I'm starting to feel pretty good about the water supply for the summer.

The bees have found the strawberry blossoms. The advertising banners came today and we hung them at the road. Had to quickly add a "Open early April" sign underneath because a customer pulled in the drive right after the signs went up.

Made first fertigation today of 50 lbs calcium nitrate in 2 hours of drip.

Pulled back row covers

Kevin — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:59:00 GMT

Pulled the row covers off this morning. Lots of dead blossoms and lots of new live blossoms. Can't really estimate what percentage died in the freeze but it was considerable. Took petiole samples for first analysis. Yesterday my neighbor and I brought over two bee hives and placed near the field. One brood chamber got bumped out of place while trailering and the bees got riled up. They took a liking to my head and I got stung 2 or 3 times in my hair.

Icy morning.

Kevin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:46:00 GMT

6 am - NWS said 21 degrees and the thermometer agrees. One of the instrumented blossoms reads 30 and the other reads 27...not good. The tail end of one of the row covers has blown out again. The wind blew over a 6 foot step ladder last night...must have been strong.

I see a lot of darkening blossoms in the areas where the covers blew off, also in the first row peaking under the cover. I will leave the covers on through saturday for more freezing nights, but it does not look promising that the blossoms survived.

Started designing a tractor mounted hydraulically powered row cover spooling implement. Ordered the hydraulic motor, shafts, and shaft couplings. Decided to go with a big motor direct driven to the spool rather than the complexity of a chain reduction.

Deep freeze tonight!

Kevin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:36:00 GMT

We have had mild weather for several weeks now. The 1/4 ac Camarosa and 1/4 ac Chandler that were covered from early Jan to late Feb have started blooming, especially the Cams. I'd say 20% of the Cams have one or more blooms open already. This afternoon dad, Lara and I covered the entire field with the 1.0 oz row covers in 20-30 mph wind gusts. We have had a hard time keeping the covers down; I added more rock bags around the edges...probably one every 6-8 feet. NWS predicts 21 tonight and high winds. The 1.0 oz covers may not cut it tonight. I checked two blossoms with thermocouples after dark with ambient temperature already below freezing. Looks like they are about 6 degrees warmer than ambient. My digital thermometer loses accuracy when the instrument drops to around freezing. It reads about 1.5-2.0 degrees warmer. At room temperature it is dead on measuring an ice bath. I'll check tomorrow at 6 am.

Hard rain this morning.

Kevin — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:05:00 GMT

Weather radar is showing a thin hard rain squall coming this morning. Doesn't look long enough to warrant setting up the pump.

Wow! We got over an inch of rain in just a few minutes. Too bad there was a lot of lightening. I might otherwise have rushed the tractor and pump over to get some more water stored up. The pond is down about 2 feet.

Lara and I spent our anniversary weeding the field

Kevin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Today is our 12th wedding anniversary. Lara and I celebrated by spending the entire day in the field weeding the plants and digging out side crowns from under the plastic while the kids wandered in and out of grandpa's house. The gas-powered picking cart I built works great. No back-breaking work sitting down low between the rows and motoring along from plant to plant.

More repercussions from the problematic planting issues we had last October. The water wheel planter I built had too small diameter planting wheels and too long plant spikes. This caused several problems. The plant spacing didn't work out right due to the dragging/skidding effect when the long spikes contacted the bed; the effective rolling radius of the wheel was bigger than anticipated and so the plant spacing got long. Then the hole in the plastic tended to be offset from the hole in the bed. Come spring one side of the plant tended to get stuck under the plastic and we spent too much time fixing that problem.

The plugs were too deep as the holes were oversized due to the long spikes and the skidding effect. This also gave the plants space to grow under the plastic and get stuck. I hope we don't have disease trouble with the crowns being depressed.

The beds were so bone dry at the time of planting that I ran the drip in advance at times. Got them too wet in areas and the water wheel compressed the bed, leaving air space under the plastic. Another lesson learned. More space for the plants to get stuck under the plastic.

We picked out a lot of vetch from around the plants. This field has not been farmed since my great Uncle gave up farming watermelons in his late 80's around 1990. It has had a lot of time to accumulate an abundance of weeds. Looks like the plugs arrived with some volunteer weeds too, maybe a couple percent of them had a weed.

If customers wonder about the cost of strawberries, this is one reason why. There is an enormous amount of manual labor involved in raising these plants.

Tried to pump water

Kevin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:36:00 GMT

The weather radar showed a whole lot of rain headed straight this way in the evening and over night. After dark and 40 degree weather raining I took the tractor and pump down below the pond and hooked it up to the intake and discharge piping. The heavy rain didn't materialize by 10 pm so I left the equipment in place and went home. The next morning the radar showed another heavy broad patch of rain headed this way. Waited all morning as all the rain passed just to the south. Wasted effort...unhooked the pump and tractor and brought it home. Pond is down over 2 feet.

It's a shame that living in the city exposes our farm to theft of anything that isn't bolted down or poured in concrete. Can't leave anything out or it will be gone in no time. Last fall I left the pump (PTO on wheels) hooked up down at the pond for overhead watering of the new plants. One morning I walked around the pond and saw the craziest thing...The 4 inch irrigation pipe leaving the pump had been crushed flat in 2 places...about the width of truck tracks. Someone had driven across the dam and around the far side of the pond and tried to make off with my pump. They backed over the pipe, crushing it, then couldn't get across the creek/ditch between them and the pump, so left emptyhanded. As if growing strawberries does not enough challenges with weather, disease, and all the huge expenses, now I have to worry about equipment getting stolen at night!

Visited the Cooley's at Strawberry Hill USA, Chesnee SC

Kevin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:00:00 GMT

We stopped by Strawberry Hill USA for a bite to eat on the way back from the mountains...the van is loaded with 400 lbs of soluble fertilizer from Southern Ag in Hendersonville. James Cooley showed up and we had a nice visit with both James and his wife. There farm is as neat and orderly as any I have ever seen. The diner is the cleanest restaurant ever, good food, and good prices. We'll start going to the mountains via Chesnee instead of through Shelby just to enjoy their operation.

I removed the row covers from the Camarosa and 1/4 acre of Chandler that we covered over winter. The covers were placed in early January. It will be interesting to see how far the covered Chandlers get advanced over the uncovered plants.

Gotta get some water in the pond.

Kevin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:36:00 GMT

Our farm has one pond about 3/4 acre in size that is replenished by surface runoff only. Currently, it is nearly empty after pumping so much water onto the dessicated field in the summer to get it ready for bedmaking. It is too shallow to run the PTO pump, but I can still run the electric pump for the drip system. Before embarking on this venture, I confirmed with the city that I could purchase water from them through a fire hydrant next to the field, but now Charlotte has severe water restrictions and I doubt they will sell me water that I may need for frost protection.

There is zero runoff filling the pond because the fields are like dry sponges.

I have dug a huge hole down below the pond with the backhoe where I can collect runoff water coming from a very large area that doesn't flow into the pond. I've run 4 inch pipe from the hole back to the pond and pre-staged the suction pipe in the hole. I will monitor storm activity via weather radar on the Internet and set up the tractor pump in the event of a significant rain and hope to pump some water into the pond.

I've had the first successful pumping operation since setting up this operation. We had a night of rain, saturating the ground, followed by several hours of moderate rain during which I pumped. I was able to pump for around 2 hours at 500 gpm estimated. A few more of these and I should get the pond back up.