Blue Fox Farm » Farm

Spring Fields Planted Out

chris — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 06:04:35 +0000

We’ve started our spring succession plantings. Things are starting to take off nicely. We have water in our pond again. The plants are always happy for that.

Beating the Rain

chris — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:48:29 +0000

I’m really proud of our crew this past week. On Friday we pushed and got 90 flats of veggies in the ground. We were going to wait until Monday to do the second half of flats but decided if we had the window now to do it. It paid off. It’s snowing here while I write this. Oh wait, now it’s raining.

We also planted 3000 strawberry plants this past week. That feels great to have that accomplishment under our belt. It’s always a push to complete in the spring. IT’s the one crop that we plant on plastic, but it gives a top notch fruit, so we make the compromise.

And hopefully this week I’ll get to pour the retaining wall for the loading dock. My friend Chris and I formed up the wall this past week. Concrete is pretty fun to work with.

Look forward to seeing you all at farmers market this coming Tuesday. I’ll have lots of salad mix that day! Along with a pile of other great food.

Sub-Soilin’

chris — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 07:23:46 +0000

I had the chance today to sub-soil the entire upper field. I’ll hopefully be prepping that area tomorrow into beds that will be planted in the coming weeks. We suboil our soil to break any soil pan from past tillage plus it also aids in drainage as well as allows oxygen to enter the soil. It was a great day to be out in the field today. Hopefully tomorrow will be the same.

Veggies in February

chris — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:49:43 +0000

We planted out some bok choy today. As well as some Tat Soi. Into the new hoophouse.

Back at the home property our salad is doing just great. Should be ready for market at the end of March.

Melanie and I are figuring out our crew for the season, filling the greenhouses on a daily basis, making sure we have all the supplies for the season, and enjoying hanging with Demian as much as possible. With a kid this cute who wouldn’t want to?

We still have room in the CSA for this season. If you’re interested please check with our CSA information page.

Out in the covercrop

chris — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:58:15 +0000

Melanie, Demian, and I were out checking the covercrop today to see where it was at in growth. We’ll be mowing it down and tilling it in this week. You can see the height on the oats (the grassy looking blades) and the peas (look like pea plants- ha!) compared to our little guy. Notice his cool shirt with the tug boat- Chuggin’ along! …. That’s what we’ve been doing all along……

Ahhh transplanting and diesel

chris — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:49:47 +0000

Today we had another major plant out. Lettuce, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Bok Choy, and our first sweet Onions of the season. (We do have some overwintered as well). We’re trying a sweet onion variety this year being developed here in the valley. It’s called Siskiyou Sweet. We’re growing it along side the classic Walla Walla sweet to see how it compares. If it works out we’ll probably continue with the Siskiyou Sweet considering it was grown about 10 miles from our farm. We planted out seven 400 foot beds today. Hats off to our crew. They’re transplanting maniacs. I was on the tractor most of the day making more beds. I also spent the day thinking about biofuel production now that diesel has hit $4.25 (on road price) in our area. Not that I hadn’t thought about it before, let’s just say I was reintroduced.

My biggest dilemma with biodiesel is that it takes methanol to produce it so I wouldn’t say it’s petroleum free. The only other option I see currently is using Straight Veggie Oil but I’m not sure Landini (my tractor maker) would understand if i tried to convert it. Nor would Melanie if it didn’t work.

So I’ll just ponder more, and keep searching for answers. Any one have any thoughts or solutions on this one?

My petrol arsenal:

Beginning Farmers Markets

chris — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:50:30 +0000

Just a quick note:

Blue Fox Farm will be back at the Ashland Farmers Market on April 1st. Ashland Markets are Tuesdays 8:30-1:30

I think we’re planning to be at the Grants Pass Market the third week of April- probably the 19th. Grants Pass Markets are Saturdays 9:00-1:00

I’ll post details of what we’ll be bringing soon.

oh the rain

chris — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 05:52:08 +0000

Tomorrow Melanie, Demian, and I are invited to talk with a group of folks that meet here in the Applegate Valley to discuss a topic of their choosing. They’ve invited us to talk with them about the current state of organics, GMO foods, food policy, and just in general what we’re up to here at Blue Fox Farm. Should be really fun.

What are we up to here at the farm? Waiting for it to stop raining. It did actually stop today and tomorrow we have a continuing window of no rain. So as soon as we finish up with the discussion group we’ll be high tailing it home and I’ll be heading out to the field to till ever so shallow-ly so we can get in and transplant the 100+ flats of veggies that have been waiting out the rain. They really are quite responsible veggies, patiently waiting, but at some point the humans need to help them out and set them in the soil. Hopefully that will happen on Monday and Tuesday. And then supposedly more rain on Wednesday. Ahh spring.

Plant, plant, irrigate, plant….repeat

chris — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:34:24 +0000

Finishing up cleaning our irrigation ditches this week. We should have water in the ditches and on to our pond by Wednesday or Thursday, which is good since we’ll be planting into the fields this coming week. We’ll also be transplanting out our strawberries for the season. They should be coming via UPS tomorrow. I realized yesterday how much we still have left to do and the main market season is getting close. I’ve learned not to let the entire picture weigh me down, instead I just breath a lot and take my list of things one at a time. Okay, so every once in a while I freak out for a few minutes, but that’s usually just for 5 or 10 minutes in the evening when I’m thinking about the next days projects.

We’ve all had a cold over the last week so I haven’t had much motivation to do much other than work or sleep.

Our crew will start showing up in less than a month. Oh dear, I better go get things done.

The Season is Shaping Up

chris — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:35:35 +0000

Transplanted Salad Mix into the hoophouse Friday. That was 30 flats of transplants. Yet, somehow the propagation greenhouse is still bursting at the seams. I think we may have started a few more veggies this spring than in previous years. (Read: A lot more veggies!!!)

Looks like we’ve firmed up our crew for the season. It’s always exciting to see what life will present us each year and how we can finely tune the different applicants into a great team. I’m really excited for the season to get going.

We have so many projects to accomplish this next month- Finishing up in the new packing shed, getting irrigation set up, tilling tons of beds, cleaning the irrigation ditches from the river to us, finishing up a few top secret implements for the tractors, and a few hundred other things.

But we’ll get’em done I’m betting.