Connor and Claire Live on an Organic Farm: The Final Days of Spring

It's now late May! Broad-tailed hummingbirds buzz outside our window and the wind sways the small willow trees and canopy cottonwoods outside our cabin. The willow groves and cottonwoods are a paradise for birds, and we awake each morning to the beautiful western meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, ravens, yellow chats, and warblers (and plenty else we haven’t identified yet!) Sometimes the warm spring days make us forgetful of freezing nights. When one such night in mid-May promised to be below 35 degrees, we frantically worked to hoop and cover all of our new and old transplants. Such love and care has gone into raising each of these plants from tiny seeds, and it’s not worth risking a potential nighttime frost.

Dark clouds roll in as we rush to cover our new transplants and seed beds from the cold

Kerry and Claire make tents for a row of peas

On a farm like Rain Crow, there is no such thing as unused or wasted space. Space for transplants out in the fields is coveted and limited, and where extra plants can be squeezed in, they will be. Leeks grow straight and tall, which means that the empty spaces in between them will either be crowded with eager thistles and bindweed or given to feathery fennel transplants. After weeding and trellising some outdoor peas, we found that the outside strip of the bed wasn’t being used. Thus a little room was found for a couple trays of head lettuce. By the time the peas grow tangled and become truly bushy, the head lettuce will hopefully all have been harvested.

Transplanting Leeks

Squeezing some head lettuce outside a row of peas

Kale transplanting was our first daunting project, and for a few days we filled bed after bed with hundreds of Lacinato, red Russian, and green curly kale plants. The fields are expanding rapidly and are now watered with a gun that connects to a fire hose at different locations around the field and pumps out gallons of water as it rotates.

Sarah and Connor transplanting green curly kale

Connor waters in transplants while the gun takes care of the rest of the field

The Desolation of Voles and Slugs

The prop house was full to bursting with every table full and plant flats occupying second level shelves, and tables on either ends of three tunnels were packed as well. Where to put our extra plants? Beneath the tables in the tunnels seemed a good temporary place, but the next morning we walked in to find that voles had feasted that night on those unlucky kale plants. Voles continue to be our greatest nuisance in the tunnels, despite our numerous traps, snakes, dogs, and cats. Sometimes losses must be taken in stride.

On the harvesting front, it's the slugs and roly-polies that give us the most grief. They nibble holes in turnips and radishes so that half our harvest goes to the chickens, and we're back out in the tunnels searching for shiny, untouched pearls and rubies.

A stunted kale forest, the work of voles

Slug alert

The desolation of slugs

Perfect ground pearls

Organic fertilizers

Plants at Rain Crow are treated to a powdered organic fertilizer at every stage of their early life. Yum-Yum, a fruit and vegetable (vegan) based nutrient mix is added to seeding soil and bumping-up soil, and we also add a pinch into each transplant hole. Transplants in particular are also dunked into a microbial root dip called Rootwise before being planted. This is the first year that Rain Crow is trying the microbial mix, and already it is evident that plants are overcoming transplant shock faster, and quickly developing healthy outdoor foliage.

Another organic fertilizer used on the farm is called Bio-live, made from animal and fish nutrients. The strong fishy smell prevents us from using this mix out in the fields because raccoons and other animals will dig up the plants, but we use the mix in the greenhouses and in pots!