Old Otter Holler Farm

Gearing Up for the Growing Season

With the official first day of spring just under two months away, the farm is beginning to come alive with activity as we gear up for another growing season here at OOHF.  We have already ordered our annual flower plugs, herb and vegetable seeds, growing  supplies, and some replacement parts for a few of our hand pruners and saws.  I also picked up our first load of lime over the weekend and am making preparations to apply it to our pastures, garden areas, and raised beds in early February.  Our chicken manure pile is also doing well.  We've been cleaning out the chicken coop (drop board) every week since late fall and have been alternating layers of manure and straw in a pile, which is growing quite large.  We'll use this well-rotted mixture to side dress our tomato plants in the spring giving them  a boost of phosphorous (as well as nitrogen and potassium) when they need it most (during fruit set).  I've also contacted a neighbor to put in an order for a couple of 1-ton dump truck loads of well aged horse manure and sawdust.  We will use this mixture in our gardens, raised beds, flower beds, and around our fruit trees in early spring.  Speaking of fruit trees, pruning season is coming up fast and will consume quite a bit of my time starting in mid to late February as I prune several hundred fruit trees (and other deciduous trees and shrubs) around the farm.  Pruning season involves much more than pruning.  It is a time to get up close and personal with each tree assessing the form, growth, health, and removing egg masses of undesirable insects.  Inevitably though, I always have to prune off several limbs that contain preying mantis egg cases, which breaks my heart to do, but has to be done.  Whenever this happens, I always attach the limb with egg case to a fence post or other structure near the site allowing the insects to emerge in the spring and do their magic.

To increase the odds of a successful growing season and to keep the farm running smoothly, each week brings new tasks that need to be completed, each one building on the previous one.  I'll be posting more about what we're doing in the weeks to come and hope that you are gearing up for another growing season too!

Why Do We Garden?

Everyone who gardens has their own reasons.  Some folks do it for the excercise, to become more self-sufficient, or to have a few fresh vegetables and fruits over the growing season.  Here at OOHF, we garden for many reasons, not just to be more self-sufficient.  If you are contemplating gardening next year, here are some compelling reasons to start planning now.

• Grow the vegetables, fruits, and nuts you want.  Don't be a slave to the small selection and bland taste of the commercially grown vegetables, fruits, and nuts you find in the grocery store.  Grow varieties that are more nutritious, healthier, tastier, store longer, or for whatever characteristic you desire.
• Gardening is exercise.  In fact, it is not only a good aerobic exercise, it is also good for the mind and spirit.
• Create an edible landscape around your home.  Instead of planting traditional landscape ornamental trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, go ahead and plant something that you can eat or use.
• Gardening improves your property value.  A nice garden with good soil is like money in the bank as is a well-planned edible landscape that provides beauty, utility, and food for you and wildlife.
• Plan and prolong the harvest.  Growing your own vegetable, fruits, and nuts allows you to plan your harvest. For example, you can plant early, mid, and late varieties of certain vegetables or fruits.  In addition, you can extend your growing season using many inexpensive season-extending techniques.  This gives you more control over your food supply and food security.
• Supplement your livestock's diet with garden waste.  Nothing from the garden should go to waste.  Overripe or blemished fruits and vegetables make a fine meal for your livestock.
• Sell or barter the surplus.  Most of us grown too much on purpose, or maybe we just had our best year ever for a given crop.  Regardless, sell the surplus for a little extra income, or trade with a neighbor.
• Add value to your garden bounty.  Vegetables and fruits can be made into other products such as wine, vinegar, canned foods, insecticides, juice, etc.
• Propagate or grow your own stock from seed.  We're sort of in a unique position here at OOHF since we grow and sell bedding plants from the greenhouses in the spring.  We grow most of these plants from seed and end up planting our garden with the leftovers.
• Grow heiroom varieties and save your own seeds.  Open-pollinated varieties of fruits and vegetables often taste superior to hybrids and will come back true to seed.  You can also carefully select the vegetables and fruits you want to save based on a number of characteristics you wish to continue.
• Plant trees in your forest garden to serve many purposes.  For example, we plant trees for windbreaks, firewood, wildlife value, erosion control, shade, food, animal feed, fiber, etc.
• Grow a garden for craft supplies. Almost all of the perennial plants we grow, sell, and plant at OOHF can be used for dried flowers, fresh cut flowers, natural dyes, wreaths, etc.
• Reduce the size of your lawn.  Since moving to OOHF, we have reduced the lawn size by at least 50% by making pasture, chicken areas, gardens, flower beds, naturalized areas, and orchards.  We still have a long way to go, but as the lawn trees we have planted grow and mature, we'll be able to fill in under them with shade-tolerant species such as elderberry, blueberries, etc.  Besides food, the next best thing will be less grass to mow!

I'm sure I could think of a few more reasons why we garden, but I am interested in hearing from others on why you garden.

 

 

      

 

 

Yields from New Seed Garlic

Last fall, actually in late November, we planted seed garlic from a variety of new-to-us types and have broken up the bulbs for replanting today.  Before replanting this year, we decided to weigh the cloves just to see what our yield was for last year.

Georgian Crystal:  Two pounds of seed garlic returned 2.75 pounds of seed

German Red:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned two pounds of seed

Romanian Red: 1/2 pound of seed garlic returned 1.25 pounds of seed

Siberian:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned one pound of seed

Thermadrone:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned 2.5 pounds of seed

Even though the yield seems a little low to me (I don't have anything to compare it to though), we are pleased with the results and hope to increase the yield substantially next year.  This crop saw some real weather extremes this past season with snow covering it for three months, then no moisture and high heat from late May to mid-July.  Because we rotate our crops, I'll be planting the garlic in a place this year that has traditionally returned higher yields on most crops.

Bumper Crop of Black Walnuts

This year has turned out to be one of the best years I've ever seen for Black Walnuts here at OOHF.  Nearly every mature tree was loaded with nuts, which have been steadily falling to the ground for the last several weeks.  In fact, in some places the nuts are so thick you can't even walk without twisting an ankle.  This is a far cry from last year when there wasn't a walnut to be found anywhere around the farm despite the 50 plus mature trees that inhabit our creek bottom.  I've already seen the fox squirrels busily picking up the nuts and hiding them for winter food.  I'm sure this year there will be enough for both us and wildlife.

Despite being busy pressing apples and tending to the livestock, we have been collecting as many walnuts as we can and dumping them in our gravel road that leads from the house to the orchard.  As we travel the road daily in our utility vehicle, we run over the nuts removing the outer casing and exposing the hard nut shell to the elements.  After a few weeks, we pick up the nuts and store them in large netted potato and/or onion sacks and hang them in the well-ventilated hoophouse or one of the outbuildings where they will finish drying and curing.  While pressing apples this past Saturday I picked up and cracked several walnuts near the apple press, and while very tasty, they were not quite ready for cracking since the nut meat had not lost enough moisture to separate properly from the surrounding shell.

Black Walnuts are reliable nut producers and, when properly dried and cured, will last until the next harvest season.  We typically collect a dozen or so large sacks each year and munch on them almost daily during the winter months when we're lounging by the woodstove on a cold winter night.  Since we don't eat many sweets, we eat most of the nuts plain with the exception of banana nut bread and a few other baked goods.

For those who have tried, cracking a walnut is no easy task.  The nut casings are extremely hard, and when crushed, are used commercially for sand blasting.  When we first started cracking walnuts, we tried all sorts of methods including a hammer and vice.  Although successful, it was lot of work and one of use  usually ended up with a smashed finger.  There had to be a better way.  After doing a little research, I discovered the Hunt's Black Walnut Nut Cracker.  The cracker is known to be one of the best and is handmade by the H & C Nutcracker Company in Des Moines, Iowa.  This nutcracker will efficiently crack any nut from 1/2 " to almost three inches.  We are extremely happy with our nutcracker and highly recommend it.  Although quite a bit pricier than when we purchased ours, it is still worth it.

On a side note, I noticed this morning while feeding some apple pomace to the pigs that there were a few dozen walnuts on a black walnut tree that was no more than 25 feet tall and only five years old.  This is very unusual since it takes at least 10 years for a black walnut tree to produce nuts.  This particular tree is different in that it is a stump sprout from a diseased black walnut tree I cut down about five years ago.  The tree was suffering from a canker, specifically the Perennial Target Canker (a.k.a. Nectria Canker), and would probably have broke at the canker location and fallen over on my fence if left alone.  The year after I cut the tree it stump sprouted three new stems which now range is size from about 10 feet to 25 feet tall.  It is interesting to note that a seed-sprouted black walnut that size would not produce nuts, nor would it be that tall after only five  years.  I'm not an expert, but is seems that the root system of the tree plays a large part in the tree's nut production and growth.  Since the original black walnut (about 14" dbh) had a mature root system when I cut it down, it invariably had the stored energy and the availability of resources to promote the fast growth and accelerated nut production of the stump sprouts.  This is good to know if I ever have to cut down another black walnut and am worried about the loss of the nuts.

Annual OOHF Community Seed Swap

Join us at Old Otter Holler Farm in Pence Springs on Saturday, January 30, 2010 from noon to 3:00 PM for our annual Community Seed Swap in honor of International Seed Swap Action Day.  The goals of the seed swap are to meet new people who are interested in seed saving, share local wisdom on seed saving and gardening in our area, expand the cultural and genetic diversity of our seeds, and strengthen the food security and ecological viability in our community.

Old Otter Holler Farm grows, sells, and barters a variety of annual and perennial flowers and herbs, an assortment of heirloom tomato and pepper plants in the spring, organically grown seasonal fruits and vegetables such as heirloom apples, blueberries, green beans, peas, squash, tomatoes, peppers, greens, and beef, pork, lamb, and chicken to order.