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January 2, 2008

The Farming Year

Farm News
2 January 2008

The Farming Year

Farming is an interesting job, in particular our type of farming. Our style of farming is to grow as many possible crops with each season, throughout the entire year. At some point this was given the phrase “truck farming.” When people ask what we grow on our farm I tell them we are “an organic truck farm;” opposed to a farm that specializes in growing an item or a handful of items.

This past year on our farm we grew 28 different crops ranging from peaches to radishes and everything in-between. Of each crop we grew several different varieties (for the crop of radishes we grew four different varieties of radishes this year), the total number of different varieties that we cultivated this past year was 111.

The implication of this is that our team of field crews, tractor drivers, irrigators and packers need to be able competent in the knowledge of cultivating each of these different crops and varieties. All of which have different water requirements, different equipment needs, different cultural practices and different harvesting and packing methods. It would be much more easy to get really good at growing a thousand acres of one variety of processing tomatoes, but for obvious reasons that is not what our farm is about.

The result of our diverse crop selection is that at the end of every year I take a good look back over those 111 different varieties and take note of what I would like to improve for the following year. There are some varieties that I won’t grow next year and there are new varieties that are already in the works to be tried. There are some pieces of equipment that I didn’t have last year and are on the top of my list to purchase for the year to come. The spacing of some of the crops were too tight or not tight enough – notes have been made to try to get that better next year. The planting time of some crops was too late and too early on others – notes have been made for better planting times next year.

There were also a lot of things that went really well this past year, proof that this annual evaluation works. There are pieces of equipment that we used for the first time this year that I can’t imagine farming without. This year we were able to harvest every one of the 111 varieties of crops we grew – something I hope happens again next year. Some people were given new or added responsibilities that made the farm run more smoothly and increased the quality of our products.

I suppose this is what business and life are about, taking an honest look back at how things went and trying to make adjustments for the future. With all of the dust from 2007 settled, I must say that is was a good year for us and that we enjoyed being able to grow as many crops as we did knowing we had a network of customers waiting to receive them. Thank you for all of your support last year and we are already planning and planting your meals for 2008. -Thaddeus

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