DeBerry Farm Blog

Things are in full swing!

2009-06-07T19:32:00.003-04:00

We've been selling at the Morgantown Farmers Market since May 3, now Oakland has started! We'll be attending the Oakland market on Wednesdays, the Morgantown one on Saturdays.

Plus, our CSA Vegetable Subscription Service is starting next week (June 10). It's a week early, but we have lots of greens ready now!

Things in the garden are coming along. The tomatoes look good (just took the row cover off some, and there are blooms there!) Charles is working on staking and tying them up today. He has a nasty cold, so he probably didn't get it done.

The sugar snap peas in the tunnel are over Cheryl's head now. We started harvesting them this week. Had around 3 gallons of them for the Saturday market yesterday. Yum!

The strawberries in the tunnel are beautiful! The ones outside are coming along as well. The lettuce outside is doing wonderfully for some reason!

We're hoping for a great season this year! Stop by at the market and say hi!

Greenhouse Happenings

2009-03-22T16:59:00.006-04:00

Wanted to show off our young plants in the greenhouse - they look so lovely!

Some lettuce seedlings - red leaf on top, green leaf on bottom.

Some baby kale seedlings - so cute!

The greenhouse is pretty full!

Greenhouse is Going & Winter Blues Market

2009-02-25T20:29:00.004-05:00

We got our "bare-root" dormant strawberry plants last week, and Charles got them potted up and growing in the greenhouse. Actually, some of them got planted directly into the ground in the tunnel, under row cover (an experiment). So far, so good! Can't wait for some lovely strawberries to start coming on in June and going through the fall.

Beyond the strawberries, we have some greenery starting to show up in the greenhouse. We planted some peas for pea shoots and buckwheat for sprouts - couldn't wait for real food.

We attended the "Winter Blues Market" in Morgantown Monday evening - it was the kickoff event of the WV Small Farms Conference. We took our salsa and hot pepper jelly. We were so pleased at the turnout of vendors and (more importantly) customers! Our customers are the best! The market was a success, and there is talk of trying to do a winter farmers market in Morgantown next winter - maybe once a month or so. Let me know if you have ideas/comments/suggestions for it!

Winter reading

2009-01-23T20:15:00.005-05:00

A friend lent me (Cheryl) her copy of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I started it last night. I had gotten to bed a little later than usual, and wanted to just read a few pages then put it down and drift off to sleep.

What was I thinking??????

I couldn't put it down! I kept going until I got to the end of the first chapter! Then, I absolutely forced myself to put it down to get some sleep. (After all I had to work today, and our little girl is a morning person!)

I had heard from so many people that this book is good. Well, I don't know how it ends, but the beginning is right on. This author has a knack for saying what I'm feeling about the whole "Locavore" issue - we should all be one!!!!

So, even with only one chapter under my belt, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. And it's a good time to be reading it - there's snow still on the ground!

Enough snow, we're ready for spring!

2009-01-19T11:32:00.003-05:00

Snow, ice, cold (very cold) weather - it's enough to make us think it is winter out there! We've been going through the firewood this last week - temps in the single digits (and below zero).

But, we do have some pea shoots growing in the basement - nice to have a tiny little taste of spring. Charles planted them to see if the seed is viable. These are pretty old seeds, and some were left out in the greenhouse last summer/fall. So they got hot, then cold, and were ignored in a corner on the greenhouse transplanting bench. But nature is wonderful, and at least half the seeds germinated!

The greenhouse is set to keep our strawberry plants from freezing - so it's pretty cold in there too. We'll be firing it up around the end of the month, to start our early plants. Our first market starts Saturday, May 2 in Morgantown. In the spring, when it is still pretty cold and the days are still short, it takes plants longer to mature. So a lettuce that is supposed to be ready in 50 days may take 70 days.
We've ironed out most of the logistics in our new (and improved) CSA Vegetable Subscription Service for 2009. We're making some major changes (some back to the way we started, some new ideas). Watch the website for details - we should be posting them soon and I'll try to remember to do a post here to let you know when we finalize everything.

Our 4-year old loves playing in the snow - and has been "partaking" every chance she gets! So if you drive by the house, you will not see a pristine, glistening, perfect blanket of white snow on our lawn - you will see zillions of little footprints, plus as many snow angels as she can muster the strength to make. (Do we care? NO!)

Hope all is well with you and yours this new year. My New Year's resolution is to post here much more often in 2009. Feel free to "bug" me if you see I have forgotten! In fact, that's the reason I'm writing today - someone "bugged" me last week...you know who you are! ;)

Thank goodness for seed catalogs!

2008-11-21T20:00:00.002-05:00

We have at least 8-10 inches of snow on the ground - it's cold and white everywhere! Though we did have some broccoli for lunch - picked while it was frozen in the field. It was still pretty good!

With all that cold out there, thank goodness the seed catalogs have been coming. We've gotten about half a dozen of them or so. What lovely pictures of fresh veggies, beautiful flowers, fragrant herbs...makes us dream of next year's market season.

Prices of seeds have gone up this year (haven't they for everything else too?), but not the 50% higher as some folks thought we'd have.

We'll have to select what varieties we want of items we already grow, plus find a few things to experiment with this year! Any requests?

Fall Happenings at the Farm

2008-11-10T21:16:00.003-05:00

This fall we've done pretty well at getting the fields cleaned up. We actually got the garlic planted on Columbus Day (the "official" garlic-planting day).

Charles worked a long time to get the plastic mulch and irrigation tape pulled up from the fields. We keep transitioning further and further away from using the plastic mulch - but we're not quite ready to get rid of all of it yet.

Charles got the cover crops planted last week. (Except the tomato patch - haven't tackled that one yet). Hopefully the rye will sprout this week and will soon start working its soil conserving and soil-building organic matter magic!

We're still eating a little cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and kale from the fields. Though they aren't growing very fast with these cold nights! A lot of the broccoli is starting to get a little brown inside the stems - too cold for them we suppose. But the tops and outside of the stems are still pretty good.

Charles has one tunnel ready to plant our summer strawberries - we're trying a different planting scheme this year. We'll be using landscape fabric in the strawberry tunnel to keep weeds from overtaking us!

As always, lots to do at the farm!

Markets are over! (Tested out the strawberry mix last night)

2008-11-02T09:17:00.003-05:00

Though we love our customers, the conversations, the jokes, the family updates, and interactions at our markets, we're pretty relieved that yesterday was our last market of the 2008 season!

We actually had some broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and cabbage at the market, along with our value-added products: hot pepper jelly, medium salsa, and strawberry slushie mix.

Speaking of the strawberry mix, this stuff is sooooo good! It makes wonderful slushies, smoothies, daiquiris, and is terrific as an ice cream topping. Charles tried it mixed in the blender with some yogurt, a few ice cubes and a little milk, and it made a wonderful slushie/milkshake type drink.

We'll be getting the mix (and jelly and salsa) in our store on the local harvest website so you can order online soon.

Autumn is Near!

2008-09-02T06:55:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's September! Can't believe how short the days are getting now. We've even seen a few leaves turning lately on the mountaintops. And, we only have 2 months to go with our farmers market season.

What does that mean?

The light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to show itself! This season has sure had its ups and downs! Most of the downs had to do with all those downpours we got for the first half of the season.

Some ups included the new sweet corn experiment (yummy!), the Italian roasting peppers (again, yum!), trying a fall planting of cauliflower and broccoli without plastic mulch, and trading veggies with Backbone Farm to "supplement" both our CSA's to provide more variety this time of year.

I guess it's too early to get too reminiscent! There's still lots to do. We need to clean up the fields and plant cover crops, clean out the tunnels and get them ready for spring, and get the greenhouse ready for spring as well.

Farm work never ceases.

Time's REALLY Flying!

2008-08-06T20:26:00.004-04:00

Wow, can't believe it's been a month since our last post. Sorry for the delay. We've been island-hopping in the Caribbean, drinking cute drinks with little umbrellas, lazing about, doing nothing and being good at it...

Wait, sorry, back to reality here.

We've been a bit busy! We've been selling sweet corn (and everything else...) for 2 1/2 weeks, trying to keep weeds at bay, and trying to clean up the mess the rain keeps making of the strawberries.

The poor strawberries don't do well when they're ripe and it rains - talk about fungus! And we're trying to use organic methods. So there's a lot of hand-work: pulling runners and weeds out from among the plants to improve air flow, removing rotted and rotting berries from the field to keep insects from finding them, and picking berries a little less ripe than normal.

The sweet corn is certainly that - sweet! We've gotten great reviews from our subscribers and market customers (even with the occasional worm and smaller ears on the early corn!) The next batch is coming on, and the ears are much bigger and our organic spray worked on most of the worms. So it's looking really nice!

Green beans are going like gangbusters this week - Charles took 5 bushels to the Oakland Wednesday market. (That took a lot of picking!) There may be a lull before the next rows are ready, though.

A few peppers (bell and banana) are getting ready as well. We need the bells to turn red so we can make more pepper jelly - we're almost out already this year!

The tomatoes are finally coming on - both the Brandywine (pink heirloom) and our reds (Mt. Spring, Celebrity). Even the Roma's are starting to ripen. Thank goodness! It was time for a good BLT sandwich at our house!

Thanks for reading, and we hope you have a great day!

Time Flies...

2008-07-07T20:39:00.004-04:00

Time flies, even when you're not having fun!

Enough with the rain.
Enough with the hungry critters.
Enough with weed growth.

OK, I feel better now. On with the show!

We're already in our 4th week of veggie subscriptions. Despite the things above, we actually have been having quite a nice variety for our subscribers each week.

The strawberries outside are finally starting to produce. The sweet corn looks great (except where the neighbor's cattle got out and decided to eat and knock some down). The first batch of corn is in silk, and starting to make nice little plump ears.

We have gotten a few ripe tomatoes from our plants - still waiting on most of them though!

We're getting ready to plant our fall crops so we have plenty for our customers all through September and October.

We had a great day at the Morgantown Farmers Market Saturday - thanks to all our loyal customers (and especially those who bring reusable bags!)

Veggie Subscriptions started today!

2008-06-17T21:28:00.002-04:00

Today we had our first veggie subscriptions of the season! Subscribers got a mixed bag of leaf lettuce, a head of Romaine lettuce, a half bag of spinach, a pint of strawberries, a pint of sugar snap peas, and a jar of our hot pepper jelly.

We had a few "snafus" but all in all it went well.

The rain really did a number on the strawberries, and we had a hard time getting enough pretty ones for our subscribers. The deer ate the Swiss chard we were holding for the subscriptions.

Charles left early to go get the bags assembled for the deliveries this morning. Then an hour later, he returned, as he had forgotten the strawberry clam shell containers in the basement.

Charles put all the deliveries in coolers to keep them fresh and to avoid the wind-whipping that can occur to lettuce. Of course, we forgot to load one of the coolers. So, he made an extra trip back to the farm house to get it.

He found all the delivery drop offs - after a bit of searching on a couple of them!

So mostly it was a good day. After we get the bugs ironed out, we think things will run more smoothly this summer.

Things are Sure Busy on the Farm!

2008-06-12T21:11:00.002-04:00

Wow, what a difference a little sunshine makes!

Our veggies are finally growing - and fast! Charles set up the irrigation line today so we can pump water to the plants. No more hauling water to holding tanks! Going from completely wet every day to 80+ temperatures for several days in a row is hard on the tender young plants. Luckily we haven't lost many to the weather yet.

Now the critters, that is another story.

First, a squirrel was devouring a whole row of ripe strawberries. Then a groundhog started eating a large section of our purple kohlrabi. The deer are eating the Swiss chard. And the slugs are eating anything they can! Argh!

We've transplanted most of our plants but we'll still keep planting beans, lettuce, spinach, kale, etc. throughout the summer so we have nice young and tender veggies.

We'll be starting our vegetable subscriptions on Tuesday June 17. A week later this year - due to the torrential rainstorms and cold weather this spring.

Such is the life of a fresh produce farmer!

Tunnel Produces Big Strawberries - Really Big!

2008-05-29T21:01:00.006-04:00

Here are a few strawberry pictures - Charles picked these this morning out of the high tunnel.

We put the ruler there, because the strawberry is over 2 inches across. We put it on the postal scale, and it weighs 2.1 ounces! (It would only take 8 of these monsters to make a pound!)

The strawberry on the right is a normal sized, one-ounce berry. In the center is one that is about 1.7 ounces. The monster is on the left.

Oh yeah, they taste so juicy and sweet too! We'll have some at the Morgantown Farmers Market Saturday morning. Come early and stay in line - they'll go fast. (Market starts at 8:30 am).

Giant Peas Take Over High Tunnel - Makes a Nice Hedge Row

2008-05-27T21:10:00.005-04:00

Woah, look at these sugar snap peas!

Charles is 6 feet tall, and they are over his head in places. The first blooms are about 5 feet high. As the peas grow, they will put out more blooms above the first ones. Good thing we have the step ladder in the back of the tunnel! We'll need it for picking in a few weeks.

Had a great weekend planting and mulching!

2008-05-27T18:37:00.002-04:00

Wow, what a beautiful weekend! Thank goodness it stopped raining for a few days, as we are painfully behind where we would like to be in regards to weed control, planting, and growing veggies.

We were able to plant some seeds, such as peas, beans, beets, and the like. We got 200 pounds of potatoes planted as well. We transplanted some more sweet corn and our first tomatoes outside. And the strawberries are now mulched between the rows. It's amazing what you can get done in a long weekend!

We're still behind, though. We still do not have enough veggies getting ripe each week to fill our subscriptions. We may even have to postpone our start of our veggie subscriptions a week. We usually try to start at least by mid-June, but we're afraid it may be later in June before we start.

So for a few more weeks we'll just take everything to the farmers market in Morgantown. The Cumberland market starts this week, but we don't have enough to go to both.

Pray for more sunshine!

Where's the sunshine?

2008-05-16T21:21:00.002-04:00

OK, enough with the RAIN! Our greens barely grew this week - we have much less to take to the market tomorrow than we've had the last two weeks. With no sunshine, things just aren't growing like we would wish them to.

We're hoping the rain holds off during the market at Morgantown tomorrow morning. Markets in the cold rain are downright miserable.

In other news, Charles was able to trod through the mud and transplant some onions this week, along with some Swiss chard, spinach, and lots of lettuce. We still have some plastic mulch to lay, but we have to wait until the fields dry out.

Please help us by praying for some sunshine! (And warmer weather!)

Morgantown Farmers Market Farm Fun Day this Saturday May 10

2008-05-04T20:45:00.003-04:00

Saturday May 10 will be a super-fun day for families who attend the Morgantown Farmers Market.

We're having a Fun Farm Day, where we'll have contests, trivia, and good old-fashioned fun at the market! Lots of giveaways for kids, and balloons, and prizes will be available.

Visit the market between 8:30 am and noon at the corner of Fayette and Spruce Streets in Morgantown, West Virginia.

And by the way, we'll have lots of veggies for sale as well! Come get spinach, two kinds of kale, Swiss chard, and more! Plus other vendors will have tomatoes, herbs, plants, crafts, and jellies.

We hope to see you there!

Planting Has Begun!

2008-05-04T20:41:00.005-04:00

We got a couple rows of cabbage, cauliflower, and the like planted in the patch along Rt. 219 on Friday evening. If you drive by while we're transplanting, you'll think we're just sitting in the field, but we're actually moving, very slowly! The tractor has a "creeper" gear, so it can go down to as slow as 0.1 miles per hour.

It goes that slow so we can plant behind the tractor. After the wheel pokes a hole and dumps some water in it, we have to shove the root-ball of the plant into the hole, and squeeze some of the mud around the roots to get the plants started nicely. So when you see someone riding behind the tractor, with their feet up, know they are actually planting furiously, not just sitting back having a joy ride!

Strawberries are Planted!

2008-05-04T20:35:00.003-04:00

Last weekend we were able to get all our strawberries transplanted into the ground. Yay!

Why rejoice? For several reasons.

We had the strawberries potted up into cell trays, sitting in between the strawberry rows in the high tunnel. That means we had to water them once or twice a day, depending on how hot it got! It means we had no room to walk between the strawberry rows.

It also means that when a vole or mole started tunneling under the plant trays, and started eating the strawberry plants, we had not recourse!

So, after the trays were out of the tunnel and on their way to being planted, one of the voles/moles was eradicated (we'll spare the gory details). Not sure how many more there are, but hopefully not many!

The strawberries are looking good in the field. Now if we can just keep the deer and other wild creatures from finding them...

Making Progress with Planting and Mulching

2008-04-22T21:35:00.003-04:00

Over the weekend Charles was able to lay a bunch of the plastic mulch for our plants to be transplanted into soon. Then it started to rain, so that gave him a day or two in the greenhouse to get more plants ready to be transplanted!

Thank goodness for the pretty days we can get out in the field, and thank goodness for the rainy days that force us to get into the greenhouse and get more seeds in trays. Sometimes if it's sunny for too many days in a row, we get behind in our greenhouse work. And vice versa when it's rainy, we get behind in our field work.

Such is the life of a farmer, though, we're at the mercy of the weather - big time! Who needs a one-armed bandit when you have mother nature to gamble with?

Charles, the Mulch-Laying Man!

2008-04-18T20:49:00.002-04:00

Charles worked at laying plastic mulch pretty much all day. When you lay a couple miles of it each year, it takes a little time.

The process goes like this: After plowing and working down the soil, you till the beds so the soil is nice and soft. Then you lay the plastic with the raised bed mulch-laying machine (ours if partly homemade by Charles, partly store-bought). Voila, nice, ready-to-plant-in, raised beds!

We hope tomorrow we'll have most of the day to lay more plastic before the rain comes. It was nice having some warm, sunny days to work outside.

But,

Sunny, warm days cause the greenhouse and tunnel temperatures to skyrocket. So you have to water them more often to keep the poor little plants moist. Running back and forth from the farm (where the tunnels are) to the house (where the greenhouse is) takes some time.

Hopefully mother nature will cooperate on a regular basis and let us get our work done.

More progress on the planting front

2008-04-11T20:11:00.002-04:00

Well, we got some peas transplanted out into the patch by Rt. 219. You'll see them as you drive by, they're in the left-most row (closest to the driveway).

Charles drove the stakes and ran some string through the stakes first, then set them out by hand. He carefully put the plants on the prevailing wind side of the stakes and string, so the wind would blow the pea plants onto the string, the peas would grab onto the string with their tendrils, and all would be well.

Well.

Of course, the wind blows one way in that field 90% of the time. The day Charles was putting the peas out, the wind decided to switch. So rather than blowing the peas onto the climbing string, the wind blew the peas over away from the string. So much for good planning.

But nature is pretty good at correcting herself. So some of the peas have recovered and found the strings. Others will find their way soon. All will be well, and we'll have delicious sugar snap peas in about 5 weeks.

Let's hope the cold weather the forecasters are calling for next week doesn't last long!

Taters and Peas are in the Ground!

2008-04-02T21:30:00.004-04:00

We've planted potatoes and peas in the ground! I think that's the earliest we've tried planting things outside. (Gambling with Mother Nature again). The warm dry weather we had a few days last week allowed us to get into the fields.

We have lots of strawberries, spinach, peas, and kale planted in the high tunnels as well.

With our first market starting May 3 in Morgantown, WV (www.MorgantownFarmers.org) we only have four more weeks to get ready! The warm weather really helps, but these cold nights really slow our plants' growth down.

Our tunnels are getting full, and we still need a "staging area" for our plants still in their trays, but not ready to be put outside yet. So, we're on the lookout for a used greenhouse or high tunnel. Let us know if you find one for a good deal!

Where's Spring? We have taters to plant!

2008-03-21T20:45:00.003-04:00

OK, enough with the cold already! We've got a heater in the greenhouse, a heater in the tunnel, and now a heater in the garage. Our propane bills are climbing each day!

We have to heat the garage now to keep our seed potatoes from freezing. We got them today - all 1,000 pounds of them. We have to keep them cool so they don't sprout, but not frozen because then they won't grow.

Our dream is to build a root cellar underground - to keep potatoes and other winter root crops at the proper humidity and temperature for longevity in storage. Until then, we improvise with the garage.

Wish us luck, and here's hoping the freezing temperatures don't last much longer.