This is our farm column from farmer Casey O’Neill. O’Neill is the owner operator of HappyDay Farms north of Laytonville, and a long time advocate for the cannabis community in Mendocino Co; more of his writing can be found here. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer. If you would like to submit a letter to the editor feel free to write to [email protected].
Friday was one of those days that dreams are made of, where everything comes together! It was also incredibly hectic for me and I spent the day sprinting to keep the various balls in the air. I got up early to harvest salad mixes, turnips, radishes, bok choy and a cooking greens blend for the orders up here on the hill. I harvest on Mondays for town market, CSA and farmstands, and on Thursday/Friday for special orders, CSA bags up here on the hill and farmstand.
The third Friday of the month is when the Laytonville Food Bank operates, so I took the bags of salad mix that I harvested on Thursday over to brother Lito’s so he could take them to town. He also took the trailer to pick up the delivery of grain for meat birds that had arrived at the feed store. We’ll be unloading feed this morning into barrels spaced out along the pasture where the meat bird tractors will move to make it easily accessible for feeding each day.
With the crush of spring planting full upon us, I was glad to get help from some willing hands. A neighbor from up the road helped me clear hoophouse beds of blown out salad mixes, and in the afternoon two more friends came to help so we had four of us working on planting cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower in two long beds.
Staying ahead of the curve so that operations flow smoothly takes tremendous effort on my part, but when I’m able to anticipate the tools and workflow, then things move along smoothly. It has taken me years to learn to plan and be prepared, and although I’m getting better at it, it still requires all of my energy to stay on the ball.
Having a clear plan for the day is key; I need to know the order of jobs to be done along with having the components of each job in place so that the work can happen without folks having to wait for me to get my shit together. Being able to anticipate contingencies and the inevitable hiccups comes with the repetition of tasks over the years, so I start to know what can go wrong and can evaluate how long each job is likely to take.
In addition to harvest and bed clearing, we had a contractor coming to install a new, bigger pump in the pond on Friday. This was a momentous occasion, a true sea change for our farm because now we have the pumping capacity to get water from the pond at the bottom of the property up to our storage tanks up top. We’ve never run out of pond water, even in the drought, but we haven’t had the pump capacity to push enough water to keep up with the additional plantings over the last few years.
As salad mix production has increased, along with new hoophouses for vegetables and more beds for flowers, perennials and fruit trees, it has been a struggle to balance the water needs of these new beds with the needs of the pre-existing beds and especially the cannabis crop. The pump was paid for by a grant we got from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and will make it possible for us to grow more food, foster more pollinator plantings and wild spaces within the gardens and grow more cover crops and fall plantings of food.
When the pump setup was ready, I paddled a kayak out into the pond and tied the pump assembly to the floating dock and a few moments later it was fired up and flowing water, bringing a smile of joy to my face. Water stress in the late summer months has been one of the hardest things about farming for me and I’m deeply excited for the possibilities in the season to come.
The pump contractor headed out and I shifted my focus to preparing for planting the cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower. We’re trying a modified no-till process with one of the beds, in which I harvested the biomass for animals, broadforked and amended the bed and then put down cardboard, compost and straw back in January. The cardboard smothered the weeds and remaining biomass, and the compost on top of it caused it all to break down so that when we spread apart the hay to dig in to plant the 3” pots of brassica there was little residue of the previous crops or the cardboard but a ton of worm activity. We loosened the soil and added some chicken pellets into each planting hole, planted the plant and pulled the straw back around it. I’m super curious and hopeful for this method, which lets me get into beds that are still too wet to run equipment on them and terminates all previous growth for a weed-free planting bed.
After planting we moved to the propagation house, where we up-planted the next round of cabbages and broccoli along with all of the tomatoes and almost all of the peppers. I sowed trays of Salanova lettuce, basil and cilantro and then we closed the day with a celebratory joint on the porch. Getting food delivered, grain brought home, new pump installed, beds cleared, brassica planted, starts up-planted and new seeds sown all in one day was an incredible experience and I’m deeply grateful for the help from friends at a crucial moment in spring. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
