Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
It’s such a rush when the farm really starts to come together and the sun is warm enough that rapid growth begins! This is the time of year when plants change overnight and the abundance is astounding. With the good rains this winter vibrant green is everywhere in the lushness of the landscape and the height of the grasses and other plants in the pasture.
The cover crop in beds that have yet to be prepped is damn near as tall as me, but I’m making the shift from overwhelm to excitement about the remaining work as we close in on the home stretch of the spring lift. We got some help from friends this week in the big bed prep and planting push, and the propagation house isn’t looking quite so full now that a couple thousand plants have gone out to their forever homes.
Beets, shallots, arugula, mizuna and greenhouse peppers went out yesterday, and today will be more Asian greens and lettuces. The two rows of greenhouse tomatoes are in, and two more beds are cleared for planting of Salanova lettuce early in the week to come. Three of the four light dep hoops are planted, and the meat birds have been moved out of the fourth tunnel and onto fresh pasture so we can prep the beds and get the final hoop planted.
With the much warmer weather I’ve been focused on irrigation, installing sprinkler systems to keep the tender starts moist and happy as they settle in. We’re using the higher volume wobblers for large areas and the smaller mini-wobblers for single, wide terraces or places with a few narrow beds in one location. I’m also laying out the ½” inline emitter tubing that will provide drip once the larger-growing crops are sized up and have deep root systems, so that we can alternate between the targeted drip and the broad moisture patterns of the sprinklers.
We’re harvesting more produce than ever before, and I’ve been reflecting on the mixed feelings of contentment and stress that large harvests bring. It takes coordination, management and understanding of timing and the effort required to bring in the salad mixes, cooking greens, scallions and root crops that make up our spring offerings. On the one hand, I’m reveling in the beauty and quality of the things we grow, and on the other I’m ruminating on ways to be more efficient, effective and to continue to increase the quality and volumes of our crops.
Finding the right scale is one of the hardest parts of farming. If I plant more than we can harvest or sell then I have waste that costs money and uses resources. I develop multiple market channels to absorb the production, and I analyze our practices and the crops we grow to try to find the most efficient, productive methods to bring produce to market.
This year I cut our pepper production down from 6 hoophouse beds to 2, in part because peppers don’t sell all that well and in part because they are such a long season crop that they occupy the beds from late spring until the end of the year. Because we get such a late killing frost, the peppers often linger too late for me to replant a late fall crop for winter, and then with the holidays and needed downtime I find myself not getting those rows back into operation until late January or early February.
The extra 4 rows will rotate through salad mix, beets, salad turnips and radishes, and I’ll be able to pull off three or four crops out of each bed in the time that the peppers would have taken. I’ve been looking at the economics of the high-value hoophouse space, and figuring that each bed needs to return at least $300/planting.
It’s a little tricky to evaluate with the different length of time that each crop takes, so I’ve assigned a timeline of 3 months for that return as a baseline. This means that a 9 month greenhouse tomato or pepper crop needs to return $900 to make it worthwhile. The tomatoes definitely deliver, with a 50 ft row yielding as much as 1000 lbs or more of tomatoes at average $3/lb, but peppers almost certainly don’t make the cut. Salad mixes are the most viable by far, with a 60 day turnaround time and an average $500 return, but there is a ceiling of how much I can sell. I could try to expand my market channels and focus more on salad mix, but I also need to maintain a wide variety of crops to fill the CSA bags each week.
As we’ve leveled up into this new volume of production, I’m evaluating my market strategies and planning processes. Today 75 bags of salad mix will go to the local food bank because I’ve built into my crop planning a bump for the 3rd Friday food bank distribution day. It’s important to me that local produce be accessible in as many ways as possible, and this is part of my strategy for increased production. The farm grows and shifts over time, and figuring out the pieces and relationships is the great challenge and beauty of my life. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!