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.
This week I harvested 120 lbs of salad mix, which makes for a helluva lot of salads. Some of it went to our farmers market, CSA and farmstand customers, some to wholesale for a festival and some to food bank which is on the 3rd Friday of the month. It was the highest volume I’ve produced in a week, and it has me thinking about market channels, customer desires, crop planning and food safety.
Salad mix is an incredibly fast crop that grows well in the right conditions but can become bitter or too spicy in the heat and is susceptible to all sorts of pests. These days we do two blends, one that is a mix of Salanova lettuces, and one that is the lettuces plus an Asian greens blend of mizuna, Tokyo bekana, tatsoi, red choy and arugula. I prefer the second mix with the flavors of the mustard and arugula, but it’s not for everyone so we do both blends to try to provide for different tastes.
The paperpot transplant system is the key to my salad mix game. It allowed me to shift from laborious planting of plugs in 72 cell trays to pulling the transplanter down the bed as it plants the paper chains of starts from the 264 cell tray. The increased number of plants/tray means that I need 2-3 trays to plant a bed (depending on whether the plant spacing is 4″ or 6″) instead of 10-12 trays of the 72 cells. I seed the paperpot trays with a drop seeder that cuts the time for sowing down dramatically, and the reduced number of trays take up less space in the germination chamber and the hoophouse. Fewer steps to move them with less shuffling, and minimal bank-bending work to get them planted has meant I can grow a far larger scale of salad mix than ever before.
As my ability to sow and plant with consistency has increased I’ve had to make some decisions about crop planning to find space for the additional salad production, and I’ve also begun to prioritize other quick and popular crops like the Hakurei salad turnips, beets, plantings of individual Asian greens (rather than blends) and also kale and collards for smaller-leaf cooking greens blends. Putting more emphasis on these crops meant less space for long season crops, cutting from 6 rows of peppers down to 2 gave me an extra 4 rows of hoophouse space where the wobbler type sprinklers keep things wet.
Even with the additional 4 rows I still needed more space, so I strung up a 30x50ft piece of 30% shade cloth to cover the south side of the salad mix tunnel and more specifically the 3, sunbaked beds below the tunnel that have been too hot for the tender crops. With 14 beds in rotation for these crops and two shadier sections of about 30 foot at the end of two cannabis terraces, I can maintain a steady supply of the tender crops so long as I’m on point with the timing of my sowing. It seems to work out well if I sow enough for 2-3 beds each week, so that all 16 planting areas turn over on an 8 week average (salad mixes are a little faster, beets and heavy cooking greens a little slower).
The increased production also has meant that for the first time in the years I’ve been farming, I’m producing more than I can sell with my current market channels. I’ve always been in a “pull” market, not able to produce enough and trying to keep up. That’s a stressful feeling but I’m finding that being in a “push” situation is more difficult because of the extra effort required to produce the additional volume. The food bank program helps to alleviate the pressure, and it’s important to me to include donations in my crop planning to make local produce more accessible to everyone in our community, but even so I’m looking at new market channels and thinking about next steps.
We’ve done restaurant sales in the past, especially when the Big Chief was rocking in Laytonville, but it’s been a few years now since I’ve pursued those channels. This week we had a wonderful farm visit from Ryo from Hatake Farm Kitchen in Willits and I’m excited to start getting some produce to him (and if you haven’t checked out his Ghost Kitchen you should go online and place an order next time you’re hungry in Willits!
I’m also excited that the Mendolake Foodhub now has a regular pickup in Laytonville on Monday late in the day, which works perfectly for my Monday market schedule. The local food system has so many facets, from producers, sales channels, distribution efforts, farmers markets, farmstands, restaurants, grocery stores, wholesale customers, and the community members who take local food home to turn into nourishing meals. It feels good to be part of a local food network that is growing and learning to thrive.
Last year was the first time that I was able to produce consistent volumes of salad mix all the way through the heat of summer. This year I’m hoping to maintain larger production and continue to raise the bar on quality. I love the challenge of it, the puzzle pieces that have to fit together in 3 dimensions across time to arrive at marketable produce and get it where it needs to go in a form that’s accessible to my community. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
Casey O’Neill owns and runs HappyDay Farms, a small vegetable and cannabis farm north of Laytonville. He is a long time cannabis policy advocate, and was born and raised in the Bell Springs area. The preceding has been an editorial column. The Mendocino Voice has not necessarily fact-checked or copyedited this work, and it should be interpreted as the words of the author, not necessarily reflecting the opinions of The Mendocino Voice.