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.
Yesterday we held our annual Bell Springs Fire Department fundraiser, and it was a helluva good time! It feels so special to come together as a community to celebrate, catch up, and raise needed money that will help equip and maintain our volunteer efforts. We’ve already had several calls this summer, and fire season is far from over. I love the shared effort of creating an event, bringing together locally grown food to enjoy a meal in community.
I’m struck by the effort and commitment that it takes to build and maintain community. It means showing up, but like all good alchemy, the sum is more than the parts, and the joy of gathering creates good energy and positivity that flows forward. I find myself reminded of the importance of knowing each other, of being able to count on each other to show up, to work together, and that how we show up in the good times has a huge influence on how we show up during the hard times.
Just like fire training is practice for what we’ll do when there is a real fire, community gathering is practice for the lives we want to lead, for the bonds that strengthen us to carry us through the inevitable difficulties of life. It’s not always easy, and there are plenty of times when I’d rather just stay home, but I find that once I arrive I’m so glad to be in a shared space and connecting with friends and neighbors.
On the farm, August marks the beginning of processing season as the abundance of summer overwhelms sales channels, and knowledge of an eventual winter hastens the desire for putting up food. I’ve been making big batches of pesto from the voluminous basil crop, while Pops is working on canning whole tomatoes and making salsa. As summer wears on towards fall we’ll make ketchup, marinara, hot sauce and pepper jelly, and I’ll continue with pesto until we get a cold snap in November.
Hot crop harvest season runs from July all the way through fall because our first frost date often isn’t until late November or even December. Most of the tomatoes, and all the peppers and basil are in hoophouses, which buys us extra time with the frost protection they provide. Despite their reputations for a lack of cold hardiness, we’ve found most of the warm weather plants can manage a decent frost if they’re protected in the tunnels.
It’s tricky to know how long to let the peppers and tomatoes go; some years they don’t frost-kill, and I miss the window to get them cleared and the beds replanted with cold-weather crops before the darkness of winter and the holidays set in. I’ve found that if I don’t replant by early December, it probably won’t happen until the middle of January, and then those crops miss the early winter markets and don’t come in until late February or March.
It seems like I need to set a hard date of crop removal, regardless if they are still producing or not, so that I can get the winter crops in and growing while there is still enough light. I start by replanting the light dep tunnels as soon as they are harvested, usually two hoops in early October and two hoops by early November. The two cucumber beds at my place come out by the end of October, tomatoes sometime in November, and with the other rapid rotation beds I have twelve hoophouse beds to rotate between salad mixes, cooking greens, scallions, beets, radishes and turnips.
The pepper and tomato tunnel at the farmstand is always the last to get cleared and the hardest for me to get replanted, so this year I’m planning to strip the last of the peppers and tomatoes by November 15 so I can plant bok choy, kale, collards and carrots in that tunnel’s four beds. Crop planning generally looks forward from start time, but working backward from when I need the bed space available forces me to make decisions about acceptable timelines for the previous crop.
Some things are easy — root crops are finite. Once you’ve harvested them, the bed is done and ready. Even salad mixes will blow out or become bitter so there is only so long that they can stay in the beds, but squash, peppers and tomatoes will keep producing while the weather cooperates. Cannabis is nicely finite, and our desire to sow vegetables or cover crops means that we’ve gotten good at clearing the stumps on the day of harvest to replant and move into the next stage. We cover the beds with Reemay or Proteknet insect netting and run sprinklers or hand-water heavily to get the seeds germinated and growing well before the dark of winter.
Though we’re still in the heart of summer, my thoughts turn to fall as I sow broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, romanesco, kales and collards, salad mixes and quick root crops. I sowed the first bed of carrots this week, and have hopes to sow another one soon. I’m careful not to think about fall until August, because if you start thinking about cool, wet days too early you burn out, but it feels good to start looking forward to rain, soup, and short days as an antidote to the difficulties of summer, even though we still have a good ways to go. 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.