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.
I try to walk the gardens on Sundays, checking on crop health and growth, making a task list and planning out the harvest for the week to come. I was astounded this weekend to find that the Striped German row has managed another whole flush of heirloom tomatoes, which will grace the market table on December 9. I say the date for emphasis, for we have yet to have anything more than a glancing frost up here on the ridgeline.
Our Mediterranean climate is amazing in its variability. On any given year from November to May we might get balmy sunshine, gentle rain, big storms, hard freezes or snow. You just never know, which is both part of the fun and part of the confounding aspect of farming. Yesterday I pulled covers off of the low tunnels and hand-watered the crops with the garden hose because it’s been so long since the last rain that the tender seedlings were struggling for lack of water.
The larger crops have sunk roots deep enough that they don’t need watering and are soaking up the sunshine to produce abundance. We’ll have the first pea-shoot stir fry blend this week from the cover crop, months earlier than usual. I’m also playing around with a juice blend of edible cover crop for folks who make green juices and smoothies.
I’ve been loving the sunny days, making hay while the sun shines, but I think I’m ready for some gentle rains that let me sit back and put my feet up by the woodstove and read a good book. I’m grateful to have gotten the early fall rains, so that a period of dryness like this is positive for crop growth, and I’m not stressing about water. There have been years when we didn’t get substantive rain until the beginning of December and there wasn’t enough water for cover crop plantings.
This year the cover crop is already 8-10” tall, and the beds are lush with growth. My late fall salad mix plantings are finally coming along after a few weeks of lean harvests, and the broccoli and cauliflower are heading up nicely. Cabbages have been a staple the past few weeks and though we’re almost finished with this round of them, I have high hopes for the later plantings based on the weather thus far, though I know all too well that it may change with a vengeance at any time.
This isn’t the first year that I’ve had tomatoes this late, but with another week of temps predicted in the 40s and 50s, this will be the longest I can remember going without a hard freeze. It’s partially being up on the ridgeline above the inversion layer, but it’s also that this has been an incredibly mild fall coming on the heels of a temperate, comfortable summer. Overall it’s been a great year to farm, and I’m grateful for the gift.
I’m finally caught up with my planting, just two trays of cilantro ready to go out and the next round of salad mixes at least a week away from being ready. As growth has slowed and the demands of the planting schedule have eased, I take time to pick my head up and look around to evaluate the successes and failures of the year, and to begin planning for the year to come.
Brother Lito and I have been getting out in the world on sales trips, representing our HappyDay 1/2oz’s and the Farm Cut Cooperative. It feels good to revisit relationships that we began building in the spring after the hiatus of the farming season. We’re checking in with the shops about the fresh harvest, providing support and education and doing demos where we set up our market table and talk to customers. We’re slowly getting the hang of doing sales, figuring out how to be good partners to build strength in our retail relationships.
There is a lot of driving on these trips, which we use as administrative time. On this last trip we made our crop plan for the year to come, talking through which strains to grow and how many clones we’ll need to order. We filled out information on the strains we grew this year to support HendRx nursery in its efforts to refine and evaluate their offerings. We’re grateful for strong nursery partnerships that provide us with healthy plants because a strong start is key to a good finish. The amount of driving and effort in making sales reminds me to be grateful for our distribution partners, big shout-out to Redwood Roots for their shepherding of our herb through the supply chain so that it is tested and can be transported around the state!
As Lito drives, I work on emails and contact lists, and we discuss sales strategies. Our goal is to be the best partners we can for the shops who get our herb out to the people. We want to communicate our values and ethos to establish authentic connection through the supply chain so that customers know what they’re getting when they purchase our flower. We put a lot of love into our efforts and we try to communicate this with our presence and energy. As Grandpa always said, let us be happy in our work! 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.