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.
My love affair with plants runs deep, one of the main driving forces in my life. The mutual commitment of tending in exchange for abundance, the beauty and vibrancy of growth brings joy to my soul. Even better is the chance to gather in celebration of plants to raise up funds for a good cause!
Yesterday we held the second annual Bell Springs Fire Department Plant Sale and Pancake Breakfast. Hundred of plants on display from veggie starts, flowers, perennials and other exotics. Jess and Dusty threw down a full service pancake, egg and sausage breakfast and around a hundred people turned out to gather and celebrate the burgeoning spring. We raised an incredible $4000 after expenses. Big gratitude to everyone who contributed money, time, plants and effort!
It feels good to build new traditions, carrying on ancient ways of sharing with neighbors in seasonal celebration. I love talking about crops, planting times, hearing about what’s working well and what needs revision. These ways of communicating knowledge and the genetics of good plants are part of what make up successful, small-scale agriculture. The more we share with each other our wins and warn of the pain points, the more likely is our shared success.
Food shouldn’t be left to corporations to produce as cheaply as possible by sacrificing quality. The more that we can produce good food within our communities, the more stable and safe we are in an uncertain future. Saving and sharing seed, sharing extra plants and the bounty they produce are traditional ways of maintaining human connection and mutual support. And sometimes you make a donation to the fire department in exchange for a stellar pancake breakfast!
I love living in a community of farmers and gardeners, and it makes for an easy gathering with so many plants to talk about with full bellies and the contentment of a gorgeous spring day. I brought home some new Day Lilies and a Red Hibiscus that I’m super excited about, along with a few Striped German tomatoes that are a helluva lot bigger than the ones in my propagation house.
My hot crop starts are way behind this year, in part because of potting soil without enough nitrogen but also because I love the salad mixes and spring greens so much that that’s where my focus tends to go in the early part of the year. The warm weather has things finally starting to pop, and we should see cabbages ready for harvest in the next week or two with summer squash shortly behind them.
I’m trialing new interplanting methods this year by running a row of cabbages down the outsides of a wide terrace with two rows of Dunja zucchini and Zephyr yellow summer squash down the middle of the bed. The goal is to harvest the cabbages and then top-dress the squash and let them spread outwards into the rest of the bed.
Last year I did a similar thing but in succession instead of at the same time, and I found that by leaving the cabbage stumps in I got some nice regrowth cabbages late in the fall as the squash petered out, so we’re gonna try it again this year by harvesting the cabbage plants but not pulling out the roots and waiting to see what happens. I’m also trialing a closer interplanting with heavy feeding and plans to cage the squash upwards so there is enough space for both crops to produce well.
These types of little tricks to maximize production are a core part of our strategy for a successful small farm. Our scale requires us to maximize what we can do from every bit of bed space, and our market demands ask us to produce as much as we can to fill our channels from CSA to farmstand to farmers market. It’s also a huge part of the fun: playing around with each crop as a piece in a complex, interrelated puzzle keeps farming interesting.
Looking back on more than two decades of farming, first just in cannabis and then for the last sixteen years with cannabis and as CSA and farmers market producers, there is a clear trend of increasing quantity and quality in our work. There was a time when we produced salad mix for only a few months out of the year during the shoulder seasons of late spring and early fall, but now we are in production year-round.
Growing food every week of the year takes consistency and effort that are sometimes difficult to maintain, but the results in our kitchen and our ability to send good food out into the world more than make up for the struggles along the way. Plants and the good things that result from their growth are one of the main driving forces in my life, and for that I am grateful. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!