O’Neill: Failures are part of farming

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 [email protected].

We’ve had some fall crop failures that leave me frustrated and aware that farming is just our best-guess efforts set against the inviolability of nature. The sustained heat has stunted the early brassica plantings and given haven to the aphids. We got one stellar round of cabbages, but the broccoli were pretty much a loss to aphid damage, and the early cauliflower planting blew out and made tiny heads that don’t amount to much. 

What works one year may not work another, and everything to do with farming is dependent on the weather. We hedge our bets with a wide variety of crops, with row covers, shade cloth, irrigation and hand watering, but at the end of the day, so much hinges on the temps and whether or not it rains during spring and fall. The long, dry period this fall has been incredible for cannabis, but less so for brassica, and these are the inevitable types of tradeoffs that define our work and thus our lives. 

Our farm mostly benefits from the inversion layer that keeps things warmer than the valley during cool spells and cooler during the heat, but there is one critical exception—nighttime temperatures don’t drop as much as they do in the valley during heat spells. This month it has generally been in the 70s at night and the mid-80s during the day, and without cooling nighttime temps, the brassica plantings have struggled. 

Some years we get cooling rains early, some years we don’t, so we just try to stay the course with our planning and planting, trying to achieve the most productive harvests with the least loss. Tomatoes slowed down early this year (and took a long time to get going), which would usually be a signal that the cool weather crops should thrive, but that hasn’t been the case. 

As the cannabis harvest continues, we’re clearing the finished beds as soon as we can for replanting with salad mixes, cooking greens and root crops. Gaining this extra space for winter production is critical for our market channels and income, and it all rests in getting things planted soon enough that they size up before the sun gets too low on the horizon to produce much growth. The pressure is heavy when the weather is still hot, requiring extra hand watering and care to make sure the tender plantings survive and become productive. 

The flip side of the heavy planting push during harvest is that for many of the beds it’s the last time for the year, which creates a feeling of breathing room soon to come. Each time we clear a bed and plant it or seed it, it’s one more checked off the list. Now we’re edging towards the time of lower direct farming work levels and the shift into maintenance and the slower scheduled winter projects we’ve been dreaming of all through the hectic season. 

We transplant most of our crops, using 3-inch pots for the large, well-spaced plantings like brassica (broccoli, cabbage, cauli, etc), tomatoes, peppers and squash, and the Paperpot system on 2-inch or 4-inch for the smaller, rapid rotation crops. The effort takes forethought and consistency in the propagation house, and we sow seeds every two weeks like clockwork. Then we clear and prep the beds to a soft and loose consistency so that the transplanter can run smoothly down the rows. 

The rows where large cannabis plants have grown have tremendous root mass in the soil, so it’s much harder to prep them to the consistency that works for the Paperpot. In these beds, we cut the cannabis stalks to ground level, leaving the roots to decompose and add tilth to the soil while we run the Jang seeder over the top. I can sow 8-10 passes with the seeder in the wide cannabis terraces with different Asian greens, cooking greens and radishes. Then we cover with low hoops, insect netting and shade cloth until germination moves into solid growth and the heat departs. Then the shade cloth comes off and hopefully the rains come so we can stop irrigating and let them run the race unassisted until harvest. 

We’ll keep flipping beds in the hoophouses through the winter, though my strategy has shifted to focus only on the quickest root crops and salad mixes because they require the fastest turnaround. The low tunnels outside take more work to set up and break down with each planting, so I’m skewing the longer-season, hardier crops like kale, collards, bok choy, chard, beets and scallions into the low tunnels where they can ride through the winter. 

The weather looks to finally be shifting into a cool, moist pattern after a Hotober to remember. It has been amazing for finishing beautiful cannabis, though it has tested my fortitude this deep in the season. As we edge towards the end of harvest a day at a time, I reflect on the huge effort of the year, and am grateful that the downturn is on the horizon. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!