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.
The days are long but the list is longer; June is the time of frenetic energy, the final uphill sprint before we cross the solstice and begin to roll back downhill towards shorter days. This has been a momentous week for us on the farm with the final installation of our new cold storage unit along with the solar panels and batteries to run it. Being an off-grid farm has its challenges, and we have always struggled with lack of refrigerated space.
After 15 years of shuffling coolers and ice blocks, it’s an incredible feeling to have dedicated cold storage here on the farm. It’s a 5×8-foot box trailer outfitted with a wall-mount AC unit and a Coolbot modular that hacks the AC and forces it down to refrigerator temp. The money to do the upgrade came through the MendoLake Food Hub via the Farm to Schools grant program from the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and we are deeply grateful.
When we first got the grant, I had some feelings of imposter syndrome, unsure that we would be a good recipient for the money, but it has provided a guiding light for me in scaling up our vegetable production this spring. In the last six weeks we provided salad mixes and fixin’s to the schools in Laytonville, maintained our regular market channels and produced more than 1500 bunches of greens, root crops and scallions for distribution through the Food Hub, along with more than 200 bags of salad mix. This spring has been our biggest crop of salad mix yet, with more than 100 pounds harvested each week since the beginning of May.
The last couple weeks we’ve gotten into the heading brassica, harvesting 150 heads of cabbage and 100 heads of broccoli. This week will be about the same numbers, with probably another two weeks of heavy harvests and some lingering slower producers over the following couple weeks. Summer squash has begun coming in, and I’ll be sowing a third succession of squash this week to replace one of the brassica beds.
The first row of cabbages came out in the nick of time to be replanted that day with Asian greens salad mixes that needed a home, tucked under heavy shade cloth for the first week and then switched to 30% shade cloth for the duration of its time before transplanting. Bed space is at such a premium that I’m always eyeballing for crops that we can harvest and clear for replant; it’s good to have this pressure because it stops me from letting things linger past the point of diminishing returns.
The electrical upgrade means so much for our farm on so many levels. We’ll be able to power the big compost tea brewer without having to run the generator. Heat mats will be a cinch, making for more and better starts in the propagation house. For the last few years as our old batteries declined, we’ve had to be so cautious about power that I have often found myself checking the system in the morning to find out if I can have a light on or need to use a headlamp in the early morning.
Lack of electrical capacity has been a key stressor in my life, trying to manage a power system that was badly undersized for the farmscape that we have become. Making hard decisions because of a lack of juice, or having to spend money on fuel to run the backup generator, presented difficult choices and meant that we often had to use fossil fuels to provide the extra oomph. Now we’ll be saving up for an electric refrigerator for our house, getting rid of the too-small propane fridge that we’ve been working with for so many years.
I’ve been reflecting on the changes over the years, the ways that we have built competence and leveled up. In the early stages of any farm effort, we work so hard because we don’t know how to do things and don’t have systems in place. Then, over time, we build skill and decrease the pain points so that there comes a time when the work starts to get easier. This week has been that type of experience, coming at a crucial time in a season that has often felt too rushed and harried.
Yesterday we slaughtered meat birds, and instead of needing multiple heavy coolers with ice to chill them for a trip to cold storage in town, the birds came out of their ice water bath and onto bread trays that went straight into the refrigerated box trailer. No more lifting massively heavy coolers, no extra trips to town, and a significantly easier slaughtering process. The changes are both incremental yet massive, giving me hope at a time when I needed some light in the tunnel.
June is hard because the days are so long yet the work is never-ending, so it feels incredible to see some things start to get easier. 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.