Spreadsheet madness!

Crop planning is in full swing these days and that means lots of time with all the spreadsheets I use to plan and track 60+ different crops, most with multiple successions.

Rows and columns and dynamic formulas, oh my!

The planning process is reverse engineered, so I start with what my ideal CSA share looks like for each week of the season and count and calculate backwards from there.

For instance, in the second week of June, I'd like each shareholder to take home 2 heads of lettuce, plus I'd like to bring 30 heads to the farmers market, meaning I need about 250 heads ready to harvest that week. Different varieties of head lettuce have slightly different growth rates, but I average them at about 45 days from when I transplant them in the spring. June 10th - 45 days = April 27th. To be ready to transplant then, they'll need at least 2 1/2 weeks growing in the greenhouse, so I note on my seeding spreadsheet that we'll need to seed lettuce on the

week of April 7th. To be safe, I always assume at least a 25% crop loss on any crop--sometimes we get lucky and there's almost no crop loss and sometimes, like last fall when the deer got under the lettuce's protective row cover, we have 90%+ crop loss. Our new deer fence this year will guard against that, so I'll use the standard 25% loss factor, which means we seed a total of 315 heads of lettuce on that first chilly week of April.

Green Star

Adriana

Now comes the fun part--what kinds of lettuce? My favorite seed company, Johnny's Selected, offers over 60 varieties of lettuce of all different types, including Butterheads, Red Leafs, Oakleafs, Bibbs, Romaines, Green Leafs, Summer Crisps, and Icebergs. For this succession I'm going to stick with an old favorite, a green Butterhead called Adriana, a frilly Green Leaf called Green Star, and a drop dead gorgeous red Summer Crisp called Cherokee.

Cherokee

That info gets entered into my seed buying spreadsheet, I double check all my math, and it's on to the next succession of lettuce! Hundreds of successions and crops later, I have a large bill at Johnny's and a comprehensive seeding calendar for the year. That seeding calendar will guide us from early March all the way through our last seedings in September, when we put in the final successions of fall arugula, radishes, and turnips. Right now September feels a million miles away, all just a plan on paper and visions of long, straight rows of thriving veggies, but it'll be here eventually!
                                                                             

Welcome to the Weir River Farm blog!

For 2014, we’re bringing the farm to the blogosphere! This season we’ll be photo-documenting more of the farm here – from the very beginning of the season right through the frosts of autumn – crops in the field, our crew hard at work, and maybe some of the beautiful sunsets that can be seen from the top of Turkey Hill. We’ll share farm news with the whole world and bring news from different corners of the world home to the farm and talk about how it affects us here. Recipes, foodie links, and other goodies will be showing up here too – hopefully some shared by YOU, our great CSA community.

Winter projects of crop planning, seeding ordering, budgeting, and farm crew hiring have been keeping us busy inside, while outside the farm’s been enduring a hard winter. However, the potential upside of some of the record low temperatures is that we might have less insect pressure in the spring, as the harsh weather whittles down the population of bad-guy insects. Watching the way the little ecosystem of the farm responds to the various pressures and opportunities that Mother Nature presents is one of the most fascinating parts of being a farmer. Weather patterns in February affecting zucchini yields in July? We’ll see… the soap opera of the farm ecosystem is constantly churning out new story lines, so stay tuned!