A cool April morning, chill in the air, reprieve for the sugar maples from the warm, sunny days of an early March thaw. We watch our land wake up. We see the slow sap trickle downhill towards collection. We hear peepers on the pond, Crow Creek flowing. The dirt is drying out. We feel a sense of enthusiasm mixed with concern for a season that breaks weather rules for what we have come to expect of our North Country. Days ago, anxiety over a diminished syrup season. But today, we look to the week ahead with cautious enthusiasm and hope. Freezing temperatures return to our nights while days are warm; ideal conditions for a sugar operation. The sugar maples and the sugar makers recharge in the anticipation of sap flow and the delicious boil towards maple syrup.
While we do have hope for sap this week, we do not expect a miracle run this season; a tough year for all sugarmaker’s in MN and WI who have worked extra hard for little to no sap. We feel blessed for what we’ve been given and what may yet come. Our sugarbush is high in elevation and held onto its snow later than lands around us; we are consistently colder than most areas. As the spring progressed, we knew that if anyone could get sap, we could, and we were fortunately correct. While currently at 25% of syrup from our average years, a tremendous economic loss that we can barely comprehend, we at least have some syrup. Farming friends in WI have had none. While we won’t have our traditional presence in Mount Royal Grocery of Duluth or Buddy’s Mercantile of Two Harbors, nor will be able to stock new shelves at the Whole Foods Pantry in Ely as we had hoped, we will be able to take care of the syrup needs of our CSA members and this feels good! Please know that every time you eat a pancake smothered in our syrup this summer, that you are one of few enjoying pure, fresh maple syrup from the stoic and beautiful maple trees of our region. What an awesome thing!
As the syrup season soon comes to an early close, we will turn attentions towards our farmland and vegetable production. With great enthusiasm, we make plans for our 2012 CSA season. Onions, peppers and tomatoes are already started with cole crops of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower soon to follow; thousands of babies we nurture strong to eventually turn loose in the heavy clay that is our soil. While the warm spring has caused havoc for syrup enterprises, it is hard to not let the early spring fill one’s senses with a contagion of hope and optimism. More, our winter was spent better understanding our land’s ecosystem and engaged in holistic, regenerative education around land health. While we consider ourselves lovers of lifelong education, we never anticipated the amount of knowledge we would acquire this winter. From this knowledge, we feel empowered to try new approaches and do new things.
For example, we are searching to buy a chisel plough (or sub-soiler) as a sustainable method to break up compacted clay layers which allow plant roots to scavenge deeper for nutrients. We will create greater raised beds to aid water drainage; an ongoing issue for us farming on clay. We will focus compost hilling around crops that are heavy feeders such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower in hopes that we can see better production this season. We are incorporating a foliar feeding schedule of organic fertilizers (fish, kelp, and other natural products) to balance the nutritional needs of our plants. Through this plant health approach, we aim to increase the amount of beneficial sugars produced in our plants that make their way to our soil through plant root exudation; something that only healthy plants produce. These sugars are food to the unimaginable amount of life that exists below the soil surface. That life, in return, is what creates stable organic matter to continue to keep our plants healthy. With our efforts, we hope to help close this loop!
We are focused on keeping our soil covered as much as possible with cover crops that aid soil fertility. In particular, we plan to utilize a cover crop of ‘tillage radish’ (a field of daikon radishes) mixed with yellow sweet clover in the adjacent field for which we will prepare this year for future vegetable production and rotation. The tillage radish with its thick, penetrating taproot will break up and aerate clay layers while the yellow sweet clover’s long fibrous roots will stretch deep, fixing nitrogen and giving microorganisms something to eat which eventually, through the miraculous process of waste elimination, builds organic matter in the soil.
And finally, before we plant the field in radish and clover, we will welcome new life to the farm! This spring, 100 chicks will arrive and will be pastured on the field this summer, eating the hay crop and releasing rich, nutritious manure, adding fertility to an organic farming system that thrives when animals join our human efforts to improve the land health. With hope for healthy chickens and good production methods (and a Ruby Mountain cattle dog whom we must teach to care for and not eat our new babies!), we will begin offering egg shares this coming winter.
These new developments, coupled with our cultivating tractor bought last season and our never-ending quest to be good, competent farmers is driving a certain excitement and enthusiasm around farming this season. This positive emotion after last season’s tough growing conditions is exactly what we need. Farming, a difficult trade so dependent on weather and nature being on your side, requires a certain eternal optimism. We are happy to report that our spirits are high!
Cree and Jason Bradley
While we do have hope for sap this week, we do not expect a miracle run this season; a tough year for all sugarmaker’s in MN and WI who have worked extra hard for little to no sap. We feel blessed for what we’ve been given and what may yet come. Our sugarbush is high in elevation and held onto its snow later than lands around us; we are consistently colder than most areas. As the spring progressed, we knew that if anyone could get sap, we could, and we were fortunately correct. While currently at 25% of syrup from our average years, a tremendous economic loss that we can barely comprehend, we at least have some syrup. Farming friends in WI have had none. While we won’t have our traditional presence in Mount Royal Grocery of Duluth or Buddy’s Mercantile of Two Harbors, nor will be able to stock new shelves at the Whole Foods Pantry in Ely as we had hoped, we will be able to take care of the syrup needs of our CSA members and this feels good! Please know that every time you eat a pancake smothered in our syrup this summer, that you are one of few enjoying pure, fresh maple syrup from the stoic and beautiful maple trees of our region. What an awesome thing!
As the syrup season soon comes to an early close, we will turn attentions towards our farmland and vegetable production. With great enthusiasm, we make plans for our 2012 CSA season. Onions, peppers and tomatoes are already started with cole crops of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower soon to follow; thousands of babies we nurture strong to eventually turn loose in the heavy clay that is our soil. While the warm spring has caused havoc for syrup enterprises, it is hard to not let the early spring fill one’s senses with a contagion of hope and optimism. More, our winter was spent better understanding our land’s ecosystem and engaged in holistic, regenerative education around land health. While we consider ourselves lovers of lifelong education, we never anticipated the amount of knowledge we would acquire this winter. From this knowledge, we feel empowered to try new approaches and do new things.
For example, we are searching to buy a chisel plough (or sub-soiler) as a sustainable method to break up compacted clay layers which allow plant roots to scavenge deeper for nutrients. We will create greater raised beds to aid water drainage; an ongoing issue for us farming on clay. We will focus compost hilling around crops that are heavy feeders such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower in hopes that we can see better production this season. We are incorporating a foliar feeding schedule of organic fertilizers (fish, kelp, and other natural products) to balance the nutritional needs of our plants. Through this plant health approach, we aim to increase the amount of beneficial sugars produced in our plants that make their way to our soil through plant root exudation; something that only healthy plants produce. These sugars are food to the unimaginable amount of life that exists below the soil surface. That life, in return, is what creates stable organic matter to continue to keep our plants healthy. With our efforts, we hope to help close this loop!
We are focused on keeping our soil covered as much as possible with cover crops that aid soil fertility. In particular, we plan to utilize a cover crop of ‘tillage radish’ (a field of daikon radishes) mixed with yellow sweet clover in the adjacent field for which we will prepare this year for future vegetable production and rotation. The tillage radish with its thick, penetrating taproot will break up and aerate clay layers while the yellow sweet clover’s long fibrous roots will stretch deep, fixing nitrogen and giving microorganisms something to eat which eventually, through the miraculous process of waste elimination, builds organic matter in the soil.
And finally, before we plant the field in radish and clover, we will welcome new life to the farm! This spring, 100 chicks will arrive and will be pastured on the field this summer, eating the hay crop and releasing rich, nutritious manure, adding fertility to an organic farming system that thrives when animals join our human efforts to improve the land health. With hope for healthy chickens and good production methods (and a Ruby Mountain cattle dog whom we must teach to care for and not eat our new babies!), we will begin offering egg shares this coming winter.
These new developments, coupled with our cultivating tractor bought last season and our never-ending quest to be good, competent farmers is driving a certain excitement and enthusiasm around farming this season. This positive emotion after last season’s tough growing conditions is exactly what we need. Farming, a difficult trade so dependent on weather and nature being on your side, requires a certain eternal optimism. We are happy to report that our spirits are high!
Cree and Jason Bradley