Rutkowski Farm

The Name Game

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Well, it's been an eventful fall/winter here at the farm. This is due in part to the arrival of our little guy pictured with his Mama. The official scoop : Asa William Coleman born 10/28/2008 12:20pm. 8 pounds 4 ounces.

He's just hit 14 pounds at 3 months in. We're very excited about his arrival, but we also realize that we're going to need to change what and how we do things with regards to the farm. As some of you may or may not know, the farm is basically an extra full time endeavor on top of our paying jobs. With Asa's arrival we have extra load on top of that. Rather than hand him off to grandma all the time (which we'll do a bit of) we want to be there with him as he grows up. This has resulted in the tough decision that we're not going to participate in the Ballston Spa Farmer's Market this year. We may act as a fill in vendor from time to time with the sales of our blueberries, but beyond that we'll likely be opening the stand to sell berries/garlic/ and any excess. We haven't set times yet, but we will post when we know.

Other things afoot:

We'll be attending/selling from at least 2 garlic festivals this autumn.
Look for a site redesign for online garlic sales.
The farm stand is getting a much needed makeover this summer. Goodbye homasote.
We're looking for a new name....more on that below.

So onto the new name. When we took over farming at the property, it only made sense to use the farm name as it was. Most folks knew it as that. Now that we're reaching what is a natural break in our farming activities (and a change of venues with the garlic fests), it makes sense for us to revisit the name. Kathleen is a Rutkowski, but no longer has the name. I, despite thoughts of changing my last name, am not a Rutkowski. I also tend to shy away from name titled things. The only thing we've come up with thus far that we like is "Starry Plough Acres". This name would have a loaded connotation across the pond. That said, this is America, so maybe not so much. Anyhow I've said enough. If you have any suggestions for a farm name, let us know!

The missing Dibbler Action Shot

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:06:00 +0000

Oh yeah..and rough Garlic planting totals:
Music - 400
MarJean - 520
Ukranian Red - 3080
Spanish Roja - 1760
German White - 4360
Total - 10120

Dibbler Test/Garlic Planting

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:39:00 +0000

Ah.... the long overdue post. So how did the dibbler work? The short answer is well enough. What I can say is that the fluffier the planting bed, the better. I'm going to add another 10 (or more) pounds of weight to the ends before the next use. I feel like the extra weight could have made a difference, as the impressions could have been deeper. In any case, it worked very well as a row marker. Another project for this to make a tractor mount for it. That would help with the "walking straight" issues I seem to have.

So on to the important thing! GARLIC!

On Saturday October 11th we were graced with the help of our friends (in no particular order) Jen, Heather, Erin, Jacqui, and Matthew. We got rolling around 10:30 and had a fairly tall order... Plant a lot of garlic. Kathleen and I had trimmed out all of the garlic heads in prep for the planting. What was left to do was a lot of shelling and planting.

I dibbled (above photo) and everyone got to work. To summarize quickly, we finished planting everything except for all of the German White by that evening. The next morning, Jen and I finished the German White. A few days later, I spread the straw. OK...now for the pics!

Garlic Before the Event

Erin & Jacqui

Kathleen, Heather and Jen

Matthew & Erin

Straw on Garlic

Dibbler body completed

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:52:00 +0000

Another (couple of) evening(s), a bit more progress. I'll do my best to blab as much as possible so that I don't run out of pictures to blab to.

OK so before I got to the point at left, I got a can of clear coat spray paint to give the pine a bit more protection than...nothing. So it looks like plain old pine, but will hopefully not rot right away.

Once I did that I attached all of the 2" l-brackets to the wood at the pre-marked places. I used 3/4" wood screws.

Next step was to cut all of that PVC. Per the instructions I found out yonder on the interwebs, I cut a bunch of 4" sections and then tried to cut the angles. After a few exploded pieces (always wear safety glasses...seriously) I finally figured out that it wasn't happening. I sucked it up and bought another 5' section of 2" PVC. This time I made a mark of the fence of my miter saw and alternated between 45º and 90º cuts. Once I had all 24 pieces of PVC, I set about marking them for drilling by setting them on on an L-bracket and marking it with a pencil.

Once I had them all drilled, I attached them with 1" 8-32 machine screws a locknut and a nut. In retrospect, I could have gone with a 1/2" machine screw.

One more note about those screws. The original instructions call for 1/4" screws. Their 2" brackets must have larger holes because the 1/4" ones didn't even come close to fitting. When you do this, just keep track of your hardware receipts. You may find that you need to make an extra trip to bring a bunch of it back.

I attached all of the dibbler points. I then slipped the T over the nipples that go into the flanges on the ends of the plywood. The next step with these T's will be to build the handle on them.

Beyond the T's are 5 pound weights and then an endcap.

I'm finding that a 6" nipple may be overkill and 5" would have done fine. I think it's, in part due to the fact that the weights illustrated in the original article are much wider.

In any case....ta-da! Here it is. It looks to me like some space buoy from a third rate sci-fi flick. I can't wait to try it out.
Next update will be the handle and also a revised parts list and rough cost assuming I can find all of the receipts.

Good morrow.....Paul

Dibbler Drum Step 2.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:12:00 +0000

As promised, I'm continuing to document the building of my dibbler drum.

Tonight, I cut out the plywood ends using the template that I posted in the last post. I used a table saw for the rough plywood cuts and a jigsaw to make the ends into the 12 sided beauty you see there.

Next, I attached the flanges to the center of the plywood pieces with (8) 3/4" wood screws.

I then cut 12 - 2' sections of 1x3 and attached them to the ends using (24) 2" drywall screws which is what I had lying around.

Now for the stupid part. In my last post I stated that with a 2' drum I could only have 3 across. This was based on my dividing 6" (my intra row spacing) into 2'. The answer to that is, of course, 4. However, I didn't want my dibbles going all the way to the edge of the drum so I subtracted one. What I forgot is that zero counts. I'm a dope.

Finally (once I figured it out) I made markings on every other wood slat at 3",9",15" and 21". If you click on the photo to see the large version, you can see my first attempt at laying out the spacing (dots with x's through them) and my corrected attempt (dots with circles).

That's it for tonight. The next task is to cut and assemble the dibbles from the PVC sections. Next update...sometime next week. I have to dig potatoes tomorrow.

Rolling Dibbler

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:05:00 +0000

So...as mentioned in the last post, we're planning to sell at a few garlic festivals next year. Because of that we're going to more than double the amount we're planting this year to roughly 10,000 head. We planted about 3,800 this past year and our crooked little rows were inefficient for weeding and not space effective. We had 2 garlic plants per row and a spacing of 5" between plants. The distance width wise was eyeballed and was frankly all over the place. The optimal spacing for garlic is 4-6", but I recently read a trial where 6" did perform the best of all spacings.

So...how do I get a perfectly spaced planting of garlic without spending a fortune on a transplanter?

Enter the rolling dibbler. The University of Wisconsin has published a how-to guide for building one of these. The picture to the left is from their website.
credit: University of Wisconsin Healthy Farmers,Healthy Profits Project, November, 2000; Third Edition

In addition to this Paul Betz wrote up an article in an issue of the Seed Bin from High Mowing Seeds. If you follow the link, you can see that his version is made almost exclusively of wood and is quite a bit smaller.

OK...Step 1. I went to gather up all of the materials at the local hardware/plumbing outlets. Everything was readily available except for the 12" PVC for the drum. I was told I could buy a 20' section for $155. Um...no. Since I need just a little more than 2' for this one drum it'd be a huge waste for me.

This put me back to the drawing board and made me realize that there were inherent advantages to both designs. The removable handle on the U of W design would come in very handy if I build more than one drum (which is likely). The Paul Betz design allows me to make the drum any size to accomodate exact spacings.

Like his design, I'm going with a regular dodecagon or twelve sided design. Since my spacing is 6" I need some multiple of that for the circumference of my roller. I'm settling on 36". Now that I have my circumference, I use Circumference / π = diameter to get the total diameter of my roller. In this case, the answer is 11.46" which I promptly round up to 11.5". I'm not going to mess around with hundredths. This is the point where you can't forget that those 1x3's are going to add thickness as well. I subtract .75" (yes, a 1x3 is .75" thick and 2.5" wide) and see that the diameter of my plywood ends need to be 10.75". The beauty of this approach is that you can get exactly the spacing you want. With the PVC pipe method, you're tied to spacings that aren't quite on the money. I anticipate that I'll likely build a few of these with different spacings for different crops, so having the ability to get the exact spacings is a boon.

As I see it, figuring all of this out is the toughest part of the process, I'm keeping all of my other parts in line with the U of W guide (some hardware notwithstanding...more on that in a later installment). At this point I had to figure out how to make a regular dodecagon. I used that wikipedia link and (more or less) followed the instructions. To make your life easier, you can click on the picture to the left and print out your own template. This image is a 10.75" dodecagon. If you don't have a printer that can handle 11x17" you'll have to print out 2 and tape them together.

OK...that's it for now. I'm going to start the build Wednesday night and will post updates with pictures as it goes along.

News.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:38:00 +0000

Hello from us. It's been too long. Well now that the season is starting to show signs of ending, I think we're due for an update.

First off, for anyone who lives in the Capital District, you probably remember how much rain we received earlier this summer. Some crops (blueberries) loved it! Some (tomatoes) most assuredly did not. More than any other year, I've come to realize how important it is to have diversified crops. There were many weeks when the blueberry sales made up for lackluster harvests of other crops. That said, we've had prior years where Mummyberry has taken the majority of our blueberries and other crops made up the difference. As each year goes by we get a better and better feel for what conditions cause what problems.

Now on to the real news. As I mentioned in prior posts, there's going to be a little farmer born pretty soon. Because we REALLY don't know what we're doing in this arena, we've decided to scale back on farming for the next several years to make sure that the little whippersnapper gets all the attention he deserves! What this means is that we'll likely have a garden for ourselves while devoting our actual farming time to the cultivation of berries and garlic. I realize this flies in the face of what I said above about diversity on the farm, but baby comes first.

Because of this, we're scaling back on the Ballston Farmer's market. It's likely that we'll start later (July or so) and have much less to sell. On the other hand, we'll likely be attending and selling at a couple of Garlic festivals next fall. Stay tuned.

Long time no see!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul C.) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:20:00 +0000

We're back. I'm not going to say anything like "we're better than ever," even if we are. Winter's gone, and boy did it seem to linger this year. I guess I feel that way every year.

So...what's going on at the farm? What isn't going on at the farm. First the important news items.

We've joined the Certified Naturally Grown program this year. And no we can't use the 'O' word. It's the law. That said, we follow the NOP standards to meet our CNG certification. We just don't have the government to answer to.
There's going to be a tiny and "somewhat useless as a farm hand" addition to the farm family come October. No..not a toy poodle. Sheesh...Do I have to spell it all out for you...A BABY!!!
Allis Chalmers D17 is back from the shop and she's taking names now and asking questions later. It runs so well, that I wonder if it's running better than the day it was new. Sadly, it is a gas hog.
Allis Chalmers G is getting ready to make it's debut as well. This tractor is going to be our cultivation tractor. We have a sudden embarrassment of riches in the tractor department. I guess this means we're out of excuses until next year (see point about baby).

OK..now to the far less interesting stuff. What follows is the boring minutae:

Garlic is coming up (just shy of 4000 bulbs this year)
Peas are planted
Onions are planted
Spinach is planted
Our out of cycle fields are either plowed/disked/planted with cover or just plowed (did a bunch today)
A ton of stuff is started in flats. I guess I'm done being specific.

Also, thanks to our neighbor I learned the correct way to plow a field. There's a pretty good post on how here.

New Site...and yes...it's autumn

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Not that anyone noticed, but the site is all newish. OK...maybe it doesn't look quite as spiffy as it did, but I'm trying. I decided to move away from Apple's iWeb (no link provided) to blogger. It's a lot easier and I'm not tied to a specific machine for publishing.

OK other news. Here's a not quite new pic of our winter squash just after we had pulled it all in. Most of what you see is long gone. In the case of the butternut, Skidmore College was our primary consumer. Pumpkins went here and there...including a bunch of elementary school kids.

And the most exciting news (for me at least). Allis Chalmers D-17 is healthy again and ready to roll for next year!!! I've got plans for that old tractor. I'll post pics this weekend.

More news from the farm

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 17:37:00 +0000

Big happenings with us...First and most importantly, our garden grows quite nicely.

My fingers are crossed, but I haven’t seen a cucumber beetle yet this year. The only downside is that we planted a LOT of hubbard squash. We did this because the cucumber beetles love the hubbard. The intent was that we’d attract the beetles to the hubbard instead of our precious cucumbers and summer squash. In the process we anticipated losing a lot of the big blue squash. Oh well. Lots of pumpkin pies for us.

In other news, our house in Greenfield (nope, we don’t live on the farm...yet) is going on the market this week. If you know anyone who’s looking for a nice house, we’re moving to the farm...

Lastly, we’re skipping the Thursday market because we don’t have enough to sell right now. We will be there Saturday and anticipate having the following:

This week:

Red Romaine Lettuce

Peas (hopefully shelling, snow and snap)

Sprouts (3 varieties, mild to hot)

Radishes

Garlic Scapes (last day)

Catnip

Thyme

Market Begins

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:40:00 +0000

We haven’t written anything in a long long time, but we've been super busy! Above is a picture of the edge of one of our fields. We’ve got a lot more this year than the last which brings us to the Ballston Spa farmer’s market.

Here’s the scoop on that:

Ballston Spa Farmer’s Market

Wiswall Park, Front St. Ballston Spa, NY

Thursdays 3-6pm, Saturdays 9am-noon

June 14th-September 29th

I’m going to try to update weekly with what we have growing and what you can expect to see at our booth. That said...it’s always a slow start in June, but the squash and tomatoes will be here before we know it!

This week:

Spinach

Snap Peas

Sprouts (3 varieties, mild to hot)

Radishes

Catnip

Blueberry Trimming

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:42:00 +0000

In addition to starting a ton of seeds, our other big spring task is to get the blueberries and raspberries in shape for the summer.

Step 1 for the blueberries was getting them mulched. We have a problem with Mummyberry. No it’s not some sugary kids cereal, it’s a fungal disease. To oversimplify it...the berries shrivel up, fall, and become next year’s spore packs. Thanks to our out of town friends, we got the straw down last week.

Today, Kathleen and I worked on pruning (step 2). A lot of the bushes haven’t been pruned in years but we’re finally catching up. We’re also not nearly as timid as we used to be about cutting out a “good” branch or two in the interest of keeping the plant healthy and productive.

As a side note...It is in fact April 7th. The picture of Kathleen above illustrates how cold it was today. We may even get snow this week. I like winter, but we’re soooooo ready for Spring. I want the ground to thaw enough so we can get our peas in!!

Turkeys in the Straw

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:44:00 +0000

We had some good friends visit this weekend (2 from Boston, 1 from Minneapolis). As is customary, we took them out in the fields and put them to work.*

As it goes this time of year, ground was too soft, so we walked out to the blueberries. Once we got there, there were 32 bales of straw waiting (strategically placed by me) to mulch the bushes. All the extra hands helped us get the straw down a lot faster, though in the end we only used 22 bales. Ostensibly, they’ll be refreshed with the rest in a few weeks.

*-Note to our friends, we’ll only make you work as hard as you want...We’d love to see y’all this summer!

Seeds are starting...Truck got Stuck

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:50:00 +0000

Here we are at the end of March already. It’s not going out like a lamb just yet as we had lightning tonight along with downpours. That said, the rain ought to finish off the snow.

Speaking of snow, I (Paul) managed to get both the truck and the tractor stuck in it. The tractor was an easy fix (a little bucket maneuvering/pushing). The truck was another story. Still, with Kathleen’s expert advice we got it out one day later.

On to the seeds. So far we’ve started Onions, Leeks, Celeriac, Celery, and Peppers. This weekend, many of our Tomatoes will be started. It’s all officially underway!

I’m also going to start working on a mySQL database to get a better handle on planting times, harvests. I’m working from the inspiration/ideas provided by the Crop Planning Spreadsheets that Brookfield Farm sells. Their sheets are set up for a CSA. We’re primarily farming for a small farmer’s market, so our needs are slightly different. Still, there’s a lot of great stuff there. It will probably take a few years for me to get it right, but hopefully, I’ll have something I can share once it’s developed. Stay tuned.

Winter Blanket

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:52:00 +0000

The cold, cold days have finally settled. To top it all off we got roughly 30” of snow today!! Seed orders are almost finalized (all thanks to Kathleen...no thanks to me). We spent the last two Saturdays chain-sawing back the trees from the blueberries. It had gotten to the point where some of the pines were in the way when it came time to pick. There’s still more to do, but it looks so much better.

Despite all the snow and cold, spring will be here so soon and we’ll be planting our peas and radishes. We can hardly wait!

Catching up is hard to do

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Mon, 29 May 2006 17:52:00 +0000

5/16-5/20/2006

* Rain Rain Rain Rain Rain.

* Some Raspberry trimming got done

* Brush hogged some

5/18/2006

* 25 ft of Golden Rocky Beans, 25 ft of Green Provider Bean

5/20/2006

* Saved seed (Radishes and Green Beans) Planted near peas

5/27/2006

* Corn planted

* 50 ft Ashworth

* 50 ft Argent F1 (White Sweet Hybrid)

* 60 ft Golden Bantam

* 200 ft of Popcorn (saved seed)

* 300 ft of Indian corn (saved seed)

5/29/2006

* Potatoes were planted (pics attached)

* 72 Magic Molly's (Purple potatoes)

* 75 Desiree (Red Potatoes)

* 183 Yukon Gold (White Potatoes, yellow flesh)

* 15' of Red Fuseau Sunchokes

* 30' of Star of David Okra

* 20' of Pink Beauty Radishes

* 150' (?) of Kuroda and St. Valery Carrots

* 10' of Ground Cherry's

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Mon, 15 May 2006 17:56:00 +0000

Since we still hadn't bought a Rain Gauge before the storm began, I don't have accurate numbers. Anecdotally (from reports of nearby folks) we got about 3 inches of rain on Friday/Saturday. I don't know what yesterday's rains amounted to.

5/14/2006 -

* Transplanted about 45 of our 172 tomato seedlings into better fed soil. We went down to the Country Garden in Niskayuna (where Kathleen works) to do that work.

* Also, out our large trash items for pickup. Ballston has it's semi-annual big pickup. Due to our high traffic location, I suspect a lot of that stuff is long gone.

Today -

* Our potatoes and jerusalem artichokes arrived from Ronningers. We got 5 pounds of Magic Molly, 5 pounds of Desiree, 10 pounds of Yukon Gold, and 2 pounds of Red Fuseau jerusalem artichokes.

* Transplanted the tray of tomatoes that we brought home (72 plants).

* Started seed for more Gray Zucchini, General Lee Cucumbers, and a whole bunch of herbs.

Rain's a comin'

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Thu, 11 May 2006 17:57:00 +0000

5/11/2006 -

* Today we pruned out more raspberries. We're now at more than half way through the pruning. Maybe we'll finish before we start getting berries. Heh.

* We also got our copy of the Farmer's Pledge in the mail. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get it notarized and back in the mail...We're not certified organic yet, but we'll get there one day. This is a good first step.

* Also tomorrow...our soil samples finally go out for analysis!

* And finally, the rains begin tomorrow...we still need to replace our rain gauge.

More dull details!

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Wed, 10 May 2006 17:58:00 +0000

5/7/2006 -

* Planted 15 feet of Pink Beauty Radishes

* 12 feet of Fava Beans (we're experimenting)

* 20 feet of Mustard Greens

* Slept and rested.

5/8/2006 -

* Paul finished mowing the orchard

* Paul & Kathleen got another 20 feet of Raspberries trimmed out...it seems like there's never enough time for this.

5/9/2006 -

* Kathleen planted 100 Cavendish Strawberry plants

5/10/2006 -

* Kathleen and Paul planted 100 Mesabi and 100 Tristar Strawberry plants

* Planted 25 ft of Golden Rocky Yellow Snap Beans, 25 ft of Provider Premium Green Snap Beans, 12 ft of Royal Burgundy Purple Snap Beans

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Sat, 06 May 2006 18:00:00 +0000

Poor pun. OK. It was one of those days where it rains...then stops...then rains...then stops and gets sunny and cold. Tough to get going on any one task, but I was able to get some planting done as well as tackle a few other chores.

Here's the rundown:
Planted 20' row of Cherrybelle Radishes,
20' row of Kuroda Carrots,
20' row of Beets
80' row of Swiss Chard
70' row of Spinach
I also started to clean the garage and organize my tools (which is a task that will never really be finished). Tomorrow...Beans.

More Peas, some onions and a tiller

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Fri, 05 May 2006 18:03:00 +0000

Hi...much more to report. We've been busy getting ready for all of the planting in the next few weeks.

4/28/2006 - 2nd row of (variety to come) peas planted.

4/29/2006 - Paul continued with pruning of Raspberries.

4/30/2006 - Started building cold frame. It's leaky and we still have more to do to make it viable. More cleaning of old greenhouse. Burned brush.

5/1/2006 - Onion sets arrived from Moose Tubers.

5/2/2006 - Kathleen and Mom R. collected violets for violet jelly. It's really sweet. Good for PB&Js.

5/3/2006 - Transplanted remaining peppers/herbs. Tiller for Kubota is purchased! Strawberries arrived in the mail.

5/4/2006 - Tilled a portion of the front fields. The fields that were used last year will be cover cropped. The rest will likely house tomatoes beans and squash....we're still working out the what goes where bit.

5/5/2006 - Started seeds for 5 different types of cucumbers and 5 different types of summer squash. Tilled the back fields where the garlic is coming up very nicely (see the picture below)! In these fields we're planting Strawberries, Potatoes, Garlic, Onions, Radishes and Carrots. Changed the crankcase oil and oil filter on the Kubota (transmission is next). Oh....and we planted the onions (the string in the picture is our onion row).

Spring is Here!

noreply@blogger.com (RutkowskiFarm) — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:04:00 +0000

Welcome to our internet account of our farming activities. It may be dry (no pun intended) as far as prose goes. We want to keep an account of all of the stuff that we've done (including what seeds we've planted and yields). This is year two for us and we're still learning.

So here's all of the gory details of the year to date:

* March/April 2006 - Many weekends spent working on the Allis Chalmers D17 with Rob Pastore of Morning View Farms (thanks Rob!). Unfortunately, we had to call it a day on this renovation after we put the oil seal on badly. It's now next winter's project. Anyone who wants to see a step by step account of breaking down an old tractor and rebuilding it...stick around until next winter. That's when it'll happen.

* 3/23/2006 - Planted seed for 9 varieties of tomatoes, 2 types of eggplant, 3 types of peppers, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (no, there's no parsley Garfunkel!)

* 4/18/2006 - Kubota B7800 is delivered! She isn't as big as old Allis, but she starts right up and has plenty of power for what we do. Action pics to come.

* 4/20/2006 - Tomatoes transplanted

* 4/21/2006 - Eggplant and some peppers transplanted

* 4/22/2006 - Built a fence for peas. The rain came down in buckets. We planted one 100 foot row of Oregon Giant Snow Peas.

* 4/23/2006 - Rain continues. Sadly we discovered that our rain gauge has a leak at the half-inch mark so we have to go by airport totals. Over 2 days = 2.68 inches. We needed it!