The Farming Engineers

January in the greenhouse, again!

burkefarm — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:06:37 +0000

Let’s see.. last January, we had one greenhouse.

Now there are two. Let’s take a look inside the big one.

Looks promising. What’s growing in here?

Tatsoi. Beautiful tatsoi. More people need to know about this delicious spinach alternative.

Lettuce & green onions. The lettuce maybe has another cutting in it, since we’re having this warm, sunny spell.

For really early spring, there is a bed of radishes & carrots. The radishes are only a couple weeks away.. the carrots probably won’t be ready until March or April. The southernmost bed, not pictured, has red mustard, kale, arugula, and spinach.

The small greenhouse looks nice too.

Baby kale, anyone? The other beds contain mizuna, arugula, and yukina savoy. Another grower told me I should try yukina savoy, and I do like it a lot.

All the rows are uncovered today because it’s 55 F outside, and the forecast is for fairly warm nights this week. When it gets below 20 F at night again, I’ll cover the beds back up with the white row cover.

A quiz

Matt — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 14:16:51 +0000

We upcycle egg cartons, so we see a variety of farms’ packaging, names, and claims about their practices. And we know a few other local farmers who raise their own eggs with practices similar to ours.

A fun game:

…match these farm names/descriptions with their google maps picture. Here are the farm names & descriptions.

1. Archer Farms (Target store brand): Cage Free, Organic Eggs

2. Hillandale Farms : “Organic Eggs from Free Roaming Hens. 100% organic feed, no hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides.”

3. Naturally Preferred Eggs (Kroger store brand): Cage Free, Grain Fed

4. Redwine Family Farm: Free range, pastured, farm fresh eggs. About 200 laying chickens.

5. Phelps Family Farm: Free range eggs. About 1000 chickens.

6: Farming Engineers: Eggs from pastured chickens, fed certified organic grains. About 150 chickens.

Farm A:

Farm B:

Farm C:

Farm D:

Farm E:

Farm F:

Place your guesses in the comments. I have a dozen free eggs for the local person with the most correct guesses, for pickup here or at one of our markets.

Need help? The Cornucopia Institute has an interesting Organic Egg Scorecard.

CSA news

burkefarm — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:11:10 +0000

This is the last week of the summer CSA. We’ve got the application up for the 2012 CSA, you can take a look. Print out your own or pick up a full color, glossy version at one of our markets. We’ll accept applications from now until we’re full.

Our last batch of broilers were processed this morning and they looked great. We’ve got the largest birds we’ve raised all year. If you eat meat, a pasture raised, organically fed chicken is an amazing gift to yourself.

We think they’re an amazing gift to our land, too. By moving the broiler housing across the pasture, the grass gets mowed and we’re getting a very rich organic fertilizer into the soil, complete with a balanced array of micronutrients. Cover crops alone can replenish depleted soil, but cover crops and livestock together do it a lot faster.

August Abundance

burkefarm — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 22:14:25 +0000

As usual, once summer abundance sets in, it’s difficult to find time to blog.

We just put our final batch of broilers out on pasture, and received our last shipment of baby chicks for the season- 50 golden comets. We’ve not had this breed before, but they are supposed to be tame and excellent layers.

First meal after 2 days in the mail

The tomato abundance is keeping us very busy. These pictures are of less than one day’s harvest. Our biggest one day harvest so far was around 250 lb.

I am busily working on the CSA application for next year and should have it ready by the weekend. One of these tomato pictures might even be included.

Our next abundant harvest item? Winter squash. We have a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck butternut squash out in the field- they are sizing up to enormous proportions and look delicious. The seed is from Nature’s Crossroads, right here in Indiana. We’re growing several of their products this season but this squash might be my favorite.

We’ve applied for a grant for some fencing on our farm. They are accepting applications through October 31st. I don’t know if more page views benefit us or not, but have a look at our story. I was limited to less than 500 words, so it’s shorter than my blog posts!

Just a Monday

burkefarm — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:56:33 +0000

Here’s a glimpse at a Monday morning harvest before it’s packed into 6 CSA shares. The tomatoes didn’t make it into the picture; there weren’t many yet anyway.

Catching up…

burkefarm — Mon, 30 May 2011 21:38:53 +0000

April was wet, and our 80 foot greenhouse fell down in a storm. These two things meant we started the month of May behind schedule.

Two greenhouses were standing in a field. One was taken, the other was left.

The 40-foot greenhouse has been overflowing with transplants ever since that time. When the ground is wet, the plants stay in the trays.

The weather dried up enough to start field planting around May 15th or so. I got a few things in before that, but cold, rainy weather didn’t really encourage them to thrive. Our replacement greenhouse arrived on May 17th. Nothing like having it all happen at once!

On Saturday, May 21st, some friends and work share members visited. The friends helped with the greenhouse & the work share members helped with the field planting. The weather was perfect- sunny during the day, followed by about an inch of rain to soak in the transplants after everyone went home.

Cold, rain, and storms have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the last few weeks, but I think we’re turning the corner. The new greenhouse is fully planted as of today, the west end is framed up with a fan installed, and we might actually put the plastic cover on this week.

It’s 90 degrees out today, and the strawberries are getting ripe. Why didn’t I renovate the paths last summer again?

We’re still behind schedule, but the dry, warm weather in the forecast for this week is a very good thing. June is off to a more encouraging start than May.

Oh, and have you ever eaten garlic scapes? Because that’s the other thing we’re harvesting this week, brought on by the heat. This means another early year for garlic!

Tractor repair

Matt — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:23:19 +0000

Yesterday, the tractor quit running while Mrs. B. was working up the garden, and it wouldn’t restart. It’s done this before on hot days when the coolant was low, so we assumed that was the problem.

Today, she tried to start it, but the key wouldn’t turn and the starter wouldn’t go.

After getting some advice from Mrs. B.’s dad and the internet, I set out to investigate. There were two problems: (1) the battery terminals were dirty, and (2) the ignition wires were fried.

The simple solution was to bypass the switch, which would have solved the “on” part of the on/off switch. The tractor had a couple “spare” switches (at one time, they controlled the headlights), but neither of them worked. So, I grabbed the first switch I found, similar to this one in our house:

And now we’re back in business.

Open House April 16th

burkefarm — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 21:49:39 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came out to the open house. We always enjoy having company & showing folks around the farm! Our next planned farm event is U-pick peas, some time in June.

Baby chicks are coming!

burkefarm — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:32:31 +0000

Baby chicks are coming this week. Today we finished working on the brooder. It’s amazing how much junk can be stored in one tiny little building.

Some finds:

- A car jack
- 1/2 bag charcoal from 1990
- A calf pan (galvanized tub with attached calf nipple)
- 150 or so canning jars
- 150 or so mayonnaise jars
- Five large coffee cans almost full of roofing nails
- Window weights
- Many rusty gardening tools

We’ll probably use the window weights as canopy weights for our market canopy. As for the roofing nails- I guess we’re prepared to re-shingle the roof!

Tomato plants have germinated for the new hoophouse. Now that the brooder is ready, hopefully we can make some progress on putting up the new hoophouse.

Everything old is new again!

burkefarm — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 03:22:49 +0000

We got in touch with the folks at vintageaerial.com this week and looked at some historic photos of our farm. While I haven’t shelled out $350 for a print yet, it was very interesting to see that, in 1973, the south lawn of our property was a one-acre vegetable garden.

This is approximately where we are currently growing strawberries, have put up a hoophouse, and are about to put up a second hoophouse. 37 years later, it’s nice to know that we have the same agrarian, back-to-the-land ideas as whoever lived here in the past!