Red Hawk Rise Organics

November 30, 2017 Weekly Updates

Along with plugging away at the work outside, we’ve also been focusing on another essential part of the farm- business formation. Of course, when I dreamed about starting my own farm, I was thinking about growing food, not about tax forms, licensing, and permits, but as any small business owner knows, these are crucial steps to running your own operation. And at last, we’re getting there! This week marked a number of milestones in this area. We have been registered as a limited liability company with the state of West Virginia and are now officially known as Red Hawk Rise Organics, LLC. We have a completed operating agreement (a key...

Progress Report!: November Photo Shoot

November 16, 2017 Monthly Photo Shoots, Weekly Updates

With the cold weather settling in and the days growing shorter and shorter, it isn’t hard to be up with the sun. And as this is the first house we’ve lived in with an east-facing view, we’re learning to appreciate sunrises as much as we already appreciate sunsets! With November somehow already halfway over, now seems like a good time to look back over our photos from the last four months and see how far we’ve come. Enjoy! ...

Rocks

November 2, 2017 Weekly Updates

Even as the weather gets chillier, the work hasn’t slowed down. And each job finished seems to create a new job after it, whether we were expecting it or not. The most intense so far has been all about the rocks. Unless you’re farming in the great plains (and for all I know, even there), your soil is likely to have some stones. However, this is less likely in land that has been farmed for years and years as some other poor sucker has probably already pulled them out by one means or another. After talking to our neighbors who have lived here their entire lives, it seems like our...

Raising beds

October 18, 2017 Weekly Updates

What a difference a few days make! On Monday, our field was basically a big dirt pile. Now, it is mostly the precise raised breads you can see in the picture above. The benefit of raised beds (and the reason we chose to work with them) is that the soil warms sooner and dries faster, enabling earlier planting in the spring and helping keep the drainage as good as possible in our somewhat clay soil. After the initial plowing, this was the next big jobs for our BCS walk-behind tractor. Using the rotary plow attachment, Mike and the BCS were able to accomplish in just three days what would have...

Building up

October 7, 2017 Weekly Updates

After a month of thinking about and working on plowing the fields, our focus shifted completely over the last week as we embarked on the major project of setting up our hoop house. Hoop houses are basically unheated greenhouses. The clear plastic that covers the frame allows in light and then helps traps the heat inside, allowing crops to be grown much earlier and later in the season and even over the entire winter. By hoop house standards, it’s a pretty modest structure at 20 feet wide, 48 feet long, and 12 feet high. But by my standards, it seems enormous! I had seen more or less the exact hoop...

Looking like a farm!

September 22, 2017 Weekly Updates

Big apologies for the long delay between posts. It finally feels like we’re running a farm in that we have close to no time to think about or do anything besides working outside, planning what work we’ll be doing outside, problem-solving what we’re doing outside, etc., etc., etc., and the last two weeks seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. In the last week, we’ve gotten 30 cubic yards of compost delivered as well as our BCS walking tractor. While I work on spreading the compost around the fields to get an extra boost of organic matter into the soil before next season, Mike is gradually plowing up...

Working away

September 5, 2017 Weekly Updates

While we watch our little garden of fall greens begin to sprout and grow, our major focus is on getting the farm fields set up for spring. There is no easing into the growing season on a farm. Once late winter hits, the work instantly goes into overdrive, so the goal is to be completely ready to go before then so that no catch-up work needs to be done. Additionally, getting the fields ready for planting now means that we can put in a cover crop over the winter, which will provide the soil protection from compaction caused by rain and snow as well as nutrients to feed the crops...

Bugs and sprouts

August 24, 2017 Weekly Updates

So I lasted about 6 weeks with no garden. As I’ve probably mentioned, I love growing greens- kale, lettuce, arugula, raab- really anything leafy has got a special place in my heart. The kale and cabbage from our garden in Pennsylvania lasted for a of couple weeks after our move, but once those ran out, I knew I’d only last so long before having to grow more of my own. It’s tough to find locally grown greens in the heat of summer and even the ones I did find just weren’t the same as eating what I grew myself, so I guess putting in a garden so quickly isn’t much...

The lay of the land

August 16, 2017 Weekly Updates

Summer moves on, peach season is upon us, and while not having a garden of our own is always a bummer, it is actually providing us with a great reason to check out all of the local food options in our area. We’ve ventured out to multiple farmers markets, the nearest food co-op, and are even lucky enough to have an on-farm market just 3 minutes from our house that is open six days a week. Not only is it nice to have access to so much great local produce, this is also helping us do valuable market research in advance of running our own farm next season. It’s helpful...

This year’s bummer

June 20, 2017 Weekly Updates

After growing beautifully all winter and into the spring, producing amazing scapes, and seemingly doing everything as expected, the garlic finally succumbed to the effects of a cool, wet spring and started rotting in the ground before producing decent cloves. The cloves in the picture look deceptively nice, but are actually incredibly under-sized, each only about the size of a quarter. I am totally bummed out. This would be an unfortunate loss any year, as garlic is a staple item in our kitchen, but this garlic was even more important- it was supposed to be the foundation of our seed garlic to grow on our farm next year. After growing...

Two Feet in the Dirt

microfarm