[AT] Now NC twisters: -now hail vegetable discussion

Grant Brians sales at heirloom-organic.com
Wed Apr 20 06:33:38 PDT 2011


Charlie, your question about the greens and mowing is actually a very
pertinent one. On two of the crops mowing just kills the plants because of
the nature of how the leaves are grown and harvested. But on the Spinach,
Baby Lettuce (not Miners Lettuce which is a wild plant and is quite the
curiousity in how it grows and is eaten) and the Baby Brassica Greens it is
feasible to harvest multiple times.
     We do sometimes use one of our rotary mowers to mow down a crop of one
of these, but it is not the preferred path when it can be avoided in the
Spring time. When the plants are hand cut with the knives, they recover
faster and have fewer damaged leaves that we have to pick out and throw away
during the succeeding harvest. That was part of the reason to cut and try to
sell part of the damaged product. The second issue is that the recovery time
when cutting with a mower is longer than if the plants are hand cut. The
reason is that the mowers no matter whether they are rotary blade (bush hog
style), flail or disc rotary break the leaves with a slightly blunt trauma
versus the clean cut of a sharpened hand knife executed by an experienced
hand picker. Because of the trauma aspect, in the Spring time there is a
higher likelihood that the crop will flower which eliminates the salability
as well.
     There is a last reason to try and harvest some of the greens even if
damaged - customer loss. When you do not have product to sell the regular
customers then that interrupts the pattern of purchase whether the customer
is a retail customer at the farmers market or a wholesale restaurant or
wholesaler customer and they then have to be enticed to come back to you
rather than simplu continueing to purchase each time from you. This is a
major reason I grow and sell produce every single week of the year including
times like the week between Christmas and New Years when historically sales
were abysmal (although not this past December for reasons which completely
escape me....) Also, it is a major reason I grow on the remote ranch which
is 50 miles away over a mountain pass on a poor condition road in a valley
that gets extreme weather conditions. By growing there too, I can produce a
variety of items year round which otherwise I could not do so.
     So, your thoughts about market demand are spot on! Hand pick Fresh
Market Vegetables and Fruit are a business that is different from any other
in Agriculture. The only other somewhat similar one really is Dairying. The
similarity is that the Cows, Goats or Yaks (just throwing the Yaks in for
fun...) must be milked every single day on the same basic schedule - just
like selling the vegetables or fruit. The differences are that the
production levels are constantly varying, the demand is different nearly
every day, the weather has more of an effect on production (not necessarily
the people), picking involves large numbers of people, irrigation is needed
for growing in nearly every crop for at least supplemental water and that
prices are constantly variable.
     By the way as an aside, in regard to your tobacco transplant specific
comments, to control transplant height that is the same technique that is
used on Artichoke, Asparagus, Strawberry and Bush Berry transplants. No
doubt I am forgetting several other California crops too!
     My next post will now return to a tractors subject....
             Grant Brians
             Hollister, California Vegetable, Nuts and Fruit farmer

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com]On Behalf Of charlie hill
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:20 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Now NC twisters: was Mina problem


Grant,  I somehow missed your message until I read Dean's reply.  Sorry to
hear of your loss.  I can tell you from being raised on a farm and from
working for a while as a crop insurance adjuster, an inch of hail is a big
deal anywhere.  In fact any hail at all is tough on crops.  I hope you
recover well.

I have a question for you with regard to your greens.  In the old days of
tobacco farming we always handled our young tobacco plants in the seed bed
with kid gloves.   But some years weather conditions would result in the
plants getting too long (leggy) before they could be transplanted and that
caused problems with the transplanters.  (be patient.  I'll get to the
point).  It was then that the folks at the universities figured out that you
could simply take a lawn mower, modified so that it would cut about 4 inches
high, and mow the plants down.  They would then sprout back out as if
nothing ever happened to them.   I'm wondering how your greens would do if
you tried the same thing?   I mean, cut them off below the hail damaged
leaves and let them grow back out?  Just curious.  I realize that might not
be feasible for a large scale operation and I also realize you need to meet
a particular market demand within a specific time period.  It probably
wouldn't solve your problem.  Just wondering how the plants would respond to
it.

Good luck with the rest of your season.

Charlie



-----Original Message-----
From: Dean Vinson
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:59 PM
To: 'Antique tractor email discussion group'
Subject: Re: [AT] Now NC twisters: was Mina problem

Grant, I'm very sorry to hear of the crop damage you suffered--that must be
terribly frustrating.

And, speaking as a more-or-less lifetime resident of the Midwest, an inch of
hail is serious business wherever it falls!

Hope your spring sale was productive--and if nothing else, good on you for
making the best of a tough situation.

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net



-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Grant Brians
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 7:25 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Now NC twisters: was Mina problem

On April 7th we had a freak Thunderstorm here in the Santa Clara Valley of
California. Normally we rarely get thunderstorms and we only get hail once
in a while. During that day, at two of the ranches I farm about half a mile
apart (but not at the other two ranches, one of which was less than three
miles away as the crow flies) we received 5 separate periods of hail. In
total about an inch of hail fell as part of the total 1.2" of precipitation
during the 5 hour time period.
     Now I know what you people in the midwest and Southeast are thinking -
"that hardly counts as precipitation let alone hail!" But remember this is
coastal Central California where we "almost never" get hail and certainly
not in April! So, the problem is that the hail damaged my Spinach, Miners
Lettuce, Baby Lettuce and various other Baby Greens crops from bruising and
it also knocked off many of the fruit tree blossoms - all of these being
major crops for me and in the types of local crops that are grown. So the
result ended up being a loss well over $10,000 for my farm, all because of
less than an hour of hail falling during a part of one day from a small
Thunderstorm. And as noted by others in this thread, these types of storms
are usually ones that only "touch down" in certain spots deemingly for
unclear reasons....
     So there is my "hail tale of woe" and to recover a little bit from it,
we ran a Farmers Market "Hail Spring Sale" on the weekend to try to recover
a little from this.....

         Grant Brians
         Hollister,California




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