Unpaid Field Hand: Welcome to the Farm

Posted by James Eisenstein on 06/10, 2011 at 12:34 PM

One way I can contribute to this task is by offering an “in the dirt” perspective to the stories told on the Local Food Journey bog. I spend at least two days each week in the actual production of food. A little takes place in my backyard garden in the suburbs of Linden Hall, but most of the time I work at my son John’s certified organic vegetable farm (Jade Family Farm) in Spruce Hill Township, Juniata County.

Now about that picture.  In 2010, we planted five-and-a-half rows of Jersey all male asparagus, each row about 130 feet long. What you see is part of that field in its second year at the end of this May. If you do not cut the asparagus spears when they are five or six inches high, they grow to become the beautiful fern like plants seen above, building the strength of their crowns and roots for next year.

Photo Credit James Eisenstein.

This field looks nice and healthy, right? Well, almost right. As the picture below sadly shows, growing around healthy plants and between the rows are … weeds and more weeds. Asparagus does not like to compete with weeds, and these small weeds, left alone, will grow into really big weeds. Because Jade Family Farm is certified organic, we are not allowed to spray for weeds—we wouldn’t want to anyway. So it is down on our hands and knees to pull the bigger ones and then hoe the rest.

The next picture shows the same area (within a few feet) after weeding and hoeing, but before we tear apart a bale of mulch hay (growling all the while). We schlep it into the patch and spread it thickly enough to suppress the inevitable re-emergence of spectacularly tenacious weeds and to conserve moisture when rain is in short supply.

Photo Credit James Eisenstein.

Will we have the twelve hours needed to hand weed and hoe the rest of the patch given the twenty other critical tasks waiting to be done? Maybe we will have to just push a lawn mower between the rows, hand weed right next to the asparagus, hoe, and then mulch. That will save a few hours (assuming we can get the mower between the rows), but if we don’t mulch really thickly (which takes more time), weeds will soon reappear. Welcome to farming!

If we do all of this, and we are lucky with disease and insects and rainfall, we will begin to get good production next year. Keep your fingers crossed and check it out next spring at the Jade Family Farm stand at the Boalsburg Farmers Market.

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