Pre-Season Farm Update

A view of the farm after a snow. The demolished house in the background has since been removed.

Greetings in 2013!

 Much has taken place with the farm project since the end of last season. After continuing to harvest some field crops into the beginning of November, we have kept up weekly shoot production through the off-season with only a short break for the end-of-year holidays. As is plain from the above photo, we are still a little while removed from doing much outdoors, although the sweet onion transplants for the spring are already in trays.

onion transplants for the first spring planting

On the request of our friend and customer Phil Jones at Colors in Harmonie Park, we have also recently tried our hand at growing popcorn shoots. We dropped off some 7-day-old shoots at the restaurant, though they did not look as developed as the packaged shoots in online photos. Right now, they look like pale yellow spikes, but will apparently develop blades somewhat wider than wheatgrass blades. Most recipes that I have found on the internet assume that the corn shoots have been blanched during the sprouting process, which is what we have been doing.

popcorn shoots at about 8 days

Because we have only planted about half of one tray, the current plan is to bring samples of this crop to Eastern Market this Saturday (2/16/13) and see where customer sentiment goes from there. We also need to figure out how many days each planting would require.

Imminent Greenhouse Construction

The long march toward an improved growing space took a major leap forward at the beginning of February with the acquisition of a City of Detroit Building Permit for a greenhouse. At the conclusion of two bewildering afternoons spent at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, we emerged one permit fee lighter, but with a shining piece of paper allowing us to break ground. Our hope is to start construction as soon as the frost is off the ground this spring.

Low-Technology, High-Information

This next section is dedicated to my brother William and his wife Rebecca, without whose generosity our progress in this regard would not have been possible.

When we started coming to Eastern Market after the start of the year, I got into a habit almost by accident that has since yielded some useful statistical information. Desperate to find some alternative to constantly checking my cell phone for the time (it is quite handy to always know what time it is during the Saturday markets), I began bringing the elegant timepiece I received from my brother for being a groomsman at his wedding and keeping it on the table. Almost immediately, the instantaneous access to the current time strongly appealed to me, and I certainly didn't mind being able to stow my cell phone until the end of market.

Market Ledger at 8:59 a.m. on February 2nd, 2013

During the first Saturday I brought it with me, it occurred to me--since it was much easier to keep track of the passing of each hour--to mark when the tops of the hours took place in the course of tallying sales of each crop. Doing so, I realized, would allow us to see how busy we were through the Saturday market. As long as each hour was noted in its place in the tally row, we would end up with a tidy record of hourly sales.

I will be the first to admit that our hand-kept tallying system is highly imperfect to begin with, and only effectively records about 90% of each week's sales even without marking the hours. On the other hand, sales in January and February are much easier to track with any degree of accuracy, both because of their relative infrequency during the market day and the lack of crop diversity in the off-season.

Mean Hourly Sales Volume by Crop, 1/12/2013 - 2/9/2013; Source:  Rising Pheasant Farms

The above graph shows an average of the hourly sales volumes over the most recent five weeks at Eastern Market. These data seem to suggest that most folks show up for their sunflower and pea shoots around lunchtime, but I am excited to see what this bell curve does during the season. My hypothesis involves a general shift to the left (that is, toward the earlier end of the market day), but time will tell.

Thank you again, William, for enabling the preceding interpretive analysis with your thoughtful gift. Carolyn and I wish both of you the best possible luck with everything!

Spring Wrapped Up, On to Summer!

Wow!  so much has happen since my last post, its hard to know where to start.  We we are officially done with Spring!  And by Spring I mean the season in which I work 12 hour days to get all the beds prepped and planted and begin to enjoy our first delicious harvests of Detroit produce.  It was a crazy one.  We unfortunately had some personnel turn over right in the middle of the peak field work period (end of May), when we had 10 90 foot beds to work up and get planted.  But thanks to friends and family who were able to put in a little extra Finn-care time I was able to bust my butt and get it all done.  Of course now that all the real work is over I have more then enough help, as Joan has returned from South America (good stories, you should ask her about it) to join the Rising Pheasant Farms team again and we have brought on Russell for some additional assistance.  So the farm is really looking great right now and I'm nervous about running out of things for us all to do (probably won't happen but now I don't feel bad about taking Monday's off...well from field work at least).

Snapshot of the farm harvest currently: scallions, garlic scapes, broccoli, cabbage (we grew them mini, and folks seem to really like that), collards, red russian kale and curly kale, swiss chard, spinach, and peas.  A few of these spring vegetables are on their way out (we'll have more head lettuce, spinach and peas in the fall!), but just in time for our favorite summer vegetable to begin to produce.

We also planted a bunch of perennials which we will not be able to harvest at all this year.  Raspberries, blackberries, asparagus, and strawberries all went in and I can't wait till next year when I'm harvesting all that goodness.  With the complete devastation of Michigan fruiting crops it has reaffirmed my desire to grow my own berries (gotta use that heat-island effect for something positive).  Plus with out the recent crops losses, it has generally been difficult to come across organic/no spray berries at Eastern Market or even near by upick.  I used to just ignore that fact but with a small child and the unfortunate knowledge (some times a curse) that berries absorb more pesticides and herbcides then really any other type of produce, I just can't bring myself to purchase/consume conventional berries.  And I LOVE them so much...its really aweful.  But next year we will have more strawberries, raspberries and blackberries then we'll know what to do with!!  It will be interesting to see if any of them make it to market.

Infrastructure wise, we're still plugging a way on the fence (and making plans for fencing in the side yard) and we've finally finished demo on the farmhouse!  This past weekend we actually put something IN the house (besides blood, sweat and tears).  My neighbor Mike, who is a carpenter, assisted us in building and placing a 16 foot beam down the center of the house so we could remove a support wall and expand the kitchen.  It looks awesome and only took one days work (after a year of demo, it is unbelieveable that any thing could be accomplished in a day).  The next project is replacing the stairs in the center of the house (taken out when it was converted to a 2 flat).

We've also started our weekly farm stand.  We've put up our stand 3 times now and seen some decent neighborhood traffic, including meeting at least 5 new neighbors.  And since that's really the whole point of the stand, besides increasing access to fresh produce, I'd say we're doing pretty well.  The farm stand will probably never be a big money maker (hard to beat Eastern Market) but I think it will serve very well as a neighborhood gathering spot and mini food hub.

Well I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole bunch of exciting updates, but its time to get out to the field so I'll leave you with some photos from the spring!

Tilling up the new land back in April

Cabbage back in April.  Now we've got mini cabbages at market.

Finn enjoying an entire bag of sunshoots :)

A little help from the neighbors at our first farm stand!

Our biggest load yet...we made it to the 3rd level!

View of the farm (beginning of June) taken by Randall of Eastern Market Corp.

The Rotobike!

Tilling began today on the new land!

and when we say bike power we mean bike power...check out Jack picking up the tiller from Earthworks (a convenient time to run the dog as well)

http://vimeo.com/40648533

Here we go!!

Sorry folks, this post has been a long time coming...didn't mean to leave you with such a downer post for so long (though it had a happy ending, right?).

So lots going on here on the farm.  Darryl and I have been holding it down at Eastern Market.  I hope you all have gotten a chance to come and visit (and maybe picked up a bag of sunshoots!).  We are now in Shed 2 next to Brother Nature Produce for the rest of the year, so you can't miss us.  Last week was our first week out there and despite it being a little cold, it was a pretty good market.  Darryl seems to be really enjoying the market and I really enjoy having the help!  Sales are definitely up over last year, though I don't have an exact percentage, so we're off to a good start!

On the home front, Jack and I have been diligently working away on the fence for the farm.  As you can see from the photo we have completed the eastern side and actually now the northern (Frederick) side is nearly

complete (this photo is a couple weeks old).  We're building it out of the 100 year old lath we've been removing from the farmhouse as we demo.  At this point the lath is multi-colored, which looks really sweet, but I think unfortunately it will all go grey eventually.  I'm not a big fan of fences in theory but the reality is this will hopefully help define what it is we're doing out there for our neighbors.  It shows that its cared for, well maintained, that it isn't a community garden in the sense that folks are welcome to just take whatever, and that we are committed to that space.  Plus its not exactly a fortress wall...no razor wire...I knew we forgot something :)
Just to prove that I'm really dedicated to this fence I ceremoniously smashed my thumb with the very first nail and then continued to hammer my blood into the fence (literally, I was getting blood all over the nails).  It seemed very poetic.

Beyond my minor wounds, the fence is coming along really well.  Its a slow process but I feel like that is to our benefit.  Detroiters (and most people) don't do well with sudden change.  Because the fence building is time-intensive our neighbors see us out there nearly every day adding a little more.  It makes the process more on a human-scale.  Plus Finn has been out there with us most of the time and people walking by like to stop and say hi to the cute baby and it really facilitates neighborliness.  We're still the new kids on the block, and since many neighbors have lived here most of their lives we're going to have that title for a while, but that makes it all that much more important for us to be seen and to be seen slowly improving our little bit of the neighborhood.  We're building trust as we build our fence, dismantling the "other" and being seen as just people. Well at least that's what I hope. :)

I've also be busy growing our transplants for this season.  Currently we've got onions, leeks, cabbage, broccoli, collards, lettuce, kale, sweet peppers, and some flowers up and growing.  I learned a very important lesson about not cutting corners with transplants.  Growing supplies are not easily available in the city (yet! Detroit Farm and Garden is opening this Spring!!) so I usually borrow a car and drive all the way to Troy to get some of our transplanting supplies.  Unfortunately I forgot to pick up perlite when I was there and I attempted the the first transplants (the onions, leeks and scallions) without it.  Big mistake!  Perlite, for those who are unfamiliar, is  "an amorphous volcanic glass that has a relatively high water content, typically formed by the hydration of obsidian. It occurs naturally and has the unusual property of greatly expanding when heated sufficiently. It is an industrial mineral and a commercial product useful for its light weight after processing. When used as an amendment it has high permeability / low water retention and helps prevent soil compaction."  Thank you Wikipedia.  Its the little white balls you see in potting soil.  So basically without the perlite the soil in the transplant trays is compacted and doesn't drain well which results in roots rotting and plants dying. :(  Thankfully I was able to get some perlite off Patrick at Earthworks and most of our transplants are doing just fine.  Actually the cabbages are ready to be hardened off (the picture of "Red Express and "Farao" is our cabbages but a couple weeks ago) and if it wasn't so dang cold and windy they'd be outside right now.  It seems cruel to subject them to this kind of weather after living in the warm cozy attic all their lives.  But the day will come when we got to kick them out of the nest, give them a few bucks, wish them luck and send them on their way....we'll try again next week. :)


Out in the field the garlic is up, peas and beets are planted and hopefully we'll be planting spinach, onions, carrots and our cabbages next week. 


We are tittering on the brink of the busy season and all the excitement, anxiousness, and anticipation is beginning to unfold. I think it is going to be an amazing season. We're better established with our land (though it would really be nice to actually own all of it...if you have contacts to the City of Detroit that could help us, please let us know!!), feeling really good about having Darryl on board, and just feeling like its all coming together, slowly but surely.  I have been so fortunate to be given the chance to do what I love in a city I love (most of the time) and to work along side such amazing farmers, activists and neighbors.  


Thank you all for your support!