24 tons of Black Gold delivered
No, we didn’t actually buy black gold but good quality compost is often referred as that in farming.
Growing veggies pulls nutrients out of the soil and there are a few ways to replenish them including cover crops but compost is the most sustainable with it using waste products from other industries to make a nutrient-rich soil amendment and fertilizer.
On Tuesday we received a truckload of compost from Cold Creek Compost in Ukiah. It was 23.95 tons, or 47,900 pounds of their Agrow-Blend Compost that were on the truck and trailer.
The compost is made up of 25 percent chicken manure with the other 75 percent being grape pomace, yard trimmings and food waste.
Many other farms in the area have got their compost from this company for their compost so we knew it was high quality compared to other places.
We won’t be putting much of it on the fields right now but we wanted to get it delivered with plenty of time to spare before we needed it in late January when there could be the chance that rain makes the dirt road too muddy for the truck to drive on.
While we are still busy harvesting and weeding on the farm we are done planting for 2023 so we have been using that time to look ahead to 2024.
We can’t just go into the new year with no plan and we also don’t wait until the calendar turns to make improvements on the farm.
Getting a delivery of compost was a key goal in preparation for 2024 and we have also been purchasing a number of small tools that will help us accomplish tasks faster or improve the quality of veggies we grow.
Most of these tools will be crucial in reducing the time that we spend weeding on the farm which is a goal of ours to lower for 2024. The less weeding we have to do means the more time and energy we can spend on harvesting and planting which are more fun tasks to do.
We are fortunate to have such a wide network of farms that we can visit and talk to them about what they are doing and see how it can be adapted to what we are doing.
Those conversations lead us to get compost from that company and focus our improvements on weeding with new tools like the tine weeder.
Our first seed catalog arrived in the mail which signifies the start of us seriously planning our spring and summer veggies for 2024. We like to look through the physical catalogs instead of the digital ones as we can write in them and more easily compare varieties from different catalogs side by side.
We have been thinking about what our plan for certain crops in 2024 are since early summer so these ideas have been percolating in our brain.
Much of what we will grow will stay the same with small tweaks to when we start planting each variety and maybe a new variety here or there. We also will be reducing what we grow of some crops and increasing some of the ones that we sold out of too quickly.
Once we get the crop plan finalized we will then buy all of the seeds we need after checking through the supply of seeds we already have from this year.
