Cleaning up around the farm and our winter markets

Late October and early November are a time for us to "clean up" around the farm. It's always tempting to leave things out in the field as we're tired from a long but rewarding season of growing veggies for you and your family but a little extra work during the late fall helps us in the spring. We like to leave our fields as ready as they can be for the coming spring.

One of the bigger fall cleanup jobs on the farm is pulling up landscape fabric. We use landscape fabric on specific crops to help suppress weeds and conserve moisture - the fabric is woven and breathable allowing both air and water into the soil below. The fabric is secured by "staples" that are about 6 inches long and spaced every 5 feet or so. The job involves cutting off and removing the plant matter from the vegetables grown in the fabric. Then we remove the staples and finally we fold the fabric neatly and sort it by type of plant grown. We can reuse this fabric for 4-5 seasons before it degrades so much that it no longer suppresses weeds.

We also pull up the most fragile of our irrigation system. This included our irrigation times, pressure regulators and filters and the runs of irrigation that move around the farm based on need. It's important to keep this equipment from freezing repeatedly as any remaining water would turn to ice over the winter and potentially damage the components.

We've also begun work on our newest tunnel which will be 30' wide by 95' long and paid for by a grant through the USDA's National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) program. We're thankful that our project was chosen by NRCS and are looking forward to expanding our early season offerings by utilizing this tunnel. It will also help us work through a cover crop rotation in our existing tunnels so we can continue to build soil structure inside our tunnels. Better soil structure = better soil health = healthier veggies!

Finally, we're looking forward to our winter markets at both the Mankato Farmers Market and the Cannon Valley Farmers Market. The Mankato Farmers Market is located at Drummer's Garden Center on select Saturdays from 10a-noon. The Cannon Valley Farmers Market is located in the Faribo West Mall in Faribault, MN. See below for our schedule: