{"id":5062,"date":"2016-01-25T12:39:09","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T12:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5062"},"modified":"2016-04-07T12:40:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T12:40:01","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-willjanuary-25th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-willjanuary-25th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer will:January 25th"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members,\r\n\r\nThis year is my first year farming. At least that\u2019s how it feels. I have\u00a0experience working on farms and working on farm enterprises, but this is my first\u00a0season growing vegetables and row crops in the field while being solely responsible for them. As a relatively inexperienced farmer, this winter season has been\u00a0an interesting one. As most of you might know, it is an El Ni\u00f1o year.\r\n\r\nAn El Ni\u00f1o\u00a0storm system hits California every 3 to 8 years and when it happens it means that\u00a0we are slated for a wet winter that can persist through spring. From what I\u2019ve been\u00a0reading from meteorologists and other farmers, it looks like it will continue until\u00a0March and maybe April and May.\r\n\r\nThis is very good for California as a whole. Our state badly needs the water to replenish man-made reservoirs, natural watersheds and our lakes, rivers and\u00a0streams. I can already see it breathing new life into the lush green hills around Mt.\u00a0Diablo and the Altamont that overlook the farm. For California farmers, as I\u2019m\u00a0discovering, the erratic rain schedule brings a new set of challenges. It has been\u00a0frustrating and challenging planning for a spring crop as well as maintaining our\u00a0crop of winter vegetables.\r\n\r\nOur thick clay soil retains a lot of moisture, so even when we get a string\u00a0of days without rain, the soil remains too wet to work. It\u2019s hard to get into the\u00a0field to cultivate weeds because our boots get mucked up and mud sticks to the\u00a0stirrup hoes. When we do cultivate, as soon as weeds are uprooted from the soil,\u00a0the rain and damp soil create the perfect conditions for them to reestablish their\u00a0root system. It\u2019s generally not good for the soil to cultivate or walk on wet ground\u00a0anyway because it leads to compaction. When the soil is moved or pushed, air is\u00a0squeezed or forced out of the space between soil particles and when it dries, the\u00a0soil loses its water and air holding properties because of the way these particles\u00a0have been rearranged. This makes it difficult to get transplants into the ground or\u00a0to check on already planted crops for pest issues as well.\r\n\r\nHopefully we can get a little reprieve so I can at least make some progress\u00a0with building our new vegetable greenhouse!\r\n\r\nWishing you the best,\r\n\r\nAssistant Farmer Will","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear CSA Members, This year is my first year farming. At least that\u2019s how it feels. I have\u00a0experience working on farms and working on farm enterprises, but this is my first\u00a0season growing vegetables and row crops in the field while being solely responsible for them. As a relatively inexperienced farmer, this winter season has been\u00a0an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1jE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5064,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions\/5064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}