I can't believe it has already been a month since the last post! We have (almost) settled into our new home and finally have been able to stretch out a bit. The basement and garage are still in shambles but everything is moving forward. 

At the greenhouses we have planted all of our tomatoes for 2014 production in our heated houses. We already have a few Sun Golds that are going to be ready to eat any day now! Once we get a bunch more starting to turn we will think about sharing the first local taste of summer. It is hard to believe how great these little tomatoes taste, with a great balance of sweet and tart in a bright orange package. They were a huge hit last year, especially with some little ones who would eat them like candy! I'm drooling over here just thinking about it. We also have some of our bigger varieties flowering and some starting to set fruit, so we will be about 30 ish days out on our first bigger tomatoes if all goes well. Tomatoes in Wisconsin in early May? We are very proud of this and it is nice to see the fruit (literally) of what seemed like an eternity of freezing cold wood cutting and stove loading, and sky high propane prices.

Despite the snow today it really is starting to feel like spring has sprung. We saw the first lightning in the area last night, and Robins are out in full force. Tif and I are very much looking forward to it, even though we have a bit of a taste at work.

The flowers are looking absolutely stunning this year! I think the folks signed up for our class next Saturday (there are still a few spots open here) are going to be really impressed with the quality and variety we have available this year. The flower greenhouse seemed crowded last year so we cut back a little bit, and the flowers have really grown into the space and are really healthy!

My parents just came down last weekend and part of this week and were a huge help! My dad, Jim Sr., helped with some electrical/mechanical equipment issues we were having and my mom, Rhonda, helped plant and clean up. It was nice to have two extra pairs of hands around, and additional expertise. My mom is currently training to become a licensed Master Gardener in Michigan and it was great learning about the class and what she has learned. It is quite the hefty manual!

It's been another few busy weeks here in Westby. Tiffany and I have moved into a new home. It feels great to finally be in a space we can call our own that is separate from the greenhouses. We also grafted tomatoes for the first time about 3 weeks ago. Grafting is the process of cutting two different plants at an angle, and putting the separate halves together. The idea is to get the strongest roots, with fruiting body that is tastier (or has some other benefit) than the rootstock plant. Grafting is very common in fruit trees, and has been in practice in orchards for thousands of years. There is evidence of the practice dating back to 2000 B.C. in China. We are only doing a few plants this year as a trial. We are hoping to see increases in production, disease resistance, and better over all fruit quality in these grafted plants do to their more robust root system.

grafting with half a razor blade.

I was definitely nervous cutting the little beloved seedlings in half when I started the process. I honestly thought I had killed the whole lot! Now that it has been a few weeks though, it seems that all of them survived except for one which I cut at an improper angle. Phew!

Clear line where the Scion and Rootstock meet

We are also getting back from the MOSES conference this past weekend. It was good to meet some fellow organic farmers, and go to lectures to learn about ways we can improve our farm and our practices. We have big plans to encourage native pollinators and beneficial insects around the farm we will be implementing soon! We also learned about building energy efficient cold storage, purchasing a tractor, farm finance and employee management. We also got to meet a few people we have been working with over the last year at DRAMM, Purple Cow, and Four Season Tools.

We moved the soil into the greenhouse to thaw, and flowers are coming in starting this week. The tomatoes need to be transplanted (already!) soon, and the organic compost is en route for them. We are very excited about the coming weeks and it is starting to feel a little bit like Spring at the greenhouses despite the still frigid weather.
We have also announced the first class at Deep Rooted, so be sure to check us out on Facebook, and sign up!

Thanks for checking in!

Jim and Tif

Here we go again!

2013 really did go fast! We apologize for the lack of posts last summer/fall; we were extremely busy, truthfully I don’t think either of us thought one could be so busy. We harvested over ten tons (20,000 lbs!) of tomatoes last year; and though this was a little less than our projected goal we are very happy with the results, and our ability to help supply fresh organic produce to our community. Our tomatoes were sold at a number of local grocery stores, farmers markets, used by delis, and were in school cafeterias last year and surely on countless BLT's at home.

 

Our season ended a little early as we shifted our focus onto building a new hoop house. It is the same size as our greenhouses, but uses all passive ventilation to help lower our environmental impact. We will be growing our 2014 heirloom tomatoes in the hoop house, and we have some very exciting flavors and colors that will be available. We will also have some early and late season produce coming out of the hoop house to help extend the local season deep into the winter months.

In other things non-greenhouse. We spent the holidays in Michigan with Jimmy’s family, which was very enjoyable, and a much needed vacation. We were able to catch up with some old friends, enjoy some ethnic food, attend the Winter Classic hockey game and we even had some time to teach Jimmy how to ice skate, he is a natural!

We are back, refreshed and ready to go! Wood stove is going, tomatoes are growing and we are looking forward to the 2014 season! We will be sure to update more frequently this year, there is going to be a lot of new and exciting things happening this year.

Bloom

We have a few baskets and pots that are extra ambitious. It's still snowing outside and the flowers haven't even been fertilized yet, but you can definitely get a view of the beauty that's soon to bloom here at Deep Rooted.

Where there's fire, well there's fire.

Things are moving right along here at Deep Rooted. We got another 12 trays of flowers in on Tuesday, and got them all planted this morning. Still working out the kinks as far as getting them done quickly and efficiently, and getting used to the space in the greenhouse, but it's fun and goes pretty quickly with a few people. We're lucky to have plenty of good help, and volunteers. We have just shy of 200 baskets of flowers hanging, and the tomatoes are growing really well.

I've been working on creating a wireless network sensor system using XBee radios to monitor the greenhouses temperature, humidity, soil temp and light. Hopefully CO2 and soil moisture down the road. I haven't really gotten deep into it yet, but have gotten the radios to talk to each other through my computer's serial connection which is pretty fun to watch. We're also planning a house and working on insulating the future retail and storage space.

 The wood stove hasn't been able to keep up with the heat at night with the cold, and we are using a bit of propane to keep her above 55. The stove has seemed to be burning better over all though. Tif and I went up tonight to load the stove, and on our way out she noticed there was no smoke coming out of the chimney, we turned around and there was 2 ish foot flame coming out of the chimney. It looked more like a wood fired kiln then a stove, and we stuck around and took some temperatures to make sure everything was ok. It calmed down after a bit, and probably cleared our chimney out in the process, gave us a little scare though.

Between all this, the other little things, and the cold snap we are in right now we haven't had a lot of free time, and when we have it it's been spent bowling or cooking. Nordic lanes is right between us and the green houses and it's been fun to try and channel the big Lebowski and be calm for a bit. It sounds funny, but it's almost bowling as meditation at this point. We are supposed to be getting a fair amount of snow tonight and tomorrow. I picked up a pair of snowshoes today in anticipation of some free time this weekend to check out more of the beautiful hills here in the driftless.

Getting a little long winded here,

Jimmy

We will move forward, upward, and yes, we will move onward.

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It's not even 7 am yet and I've already loaded the wood stove, made homemade banana nut muffins, coffee, and caught up on some light unemployment law reading and have found myself with a little time to kill before we head back out to the greenhouses. We planted our first flower baskets yesterday and have another shipment coming this week and another big shipment the following week and so on through March so we will be busy planting flowers and arranging baskets for the next month. We fired up one of our wood stoves about a week ago to heat our flower greenhouse. As you can imagine this is quite the challenge in February. After changing out a few pumps, adjusting our schedule, and making a few minor improvements I think we've finally got a pretty good system down and it seems to be keeping the greenhouse around 55 through the wintery Wisconsin nights. During the day it is around 80-90 degrees. Who needs to go to St. John when we've got our own little tropical paradise (well kind of, maybe not quite tropical but definitely becoming lush) here in Southwestern Wisconsin?

 We started our tomatoes on January 29^th, they sprouted in less than a week and two weeks later they are looking GREAT - healthy and strong. We started our seeds in our new Amish friend Menno’s greenhouse which he has had going since the beginning of January. We have 7 varieties and roughly 2,500 tomato plants. We will bring them out to our 2^nd greenhouse in Mid-March and then move many of them to our 3^rd and 4^th greenhouses in April, when the temperatures start to get a little warmer. We try to keep them in our 2^ndgreenhouse as long as possible as we do not have #3 and 4 hooked up to the wood stoves yet, we use a gas heater at night to keep the temperatures up, this will be yet another learning experience, as we are quickly finding that with everything comes a learning curve.

Our lives have pretty much been consumed with work and research. Although, we took a little road trip the beginning of February to Madison for a workshop. We did find sometime for ourselves and enjoyed a nice meal and some good cocktails, as those two things (and many other amenities that we are both used to) are hard to come by here in Westby.  That same weekend there was an annual Ski Jump competition that happens in our backyard (literally), which is always a good time. We also celebrated our year anniversary and Valentines Day, which was oh so romantic! We worked all day and were both passed out before 10pm! All and all I think things are shaping up quite nicely and we’re really looking forward to getting into the production end of things (the fun stuff)!

Onward,
Tif

And so the tale begins...

On the 2nd of January, 2013 Tiffany, Nixie, and I (Jimmy) loaded up the jeep to the brim and made the ten hour drive from Detroit into our new lives in Wisconsin. Well, not completely new for Tif, but new for me. It's been a busy month so far after the "relaxation" of the holidays and we have hit the ground running. Construction was started on two sheds in the fall, and we are just getting them rapped up. Electric, drywall, and insulation are all going into the retail shed in the next two weeks after much flip flopping. The wood shed is complete and loaded with about 36 cords of wood. Loaded in our first week home over three days with help from friends and especially Tif's uncle Pat. It's been a family affair so far, and it has been a pleasure meeting and working with everyone, family, friends and acquaintances a like. 

We've also spent a lot of time organizing, cleaning, and prepping business materials. We managed to squeeze in a birthday party, a bowling tournament (I bowled a 240!), concert, and a home cooked lobster and steak (and mac and cheese) dinner. It's been a bit of a rocky road at times with plans changing unexpectedly almost from the get go, but it seems that every time so far it's worked out to be a better situation then we originally thought though, and all of them learning experiences. 

Keep following for pictures, and more to come from Tif and I.

Happy trails, 

Jimmy