Finishing up our first year

First I would like to thank Nancy Dockter with the Arkansas Leader for the opportunity to be interviewed about my new career choice last week. Nancy is not only an excellent reporter; she is a local farmer.
She stands as one of the examples of why I maintain you will find no finer group of peers to work with.

It was sad to see our tomato and pepper plants succumb to the cold a few weeks ago, but keeping heirloom’s alive from April to December is one of this years success stories.
One of our lessons learned this year was that while high tunnel greenhouses are very hot in the Arkansas summers, they do a fantastic job of water management.
Keeping the rain off the tomatoes and most of the rest of our crop was most likely the key to their success. Fred was a bear to build and his soil has a long way to
go, but I suspect he will be a very productive growing system within the next few years.

Another success this year was finding great people to work on the farm. None of what we accomplished this year would have been possible without their help.
So thanks to Shawna, James, Sam, Brady, Mike, Gump, Steve-O, Justin, Jon Paul Sr & Jr, Tony, Josh, Tom, Tim, Ryan and Cody for all the hard work.
This group of local workers rose to the task of keeping this years construction and growing schedule on time and I could not be more thankful for their effort.

The next few weeks will be spent getting Fred ready for winter. We have spread leaves, lime & litter and will be lightly tilling it into the soil.
Afterwards we will seed rye grass for our winter cover. This process will help build our soil fertility and assist in the prevention of nutrient run off.
Starting in March of 2010, we will begin building our beds and transplanting our young ones.

Finally I would like to thank all of our customers. Thanks for the feedback and continued support. I am excited about next years crop and look forward to re-uniting with everyone in the spring.


Happy New Year!

Rainy Afternoons

OK, so Mia Vermillion’s “In the Dark” set’s the mood for a smooth afternoon listening to B.B. King’s Bluseville on the satellite radio. Farmers usually love August rain and I am no different, but do for different reasons. For me, it’s a chance to work in Fred without the brutal heat. I have some aphid collecting to do and get to try out my super duper bug sucker (leaf blower vacuum).

We have learned many valuable lessons with this year’s crop and continue to learn more every day. We are starting our fall crops and look forward to testing the limits of Fred this year. The tomatoes are starting to produce and the green beans have received good reviews. The Tyria’s have been a big hit at the market and their size certainly has been a fun conversation piece. We have learned much with regards to our cantaloupe. I think we may choose a different variety next year. We are loosing a very high percentage of these very fragile melons. We have started another row of Yellow Squash and Zucchini and hope to have some by the beginning of Oct. We are starting our spinach, basil and cilantro next week.

One a more personal note, it was a beautiful drive to Northern Virginia to help my oldest daughter Michelle move for her new job at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A big thank you to my nephew Joe for his hospitality, from a parent’s perspective, it is comforting knowing that your child still has family around who can help if needed. So thanks to Joe, Lesa, Jules, Adeline, Missy, Bill, Kerry & Joe (jr) for having the insight to move to the DC area all those years ago. I have no doubt that my little girl’s new career will take off and her new employers will see her value quickly. Those who know me, know that I have never let a little geography get in the way of being with my daughters and I look forward to more trips to our nations capitol.

I also look forward to more rainy afternoons and Mia Vermillion can sing the blues for me anytime.

Role Reversal with Channel 7

I want to thank Jessica Dean and KATV for the opportunity to talk about organic farming. While I do wish that more of what I said could have been shown, I understand that television news stories have to fit within given time slots. It was a pleasure meeting Jessica and showing her the farm and talking about the value of organic foods.
You can see the story at the following link:
http://cfc.katv.com/external.cfm?p=chooseyournews&h=2000&menu=news

For over 20 years in the IT arena I have been on the side of science and it was interesting seeing me as the emotional defender when in fact there are many issues with the science the report was based on. The report from the United Kingdom was based on the evaluation of published studies over a 50 year time frame. I can say from a methodology perspective, this is bad science. The inconsistent data sets and lack of standard quality controls for collecting this data puts it in question to begin with. In fact, more recent U.S. studies that track antioxidant levels in plant based organic foods show completely different results. Keep in mind that it’s only been in the last 25 years that we even knew what an antioxidant was. Finally the study focused only on nutrient density and did not take a holistic approach. Any one who knows me, knows how I feel about making decisions based on only one piece of information, it’s not a good idea. Especially if we are talking about purchasing food!

Organic food is not just about the nutrient levels, it’s about the processes used to produce it. Organic farming is about sustainability and health. From a health perspective, not using petro-chemicals or any other synthetics in our process prevents any possibility that an accidental human error could cause an overdose to the plants or product. Recent studies have shown that plant based organics have higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of nitrogen than there conventionally grown counterparts. The higher nitrogen levels are a real health concern. The fact is we don’t know what the long term effects of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are because they have only been in wide production for the last 40 years. From a sustainability perspective, we simply can’t continue to over fertilize and over water and hope to stay on the top of the food chain. Organic products are produced using natural fertilizers and management practices that can be sustained. Organic Farmers have to have a soil management plan that prevents fertilizer runoff and builds soil fertility. The fact that our soil gets better with use extends the life of the farm.
Certified Organic farmers are inspected by USDA certified auditors who verify our practices and test our soil. This 3rd party audit is an assurance that we are following the rules.

Here is a link to the recent report regarding higher levels of antioxidants in plant-based organic foods:
http://www.organic-center.org/reportfiles/5367_Nutrient_Content_SSR_FINAL_V2.pdf

Granted, I have a vested interest in organic foods, but the reason I chose to grow organically was because of the science, not the emotion.

Markets & Tasty Lessons

The last few weeks of selling our produce in North Little Rock and Jacksonville has rocked!
Re-Connecting with many of my former travel colleges has been a pleasant surprise. I never knew that so many of them supported local agriculture and am thankful for it. We have sold several hundred pounds of squash, zucchini, and tomatoes. Starting soon, our cantaloupe will be here. Now understand I am perfectly happy being Mr. Squash Man. I like it and it has been profitable. But, if I am not Mr. Cantaloupe Man before fall, I will surely be disappointed. Our Sweet Granite’s are starting to mature and hopefully will produce thru the fall. Look for them online at www.cafm.locallygrown.net .
Additional produce information is available at our online calendar www.northpulaskifarms.com/calendar.html .


Last week, I harvested 8 pounds of sun scaled Brandywine’s. Deciding not to sell them was difficult, Brandywines are grown for taste, not appearance and I am selling out each week. Since the scald was pretty bad and for the good of our customers, I sacrificed them and made a marinara sauce. I am not a real cook, but have been known to play one at parties, the Brandywine Tomato flavor was very rich and now I am really questioning the logic in me putting up a shade screen to prevent the scalding from happening again.



This season has started slow for us, but we are stating to find our grove and our crops are maturing.
Meeting new customers and re-connecting with former colleagues, networking with all the local growers and sharing the experience with my daughters has been priceless.


Mr. Squash Man

they call me... Mr. Squash Man.....

Despite what the thermometer said, Saturday June 27th was a very cool day.
Our first market was a huge success, if anyone had told me we could sell over 80lbs of squash in the middle of the summer I would have asked them to share whatever they were smoking! A special thanks to my daughter Danielle for getting up early and letting me exploit her cuteness and charm. She not only weighed all the baskets we sold, but handled many transactions herself.

Thanks to all our customers who purchased our squash and tomatoes. Growing quality produce is our farms first priority, if you folks are not satisfied for any reason with your purchase, we will gladly provide a refund. We consider service a privilege and are grateful for the opportunity to provide it.

I have been called many things in my life and a good portion of it is not fit for this blog. Saturday I was called the Squash Man by a few of our customers. I think it has a nice ring to it.

Mr. Squash Man

p.s. just wait until our cantaloupe come in

To Market We Will Go!

Greetings folks, it has been a very busy two weeks, training, tweaking and testing all the growing systems here at the farm.
Minus a few small leaks in our irrigation system, things are starting to settle into a summertime pattern.
The heat has driven us to night shifts and we have removed Wilma’s poly in anticipation of the shade screen scheduled to be installed next week. We are still waiting on word regarding our organic certification and hope to have positive results before this weekends opening market.

North Pulaski Farms will have summer squash and a small amount of Grape and Brandywine heirloom tomatoes for sale this Saturday at the Certified Arkansas Farmers Market in the Argenta district of North Little Rock. I cannot express how much I look forward to this. One of the things I miss from my IT/Travel career is the relationships made during the course of our business. I look forward to the relationships built with this one. As always, props to James Franks whose effort and expertise is constantly evident at the farm. This weekend would not have happened without his help.

Wow What a week!

This last week we finished Fred, built 44 325 foot beds, installed an 8 stage irrigation system and transplanted several thousand seedlings.
The end of the week was capped off with our organic inspection by Jeff Stearns of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture. One of the differences with certified organic farmers and others, is the inspection process to get certified. Annual 3rd party inspections and audits of our farm and its systems is a requirement of the certification process. Jeff toured our farm, took soil samples from Fred, Wilma & Barney, reviewed our seed and fertilizer documentation, and reviewed our Organic System Plan with our actual practices. He commended us on our runoff prevention techniques and our water management design. It’s nice to know working all those buckets to catch the run off from the seedling tables and the design efforts for our drainage and irrigation systems did not go un-noticed. True Organic farming is more than just not using synthetics fertilizers and pesticides; it’s about doing so in a sustainable manner that actually enhances the land used. This inspection was our first chance to show how we plan to do just that.
Jeff advised they should have their results by the end of the month.
Thanks to all the teams that made it happen.

Later this month our Brandywine’s will be ready for market, check www.cafm.locallygrown.net and www.littlerock.locallygrown.net for details and of course you can watch their progress on Wilma cam.