Friday marks the official start of Autumn, and by next week the nights will be longer than the days. In recent years, this change was hardly noticeable here with the seemingly endless summer weather lasting well into October and even November. But beginning this week last year -- when we had a soaking rain just prior to the Equinox -- something changed. And if anything, fall seems to have already started this year. Believe [MORE ...]
Yesterday was my birthday, 57 to be exact. I wouldn't normally mention that in the newsletter, but this year marks a full thirty years that I have been farming, all of them right here. I moved from New York to California in September of 1992, and moved to Winters after spending six months in San Francisco. And while when I arrived here I had already lived 27 years, the reality is that almost the [MORE ...]
Terra Firma Farm is technically located in Winters, which is a town in Yolo County. But most of the land we farm as well as our packing facilities reside in Solano County, just south of Putah Creek from Winters proper. We started out farming exclusively in Yolo County, but over the years we have moved about 80% of our production over the county line. We like it here. Solano County is actually part of [MORE ...]
One of the frustrations of CSA farming is the mismatch between supply and demand in the summer. Most years, the peak production of summer crops like tomatoes and peaches falls almost exactly during the long summer break when most kids are out of school and families tend to leave town. Like most CSAs, Terra Firma sees a seasonal dip in the number of subscribers receiving boxes every summer, and a corresponding increase when schools [MORE ...]
For six months of most years, California is a very dry place. Sometimes our climate is called "Mediterrean", but that's a misnomer because many places adjacent to that body of water actually get regular summer rainfall. In the Golden State outside of the mountains, we get an average of close to zero. So how can it be that California produces more agricultural bounty than any other state in the U.S. ? As so many [MORE ...]
A few years back, during the height of the drought, it seemed that everyone knew that farmers in general -- and almond farmers in particular -- were using too much of California's water. Fast forward to 2023. The drought is over, having been spectacularly eradicated by one of the wettest winters in our state's history, and thousands of acres of almond orchards in the "driest" part of the Central Valley are under the water [MORE ...]
If watermelons and sweet corn are the symbols of July at Terra Firma, then Melons are a sure sign of August. Melons, also known as Muskmelons, are part of the extended family that includes not just watermelons but cucumbers, summer squash, winter squash and pumpkins. Botanically, they are most similar to cucumbers as they share similar-looking seeds, flowers and leaf shapes. While most supermarkets in the U.S. sell only cantelopes and honeydew, there are [MORE ...]
Watermelons and Muskmelons are two of our most important summer crops here at Terra Firma. Both crops like hot weather more than anything else we grow; the hotter it gets, the bigger and more lush the plants get, and the better the melons taste. Our muskmelon season is fairly short, primarily late July and August. And while we grow several varieties -- cantelopes, orange honeydew, Galia and Piel de Sapo -- you will likely [MORE ...]
If you consume any media at all, you have probably heard about the devastating floods on the East Coast and the unrelenting heat in Arizona, Texas and other southwestern areas. We have been pretty lucky in California this summer to mostly avoid extreme weather lately, but we did have two days of near-record heat here in the Sacramento area over the 4th of July weekend. Saturday it hit 108 and Sunday was 109. That [MORE ...]
Sweet Corn is the quintessential 4th of July food, and as I mentioned last week, we take a lot of pride in harvesting it before July 4th each year. Ideally in time to get our CSA subscribers in time for the holiday. This year the timing of the calendar and the holiday meant that that didn't happen. Instead, you're getting corn today, July 5th (or later). Turns out it's not really that easy to [MORE ...]
One of the most common questions we get at Terra Firma is "Do you rotate your crops?". I understand why people ask the question, especially since the media so often uses the term "monoculture" when they are talking about agriculture. But for us, it's roughly akin to asking the average person if they eat, sleep and breath. Here's a fact that might surprise you: almost all farmers in California rotate their annual crops. (Perennial [MORE ...]
Today is the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice. Beginning tomorrow, the days will begin getting shorter and the nights longer. But on the farm, it feels like it's still May. In fact, this week's CSA box list is almost identical to a box we would normally pack on May 20th instead of June 20th. The peach varieties we are harvesting this week usually ripen in May. And while our strawberries and [MORE ...]
In the March 22nd newsletter, I told you how we had been forced by the endless wet weather that month to hand-plant our entire first planting of tomatoes. The first of those tomatoes make their appearance in your boxes today...taaaadaaa. Looking back now at that newsletter, I realize how many important details I left out that illustrate how desperate we were to get the tomatoes planted. Of course both of the days we were [MORE ...]
For many Californians, including many TFF subscribers, June can be a gloomy time with chilly wind, fog or marine layer clouds blocking the sun. In contrast, June on the farm is normally the sunniest month of the year. Although we occasionally see glimpses of it, the fog never makes it to our location. And the long days before and after the Summer Solstice mean the sun is at its highest point and the days [MORE ...]
You might remember that for Terra Firma, last year was "the Year of No Peaches". A days-long hard freeze in February of 2022 wiped out almost our entire crop of "Stone Fruit" : Apricots, Peaches and Nectarines. Stone fruit is one of our farm's cornerstones. We grow 30 varieties that generally ripen over a five month season. Since we started growing Peaches in 2006, we've never lost the entire crop like we did last [MORE ...]
Farming is expensive. It takes lots of money and equipment to prepare the soil and plant crops. Believe it or not, many farmers of the most commonly grown crops in the U.S. can't even afford the equipment to harvest them. They pay a contractor harvester to do so. And only a tiny number of farmers actually transport their crops to market. The big trucks required are a huge investment. So by default or by [MORE ...]
You've probably had dreams where you are racing -- to catch a flight, or finish a project, or get to an event -- but things keep popping up to keep you from getting there. You wake up in a panic when you miss your flight, deadline, meeting, etc. In Terra Firma's stress dream, now reality, we are finally getting caught up with our spring preparations to-do list for April 15th. But then we look [MORE ...]
Strawberry season starts this week! Two things immediately jump out about this year's berries. First, they are late -- very late. Today is the latest calendar date we've ever put the first strawberries in our CSA boxes. That follows the coldest winter and spring we've had in Northern California in twenty years. The second thing you'll notice right away is that the berries are HUGE, absolutely the biggest we've ever harvested. This is the [MORE ...]
There's one weather phenomenon that terrifies every farmer, worldwide, no matter what crop they grow or where they grow it: Hail. It's hard to imagine anything more damaging to growing crops than rock-hard pieces of ice falling miles from the sky at hundreds of miles per hour. And while golf- or baseball -sized hail makes national headlines, even teeny-tiny hailstones can easily destroy many crops. Maybe you're thinking, "Why is hail any different from [MORE ...]
It's hard to believe that just four weeks ago today, it was pouring rain while I wrote the newsletter. The high temperature that day was 54 degrees. Yesterday it was sunny and hot, reaching 88 degrees and today is likely to hit 90. That change has been as sudden for the crops as it has been for us humans. Over the course of those four weeks, we went from checking fields every day to [MORE ...]
Over our thirty years of farming at Terra Firma, we have continually striven to improve our farming: growing nicer crops more efficiently while making our employees' jobs easier and reducing our carbon footprint. In the last five years, labor regulations in California have dramatically raised the cost of employment. And since the pandemic began, it has been difficult to find enough workers. In response, we have focused on mechanizing harvest of some of our [MORE ...]
Despite the pessimistic title of my last newsletter, over the weekend a seasonal switch was flipped and just like that, Spring Arrived. The change over just a few days is not just visible but palpable. On Thursday my sinuses started throbbing; the next day I noticed the bare branches of walnut and pistachio trees had begun to push out their first flowers -- the last of our tree crops to bloom each year. The [MORE ...]
Over the past few weeks, I have spent a lot of time on rainy days looking over farm records for the past 16 years -- as far back as I have them. Not once in that time period we were unable to plant a single crop for the entire month of March. Outside of the drought years, rain is fairly common for this time of year. We have an aspirational list of planting goals, [MORE ...]
Last week Governor Newsom issued a directive that would allow water managers to intentionally divert surplus water from rivers in the wet season into farm fields to recharge groundwater. Just a day or two later, the Pajaro River broke through a levee and flooded the small town of Pajaro as well as thousands of acres of prime, vegetable-growing farmland near Watsonville. It's very important to distinguish between these two phenomena. Carefully-planned, intentional flooding of [MORE ...]
On a drizzly day last week a young man walked down my driveway calling out for help. It turned out that he had followed Google maps instructions to turn onto a dirt road through our farm fields and immediately gotten stuck in the mud. Luckily for him, we were able to pull him out. Most Californians live in areas that are essentially waterproof. Wet weather is a minor inconvenience of short duration, unless it's [MORE ...]
There was a story last week in Bloomberg about a global shortage of onions that is causing price inflation and follow-on impacts for other farm products. The shortage of wheat last year, caused at least partially by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was widely publicized. Onions are also a worldwide staple: the second most consumed vegetable in the world (the first is tomatoes), and they are a critical component of most cuisines worldwide. Some people [MORE ...]
In the summer of 1988, after graduating from college, I accepted an invitation from my good friend Sam Wagner to come out to work on his family's farm in Southeastern Pennsylvania. We spent the summer cutting and baling hay on 320 acres of rolling farmland along the beautiful Brandywine River. It was hard and dirty work, but I loved every minute of it. At the end of the summer, I left Deborah's Rock Farm, [MORE ...]
Broccoli is a mainstay of Terra Firma's CSA program and thus of our farm. We start transplanting it in early August and continue until about Halloween, just a few weeks after we normally begin harvesting it. Harvest lasts through winter and normally concludes sometime in March. If you pay attention to the broccoli in your boxes, you may have noticed that it changes over the course of this six month period. The heads look [MORE ...]
Since 2020, farming in the winter in Northern California hasn't been much different than farming in the desert valleys of Southern California and Arizona where most of the winter produce in supermarkets is grown. It's been sunny, warm and dry during the day and a little frosty at night. Rain was rare and unsubstantial, meaning we had to irrigate every few weeks. The crops grew at a predictable pace, we had no gaps in [MORE ...]
Agriculture has a pretty unforgiving schedule most of year, and most everyone in the field looks forward to having a nice period in the winter to catch up on sleep, visit with friends and family, and relax. But this winter has been the first of the decade at Terra Firma that we actually got to slow down and take a real break. For the last three years we've had barely any downtime, with warm [MORE ...]
The atmospheric firehose that has been pointed at California for a month has finally been turned off. We had a sunny day without rain yesterday for the first time in weeks. Here at Terra Firma and in many places in our state, we have gotten more than our total annual average rainfall now. Our local reservoir and source of irrigation water, Lake Berryessa, has added 200,000 acre feet of water since New Years: 54 [MORE ...]
Welcome to 2023! I hope you all had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday season, although I expect more than a few people got tangled up in the holiday travel disaster -- as my wife Marisa and I did. The holiday period saw extreme weather in many areas. California escaped most of it, but it now appears we are just late to joining the party. For the last four years, we've seen mostly warm and [MORE ...]
It's the end of the year, and thus time for the obligatory year-end retrospectives. 2022 was another rough year in a decade that has specialized in them. We still have Covid, but now we've also got inflation and war as well. Here at Terra Firma, we were surprised and saddened in June by the untimely death of our founder, Paul Holmes. Although he had retired in 2018, he had continued to help guide our [MORE ...]
Over the weekend, we got another very good soaking from the latest storm system to hit the state. The 2.5" of rain we received brings the farm up average for the Halloween-Christmas period. And although we did not get any rain in October, the very unusual heavy rain we received in September more than made up for it. From a rain perspective, it feels pretty "normal" around here. The recent rains pushed the "pause" [MORE ...]
We've been farming many of the fields where we grow your fruits and vegetables for twenty years or more. Over those years, we have added hundreds of thousands of pounds of organic material to every acre of our soil in the form of compost and cover crops. And we have seen the results of that stewardship in better and more abundant crops. Other organic farmers have seen the same results. And now the latest [MORE ...]
Over the years, when anyone would ask if we have any solar power at Terra Firma, I would respond: "Of course, our entire farm runs on solar power, like all farms". I was referring rather cheekily to the fact that plants use sunlight to create the foods that humans (and other creatures) consume to power ourselves and our society. Agriculture is far and away humanity's largest application of power from the sun. But no, [MORE ...]
For many people, this will be the first "normal" Thanksgiving they've had since 2019. Whether that means you're traveling out of town or out of state, or staying home, I hope you're enjoying the holiday the way you want to, with the people you want to. Like many small business owners, I am thankful just to have kept the doors open and the lights on. The last three years have been the most challenging [MORE ...]
Thanksgiving is next week, and as always we are re-arranging our delivery schedule in an effort to get all of our subscribers their boxes prior to the holiday. -- Wednesday deliveries remain unchanged. -- Thursday and Friday boxes will arrive instead on Tuesday of next week, November 22nd. If you are planning on adding-on to your CSA with items from the TFF Web Store, please get your orders in by midnight this Thursday, November [MORE ...]
In just a few days, the early November rainstorms have changed the environment here on the farm completely. The air is chilly, crisp and damp and the bright sun feels good on your face. The soil is soft and moist instead of hard and dusty. If I had to pick one item we grow that personifies (produc-ifies?) this wonderful time of year, it would be Satsuma Mandarins. When you pierce the rind with your [MORE ...]
If you've been wondering "Where are the Carrots?" in your boxes, today is your lucky day. Carrots have always been one of our signature crops at Terra Firma. While they are a staple vegetable for most people, anyone who's ever tasted ours knows that TFF carrots are not just a staple: they are special. For decades, we have been growing French carrot varieties generally called "Nantes". This type of carrot has no chewy core, and [MORE ...]
Legumes are a huge family of plants, including a wide variety of common human food crops including beans, peas, lentils, and garbanzos. Important livestock crops including alfalfa and clover are also legumes. Legumes are a critical part of any farm's crop rotation. Unlike any other family of plant, they provide their own fertilizer through an evolved relationship with specific soil bacteria that colonize their roots. Those bacteria pull nitrogen from the air and "fix" it in the [MORE ...]
Fall is harvest time for Winter Squash at Terra Firma. Despite its name, Winter Squash is a grown in the summer: planted around Memorial Day and picked after Labor Day. We're about two-thirds done with this year's harvest, which we hope to wrap up before the next rain or by Halloween, whichever comes first. While it can be grown in many places, Winter Squash is almost perfectly adapted for the region where we farm. It loves [MORE ...]
During the last year or so, inflation has made the weekly trip to the supermarket an experience in unpleasant surprise, as prices for most goods have been going up on a regular basis -- sometimes dramatically. A majority of humans living today have never experienced significant inflation in their adult lives, and seeing prices for basic goods constantly rising creates a deep feeling of anxiety and unease. For farmers, though, a trip to the [MORE ...]
Many supermarkets now have an entire aisle or half an isle dedicated to water. Dozens of different brands of plain old water, plus many processed in special ways that they claim makes them "healthier". One of the newest health kicks is drinking "alkaline" water, which supposedly has numerous health benefits. Meanwhile my dentist tells me that the carbonated water I drink (made with my own tap water) is too acidic for my teeth. A quick explainer: Purified [MORE ...]
Two weeks ago, we cancelled work for the first time ever in September due to extreme heat. And now in another "first" for September, we have cancelled work -- for not one but three days -- due to rain. If you live in certain parts of the Bay Area, you may not know that many parts of Northern California -- including Terra Firma -- experienced quite a bit of rain over the last four [MORE ...]
Strawberries are a crop that is planted once a year, in the fall, and harvested the following spring. At Terra Firma, we traditionally plant on or around September 1st, give or take a week depending on the weather. But this year we started Monday the 12th and are just finishing today, making it the latest ever we've gotten the berries in the ground. It's a labor intensive job. We use some type of planter [MORE ...]
Unless you live within a mile or two of the Pacific Ocean, you likely experienced -- or are still experiencing -- some of the hottest September temperatures your location has ever had this week. I hope everyone is figuring out some way to stay cool, especially folks who live in places where they rarely need air conditioning. As I mentioned last week, we were originally anticipating a "convenient" record-breaking heat that would last just [MORE ...]
For most farmers, there's not much to like about Holidays Weekends during the summer. You can't put a farm on hold during the hottest time of year: the crops just keep growing. At a minimum, you have to keep watering them. And if you're harvesting -- as we pretty much always are -- you can't stop for three days. Heck, sometimes we can't even stop for two days. Even in a regular week, we [MORE ...]
One of the reasons most frequently listed to join a CSA or shop at a farmers' market is to "eliminate the middleman". This concept is most often thought of in economic terms: buying direct means that the farmer gets a much larger percentage of the value of their crop. But middlemen also prevent communication between farmers and consumers. And they have interests that are not only different, but often in conflict with, the grower [MORE ...]
Many CSA subscribers probably heard about last week's report on how Climate Change is increasing the probability of an ARkstorm: a month-long series of atmospheric rivers that would cause extensive flooding throughout the state but especially in the Central Valley. The most recent ARkstorm was in 1862, and left Sacramento and much of the rest of the valley under water for a month. From a purely statistical perspective, we are "overdue" for another one. [MORE ...]