050 - Early Winter Months - Merry Christmas

Lowell and Eldon recap November and December of this year, mostly talking about the strawberry plants and what we've been doing with them since they were planted later than we would have liked. Toward the end of the episode, we also talked about the greenhouse hydroponic tomatoes and Farm Store a bit.

What is Conversations with Yoders' Farm?

A biweekly conversation around what has been going on here at Yoders' Farm in Rustburg, Virginia. We are a four generation farm providing "Locally grown, gourmet produce & family friendly activities." That includes a PYO Strawberry Patch, Hydroponic Tomatoes, and in the fall we have a Pumpkin Patch and Corn Maze.

Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of conversations with Yoder's Farm. I'm Eldon and my co-host is here today, Lowell, welcome to the podcast. Thank you Eldon. How are you on this very wet, dreary kind of a day? I'm hanging in there. Okay, well that's good. Yeah, so today is the 22nd of December and it's been what, a month and a half or so since we, a little over since we recorded. Close to two months. So I guess we'll just do a quick rundown of what all's been going on here at the farm. Wish everybody a Merry Christmas and get out of here in about four minutes. Happy New Year. Don't forget that. Yeah, well, I need to save something for the next episode. Oh, looking ahead. It's also our 50th episode, so if you've listened to most of our episodes, you're, uh, I don't know what. Pickle out for punishment. Something like that. Uh, yeah. So, November and December on the farm, what all has been going on around here? I thought you were going to step back and do like a year in review. That's what everyone else is doing these days. Well, and then the challenges and opportunity of the new year and what we can learn from the past year. But we can just keep it to the four minute one if you want. Yeah, I'm sick and tired of hearing all these people figuring their lives out. Just kidding. When you're struggling to figure yours out. No, that's mostly a joke. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't know. Up to you. Do you want to talk about an overview of the year or do you want to just kind of catch people up? Uh, well, we can start with catching people up. Alright. Um, so, strawberries don't look all that great. Look okay. Got them planted late. Lulz extra depressed today because of the rain. Tomatoes don't look all that great. Look okay. Pretty much where we're at. Alright, well, thanks for listening everybody. We appreciate everything that we do have. Yeah. This time of year it's a little easier getting the doldrums, isn't it? Well, today is the first day that the day is lengthened, so there's that. That's true. So, there's hope. So, it's um, I think we, you know, I'm sure we talked about it last episode, I don't even remember it's been so long, but it was very late planting of strawberries, very small plants, lots of things out of our control, and this, you know, happened to a lot of other people so we're not unique in that regard. So we did pool covers on the 10th of November. We pooled most of them. I had a few covered earlier than that, if you'll remember, which I'm sure you will. I probably won't. You will. Other people might. I don't know. We had actually a very mild, we had a cold snap in October. Yeah. We had serious cold. I think we talked about we row covered pumpkins, like the fruit, so they wouldn't freeze. And that was like in the 20s, something of October, and then it warmed up and the first part of November was actually very mild, which was great for strawberry plants that were planted late because you want like everything you can get at that point. So we covered most everything on the 10th-ish or a few days before of November. Once the daytime highs started getting down to the 60s, if you're in the 70s, you can really spike things underneath those covers. You can, you know, if you're at 20 plus degrees with the greenhouse effect during the day, you can be at upper 80s, 90 degrees, and that's way too hot for them. A little warm for November. For that time of the year. So that's why we waited. And yeah, so things started cooling off just a notch. Pulled the covers. We prioritized our thinner covers. We have some covers that we don't like for frost protection because they don't offer as much frost protection because of the fabric and the material they're made out of. But they let a lot of light through. Is what you're doing when you're pulling a row cover on a crop, you're essentially shading it because even the best covers you're only getting maybe 50 to 60 percent light transmission. Yeah, that seems high. I think, let's see, how is it? Anyway, it's not quite half. Yeah, there's some scale that they use. I think some of them do say almost up to 60, but that would seem really high. I think a lot of our covers are closer to half. And then that also varies on the thickness of the cover and so forth. Anyway, so we had some of these, we call them, they're kind of for fall covers. So those are actually out currently. We put them on. And I think we've about squeaked every last little ounce of fall growth that we can get out of our berries. You know, they look kind of how they look. The late ones, the poor plants, small plants. The plants themselves don't look bad, but they're just tiny. I mean, they're just small, no doubt about it. I don't know if there's, it's kind of hard to put percentages on stuff. A lot of the stuff that we did get in, even though it was late, but it was earlier, looks a lot better, bigger. There's stuff that, yeah, so I mean, hopefully that, you know, that's kind of the two ends of the spectrum. Some stuff looks, I would say, decent or almost good. And then the other stuff that, I mean, I'm sure we're going to get some production off of the smaller ones, no doubt about it, but it's just not going to be what it could be. But I mean, if nothing else, you can look at it in two years as an experiment. What will you be? A forest experiment. I guess. No, I mean, you may be able to learn. I don't know. Well I don't know if we're learning a lot. We're learning that, what we already knew. It's reinforcing that you need to have things planned on time. Sure, sure. I'm just trying to say, you could probably try to find a little bit of silver lining somewhere. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I mean, things could have been worse. I mean, there are people that got their plants later. Did I say that? Maybe I didn't say that it could have been worse. I mean, we could have, other people had plants that were later. I'd say like for the circumstances, they look decent. And I do feel like we pretty much did what we could. We got out there and got the covers on and so forth and tried to push them. Yeah, water, fertilizer, stuff like that. Well, you don't want to do a lot of fall fertilizer because that can push them in the wrong ways. You're really trying to grow the foundation in the fall, a good root system and so forth that can set you up for spring and then the spring is when you kind of put on the gas, so to speak, and try to get your berry size up and so forth. Fair enough. I feel like I'm saying so forth a lot, but. Well thenceforth, you should stop forth. So yeah, they look, I wish they looked better, but they look, you know, for the, under the circumstances they look. There you go. Okay, and I do think the average will be, you know, better than the worst. It will be what it is. The average will be like an average should be. So hopefully the stuff that looks good will help pull up the other. The one interesting thing with, just with the way the year has been, maybe how our fields are rotation or the rotation of our fields and with them being covered up, we had almost zero deer damage. Okay. And some years it's actually a fairly big problem. So there again, maybe we can, the silver lining of not having that to pull production down. Right on. Ideally, you know, within the last couple of weeks we'd actually gotten the covers off and been able to harden the plants off with some cooler temperatures, even some frost on top of them just to prepare them. But we didn't get that chance. So they're still fairly green and not really in a dormant state. And now as you know, you'll probably know, I might remember, you know, we have this storm moving in, not really going to snow here, but it's going to get really, really cold. Like maybe upper single digits tonight. Yeah, it kept notching down throughout the week. I've not been enjoying that forecast. I think I saw like 12 at the beginning of the week and then nine yesterday. I think I saw seven this morning. Anyways, we hopefully, and ferocious winds and those. Oh, I hadn't noticed the winds. Oh yeah, not good. Not good for covers either. No. So that combination is not good for strawberry plants. It can just really scorch them, especially plants that aren't fully acclimated. So in a perfect world, you know, we would have had more acclimation, but they aren't going to get it. And less dire colds. Yeah, that too. So we're just going to keep the covers on through this event and probably try to get them back off pretty soon afterwards for at least a while, unless it gets cold again, really bitter. Because I've seen, yeah, some buds and stuff that kind of got pushed along with it being very mild. I think I saw maybe some warmer, in quotes, temperatures end of next week, but then also some rain again. But it's back up to almost 60 degrees. Daytime highs. Very hot. So that's about all we can do on that front. We were going around yesterday and trying, well we pulled a few covers that we hadn't had out yet. And then I was trying to put some extra bags out and fix a few spots. And I don't know, I'm not looking forward to tomorrow at all. We have gusts up into the 30s. It's the wind mostly tomorrow. Well it goes on through, even on into, through the night and into Saturday it won't be quite as ferocious on Saturday. I just hope it's not like those hurricane winds that one night, month and a half ago, or two months ago, or whatever. That was a lot more sustained. This is talking like 18 to 20 mile an hour winds and then gusts into the 30s. I don't know. I guess we'll see how we come through it. And we'll try to be joyful and celebrate Christmas on Sunday anyway. By Christmas hopefully it'll be, well it'll still be really cold but hopefully the winds will have laid down. There you go. Alright. Tomatoes? Yeah. Tomatoes. Tomatoes we're kind of nearing production, slowly but surely. At least some production. I don't think they're going to be very heavy for the first while. Dad's been telling me to tell people mid-January do we have any sort of semi-solid production. Yeah, we'll see. It's just sitting there. I was working in the greenhouse today. We have tomatoes that are quarter pound plus in size, so that's a good thing. I mean a few that are that size. So if they would turn red, you know, they'd be big enough to sell. They didn't set well the first stuff they got set, so it's kind of sporadic through the house. Of course. Some of that's a variety of issues. Short days, low light, all that. It's just always really hard this time of year. Hopefully once the days start going the other way, well I guess we are officially doing that, but hopefully we have a good foundation for March and April with good production and so forth. So. Yup. Alright. Hustle them along as best we can. Yeah. Anything more to talk about tomato wise? Not really maybe. I don't know, it's just kind of, yeah, not really. Yeah, I got to have a bumblebee's in the other day. Okay. Which was the first we've had this winter. Just to try to help with pollination some. Yeah. But they can only do, I mean, it looks like to me some of the blooms are a little, the blooms just don't look as good as they should and just having a bumblebee pollinate a bloom that doesn't look good isn't going to miraculously produce a tomato. So whether that's just the low light or I'm not sure exactly what else is going on. Would you ever, would it ever make sense to put a row of grow lights in the greenhouses? I don't know. Ask dad. Okay. I mean, there's probably a reason that they don't, haven't done it. No, some greenhouses do. And I think with LED technology, it's more affordable and more possible than it's ever been. I just wonder if you could help yourself out in some of these December, January type months. Yeah, typically we, well, is what we try to do is have some fall production before this period of time and we often struggle to set tomatoes and fruit during this time of the year, but it's less of a problem if you've had a strong November and early December of picking these clusters and then you go through this little bit and then you restack them up. But if you've not had that and you're struggling on the front end, anyway, hopefully that'll lead to, like I said, nice young tomato plants and good production going into March. Rocking and rolling in 2023. Hopefully. Yeah. It's right around the corner. It sure is. Anything else we should mention? I don't know. It seems like that kind of covers things. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're... Farm stores open right now. Working at. Mom's got it all festively decorated and stocked up out there. So I don't know what else to really say about that. Yeah, the store has been steady. It would have been nicer to have tomatoes to sell in addition to the other products, but... Yeah, I've got some messages from some grumpy... No, they weren't grumpy. No, they just looking forward to tomatoes. Just looking forward to tomatoes, which is understandable. Yep. All right, well, I think that about wraps it up, doesn't it? Fine with me. Yep. All right. You want to give a shout out to anybody for Christmas or anything? Can do more about the year end or the year in review and whatever the future. Maybe next time. Sounds good. If there is a next time. Make a list. Maybe we'll wait two months and do another one and then... Yeah, I don't know. Somehow it feels like spacing out a little more this time of year isn't as big of a deal. Well, it definitely has been slower. I mean, yeah, there's stuff to do, like with our greenhouses and lots of maintenance type of things and clean up and putting away all our stuff from the fall season. Yep. Actually, if it was drier, I would be lifting plastic maybe sometime soon. And so the cycle can continue, but it's very wet right now. So, yeah. All right. Well, thank you for listening. If you've made it this far, we appreciate you. If you haven't made it this far, thank you as well, but you didn't hear it, so... You won't know. Yeah. Which is understandable. Which is why we always save our giveaways until the end of the episode. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for listening. Hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Stay positive. Stay cheerful. And healthy. Like us. Yeah. All right. Talk to you all later. See ya. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.