Fall ’22 Farm Update

As I get to know our new website and its blog function, I thought I’d introduce the farm and what’s going on this fall.

First, though, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Anna, one of the sisters leading the farming and land stewardship activities at Laird’s Corner Farm.

I moved to the farmhouse and broke ground in the market garden in late spring of this year, but I’ve lived in Port Angeles since 2019 and am a born-and-bred Western Washingtonian. I am beyond excited to embark on this dream with my parents Jean and Brian, my sister Ellen and her husband Mitch, and my partner Michael. Our plans for the farm are wide-ranging, including a market garden, farm stand, CSA/farm shares, orchards, food forests, silvopastured sheep and poultry, nursery production, cut flowers, and more.

Up til now, fall in Western Washington has been unseasonably warm. The bone-dry summer weather carried on until just a couple days ago, and smoke from forest fires lay thick over the landscape. Now, at last, thankfully, we’ve been blessed with a little rain and cooler temperatures. It finally feels like fall!

Here’s what we’re up to:

We’re winding down the growing season. Granted, 2022 wasn’t much of a growing season, at least compared to our plans for future years. We did manage a few rows of beans, a few hills of squash, some broccoli and kale, and a greenhouse full of wildly overgrown tomatoes. Alas, the beans have stopped flowering and mildew is overtaking the squash and tomatoes. The kale has long since scattered its seed for next year’s crop of volunteers. The broccoli is still pumping out delicious florets, but there are only a couple of dinners’ worth left in those hardworking plants.

We’re battling perennial weeds. But of course we are. It seems like a neverending fight. Tarping was a disappointing mess, and the cover crops that followed couldn’t outcompete the crabgrass and field bindweed.

So, we’ve decided to try more drastic measures with a (hopefully) one-time major soil disturbance, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood tractor enthusiast, Josh. We will of course follow the plowing, disking, and harrowing with winter cover crops, including tillage radishes to combat soil compaction. After this, we will return to minimal-tillage methods to preserve the soil structure and biome.

And we have another new anti-weed trick up our sleeve…:

Geese! (And ducks.)

We ordered a flock of four African geese and eleven Silver Appleyard ducks from Metzer Farms in September. They hatched around September 6 in California and traveled to us via the US Postal Service. Geese are grazing birds, meaning they prefer to eat tender green growth at ground level. This habit makes them useful weeders, especially the Chinese and African (which are also from Asia) breeds. I plan to try them out next year weeding around a few crops that–I hope–don’t look like food to them.

The ducks are a different story. They’re excellent slug and snail control, but they will also reach overhead for greens and fruit, so they can be a force of destruction in a garden far outstripping the damage slugs can do. They might be useful for processing cover crops, prepping beds for planting, and clearing crop residues, though, and they will certainly take care of any slugs or slug eggs they find. My biggest hope is that they will lay dozens of delicious eggs for us!

And of course,

We’re planning for 2023. The days are getting short, and the urge to curl up with a pile of seed catalogs, notepad and pencil, and a selection from the farm library is very real. My goal this fall is to see if it’s feasible to inaugurate our Winter Farm Share next year! We might also be adding sheep to the farm soon; stay tuned.

My idea for this blog is to share Laird’s Corner Farm news and announcements, informational posts, and maybe the occasional brief musing. We’ll be back with more posts in the coming months.

Cozily,

Anna