Farm Report: November 2005
by Erica Renaud

A mixture of gold leaves and three-inch-high ryegrass now covers the farm these days. It replaces last year's crops and protects our soil from the coming winter. Fierce autumnal winds have alleviated the two-hundred-plus year-old cottonwood trees of their summer dress; they now stand naked overlooking the farm. Maintenance and Repair Coordinator, Joe Martinez, and Field Coordinator, Kelle Carter, continue working in the field into the winter season: they're draining irrigation lines and chipping our spring fruit tree prunings to prepare needed complex carbons for next year's compost pile construction. Joe is elated to finally retire his front-end loader from compost-pile formation, now that the compost turner has finally arrived. However, its arrival came with a glitch—the PTO (power take off) shaft is too short for the side mount, making it inutile until we acquire a two-foot extension. Just a little while longer and our on-farm compost operation will be fully realized and the loop in attaining sustainability will become even tighter.

Even with the cold temperatures and random blustery winds, data collection goes on. Of late, colored carrots consumed two entire days of evaluation for Emily Gatch, Greenhouse Coordinator and Assistant Seed Cleaner. She is evaluating what is best (and worst) on the market and what potential may lie in breeding stock received from Dr. John Navazio, of the Organic Seed Alliance/Evergreen State College, and from Dr. Phil Simon, of the University of Wisconsin. Both professors were kind enough to provide some of their colored carrot breeding material for the project and to walk us through the finer points of carrot-quality-parameter evaluation. If all goes well, we hope that a rainbow of carrot offerings will come your way in the near future.

While the growing season winds down, the seed cleaning season kicks into gear; with that comes a new staff member and new developments in our quality program. Jay Bost has joined us from Oklahoma until his September 2006 start date to an M.Sc. program in Ethnobotany in Scotland. Jay approached Seeds of Change a few months ago: he explained that he had a keen interest in learning the intricacies of seed cleaning and how to best determine seed quality. Under the tutelage of seven-year veteran Emily Skelton, Jay will be doing just that! Emily, who has been working to refine our seed-cleaning process, is most recently expanding the program to include in-house germination testing in addition to third-party testing and the development of a Seeds of Change seed-and-plant-variety herbarium and a weed herbarium. The quality-program expansion goals are two fold: first to better train the seed cleaning and quality staff in visually identifying the highest-quality seed as well as any weed species present and second, to better support our seed growers by providing them ideal samples of what they should expect their seed crop to look like at the end of each growing season.

Although we would like everyone to think that all we do is take data, practice deep-sustainable agriculture, and clean seed, the reality is that recipe development might compete for allocation in valued outputs from this job. Who could resist developing "curry squash soup," when one has over forty varieties of winter squash to choose from? Without fail, year in and year out, Buttercup leads the pack for flavor; but, since its introduction, Queensland Blue gives it a run for overall quantity and the brilliance of its bright-orange flesh. As a variation on the soup theme, leek and potato soup is not far behind in popularity. Poncho and Scotland typically find their way into our pots, along with an assortment of colored potatoes to defy the traditional French recipes and add a little heirloom twist. May your fall soup making keep you warm and connected to your garden!

From the stewards of the land and seed at the Seeds of Change Research Farm,

Erica Renaud
Research & Farm Manager