In a field of artichokes. Photo by Scott David Gordon

I have exciting news - we are going to be putting up two new houses at the farm.  These won't be your typical abodes, though, as they're made for bats!  Designed by bat conservationists, each structure provides enough space for 400 bats, so if all goes well, we'll have soon 800 bats residing at JBG.  While I would love to take credit for this idea, it wasn't mine.  It came from Temo, JBG's long-time Irrigation Manager and key employee.  In addition to handling irrigation for the farm, Temo also does a lot with pest management, and he thought that attracting bats would be a great way to control bugs.  I agreed, and so we will be mounting these bat houses on poles close to the river - here's to hoping that these elevated homes are irresistible to our bat friends!

We are going to be trying out another way to control pests, and this one involves a vacuum.  Yes, we will be sucking up bugs!  This way, we can target the bugs that are a nuisance to our plants and keep the ones that are beneficial.   Another way we boost our beneficial insect population is through planting flowers.  This week, we laid out the beds for half an acre of permanent flower beds at the entrance of the farm.  It is going to look beautiful, and we hope to be able to bring about 300 bunches of organically-grown flowers to the farmers markets each week.  I can't wait to see these beds in full-bloom.  In addition to the flowers, we will be establishing bee hives at JBG, so soon the place will be abuzz with even more honey bee activity!

Montana & Angel, two members of our amazing crew. Photo by Scott David Gordon

I myself feel like I've been abuzz with lots of new ideas for the farm.  As you may know, I take my tape recorder with me when I go running so I can keep track of all these ideas.  This weekend, I think I had over 200 ideas while running - that's a lot to go through, especially when the speaker is out of breath!  Sometimes, I think all my new ideas make the JBG staff nervous...  I say this because often when we make a change, there's extra work involved in learning how to do things differently.  Take the decision we made not to use plastic mulch anymore.  While everyone on staff supports this decision, it has led to a lot more work.  As Temo says, the hardest part of this has been the weeds - without the plastic to control the weeds, they have gone wild!  Right now, we don't have enough tractors to implement the most efficient way of weed control, and it has left Temo and his crew struggling to keep up.  We are learning as we go here, and that can be difficult given we already have a full plate of work to accomplish each day.  The process of change can be hard, and I have to thank our crew for sticking with me through the rough parts.   I am lucky to have such an amazing staff.  They may be a little wary of all of my ideas, but they always put in the effort to make the farm a better and better place.

We hope you are enjoying the artichokes in your CSA shares! Photo by Scott David Gordon