Oak Slough Farm

Crusade for Corn

Jess started the crusade to grow sweet corn, claiming it would be our niche at the farmer’s market.  She even bought a book on how to grow it and read some of the book over the winter.  It’s been an interesting battle to grow a decent crop.  The corn worms are the biggest problem, and they ruin the tips.  We tried completely cutting off the tips, but that looked weird and sort of dried out the corn.  Then we performed surgery on each ear of corn and carefully removed the bad spots and then closed the husks back up.  That took forever and was hardly worth the time for a 30-cent piece of corn.  So, now we’re leaving the tips and worm for you, the customer, to take care of.  Hopefully, it does not gross you out too much, and you feel good knowing no chemical pesticides were used on your corn.

This final planting of corn has been a double battle because ground squirrels have decided to chew the drip line in this patch.  Every time we water, there are hundreds (or what feels like hundreds) of little and big leaks.  Asa even tried putting out little containers of water for the squirrels and, more often than not, a big hole will be chewed through the drip line right next to the water container.  I use duct tape to patch the holes because a real coupler is too expensive.  I will be excited when this last batch is done and I won’t have to water it any more.

Slow Food

New friends from our local Slow Food group came out to our farm to check it out for a possible event site.  I think they recognized that we had a lot of work to do to clean up our farm pretty for guests.  Actually, the garden part looks pretty good, especially with Sadie’s flowers growing among the other crops, but the fields surrounding the garden are full of star thistle, and the old abandoned walnut trees are still in desperate need of pruning even 10 years after we bought the property.  Sounds like it might work to do a small dinner inside the garden…stay tuned!

Food Access

One of our goals as a farm is to be able to provide some fresh organic produce to people that ordinarily don’t have access to it because of their financial situation.  We donate a fair amount of food to local organizations, like Salvation Army and PATH.  Also, once a month, we focus on harvesting produce for the Tehama County Gleaners for their Red Bluff distribution.  The Gleaners distribution was this week, so a lot of our food went their way.  That is why, at this week’s farmer’s market, we have a much more limited selection.

Coupon

The report is that no one has used their coupon at Cisco’s ale house yet.  Jess and I will be there on Thursday, August 29, to listen to the band Ludlow.  Maybe we’ll see you there!