June 1, 2015

Above: A portfolio of flower photos is easy and inexpensive to create with an online book-printing service. Gretel uses Shutterfly for hers. All photos courtesy of Sunny Meadows Flower Farm.  The omnipresence of technology and social media makes it of growing importance to every business, even farming. It seems backwards that choosing to work in […]

We have been growing muskmelons (sometimes called cantaloupes) for many years, and a few years ago added the crisp white-fleshed Asian melons to our repertoire. This year we are also growing Tasty Bites personal-size melons from Johnny’s Seeds. I was going to write an article about personal-size melons (they top out at 3 pounds), but

Arriving at Bumble Bee Farm in County Cork, in the southwest of Ireland, my daughter and I felt completely at home despite the dramatic scenery so different from our own Kansas farm. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the farmscape — high tunnels, chickens, raised beds of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Or the shared passion

Recordkeeping has always been essential to profitability on a farm — you need to track your inputs and activities before you can set prices to make a profit. Today, good records are more important than ever because of the reporting requirements for organic certification and food safety regulations. Two new systems allow you to keep

Below: Onions were mulched with straw or Spent Brewers Grains to a depth of 1 inch. Photos courtesy of Regina Dlugokencky. Organic vegetable growers are limited to hand weeding, cultivation, and mulching to keep weed pressure to a minimum. Hand weeding is time consuming and thus labor costs are high. Cultivation is limited in long-term

When we started our farm in our mid-twenties, we didn’t plan to have kids. We jokingly said the farm was our baby. And it was. Like so many others before us, we poured ourselves into building our business, market base, soil fertility, equipment, variety selection, and overall farm system.  We didn’t have time for kids.