Category: Green Beans

The start, the middle, or the end of harvest?

Harvest has been happening for awhile around here. It snuck right up on us after a long winter and the idea of you were following plant stage and growing degree days that we would start harvest late. I stupidly started making early July plans that seems so attainable with a mid July start. However I quickly started canceling things when we looked out the window one day and Matt said, “maybe we should look at the clover, it looks really brown!” And after a quick look at the field later that day, “Hey it’s Brenda, so that camping trip I said maybe we could do…..how does your November look for timing?”

We have finished up clover harvest. And my gosh what a surprise, after so much drama with that darn stuff it actually produced a very nice sized seed crop.

Grass seed harvest started near the end of June with swathing or cutting the grass.

Combining or separating the seed from the straw started quickly after our good old St. Paul rodeo on the 6th of July. We have about 4 or 5 more days until we finish up that crop.

Hoot also found out that he’s heavy enough to weigh down the seat of the John Deere by himself and got some good driving time in.

Our green beans are just about ready to be harvested, probably next week sometime.

And finally the filbert crop is looking great. The price not so much, but that’s probably a whole other blog post that we don’t have time for today.

So all in all we are at the just the start with some crops, right in the middle of others and at the very end of a long harvest season. Meanwhile we are of course taking soil samples, mowing old crop stubble and starting to work ground for fall planting.

Hoot is also our field chauffeur after learning to drive the four wheeler.

Life in the fields has become the norm around here for the past month and a half. Some of us are ready for a little less dust in our dinner, but I also know we will look forward to it all again next year.

Kicking off July 2022 with Irrigation!

After record breaking rain in the Pacific Northwest this spring, yesterday was the day, we finally turned on our first irrigation pump of the year.

We got everything set up to water our newly planted green beans, turned the linear on, and turned the pump on. Then I turned to Matt, “You know what’s really nice? Watering on our own terms! I mean God, you’ve been great and all, but time for us to make a few water decisions around here for a change!”

Just for a comparison, in a normal year, we are hitting start on our pumps around April 15th and they pretty much don’t turn off for months. As farmers we are always thankful for water that comes free, but we are also thankful for our ability to spoon feed, to time applications, and do what’s best for the crops we have planted.

Hot Weather in Oregon

We have been getting some above normal temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest. Last week we saw some record breaking temperatures go up into the 110-115 range (even higher in some areas), which made air conditioning feel incredible and the stress of what was happening to our crops not so amazing.

It’s hard to say how it affected our crops. When I walk around assessing what might be damaged it all seems very inconsistent. Some crops seem unaffected, while others have shown that it was clearly too hot for them.

We have green beans that were trying their best to bloom during this time. We poured the water on and I think escaped with not too much damage to the blooms, but the plant themselves have seemed to have stalled somewhat. Sort of like saying “What on earth was that??!!”

This is in an area that got consistent water through the hottest days.
These beans plants were on the edge of the field and only got about half as much water as the rest.

Our hazelnuts in some areas look like you took a blow torch to them; and in other areas they look just fine.

We had about half of our grass seed cut for harvest, and I’m sure knocked a fair amount of seed onto the ground while cutting in less than ideal conditions.

So when asked “How did the crops do in the heat?” I honestly have nothing more to say beyond “We will know more after harvest.” Because until our crops get trucked across scales it’s always a tough call on what the effects actually were. Until then we will keep taking care of our crops the best we know how, keep trying to protect them from the things that we can control, and pray Mother Nature is done with the “extremes” this year.