Prosser Farm

Name: Pisum sativum

Fruit or Veggie?: Botanically, a fruit because the seeds develop from the ovary of a flower

Seeing peas growing on the farm is the surest, happiest harbinger of spring! This year we have planted eight varieties of peas—snow, snap, and shell—and we are experimenting with a crazy blue podded snow pea. 

The seeds in their greenhouse-protected trays. 

We start by layering the wrinkled pea seeds on a bed of soilless growing medium, cover lightly and keep moist. Wait for 2-3 days before they soften, plump up and sprout a “tail.” This “tail” is the root end, which will send out a shoot. Germinating in a greenhouse ensures that all seeds have a head start before having to contend with the possibility of heavy rain and very cool temperatures in the ground. 

Pea “tails”!

Once they have germinated the peas are ready to transplant outside. We seed them thickly as it helps them to support themselves as they climb up the trellis netting.

Maria thickly seeding the sprouted peas.

The pea plants jumping out of the ground three weeks later.

This reusable netting runs the whole length of the 100-foot rows, and provides support for the peas as they  climb upwards.

We have planted 800 feet in rows of peas, so look for them to show up on our restaurant menus towards the end of May!

“What [on earth] is a winter cover crop?” I asked Jackie on the phone today. Jackie explained that after the last harvest in the fall, they plant rye, clover, and vetch. This trinity helps prevent wind and water erosion during the winter and spring season. After a season’s worth of foot traffic, tilling, and harvesting, this “green manure” helps revitalize the soil structure, adding nutrients, and organic matter back into the ground.

The rye is taking over Prosser Farm! These babies are ready for their haircut.

I asked Dev why they use these specific plants. He said that rye grows tall and big, producing a lot of organic matter that disperses well. Clover and vetch are part of the pea family and produce a lot of nitrogen. Fun fact: plants in the pea family absorb nitrogen from the air, convert it, and then store it into its roots.

Aww isn’t that cute. The rye, clover, and vetch living together side-by-side.

Rye, clover, and vetch work together. The rye provides a stable support for the clover and vetch to attach themselves to as they grow. It is very common for farmers to use winter cover crops, but Jackie and Dev like using this combination because they don’t require a lot of water—perfect for the dessert climate of Prosser. (They haven’t had to water since October!) Other farmers may also use alfalfa. The alfalfa will serve a dual purpose: cover crop over the winter, and feed for cattle in the spring.

They let the cover crop grow 2-3 feet tall. As you can see, these guys have gotten pretty tall and Jackie, Dev, and the Prosser Team are in the process of mowing the tops—this is called “a kill.”

The roots will stay intact. After mowing, they’ll till the soil to speed up the process of working organic matter and nitrogen into the ground—like folding egg whites into your cake batter! Three to four weeks after tilling, the soil will have built up enough healthy little bacteria called “microbes” to begin planting.

Cover cropping is key to organic farming. This keeps down diseases and pests, and keeps the soil healthy and fresh!

Next up: you’ll get a sneak peek of what vegetables are coming to our restaurants this summer!

Chief farmer Jackie, her parents, and Dev attended Lamb camp! Invited by their friend, Martina, a third generation lamb rancher in Prosser, WA, Jackie and Dev got an insider’s look into lambing.

 Martina’s camp houses 5,000 sheep, as well as acres of cattle ranching and orchards. Her brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews work to make this family business thrive. Their sheep graze several pastures and some national parkland around Eastern Washington. For months, Spanish and Peruvian vaqueros move with the herd—it’s cool to think that some traditions haven’t changed!!

 Around early February, thousands(!) of pregnant ewes are moved to the Prosser lamb camp where they are kept in large pens and watched carefully by several roaming workers.

Once an ewe gives birth, her lambs are grabbed up (rather unceremoniously, Jackie added) and moved to a small pen with the mom eagerly trotting along behind. Both mom and baby are monitored to ensure that a bond is made and feeding goes well.

Don’t panic—this lamb isn’t dead! This is how the vaqueros transport the lambs and ewes to their new pen.

Here’s a fun fact: most ewes give birth to twins! Occasionally, a triplet, single, or (sadly) stillborn occurs. Because sheep only have two teats, it is common for one of the triplets to get bullied out and thus not get enough milk to survive. If a triplet or stillborn occurs, the farmers will use two kinds of adoption methods to ensure the survival of the new baby and the happiness of the ewe—a win-win for all!

Wet Adoption: This type of adoption requires careful management and timing. If the lamb is a stillborn, the farmer will keep the ewe pinned down so that she never discovers her biological lamb. The farmer will then cover an orphan or triplet lamb in the birthing fluids. Once the ewe smells the adopted lamb and believes it to be her own, the farmers will release the ewe to bond with her new adopted lamb.

The second kind of adoption is Twinning Adoption, and can be riskier.

If an ewe has already bonded with a lamb but that lamb has died, they will attach the skin of the dead lamb and place it on an orphan or triplet runt lamb (think sweater vest!). This “twin coat” remains on the lamb for 24 hours. If the ewe rejects her new lamb, she will not allow the lamb to drink her milk.

After a few days, the bonded ewes and lambs are slowly moved to larger and larger pens until the whole group is ready for the open pasture. By mid-June and July, the lambs are ready for processing. This process used to occur in Ellensberg, but since that facility closed down several years ago, the lambs are sent by train or truck to Colorado and California to be dressed!

A shout out to Martina for an amazing field trip!

Little onion sprouts!

Yesterday was the annual replanting of daffodils at Pike Place Market, marking the first day of spring! For farmers Jackie and Dev over at Prosser Farm, this also means Seedling season!

It all started a few weeks ago with Walla Walla and Cipollini Onions. With over 4,000 seedlings of each variety, one of the two available greenhouses has already been filled. That might be a whopping number to us urbanites, but this will only produce one, maybe two, weeks’ worth of onions for all our Tom Douglas Restaurants. That’s a lot of onions!

These adorable little onions received their very first hair cut yesterday, once they reached around 3-4” tall. Why cut them so early on? Dev says that these little guys tend to get tangled up with each other the taller they grow. The other important reason to trim them is to coax the seedlings into focusing their energy downwards, thus developing their root system. That way, when they move outside in 4-8 weeks, these onions will be sturdy enough to grow tall and wild as onions are meant to be! Can you imagine trying to transplant little skinny blades of grass? A shout out to Patty and her crew from Cuoco who stoically did this task last year!

The “little blades of grass” pre-haircut.

The onions post-haircut.

Dev passed on a pro-tip from Elliot Coleman for all of those interested in transplanting their own “little blades of grass”. Coleman suggests that you bunch the onion seedlings in sets of 3 or 4, spacing them 4-6” apart. Not only will the onions thrive, but you’ll have an easier time and escape the hot noonday sun faster!

Other seedling varieties in our greenhouses include herbs, 3 kinds of lettuce, 2 varieties of radicchio, 3 types of kale, and (fingers crossed) our very own sweet potato slips! We’ll keep you posted about how they’re faring over yonder!

Marjoram seedlings!

SHISO!  Farmer Jackie Cross gave the shiso a haircut today and the shoots are being delivered to the Dahlia Lounge later this afternoon to be used at chef Brock Johnson’s will on tomorrow’s menu!

For anyone not familiar with this plant, shiso is an aromatic green, jagged-edged leaf from the perilla (or beefsteak) plant, which is part of the mint and basil family.  If you’ve never tried shiso before, it’s commonly used as an herb in asian dishes and has a nice citrus-y flavor!

(above: raised beds for herbs; below: our new quads!)

After months of winter hibernation, it’s time to get the farm going and we’ve already ramped things up for the 2013 growing year!

Our little farm has grown so much since we first started and we just keep on getting bigger!  We just expanded from 8 to 12 quads.  To give you an idea of what that means each quad is 22 rows and each row is 100’ long.  Just in case you don’t feel like doing the math, that totals another 8,800ft for fruits and veggies! 

With all this extra space to plant it will allow us to do a number of things:

1.       Leave a field fallow each growing season. Fallow is when a farmer chooses to no plant any cash crops in a particular area, instead they plant cover crops.  This practice allows the soil to rest and regenerate.  Also, the fallow field will be the home for our soon to come chickens!
2.       Ability to plant crops such as corn or sorghum in larger volumes.  These crops require greater land mass to make yields viable for our restaurants to use them in their kitchen.
3.       And there might be grapes!  Seedless concords?  I know our pastry chef, Stacy Fortner, will be happy!  Just tossing that idea around.

As for the 14 raised beds, we are really amping up our herb production at the farm with great hopes to provide the majority of herbs used daily in our restaurants.  We just started 15 trays of herbs in the greenhouse to fill up the raised beds in the spring!

Coming soon to the restaurants from our farm:

Onions

Kales

Lettuces

Peas