2019 - The Farm

TrentL · Jun 7, 2019

Fredo said:
I really don't know how you have the time or desire to type this all up for us to see. Thank you.

Is it only you and your wife doing all of it?

Up until a week ago, yeah, was just the two of us. Last week my younger boy got back from Colorado for the summer, and we hired one girl last week to help keep up with the maintenance tasks.

TrentL · Jun 7, 2019

Fredo said:
I really don't know how you have the time or desire to type this all up for us to see. Thank you.

Is it only you and your wife doing all of it?

Up until a week ago, yeah, was just the two of us. Last week my younger boy got back from Colorado for the summer, and we hired one girl last week to help keep up with the maintenance tasks.

TrentL · Jun 11, 2019

Made a lot of potting soil yesterday, 2 cu yds, while the others were out planting peppers

I made them a list; instructions were to hold 2 of each type back for seed, get at least 2 of each type in the field, and I noted which I wanted extras of.

We are going to throw away some 2300 pepper plants though. Have one more shipment going out today and that's the end of online orders; the damn things are too tall to get in any box we have lol. Also, shipping them in 4" pots is going to be impossible w/o paying a lot for faster shipping as they dry out so fast, being so large.

Our last live plant market, from here-on it'll be just whatever produce we can bring and maybe a few peppers I pot up

Speaking of potting up, I've been busy topping and potting. Got about 600 cannabis potted up to 3" or 4" pots at this point, have about 7500 to do total.

PaulG · Jun 11, 2019

Wow, topped all those?

That is going to be 8100 bushy mo-fo plants!

They really look nice and uniform. I forgot, are
those for your contract planting or your own grow?

TrentL · Jun 11, 2019

PaulG said:
Wow, topped all those?

That is going to be 8100 bushy mo-fo plants!

They really look nice and uniform. I forgot, are
those for your contract planting or your own grow?

Still topping lol, have 5,000 to do for my own grow

TrentL · Jun 11, 2019

Also I'm up to 16,282 cannabis plants now.

PaulG · Jun 12, 2019

Mr.joe · Jun 12, 2019

The scale that you do everything still impresses me. Keep up the good work

TrentL · Jun 12, 2019

Mr.joe said:
The scale that you do everything still impresses me. Keep up the good work

The scale I do everything at makes me question my sanity more often than not.

Combined with the hard reality of continual money loss, it's mentally challenging some days to keep at it.

143 days straight now this year without a day off. Not a single one.

I've had a half day off, though! I drank too much at a friend's funeral (well, a "celebration of life") on Saturday and spent half of Sunday throwing up, but still got out to the farm to water plants for 4 hours that night. Was a rough 4 hours.

We DO have all of our plants in the ground, finally, officially as of today! (Minus cannabis, which goes out when wheat comes up next month, hence the potting up drudgery, and our second raspberry planting which hasn't showed up yet, and our 2 acres of fruit trees, also still not here)

I had to make some hard choices, and 2300 peppers didn't make the cut. Just not enough dry land, everything we planted out got cut in half this year, peppers no exception. We did manage to get out somewhere north of 2600 pepper plants though! So that's an accomplishment. Not quite as many as last year (3200 went out) but still, a fair amount of heat coming this summer.

We did such a wide assortment of peppers this year, I have at least 4-5 of everything planted or growing in isolation (for seed), with some of the more well known types planted in abundance. 1600 annuums (sweet and milds, about 30 varieties), 250+ habanero, 250+ scotch bonnet, 450+ reaper, 100+ 7-pot brainstrain for some of the heat. But everything on "the list" made it in to the dirt *and* is slated to pot up for isolation grow this week.

We also got out 1400 row feet of sweet corn, 1000 row feet of melons, a 35x100 patch of rhubarb, 75x100 patch of greens and brassicas, a 50x60 patch of strawberry, 600 row feet of raspberry starts, 50x60 patch of garlic, 50x60 patch of onions, 1,100 live tomato plants (4x200' dual rows in plastic mulch, and 4x 100' rows strawed), a quarter acre of pumpkins, and probably a bunch of other shit I'm forgetting.

So, we're done. And damn near all of that (plus covering the better part of an acre with 3" of straw), in a week and two days.

Now, the big pepper seed crop, and cannabis pot-up operation begins (in earnest). I've been chipping away at it but only have 900 cannabis plants topped and potted up, working solo over last couple of days). Will go faster with more hands on it.

This year can kiss my ass.

Also if anyone around Illinois wants some pepper plants; I have 2300 of them about to get zero-maintenance (until they croak and we compost them) which I'll let go of super-duper cheap.

Except for one guy who ordered 3x TFM and 3x MOA scotch bonnets before I closed the live plant part of the online store. He's getting whatever the hell I can fit in whatever boxes I have laying around at the farm, whether he wants them or not lol. The plants are in rough shape at this point, been really struggling to keep them alive in 4" pots, so not our best, for sure but hell, he ordered in June.. so doing the best i can!

Also, fun fact - did you know c. chinense *will* set fruit in a 112F degree greenhouse? Blew my mind. I thought for sure pollen went sterile above 96F. But apparently, with all the pod setting in the ultra-hot greenhouse, they are much more resilient than I gave them credit for.

Mr.joe · Jun 12, 2019

I'm tired just reading all that. Really makes a guy like me appreciate the nursery growing plants a bunch more.
Flowers in 112 degrees is good news for me we get some pretty hot summers here. I seen 109 today

PtMD989 · Jun 12, 2019

Is the hemp crop already spoken for ( sold)? Or is it a, if you build it they will come, type of adventure? Is Illinois close to legalizing rec marijuana, yet?

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TrentL · Jun 12, 2019

PtMD989 said:
Is the hemp crop already spoken for ( sold)? Or is it a, if you build it they will come, type of adventure? Is Illinois close to legalizing rec marijuana, yet?

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Grow it and then find a buyer. Legalized marijuana was passed by senate and house, waiting on Governor's signature.

Y'all want a kick in the nuts?

Mice got in the greenhouse last night - ate *39* fucking trays of cannabis sprouts, dug up seeds, and made a real mess. Somewhere between $10-90,000 in lost revenue potential in one damn night. Little bastards were too small to trip the cameras so had no idea until I found the damage this am.

War has been declared. Girls are clearing every store in the county out of mouse traps, glue traps, and trying to find synthetic poison bait stations which are approved for organic use.

Ruid · Jun 12, 2019

Too bad cats fuck with plants too...

TrentL · Jun 12, 2019

Ruid said:
Too bad cats fuck with plants too...

Yup, they'd do more harm than the mice would in the greenhouse. It's one thing to have 20 or so cells in a tray messed up, totally different to have trays knocked down, crapped in, pissed in, etc.

Somewhere in my photo archive I have three pepper trays knocked down in the basement by the cats. I lost my entire pepper grow in 2012 in one heartbeat when the cats knocked all 3 pepper trays I had going on to the floor of the basement, off the bench they were sitting on. I only managed to salvage about 6 plants out of 3x 72 cell trays.

saiias · Jun 12, 2019

Sad to hear about your losses Trent. Hopefully everything will work out at the end.

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TrentL · Jun 12, 2019

saiias said:
Sad to hear about your losses Trent. Hopefully everything will work out at the end.

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Oh yeah I planted more than I needed, and still have the grow split between indoor & outdoor, just in case I lose a building.

simp3204 · Jun 12, 2019

Sorry to hear about the mice, Trent! Little fuckers wreak havoc at the worst times.

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saiias · Jun 12, 2019

TrentL said:
Oh yeah I planted more than I needed, and still have the grow split between indoor & outdoor, just in case I lose a building.

Happy to know.
Hopefully weed will be legalized by the time I visit your farm this year. Lol.

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TrentL · Jun 12, 2019

It's war. Hundreds of traps have been deployed. Nowhere is safe. Everything is lethal to them now. There is no way any of them will survive the night.

PtMD989 · Jun 12, 2019

That’s a kick in both nuts and your dick.

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