Fue
Yang, who will soon to complete his Agriculture Business degree from Crowder
College, is the manager of our Education Center located on the Yang Farm, as
well as one of the market’s growers. When he needed an internship project for
his studies, the center provided an excellent venue and the market served as
his supervisor. His final report on the project, written in early May, is a
wonderful peek into his experience. Since our monthly Tunnel Twilight Walk at
the Center is tomorrow, I thought today would be the perfect time to share it. I
have reprinted it, with Fue’s permission, below after the current market news.
Tomorrow, the fabulous Geriatric 5 play. The
Free Kids Meal is chicken with rice, market produce and milk. Both the music
and the kids meal runs from 11 to 1. The market is open from 11 to 2.
The Market Lady, Carolyn Smith, will
demonstrate a recipe tomorrow featuring Braker Berry Farm blackberry jam.
Stewart’s Bakery is serving Mexican casserole
for $6. Ana’s Bananas has fresh cut fruit salad and grilled chicken salad for
$5 each.
On Saturday, Scott Eastman plays. Cooking for
a Cause benefits the Webb City High School Band Boosters. The Free Kids Meal is
egg casserole and a biscuit. All three runs from 9 to 11, while the market is
open until noon.
Stewart’s Bakery is serving spaghetti and meat
balls and Ana’s Bananas will have their fruit salad and grilled chicken salad.
Fresh Ground Seed Library, a project of the
Master Gardeners, will be at the market Saturday, with information on seed
saving. Look for them north of the pavilion.
The June Twilight Tunnel
Walk is set for tomorrow starting at 7 pm at the market’s Year-Round Education
Center located on the Yang Farm, 1213 Route U, Rocky Comfort (1.77 miles south
of the intersection of State Highway 76 & Route U).
Walk through the Center’s
two high tunnels with Extension experts and experienced farmers. The walk is free
and open to growers and the general public. No reservations are needed and it';s free. The Twilight Tunnel Walk takes place on the fourth Thursday through
September.
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| Planning the Education Center planting schedule in 2016 |
Fue’s
Report - Agriculture has always been familiar to me. My
childhood pretty much revolved around agriculture. My parents had various
agricultural jobs throughout my childhood. I remember my mom and dad working as
cucumber pickers in Wisconsin during the summers. There were rows after rows of
pickling cucumbers growing in what seemed like an endless field. When we lived
in Massachusetts my mom would pick us up after school and go straight to the
apple orchards where my dad worked as an apple picker. I can remember sitting
in between the rows of apple trees doing homework and watching my dad work while
chewing on a freshly picked apple and enjoying the light breeze blowing.
From
what I can remember we had always grown our own vegetables throughout my
childhood. From mustard greens to cucumbers to corn, we had it growing in our
garden. I remember being taught how to use a garden hoe to weed and dig holes
to plant seeds. That little vegetable garden that we had would eventually grow
into a small business we called Yang Family Vegetables, which we started in
Massachusetts around 2003-2004.
In
2006 my dad started making preparations to retire. We came to Southwest
Missouri to look for, and ultimately purchase, a small 43-acre cattle farm. In
February of 2007 my wife and I, along with our two young daughters, moved here
to live on the farm. My parents retired in 2010, relocated here, and wanted to
continue vegetable farming. In late 2011 I quit my job at La-Z-Boy in Neosho,
Missouri, and picked up farming again in the spring of 2012. During this time I
debated whether or not I wanted to do this for a living. If I did then I wanted
to go back to school because I thought that by going back to school I could
learn new ways to farm. I wanted learn some of today’s technology and utilize
it on the farm and try to make it more efficient. I finally made the decision
to go back to school in the fall of 2015 and enrolled as a business ag major at
Crowder College. Well, I say I made the decision but it was actually my wife
who enrolled me, so I couldn’t exactly turn back now.
A
couple of weeks after I received my acceptance letter from Crowder, I got a
phone call from Eileen Nichols (Webb City Farmers Market Master and supervisor
for this internship). That one phone call would completely change the way Yang
Family Vegetables operates today. She was working on a grant to establish an
education center that consisted of two high tunnels and a seed starting
greenhouse. The education center was going to be focused on season extension
and winter production. There would also be monthly walkthroughs and various
workshops throughout the year.
I
was very excited about the project but kind of nervous at the same time. It
would provide the technology that I had wanted to learn about. I would be
working with the Webb City Farmers Market, Lincoln University Extension, and University
of Missouri Extension, as well as having a farmer mentor to learn from. But I
would also be going to school at the same time and was afraid I that had chewed
off more than I could handle. My dad also was very hesitant about the project
because of the added workload and he was skeptical as how it would improve our
farming practices. Most importantly, he didn’t want to let everyone down if
things didn’t go the way it should. I am happy to say that the Education Center
is in its second year of operation and accomplishing its goals.
This year has been tough out in the
field. In fact, in all the years that we have been farming here I have never
seen it as bad as this year. My Troybilt tiller died and had to be resurrected
and my tractor was down for a little while as well. Our well pump also died for
a bit. Then we got hit with rain, wind, and hail that pretty much destroyed
everything out in the field. My green onions, sweet onions, and snap peas that
were in the field looked like someone had laid a 2 by 6 on top of them and
pushed them down flat onto the ground. My lettuce, spinach, green beans,
cucumbers, zucchini, and summer squash were ripped to shreds by the hail. We
had to replant most of the plants and what we didn’t replant are still trying
to recover. The plastic on tunnels on one side are full of little welts,
divots, and holes but it did protect the tomatoes and other plants I had in
there. Not a single plant in the tunnels was affected by the storms.
My
internship revolved around working in the high tunnels as well as out in the
fields. My daily activities included watering the seedlings in the seed
starting greenhouse and monitoring for pests and diseases, planting,
transplanting, weeding, irrigation, fertilization, tilling, etc. Over the
course of my internship, I acquired a lot of information that I will use on my
farm. One of the things I learned is the importance of planning. We had always
guess-timated everything. My mentor, Karen Scott of Oakwood Farms in Granby,
showed me her planning schedule. I was absolutely amazed at all the information
she had. She had her whole year planned out in weeks. Each week consisted of
different things she had to get done in that week. She also had her planting schedule,
including the specific cultivar, mapped out for the year. Since she practiced
succession planting, her plan consisted of plantings every three weeks. She has
specific dates on when to plant, what to plant and how much to plant whereas
for us it was “I think this is enough,” or “the plants are fruiting so it’s
time to replant.” The result of that is
sometimes we plant enough and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we replant too
early and most of the time we replant too late. I will continue to write in my
journal as suggested by Eileen after my internship is over and use it as a
starting template.
Last
year we planted two rows of tomatoes and one double row with each plant being
18 inches apart in the heated tunnel. We had pesticide damage last year so the
leaves and branches were stunted. This year we decided to do three double rows
to save space since last year’s double row worked well. That would leave us two
rows to plant zucchini and cucumbers. We transplanted the tomatoes at 18 inches
apart like last year but this year the tomatoes are growing to be bigger than
we had anticipated because we grew a different cultivar of tomatoes in hopes of
decreasing the chances of pesticide damage. Even with all the pruning, the
plants are still a pretty good size and the leaves from different plants are
overlapping and seem to be a little over crowded. Next year I am going to plant
them about two feet apart to help with the crowding. I will get fewer plants
but there will be better air circulation, which should keep down diseases and
plant stress. As of right now the tomato plants are a good four and a half feet
tall and have on average three to four cluster of tomatoes on each plant.
One
of the things I wanted to include in this report was the education part of this
project. One of project’s main goals is to teach other farmers and the
community about season extension and winter production through the use of the
high tunnels and the seed starting greenhouse. Every fourth Thursday beginning
in April and ending in October, Lincoln, MU Extension, and the Webb City
Farmers Market hold a Twilight Tunnel Walk that’s open to the public. This
walk-through is designed as an introduction into the usage and benefits of the
tunnels and the greenhouse. It also shows the progress of our produce as it is
growing, the problems and pests that we might have.
This
year they decided to do a pilot field day for high school kids. Two week before
the field day I was asked to do a presentation. I have never done a
presentation before and was pretty nervous about it. Karen and I met and
discussed what I was going to talk about and made up a general a list but I
still didn’t know what I was going to say. Randy Garrett with LU Extension who
organized the field day suggested I talk about my experience with the tunnels
and the project.
When
it was my turn to present, I took a deep breath and told myself it’ll be ok,
just go slow. As I looked at the kids looking at me, a sense of calmness kind
of took over me. I was still pretty nervous but I opened my mouth and the words
just started to come out. I talked about where we came from, about how I grew
up around agriculture, how my parents farmed during their time in Laos (methods
we still use here), about how we started Yang Family Vegetables, and about how
I tried to walk away from farming but ended up coming back to it. The farther I
tried to get away from it the deeper I became involved. Now I embrace it with
arms wide open.
Throughout
my time at Crowder and my involvement in the education center, along with this
internship, the experience has really opened my eyes. I learned in school that
we live in a society where food is readily available. A society where being
hungry means a trip to the grocery store, or even easier, a trip to McDonald’s.
I realized with the education center that there is useful technology out there,
but it takes farmers like my parents longer to see the need for change because
their set ways have been passed down from generation to generation. I’m
starting to notice that there are big differences when working in the tunnels
vs. the fields. The tunnels are a lot easier, they are less labor intensive,
and the growth and production so far has been better than the field. This
internship helped me start collecting data via a journal that will be useful
later on. I have seed starting dates, transplanting dates, and now harvesting
dates that I will always have on hand and available when I need them for
reference.
My goal is to pass on the
knowledge of what I have and will learn in the coming years. The world is
changing and we need to change with it. The average farmer today is at or near the
age of retirement. Farmlands all over the world are being developed and the
population is ever growing. The decisions we make today will impact the lives
of our children, their children and their children’s
children. I am choosing to go backwards to move forward. Backwards in the sense
of small local farmers growing for their families and their surrounding
community. Forward in a sense that one day with enough small local farmers we might
just feed the world, at least our part of it.
