Boundbrook Farm and Vermont Rice Have Moved!

Come check out our new web home at www.vermontrice.net

New rice is available!

Our 2012 crop of hayayuki short-grain japonica rice is available now for general sale. Please contact the farm for more information. We offer 1.5 lb cloth bags, and larger bags of five, ten, twenty, and fifty pounds are also available.

July 2012: 7/1-7/7

This is an exciting week on the farm.  Transplants in the Eastern Paddy and in the nursery have started to put on panicles of grain!

Panicle formation in the Eastern Paddy

Eastern Paddy growth

Western Paddy growth

Middle Paddy growth

Akitakomachi variety rice

Growth in the Nursery Paddy

This marker indicates the amount of water in the pond. Right now it is hovering around 7′.

Panicle formation in the Eastern Paddy

The developing rice starts hollow and fills out with time.

6/24-6/30

More rice, more growth, and more paddies.  The pond has been dug to full size as well.

The last of the transplanting, of about 1/4 ac. in area

A lot can happen in two weeks here. Notice how many flats have been used in transplanting and how much the seedlings in the nursery paddy have grown.

The “Egg-Shaped Paddy,” with the last of the hand transplanted rice

Growing hand transplants in the Eastern Paddy

The Middle Paddy, transplanted by machine around June 18

Growth in the Eastern Paddy

An aerial view of the entire project

The pond at its full size, and filling with water from runoff

June 2012: 6/3-6/9

Some updated photos of the planted rice, showing new growth.

The Eastern Paddy’s area is now filled with both hand- and machine-transplanted rice

A closer view of the hand transplanted seedlings in Eastern Paddy

Transplanted 5/28, the seedlings in this field are now showing new growth.

Transplanted 5/28, the seedlings in this field are now showing new growth.

May 2012: 5/27-5/31

Here are some photos of  field prep and conditions, pond level, rice seedlings and seedling growth for late May.

Erik is shown here getting ready to “puddle” with the spike wheel tractor. Puddling involves churning up the mud so that particles of soil become suspended in the water. With time and patience, the sediment settles in the low spots in the paddy, allowing for a more level surface.

The spike wheel tractor in action

Here is a view of the Western Paddy after puddling. Note how full of sediment the water is in this picture.

Another look at the Western Paddy after puddling.

Here is a shot of the project from the West, showing the different paddy levels.

The background of this picture shows the level markings on stakes within the paddy area.

The stakes shown mark the level of each particular location. Plus signs indicate that the area is higher than the reference point and vice versa.

The pond level is shown here just before the Eastern Paddy was prepped for transplanting.

A full day of pumping water from the pond was necessary to get to this water level on the Eastern Paddy.

Another view of the Eastern Paddy ready for transplanting

A view of the dike separating the Western Paddy from the rest of the project. Note the difference in water levels between the two paddies.

The Western Paddy is mostly sealed from leakage at this point. The work horses are in the background.

The paddy system provides habitat for many species of waterfowl, migrating birds, amphibians, insects, etc. Here a waterfowl is probably hunting in the paddy.

A view of the low tunnel where the rice seedlings are grown in flats

A view under the hood in the seedling nursery

These seedlings have just begun putting on their third leaves, an indication that they are ready for transplanting.

The transplanter demystified! This machine can do the same amount of transplanting as one person could do in a day in a mere ten minutes!

These seedlings in the hoophouse, planted on April 20, have reached an average height of about 3″.

A view under the hood in the seedling nursery

Check out the Vermont Sail Freight Project

http://vermontsailfreightproject.wordpress.com/

As if I don’t have enough going on, there is another project in the works for which I’ve just started a new blog.  It’s a future sail freight company to link Champlain Valley artisanal farm products, like and including ours, with markets in the Lower Hudson, by means of a custom-built flat bottom sailing barge.  Launch slated for fall 2013.

Speed the Plow

The rice paddies, measuring about 5.5 acres in total, are now leveled within a few inches.  It took many steps to get our uneven, mostly soggy pasture to this point, starting with bulldozer and excavator work last August.  In the last few weeks we’ve been following up where the construction equipment left off with a device called a land plane.

A land plane is sort of like a road grader that gets towed behind a tractor.  A neighbor and supporter was kind enough to loan it to us as well as the heavy tractor to pull it.  By setting up a rotary laser and fitting the laser receiver onto the land plane, we were able to fine tune the leveling process with laser guidance, so to speak.  The finished result was smooth enough to be an airport runway.  This is important so that when the fields are flooded, the water is of consistent depth throughout the field, with no deep spots or islands.

But after the leveling some areas were so smooth and hard that plowing was definitely called for.  If I had the wherewithal I would be using my horses for this step.  But as heavy as this soil was I know my horses wouldn’t have been up for it.  I don’t own enough drafts to pull a single plow bottom through this kind of clay.  So instead we have been plowing with our kubota tractor, and are almost done.  Finally the surface needs to be harrowed and leveled one last time before we flood it.  I hope to accomplish these steps before setting up the seedling nursery Sunday or Monday.

Gearing up to plant rice

Coming into April we are preparing for a busy season.  The first step is to prepare a seedling nursery, to be seeded down by April 20th.  The seedlings grow to about 6″ long in special flats before being mechanically (I hope) transplanted to the field starting around the third week of May.

Given that we live in a northern zone (5a, by the latest reassessment) we need to frost protect our seedlings from day one.  Rice growers in cold areas have two main tools for this.  The first is water, and the second cover.

The seedling nursery area is relatively small compared to the overall paddy area, maybe around half a percent.  So you can raise seedlings in a greenhouse or even a hoophouse or low tunnel.  In our case we are using a common Hokkaido method of creating a sort of mini-paddy within the larger paddy.  We can then water or even flood the seedlings with the irrigation water already available in the project area.

Rice doesn’t actually need flooded conditions to grow, but it does have high water requirements and doesn’t mind flooding so long as the plants can get enough oxygen.  The flooding is often as much for the growers’ convenience as for the plants’ needs.  In the nursery period, the young plants can be almost completely immersed in water if very cold conditions threaten.  The water provides a thermal buffer, both above and below the surface.

The second, and more modern tool to combat cold is cover.  You can use a real greenhouse, or a lower-tech hoophouse or low tunnel.  Last year we used a high tunnel, but this year we plan to use a 4′ wide low tunnel, for a total of 300 feet of length.  We have a regular high-light-transmission cover to go on it most of the time with a second, heavier, “DEFCON 3” cover to put on if really cold temperatures enter the forecast between April 20th and May 20th.

If there is one thing we’ve learned it’s that the weather is unpredictable.  So we take what steps we can, and roll the dice.  More soon.