Transplanting from greenhouse to field at Whistling Wolf Farm

For the past several months, we’ve been documenting the work of a young farmer, Helen Chandler, in her second year of building Whistling Wolf Farm. At this photo shoot, Kyo captured the process of transplanting from greenhouse to field. Helen built a cold frame greenhouse in March, and toward the end of April, there were flats and flats of vigorous beet seedlings ready to be planted outside.

First, a view of Whistling Wolf Farm from its most important asset: the soil. (For the farming geeks out there, Helen told us that she believes her soil is “Quakertown silt loam”. We are not soil specialists; all we can say is that it has a lot of rocks!)

This is the cold frame greenhouse that Helen built with the help of friends from Gravity Hill Farm.

The bounty inside the greenhouse includes parsley, peas, choi, lettuce, onions, scallions, leeks, rosemary, broccoli, cabbage, kale, swiss chard, and beets.

First, Helen makes a nice bath for the beet seedlings with “liquid fish guts” fertilizer. (It probably has a fancier name than that, but we don’t know what it is.) Helen explained that soaking the seedlings in the fertilizer before transplanting is “like giving them a booster shot before sending them out into the world.”

Here’s a shot of Helen’s field map.

Next she drives the seedlings out to the field for planting.

Before the seedlings are planted, Helen has to lay the irrigation line on the fields.

And then she plants the seedlings individually by hand.

An aerial view of Helen’s labor of love.