Thu, Dec 06, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Indoors, Seed starting
These 72-cell plug sheets, filled with now bone-dry starter mix, have been sitting in the Milkhouse on one half of the double sink since early last summer. They were extras from the final round of seed starting (the last of the brassicas). Now, it’s their time again, as I start the set-up for next year’s seedlings. I usually only do this stuff after the Holidays, but this year, I’m unusually anxious to get going. Maybe it’s a reaction to the unexpected snow and cold. After the recent, freakishly short winters that happened to coincide with my entire farming career, maybe I’m edgy about being cut off from the garden for so long. I mean, all I see is white. I want more greens and browns!! (And there’s the new adventure in fine dining to get started, sparked by Amanda at Apartment Farm’s recent peppy post: “Winter Gardening: Micro Greens”!)
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Wed, Dec 05, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Fieldwork
Where am I going? What am I doing here? (Heading out to check the greenhouse. Got more snow today… :)
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Tue, Dec 04, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Indoors
As pure, abstract small farming pleasure, for me so far, catalog season can’t be beat. This year’s catalogs started arriving two or three weeks ago. The first from one of my main seed suppliers has been here only a couple of days, and I’ve started flipping pages and poring over tiny type. What’s all the fun about? Simple. It’s the clean slate, the chance to START OVER, with the little edge of knowing what you know now, after another way less than PERFECT but oh so educational growing season. EVERYTHING is more than possible…next year! I’m picturing—visualizing!—a two-month continuous harvest of succulent MELONS, plump, super-early hybrids followed by exotic long-season heirlooms. Never mind that, between water issues, cucumber beetles and rollercoaster temperatures, the melon crop here has never been too fine. That’ll change. Melons, and all manner of crisp, mild salad greens right through the summer heat, parsnip without endless hours of tedious, fingertip weeding while waiting for germination, plentiful red and orange and yellow and chocolaty brown peppers well before first frost (several varieties of eggplant, too!),… Wow, it’s almost unbelievable!! Especially with the pristine new CUT FLOWER GARDEN. And it all starts with the catalogs! I realize this is an odd sort of consumer world pleasure, and most of this is about hybrid seed that HAS to be bought every year. Still, I can imagine it as SIMPLE, and it’s great fun, until I get around to seed saving… ;)
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Mon, Dec 03, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, The Farm, Tools
Finally got the tiny tractors in out of the weather. The diesel Kubota took hours and some warming and recharging to get started (I should’ve put ‘em in sooner, but I wasn’t believing in the COLD). You can just make out the John Deere riding mower, parked sideways and in for the winter. The Kubota I fire up every few days to keep it limber, and it goes on snow clearing outings, mainly to make paths to the greenhouse. Unheated and uninsulated, the Drive Shed is still the place to be for machines in the cold! This version was built in the 1940s (here’s a view from the other side, it’s sticking in on the left), and like most things on the farm, has quite the history of…use All manner of vehicles, probably in the hundreds, have been stored or repaired here: tractors, cars and trucks, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, buggies and sleighs (that’s a 1977 Ford F-150 pick-up on the right, slowly being repaired by Bob’s son, Robert). The upper level is quite huge. It’s now mainly crammed with parts and pieces—assorted useful “junk”—but back in the day, a pulley system raised and lowered a wooden platform (it’s a manual, open elevator), and as the seasons changed, the farm’s various horse-drawn carts and buggies would be swapped up and down with sleds and sleighs for different purposes. Now, they’re long gone—one sleigh and no horses remain—but maybe they’ll be back!
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Sun, Dec 02, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Harvest, Indoors, Storage, Veggies
Finally finished a bit of hot pepper harvest, now there’s a convenient pile of dried heat! A few weeks ago, wondering whether to cover for frost, I decided to also pull up some hot pepper plants, roots and all, instead. An experiment! We loaded about 20 of the Cayenne Long Slim on the cart and dumped them in the Milkhouse, heaped on the grow racks that we’d been using, with the lights removed, as summer storage shelves. And there they sat, blending into the decor, drying, the peppers that were still green maturing to red. Until today… (This is the kind of thing you can do in a Milkhouse, not so acceptably in a real house…) They’re satisfyingly high on the heat scale, delivering a little pain if you don’t sample carefully. Great! More »
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Sat, Dec 01, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Building & Fixing, Indoors, The Farm
Here’s the Extended Milkhouse, looking pretty much as it did in mid-February last winter, a couple of months ahead of schedule. This time last year, it was still a dreary shell; we didn’t finish up until January. It serves as a seedling room in spring, for overnight harvest storage and CSA pickup for the rest of the growing season, and as the farm office year-round. It may look like a…bunker, but inside, it’s a great, custom-designed small-farming space. Now, I have a little time to do what I haven’t done so far: get it all sorted out!
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