Tiny Farm Blog Organic micro-farming with two acres and some tools ~ a daily photo journal...

A couple of days ago, things seemed to be moving in slow motion, today, it’s the wide open highway! (A poor analogy, perhaps, given the soaring price of gas, but anyway…) Sitting at the wheel of the little riding mower, heading to the greenhouse down the main path with trays of seedlings in tow, a warm sun shining down, a good part of the field just about ready to work, all the possibility of a brand new garden season ahead, and no weeds in sight felt…really fantastic. With a nice adrenaline rush! As the warm weather kicks in, there’s a whole series of winter-to-summer changes, and my body memory of fieldwork details starts to come back. It’s not like I’ve been doing this forever, each new season, there’s a spring ramp up of remembering routines, pathways, ways to do a thousand little things. Last week, I moved the Kubota compact tractor and the riding mower out of winter parking in the drive shed, to make room for summer storage. The greenhouse is now almost completely set-up for full seedling mode. Today, I test started the Horse walking rototiller and walked it around, set out the rain gauge, stripped off the draft-sealing duct tape to open the Milkhouse side door (a milestone spring moment!), and hooked up the hose from the barn well to the pipe that runs down the field and supplies the greenhouse (the hose goes through one of the holes at the bottom left of the door). Practically overnight, there is SO MUCH TO DO, RIGHT AWAY. There’s tons of tilling as soon as possible so the cover crop residue can start breaking down, and immediate seeding of, at least, peas and spinach, in the next couple of days of sunny weather, before the big rain forecast for Friday and the weekend. And CHICKENS should be here tomorrow… Fun!

A gray and gloomy, windy day…but WARM. Well, fairly above freezing for the most part, and with a little rain, yesterday’s speeded-up melting continued. But we’re still a ways off from actually doing any work in the field. So, another pretty laid-back day. Lynn came by for her weekly installment of tiny farming. Out in the greenhouse, moving tables around and some hand-watering (those barrels of snow water are coming in handy!). In the Milkhouse, more seed starting: 400 more tomatoes, and a tray of leeks (a little late for this batch, but still better than direct-seeding). For her very first time starting seedlings, Lynn seeded 19 varieties into a 200-cell plug tray (10 each, 20 of one). Clearly, I trust her…accuracy. Working in the tiny cells, changing seed every row, and keeping track of names requires a bit of concentration. A little wandering attention, and who knows what tomatoes would be growing where… Living on the edge! :)

Inside, in the increasingly GREEN Milkhouse, this year’s artificial sun set-up is done. It’s about fitting in as much area-under-lights as possible, while making sure all of the trays are easily reachable, for watering, rotation, thinning. So, there are the four grow racks, and the lightbox (that’s leek, onions and parsley under there), with its second level (why waste a flat surface that comes with chains?!). For now, this extra space is the new spot for the rescued-and-passed-along decorative plants (the heather was too dried out and didn’t make it, the winterberry are doing fine, and the orchids seem OK…), but they’ll eventually be crowded out and moved somewhere else. The shelves are filling up fast… MEANWHILE, outside, it’s snowing and snowing, again. That’s a lot of snow. Around here, we’re definitely off to a later start this year than at least the last couple, but I’m still not particularly put off, not just yet. Although, it’s not supposed to warm up for another week, maybe two…

This is today’s peaceful but uninspiring view of the garden from the north-facing Milkhouse window…

Went through the lumber delivered yesterday, selecting the straightest pieces for a new grow rack. There’s all kinds of scrap wood around the farm, except, there are never enough 2×4s and plywood… I order construction grade for most things, quite inexpensive but the boards have to be hand-picked if you don’t want a lot of warped wood. For rough carpentry, this works fine: the savings add up, and rough edges add character! There’s the grow rack, a double screen door for the Milkhouse, the composting toilet-ice fishing hut conversion, the chickenhouse reno, new tables and trays for the farm and market stands, more… All needed pretty soon. Spring building starts now!

Another seedling room set-up task checked off today: hanging the lightbox. Not exactly a big job—the chains were already there from last year—but having it in place is a big visual reminder in the Milkhouse that we’re heading into spring. The box, given to me two-three years back, has four 48″ fluorescent tubes on 5″ (12.5cm) spacing. Raised up a bit more, it gives pretty good light to the whole tray, which is about 3.5′x4′ (1×1.2m). It’s been a welcome bit of much-needed space for larger seedlings, though this year, with the barely-heated greenhouse plan, maybe it won’t be so critical. I still have to line the tray with plastic, and possibly get round to giving the box a coat of white paint…

The choice storage spot for tiny farm gear, especially during winter, is this giant shelf, where it’s warm and dry. It’s at the back of the Extended Milkhouse, the last 3-1/2′ of the old ceiling, propped up on the leading edge by a beam across and 4″x4″ posts. It would maybe qualify as an upper level, if you could actually stand up: clearance is only 3-4′ under the new sloped ceiling. It’s 3-1/2′x20′ (1mx6m) of up out of the way space…a big shelf! About 7-1/2′ feet high, I get up there by ladder. Only one season old, it’s still startlingly clear, orderly, and almost entirely filled with immediately useful stuff as opposed to sure-to-be-useful-sometime gear (though the inevitable packing boxes saved just in case of return already have a presence). It’s dusty up there. At this end are the many fluorescent light fixtures (12, I think) for the grow racks. They hang from chains from those dowels in front, and the dowels in turn hang by the nails from more chains on the rack! When seedlings are all done, I remove the lights and use the racks for harvest storage. The oscillating table fan is used to give newly emerged seedlings a bit of a toughening up, conditioning breeze. Down at the other end, stacks of 3″ peat pots and plug sheets and trays. Time to start seedling room set-up!

Not a big concern, but part of my rounds is keeping an eye on the snow load on the Milkhouse roof. It’s that shallow angle. This pic makes the potential problem clear: big, steep upper roof, unloading onto not-so-sloped lower roof. Luckily, with the wind and angle, there is seldom upper roof build-up. Although the weather’s been relatively warm recently (it did drop drastically last night), and there’s melt-off, it’s also been snowing in regular spurts, dumping an inch or so at a time. So, I keep an eye out… (If not for apparent global warming—shorter, less snowy winters in general, for whatever reason—we might have gone steeper when building last year. It seems we’re already casually adapting to visions of a freakish weather future, which IS human nature but still…weird!)

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!

Looking out the side door of the Extended Milkhouse, this is what I see. The mighty tiny tractors don’t seem too formidable under a little snow. A good old fashioned blizzard and they’d be…gone! A few years of crazy short winters, and it’s easy to forget how different the seasons used to be around here. Not that long ago, 15-20 years, winter meant a whole new ground level, with permanent snow at least two or three feet deep settled in for the duration wherever it wasn’t plowed. Now, it’s practically a novelty. I can hardly believe I’m not exaggerating… Well, there may not be as much snow, but winter’s still coming, and I’m still going to have to soon finish cleaning out the drive shed to put the machines away…