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

What a funny thing: an instant photo shoot in the field! A few days ago, I (reluctantly) did an interesting-people-in-the-community interview/profile for one of the local newspapers, and early today, I got an email asking for a photo, or the columnist could come out and snap one. They were on a same-day deadline. I said I’d send something along in a couple of hours. Shannon (who’s here every day till June) was working with Raechelle, here on her day-a-week, so I asked them to come up with the photo concept, location, and do the, uh, art/set direction—anything but a typical, kinda impersonal shot of a guy with a field in the background. Karen (Bob’s partner) had dropped by in a wheelchair, her first time at the farm in weeks since breaking her leg. She takes nice pics, so I asked her if she’d do the shoot, and wheeled her into the field with my camera. The concept was: S and R would pretend to mulch the garlic (the mulching’s done, but it’s the only really visible crop in the field), and I’d be around, holding a…well, digging fork (closest thing to a pitchfork, I guess). Anyhow, Karen snapped away, and for an alternate they came up with feet in the air. We emailed both, with a tighter cropping on the top one so it’s about square, with the left chopped out. I found it quite hilarious, because in a past life, I’ve attended and organized “real,” sometimes ridiculously expensive, studio and location photo shoots, with creative meetings, stylists, props, shooting permits and cops detouring traffic, the whole bit. Recreating all the basic parts in an hour or so, in the field, with whoever was around, was great! Devolution on the tiny farm… :) I wonder which one they’ll pick… (Guest photos by Karen.)

The grass seemed just long enough for a productive mulch cut without overloading the John Deere riding mower, so today was the day to start season 2 in the grass mulch experiment. This is just one part of the total mowing area: including the field perimeter and another big area behind where I’m standing to take the photo, there’s maybe four times that much (this area is being kept clear for the eventual bigger greenhouse). The JD’s deflector forms those nice mini-windrows instead of scattering the cut, making raking it up much quicker. I’m still not sure if the time it takes to mow, hand-rake and bag will be worth it on a larger scale: will the work be offset by savings in irrigation and weeding, and maybe better yield, for the crops that’ll be mulched? It takes a lot of big, packed leaf bags to properly mulch just a few beds… Well, we’ll soon find out!

It’s a gray day today, as it’s been for most of the last few, but out in the field, it feels green. We’re at about 1.5″ (37cm) of rain in total, and the ground is nicely soaked (and a little too wet to work). The grass surrounding the garden is looking particularly inviting this year, since today’s lush green carpet is tomorrow’s GRASS MULCH. The temperature is up as well, and some sunshine is on the way (no doubt…). All in all, everything’s a little delayed, but looking pretty good!

A good stretch in the field today. Harvested a bushel and a half of carrots (huge Danvers Half Long, enough to last through the winter) and a bushel of beets, a mix of red, golden and the Chioggia striped. Mulched another garlic bed, leaving just one uncovered. Did some clean-up with the compact tractor, moving empty barrels, turning crop remains into one end of the compost windrow. Took a trip down to the pond: it’s unfrozen, with only a layer of ice on top…

The pond is as full as it gets. Normal level is several feet lower, after the winter runoff evaporates, usually sometime in June. The barrel is a float that keeps the end of the uptake hose that leads to the pump suspended above the bottom.

Spent about four hours out in the field. The feeling of calm satisfaction as you head in after doing some work in the garden never fails! I dug up about half a bushel of carrots to see how they’ve done. These are, I think, Nelson and Danvers Half Long (the BIG ones)—the label stakes were out, so I couldn’t immediately check the varieties, it’s not necessarily that easy to tell! They’re mostly in fine shape. On a few, the inch or two exposed above-ground had frozen and thawed, leaving the top tips spongy and mushy, but this didn’t affect too many. I can probably get a couple of bushels! This mid-January harvest is actually consistent with last year, except for the extra 6-7 weeks of RealWinter… I also mulched the garlic, leaving a couple of beds clear as a test (I’m not sure how useful an experiment that is, since I’ll mulch them for moisture and against weeds first thing in spring…). Anyhow, a bit of winter fieldwork… More »

Happily expecting heat, I stepped out into a sharp, nasty wind this morning. The weather’s taken a downward turn from the cheery short-term forecast. It’s still going to be above zero for the next couple of days, They say, but just, and the nights have plummeted below. Also, in the 15-day, that follow-up warm spell predicted for 10 days from now has evaporated. All this meaning: harvest and mulch now! Unfortunately, the heavy wind makes grass mulching nearly futile (the mulch blows away), so I’ve put it all off till tomorrow…

A last hold-out of snow is melting off a section of spinach. While the color is a bit odd, with two distinct shades of green going on (cold effects!), the taste and texture are good. Spinach lives in these conditions, so as long as the leaves haven’t been battered by cold wind, they’re still good eating. Just sort! More: the Big Puddle »

After a night of rain and 50°F (10°C) warmth, the field is just about clear. What a difference a couple of days can make… I took a walk. The ground isn’t even frozen—with the odd way all that snow came before a real cooling down period, the ground was insulated by the snow and didn’t freeze too deeply. It’s quite strange. Usually, during the March end-of-winter melt-off, the clayey soil is wet, sticky, mucky, sucking, and the drainage is slower as the frozen ground thaws out, but now, some areas are dry enough to till! The scene also looks quite different—greener!—than in previous years, because I’ve left a lot of cover crops (oats, bit of rye), and there were quite of few beds of late harvest veggies caught in the first snow. There’s potentially good stuff out there: huge carrots, beets, spinach. They may be too cold-damaged to be worth a harvest, I’ll check ‘em out tomorrow. And the unmulched garlic is doing fine! More »

OK, so this garden is really over for the season! Called due to extremely cold, snowy conditions that don’t seem likely to let up any time soon. I’d been counting on one more melt-off, but it’s only been freezing cold and more snow since the fall that covered it all eight days ago. And there’s no let-up in the 15-day forecast… So, I got caught out a bit. There are still carrots under there, that I might not see until spring, and I didn’t finish mulching the garlic (I think I was unconsciously pushing for a side-by-side test of mulch and no mulch, against prudent practice, and now I have one—it will be interesting…). The big experiment (and possibly, gamble) is with leaving the green manure cover crops—oats, rye—over winter, to be tilled in in spring. In the pic, you can see it’s smooth to the left of the main path, and rough on the right (at the very bottom is the composting windrow where the last of the leftovers go). The left side (plus eight sections across the north end, out of sight at the top) is fully prepped and ready to seed as soon as the ground dries out in spring (peas first!). To the right, I’ll have to wait until it’s dry enough to till with the Kubota compact tractor—determined by the weather, this could hold me back a couple of weeks. Or more. After that, again weather-dependent, there’s the minimum wait of a week or two after tilling for the cover crops to break down. But, with two-thirds of the field ready, however the weather goes, it’ll be fine!

Woke up to a world of snow. Unlike the heavy dusting a few days ago, this was a serious snowfall, looked like 5-6″ (12.5-15 cm). This will stick around for a while. I didn’t finish mulching the garlic, and there are still carrots out there, but no worries, I’m SURE it’ll melt off in the next week or two, and meanwhile, snow is a great insulating mulch! See snow and a goat! »