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

Around 8 am, just getting light, and it’s the second snow that’s sticking around for a while. Here, I’m standing in a weedy area right beside the barn, looking south-west over the south-facing slope, with the chickenhouse just out of sight to the right. (That’s a so-far unidentified piece of antique iron farm gear with wheels, sticking up on the left.)

Winter isn’t coming in as hard and early as it has in the last couple of years, the temperature is supposed to stay above zero for the next few days at least. We shall see!

Every year, the feeling on first seeing veggie production land disappearing under snow I find kinda cool and interesting. It’s not really sad or anything like that, but there’s definitely an “it’s really over now”, wiped-out thought-sensation-emotion thing going on. When you’re growing stuff, the snow and the cold really send a message. This is obvious, but still…worth noting. :)

Here it is, in the dim, chilly, gray 7:30 am light: the first snow to stick this fall. Familiar—we really do have such a short growing season, time flies—and of course not welcome, because there’s still fieldwork to do. And I’ll take warmth and greenery any day. But this first round will be gone by mid-morning, and if the 15-day forecast holds anywhere near mildly accurate, we won’t be in for snow that stays for at least another couple of weeks. The last two years in this region, winter came kinda early, freezing weather and long-term snow arrived by the end of November. But the couple of seasons before that, far as I remember, we were actually WATCHING for winter well into January. So, who knows?!

There are pretty ornamental cutting sunflowers, and then there are these monsters of the field, towering Early Russians, and their almost as imposing kin, the rugged Jerusalem artichoke (last photo). They’re the genus Helianthus, North American natives, supposedly dating back 8,000 years, and by the look of it, really not too disturbed by the crazy weather right now.

Both of these are experiments. This is the second season for the Russian giants, grown exclusively for their potential as a plant-protecting wall. It’s the third time around for the JAs, a crop that can do double duty as a living wall… Neither were strategically placed for action this year, but the idea is mainly to use them as shade during scorching summers. They get to a pretty good height by sometime in July, so the timing works. Even at 7-8′, they won’t protect too far out, a dense and high-value crop like all-lettuce mesclun would make it worthwhile. They could be good as windbreaks as well, but I haven’t considered for what…

The sunflowers are around 8′ tall now, it’s quite incredible (with a longer season, they can apparently get up to 14′). You’d think with them growing so fast and big, they’d always stand out, but with all that’s going on in the field, you can forget and then one day, turn around and BAM, there’s that wall o’ green, STARING at you…

The flowers are practically as big as my head, and so heavy, they eventually completely face down.

The Jerusalem artichoke are a little more refined, but still big and resilient. They’re around 7′. Both sunflowers and JAs are planted in double rows, and held up to this year’s helping of storms and massive winds no problem. Reliable…

The weather is warm, the days still feel long (although, at 5:00 a.m. for Saturday market, I’m already waking up in the dark)—summer is in full effect, but you know the season’s soon changing because the field is clearing out. Today, I did some tilling, cleaning up before weeds get too established, and preparing for a last seeding of spinach for fall harvest (a gamble, for sure).

In the pic, a couple more passes to the left of the freshly turned strip and we’ll be at the edge of the previous spinach planting, barely visible, seeded about 3 weeks ago. To the left of that, a half-bed of bok choi, delicious and miraculously untouched by flea beetles, at tiny baby stage from seedlings transplanted at the beginning of the month. Beside the bok choi, beds of broccoli and cauliflower, also set out 4 weeks ago, and looking pretty good for harvest in October.

This section was planted out at the start of the season to snap peas, lettuce, and the first spinach. After adding in some of the handy pelletized alfalfa, it gets to go round again!

In the next section (top right of the photo, which is…east), I’ve started tilling in an overgrowth of grass and vetch, where more peas and the first plot of potatoes used to be. That section is done for the year, and may get a protective cover of fall rye, as a green manure to be turned under in spring.

In the market garden, it’s always one thing after another… :)

Harvested the season’s first sweet peppers, for the Monday CSA shares. They’re small…but tasty (that description has popped up a few times this year, as we pick early against the slow-growing weather and the flying by of time). The lime-yellow, tapering Gypsy (yellow-to-orange-to-red) are performing well once again, early and prolific, and the always-early, dark green bell peppers are Ace (green-to-red). Both varieties are F-1 hybrids (no seed saving), which isn’t great, but these guys are super-reliable in crazy weather, so I still plant ‘em first… Peeking out from underneath, Ambassador (green) and Golden Dawn III (yellow) zucchini (also hybrids; GDIII is a mad producer, yellow zukes everywhere, on and on—another reliable standby that I’d love to replace with an open-pollinated variety)—after finally starting to take off a couple of weeks ago, the first planting of summer squash hasn’t looked back. So that’s something!

Cloudy, coolish weather continues, and the growing’s so slowwww…  At the farmers’ market today, instead of all-new main season veggies, it’s kinda more of the same. No super-early tomatoes (Stupice!), not even BEANS (not even the super-early yellow wax beans…). But the root crops are doing well with the rain, and their colors are…refreshing. Here, purple Purple Haze carrots, and radish-red Chioggia beets, freshly misted, drenched with…color. That’s nice… :)