Month: April 2008 - Page 3

Head out on the highway…

16 Nov 202315 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

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!

Chickens arrive!

7 Mar 201116 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

That was fun! Picked up the CHICKENS, wood shavings, and starter feed mix at the feed store. On this beautiful, sunny day, the airy, skylighted boxes looked like a deluxe place to be for a traveling chicken. Back on the farm, wood shavings were spread and waterers filled, and then the two-week old chicks were let loose. I lifted around 20 out by hand, a start on getting to know the guys. There are 50 in all (though I forgot to do the official count while unpacking), 40 White Rock Cornish X and 10 Frey’s Special Dual Purpose cockerels, all healthy, energetic, pretty much same-sized and apparently happy, running around like maniacs, jamming themselves into intense corner huddles, and PECKING AWAY at the feed and everything else in sight…

Yes, right from the airhole view, they’re definitely entertainment! I could watch ’em for hours (and, sorta, did…could’ve been tilling…). Chickens…

Field day!

3 Apr 201617 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

Left to the last possible harvest in the fall, brassicas like kale, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower (above), were eventually winter-killed and now have to be cleaned up—one of the first field-readying jobs of spring! Today, I started. (EVERY day is a field day from here on in, through November at least, or the first heavy snow that sticks.) A day of tiny farming fieldwork is really just a whole lotta gardening… Now that the ground has dried out enough to be tillable (that could’ve been yesterday, but…errands and CHICKENS), and warmed up enough to direct seed the crops that germinate in cooler soil, it’s a whole new world of things to do…and think about doing. There are two basic ways to ponder the progress of the season’s garden: by timing and by area, each useful in its own way. Timing is mainly about the plants: when to seed, when to water, when to harvest. Area is about where to locate particular plantings, which in my case doesn’t mean absolutely running out of space, since there’s lots more field to expand the garden into if I wanted to (which I don’t), but more like where to position stuff efficiently, so you’re maintaining crop rotation, but not having to, say, drag hoses all the way down the garden to a couple of newly seeded beds that need daily watering in (although there’s a field production plan made up, there are lots of adjustments on the way—where to put stuff will come up again and again!). So, the start of the season is mainly about area, because you have to prep beds and get veggies in in a rough order—cool soil seed, then cool weather transplant, then warm soil seed and transplants—and the timing is a constant: it’s all right away! One way I keep overall track of this garden is by counting sections: it’s about 2.5 acres, divided into 40 50’x50′ squares (each fits 10-16 beds, depending on width). At some point in the next six weeks or so, almost all SHOULD be planted out, nearly 40/40. Today, I started seeding in one…

Tilled and untilled: Partially composted cow manure was spread and incorporated in the fall. Now, a light rototilling to prepare for seeding is all that’s needed. Today, I used the tiller on the Kubota compact tractor.

Rock beats tiller: There are lots of stones in this field, they work their way up continually, and even a fist-sized rock, caught in the right way, can stall out the 48″ rototiller on the Kubota (it’s a tiny tractor!). No problem: remove and restart.

Getting set to seed: I work mostly one or two sections at a time, prepping an area with the tiller, marking the beds, then seeding (or transplanting). This way, I can get the crops that need to be started in as quickly as possible. Here’s the cart towed by the riding mower, loaded with assorted seeding gear (and some transplants being ferried to the greenhouse).

Making beds: Oh, there’s A LOT of tiny farm history behind my bed marking methods. :) I’m still working on the most efficient way to set up beds. Right now, it’s fairly streamlined, involving a 100′ tape measure, stakes, and pacing off distances. This year, I’m planting in 3′, 4′, and 5′ beds (that’s path included), depending on the crop.

Customizing the Rake: Every season, I re-ink faded measurement markings on a couple of hand tools I use the most. Here’s a convenient mark for 42″ from the top of the handle (that’s the planting area width for a 5′ bed. There are other marks further up the handle, and the whole rake is exactly 5′. It’s convenient for quick checks, especially on the favorite rake that I use for touching up beds right before seeding. And so, off we go…!

Seedlings don’t wait around!

3 Apr 201618 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

The weather’s been warm, sunny, essentially FANTASTIC for the last couple of days, and the forecast for the next few looks just as good. Indoors, many of the earliest seedling starts are putting on growth spurts, quite suddenly crowding each other and grabbing for the light, like these Gypsy sweet peppers. That means hundreds of seedlings have to be potted up, hardened off a bit, and headed out to the greenhouse, NOW—it’s not good to constrain their growth in small cells, and once they’re in bigger quarters, there isn’t room for them all under the lights. It’s no coincidence that, just as you’re driven to seed a dozen crops into the field RIGHT AWAY, the transplants are ALSO blowing up and demanding immediate attention—it’s the miracle of the garden plan working. They’ve been timed to be at this stage right about now. This is the way it goes. I’m so completely swamped with things to do, not just planting, but building and repairing things, working on the new farmers’ market stand, setting up the irrigation, and on and on. It can be quite overwhelming. Often, it doesn’t seem possible to get it all done in reasonable time. But you plug away—if you’ve done it before, you can do it again!—and eventually things ease up, and you get to survey your first crops setting up in the field—not to mention, EAT STUFF, like a perfectly crunchy spring radish…just brush off the dirt—and at that point, the deep feeling of satisfaction and simple happiness at having done it all is really, truly, have-to-experience-it excellent. MEANWHILE, that’s a good six weeks away, and until then, it’s the full-on SPRING RUSH! :)

Tangling with hoses

3 Apr 201620 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

In smaller gardens (tinier farms!), hoses are generally a fact of life. In spring, it’s time to uncoil them all, check the fittings, and get set to deliver water largely by hand.

On BIG veggie farms, “hoses” are usually big pipes (3″/7.5cm and up), part of full-blown irrigation systems that suck up and spew MILLIONS of liters of water a season. Here on this tiny farm, we’re way closer to the garden hose end of the scale.

Our irrigation system is a work in progress. Drip tape is the ultimate goal, but there are obstacles to work around, like the limited water available from the barn well, and the distance to and lack of electricity at the spring-fed pond. Right now, watering is about regular 5/8″ hoses, fed by a 1″ plastic pipe that runs from the barn well to the pond located WAY at the other end of the field, with taps at 100′ intervals.

Actual watering is done with a combination of soaker hoses, sprinklers when there’s no wind, and various hand nozzles for watering in newly seeded beds. Quick connectors are a major convenience when hooking up the various combos of multiple hoses and other attachments. I try to find a balance between not too many hoses, because you can’t leave them lying around, and not so few that you’re moving the same rig all over the plot.

Accidentally tilling hoses that were left snaking around instead of being promptly put away has turned into a not absolutely rare occurrence, and a time-waster (untangling and splicing takes more than a minute). Just put away that 300′ of hose plus 500′ of soaker hose when you’re done! ;)

Spot irrigation with hoses on two acres is a bit tedious, but like everything else, you do get used to it, it’s part of the routine, and it gets the job done, which is satisfying in the end…

That’s the state of the watering art around here as we head into a new season, and I’m promising myself advances on the drip side of things. Of course, it could happen to rain all the time, about an inch (2.5cm) once a week would be fine, and then hoses would largely vanish from the garden landscape. That’s not at all that likely (and when it’s a really rainy year, you wish for hot, sunny hose weather), but…YOU NEVER KNOW!

How odd…

3 Apr 201621 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

It’s like we’ve gone directly from winter to summer. Less than a WEEK since the ground dried out enough to walk on it and till it, I’m actually out there WATERING… This is really odd.

I’m sure we’ve had unseasonably hot Aprils before, where watering in newly seeded crops was necessary, still, it’s only common sense to chalk this up as another of the consistently bizarre weather events we’ve been having in the last three years or so… In other words: global warming, I guess.

“Normally,” April is a good month once it warms up, because our rather heavy clay-loam soil holds moisture well, and just post-snow, it’s wet enough that you don’t have to water in what you’ve seeded. A spring bonus!

Instead, what’s going on here is, in a handful of days, the top inch or more of the ground has dried out completely in the unusual heat. That means shallowly-sown seed, like spinach, lettuce, radish, beets, and chard, is sitting in perfectly dry soil.

I put in peas at around 1.5″ (4.25cm), and they were just barely in nice, moist earth. But these other guys, what can I do?

I considered setting the seeder deeper, but that could just bury them too far for good, quick germination (I’ve messed around with too deep before…).

Or, out with the sprinkler.

I don’t like using sprinklers, I don’t have water to waste, but here, it’s much the more reasonable alternative to hand-watering a 50’x100′ area, when there’s so much else to do.

The pond irrigation isn’t yet set up, so the water’s coming from the barn well, where there’s such low pressure that only the cheapest, most lightweight garden sprinkler will oscillate, where better quality, heavier duty ones shoot a stream of water straight ahead and won’t budge.

Irrigation comes early, and cheap gear is every once in a while…good!

Grass fire across the road

27 Nov 202321 Apr 2008 by Mike (tfb)

Someone in the village burning junk in their backyard set off a grass fire that spread across a field and threatened to burn down the barn and house across the road. I missed the flames, and took a look as the firefighters were mopping up. I’m somewhat aware that, lately, a good part of the planet is on fire at any given moment, but this was the first time I’ve seen any sort of fire damage first-hand, outside of buildings and stuff in cities. What struck me was the unexpected, forbidding BLACKNESS of the charred ground, like a black hole sucking in all the light, looking like it could spread and swallow up…everything (I’m sure spreading flames are a lot scarier)… Interesting. With the dry weather, there’s a burn ban on in the region (I haven’t yet heard the full story on the unfortunate firestarter…he or she must be fined into oblivion…). On this side of the road, the predecessor to the big barn I’m in right now was accidentally burned down in 1949, and these days, we do have a burn barrel, but I don’t think much about fire day to day: only burn on wet, non-windy days, always put the grate on the barrel, don’t take any sort of fire or drive gas vehicles (like the riding mower) into the barn (apparently, gas engines can spark, hay and straw dust is extremely flammable, diesel’s OK)… That’s about it. Still, another thing to keep an eye on. On the farm, it’ll probably take more than a handy fire extinguisher if things get burning…