A path through the snow on New Year’s Day. This year for tiny farming here will be different. More of a focus on repair—equipment, greenhouses—and generally organizing. After years of putting some things off, it’ll be fun to tackle them!
2026 from the start
Grow the whole bulb!
A left-behind garlic bulb from last year has set out on its own, with six cloves all making their way. Decided to leave it to see how things turn out. Not the greatest experimental venture into the unknown: in this quite heavy soil, when things are multi-planted, when it’s veg that grows in the ground in one spot, they tend to crowd and even flatten the sides of each other where they press together. This I know from experience. So expect small, maybe partly flattened new garlic in a couple of months!
A big little fix
Today, a tiny farming breakthrough—I found I could securely balance multiple tools on the wheel hoe, and easily wheel the whole setup between the tool shed and the field! When the tiny farm was operating at a larger scale, I’d hitch the flatbed trailer to the John Deere riding mower, load up with everything we could possibly need for a job, and drive on out. That was deluxe! But for a couple of hand tools—here, a hay fork, leaf rake, shovel—plus the wheel hoe, driving is just overkill. It’s not that far a walk. Still…guiding a wheel hoe while carrying tools is a bit of a balancing act, and I usually make two trips. This new way, using the wheel hoe as a tool carrier, flips it from irksome to fun! I figured out how to quickly insert tools so they brace each other and don’t slip out the bottom, and that was it…upgrade complete. (Yes, I could just pick up the not so heavy wheel hoe, but then, that’s what wheels are for! :)
Don’t stare
It’s just the sun at around 9 am, but looking unusually crisp, a clean white disk cutting through clouds and fog. Today is set to be the first near scorcher of the year, in the high 20s C (80s F) and humid, after the overcast is burned away. While the source of all planetary light and heat seems a little muted on the brightness side—you can actually stare at it right now—for the safety of your eyesight, the smart money says, “Look away!”
Gushing is good!
A gushing water hose—nothing more normal and mundane wherever electricity for pressurized pumping, and of course WATER, are in plentiful supply. This tiny farm is in such a place, yet the gushing hose signals something much happier, an elevated event, because it’s proof positive that the dug well that irrigates the field is back in action once again after another frozen winter.
Priming the pump is usually a mid-May thing, when freezing is over. The operation is simple enough: slowly pour a couple of gallons of water into the pump so it backfills the pipe that goes into the well, turn on the pump, and wait for it to catch. It may take two or three top-ups and retries. When water gushes, the pump is primed for the season! It’s not foolproof, though, the pipe could’ve gotten hopeless clogged, or the well-used and dilapidated pump and tank could decide to give up a seal or conk out entirely. Then the simple would likely become costly repairs or replacement. But not this time!
If the irrigation fittings look small, they are indeed. I’ve seen photos of irrigation set-ups on big farms that are full scale waterworks, orderly grids of giant pipes. Here, the setup is a 1″ plastic pipe that snakes above-ground out into the field—it’s the disconnected part on the left. The pipe can be this small because it’s only meant for supplemental low-pressure drip irrigation: not every day, not all crops all the time. And, a dug well like this doesn’t have an endless water supply, you don’t want to get ahead of its reservoir size and replenishment rate. So drip irrigation by section is the max use case, although hand watering, filling up barrels, and the occasional sprinklers can all be deployed in a pinch. Overall, 1″ is fine for a slow, steady drip!
Zukes vs cukes
Zukes vs cukes—same family, different natures. On the left, zucchini are big, bold, and prolific with fruit that blow up to dirigible class if you take your eye off of them and stop harvesting more or less daily. On the right, cucumber, more modest in appearance, preferring to vine out than shoot up, unless trellised. Cukes are about equally prolific in the quantity of fruit as the zukes, but not so prone to expanding when left unharvested. Here, barely two weeks from being seeds in a package, with very similar seed leaves (the first two leaves to come out), the difference in their true leaf size already displays their separate ways. Today, they’re out in the sun.
Burying Gold
Yukon Gold seed potatoes, placed in a trench, covered with a layer of on-farm compost made from cow manure, and carefully tended—watered and weeded, and hilled up with earth as the potatoes form upwards. In seven or eight weeks, scrabbling around in the dirt underneath the plants is rewarded by the first golf ball-sized new potatoes. So delicious. Yukon Golds were the first potatoes I planted—I almost remember reading about them and thinking of them as a kind of super-potato. “All-purpose” was the magical attribute. Starchy enough for fluffiness when fried, roasted or mashed, yet still with the firmness to hold up quite well in potato salad or a stew. These guys are spaced a foot apart, close enough to commune with their tribe, not so close they start to eat each other’s dinner. With decent weather, this batch will be a mouth-watering harvest just down the line!