Can’t quite seem to stop planting! Lynn and Libby put in a last 200 or so lettuce seedlings to see how far they’ll go in fall growth. The soil is still moist an inch (2.5cm) or so down, but the surface is way DRY from a few days of sun and breeze, so we watered in these guys—the weather’s been great, sunny and warm this week…and it’s back to the hoses!
People
Supply run…
Not a typical farm day in the field, instead, a fairly extended supply run to town: chicken feed, groceries, diesel…ice cream… Moving through the last half of summer, the workload eases up a bit, and you can afford to get a little leisurely. So, three of us headed in…an UNTHINKABLE use of people power any time earlier in the season. Above, at the gas bar across from our local strip of box stores, I’m actually having fun squeegeeing the windshield, just like in the movies (I’m a non-driver, hardly used a gas pump, and maybe never washed a windshield before…). Below, Lynn and Raechelle pose with the wooden horse in front of the feed store. If you look closely down the side of the building, you can see a Mennonite horse and buggy loading up beside a car. Everybody needs feed! Curiously, today was one of those trips to town where I really felt the fine line between being a “new farmer” and…not. As long as you’re surrounded by the garden and a lot of WORK, it’s easy to see a clear course. But when you’re away from your field, you can see how precarious tiny farming really is (at least, for now, in North America). We’re still so reliant on the existing system, for gas, machinery, supplies, even a lot of our year-round food, on taken-for-granted “utilities” like electricity, phone, Internet, and, of course, on a reasonably functional economy that allows others to drive to the farmers’ market or farm to buy our produce. Hmmm… It makes me wonder, how much of my tiny farming simply comes from what I do every day, and how much is a fundamentally changed outlook from my city days, a new state of mind? What would I be now, if I stopped doing this? What a puzzle! ;) Anyhow, as for the weather, it was all beautiful sunshine for this laid-back day… (Windshield photo by Raechelle)
Harvesting around the rain
Have I mentioned that it’s been RAINING a lot all summer, like, a few times a day? We’ve taken to planning the Friday harvest to fit the slots between downpours, using…weather radar on the web! It works pretty well, checking the national and local maps, you can see precipitation quite accurately up to 3-4 hours out (it’s a little…high tech, but so is this crazy weather!). To avoid a late morning downpour, we started picking beans—finally, our first snap bean harvest of the year!—first thing in the morning (Maria, Lynn and that’s my bin at the top left of the pic below), so that we wouldn’t be messing with wet bean plants (they really don’t like being touched when wet, they get…diseased). That was pretty satisfying, picking about five bushels before the first shower, which arrived as foreseen. And so it went for the day. You can work between the daily rains, but mud avoidance is not an option—Michelle illustrates!
Laid back Friday harvest…
With the poor weather-driven slow growth and setbacks (like, hail), Friday harvests so far this year have been nothing like last year, much easier, less to do, relaxed. There are usually three to five people for all or part of the day, compared to six to eight last season. Comparisons don’t mean much on a practical level—the season you’re in is what you’ve got!—but it’s interesting, and human nature, I guess, to rank and rate and contemplate. Michelle has become this year’s mesclun cutting specialist, cruising in later in the afternoon and slicing up 60-70 lbs (approx. 30 kg) in no time. This year, depending on the veg, we’re doing about 20-40 units for sale, and around 30 for CSA shares for pick-up at the farmers’ market. Harvest on!
Garlic all in
Harvested in three parts over the last week, the garlic is now all in! This crop seems to’ve done well once again (I LOVE growing garlic!). For the first time, there’s a small pile of damaged goods, water-logged from all the rain. But overall, things are looking good. The combination of oat straw (from last fall’s cover crop) and grass mulch worked great (below)—weeds were kept down, and although the paths weren’t as heavily mulched as around the plants, they weren’t bad. We’ve been having trouble starting the riding mower, which means no trailer, so the tractor bucket took its place for transport duties. The garlic is stacked on pallets in the barn. Lynn seems to’ve taken to garlic harvesting and went to town: fork and pull, fork and pull…around 3,000 garlic bulbs hit the local food chain!
People in the field update
This has been an interesting summer for learning about tiny farming, people, and the ups and downs of growing largely without machines. I’ve had an ongoing debate with Bob over the years about the garden layout, using relatively short, 50′ beds, and hand cultivation, rather than planting long rows and doing most of the between-row weeding by tractor. The tractor approach lets one person, one machine, and some cans of diesel do most of the routine work alone. The hand-grown approach requires lots of labor, and you either settle in and do it yourself with many 10-12 hour days right through the weekfor a good part of the season (as I used to do), or…have help. I’ve found it’s definitely more fun to work with others, BUT, once there’s a bit of a regular crew, there’s the new matter of keeping the group dynamics smooth and making sure everyone’s HAPPY. Long days of often repetitious work, finishing one job only to launch directly into another, and working around the vagaries of the weather—this year is an exceptional case in point—aren’t what most people are used to. And when some of the people live on the farm, for a few days a week like Lynn (chatting with me in the pic), or 24/7 in the case of WWOOFers, things can get even more complicated, like, when is quitting time! At least in the start-up years, tiny farming can be pretty much an all-consuming focus during the growing season, and that’s not something most people really want or can handle, either—you’ve gotta love it! So finding the balance between going all out, and, well, providing a fun taste-of-tiny-farming experience for others, can be a bit of a puzzle. At least, that’s what I’ve found so far. All just another part of the ever-changing TFE…! (Guest photo by Maria)
Rinsing…
On-going debates about the merits of rinsing are…academic right now as the near daily rains continue, and the soil remains between moist and mucky. Even on a rare hot and sunny day like today, crops are coming up caked in mud. Carrots are messy…
…and so are green onions (being rinsed by Mike) with tangled roots that hold clumps of mud so well…
