Category: Planning - Page 3

50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming: #8 Remain calm

1 Mar 20164 Apr 2013 by Mike (tfb)

See the growing list of 50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming:

#8 – Remain calm: In tiny farming, you can indulge WORRY to the max. You can really work yourself into a frenzy. It’s usually about, well, the weather, people, money (specifically, stuff that has to be paid for), time, people, and…the weather. In that order. The big factor in outdoor farming that’s NOT present in a lot of lives, particularly when you’ve been living a largely indoor urban existence, is the DAILY effect of the WEATHER. Or really, Mother Nature in general: bad weather, disease, deer eating all your lettuce, zombies, all of the destructive things that an overwhelming, out-of-your-control force can deliver, just like that! Thinking about the possibilities can be…stressful, and that’s not to mention dealing with a tidal wave of so much to do, so little time. The COOL thing about farming: over time and your share of intense worry, you notice that things come and they go. You plant your crops over and over again, and here and there they get eaten before their time, and people sometimes fail to meet…expectations, money may get tight, deadlines get blown, but it’s all really not terminally terrible. If you’re still there, and the land is still there, you keep moving ahead, because that’s the game! The simple arc of the farming year makes obvious exactly where you are at any time, and what the next step is. Farming is unpredictable, but it is not fuzzy, there is always a clear result, one that you can hopefully, and usually, eat! So really, just keep farming and you will become increasingly calm as it sinks in by example that A) You really don’t have THAT much control, and B) It generally works out anyway. Sooner or later you’ll realize, the easiest thing to do is just…remain calm. :)

This year’s catalog!

8 Mar 20138 Mar 2013 by Mike (tfb)

For the record, this year’s seed catalog! It arrived in late December, and I’ve been thumbing through, but it’s still not well-worn—I pretty much know what I’m ordering. It’s as exciting as always to get the new catalogs, but a bit more symbolic now, start of a new season and all that, than it used to be at the beginning, when I pored over it for hours. Like anything else, do it for a while and it becomes…easier. Also once again for recent years, almost all of my seed will come from just this one place, William Dam, a family owned company not too far from here, that carries only untreated seed. Selection does the trick, service is great, and I like talking to them on the phone. High Mowing and, of course, Johnny’s, both relatively close (Maine and Vermont, to my Ontario), have a lot more in general, and High Mowing is 100% organic seed, but at the moment, I’m fine with Dam! Everyone’s farming has its flow!

The Intelligent Gardener

11 Feb 2013 by Mike (tfb)

More winter reading , and the buzzword is…”remineralization,” which here means carefully replacing missing soil minerals in a holistic way (as opposed to just topping up with this or that). The other keyphrase is what that leads to: “nutrient-dense food.” The book is The Intelligent Gardener by Steve Solomon, published only a couple of months ago. I heard about it chatting with Shannon, and read it while visiting their farm in Nova Scotia, last week or so. Only a few pages in, it became a kind of tipping point experience for me. Where I used to happily rely on cow manure and compost, thinking about soil chemistry only in bits and pieces, now I find myself suddenly quite FOCUSED on the arcane details of cation exchange capacity, sample extraction methods, and the like… Odd!

“Skepticism is a healthy attitude when it comes to taking garden advice,” says the preface, and then the book takes off on a kinda wild ride through Solomon’s world of soil and fertility, including interesting attacks on popular beliefs in organic growing, like the reverence for compost, and in general, the organic practices promoted by Rodale to millions of North American gardeners. The main purpose of the book, though, is to provide practical and easy-to-follow, soil test-based remineralization instructions. Which it does.

Definitely worth a read, and quite possibly a game-changer depending on how you manage your own garden dirt. More to follow…and my tubular soil sampling probe should soon be on its way!

When the well runs dry

23 Feb 20222 Jul 2012 by Mike (tfb)

End of the line: what it looks like when your well bottoms out and the water stops flowing. Just like a power failure… We’ve been watching the level in the dug well we’re using, and the refresh rate is pretty dismal. Today, while watering in newly seeded beds, the water finally stopped. After last fall’s failed well drilling, figuring out short and longer term water solution is big here now. The water will come back eventually in this well, but the water table drops as the winter reserves go, and at this point, the well won’t refill high enough or quickly enough to be useful even for seedlings. Water barrels filled from the house well and distributed by watering can is a possible labor-intensive emergency measure. And of course, there is always…rain.

Seed store

13 Mar 201627 Jun 2012 by Mike (tfb)

My current seed bank is around 60 Ziploc freezer bags. In alphabetical order. I haven’t been as careful lately with storage conditions as at times in the past, these plastic bins with lids (there is third one with bigger bags of larger seed, like beans and peas) are kept out of sunlight and away from heat. I could do a lot more, but I’m not going for long term storage, and most of the time there seems to be no critical difference in germination time and rate for seed 1-2 years old, which is the longest I keep anything in any sort of quantity. Fresh seed may pop up a little quicker, but with the many other variables based mainly on the weather, it all seems to even out by the time harvest day rolls around!

Winter?

26 Feb 201628 Jan 2012 by Mike (tfb)

It’s a different winter from day to day. Same picture, new weather: today, a more traditionally winter look, with soft flurries and gentle snow drifts. The weather continues to swing around rather wildly. Indoors, this has been a month of reading, clicking and scrolling through the web, thinking about this year’s plan, burning wood. Not having a real winter is a little disorienting, but I’m starting to notice the days getting longer!

First seed catalog of the year!

20 Nov 201324 Nov 2011 by Mike (tfb)

Well ahead of the pack, Veseys takes first new seed catalog of the year. They’re a pretty marketing-oriented company, they get their stuff out early—this actually arrived a while ago, but I only got my hands on it now! Which is fine by me. I haven’t been this, well, EXCITED with that new-catalog feeling in a couple of years. That’s good. There is a lot of proper, well-ahead-of-time planning to do, expectations for 2012 run high! Whatever the weather!!