Compressed air and rototiller repair

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Looks like a whole lotta gear for swapping out one broken rototiller tine. Two bolts. BUT, this was a chance to try out the air tools with the new, tiny (8 gallon) compressor. So far, all it’s done is inflate tires.

The compressor is a smaller-scale replacement for the heavy duty one at the old farm. It’s not an absolutely essential bit of gear, but it does a lot of farm work: inflating, cleaning out things like screens and filters with blasts of compressed air, loosening big nuts and bolts (impact wrench), and removing lots of nuts quickly (air ratchet). And it can do more. I use it at least once or twice a week.

This unit is the top end of the home handyman line. The smaller tank means it can’t put out full pressure continuously for too long.

Sometimes, getting “home” gear for the tiny farm just doesn’t make sense, the equipment isn’t up to what you need it for, or, it breaks. But you often don’t need or can’t afford the same heavier equipment as, say, a more tractor-driven farm. Then, the choice is to rent/hire, or buy lighter duty IF it will really work.

Buying used equipment is another great approach, but, you need lead time—you want a tool there when you need it, not only after a good deal comes along—and you need extra buying skills to make sure you’re getting good used gear…

In this case, compressed air is used quite frequently, I couldn’t justify the cost of a commercial/industrial compressor, and I wanted it right away (here, the difference was two or three hundred dollars, and that adds up). Of course, I figured this one would work out, but you don’t know for sure until you try!

The impact wrench did just fine for de-bolting and re-bolting (I finished tightening up by hand). Now I know this little compressor can handle all the usual tasks on a tiny farm scale. Another CHECK on the new-farm, getting-set-up list. That’s good!

Rototilling results…

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My first post title was “Pounding away,” but that sounded too brutal when it comes to garden soil. Still, that’s what we’re doing, what has to be done to stay on a reasonable planting schedule. Rototilling chops up the turned-under strips of sod into smaller, more easily digested pieces. The pic shows the result of one pass of the Kubota compact tractor with 48″ tiller. It’s still pretty rough, you can see clumps all over the place.

A quarter acre is getting this treatment, enough for the earliest direct-seeded crops. Hopefully, we’ll have the rest of the field disked well before it’s needed. Meanwhile, one or two more passes with the rototiller, hand raking, spreading a healthy amount of compost, and we should be ready to go. A rough and ready hay field-to-veggie garden conversion that should work out fine. As always, we shall see!

Seedlings on the move

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Seedlings seem to expand in spurts, like these Vittoria eggplant, growing quietly for two weeks or so since they first appeared, then suddenly reaching out to touch their neighbors practically overnight. Even the tomatoes, a week old in 200-cell trays, will soon be getting crowded. In just a few more days…

I haven’t yet stumbled upon or otherwise discovered the absolutely best time to transplant up. Generally, I try to move plants to bigger containers before their leaves start to overlap and steal each other’s light. But in practice, since potting up means the same number of seedlings take way more space, the timing ends up being determined by how much room there is under the lights.

The first plants started, in late winter-early spring, tend to also be quite cold-hardy—onions, the brassicas, various herbs—so they can usually be moved out to the unheated/barely heated greenhouse in March and April, making room under the lights for the next wave of seedlings. This year, until the greenhouse is set up, as the seedlings expand, there’s nowhere for them to go. Gotta get that greenhouse up!

Managing seedlings

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It will soon be time to move many of the seedlings to roomier quarters—there’s only so much space under the lights, so the greenhouse has to go up soon! Timing is getting trickier by the day, but we’re still doing fine. Here, Tara, at the very start of her tiny farming career, manages her first tray of cauliflower, splitting cells with two seedlings, and filling any empty spots. There’s not always time for this sort of micro-gardening, but there is right now…!

Soil inspection

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A sunny, still chilly, fairly busy outdoor day. Did some test tilling this morning, with the Kubota compact tractor and 48″ rototiller. The solid ground hasn’t fully thawed out, but the plowed area is already nearly 50°F (10°C) at 6″ (15cm) deep. So I thought I’d have a go on a 30′ (9m) strip, to see how well it’d chop up with the Kubota.

The full plan is for disking—big plow, big tractor—by Peter down the road. That would break up the moldboarded strips, finishing up with the little (but mighty!) Kubota. But between the weather, and unexpected things happening, you never know when a date with off-farm machinery will fall through.

I want to get the early stuff—spinach, garlic (yes, have to try spring planting this year), onions and so forth—in as early as possible. So we’ll probably be prepping an area with just the Kubota.

In the afternoon, Andie (aka Andrea, aka Max) dropped by for the first time, to check things out. She’s finishing up school, and planning to spend a couple of days a week for the summer, learning about small-scale farming the hands-on way… We strolled around, Andie tried out some seed starting with a tray of arugula, and we chatted.

Everyone’s first visit to the farm is a bit different, and there are all kinds of reasons why people want to get out in the field. This time, a good deal of the conversation involved university, graduate studies and the like, along with…tiny farming. It’s good to have an idea of who you’ll be working with, both ways—a comfortable, interesting fit really makes a difference in the tiny farm experience!

This season, there’s a bit of a blog plan: to show a lot more of the people side of the market garden! Today, as often happens, I forgot to take photos while we were actually doing stuff, so right at the end of her visit, Andie checked out the freshly rototilled ground, and I snapped an official Her Day 1 pic. The soil looked good, it’s a clayey loam (pretty much like at the old farm), with the sod breaking up nicely, and Andie seemed happy with the prospects, so we should be checking in again with both real soon! :)

Making space and saving space

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Hanging the lightbox is again this year part of the spring time set-up in the seedling room, when gear comes out of storage for seasonal use. In late winter, the fluorescent lights are put on the light racks, and removed after seedling production is over, usually in June, so the racks can be used as overnight harvest storage. And the lightbox, with its 4 fluorescent tubes, adds extra plant space when it’s need. I put it up today…

At the old farm, in the Extended Milkhouse, there was no space to waste, and it’s the same here in the new seedling room. That means clearing and converting the layout to fit the needs of the moment.

Tight quarters has a lot to do with the weather. Building a space insulated against our fairly brutal Canadian winters, and then keeping it warm enough for seedlings, is relatively expensive, and construction tends to be limited to the minimum you need.

In summer, the same insulation keeps the seedling room cool. It’s good to have a chill-out spot near the field, with phone and Internet (all the modern telecoms conveniences!), tea and cold drinks, chairs and a table…The more room the better. So, the lightbox goes up, and soon it comes down…

Tiny cultivation

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Tending seedlings on this tiny scale is pretty much literally fieldwork in miniature, especially with the pesky GREEN MOSS. The seedlings have to be watered, of course. And with the green moss, they have to be weeded as well. I use something pointy to stir up the surface of the peat-perlite seedling mix…

It comes back quickly, in a day or two, whenever the surface is wet.

I’m not even sure it’s moss, could be algae? Mold? Lichen?! I haven’t been able to ID it for sure, but I’ve often seen it called…green moss.

Not too appetizing to look at, the green moss has been quite harmless. At the old farm, I wondered if it came from the well, but here, we’ve been using filtered water and there it still is. It could be from the peat.

In any case, no worries, just a quick scuffling once in a while to keep it from sealing off the surface while the seedlings are small, which it looks like it would eventually do. I suppose I could find some clever, NATURAL way to kill it off, but I really don’t mind it. Once the mix dries out, the green moss is gone. At least, it disappears…

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