We’re still digging potatoes! Ryan, Corrie and their youngest, Hannah, came out today to salvage some potatoes. There are still a few 50′ (15m) beds of Chieftan and Kennebec. With all the rainy summer and wet ground, a lot of the potatoes were coming up with rotten spots (I heard this from other growers at the farmers’ market as well). With lots of sorting needed, and quite low yield in some rows, I decided to harvest the post-season balance only as needed. I mowed down the whole potato plot and invited anyone who wanted to dig. It looks pretty scary, in this particular spot, grass and other weeds didn’t take long to start taking over, but in the bright sunlight, it seems a lot worse than it is (a bit of tilling and left to overwinter, and it’d be right as rain). To find the treasure, locate a couple of the dried potato stems—they’re short but easy to ID once you know what you’re looking for—then dig in a line! The haul of crisp, red skin-white flesh Chieftan potatoes was pretty good! The fall harvest continues…
New farm revisited
Spent the day at Tara & Michael’s farm, my second visit, and a beautiful day it was. I took the time to walk around alone, checking out the fields for veggie garden locations. It was a great feeling, deeply exciting, to look out over new farmland, and start to apply all of the things I’ve learned from six seasons of tiny farming in one place to another. The field in the pic has about two acres of fairly flat land that looks good. There’s also a south-facing slope that looks perfect for a small, early spring garden to take advantage of the faster post-snow drainage and quicker soil warming that a southern incline provides. I checked for twitchgrasss (nope!), and signs of other invasive weeds (it’s all hay that’s grown out to mainly grass). From a couple of samples, the soil seems like a clayey loam, similar to what I’ve been working, but it’ll be easier to see when it’s plowed up. Looks good so far, clean and ready for tiny farming action! Nothing like a fresh challenge to force you to review your thoughts and experiences, and discover conclusions you may not even know you’d come to. At least, that’s how it feels for me. Change is in the air! It’s excellent!!
Flies to heat
It’s summer again! At least, it’s suddenly a whole lot warmer than it’s been for a while, as any fly can tell you. I headed out to the greenhouse in the late morning to find flies all about, buzzing to get out, and basking on the plastic outside. It’s kinda creepy how they slow as it gets colder, like some sort of tiny machines winding down, eventually disappearing off somewhere to hibernate (I think that’s what they do), only to suddenly reanimate given a little heat. Anyhow, a few days of 60°F+ (15°C) and sunshine are in the forecast, and I believe it!
Tossing onions
Well, Friday harvest is over…what to do? A few onions and a little winter squash you’re set for ALL-TERRAIN ONION BOCCE. Libby used yellow cooking onions (Stuttgarter), Grant took a mild white (Superstar), I went red (Red Wing), four onions each. A stunted orange acorn squash (Table Gold) served as the target ball. Toss away!
The rules are simple: the player with the closest one or more onions to the squash scores a point apiece. The all-terrain part means the winner of a turn gets to toss the squash anywhere. We played up and down the gangway to the barn, through gravel, long grass, chicken hazards (roosters peck onions)… Good thing no-one got really competitive, ’cause onion bocce is pretty imprecise, what with eventually exploding onions (largest piece counts), and ragged edges that make down-to-the-millimeter measuring kinda futile. Still, we did get out the tape measure… Wholesome outdoor fun on the farm. With veggies. Must be a new age of innocence! :) (Guest measurement photo by Libby)
Bringing in the pump
The trusty 6hp irrigation pump was dutifully hauled out to the pond in May, and never seen and barely thought of since. Besides priming it when it was first set out, it had zero use this year. That’s what happens when you get many inches of rain a month, every month, for an entire season. I could’ve brought it in a lot earlier to save it from some weather beating, but today was the day (and it’s a pretty rugged, all-weather pump). So, into the Kubota compact tractor’s loader bucket, and back to the drive shed. Test run for a while, drain the water, and it’s away for the winter!
Big egg
Every few days, at two dozen a day, along comes one very big egg. It’s hard to see with the chipped paint on the old egg scale, but these big guys take it right off the chart. Beyond measurement by this technology. Poor girls (I think, or maybe not). They’re too big to fit into extra-large egg cartons, they won’t let the cartons close, so I put ’em aside and eat them. They’re pretty big, fat eggs!
New farm
A cool road trip today, to visit Tara & Michael’s farm, about 40 minutes from here. They moved onto the farm in the middle of last winter, and spent the summer gazing at their fields of hay while dreaming about…gardens of veggies! We had an energetic, intense conversation about ways to start a small-scale, hand-tended market garden from scratch. Cool! (If you look REAAAALLLY closely, you can maybe just make out Raechelle, way in the distance, taking a walk with T&M’s youngest son…) And what about Friday harvest, for the last farmers’ market of the season? Well, we did some root crops yesterday, and Libby and Lynn finished things off today, on their own—a first, me not actually being there for a harvest! The Tiny Farm Experience…expands!!! :)