Toshiko, WWOOFing from Osaka, Japan, via Vancouver, where she’d been studying English for the last few months, is our last guest in the field of the year. She arrived last Friday night, and stays until a week from this Sunday, two weeks in all. A couple of years ago, she volunteered on larger farms in Australia, where whole days were spent on one task, like picking a single crop. This is Toshiko’s first taste of really tiny farming, where there’s something different to do every couple of hours. At this point in the season, fieldwork consists mainly of harvest and post-harvest things to do, also, maintaining row cover in case of frost. Here, she does a final, thorough sort through the garlic, separating the good from the damaged bulbs, and trimming the roots of the good stuff.
Autumn
Pumpkins and pigweed
Today, the pumpkins came in, wrested from a jungle of pigweed gone wild. Every year, a few of the 40 50’x50′ sections that make up the 2.5 acre garden get a little overrun with one weed or another (usually, pigweed). This year’s pumpkin patch was a good example, with pigweed growing unchecked for a good six weeks—no time made to weed, not IMPORTANT enough a crop—until today, when Raechelle used the belly-mounted 52″ mower deck on the Kubota compact tractor to mow it down!
Of course, this is exactly what you DON’T EVER DO in a garden: allow weeds to flourish and go to seed, then mow them down, broadcasting seed everywhere… Oh, well. The alternative, pulling the pigweed by hand, then carting it off, we also do when necessary—see the Pigweed Mountain—but once in a while, I go for the instant gratification of seeing a section clean and clear in an hour or two. The millions of pigweed seeds, ensuring healthy future generations for years to come, will be dealt with…later. (As long as we weed on time next time around, how bad can it get?! :) Anyhow, it’s all part of the grand experiment! Guest pumpkin photo by Lynn.
First frost misses
Frost finally hit the garden…but it missed the veggies! Just after sunrise this morning, there was ice on the grass at the very bottom of the field, but it stopped maybe 10′ feet from where the garden begins. Pretty cool. There’s a gentle slope from a high point about two-thirds of the way up the garden, and cold air flowed downhill and pooled at the very bottom of the field. Fun with science: when there’s no wind to mix things up, cold air rolls with gravity along the ground!
Local toast
My local toast: this morning’s breakfast slice of whole wheat from local baker Barb, along with a tall glass of supermarket-orange-juice-not-from-concentrate-with-pulp, and all-from-the-store orange pekoe tea with cream and sugar. The toast is spread with industrial peanut butter (smooth!), Gloria-Jean’s Sundae in a Jar (strawberries, raspberries, sugar, pectin, from the farmers’ market…mmmm!), and expensive transfat-free margarine. Altogether not so local, and nothing from this farm, but the bread is delicious…
Some things I’m compelled to plan, like changes to the market garden. But when it comes to eating local, there is NO WAY I’m going to sit around with lists and notes, calculating food miles, looking up arcane food processing ingredients, interrogating local producers and the like. “Planning” my diet and, uh, FOOD STRATEGY to be Local would reduce the pleasure of eating to a chore, and that’s not fun! My personal preference for local food seems to be emerging as a natural extension of tiny farming and eating what I grow, which is cool. My instinctive approach to local food is…laid-back, figure it out as I go. Let’s see what happens!
Barnyard at night
Here’s what I see coming out from the Milkhouse at night, as I head to the house. Facing is the goat barn, with the big old barn out of frame to the right, the farmhouse off to the left behind the rail fence, and the curve turning into the on-farm lane that meets the road. (I borrowed a tripod to check out photos by available light. It’s cool, way more picture possibilities. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks, avoiding the annoying flash.) The light from the street light-type lamp pools brightly right below and fades across the yard. (Without that lamp, it would be pretty near pitch black around here unless the moon was out.) The scene seems sometimes picturesque, sometimes a little ominous, that desolate, deserted parking lot look…but it’s only the Farm. As far as anyone remembers, the lamp fixture was rented 20 years ago from the provincial hydro company, they still come around every few years in a huge truck with a cherry picker to change the bulb, or tube or whatever it is up there. I could call and find out the details, but at the moment, they’re not important…
Snowbanks
A brilliant sunshiny day after our 24 hours of snow. There are deep drifts everywhere, and the snowplow’s been by, leaving 3′ snowbanks along the roads. The farm is on the edge of a village of 300. Here’s a view down one of the two intersections. I’m on my way to pick up the mail from the bank of mail boxes in the convenience store/post office. It IS convenient, a pleasant three-minute stroll down the country lane (well, two-lane secondary road). And open till 9:30 most nights, too!