In the building and fixing department, there’s always a queue. Jobs are usually one of three degrees of urgency: Right Away (fix it or we can’t go on!), It Would Be Really Good To Have This Done Soon, and When There’s A Little Extra Time (and that’s often, all the way to Fall). Today, it’s finishing a Right Away job: making up more wooden stakes for the tomatoes. Last year, I bought for very cheap a pile of scrap wood, 10-12′ lengths, rough cut to around 2″ square, from a local sawmill. This year, we found pounding stakes made from this stuff a foot or so into the ground took an insane amount of sledgehammer effort, especially when driving into dry soil. Cutting them down just a bit made a HUGE difference. Using a table saw out in the barn yard, we shaved about 1/2″ lengthwise off each width, winding up with maybe 80 1-1/2″ square stakes. It took a couple of hours overall to save many more in the field, not to mention energy, sweat, frustration. The little things do indeed make all the difference! (Also in the pic, painted white, an old door scrapped during the Milkhouse Extension, and a nice, solid pallet (probably from the seed potato delivery), both to be reused in the composting toilet enclosure, an IWBRGTHTDS project.)
Summer
Pumpkin update
After a marathon session of pigweed pulling, the pumpkin patch appeared, looking rather orderly and much expanded from one month ago. So, all’s well with the PUMPKINS, on to the hopefully last major de-pigweeding of winter squash. I noticed back-to-school ads in a local paper already, and as obnoxiously early as that is, we are also preparing for that final summer stretch in the field. Oh well, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are doing great, garlic is soon to be pulled, the best eating and market days are still to come!
Eggplant on the way
Tucked away and safely shaded from scorching sun, a Dusky eggplant happily expands. The earlier tiny eggplant puzzle, while never solved (eggplant and peppers were fruiting extra early, tiny fruit on tiny plants), no longer matters, and the brief Colorado potato beetle onslaught was successfully weathered. All varieties of eggplant are doing great (that’s Dusky, Black Beautry, Vittoria, Fairy Tale and Millionaire), with abundant fruit well ahead of any other year on this tiny farm!
Sunflowers show up!
The first few sunflowers are unfolding, this one’s from the Go Bananas! mix (there are also burgundy Claret and familiar orange Sunrich). It’s a little bitten and tattered—the rough and ready look!—but a welcome sight nonetheless. The cutflower garden‘s received very little attention since seeding, and only maybe half have flourished in spite of lack of water and a fairly weeded-over state. The flower test plan included minimal care (which is what they got), so I’m not disappointed, although it’s always nice when crops take care of themselves (this doesn’t happen often enough :)! Anyhow, we should have at least a couple of hundred fair sized sunflowers, and some others, all headed for the CSA shares. I hope the zinnias do well!
Fish in the field
A different order of fieldwork: eating up the leftovers! A couple of rainbow trout left over from yesterday had to be used, so I coated them in cornmeal, pan-fried ’em in olive oil and butter, with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, squeezed some lemon over, and took ’em out to be picked at in the field. The trout was joined by leftover roasted potatoes from last night’s dinner harvest, and fresh flat leaf parsley. Fast, no fuss (my cooking skills are so far…basic!). The photo’s kinda funny. I set the plate down on a path to get the parsley, which is growing two feet away, snapped the shot, then noticed what all was in it: a little pigweed growing on the left, some mallow on the right, and grass all around, my weed friends looking on… Rain: another intense storm overnight finally gave us just over an inch (25mm), and then gave way to this beautiful, sunshiny day. Still, that’s only about 40mm in 40 days!
Dinner!
After a fairly lazy day in the field, half of it spent waiting for the ground to dry out a bit after an intense thunderstorm (only 15mm, though), it was off to a farm a couple of miles down the road to get some local rainbow trout for dinner. Then, a quick tour of the garden to pick the fixin’s: new potatoes (Norland, Yukon Gold), yellow and green beans (Indy Gold, Derby), summer squash (Sunburst, Flying Saucer…yes, FS), beet greens (mainly Detroit Dark Red). Nestled in by the beans, the first tomato to turn color, a Stupice, of course, not quite ready to munch, but only days away! And so, except for salt, pepper, olive oil and butter, your basic local dinner!
Risk crop
Protecting a final planting of the season, Jo and Conall lay row cover over a selection of summer squash. Also transplanted today from the squash family, more cucumber, an extra early muskmelon, and a couple of early maturity winter squash because there’s space. All of these are pretty much risk crops, with 50-65 day maturity up against our average first frost of around Sep. 20. They could have gone in a week or two earlier, but I’m gambling on another warm fall, with only a mild frost or two to get in the way (against which, row cover once again!), and MAYBE a harvest through October. Of course, the weather can be relied on less than ever, BUT, warm autumns seem to be a good bet. If this pays off, I’ll have some interesting veggies after the standard, safe season for ’em is over. Nothing ventured… You take your chances!