Today, I assembled this rather simple mini-stand to sell veggies at a local coffee shop. The trays were put together on the farm, then we drove over with the cut pieces and screw-nailed it together on site. It’s part of the bit of expansion this year, a completely new side to this tiny farm—we’ll see how it plays out! The shop is about 12 miles (19km) away, in a small village that swells in summer with cottage and boat traffic (it’s on a busy recreational waterway; we’re in lake as well as farm country around here). It serves salads, baked-on-premises pastries, fair trade coffee… I’ve known the owner, from the farm, for four years. She wanted to add veggies this year, and the overall…karmic vibe (!) seemed right, so here we are! The shop is actually buying all the veggies upfront at our regular price, and maintaining the stand themselves, so it’s not a BIG change, all in all. Still, a very cooperative, new thing to do. The stand itself is a work-in-progress, for one, it has to be bolted to the concrete pad, and it needs some sort of backboard built in. More as it happens! :)
Summer
Pigweed: going in!
There’s no exaggerating the amount of pigweed in some sections of the field. Here, where the last seedings of spinach and peas failed—really poor germination in the heat—pigweed happily took over in no time. I mowed it down, and now I’m going in with the 48″ rototiller, prepping for fall spinach. Ideally, I’d keep the rototilling and any heavy gear off the garden beds, but this is practically an emergency. I apply the in-moderation rule here… It’s growing on me that round about next year, much of the pigweed seed, deposited three years ago in two-year-old manure, is due to expire… Right now, though, the seed seems pretty healthy to me.
Red onions, golden beets
Veggie variety is great: different tastes, textures, shapes, colors… From the start, it seemed only natural to grow several varieties of each crop rather than just the most “efficient” one. This has worked out to at least a couple per crop (this year, two types of spinach so far, three potato, two corn…) to many (at the extreme end, 50+ varieties of tomato). The biggest difference is quite often in maturity date: crops fairly similar in taste and appearance can be two or three weeks or more apart in maturing for harvest. Sometimes the difference is only skin deep. The Red Baron spring onions in the pic are only red for a couple of layers, but they look great when you get ’em. The Golden Detroit beets taste a little different from red varieties, but the fun (for me, at least) is mainly in the striking and unusual golden-orange flesh. Look before you eat!
Freshly dug garlic
To add variety to this week’s CSA shares, I dug up 50 garlic a little ahead of the main harvest in a week or two. It’s looking great. Uncured garlic doesn’t store as well, but how long are you gonna let a single bulb of garlic hang around?! Really, there’s no such thing as too much garlic!
Milkhouse looking out
The view out of the extended Milkhouse sliding door is not yet a great one—gotta move the big storage shed that blocks the view straight out to the field—but it’s become a common one this year. Amongst other things, the Milkhouse is a place to take refuge from extreme heat and, very occasionally, from…rain. And the extreme teasing continues. The latest is rain from INDIVIDUAL CLOUDS in an otherwise largely clear blue sky, that comes down just heavily enough to make you take shelter. A gutter hasn’t yet been installed at the front of the Milkhouse, so water streams down from the roof, which picks up more from the main barn roof, creating a deceptively abundant pool in no time. Actual rainfall for this little session: 2mm. (The tiny grey hose running across the pic is the original lifeline from the barn well to the field that in the first two and a half years was all that supplied water when the weather didn’t!)
Pounding stakes
Jo pounds in wooden stakes for a somewhat catch-up version of tomato staking. I think of it as the Modified Sprawl. There are about 600 plants, with maybe 250 in home-style tomato cages. The rest are so far on their own. The cages work great, until a mighty wind comes along and blows a bunch over—they’re not really rugged field gear. It’s too late for proper basket weaving support, so it’s on to my previously tried and OK version, pulling the plants up with twine on both sides, to stakes set every three plants apart, with a bit of pruning and suckering as we go…
This is the point in the season where we start playing catch-up as a million different things need handling. It can get a little frantic, depending greatly on how it went earlier in the year. To add to the…decision-making puzzle, it’s last call, and even very iffy last call, for planting many crops (60 day maturity and under), with day length shortening and frost risk building to a significant consideration just 6-8 weeks down the road. So, thin here, or weed or seed there, or water elsewhere, you can’t do everything at once! It’s all in the timing, with much of the schedule in the hands of Ma Nature (where’s that RAIN!?!). Gambling, yes! Still and all, quite FUN.
Burlap method strikes again!
The carrots-under-burlap germination method is now 3 for 4, with this fine performance: solid rows and almost no weeds! The third attempt failed miserably with three different varieties, mainly due to underwatering (the extra drying effect of a very windy week wasn’t given proper respect) combined with using the Earthway seeder’s light carrot plate, which puts down much less seed (what a bad idea, I fall for the allure of little or no thinning every few plantings…). Anyhow, it was back to the regular seed plate and proper checking and watering, and now, a new 800′ of Nelson and Touchon is on its way (although, something’s been munching on carrot seedlings lately). Never dull! :)