PROTECTING THE GARDEN GOODIES.
Bunnies, deer, puppy dogs - gardens definitely have their predators (even if most of them are pretty adorable). In order to insure as few sleepless nights as possible for Hannah and I, it was imperative for us to build a fence. However, since we have access to a lot of land and thus a lot of barns to rummage through, we've been trying to scrap our entire perimeter. So far so good - although our fence has become quite the charming, motley collection of scrap welded and woven wire! We still plan on adding some barbed wire and colorful flags along the top of the fence to scare away the deer...you need at least an 8 foot fence to keep them out! But still, our salvaged material fence is almost complete and we've only spent $25! With a little more scrounging we're thinking we can get the whole 1/3 of an acre fenced for under $50 total (fingers crossed). And none too soon! Later this week the chard, kale and broccoli will be making their soil debuts, right on the other side of the gate Hannah has created - the garden's wonderful new centerpiece!- Jesse.
LIKE MAGIC.
We are quite to proud to say that our little soil blocks and our make-shift cold frame seem to be working! We've got tomatoes, chard, kale, broccoli, and lettuce! It is funny,...even though Jesse and I have successfully made gallons of soil mixes and grown many a vegetable in our work experience at Bugtussle, there is NOTHING quite like the feeling of accomplishing this on our own. It truly is magical, the idea that nature just...naturally....grows! It is a beautiful sight, and I hope that as the years go by we will never stop being amazed by these first, tiny sprouts of spring.- Hannah.
SOIL SOUP.
I was a cook for many years before I became a farmer and if there is one thing I can say about farming, it's that farming––complete with recipes, long, grueling days and urgency––is just cooking with a straw hat in place of a toque. And in both careers, it all starts with ingredients."Your dish is only as good as your ingredients," is a clever and much used adage in the food world. It means you could be the best cook in the world, but if your tomatoes aren't any good then you're not going to make the best tomato soup in the world. Sorry. For farming it's the same thing: your vegetables can only be as good as your soil and your baby plants can only be as good as your soil mix. So when the time came this week to find a few things for our soil mix (homemade potting soil, basically), Hannah and I set out to utilize the best ingredients available and we're excited about no ingredient quite as much as the sand.Sand is an essential part of potting mix. Along with compost, peat moss, soil and a few other amendments, farmers add sand to help aerate. "Adequate aeration," famed farmer Eliot Coleman tells us in The New Organic Grower, "is the key to successful plant growth in any medium." But I have always believed sand does more than just aerate. Sand is mysterious and multitudinous, comprised of millions of tiny pebbles from all different brands of rock and mineral formed over tens of thousands of years then soaked in fertile silt. I've always believed plants like sand for more than just aeration, they use the minerals and the silt and the diversity provided by sand. In honor of that, we wanted to use the best, most alive sand we could find. Out of the creek at the bottom of the hill by our garden, Hannah and I set to work shoveling and sifting this wonderful ingredient...- Jesse.
