COLD EASTER WEEKEND.
Happy belated Easter! We hope your weekend was filled with family and friends and happiness (and maybe some chocolate). Our weekend brought some actual SPRING-like temperatures! After what has been about a month of smooth sailing in the garden, it was our first real “bump” in the road….a hard frost on Saturday morning. We were prepared, however, and covered all our delicate plants and the cold frames with a patchwork of sheets and comforters. We survived, but this week is full of more frost advisories. Another Goodwill-sheet-shopping-trip it is.This weekend was also the opening day of the Boyle County Farmer’s Market. We stopped by, thinking that this might be a good spot for us to set up our little stand and have our Danville CSA drop offs. It was the loveliest of markets, and we met so many people that I hope to someday call friends. Maybe because we don’t really know anyone in Danville yet and I am feeling deprived of any social contact, but I was overflowing with excitement to talk to everyone we met. Each farmer and vendor was nothing but kind, offering advice and tips and words of wisdom to some young whippersnappers. It was wonderful, and we brought Wendell along with us...so we were by far the most popular people there. Next to the market, we were happy to stumble upon an FFA farm equipment and small livestock auction. It was incredibly difficult not to buy every chick, duck, goat, and miniature pony that we saw. But as much as we lusted after every little creature, we knew we were not prepared to take care of them yet. We still live in the enormous Warrenwood, and have no hen house, duck yard, or goat pen ready.SO….we promptly got to work building our chicken coop! There is another auction in a few weeks, and we decided we want to be ready this time. Of course, we are completely throwing it together with random bits we find around the farm, but it is already filled with a lot of love, hopes, and excitement for our girls. In related news, the rennovation of our little house is nearing completion, so we hope to very soon be moving in, with one rather large puppy and perhaps a flock of backyard birds.- Hannah.
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK.
With what we thought were to be a couple weeks to prepare beds for the strawberry and asparagus plants we'd ordered, Hannah and I were content to take our time and do things right. Slowly and carefully we had plans to plow and till spots for them, garnish them with natural amenities and have them nice and ready for these two perennial crops. When they arrived on Tuesday, however, about a week and a half earlier than we'd expected, our pace exchanged its calm for urgency. We had almost nothing ready for them yet –– and our esteemed guests were early and starving. We didn't want the plants sitting in the fridge for too long and there was an indefinite amount of rain coming––who knows when the next opportunity to get into the garden would be! So we got to work plowing and hand-tilling––as hard and insane as it sounds––and building a 16'x4' raised bed for the asparagus then filling it with soil and compost. It was a little bit of madness, or a lot of bit if you're human, but we were absolutely pleased with the results. If we worked this way all the time we would accomplish unprecedented amounts of gardening, then effectively pass away in six days. But we did it, and we're taking today off, and although the proverbial (and literal) fruits of our labor will not be seen until next season, we have confidence the strawberries and asparagus will reward us (and our shareholders) kindly!Among our other projects this week was the planting of blackberry, raspberry and black raspberry plants. Clearly, a lot of fruit has gone into the ground this week, one thing we'd really like to add and emphasize in our CSA in the coming years. (Next up on the fruit list should be blueberries!). Also, we were having a little trouble keeping our lettuce from "damping off" in the cold-frame, or dying from excessive water, so we had to go ahead and transplant them. They look happier out in the field anyway. Peas are up, potato plants are pushing through the soil, sweet potatoes are in their slip bed, onions are looking good... ladies and gentlemen, things. are. growing.- Jesse.
SCRAPPY.
It's impossible to attempt an accurate account of everything we've done in the past few days, because now that the season is here, we're never not doing something new. Mulching, planting, soil-block making, constructing, fencing––the tasks add up quickly. That's how farming goes, though. It's a diverse collection of thousands of different projects in hopes that all our hard work, sweat, tears and yes, occasionally blood, coalesce in bushels of good, healthy food. UPS should use farming as an example of logistics instead of that horrible Christian Laetner shot. Luck is the opposite of logistics, UPS.Anywho, our young tomato seedlings were getting large enough to need bigger digs, but the 4" soil block makers are not cheap, begging us to construct our own. The results took the form of a small plastic pot, a 2"/2" piece of wood and a screw––all scrapped (thus free!). Soil-block making is a little like building a sand castle where you stuff the plastic container with soil and dump it out as an identical mold. To be perfectly honest with you, however, we were both a little surprised at how well our homemade version of a soil-block maker actually worked. Having got our first round of tomatoes re-potted, we were now faced with the task of finding room for them––they were four inches taller, four inches wider and there were twenty-seven of them––that's not including the heirlooms we've yet to do. It eventually became apparent we needed to construct another box. With our new collection of scrapped windows and scrapped wood, we endeavored to build something a little deeper than the original box, and it would be hard now to hide my pride for the resulting structure!––even if it is a little wonky, we adore it.But that only grazes the surface of our activity. Luckily, they say pictures are worth a thousand words so I'll just let the pictures tell you about our mulching, our garden and the new reel mower (non-electric) I talked Hannah into! Take it away, pictures...- Jesse.
BUSYNESS AS USUAL.
These last few days have been pretty dirty, but pretty productive! Along with the potatoes, shelling peas and onions, we've had a chance to go ahead and transplant our broccoli, kale and chard. So now when you look down at our rows you can see the makings of a real life (and presently real busy) garden. There's much still to do, but it's nice to know that there's also much that's already been done. We're starting to feel caught up, which is not easy when it feels like April, or sometimes even June, outside... but we feel good! Having gotten those crucial things in the ground we can get back to concentrating on preparing the garden, starting soil blocks and taking care of our baby tomato plants.- Jesse.
