The best way to grow an amazing crop of hay…

… is to surround part of your pasture with fencing and call it a garden. All the rest of the pasture will have grass 2 cm tall at best, but in the garden, the stuff will be knee high. Mow it down and feed it to your sheep, it’s the best stuff on the acreage.

I’ve been battling the grass in the garden for a long time now (hmm, three years I guess) and it’s still putting up a good fight. Today required the use of the gas powered weed whacker just to find some of the raised beds … yeah, things have gotten out of hand. It comes on so quick … one day it’s ankle high, the next day, it’s shot up into this miniature forest of greenery that hides thistles and assorted things that were left on the ground. The results of the mowing were delivered to the sheep and filled two (yes, two) quad wagon-loads.

At least the sheep were happy.

I had cleared several of the garden beds early this year and planted some ‘head start’ things, during that unseasonably warm spring weather we had a couple months back … but I have come to realize that while the garden plants may appreciate a head start, they absolutely cannot compete with the weeds in those chilly spring temperatures, so if you haven’t got weed-free soil (or the time and knowledge to identify and remove the weed seedlings while not removing the plant seedlings) … give your plants that head start indoors. I couldn’t even find any mullein where I’d planted it … nor the chamomile, poppies, meadowsweet and other herbs. I did find a few beets and a couple of carrots … and the onions and garlic are okay, but for everything else, I ended up just digging the beds up a second time and replanting. Next year, I will hold back from the temptation to start early (or, more likely, start more things indoors). Outside early starts just don’t work, not with this climate/garden combination, anyway. Maybe after the pasture grasses are all gone it’ll be different. You’ll have to come back and ask my grandchildren … it’ll probably take that long for the stuff to finally go away.

However, I did manage to get about half of the garden weeded and cleared of grass, two rows cleared and planted (tomatoes transplanted from inside, and a row of heritage beans, the kind for drying), and more beets, carrots, leeks and radishes put into one fully-cleared raised bed. I found some volunteer mullein plants and transplanted them to where the others were supposed to be, and put in some calendula and poppy seeds. The one small raised bed that had serious grass problems is now host to several zucchini plants: I figure if anything can outcompete the grass, it’s probably a zucchini. :)

Tomorrow – assuming I can still move – I’ll tackle the herb beds, transplant the stuff that is still inside and waiting to go out, and hopefully get the other large raised bed cleared for planting.

Of course I now have no idea where my garden plan is. I’m making it up as I go. :)

Cheerful tomato plants

Been tired, wrung out and busy of late … so not writing much.

So, here is a cheerful picture of tomato plants to tide you over until I come back with something more profound:

They’ll be moving outside to the garden this weekend, if all goes well!

That’s not drudgery … THIS is drudgery!

I worked with someone a few years ago in a cube-farm industrial IT environment. You know the kind of place … it’s the land of Dilbert. Yes, there really are places like that, and way more humans are confined to them than is just and proper. The environment doesn’t seem to destroy absolutely all of the inhabitants, but there are a lot of casualties, and the toll on the human psyche is pretty significant.

Anyway, one day on a short break in the ongoing slog of our software project, she mentioned her dream of a little house by the sea – all she ever wanted, she said, was a little house by the sea, with a garden and a few chickens.

“They told us that mucking out chicken coops and chopping wood and hauling water and cooking on a woodstove was drudgery.
They were wrong.
That’s not drudgery … THIS is!”

Now I’ll readily admit that mucking out chicken coops isn’t fun. Chopping wood and hauling water is hard work, and it’s unpleasant in bad weather or if you are feeling ill. Cooking on a woodstove takes time and planning and practice. Yes, it’s all work, definitely.

But it’s not drudgery. You muck out the coop and you stand back and say, “There! That’s better.” You chop the wood and say, “Good! We’ll be warm this winter.” You haul the water and say, “There, those plants are not thirsty anymore … ooh look, a tomato is ready!” You cook on the woodstove and have the opportunity to actually think about what you are making, to slow down to the speed of life, and acutally be present while you do the necessary task of feeding the crew. And you get to taste the stew while it simmers.

This is nothing like cube-farm IT work. For that, you get out of bed, make yourself presentable for a Business Environment and drive an hour through rush hour traffic to get to the office. You swipe your passkey to get in, and stash your lunch in the desk drawer, hoping you remembered to stick the ice pack in or you’ll have to go out for fast food. You log in and start work, knowing that every keystroke can be monitored by the Powers that Be if they feel the need, and you spend the day creating and/or breaking stuff that exists nowhere but in cyberspace, and which, in all likelihood, is going to annoy the people who are paying for it because although it does everything the documentation says it has to do, there are half a dozen common-sense oversights that stare you in the face all day and drive you nuts … but you can’t fix them, because the documentation was signed off as it is, and if the customer wants something other than what they signed off on, they’ll have to submit a change request. Oh, and pay for the modification they are requesting, to add the really obvious thing that was either assumed or forgotten in the initial round of design. By the time you start the trek back to your vehicle (parked ten minutes from the office building, because anything closer costs an arm and a leg) you are wrung out and frustrated, uncomfortable in your now-wrinkled business clothes, and overdosed on caffeine and junk food. You drive back home through rush hour traffic, find something to microwave for dinner, and crash in one fashion or another for the evening – assuming you don’t have errands to run or places to shuttle your children or homework to supervise or some emergency work project that absolutely has to be done before morning so you brought it home and will do it on your laptop. Then you fall into bed, get up the next morning, and do it all again.

Now see, THAT is drudgery. That kind of existence eats you up from the inside, knowing that all the hours you spend at work every day amount to nothing more than shuffling pixels from one screen to another, and making money for several middlemen while you are at it. You die a little at a time on the inside, day after day, until you’re just a drone on autopilot, periodically waking up enough to wonder why you bother with all this hurry and hullaballoo.

Thankfully, I did manage to escape the cube farm five years ago,  just in time to prevent me from going right off the deep end into despair, and right around the same time I found Apple Jack Creek. I do still have one foot in each world – my day job is still in IT (with a small, honest firm that takes excellent care of their staff and customers – and where the stupid annoying stuff gets fixed without anyone demanding paperwork first!) … but my heart is at the farm.

So, yeah, I have extra work to do – I have to keep track of the schedule for the farm jobs, work on infrastructure like fences and gates, shear sheep, plant and harvest in the garden, and deliver eggs and meat to our customers … but I have a lot of help. The Boy and The Reluctant Farmer carry all the day to day tasks, bless them both (The Boy says, “Yeah, it’s work, but it’s not all that bad … well except when it’s a blizzard or something.”).

Most of all, it doesn’t feel like drudgery, most of the time. Oh, it’s work, I don’t deny it, and yes, there are days when nobody wants to haul hay (again) or figure out why the tank heater isn’t working (again), or round up the escaped animals (again), or pound in fence posts (again).

But there aren’t any days when nobody wants to watch the lambs bounce around in the pasture, or be entertained by the chickens scrambling for the kitchen scraps tossed out the door, or enjoy the bounty of our own harvest at dinner.

It’s not drudgery. It’s living in the real world.

I want a farm just like Isaiah’s

Sharon Astyk writes of her son Isaiah’s wish for a farm:

I know, because he tells us, what Isaiah’s farm dream is – he wants more animals, more kinds of creatures.  He wants a tall, two story barn with a hayloft, and ideally, barn cats to chase and bales of hay to climb in.  He wants more of the animals to be his own special ones, his to care for and choose.  He wants to sell more things, be a true working farm with people coming down the drive to buy eggs and plants – and sometimes from him.  He wants it to be beautiful to others, beautiful to us, integral to the landscape and to the community – the place our neighbors come to buy what they need that we can provide.  He wants to be part of the diversified small farm of every child’s dream.

All I can say is … Isaiah, me too. :)

Independence Days Update

Where are we at now that spring looks like it’s really here?

Planted: Oh yeah! Planting time, finally! Today I put out beet seeds, carrot seeds, and leeks and cabbage. Watered everything that is outside, and continue to care for the indoor seedlings. Just 4 weeks to ‘Official Last Frost’!

Harvested: Lots and lots of eggs, and some fleece from the sheep.

Preserved: Nothing that I can think of here … 

Waste Not: The usual feeding-leftovers-to-other-creatures (including putting my apple cores in a ziplock and bringing them home for the chickens, instead of just tossing them in the garbage at work). Made fresh pasta as an ‘egg saving experiment’ (see below)

Want Not (Preparations): Tried home made pasta and posted about the experiment on Facebook … and a friend offered me an unwanted pasta machine! Traded some lamb chops for said pasta machine and have made wonderful fresh pasta (doubles as entertainment for small children who think pulling noodles out of the machine is really cool).

Community Food Systems: Lamb sales have been so successful we are down to just sausage in the freezer! Have a couple more ready to go to the butcher, and will be restocked soon. Set up a Facebook page for the Apple Jack Creek Family Farm.

Eat the Food: More fruit in the WECAN basket this month, and cauliflower and potatoes. Have ‘cowboy pie’ in the oven right now – ground beef cooked with spices & HP sauce, mixed with a tin of mushrooms, topped with mashed potatoes and baked. Baked with the bulk flour purchased at the mill – nice bread! The flour is a different shade, not quite as white as the ‘store stuff’, and the bread has more flavour. Yum.

More progress in the garden

Ev asked for pictures of the garden, so I had The Boy (who is a great photographer) take a few shots today while I finished raking the wide beds.

 

This shows the new ‘mini-raised beds’: large tin cans with the tops and bottoms removed, filled with soil and planted with herbs that should be kept from spreading (or clearly identified). I have no idea how well the cans will hold up to the weather, although all of these are enamelled on the inside, so perhaps they’ll be more durable than the usual sort. Trying them out seems a good way to discover the outcome – they were free, after all! (Thanks Mom!)

If you look closely you can see the wooden plant labels – I splurged and picked them up at Lee Valley, having grown tired of cutting up yogurt containers into strips that just get lost in the dirt. The orange thing is a spike waterer: you put a pop bottle on the top and it’ll slowly water a plant (another Lee Valley widget).

 

And here you see yours truly, decked out in garden gear, raking the wide rows. The straw cowboy hat keeps the sun out of my eyes and off my fair skin, and the rubber boots are lined with sheepskin which makes them both warm and cushioned. The belt is my “Quaker Sword Belt”: it’s a thrift store D-ring belt to which is attached my Japanese hori knife (for weeding), a sheathed dagger (I’m useless with a flip blade, and there’s always bale string that needs cutting if I haven’t got a knife with me), and a net bag containing the house phone, my cell phone, and a family radio (I was on call today, and The Boy was out and about). It’s very handy having all the ‘usual tools’ attached to a belt that can just be added on to whatever I’m already wearing – although I do need to replace the net bag with something smaller … it was what was handy today, but it’s too big to really work well.

Anyway, the white arch is plastic tubing (previously used as row cover supports) which is marking where the rebar row-markers are placed (I discovered that rusted rebar isn’t particularly visible against a dirt-and-straw backdrop, so these are serving as safety markers). The wide rows are measured very scientifically: they are just as wide as I can comfortably step across. I figure I won’t always want to walk around to the end of the rows, so if I can take one big step and get across, that’s about how big it ought to be. The pathways between the rows are about as wide as I am, on the assumption that I won’t be taking a wagon down between these paths, just walking (the raised beds are spaced so that the wagon fits between them, but then, those are rather solid fixtures, and it’s best to have a bit of room to manoeuvre).

There are only 5 rows for the wide beds, which doesn’t seem like it could possibly be enough. However, with the wider rows, there’s room for more plants – it’s not just one long row of tomatoes, they can be staggered so that each still has enough room to breathe, but the total number of plants is almost double what we’d get if we just had one single row.

I’m sure I’ll still find that I need more garden space – as I learn to preserve what we grow, I’ll want more available to put up for winter, plus our summer eating, but for now, it sure feels good to have all that compost spread out, raked mostly smooth, and marked out for planting.

Finally getting dirty

At long last, it’s time to get good and dirty in the garden!

Yesterday, The Reluctant Farmer fired up the bobcat and brought in about 20 bucket loads of 2-year old compost from where it had been piled to age. The resulting mix of mostly-dirt (the pile wasn’t turned or cared for in any fashion, so there are still some spots where the hay/straw is clearly recognizable) was rather haphazardly spread in the south area of the garden, where the row crops are going to be planted this year.

We follow two wildly different gardening strategies: we use both Square Foot Gardening and Gardening When it Counts. The root vegetables and small things like lettuce go in the square foot beds, and the tall and spreading things, like potatoes, peas, and beans, go in wide rows. Since we have a good, steady supply of soil amendments (barnyard waste is not waste around here!), square foot gardening isn’t as resource intensive for us as it is for people who have to buy their compost at the store; and since we actually do have a lot of room for our garden, we also have the option of wide rows for the kinds of things that do well in that system.

So, needing more raised beds for the herb garden expansion, I got out the air nailer and the skill saw and knocked together several more frames – we have plenty of scrap lumber, and as the garden used to be pasture (and thus is well populated with insanely stubborn grasses), it’s very useful to get the growing areas clearly marked off from the paths. Besides, the actual topsoil layer is very thin, and the borders for the raised beds hold in the upgraded dirt.

The garden plan was up to version “E”, and the actual implementation is, as always, turning out to be different yet again from the last iteration of the plans. It’s not too far off, though, and I’m finding that the work that went into the various drafts is, once again, saving me time in the actual implementation … even if it is different than it was on paper.

So, what’s out there so far?

Well, there is a 4x4 bed of onions planted: I had a bag of onion sets that I picked up last year and never planted, so those went in today (onions don’t mind being planted early). There were a lot of herbs that needed stratification, and so several of those went out today as well – there’s no point fussing with starting them indoors if Mother Nature will take care of the stratification for me. So, in a new 5x2 herb bed we have Meadowsweet (used as an anti-inflammatory and stomach remedy), Evening Primrose (an edible plant that is used for a number of medicinal purposes, including soothing muscle aches), Borage (for skin and women’s concerns), Lovage (a celery substitute that is also good for an upset stomach), Elecampane (for bronchitis and congestive coughs), Vervain (for fevers, and as a relaxing tonic), Coltsfoot (for dry coughs), Hawkweed and Horehound (both for congested lungs and coughs). Most of these I haven’t grown before, so we will have to see how they do.

In a new 3x3 bed we have Chamomile (for tea) and Mullein (for coughs and ear infections), and in another we have Poppies (for seeds) and Calendula (for soothing skin salves, and in tea for upset stomachs).

There’s also space set aside in a second 5x2 bed for the herb seedlings that are still indoors: chicory (for drinking as a coffee-type beverage which is also good for the liver, and as a dye plant), Wild Lettuce (which is a fabulous sedative that gives pleasant dreams and deep, satisfying sleep), Betony (a black tea substitute that also has some medicinal uses), and St John’s Wort (used in depression, but also topically for arthritic pains and as an antiseptic).

Up along the fence, I am trying a new strategy: my mom works at a camp kitchen where they use lots of gallon-sized tin cans. She saves them for me, and I’ve been using them as temporary plant pots for seedlings. Today, though, I took some outside and used the can opener to remove the bottom as well, making a tin can tube. I dug out a section of grass and twisted the can into the dirt, then filled it with good compost and planted seeds in the can. Basically, I made small round raised beds. I have some very old seeds that may or may not still be viable, and some other plants that I want kept separate - those that can cause skin irritation if handled in full sunlight, for instance, or those that I want to be sure nobody picks by mistake. So, in the tin cans I’ve now got dill (for cooking, and as a digestive aid), columbine and sweet peas (flowers from my ancient stash of seeds), two kinds of poppies (which may be seed poppies or may be the California kind, we’ll have to grow them and see), Rue (used as a dye plant, mostly, or very cautiously as a herbal remedy), California bluebells (more flowers), and Feverfew (for migraines and fevers). I also plan to put cilantro, chives and basil in tin beds (all herbs used for cooking), as well as woad (which is a dye plant).

This is most definitely the year of the herb garden: I like learning about the various herbs and their uses, and I have found them to be quite effective, even if my family makes fun of me for using ‘snake oil remedies’. The herbs do have to be used with knowledge and respect, of course – just because it grows outside doesn’t mean it won’t hurt you – but with a reliable herbal guide and careful selection of plants, you can make life a little more comfortable without spending money on ‘over the counter’ remedies. I mean, why take Nytol if a cup of strong wild lettuce tea will knock you out for the night, and let you wake up without a hangover the next day?

Besides, growing stuff just feels good.

Up next: veggies!