all well here at the farm. I am sitting in the Hugging House while Steve is doing progress reports for each student and cooking dinner for all. It is raining and I managed to rake out beds and plant spinach and Mixed Salad Greens this morning. It is nice to relax and give those muscles a little time to catch up. I am getting stronger by the day and with hot showers in the evenings I manage to not get sore anymore.
When I had my first week in Germany apprenticing on a dairy farm in 1984 I got that tractor stuck and I had to go and tell the farmer. He came and was not excited , but said as long as one does not keep trying until the axles are dug in deep he will not be mad and to come right away if it happens again. Thanks to him I did not get too stuck.So we finished fencing at 6pm and after milking Carol and brushing the cows there were home made french fries with ketchup and green beans waiting for me. A good day!
Last week I also planted the first peas, soaked the night before to germinate faster, but they are not up so far with the cold nights. I have to make fires in the wood stove in the greenhouse every evening to keep the tomato transplants in there from freezing.
This week the tractor will go to get a new exhaust and tail pipe put on. The muffler fell off last fall and was driven over, so no fixing that. I ordered the new exhaust this year as I had run out of funds last fall and had put up with the noise. It is a new season CSA payments are coming in and and the local shop Star Route Services on RT 25 will put it on. While "Joan" the tractor is there they also will adjust the front wheel spacing to line up with the back wheel spacing. The chisel plow will also be adjusted to that spacing .
I am planning to try the permanent bed method where you have 14"tractor aisles and 4' bed between. The first years the beds have to be forked deep by hand to break up crusts built up over the years by tractor implements sliding down there at the same depth year after year, called plough-pan. I had heard about this for a long time and finally got a book on it. Intuitively it speaks to me to not just disc all the soil several times before planting, compacting under the wheels and airing the soil which activates soil live to burn up carbon. The goal is less tillage. Some folks have perfected it to where the beds are loose enough to seed into and not have to till at all and with that also not bring up weed seeds to the surface. No weeds, what a dream. These folks do add a lot of compost and minerals and bio nutrients and are busy with other things. I pick and take from it what seems right to me. I don't want to add a lot of outside produced minerals. Cow manure and haylage from the neighbors are good for me for now. For you garden or soil nerds here is the book:"No Till Intensive Vegetable Culture" by Brian O'Hara.
I am spending part of each day deep forking 4' wide beds and had to fix the tines several times by unbolting the bent or broken one and bolting a new 12' bolt in and sawing off the head of the bolt at the bottom to create a tine. It is time consuming and frustrating. I ordered a new better deep digging fork . The shipping is delayed because half the country is putting in a garden and forking. Fortunately this spring is dryer as the past three and as it is still cold no crops are growing and I can take time to prepare the beds instead of rushing everything in at the end of April.
Henry is Katrina Hebb's son. They moved to Birdsfoot North, next door in March. Katrina is the new Presbyterian minister in Potsdam and so glad to be back in the North Country. If you remember she was the baker for the Black Bird Cafe when it opened in 2001? There is nothing better then to be stuck at home in a pandemic with an accomplished baker and she surprises us with chocolate pudding, chocolate chip banana oatmeal cookies or coconut chocolate macaroons at dinner for desert. You get the idea, I love it.
Well, this getting long. Here a few pictures of the recent transplants and seedlings.