April - 3rd Week

All my peas are in a row. The vibrant green of Spring is the essence of hopefulness. After a brown winter my eyes feel bathed with the sight of spring growth. Now the momentum of the season is starting to pick up speed. Each day more and more green returns to the landscape, birds are calling, my seedlings are starting to take off in the greenhouse. There is a buzz beginning. The work of the season starts to pick up speed too.

When I think about the numbers of plants that cycle through the season it astounds me. The peas that were planted out this past week numbered thirteen 98-cell trays… that’s about 1200 pea plants. That led me to start to calculate how many winter squash plants I would be seeding in the beginning of May. Would I have room for them all in my greenhouse? I came up with 88 50-cell trays each containing 2 plants. That’s about 8800 winter squash plants which would easily fill half the greenhouse. I repotted my pepper and eggplant starts. They have all gone on to 50-cell trays as well. That was 33 trays. That’s 1650 plants! I moved some of the cold-tolerant plants outside to make room and to harden them off for a week before I put them into the ground. The beets, chard and broccoli will all be ready for the fields this coming week. The first cucumbers and squash will not be far behind them. Even my early tomatoes are looking stocky. The squash, cukes and tomatoes will all go out on the warm “plastic” (made of corn) and be covered because there is certainly still time for a frost here.

At the end of the week, I walk past the barn and the intoxicating perfume of the crabapple tree in bloom reaches out to me and I drink in the fragrance. Its pink and white blooms are so pretty. Large carpenter bees hoping to make their homes in the barn swoop down to check me out. (I swear they make eye contact.) The killdeer birds are still attempting to nest in the middle of the gravel driveway. Our faithful dog, Boone, is discouraging them. The tulips are blooming (Boone only eats the purple ones), the blue iris are coming up, the peonies are emerging and the grass is growing that deep green that you see only in Spring. All is hopeful.

April - 2nd Week

We had some more gorgeous spring weather this week again and I took advantage of the sunny days in the beginning of the week. At left is Chinese Cabbage planted out. This will be covered for frost protection and bug protection. In addition I was able to seed carrots, parsnips, bok choi, lettuce mix, turnips, mustard greens, arugula and spinach... all cool weather crops. Makes my mouth water! Friday and Saturday proved to have gentle rains, just what was needed and I spent half the day in the greenhouse seeding flowers and herbs. The coming week looks promising as well. We'll set our sights on planting out some peas, head lettuce and kale as well as prepping some more ground for coming crops.

April - First Week

The start of a new farm season is upon us. We enjoyed some amazing warm weather this first week of April. It revved me up. We will be working with a raised bed system this year at Blue Star Farm. The bedshaper at left will produce beds that are six inches high. What this will enable! For starters it will help keep our plants from getting water logged should we get a lot of rain (everyone knock on wood that this doesn't happen), #2 it will warm the soil for our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, zucchinis and melons, #3 it will provide an airy loose bed of soil for our seedlings to grow in. We will cover some of the beds with a biodegradable mulch that looks like plastic but is made out of corn. It will break down in 4-5 months and we will be able to till it right in with no residue left.

We have a new addition to our farm family, his name is Boone. He is an English Shephard and is almost 6 months old. He likes to stop, smell and taste the flowers as he goes along his way. Boonie's job is to keep all vegetable perpetrators away. We are working on this. Right now he chases Killdeer birds, catches and eats voles, and generally tries to scare all robins from the vicinity.




The hens are going full tilt in this spring weather. We have 16 ladies and we got 10 eggs just the other day. The girls are almost 4 years old and for most farmers that's probably old lady hen time for the stock pot, but I have a soft spot for chickens so they eat bugs and grass and enjoy the spring air and the wonderful sunsets. They make me laugh and the world needs more laughter!

There's nothing better than healthy vibrant seedlings in the greenhouse. These are onion and early tomato seedlings. We will keep our fingers crossed for good weather this spring and the rest of the season. Feels great to get my hands in the dirt again!

The End of June

Okay, I've been remiss to report in the last two weeks of June (and maybe into July). My Mother always said, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." But, you have to report the good with the not so good. We have had a record breaking amount of rain in the past five weeks (over 10 inches). In the beginning year here, with not a lot of fertility and HEAVY CLAY soils many things were lost. Spinach turned yellow in the field and died. Turnips, arugula, mustard greens, radishes, lettuce mix were all in the soggiest field and some underwater, some still underwater. I'm thinking pond perhaps here. Onions are small and not very happy either. Needless to say, I have not been to market yet. Everything in the greenhouse looks wonderful. My transplants are gorgeous. Just the issue of getting them into some soil they can breathe in.

The frogs are very happy... they've never had such a long season like this. It's amazing that such a loud noise can come from a small hidden creature.

Many things run through my mind... because I can't even think about getting into these fields before 5-7 days of just plain sunshine. So far, the longest we've gotten is 3 days before we got another 1/2" of rain. What's a farmer to do? Carry on, look towards the fall, and next year. Read a lot about soil fertility, compost, LOTS of greensand? Cover crops, subsoiling? Search out the wise and experienced and go work for them for a few days... since not much happening here until some major drying out happens. And, all the wise and experience have their hands very full at the moment. Short term memory and blinding optimism help in these situations. Thanks goodness for that.


Squash fields after 10 inches of rain. The mulch is still a good idea, but would have worked better had it not rained so much. Some of the "high ground" squash looks great. Raised beds are a must here going forward. I'll be looking into a bedding system that will incorporate that idea.














Lots of standing water... get your mosquito netting out!

A New Look.

Bear with me as my designer past noodles around blogger templates. Hope it doesn't throw any of you off.

June -2nd week

Winter Squash Planting

This past week was perfect weather for setting out young squash plants. The irrigation was in place and working well, the weather was cloudy and overcast, but not raining... good conditions to set out finicky squash transplants. The greenhouse was full. There were 38 trays in the greenhouse with 98 plants each. That's a total of 3,724 plants to get into the field. So the challenge was to see if I could plant them all in one day. With this kind of work ahead of you there is only one way to approach. Keep your head down and keep moving! As one is slogging away in the field planting, planting, planting I tend to start to calculate things. 

Farm Math. I was averaging 2 beds/hour, so let's see, they are 300 foot beds with 18" spacing between plants, that means that I was able to drop and plant 200 plants per a row, 2 beds is 400 plants per/hour, yet there was 2 plants in each drop so that doubles the number to 800 plants/hour. And so one's mind rambles on... as you have your head down and keep moving.

Squash on the left ready to go to the field.

2 beds done, nicely irrigated while planting, just what squash want.

Head down, keep moving.

This is an apple tree root in the field. Of the 18 trees that we took out some roots are bound to reappear as the field gets cultivated.

OK, I made it to 9 beds out of 11 planted in a day.

The Farmer is done for the day.

Drip taping the tomatoes... This is model #2 in action. 

The drip tape deployment tool.

Onion planting... these are 80ft. rows.... thank goodness.

Mulching

And to end the week we mulched the squash with the bedding chopper from the neighbor's dairy farm. This was exciting. I mulched the first 2 beds in the other field by hand (200 ft. beds). It took the 3 hours... and 1.25 bales of straw (farmer math coming up). The bales were each about 450lbs... not something I could just throw around myself. I had another 11 beds to do that were 300 ft. long, I had 9 3/4 bales left to do the rest. Would I have enough straw to do them all, how long would it take me to complete the other 11 beds?

Answer: (I didn't really want to do that calculation.) Bring in the straw chopper and get it done in 2 hours.

Two beds done by "hand" and tractor

The straw chopper, ready for take off. Pulling the bales out from under the shed.

The straw chopper: IN ACTION.

Mulched squash... a beautiful thing. Some might say this is cheating, but the idea is to work smart, not hard.

Finally, nature is always amazing.

This is a a Killdeer with it's nest site. Killdeers are in the plover family and they are a noisy bird of the rural farm country. They like gravely areas and will feign an injury to avoid having you come near the nest. There were six of us walking by her nest and she set up the alarms and started dragging her wing to protect her nest with it's one egg in it. I now give her some distance and am watching to see when the baby will hatch.

Mama Killdeer and her egg. 

Robin's nest in our small front tree. They have the most beautiful turquoise eggs

June - 1st week

Irrigation

The winter squash field will get irrigation first. They are tender little plants ready to go out... cucurbits like their water so we plan on giving them a happy home to transition to from the greenhouse.

Here's the PLAN:

Fields A, B, C, D, and E this year.

Here's the Supplies. I really do know where everything goes.

Step One: Plumbers Tape on everything. This is the beginning of the feed. You can't underestimate the value of putting plumber's tape on everything.

The Single Farmer's Drip Tape Dispensing Tool: This is model number one. After using it on two 300' beds, which worked wonderfully, the structural integrity was compromised. I was too excited to get that drip tape on the field. Back to construction and I reinforced model number 2. That one did fine for another nine beds. That took me to the end of the day. More pics on model 2 to come. We'll be giving the tomatoes some drip too.

Water in the Lines! That was the goal.