The season is winding down . . .

I am looking at my list of offerings on Purple Porch, our on-line co-op.  More items just got pared from it.  I'm down to a few tomatoes and peppers and a lot of greens.  I didn't plant enough root vegetables, wish I had more beets and carrots to offer.  Next year.

My broccoli was very poor this year.  It is sprouting broccoli, many little heads.  I sold a lot of plants, since it is a favorite of mine and so I am enthusiastic about it when selling greenhouse plants.  But the heat!  It didn't produce, and my customers all complained.  No one got much broccoli.  However, now with the cooler weather, it is finally coming into its own.  With a little luck, I'll be harvesting well into November.  Perhaps my customers will be a little happier with their plants now that they are doing what they are supposed to do.

My new chickens are getting into the swing of things around here.  I was to be gifted with 16 of them, but only nine arrived here, and of those, one is really just a pet, had quit laying altogether, and three are still young pullets that haven't started laying.  So my dreams of having an extra dozen eggs a day once they showed up has been dashed.  They have been here nine days, and since they all lay non-white eggs (my Campines lay white eggs), I know how many they have laid to date.  Try seven!  Yup, nine chickens, nine days, seven eggs.  I am underwhelmed!  I found most of them under a tree, and since they have been confined to the chicken run, which isn't all that big, I am sure that I have found them all.

Yesterday I opened up the run for the first time, since I was sure that the new girls would know where home is by now.  Alas, two of them, one of my new Buckeyes, and one of the Gift Girls, were running around frantically at dusk because they found the way out, but couldn't find the way back in!  Androo helped me round them up.  We will see what happens this evening.  I opened up the gate all the way today.  It will be easier for them to get in and out.

Allen quit.  He was very good with the equipment, and was learning to milk.  Due to health problems, it wasn't working out for him, though.  I hope he feels better soon.  In the meantime, a new person is coming on board for a bit to see how it works out.  I need help, and he says he is willing to work.  There is plenty of that around here!  We will go slow and make sure it works well for all concerned.

Androo, Allen and I had a very good meeting shortly before Allen quit, and we looked at the whole farm, what needs to be done, what needs to change, how do we put our efforts into what is the most profitable.  Financially, it was not a very good year, in part because the bugs destroyed a good bit of my garden, probably cut my produce revenue by at least two thirds.  Ouch!  But we have a pest management plan in place for next season.  I have not had a problem with bugs since I moved here in 2002, so this year took me by surprise, and being organic, my choices in combating them were limited.  But as I said, the plan is in place.  Bugs, beware!

I have said before that I wish 24 hours would go by when no equipment fails, no light bulbs burn out, no cows escape.  It won't be today.  One of the tires on the golf cart came off the wheel, so I had to fire up the small tractor and hook up the wagon so that I can get hay out to the girls this morning. I will worry about fixing the tire later.  For now the girls need to eat.  And I had better get on it right now!

It's a boy!

I noticed that Buttercup was off by herself, away from the other three cows in their paddock, day before yesterday, usually a pretty good sign that a cow is about to freshen - that is farmer talk for having a calf.

I checked her a couple of times throughout the day, but no calf.  Yesterday morning, I asked Androo if she had had her calf yet when he got here about 8:00 a.m.  Nope, no calf.

We were hard at it all day, I in greenhouse staging orders and sorting out the plants I wanted to get into my garden, and Androo doing the garden work, taking tray after tray of cukes, squash, cauliflower and broccoli plants.  I walked off the rows, estimating how many plants we could cram in per row, and how many rows we can squeeze in.  It's a tight fit!  But I have all of those market baskets to fill, and we will need to have the garden overflowing.  Androo also spot seeded the radish rows, reseeding where I have already pulled radishes for orders.  Hopefully it will cool off a bit again so that we can get this second crop of radishes out before they get woody and hot.

I was really beat, but had to take a quick shower and take orders to Purple Porch.  I had quite a few plant orders, which were all staged from my morning's efforts, and had a few bars of soap and some spices to take in.  I was running late as usual, and heading down my lane with barely a moment to spare.

Wait!  I slammed on the brakes.  There was an animal with a lot of white on it, and none of the cows in that pasture have that much white.  And it was too little to be a cow.  Up and running around already!  Buttercup had her calf!!  How exciting.  But I was late, and so I took off for Purple Porch.

When I got home, Androo and I herded mother and calf to the nurse pen by the barn.  It is a bull.  And he too is the spitting image of his daddy, Sam.  I think he will sell quickly.  He is beautiful, big and healthy.

This morning I brought Buttercup into the barn to relieve her of some pressure, since her udder was full to bursting.  I milked off about two and a half gallons of colostrum, leaving plenty in her for the calf.  Some of our shareholders wanted a quart of colostrum, and the rest went to the bigger calves. 

It was such a pleasure to milk her.  No dramatics, no histrionics like we went through breaking Dolly and Smarty Pants, although they are behaving like perfect ladies now.  :)

There was only one compensation.

Tonight the neighbor brought me 86 bales of straw to use for mulch in my garden.  He gave me a good price, and included delivery.  I told him I would have someone there to help unload it.  Allen said he could come over and help.  It was a good thing, because Androo was milking tonight, and it was the first time since the milk cows, the three pregnant heifers and the yearlings were all together.  How would he sort out the five milkers from eleven animals, he wondered?  I told him I would help.  And of course, that was the exact time the neighbor showed up with the straw.

I went down to the garden and showed Kevin and Allen where to put the straw.  I walked over to a spot south of the compost heap and pointed with my toe.  Then I joined Androo to bring in the animals.  By the time I got down to the garden, they were on the last few bales.  They didn't stack them where I indicated they should go; the neighbor, in his infinite wisdom, decided to stack them within a few feet of the fence - a fence that was installed to keep the chickens out of the garden.

The pile of bales is about five feet tall; the fence around the garden is about six feet tall.  There were several chickens running around on the bales of straw.  Why none of them went over the fence I will never know.  I went to the house grumbling to myself.  Then I decided that the bales had to be moved - and right now.  If just one chicken figured out that the bales were a great launching pad to get to the dinner in the garden, it would be all over.  They can easily fly over a six foot fence, but they have enough to eat without that much effort.  But now, of course, they were provided with a beautiful ladder of straw!

I went down to the garden and began moving bales.  Androo came down and helped with the last dozen or so.  I was really grumpy.

But then I came in the house and steamed the first stems of asparagus out of my garden while I whipped up some homemade Hollandaise sauce.  Yes, that was compensation enough at the end of a frustrating evening.

Measure twice, cut once.

I learned a few valuable lessons during my marriage to a tool & die maker.  Probably the most valuable of them was to "measure twice, cut once."  He would stand around watching me wallpaper and say it to the point where he was lucky he didn't end up with a wallpaper brush firmly implanted in his ear.  But truly, it was a good lesson, and one that was once again demonstrated during Androo's day here at the farm last week.

On the first day that Androo was here, I put together a long list of things I wanted him to do during his tenure here as an intern.  These are the sorts of things that will be lasting, since he may or may not be here next season, but definitely not the season after.  So best use to put him to, after the lessons in seeding, planting, chickens and cows, are those things that will last long after he is gone.  To that end, the garden was enlarged by 400 square feet.  The perimeter of the greenhouse now has a hardware cloth barrier around the foundation to minimize mouse infestations.  The fencing is in place around the big garden.  The trellises in the garden were rebuilt.  Another thing on that list was to bury an old refrigerator to use as a root cellar during the winter months, for carrots and other root vegetables.

Androo had a drawing of how to use a fridge for cold storage, and it showed the fridge sitting 5" or 6" above the surface of the ground.  I chose the spot where I wanted the fridge to be buried and Androo and I gathered up the tools needed.  My ground is very sandy, and I knew it wouldn't be too big a job to get the hole dug.  I needed to get to the butcher to pick up half a hog I ordered, so I told Androo I should be back within a couple of hours, and that we could work together to get it in the hole, as I was pretty sure that would be a two-person job.

When I got home, this is what I found.  Not only was the fridge 5" or 6" BELOW the surface of the ground at one end, it was considerably deeper at the other.  In his haste to finish the job, the fridge went into the hole without measuring, and it was in there way deeper than it should have been.  Androo said, "We can just slope the ground down towards the fridge."  I pointed out that rain water would be directed at the fridge and all of the moisture would build around it.  He said, "But the soil is very sandy and there is a layer of rocks under the fridge for drainage."

I reminded him that our drain system from the barn is always plugging because my sand is so fine that it really doesn't allow proper drainage at all!  When they dug my well out here, they got great water at 75' but had to come back and dig down to 125' because the sand was so fine that it plugged up the screening.

"Androo," I said, "there is only one thing to be done.  This fridge has to come back out of this hole and the depth has to be adjusted.  Did you measure?"  Silly question - it was obvious he hadn't.

"I estimated the depth," he said.

Sigh . . .

The biodynamic calendar flipped over to "fruit" at 3 pm and I wanted to be hard at potting up pepper seedlings when the clock struck 3. We had several hundred plants to pot, and it is tedious work. 

"Start digging," I said.  There was no way to get the fridge back out without enlarging the hole at one end.  "And remember, measure twice, cut once.  If you had measured carefully, this wouldn't have happened.  And there is a level in the greenhouse.  Let's make sure it is level this time."

An hour and half later, here is what I found.  Fridge is sitting above the level of the surrounding soil.  Note the level sitting on top of the fridge.  Job well done!!

There were several lessons to be learned here.

1. Measure twice, cut once.  
2. Break the job into small tasks so that you don't need to drop the fridge in the hole to get that rush of accomplishment.  Dig the hole and do it right. Give yourself a pat on the back.  Put in the rocks for drainage and make sure they provide a level bed.  Another pat on the back is in order.  Drop the fridge in the hole.  Yet another pat on the back.  This prevents an inopportune rush to the finish line.
3. Think through the job from start to finish - what can go wrong at each step?  how hard is it to fix at each step?  Making the hole a bit too big or too small - piece of cake to fix.  Putting the fridge in the hole without measuring first - big deal to fix!  Understanding the pain of making an error helps to put things in perspective.

So we started  potting up the peppers a little late, but they all got done, and I was in the house by 7 pm.  All in all, a very good day, and one more BIG job ticked off the list.

Gardening

The first of the seedlings went into the garden yesterday.  Androo came over after work and we did a row of onions, it being a root day on the biodynamic calendar.  Androo is here for an education, as well as to make some extra money, and he got one yesterday.  I'm sure it is the first time he ever planted the way I do!  We set a line, then I took a garden rake and raked away a foot-wide strip of last year's mulch on that line.  Then we dug out any lumps of grass, always the bane of a gardener, and threw them over the new fence into the yard.  Let them multiply there, NOT in my garden!!

Then it was on to the hard work, poking holes in the soft earth and putting in tiny onion starts.  They are pretty close together.  I'll harvest half of them as scallions for my market baskets and for my dinner, then leave the others to grow to maturity.  We put in Clear Dawn yesterday, an open-pollinated onion with good keeping qualities, yellow, medium size. 

Clay is on spring break and he was looking for some hours of work, so he and I turned a compost pile in the morning, then went down to the garden and incorporated a couple of wheel barrowfuls of compost into the 4' x 100' strip of new garden that we put in last week.  That is hard physical work!

I quit planting onions about 8 pm, having been at it, either in my office or the garden, since about 5:30 am.  (Okay, okay, I took a little nap in the afternoon!)  I left Androo to finish the tray of onion seedlings. I fixed myself some soup and called it a day.  It was nearly dark when I saw Androo's taillights going down the drive.

It's kind of nice knowing that the garden is back in business for the season.

New gadgets

Androo, my intern, and I will be planting our first batch of pepper seeds on Friday after 9 am.  That's when the biodynamic calendar turns over to planting "fruit."  Since we eat the fruit of the pepper plant - not the leaf, the root or the flower - then we plant the seeds on a day when the planets and moon are properly aligned to send the energy to the fruit, the part of the plant we will harvest.  For lettuce, we plant our seeds on leaf days.  The onion seeds went in on a root day, and the broccoli seeds on a flower day.

I have been planting by the biodynamic calendar for years, and I am pretty convinced that there is something to it.  I use the Kimberton Hills versions of the calendar.  If you are an avid gardener and would like to try it, you can buy the calendar here:  Stella Natura biodynamic planting calendar  It's full of wonderful essays as well as the planting guide.  And if you are from the South Bend area, there is one calendar left for sale at my booth. 

At the farmers market where I sell my organic plants, my peppers are always behind Mary's.  She has these big beautiful plants that make mine look so pitiful!  Mine are fine, will bear great fruit, but from a marketing standpoint, I felt something had to be done.  For one thing, Mary plants VERY early.  But she has several greenhouses, so she can afford to heat just one to get the plant starts going for all of the greenhouses.  I have one small greenhouse, and I can't heat the whole thing for a few starts.  So this year, we are starting seeds in my atrium, which is on the south side of my house.  Since it is unheated, except for the sunlight (when we get it - not often in February in Indiana) and a little residual heat from the house, I dug out some old gardener's heating mats and put them under the onion seeds that we planted two weeks ago.  But they are not really very good, some old things that my realtor got from someone who was throwing them away when moving.  The onions are germinating, but the peppers will need more than that.

In comes my new gadget.  I bought a new heating mat and a separate thermostat so that I can control the temp.  Seeds from different plants need different germination temperatures, e.g. peppers need 85º, spinach needs 70º.   Both of these are slow to germinate, and the extra help from the mat should improve germination. I can get four seedling trays on it, which is a total of 976 plants.  We will plant the first of the pepper seeds on Friday.  Hopefully, by March 1, when I will fire up the furnace in the greenhouse, they will be tall enough to pot up into the 2" pots, their final resting place until my customers pop them into their gardens.  As soon as they germinate, I can devote the mat to spinach, parsley, lettuces, and of course, tomatoes.

Perhaps this year my pepper plants will hold their own in the looks department with Mary's giant peppers!