Last week I ordered a soil blocker that makes 20 little blocks of soil that measure 3/4″ x 3/4″.
Soil blocks are compacted squares of a special soil blend. They allow you to plant seedlings without using a plastic container. Pretty amazing!
Once the seeds sprout they “air prune” and are much easier to transplant since they aren’t root bound.
This is a great way to start your seedlings.
Ten out of our eleven pastured bunnies escaped and ate all the plants Josh bought for me for Mother’s Day. So yesterday I repurchased all my Mother’s Day gifts and replanted them. Two Juliet tomatoes, habanero, and thai chili–but I didn’t replace the snapdragons because I don’t want snapdragons in my garden. I also didn’t replace the leeks because they will grow back. The peppers might grow back too. I also need to replant some greens that the bunnies ate.
Grant, Isaac and I put 2 inch poultry netting on the bottom of the rabbit tractor so they won’t escape, but they’ll still have access to fresh grass.
I also planted 8 Italian Paste tomato plants, another habanero + thai chili for Josh, along with a spicy basil and 6 nasturtiums.
Today I am soaking beans for 12-24 hours before I plant them. I also dug up the horseradish and comfrey and moved them out to the exterior of the pasture.
Today I’ll dig up the ditch in front of our house and plant some wildflower seeds. Mostly sunflowers and millet. Maybe a few other seeds, too.
In the stories of Peter Rabbit, as of today I ally myself with Mr. McGregor.
The bunnies are escaping on a daily basis. They mowed down all of the leeks, tatsoi, peppers, tomatoes, snapdragons, a few garlics, and all of my lettuce. I’m not a happy gardener.
Lots of work in the garden today. We seeded peas and carrots. We transplanted six plugs of leeks, two Juliette tomatoes, a habanero pepper, and a Thai pepper plant, as well as six snapdragon plants. Heather transplanted a anise hyssop plant in the herb row. We laid down two more soaker hoses and watered. Things have been really dry lately for springtime. Today involved lots of weeding, cultivating soil, and raking.
I love getting early spring harvests! The overwintered kale is about done– and getting aphids, so it’s time to pull it out–but the chard is super sweet and should keep going a bit longer… hopefully long enough to tide us over until this year’s planting starts to produce. I’m optimistic about the tatsoi.
Front the incubator, we ended up getting six ducklings. Turkeys are more fragile: some never made it out of their egg, and a couple died after hatching, but two have survived.
We’re finally getting a little rain today after two very dry weeks.
Some of the duck eggs are starting to crack, and we are hearing peeping sounds. Any day now…
Y’all!! My Jimmy Nardello sweet peppers are poppin’!! Seeee??? I’m so happy!
Life can sometimes be just a string of minor disappointments (sorry to go philosodark on ya). And we just get to roll with them + grow from them. But every once in a while, life surprises you with a miracle! New life is glorious and it’s something worth celebrating!! Seedlings! Yay!
Back to my string of minor disappointments… A tray of bebe onions and wee holy basil were blown off my porch yesterday and scattered to the wind. When you hand-water for weeks and talk to your seedlings, it’s sad when it ends in a flash. Like, mood altering sad. Like, I want to talk to someone, but can’t figure out if it should be a therapist or a botanist. Yes, I can always replant, but I still feel the sting of loss.
Today, I felt like the loss of my onions and holy basil was compensated for with the victory of my super pretentious Jimmy Nardello Italian sweet pepper seedlings emerging!
The tatsoi has sprouted nicely, the orach pretty well, and the mizuna, lettuce, and cutting greens sparsely. Keeping the soil surface moist has been a challenge this week due to extremely high winds (strong east winds blew the farm stand over yesterday) and very low humidity.
I finished installing the garden irrigation system today. We can run two soaker hoses on each of the six garden rows.
I made vinegar last year, and I believe that it saved my mental health.
When the pandemic hit in 2020 and we were all wondering “what’s next?” I started feeling weird and weirder. I guess you could call it anxiety. I had trouble regulating my breathing and I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night feeling (and knowing) something bad was going to happen.
I needed something to both anchor me and distract me–something that would take my mind off uncertainty, and let it just imagine goodness. It was summer and the pandemic wasn’t going away. I don’t know where the idea to make vinegar came from–but as soon as I thought it, it felt like the right thing to do.
Here’s how it works: Fruit + water + sugar turns into fermented juice which then turns into vinegar. The moment I realized that fruit is fruit is fruit, I was like “Hold the phone, Martha! I’m going to make vinegar from every fruit I can get my hands on this summer.”
And I did! Blackberries, plums, apples, pears, grapes. They all sat on my wire shelves, patiently fermenting, bubbling, gassing and morphing. It was the most beautiful, hopeful thing to see jars and buckets of jewel-toned fruit, bobbing in frothy liquid.
The fruits were changing, and they were giving me something to look forward to each day. (Remember the dreamy golden redness of the plum vinegar?) As I struggled to stay calm and hopeful in the midst of the 2020 chaos (um, stressful presidential election, too!), the vinegars were a project that saved me from self-destructing by binge watching crappy tv, feeling self pity, or just doing nothing.
And just recently (no joke!), I finally cracked into my stash of vinegars (why did it take me so long??) I made a vinaigrette this week to go with the kale salad from our garden, and then I preserved a batch of marinated sun-dried tomatoes to keep in our fridge. I also added the blackberry vinegar to some chickpea curry–and it 10x-ed the umami. I’m loving my sweet, dark blackberry vinegar. (P.S. I will always love you, blackberry vinegar, and i promise to make a new batch of you every year, i love you so much xoxo)
So, why go to the trouble of harvesting local fruits, learning how to make vinegar, then letting a bottle of fermenting fruit sit on your kitchen shelf for a month or more so you can strain it and set it on your shelf? Because when you can add one more item to your pantry shelf that you made yourself, it truly feels healing, miraculous, beautiful and wholesome.
Not a very sexy answer, but it’s 100% true.
Yesterday I planted my multi-sown beet starts and some Oregon Peas. It feels great to be able to put some things in the garden.
I also planted carrots in a self watering bucket. I’m hoping those are successful, because up until now, 100% of my carrot attempts have failed. Always hopeful.
Then today I labeled my herb garden. Half is culinary herbs and the other half are medicinal.
This evening we planted tatsoi, muzuna, and orach in row 5, and little gem lettuce and cutting mix in row 6 (3×3 patches about 6 feet in from the east end). The seeds are so tiny, they remind me of having “faith as a grain of mustard seed.” It’s hard to believe that these ones will grow into food for the dinner table.
Grant transplanted lettuce, kale, and spinach.
The gravel came yesterday, we got it all spread, and the farm stand is now in place.
Today we put down the underlayment for the farm stand pullout area. Gravel is next.
I did my first weld with our new welder: reattaching a bracket to the mower deck for the Craftsman.
I also replaced an idler pulley that had seized up and made the tractor undrivable.
On the Case tractor, I’ve been drilling out lug bolts that sheared off from trying to remove the left real wheel.
I also tried fixing up the hand throttle, but I can’t hammer or drill the pin out of the shaft, and I can’t get the shaft to turn
Today I shoveled water-logged dirt and gravel. It wasn’t type-I fun, but I’m really excited about what it means!
It means we’re getting ready for our little farm stand, and we’re super excited! Our plan is to populate the farm stand with seasonal produce from our garden and orchard, handmade crafts, baked goods, and items that celebrate our local culture. These will all be things that we grow or make ourselves.
Josh likes to do things right, so he helped me plan a gravel pullout area so that people won’t get stuck in the mud.
Our farm stand is set to open in the beginning of March 2021. Our goal is to have it be a year round, 24/7 farm stand. It will be cashless. People can pay by using the Venmo app for a single purchase, or by purchasing a prepaid card that can be used for future purchases.
It’s egg laying season!
It’s been such a long time since we’ve gotten eggs. We have good birds, they eat lots, they have lots of space and sunshine. The problem is that something has been taking the eggs from the coop–a racoon, a fox, a skunk? That’s the only explanation for our egg shortage.
But…now that our chickies are in a chicken tractor, we get 1 to 3 eggs a day! We’re thrilled! We love farm fresh eggs. In just a few weeks we should be getting more eggs, specifically from our dominant copper marans. They lay dark chocolate eggs.
We’re grateful that we getting eggs! Now we just have to figure out how to get duck eggs from Maggie.
Grant bought lavender seeds today with his own shekels. He found a variety called “True Lavender” and he’s starting the seedlings today!
He’s using a method called “stratification” where he puts the seeds onto a damp paper towel, then covers them with a gallon ziploc and puts them in the refrigerator for a month.
And can I also add that he’s growing lavender because he wants to sell it. I think he’ll do a great job as a lavender farmer!
We applied about three yards of aged manure to the garden today. It’s still soggy out there, so we got the trailer stuck a couple times.
We’re still harvesting kale, but it looks like it’s going to start going to seed soon.
I gave a pear tree a light pruning and the grapes their usual heavy pruning.
