The first row of corn is up, and I planted the second row today. The potatoes are up, too. Instead of thinning the tatsoi, I tried transplanting every other plant to give them enough space. We’ll see how they handle it.

With the tractor running again, I was finally able to do some grooming on the driveway (I had to wait for rain, too, to loosen things up and keep the dust down). While I was using the tractor, it suddenly died. It turned out to be a buildup of deposit on the rotor in the distributor. A little sandpaper took care of it.

I forgot to mention, the bees died over the winter (probably from mites). Alden got a new nuc a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, he added a second brood box and two supers back onto the stack. We hope we can figure out how to help the bees survive the winter. We sprayed for mites last year, but apparently it wasn’t effective.

Heather planted red Pontiac potatoes in the east end of row #2 a few days ago.

I planted the first of four rows of corn today. The seeds soaked for almost a week before I got a chance to plant them.

Heather planted Jerusalem artichokes along the southeast fence line of the pasture in March. They’re about a foot tall now.

An idea just occurred to me this week. Actually it is more than an idea. It’s a dream! A destiny! An obsession.

We must grow grain in 2021.

I don’t mean an acre of rye–I mean a modest 10×10 patch of sorghum, a couple rows of corn and a corner of quinoa. I want to harvest enough sorghum to fill a quart Mason jar. I want to have enough dried corn to make a sweaty, dirty stack of red corn tortillas. I want enough quinoa to help me figure out if it was worth it for just one meal to say “We actually grew this, harvested it, did the chaff + winnow thing, then ate it next to a pile of sauteed kale and braised rabbit.” (P.S. I don’t know what braised means. I just said it to sound fancy.)

Slugs decimated my beans, so I replanted most of the row today. I also planted a few additional corn seeds to replace ones that got eaten by slugs.

Heather brought home another rabbit today, so we have one buck and two does. This one might be pregnant.

We planted the rest of the garden today:

  • Row 1: transplanted two tomato plants
  • Row 2: seeded bush beans
  • Row 3: transplanted 2 tomato plants
  • Row 4: seeded corn, transplanted delicata squash, two watermelon plants, and pickling cucumbers

Grant transplanted a bunch of chives along the north wall of the carport.