November 13, 2015November 13, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ 4 Comments

I’ve still been feeling rundown but I did get out there this morning. I prepped for and planted a packet (~40 seeds) of early purple podded fava beans. We’ll see how they do (it’s a bit late for planting, for one thing, and they’re in an area where the raccoons hang out).

I told Z about how the drip lines for the new-new strawberry bed are a bit out of place. I could theoretically set up a new manifold, but why not let him do that and focus my energy on planting, weeding, etc?

Oh, the things I would do if I were out there more. Like weed in-between Chandler strawberry plants, instead of just right around them.

Those peas are still flowering. Hoping for peas for Thanksgiving, but things are moving slowly…

Missed photo of a lifetime: me and T with our sweatshirt hoods on and headlamps on top of them, ready to go out to the garden after dark. I weeded the berries a bit, but it’s so cold out there!!!

I picked a half-dozen old strawberries last night, did I mention that? I would put them out of their misery if I had more time. I guess that technically I could at least stop watering them!

Working towards planting stuff

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ 2 Comments

This morning I was running behind because I had a nice chat with a fellow mom when I dropped T off at his school (he goes 2 mornings a week). I was also still taking it slow – today was my first time having kale with my breakfast in almost a week!

When I finally made it to the garden, I worked on raking and moving soil to level out the bed where the next strawberry planting will go. We have about 25 or 30 feet of drip tape out there, which will be fine for the 25ish crowns that I have in the fridge, assuming they are still viable as I haven’t checked on them in a while. I’m never very happy about the soil getting chisel plowed or raked when compost wasn’t applied first, and there are some weird things about the soil in the south side of the field. It sounds like a former owner brought in soil to cover up a, um, small pond that formed in the winter. This might explain the sinkhole that I filled in last fall (or this spring?) at the east edge of the field.

Some late buckwheat that sprouted on the south side of the field

You can click on the image to see a closer-up version.

I was hoping to get out there this evening to throw compost on top of the bed, but it didn’t happen. I also need to hoe out weeds. Speaking of weeds, there is buckwheat out there! I was surprised to see it, since we’ve had some low temperatures- last night at 4:30am the thermometer outside the house said 34 degrees (and my phone backed that up, as it was the temperature that it showed in the morning). Supposedly buckwheat doesn’t like the cold. I barely made it out there tonight to turn the water on for a bit and check to see that there were no major new leaks.

I really want to get fava beans into the ground. I’d like to put some at the end of the Chandler strawberries. The raccoons have still been digging that area (and the garlic and onions) up like crazy. We have a bed that we’ve been saying would be favas, but it got really messed up by the tractor. Z thinks we should put the beans into the 4inch deep furrows and rake over them. That _might_ work, but would the beans be too deep?

I finished putting in that batch of strawberries!

October 28, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

Yay, 99ish strawberry crowns have been planted. The first half or so had Tyee spinach planted between them. As I went farther and farther down the row, the ground was less wet and had more grass mixed in, so I went slower and slower. The weeds are going to be crazy this winter! I wouldn’t be surprised if there is another crown out there, since T kept trying to give me one that looked humongous and then I never found one that big when I was planting. I sure do do it the labor-intensive way.

This picture was taken about 5 plants from the end.

the adorable T standing near me as I plant strawberries — Me, about some 80+ feet into the bed of strawberries, and T, rocking his rain boots

When I was out planting this morning, it was windy and cold and you could just smell the rain in the air. It was like being someplace else where it rains, not in Sonoma County (the first winter I lived here was an El Nin~o winter and it rained SO MUCH!).

After I finished planting tonight, I hoed next to the peas – just trying to get a few inches between the “path” and the drip tape. Unfortunately, if I go too close, I tend to cut the tape.

I’ve planted more than half of the Chandler strawberries!

October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a picture from before I got started on this evening’s planting session – I had done some this morning. Now I’m up to 55 or so strawberries, and a few more spinach seedlings than that. We’ll see how many of the spinach plants make it. T was pretty mad when Z took him into the house when the sun went down- he was enjoying helping me plant.

on the right, the bed where i am planting strawberries — strawberries on the right

I planted some strawberries!

October 25, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

Tonight I got to plant 19 Chandler strawberries and 18 spinach seedlings of a forgotten variety. I had 2 sixpacks of these seedlings, but since they were never thinned, there are a lot more than 12 plants. T was with me, which was ok at times, like when he was putting compost into planting holes, and not ok at other times, like when he was moving or stepping or sitting on stuff I’d already planted. Right now we have drip tape on roughly 30 feet, but that tape needs to be switched out when I reach the end of it (I started planting in the shorter row tonight after I finished the longer row).

Z mowed all of the rest of the cover crops except for one row. I was like, “we have to leave some habitat!” There are some questions about how that stuff is going to break down with winter around the corner. I guess that we could let the gophers work on it and then plant something in January (?).

Z and Tristan next to our row of sorghum sudangrass — Showing how tall some of the sorghum-sudangrass is

Z finished putting the pea trellis up tonight 🙂

We had visitors this morning, so we harvested a “greens” plant that the gophers had cut off from its roots and sent our friends home with some of the leaves! We have lost 3 plants in the last week or 10 days.

Last night I left the water on on the compost for an hour when I meant to leave it on for like 3 minutes. It was a disaster out there!
I hit my sprained hand, especially the most painful fingers, on the table when I was eating tonight. My pinky hurts so much! I hope it is ok.

Not enough garden time!

October 14, 2015October 14, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

I have not been getting much time out there at all. I did get a six-pack each of collard greens, dino kale, and um… cabbage? planted at the north end of the east bed of greens in the last few days.

This morning (Tuesday) I hoed an area for the sixpack of… broccoli? I hope it’s the broccoli so I have cabbage in one bed and broccoli in the other.

I did the math, sort of, on the spinach this morning and looked up a bit about companion planting. So the spinach would be ok with strawberries. I won’t have strawberries to plant for a few weeks, still. The bed won’t be prepared until this weekend at the earliest. I would love to do this by tractor (with the chisel plow followed by the landscape rake) myself while T is at school, but Z doesn’t want me to use the tractor when he’s not home. Sigh! Plus I might want to have a lot of time in which to experiment and not feel rushed, and I do not get much time in the mornings after I bury/rebury pea seedlings and greens seedlings.

Tonight I picked ~1.75 baskets of strawberries. They aren’t in terribly good shape – we are having a heat wave. There are too many plants, too close together, so the bugs have free reign. I was very excited to see grey kitty walk through the strawberry bed, about 12 feet from me, when I was finishing up my harvest. She is very pettable.

Tonight I pointed out an okra plant that I’d heard a gopher chewing on, and T stood there and watched and listened for signs of it tonight. On one of the last few nights, he was digging up pea seedlings and moving them to different places. Nooooo!

Pumpkin patch at school farm

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

Today we went to the annual pumpkin patch/fall open house at the farm at the junior college that I attended. It’s always interesting to see what changes and what stays the same. One student (I assume, he was in a shirt with the farm’s name on it, like all the volunteers and student workers), when I asked him who the current garden manager is, said that it was the farm manager. When I pressed further, he said that there were 4 or 5 students running it. Now I think that he misunderstood me, because another guy came up to the table and sent his tablemate on her break. So that was the “supervisor” and maybe the student didn’t understand all the crop planning and stuff that that person does.

It was amazing to see what’s different between that garden and ours. The garden looks so clean- nary a weed in site, except maybe in the pumpkins. They have raised beds – they have a bed shaper, iirc, and a lot of other implements. Their strawberries, at least the Seascapes, don’t have runners. Their San Andreas plants look newer and do have runners. They look like it’s the beginning of their season, but I would guess that it’s the end (#winteriscoming). Z thought that they didn’t have many berries per bed foot compared to us, but then again, people had been picking berries for over 3 hours by the time we went to that area (I found only 2 ripe strawberries. there were a lot of overripe ones in the San Andreas section). They use landscape fabric to cover the strawberry beds- we didn’t use anything to cover the ground (and the skunks or raccoons dug the hell out of my plants and I had to replant a dozen every day for several weeks). Sure, we had weeds, but there aren’t many now. I find that they tend to provide places for the pests to hide (that said, I keep having to pull out dried grass at the edges of the bed, because the runners keep spreading so far. sadly, pulling the grass tends to also pull out the little plants whose roots have been taking refuge in the shade provided by the grass). Their greens were planted closer together (but in the case of kale, at least, they harvest more often. I wonder about their cabbage plants that seem to be only a foot apart. Maybe they are trying to grow smaller, personal-size cabbages, which makes sense to me.

The farm doesn’t have any chickens right now. I was part of the group that got the farm’s first-ever laying hens. The mobile coop that we built sat empty, with its doors open so people could see inside. I hope they park it out of the weather so it will last longer. I kind of wonder if they will sell it if it doesn’t get occupied within a certain number of years…

There used to be a hedgerow that was filled with native plants. It was a bit overgrown my first year, and the garden manager cut it way back my second year (iirc it may have been hosting chicken predators). It hasn’t really grown back. There was a huge, tall pile of what was obviously a Sonoma Compost product (we will miss you, Sonoma Compost!). One of that company’s owners is an adjunct instructor and board member for the Sustainable Ag program, so I almost wonder if it was donated. Oh, I had an interesting conversation with a woman from a local environmental nonprofit about folks who are trying to start up smaller local composting operations. She said that our compost likely does not go to Marin County, but rather even farther away to Solano County (this will increase our garbage fees). I need something to grind up my big pieces of food and crop “waste” so I don’t have to have my stuff shipped that far.

There were several familiar student faces (Albert, Ken, the guy with the mutton chops), including someone who lived at the intentional community I lived at when I first moved here. Two of my former instructors were there, and I passed by the farm manager at one point. He didn’t seem to see me. I have so many questions for him- what thickness drip tape do they use, where does he get those connectors that he uses between the oval hose and the drip tape, what is the tape that they use to cover up some holes, etc…

One of the strangest things to me was that, prominently featured in the parking lot, was the Tiny House Club’s workspace. Apparently that club works out of the farm- they are actually milling their own lumber from wood from the forest that is on the farm property. Sonoma County seems to be a hub for the tiny house movement – in fact, several people were building or living in tiny houses at the intentional community I lived at. Tiny houses are seen as an important way to house young farmers. I have some “issues” with the idea. Here are some of them: 1. they are expensive. even with the wood coming for free, and the school providing tools, what about a bed? will it have its own kitchen and bathroom, as they usually do? all of those things, plus the electrical, cost money. 2. I suppose that people are correct to say that young folks tend to not have a lot of stuff, but I’ve observed that my friends who live tiny (and this was true for me when I lived in a bus for 4 months at the i.c.) tend to need additional storage. 3. Zoning. There is an Event about zoning for Tiny Houses in Sonoma County coming up, but really, as a rural landowner of acreage, I have to say that we’d be concerned about having to provide hookups to our septic system, water, and electric system (and the tiny house’s drain on those systems), and insurance – what if something happened to that tiny house dweller, or the tiny house, while that person was living on our property? Also, what kind of rent would one charge? 3. It can be really isolating and make one feel claustrophobic to be stuck in a small unit during, for instance, an El Niño winter (as I was) – in that case (or when one needs to do laundry), one will likely need access to the primary dwelling or some other space. I do think that this is a better way to do the Tiny House thing- in community with friends

We went on a tour of the forest – it was just a tiny section that used to take me 15 minutes to walk, while my whole hike took an hour to 75 minutes. I walked really fast then, too. I miss that forest SO much. It’s not open to the public, and it’s 30 minutes from our place with no traffic. I even visualize it sometimes to help me sleep! Our tired kid seemed to enjoy it, too, although his dad had to do a lot of hiking while holding him! They provided water and a pumpkin bread snack at the end. It was neat to hear students and what appeared to be the main instructor who uses the farm as his class laboratory talk about some aspects of managing the forest.

Back at home this evening, Z picked a basket of strawberries, T picked pieces of greens, and I hoed the empty part of the east greens bed so I can try to get those poor seedlings into the ground. The tall collards look very unhappy and need to get transplanted!!!

I mowed! And stuff

October 8, 2015October 8, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

I was only out in the garden for about an hour and 20 minutes while my kid was at school, but it was a productive morning. I reburied the peas and the greens (the ones I could rebury), pulled out the drip tape from the bed I was going to mow, moved the sprinklers from the strawberry/garlic area, and mowed some other spots. This evening I got out there and weeded a bit more, hoed a bit, and located a file that T had dropped (at one point he had lost 2 – in the garden!). I also picked 3/4 of a basket of strawberries, and a bunch of cherry tomatoes and some dried Scarlet Runner Beans.

(Click on an image to see a bigger version)

Area next to the eastmost greens after mowing and raking — Mowed Next to Greens

Mowed path next to the pea bed — I mowed the path to the east of the peas

Plant that was chewed off about 5 inches above the ground — Gopher damage?

Slow garden weekend

October 5, 2015October 5, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

On Saturday night, T and I planted some carrots and radishes. We’ll see if anything comes of that- there’s a chance that I’ll accidentally weed them out in the semi-darkness some evening. I harvested greens that night, which means that I also did some weeding.

On Sunday evening I picked about 1.75 baskets of strawberries, which was about 1.3 of the strawberry area. Ooh, tomorrow I can buy strawberry crowns. I also weeded the east side of the newer pea area, and… well, I bought like 6 six-packs of seedlings today (what is wrong with me?! well, I was thinking of maybe replacing the collards and kales that are bolting), so I looked around and tried to figure out where I can plant them. I think that rather than trying to tuck in 1 here and 3 there where other plants haven’t made it, I should use the empty bed to the left of the east bed of greens. It was prepared at the same time as the others, and I’ve kept up with the pigweed for the most part, but it is covered in bell beans and (mostly) grass. Like, it’s hard to find the drip tape. So I should move the drip tape aside and mow and then I guess hoe and put compost down before putting the drip tape back. I’ve been using just a metal file to sharpen my hoes, and I have to say that it is so ineffective! An angle grinder would be better, but I don’t have a good space for using power tools, and of course I don’t want super-sharp tools around the toddler.

When/if my sprained wrist gets all the way better (and why do I feel like when T bumped into me at one point this afternoon, I got some sort of knee injury like a hyperextension or something?) I have a lot of work to do out there- need to put compost out (I’d prefer to use the shovel and wagon, but this requires time, no kid, less pain, and no wind… but the benefit is: exercise, which I feel like I’m not getting out there these days), hoe out existing plants, get drip lines in, and plant garlic (bought seed for that, too – and can onion sets really work at this time of year?) and get ready for strawberries. Whew!

Oh, the slugs are getting bigger every day- some are over an inch long. I killed so many out there and there are so very many more. This is why I don’t want to try to grow lettuce – yet.

One-handed gardening

September 27, 2015September 27, 2015 ~ FarmingMum ~ Leave a comment

I thought I’d chipped a bone in a finger on Thursday night, but by Friday afternoon it became clear that my wrist got sprained when I recoiled from the thing that hit my finger (just a bruise, no break). I’ve had to take it a bit easier this weekend.

Last night I picked 2 baskets of strawberries, and I picked another this morning. I also did some weeding in the greens, as usual. Then, since I had some time to myself while T and Z were at the park, I organized my seeds a bit- I had 2 boxes that hadn’t been added to my seed storage. I picked out seeds I’d like to get planted asap (peas, carrot, radish).

This evening I planted 2 10-foot rows of shelling peas!!! T took the bucket from me, dumped out the peas, and put a bunch of dirt and gravel in so he could make “soup.” Took me about 2 hours to weed and plant those peas :/. Need to get better at using the seeder tool we have.

Z mowed the old cover crops, unleashing several clouds of dust as he ran over mounds of soil that had been left by the gophers. He also picked a bucket of ears of corn. The kernels ranged from still-whitish yellow to purplish. There is a ton of corn earworm damage! Half of many ears have been eaten. The corn will still be yummy, though!