Last weekend was the final weekend of KPI's first PDC at Heartland Farm in Pawnee Rock, KS. The drive out early Friday morning was beautiful and peaceful. I enjoyed several podcasts on the way.
Every group of students that comes through the PDC touches my heart in a new way. This group was special in so many ways, each and every one. Their design presentations and work on their designs was a great way to wrap up the course and I hope they are all as proud of what they have learned as I am.
We have been trying to wrap up some projects that have been lingering since last year. The biggest of them is finishing the revamp of the garden area. We put sides and mulched paths in about half of the garden last year and the result was well worth the effort. We found that by burying wood in a trench alongside each bed and then putting deep wood mulch in the aisles, we watered significantly less last season than we would have normally. To try and capture those benefits in the rest of the garden, Jeremy and Jacob spent a couple of days building bed sides for the remaining garden beds. Now we need to finish shaping the beds into their new forms and then get the aisles mulched. To that end, we had another load of wood chips dropped close to the garden.
Speaking of the garden! The green peas are ready and oh so delicious! We rarely grow very many of these because of the time required to shell them, but they are a real treat when they're in season. Hopefully, we will have our summer meal of creamed peas and new potatoes this week sometime. That seasonal meal signals the end of spring and the beginning of the summer garden bounty for us.
For only the second time in our gardening lives, we have a great crop of onions coming on! Normally, we have very small bulbs but this year they look amazing. We think the difference is using manure to amend the bed prior to planting. Typically we use compost but going forward we will try to put manure in the root crop beds and see if that makes a difference. These aren't quite ready to pull and put up, but they're getting really close.
Another first, the orphaned grape plant in the garden has grapes set on! Its hard to see in the picture, but there are several bunches of grapes growing on this vine. While we aren't completely sure of the variety, we're pretty sure its a wine grape. That will mean seeds, but that's not the end of the world. I hope to have time to do some work in the main vineyard this year to see if we can revive some more of the survivors there.
In an effort both to help the fruit trees develop and to smother out the lespedeza that is endemic to the top field, we are prepping for sheet mulch in both fruit tree areas. This week Jacob mowed the pasture around our top field fruit trees. Soon, we'll get cardboard and have another load of mulch dropped off to start sheet mulching under these trees. That should rapidly convert the soil's structure to be more fungal which will support the health of these trees. It will also let us inter-plant some more food plants with them like blackberries, raspberries and currants. This space can't be cut for hay anyway due to not enough room between the trees and the property line, so a food forest planting is a much more productive use of the space than its current form.
Speaking of fruit trees in the top field, the 2 plum trees finally made plums! These first ones are ripening early due to worms in them, but its still nice to see ripe fruit from the trees we planted back in 2015. There are more on the tree that aren't showing signs of worms, so we're looking forward to some plum snacks soon. The black ice plum in the lower orchard is absolutely loaded with fruit too! It is an older and larger tree than the 2 that produced these. We also have many plums set on both the Arkansas plum we grew from pits and the sandhill plums along our front swale. I'm hopeful that we'll have enough to make plum jelly and syrup this year. Plum jelly is a family favorite - sweet and tart and rich - and we haven't had the fruit to make it for several years. Hopefully 2019 will be the year!
Plant sales are a weakness. An advertised sale on chestnut tree seedlings led to 24 little trees getting planted into a garden bed for this year. Aren't they cute?! There are 3 each of 5 named varieties and then 9 chinese chestnut trees. After these little guys get a year to put on some more size, they'll be moved into their final place on the farm. Hopefully by then I'll know what that final place is...
The water garden continues to evolve as well. We've added a floating lilly, some more fish and a floating fern to the ecosystem there. It is wonderfully serene to sit and listen to the water, watch the fish swim and see the flowers around it bloom. This lily is particularly beautiful right now.
The early summer is always a magical time on the farm. The vegetables are growing - the spring crops are bearing and coming out, the summer crops are really getting their legs under them, the fruit is swelling on the trees and it isn't unbearably hot yet. As we continue building the farm this season, there is so much to enjoy and be grateful for.
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