Moving into summer - the garden's bounty

The busy of the growing season continues here on the farm.

The headline event for this week was our wonderful neighbor, Kyle Rohr, bringing his tractor and brushhog out to mow the farm.  Normally we would bale the hay, but his baler wasn't working and we didn't want to mess with finding someone else, so he agreed to just mow it instead.  The farm looks so much nicer with all the growth knocked back AND we can confirm to the county that we are continuing to follow our plan to prevent the lespedeza from multiplying. 


The garden has started to really produce now.  We dug all our potatoes this week - yukon gold, red pontiac and white nordland (I think) - and came away with about 100# of spuds.  It isn't our best harvest, but it also isn't our worst.  We only planted 3 beds this year (we've been planting 6) so not a bad showing all in all.  We're also harvesting blackberries, currants, goji berries and our first ripe peaches!  The peach tree we planted way back in 2012 is completely loaded with fruit this year.  It is also infested with moth larvae.  Its so disappointing to see such beautiful peaches and know that almost all of them have worms in them.  Then, tonight, I also saw June Bugs munching away in big clusters on the ripe fruit.  Sigh.  I did some research on the moths and I think next year I'll put up some sticky pheromone traps to see if I can limit their damage.  I'm also picking up all the dropped and caterpillar infested fruit to feed to the chickens.  If I can't enjoy the peaches, at least I can enjoy the eggs!  I've read about a molasses trap for june bugs but haven't tried it yet.  Maybe I'll give that a whirl this week.  Learning how to manage not just an organic orchard, but a no spray orchard is a priority for the next couple of years.

First squash, blackberries and a peach!

bed #1 potato harvest air curing

The same neighbor who mowed for us has a couple of piles of cow manure that we're steadily moving into the lower garden.  We picked up 2 trucks full yesterday and got one of those unloaded.  There were SOOOOOO MANY GRUBS!  I swear that every shovel had 2 or 3 grubs in it.  We collected all the ones we found as we unloaded and dumped them in with the chickens.  They were in heaven!  And, yes, between fruit, scraps and grubs our chickens are totally spoiled. 

scoop of manure being dumped into the truck

Chickens going to town on a pile of grubs

A host of other farm stuff got done this week too.  Beds were weeded and mulched, we got 2 loads of cardboard to continue doing sheet mulch in the garden aisles and we harvested SO MUCH SQUASH!  I picked a 5 gallon bucket full on Friday evening and we still had squash left from the last time I picked.  Everything we eat must have squash in it so that we can keep up.  Normally, we would be coming into ripe tomato season too and most of this squash bounty would find its way into vegetable soup that we enjoy all year long.  Our tomatoes are way behind though, so we just have the squash. 

 It was also time for our regular battery maintenance on Saturday morning.  We have to monitor the water levels in all the battery cells to keep them running at their best.  In the summer time we're finding that we need to monitor them every 2 or 3 weeks.  In the winter, it is less often.  We pull each of the white caps off and top off the 3 battery cells underneath with distilled water, then replace the cap and go on to the next cell.  The whole thing takes about 10 minutes.  This time, while we were working, a tiny toad hopped into the ratchet set!  He was too cute not to take a picture.

 Jacob topping off batteries

 A froggy friend visiting our work 

The most amazing thing for this week was that I got to spend all day Saturday on the farm.  There were no errands or functions or anything else to take me away.  It was a solid day of working in the garden, spending time with Jeremy and focusing on doing the work I love to do.  I need more of these days.  It is good for my soul and body to do real work that I can see, to connect with this piece of the earth and to connect with my family. 

Working on the Farm

Last night I went out to water all the plants and trees on the farm and to continue clearing out the fence line for our grapes.  There is progress all around!  The growing cleared area along the fence will soon house our established grape vines which will use the existing fence as a trellis for now.  We have more clearing to do before its completely ready to put down cardboard/paper and soil for the planting bed.  We’re thinking about planting sweet potatoes under the grapes as a living mulch also.  Most of the trees in the top field are leafing out and growing.  I trimmed a circle around each one so that we could find them more easily.  Eventually there will be a nice line of peach and mulberry trees along with some other thus far undetermined trees.  Enjoy the pictures!

Ripe Currants!  First fruits from the farm.

Our whopping 2 tomato plants are looking healthy

The "garden"

The grapes will go along this fence eventually

One of our baby peach trees in the upper field

A baby mulberry in the upper field is leafing out

The upper field.  You can just see the RV in the far corner

The middle field

Looking down from the middle field to the garden spot.  Gives a perspective on just how much more we have to do...

Looking to the right from the same spot as the last picture.  This is the north  half of the lower field.

Maybe Next Year...

This year feels like it is caught in stasis somewhere around March for me.  I realize that we are actually in May and that the plants think we’re in mid-June, but for me all the normal cues of spring and summer are missing.  I don’t have a garden this year. 

I normally mark early spring with hundreds of plant starts in the living room.  Every morning before work, I go in and turn on their lights and inspect each one to make sure it’s healthy.  I pull up little sprouts of crabgrass that have come in with our home made compost mix.  Usually it’s still cold outside and as I bundle up for work, I look at my seedlings and know that spring is coming.  Those tiny plants create a bubbling sense of overwhelming joy inside me every morning.  I face the cold with an eager smile knowing that winter is losing its grip and the warmer weather is coming.  Slowly the weather warms and more seedlings get started until I have a seed starting stand and a greenhouse full of plants waiting on the right time to go in the garden.  Then comes the busy season of planting – hours spent joyfully digging in the dirt, mulching and otherwise being outside in the spring.  By this time of year, I should be transplanting tomatoes and peppers, marveling at the growth of green peas, potatoes, cabbage and spring greens.  We should be enjoying our first meals mostly from the garden and thinking about what we want to can, freeze and dehydrate this year.  Then comes the annual marker of summer – creamed peas and new potatoes straight from the garden.  This meal more than any other says that the beginning of summer is here.  We’ve eaten it with the first green peas of the season every year since the garden started.

There’s more than just the work and fun of the garden that is missing though.  I would usually be working to organize the Lawrence Food Garden Tour (www.facebook.com/lawrencefoodgardentour).  This too starts in the cold weather of early spring with the first emails out to past participants.  This time of year, there would be a growing urgency to getting things organized – getting the brochure printed, the event posted, all the gardens lined up and ready to go. 

My conversations with friends take on a new flavor in the spring and summer too.  Our talks would be laced with “What have you been planting?”, “How are your plants growing?”, “Have anything new this year?”.  These conversations with others who are doing the same work but often doing it differently encourage us, give us new ideas, and help to bind these gardening relationships together.  It is like living a friendly experiment – these friends are trying this new method/variety/plant and we are trying these others.  We’ll check in over the season and see how it goes and then next year we can all use the best of what we have collectively found.  

Instead of these normal markers of spring and summer, we are moving.  I am not planting in my garden, I am digging it up and moving it 20 miles away.  Instead of starting seeds this spring, I removed wall paper and painted to get the house ready to sell.  There are no spring crops beyond the few lettuce plants that volunteered and some leeks that overwintered.  I didn’t start any seedlings this year (ok, I started a couple of tomatoes…couldn’t help it).  There was no seed stand in my living room at all.  Instead of a greenhouse full of tomatoes and peppers waiting for their chance in the garden, I have a greenhouse full of plants waiting for me to make a place for them on the farm.  There are no green peas or potatoes so our beginning of summer meal won’t happen this year.  There won’t be any canning for me this season.  Even if we planted summer vegetables, I don’t know that I will have anywhere to store food come winter.  I am not organizing the LFGT this year – Caryl Hale has generously taken it on and is doing a great job.  I miss it though.  I’m not having my usual talks with gardening friends.  As they share what is happening in their gardens, I can only respond with “Maybe I’ll try that next year.” 

It feels like I’ve lost a friend.  My senses are waiting for the seed stand to come back, for the little seeds to poke up out of the soil and show me that its spring even though it’s now firmly summer.  The fact that I had the first sweet cherry off of our sweet cherry tree hasn’t even convinced my subconscious that it is in fact summer (neither did the awesome sunburn I got this weekend while moving dirt to the farm).  The rhythm of the year is just off for me. 

It’s not all bad.  I’m sure that I will write about all the excitement of building a new place, the plans for the garden-to-be and all the many things that we are doing to create our future place.  Not to mention the plans for next year’s garden.  But right now, in this moment, with the rain coming down and the urge to plant burning up inside me, the excitement is buried in melancholy.  I want my garden back.  Summer just isn’t supposed to come without the seeds, the plants and the creamed peas and potatoes.  But it has.  Summer is here and my garden is not.  I suppose my only consolation is the perennial garden refrain “Maybe next year.”  Maybe next year the garden will be back better than ever.  Maybe next year the seeds will be back on the starting stand, the plants will be waiting for the garden and we’ll have our creamed peas and potatoes.  I hope so.