Wed. 1/21, a hard day

Today is over.  We get to breathe just a little.  Everything went really well.  All our clients were fed and happy.  Too bad Murphy wrote a law, and we got 7 more days of catering left.

It hasn’t really rained in a while.  It has been a little cold, but the afternoon temperatures are almost always in the 40s.  Everything is staying damp but not so wet.  The soil is not nearly as saturated as last year.  It sure has not rained since we put that rain gauge up.  We took this opportunity to play in the dirt, and more or less cleaned up the entire field in anticipation of this season.  But it totally needs to rain.

Here is an iphone capturing how clean our fields are.

Goats eat christmas trees.  Goats will eat anything.

Jeremy and Ashley planted 4 X 120 bed of strawberries!

Sunday 1/18

The rhubarb is in the ground. It is in the ground.  Hoooray!!  The crowns that we got were huge, and hopefully they will produce equally large rhubarb plants.  After much thought we (I, Chad)  decided on putting them in a 120 ft row.  The rhubarb is spaced at about 4 ft apart in a linear row.  All around the rhubarb along the 4 ft wide bed, we are going to plant strawberries.  It is going to be pie aka church aka kosher.

Hopefully, tomorrow we are going to get some strawberry runners from Lori Campell.  We also have to thin out our strawberry patches as well.

Planting the rhubarb was the first time we got to play in the soil this year.  Last year before we started this shenanigan of a farm, we added a total of 60 cu ft of compost to our fields.  After decomposing most of year, the soil looks black, and healthy.  There are lots of organisms running around in the soil.  It is also light and fluffy.  Healthy soil is the key to healthy plants, and it is going to be good year.

Now, for coming years we have to maintain the integrity of our soil by continually adding compost, manure, green manure, and mulch to the soil in our version of what may be called no-till agriculture and lasagna planting.  And tending to the soil, and soil life all ties back to sustainablity.  Actually, sustainability of the soil, land, and earth just might as well be the keystone of organic farming