March 29, 2019 It's a Wonder Anything Gets Done

It was a very nice week at our Creekside Farm, at the very bottom of the Apple Valley. Much got started, much more to do, and it is entirely possible that none of it will ever come to a close. Farming, as it turns out, isn't a linear process where most projects have a scheduled start and definitive ends, but it seems like it ought to be. But no matter  . . . I'm not complaining.

The Front Fence as it was.

We spent much of the week continuing to clear the front fence of all the loose vegetation and feral trees. We are after a clean fence line. As of today we have, for the first time, nearly fifty feet of absolutely clean fence. Only thirteen hundred feet to go.

The clearing started in the Spring of 2015. We had to clear a solid ten feet of berries, wild cucumbers, grasses, bamboo, and feral plum tress from the outside of the fence, much more had to be cleared from the inside. This is an up-hill job, even on level ground, because as we would cut, burn, or haul stuff, every plant struggled to re-impose itself. The wild fruit trees along the front had planted themselves over the years were in pretty sad shape. Some had overgrow power lines and a few had grown through the chain link fence. All have to come out to let the sun through to the gardens, so I started cutting them down last week. But all of this clearing is making the Farm look less interesting. All according to the plan. This newly "blank" canvas is where we will begin intentionally adding interest.

The Chicken Run is located at the front, western, corner.

We will be putting up a Tibetan prayer flag pavilion over the chicken run in the next few weeks. Without some color, a chicken run looks just like a bare patch of dirt, so adding the flags will bring color and movement to the front facing appearance of the Farm, attract the eyes of people driving by,  and keep the local hawks off our hens. Making the Farm colorful in late winter is a bit of a challenge.

Making the Farm colorful in late Spring won't be difficult. There are hundreds of flowering plants ready to be planted sitting in the greenhouse. We also have about twenty thousand square feet of wildflower and cover-crop seeds we can put on any unused land to liven things up.  Most of the plantings are produce to be sold starting sometime in May, but quite a few will stick around until they fade out in Fall. By mid-May the Farm will be covered in color.

Wild-flowers and cover crops  will be a pretty mess.
Only slightly better than the unplanned mess we once had.

The wonderful weather we've been having make it seem like the garden are dragging a bit, but planting in the Market Garden continued on schedule with a few hundred yellow and white onion sets going into the rows we finished a few weeks ago. We found our red onion sets this afternoon, so we'll put them in next week. The potatoes are mostly in the ground. Kennebecs, Pontiacs, and German Butterballs, just as last year crop, which we ate all winter and there we plenty of seed potatoes left for planting. I ordered some Purple Vikings to add to the mix this year, but they are a bit late and will have to be planted next week. All the rest will be planted in the next few weeks and the stuff going in as seed will wait until the end of April. Until then we will put plastic down on the rows and encourage the weeds to sprout so that we can burn them down prior to planting.

Spring comes a bit late to the bottom of the Apple Valley. The hills are high and set close together, so the Winter Sun comes late in the morning. But things are growing and the Farm is getting better every day. Our soil seems wonderful and the rains has come every other night, at around mid-night, to get things growing.