Weather is the major hold-up for house building. We have all of the wood, and have ordered the roof trusses (coming on Tuesday), but what we need is some predictably dry weather to put the whole thing up. Until then, maybe three weeks away, we are working the Gardens and anticipating our food production this year.
The Corona Virus has us thinking that our gardens might just be very important to us and to those around us for bringing food to the table. Field workers that usually produce our vegetables may be a bit hard to find this year in California and other big productions states. I encourage everyone to get ready to grow some food. The Corona Virus has us all locked down and the self imposed quarantine looks like it might work. Hopefully our world will return to work this Summer, but it looks like things will be pretty hard on people for the next four months or so. I spent some time writing three articles about growing food at home in hopes that people will understand the serious problem we will all have with fresh food supplies for the next year as the Virus shakes out.
This will be our third growing season. So far we haven't done very well at farming but have learned a great deal and have some new plans to follow. This year we have brought about twenty-five yards of horse manure compost to the Farm to till into the soils. Since many of the rows we have cultivated are already pretty rich we should do much better this year than last. We have also bought fifty cubic feet of coco noir and peat mix to till into tomatoes and peppers, which like an acidic soil. On top of this we are bringing in sixty cubic feet of perlite to make some new carrot beds with exceptionally light soils made by combining compost with coco noir, peat, and a whole lot of perlite. The new carrot bed will be dug one foot into the clay, and have a one foot high raised bed, so the soils will eventually become two feet deep. We will put down screen mesh at the bottom of this new bed to keep the gophers and rats out, and some rabbit proof screen covers to secure the top.
We haven't seen nearly as many squirrels and rabbits as last year, and the rats are keeping themselves well hidden. But we are prepared for the eventual rodent wars this year. Our little rifle is loaded and our hounds have already caught one rabbit. We haven't seen many gophers this year either, but there are still a few around and we have a plan to remove them once we figure out where they will pop up.
All of the fences we planned to move six weeks ago are in their new places. We have restricted dog movement to the central third of the Farm to give the plants a better chance.The Kitchen Garden layout is in place and is mulched in very well, but the Kirchen Garden won't be planted this year. Since we have deeply tilled most of the dirt for three years the weed seed load ought to be starting to slack off , so this year we will only till about the top inch in hopes of not needing to do so much weeding.
We spent a few days getting the weeds under control in the Strawberry patch last week . Last year I was tilling and mulching the rows when the tree hit me and the patch sort of went ferrel This year we are starting cultivation much earlier and the plants are well established. We ought to get a good crop this season. But the work is hard in late Winter and we are out of shape, so far we have tilled between all of the rows, are carefully removing the weeds in the rows themselves. and mulching everything heavily. The Strawberry Tower we put up last year is weeded out and mulched for the season, so hopefully we'll finally see if the tower idea works . May looks good for picking Strawberries.
Staying home is our primary occupation, so the Corona Virus doesn't change much for us. But if you find yourself needing some time out of the house you are welcome to come and put your hands in the dirt, or pet some dogs. We do social distancing very well here, and we both had the virus in January, so it is pretty safe here and you are all welcome.
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