August 29th, 2020 The Dog Days of Summer

Despite the heat, Summer is beginning to come to its inevitable end. Harvest season is upon us, not that we grew so much or didn't harvest things all along. 

Not much has happened here in the past few weeks that didn't happen before. So I won't bore the world repeating the mundane. Instead I took some pictures . . .

We have three people who took up the challenge of coming here to grow some food. Their gardens are growing like crazy. The above image is of Beth's Monster Tomatoes. She planted five different types of tomatoes from starts and the combination of good soil and sunshine has turned them into a huge harvest. 

Below is C.B. and Ellen's pepper plants. They used their plot just to grow hot peppers and last week took home about half of a paper shopping bag full of Jalapenos, Serranos, and others. They brought starts from the store and the soils did the rest, but they hadn't done much up until a week or so back.. What was lacking was heat. We had plenty of heat and they now have plenty of peppers.

Beth also planted two squash plants and they have been producing well for about a month. The above picture is her yellow Summer Squash and below is her Zucchini. 

Christina took a different path in her garden plot. She planted nothing but seeds and the explosion of growth has us jealous (pictured both above and below). She planted an eclectic bunch of vegetables and flowers all mixed together. This is the aesthetic sense we admire most. . .  A green mess full of food and color.

Last year we had a tree fall. This year we got rid of the very last reminder of it. We have begun clearing the land behind the Farm and so far we have about an eight foot path back there. The huge tree stump that remained from the tree fall went into the creek. When we repair the fence we hope to move it to the edge of the creek's high bank. At places the bank is as much as thirty-five feet behind the fence so we will gain a lot of space by moving the fence back.

Below are Ann's Romaine Lettuces. She also grows Butter Crunch Lettuces too.  We keep the lettuce under row covers to keep the squirrels from eating it all. So much so that we have taken a lot of lettuces down to the food bank.

While we were waiting for a building inspection I took the day to clear part of the old gravel parking pad out of one of the few problem areas in the Kitchen Garden. I took out about twenty yards of gravel, leaving a really dusty area behind. We are watering this area down to settle the dust and eventually we'll have all of our mulch delivered to this spot. This morning I had a very decorative water sprinkler turned on and it attracted our Runner Ducks.

Below is a gourd that Christine planted in her garden plot.

Above is another image of Christine's garden plot. It is a riot of growing stuff.

When we built our compost heap last fall I put some rotting pumpkin carcasses in with the weeds and stalks. So, naturally, when we spread the mulch we distributed a bunch of seeds. And now we have twenty or so pumpkins ripening in the Kitchen Garden, all of them doing well, none of them planned.

So far our corn hasn't done very well. But the Runner Ducks love hanging out in the corn on the hot days. And the California Poppies are really happy.

Ann's Sunflowers are a favorite of the local Canaries and Finches. She planted five kinds of Sunflower and all are doing very well. So are the two raised beds of succulents and annual flowers we put in last Spring. Two of the remaining Apricot (Asian) Plum trees we kept are at the corners of these two raised beds gardens. They are also taking shape well and should fruit next Summer.

The Peaches and Herbs Garden is doing okay. Some plants are better than others, but this is the first year of perennial and self seeding herbs, so next year will be much better. Our well has a large volume of iron in it. We filter the iron from the water we drink, but don't filter the water we use to water plants. So the  white patio furniture in the gardens, and anything else we have out there, slowly take on a lovely golden red color. The color doesn't come off on clothing or hands so we sort of like the Creekside Gold color we get over time. 

The Farmhouse build is going very well. We are putting a double layer of roofing felt on before putting the final roof covering down. This is all very high and steep work, but were getting it done prior to the rains returning next month. After stapling a layer of paper down we overlay it with another and then nail it down using washer nails. We then add a row of 2x3 boards to ease climbing and working on such a steep roof. We hope to have the roof "dried in" in a week or so. 

August 15, 2020 A Month Later

 Time flies. I looked up and a month's time had gone by without an update for this journal. Not at all too disciplined, but things happen, and don't, that get in the way. The lack of  and update didn't mean that nothing got done.

The Farm is growing. Ann and our three tenant farmers have been very busy. The plots of MacGreggor's Market Garden we have allowed people to grow are doing very well. This is the third year of tilling for MacGreggor's Market Garden. It is small, but we have tilled in quite a bit of compost and so it holds water a bit better than the native soils. The weed seed bank has finally begun to burn itself out so weeds are not as big of a problem in this one particular patch of dirt. Building a vegetable farm from unimproved dirt takes time. We are tilling in tons of compost every year and planting quite a bit. The worms and fungus then have the stuff they need to do the work of permanently improve the dirt and make soil. We are trying to grow eighteen inches of soil depth but at present we're only about half way there. But the lack of depth allows some things to grow pretty well without a lot of watering and weeding.

• One couple who has adopted a plot of land to farm put in nothing but peppers grown from starts they had purchased. The peppers haven't really done well so far this year, but there is a lot of season left. 
• One of our perennial helpers, Beth, took a plot of land and her stuff is doing fantastically. Her Zucchini and tomatoes are huge and producing a huge crop. She has even got some sweet Ground Cherries ripening out there. 
• A local woman and her daughter took a plot and planted nothing but seeds. These have exploded in growth, she even has carrots up and growing. Her sunflowers haven't bloomed yet, but everything else looks very good.
• Our own plantings in this Garden had been pretty slow to grow, but we have been eating our own lettuces for about a month now and we'll be having beans and peppers pretty soon. We also put in quite a lot of peppers, grown from seed, and they are doing okay. But none of the peppers have produced much. 

In the Kitchen Garden we have begun harvesting potatoes and onions. So far there is about five bushels of various potatoes, not as much as expected. Since these rows are in very new dirt we are pretty happy for the harvest, but our plans to donate the excess to the food bank isn't going to be as large as we thought. We are realizing a large number of seed potatoes for next year's planting and the soil ought to be much better then. The Strawberries aren't as "ever-bearing" as we thought they would be. The Strawberry Patch is largely weed free now and the plants all doing pretty well, but there is only enough fruit coming for our own eating. The Peaches and Herbs Garden is doing wonderfully. Our Chives and Thyme is doing very well, enough so that our Runner Ducks are eating only enough to keep the beds tidy. Basil hasn't done real well but the soils are all new. Sapedeh (our Peach tree named for the person who gave it to us) is growing like a wild weed right now and I will have to prune it hard once the weather turns cold and restore its shape. And a few of the Asian plums we have allowed to continue are also doing very well, even though they were pruned to harshly to bear fruit this year. It takes a few years to grow a tree taller, or smaller, but we expect these tress to produce next year. Our corn, pumpkins, and sunflowers are all doing very well in the Kitchen Garden. We have many pumpkins ripening and the whole Garden is very colorful. 

From Sell Road the Farm looks like a Farm should. . . Tons of plants and animals everywhere. The Ducks are happy in their Garden of Ducky Delights. We re-homed the two Khaki Campbells because they turned out to be drakes. And we re-homed ten of our older hens as twenty of our new hens are now ready to join the flock. Ann is working very hard out there, but my time is spent building the new Farmhouse.

All of the Gable ends were 
finally built by last week. 

The big news on the Farmhouse is that the roof is nearly finished. This has been a long haul and our son Jack has been a huge help in putting the thousands of part together. Each of these parts is small when taken on its own, but all of them are considerably high off of the ground. We have safety equipment which is tied to the top of the roof, but this doesn't make the job of going up there any easier. This past week we built all of the interior structure and bracing in, making the roof very stiff, but there are some touch-up projects to do before we can have the thing inspected. 

In a week or so we will have our house framing and roof inspected and then we can begin to put on roof felt on to keep the rains out from above. We ordered the windows a few weeks ago, and already have the doors, siding, and vapor barriers needed to make the place waterproof on the sides. It looks like we will beat the rains and have the place ready to begin finishing the interior. This will all take time, but the house looks a lot like a house ought to.

All in all this post isn't very long despite all that is happening here. The heat has arrived, things are growing, and the house is at its full height and looking good. But there is so much more to do. So we'll just keep pecking away at it all in hopes that our dreams will finally be realized.