May 28th, 2022 Spring Finally Arrives

 About two weeks ago the rains of Winter finally stopped, ending one of longest wet spells the Pacific Northwest has seen in many years. Our last truly dry day was in September of last year. Prior to that day, the days of endless rains began, we had the hottest Summer on record. The Summer included about four days of one-hundred-fifteen degrees. Another new record. While the Winter rains ended, the Spring rains arrived a few days later.  The difference between Winter and Spring rains is easy to tell if you know what to look for. Winter rains are cold and sharp when they hit your skin. Spring rains come through warm air and is usually a smaller drop which is softer on the skin. You get wet either way, but Spring rains are wonderful. The difference in the rain gave us good reason to begin preparing the farm for planting. The Spring rains are usually spaced apart too, giving us a few days of sunshine in between rainy days and allowing the ground to dry out a bit. Dry ground is what we need to begin planting. 

This is the new Strawberry
and Potato beds.

In the past few years we began preparing the Farm for planting in mid-April, so we're getting started pretty late in the year. Previous year's preparation were about physically breaking up the rain damaged soil on the surface of our planting beds and bringing in loads of horse manure. The horse manure is usually composted and ready by late April so we add it to the beds and till it in while dragging a row making tool behind our tractor. The result has been an increasing amount of good soil. But building up good soils has been a one step forward, one step back sort of thing and we decided to try another method. I wrote a long article about how we planned to change our Farm practices last October. You can read it by clicking here if you'd like. But here are the highlights.

No till gardening uses massive amounts of garden debris laid out in a thick layer over the native soils and left to rot. Worms come up and eat the debris, converting it into worm tailings which garden microbes digest leaving nearly pure nutrient rich soil for plants to grown in. Besides this great soil the leaves break down, leaving the veins and twigs behind to form a "matrix" which breaks down more slowly, leaving water channels which carry water deep into the dirt. 

A finished no till bed.
This is cucumber and squash.

Last fall we had about four hundred yards of leaf debris brought in by gardening companies to get us started. We also began tearing into our gigantic compost piles and sorting this out too. The whole process takes a lot of time and effort, but we really needed to get going on the new plan. 

We decided to help Nature along a bit by tilling in the well broken down debris on the beds, laying out the final rows where they would be for the coming years, and then covering the new rows with another thick layer of leaf compost. 

The whole system works to contain weed seeds and allow any weeds that do sprout to be pulled from the soft soils without much effort. The vermiculture eats the leaf debris which feeds the fungus, but other animals enter to the soil to eat the worms and these also eat the larvae of harmful insects too. All in all it sounds like a good deal. Time will tell if this works, but we are committed to it at this point.  So far we have about a third of our planting done. But there's much more happening here.

This is one of Bit O'Honey's
pups with her new bigger brother.

We birthed three litters of puppies in late March and have been delivering them to their new families for the past few weeks. Right now we have only one puppy left and she will go to Washington next weekend. This will allow us to put the Pantry back together and finish one or two more Farmhouse projects that have been on hold for space, time, and money. The puppies provide the cash, their leaving provides the space and time. 

The Farmhouse build is still moving, albeit slowly. We have been working on smaller projects as time permits. A few weeks ago I finished the closet shelving. The pandemic caused supply disruptions, especially in building materials, so buying the twelve foot long cheap shelf boards became impossible and I had to get creative. We found some forty inch long pine shelving on Craig's List and stitched it together into lengths long and strong enough. This is the sort of little project that we have been doing since finishing the Porch roof framing a few weeks ago. Last week I wrapped the water heater and earthquake strapped it to the wall . . . we have a long list of little stuff. The only major thing to do is painting the exterior of the house and we've been waiting for weather for months. I'll begin painting this coming week.  We are also approaching the point where we can begin the porch floor concrete and parameter drain. It's all about time and money. 

One of our tree and debris projects is a
mushroom patch. This is a permaculture
project involving tree trunks and leaf compost.
The trees will rot under the compost and give us
some good ground for mushrooms in the future.

Aside from these things we have begun taking down the large and dangerous trees that were always slated for removal. The fruit trees along the front fence have to be  removed, but these are small and relatively easy to take down. We cut them up and burn the debris, but the bigger trees are a problem to solve. Some of the pines, though healthy, are eighty to one-hundred feet tall and either near the power lines, the fence, or some other thing we don't need to drop a tree on. We have four more pine trees to cut down but it might be we have to wait until next Spring for these. The bigger tree cutting project is two  hardwood trees nearby the Farmhouse. These are diseased and rooting out so simply sawing through them does not guarantee they will fall in the right direction. We'll have to take these bad trees down in stages; the top and side branches first until all that is left is the main trunk. Then we can cut the trunk down without worrying that it will damage the house. This is going to take some time, but we've been wanting to get these things done for five years.

I have been a bit slow in writing all of this stuff down. So much is going on and it all seems pretty small. But when it finally does hit the page it seems much more is being done than there is time to write. Certainly more than there is time to read. 

May 14th, 2022 Spring is Late

 It has been cold and wet nearly every day since the start of Winter, maybe earlier. What this usually means is that we are in a La Nina year, cold and wet right up until the start of Summer, then hot, but a bit cooler than the Summer's have given us lately. 

The Summer will be good for growing things, the Spring . . . not so much.  But we have much to keep us busy.  So much so that I haven't had time to write about things, so here's what we have been up to.

We had three litters of puppies in March. None of these were well planned and all together there were thirteen pups. We had a lot of fun, but didn't get much sleep from late February until just about a week ago. We found places for everyone to go and still have two of them here with us. They will go to their new homes at the end of May. The money these pups brought in will allow our projects to go forward and bills to be paid through the Summer. We also have some boarding and egg money coming in so things are farily comfortable right now. Hopefully we'll get a crop to sell this year to carry us further. 

Having puppies in the house put a hold on some of our short termed projects and took time away from others. But the rains were the main reason why our planting schedule is behind by six weeks. We began planting seeds in the Greenhouse, but the sun just hasn't been there for us. To keep from getting further behind we bought a hundred large plant pre-started to put into the ground around the first of June. Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cucumbers are keeping warm in the Greenhouse until it is time to plant them. We will continue to plant seeds in pots, but have already planted Strawberries, Potatoes, and Onions since they can take the inclimate weather. This is the first year for our new "no till" gardening  plan.

No Till, for us, is something of a hybrid system. We took in a few hundred yards of hardwood leaf debris in Fall last year and this stuff mostly was piled up to make compost. We put about one hundred yards out directly onto the ground to sit through Winter and protect the soils we already had, and this debris was largely taken down into the soil by worms so it really improved the soil composition. We are laying about six inches of newly made composted leaves on top of the soils and then tilling it in a bit to distribute the materials better. Following planting we will put another two inches on top of all this to protect the soils and keep water loss down.  Once we build the new rows and plant them we will no long be able to walk on our rows, but we also won't need to till the soils to get ready to plant every year. So we're being very careful in laying out our rows this year and hope to no long make changes to the gardens going forward.  Other than this, we also have been working on fences, paths, and made our driveway large enough to park cars inside of the fence. At some point in Summer I will build our permanent produce stand. The rains have made working outside a hit and miss thing, but we are getting things done. 

Living in our new Farmhouse is delightful. We've been doing small and large projects a few days a week while preparing the Farm for planting when weather allowed it. I had to re-charge our water softener, the resin medium that clears the iron from the water had finally broken down so it wasn't doing enough. We have sediment filters wherever drinking water enters house plumbing so we were able to get by for a while until I could replace the  resin. Since this was the first time I had ever done this I was a bit nervous about it, but in the end the job was pretty easy. It's nice to have fully softened water back in the pipes.

In early Summer I will begin painting the Farmhouse, weather permitting. Once we paint I can begin putting the final roofing on the Porch, but this is not something that needs done prior to the final inspection so it will wait a bit longer. There are still a few large projects remaining before getting our final inspection scheduled in August. I began backfilling the area under cover of the newly built porch roof. Once this dirt is settled we can begin pouring the concrete rim of the porch and build the perimeter drain around the outside of the Porch to carry away excess water, the last big project needed to get our final inspection done.

All in all it must be said that things are going along pretty well despite the rains. We're looking forward to the Summer and hoping for the best while wishing people less fortunate than we are the same.