May 12th, 2024 Hurrying Up So That We Can Wait.

 

Our two rows from
last year as of today.

We've been pretty busy here on the Farm. Working the planting plan, sprouting seeds, and putting what plants we can into the ground. But the Springtime weather is a bit too wet and a lot to cool to make a while lot of headway in growing things. Still and all we are getting some things going while we wait for the Summer.

Our two rows when
we started this year.

Right now there are many hundreds of plants either in the Greenhouse or on benches nearby. Every type of seed. We have quite a few varieties of Peppers, tomatoes, corn, beans, peas, and most other garden veggies that come in seed packets. There were enough plants this year that we had to come up with some way of keeping track of them. Managing what we have, what we will need, and where they are in the growing cycle takes a lot of time. In the past years we tried jotting things down on paper, but this got confusing and really didn't tell us too much unless we spent hours compiling the numbers for analysis. Then we started journaling things using Google's Calendar, and this was a bit better because the numbers would show up on a wider variety of computer screens and fit in our pockets. The calendar almost made it work, but again we had to pull the information off of the computer and put it into a spreadsheet to make sense of it. Last year we moved everything over to a Farm BLOG, something like what you are reading right now, but without all the great writing. But in the end we raand into the same problem, pulling out data and then trying to analyze it.  All of these things had one central theme, journal what you did today. 

So this year we are trying to do something simpler. We came up with a string of numbers for each type of seed and are journaling each type on a separate page. The form is simple and handles one thing well: planting seeds in dirt. This is the form:

z-x/y-1:2-3:4 ______________________

• z is the seed name. Usually we are planting more than one type of seed of the same kind. Like two varieties of watermelon or three varieties of lettuce. So we give each a separate letter for each variety at the top of each page. 
• x/y is the date of the entry. The x is the month, y the day. 
• 1:2 are greenhouse numbers where 1 is the number of seeds we have showing leaves and 2 is the number of seeds we have planted in the Greenhouse. (So if we have planted eighty seeds in trays or otherwise and eighteen of them have shown up bearing leaves the thing looks like this 18:80.) 
• 3:4 are the plants in the dirt out in the garden where 3 is the number of plants growing in the garden, 4 is the number of plants we need growing in the garden. (So 5:24 mans we need 24 but have 5)

Since we get around to looking at trays of seeds as we need to, the new numbering system keeps track of what we have, what we need, and where we are in the process. This cuts way down on  journaling what is actually going on.  There's room at the end for notes. Like fertilizing, or if we run into something out of the ordinary.  A typical record changed to look like this for watermelons:

 Sb- sugar baby - 48

W - watermelon - 48

W-4/11-0:44-0;48 greenhouse

Sb-4/11:0:36-0:48

W-4/23-37:44-0:48 sprouting 11

Sb-4/23-25:36-0:48 sprouting 50

W-4/26-39:52-0:48

Sb-4/26-24:24-0:48

Sb-4/29-21:66-0:48

W-4/29-57:74-0:48

Sb-5/1-31:96-0:48 

W-5/1-44:52-0:4

So we can tell just from looking that we have ten sugar baby watermelon sprouts out of thirty we have planted in pots, there aren't any out in the garden yet, but we plan for forty-eight eventually. If there's something that doesn't make sense we can find out what just by counting the plants and looking at the trays.  Eventually we might develop something that tracks the harvest, but we decided to keep it simple for the time being. In the current format we can see how long it took to sprout the seeds, then how long it too to get them planted in the ground. And since we track plants separately we've got nothing to sort out later. we're hopeful this will work, but journaling is a big part of getting things going in the right direction.  

Other than this I am spending a lot of time preparing rows for planting. Each row must be weeded out because we don't weed them in Winter. We don't weed them because in our no-till system the roots of weeds is part of the natural cycles which add soil organic matter below the surface. Weeds can help protect the soil from ice and rain damage too. After clearing things off the surface, I use out broadforking tool to make sure the soil isn't compacted. Since we don't till the dirt and don't walk around on it either there's little chance the soil is going to be compacted, but we check anyway. Then I sift out a load of leaf mold compost and spread it onto the beds. This compost will feed the soil, the worms, and the microbes that make nutrients available to the plants. In the end we have a nice light and well drained soil that holds water and plants well. Planting is a cinch and the plants have plenty of room to grow. 

Eventually, once we have plants in the dirt, I will put the irrigation system together and make sure things get water in Summer. For now the water in the ground that comes to the surface from below is plenty enough, and it rains all the time anyway, but once the plants start fruiting we need to keep the leaves dry as best we can. 

As it turns out, farming is hard work. But it gets a bit easier every year as we learn how to do things better. Right now we're doing the hurry up and waiting thing. We go out each morning and get all that we can do done until we tire out. Eventually we will be forced to wait until stuff starts ripening and then we'll have to market everything the best we can. 

It takes a marketing plan to sell produce, this is certain, but until the crops become reliable putting anythiing more scientific to the plan makes little sense. But we will get there.

December 1st, 2023 Pest Report

 

Last January I wrote a long(ish) article about our intended strategy for keeping bugs out of our gardens. (You can read about it here.)  And through the Spring and Summer we got the bulk of the tactical plans that came of these thoughts implemented. This article is merely a recap of what happened and can be skipped by most people as trivial.

Our Lettuce Row Covers
kept the rodents away.

Our rodent population this past year was small. Our main concern, after putting in rows of barrier plants and using those few idea we had laying around to keep them off the plants, became moles and voles. These didn't really do much damage to the crops, but appears in every row as a small hole near the end of each row and some few places where the wee beasties had to come up for air. Our no-till growing strategy meant there was deep enough soft ground that these two sorts of animals were able to keep their tunnels much deeper in the dirt. Moles eat worms, of which there were plenty of Compost Worms (Red Wrigglers) above the level of the soil, and Earth Worms (mostly black worms) under the compost layer in the soil. (I did see one fairly large furry little Moles in one of the Compost piles when I moved it with the tractor. Our tangle of Bassets caught it and there was some happy carnage for a little bit.) Voles eat vegetables, mostly root systems. We didn't have much plant predations, though there might have been a little, so Voles weren't really much of a problem. We didn't really see many Moles or Voles, but when we did find an open hole we dropped two or three Mole Bait Pellets into the open hole to keep the numbers down where we could without adding a lot of pesticides to the soil. I saw an open hole this morning, so they are still out there.

We had a bit of a Chipmunk problem in late Spring and I had to shoot them where I could with my 22lr rifle. I got good at it and the chipmunks were mostly under control through the Summer. We had few squirrels, but this Fall there were plenty coming onto the Farm to gather Walnuts and I let them be. The squirrels aren't living on the farm but they are put on notice. We also had a rabbit at the back of the Market Garden. He's a slippery little guy and avoids us. One day I was working in the garden and he walked out of the brambles to lay in the sun. I told him he ought not lay out where I could see him because I definetly would shoot him if I could, so he agreed to lay out somewhere else and we never really had any rabbit troubles this year. I carried my rifle around with me for two months in late Spring and this solved the problem of Chipmunks for the most part. 

We had no Japanese Beetles this year, which were a concern a few years ago, but toward the end of the Summer we did have a few common Cucumber Beetles in amongst the squash and bean plants. These were the only insects that our efforts did little about. We planted many barrier and attractive plants in long rows throughout the gardens and this seemed to do the trick. We had a few Flea Beetles in the Potatoes early on, but a fine kitchen sifter and some diatomaceous Earth took care of it. We applied nematodes to the rows in early Summer and I don't know what effect they might have had. Our only real problem was Flea Beetles. In the bottom half of Summer we had an explosion of Flea Beetle populations throughout the gardens. There were millions of these highly destructive bugs which might have done some real damage to the crop plants. But they were more attracted to the Nasturtiums than anything else and their millions were wiped out in one application of Diatomaceous Earth. Two days after they showed up and turned the Nasturtiums black, and ate nearly every leaf, the plants began to recover. By Summer's end the plants were looking robust and covered in flowers once more. 

There were few slugs in the gardens to worry about. We did find them around the house and in the wood piles. We also saw some Strawberry predation, though this might have been Field Rats or Chipmunks. There wasn't enough trouble to address, so we let it go. Our first year of the new Strawberries was great, next year we'll put in three times the number. 

Our little Farm Stand

Bottom line, the strategies we adopted last Winter worked pretty well. The only real trouble was the Flea Beetle explosion, which we saw immediately, got on top of, and solved easily since the combination of an attractive plant and an organic solution worked easily.  The rodent populations will continue to be a problems since clearing territory only gives outsiders an opportunity. I suppose that vigilance is the price of lettuce and hunting them out seems the only way to control the damage. We'll likely try adding barrier plants to the edges of the Farm next Spring. I'm thinking allium types will give us a crop plant that rodents don't seem to want to cross through might do the trick. 

Winter is setting in at Creekside Farm. Our Christmas lights are up and we can't wait to find a tree to dirty up the Farmhouse. Our Farm is looking pretty good and we're pretty sure of the future, so long as things continue as they are. Life here is good, if not easy.

I read a story a very long time ago about the Laziest Man on Earth. Born on a farm he thought it would be better for him to avoid all of that hard work by doing the easier work of thinking, so he went to school. That he became a mathematician isn't the moral of his story though. I learned from this that thinking things through, when you have the time to do it, was one very good way to avoid as much of the physical labor as one could while still being a farmer. Our pest controlling "dogmatic" thoughts of last Winter seemed to have not been a waste of time. 

September 8th, 2023 Summer Winding Down

 Summer is still with us for a few more weeks. Today it is a wonderful seventy-five degrees and clear skies. While this isn't very good for farming veggies, it is wonderful for working in. We have a lot to show for all the work this year. 

We got the Tiny Home Cabin(s) moved a few weeks ago. The project was planned years ago and there were some significant issues we needed to address to make things work out.  We needed to expand the electrical, water, and septic infrastructure to make the tiny home(s) usable once  we got them moved. 

On the left is the Tiny Home Cabin we moved to the Farm back in early Winter of 2018.
On the right is the same space (note the telephone pole in both pictures) as it is today.

Since we have a serious iron problem with our water we have built our water system with house water is very well filtered. This house water system had to be tapped into to provide good water the the Tiny Homes (now called the Guest House and Kennel). Then we had to expand the electrical system to provide power to the Guest House and Kennel as well.  While we did the electrical work we also included inlets, outlets, and switching to bring in generator power when it is needed. And finally we needed to put in piping to remove septic waste. Each of these projects was difficult to accomplish, even if not very expensive.  Once we got all the preliminary ground work done it was time to separate and move the two Tiny Homes to their permanent places behind the Farmhouse.

The new Farmhouse layout.

When we built the first trailer we did the work in the driveway of our home in North Plans and towed the thing out to the empty lot that would become the Farm (pictured above).  A few weeks later we built the second half, making ours a double wide Tiny Home Cabin. We lived in the Cabin for nearly four years as we cleared the land and built our new Home. Taking them apart was not the biggest part of our plans when we built them it took some work, as did moving the small garden and accumulated stuff added to the place after it was built.

Moving these two large trailers took an entire day using a large rented tractor. Towing them was a tricky proposition once they were separated. But once we got them moving it came down to jostling the two halves into their permanent places. This  proved to be the most difficult part of the job.

The Guest House eventually settled into a place where the front facing side ran parallel to the Farmhouse Porch. The Kennel side eventually came to rest immediately behind the Farmhouse on the back wall where there are no windows. Both buildings needed the eight foot pass through hole sealed up against the weather, so we are installing sliding glass doors to keep the rain out and the heat in. The piping and wiring were the easy parts and once we had the two trailers jacked up and level. Eventually, the end of the largest temporary part of our early plans for building our farm came yesterday, when we moved my brother's camp trailer to it's new place near the Utility Shed.

A Wooly Bear Caterpillar.
This one say it is going to
be a long, cold Winter.

So now the entire area in front of the Farmhouse is cleared out and cleaned up. We hadn't been able to see the front of the Farm from the Farmhouse until just yesterday. So this is a major change in how things look. Perhaps more importantly, the view of the Farmhouse from the Road is now much cleaner.  Now the place looks as it should. 

I remodeled the Guest House interior during the cold months last Winter. Putting the glass door on it allows me to finish the job and do some upgrades on the exterior, including a fresh coat of paint. Eventually I will put skirting on both buildings to keep animals from playing around underneath them and refinish the Kennel building to make it useful. We will also put in a fence to contain our tangle of hounds behind the Farmhouse and reduce noise a bit out front.  But for the present, the job is mostly done until Farming winds down and we settle into Winter month projects.

Farming this year has been quite good. We have been selling produce for many weeks and eating quite a lot of it ourselves. While we haven't  had the growth we wished for, we have done roughly ten times more planting than we did last year. No-till gardening is really a great way to grow things and our planting and pest control plans have all performed much as we expected they would. A few weeks ago we have our expected flea beetle infestation, but instead of them stressing our tomato and potato plants they attacked the Nasturtium plants we had planted as a pest attractor. We dusted the Nasturtiums and the problem was solved in a few days with little actual damage to our paying crops. And we got some really goods crops.

We planted three flights of potatoes this year, each a few weeks apart. The first flight came up easily and the spuds are absolutely wonderful to eat. Rich flavors, perfect flesh. Our cucumbers and tomatoes have thrived this year and we had put quite a lot more of them in the dirt. They are heavy with fruit  and sweet. Tomatoes are selling like hotcakes. The peppers haven't done as well as we expected, but our cool peppers are doing very well and selling out as quickly as we can pick them. The Corn crop has been disappointing. We put in so many and got so few ears out of it. The Corn cobs we did get is smallish, but the flavor is wonderful and we are enjoying eating it despite not being able to sell it.  Melons are doing very well and selling out for the most part. So the gardens are producing well even if we do need to make some changes next year. 

Lemonhead Lucy

We think Taffee is pregnant with our (planned for) Fall litter of pups, but we won't know for sure for a few weeks. This will be Taffee and ClarkeBar's last litter and they will be retired after this. We love having puppies around and are really looking forward to the work raising puppies brings.

Our newest addition to the kennel is Lemonhead Lucy, a wonderful little white and red female. She is well accepted to the Hound's social group and is quite well liked by everyone who she meets. Lucy is very chatty, with a great many expressive howls and barks that make her unique in our kennel.

We have had loads of visitors this Summer. Some coming for the produce, some just to visit. All are welcome. So if you find yourself on the Highway and looking for some place to stop by, think about stopping by and seeing all the changes at Creekside Farm. We are making constant improvements and it will be nice to have you see it all. We have plenty to keep us busy here as Summer begins to close down. We look forward to the change in seasons and are ready for whatever comes. 

In the middle of this image you will find the telephone pole seen in the upper images.
This is the place before we found it, taken from a real estate advertisement.
Taken from the Western edge of the property, where the Market Garden is today.

This is the same telephone pole.
This picture taken on the first day we came to the property, but from the back of the place.
This is approximately the angle seen from the Bathroom window of the Farmhouse.

This is the same telephone pole.
Just before we brought the first tiny home here.

June 11th, 2023 Summer Weather

The end of May brought a string of 90+ degree days, then things went back to our normal near eighty for a few weeks. The heat didn't really change much in what we had to do, planting the assorted crops, but the results have been a bit better than we expected. The plants are doing very well and outgrowing the weeds by just a bit.

The plans we made in January are nearly all in place. Our row building plan is almost four fifths complete. Dozens of neatly made rows of varying lengths, each oriented exactly from North to South to grab maximum light no matter the season. These will all be permanent rows, after this year the tiller on our tractor won't have too much use and I might just dismount it. In our no-till scheme what happens is addition of organic matter (leaf compost) directly on top of each row as we take plants out and put new plants in. This, along with loosening the soil with our heavy Broadfork, should keep out plants healthy and growing more vigorously every year. But there were three bigger plans for the Gardens.

We specifically designed the rows to keep our pest problems down by putting the right plants in the right places. Some plants discourage pests from crossing between rows. It is hard to prove these are working because the effect is nothing, but we are guess things are going along just fine since there hasn't been much animal predation of our starts and seeds. We had always planned to put Nematodes into the Gardens to keep larvae down and we did this two days ago. So far no new is good news, but the Flea Beatle population doesn't seem to have been effected much. The main target for the Flea Beatles has been the tomatoes so far and a little bit on the potatoes. We walk along the row the rows  and squish the little black specks a few times a day figuring the dead ones can't breed. And we hope the nematodes do the job down in the soil. If the Beatles get out of hand we have a few more tricks we can use.  Our only other pests are the few mammals we have seen.

Radishes

There have been a few Moles working the rows. They are easy enough to track, but the previous years of gopher tunnels gives them a super highway to whatever part of the Gardens they think are nice. So we are flooding their holes, ruining their tunnels, and hoping they will either go away or attract an owl. Either will do the job. Moles eat Worms, of which we have a great many, so they don't do much damage to the crops except for messing up the rows a bit, an easy to fix.  The few field rats we had seem to have either been killed off or have fled. but not before eating quite a few watermelon and bean starts. We planned for this and over planted starts so that we might replace them as quickly as we can. This doesn't replace the growth, but we have a lot of growth and most of the plants are unhurt by rodents. Aside from these few things it seems out pest plans are doing okay. 

The third part of our plan is crop rotation and bed flipping. We haven't moved far enough into the season to start thinking about this seriously, but there is some movement. The used forty gallon plastic stock tanks we bought have all been carefully filled with the right soil components and planted in Radishes, Carrots, and Bunching Onions.  The seed have germinated and we're hopeful of getting these things to grow quickly. The plan is to plant two new rows of these three every few weeks so that there will be a steady supply for the Produce Stand.  Fingers crossed. The rest of our rotation thing can be discussed later. 

The month of May was so much more cooperative this year than last. And the presence of  Ann and I in the Gardens nearly every day means things are slightly cleaner and quite a bit better laid in.  We are watering a bit less this year due to the thick compost mulch cover put on every row. So too the weeds are greatly decreased and easy to remove, but it's an uphill fight. There are still quite a few trouble areas for weeds, but I am burning and cutting a few times a week trying to stay on top of the weed problem. And there's still much to do that is not  digging and planting.

Pickler Cucumbers

We have a new irrigation thing happening soon. I invested a bit in a drip tape plan to directly water the plants at the dirt level. This is a big job but the parts are all here and once I get a minute to start putting it all in things will go along swiftly.  

My Brother, visiting in his first few months of retirement and looking for a job and permanent housing here, has spent a few weeks siding the Utility Shed. This was something that needed done before next Fall and today it is nearly complete. We will caulk and paint it in the next few weeks. 

Very soon I will need build build the parking lot area that will allow us to begin opening the Produce Stand. This is more to give the four cars here every day a place to stay and allow people to use the driveway outside of the Farm as they access the Stand. We're shooting for mid-July opening and things are looking good. 

Other than this a great many smaller things still need doing. We need to set up a backup power generation plan to make this place habitable when PGE turns off power to avoid wild fires. We need to put in the infrastructure to make the tiny home move immediately ready to use. I'll be looking for the parts in the coming few weeks. 

Jalapeño

If it seems we are really busy, we are. At our age we have a good five or six hour work day available, and this about four days a week. But the lack of the forty hour week doesn't seem to be holding up our plans. We just have to keep moving.

May 4th, 2023 Spring Update

 Things are humming along at Creekside Farm. The weather turned warmer and a whole lot dryer this past few weeks, allowing us to move out into the gardens in earnest. Today it is raining quite a lot, but this isn't supposed to last for very long and we'll get back to work. 

Our farm grows weeds better than most. We never use chemicals unless something is very wrong so weeds can get ahead of us if we take a day off. I have spent the last week or two moving and tilling leaf compost into the gardens.  Tilling has the dual effect of killing weeds and allowing us to add compost to the soil, so the ground is looking pretty good in most places. We're heading into a no-till permanent gardening practice, so sooner or later I'll take the tiller off of our little tractor "Rosie". I won't go further into no-till than I have in previous articles. If you don't know what I mean there is an archive of articles to look through and you are welcome to look through it. We have a large garden plan based on our previous plans, the chief difference is that all of our rows will be completely new, all of them very heavily stocked with soil organic matter in the form of compost and mulch, and nearly every one of them will be aligned in a north-south direction to get maximum light.

One of three garden plans for this year.
This is the first one we have been planting.
It turned out that we had seven more rows than we had planned for.

We spent some time a cutting down, or limbing up, the sky depriving trees shading parts of our gardens. There was one seriously dangerous deciduous tree shading the east end of the Market Garden which we took down a few weeks ago.  Yesterday we went out to fall three large and healthy pines, but thought better of it once we took a good look. These are all along the front fence near power lines. We called a friend who cuts down trees for a living and will see what it might cost to take them all down next week. We did take all of the branches off up to about twenty four feet and there's plenty to do without the little new gardens removing these trees will produce. 

Ann has been spend a lot of time in the Greenhouse this year. We heated the place and added some fans to move air around and the plants really took off. Once I built some new rows and the weather turned nice she got out there and started putting plants in the ground. Strawberries, flowers, and the first flight of corn (there will be five this year) are all in. A multitude of crops are ready to go in or ready to plant. All is on schedule/ 

This garden sits to the south of the first one.
The areas for basil will have to move until we get the trees down.
This is a huge increase in garden spaces and we'll grow hot peppers here.

The Kitchen Garden area will hold our potato crops and cooled down peppers. Tis year we are adding a cool version of the Habanero Pepper. The hot version is one of the hottest peppers humans can use, but ours has not heat to it. The cooled Jalapeños and Habaneros have all of the great chili pepper flavors, none of the heat, so they will soon become a favorite on our produce stand. I tilled the Kitchen garden spaces in the last few days so we hope to begin planting there in a week or so. Peppers take a lot of heat to thrive and it just is not that warm out yet. Potatoes really don't care much when they are planted.  We will plants flowers and herbs wherever there is space and time.

The Kitchen Garden spaces are nearly ready for planting.

We are aiming to make the Farm profitable for produce this year and all is going pretty much according to plans. But there is certainly more work to do than we have time and energy. Things will happen in their own time. Our goal is to have the Produce Stand moved down to the end of Sell Road where the people are every day. So picking in the morning, selling in the afternoon. We shall see how it all works out. Farming is going along as we thought it might, but there's a lot going on here right now.

We had a litter of puppies about seven weeks ago. Most of them will leave us for new families in a bout a week's time. This is a big part of our lives and livelihood. We love to see them come into our little world. Love to see them grow and learn. The we love to see them go so that some semblance of cleanliness and order can be restored. Mostly we love it, but there are days . . .

We ran into a bit of trouble with our fresh water system in these past few months. I thought it might be overloading the water filters that was causing it so I went out to add more filtering capacity. As I was working through it I figured out that something was wrong in the pipe routing that brought water from the well to the filters, so we dug the problem out, swapped a few pipes, and this fixed the problem. Last Tuesday I replaced the filter media and things are cleaning up as we go along. Since I made the mistake a few years back, when we were building the water system, the rust and resin got thoroughly into everything so it might take a while to get it all out. This morning the water was clear and iron free. Hurray for us!

Jack and I have nearly finished remodeling half of the tiny home cabin, the part he will occupy once we have it moved behind the new Farmhouse. It looks great, but there's still a few things to do. As is always at Creekside Farm, so much to do.  The second half of the tiny home will also move to the back and become the new kennel and grooming area. We'll remodel it once it is moved. Hopefully we will get these things shifted around once all of the compost behind the Farmhouse is shifted into the gardens. 

As a last note, to those interested in our longer story, we talked to our lawyer yesterday. For those who don't know we ran into a problem with our ownership of the Farm last Summer while trying to finalize the sale of the property. Things got really tense and terse for a month or two and then we found a lawyer worth the money and stopped worrying so much. While things still are not entirely settled, it looks like they might we be in a few months. He has this thing well in hand. 

Time goes by quickly if you don't pay attention to it. We are lucky to have each day and none of them go by unnoticed. If anyone reading this would like the opportunity to get fingers into good dirt, come on ahead. Working in the sunshine is wonderful. Someone said you had to stop to smell roses. I say there's plenty of sweet thing to smell while moving around and working.