May 23, 2021 Time Flies

 It has been three week since my last entry, so I figured I'd better write something. But it's not like there is too much difference between the last entry and this. Just more of the same.

We still have fourteen Bassets, six adults and eight babies, living in the tiny home with us. The pups leave us this week for their new homes and Stanley, our visitor, leaves next week. Things are going to seem much quieter around here after that. We will be keeping one of the male puppies this time. His name is Rocketdog Rockford Rhoades, we call him Rocky. Our boy ClarkeBar will retire in a year or two so bringing up his replacement allows us to control the genetics a bit. And having a puppy around will be fun. With our puppies all being sold, and food sales about to rise in Summer, we ought to be able to show a good profit this year. We are hoping for one or two more litters of pups in the second half of the year, but dong things naturally means not knowing for certain. 

Ann has been very busy in the Greenhouse and the Gardens. We have hundreds of sprouts up and more than a few rows planted. There are hundreds of plants in the Greenhouse, mostly sprouted, but there will be thousands more as the Summer draws near. I found a large number of planting benches on Craig's List a few weeks ago. A guy in McMinnville had a Pot grow in his basement and gave up on it.

I got thirty or so nice plastic benches and quite a lot of wall mounted electrical fans to move air in the greenhouse. We've set up two long benches in the Greenhouse and a few of them outside to "harden" off plants making the transition outside. We will find uses for the rest of the benches as time goes on.

True to form, we are adjusting our farming plans to include new information and try to find things that work a bit better. One of the things I am trying is planting fewer rows by scraping the soil together into deeper rows with wider spaces between. This gives the rows better drainage and the plants a deeper bed to grow roots in. It also gives us more room to move around in. The soils here are beginning to develop into fairly good dirt, but the entire farm is still a few years from being where they need to be. We have mostly solved the trash problem. Most of the debris we find now is very small glass shards. The weeds will continue to be a problem for some years going forward, but we are making progress in certain areas. 

This year's potatoes are in two very long rows at the back of the Market Garden and all of them have emerged. This year we have planted the potatoes in a full ten inches of soil with wide margins of good soil on both sides. When the plants reach twelve inches tall we will pull soil up from the edges over the plants, deepening the soil column and allowing more potatoes room to develop. That's the theory anyway.

In the corn rows we are not mounding up the dirt at all, but we are mulching the beds following planting and we are adding a bit of lime, even though our soil tester says we don't really need it. We planted six one-hundred foot rows and will plant another six in a month, then another a month later. Let's see what happens, but it is supposed to get us a whole Summer of corn to sell. Onions, garlics, and herbs are all out in the gardens growing right now, peppers, tomatoes, beans, peas, and lettuces all ought to go in soon.

There is a new row at the front of the Kitchen Garden dedicated to squash, pumpkin, gourds, and watermelons. The thing is a bit over one hundred feet long and about ten feet wide. Again, we made a berm of good soils about twelve inches deep, right down the middle, with four foot wide margins for growth to spill into. It ought to be a riot of interesting stuff growing right where people can see it from the road.  Ann is adding some Sunflowers to the row for color too.

The Strawberry patch is doing super well this year. This is the third year for the rows and Ann finally has the weed problems and excessive growth under control. We mulched the plants about a month ago and right now each plant is covered in young fruit waiting to ripen. We'll pick them in the morning, sell them in the afternoon, hopefully through the month of June. 

The house build is going along just fine. We have ninety percent of the finishing done in the bedroom side of the Farmhouse. I'm hoping to finish in that end of the house either this week or next, leaving only the great space to do. Our son Jack has agreed to help with the exterior siding portion of the house to keep us on track for moving in this year. Following the interior finishing I will be working on the roof for a month, trying to get it done before the heat of Summer sets in. Plenty to do on the house still but we are working on it nearly every day.

We have found and collected enough cabinets and shelf materials to finish the Kitchen and Bathroom. One of our counter-tops is sitting on the floor in the Kitchen right now and I'll likely make the others myself. We're still needing more paint, but we have about half of the flooring already purchased and most of the rest is either bought or easy to get. Lumber prices are ridiculous right now so we may need to hold off on doing the wrap around porch until prices come down. It will be time to find carpet soon so I'll be looking for a deal.

May 1st, 2021 Busy, Busy, Busy

 Last week we took a couple of days off and the world wanted them back, so we did eight days this past week to make up for the malingering. 

Laffee Taffee's pups all came to life in a big way. Their little puppy personalities began to emerge when their ear canals opened up and they became aware of the world.

We started weening, putting warmed milk in a very large feeding dish a friend of the Farm gave us. We had a dish something like it but it was about a third the size. This one allows the pups to all get around it in one go. At times there's enough room to fit a few inside the dish while the others are eating.

On Monday we started giving them about a cup of milk, by Friday were adding a handful of puppy kibble to three cups of milk. They pups, if added together by weight, would out-weight their mother, so she isn't really able to fill them up anymore. The dish fills them up just fine. We have begun letting people visit the pups. 

The House build is still moving along well. I have been working on finishing the drywall in the low portion of the house. This week I was able to put the final touches on the seams and corners of the Closet and Bedroom, and am getting pretty close in the Hallway and the Water Closet. On Friday I put together the texture gun for the first time and sprayed the Bedroom and Closet, the last step before priming and paint. 

On Wednesday I found a commercial painter on Craig's List who had exactly the paint we need to do much of the interior finishing. He had bought a house-full but the job had fallen through due to Covid and he got tired of waiting for the work to come back. We bought about twenty gallons of primer and paint for under two-hundred dollars and the guy even delivered it to us. I will begin painting on Tuesday next week and we will have two rooms of seven completed (except flooring).

Craig's List is a real resource for the House build. I bought the air compressor, paint sprayer, and texture gun in past months for pennies on the dollar. This week we found a few other things we will need, including one of our Kitchen counter-tops. A lovely ten foot piece of quartz for Ann's Baking counter.

The Farm is beginning to show sure signs of Spring growth. The greenhouse is awash with baby plants of all sorts. We have peppers, tomatoes, squash, watermelons, lettuces, and many others growing out there and we will be putting these into the dirt soon enough. There are also many annual flowers growing too. 

The biggest flower planting we do is Marigolds. Marigolds add a great deal of color to the Farm, but they also provide a chemical barrier to many beetles. We plant rows of Marigolds around the parameters of each garden to protect the leaves of our vegetables but this year we plan to add a few rows just for color. Marigold really encourage pollinators. Bumble Bees love to sleep in the blooms.

We also got a wonderful planting table from a Lutheran Church where it had been a kids sandbox for over two decades. The thing is large enough to mix soil and gives us a great place to put seeds into pots.

Yesterday I found a garden cart on Craig's List  for Ann. She's wanted one for a few years and it finally showed up on the listings. You have to be quick to get the hard to find stuff and I saw this nineteen minutes after the seller put it up for sale. Last year, at Mother's Day, I found a nice little fat-tired planting stool for her, another real find, and she's been using it for weeding. This year she gets the wagon to help in moving  the hundreds of things now growing in the Greenhouse out to the gardens. 

Things are really beginning to move at the Farm this week. Puppies have been born and sold, the Strawberries (in their third year) are thick with young fruit, and our house is about four-fifths finished. Covid relief checks came too. So money, though important, isn't nearly so much of a concern. With any luck our plans will now begin to bear out the promise we already knew was there, but had so far been unable to find.

It is good we got a few days off. There will be few days off in the coming weeks.

April 25, 2021 Time Off

 We haven't taken a day off since Laffee Taffee began having false labor in the second week of March, so we took the weekend to loaf a bit.

Saturday we simply hung around. It was a  rainy day so I went out and watered the Strawberries. This might not sound right, but the rain didn't have enough water in it and we had mulched the Strawberry Field on Friday. Ann had spent a few days cleaning up the Strawberry rows and I had cleaned up the spaces in between. This is the third year for the field, so things are getting a whole lot easier to take care of. Ann pulled about two hundred plants out to make room for the ones we wanted to keep. There are about three thousand plants in the field now and all of them are covered in flowers. This is going to be a really good year for Strawberries. 

There has been a lot of work done in the Kitchen Garden this Spring. We have all the trees well pruned, though there still isn't enough growth to give us much fruit yet.  The Peaches and Herbs Garden is doing very well. The Parsley, Thyme, and a few others have grown rapidly and many of the annual herbs had re-seeded themselves and these are beginning to poke their little heads up.

Soon enough we will be planting a few rows of corn in the Kitchen Garden every few weeks. Hopefully the weather will return to normal and the heat will bring things up as they should have the past few cold years.

The thirty-four Peonies we planted in the big bulb flower bed are all up and happily showing buds. We will have a ton of flowers pretty soon and it's a good thing too, since the bulbs are all spent now and the only color we have is green.

Ann got quite a few Dahlias to plant this month. We decided to put in a few new raised beds to accommodate them. The drainage in the Kitchen Garden isn't the best, so raised beds gives us a bit more flexibility. I decided to put them at an intersection of tractor paths near the front of the Garden and since we had enough new space we also planted one of the Mimosa Trees we have grown from seed in one of the new beds.

Our plan is for five Mimosa Trees. They put out a lot of color all Summer long and also provide some strategic dappled shade. Since we are taking out most of the large trees replacing them is important. 

We have been very busy this Spring. The House build is coming along very well and I now have three rooms nearly finished and the Hallway started off right. There is still a ton of finishing work to do, but we are already planning the installation of cabinets and plumbing fixtures. I collected some Laundry Room cabinets from a Craig's List post and we are looking around for some better ones to do the Kitchen. 

Our Shower stall ought to come this week and soon we will be able to finish the bathroom. It won't be long before we're moving in.

Laffee Taffee's pups are nearly four weeks old now. We have decided to keep the pup we had named Bismarck. He will become our new male when ClarkeBar is retire in a few years. His new registered name will be Rocketdog Rockford Rhodes, Grizwold, but we'll call him Rocky. Life at Creekside Farm is good and getting better every day.

I took a bunch of pictures this evening on out evening Farm walk. I'm just going to paste them below this. We have developed enough walking path to take a walk every evening with the dogs. The path leads through every garden and past the new Greenhouse where we check on things and turn on the grow lights. The dogs really like taking the walk and we get the chance to look over all we have done and plan to do more.

This is our Peach tree

This is our new Columnar Apple

This is a side of the House I haven't show yet.

This angel is the Bedroom corner.
The Bathroom is the widows to the far right.

The Attic windows are above all.

April 17th, 2021 Help Wanted: Grow Some Food

 

This re- post is about our offering free space in our gardens to people so that they can grow their own food, or flowers, whatever . . . We did this last year and had three guest farmers on three plots. They did well. But we'd really like to add a few more.

Last year the virus problem we had turned out much worse than anyone imagined, but the end of civilization didn't happen.  Last April we offered space for people to grow food, hoping that there might be some excess to donate to food banks, but the offer was without conditions. 

This year we have more time for growing things, a new greenhouse to sprout seeds, and there is even some watering infrastructure buried out in the gardens to make things a little bit easier. Once again we are offering some open dirt to those interested in growing some food to eat, or to donate to food banks, or whatever. You and I cannot possibly make a dent in the food problem most people face, but maybe we can make a light scratch in the problem. 

If you have no place to grow food, or want a bigger challenge, we have space for you to use on our tiny organic Farm. We have tools (big and small) to loan and can help as needed. We'll let you pick as much dirt as you can reasonably take care of. The only requirement is that you show up once a week and keep the weeds out of the dirt. We will section you off a plot of land, help you till it, and you do the rest. All for free.

We have dirt, soil amendments, and fencing as needed, We will try to find you whatever seed you need, or you can provide whatever you want to bring. We will water your patch in the Summer for you, or you can bring your own watering can if you wish. You can eat what you grow, or give it away.  All for free.

And if you don't want to commit to taking on a whole patch, we will have food in the ground that will need a few hours of cultivation a week, a few hours of picking and cleaning once in a while. Whatever time you have, we'll find work for you. Anyone willing to put in some time, willing to get dirty, willing to risk a happily sore back, is welcome to come work the soil with us this Summer. Again, take a share of ours to eat, donate, or share with others.

Message us on Facebook and we'll talk about it. The link is at the top of this page. Or write us using the email thing on the left. 

Some pictures of last year's guest gardens:

Beth's tomatoes did very well. She did three varieties from starts and quite a few other things from seed. Her space was smallish, only about ten by twenty/

Ellen and CB put in a ton of peppers. The weather didn't quite cooperate, but they did okay. Their space was another ten by twenty.

Christine put in a mixed bunch of everything. These are the squash and gourd plants. She also had food  happily mixed in with flowers, sunflowers, corn, and others. Hers was an eclectic garden and it was lovely. She also had a bigger space. The gourds really took up some space. 

April 11, 2021 Spring has Sprung

 The past week or so have been a bit cold at night and in the shade, but warm and lovely in the sunshine. This isn't the essence of Spring, but it is close enough for working on the Farm. The real beginning of Spring is the day you can smell the dirt and this only happened today. So I suppose today is the first day of true Spring, the day when planting is due to start, but where frost might still happen. 

We are preparing for planting every day now. Ann and I put up the new greenhouse in past weeks, but this week we actually built a few of the planting benches we will use to populate the gardens with growing things. 

Ann and our friend Ellen spent Thursday morning planting the first flats of seeds. Inside the Greenhouse the weather is about eighty or so degrees during the day, the trick to sprouting to not let the flats fall below seventy degrees at night. Once the seeds have sprouted the baby leaves we will move the flats to the table's lower shelves where there is a good amount of artificial lighting installed. The lower shelf plants will grow rather quickly there because the lighting will extend the growing day six hours, solving the problem of growing at the bottom of the Apple Valley.

I spent a few days opening up the dirt in the Market Garden this week, having done the same in the Kitchen Garden a few weeks ago. A light tilling of the soil cleans the gardens up pretty well. I am tilling just deep enough to kill off any weeds, but not so deep that it brings more weed seeds to the top,  This is the third year of planting so the soils are in very good shape. Where needed I am tilling in a good amount of compost, but the soils really don't need it. In a few weeks I will begin pulling the dirt into elevated rows for planting, about the time Ann's baby plants are ready to go from the Greenhous and into dirt. Ann will plant potatoes pretty soon, but right now she is spending more time cleaning up the Strawberries for May and June harvest. It is going to be a good year.

Part of our farm infrastructure plan is to put a permanent water system into the ground and I finally got the main thing done early last week. There are now four frost free landscape hydrants along a one inch pipe extending both directions from our well and into both main gardens. These are simple things, but a bit expensive. The hydrants will remove the need for the super long hoses we have used for the past three years. Eventually we will put automatic watering in, but that day has not arrived yet. 

Laffee Taffee's puppies are growing by leaps and bounds. This past week their eyes opened and they have begun toddling around the whelping pen. Taffee is a great mother, she never goes far from the babies, but she has begun loosening up and spending more time outside with the other dogs. 

Our Daffodils all opened up a few weeks ago, this past week the tulips and Narcissus flowers all opened. In the beds where they live they sort of look small when compared with the size of the Farm, but there are a whole lot of them planted out there. The row in this picture is maybe sixty feet long and there is also twenty-nine Peonies planted in there too. We are propagating the thousands of bulbs needed for the gardens and today we are about a third of the way along in the process. It is nice to have some color out in the gardens.

The house build is moving along well. The drywall is almost all installed and I have been working on the taping a few days a week while we get the Farm ready for Spring. I will be spending a great deal more time on the house in the next few weeks, but with only seven rooms total, and two nearly finished already, I should be able to get through it by mid-May.

There has been a great deal of Spring traffic here lately. Rodents came along and the dogs really loved chasing them out. Our covey of wild Quail are out there on the East fence-line. I think their numbers have doubled since they decided to live there. We have fourteen or so wild songbirds living here now, mostly because we put out food for the Chickens and Ducks. We even had a Great Blue Heron land in a tree last evening while we were out walking the Farm. The big bird made the chickens cluck and run.

Life on the Farm is good, but it's also getting better.