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.

March 27, 2021 The End is Near

In a world which promises lots of great apocalypses, our lives have a whole lot of things coming together at one time. Winter was a tough one, we got through it. Covid19 nearly wiped us out, but not the us living at Creekside Farm. The house is too much work, we have got so much done. Civil War, nope, that didn't happen either. We even had a rocket blow up and fall from the sky right over the house, while we watched from the comfort of our hot tub. The Daffodils and Tulips are up and some are even flowering. Despite all of the negative possibilities our lives are pretty positive and we hope yours is too. 

One of our female Bassets, Grizelda Laffee Taffee, looked to be coming into labor about a week ago, so we went into full whelping vigilant mode. Not a whole lot of sleep, splitting the nights into two shifts and napping in the afternoons has left us both a bit foggy in the head. But so far she hasn't really been too serious and so we have no choice but to continue waiting her out. The litter is likely all sold out prior to the pups arriving since we have more than twenty people on the wait list for puppies. 

The house build is going a bit slowly since someone has to stay with Taffee for the time being. But we did get much of the remaining drywall put up since my last post and all of the insulation is done. So the new Farmhouse is very comfortable (just in time for the outside temperatures to rise). All in all the Drywall project is looking very good.

We have about eight more panels to put up in the big front room and I have begun taping up the joints and corners. This is not new work for us, we did quite a lot of drywall work in our business and have the tools too. I have begun the laborious work of making everything smooth during those times when Ann has to stay with Taffee or has other farm work to do. There is about six weeks of taping joints and corners before I can start spraying textures and painting walls. We bought a nice little texture gun and airless paint sprayer from Craig's List in past weeks, so we are certainly ready to go once the walls are flat.

I have begun working on getting water to the house in the past few days. Since we have a well and also a temporary pump house we have to move everything but the pump and switches to the new Utility shed, about a hundred feet away, and then hook it all up. We have had a basic plan in place since we started building, and have a hose connection bringing water to the house today (where the Landry room is now located and working), but actually moving everything over is a bit tricky since we are using the water every day. I did bury nearly all of the new transport pipe a few months ago, as well as the long wire from the new Utility Shed to the old pump house, so quite a bit of the hardest work is already done. Moving the water treatment and pressure tank to the utility shed will have to go in two stages though.

The first part is to change the well pump power supply over from the temporary electrical pole and panel the the permanent electrical panel on the utility shed. This part is sort of an easy one. The second part is to hook up the existing old pump house, with the tanks and treatment stuff, up to the new water pipes so that we have treated and softened water all over the Farm and to the new house. We will also have treated water to the tiny home until we move to the new house. These two things will allow me to take a break from this water project and still use the water system while we get the house ready for all the water projects in the new house to be completed. Once we're done with the interior work on the house we'll move on to moving everything else water related into the new Utility Shed to live forever.

We moved a greenhouse out to the Market Garden a few weeks ago. Since then we have been trying to get out there to finish it and begin sprouting the thousands of plants we will need in the late Spring.  We have everything but time, but it will all need to get done in spite of the time we'll have to spend raising puppies and finishing farmhouses. Once the next step in the watering system is complete we will have water and power directly to the new greenhouse. We put in a fabric floor in the greenhouse and positioned one of the long growing tables, a large water tank we will use for a heat sink, and a propane fireplace to bring heat if it begins to get too cold. We need to get this done pretty soon, so the house build will need to take a back seat for farm-working.

Aside from these few things we are beginning to till the ground around the Farm and to make things ready for late Spring planting. Since we have mostly finished trash removal and have been tilling for three years now the process of preparing the soils for planting will be pretty quickly done this year. We already have the soil amendments and seeds ready to go and good weather is getting easier to come by. So farm life will be pretty good this year.

March 7, 2021 Spring Might Have Arrived

It's still Winter here at Creekside Farm, but signs of Spring are everywhere. Our two large bulb beds are all colored in green shoots and there are a few flowers emerging. Daffodil flowers are usually opening right now but the Farm is at the bottom of Apple Valley so things grow more slowly here. Some of the English Daisies we put in the Peaches and Herbs Garden have begun to flower for the first time. We pruned all of our fruit trees a few weeks ago and they are budding out nicely. So, despite the recent snows and ice storms, Spring is looking good here.

We took most of the week away from the house building project to work on the collapsed shop hoop house and move the new greenhouse out to the Market Garden. The new Greenhouse moved easily. It was the last hoop house we built and it looks like our latest design changes are sufficient to last through the harshest parts of Winter here. The new design was also built using all that we had learned from constructing these things, so all of it came apart, moved, and then went back together in less than five hours. One of the Farm's friends, a guy named C.B., came to help out putting the thing up. He seemed interested in learning how i had built it and has a similar project of his own to do. The greenhouse is up, but we still have to put the end walls together and install the doors and heat vents for when the summer heat arrives. There is a new water hydrant to the greenhouse and we have enough heavy power cords to power the fixtures we will eventually have in it.

The new Greenhouse will be stocked with newly built planting tables, a recently acquired potting table, quite a few high intensity grow lighting fixtures, a three hundred gallon water tank, and a propane fireplace heater, and ventilation fans to keep the air moving. All of this stuff has been collected from CraigsList postings and most of it for free. We also have quite a lot of planting soils laying around which came from CraigsList also. So we are prepared for planting and are ordering seeds this week. The Farm itself will need quite a bit of preparation for the planting season, but is still much too wet to do much tilling. Our water system still needs to be installed, but we have the pipes in the ground and a plan in place.

The new Farmhouse project didn't get a lot of attention this past week but it has been our primary focus all Winter. Since our last post we got all of the doors in and the ceiling drywall installed. There is still two rooms to put drywall walls up. The Bathroom used three types of drywall boards which we still need to bring in. The large front room is about a fifth of the way done and we have the sheets to finish it.

Most of the electrical work is in, but there are still a few things to get working. We have lights and heat in the Farmhouse and it is beginning to look like a home in there at times. We have much of the flooring already on the Farm but it will have to wait for finishing the walls and ceilings.

In other Farm news our hens are putting out about  eighteen eggs a day and all of these seem to be selling out pretty quick. Our Runner Ducks are happily clearing the Kitchen Garden of pests as we get ready for Strawberry Season, but we have no duck eggs yet. And one of our Basset Hounds, Laffee Taffee, has figured out how to get preneant again. So we'll need to prepare for puppies coming at the beginning of April.

We have been preparing for puppies since November. I began by joining quite a few Hound oriented Facebook Groups a long time ago and participating in them. And in November I started putting a Wait List for future litters online. We have about twenty people waiting to hear good news about coming puppies and the Wait List will get notified this weekend. 

There are a lot of projects happening here this year. All of them will take time and effort, most will take money. So we are planning on a large planting project this year, two or more litters of puppies, and quite a bit of luck and hot weather to keep the main projects moving forward. But things are looking real good today.