April 1st, 2023 On the Cusp of Spring

 These past few years have had wet and cold Spring seasons. Growth doesn't really happen until soil temps come up to an average of sixty degrees. This is also the temperature soil microbes begin breathing and the smell of soil is in the air. I expect by the second weekend of April we will begin smelling Spring. It will certainly be very nice.

It is a bit too wet out on the fields to till or begin making ready for planting. There are some sizable projects that need done while we wait.  We finally had the time and courage needed to take down one of the larger danger trees. This tree also deprived a large portion of the Market Garden of morning light and had rotted out at least five times.  It was difficult to tell which way things might fall when cut off. But we got it down safely burned the carcass almost to ashes.  The project meant taking down the hand tool rack and East fence of the Market Garden.  In the end the fence project compacted the wet soils we never got planted last year; they will take a bit of fixing. These repaired rows will be the first planted. We have a few new strawberry plants to go in. Moving the fence allows us to move the greenhouse to its permanent placing  near the house in late Fall. In late Summer we will move the tiny home and kennel to its permanent placing behind the house. Next year will be a bit more open. 

Our gardening plan is large this year. Lots of beds to create and restore. Our Greenhouse is full of plants. Everything is being held in ten by twenty inch flats. Each flat hold between 20 and 92 plants, depending on the pot. We have a great many plants ready to go and as soon as they are planted the flats will be replanted with more. We will direct sow when the average daytime temps reach seventy degrees. This will be toward the end of May. Until then we have plenty to do. 

We had a litter of Basset Hound puppies in March. Nine beautiful little hounds. They are finding new families very well and Ann is doing much of the marketing. It is a happy business, not unlike the Christmas Lighting business I once did. The pups come, stay until they are the best sort of fun, but dirty. And then they go to happy families and we can get some sleep. And it helps support the Farm plan in a significant way. We need all the help we can get. 

I will complete the tiny home remodel this month. The plumbing and electrical are all in and working, the walls are all covered and the flooring is bought and ready to put down. What is needed is drywall finishing and paint, the rest isn't easy, but there's not a lot to do yet. Finish work. Then, once we move the halves to the back, I will begin remodeling the Kennel and fencing off the dog yard. 

There's so much happening here right now, but the days don't seem hectic or overly full. The weather keeps us indoors quite a bit. But stuff is getting done every day.

February 21, 2023 Quick Chess

Quick Chess

 I made a new game out of a very old one. In our first tries we found the game easy to learn, very quick to play and, relative to the Classic Chess Game, very fun to play. But this new game has not been explored sufficiently to know the problems or gauge response. So follow this link and let me know what you think.

February 11, 2023 Five Years Seems a Long Time.

Today we celebrate another anniversary. Five full years of our living on Creekside Farm. But it seems like we've been here much longer.

We built our home here.

Five years ago today I built the frame for the first Greenhouse. This first attempt worked well that Summer, collapsed the next Winter, and then rebuilt twice. Eventually the Greenhouse was crushed by a tree-fall which nearly killed us both, but didn't, and there have been six such greenhouse structures built here since. Two are standing today.

Five years ago today we built our heated dog house in the temporary enclosure attached to the side of our still unfinished Tiny Home Cabin. Our indoor-sy dogs were destined to become outdoor-sy dogs so I built them a dog house and put a little electric heater in it. Our hounds decided it was pretty nice in there and soon quit complaining about sleeping outside.

Our Tiny Home Cabin on Day One 

Everything we were doing five years ago was supposed to last only a year as the Farmhouse was built and new Kennel completed. It turned out those things were a bit more difficult than expected. Our Farmhouse took just under four years start to finish and there's still a concrete porch floor to pour.
The Greenhouse is now heated, water supplied, air ventilated, and grow lights lit. Our Farm Plan was finished on time and early seed went into pots last week. The bigger open questions are about organic pest controls and the first shots in our War on Pestilence were fired last week. We got control of the weeds last year. This year will be controlling insects and small animals. If weather permits we will have produce in our Produce Stand in June.

The Tiny Home Cabin we moved into five years ago is now two-thirds remodeled. Our little Cabin was worn out by living in it for so long and we had planned a remodel after we moved out to make it ready for Air BnB rentals. It seems like we are on track. Our tiny home Cabin is producing a small rental income today and hopefully more as time goes on.

We've Come a Long Way

Our initial 2013 "ten year dream" (made ten years ago) and "five year goal" (begun five years ago) was to have a Farmhouse built and a Farm producing a profit. We did this, if only just slightly over the line.
Our ten year anniversary goal will come in February of 2028. The Farm ought to be fully open to the public by then, tiny homes and camper spaces booked, a Farm Store selling produce and products every day, and Café serving food to people coming here to wander through a peaceful retreat from city life or be married in a purpose built Chapel space. . . We're still "swinging for the stands".

Our Produce Stand

Let's see what happens.

January 31st, 2023 Collette Kramer's Rememberence Day

 We celebrate two Collette Kramer anniversaries here on the Farm. The annual Birthday notice, and this secondary day of remembering her after-life. I write about her a few times a year in remembrance, this is a seven year anniversary so perhaps more important to me than others.

I wrote this public obituary on Facebook seven years ago, prior to this I had kept her name out of my postings for the most part:

Collette Kramer passed on this weekend after fighting for a month or so against a stomach tumor which came out of nowhere. She was sixty-four (near as I could tell) and the person who I bought the Farm property from. She lost everything more than once during her life, never had anything worthy of any notice, collected everything she found in hopes of someday having something she could call a life achievement. I found her living on the street in her broken down Toyota and all life is precious, all is temporary, all is suffering. She lived like a tiny boat on a big sea that didn't seem to owe her anything. She fought against almost everything and everyone in a effort to keep her dignity. In the end the pseudo-dignity she got from having a fingernail hold on a peice of property was really all she had to pin her hopes to. She sold me that property in some pie in the sky scheme to eventually find herself a permanent home. Her life didn't amount to all that much in the end. A short story with a bunch of sad chapters. Tragic only because it was so short. The shortness becoming something of a mercy.

As for us and the Creekside Farm Project, nothing is ever easy. We haven't done much that was over-funded or straight forward except being married to one another. Our successes have all been hard fought. We have the plan and it might work whether we build it in Manning or some other place. She left us with a bunch of legal hurdles to jump before we can call the place ours by virtue of a deed with our name on it. Only time will tell.

I think Collette would be proud of what we have built here, had she made it. There's still a bunch of legal hurdles to jump over before we finally get the place to ourselves, but things look okay going forward, at this point. 

She lives on in our memories.  

January 4th, 2023 Dogmatic Pest Control Theories

 

My one and only New Year's Resolution for 2023 is Step Two of the Grand Plan: to make the Farm profitable through production of food.

We made the Farm self-sustaining a little over one year ago and this meant no longer augmenting our income with savings. But this year is about making the future of the Farm more profitable so that we can begin the massive improvements we have been working toward for nearly eight years. Step One of the Grand Plan was to build the Farmhouse and we did that last year. Step Two is to build a Farm Business. Step Three is all about hospitality and creating a wedding venue in the future.

Our first year Step Two goal is to earn $25,000 in cash sales. Since we assume we will earn about a dollar a pound on produce then we will need to sell 25,000 pounds. But this level of efficiency is not likely to happen right away. Instead, we are assuming that we will need to grow nearly double this amount in order to find the highest quality goods, then preserve or donate the rest. The problems are many in reaching this level of growing things and many more in finding a way to sell it all when we succeed.

Of the things we have learned in our Farming practice so far I think getting rid of pests is perhaps the most important. In our second year of planting we found Squirrels, Gophers, Rabbits, Rats, and Mice all were very happy to come in and eat anything we had growing. We lost our entire crop that year as we learned to deter rodents and shoot straight. Last year all we had on the Farm were Chipmunks and a few field rats, so the problem wasn't too large to handle and we were able to sell a bunch of our production. But, even as we succeeded in getting the mammals under control, we found that insects began taking their place.

Cucumber Beetles

There are a great many insects that can harm crops. Last year we had Cucumber Beetles, Japanese Beetles, Flea Beetles, and a few grubs, but there were doubtless many more we didn't look for.  There are Ants, but they didn't come into the garden much. You might see the scope of the problem we will face as we expand our gardens this year.  

Of particular concern are the Beetles since they nest and over-Winter in plant debris. Since we are importing hundreds of yards of plant debris as part of building a no-till farm, we are likely going to give a home to huge numbers of beetles.  

Japanese Beetles

Adult Beetles have few natural predators and many have chemical defenses so birds usually stay away from them. Almost all have significant jumping and flying abilities too, so they are hard to catch. As we plan for the Spring we are spending quite a bit of time on the problem of Beetle eradication and prevention. As is turns out there are quite a few ways to get the job done in an organic garden. We will likely use them all. The first thing we can do is to put the right plants in the right places. 

If you put all of a Beetle's favorite food in one row the numbers will increase and soon the wee beasties will finish off the crop and need to find substitute food. One way to plant right is to use barrier plants, things that stop the beetles from moving from row to row and finding new food to eat. We will plant our rows with the following in mind.

• Marigold is a plant we have been using since beginning to grow stuff. It gives off an odor which most mammals, and quite a few bugs, tend to avoid. Marigold also gives Bumbler Bees a great place to sleep at night, so pollinator populations tend to increase in number. Marigolds are cheap, fast growing, and long flowering plants which look great in rows which border the larger gardens. We usually put in around a hundred Marigolds, this year we will put in around one-thousand as we expand our growing spaces. 
• Nasturtium is a plant I put in during year one of planting, but haven't used in any year since.  Nasturtium is a different sort of barrier plant, the bug attractive sort which tend to bring insect to one spot. In the first year I thought Nasturtiums didn't do well here so we gave up on growing it.  But after reading up on the subject we found that bugs loved them. They ate them down to nothing ahead of the plants growing out and before moving on to other sorts of plants.   There are other plants that attract bugs too. Radishes and Kale haven't done well here, for the same reason as the Nasturtiums didn't.  We are planning to plant at least one large row of Nasturtium in each larger garden bed, then treat the one row with Diatomaceous Earth once a week to kill off those bugs that have been drawn to it.  
• Diatomaceous Earth is a natural pesticide, it gets into the joints of bugs' exoskeletons and they simply stop moving around until they die off.  But care must be taken even in using this relatively innocent dust because Diatomaceous Earth also kills off beneficial bugs. We will restrict its use to these Nasturtium beds and then dust other plants only if we find a problem.
• Onions, Chives, and Garlic, all form a barrier to certain insects. We always grow these but now they will become border plants to hold back pests. These will be grown as "companion" plants along side of potatoes, beans, and tomatoes. Some plants simply do better near some other plants. I have a few charts describing these relationships and so we will plan accordingly. 
• Many herbs also deter insects. Oregano, Cilantro, Dill, Rosemary, and Basil all can deter insects, some have insecticidal properties.  Dill and Thyme can prevent some insects from laying eggs.

Cutworms

So it seems safe to say that planning to put the right plants in the right places might make things go along a bit easier. But there is a second way to keep buggy populations down: bringing in some good bugs to eat the bad ones. 

• Nematodes are non-segmented microscopic worms that hunt down many pesky bugs while the pesky things are in their larval stage. Nematodes invade their evil larval guts and eat them from the inside out. Some larvae, of some bugs, infesting root systems and killing the plants from below. Some adult Pests eat leaves and stunt growth from above. Putting a few billion Nematodes on the garden in Spring will help to kill off the larvae and prevent the adults from laying eggs in the soil.  
• A large number of different varieties of Nematodes are available, cheap, and easy to find, and these things come in very large quantities. You put them out using a garden sprayer and they breed and persist in the soil so long as the bad bugs are around to eat.
• Ladybugs and lace wing flies eat aphids, so they can be bought to release into the gardens, or encouraged to come in from the wild. We usually have a lot of ladybugs in Summer and we don't seem to have much of an aphid problem so far, so we are not likely to buy these predator insects this year. 
• Our Ducks and Chickens all like a good snack and many bad bugs, like houseflies, slugs, and snails make good duck food.

Aphids

The third way is to use insecticidal soap sprayed directly on the bugs. This is mostly a few tablespoons of detergent soap mixed in water and put into a garden sprayer. This stuff works by covering the little breathing holes on buggy bodies and suffocating them. There are no chemicals in Insecticidal Soap, but it can't be sprayed without care since it kills beneficial insects too. 

Finally there are physical barriers like cloth row covers. These keep the pests away from plants in an attempt to give the plant a running start. But row covers are time consuming, light depriving, and expensive to buy, so it's not likely we will invest in them this year. 

Since our problem is mostly beetles, we will rely heavily on the first and second means of keep their numbers down. We will carefully plan our gardens to include elements which deter bugs from sticking around or attract the bad bugs to their death. We will put down Nematodes to try and get them out of the soil. 

Flea Beetles

We have no hope of getting rid of all the bad bugs, but we can encourage the good ones that eat them if we are mindful of the problem.  The bug problem is a large and growing concern as we open more planting spaces and put out much more composted materials and leaf debris. The bug problem is much on our minds right now as we plan on making the Farm a planting success.