Warmer Weather

Things have been quite busy on the farm. I have been spending a lot of time watering and moving many plants into our hoop house and cold frame here in Seattle, and after doing this for years I learned a lesson the hard way this morning. Morning coffee may have played a large part in this hard lesson. I'll start back at the spring of 2008 on one of many rainy days.

My farm mentor Georgie had shown me how to prep flats for seed and one of those steps involved lightly pressing another flat on top of the starter mix to compress it. ...a bit. Repeat this entire sowing process until it quits raining and eventually you'll have more plants than you know what to do with. In my infinite wisdom and low-caffeine state this morning, I decided to really squash this peat mix down and seed four flats. This unfortunate error didn't reveal itself until it was time to sprinkle gallon after gallon after gallon after gallon after gallon on these flats that are clearly misbehaving. Bubbles started emerging from the cells and entire clods of peat moss came bursting forth out of their six-pack plastic-cell confinement. I though to myself, "what in tarnation?!" After doing battle for an hour with my trusty water bucket, I resigned to dumping all four flats onto the compost pile and starting all over again. Without compression, everything was dreamy again and I was able to wet everything out in a mater of minutes. I have recovered (although not gracefully) and I strongly recommend for those of you who feel compelled to seed flats at 8:00 A.M. to fight any and all primal urges to smash peat moss into oblivion and definitely indulge in your vice prior to loading trays.

...Finally Plowed.

We were beginning to get a bit worried when Van had not showed up by two in the afternoon, but we were to find out later that we were next in line after Local Roots Farm just down the street from us. To us it looks there is a lot of ground that has been opened up, but to other big operations, we have a glorified garden and that's about it.

Van's classic tractor pulling rig

Just another tractor picture

Van and Sean discussing where to plow.

Thank goodness it's done!

Spring Cleaning

We are rapidly moving forward towards a useful barn that is clean, organized, and ready for production. Doug and Sean (owner/operators of Big Rock Chicken Club) descended upon the barn in a cleaning frenzy and we loaded several truck loads of scrap metal and construction debris and sent them on their way to the transfer and recycle station. We are trying to organize a burn pile day for the remaining wood scrap, but we all have to agree on a location and pray for some drier weather.

Doug and Sean were busy marking off pasture for their poultry to roam around on today. Solitude is nice, but I think that it will be nice to have some chicken friends and other folks out there periodically during the day while I work alone. Livestock and poultry are also a great way to add nutrients essential to growing crops to the land we work. Currently we only use certified organic fertilizer that is from Steubers yet it remains difficult to tell where it came from. Having said this, having a nitrogen input available on site will be fantastic. I hope to work with Team Big Rock and have chickens pastured for a few days where our corn and jack-o-lanterns will be growing.

Doug Dancing (not really)

I spent Friday afternoon on the tractor moving 25 yards of woods chips. It took almost every chip to build driving ramps for the bridge and we can now walk into to the field without having to put on waders and live without the constant threat of getting stuck in Weiss Creek. As soon as the weather permits, it will be plow time. I am a little embarrassed about the late date that we are doing this, but the snow and bridge have really set us behind. I have all of my fingers and toes crossed for plowing Monday evening or Tuesday morning.

Ready for traffic!