Thank you, Sir; may I have another?

Getting crushed by yet another winter storm. We have more than 12 additional inches on the ground now, and the snow is up to my crotch. Granted, I'm not all that tall at 5'3.5", but still!

Farm dogs are now in the mud room. Piggies are now in the barn. High tunnel dug out yet again, but without collapsing this time (hopefully!). Jim went out last night to clear it off, and I was out again this morning at around 5:30 am. By that point we'd already had 10" of snow.

Blasted by yet another storm!

More than 24" this time around and yet another high tunnel collapse. Thank you Jim for digging it out again! The animals are all faring well--gotta love the hardy heritage breeds! And I'm mighty glad to not be milking in this weather, though the kiddos are definitely missing the milk.

Frosty Moo:



Frosty piggies:



Collapsed tunnel from the inside:



Digging out:

Dreaming of Warmer Days

We've been cold and gloomy with ice and snow and slush everywhere. My mood has matched the weather. I've been itching to get outside, to feel useful and productive. Part of it is a control thing—feeling out of control of the weather and the future, wanting to use my own energy to plant and push the world towards spring and growth and renewal. Antsyness and angst for the changing season, for hope and change in the wider world have been hanging over my head these days. Too much time to think isn't good for me: living inside my head breeds moodiness and obsessiveness.

Gardening gives me hope. The afternoon of 9/11, before I knew if my husband was safe as Bolling Airforce Base and the Naval Research Labs locked down due to the Pentagon disaster just miles away, before I knew if my then brother-in-law made it out of the Towers, having last called while in the stairwell, as I felt paralyzed to help those I loved, to make any difference at all, I found solace in my gardens. My gardens with their earthiness and strength, the reality of dirt in my hands and the connection to life and the things that really matter. This is what people mean when they talk about being "grounded" and "rooted," this feeling of deep connection with the earth, the solidity and stability it lends as chaos rains down.

Today, the weather broke. The sun was glorious and warm, and the last of the ice melted. I hung my laundry outside this morning—three loads. I watered in the hoop house where the baby lettuces were longing for a drink, yet I didn't dare wet them with the recent low nighttime temps. I planted in the low tunnel today: radishes, endive, tatsoi, chard, and kale. I cleaned up the yard, gathered kindling to help us eek out fires in the wood stove for as long as possible, tossed dog-poo popscicles into the hedgerow before they thawed, and spent the end of the afternoon enjoying a beer on our west-facing front porch in resplendent sunshine, all the while planning and envisioning my new medicinal garden in place of the existing turf.

So far outside, I've direct sowed three plantings of radishes, two plantings of tatsoi, and one of beets, hakurei turnips, endive, kale, and chard. The first radishes have already popped, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next. Not too shabby for mid-February.

The Winds of Change are Blowin'

It's been a while since I've done a weather post....

Last week, our temps dropped to 14°F at night, and this week, they've risen to 70°F during the day, and today we're getting gusts of wind up to 35-40 mph. Needless to say, the plants are not happy. That's the down side of living in the Mid-Atlantic where we do—temps can go either way and often both.

The people, however, are making the most out of these warm days. Interestingly, Julia remembers her birthday (January 4th) as "warm" because we've had temps in the 60's ever since she can remember, which means about the past 4 years.

Hard Frost

We've had several hard frosts this past week—significantly later than last year, when we were covering lettuces before Halloween. I still have lots still growing in the garden: several herbs, carrots, radishes, beets, lettuces, raab, kale, tatsoi, chard, green onions, and broccoli, in addition to several seedlings that I hope to be ready for an early spring crop. The parsley on the left fared fine without any cover, as did the carrots to the right and the beets even down by the lettuces in the market garden. Although they were weighed down by frost, they bounced back quickly during the day time temps that are still in the 40s and 50s.

I'm learning quite a bit this year about the microclimates down in the market garden, not surprising considering this is my first year planting down there. The lettuces are planted in a frost hollow, and they got zapped a bit the night of our first frost. I quickly covered them with old bed sheets, and that got them through a few more nights. Luckily I've had the greenhouse plastic on them for the hard frosts we've had this week, so they've gone untouched. Up in the kitchen garden, which sits atop an East facing hill, all the lettuces were fine with the first frost and have fared well since even with just a light covering of sheer curtains. The chard, sorrel, other herbs and all the seedlings already in the ground have been fine as well with no covering at all. This weekend, though, we're working on getting the high tunnel up, which will hopefully allow us to grow throughout the winter. More on that soon.

Indian Summer CSA share

Many of our succession plantings that failed to germinate with the drought came up once we had some rain at the end of August, meaning that we're now enjoying summer harvests even though it's late September/ early October. Luckily the warm weather is cooperating even if the days are getting shorter. This is the CSA share we delivered to our members the last week of September. This share offers the last of the yellow summer squash, but the Costata zucchini is still coming, as are the watermelon and muskmelons.

Share list:

• 1 1/4 lbs. mixed beans
• oxheart carrots
• French breakfast radishes
• onion (ruby ring or New York early)
• Costata zucchini
• yellow squash
• bell pepper
• Serrano hot peppers
• Brandywine heirloom slicing tomatoes
• German red strawberry tomato
• green zebra tomato
• bright lights swiss chard
• red salad bowl lettuce
• oakleaf lettuce
• mixed baby greens (kale, simpson, oakleaf, romaine, raab, tatsoi, beet, speckled bibb)
• strawberry watermelon wedge
• 1/2 muskmelon (Hale’s best/ old time Tennessee)
• sorrel
• basil
• thyme
• citrus thyme
• rosemary
• tarragon
• chives
• parsley

Peaches and Pickles

We got one perfect peach from our peach tree this year—not bad for the tree's second year, considering we really weren't expecting anything. Our blueberry bushes also produced pretty well this year, and we're currently harvesting both Mars and Canadice grapes from 2 year old vines. Our apples, pears, and plum trees offered no fruit this year, so we'll look forward to next. But our fig tree has set fruit again this year, and we're hopeful that it may get large enough and ripen to eat, considering all this heat we've been having.

Our cucumbers have finally started producing, though the pickling cukes more than the slicing cukes. I made 8 jars of garlic dill pickles this weekend, using cukes, dill and garlic that we grew ourselves. I chose to spear mine rather than pickle them whole, and Jim and I are looking forward to trying them. Overall, our cucurbits are doing pretty well down in the market garden, despite our lack of rain. The beans, however, have been a dismal failure, and several seem to be suffering from clover yellow vein virus best I can tell. I'll be pulling those plants this weekend, and crossing my fingers for the subsequent plantings. Sometimes I think the biggest farming challenge is just keeping one's spirits up and focusing on the successes rather than throwing hands in the air and giving it all up for lost.

My Milking Parlor

Milking is finally smoothing out a bit, as Latte and I have gotten into a rhythm. She's giving me about a pound of milk each morning, give or take, which isn't great, but I'm hopeful that it's on the increase.

She's a first freshener Nigerian Dwarf Goat, and we've left her baby with her, both of which account for the low milk numbers. Once he's weaned and we go to twice a day milking, we should get more. What we do currently is separate them at night, and I take the first morning's milk while Dragon gets to nurse throughout the day. He's growing well, and it beats bottle feeding. I have enough to do around the farm, and my motto is let mamas be mamas because they'll do it better than we do.

So, I bought the canopy above, optimistically thinking it would enable me to milk even when it was raining. Well, we haven't had a single drop of rain (well, we've had drops, but that's about it) since we bought it, and our last best hope for July rolled on outta here last night without even wetting the bottom of the rain gage. It did, however, at least leave a pattern on the pavement, which is more than any of the other systems have done.

And here's a photo of my matching Delux Solar Dryer, Farm edition. Look how dry and crunchy our grass is—it's so sad. But my cow poles make me smile each time I look at them. The girls and I painted the spots last weekend, as it was finally cool enough to paint in the morning. We've had them white for a while, just waiting for the weather to give us a break.

My first CSA anxiety dream

I had my first CSA anxiety dream last night, as the share bags have been dwindling. In part due to the drought we're experiencing and in part because all those beautiful spring lettuces took up so much space. I try to keep that in perspective, but perspective is difficult in the face of drought effects. Our only saving grace is that it's been raining to the north, south and west of us, so the underground water sources are still holding their own—not great, but not yet dire.

This photo represents 3 shares worth of food, though the potatoes and zucchini were divided into 4. Even the hens are laying about 6 fewer eggs a day than normal due to the heat, which has thrown at least three of them into a molt from what I can tell. This week's share was similar but thankfully a bit bigger as the beans and tomatoes have begun producing: minus the potatoes and with fewer lettuces and adding into the mix an acorn squash, more tomatoes, more royal burgandy beans, cherokee pole beans, chioggia beets, and a bulb of hardneck garlic.

I think folks have been happy with the shares and certainly the one you see here was our barest as we transitioned from spring to summer produce. The anxiety stems from my end—seeing all the drought-stressed plants, watching thunderstorms roll right by, and wondering what the next share will be as many of our succession plantings fail to germinate without rain. I can't and won't water irresponsibly off our well, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage against the big CSAs in the area with their fancy irrigation equipment. Here, it's just little old me, a couple of 55 gallon drums, and a husband sweet enough to help me after a long day at work and a grueling commute home. We're both having a hard time keeping our spirits up as we watch crop after crop suffer and yields drop dramatically. I should be having extra shares to sell by this point, but we're barely holding our own with just our six member families.

Folks around here got a scant first hay cutting, and no one even has the possibility of a second cutting. One local guy got only 30 square bales off 10 acres of alfalfa. The lady we buy our beef from who has just shy of 400 acres and I don't know how many head of cattle and generally produces all her own hay and grain on premises has finally found enough hay to get her through the winter and is looking at a $10,000 bill. She says even the Mennonites are at the sale barns looking for hay—a very bad sign if they can't find enough within their own community. Farmers in our area are hurting, badly, and that story's being sung across the country, just with some different lyrics. The weather's been brutal this year, no doubt.

So, I awoke early this morning in the midst of a dream that was very clearly an anxiety dream...

It was Thanksgiving day, and our family had arrived. Apparently I'd been so busy that I hadn't taken a turkey out to defrost, so I was trying to cook one of our turkeys while it was still frozen. Our heritage birds weigh between 10-12 lbs, and I will cook 2 for our Thanksgiving of six people because folks in my family really like the leftovers. So in my dream, all I had was one frozen turkey, and next thing I know all these people show up—apparently neighbors, all of whom I now need to figure out how to feed off the one frozen, 12 lb turkey. I woke up in the middle of the dream, as the kids were trashing the house and refusing to go downstairs to play, and I was beginning to drink heavily....

First Frost

We had our first frost this week, and I'd come up with a pretty good plan for protecting our late season crops. I found some pex piping, water pipe, that comes in 100' rolls at the local home improvement warehouse. We were able to cut that to length pretty easily with a pipe cutter to create a low hoop-style row cover, which I then covered with some old sheets.


Voila! Instant row cover, which worked quite well and none too soon. Being outside, working together and watching the cold front move in—the change in the light, the sky, the wind, the temperature—was really amazing. The next morning the basil was totally zapped anywhere that wasn't insulated. The beans were a bit more hardy, but the new growth still took a hit.

We harvested the last of our green tomatoes and green peppers, and I just put up a huge batch of green beans. I was able to save the basil from the middle of the plants and pull together one last big batch of pesto for freezing, and I got a bunch of this second batch of dill vacuum sealed and frozen to pull out over the winter—it makes a delicious dijon sauce for salmon among many other things. Jules is going to miss coming out in the morning to harvest raspberries, but man, is she going to love it next year when we hopefully have more than just a handful. I can't wait to make jam!