In the month of July, we have been keeping busy with plenty of farm activity. We've had a few long weekends which has helped us get a jump on our efforts to continue making beds and blocks down to the end of the fence line. We have sown some more seeds and are watching as the seedlings grow and keeping up with the weeds that are also happy that there is some water to allow them to germinate. We've done lots of scything of the purple velvet grass and raking them into large piles. We've scraped more beds and sifted some compost and then decided that the time it takes to sift the compost isn't worth it and that we are now planning to buy some compost from a different place that has a much better product. We had bought a large amount from the city that has organic compost for cheap. The problem with it is that there is a ton of "microtrash" and plastic bits and bobs in it. We have collected a 5 gallon bucket that is about half full of this trash that we pick out of our wheelbarrow by hand each time we sift a few shovelfuls of compost. We can't imagine exactly how the city can claim this is "organic" with all the junk that's in there. We've also turned one of our compost piles twice within a few days. We are trying to get those compost piles to get into action. It's not easy when you have so much else to do. You are supposed to turn a compost pile every few days to keep the microbial action and heat going for all that material to actually compost down. The plan is to get this good compost to the farm so we can then start digging our new beds and planting a summer cover crop, so that the beds will be ready sooner than later to plant our food crops.
The seeds we planted in the keyhole block in June germinated rather quickly; as early as July 1st and most no later than July 4th
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| chioggia beet |
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| arugula |
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| red giant mustard |
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| carrots | |
By July 16th the seedlings looked like this!
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| chiogga beets |
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| tres fines marachaire endive |
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| red giant mustard |
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| arugula and full heart batavian escarole on the end |
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| parisian carrot |
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| cosmic purple carrot |
As I mentioned before, we started working on our lower area down toward the fenceline. This area hasn't been touched in years and constitutes maybe about a quarter acre. The last group of people who were farming part of this land (AKA "The Bohemians") started to turn the soil in this area by tractor and then couldn't finish the job with the machine due to the very wet Winter. They ended up never returning. And so, here we are today getting the job done. There was still a lot of grass to scythe and then we left that for a bit as we started to grid up the blocks. Then we started scraping with our spade. We got back to the grasses and started raking them into huge piles (normally the grasses would be incorporated into a compost pile much earlier in the season - well, that didn't happen) and then it was back to scraping the blocks. We decided that this lower area we were going to grid up smaller beds. We decided beds would be 12 feet long and 3 or 4 feet wide. One block is 39 feet long with 16 inch pathways between each bed and a main walkway between blocks being 5 feet. Got that? Ok.
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| scything purple velvet grass July 4th |
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| new blocks July 7th | | |
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| and by July 8th we had another block gridded out |
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| and then by July 16th the blocks looked like the above 2 photos |
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| Raking the purple velvet grass |
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| and here's the end pile |
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| and that's becoming a "needle in a haystack" |
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| and we raise our rakes in the air with a hurrah and FIN! |
A compost pile turned not once, but twice (well, really 4 times and will get turned again and again)
I have to admit that the above photos make things look pretty "brown and scratchy". How about some greenery? We had some lovely development of flowers and the beginnings of the fruits of our labor. Take a look...
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| first of the bean flowers July 7th. These are the hopi red lima bean near our bullseye center of the keyhole growing upon the stalks of our hopi black dye sunflowers |
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| Turkey Craw are the current winners for growth and we think that having two rows of beans near the top of the mounded bed seems to be the best sowing position |
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| the first beans! How cute! calypso bush beans |
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| our costata romanesca summer squash. So far lots of female flowers, but no males. Oh well, we can eat those undeveloped anyways |
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| a pepper corno di toro |
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| and tomatoes nyagous |
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| and look at those australian brown onions! |
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| lots of growth and male flowers on the melon plants, but very few female flowers. Maybe the squash and melon need to just bend all the rules and get together instead... not going to happen, but we just have to be patient for the plants to be ready for some action |
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| this hopi black dye sunflower is going to win the "first in bloom" contest for sure. |
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| the keyhole looking great! |
And finally, a little box of edible goodies we were able to bring home to cook up one of our favorite meals. Any guesses on what we might have made? It could be anything, but a food post is coming soon. Recipe and detailed instruction to accompany the post for your own cooking enjoyment!
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| what's in the box? red giant mustard greens, herbs: summer savory, dill, shiso, cilantro and three costata romanesca unpollinated summer squash with flowers |
