A Moment of Peace

 ...before the storm. Not every day starts with a double rainbow over the hayfield. As much as we need the rain, this is an auspicious start to the day!

Winter Wonderland?

After a barely productive and somewhat comic trip out to the timber to cut wood today, I caved and ordered my first pair of snowshoes.

We'll see if their arrival functions like the groundhog and his shadow...either an early spring or plenty of practice opportunities??  Hmmm, wondering what OSHA says about snowshoes and chainsaws??

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

No, we are not talking about The Sound of Music...or The Sound of Mucus (as it is referred to in some theatre circles). We are talking about a chicken coop. After some delays, the building of the replacement coop is finally underway. This is a good thing as the day-old chicks are due to arrive on Friday!

Here is the stack of newly purchased lumber complete with tools all ready to become a 10' x 16' mobile range coop. It will be moved around the pasture with the tractor.

 The cutting of the skids is underway. These are 18' long, treated 6 x 6's.

The skids are trimmed up and framed in square and the first of the floor joists are in place. Note the increasing snow on the ground and the fancy wind break in the background. Our timing might be a little less than perfect.

More to follow when we get it dug out from beneath the snow...

When Dragons Fly

It has been a while since my last post. Its not that nothing has been happening, but it has been rather a frustrating summer farm-wise and every time I sat down to write a post it came out as complaining. So here it is in (hopefully) non-complaining terms...RAIN! Too much rain, too often (ok, so maybe a little complaining).
May 5.5" (ave. 4.25")
June 13.6" (ave. 4.6")
July 10.85" (ave 4.1")
August to date: 7.9" (ave. 4.5")

Alone, none of these months seems too terribly alarming, but just these four months together total 37.65" of rain...a yardstick stood on end would be under water, along with a lot of other things! Also, note that the average annual rainfall here is 34.7". So in one-third of the year we have exceeded the annual average by several inches. This has translated to a variety of repercussions "on the ground."

Over the summer we lost at least 60% of our crops. The only two crops that have exceeded expectations have been the patty pan squash, which we have systematically buried the CSA in, and the okra.Were it not for the high tunnels which have been producing steadily, we would have been forced to close down the CSA mid-summer. This is the first of "counting our blessings"...we thank our lucky stars for those high tunnels, and the patty pans and okra!

In addition to that, because the soil has been and stayed so wet, we've been unable to do any planting in the fields since May. No succession planting at all...scary! We do have an absolutely beautiful field-wide crop of foxtail growing and as soon as we figure out a market for that, we'll be rich!

But, our house wasn't flooded and our family members are safe and largely healthy. Our livestock wasn't caught in rising waters and our vehicles and equipment are on high ground. Compared to a lot of people in the state, we have been (and still are) lucky. Though it isn't always easy to remember on a moment-to-moment basis in a summer like this.

I've been taking monthly Meditation sessions this summer and my instructor had suggested that maybe it would be a good time to focus on "gratitude". Since the things that were causing me so much stress were completely out of my control. Ok, that shouldn't be too difficult, I tend to be a pretty optimistic person. Hmmm, as in so many things, the theory and the practice are two entirely different realms!

And then last night just as the sun was settling toward the western horizon, the dragonflies arrived. We live in the country, near a number of ponds so there are always dragonflies around in the summer, but this was something different entirely. There were thousands of them, apparently all the same variety, swarming across the yard. We could see them hunting smaller flying insects, like mad-bomber-flying-aces. Occasionally we could hear the sudden rustle of translucent wings, but otherwise the only sound was the cadence of the cicadas. It went on for more than an hour, a mad ballet and aerial dogfight in the heavy, sponge-damp air of an August evening. Ah, this is gratitude...

Vampire-free Zone!

As you can see from the above photo, BGF is now a vampire-free zone! No pale-faced, night stalking blood sucker could make it through our massive garlic moat!
Well actually, its not technically a "moat" since its mostly hung from the rafters, but it sounded good. All kidding aside though, I had certainly not planned to harvest garlic this week as it is about 3 weeks too early, but our obnoxious weather pattern of late was putting the crop at risk. When we pulled a test batch to give the CSA earlier this week, we discovered that the garlic was actually sitting in water just below the surface. Not good!

So we took a break in the battle with the weeds and did some serious garlic harvesting, to the tune of more than 2400 heads. Whew! That is a lot of garlic, for us anyway. We did lose a number of heads to rot, and let me tell you there is nothing quite like the "heady" aroma of rotting garlic...blech! But it wasn't as bad as I first feared. So now all of it is bundled and 90% of it is hanging. I ran out of drying space in the packing shed, so now I'm working on annexing part of my parent's garage to finish out the last of it. Surely they would appreciate a little protection from vampires too?!?

PFI and Trees Afire

Thursday we had to leave the farm shortly after dawn to make it to Ames for the PFI Cooperators meeting. This is an annual outing for us and one last opportunity to visit with a large group of farmers before the season begins. It is also the place where we commit ourselves to various field trials that we want to work on during the upcoming season. In the past we have done trials on tomato trellising systems and high tunnel profitability. It appears that we will continue the recent high tunnel trial, and add one on HT fertility. We also volunteered to do a study on low tunnel technologies in the field, which basically translates to "how do we keep the damn row covers on when its windy?" Details to follow on all of these, I'm sure.

Anyway, as we got ourselves and our chores ready for our departure the sun began to rise and lit up every surface covered with hoarfrost. It was absolutely glorious and looked like the world was ablaze in an icy fire. They aren't the greatest pictures, but you get the idea.

Ice, Ice Baby

Yeah, I know...passe pop culture reference, but I just couldn't help myself. Our whole world is ice right now, everything is covered in a solid 1/2" casing of slick crystal weight.


So far though, no real complaints as we still have electricity. There was one little hiccup at 4:05 this morning, whereupon we lay in our warm bed discussing how we would ever get the generator out of the barn and up the hill in this ice rink. Fortunately, we've had steady power since then, so no immediate need to figure out that little issue.


We did finally acquire two pairs of YakTrax yesterday, so now we are much more sure-footed in our current glass world. Blue is not so lucky and she would undoubtedly prefer the world of sod, or even snow under her paws.


Late last night when out to do boiler chores, the world was rather remarkable. Sparkling wherever light touched any surface, but the sound was unearthly. Trees all around creaked and groaned under the enormous weight of the ice. Now and again a loud, shattering crack as a limb gave up the fight and crashed to the ground. Dangerous beauty, indeed!

A Preview

Well so much for doing a better job of keeping the blog up-to-date.
As I sit at the computer today I can look out the window at a beautiful snowy wonderland. We got about 4" of fluffy snow last night, and suddenly its winter on the farm. This is only an appetizer though as we are predicted to get up to 12" in the next couple of days.
Hard to believe a week ago we were harvesting radishes, salad and other greens outside. This likely marks the formal end of the outdoor gardening season for us, and I sure am happy that we have the high tunnels, as we still have one CSA delivery and one farmers market to go.

I will try to get pics of the high tunnels posted in the next day or so. The crops in there are still lush and beautiful.

A brief observation

This past Friday I saw a flock of geese flying south at sunset. It was a beautiful sight with their stark arrow of bodies silhouetted against the glowing end of the day. Sheer poetry it was.

Then I realized its July 18, I'm wearing a sweatshirt and have been wearing it most of the day while harvesting...and the geese are flying south. Not a huge flock, mind you, but a flock nonetheless. Huh. I'm sure it was just a fluke, that they were simply moving to a pond for the night. But regardless, it did make me pause.
July 18.
Sweatshirt.
Geese flying south.
Huh.