A Whirlwind of Summer

As a lone lady farmer trying to keep up with an acre of land, I found it impossible to keep up with the blog as well. So here are a few snippets of farming since last April to catch you up to speed.

First the wild poppys bloomed.

Then the tomatoes went in...

The radishes flourished.

And where then harvested.

The onion scapes went to the restaurant.

And the spring garlic turned into soup.

The tomatoes grew up!

And there were turnips galore.

The squash plants made squash.

Next baby kale plants went in.

And the wild flowers bloomed,

While the artichokes choked,

The celery root rooted,

And the leaks leaked.

Then fava beans popped up.

And looked stunning all in a row.

It has been a more productive summer than last year which helps me feel like I learned something over the year and a half that I have been out here. I am enormously grateful to this piece of land and to Christian for allowing me to learn here. Enormously.

Starts

For the past four months my back deck has been a starting ground for farm plants. As they mature they move to the farm to be planted, making room for the next crop. Its quite enjoyable having a mini farm right out the back door.

At the moment, crops include parsley, wild garden kale, chard, rapini, nasturtium, strawberry, leeks, chives, tomatoes, and some edible flowers.

Tomatoes still in their greenhouse

In Love

Special Announcement: I am in love with a rototiller. She is amazing, hardworking, beautiful and has changed my life for the better! Oh, and she’s Italian. All of a sudden the farm went from being totally overwhelming and weedy to a manageable project, a true pleasure to be around. It used to take me a day or two to turn one bed and make it plantable. This always involved a lot of back-breaking digging, scraping, and weeding. But over the past two days with the tiller (lets name her Tilla) I easily made five new beds and am close to finishing five more. In just one day I had three beds of kale planted for summer and I’ll have the squash planted by the end of the week. My upper body is very sore as I am using muscles I didn’t know I had to maneuver her around (she is quite heavy), but its so worth it.

Loading into the Truck to Bring Home

She is a BCS tiller, harvester 722. Different attachments allow me to mow and dig trenches.

Christian turning soil into gold.

Simon taking on the grass with Tilla

This short grass tears up easily with just the tiller attachment. I leave the grass to decompose for a day or two and then go through it again to finish the bed. Driving her takes a little getting used to but once you understand the levers, you let off the clutch and let it do the work for you. There is a bit of steering needed as it has a mind of its own: veering off course whenever it hits a dip or bump, leaving the driver to wrestles it back on track which makes it a true upper body workout.

Another exciting benefit to tilling the beds: the gopher holes that have taken over the farm are quickly demolished, allowing the plants a head start to the gopher invasion. Between the tiller and the gopher traps I plan to keep them at bay.

Gopher Trap

I found this guy warming up under plastic mulch that I was using to keep the thistles from sprouting.

Spring!

Even in this wet, cool weather the plants grow on. I plopped garlic cloves in the ground at the end of October and look at them now!

Spring Garlic

Then the onions came in the mail and I snuggled those in too.

Soon to be: big red onions

Wala Wala Onions

The radishes continue to produce despite the muddy conditions. I harvest them when they are dime sized and adorable.

Baby Radish: growing under cover to keep them warm

When the President was in town for a meeting a few weeks ago, the caterer, who happens to be a friend of mine, served him these very radishes… Steve Jobs too. I hear that he cleaned his plate, so he must have enjoyed them.

Obama Radish

…And then there are the baby plants that are beginning on my back deck. I built a cold frame out of insulated plastic and lined the bottom with full water bottles. During the day the water heats up, keeping the plants warm even after the sun goes down.

Water Bottles Lining the Bottom of the Cold Frame

The baby tomatoes are in there now, and they are very happy indeed.

Tomatoes in Cold Frame

I am seriously looking forward to clearing beds and planting veggies and flowers. But until this rain stops, I’m happy planting many (15 so far) flats of baby plants and mapping out the farm for spring.

Inspiration

Baby Onions

 

Its pretty stormy around here. The gopher holes have turned into pressurized piping, spouting water up and out enthusiastically all over the farm (and drowning the gophers I’m hoping!). I dig a lot of trenches and hope for a dry spell so the plants can breathe. I also spend a lot of time looking for inspiration outside the farm and planning for the spring.

I’ve been drooling over Little City Gardens‘ blog due to their nicely mulched beds and the fact that these two girls have been farming at their plot in San Francisco for several years. I’m impatient and want my farm to be organized and beautiful right NOW.

Ghost Town Farm blog is also fun to read as I try to imagine raising animals. This is the woman (Novella Carpenter) who wrote a book about raising animals and food on an empty lot in Oakland, feeding them from dumpsters and then eating the animals herself.

And then there is Dispatches from the Funky Butte Ranch which is continuously amusing. This guy (Doug Fines) also wrote a book. Farewell My Subaru explains how he kicked his oil habit, began eating locally, and made goats milk ice cream from his own goats’ milk. I’m jealous here as well.

I do have my own farm inspiration too. An impromptu work-party appeared at the farm several weeks ago and powered through some weeding that was taking me ages to finish. Thanks guys!

farming is hard work

Yup, I grew this artichoke

I’ve been working 7 days a week for about two months now and I’m beginning to understand why weekends were invented. I had my neighbor, a long-time farmer, tell me that farming is an addiction and good luck kicking it. I couldn’t have put it better.

Here’s what’s happened since I last sat down to write:

Plants grew like crazy and I spent all my time harvesting beans and squash and dragging them to the restaurant. It got cold, the warm season crops decided to call it quits, and the weeds took over. So I spent my time caring for the winter greens by hula hoeing and meticulously trying to pull the grass out from around the carrots. Then a deer pushed his way under the fence and ate the carrots. I patched fences and planted parsley, garlic, and radishes.

The chard and kale look fantastic, well, the ones that are left.  A bothersome gopher is eating them one by one from the bottom up. I’ve got to stop feeling sorry for him and kill him (I set the trap sometimes but then go back and pull it out of the hole because I start feeling bad that I’m gonna break his back). The kitten is useless when it comes to hunting, though continues to be extremely cute thus good for my spirits.

It rained and cheered everyone up, especially the weeds that have turned my farm from mostly bare dirt to a vibrant green need to weed. I desire a rototiller, and ten more hands… oh, and maybe a few more days in the week.

If I could grow all my radish like this, I'd be rich

 

Zucchini showing off his seeds while still growing on the plant.

The good news is I very often love my farming addiction. I can’t wait to finish planting and start making water catchment systems, mulching beds, making compost from the restaurant, and so many other projects that will make it cheaper, easier, and more fun to farm this piece of land.

“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

– Wendell Berry

 

Surprising

Bush Bean Harvest

 

To Stellina for dinner.

Summer Squash Mix

 

The pole beans on their new trellis.

 

Winter squash blossoms.

 

This week, I planted out baby lacinato kale that I started from seed on my back deck in seed trays. Three rows for winter.

 

Surprising what damn hard work goes into keeping the rabbits out of the field long enough for the sunflowers to grow to eight feet tall. And honestly, surprising that a dried out little brown seed turns into a sunflower, or kale or, or, or…

 

Labor Day

I have amazing friends! On labor day I invited my wonderful people out to the farm for some good, old-fashioned labor.  I needed help  getting ready for winter planting by clearing grass, shaping  beds, and trellising beans. I had 11 people turn up and get down to business. I cannot thank them enough! I think we got two weeks worth of projects done in one day. It was a hot, dusty, beautiful day in Point Reyes Station.

First, we cleared the dead grass, which had been tilled into the soil and is not yet fully broken down. As it slowly breaks down, it uses up available nitrogen (a nutrient my seedlings need to survive). Also, when planted into this, roots don’t connect directly with the soil and thus don’t grow very strong. This project left us very dusty and thirsty so…

We took breaks for watermellon, cheese and bread, and beer.

We trellised the pole beans,

weeded the bush beans,

and admired their blossoms.

Geezzzz, its starting to look really farm-like. Thanks so much to all who came out to help!!! Lets do it again soon.

Thoughts on the day by the hardworking and successfully dusty Lillie.

Even in Foggy Point Reyes…

… the sunflowers grow,

turnips bulb,

squash blossom,

tomatoes turn red,

and friends come to visit

Firewood Man

to help me weed the garden.