A heart full of love

Every year, sometime between transplanting and the craziness of harvest, I start to think that it is not going to work out, that nothing will grow into food, that everything has gone horribly wrong. Then I realize that there is a five gallon bucket full of potatoes on the kitchen floor, that we have been eating green beans for weeks, that the hammock is full of curing onions (good thing it is way too hot to swing in it myself), that those two cloth sacks full of garlic make for a LOT of garlic, that I can eat as many tomatoes as I want and there are still enough left over for canning, and that despite the appearance that it is knocking on death's door the cucumber are steadily growing, I realize that it worked out again this year. I have food!!! AND it is raining. I feel happy.

Independence Day

What a great day! A day off in the middle of the week made for good fun and good farming. I finally harvested the onions; they are drying on the hammock. This system seemed to work pretty well last year, and we never got around to making something a bit less.....holey for this year, so hammock it is! I also harvested two types of garlic and shallots. One type of garlic made very small heads, so I think I will plant more of the second type next year. Then we biked to the Eno Festival for some food and music. We also learned that we can download plans for a screech owl house on the Piedmont Wildlife Center's website, so maybe we will try to attract a screech owl next spring. Then bike home and harvest POTATOES. If you have read previous posts, you know I love potatoes. I pretty near filled up a five gallon bucket of these wonderful things, even though all of my plants succumbed to a terrible disease this year. Secretly I am pleased that this means I get to procure all new seed potatoes next year. I like trying new things. Happy 4th, everyone!

Please rain

That is it. That's my whole post. Please rain.

A beautiful day

Could it be more perfect? I left work a bit early today to attend a meeting of the Durham Food Prosperity Council, which I help organize. We had a guest speaker, Durham City Council member Steve Schewel, who spoke to us about how to get involved in policy advocacy at the local level. I am very excited about the prospect of getting more involved in local food policy work, for I love me some wonky dorkiness.

Then I checked my email and found out that I have been accepted to the undergrad certificate program in horticulture at NC State!!! Yay! I am excited to be going back to college to study something that can help me be a better farmer.

And now I am blogging from my farm. It is 73 degrees, which might be unheard of for late May in North Carolina. It is just beautiful outside and I am so happy to have some quiet time out here to look and love without digging or weeding or planting or mulching or running drip irrigation lines. I plan to be out here some this weekend getting some of that done, and I will be happy doing it, but it is also wonderful to sun myself and just sit here and appreciate all of the hard work my friends came out and did last week whipping this farm into shape. Thank you, friends! Your work is much appreciated!

The seasons go round like a wheel

It's been nearly six months without blog contact. To catch us all up, Durham had a wildly mild winter. Them, last night, it snowed. But don't worry. It will be over 60 degrees out tomorrow and 70 by Wednesday. The floating row covers and the plastic tunnel experiments worked a bit, but not nearly so well as I was hoping. It was difficult to keep the plastic where it belonged, and the row covers are too much a pain in the tush to get under. But it is possible that these things extended the growing season. It is hard to tell because the winter was so warm that things grew even outside of the season extenders!
On to spring news:
The peas are in. I planted them on Saturday. Also seeded in is a very exciting experiment. My massage therapist and I share a love of gardening and she gave me Italian arugula seeds. I have decided I love European seed packets. This one is quite informative without being overwhelming.
More greens will go in this coming weekend.
Soil prep has been done with a fun new tool this year. I'm using a broad fork I received as a Christmas gift from my in laws. It is awesome to use and hopefully it will do good things for the garden.
Seed starting will begin in earnest in a couple of weeks indoors. I think I might have 10 different types of tomato seeds...thank you Baker Creek for throwing in one more as a free gift with my order! It is always fun to try something new.
The BIGGEST news ever is that we have expanded our urban landholdings, and........we will be putting in an urban orchard NEXT WEEK!!!! The orchard was designed and will be installed by Bountiful Backyards (Will and I will wield shovels as well in an effort to be helpful!). I cannot express in words how very excited I am about the orchard and the chance to work with BB.
I will wrap it up with the animals. My cat has yet to kill a vole. My 2012 bee attempt will begin (with two hives) in late April. I think I have learned enough at the wonderful Orange County Beekeepers Association's bee school to keep them around this year! I also have a house for mason bees (another thankful shout out to Anne and Tom) that I will hang on the front porch. The fowl are doing well and laying regularly and have been for about two weeks now. I am hoping to add two more ladies to the flock sometime this spring.

One more day of summer

It is supposed to get really cold on Saturday night. This is good for the garden, but bad for hot-loving farmers like myself. Luckily, I love my garden and am glad that the cold should do in the bugs that are munching on my brand new Red Russian Kale seedlings and my chard. All else seems to be going well. Seedlings of all types are pretty well established, and it's supposed to warm back up to lows on the 50s after our little cold snap. Perfect fall plant weather!

One more big plant project is coming up before winter's onslaught; high tunnels for some of the seedlings. I want to see if 1. I can have them without their collapsing at the first snow fall, and 2. They help the plants grow more vigorously in cold weather. I'll keep you posted!

Fall garden time

It has been ages, blog! Late summer tends to get me down a bit. The corn didn't quite work out, the tomatoes died of wilt, squash bugs abounded and still abound, and the second bee hive fled the premises. It is too depressing to write about in the moment and the bad stuff manages to obscure the good.

And there is a lot of good.We put up beets for the first time, not all the tomatoes died (we have put up a bunch of tomato sauce and the tomatoes keep coming!), the green beans did well, the crowders are insane, and the edamame rule.

All that being said, fall is here! And I feel like I've earned some cred as a southern gardener because I am nine kinds of excited! Beans and peas are growing well, as is a TON of dill (I helped a few flowers self seed), and cilantro is up! I finally cleaned out the front yard garden and planted mustard, rape, Wong bok, arugala, lentils (we will see how that goes...) and fava beans. YAY!!!!!

There is still so much more to be done...more weeding out back, and taking up the melon/cuke patch and some of the beans so that more fall plantings can go in.

I'll wrap it up with a shout out of thanks to a storm named Lee who got me the rain I have been dreaming of for months. Thanks Lee! Now let's go fall garden!