Yep really. I took the photo back on the 12th, after three days in Coasta Mesa. It blew me away too. Not as much as it blew away the beans though. That’s about a pound of beans that never really go anywhere. Even some of the cole crops got nipped a bit.
Potatoes went in this weekend, lots of help from the smallest farmer (little feet are great for packing the soil down around the spuds).
Reds. 14#
Yellow. 12#
Fingerling. 8#
Purple. 7#
Herloom red. 7# (I will find out what they were)
We are trying something new on the farm this year. Sheet mulch. I saved a bunch of boxes from work, and although we don’t read the paper, a co-worker saved some for us. The area by the hoop house will be for squash, gourds and such. What you don’t see is the deep pile of half rotten hay from a wet round bale we had. Once the weather is better the zucchini, acorn squash, pumpkin, hubbard and other winter squash will go in.
The beans and potatoes (coming in another post) went in today as well. Summer is coming!!!
Baby chicks went into the deck brooder today as well. Ah peace and quiet in the house again.
*.*
It only lasted a few days. Almost three year olds have an annoying habit of loosing some of the cure ‘ism’s far too soon. When two, our little one called hula-hoops ‘hoolyloops’ and would correct you if you said it right. I mean, she’s a kid, she knows what they are really called, right? Well as we finished the hoop house this spring, she did manage to mispronounce ‘hoop house’ enough to take the name on. For a while. She now corrects us “no daddy, da hOOp houtse” ”Dilly Daddy”…. Ah kids.
So here it is, in pictorial story. I’ll narrate (just in case you can’t tell plastic from grass, and a pipe from a board).
Site selection
Starting the sleeve, finished with the 2×4 for a coushin
Neighbors helping out.. I love our neighbors.
The added benefit of the screw into the ledger through the PVC, it kept the hoop from digging into the ground.
The helpful little farmer.
These people are the three reasons I farm. Growing our own (eggs, chicken, veggies, honey, milk etc) lets us feel like we are giving them the best we possibly can. We started with cold frames in the hoop house for two reasons, 1- chickens 2- they are that much warmer, and 3- the ground is still too wet to work (oops, I suppose that’s three)
The legs are from an old picnic table, it would be in here, but the wood finally gave up the fight against the PNW’s wood killing weather. The legs are GREAT though!
Here we have the clean out crew at work. So far I have hauled out a big load of ‘thatch’ and they are getting into bare dirt in places now… And as soon as the ground drys out I’ll kick them out and direct seed.
There it is so far! I am sure you’ll see more of this summer!
Edit: It was brought to my attention that this pile of photos needed some hard metrics and explanations…
The size of this house was 11.5′ by 30′, dictated by the size of the 6 mil plastic that I could get pre-cut (at 24′ by 50′). My logic was to have two feet on either side to secure, and 10′ hanging down at each end to tuck in and secure in the door way. The PVC is 1″ schedule 40 and as my day job is as an electrical PM and estimator, I was able to coerce a supply house to deliver 20′ conduits (so I don’t have a joint at the peak) to the farm. It cost me an additional $6 total. The peak of the roof is at about 7′ 6″ (depending on how deep the low spot you are in is), and if I had made the house a full 12 or even 13′ wide, I would probably still be able to walk around in it no problem. The pipes that we drove into the ground were 1 1/4″ cut down to 2′ 6″ and pounded about a foot and a half into the ground. As there is so much of them above ground, I think they help keep the 1″ ribs running vertically a little further from the ground (and that helps with the headroom). The ridge pipe (a 3/4″ pvc pipe) is there to keep the ribs at the same distance apart, and to give me a place to hang plants, or tie up tomatoes. The two side ones are for the same purpose. They ridge poles are screwed to the ribs (careful to have the screw not be long enough to reach all the way to the plastic.
The 2×4 on the bottom probably could have been 2×6′s, but I was trying to stay under a $300 budget. The support pipes have a 3″ wood screw through them, into the 2×4, and this acts as a stop for the 1″ ribs. The plastic is rolled around the second 2×4 and they are screwed together, sandwiching the plastic between them. The main purposes for the 2×4′s at the bottom are for 1-weight, to hold the entire thing down, 2- give a place to secure the plastic 3- provide an anchor for the support pipes.
I could have done the entire thing solo, but it was really nice to have a couple of extra hands to keep moving with assembly as I head scratched my way through some ‘engineering issues”. I was able to get the plastic over on my own, but took my time with it.
If I was to do one thing differently next time, it would be to have the perimeter prepped, so that the 2×4 sits in better contact wit the soil. There is a bit of an air gap, ad I can feel the cold air coming in with the wind. I assume this gap will be filled by soil as I bring manure into the hoolyloop house.
Late summer and fall are busy times. Today we finished digging potatoes and horseradish. The apple sauce was done last night and if the weather holds today we might get enough yellow raspberries picked for a last batch of jam.
I am hoping to get back to a more regular blogging schedule, and although one might think the first fire in the wood stove signals a slow down, there is still much to do.
Oh and I will work in dragging out the camera more as well.
Posted with WordPress for mobile, please excuse any rough edges..
~///~
We are not a factory farm. We have lots of ‘buffers’ around the creek, pond, and in the middle of the fields too! I think buffer is a nice way to say ‘area that’s out of control’. Granted there are some areas that need a buffer, to keep them ‘native critter friendly’, but mostly, on our farm, they are just places we don’t want to waste the gas to cut the grass, and our grazing heard just isn’t that big. Yet.
One of the ‘native’ plants that is thick in the buffers around here are Salmon Berry. Or Rubus spectabilis. They range in color when ripe from yellow, to deep red or almost purple. You have to be on the ball though. Like raspberry’s they tend to slip off their receptacle very easily when fully ripe. In some places you also race the birds, but with an orchard full of cherry trees, the birds tend to ignore the Salmon Berry’s. Last year I picked enough for a small batch of jam (it turned out pretty good, although I should have strained the seeds…) They are almost all gone now… Just a few here and there to tempt us.
~///~
To Rusted Root, Beach Boys and Michael Franti. And yes, the raspberries are now ripe. More goodies for us. They are all a bit weedy, but no less sweet. Most of these will go into freezer jam, some we will do ‘cooked jam’ for gifts and to save freezer space. Assuming all goes well with the dairy goats we will end up using a lot of this for yogurt as well…
~///~
Human grazing that is. I tried an early sowing of several “cold hardy” crops and the big winner was Pac Choi. In fact, I can’t keep the kids out of it. I finally relented and simply give them the OK to snack on it whenever they were playing outside. They were just as devastating as the slugs, and a lot cuter. The lettuce I planted at the same time is doing well and we have had some wonderful dinner salads with it.
Notice you can’t see any of the garden in the background? Well, that’s because all that’s in is the garlic from last fall and the walking onions. Hopefully by the time this hits the webs I will be running my tiller over the mulch I put down last fall… We have seed potatoes that need a home and the weather looks like it’s finally turned. And although I swore off them I might try tomatoes again… The fool that I am.
~///~
All of it. Like a freight train on a downhill slope. Spring.
The chick weed is starting to get new growth on it in the garden, the dandelions are getting bushy, and the deadline for package bees is fast approaching. The goats look like if it were up to them, they would have these babies NOW. With a quick clip for the births, they look like they sat in a bucket of Nair. I’m trying not to laugh. ‘Gatti’ is bagging up, and looks like a little mini dairy goat. ‘Crazy-Chendo’ is in strong denial. She even turned away when I showed her the ‘birthing tote’ all ready with the hopefully unnecessary items. So did Farmer J. “Yes I know my hands are smaller than yours, but it doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to it”.
I’m trying to track down a supplier for a couple of packages of bees to install in my hives in Duvall in Mid April. I’m hoping for Carniolans, but really, any bee will do.
The order went into Territorial Seed last week… More stuff that we proved this winter we will indeed eat. Now to wait for that last April Frost that ticked me off so bad last year… Oh, and fill the cold frames with compost in the mean time for some earlier greens… (oh and the berries… yes the berries)
“Chicks are in”. If you are anywhere near a farm store that’s what you’ll see.. And we have some crazy big hopes for this year. Replacement layers, meat birds (heritage breed) and in another 8 weeks or so, some turkey polts. That also means in another three or four months we will be having a ‘processing day’.
Oh and the mower won’t start… Grr. That’s going to be an issue here shortly.
We need to replace some apples that have died off after planting… Slow Food USA just had a great post on forgotten and endangered apples in the US. It’s here (www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/apple_varieties_disappear_from_u.s._markets) and worth the read!
Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com.
