Work, Work and More Work

The girls have been weeding garlic and onion beds.  The onion beds are the hardest, they are infested with clover.  But the onions are looking great in spite of the slight encroachment on their space.  The girls have been trying to keep up with the ornamental beds as well.  I do have a tendency to want to weed the ornamental beds myself to guard against loosing plants to inexperienced eyes.

The taters finally went in Tuesday and Wednesday.  Yes, I know, I’m late, exactly eight weeks late.  I put them to sprout the first of March, that was two weeks later than usual but for some reason even though they were in a place where it was quite warm and I was actually worried that they would sprout to fast, they took forever to sprout.   Some sprouts on certain varieties had barely broken the surface.  In they went any way.  It is so warm now that continued sprouting wouldn’t win me any extra days at this point, probably lost that point about three weeks ago.

Ya know, sometimes late is good, we’ll be eating “new spring taters” when normally we would only be eating big fat full grown ones.  Of course we’ll be doin’ rice and pasta for a long while.  Hmmmm, trade offs.

Seriously, what went in?  Fingerlings: Russian Banana, Rose Finn Apple, Austrian Crescent.  Some nice round spuds, reds: Dark Red Norland and whites: Atlantic, German Butterball.  I think I’m missing a few, I’ll walk out to the Market Garden and see what is on the tags.

Because I can pick up a fifty pound sack of russets (yes, literally pick up and also purchase) for a couple of bucks at the restaurant supply store, we opted to not put in a lot of taters this year.  These will just be for special kitchen use and seed taters for next year as we slowly build our crop back up from when we scabbed out.  Seed potatoes are ridiculously expensive. 

We finished planting all our asparagus in the perennial food Barn Garden, though next year I think I will add a couple more beds.  This year’s last order came in just before Dirt and I left for Leavenworth and Danielle and I got that planted when we got back.  The first two beds that I have told about are coming up.  But I think ducks like asparagus tips, for I am finding quite a few snapped off stalks.  Cute little ducks, I like them sooo much and they eat slugs, cute little ducks.  But part of me wonders if this isn’t a sign that roast duck breast goes well with asparagus.

The harvest of course won’t happen until next spring, long time to wait, and even then it will be limited, but the thought of not having to replace something for twenty plus years, a definite large bonus.  I need to pick up some artichoke plants and to start some myself as that will be something else that can go in the perennial foods garden side of Barn Garden.  I’m not a huge fan of eating artichoke leaves but we do go through a large supply of hearts and I truly am fond of the flower when they are allowed to color up.  I would love to have enough artichokes to have hearts a plenty for dips and salads and still have many flowers left to allow them to fully bloom for some fresh and dried arrangements.

New market beds have been heaped up. And new ones get added every day.  Yes, the beds are lumpy with sod bits but that won’t be a problem. On top of the lumpy sod bits we will add manure.  Depending on what the bed will be used for the manure used will be any where from fresh to fairly rotted.  Then, again depending on what goes in, the bed might get a layer of finished compost or little bowls of finished compost.  If you would like to read more on how garden beds are made here at Vicktory Farm &  Gardens, I will be putting together a page just for that, but for now my main post on bed building is here.  So this coming week, along with lots of other things to do, will be manure procurement. 

Danielle took me up to a neighbor of her folks’ today to get a PU truck load of fresh horse manure minus shavings.  We took their entire fresh manure supply and we will be back for the well rotted manure later this week.  I am trying to become a manure hauler. If there is manure to be had, I want it.  One of my favorite books on farming made that apparent, if you can get your hands on manure sources off of your farm, take it. The concept goes something like this, for every nutrient that leaves in any manner, one or more comes back in.

Along with off-farm sources, this week our barn needs to be emptied and by emptied I mean emptied.  Completely.  Down to the old rocks left by the original homesteader in my opinion.  Then I would like to haul in some base rock, gravel and sand.  Now that I have successfully installed the drain on the east side of the barn I’d like to take this opportunity (nearly empty barn) to get the whole bugger tip top.  Well, as tip top as a hundred plus year old log barn can be.  So out goes old hay to the compost pile and out goes the manure and bedding to the new market beds.  After we get that tackled we’ll deal with the stationary poultry pens.  And boy howdy will that stuff melt those soddy bits!

Tomato plants will go in this week in some of the new beds under low poly tunnel.  Poly tunnels for a bit of extra heat.  We are pretty much past our last frost date, nearly a guarantee by this weekend although we sure saw some good little frosts last Friday, Saturday, Sunday.  Yet in spite of the guaranteed frost free date arriving, I still put the toms under a poly tunnel.  In the PNW we just don’t get the heat that produces a good tomato crop.  Once the flowers come on I will lift the sides of the tunnels so that the pollinators can get to the plants but the heat is still held in on the plant. 

Because the toms are pretty well started, really needing new space actually, they will go in a fairly heavily manure-ed bed, holes will be made eighteen to twenty-four inches apart and filled with complete compost and the plant set inside that.  This will give the fresh manure time to settle before the roots get to it.

Along with all this outside farm work we have inside farm work, setting up the Fiber House aka Laundry House, setting up the new bunkhouse (bedroom for three farm hands), setting up the Farm’s office room (Dirt’s room really but we’ll all use it).  I’d like to be painting upstairs by the twenty-fourth of this month.  And have everyone and nearly everything in their rightful rooms by May twenty-eighth.  Big goals!  No really, if you could see the starting point, these are big goals.

So I told the girls yesterday that boot camp starts with a vengeance Monday Morning with a bit of a increased taste of it today.  No more slackers.  No more brainless wanderings.  No more dazed looks.  No more chit chatting while the hands sit idle.  The jaws and TV eyeballs have had enough exercise, it is the hands’, arms’, shoulders’, backs’, thighs’ and calves’ turn for a while.  And that goes for me too.  We did start a time sheet mid week this last week and I think that helps.  But I’m thinking what will really help is an occasional use of a cattle prod.  Or a dog shock collar, those I have!

I’m thinking the theme for this coming week is:  Gut It!

The next week?  Gussy It!

We’ve only got one month ’til summer camp begins, Flag Day – June 14th, which really doesn’t mean anything except that hopefully the work can take on a more leisurely mode like the stuff they have you do at summer camp to make you feel important.  And the time for canoe races, horse rides, hiking, picnics, reading (I got to get some hammocks), lemonade and cookies… arrives.