What Does the Farmer Say?

I’m sure those of you connected to the internet, oops, guess that’s all of you, have seen “What Does the Fox Say?”.  I found it hilarious, at a time when I needed a good chortle, tear streaming chortle. 

My good friend sent me “What Does the Farmer Say” it was cute but I had yet to see the original fox version.  Is that proper to say, “original version”?  It sounds rather weird doesn’t it.  Any who, I loved the first answer to the question, “what does the farmer say?,”  “work, work, work, work”. 

It just so happens that, yes, we’ve been working like fairly typical farmers: wrapping up the last season, growing in this season, and preparing for the next two seasons.

The Wrap on Summer

We’re steadily cutting back all the tender perennials for wintering over in the Hippy Hot Hut.  Evaluating who is worth saving and who just needs to be ditched, er-um, become soil. 

Dirt has finished with potato harvest, the last crop to come in for storage.  The last of them are curing, this weekend we’ll bag them up in clean burlap bags and they will be stored with many bags we have in storage already. 

With summer crops stored fresh, or pickled, a few canned or frozen, the left over vegetation, vines and stalks, remaining on the beds is getting thrown to various animals for food or tilled in to feed the soil and the soil dwellers, worms and microbes.  Feed the soil, feed the crops.

Growing in this Season

The current growing crops’ biggest issues right now are slugs.  Ugh.  I feel infested.   And of course weeds, but I never worry too much about weeds.

And staying ahead of killing freezes and decimating winds and rain with floating row covers and our poly tunnels, or hoop houses is what we usually call them.  They have a lot of names out there, but the main thing is that they are great season extenders.  A person could either look at is as getting extra months from a growing season or going up a horticulture zone plus a bit extra.

In among the summer hoop crops a few winter crop were sown.  Those crops are already growing under poly tunnels, some have already failed, we’ll be putting in others in their stead.

Not all tunnels had winter crops put in them, one was needed elsewhere.  We’re going to be moving a poly tunnel over some beds that hold Brussels, broccoli and kales.  It will extend their season, November and December, possibly January, on into January and February for sure, maybe even jump on into the next season, March.

Preparing for the Next Two Seasons

Another poly tunnel will be moving this weekend, or next, as we plant the onions that arrived, planted as plants now, grown in a frost free area and they will be harvested in the middle of our spring season.

The summer beds have been vacated, I’ve tilled up a storm.  Before the storm.  A mild one predicted for tomorrow I believe.  We’ll see. Sometimes reading weather forecast just seems so futile.  But most of what we do day by day is decided by weather forecast, so I continue to read. 

In the time we had, the majority of beds are tilled and some are planted to green manure and grain crops.  Late as usual.  But one place I read about planting overwintered grains was that you had to wait until a solid frost.  Well we haven’t had one yet.  Not even a threat of one. 

Which is why there are still fuchsias, geraniums, brugmansias and such sitting around the farm in their summer pots waiting to go into their winter home, for protection and a little plant spa rejuvenation.

By next weekend, when all the plants are inside so they can be beautiful in the spring, the overwinter crops planted, the empty beds tilled or reserved for winter turkey forage ready for early spring planting, then it’ll be time to circle back ‘round and weed, de-slug and protect the winter season beds. And when the weather is really gross, we’ll begin to set up for seed starting in the Hippy Hot Hut, oh and rounding up lambing supplies.  What do the farmers say?