Birth of the Cool... Field

Today... it began. F field. I. Am. Excited.
Why (you might ask) am I so excited by this?

Is it because I like to "burn stuff?" Possibly.
Is it because I like to dig post holes and pound soil by hand?? Great workout.
Is it because I enjoy picking up rock after rock that's being unearthed by the plow??? Easy on the knees when planting/weeding...

The real answer is: All of these things. (Yes, I do enjoy making/sustaining
BON-, CAMP-, and other CONTROLLED fires)

But these three reasons are a subset of one main reason:
If I am to pursue farming in earnest (which, at this point, I can truly, truly see myself doing... sooner than later), then I am actually seeing/working through/learning about the birth of a field (read: farm), yes... from the ground up.
Today was the first "day" in field F. Hereafter it will be part of the farm.
Exciting. More later...

I've been absent for a few days. Gotta play catch up.

Let's start with Friday.

Overcast and on the tail end of some rain...
On our way to the greenhouse we (well, D actually) noticed a very peculiar thing in field A:

Who, or what, did this? The (10year old) beans we were trying out as cover crop have been piled neatly...over the entirety of their 3 beds.



D says it's mice (I say aliens. Ones that are REALLY particular about fava bean placement). Either way, very cool.

Friday morning was spent transplanting onions using the transplanter and cabbage by hand from 50cell flats (and E's soil blocks) to the ground in W2.









FYI: Soil blocks are used to plant seeds in, just the same as flats, except not really. One must form them with a press, making sure the soil is the right consistency. The blocks/soil are free standing as opposed to soil in the plastic flats that take the shape of each cell and are supported by the sides/bottom. The main reason one might want to utilize soil blocks (instead of flats) is that air can circulate around the entirety of the cell, not just top and bottom.

On and on. We had help transplanting from a volunteer. Many thanks...

After lunch I worked on our other riding mower as the parts that we ordered the week before finally arrived. It took some coaxing, but I finally fixed the blade assembly and reinstalled it. Changed the oil, cleaned all the nooks and crannies and crossed my fingers. Started without a hitch... and it cut grass REAL GOOD too.

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My weekend was wonderful. Indeed. Some hardcore brainstorming about what comes after this apprenticeship (yep, already looking down the road). Very exciting possibilities/options. Will expound when the time is right.

The weekend also saw my second CRAFT visit...to a biodynamic farm about 30 miles away. We got an in-depth look at their livestock, cheese making and lactofermentation operations as well. All very interesting.

And before I forget, Sunday saw the arrival of 3 Tunis sheep. E has got her hands full at this point. Managing very well though. They eat LOADS of grass. Very quiet.



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Monday (in brief):

Spent morning raising the irrigation box in field Z and levelling ground around the box by the greenhouse. This procedure I've done before. This I'll have to do again. Lot of digging with a shovel, placing and pounding of rocks, proper levelling of box and replacing of excavated soil.

My afternoon was spent cultivating/weeding broccoli in W1. Also, as we pulled the reemay from our 6 beds of onions for the last time (setting them loose as we're hoping we've had our last frost), I got to cultivate them with the basket weeder on the Cub tractor.
Speaking of frost, our broccoli got a little frost damage, but only where the reemay was laying on top of them. No worries though. They're tough.



Today: Field F (pics and captions time)

Haven't had a sunrise (5:46am) pic in a while. Beautiful





F - Pre-anything



Fires begun... hours from plowing



...twisted fiya shtahta..







Marking/measuring the parimeter of the bed area and the fence line





Official groundbreaking!!





Fires out... plowing underway... time to dig post holes for electric fence corner posts







Posts and hand tools



4ft deep



In the meantime, E finishes plowing. F is officially carved out...





Back to the post... Lots of this action...





And??? Quite proud of the work done... Back patting all around...



I swear it was a white t-shirt and clean khakis this morning.



A wonderful day. Truly.

Before the day ended I got another 1 1/2 hours of mowing in. Why do I dig mowing so much? I leave it to you. No clue here.

Upon closing the greenhouse, I had to capture the latest on the summer squash. They just don't stop, eh?


Sleep awaits. Sweet sleep.

Dig