Also notice, in the foreground of the third picture, how thick the oats have grown already. The soil is much happier.
Thursday was, as is at this point, mainly harvesting. Of note, as it's pretty much only E and I day in/day out (D's got a house to finish), we have our hands full with that task alone. However, we did manage to get in some serious soil prep in F for Garlic planting.
I began on the Cub spreading powder fertilizer. 2-4-2 if I'm not mistaken. E spread compost/manure after me with, what else, the compost/manure spreader. In the meantime, Peter happened by to remove quite a few rocks that would have stood in the way of level bed prep (rototilling) and marking. Thanks as always!!
Next up was a quick chisel plowing to aerate the subsoil and mix in the manure.
(During all of this, E and I were trading off on the week's potato harvest.)
To end the day, I hopped the John Deere to get the 6 beds in F rototilled and formed. Curiously, on my first attempt, while the rows all came out mad straight, I ended up with about 5 1/2 beds. No good. So I made a complete second pass on everything. This time I started right beside the three rows that are already planted. And, going against all proper tilling methods, I worked my way up slope from bed to bed. Happily, I ended up with 6 evenly spaced, straight beds, ready to be marked and planted. ... but that would be on Saturday.
Thursday night I worked on the bench for a few hours (before the debate... which I watched... aaaand had a few opinions on...). Oh, forgot to mention that I moved the bench into 'the office'/'my house'. The floor in here is true level, so now I have a proper reference by which to do all of my hand planing. So, I scrub planed the underside of the bench. Not too shabby.
Next up will be squaring/planing the depth of the bench (actually that's as soon as I'm done with this post).
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Friday? You guessed it. Harvesting!
The day was pretty chilly. But I do love the weather this time of year as it seems to give one a bump in energy. Thoughts and actions are a little clearer. The air a little easier to move through.
Our volunteers, Judy, Nancy and her daughter Eliza, helped us clear the bed of beans, pick tomatoes (which are looking sadder by the minute), and break apart garlic bulbs for Saturday's planting.
The afternoon saw Pepper and Eggplant harvesting and an early set-up for the next day's distribution (gotta help yourself out sometimes. Plus E was heading to Rochester so would be absent).
Friday night the temperature dipped down to 26. Luckily, D, keeping an all night vigil, covered several frost-sensitive crops with reemay around 2:30AM. Crazy man. He saved the Beans, Peppers and Flowers mainly.
A few pics of what I woke to Saturday morning.
Saturday's distribution, while chilly, was smooth sailing. We even wrangled a few members to help us break apart Garlic.
I ran to the train station right after to pick up H.
When we got back to the farm we readied for our Garlic planting work party (2-5pm).
Happy to report that 14 wonderful volunteers showed up to help us plug 7,200 cloves of Garlic into the ground.... in only 1 1/2 hours. NICE!
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Saturday eve and Sunday.
Relax. Cook. Eat. Relax. Cook. Eat. ... need about 1 straight week of that at season's end.
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Today we hit the ground runnin. Lettuce, Spinach, Swiss Chard and Eggplant all by lunch. (nts, we cleared everything we could from the eggplant patch as we expect a plant killing freeze tonight and they're just not giving enough to make them worth covering).
This afternoon, we picked beans as those plants (even though covered) will probably incur a bit of damage with the freezing temps tonight. Best to harvest what you can. After beans, we spent the rest of the time covering everything we could with reemay. Surely pays to be cautious when dealing with possible temps in the low 20's. Hopefully all will be well come tomorrow....
Send the crops your warm positive vibes.
Dig.
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