major transplant

This morning was absolutely gorgeous.
Dew on the fields, a little nip to the air but not COLD.
A breakfast of eggs, grapefruit and buttered, locally made, organic bread (see new link in "more fresh stuff"). I had their Raisin Walnut Multi Grain loaf & Everything Onion Rye loaf. Sooo good.
I donned my MuckMasters and hit the greenhouse.
Today we made our first big transplant of the season from greenhouse flats to field. Kale, Swiss Chard, Lettuce, Chinese Cabbage and Broccoli were all "up to bat".





Also, as this is the first year D is using a new brand of 128cell flats, we seeded broccoli in both 50 and the new 128cell flats to determine what will be best to use going forward.





The cell of the 128 is smaller than the 50. Therefore the root mass of the seedling getting transplanted is smaller. So we'll see if less root mass at time of transplant means longer amount of time to take hold in the ground or not.

We loaded up the hay trailer bed with all of our flats and irrigation equipment and headed to the W1 field. By this point the sun was staring down at us pretty solidly and the gnats were more than happy to join us.
E took an early day as she was (and still is) rather sick. She stuck it out as long as she could. So, D and I were left to transplant roughly 4,000 seedlings...
Surely not as many as we did on our onion day, but quite a bit more movement per transplant (from flat to ground).
A few pics of the process:


The cells are pulled, gently, from the flat and laid/dropped on the ground/grid at intervals specific to their spatial growing needs.





This is what I see as I work my way down the bed on my knees. Right hand grabs the cell, left hand punches a hole in the soil, right hand places the cell and both secure soil over the roots.

This we did for the remainder of the day, save for a few breaks to run irrigation lines.





The seedlings wouldn't stand a chance in the midday sun without water... especially on their first day. And yes, getting hit intermittently from the water sprayers (called wobblers) felt awesome in the hot sun.

We finished our day strong and feeling great about what we had accomplished. Our backs are none too happy with us, but they'll have a weekend to mend.

At sunset I closed the greenhouse and put our feathered pets in their coop. D and I took 30min to lay covers on what we planted today as a measure of defense against any curiously early flea beetles.

Post workday saw (and is still seeing) ice cold Yuengling and crazy wonderful sights like this.



And this for a friend...



Dig.

wordless wednesday (well...almost)

Dig...

me and my arrow (read: hammer)

Having not showered since Sunday I was a little apprehensive about going a third day "without" ...especially in light of yesterday's grease-fest with the slip clutch.
But I re-confirmed two things very quickly today:
1. I'm outside. Working. No one cares.
2. Greenhouse work is perpetually "dirty." ...so is spreading compost... aaand oiling/greasing the rototiller.
Happily unshowered.



E spent her WHOLE day loading the compost spreader and prepping soil in our Z and B-C fields.



Believe me, this job ain't just sittin on the tractor all day. She's hurtin a little bit...

I started in the greenhouse watering what now seems like endless tables of seedlings just bursting from their flats. Seeded 11 flats of summer squash (zucchini: Zephyr, Raven, Elite) with a volunteer. Summer squash takes large individual planters as their seeds are HUGE compared to most others. Think pumpkin seed.
Here's the greenhouse midday. Just can't get the whole thing in the picture... dang.



After planting was done we motored down to W1 field and cleaned/raked out the dead matter from our 3 beds of strawberries (that are already coming up). Yeah, strawberries, this is dangerous knowledge for me.
From there it was over to Y field to break up and spread out uneven piles of compost. That with our volunteer as well. Nice to have help.
Then... same in B field. At which time we (me, E, volunteer) cleaned up my rock breaking project of 2 weeks ago. Again... nice to have help.

-Lunch. oats, apples, raisins, honey, assorted roasted vegetables. heated up and covered in maple syrup. Hoo wee!! By the way, the big pineapple lookin vegetable in yesterday's pic is celeriac, celery root. The meat tastes a bit like celery and has roughly the texture of a potato. Very tasty roasted.

After lunch I spent the rest of the afternoon inspecting, shoring up and/or replacing the lath work on the exterior of the greenhouse. Me, some wood, nails and a hammer. A beautiful sunny day. Good. Stuff!

E was visited by her parents and was whisked away to a sit-down meal. I stayed to close the greenhouse and put in the chickens.

This evening I helped D finish a project he began earlier in the day.



It's a peg board that will nudge seedlings from their 128cell flats. Press the flat



down on the board and, in theory, the seedlings will come out root and all. This alleviates the chance that you'll break the root when trying to pull out the seedling for transplanting. D is definitely a DIY farmer.

Dig.

dreams and 2-plate slip clutches

I am back from a wonderful weekend in the city.
Wonderful indeed.

As I left right after work on Friday I was not able to post about the day.
Quick recap:

As Thursday was total "onion"ation and stiff muscles were a direct result, we were "semi" promised an easy Friday. That easy Friday didn't happen so much...

In the morning we sat down, planned out our day (which initially involved some errands in town and general tractor implement maintenance) and proceeded to ignore all the plans.
First, we covered all of the beds we seeded the day before with HUGE 200'x30' pieces of floating row fabric which is like very heavy cheesecloth.
Then around to all of the fields to pick up sandbags that were left from last season.
To the office...
The weather was to be rainy, etc., but alas, no rain. So...we quickly researched cover crops for several beds that needed to be seeded days ago. Seeding of actual cash crops in those beds will be happening in 40 days so cover seeds need to go in now if they have any chance of growing and getting tilled under. But what to plant last minute while the weather is still relatively chilly? Why 10 year old fava beans and rapeseed (canola) of course. We hand scattered them after D rototilled. Then pressed them in using the Brillion...



which we then used (as it was intended) to seed 5 other rows of a different field with cover crop.
Some real fun followed.



We raked/burned/spread all of last year's "leftovers" that were in the large flower bed and the asparagus/raspberry bed. I must have a little "pyro" in me as I really enjoyed that part of the day.
To close the day we washed the remaining dirty harvest bins from last year. Cold wind, cold water, brrr!!! For real.

--Weekend--

The first few hours today felt rather dreamy as I was transitioning from the craziness of the city. My mind was not completely present and somewhat vulnerable to mistakes.
E was busy most of the day spreading compost on our Z field (which she did rather well I must say).
My first task today was to replace 8 tynes on the rototiller as hitting rocks at 540rpm has a tendency to wear down even the most hardened steel.



Old tynes are the shiny ones.



This I undertook without a hitch.

My NEXT task? Hitch central...
In summation, when servicing your rototiller's 2-plate slip clutch:



If Step 5 of your 2-plate slip clutch disassembly instructions



says to remove the thrust plate with the Belleville Springs and lug rings (all at once and not piece by piece) to access the friction disks and hub for inspection... then you best believe it is probably a good idea to remove the thrust plate with the Belleville Springs and lug rings (all at once and not piece by piece) to access the friction disks and hub for inspection!! If you don't you just might snap a bolt off the base plate that holds the Belleville Springs rendering the entire 2-plate slip clutch useless unless... D tries to weld said bolt back on, then snaps it again, then goes to the neighbor to drill out the old bolt in the base plate after having gone to the hardware store to get new bolts, then measures out the length of the new bolt, welds it back into place, cleans all the other bolts and you both attempt another reassembly of the damned Bellville Springs... successfully. The whole ordeal eats up half of our/his day.



Otherwise I spent 2 relaxing enjoyable hours in the greenhouse seeding for Lettuce, Bok Choi, and Leeks. Definitely needed after my morning/afternoon.

Closed up the greenhouse, corralled the chickens, chopped and roasted these



for what was a delicious dinner.

Happy and relaxed now. Looking forward to tomorrow... as long as slip clutches aren't on the "to do" list.

Dig.

land of 10,000 onions

First, I've added a space to the left to link to blogs that I dig (and perhaps you will as well). E's blog of her experience here on the farm is first up. Check it out.
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A real short post as we basically did one thing for the entire day.



We hand-planted 10,000 onions! 8800 onions & 1200 leeks.
An absolutely gorgeous day to do so.

Here are D & E planting just after lunch... and one of the finished rows (the depressions between the rows are knee marks).





Around lunch time I made my watering rounds through the greenhouse. It is becoming greener every day. Very nice.



....and... scene...

dig.

i could lift a smaller one...

As we have 29 - 200ft rows of varietals
(assorted greens
spinach
kale
parsley
swiss chard
parsnips
carrot
turnips
lettuce
broccoli
broccoli raab
cabbage
chinese cabbage
kohlrabi)
going to ground in field W1 within the next two weeks AND because the weather has been too cold/wet to do so AND because we have not had the crop maps until two days ago....
We did ALL of our soil prep for this field (+ 10 rows of W2) today.
As E has been under the weather for the past couple days
(she worked hard in the greenhouse all day)




it was up to D and I to tackle the field. As I was perpetually in motion, I unfortunately didn't get that many pics. So? To the list...

8:15-10:00 - Continue and finish spreading compost on W1 (New Holland Tractor). Got much more comfortable with front end loader. Nice.
10-11am - Hand raked uneven piles of compost to spread them over the beds.
11-12pm - Pulled last year's pepper stalks/roots from a 200' bed (as they are rather woody and would not till well back into the soil). Done pretty much all on one's knees.
12:30ish - 2:45 - Spread fertilizer over all of W1 and 10 rows of W2 (Cub Cadet). Wind was a little blustery at times, so I had to stop in the middle of the bed and wait fairly often. The fertilizer mix is rather like sand. The lightest material of the mix is nitrogen (a coarse dust) which happens to be the most important. Dust + Wind = (a terrible song by Kansas...) Waste of good (and not so cheap) fertilizer.

D (using the new John Deere) chisel plowed all of what I had fertilized. Looking like this.


As one might imagine, LARGE rocks "surface" after tilling so deep. So..
2:45-3:45 - Collecting large rocks from chisel plowed field (There was one roughly the size of your average pillow that I absolutely could not pick up. I rolled it. Visions of Bill Murray for some reason...) and depositing them in the front end loader for later drop.
3:45-4:20 - Pulled up a 100'+ bed of last year's kale. Same story as the pepper stalks. Way too woody to be beneficial to this season's soil.

4:30 - Gather tools, close field gate, tractor back to barn, done for the day.

Tomorrow morning, first thing, we'll be using the rototiller on W1 & W2.



From there we will be spending most of the day hand planting 10 rows of onions/leeks. They were actually to be going to ground May 1, but they've arrived early. If we were to wait on grounding them, they would probably go bad within the next week.

One more pic for the day.



The "pets" on the farm followed me (I was taking 10year old beans) to the compost pile in hopes of getting the "table scraps." They were ultimately unhappy with my contribution to their buffet...

To rest now. Dig...

the new arrival

Right. So. The newest member of the farm family???



Damn. John Deere 5325 Turbo Diesel. Custom designed for this farm, hence the ultra thin rear tire.

That's Jerry



He walked us through the specs and operational procedures of this bad one for 2 hours. I know there are those of you that would like me to review our orientation point by point, but, alas, time and space prohibit. Hit me up if you'd like to know any particulars. A real bad machine.

I will give you my day in pictures as I'm beat and it's late.
Suffice to say the day was absolutely gorgeous. Weather especially. 60ish and sunny. Light wind.
Beds were fertilized, chisel plowed and rototilled. Rows were marked/measured. Peas were planted. Transplanted peppers in the greenhouse stood tall. Compost was spread... some by me. Laundry was done... finally!

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(This is Peter. He clears rocks from the fields, among other things... voluntarily. At his age he's more active than most people I know...including me. Amazing)


This is what E used to direct seed the peas today.





Well, yeah, that's me just back from spreading compost on our lower fields in preparation of next week's planting. Need work on the front-end loading skills. Not bad for a first day. D made it look soooo easy though....

On and on. Dig.