See what I see

This farming gig is a detail game. I’ve got, oh, maybe twenty or thirty different crops going. More if you count all the different varieties within each crop–so, f’rinstance, there are early, determinate tomatoes, sprawling indeterminate beefsteaks, several different cherry tomatoes, and some romas, and they all have subtly different growing (or in this case, staking) requirements. Furthermore, I need to stagger the plantings of many of vegetables and flowers (this is called “succession sowing” in the biz), so that we’ll have lettuce most weeks, beans for many weeks, sunflowers throughout the season, etc. etc.

Keeping it all straight is a challenge. I feel like my brain is on a hamster wheel.

Sometimes, instead of scanning my endless To-Do List for what still needs to be done TODAY! NOW! YESTERDAY!!, checking www.weather.com obsessively, chasing down a particular hoe, shuffling through my interminable boxes of seeds, seeding new flats, weeding, chasing down a different hoe, fixing stuff, planting, irrigating, etc, etc, ETC, I have to remember to call a halt to all the chatter in my head. At least every couple of days, I need to just mosey on back to the field and poke around. And look. And see what I see.

So. Here’s how the farm is faring, this first week of June.

Spring has sprung so hard that it’s nigh on summertime. On the way back to the field, there’s a hillside that’s patchworked with new phlox and last-year’s burdock. Two invasive species that have, um, well, invaded. But they look kinda pretty together, I think.

Weeds At Sunset

The lane also passes this young grove of oaks, descendants from an ancient oak that once shaded the farm pond. Sadly, the mother oak fell in an awful thunderstorm about ten or twelve years ago. The main trunk of the tree was too big and too full of nails to harvest for firewood, so it’s still lying beside the pond where it serves as an important habitat for all sorts of creatures, I’m sure.  Frankly, though, that’s hard to appreciate when you look at it every morning from the breakfast table.  Mostly, it’s a huge eyesore that is only gradually being swallowed up by wild grape vine and scrubby bushes.

After it died, we noticed that this grove of a half-dozen oak trees had taken root right where the crown of the old oak landed. Perhaps the force of the fall drove some acorns deep into the ground when it died. I like knowing that these new oaks will grow up alongside my children and their children, a legacy from the oak that was on the farm when my great-grandparents and great-great grandparents lived here. I noticed that this year, the baby oaks are not so babyish anymore. Just like my kids.

Our grove of young oaks

We like things to be beautiful and functional around here. I guess someone thought the trunk of this particular individual would be a perfect place to hang a temperature gauge.

Seventy degrees. Perfect.

And to your left, the field.

The garlic chives are flowering.

Garlic chives honey, anyone?

The lettuces (letti?) are flourishing.

Lettuce. Black-Seeded Simpson, to be exact. (There's other varieties as well. This was just the prettiest).

This green stuff is arugula, or, if you want to sound terribly fancy and European, you can call it “rocket.” (Mental note: locate the row cover. The arugula needs a little help fending off the flea beetles).

Elsewhere in the garden, things are proceeding apace.

The beans, both bush and pole, are germinating.

This is my nifty little bean tunnel. Pole beans along the netting, and bush beans near the center aisle. Mid-season, it's very cool-looking. And wildly functional.

Someone did a GREAT job weeding and hilling those potatoes. Next step, hand-picking potato beetles and their eggs.

The tomatillos are all of three inches tall and already, they’ve decided to send out a few blossoms. (Please pardon the lousy picture quality). The tomatillos are precocious little things. Reminds me of pre-teens I have known. ;-)

Tomatillo flower

Hmmm. What’s this mess?

Peas. Kale. Weeds.

The peas need irrigating, I think. And weeding. But my benign neglect has allowed last year’s gone-to-seed kale to take off. (The kale is the lacy green plant with faint purple ribs that’s growing all higgledy-piggledy). That’s good to know. Early kale! I may let an bed of kale go to seed on purpose this fall.

Oh, and check out our Irrigation Station. This is my latest kludge. Dad pumps water from the pond to these barrels, and we hand-dip water from the barrels to distribute on the plants. Eventually, we hope to rig these barrels up with spigots and hoses, for a gravity-fed system. Less toting is good. Plenty of rain, however, is even better.

There's a board floating on top for thirsty bees and birds to use as a landing/launching pad, so we aren't drowning them.

And finally, our first vine-ripened strawberries! And not just any strawberries, either. These are Earliglows, the most delicious berries I’ve ever tasted.

No visit would be complete without checking out the wild critters. Wow. Check out this dainty creature.

Check out the moss growing on her shell....

Our old friend, Mama Snapping Turtle. Usually, she likes to lay her eggs right on the north edge of our garden, though this time she’d unwisely selected the actual driveway for her nest. I think we persuaded her that this location was far too heavily trafficked, though, because I noticed she’d lumbered off soon after the farmer’s husband took this photo. (I’m sure she didn’t go far. She seemed pretty intent on laying those eggs). If all goes well, her eggs will hatch sometime in August and we’ll find little snapping turtles roaming the fields.

And that, my friends, is why we climb off the hamster wheel once in a while.

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