Garlic at the start of the week – happy and excited to grow!
Note: this is a different side of the garlic patch. But yes, it was a swamp from The Great Flood.
Swamp. Or, really, a running river. Le sigh.
So maybe you heard. It rained.
It rained for days. And as I am a terrible farmer who broke her rain gauge and never mounted its replacement, all I know is that it rained A LOT. I’ve got video of a veritable river running down the side of the field (and sadly, but not too tragically, running through the bottom of my pea rows), and the trenches it left behind are pretty impressive. My dairy boss nearby market it at 4.8 inches – which translates to a mess for a lot of friends and fields in the area. Today has been a soggy day of runoff and assessing any damages, and determining when we can get back on the ground.
Nature, my friends. It’s a heck of a thing.
Thankfully, one of the only upshots to growing on a hill (hah) is that everything above flood level is now really happy. The perennial herbs are stoked.
My happy perennials – rhubarb, lovage, sorrel, thyme, sage, chives, lavender, and more to come soon.
The Chive.
The lovage, which was pretty irate about the severe temperature change two weeks ago, has since recovered and is ready to be celery 2.0 for the masses.
It’s fun to see all these things come back to life.
We’ve had a busy, busy time of things since we last spoke. Lots of seeding, prepping, and now, finally, finally starting to plant. Everything feels so delayed – from the fluctuating temperatures and weird, late-April snow to The Great Flood – but in the next couple days all the happy greens and potatoes should be in the ground, the peas, radishes, spinach, beets and turnips should be a billion times bigger than they were two days ago, and June 1 will be that much closer.
Some purple passion asparagus popped up yesterday!
Baby breakfast radishes 🙂
Our friends Mizuna
Big tomato country!
Darling dearest wife Olivia came up on her birthday to spend the day potting up tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and planting onions in the field. Momma Wags helped put in onions, scallions and onion sets, and Strider helped with the row cover on the first mesclun planting. Grow, babies, grow.
Don’t worry – even if we get the cultivator working for potatoes and greens, we’ll still have some crooked rows of things. But they are less crooked with the Valley Oak Wheel Hoe!
My dog is better than your employees.
Stuttgarter and Red Baron sets – for tasty spring onions.
Certain tasks are easier than last year. We got ourselves a Valley Oak Wheel Hoe from Green Heron Tools with a furrowing attachment to make arguably less crooked rows when we do one row of things at a time. Allegedly the cultivator will be up and running for rows of greens and things, but I don’t want to get too excited until it happens.
In the meantime, this guy is great!
And the hops are happy and alive and growing. As we gear up to bottle a ginger beer this weekend (which I am beyond excited about – Steve has a killer recipe), I can’t help but be stoked to use these guys in the future.
Hops are hoppy and happy.
My dear compadre and exquisite carpenter friend Justin has been coming up to the property after a full day of work to build me a walk-in fridge. I love guys who can build things, especially when they are friends and like smaller projects. Tomorrow my air conditioner I shopped for on PortableACNerd.com arrives, and once this puppy is insulated and dry-walled, I won’t be quite as crazy about running around hours before market trying to pick last minute mountains of peas and beans and bunches of greens. The Coolbot will allow these veggies to stay happy and fresh despite the summer heat.
Justin climbs around in the dark being awesome.
Strider admires Justin’s skills.
On a bittersweet note, Thursday marked my last day official day at the dairy until the cold weather comes around again. I just couldn’t maintain last year’s crazy schedule with another Philly market in play. I am excited to get on the field full time, but I’m really sad to be leaving the hilarious and sweet friends/new family who have helped me grow so much and put up with me for over a year now.
And, of course, I’m going to miss the cows and other assorted farm creatures.
These punks don’t even care that I’m leaving.
This dairy family even gives me Easter cows. Cows! Good thing they’re stuck with me for life now.
Goodbye, Totoro kitten!
I will especially miss my clan of baby Brown Swiss. Now who will slobber up my ears and hair and hands every day?
So now we’ll be getting down to business – Cue the Mulan!
If at any point next week you are feeling bored or sad or don’t want to be inside, you just let me know. I’ll make a frittata and some tea and put on whatever music makes you happy (because plants like all kinds of music – at least my plants, anyway) and you can come plant or move fencing or seed lettuces or play with the dog. See you there?
See You, Field Cowboys…
Photo by Miss Dairy Boss Lady Andrea S-L.
Farmer Liz 