Handling your hoe (rural version, ch. 1)

A couple days ago I was out weeding our two remaining beds of leeks. It was an odd weeding job because the deer had been grazing on the weeds they like to eat, leaving shortish weeds with fairly stout roots (hard to hoe and pull because of the deep-set roots, hard to pull, also, because of the lack of grip space to yank 'em up). Deer don't like to eat leeks (at least these don't), and most of the rest of the field has just recently been put into a cover crop of rye, vetch, and clover (all of which are mere seedlings), leaving the nightly congregation of deer in that field to munch on nothing but weeds. The main weed was a yellow-flowering fast grower (whose name escapes me) that just absolutely dominates our farm throughout most of the year; deer seem to love it, but they left others, like dock (deep, stubborn roots), to grow unabated. So, hoeing was rough. And the inevitable hand weeding that left many broken roots in the ground was discouraging . It was slow going.

I find that when you have such a weeding job in front of you, it's nice to slap on a pair of earbuds and let music help you along. For instance, Modest Mouse assisted me in the leek-weeding endeavor. The schizophrenic vocals over a steady funk-like beat helped rhythmize and energize my hoe strokes to efficiently uproot (or at least chop off sufficiently until the first frost comes) those pesky bastards. Neko Case helped me slow it down a little--let me feel the cool, pleasant breeze under the completely blue and sunny Carolina sky, helping me find some odd grace in my hoeing technique. Because, what's weeding without a bit of contemplative, sensual pleasure? And then Paul Simon brought me back to the rhythm, giving me that final push of energy to get the job done. Plus, there's no not liking weeding when Simon inquires about the 50 ways.

Sometimes I don't need music to accompany me. Often just being outside, doing real, meaningful work to survive is enough. But there are days when you'd rather be doing nothing, or else something easy. Though it's tempting to just give in to laziness (which happens sometimes), certain things just have to get done. And I really wouldn't want it any other way.

*****

The trees are really coloring up now in the higher elevations. The reds are out. But yesterday our high temperature hit 80, which was, um, perfect. Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin, they're expecting snow and freezing temps. Love it here.

Chill

It has gotten a bit cold here. Smells like fall. One night we go from the fan sucking cool, sweet mountain air into our room, to the next night having the whole apartment closed down--us draped in sweaters, smothered nightly in a heavy comforter, me cursing my lack of a good pair of boots for farm work (thus relying on the old trusty sandals in the 40-degree dewy morning). But don't get me wrong, it feels good.

Basil and pepper plants are pissed. Basil hates the cold; sweet peppers also hate the deluge we've been getting of late. Even some of the lettuce, the cool-moisture lover that it is, is rotting in the field. But arugula is happy. Napas and bok choi are trying hard. Kale would probably be happy if not for the plague of harlequin bugs. But we can take heart that the flea beetles have seemingly left us for the year. And we haven't gotten flooded like some of our unfortunate WNC neighbors.

We've got a bit over a month left at this farm, where we'll keep tending our fall/winter crops for market and, most importantly, CSA members. It's a bit of an unwinding time, at least in my mind, despite all that's left to do.

In other news, the blueberries are still plentiful up on Max Patch, as of last weekend. We were picking amongst the roaring wind and the cries of the haint (or a flying kite; or a creaking tree--I'm not sure).

The near future brings visitors from afar and, maybe, if things fall right, a trip into the backcountry (our last camping excursion near Mt. Mitchell left us soaked, a couple additional inches of rain away from being devoured by a rising river, and within several hundred feet of being crushed by a toppled tree--which is what I call an adventure).

In the meantime I'll be happy to watch the trees slowly transform as the cold sets in and daylight contracts. Already we see the 4,000+ foot peaks that poke into the sky around our cove hueing toward orangish-yellow. The vegetation on the creek banks is thinning to the point where we can see the road again for the first time since May. The ragweed has pretty much done its thing (ahhhh... relief). Sumacs everywhere are blushing mightily.  They're calling for a less than stellar fall color show this year because of all the rain we've had. But I wouldn't heed what "they" say. Because, well, the spring leafing was beyond words, in it's spectacularly subtle green gradient, and hardly anyone even touches on how beautiful that is--ever.

How's fall on everyone else's land? Fruits and veggies still going by you?

Did I mention it's raining?

Yep, it's still raining. We're approaching 10" for the month, which is nearly a third of our yearly average. In one month. And last month was rainy too. And so was the previous month. Standing water in some of the fields. Lots of slugs. Temps this month have fluctuated from lows around freezing to highs in the low 80s, which has caused a bunch of our field crops to bolt and try to go to seed early, thus shortening their lifespan and ruining their quality in some cases. Affected: broccoli, arugula, radishes, cilantro, tatsoi, and probably some others I'm forgetting. The lack of sun has really slowed down our second succession of crops and stunted early planted peas, beets, turnips, strawberries, and spinach. On the other hand, we're producing monster heads of lettuce, beautiful mixed greens, vibrant rainbow chard, mustard greens, and kale. These things are loving the rain.

All our greenhouse crops are doing pretty good. Cukes are huge sellers at market, but they've reached their peak and are starting a downward trend. Eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes look promising.

New crops in the field: summer squash, parsley, basil, sweet corn, and flowers. Fruits are forming on the squash already. So far so good.

Potatoes and onions are looking healthy. Pests are up. Now seeing potato beetles and cucumber beetles out and about. Boo those.

It's busy at this point in the season. More to come soon.

April snows bring May...uh...?

Photos, as promised (kind of).

The snow begins. You may have to click on the pic to see the flakes.

Almost post-accumulation. From right to left: See how the cover crop (a mix of rye, vetch, clover, and field peas) doesn't get blanketed. You can also see the row cover over the strawberries. Finally, a field road, covered in snow. Also, we still think that's Bluff in the background (poor AT through-hikers must've had a couple miserable nights, because they got something like six inches up there, so I'm told).

Sunset before the storms.

This is the greenhouse we direct seeded on our first day here, photo taken about a week and a half ago.

Same greenhouse--a few days ago. Somewhere in the vicinity of when this photo was taken, we weeded (most of it)!

Preparing a different greenhouse for tomatoes, which, if everything goes right, we'll start harvesting in June! All the straw-colored stuff is dead rye and mustards, which we chopped up with a giant weedwacker. This here is a no-till operation. We just used shovels to loosen up the soil between the giant t-posts, where we'll transplant our ready-to-go tomato plants. The dead rye will be mulch, which will hopefully inhibit the growth of weeds. Not pictured are the cattle panels we installed. The tomatoes will have lots of opportunity to grow upwards.

Same greenhouse. We needed to replace the aged and holey plastic, and do some repairs on the baseboards (the difference in the clarity of the plastic is astounding). Oh, and scaffolds and front-end loaders are fun (if you're crazy). Don't try this at home.

Finally, today's glimpse from the top of Max Patch. Max Patch sits at about 4,600 feet on the TN/NC border, and the AT passes over it. 360 degree views let you see something like four states on a clear day. It is treeless thanks to years of cattle grazing. Now someone maintains its prairie-like setting. If you can handle the twisty, largely unpaved drive up to the trailhead, it's only a short, mildly strenuous walk to the summit. It was a hazy day today, but what I saw still made me thankful for being alive. (Also see my new profile pic for another shot from the top of Max Patch.)

Indoor farming

It's been a week of mostly indoor farming, thanks to some schizophrenic weather. I wish I could post some pictures, but we're in the midst of some major storms, and our internet connection is super spotty.

Last Saturday we met the folks from the neighboring farm and another neighbor from over the mountain. All super nice, enjoyable people. We shared some homemade wood-fired pizzas with some local and not-so-local brews. Local being a variety of Highland beers, which are always delicious, as well as some homemade IPA that I find to be the tastiest IPA I've ever had; but I'm not really an IPA connoisseur, so I may not be an adequate judge. The not-so-local brew came straight outta the Midwest, representin' Wisconsin--the best cheap beer you can get here, in my opinion--PBR. Anyway, the beers, the pizzas, the company: great all.

Before the get together we spent Saturday exploring a bit of eastern TN. It's amazing how fast you leave the mountains once you get outside of Newport. And someone really has to explain to me the whole deal where people kind of just set up on the side of the state highway in TN and display and sell their wares. Right there on the shoulder. Is this a thing? Or are these people going rogue, kind of like moonshining, but more conspicuous and less tasty?


So Sunday, after a bit of recovery from Saturday, we had to put row cover over our strawberries in the field because the temps were supposed to drop into the 20s. Sunday was gorgeous, in the 70s. We went huntin for morels and came up empty. But we did find an awesome little waterfall lost way up the holler.

Monday saw temps dropping fast and wind picking up mightily. We wrestled with more row cover and were able to blanket about 1100 feet of transplanted veggies. It took us several hours to do that, and entailed gathering rocks that we had previously removed from the field and hauling them back in to hold the row cover down. Stupid rocks.

Then it snowed for a couple days. A lot. All snow globe-like. Only a little bit stuck to the ground, enough for me to make ultra-mini-snowmen, whose demise I delighted in with great pleasure. Needless to say, we did lots of seeding and greenhouse work over those couple days; I think we're nearly back on schedule in that department. And it looks like almost all our plants survived the freeze, so the tedious covering paid off for our CSA members and future market buyers.


Thursday brought nice weather back to our little cove. We worked on replasticizing one end of one of the greenhouses. I ended up hurting my back in some mysterious way (I didn't even know it was hurt until much later in the evening). Which meant that I would spend today (Friday) doing more seeding and such in the greenhouse. But I'm doin ok.


Today brought our first thunderstorms of the season. I love me some t-storms. It was thundering all wicked-like at various times today. We got lots of water from the sky, which I'm sure the plants outside are happy for.


Not sure what this weekend holds, but I'm going to try to get some recent pictures up here. Hope everyone has a good one.

Warmth

Yesterday when I went outside I was quite stunned by the "heat" in the air. It was in the mid-30s. Today, I wake up and I see snow melting off the roof. Here it is, just before noon and it's in the lower 40s. The typical January thaw is a little late this year. Let's hope this year we skip the brutal cold spell that usually follows one of these thaws.

So today we're gonna really try to get things going over here on the moving front. Maybe put the old beat up recliner on the curb and pack up books and other little-used stuff. Or maybe I'll get under the car and do the oil change and remove that annoying heat shield that's sitting on my exhaust. Or perhaps I'll do both. But I figure this is the weekend to officially get under way, it being a little more than a month before moving day. Not looking forward to it, but this is not something to procrastinate. Right? Right.

Relief

We survived the deep freeze. I think we got down to -30 one of those nights. They showed on the news that if you tossed boiling water into that air, much of it would instantly crystallize into ice particles. It was cold.

My car tolerated the awful weather until Thursday. Then it just cranked and really wanted to start. But it couldn't. No go on Friday either. I'll have to see if it'll come to life today, now that we will have "warmed" up to the teens above zero. But I'm proud it made it through a couple of subzero days.

It's sort of interesting coming out of a freeze like that here in central Wisconsin. Makes you think spring is on the way. All the sudden the 20s and 30s feel warm. You start to believe the air has that faint, sweet springtime smell. It's exciting. But we know better. January and February are typically the most brutal winter months. And March ain't much better. There is more to come. But the hint of spring is welcome.

Well, our future will be hinging on the next couple weeks. I know, things are always hinging, but now we're beginning to make plans to pack up our things and go. This will be a big change. We'll be applying for farm apprenticeships starting today. If all goes well, we could be waking up to a whole new existence in just two short months.

Break out the fleece

Chances are good that starting somewhere around midnight tonight we won't see temperatures above zero for about four days. Oh, I'm so excited. It probably means no car for me until Saturday, which, you know, has its pluses and minuses. Unless I pull the battery out. But methinks that's too much work.

Meantime, I'm getting sparse work here on the workfront. Which doesn't bode well for springtime plans. Working to correct that situation now, I hope.

Anyway, just a quick update tonight.

The weather and other random crap

It hit the 40s here today. It's a frickin heat wave. How awesome. I like talking about the weather for some reason (anybody who ends up reading this blog regularly will probably see what I mean, so let me apologize ahead of time). What's funny is that as a teenager I absolutely hated talking about it: I thought it was the smallest of the small talk. Now, I don't know what has happened to me, but I'll gladly carry on a hearty conversation about jet streams and convection and Alberta clippers and thunder snow. Well, I'm kind of lying, because nobody in their right mind, aside from meteorologists, wants to talk about those things. (Which reminds me, if you like meteorology and have access to WGN over the air or on your cable/satellite provider--and if provider carries the feed of WGN that shows the Chicago news--tune in to the noon and nine p.m. broadcasts, Central time of course, to see the best weather forecast breakdown I've ever witnessed on TV.) Anyway, Neil from the Up Series of documentaries makes a good point in 28 Up. He says that people who live most of their lives outdoors don't talk about the weather much because they live in it; everybody thus intimately knows what's going on in their environment and they have few reasons to discuss it further. Makes sense to me. So, we'll see what happens when Spring finally rolls around and I get my ass out on the hiking trails. Will I blog less about the weather? One can only hope.

Other stuff of interest (maybe):

~Spring your time ahead this Sunday morning. It'll be nice to have some extra light during waking hours.

~Did ye know Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog? That's right. He and a few of his merry friends make witty posts in all their Middle English glory. And don't miss the occasional Old English (must be late OE) post by guest blogger Tremulus Aescgar, who reminds us what it was like "bifore the Frenssh cam to Engelonde." Represent!

~Wikipedia has a list of unusual articles. Trust me, this page is hours of fun.

~One of those articles is about Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia's alter-ego. Again, hours of fun.

Snowy weekend

Nothin like gettin nailed with nearly a foot of snow right after it sooo seemed like Spring was on its way. The beginning of February was a deep freeze -- And it ends with a blizzard. This morning cars were just about buried up to the tops of their wheels, unless of course a snowdrift made it even worse. I could barely open the door to get outside. And it took all my might to get into my car. The plow/snowblow people came around 3:30 this afternoon. Took em long enough, eh? Our landlords aren't the greatest at getting things done. The poor saps who weren't home or didn't answer their doors to move their cars and have their spots plowed are gonna be pissed tomorrow/tonight. Like this guy/gal (not good):
But really, when I'm not the person who owns the car above, I don't mind the snow so much. A fresh fall makes for some beautiful sights. And there's just something cozy about getting blanketed. I didn't get a chance to capture any really beautiful shots, but here's a look down our street this afternoon, right when the snow was starting back up again (three more inches to come they say):