scavenging and growing

The last couple days have been dry, warm, and sunny. Which means that our backlog of way-too-big greenhouse plants could get transplanted into the fields. Chard, choi, brocolli, lettuce, potatoes (seeded), kohlrabi, and cabbage all escaped their plastic prisons. It was a good feeling to get 'em all out. Here's a shot of the lettuces and some of the brassicas right before they got trucked out to the field.

How about the greenhouse cukes? Click to see the detail. Those tentacles are beautiful and strong. And notice the fruit in the first pic. Hopefully we defeated the soil disease problem.

The arugula and other greens we direct-seeded into the greenhouse our first day here? They're coming along, and some should be ready for next week's tailgate market.

Here's potatoes being planted. The implement is called a dragsetter. Two folks sit on the thing and drop potato pieces while one person pulls it with the tractor. A shoe digs a trench, and those wheels you see pack in dirt over the dropped potato. I was the driver. It was my first time doing potatoes like this. It was fast and easy. This dirt is plowed and disked, but there was really no need to till it up.

Then we found these yesterday admidst a stand of poplars on the ridge (thanks Molly!).

That's four yellows and three greys. They were all solitary; that fact combined with the mounds of deer shit and disturbed leaves make us think the deer are devouring all the morels. But it's just a theory. Oh, and we found that turtle shell that the morels are laying against. Not a bounty of morels, but it was so satisfying to finally find them ourselves and cook 'em up in some butter and eat 'em. They were yummy.

Also came across this spike morel that was too dried out to harvest or eat. Ugly mutha, right?

Beautiful tulip we saw during our foragings.

First market of the season is tomorrow, so we'll probably be heading down to Asheville to check it out. Then we get to tour a farm down in Saluda Saturday evening as part of our apprenticeship learning experience. And then we get a roommate on Sunday (the third apprentice). So, it's gonna be a busy weekend.

Most of the photos in this post were taken by Meagan. All the credit for the pretty pics should go to her. Plus she contributes about half of all the other photos on the blog.

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