I really need to figure out the farmblog rhythm for this year. I've been starting up a few new (and long) writing projects-- but there's only so much time. Things will all balance out soonly.
The past week has been mighty stressful. My buddy Jizzy has been having a rough road of it acting way down south. He drove a long ten plus hours up to call things off with his girlfriend face-to-face. Jizzy blew back into town around midnight. Tearfully and through many beers we sussed him back together. I could relate and the heart blood was all across the tracks... Jizzy slept to sober and lit out south in the early morning.
We're starting the long way to filling up the fields. A mess of cauliflower, kale (toscano and green leaf), cabbage (red and green), swiss chard and brussels sprout are in the ground up on the hilltop. The pea varieties are coming strong, the fava beans have broken surface, the spinach/beets/bok choi have sprouted. Things are coming along. We've had a few days of heavy rain and the cold frame has (barely) managed to survive.
I managed to mess up the tractor one rainy morning. When harrowing a small field along a row of blackberries I got stuck on a boulder while trying to turn around for another pass. Kicking the machine into reverse everything went haywire, the back wheel caught on a hydraulic line-- tearing the hydraulic system's connectors into a pretzel shape and busting a dagger sized hole in the tire. The boss was ready to strangle me.
Ouch.
Tractor wheels don't typically have inner tubing anymore, so repairs are more simple-- but a highly caustic (and expensive) anti-freeze solution was jetting from the hole. Fortunately, the tire mechanic came on short notice-- patching up the tire for just a hundred dollars. The bent hydraulics are another matter-- next week's problem.
After a few days the boss eased off me. Running over a hydraulic line is a problem, but a relatively common one. The real issue was why the safety release didn't trigger and eject the line-- instead the coupler stayed attached and bent everything up. So the boss has relegated everything as mostly not my fault. He wouldn't even let me cover the repair bill...
It's been real busy these past days-- I'm forgetting almost everything that's happened. But the "pre-season" is almost over. Hard planting is about to begin, and Bah is due back next week.
I'm working this weekend-- on a special job. We're doing a little cattle drive tomorrow-- moving the heard across the town road up to new pasture. A lot of the boss's family is coming in to lend a hand and the town police are gonna be there to mind the traffic. It'll be a crazy day, most certainly.
Off and onward, we'll click into gear here soon enough.
Light rain throughout the morning, it slowed down mid-afternoon into a cloudy brood. Temperature hung at the middle 50Fs.
It was a sloppy, wet morning. Snapped a few pictures of yesterday's masterwork:
There it is. On the left of the greenhouse. Haha, nothing fancy.
Here she lies. Tomorrow we're putting down a black plastic floor covering, rigging up the odd irrigation pipes as center-beams and covering over the top with extra greenhouse plastic. Can't wait to fill this up-- I've gone seed crazy. The more we start, the more to plant and be paid for. Sweet dollar bills-- I can hear 'em growing.
First thing I opened up the greenhouse and gave all the little-uns a thorough water. Then it was time to start harrowing. I headed uphill, hitched up and got grinding. The boss had some farm bureau event today-- he's still the county president-- so he dropped off thirty gallons of diesel and left us for the day.
I started in the old butternut field and had a hell of a time. The mud was thick and the tractor was getting swamped in muck at every turn. It was particularly terrifying to slide sideways downhill at a steep, tip-over-type-angle. I took a brief sit down and cigarette before going over the tractor, looking for some problem. Eventually I figured out that the boss had flipped the transmission into a 2-wheel drive setting-- I fixed that back to 4 wheel. The going was mercifully easier.
The light rain was perfect for the fertilizer spread yesterday (not so much for harrowing)-- for added effect I went over all the sweet corn fields (for the second and, I'm sure, not the last time). I spun those discs all day long-- everything on the hilltop has now been tilled once, and everything currently fertilized has been twice-tilled.
Here's a picture of the contraption. There are two rows of discs (the second is behind the wheels), angled for maximum turnover. The hydraulic lines (there on the right) power a wheel jack that raises and lowers the whole frame-- I pop that thing up and down all day to negotiate around the many sub-soil boulders and travel between fields. Behind the last row of discs is a split line of steel chain dragging a length of telephone pole-- it serves to even out the loosened dirt, smoothing the chaos into some semblance of a plantable field. The telephone pole is what cracked me in the hip earlier this Spring. Any long time readers might remember another harrow story from last year-- the solid steel cross beam that holds up the first row of discs: that's what I sledge hammered out of its fittings for welding-repairs, and those discs are what rolled over me and shredded the pants clear off my body. The harrow and I are on better terms these days.
The view from the tractor roof (I smoke sitting up there) at the day's end. It's an abnormally bright look at the day-- all the dark patches are freshly harrowed. The sloping butternut fields are just out of the frame on the left. I saw three bull-sized tom turkeys at the far wood's edge this morning-- they were bucking around trying to entice a mate. I tried to nab a picture, but couldn't get close enough-- the testosterone was pumping and they chased me back into the cab. I wasn't about to mix with a gang of raging turkeys.
Saw Newport for the first time at the end. He'd been in the barn all day, sanding and staining all the produce wagons-- opening is Memorial day (May 28th) and we're almost ready. His finger was bandaged up tight-- he'd slipped with the power drill and it skidded in under his fingernail, biting him good. Newport really needs to take it easier.
Another surprise-- when closing up the greenhouse, I had to double back and hold in my gut. The whole place reeked of well cured fish parts. The boss finally sprayed the seedlings with his new fish-fertilizer-- it's great for young plants, giving them a shot of nutrients without the killing strength of the regular commercial sprays/pellets. Apparently the boss lost his sense of smell over the years, but I surely still have mine-- and that greenhouse smells like hell.
May already-- feeling stronger and a little easier of the mind. But on to the work.
It's been a haggard week-- Monday started in the back of the boss's house. His water heater died, so we cut the pipes free, dragged the rusty tub outside and went hunting for a new one. The boss and I make a motley crew, our dirty slouch versus the pristine order of retail, sauntering about in public had an acutely surreal quality. I drove him around to a few box stores before we found a price he could agreed with-- we stopped for a fine time at the dump-- and then returned to the farm in order to meet the plumber. The pipe-man was a secret architect-geek and was fascinated by the boss's house. I left to harrow, while they debated green building and eventually installed the heater.
The weekend frosts passed, all blueberry and strawberry buds survived, but the pepper seedlings in the greenhouse didn't fair as well. A third of the trays caught a killing freeze-- I culled out the lifeless and consolidated the living into order. There was a big empty chunk left over-- a matter for Tuesday. The weather was pretty calm Monday afternoon, so we phoned in a fire permit and burned (burn season is now officially over). I had my own small fire on a hill overlooking the cow pasture. Popped the radio, smoked a few and dozed the day away.
Tuesday was rain. A shower turned into a day long down pour. I hid away in the greenhouse and seeded up a storm: 5 more trays of swiss chard (400 plants) , 6 trays of mixed lettuce (1500 plants) and 3 more basil (750 plants)-- these filled the pepper gaps. But there was a lot of day remaining, so I dry seeded a slew of broccoli to preempt the completion of the cold frame: 4 trays of 75 day (450 plants), 6 trays of 76 day (500ish plants), now I lost track of my tray numbers-- 2000 plants of 86 day, 3000 plants of 88 day and 3000 plants of 96 day. A little under 9000 broccoli plants-- god damn what a mess of work is ahead.
Then there was today.
Cloudy all day through-- temperature in the mid 50Fs.
I headed over to the berry fields with the tractor and four 4x4 wood beams-- last week we augured deep holes through the black-raspberry field, so it was finally time to sink in the head-posts for a new trellis system. After pounding everything down and tamping home the dirt I headed back to meet the delivery man. 5,000 lbs worth of fertilizers was delivered and laid out on palates-- signed all the paper work and rung up the boss for the check.
Once everything was straightened out, I hitched up the spreader and got the boss fertilizing the blueberries. These bushes thrive in tough soil-- acidic pH and low nutrients-- so we loaded up 500lbs of 7-7-7 (potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus). While the boss was off I put on shoulder length haz-mat gloves, grabbed a grub hoe and headed to the black raspberries to tear up 50ft x 3ft worth of thick poison ivy. It was my personal hell-- despite the gloves, I look forward to many new rashes. In between hoeing and refilling the spreader, I cleaned up the mess of spilled soil I left in the greenhouse during my seeding marathon (filled a trash bag).
It took a few hours for the boss to cover all the tractor-accessible areas of the three blueberry fields. In the last minutes before lunch we measured/staked out the cold-frame. We then worked long into lunchtime, chaining/hauling telephone poles into position, but it was all finally done/ready for hammers and nail.
Newport was back after lunch, and boy, time off did him no favors. Bill collectors had been hounding him and inaction had led him to the door of insanity. So it was a cold reunion. We gathered up buckets and cups, then hitched a ride with the boss to the far-off blueberry fields along the cow pasture. The terrain gets pretty shaky in these less-kept fields, but we hand fertilized 1lb per bush. It took around 700lb worth to finish the two fields.
We hiked back to the farm and loaded up the tractor with 500lbs worth of 9-19-9 (i think that was it, all the damn numbers run together now) and headed up to the peach orchard. The boss was out carpet fertilizing all the fields marked for early sweet corn, using that same 9-19-whatever it was. All the 1-3 year saplings got a light 1/2 lb sprinkle around the base, the older trees received the full lb. Aim is important with all hand fertilizing-- the granules themselves are pretty caustic (due to the concentration), so you never want to hit the plant. A few stray beads here and there can burn the root bulbs and cause some long term damage. So we sprinkle everything wide and loose over where the roots reach. That way, once it rains, everything will be diluted and seep downward where it's needed.
It wasn't long before the orchard was done, so Newport and I headed down to start bringing together the cold-frame. I took out the grind-wheel wand sawed off the old iron-telephone-ladder-pegs, while Newport hammered on the end-boards. The iron pegs were no joke-- sparks exploded and it took a solid minute of sawing per nail to hack 'em off. Newport started loosing up and tried to light dead grass on fire off my sparks. That was a bad choice. He caught a hunk of orange-hot steel filament to the eyeball. Through some miracle he managed to pluck it out before his eyelids dragged it all over the place-- which would have been very bad. He handed me the chunk and said-- feel it, rub it between your fingers (I did). Goddamn it! That was in my eye! He kept his distance as I finished off the pegs.
Next we measured everything up, took out the circular saw and built a middle partition. I could try to explain this construction project, but it's a tragic combination of genius/half-assed supplies/impatience. I'll take some pictures tomorrow morning so you can see how things develop. But anyway, we built the middle partition and then sawed up a series of notched posts-- we'll rest old irrigation pipes along the grooves to form a little tee-pee roof over the monstrosity. The end of the day was long passed when I looked over the whole thing-- we really should have leveled the ground more before building.
We met the boss-- I got my orders for tomorrow, and Newport left with a direly needed check.
Rain ahead, rain behind, this sunny sort of notion just crossed my mind.
