May 1

We thought we would share a few photos of how the farm is doing as of May 1.  We seem to be ahead on some things and behind on others.  Most of the initial rototilling is complete for the 2009 active beds.  2 weeks of market greens are in the ground.  Lower greenhouse crops are starting to look liks something. May 1st was also a significant day as we picked up the new farm van (traded in the truck) and got things organized with our new staff person Pam.

Windows of Opportunity and Bonus Nights.

AKA “Part Time” Farming Challenge No. 1.

With the farm/work balance, weekends bear most of the load. Weekends in May (our intense planting, field prep and market readiness time) are tremendously precious. This weekend was a washout and blowout. High winds and torrential rains. We managed to fill the time with a trip to the city on Saturday (picked up an irrigation system for the greenhouse) and on Sunday we moved a dishwasher, moved a new fridge for the garage and filled the back of the truck with bags of sheep manure. How we lived before the truck I do not know.

The rainy weather meant no field work. No weeding. No planting. To have fresh greens at market every week we seed 1 bed (bed = 2 foot x 30 foot) of red, 1 bed of green and 1 bed of mustards. We normally prep the beds and plant on the weekends. We were a bit worried looking at the forecast. It has since improved. (nice weather on Tuesday) But ugh, Weds, Thurs and Fri look ugly.

When would we seed and weed? With all the recent rain, the perennial weeds have regained much of their vigor and the first flush of annuals is upon us. (Ohhh pigweed I missed you so much).

We normally have a class on Mondays, but it was canceled so we had we we like to call “bonus nights”.

Bonus Night: Unexpected and unscheduled blocks of time that coincide with good weather and become available for farm work.

Now for normal people, a Bonus Night might mean a bit of ornamental yardwork, running into town to rent movie or this thing called “recreation” I have heard so much about.

We managed to get in 3 hours of work. We seeded 3 beds of greens and one of radishes, laid some row cover on the freshly emerged mustards and did some significant weeding. (Roxanne hoed the annuals, I dug up cooch grass) But we had to take advantage of the time.

It seem often that these windows of opportunity happen at the wrong time or the wrong weather. Last year when we were trying to get some rototilling done, we were often frustrated by rainy evenings with sunny breaks only between 8:30 and 4:30. We’d be racing home to get started and the sky open up. arghhh