In between gray

Broccoli in the garden

It is foggy this morning, and I'm waiting for the fog to burn off and the dew to go away, so I check the hay curing on the ground.

In the mean time, I did some house chores, and hoed in the garden.  Status:

• The long rains followed by gorgeous clear days seems to have made the broccoli particularly happy.
• The rains took out the carrots, most of the potatoes, and some of the squash.  When I expressed displeasure with the drowned potato seed, one of my nieces, who grew up in Ireland, said "Oh, Aunt Hetty, these things grow in Ireland.  Think about it!"   She may be right...two plants popped up in the "wettest" trench over night!  I'll leave the trenches alone for a bit more.
• Rutabaga, lettuce, and beans are up from seed.  Tomatoes seem ok., but need to be staked.
• George and I got the first hay into the barn.  We also got the baler, wagon and tractor stuck in the hayfield twice, and got out by ourselves twice.  Whoo hoo!   As George noted, we now have lots of experience hooking and unhooking machinery for this year.
• The farm sign is in place by the road.   We've already had one person ask "Where is the island"?  The "island" is described on the bottom of the Rock Island Farm web page.

Potato plant in the least wet trench

Got hay?

Wildflower from August, 2011

It is really nice when one gets to the time of year when people starting looking at you sideways and saying..."Got hay?   We're going to need X number of bales...".

We had a gorgeous hay window, in terms of weather, this past week.   It had me standing, staring into the breeze, wanting to hay.   Unfortunately, like other people with clay soils, we need a few dry days before such a window in the spring to allow the hay field to dry out.   That kind of weather hasn't happened yet.   Haying on wet grounds mucks up the soil, and produces potentially musty hay.

But, the haying equipment is all out of storage, oil and greased, and ready to go.  Well, almost.  We're still messing around with the bale knotter a bit, but we'll manage that.  We just need the weather.

We'll list hay for sale on the farm website and on Craig's List when we have hay in the barn.   I know it would be easier for some buyers if we did advance sales, and I'd really like to say "yes" when we get asked.   But, we need to get the hay in the barn first, and then sell it. We're a small, local farm, relying on some older equipment and some older people, and we don't want to promise something that we might not be able to deliver. 

Producing and selling hay is an important part of our ability to keep the land classified as "agricultural", as we slowly improve soils and increase our vegetable production.  Please remember us when you need feed or mulch hay and pass the word.

Please support your local farms

Rain, potatoes, and ditches

It has been raining.  A lot.    Nothing like the amount it has rained in Southern Maine, but a lot.

I went out this morning to check on the garden, and found the potato trenches full of standing water, several inches deep.   It would be nice to have a "before" photo, but at time like these, one tends to run for the shovel first.

The picture at right shows a partially drained potato trench, with a bit of drainage ditch below.   I dug about 45 or 50 feet of drainage ditch along one edge of the garden.  Then, I widened it to hold more water, and started a side ditch to try to sheet the stormwater off into a buffer area.   I'm glad that it wasn't raining while I was doing this, and that there is a large vegetated buffer area beside and below bed #1. 

The water shown in the left side of the photo is in one of the potato trenches.  The water heading off to the right is in part of the ditch.   The rest of the bed #1 looks pretty good.  The paths between the plantings tended to drain off the water.

But..the seed potatoes may be rotting in the ground.   This would be unfortunate, because we store the potatoes and eat them during the winter.   If the seed potatoes are rotted, I wonder if we can still find any more around here?

On a cheerier note, the grass is nice and green.

The white temporary fencing is used to keep the groundhogs out of the garden. So far, we haven't had to electrify it.   We have nice groundhogs around here.

The wind is from the northeast, and more rain is coming.   No watering is required, happy and cool onion seedlings, pumps in the cellar working, and George just came home looking sharp from the barber.  Time for lunch!