442 Farm

View from the orchard

Along with gardening, singing is one of the things I love best in the world. Last night I went the Tuesday singing in Northampton for the first time in at least 4 weeks. Phew. Usually I am there every week, at least for the first half. Perhaps this is a sign that the garden is slightly in hand. Next year I want to make sure that planting season does not mean missing singing.

By singing I mean shape note singing, of course. I love all music and listen and sing other kinds of things but my singing home is Sacred Harp. And that is also where my family of friends reside. It was good to be home.

So, 442? That's the number of a song in The Sacred Harp, I just had to look up its word name. We call the songs by their numbers and even their numbers become imbued with meaning and memory.

At some point in time, the right name for my farm will reveal itself to me. For now I brainstorm along and keep a running list of possibilities. Because I love singing so much, I am drawn to using a name that reflects that love. 442/New Jordan has many phrases that are appealing: "living green", "generous fruits", "sweet fields". My recent little joke is to call the farm "442 Farm" until the right name comes along. More on names some other time.

This morning I will be taking pictures around the farm (Thanks again Leslie for loaning me a camera!) and will post some here. We had 1 inch of rain earlier in the week and everything has been growing like mad, including the weeds.




Champion Collards




New iris

Dig Dig Dig

This is so much work!

Okay that's it for complaints(?)/appreciations(?) Actually I love working hard and using and strengthening my body. For the past month Karen and I have been spending a large part of our gardening time digging. We are reclaiming old parts of the garden that have been neglected for years and creating new areas any place we can. I am even planning on digging up the old chicken yard as it is fenced with 7 foot fencing that should keep the deer away from the kale and brussel sprouts come fall. This week UMass Soil Testing Lab sent me the results of two soil samples I sent to them for new areas. Hurray! The area near the house is free of heavy metals and okay for growing vegetables, except for the fact that it needs lots of compost. (more digging!)

Once in a while the idea of using the rototiller comes up. I may very well use one at some point but for now this is a hand tools only operation. Very green farming. I love that the sounds I hear while working are the birds and the wind in the trees. Yesterday I saw a raven fly overhead and heard its call. That was the first time in my life that I was positive I saw a raven, not a crow. I would have missed it if I had been tilling, I am sure. Lately the wind has been rattling the leaves on the freshly cut pole bean poles. That's a fun tune. And I have been learning the call of my resident Red Bellied Woodpecker.

I also like the fact that the hand tools don't use any fuel or need any engine maintenance.

Lastly, digging kind of ties in with my style of gardening. I use my own foot to measure the beds and the rows. I use my hand to pat the seeds into the ground. I like that the garden is closely tied to me. I like touching the earth.

All right, back to digging.

May Flowers

Note: This post is really on May 25. (A little learning to blog blip.)

Everything is is full swing here at the farm. It's the first day of my second "Farm Week" where I get to stay home and farm full time. It's bliss. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the work is happening, and the flowers are blooming. These pictures were taken 1 week ago and already there are more kinds of flowers coming into bloom. The tree peony buds were fatter and pinker this afternoon than they were in the morning! Dianthus and Centaurea will be flowering soon. Last year the first CSA delivery bouquet included some of these stunning tulips. This year they will be all done before the first delivery so here are some pictures to enjoy. I definitely want to plant more tulips this fall.

Amazing Parrot Tulips



This bouquet was made on May 16. Even this early, it's possible to make something pretty. Now the lilacs are in full swing. I have light and dark purple, white and cream. Plus an old bush I am trying to revive that has dark ruby flowers. I am a sucker for lilacs. I want more!

An early bouquet



I love species daffodils, especially the scented varieties. This one is a sweetie.

Sweet daffodils: I think the variety is Sun Disc



By now (May 25) the apple blossoms are nearly done but the trees were loaded this year. Plus we had a bunch of sunny weather while they were blooming so maybe we will get a good crop of apples in the fall. Apple trees in my garden: Baldwin, Gravenstein, Pippen, Bramley, Red Astrachan, Stayman Winesap

Apple Blossoms: Baldwin



There's lots and lots of planting going on. Yesterday I finished planting 16 teepees of pole beans and 20 feet of head lettuce. Today I put in 8 hills of summer squashes and 14 feet of slicing cucumbers. Plus I dug more space in the flower garden and took soil samples for the new tomato area and next year's cutting garden. Rob mowed the grass and set up the frame for the greenhouse and yesterday Karen dug up another 6 feet of overgrown garden space. Phew! We are all working hard and it's starting to show.

The first delivery bouquet

Fruits of the Earth

Lately I have been enjoying the many wild foods the earth gives us in the springtime. I've had nettles, Jerusalem artichokes, violet greens, wild peppermint, violet blossoms and fiddleheads in various forms. Last night Rob and I had a delicious combination of many of those items, mostly as part of tabouli made with quinoa. So good. But I didn't want to leave out the vegetable garden so we also had the first MESCLUN of the season!




All the leaves in this special mix were less than one inch long but they were packed with deliciousness! Really juicy and GREEN tasting. The mix included:
arugula, Osaka purple mustard, Green Wave mustard, Heading mustard, Zen, Golden Frilled mustard, Ruby Streaks mustard, New Red Fire lettuce, spinach, Johnny Jump Up flowers, turnip greens, mizuna, purple mizuna, Galactic lettuce. It took awhile to pick but it was worth it.

For all you CSA members and farm stand visitors, soon there will be enough mesclun for all of us! Yum.

Marking the Rows

Still working on a blog routine. Eventually I hope to post at regular intervals and to include postings of what is in each week's CSA share and what is at the stand. Since my farm is so small, these things probably vary more than other farms. In the same way that I need to be extra careful about how much I plant. Not too much, or the garden will be filled, with no space for other things, and not too little, or there won't be enough harvest for all of us. I am aiming for "just right".

I have been busy in many ways. Digging the flower garden so I can plant all the new perennials and annual cutting flowers I have. I went to Walker Farm in Putney looking for onion plants and came home with 4 new peonies, 54 Eustoma plants, a flowering onion, a few herbs, including Pineapple Sage, one of my yearly favorites. I like buying herb plants at Walkers because they come from Sal Gilberties in Connecticut. Many years ago my mom worked at Gilberties making herbal wreaths. She also used to collect Sweet Gum burrs and Sycamore burrs to sell to Sal for fall decorations. I don't know if Mr. Gilbertie is still living but I know my mom enjoyed her connection with his nursery. It was right up her alley.

Plus my orders of perennials came from Bluestone Perennials and Territorial Seeds. I have about 36 plants in all from them including Coconut Lime Echinachea, Arp Rosemary, (which just might be hardy here), Coronation Gold Achillea, Coreopsis Heaven's Gate, Gloriosa Irish Eyes, and more. Generally busy digging and planting flowers and day dreaming about bouquets. I am about to pick and prepare some bouquets/centerpieces for the Council on Aging lunch today.

Plus there are few stray flowers to move from the old flower garden so I can use that space for my potato frames. You get the picture? Back to digging...

Happy Dreams

I woke up happy this morning, fresh from a garden dream.  In it I was in Greenfields Market with some extra vegetables and the clerk there suggested I try selling them there.  So we put them out.  For some reason they were placed at the checkout.  (This may be related to the fact that I impulse buy vegetables all the time.)  There were only about 3 bunches of something or other, perhaps thick stemmed mustard was one, that part is vague.  Then as usual in the market, I got to talking with a friend.  A bit later we looked up and everything had sold!  I was so excited.  The two of us (sorry pal I can't remember who was with me for this historic moment) walked out laughing and talking about the book we could write about all this.  Then I suddenly remembered, oh right, they give me money for this too.  So we turned around and walked back to the market, grinning all over.

It's a garden; it's a farm? It's a blog!

Well, here I am.  Starting a blog for the farm.  I hope that this will help build connections with my farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members and friends and family.  (ooh, I just made an interesting typo: "farmily")  My goal is to keep a record of what's happening on my little farm and to share pictures and news with interested people.  I plan on posting about once a week, unless inspired to do more.

This week is the first of my Farm Weeks, time that I have carved out of my usual working life so I can stay home and farm full time.  Each month from April through September I get a week to just farm.  Bliss.  Last Saturday my most excellent working member, Karen, came over to help out.  That was lovely and we had a great time visiting, digging, planting and patting the earth. 

Much progress is happening.  I planted spinach, red summer onions, mesclun, kale, endive, leaf lettuce, Swiss chard, New Zealand spinach, beets, turnips, radishes, Asian onions, turnip greens, mizuna, 3 kinds of mustard, the new mystery green called "Zen", early carrots... You get the picture.  Plus I planted cosmos, marigolds, zinnias, and centaurea.  Amazingly, many things are already coming up just a few days later.  It's been pretty warm so I guess that's why.  There are 5 kinds of mustard coming up: Golden Frilled, Red Streaks, Big Stem, Tainong Emperor Heading, and Osaka Purple.  For beets there are Touchstone Gold, Chioggia, Merlin, and Red Ace.  I won't fill in all the varieties of everything for now but that gives you a taste.

Hopefully I will now figure out how to post this and a few pictures.  Then I am going out to prune sumac and other brush.