A long, eventful, productive week. We completed our first major planting! The field rows are 250 feet long; i'm told we planted about sixteen THOUSAND plants last monday. Here's what we planted:
From starts - lots of lettuce (many different varieties), kale, broccoli, fennel, mustard greens, radicchio.
From seed - salad dandelion, carrots, beets, spinach.
There might be others i'm forgetting. But it was a lot of plants! A lot of food. Then we set up the irrigation pipes (stored at the end of the fields when not in use) and "watered in" all the new plants and seeds. The ravens/crows were circling, by the end of it all. We also amended the field with gypsum and feather meal before planting. And there was a treatment of some of the rows with Ecotrol - a product of corn grit, soaked in essential oils, to ward off Symphylans. Our fearless, amazing farm manager(s) have put together a map of where the Symphylans lived in the field last year, so we only had to treat several rows with that. It was especially nice to plant in those rows, because you're sticking plants in and there's this nice, pleasing unexpected aroma wafting up from the ground.
Now, my camera is out of batteries so i'm putting the photos on hold, but i'll keep the news coming. We also did our first sowing of seeds this past week - learning about potting mix, different seed types and where all those things need to come from in order for the farm to be Organic (certified). Interesting note: we rebuilt our potting shed siding because originally it was constructed with treated plywood - since the potting mix spends time right up against that wood siding, it had to be replaced for the farm to meet the Organic certification.
David Brian and i went to Slide Ranch on Saturday, for their annual "Spring Fling" open-farm fundraiser. It was wicked fun. They are an educational farm, located just to the north of us on Highway 1. I spent the morning making origami with kids (yay!) and then ate some serious donated scones and had a potato sack race, egg race (i lost, broke my egg), and three legged race. Also, there were sheep and goats and chickens and ducklings! And baby goats! The kid goats were really a highlight. They are completely amazingly cute, and they are very friendly - they come right over to you and then try to eat your finger/jacket/watch. Blissful sigh. The ranch is a cliff-away from the water, so we also walked down to the tidepools and i also blissed out with some marine invertebrate geeking out. We saw mussels, barnacles, crabs (3 types including hermits), gastropods snails, giant green anemones, ochre sea stars, and other sea stars. Then we walked back to GGF along the coast - a perfectly beautiful walk, and much closer than i thought it would be (about 1.5 hr).
From here on out, the plan is to plant every other week, and sow on the off weeks. We're getting back on schedule, after we were rained out at first.
26 Apr 2010
18 Apr 2010
Green Gulch Farm Week 2
The days are full, such that the weeks are more like months. I feel like i've been here a month, instead of just under two weeks. I have my own knife. We were encouraged to name our knife, keep it safe for the summer. I call mine Pantalaimon.
Very trusty, so far. I learned how to sharpen my knife, and i didn't freak out when i sharpened him! I feel good about that.
On to the nitty gritty, so to speak: we worked more in the "kitchen garden" this week. We are still waiting for the fields to dry out enough to do our large scale planting, so the majority of the work is "cleaning" up beds, or preparing beds for planting in the KG. There was a good few hours of compost processing where we got good and dirty, and we also excavated a storage shed. The shed was supposed to be water and rodent-proof, but there was condensation inside and the mice had gotten in. There were two mice nests we found, which we evacuated, and about 30 mice that mostly scattered. One of the nests had teeny tiny pink hairless baby mice in it - no bigger than the first knuckle of my thumb. We evacuated them safely, but they were gone the next day, so there's no way of knowing what became of them. I like to think that the Mama Mouse came along and moved them all.
There are several steps in preparing a bed for planting, or bedding up. We first edge the bed (chop a line around the perimeter, with a spade), then we heave all of the plant matter in the bed up, by tilthing (dig a garden fork in the soil, and sort of lift up the rooted matter). Finally, we come through by hand and pick out the tilthed out plant matter and chaff, and then smooth it with a rake.
So in addition to bedding up, we planted a few things in the KG, and we also harvested baby lettuce (we'll do this every week now, for the rest of the summer). We planted leeks, scallions, and lettuce. And we turned in the cover crop on three beds. Chugging right along!
We had a couple of wonderful additional things last week: our fearless Farm Manager got her friend's band to play and sing for us on Thursday. It was so divine to have live music. The band performance turned into an open music night, and many of the residents are musically inclined, so we had some really touching and lovely performances. Our own Renee made sweet potato pie, and led the group in fiddle tunes. It was absolutely fantastic.
The practice schedule is settling. Its becoming more like a real schedule, and one that i feel like i'll get used to. Overall, things are going well.
Very trusty, so far. I learned how to sharpen my knife, and i didn't freak out when i sharpened him! I feel good about that.On to the nitty gritty, so to speak: we worked more in the "kitchen garden" this week. We are still waiting for the fields to dry out enough to do our large scale planting, so the majority of the work is "cleaning" up beds, or preparing beds for planting in the KG. There was a good few hours of compost processing where we got good and dirty, and we also excavated a storage shed. The shed was supposed to be water and rodent-proof, but there was condensation inside and the mice had gotten in. There were two mice nests we found, which we evacuated, and about 30 mice that mostly scattered. One of the nests had teeny tiny pink hairless baby mice in it - no bigger than the first knuckle of my thumb. We evacuated them safely, but they were gone the next day, so there's no way of knowing what became of them. I like to think that the Mama Mouse came along and moved them all.
There are several steps in preparing a bed for planting, or bedding up. We first edge the bed (chop a line around the perimeter, with a spade), then we heave all of the plant matter in the bed up, by tilthing (dig a garden fork in the soil, and sort of lift up the rooted matter). Finally, we come through by hand and pick out the tilthed out plant matter and chaff, and then smooth it with a rake.
So in addition to bedding up, we planted a few things in the KG, and we also harvested baby lettuce (we'll do this every week now, for the rest of the summer). We planted leeks, scallions, and lettuce. And we turned in the cover crop on three beds. Chugging right along!
We had a couple of wonderful additional things last week: our fearless Farm Manager got her friend's band to play and sing for us on Thursday. It was so divine to have live music. The band performance turned into an open music night, and many of the residents are musically inclined, so we had some really touching and lovely performances. Our own Renee made sweet potato pie, and led the group in fiddle tunes. It was absolutely fantastic.
The practice schedule is settling. Its becoming more like a real schedule, and one that i feel like i'll get used to. Overall, things are going well.
11 Apr 2010
Arrival at Green Gulch, Week 1
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Its raining. There's been talk of it all week: its going to rain on Sunday. There is more talk than usual, even, about the weather here, because our work changes depending on the weather. We were set to plant two of the large fields this week, but if it rains today, we won't be able to. The soil will be too wet.
Back up. I arrived at Green Gulch Farm/Green Dragon Zen Temple, last Wednesday. It was a smooth but bittersweet arrival: i arrived to gorgeous sun, stopped at Stinson Beach along the way, and visited friends on the drive down. But, i had just left behind my whole life and friends and contact with the world-as-i-know-it, in a flash. Just like that, i stepped out of my life and into a dorm room. Lucky for me, this is a very welcoming place, and it was sunny and warm for three days in a row - enough for me to really soak it in, get a sunburn, and go swim in the reservoir and ocean. Also, i'm not alone. There are 9 of us apprentices, who all arrived the same day, in more or less similar situations (having left behind large and small pieces of our lives). We are artists, scientists, farmers, knitters, bakers, communications specialists, and many other things - but we share this common intention: to come here and work with the land to produce food, while studying Zen Buddhism. It is good.
After my arrival on Wednesday, we had a couple of days of orientation with our Farm Manager and Garden Manager. They told us about the history of Green Gulch Farm. We cleared "weeds" out of the pond (i'm told the main undesirables are parrot feather and Brazilian pondweed).
Our able guides took us to roam in the hills, climbing up to Hope Cottage for a series of good vantage points for the farm, the valley, and Muir Beach. We botanized (!), identified poison oak, learned about the San Andreas fault, and discussed more history of the farm and its surrounds. This farm was originally a cattle and dairy farm (as were many of the farms in this region - Strauss is just up the coast from us). The land was basically donated to the Zen Center in the late 1970s, when gardener and farmer Alan Chadwick (who also implemented UC Santa Cruz's farm) helped instate the farm as it is. Wendy Johnson and others shepherded the farm into what it has become today - 5 acres in the bottom of the valley. 4 acres are farmed for vegetables, 1 acre is the garden with herbs, ornamentals, orchards and berries among other things.
On Friday afternoon, we had a lesson in soil microbe ecology (Jessica - they do value their microbes here - and they teach us to do the same). There are millions of organisms living in ONE TEASPOON of soil. Stunning. And most of those organisms, we (meaning, science) haven't even identified. Of the ones we have identified or named, there are bizillions of bacteria and protozoa, loads of nematodes (nematodes!), arthropods, annelids, gastropods, and fungi or at least fungal hyphae. With this information, we then proceeded to the beds. We planted baby lettuce starts by hand into beds that were tilled by hand. We plant the lettuces in a "hex pattern", which means the plants are staggered a bit in each row, so that the distance between any two plants is a triangular identical distance apart. See photo. Once you set plants (or seeds) in the ground, you must water them in. About 45 min will do it. So we watered our new starts, and celebrated by swimming in the reservoir. These starts will be harvested as baby lettuces, so they can be planted very close together. We plant baby lettuce beds anew, each week, so there is a steady supply of baby lettuce (this is especially desirable for the restaurants that buy from us).
Then we had a half-day sitting, and some zazen (sitting) instruction. There are many forms in each Zen sitting and ritual, and we reviewed some of those - its very helpful to review, since some are different and some are just difficult to remember the order of bowing, getting up, sitting down, etc.
Mostly, i've had the sense of having too much to do, if anything. I have suddenly and unintentionally shifted my sleep schedule, so that i go to bed by about 21:00, because wake up is around 5:00. It was a relief to find out that the center is on "interim schedule", which means that wake up time is actually about an hour later than it will be for most of the summer. I'm glad - this way i can kind of transition more easily into the schedule of rising early and bed early. So far its not terrible, and i'm not tired much.
Back to now: the fields we were to plant have been disc-ed and plowed, but as its been a wet spring so far, its still too wet to plant. Now with the rains, we might have to wait another week or two to plant those big fields, or else we'll compact the soil too much by driving tractors and machinery down the furrows. There is always a plethora of work to do on the farm, though - so we won't be sitting idle watching the soil for signs of drying out. Instead we'll be doing other farm chores like prepping smaller beds, starting new plants, and generally cleaning up. Stay tuned!
Its raining. There's been talk of it all week: its going to rain on Sunday. There is more talk than usual, even, about the weather here, because our work changes depending on the weather. We were set to plant two of the large fields this week, but if it rains today, we won't be able to. The soil will be too wet.
Back up. I arrived at Green Gulch Farm/Green Dragon Zen Temple, last Wednesday. It was a smooth but bittersweet arrival: i arrived to gorgeous sun, stopped at Stinson Beach along the way, and visited friends on the drive down. But, i had just left behind my whole life and friends and contact with the world-as-i-know-it, in a flash. Just like that, i stepped out of my life and into a dorm room. Lucky for me, this is a very welcoming place, and it was sunny and warm for three days in a row - enough for me to really soak it in, get a sunburn, and go swim in the reservoir and ocean. Also, i'm not alone. There are 9 of us apprentices, who all arrived the same day, in more or less similar situations (having left behind large and small pieces of our lives). We are artists, scientists, farmers, knitters, bakers, communications specialists, and many other things - but we share this common intention: to come here and work with the land to produce food, while studying Zen Buddhism. It is good.
After my arrival on Wednesday, we had a couple of days of orientation with our Farm Manager and Garden Manager. They told us about the history of Green Gulch Farm. We cleared "weeds" out of the pond (i'm told the main undesirables are parrot feather and Brazilian pondweed).
Our able guides took us to roam in the hills, climbing up to Hope Cottage for a series of good vantage points for the farm, the valley, and Muir Beach. We botanized (!), identified poison oak, learned about the San Andreas fault, and discussed more history of the farm and its surrounds. This farm was originally a cattle and dairy farm (as were many of the farms in this region - Strauss is just up the coast from us). The land was basically donated to the Zen Center in the late 1970s, when gardener and farmer Alan Chadwick (who also implemented UC Santa Cruz's farm) helped instate the farm as it is. Wendy Johnson and others shepherded the farm into what it has become today - 5 acres in the bottom of the valley. 4 acres are farmed for vegetables, 1 acre is the garden with herbs, ornamentals, orchards and berries among other things.On Friday afternoon, we had a lesson in soil microbe ecology (Jessica - they do value their microbes here - and they teach us to do the same). There are millions of organisms living in ONE TEASPOON of soil. Stunning. And most of those organisms, we (meaning, science) haven't even identified. Of the ones we have identified or named, there are bizillions of bacteria and protozoa, loads of nematodes (nematodes!), arthropods, annelids, gastropods, and fungi or at least fungal hyphae. With this information, we then proceeded to the beds. We planted baby lettuce starts by hand into beds that were tilled by hand. We plant the lettuces in a "hex pattern", which means the plants are staggered a bit in each row, so that the distance between any two plants is a triangular identical distance apart. See photo. Once you set plants (or seeds) in the ground, you must water them in. About 45 min will do it. So we watered our new starts, and celebrated by swimming in the reservoir. These starts will be harvested as baby lettuces, so they can be planted very close together. We plant baby lettuce beds anew, each week, so there is a steady supply of baby lettuce (this is especially desirable for the restaurants that buy from us).
Then we had a half-day sitting, and some zazen (sitting) instruction. There are many forms in each Zen sitting and ritual, and we reviewed some of those - its very helpful to review, since some are different and some are just difficult to remember the order of bowing, getting up, sitting down, etc.
Mostly, i've had the sense of having too much to do, if anything. I have suddenly and unintentionally shifted my sleep schedule, so that i go to bed by about 21:00, because wake up is around 5:00. It was a relief to find out that the center is on "interim schedule", which means that wake up time is actually about an hour later than it will be for most of the summer. I'm glad - this way i can kind of transition more easily into the schedule of rising early and bed early. So far its not terrible, and i'm not tired much.
Back to now: the fields we were to plant have been disc-ed and plowed, but as its been a wet spring so far, its still too wet to plant. Now with the rains, we might have to wait another week or two to plant those big fields, or else we'll compact the soil too much by driving tractors and machinery down the furrows. There is always a plethora of work to do on the farm, though - so we won't be sitting idle watching the soil for signs of drying out. Instead we'll be doing other farm chores like prepping smaller beds, starting new plants, and generally cleaning up. Stay tuned!
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