Green Gulch Farm Week 2

P4140012.JPG
Originally uploaded by n_yoder

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.