Green Gulch Farm, wk6+7

So much happens in a week, it sends me reeling when i sit down to write. One of the things i'm noticing is how many different moods, different modes, different emotions i can have in the span of a week. Its wild, really. A lot happens, even if seemingly nothing is happening.

But i was talking about the plants and the farm, too! We planted the 4th (?) planting in the fields last week - we barely squeaked it in, just in time for the rain! It was some major rain, too. We planted the same things as before: lettuce (lots!!), brassicas, and a host of other things in smaller quantities: parsely, flowers (Nicotiana).

We had a work-party in the Kitchen Garden (the hand-worked section of the farm), so its looking well cleaned up as compared to before. We've turned all the cover crop in, on the KG beds, so its looking really nice. We planted lettuce and arugula, and we cleaned up the edible flower beds (Nasturtium, borage, Calendula) and chives.

Last week we also harvested for market (Mill Valley farmer's market, Fridays 9.00-14.00). Our plants from the first field planting are big enough to harvest! So exciting. We brought to the market: red mustard bunches, kale, spinach, salad mix, head lettuce, green garlic, herbs - chives, thyme, mint. We harvested in a downpour, but despite that, it was really fun to see the harvest (photo courtesy Dan).



Things start to make more sense (the boxes! all the crazy types of boxes and storage and systems) after seeing that. I feel like i don't harvest very fast yet, but hopefully with time i'll get more efficient. My manager said to me that she doesn't know very much about farming, really - that with all of her experience on farms, the main thing she knows how to do is harvest. Since we spend so much time harvesting, that makes sense to me.

We have so many varieties of lettuce. I'm beginning to learn some of them. But its sort of mind spinning:
- Galisse
- Tango
- Natividad
- Breen
- Brunia
- Baby oakleaf
- Greenleaf
- Aerostar
Its amazing - its fun to learn them, since mainly i know them from the sowings and i can't identify each variety yet. But we're getting there. I also learned (er, re-learned?) last week that Swiss chard and beets are the same plant! And i learned that all peas (green peas, snow peas, snap peas) are all the same species, Pisum sativum L., just different variants or subspecies.

Happy Memorial Day! I think this is a good day to envision a world where we all listen to each other, and resolve our conflicts peacefully, and take pride in our culture and heritage.

Green Gulch Farm, wk5

Lots happening on the farm. We planted part of the 3rd field, we had birthday celebrations for our May farm birthdays, we took a field trip to the Edible Schoolyard at MLK middle school in Berkeley. See photos of the Edible Schoolyard trip, here. It was incredibly inspiring, to learn about the Edible Schoolyard, and the massive changes that have taken place at the middle school, since the project began. Not only is there now a green space and active garden space producing food that the kids eat and enjoy, the program has worked with the school to change the cafeteria - building a new building equipped with a full kitchen where cafeteria staff cook and prepare meals from scratch. This is all a complete opposite, to what was there before 1995: where the garden is now was a paved acre of unused, neglected blacktop. There was no cafeteria: the school cafeteria lay fallow, doors locked as the school didn't have enough money to keep it open. Instead, there was a trailer outside on the basketball courts, where the only thing students could buy to eat was a "walking taco" - a bag of chips with beans and heated cheese poured into the bag. Now every student in the school has to attend some program in the Edible Schoolyard garden and kitchen - so they are exposed to elements of gardening (growing plants, tilling the land, working with farm animals, e.g.), plus cooking. We sat in on a 7th grad "Iron Chef" competition, where teams of ten kids were given the same ingredients to work with, and they had to create delicious and thoughtful dishes in 45 minutes. I almost cried when one girl was explaining how she made the salad dressing with rice vinegar AND red wine vinegar.

I was also really impressed with the diversity of crops being cultivated at the Edible Schoolyard. From flowers to fruit, vegetables, grains and animals (chickens) - there's a wide variety to learn about and work with. Good job, Alice Waters - thanks for making this program, and inspiring other communities to take up similar mantles.

Back on our farm, plants are growing! The plants from our first planting here - now a month in the ground - are getting BIG! Its totally exciting. And, the potatoes are up. Things are humming right along. The fog has started, and some rain. They tell me the rain is unseasonable at this time here. That's all for this week!

First things first

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Originally uploaded by n_yoder

Ok, so the biggest thing that happened this week: Farm Baby!!! Our Farm Advisor (she was Farm Manager last year, but is out on maternity leave this year) gave birth to a healthy baby boy! Frank David. Its so completely exciting, and to be around an infant just after its born - a rare and precious gift. And now Mother's Day - so special. We've been rejoicing on the farm.

We also had some other things happening, but the arrival of Frank David was certainly the knock-your-socks-off event. We cultivated the field crops, which is a fancy way of saying we began an ongoing process of disturbing the soil around the plants in the field rows, to kill unwanted plants (weeds) and to discourage new weeds. To do this, we use hoes. It turns out, hoeing is a lot harder than it might seem. We'll get a lot more practice at this, so that's good.

We also completed a sowing - planting lots of seeds for germination in the greenhouse. There's a lot involved: making potting mix for the flats, getting the flats cleaned and sterilized, getting the seeds organized, and then filling the flats with soil and placing the seeds in. It turns out to be a long set of tasks, to get the sowing completed.


Then we also did a little stint with removing aquatic plants from the pond. There was compost (although i wasn't on the compost crew this week) and we received our Summer Project jobs, plus our tuesday chores. Summer Project is one aspect of the farm that is assigned to each apprentice, so we take special care of that set of tasks. I'm assigned to handle the veggie boxes for our CSA (small CSA - community supported agriculture - for Muir Beach). So there was a lot of housekeeping this week.

We had a tea ceremony demonstration for the apprentices last week, and i attended my first tea class. It is good to be back in the tearoom. I've been away from tea for about 2 months over the time of the move and transition, and i'm glad that we have tea here.

Wendy Johnson came to give a talk on Wednesday. She talked about ... everything. She was wonderful. She has a powerful presence. She spoke about practice, about bringing our Zen practice to our lives, whatever our lives are. For her, its growing food. So she spoke about how this is so critical that we bring our practice to the world, whatever the case may be of where we are in the world (living in a monastery, working in an office). It was Cinco de Mayo and she spoke about war and peace, and several of the Spanish speaking members of the temple read one of our daily chants in Spanish. I loved hearing the Spanish - it was poetic and songlike. Beautiful.

As Mother's Day draws to an end, i am struck with how much gratitude i have for my Mothers, and for all the Mother's of the world. And, we also call the planet "Mother Earth". So it feels like maybe Mothers are all connected, through the Earth? I only hope that i can uphold my end of the bargain, and be a caring steward for my life, for all suffering beings, and for this one and only planet. May we all go in peace.

Oh, one more thing

PS - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Natha! I love you!

Green Gulch Farm, wk3

Ok, so i have some photos for you, taken by David at the Slide Ranch open house. Yep, those are baby goats!!


This week we shimmied some time around and worked Sunday, planting potatoes. We planted SO many potatoes. We planted several varieties: yellow fin, russet, and others. So we began by amending the soil on Sunday (gypsum and feather meal), and then planting the potatoes. Our trusty, fearless Farm Tractor People (farm staff drive the tractors) pulled rows for us to plant potatoes in, and other rows for the other veggies. Potatoes get placed in a furrow, then covered by raking the sides into a mound in the middle of the row. Other veggies get plunked in the raised soil surrounded by furrows, two lines per row. So then we also did our second planting (potatoes don't count as a "planting", because they'll stay in the ground until August, when they'll all be harvested around the same time). Most of the non-potato (non-Solanum, in fact) veggies were planted out on Monday. This was all sort of squeezed in real quick-like, because the weather forecast loomed RAIN. And we were just in time: it poured, in torrents, Monday night and Tuesday. So we hurried and planted just before we would have been rained out for another week! Good stuff. Same veggies as last time, maybe a few differences: lots and lots of lettuce, kale, mustard greens, broccoli, cabbage, beets, spinach.

Then the rest of the week, we got a lot of other concise projects on the farm finished: we put out floating row cover over the field crops we'd just planted (except potatoes) for flea beetle, we made more compost piles, we hauled aquatic plants out of the pond. We prepped most of the Kitchen Garden for planting, and we did some commando weeding in one of the residents' yard.

Ed Brown gave the dharma talk on Sunday morning. Then later in the day Sunday we had Japanese tea ceremony demonstration with Meiya, our tea master and teacher, here. The tea room is beautiful, and it was a really nice day. More, soon!