Our current “temporary” water line has been laying on top of the ground for 3-4 years and is always in danger of being mowed or tilled in two.

My neighbor Carl and I had planned on going in together to rent a ditch witch for a day this winter and put a few thousand feet of water line in on our respective farms. But as you know, it has been a little moist since November.

My immediate need was to bury 100′ of new water line so we can lay down the landscape fabric. I could do that with tools on hand, a single shank sub-soiler and a trenching shovel.

Using the sub-soiler was easy, I was on the tractor. I made 4 passes with the sub-soiler, even stopped to switch out the chisel point to a wider sub-soiler attachment that would hopefully remove more dirt from the ditch. I am lazy.

It finally got to a point where I had to get off the tractor and use the trenching shovel. The trenching shovel is basic. No on/off switch and only two apps, left hand and right hand. Dig down, lift up, toss to the side. After 20′ feet of that, I was huffing and puffing, it was 5:30 pm and I decided I needed to go to Lowe’s to buy supplies to supplement the automated green house watering equipment the UPS guy delivered.

I had planned on finishing the ditch Friday, but it had started to sprinkle on the way home from Lowe’s and I did not want to take the chance of dealing with mud rather than dirt, so I finished the ditch around dark on Thursday. I have not used the ditch shovel in over a year. Now I remember why.

We have come to expect days in the 50’s with a few days in the 70’s in February. This is a different year.

Frank, the market manager at Yorkmont shared with me two Saturday’s ago that the avg. daily high this time of year is 45 degrees but this year, it is 35 degrees.

We have plenty of winter work we had planned to do but what we have been doing is the bare minimum, pulling on rubber boots, putting on layers of clothing, and doing what must be done.

We need to build some fences. To get our pigs on pasture and to section off an acre of my dad’s cattle pasture where this year’s potatoes are going.

So we wait and try not to get a big hurry. We practice season extension both early and late but have learned that most stuff tastes the best when it is consumed in season.

We do love our canned tomatoes and frozen peppers and squash this time of year though.

We discovered a recipe last summer that we fell in love with, Cajun Squash Casserole. I am not a fan of canned or frozen squash but we froze some last summer specifically for this dish. Jenifer made it last week. It was a blast of summer. Not quite as good as stuff right out of the garden but darn close. Use butter where the recipe calls for margarine.

That is what it is called when you bust up garlic bulbs into individual garlic cloves and that is what we did most of the day Tuesday with the help of CJ.

It is not that hard of work. We get to sit around. sit being the keyword, listening to the radio, and busting up garlic.

It is repetitive and your thumb will get sore from peeling that much garlic. We have found that rubber finger pads, like they use at the post office for sorting letters, are a big help.

Jenifer has always been faster than me at peeling garlic, but CJ was a garlic popping machine. She put rubber finger pads on both her thumbs and went to town.

I call that just showing off….

Garlic Varieties

Most of what we will be planting Saturday will be a hardneck variety called Music and a softneck variety called Inchellium Red.

We will be planting much smaller amounts of 7-8 varieties of both hardnecks and softnecks to build up a seedstock supply. It will probably be two years before we have enough of those varieties to sell at market.

Garlic is our longest term annual crop. Planted in October and harvested in mid-June, it is 9 months to fruition.

Prepping Garlic Beds

I hear your thoughts – “Is he ever going to shut up about the garlic?”

I am a little obsessive I guess about garlic. Especially since I held back 85 lbs of some of the best garlic we have ever grown for seedstock last year but did not get it planted till late February because of a wet winter and ended up with very small bulbs and nubbins of garlic.

Jenifer has told me multiple times, concerning this year’s harvest, is that we got what we got and it is what it is so just let it go and shut up about the garlic.

I called my cousin Lindsey to bring me two truckloads of 2-3 year old aged leaf compost, which he did last Friday.

Wednesday, Jenifer and I spread, by hand, around 300 five gallon buckets of the stuff on the 18 100′ garlic beds.

The beds still have to be fertilized. The mixture I came up with is 8 lbs of worm castings, 4 lbs. of McGeary organic fertilizer, 2.7 lbs of azomite, 2.3 lbs of greensand, and .33 lbs of humate per bed.

That sounds like a pretty specific mix, like I know what I am talking about. Put down your pens and quit cutting and pasting. The standard rate for applying earthworm castings is 20-30 lbs/1000 sq. feet. Most organic fertilizers are 300-500 lbs/acre or 4 lbs. per 300 sq. foot bed.

The figures for the Azomite, greensand, and humate, I just weighed what I had on hand, divided by the number of beds I have, 18, and there you go. Totally unscientific.

Still have to finish cleaning out the greenhouse and getting stuff sowed in it. Jenifer and CJ started 1200 lettuce transplants last week that will go into the greenhouse hopefully.

Cover crop/ green manures still have to sown on land that is not in fall / winter production. Hopefully, that will start today. We are using crimson and ladino clover along with rye grain for cover crops this year.

Howard Rotavator

Garlic Planting

I am excited about planting this year’s garlic! Especially after last year’s debacle of not getting our beautiful 85 lbs of saved garlic bulbs into the ground until late February and ending up with really crappy bulbs in last June.
Seed garlic is costly. $9 – $15 / lb. I got 25 lbs from a local source 2 hours east of here.

I received 50 lbs of gorgeous hardneck garlic today via Fed-Ex. Huge bulbs of the variety Music. I arranged a group buy to reduce costs with 4 other farms so I only get to keep and plant 20 lbs.

I will not be at market on Oct. 10. I will be planting garlic. The signs are right. The moon will be waning and in the sign of Cancer, the most fruitful sign to plant in, Oct. 10th and 11th.

We welcome volunteers to come help us plant garlic.

I know it sounds hokey and superstitious. I am not sold on planting by the signs either. But it is better than listening to cable news with video footage of the latest car chase in California…

I have a defacto experiment going on. I was sowing Monday evening in the most fruitful sign, Cancer, until dark. At 7 pm, the signs changed to Leo, the most barren sign. So I should see a major difference in the collards and turnips I sowed after 7 pm, as opposed to the stuff I sowed before 7 pm right?

How to get 100% germination regardless of the signs

It was getting close to dark Monday and I planted 4 rows of Lacinato kale before cleaning out my push seeder to start sowing collards. I plant two rows to a bed and the beds are 285′ long. I planted one row and I am 1/2 way back up the other row and glance over at the 4 rows left to plant… there are 6 rows. Uh-oh…

I had just planted the last of my Georgia Southern collard seed on top of my 2nd bed of lacinato kale.

If the other 9 beds of carrots, beets, kale and collards fail, I am fairly certain that every collard and kale seed in the the double-planted bed will germinate with vigor and it will be a mess to harvest.

• FAQ’s
• Talking Points

I understand the point of view of food safety from the ground beef re-calls, the peanut butter thing, e.coli in organic spinach, etc. But HR 2749 would impose one size fits all requirements on small and local growers.

We are not the problem. I am shocked at how widespread the re-calls are. 100’s of thousand’s of pounds of beef being re-called. The spinach re-call that spread to 22 states and was not organic but went through EarthFare’s organic processing plant… Huh?

If you get ill from eating what we grow, it is a short drive to come whoop our ass when you are feeling better. We eat what we sell.

Apparently, HR 2749 defines a farm as producing stuff that is only grown and eaten on the farm. If we wash, trim, cool, or package for sale at local farmer’s markets; we are processing food and a food production facility. Which will require a $500 annual fee and will allow the FDA to to nose around without a warrant.

This is a recent development within the past couple of years derived from California, Oregon, and Washington state regulations.

We taste test as we harvest and wash. Dirt and all. We have left arugula, lettuce, and spicy greens mix standing in the garden because it was bitter and not up to our standards. We might eat it because we eat the culls, but we won’t sell it. How does that compare to govt. regulations?

Tuesday, I spent all day potting up young transplants of eggplants and peppers into 4.5″ X 4. pots. Why do I mention this? We used to transplant the plants directly from the flats into the garden. They did ok. We have found though that if we take the time and spend the money on large peat pots, it is well worth the effort.
Instead of subjecting a small transplant straight from a 72-cell flat to our red clay soil, we pot them up. A 4.5″ X 4″ peat pot surrounds the plug with about 8 times the volume of excellent growing medium as opposed to sticking them straight in the ground.

Our transplant potting mix consists of Fafard 3B (peat moss, bark, vermiculite), Black Cow compost, worm castings, and is amended with a complete 5-3-4 organic fertilizer, azomite, a volcanic rock dust, and lime.

It is more work to transplant the large peat pots but eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes are long term crops that have the potential to keep producing until first frost. It pays to take a little extra effort on the front end.

Wednesday

It was an interesting and fun day!
CSA members Joe and Jonathan showed up to work.

We were in clean-up mode and Joe and I started working on an eyesore, the hay wagon from hell piled with junk setting right across the driveway from the greenhouse.

Jonathan helped Jenifer clean up the greenhouse and set in to potting up tomato plants.

The hay wagon was loaded with junk that I had not used in 3 years. I save everything. Joe was making fun of me, holding up 8″ pieces of rotting of 2 x4’s asking if he could toss it. I had to think, those pieces of wood would make great small wheel scotches.

I love it when CSA workshares show up. Jenifer goes out of her way to feed them. Wednesday, she made an arugula salad with FL. blood oranges, and Rooti the pig country ham. Awesome!

Joe and I took the eyesore hay wagon down to just the running gear. We piled the junk either on the trash pile or burn pile and then used wrenches, hammers, crow-bars and the front-end loader of the tractor with a chain attached to remove the old timber..

I am good taking stuff apart, it is putting it back together that I have always had a problem with.