Sorry for the pun, but I’m about to beet it. (Shudder, that was awful, I know. What is it about puns that make people cringe, anyway?)
Anyway, I’m journeying to some family reunion action (Emmett’s, then mine) for the next little while. It’s been unbelievably stressful to even consider leaving the vegetables right [...]
Entries from July 2008
July 31, 2008
beet it!
July 30, 2008
heirloom failures
So by now you know that Emmett and I handily killed $300 worth of seeds. (Well, it was really Emmett’s doing, but solidarity, you know.) When I arrived on scene, I suggested that we plant more tomatoes — even though it was getting quite late in the season. (By that time, it [...]
July 29, 2008
the che(e)p brooder
I made the decision to buy day-old chicks instead of older pullets or laying hens. Why? Simple math: day-old chicks are about $2 each (for females), whereas a laying hen will set you back anywhere from $15-30.
30 chicks times $2 = $60. Pretty manageable on a farming budget, if I can [...]
July 28, 2008
growing fancy: quinoa
It’s not something I ever would have thought of growing myself. But when Emmett and I were wwoofing on a small family farm in New Zealand, our hosts had a few quinoa plants going. They were healthy, bushy, beautiful things, and their grains were just starting to dry.
So, when we were on our [...]
July 27, 2008
farmer’s market recession
For the past 6 weeks — since we first started attending the Windsor farmer’s market — we’ve made more money each subsequent weekend, because we’ve brought more (and a greater variety of) produce each time. Every weekend, we sold out of our pre-bagged baby red-and-green leaf lettuce mix before the market closed. We [...]
July 26, 2008
the dance of the beans
From the moment they rear their little heads — seed noggin, leaf-ears — out of our crusty clay soil, I fall in love with beans. The way, even as youngsters, that they politely tuck their leaves down at night and raise them to greet the day each morning. The patterns that emerge from [...]
July 25, 2008
the amazing maize technique
A man named Enrique taught us this trick for planting corn. Previously, we’d just planted it, covered it with dirt, and then watered it every day — which led to highly irregular sprouting, and some unfortunate kernel-rotting, too. (Our soil has a fair bit of clay, so it crusts over easily, and I [...]
July 24, 2008
the fate of the squash
The squash are our hope for the future: we have hundreds and hundreds of them planted. Delicata, acorn, kuri, butternut, various varieties of pumpkins, not to mention our zucchini, yellow crooknecks, canteloupes and melons. We went big on the winter squash, thinking it a particularly useful crop: since they store so [...]
July 23, 2008
life (& death?) on the farm
Farming is about to get a whole lot scarier.
Today, I ordered 27 day-old chicks from Belt Hatchery that will arrive on August 21. The group will include 11 Rhode Island Red pullets (females), 1 RIR cockerel (male), 10 Ameraucana pullets, and 4 Pearl White Leghorn pullets. (I wanted to order from McMurray — [...]
July 22, 2008
live-blogging from the sustainable sonoma tent
The Sonoma County Fair has wireless… who knew?! Emmett and I are here staffing a local food both in the Sustainable Sonoma tent, chatting with folks about local food, farmer’s markets, seeds (we had a seed ID game going for a while), and whatever else comes up. We’ve also gotten the chance to [...]
