Recess is Over: The Farm Report 06-20-2025

 Recess is Over
The Farm Report
06-20-2025

We've been on recess.  Okay. I'm Sorry to have left you in the lurch without warning. I get it. Recess is over now. 'Annie, we need to get back to work!' You can tell by her ears she's ready to go.

"Tim! It's been a long damned time since we told everybody what's going on out here on the farm. They're getting worried about us." 

True true true. Well, 'What's been happening? Are you Okay? We haven't heard from you.' 

Life intervened, is all I can say. I'm just fine. I've had a couple of 'life events' that took time and energy away from the Oakdale Farm focus. My Mom passed on; she was going on 98 and it wasn't a surprise. She was sharp as a razor until the last days. She was quizzing me about politics and current events on Friday, then she was gone on the next Wednesday. She just wore out. It takes a ton of time to deal with the final affairs.

I just got home from Wisconsin. My grand daughter, Evie, is now ready to head off to college in a couple of months. I wanted to spend some time with her before she takes flight and moves on into the next chapter of her life.

And other stuff....

But I'm fine.

So, back to the Farm Report. I put out some new fruit trees last fall. When I saw this 'Blenheim' apricot, I just couldn't resist. Blenheim is the name of Winston Churchill's boyhood home. It belongs to the Duke of Marlborough, of course.  I plant Blenheim musk melons in my greenhouse and who could resist some Blenheim apricots? Not me.

We had a ton of winter damage. Our weather here is, ahem...., RADICAL! My greenhouse thermometer is telling us that when I took this pic, it was 48F in there. It had been up to 86F during the day. That night it dropped to -11F. That's 'real temperature' not 'feels like.'

Usually, leeks are considered pretty darned winter hardy. Not this year! I've been growing them in 'grow bags' and wintering them over inside the greenhouse. Next year....

You probably think Annie Oakley is digging something up from under those firewood logs. Well, you'd be wrong. She is burying her latest dead rabbit find. She doesn't kill 'em. But when somebody else does and she discovers it, she calls 'Finders Keepers!' and stuffs 'em where they can't be lost.

Officer in Charge of Kleen and Polished, Deb, keeps my dining room table properly decorated. This was St. Patrick's day. 

With my little diesel truck heater going in the greenhouse, I start my hydroponic strawberry patch early. They just love it in there! That's a Napa cabbage growing in the wicking bucket.

Do the strawberries actually produce?
 
Yes.

They produce and produce and produce. I don't know why anybody even bothers to put strawberries in the ground anymore. This is so much easier, and the berries are wonderfully sweet and plump.

AND, there are no birds in the greenhouse to spoil my harvest. Isn't that a 'doozy' as Hazel the maid used to say on TV. 

I picked so many I was/am sick of 'em! I ate too many; I made strawberry jam; I made strawberry pie filling. I let some spoil because I just couldn't look 'em in the face anymore.

My anemic wintered over roses when they came out of cold storage.

A few days later in protected sunshine and they're ready to get back to work.

I'm using the Larry Hall Rain Gutter Growing system idea for my grow bag roses. These are the plastic barrel tops and bottoms I cut off to make water pans. There's a hole drilled in the side of the pan about 3 inches up from the bottom. They will hold a little water reserve for the rose, but they won't overfill and drown them. The roses love this system.

I don't think I've ever actually made cement in my HF cement mixer. I use it for potting soil mixing.

I 'borrow' from everybody. I also like the Ruth Stout hay mulch ideas. This is real alfalfa hay. I put one generous hay 'flake' into the bottom of each bag. It provides wicking, aeration, slow nitrogen release as it decays ... and Ruth Stout said to do it, more or less. 

One by one, I've been potting up and getting the roses out into the Rose Corral. I would call it my Rose Garden, but somebody might come along and want to pour concrete over it and put up a flagpole.

Sorry. I couldn't help myself on that one.

There you go! This one is an 'old timer' from years ago. I got it out of cold storage in March and gave it a head start in the greenhouse. I need a flower boost along about then, and this is my way to get it.

'But roses are so hard to work with,' they say. Yes, they are a pain in the butt sometimes. They really are a pain in the fingers! How can you not enjoy a rose on the table? I wish there was a way to bring you in on the fragrance. When I pick my rose bushes at the store, the first thing I look for is 'Very Fragrant.' on the labels.

Then we moved on. I think this might have been Easter. I've been so busy it all runs together sometimes.

Little plants waiting for the season to be right. I use soil blocks a lot. The more I use them, the more I like them. I've figured out ways to transplant into them and ways to make watering them easier. Maybe I'll do a whole report on that for you sometime.

This is my real life. I'm not working for a magazine or doing photo shoots for post cards. This is what it really is when you garden alone and have all kinds of other stuff to manage. No 'staff' here to make it always neat and pretty.

Just so you'll know.

One of the reasons I took off some time was because I felt the Farm Report was becoming circular and repetitive. You've seen my hydroponic lettuce pans before. They love it! I love eating them. This one is Rex. It was developed especially for hydroponic growing.

This one is Little Caesar, a Romain type. Well, after a while thinking, I thought, 'Circular and repetitive is what gardening - and life - is really all about. So, I've decided to recommit and be more regular in my writing again. I don't make a cent off this - and that's by my own choice. I will never make this a for-profit deal. No commercials, no advertising.

I bought a bunch of chicken wire cloches from some China store this winter. Last year, the deer and rabbits ate every single one of my brassica plants. Not this time! I also added a new tiller toy.

Remember my rose pans? Well, between the top pan and the bottom pan is a cylinder! Inside those plastic cylinders live my new musk melons!!! They act like little shelters for the heat loving melons, but they also help keep the field herbicide drift away.

Gypsy Broccoli. The little Mantis tiller made the row, then my 1927 Planet Jr. wheel hoe neatly covered in the little plants. Easy Peasy.

Till in the row; set out the plants in soil blocks;

Walk down the row with the Planet Jr. and Bob's your uncle.

In the 'Animal Kingdom' out here at the farm, Ermine is still with us. He's a feral tomcat. He's been around for a couple of years now, so he's a proven survivor. He works both farms on either side of me. That means he has at least a half mile commute each way. It's four miles on to the the next 'real' neighbor. It isn't unusual to see him walking to the next farm RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD! He's all white, except the black tip of his tail. I've been working on 'taming' him. As shown, he will now occasionally come into the main shop room at night when it is Free Lunch time. He's just tolerating me until he gets his free lunch. He seems nice enough and Annie and Miss Kitty don't mind him. I like having cats around to help keep the mice and rabbits under control. As long as Ermine doesn't make a bum out of himself, he's welcomed to stay.

'Tim. Put away the camera and nobody gets hurt.' Miss Kitty is now 14 years old. She's still my 'new kitty' as far as I'm concerned. She was found on the side of the road when she was a kitten. Once she established new quarters here at Oakdale Farm, she NEVER leaves the shop building. Why would she? It's warm, it's safe, she gets free food whenever she wants it, and it's all hers. 

I feel a lot the same. Why would I ever want to leave Oakdale Farm? 

I'll be back soon, I promise. 

Cheers to all of you from me and the rest of the cast of characters out here.

Peace.

Fall Plowin': The Farm Report 11-30-2024

 Fall Plowin'
The Farm Report
11-30-2024

Well, not everything is black and white. Fall plowing, like they used to do back in the day when I was a skinny kid with hair, just isn't done anymore. Out here where I live, we have been 'no-til' farming for generations, and we have been planting fall cover crops on the fields for a long time, too. 

So, why do I 'fall plow' my garden? I don't like to use a ton of chemicals on my food patch, and I need it to be clean in the spring and ready to plant. By plowing under the mulch and other stuff, I can get a good clean seed bed right away in March/April on the first days, and I won't need herbicides to keep the weeds from sprouting and growing so soon. If I don't get it ready now, then I'm fighting mud and misery in the spring. Erosion control is one reason NOT to fall plow. However, I'm telling you that if you don't take the step and get your fall ground prepped and ready, then it won't be long before you're looking up other hobbies to pursue, because you will have gone sour on gardening - and you'll be buying your veggies at the farmers market or the grocery store.

On of my favorite 'last jobs' in the garden each year is digging the carrots. We had what some would call 'not the best' gardening season this year. Others, like ME would say it was just a crap year! So, I didn't get a ton of carrots, but like these, they are just delicious. Eliot Coleman's words saying that sugar is Mother Nature's antifreeze have once again proven correct. This variety is Royal Chantenay. It is short and blocky, but full of flavor. I cut off the tops and give 'em a dirt brushing. Then to store them, I put them in Walmart bags in the shop fridge. They'll keep there nearly all winter - unless we eat them first.

Speaking of Mother Nature - She's giggling again!!! You might have to biggie up the pic to get the joke, but those little tiny green dots are what we call 'Fall Annuals.' She has cleverly devised classes of plants - which are mostly what we call weeds - which drop their seeds early in the spring. She lets them lay in the soil all summer, and when it is getting cold she tells them to go ahead and sprout! They lay here all winter napping. Then when the good weather starts, Bang! You've got Weeds! Don't mess with Mother Nature - she's crafty and it's hard to get ahead of her.

Here's the reality of gardening. Everything eventually rots. Out on the tarp garden, the vinyl tarp has served its time. I think this was the fourth or fifth summer for it. Old Sol - Mr. Sunshine himself - has pretty much burnt the life out of the material. I've got it cleaned off, and my game plan is to not remove the tarp, but to just laminate another layer on top of it. Also, for next year's garden, I'm going to turn the mini-beds into water beds. If you're old enough to remember water beds, you'll also remember water bed liners which kept the inevitable leaks from ruining the ceiling below the bed. I love growing in fabric grow bags, so what I'm going to try is just lining the mini-beds with black plastic and mulch to keep a little water dam going. I'll set the grow bags right down on the plastic, and let them wick up the water. I'm thinking it will be a winner! Hope springs eternal!!!

This is the remains of the grow bag Rose Garden.  The weather got hot and I lost interest. When I was cleaning it up, to my immense surprise, over half of the roses survived! And that is with ZERO care from Tim this summer. Another reason I'm going to do more with grow bags. I like using them, and obviously the plants like growing in them.

I've set the survivors on top of the empty water pans so they can dry out and cure before I take them inside for the winter. They'll go into an unheated dark part of my shop building like last year. That part worked out fine.

The hydroponic beet patch is done. I planted these about a month ago. Ordinarily, they would have produced. But, our light has been getting shorter and shorter every day and the plants respond accordingly. One good thing: the beets told me they really like the idea of growing in the tubes. Another good thing: growing in the cold, the leaves are really delicious. Yes, they do taste like sweet beets. But, one good salad is all I'll get.

See the beet roots growing their way down into the water solution? The fabric is a 'starter wick' I use to keep the potting soil moist while the little beet plants are finding their way.

I even put up my little diesel heater to extend the season for them. I was hoping for maybe a Christmas salad. Nope. As I write, I can tell you that yesterday, the high temperature inside the greenhouse was 19F. I burned over one gallon of diesel before it ran out. If I kept doing that, it would cost over $5 a day to keep 3 Napa cabbages and a few beet greens going. I love gardening, but that's just dumb. So, we're done for this year.

Again, the benefit is that I learned Napa Cabbage loves to grow in grow bags and will tolerate really cold temps. These are sitting on a bucket of water solution with a wick running from the bottom of the bag down into the water. It works great. You should try it!

The variety is a hybrid Burpee's sell called Barrel Head.

How I read the news every morning! The glare at the bottom of the pic is my laptop screen. The stare across the room is Annie Oakley laser beaming thought waves at me saying, "Tim, get off your lazy butt and let's get outside. We've got work to do."

OK, so we're working on the root cellar again. We have always called it 'The Cave.' So that's how I name it now. Because I put a new door on the concrete work that was put in place around 124 years ago, there was a gap underneath the threshold where Annie is looking. The blocks and boards are my feeble attempt to form up a barrier to hold some concrete. Until we can make this thing mouse proof, it isn't usable. And my sister won't help me clean it out!

A little water, a little mud, a little elbow grease, and we've got concrete ready to put in place.

"Hey Tim! Remember that screw-up I pointed out to you when you made this new door last time? Well, it's still there buddy! And I'm not going to let you forget it, either." She almost seemed like she was smiling at the chance to show me how I messed up. Herding dogs are bossy.

There it is.... See how it is narrower at the left end and wider at the right end? I shoulda fixed it when I had the chance.

So, for other fall fun, I've been makin' bacon again. Once you learn how to do this - and it ain't hard! - you just don't want to go back to buying watered down chemical cured store bought bacon. Yes, I've become a bacon snob!

Add black pepper, curing salts, spices and time in the fridge to let it all get happy, then into the smoker for a day's adventure and this is what you're rewarded with. It tastes just as good as it looks, if I do say so myself.

You can't beat it.

I've also been making my own lunch meat. Olive loaf is one of my favorites. No eye lids or, well, I won't be crude, but you get my drift. This is just pure pork shoulder and olives with spices. Cooked sous vide until done, then sliced. How could you not want to do this?

I'm thinking some venison might be a good addition to my sausage making this year!!! This little tree is one in the timber that doesn't make any difference to me. However! The same pointy antlered buck that rubbed the bark off this tree will do the exact same thing to my new fruit trees down in the orchard - and it will kill them. So, I says to myself, if something is going to get killed it shouldn't be my expensive new fruit trees, by gum!
 
Two can play this game.

...And that's a wrap. The weather has suddenly gotten colder, I've been nursing a sinus cold that would make Frankenstein's Monster proud, and it will soon be officially 'Winter.' Annie thinks it is OK for me to take a little extra time to read in the mornings, and I'm good with that too. Plus, the seed catalogs are arriving and there's so many new things I want to try. I've got work to do.

Be thankful, be happy and be prosperous.

Grow where you're planted.

All is well at Oakdale Farm.