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Drew, Jim and I spent Saturday at the farm practicing division of labor.  My morning was spent taping up some of the tube connection points in our Freshman test field irrigation system.  Occasionally one of the inner-hose-inside-outer-hose connections, currently held together by friction alone, will pop and we’ll arrive at the field to see the evidence of an uneven timed irrigation etched as water lines in the clayey soil.  We decided to try duct tape and see how it holds.  No doubt it will be fine for now, but when the high heat comes in July and we see 100?-plus days, the adhesive might get gooey.  We’ll see.

After fixing the irrigation connections in the field, I went on to my next task, which was hoeing the last two beds and planting squash and zucchinis (with radish seeds mixed in with each squash and zucchini hole) , turnips, and cucumbers.  I’ve read that if you plant the radish in with the squash and zucchini, and let the radish grow along with the squash and eventually go to seed, this will help in repelling pests that plague cucumbers and squash.  I did not put radish seeds into the cucumber hills because there is already a row of radishes planted right next to the cucumbers.  (As previously mentioned, the radishes that will go to seed, and the turnips that we have planted partly for seed, can be mixed with clover in our next cover crop to boost nitrogen content.)

While working on the irrigation taping and planting, I was excited to see that some evidence of Drew’s planting on March 18 (10 days prior) was peeking out of the ground – we have radishes and lettuce up.  In addition, the potatoes have broken through (planted on March 7, so at 21 days).  It’s great to see them there since we have been worried about the high clay content of our soil, which made it very difficult to work with while planting.  We don’t have nice crumbly stuff to cover the seeds over with, but instead gobs of stuff that’s either sticky if it’s wet, or sharp and chunky if it’s dry, and no other state in between.

Later, we installed our “Deer Fence,” definitely a lot of steps down from what Willow described in her recent post … this is another idea that I read about on the internet and cost us $20 and half an hour’s time, so perhaps it will be worth just as much as we put into it.  It’s not going to give us the peace of mind that a properly installed, post constructed 8’ fence would, but on the other hand we haven’t yet had a chance to really evaluate how much deer danger our little test field is in.  Evidence so far is circumstantial and anectodal:  The circumstantial evidence is the scores of deer paths trodden down in the meadow grasses on the middle portion of the farm where the test field is located, and the occasional dancing hoofprints we would see in the test field while it still had a cover crop planted; and the anecdotal evidence comes from our neighbor Dave, who lives full-time on his place.  Dave tells Drew that “there’s a whole clan of deer that meet up on your meadow every evening – they’re so beautiful, just a wonderful sight to see – and so many of them!”  This is hardly heartening, but still, we are committed to trying the low-tech, small solutions first for each of the needs we encounter on the farm, and then evaluate how well those worked before moving on to a more intensive solution.

The low-tech deer fence is made with 6 t-posts and some 80-pound test line, stretched  at deer shoulder-height and rump-height.  The concept is that Mr. Deer comes across the meadow toward our field, bumps some body part into this stretched length of fishing line, and is spooked by the concept that there’s an invisible obstacle that has reached out and touched him.  If he ponders jumping over it, he will think twice because a deer does not want to jump over something he can’t see and fully evaluate.  Fine – we’ll see about that.  Will the deer think the way that guy on the internet said they would?  (His t-post and fishing line fence has kept the deer out of his garden for two straight years, so maybe??)

But here’s the really cool thing about the deer fence:  It sings.  The line is stretched tight, and when you get your ear a few inches from it you can hear strange ghostly wailing harmonics.  It’s a beautiful sound.  I wonder if the deer will like it.

Dan

The rain finally stopped this weekend, and although our field is completely saturated we were able to plant our bare root strawberries. They were beginning to sprout and begging to be put in the ground.  The rain is a blessing, as we are in a serious drought, yet it makes it difficult to get a head start on the season. Strawberries like well-drained soil, so we made sure to put in lots of composted horse manure in these beds.  Our soil is mostly clay and heavy so hopefully the manure will… Read the rest of this article »