Obviously, summer means different things in different places.  In coastal Mendocino, it means it’s warm enough to plant basil (in a sunny sheltered spot or unheated greenhouse), and… fog!  Summer solstice was a lovely, sunny day, and for those of us still scraping off winter’s moss, it was a welcome sight.  Then through today… mostly fog, overcast, and a balmy 60 degrees.  Ahh, coastal summer.  We’ll still have nice, sunny days, but they are scarce enough that we really appreciate them!

Here are the promised financials from our recent work.  The project was to remove vegetation and till on a new field of about a quarter of an acre, fence against deer (still not finished - or even started, to be honest), and then remove grass and till up as much of the already-fenced area as possible. 

$100 - Brush mower rental, 24 hours

$400 - Tractor rental (24 hours = 8 operating hours), delivery & pick-up

$65 - Diesel fuel can, extra fuel and fuel surcharge

$250 - Deer fencing (three 100 ft. x 7 ft. rolls) and 20 tree stakes

TOTAL - $815

One side of the field has fence posts already, so we didn’t need as many stakes.  We decided to use tree stakes because a) lightweight plastic deer netting doesn’t need much physical support and b) they are far cheaper than steel t-posts.  We’ve used tree stakes before, and they’ve been fine for semi-permanent lightweight fencing (and are still standing after a year-plus).

We still need to amend the soil in the new areas, which will start with cover crops in some areas, and liberal application of compost in others.  More on that when it’s all planned out.

We recently had ravens start stealing eggs from the chicken coop (or so we strongly suspect).  Today Matt installed bird netting over the area directly adjacent to the coop.  Hopefully this will be enough to discourage the thieves; otherwise we’ll have to net in a larger area.

On Thursday, we rented a “Billy Goat” brush mower and Matt spent the day cutting overgrown vegetation (the irony being that our actual goats were probably lounging in the shade all day).  On Friday, we rented a Kubota tractor with a front loader bucket, scraper box attachment (with big optional teeth), and a tiller attachment.  We had been double-digging our beds and frankly are just really tired.  (It’s pretty difficult to prepare enough ground that way, in a relatively… Read the rest of this article »

That’s a little dramatic, especially for a community that actually likes to watch the grass grow. But yeah. We had some trouble locating OMRI approved gypsum. My dad, who works alongside us, rolled his eyes at this. “Organic calcium? You have got to be kidding.” Peaceful Valley used to carry OMRI-listed gypsum, but the manufacturer no longer packaged it in bags. Our dear friends there special ordered a pallet of the Righteous Powder and we were very grateful. We rented a BCS walk-behind tractor… Read the rest of this article »

It’s a hard time to not have my tractor;  I’m still preparing new beds on a weekly basis.  But with my loader starting to drip hydraulic fluid, and so much ground work yet to be done this fall, I just had to take it to the shop.  Hopefully, the turnaround will be pretty quick and it won’t set back the work schedule too far. Read the rest of this article »

Thursday was an interesting day on the farm.  I had a bunch of tractor work planned for the morning, so I fired up the machine and rolled backwards out of the carport.  When I went to start going forward, nothing happened!  I looked down and noticed that on one of the wheels, the axle and hub were spinning freely inside the wheel rim, and I wasn’t going anywhere.  At first, when I got off to look at it, I didn’t see what the problem was.  Then I saw that the lug nuts and clamps that… Read the rest of this article »

Okay, maybe that’s exaggerating, but we now have close to an acre of potatoes planted!  I wanted a big potato patch, so I bought 700 lbs of seed potato, but I didn’t expect it to cover so much ground.  For one thing, our rows are pretty far apart.  By placing one row between my tractor tires (60 inches on-center), I can weed and hill with my tractor.  We also cut the seed potato smaller than I have in the past.  Anyway, we’re in for a whole lot of potato digging!  I had looked… Read the rest of this article »

Potato Hilling is a great study of our farm.   We are big enough, at 1o acres, where we consider our tractor a necessity.  However, we are still plenty small to do most of the work by hand. However, the more you use the tractor and see how efficient it is, the more you want to harness its efficiency (especially if you are paying people to do non-tractor work, such as hilling potatos). So, now is the time to hill our potatos.  They are giants.  At 2 feet (or 3, I really can’t remember at… Read the rest of this article »

Right about now we are planting a lot.  We are using the tractor all day, every day.  We are well into planting a couple of acres and are rapidly preparing 8 more.  We can’t work hard or fast enough right now, especially because the fields stayed wet so late this year.  I am a walking zombie but I’m loving it.  Much better than last year.  Much more fun.  Less sleep.  More fun.   Andrew Read the rest of this article »

The rain was going to come in this weekend, so I had a short window between sprinklings to get the seeds out of the packs and into the ground. Jim the Inter(Ruff!)upting Dog and I drove up and got to work. We got almost all of the seeds we wanted in, finished the irrigation system, filled the water tank, and blasted back to town in time for a late dinner and rehearsal (I also play music with a changing assortment of fellow degenerates. Being a rock star is something I have to fall back on in case… Read the rest of this article »