All the News . . .

This week it seems like the farm started to take shape, I (with some help on Friday from Rebecca), put in trays and trays of plants, and directed seeded oodles of stuff, in preparation for all the rain we are going to be having. The dryness has been a problem for our starts, this time the flood has been working for us, the water table being high enough that the ground is kind of self-watering. And now as the temps go down it looks like we will get at least a little rain so I am pretty confident that we will have parsnips this year, though the official word won't be out for another two weeks (that is how long they take to germinate).

So long as I can get all these things covered up in the next day or two with remay, a fabric that keeps the plants about three or four degrees warmer (there is one night that has a low of 34 posted which is cutting it a little too close), we should be off to a nice start. This week of cold and clouds seems right up my alley: give me a chance to pot up tomatoes, maybe get the potatoes in the ground, compost the rest of the field, and finish mulching the garlic.

We are also getting closer to filling up the CSA. Which reminds me, besides helping some in the field, Rebecca has asked if she can gather recipes for the CSA to make it easier for us to distribute them to members, so that will be nice. Everyone was very appreciative of them the few times I managed to get it together last year.

BFP

some of you probably saw an article that included us about CSAs in the BFP, well the nice folks there have also gone so far as to create an audio-visual slideshow featuring OHF, check it out

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/legacy/slideshows/041108openheart/index.html

Weather Watchers

It may not be a hundred percent true, but I think Scott Chasky, the director/head farmer of Quail Hill farm was right when he said that farmers are never happy with the weather. A year can be pretty darn good but there is generally a little something along the way to quibble with mother nature about.

For instance, here we have just avoided a major flood; one day last week it was supposed to be sixty three with some rain and we got about fifty five and little rain and a lot of wind and we dodged a bullet. Not only no 15.5 feet of river, no 11.5, which is when we start to flood at OHF. It ended up at about nine feet. Sounds pretty good right. Yeah, but this would have been the best time to flood if it has to happen, and now I'm looking at a week of some sixties, should be pretty happy, but I'm wondering if we got rid of enough snow to avoid flooding this week, which if we do, by the end of it, I might get my first plowing in.

Hence the continual checking of NOAH, which stands for something and has fun graphs like this:

If you want a case of maybe some early season-too-much-time-on-my-hands over-reading I look at this chart and I see an ice jam that is going to let loose in concert with some high temps and get us our flood. Also might be a case of as John Ashbery said, "saying things to keep them from happening."

In more normal news: I finished the cold frame for this year. Cold Frames are a little mini-hoophouse designed to hold three or four additional degrees so the plants can harden off, ie get reading step by step for the real outdoors. The tomatoes and Okra have shown themselves quick, so I'm getting excited.