One might say we were blessed by an incredible crop of sunflowers this season. They self-seeded throughout the farm; a result of the goldfinches’ messy eating last year. The combination of rain and heat early in the summer helped them grow at least 15 feet tall. They made hundreds of beautiful blooms and seeds for the chickens, along with this year’s wild visitors.
One might also say we were overrun by sunflowers this season. The volunteers we allowed to stay shaded out other crops, hoarded water and nutrients, and are gonna take a ton of time and muscle to recycle.
Holding these two truths at once is a gardener’s version of the cognitive dissonance many of us are all feeling these days in lots of parts of our lives. A friend posted a funny/not funny stream of consciousness from a parent juggling the mundane tasks of keeping the home fires burning while absorbing the barrage of previously unfathomable news coming out of Washington. I am heartbroken over the famine in Gaza and the plight of the hostages still held there by Hamas (alive and dead). I could go on, but you came here to read about flowers, not politics.
The lesson I want to record is one about making choices.
In the spring when everything is emerging it’s exciting to find volunteers popping up. Plants born of their own design tend to be hardier than those grown from seeds. Their will to live is unstoppable. It’s hard not to see them as gifts from Mother Nature. And yet, if you have other plans for the space, you have to make some sacrifices. Literally.
Some gardeners find this really hard to do. We ask: How can I, someone who dedicates so much time and energy to helping things grow commit planticide?! How can I take the life of an innocent seedling who just happened to pop up in what I consider the “wrong” place?
I transplant volunteers when I can, and have even rescued some from off-site locations. But in the end, our space is limited. We have to make choices. This season, I made some bad choices with regard to the sunflowers. They cost us a lot of productivity, but they taught me a valuable lesson I will carry into next year.
We’re fortunate to have space beyond the farm to grow flowers and let things get a bit wild. The space we’ve dedicated to this agricultural project, however, needs to be a bit more controlled in order to operate at its best. That’s what agriculture is after all, human-assisted growing. In hindsight, and if I’m being honest, I’ve had issues with other companion planting experiments as well. It’s another beautiful concept (like letting chickens forage freely to help control pests or allowing wildlife to graze rather than fighting with nature) that just doesn’t seem to be playing out for me in practice. It’s just hard to get the combination right – both for the sake of the plants themselves, and for ease of care and harvest.
So, next year, we’ll be more aggressive in culling guests from the beds. And we’ll be back to report the results.
With thanks to Katey and Nancy (my ongoing farming companions) Celia Kahle from Firefly Garden Design, and Todd Schriver of Rock Dove Farm for talking these ideas through with me.
It’s been seven weeks since my last post. A post in which I promised myselfI would try to post more regularly to help me keep track of what’s happening on the farm and in my mind about what’s coming next out there. That hasn’t happened. So, today I’m going to record seven vignettes, one for each week I missed; reflections on what’s happened in that time. I’m feeling kind of stuck so hoping this might help move me along a bit.
1. June 9: 9:13AM
I had to go back to the weather history to remember just how fucking awful this was, and continues to be. In mid-May there was so much amazing flower set on all the perennial berries. I took a series of photos but I guess I deleted them. Trust me. The raspberries, gooseberries, currants, and blueberries were all exploding with flowers. And then it stopped raining. For weeks.
Check out the middle row below. Bear in mind, to keep plants healthy and thriving, they need an average of one inch of water EVERY week. This isn’t a cumulative thing. Imagine you were doing hard work outside for a month. You’re out shoveling, hoeing, weeding… How would you feel if you got only one, albeit tall, drink of water that month.
Things weren’t much better into early June.
Yeah. So, by the middle of June, all the berry bushes started to look like the blueberries above. Full of fruit that was desiccating before my eyes. I’m not in the habit of watering perennial bushes. That’s the beauty of them. You set them and (basically aside from pruning and harvesting) forget them. Reluctantly I brought over the hoses. I was upset and feeling hopeless as one plan I had for the future of the farm was converting more beds to perennial berries that wouldn’t demand much time and effort.
2. Jun 17 – 2:14 PM
In mid-June, The Spurgeon General and I took the young one to Colorado for a week. We did a lot of hiking in the mountains. We played disc golf on courses nothing like what you see in Ohio. And we spent a day in Boulder where we stumbled on an exhibition at the contemporary art museum – agriCULTRE, a collaboration between artists and farmers. All of a sudden, the distance between my day job as an art educator and my hobby farm work seemed a little smaller. You can find information about the show here (after you finish reading this post!). Below are a couple of my favorite moments.
Anthony Garcia Sr. with Laura Allard-Antelmi & Richard Pecocaro – “Masa Seed Foundation harvests, distributes, and archives bio-regional, climate-adapted, open-pollinated heirloom seeds, each with a unique history…This seed shelf, a small cross-section of Masa’s massive library, educates us on how plant kinship exits throughout the world.”
Esther Hz with Erin Dreistadt & Jason Griffith – “Interdisciplinary artist and former urban farmer Esther Hz revisited her research in biodynamic farming through her collaboration with Aspen Moon Farm.” She furthers Steiner’s ideas by exploring through play with image and text – “replacing ‘soul’ with ‘soil’. in famous quotes. To compound this idea, she constructed two zoetropes (a pre-film animation device) to emulate the ‘wheel of life…” (quotations here and above from text by Guest Lead Curator, Jaime Kopke)
3. June 21 – 3:35PM
Somehow they made it through. When we got back from Colorado, the berries were booming. Friends who were farm-sitting got most of the red raspberries, and I was happy to share. I never grew berries for the CSA. They were always a selfish endeavor. A few times, towards the end, folks got some raspberries, ironically from those red ones that came under the fence from the neighbor’s yard or elderberries from an abundant bush that succumbed to fusarium wilt this year. But there wasn’t really enough of the rest to share broadly.
This mid- to late-June was all about the berries. As I watched the tomatoes and marveled again about just how long it takes them to set fruit and ripen, I spent many hours carefully plucking currants (red and black), raspberries (mostly black), and gooseberries along with a few blueberries and last gasp strawberries. The gooseberries and black raspberries require long pants and sleeves to protect against thorns. It’s hot and ouchy work. But when you’re inhaling bowl of mixed berries topped with whipped cream, that all fades away. I made black raspberry jam from a bag I froze last season (yikes!) and froze tons more to eat throughout the year.
4. July 2 – 2:49PM
One day I noticed something strange looking on the poppy heads I was drying in situ to use in bouquets. Upon closer examination, I noticed something had accessed the seed chambers. A little information on the architecture of a poppy this will help it make more sense. Basically, after the flower falls, which happens maddeningly quick with poppies, the head starts to bulge. As the seeds take shape and start to dry out, the head forms vertical cavities around the center point. Something was working its way down these, one by one, gobbling up all the seeds. Who was it? Was it poisoning them? I had never seen this before.
For a few days after my discovery I noticed the poppies swaying when I’d approach the farm gate, as if something had just flown away. I was dying to catch the little opium fiends in the act! One day it finally happened. A gold finch landed in the poppy bed and had its fill. Mystery solved and thanks to Google, I now know they peel the pod open and the seeds help aid their nutrition and digestion!
Overall, the garden was a jungle at this point. The spring cool flowers were giving way to hardier summer blooms and native volunteers that joined the party. There was (and still is) Spiderwort everywhere! The paths between beds were growing over with red clover and wild sorrel. I enjoyed and was complimented on how lush things looked but I was feeling claustrophobic and annoyed with myself for letting things go all Big Anthony’s garden again. (See Strega Nona’s Harvest – an all-time favorite picturebook about gardening.)The upside, lots of gorgeous flowers to share with family and friends.
5. July 9 – 5:59PM
For the first time in ages, we have summer squash in abundance! This is largely due to diligent squash bug and egg picking work aided by our friend Katey. I’m not holding my breath that it will last, but we’ve been trying tons of new recipes while it does! A few favorites – Zucchini, Quinoa, Mint, and Pistachio salad; Zuchinni Chocolate Layer Cake; and Zucchini Szabi.
6. July 12 – 6:29 PM
The first and only peach we’ve gotten to eat from our tree. This spring, for the first in memory it was loaded with fruits. Then the June drop followed by the drought left the ground littered with immature fruits the chickens and raccoons took great pleasure in making disappear. Completely.
While I’m on the subject of raccoons… They are the worst! After a few mornings finding the work table and storage tossed like a cat burglar had come around, I set up the trail cam. Sure enough, it was a raccoon. I cleaned up as best I could including some seeds and things that were out and no doubt tempting. This helped. With the supplies. But then they moved on to a few dozen newly planted basil seedlings which they dug up and left for dead. #thisiswhatthefuckersdo
7. July 20: 7:28PM
The tomatoes are finally coming in. Sun Gold, Berkeley Tie Dye, San Marzano, Purple Cherokee, and a few more I can’t remember. Feels later and later every year but I’m happy to finally be binging on their fruit. Last year we had a lot of issues with the tomatoes and have been back to diligently watering and fertilizing. The plants, overall, look much happier and healthier. But stay tuned. I just found mosaic virus (above) which looks an awful lot like a tie dye to me…
I started farming again this season rather than follow through on my planned sabbatical to give myself something to do that I could feel good about. To have something to work on. To have healthy food on hand to feed my family, friends, and extended community. Sadly, it’s been the hardest start to a season I can remember us ever having.
A late freeze killed dozens of tomato and tomatillo plants early on the morning of May 9th. This was just days after we donated plants to food access programs so we had minimal backups on hand. Last week we got 4.88 inches of rain in five days (May 18-22) followed by temperatures in the upper 80s, at least 10 degrees hotter than normal. This caused major crop failure in our spring greens, just as we were getting ready to distribute them. These are the crops I usually feel the most proud of, so their loss really hurt.
The day after the freeze I was texting with my friend Bernadett (Bernadett’s Farmacy). We’d been swapping weather forecasts and plans for protecting our seedlings for days leading up to the big chill. When I told her we lost a bunch of plants despite all my efforts, she sent me a link to the story of the Taoist farmer.
The story follows a farmer who suffers a series of what most people would deem unfortunate events ending with something most would consider a lucky break. Regardless, the farmer is always hesitant to label anything lucky or unlucky. “Maybe,” is his constant reply.
After sitting on this story for a few weeks, working through more and more of what I would consider bad luck, hunting for the silver linings, today things started to click.
I had grown only three types of tomato seedlings – following my revised sabbatical plans of using only the seed I happened to have in the basement, not allowing myself to buy anything new. Upon hearing we’d lost all our tomatoes, friends, including Bernadett, offered us extra seedlings they had. Now we have a much larger variety than originally planned. It makes me think a seedling swap could be fun in the future. Like a next level seed swap. So maybe things worked out in the end. At least for that chapter of the story.
The verdict’s still out on the others. I’ll be sure to report back as I find them.
Tomatoes are the number one crop grown in home gardens. For many, they are synonymous with summer. However, folks who grow tomatoes know it takes until at least the 4th of July before our latitude sees a harvest.
Since we got started, we’ve grown A LOT of tomatoes. This is the time of year our kitchen, and my phone, gets jammed with them. Here’s a few selections of what we’ve gathered so far this season.
Wow. What a difference a month makes. The last time I posted, it was unseasonably cool and rainy. Now it’s hot as Hades and hasn’t rained in nearly two weeks. I HATE JULY. This is the time of year when I feel like I’m failing as a farmer. Every damn year.
Turning over from Spring to Summer crops is hard. Our small scale, with related drawn-out harvests, and intercropping practices are part of the issue, but also a benefit. Our celery and radicchio bed, for example, provided offerings for over a month. But for much of that time I was in a holding pattern planning for what would come next. Once enough of that spring crop was harvested, I set beans. They germinated well but it will be a little while until we’re eating from them. Where the garlic came out a few weeks ago, I had winter squash seedlings ready to take their place, but keeping those happy in their move, as the sun beat down on them, wasn’t easy. There were casualties. But we carry on…
Radicchio interplanted with Blue Lake bush beans.
Garlic out.
Squash in.
Today, as I take a break from the hot jobs of moving compost and fiddling with the irrigation system, I’m happy to share some images I captured during the past month.
We had a good fava bean harvest.
Family visited…
…and lent a hand.
We enjoyed lots more greens and herbs…
… roots …
…and the first tomatoes of the season.
Members of the CSA have been showing up to help get the irrigation installed in an effort to ensure the second half of the season is as strong as the first.
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What a week. The weather here in central Ohio has been off the charts. It’s currently 56 degrees and raining. That’s downright nasty for this time of year. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re lucky.
Large scale farmers in the region have been struggling with too much rain, combined with unseasonably cool temperatures that have prevented evaporation, and have abandoned the idea of planting their fields this year. Too bad those folks are so big into corn and soy that they can’t imagine how to shift gears to something else. There’s still SO much time left in the season.
Here’s a few shots from the field I took earlier in the week.
Welcome to the jungle.
There’s a lot growing out back at this point. The spring crops are just about gone and the summer stuff is taking over, slowly. Will be interesting to see if there are long term implications of tonight’s 50 degree dip.
The hens are driving me nuts. They refuse to stay on their side of the fence. In good moments I imagine they are eating the squash bug larve. But most of the time, when they’re scratching indiscriminately (uprooting seedlings) and eating the kale, I just want them out!
Cora’s poppies are doing great! She and I harvested seed for these from a neighbor’s yard last year and she set them in soil in the basement over the winter one day (on her own!). We sold a bunch at our plant sale in April and I’m hearing good reports from friends who took them home. I’m a proud (human and plant) momma.
Here’s a bunch of photos from this past month. Those who follow us on the book of faces or instagrams might have seen some of these already. Lucky you. Reruns in the age of media bombardment ain’t all that bad…
May 19th we had a HIGHLY productive work day. A steady stream of CSA folks through the gates helped get lots of tasks knocked off the chore list.
I continue to be amazed by how great everything is doing this season. The plants in the ground are booming and so far the succession planning is going well. CSA members are impressed by the size of the bags they are picking up. One this past weekend asked, “This is all for us?!”
I’m going to say no more lest I jinx the whole thing. You can see the bounty for yourself. I’m proud.
Yesterday the sun came out and melted the dumping of snow we got last Friday, which followed a multi-day Polar Vortex that brought temperatures down to 0 degrees with windchills around -25.
As I ventured out back to see what survived, I was reminded of a story Eliot Coleman tells in Four-Season Harvest. I’m quoting it at length because a) I love it, and b) because it remains an inspiration for the season extension work we do at Over the Fence, and the seasonal eating we do in our home.
During [our] January trip across France, we had an experience that emphasized the point. We were visiting the Jardin des Plantes in Montpelier, one of the oldest botanical gardens in France. Like many such venerable institutions, it was showing its age. Some of the walls were beginning to crumble and panes were missing in unused glasshouses. But we were not there for the architecture. We had come to see the “non-existent” vegetables. When we had called ahead to learn the winter hours and had inquired about the vegetable garden, the nice Frenchman on duty told us not to waste our time because the vegetable garden was “non-existent” in the winter. Ah, well, we had heard that song before. “There is nothing in the garden” is usually synonymous with “it doesn’t look nice like it did last summer.”
The vegetable garden at the Jardin des Plants occupies one quarter of a parterre in front of the orangerie. Admittedly it probably did look nicer during the summer, but it was just what we wanted to find in January. Despite the disclaimers of the garden staff, this abandoned Zone 9 garden, which had probably seen no care since October, still contained ready-to-pick crops of chard, salsify and scorzonera, six different types of lettuces, radicchio, sorrel, mustard greens, turnips and turnip greens, kale, cabbages, winter radish, red and green scallion, leeks, and spinach. If that garden were in our backyard, we would have considered it a source of fresh main course and salad vegetables for the rest of the winter. It was a cornucopian example of a garden truth we have long notes–if you just look around in a post-season garden, you will almost always find something to eat.
After you read this post, head out to your winter garden and see if you can score some greens for your next meal. Here’s what I found yesterday, when the high got up to 55.
Not too surprisingly, Tatsoi did great.
Lacinato Kale is also tough and super cold hardy.
The few heads of Napa Cabbage still hanging around lived to see another day.
And even these tiny heads of Romaine (which I left as a test) were insulated enough to survive.
The Arugula I didn’t chop down in January still tastes amazing. Hoping for a small bounce back crop from these plants as temperatures return to the 30 and 40s.
The Swiss Chard was glowing.
A few heads of Raddichio are waiting for their turn at the table.
This Pac Choi was in the high tunnel, under a second cover, but managed to get burned. Need to investigate that.
Another cold weather winner, Giant Red Mustard, is ready for a growth spurt to welcome back Persephone.
As are these baby Red Russian Kale. Though they look like they could use a drink of water. The high tunnel can get a little dry this time of year. Might try to catch some of the rain coming this week and move it in before the overnight temperatures dip down again.
Our cold frame-within the high tunnel started seedlings are patiently awaiting transplant. In this box, Pac Choi, Red Russian Kale, and Tatsoi…
…and here, spinach….
…which looks amazing up close, and tastes like good health.
The biggest Polar Vortex surprise by far is that one of the chickens started laying! I suspect Hermione or Ginny since their combs and waddles are the most fully formed. Won’t be much longer until we’re (happily) drowning in eggs again!
As a reward, the girls got to come under one of the low tunnels for a snack and dust bath.
And the humans all enjoyed post-Vortex salads with dinner!
Our new flock of chickens are nearly five months old and finally have names. We (Read Cora who was 4 at the time) named most of our first flock the day we got them. When one died after just five weeks, a friend cautioned us not to name them so early again, it was bad luck or something like that. (Reminds me of the Jewish superstition against naming babies before they are born.)
At any rate, if we weren’t going to name them right away, at least we could talk about names. For me, it started with “Professor McGonagall.” When we got these chicks in September, I decided I wanted to name one after her. It’s just fun to say, and the thought of a chicken professor made the human professor in me laugh.
When a friend pointed out that McGonagall’s first name was Minerva, I got even more excited. Hens and vintage lady names go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you aren’t familiar with this habit, search the interwebs for “old lady chicken names” and read on.
The Professor was reluctant to have her photo taken, she kept coming after the camera and pecking at me, so this is the best I can offer of her at this time. She’s the Golden Laced Wyandotte pecking at the ground.
Hermione Granger, a Rhode Island Red, was more accommodating.
Ginny Weasley proudly posed for her glamor shot. Ginny is a Golden Buffington.
Luna Lovegood, a White Plymouth Rock is a favorite of Cora’s.
Madame Maxime is one of my favorite’s and the most gentle of the bunch. She is, appropriate to her namesake, a Black Jersey Giant.
Finally, Nymphadora (another amazingly fun name to say!) Tonks is a Dominque. Her comb is coming in the slowest. She’ll look a lot fancier once she’s got her crown.
Here’s looking to your six month birthday which we will celebrate by feasting on quiche, egg salad with fresh mayonnaise, and fried eggs on EVERYTHING!
Yesterday was overcast and the high temperature only reached 33 degrees, but somehow it didn’t feel as cold as it had the few days before. I spent a solid hour and a half out back harvesting greens and playing with the chickens who ventured into the yard for the first time in days. The weather is supposed to get nasty again the next few days and through the weekend, so I pulled up my snowpants and made the best of it.
Here are a few scenes from the field.
A solid blanket of snow covered everything and made accessing the tunnels a chore. I did a little maintenance, but have more to do to support the ends of our low tunnels when this melts…
While the world outside the tunnels was white, a bounty of greens lay beneath. This short tunnel (covered in Agribon and plastic) contains tatsoi, pac choi cilantro, romaine, and arugula. I’ve noticed growth increasing already since the winter solstice. I harvested most of the lettuces and left a little to see how they would hold up to the sub-zero temperatures coming early next week. I wondered if plants packed closer together would fair better than those hanging out alone, which I’m noting here to remind myself to check.
A bowl of arugula, some of which was buried under the row covers, which collapsed on the ends, from the weight of the snow.
Swiss chard, tatsoi, and pac choi under a low tunnel.
Same low tunnel – Lacinato and Red Russian kale in front, spinach in the back.
Close-up of arugula in a second short tunnel.
The high tunnel continues to enchant us. The pac choi on the left was hit hard by cold two nights before but completely bounced back (see below). I plan to add some low covers inside the tunnel in advance of the super cold temperatures coming next week.
Did you know cilantro embraces the cold?
Spinach starts in a cold frame, inside the tunnel. Surprising to me (but perhaps not to someone with more scientific understanding), these frames are not holding temperature as well as the tunnel itself (see chart below). These will be transplanted into a bed the next warm spell we see. (Note: This experiment was introduced in an earlier post, referencing the MidOhio Food Bank that made it possible.)
In the basket, chard, kale, and mustard for our harvest. On the ground, the chickens’ fodder.
After school, Cora helped me document temperatures in various locations.
Over the Fence Urban Farm 