So… I’m back after another year almost of no posts. What’s happened in the last year? We got pigs in January of 2011, more than a year ago. We got chickens in Jan of 2012. A lot has happened between the two. Too much for a single entry. I need to work at my writing, as I always admonish myself to do but I have so much to do and not enough energy.
As we grow our knowledge and our farm I’m learning how much I just don’t know! Geeeezzzz…… it’s a gigantic learning curve that keeps throwing curves at me. We keep rising to the call tho’ and are learning to care for animals and integrating them into the farm, hopefully getting to a point where we can use them to do a lot of the work around here… like mowing! We need sheep or cattle for that, maybe some goats. The pigs are working out ok: we hope they’re pregnant after artificially inseminating them last weekend, waiting for signs that they’re “in pig”, that’s farmer talk for pregnant! The chickens are great, they give you a sense of instant gratification, laying eggs daily, provide some bug control in the gardens while adding compost and nutrients in the form of manure and like to keep you company while your working near them. We need to put more energy into learning how to control their movements better but we have plans, implementing them is the bigger problem! I’ll write a couple entries hopefully, about the animals and how we’re using them and planning on using them.
We are in full swing planting for the 2012 year so it’s on again!
As March comes to a close, I’m feeling like I’m already falling behind, the good news is I’m ahead of last year….. hmmm… does that mean I’m ahead in falling behind, putting me farther behind than last year or the reverse, not as far behind as last year? Well, I’m not sure! I think I’m farther along this year in most tasks but then I realize we haven’t started a single transplant yet… except those started in the ground inside of the hoop house but we haven’t done the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants etc., etc., etc… This year I’m playing around with starting plants in the hoop house a little later than we would normally have started them inside the house, also, we’ll just start them in the ground where they will grow, the natural way of doing things. I’m curious to see the outcome, some folks think these plants quickly catch up to their earlier seeded transplants because they don’t go into shock after being put in the ground, they start growing when conditions favor them and quickly catch up and pass their early siblings, we’ll see.
We’ve got greens seeded; mustard, kale, collards turnips, beets, spinach and lettuces along with onions for transplanting, potatoes are going in the ground now so we’re off and running. The hoop house is producing mesculine mix salads as well as lettuce and some small radishes while the over- wintered crop of spinach is coming on strong along with a sudden burst of growth in the garlic and onions that we planted back at the end of fall. A few volunteer mustard and kale plants provide us with greens for salads as well. Peas are going strong, suddenly shooting out of the ground this past week. I had one row covered with a low tunnel to see if it made a difference…. it did, they sprouted and popped out of the ground first but it seems like the uncovered rows are quickly catching up, I’m talking observations over the course of a week here so quickly is the operative word!
Weather has been a bit of an issue, high winds, very high winds, gusting to 60 knots literally blew us away! I found a 5 gallon plastic bucket in the trees half a mile away from where it started, another was scattered across the gardens in a 100 pieces, I don’t have a clew how it came apart but I’m still finding bits of it, a 4′x8′ table made out of a sheet of 1/2″ OSB and a bunch of 2×4′s with a trellis; for lack of a better word, to support plastic, netting or whatever kind of covering we may choose, was lifted up and thrown about 15 ft onto it’s top ( the trellis), completely destroying the legs and canopy structure- there it is…. canopy, the word I was looking for! This wasn’t a single wind storm but a recurring theme, last night we had high winds, lightning, torrential rain….. again. We want the rain but when it comes too hard and too fast this time of year when we have exposed ground with seeds in it I have to go out and cover those poor struggling seeds and the rain washes the life right out of the soil. We’re working on cover cropping and some other ideas to try and hold onto the soil that we work so hard to build up life in but it’s always a struggle.
I’m off to plant potatoes!
Mar 11
4
Gone but not forgotten!
Where have I been? I abandoned this site last year as spring turned into summer and all hell broke loose but I did not forget about it! I think about it all the time. I think about writing something all the time. I visit other blogs and think about mine all the time. Then… I think some more, I procrastinate some more, I don’t write, don’t visit and, as if it has a mind to scold me if I appear here, I got embarrassed about the time lapse and pushed it away further….. but, I’m back, ready to try again. I have things to say… that may be part of the problem… too much to say. I need to get in the habit of making short posts about life on the farm, learn to be sparse in my writing, the irony of it all as I ramble on… OK… enough is enough, I’ll be back with more meaningful dialogue!
Mar 11
4
“This Compost” By Walt Whitman
This Compost
By Walt Whitman
Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.
This is Walt Whitman talking over a century ago words that ring truer today than ever. We emancipate ourselves, separate our beings from the natural world farther and farther. What once did not exist, today are not even considered luxuries. Air conditioning, refrigeration, automobiles…. the list is endless. People are scared of mother nature, they’ve been so separated from her very existence yet we walk directly upon her. We’ve been coaxed into believing she’s dangerous to our health, the answer lies in chemical solutions, germ fighting soaps, bug sprays and the like when in fact, we should be running as fast and as far away from these things as we can, we are ailing and dying at the hands of our chemical saviors. Cancer is rampant, toxins are everywhere, the environment is a shambles……. We can self destroy, we, in my opinion….. my opinion, that I personally believe, are on a fast ride to destruction. Mother earth will still be here, absorbing our toxic artifacts, life will rebuild in whatever new forms come to being and she will go on. For me, the question is what do you, as an individual, as another creature of this earth see fit to do? Do you work at being a sustainable part of the earth or do you go on with the status quo? Do you, do we, as humans, have a responsibility to the future generations coming behind us? Or…. are we here, now, doing what’s best for ourselves? What about our children, their children…. their childrens children? Where does our responsibility end? I’ll then ask you to think about the next concept, what do you have to lose? I’m not too concerned about where your opinion lies in the debate about our environment, it’s clear that I believe we need to do a major about face, it’s my opinion through the course of my life, through the experiences that I’ve had, the events that I’ve witnessed, we’ve overtaxed our earth, we need to change. Other people believe it’s just a lot of hysteria, overblown hype, false science…. whatever…. it’s your opinion, your entitled to it, I’ll even respect you for it…. or maybe despite it! Again, I’ll ask , what do you have to lose? What do you have to lose if we follow along the path we’re on now, without any significant change, believing every thing’s alright….. and your wrong? Then, I’ll ask, what do you have to lose if we make the necessary changes… or un-necessary changes if we’re wrong? Good stewardship will lead us to a much healthier environment, to a vitality that has slowly been lost over the years, the decades, the centuries. Where does it start? Look in the mirror… Where I stand… it starts with me!
O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?
…. nature takes it’s dead and fallen back into itself. We grow up out of the earth and crumble back down into her. We are all just a part of a large recycling “machine”.
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv’d,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through
the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
… life abounds within the soil, teaming with unseen creatures, microscopic organisms…. life, destined to take their place in the system, a world of activity we do not see but so critical to all, living, dying, recycling, breaking down and growing up from the world we see around us, a symbiotic balance achieved through the eons of time, what lives today will feed tomorrow, we are all part of the mystery.
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person–yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on
their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the
colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in
the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata
of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which
is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited
themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that
melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once
catching disease.
Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last. ?
Written about 130 years ago, we look at it as an ancient curiosity in our modern chemical world yet it is so relevant and important to our future health and well being…. in 130 years, will people look back at us now; as they compost, recycle and use the earths natural systems to conduct themselves, and think of us as an ancient curiosity? I hope so……
Spring has been a rush of activity, keeping up with this sight has suffered but I really want to make it an informative, fun site to visit so please keep coming back. We’ll be going through some growing pains but we’ll get there!
Walkerton Farmers Market….Our first.
Thanks to the great efforts of organizing the event by the folks of King and Queen Community Development, Inc. we attended our first market of the year last Saturday at the Walkerton boat landing. With a scenic backdrop of a small historic rural town behind us and a bridge crossing the beautiful Mattaponi River in front of us, we vendors trickled in to the boat landing parking lot and set up around the perimeter in a semi-circle, rushing around, trying to get our displays ready for the 9:00 a.m. “opening”, I would call it a suggested time more than anything as the first folks arrived early and circulated around the parking lot seeing what was available. A steady stream of cars came and went, people bringing boats to the landing to get out on the river, others taking some time to wander around at the waters edge, the light rumble of cars over the bridge in the background, children bouncing around, dogs hanging out car windows, all forecasting a beautiful Saturday morning, the heat intensifying as the day went on. It was a great community gathering, people stopping and taking time to talk with the vendors, seeing old faces and getting to know new ones…. us for one. We got to meet so many people in “our” community, it was great, I really appreciated my time there as Sharon did as well. We look forward to the June market.
The second market is next, followed by what we had for sale, what we didn’t and what is ready for market so read on……
Lakeside Farmers Market….Our second.
A few days and 50 miles in the opposite direction found us at the Lakeside Farmers Market, a Henrico county neighborhood in the Richmond area for those that don’t know. Thanks go out to Peter Fransisco and his wife ( sorry, I forgot your name!) for their efforts to bring to fruition a great market venue. They’ve been running this market for a few years now and took the big (financial) leap to build an open air pavillion to house the vendors, anchoring the market in the neighborhood. Again, the neighborhood turned out to mingle amongst the vendors, chatting, getting to know the new ones, eating cookies or radishes or chocolate….. real chocolate, fresh, wholesome food, strawberries and asparagus, we had turnips and greens, mustard greens, spinach, leaf lettuce mixes, swiss chard and… one bunch of radishes along with a few white icicle radishes that have a nice spicey bite to them, unfortunately, that’s all I was able to take to market after harvesting over a hundred. The weather has been bouncing all over the place this spring, we’ve gone from cool weather to brutally hot and dry weather to cold and wet weather in the course of days. We had a good quantity of radishes for the Walkerton market a few days before from the same bed, they were just getting to the right size for picking and after a few brutal days of heat we plummeted down to the 50′s and rain, lots of rain, perfect conditions for growing radishes…. too fast! The majority split, I like to compare it to a kid having a real growing spurt, they outgrow their clothes faster than you can buy new ones! Of course, we love the rain and I’d really love to see the cooler temperatures hold out a bit more… more importantly, steadier temps, I don’t know if I could survive the environmental changes our crops are enduring. They are showing signs of their stress though, we’ve been eating peas; which means they’ll be showing up at our stand, hopefully, soon, snow peas and sugar snaps. I can’t tell you how much I love them and the first early ones are the best except this year, I have to be honest, I’ve been disappointed with them so far. They haven’t been as sweet as usual and a bit tough, hopefully, the weather’ll calm down and we can bring some great peas to market. I could keep going about the other veggies out in the patch but I’ll leave that until they become critical. It’s been a trying spring that’s for sure. We have spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, mustard and turnips ready to go and more radishes too. A good replacement for radishes are turnips, they’re great in salads as are young mustard greens, come on by and try some!
Apr 10
21
Bittersweet Rain
Rain…. bittersweet rain. I’ve been working non-stop for days and weeks
now.
"Comand Central" the nerve center of the garden, stage 1
We decided to more than double our produce growing beds this year
which is mostly a manual labor of love while trying to stay ahead of
planting dates, starting seedlings indoors, building hoop houses,
mowing, raking, composting and all the other chores around here,
it’s raining today, I get to rest some …. why do I hurt more, why am I
stiffer now than after a 10 hr day of digging? ….. ohhh so
bittersweet……
"Command Center" stage 2
We’ve decided to crank up the production here at Fleetwell Organix Farm so we can share our naturally grown produce with more people. You’ll find us selling at the Lakeside Farmers Market, Ashland Farmers market and of course right here on the farm, look for our roadside stand. I’ll keep you posted on when and where we’ll be selling but a hint to all you interested folks…. a very good possibility is at the Henrico Public Safety building parking lot, at the corner of Parham Rd and Shafer Rd. where Sharon holds down a full time job. This will be for pre- orders but some extra produce will probably be on hand. Keep an eye out as we start this service up and put your order in. If you work in the area, we will have salad bags, have a salad for lunch, take the rest home along with some produce for the rest of the family!
We have great sunsets. Every evening as that burning globe makes it’s way over the horizon we’re given a spectacular show, rarely a disappointment. We sit on a knob on a hill overlooking the flood plane of the Mattaponi River, the house was situated by it’s builder to sit on the highest point, the land sweeping away on all sides facing south to take advantage of the winter sun, surrounded by a scattering of trees for summer shade, the prevailing southwest wind funneling up around the edge of “Poplar Hill” into the back door of the house; with the front door open a nice breeze flows through the hall, rear to front, we live without air conditioning…. or, I suppose, this is our air conditioning but I’ve wandered away from the sunsets. Looking west, southwest from the front of the house, you look over the flood plane and across to the hill coming up from the flood plane on the other side of the river creating a depth through multiple layers and textures in the landscape that’s hard to explain,
Just another sunset at Fleetwell 1
the sun almost drops down between these hills while creating a light show among the tree line behind us across the fields. So, no matter what atmospheric conditions are at play, things are popping all around, I think that’s one of the beauties, your immersed in the sunset, it’s happening all around you, as you sweep around for a 360 degree panoramic view things light up, colors get vibrant with that lighting only a sunset creates, then it all recedes over the edge of the hill, down into the flood plane, over the horizon….. gone, just the last glowing moments in the sky before darkness finally falls upon us. Looking up, suddenly the stars start showing themselves, the brightest first, spinning around….. looking….. trying to find them…. suddenly, more appear in places you hadn’t seen them a moment earlier, the night sky slowly comes out of hiding.
Mar 10
31
Ohhh so sweet Spinach
Man! Ya’ talk about good…. heck… unbelievable,
winter kissed spinach, so sweet and tender it’s hard to imagine kids not liking it but I don’t remember eating anything like it growing up. The cold weather apparently changes some of the starches to sugar. Our overwintered cabbage is sweet as well, that is what’s coming back after being damaged by all the snow we had. We’ve got little heads forming and picking the leaves to add to a spinach salad is such a treat. We find they only stay really sweet for a day if that so the best is eaten in the garden.
Hi everyone… or anyone who might stumble on this….. we’re not up and running yet but just learning to crawl. My first post has come at the expense of a week of studying but here I am. WOW!
So who are we? A couple of runaways from inner city Richmond where we lived for 25 years…. I’m sure I’ll write more about that experience, so stay in touch. We started having a dream of moving out to the country, to a small piece of property, using alternative energy and generally becoming more “natural” in our approach to life….. back to the land…. homesteading… the Beverly Hillbillies in reverse. What happened next is a story of struggle and triumph but here we are, getting our crop of produce started and ready for market….. we have become accidental farmers! A Google search will show we’re not the only ones, accidental farmer is a popular tag, it seems a lot of us are out there stumbling around trying to make our way in this new world. We are natural growers, using organic methods, part of the new… or not so new, biological method. We’re really just re-learning old practices that farmers through the ages have been using up until the recent past…. the last 100 yrs or less, to put great tasting, healthy, unadulterated natural, local food on their families and communities tables. We’re not reinventing the wheel, a farmer many ages ago did, what we’re doing today, is using science and technology to understand the natural processes better in order to produce the best crops possible…..
Gotta’ go make dirt, plant ‘taters, start seedlings, make new beds…. the list goes on… stay tuned for the next installment…. as the compost turns!