High Wire Farm

Starts on the hardening-off bench.

It’s that turning point in spring, where you can finally see how your season will begin to shape up – farmers markets are starting everywhere, and people are already expecting strawberries and melons (it’s a bit early, folks.) I’ve been slowly scratching things off my list, but for every task done, another two take its place.

To-Do.

Today, I mowed down my cover crop of vetch and rye, and tilled in the cover of crimson clover that I had already mowed down last week in an adjacent field. My beets are germinating in the field, and I’m hoping their neighboring carrots won’t be too far behind.

The potatoes I put in last week are already coming up through the dirt, and growing fast. I broke new ground on a hillside for 120 artichoke plants a few days ago, and amended the soil today with lime and some blood meal for extra nitrogen. I’ll be putting those little guys in this weekend, I hope. I’ve broken ground on a 10×20 foot refrigeration area, and will be pouring a concrete foundation in a week or so. Irrigation lines are also on my list to dig, and my 5,000 gallon water tank awaits installation up on the hill. I’m getting pretty handy with the backhoe, let me tell ya.

‘Taters!

Refrigeration unit and storage area.

If you haven’t already, “like” the High Wire Farm facebook page -  www.facebook.com/highwirefarm. I’m posting photos daily of things I see and do; a sort of mini photo blog.

No blog, I haven’t forgotten about you…you’re just – how can I put this? Low on the list of things to do that is literally sitting in front of me right now on my table, asking if I could kindly finish them already. Somewhere on there is “cut hair,” and further down the list – “buy thingy for (illegible).” Hmmm. Must have written that one in the middle of the night, or before imbibing my morning coffee. So, here ‘goes.

I have spent the better part of this last month scrambling around between rain showers, weeding some things, planting some things, and obsessively checking (2-3 times daily) if my carrots have germinated yet. Also, a great deal of time tending to things in the greenhouse, including these fine tomato plants that are already budding out a few meager flowers in my raised beds:

Six varieties in all, with a seventh to be planted outdoors with the remainder of my seedlings once the cold and rain quit. After several tactics, I’ve finally managed to shut down the mouse buffet that was my seedling table – apparently those little bastards love spinach seeds more than just about anything (with brassica seedling leaves being a close second). So much so that they greedily carried the ones they couldn’t choke down and dropped them haphazardly around my greenhouse, causing spinach to sprout up everywhere except where I wanted it.

Lettuce for days.

A little time working in the shop the last two days produced a new seedling mix bin and table, made mostly from cedar salvaged from my real job as a grocery robot. I thought about making a certain someone I don’t care for at my work a coffin with it, but decided that this would be a better use.

Seeding work bench and seedling mix storage bin(right), complete with a screened lid to get the big chunks of compost, etc., out before they go in the mix.

The rain stopped and started so many times today, I finally went in a finished my business card design and sent it off to the printer. How professional of me.

Front.

Home is where the farm is. (Back)

All in all, it has been a very productive spring so far, but I’m really looking forward to planting my main fields for the first time, and to attending farmers markets, which start this month. Here are just a few more photos from the past few weeks…enjoy!

June-bearing strawberry plants already in flower…come on bees!

Hoping for another amazing garlic crop this year.

100 feet of potatoes planted in an extra deep trench (8-10 inches). I’ll fill it in as the plants emerge, that way I only have to hill them up once during the season.

Liberty apple blossoms.

Salad mix from High Mowing seeds that will be cut down for the first time tomorrow and sold at market.

Asparagus ferns in their second year. Next year I hope to have a lot of tender stalks to eat.

Working away in the greenhouse today, up-potting my tomato seedlings with a little help from a friend, while outside the weather carried on with its manic struggle between Spring and Winter. Things are looking good – spinach, arugula, beets, radishes, and carrots all stand strong in the raised beds inside, and my benches are filling up with little seedlings to be planted under protection in our raised beds outside. PVC hoop tunnels will help protect them from the worst weather while they establish, helping to get a few things to bring to market by the end of May while my main fields (hopefully) dry out in time for my first Summer plantings. The “cold” frame inside the greenhouse is doing its job well, keeping the soil between 64-80 degrees during most days – enough for anything placed in trays on the warmth of the sand to germinate, as well as stay nice and toasty at night. Thinking of building more of these seed-starting sand beds next year.

Here are some photos from the last few days. I am eager for Spring, but glad for this time to pay attention to details and plan out the season that lies ahead. Enjoy.

Napa cabbage seedlings on the bench in the greenhouse. A temporary fabric row cover of agribond, supported by wire hoops and held in place with clothes pins help protect the young plants from frost damage at night - even when temperatures get as low as 28 degrees.

The long, wet road to the field. Compost lies covered and ready to use.

A furry little animal of some sort made the dormant root of one artichoke plant his home and food source this Winter. Talk about resourceful.

Snow...

...but I was cozy inside the greenhouse, watching the flurries pile lightly outside.

Little tomato seedlings nestled in their trays on the warm sand, almost ready for the 4 inch pots.

Though it is mid-winter, I’ve finally began thinking about spring, and doing some of the things that need to get done so that my first real year as a farmer gets off to the right start. The season is coming – I can just barely perceive the difference in the warmth of the sun (when it shows itself), the slightly longer days, and all the trees with their leaves shed, waiting for the signal to bring forth next years lush cover. The shadows have been long this winter, but they are shortening, and just a week of sunshine recently budged some garlic out of the ground that was too stubborn to germinate last fall alongside their compatriots, and added a few inches of height to my overwintering Walla-Walla onions. Yes, I’m getting excited.

Seeds (IN FEBRUARY!!!)

The newest addition to the infrastructure here on the farm is a heated bed/cold frame combo that I built with the help of similar projects I found online. I just yesterday put my first seedling trays in the box filled with artichokes, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, kale, collards, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage to hopefully germinate with the help of some sand and a rope light. Here are some photos of how I put the 3.5′x9′ box together, and the basics of how it works:

Base of the bed made of cedar planks, anchored into the ground with stakes.

Second layer of box added on top, cut at an angle to let the maximum amount of light in.

I shoveled in a two inch layer of sand, then laid down three 18' rope lights secured with metal stakes, then another few inches of sand on top. The rope puts off just enough energy to heat the surrounding sand, which conducts the warmth up into the seedling trays to help germination. Some left over black ground fabric stapled to the inside will help absorb light and hold it as heat on cold days.

A lid fashioned out of left-over siding from the original greenhouse construction and cedar scraps from previous cuts will help to hold in warmth at night, allowing the tender seedlings to stay warm and frost-free once they've germinated.

The lid is separated into two frames to keep it from flopping around. Both can be opened at various heights to allow for ventilation and access for watering, etc.

The other new addition to the farm is a Kubota tractor. I haven’t had much of a chance to use the machine yet due to rain, but I can already tell it will be a huge improvement over our old tractor, plus Michael and I will actually have a chance at fixing things when they go wrong, as parts are easy to find.

Testing out the gearing on the new tractor. Smooth.

Well, only a few months now and I’ll be cutting down my luscious cover crop of rye, vetch, and clover, tilling the soil, and planting. A hillside of artichoke starts will be growing near the creek, and preparations for an orchard will begin. I hope to be selling at two farmer’s markets this year, as well as making connections with local restaurants and hungry individuals looking for fresh, organic produce. Check back every few weeks for the remainder of the winter for updates on my progress, and hopefully by June I’ll be posting at least weekly.

Well, too much has happened  in these past few months to cover in this final post (probably) of the season…I can finally see the shape this farm is beginning to take, with the help of myself and the hard work of my family, I should be fully up and running on about 3/4 of an acre by next year. The fence is finally finished, the compost pile is bulging with the last of the field scraps and topped off with the first of the fall leaves, and a winter cover crop of clover, rye, and vetch has a good head start and is coming in nicely. Garlic and shallots for next year are planted and starting to pop up through the straw mulch, along with some over-wintering onions, and there are even a few veggies such as kale, cabbage, broccoli, chard, spinach, arugula, lettuce, and salad greens that are still in the ground that will hopefully help take us through the winter. Our new 5,000 gallon water tank sits atop the hill, waiting to be installed; as always progress has been slow but steady, and tractor repairs have kept us back from getting the tank and water lines in the ground…it’ll have to wait for the spring. Now is the time for sleeping in, catching up with friends, and sitting by the fire with a book. Here are a few photos taken in the past few months, some by my good and talented friend Tyler Berry, earlier this summer. Enjoy, and check back in early next spring, I hope to be posting with a lot more regularity and a lot more interesting stuff.  Happy winter.

Through the new fence: Rye and vetch on the left and ahead, and clover on the right.

Stalking by the beans, with a few rows of carrots and beets beneath that were eventually decimated by deer.

Beautiful "Bright Lights" chard.

Fall starts await the ground.

Summer squash blossoms.

Artichoke plants.

Oh, hey there. I know it doesn’t look like it, but farming makes me really happy. Remember that game substitute teachers would play with the class in elementary school to kill time, where they’d hold up a jar of beans and be like “Now, lets everyone guess how many beans are in this here jar, and whoever gets the closest without going over gets a prize!”? (The prize was usually the candy that the last “winner” rejected out of the drawer, or a crappy gold star next to your name on the chalkboard that could be peeled off just as quickly.) Well, I was always horrible at the game, and yet found it somehow insulting to my intelligence at the same time. I’d always guess something like 150 beans maximum, but it would turn out be some suspicious and unlikely number such as 5000. Well, here I am an “adult,” and I’m still dumbfounded by the phenomenon of how many objects can fit in a certain space – for instance, how many rocks would you think could fit in one 2 foot deep by 1 foot-round fence post hole, like this one here?

The answer IS……………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………

……………………………………..wait for it……………………………………………………..

……………………………………………………………………   …  .     .              .                    .

*Unusually large hammer included for perspective only.

BAM! Way more than you ever thought physically possible!!! Ok, now multiply that by 80 or so fence post holes, some pretty heavy clay soil at about the 1′ mark down, and biting flies, and you’ll understand why I haven’t posted in a few weeks. My arms, they’re just too damn tired to lift to the keyboard.

But it hasn’t been all just “Man Vs. The 1200 Foot-Long Fence” around the farm lately…nope, it ain’t all bad news. I quit bar tending in what I hope to be my final move towards a life bereft of the need to be nice to people who I in fact hate. Well, not hate; but certainly don’t understand and don’t desire to babysit while they’re drunk. Oh, and I harvested some things this week, including some beautiful heads of garlic -

- as well as shallots, a few little artichokes and some arugula. The potato plants are about 4 feet tall now and starting to flower, and I have inter-planted lettuce and bok choi between rows of summer squash plants, in an attempt to use as much of the little space I have to work with this season as possible. My beans are a’climbing the trellis and acting like they want to flower real soon, and the carrots are grudgingly poking down into the ground trying to hide from the ranch dip that awaits them in schools across America. All in all, not bad for a retired bar tender.

Beans on the trellis with lettuce and bok choi in the background.

So as it turns out, this season will be much less about the food I grow than getting all the infrastructure in right the first time, which has been a series of trials and errors from the start. My stepfather and I put together a “spinning jenny” to pay out the wire we’re using for the fence, which I promptly used the full weight of to smash my previously injured finger. Now hurting myself is just sort of funny, and gives me more excuses to drink beer after work.

That is 100 pounds of wire right there, mister.

All three Jenny's linked up real ingenious like.

Ouch. Again.

 Ok. Soon I promise to have more photos of the actual farm and of the food I’m growing. I’ll leave you with what a happy farmer actually looks like:

Here is a visual update of what’s happening lately on and around the farm…I’m all out of words at the moment, which is very un-blogger of me. Enjoy.

Strawberry plant. Kept the watering down to a minimum and pinched off the first few sets of flowers to encourage strong rooting.

Radishes, carrots, and asparagus all in bed together. Snuggle time.

Potatoes getting a little drip irrigation action.I'll be hilling these babies up soon.

Little green bean plants, with artichoke plants in the background.

My first crop.

Big blue pig at Ruby and Amber's farm. She head-butted me, but I think she was only flirting. She had 4 little spotted piglets, but they wouldn't come out of the shadows.