Fall Update

The garden has performed amazingly well this year, considering how little time I have been able to dedicate to it. Over a dozen quarts of potatoes are safely put up in mason canning jars, as well as peas, butter beans, tomatoes, salsa  and pickled peppers. September has settled in and I have been harvesting and freezing fresh peas and okra for several weeks now. 

This year one of my main goals was to try several varieties of cow peas to see which one performed the best, and I am very pleased with the results. My fingers hurt from so much shelling, but I have put up many quarts and cooked several meals from the bounty already. Of the several heirloom varieties I tried, three came out the clear winners, and I have collected enough seeds to grow them as main crop rows next year. 

The winning varieties were: Red Zipper, Turkey Craw and the Colossus. 

While these three stood out for different reasons, the choice was based on the following criteria- yield, taste, insect resistance and lastly, ease of shelling and how well mannered the plants were in the garden. Some of the varieties were vine-like, sprawling all over the place making cultivation and garden maintenance difficult. The Holstein produced beautiful and good tasting peas, but precious few of them. The Red Zipper produced lots of long, easy to shell pods over an extended period. The Turkey Craw produced a smaller yield and smaller pea, but with exceptional taste. The Colossus was just a super fat pod that shelled with the greatest of ease and good flavor.

And then there is the okra... 
I have eaten so much fried okra this summer that I feel like I have been in heaven. And I have frozen more quart bags than I can count, all from about 20 plants, which are still producing madly now at over six feet tall.

The peanuts are doing very well and I am excited to see the total yield when I harvest them. Last weekend I planted Mustard Greens, Spinach, Kale, lettuce  and Collards for the fall crop and they are up and growing. Peppers are so abundant that I am giving away about a half bushel per week. 



  

A quick update from the farm- 

May has been an extremely busy month for the band, and that has limited my work time on the farm. The garden is planted and doing fairly well, in spite of a late frost that damaged some of my crops. Last Sunday I was able to replant the green beans and some peas which had been wiped out, but there are still some bald patches in the rows that survived. I imagine I will have to replant the corn too, not because of frost damage but it looks like there were issues with my planter. A couple of the rows are thick but most of them are very sporadic. I think the planter just got jammed up and didn't distribute the seeds properly. Everything else I had planted by hand and the density was fine. 

 I was pleased with the result of my efforts at keeping the potato bugs bugs at bay, they are bushy, green and healthy with minimal infestation. In fact, they are blooming and producing little spuds already. I have already harvested potatoes from the tubs I have back in the city and they are quite good. 

I still have to plant the scarlet runner beans and some pole butter beans, but for the most part planting is done. I also planted two long rows of peanuts and hopefully they will come up and produce. I have another plot about 20x70 feet set aside for corn which hopefully I will be able plant sometime in June.

April 23rd

It's April 23rd the weather has turned cool and breezy. Two weeks ago it felt like spring was in full force, and that gave us an opportunity to get some work done at the farm. I planted the bounty of fruit trees purchased a few weeks ago, two more blueberry bushes and a fig tree.

I also finished planting the main garden- peas, beans, corn, okra and potatoes. I set out two dozen tomato plants and about that many pepper plants that I potted up from seedlings. Chris gave me some Peaches and Cream corn and I planted 10 sixty-five foot rows of it. This year I planted the potatoes in blocks instead of rows, thinking that I may have to build a barrier against the potato beetles.

On Sunday, I turned and worked two more patches alongside the main garden. The larger one, about half the rows of the main garden, will be for peanuts. I've never grown peanuts so I don't know what kind of experience this will be. The motivation for trying is my unconditional love of roasted peanuts. Boiled peanuts too, for that matter.

The second plot is for some wheat and my cowpea trials. I have about 20 varieties of heirloom cowpeas that I am going to run and see which one is the best in flavor and vigor.

After this exercise I came to the conclusion that the new barn will have a wide but shallow overhang that I can park my implements side-by-side. The current setup is stacked in one behind the other in a narrow deep overhang, open only on one side. This means I have to spend a lot of time hooking up and moving around plows and tools to get everything out.

Summer

It's hard to believe that it has been six months since my last blog entry. I think this is due in part to being so busy, and admittedly a little undisciplined when it comes to maintaining a blog. Regardless, it is time to provide a progress update on our adventures.

Over the summer we had the cabin delivered and set up. Charlie installed the septic and plumbing so we were able to put away the porta-potty. Without the well, flushing meant several trips per day down to the stream to fetch a five gallon bucket of water. It didn't take long before we contracted Bub to dig a well, which is in place awaiting decision of whether or not to go solar with the pump.

Cost-wise, it's just about a wash. I plan on being off the grid, and we have been for six months by using two deep cycle DC batteries and solar panels, but providing enough power for the well pump means having to purchase more panels. I don't think we're ready for that just yet, so for now we are having the power company drop a residential line to the cabin. This decision was made easier when we spent the week of July 4th there working in what is undoubtedly the hottest time of the summer. I don't think I could get much work done without some really big fans or air conditioning- or both.

Linda has done a wonderful job outfitting and decorating the cabin interior. Garage sales, flea markets and discount stores all have contributed to the cozy furnishings. We also installed a block retaining wall after discovering that the entire mountain seemed to be washing away behind the cabin every time it rained. Yet another unexpected expense.

Over the next two weeks we should complete the electrical grid hookup and have running water. These have been the last obstacles to being ably to live "comfortably" in our little cabin. By winter, we should have the screened porch close to completion. I'm really looking forward to being able to sleep on the porch, like we used to do at my aunt's place. It will double the size of the cabin, and provide some much needed shade and shelter from the summer heat. Winter will also mean it's time to install the wood stove. I'll start cutting firewood as soon as the weather cools down to add to last years stack that has been drying in the barn. The first tree to go will be the one high on the hill behind the cabin. With it's exposed roots it could fall in a strong wind, and if it didn't hit the cabin it would surely crash into the new retaining wall.

The garden went fairly well this year. With the exception of a late stand of corn and some butter bean plants that just came up as a result from plowing under this years expended plants, I have harvested everything already. We managed to put away several quarts of dried peas and beans, corn, potatoes, onions, okra and peppers. I'll be making picked peppers and hot chow chow tonight and that should wrap up my harvesting chores until the late corn comes in. I doubt if there is enough time left in the season to get a second harvest of beans from the new plants.

So, there it is- the long awaited update. More to come soon, including pictures and the latest news on the 2011 wine.

Spring

I absolutely hate winter. The only two redeeming qualities that I look forward to every winter are chicken stew and the crackle of a warm fire in the fireplace on a Sunday afternoon. Yes, that's pretty much the extent of my tolerance for this god-forsaken season. Everything is dead, and I'm not feeling much life either.

So it comes as no surprise that every spring, I come out of hibernation alongside the rest of nature. The first days above 60 degrees have me dreaming of spring planting and starting seeds indoors anticipating the coming days of April. Usually, by February I have the garden planned, even when the only space to grow is at our limited house in town. And likewise, I am often over ambitious, ending up having to give away multitudes of seedling vegetables to anyone who will take them.

However, this winter we were a little more productive than usual. With the pastures in better shape and the fruit orchard planted, we had time to focus on the next phase of our operation, putting a cabin on the property. This was a case of someone's loss becoming our gain, as we managed to purchase a small log cabin from a bank repossession. It's small enough that we can have it transported to our property, and our good friend Charlie brought the big dozer over to carve a nice flat spot in the mountain for it. All we are waiting on now if for it to get dry enough to haul it in.

We were able cut and stack a good supply of firewood, with the help of the new manual hydraulic wood splitter. A neighbor friend gave us over a dozen huge oak trunks which nearly filled the woodshed once split and stacked. I also planted about a half acre of winter wheat which has over-wintered very well, so we are looking forward to trying some fresh bread soon using the new Country Living grain mill.

I did find that the assortment of plows that came with the tractor was lacking one really needed implement- a bottom plow. I needed to turn the grass under so I paid a visit to the local tractor dealer and then the wheat field plowed up nicely. This weekend I will plow under the 2011 garden spot and get it ready, which is also roughly half an acre and runs alongside the wheat patch.

Over the fall I pieced together an irrigation pump, some solar panels and a DC/AC power inverter. I still need to get a few deep cycle batteries and build an enclosure for the system, but it will be ready by the time we need it. After the devastating drought last year, I am determined not to let that much hard work go to waste again. Figuring all those solar power calculations was an interesting learning experience. When I flip that switch I'll either be dancing or cursing my way back to the drawing board, but I'm actually pretty confident in the numbers.

The band is still booked every weekend through the summer, which is a great source of income, but leaves little time for working at the farm. Over the winter we have been ramping up our food reserves of dry goods, meats, grains and canned items (I'll blog about our reasons later) and have decided that given the time restrictions we foresee this summer, it doesn't make a lot of sense to try and plant high maintenance crops that require daily monitoring during harvest season. Instead, I'll be growing crops suitable to dry in the field, or harvest green all at once. We'll add the dry goods to our reserves and skip the canning of fresh vegetables for the most part.

We'll buy or trade for a couple cases of tomatoes for canning, as they are quick and easy to put up. Lettuces, Cucumbers, Squash, Peppers and a few other kitchen vegetables I can grow in town like every year. I will miss the okra though, and may have to make a trip to the farmers market as I am down to the last few packs in the freezer.

So, I've completed successful germination tests on the following and have plenty of seed stock:

• Black turtle beans


• Red Kidney beans


• Jackson Wonder butter beans


• Navy beans


• Red Calypso baking beans


• Mississippi cow peas


• Honduran Lima beans

These will definitely make it into the garden. I'll also be planting a patch of Soy beans for roasting, and Floriani Red flint corn, along with red, white and yellow onions, garlic, leeks and shallots. Down in the lower section I'll set out the seed potatoes and peanuts. If all goes well, I'll plant at least a half acre more of hard white wheat for berries and straw.

I've got a dozen or so Blackberry and Raspberry bushes to plant in the orchard along the fence by the Blueberry patch, and I need to find a good permanent spot for the Asparagus roots and a few grape vines I bought earlier this month.

Speaking of grapes, I have both Chery and Blackberry wine in fermentation, and a wonderful batch of 2009 Italian Montepulciano grape wine aging on oak. The remaining 2009 Cabernet are bottled and aging quietly downstairs in the 60 degree "cellar". (the space formerly known as the basement) I may pull them out this fall or I may let them rest another winter, it all depends on how they progress over the next several months.

Even though I detest winter, this past one wasn't so bad with regards to getting stuff done. Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age.

Taters!

OK, so just when I had all but given up on the prospect of making anything this year in the garden, it rains! Peas and butter beans are starting to bloom again, giving me a small ray of hope that all is not completely lost. While the local weatherman predicts dry heat for the next five days, I find myself a bit more optimistic than the last post.

But it's hard to find much optimism when everything is so parched. The potato vines had died down to crumbly brown stalks, almost impossible to even find among the wheat straw. Dad and I figured we might as well dig them up to see if they had produced anything at all, and I was determined to eat anything resembling a potato, even if it was no bigger than one of the few peas we have managed to squeeze out of the patch. The first plant had one potato about the size of a quarter, and the results didn't do much to boost my confidence at all. But by the time we were three or four hills in, each turn of the fork was revealing a few nice plump red blobs, and in the end I walked away with several pounds of both Pontiac Red and Yukon Golds. Not a total loss, but certainly not what I had hoped for.

With that task completed it was time to really survey the damage. 20 rows of corn, dead. 50 paste tomato plants, withered and lifeless. Black and Calypso beans, utterly consumed by the drought. Green beans and Yellow wax beans, alive but barren. two 75' rows of Okra, hanging by a thread. Squash and cucumber, not even a trace. Mississippi cow peas and Jackson wonder butter beans- green and blooming again. Potatoes, in the bag. Bell, Jalapeno, Habanero and Chilli's, alive and producing.

I have learned first hand what it is like to totally rely on Mother Nature and I'm not satisfied with the odds, as the road to self reliance is long, hard and dusty. But I take a little comfort in knowing that I successfully planned, planted and grew an entire garden from seed. Had the rains come it would have yielded enough to make a huge dent in our food consumption. That much I am confident of, so next year irrigation is top priority. A lot of hours have ticked away since march when I started sprouting seeds indoors and in the end, knowledge from lessons learned has come at a cost. But that knowledge and experience is something the drought cannot take away, in fact, it only makes me more determined and confident.

Dog Days

Some lessons are only learned the hard way. In spite of my optimism during the spring months, my garden is now dormant at best. The dog days of summer, the Georgia heat and sporadic rain have decided to crash my party. Just when the garden was entering into the crucial flowering stage, the rains stopped. Day after blistering day the heat sucked any remaining moisture from the ground, resulting in a hard, dusty death trap.

On a positive note, weeding has become easier, as even they are not growing. We have had a little rain over the last couple of days, but I am afraid it is too little, too late. Sometimes I feel like more sweat has fallen on that ground than rain, but unfortunately that doesn't produce crops. I doubt we will harvest much of anything this year, and that saddens me because all of the work that I have put into it. If we had actually had to live off land, we would not survive like this.

So, what did I learn from this experience?
Assuming the rains had come, my rows would have been too close together to comfortably work the garden. I planted close to squeeze in more, but I should have left more space to move around. With my tractor and a larger area, I should be able to use the cultivators and make weeding a little easier. It would have been much easier to hill my potato rows with a pair of disks too.

Second, I think the biggest lesson is one dad pretty much already knew- the garden needs irrigation. The last few years Mother Nature has not smiled on that dusty patch of soil, and I am of the conclusion that irrigation in some form is an absolute necessity should one have to rely on the home garden for survival in the temperate Georgia climate.

Back home the tomatoes, cabbage, chard, carrots, onions and salads are thriving. My radishes and spinach didn't fair well, however. Just too hot I suppose. In retrospect, I should have planted them much earlier than I did.

Up on the farm, the tractor is working out great. She has developed an oil leak around the PTO shaft and I'll have to fix that, but I'm finally getting to know her quirks and kinks. I learned that when mowing on the mountain side I have to wedge my knee against the gear shift or it may slip into neutral, resulting in a 90 mile per hour joy ride down the mountain straight for the river. She doesn't like the ignition key on my heavy keyring, as demonstrated by switching to the off position at just the wrong moment when I was towing Linda's car up the steep driveway, once again resulting in a 90 mile per hour joy ride, this time straight towards her car. Only Linda's quick reaction saved me from an embarrassing call to the insurance office and no telling how many days in the dog house.

I bought a 16 foot trailer with the intention of being able to transport the tractor down to dads to work the garden, but I doubt I will attempt to work it next year. The farm offers so much more potential with it's ability to irrigate from the river. The problem is that we can't be there often enough to work a high maintenance garden. I may have to start off with very low maintenance crops that don't require daily monitoring and harvesting. I'm thinking potatoes, peanuts, corn etc.

My band has become quite successful, playing 12 to 14 shows a month from Maine to Florida, leaving few weekends to spend on the farm. I'm torn between doing what I have always wanted to do and doing what I know eventually needs to be done. I only hope the shit doesn't hit the fan anytime soon finding us unprepared to survive on our own. Then again, maybe it already has and we just haven't been splattered yet. It's hard to tell sometimes.

The Garden

Last weekend I went down to my dads and we finally worked the garden. The ground had previously been too wet to till, and it was just about right by the time my schedule opened up with a free weekend.

Having been dormant for two years, the grass had completely taken over, making things more difficult than they would have been in previous years. Still, it was great to work with dad in his element. He had already planted, but with no rain, my week delay will have little consequences and we should be off to an even start.

My garden spot is small, measuring about 40 x 80 feet, but it is still much bigger than the area I have at my home in the city. I'm trying the wide bed method, mostly due to the limited space. I split the two varieties of corn into two blocks, with each block about 10 x 35 feet containing 10 rows. Next are two 80 foot rows of Red Hill okra, followed by three long rows of Mississippi cow peas. finishing off the legumes, I have two closely spaced long rows of Jackson Wonder butter beans, and half rows of green beans and yellow wax beans.

I'm also experimenting with black beans and calypso bean, which I plan on leaving on the bush until they dry.

Planting close to 50 paste tomato plants, I hope to be able to can up lots of tomato sauce and salsa as well. Those and a few dozen other Heirloom varieties of tomato plants should have us with plenty to give away. Pepper varieties include Jalapeno, Habanero, cow horn, green, yellow and red Bell Peppers.

I also have two short rows of Red Pontiac and Yukon Gold potatoes. With such a late start, they will probably only produce small nuggets, but they will still taste fine. Lastly, I have a few small hills of Cucumber, Squash and Water Mellon.

Back home, I have decided to grow greens in the side bed. We love salads, and it just makes sense to try it. I have lettuce, carrots, radish and spinach up and thriving, along with bulb and spring onion.

With the exception of the yellow onion, just about everything we are growing came from seed, much of which was saved from previous years or given to me. My basement looks like a grow house every March and April, and I am finally getting to where I can do a successful seeding. This year, I bottom watered everything and had basically zero loss to dampening off. Adequate lighting eliminated spindly growth, and mild weather allowed everything to be hardened without interruption.

My biggest lesson learned this time around was patience. Dad kept saying, "not yet" and he was right. It looks as though it will be a good year, providing the rain will cooperate.

Up at the farm, we had our good friend Charlie clear off the lower pasture, and mow the base of the mountain along the river. I'm heading up there today to stake out the orchard and get it ready to put the trees in. My raspberries have suckered well this spring and taken root in pots so I have a dozen new plants to put along the fence. It should be a good weekend. :o)

Planning the 2010 Garden

I am fortunate to still have my dad alive and healthy. Every year, with the exception of 2009, when heart surgery kept him from it, he has planted a vegetable garden. I too, it seems, have inherited the green gene and usually plant a small garden at my home here in the city. We don't have a lot of sunny space, but in the spring and summer months I squeeze tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumbers amongst the shrubs wherever I can find room for them.

Like my father, I can hardly pass up the opportunity to pick up strange and unusual seeds I notice while on vacation and bring them home to plant. Every year I grow flowers from seed, and have a raised bed which yields fresh cut flowers during the summer months. All this means that I have just about exhausted my available real estate, and another plant would probably have the neighborhood association writing me one of those nasty letters.

This year, I am looking forward to helping my dad with his garden, while hijacking a little corner for my own. He knows a lot about traditional farming and I am practicing organic methods. We have always been very close regarding our interests, yet maintain just enough differences in opinions not to bore one another. I anticipate many wonderful conversations this spring as he shares wisdom from his fountain of knowledge while we work together.

My mother, knows just about everything there is to know about canning. Growing up, there were some lean years in the family budget and if not for her industry I don't know what we would have eaten- certainly not the awesome veggies that found their way to our table every night. To this day, one of my favorite things to eat is some sort of cow pea, with mashed potatoes, biscuits and corn. Fried country ham is good with it too, but not all that necessary.

Being February, it's time to order the seeds. I actually have some tomato and pepper seed from last years bounty, but since I will have considerably more space this year I'm expanding my horizons. Some things, like those cow peas will probably always have a reserved spot, but I have also become aware of my need to grow as much heirloom varieties as possible for two reasons; as commercial farming continues to push out the little guy, many of these varieties are in danger of being lost forever, and secondly, that question keeps popping up about what we would do if we couldn't order seed for next years harvest because of any number of possible or unfortunate reasons. This is the reason, for the most part, that I am shying away from hybrid varieties and genetic modified seed. I guess the other part is that it bothers me that a very small hand full of corporations hold the patents to the much of the available seed.

I'm sure there are other excellent and reputable suppliers out there, but this year, after much research I chose three suppliers to order from. Seed Savers Exchange, Park Seed and Territorial Seed. Hopefully, if I order anything next year it will be something I didn't order this year, as between them almost everything I'm growing can supply next years need by collecting a small amount of the harvest and saving the seed.

Just another small step on the journey.