Cover Crops

We need to get the soil tests in, but what grew in the L-field last year was pretty sparse and homogeneous. Last weekend Liza and I went to the Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association (MOFFA) conference and had a fine time. The talks were largely about cover crops, which is what I think we really needed to hear about. A summary of what we learned as applies to cover crop choices, pasture, and building fertility on our farm:

Going in there was the idea that the way to improve the whole field was by grazing a grass/legume mixture. We have neither of those in the area in question. It was suggested that the best early-spring planted cover crop would be oats and Austrian winter peas, which the good Dr. Morse said could be planted as soon as the snow was out of the way. Buckwheat (the cornerstone of Morse's beneficial-insect-attracting projects) needs a bit warmer weather to be planted. But the suggestion was to just turn the chickens on what is growing there now, let them eat and stomp it to the ground, and see what comes up following this different sort of disturbance. This is encouraging because it is definitely the cheapest of the options. I don't know how hopeful I should be, though, considering that over most of the field there was what looked like broom on 5-inch centers and bare ground between. I do home something good comes up.

Springing

The Snow is starting to fade to the ground, but even where the land is accessible it is just waterlogged. I imagine it will be a while yet before the land is well drained. I am thinking most about this affecting our ability to dig and haul compost from area stables. Perhaps some places have a front end loader and piles that are on high ground right next to a gravel road. We should be so lucky.


Here is a shot of the first and only load of compost so far, before I was sick and before the snows. Like I said before, it was dug out of a ditch where there were apparently once tall piles of it. This stuff has rotted and settled for years. It is beautiful, and is a tiny fraction of what they had there. We shall return.



Though we can't spread and dig now, the seed- starting season has swept us up and we are making use of the compost, some sphagnum moss and native soil to start seeds and make transplants. A little late, but I've heard this happens to others as well. The house is pretty dark so a well lighted place for the starts is overdue.

This is the frame i put together from scraps in the barn for a small, portable plastic tunnel/greenhouse. The top angle pivots and the obtuse angle is fixed. long vertical members are 6 feet, horizontal around 3 feet. I expect it will be necessary to stake the thing down when it is skinned, and to stake the side flaps as well. It's about tall enough for me to move relatively easily in, though a few inches shorter than I am.

I think I will like this design, as it is rigid and different work paths are revealed at different settings.



Here it is opened up a bit. I can get in here with the working-at-ground-level posture but as you can see there is a good bit more to the footprint. It opens up far enough for the cross-member to be horizontal, so it could span several planting strips. and i think will be good for an emergency frost cover, or to give a boost to heat-loving plants if the spring is cool.

But I misjudged the path of the sun and this site isn't as good for a starting greenhouse as I'd hoped. The solution was much more desirable anyway.


Inspired by Frank and Christina Allen's plexiglass-walled front porch passive solar heating, I rigged this up once I realized the front porch got a lot more sunlight this time of year than I thought. The area is already protected and semi-enclosed, adjacent to a warm body (the house), much larger and easy to work in, and most importantly close to the house, which means we pay it better attention.

We have high winds right now so the fastening is being put through the paces. Currently residing in the sun room are red russian kale, Black from Tula, Amish paste, and Henderson's pink Ponderosa tomatoes, chocolate habanero and fish peppers, and red and white cabbages. We need shelves in here and lots more seeds planted very soon, not to mention sunny weather so it warms up real well.

Making Landfall

I know it's been a loong time but please indulge me as this kind of updating takes a special kind of effort on my part.

The plan of attack has evolved, as far as this season goes. It has mercifully simplified a bit, as follows:

The general layout remains the same. The major change is that it seems likely that in general the planting of trees will probably be delayed a season or so. This is to allow us to focus on the more immediately-productive annual crops, and the fertility-generating combination of pasture/cover crops and livestock. I have taken the lesson that it may be possible that a fruit or nut tree may end up bearing better and earlier after allowing a full year for site preparation than just putting it in the ground at the beginning of that year. We'll still plant some trees, but it probably won't be full-farm scale. Plus it will give us time to learn trees, their varieties, and propagation.

This means that we get to focus much more on improving fertility, and on highly productive pastured poultry. We've started ordering seeds, and have enough corn to plant about 1/4 acre. This is probably lowballing our needs a bit but it's just one grain so far. It's one of my goals to eliminate the need to buy feed for the chickens, perhaps excluding mineral and probiotic supplements and the like. To meet this goal we'll probably have to plant a good amount of some other grains. This is hardly disappointing to me. I see brisk bread sales in our future.

We have also hatched plans to experiment extensively with the three sisters planting scheme (pole beans grow up corn stalks as squash shade the soil). This venerable native polyculture promises amazing results when properly executed. The search for old, explicitly suitable varieties was challenging but I think we found some promising candidates.

We are currently experiencing the highest snowfall in recorded history in the DC area. The third once-in-a-decade snowstorm this winter has us under a few feet of snow. This makes it tough to go dig compost. This is annoying because we got in one good load before I fell ill and the snow followed. But this old horse manure was jet-black, smelled great, had excellent texture even though it was soaking wet, and there were yards and yards of it...just at one stables. This, to my mind, bodes very well indeed, especially when John Jeavons says you can only add one inch max of compost when starting vegetable beds. He also says to sow grain seeds in flats and prick them out by the thousands, so like any good (former) Catholic I expect I'll pick and choose my labors a bit.

The other side of hauling stuff in will be (I hope) directing willing tree-trimmers to dump their chipped trees on our hillside, the site of our future high-diversity forest garden. This zone appears particularly worn-out, having a kind of sanbox look under the scraggly vegetation found there. My hope is that a few inches of (free) wood chips and the ensuing fungal action and decomposition will provide excellent food for ongoing plantings of nut- and fruit-bearing trees on that south-facing slope.

So to summarize I think that our big chores ongoing this year will be to work the garden, move the chickens in their tractors (for the shorter-lived males) and mobile, moving-fenced coops for the layers. We will also continue our research and design apace, and be ready for some thoughtful planting next year.

In other news it has been fun making contact with other no-chem producers and retailers in southern MD, an activity which for me basically all took place several days ago when I went on a field trip to the hippie-food-retailers in the area. It was great to meet all the people who will no doubt all get mentions on this page in the future, and I'm grateful to Frank and Christine for the information they've already given me: a whole community, chugging along.