Planting party pictures soon

Last Sunday, the 16th, we had about a dozen people here at the farm,
where we dug small hills and planted corn in them; the first phase of
a "three sisters"-style planting, our best approximation of the native
American technique. A month from that date we'll have another party
and add the other two sisters, pole beans and trailing-habit winter
squash. The beans trellis up the corn and fix nitrogen that the heavy-
feeding corn takes up, and the squash covers the ground, suppressing
weeds and reducing evaporation. I've also heard that the spiny squash
plants are unpleasant on the legs of marauding deer, but that they'll
come if they really want. We want to experiment with other trailing
crops in the system, like melons. There will also be scattered plants
that are beneficial in other ways, like radish and amaranth.

Just a couple days before the party I decided to plant onthe hillside
rather than the field in the picture from an earlier post. The topsoil
has been almost totally removed from the large fields and the soil
test has the level of organic matter at 1.2%. Eventually dawning on me
that planting corn there would be an uphill battle and that we might
not have enough compost to make the little hills, the 4.1%, nice-and-
black, south-facing "future forest garden" slope was clearly the
better option. Tracing the shadow line of the large tulip poplar and
eastern white cedars, which are unfortunately toward the south side of
the slope, we still packed a lot of hills and seeds on there. A border
of sunflowers was planted on the north edge. Watered in with fish
emulsion, we called it a day and i led a tour through the woods and to
the far fields. As we walked back on the road and emerged at the main
farm, we were dazzled by how pretty the tesselated pits-and-mounds
were, dotting the hillside, and how they would look with ten-foot bean-
covered stalks on them.

The pits were excavated to build the mounds directly downhill from
them. We believe that we will experence very little erosion even
though we dug on a hill because runoff can't travel more than a few
feet before pooling in these little divots, where they will perc into
the soil, right into the root zone of the crops below them. I believe
this cultivation will actually be an improvement to the hydrology of
the site.

The party was also a potluck and we had a great lunch out on the front
lawn. All in all it was a great day and talk of future planting/work
parties was met with great interest. We already know the task of the
next one (beans and squash) but I want to try to make it a monthly
occurrence, maybe switching up the day so people who can't make it
Sundays can come sometimes. And I want to develop the camping-music-
and-bonfire element, which was present in embryonic form last weekend
but can go much farther.

My friend Matt Crooks was there taking pictures while not planting
sunflowers, and as soon as I get my hands on some of those I will post
them here, an probably repeat some things I've said.