While we’ve been drowning in the city, our farm was weathering a 10-day drought in the Catskills–not a drop of rain for the first week and a half of June. But we seem to be sitting on a series of springs up there, and our plants have starting coming up even without rain: beet greens are shin-high, peas are begining to creep up the trellises, and radishes are literally popping out of the ground.
We’ve got some of those radishes and bushels of lettuces in the kitchen this week–heritage Tom Thumb lettuce, sturdy Parris Island romaine, arugula and mustard greens that survived an attack of the flea beetle in addition to that dry spell.
We’re off to the races, at any rate: now we’re just trying to get the fence up before the deer notice the salad bar we’ve grown them.
When it Rains
Mother's Day
We’re growing on several fronts this month: the farm is coming along, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Ann and Maggie:
There’s also a little box garden at the restaurant, as much as a reminder of what we’re around for as for eating—though the lettuce is all ready to eat and is delicious. In spite of having been sat on by neighborly drunks who think a ranunculus looks like a good place to perch for a smoke.
On our apartment roof, some seedlings are taking advantage of greenhouse-like conditions in Brooklyn and a sea of blinding silver tar paint to get a head-start on the season:
We’re also growing a baby who’s about to hatch, with any luck on this here mother’s day, of whom pictures will surely follow.
Mother’s Day
We're growing on several fronts this month: the farm is coming along, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Ann and Maggie:
There’s also a little box garden at the restaurant, as much as a reminder of what we’re around for as for eating—though the lettuce is all ready to eat and is delicious. In spite of having been sat on by neighborly drunks who think a ranunculus looks like a good place to perch for a smoke.
On our apartment roof, some seedlings are taking advantage of greenhouse-like conditions in Brooklyn and a sea of blinding silver tar paint to get a head-start on the season:
We’re also growing a baby who’s about to hatch, with any luck on this here mother’s day, of whom pictures will surely follow.
Muck
There are swaths of ground where if you stand still you can hear water running just under the grass: I don’t know if it’s channeling through mole tunnels or over stacks of underground stone, but it sounds very much like the edges of the marsh at home in South Carolina where you can hear crabs and oysters spitting and scurrying over the mud when the tide is out. The similarities extend to the consistency of that mud, at least last week, when our dirt was saturated enough that our 3-year-old farmhand sank in to the top of her bumblebee rainboots. It doesn’t smell as bad as pluff, but it’s got sticking power.
The kitchen garden is the only thoroughly dry spot in our yard right now, so we’ve just expanded it to get a little more early seed in: kale, leeks, snap peas, lettuces, beets, radishes. About an eighth of the upper field is tilled and should be ready to plant this week, thanks to a long spell of dry sunny weather. I guess we’ll till and plant the rest of it as the subterranean rivers wither up.
In lieu of sinking through the grass up to our knees, we’ve been working on some side projects: a barn that once housed 55 rescued stray cats in palatial splendor (and acres of carpet) will, we hope, soon become a very rudimentary bunkhouse for egg refugees and friends who are up to help out. Failing that, it will become a great hall for a ping-pong table. And possibly a beer fridge.
In Gear
It felt like winter would never end, and like waiting would never cease, and then suddenly the ground that was frozen a week ago is percolating snowmelt and begging for onion sets and carrot seeds. We have a new dirt mover and a bid for a giant deer fence coming in and we are finally, officially, off to the races.
We’ve planned an 8 plot garden for the year, which will accommodate an 8-year rotation. We’re looking in to getting ducks: any suggestions? We’re aiming for half an acre this year, which sounds like nothing. But when I’m standing in the corner of the field looking out and imagining it all tilled, hilled, and sprouting, I wonder how anyone ever got the nerve to go bigger.
Somewhere, Under all that Snow
Something is going on, I’m sure: water crystallizing and breaking up little clods of soil; near-dormant bacteria slowly converting crude organic matter into more basic elements; worms dreaming of humus in Guadaloupe.
But above this foot-thick blanket of snow, we’re thinking about seed catalogs, tillers, deer fencing and anticipating the day late next spring when we’ll wonder what we did with our downtime this winter.
Slow Growth is Good Growth
The barren garden has suddenly sprung to life and is choked with tomatoes. Five lettuce seedlings out of the twenty I brought up from our apartment in Brooklyn survived and yielded exactly two salads. Mustard and arugula are bolted and gone, replanted with lola rosso and butterhead. It seems what these gardens needed more than compost (they needed that too) was patience.
Whether we can translate anything we’ve learned (what have we learned?) into a plot 100 times the size of these test gardens remains to be seen. I’ve been spending a lot of time staring at our fate:
Project List
When we closed on the farm in December, I envisioned a field full of ripening tomatoes and feathery lettuces by this time of year. Instead we have one large overgrown meadow and two small patches of scrappy peas and overgrown sunflowers. I knew getting things planted would be more work than I could anticipate, and I guess I was right. So here are the things I’d like to do before next spring so that we have everything in order for next year’s planting:
- get soil tested
- mow and dig under the meadow (so the overgrowth this year can fertilize the soil over winter)
- dig in fenceposts for deer fencing
- repair electric fence around the pasture
- clean out the barn
- propagate apples
- fix well pump in pasture and set up irrigation system
- learn something about planting
Are we forgetting anything? Want to help?
Garden Gnomes
Not much to report on the garden front after this trip. Kale, mustard, and arugula are all growing well; sunflowers are frighteningly large; tomatoes and peas are coming along. Still no sign of chard, and our lettuce seems to be fattening the slugs alone.
We did discover a couple of blackberry bushes in the yard this visit, though.
Farm, June
Here’s some of what’s going on at our farm in Oak Hill, New York:
The apple trees are full of young fruit.
As is the cherry tree.
The test garden I worked compost in to is growing pretty well. We’ve got arugula, mustard, snap peas, and kale all looking strong:
I didn’t do anything to improve the soil in the other test garden, and consequently it looks like a desert:
