Farm within a farm

Thank you, thank you, one thousand times thank you to Melanie Plies, farmer at Backyard Bounty.  She has generous loaned me 240 square feet to further my farm dreams.   In return I give her my willing labor: a small price to pay to be around her boisterous spirit and eat her delicious farm lunches.

My little row sits just east of a gorgeous wall of flowering brassica.  In front you see bulbing fennel followed by arugula.  The long rows of green in the back are new radishes that I just finished thinning.  (More detailed photos to come!)

Backyard Bounty has been a wonderful inspiration to me and I'm so grateful that I get to work there again this year.  Working out there has taught me the wonderful lesson that we all have the power to manifest our dreams.  You can visit Melanie's website at backyardbountypdx.wordpress.com.

Taking Advantage of a Nice Day

There is so much work to be done in April- row and bed prep, transplanting, clearing, digging.  It's hard to motivate during this last month of cold and rain, so using these sporadic nice days is an intrinsic part of farming.
After repotting kale, broccoli, and cabbage seedlings, and hardening them off, they're ready to go in the ground.  This feels like such a triumph!  Weeks of coddling and checking on them result in a tender transplant and then they're left to their own devices.  (Insert metaphor of a parent sending a child off to college here.)  Beets, chard, radishes, and carrots also got direct sown this past week.  Hopefully the rain will keep up enough to wet them down, but not drown them.

  I'm dreaming of the days when I'll don my sun hat....

Poop!

Getting ready for Spring!  Dirk helped me load up this horse manure.  We got it for free from some stables in deepest Gresham.

Nettles!

Thistle Top Farm will also be providing wildcrafted and foraged herbs, greens, and fruit whenever possible!  February celebrates one of the first new edible plants:  Nettles!  I suggest the simplest recipe: nettle tea with mint or ginger.  Enjoy!

First Sowing!

On February 17th, I sowed kale, arugula, lettuce, broccoli, red and yellow onions, and cabbage.  These will be transplanted in late March and hopefully will be ready for harvest in May.  They'll comprise the first  CSA boxes which will also include peas, radish, mustard greens, and possibly chard which will all be sown directly into the soil.  Hopefully my lettuce will soon look like this:  

Winter on the farm

Spring 2011 will be Thistle Top's first year, so there is much preparation to be done in anticipation of spring.  There was a tilling (mis)adventure that happened later in the year than I would have liked so the Crimson Clover cover crop is still just a bunch of baby sprouts, but it's better than nothing!  Everything else is bunkered down for the cold and rain and will get double dug or tilled in the spring with a little bit of compost or chicken poop.  Here is the bed of future carrots:

 Baby clover!

 Hibernating bees!

 Future potato bed in St. John's.