It's all Growing!

Including the weeds!
We're just about staying ahead of the weeds in most beds.  Though it has been challenging.  This particular field has not been regularly cropped, in like decades, so there are plenty of weed seeds.   But hey, those peppers are ahead of the game!  Drip tape is the black stuff off to the left.  I have to pull it out of the beds before I do tractor cultivation.  It's a little fiddly, but the cultivation really works nicely.

Here's an overview of the main field right now!  And the hoop houses.  From foreground to background: Buckwheat, tomatoes, brassicas, pepers, Garlic and other stuff you can't see after that.

Onions! and Brussels sprouts.

Here's the Super A in wheel track cultivation mode.  I also put down a third tine to go between rows later on in the day.  It's not as close cultivating as using the belly mounted cultivators, (removed in this picture) but it can go very quick and is a bit less scary from the driver's perspective.  (OMG!  I'm going to uproot all my plants!)  I'll get better.

Brassicas after path cultivation 

Buckwheat cover crop before.  Note one bed closest tomato stakes.  That one got fish meal.  Yep, the  it's working.  Patch to the back and right is a bit damp, so it's not growing quite as well.

One pass with discs, and it's just about incorporated.  I'll wait a few days and give it another pass, then it will be ready for a fall planting of... lettuce?  brassicas? Still pondering that one.

Bowdoinham Open Farm Day

This Sunday is Bowdoinham's Open Farm Day!

Come tour Blue Bell Farm and other great farms in town and cap the evening off with some great local food down at the waterfront. 

At Blue Bell you can check out how we grow tomatoes and cukes in the hoop house, feed the chickens and wander to the beautiful back field.  There is a great path around the back field, birders bring your binos!  

June

MOO!  We'll wait for you!  Fix your damn machine.

Maine's own organic milk shut down because of ancient packaging equipment, but they're looking into some new gear to keep the milk flowing.  Tell them what you think!

https://www.facebook.com/MainesOwnOrganic/posts/10152084004181010

Not too much that can go wrong with my packaging equipment: Ye olde plastic bag.

The hoophouses have been producing some excellent salad greens.

Brassicas to the field! 

A little bit late, but I'm working up this field from sod this spring with no rototiller.  Disc, Disc, Disc.  It's working!

Mulchfest crew celebrating a job well done.

Intrepid friends from away came up to spread several truckloads of woodchips on an acre of perennials.  Thanks guys!

Pickin' rocks.

My Gravely brush hog decided to start acting up just when the grass began to grow like mad.  This was was what I stared at for a few evenings.

cylinder head removed for cleaning for the first time in ~40 years.

Ahh, all better.  But, spoiler alert, cleaning the valve stems and seats did not fix my problem... At least I got it put back together so it was running again!  Now to diagnose the fuel pump.

There's STILL farm stuff in cape elizabeth.  One truckload at a time it's making it's way up to Bowdoinham.

Spring!

 Spring Rains with intermittent sunshine = Rainbow in the front field

The hoophouse has greens in full swing.

A friend in town made a toolbar for the Super A.  I'll bolt on various harrows and hilling discs as necessary.  Amazingly, the tractor used to be that same shade of red...

The garlic is up!

Pulling a single bottom plow for the first time. Worked ok.

Seedlings of all types are coming along.  We're off!

Winter Preparations

During the colder months, I was able to do some work on the machines.  The Super A needed a new clutch.  So that involved splitting the tractor into two pieces.  What?!  It's one of the more invasive procedures I think you can do on this tractor.  Just about everything else is bolted on the side of the engine within easy reach.  Working on this rig makes me nostalgic for the days when everything was built sturdier and simpler...Though the copious oil and grease does not.  Everything went back together and it all works again!  Whew.  Now we're working on extending the wheelbase.  Most bolts on this have not been touched in 60 years, so if you want to unscrew something, you plan 3 days ahead to allow an appropriate WD-40 bath. 

Another project was building a seed germination table.  Some incandescent rope light, coiled about works pretty well.

I put some reflective bubble wrap type insulation behind it in hopes of better efficiency.  Later on I added a 2nd run of rope light parallel with this one.  it now keeps a flat of soil at a pleasant 70 degrees in the hoophouse.

We added some soil amendments to the hoophouse.  Hi calcium lime, and fishmeal.  mmmm

And here's my daily farming buddy.  1 year later picking up our Fedco order again.

Obligatory father daughter Carhartt picture

Where you been?

I've been keeping my fingers crossed, and now...

We're on a farm!

It's been I don't know how many years in the works.  But we've finally landed.  I didn't want to jinx anything during the process, but Bowdoinham, Maine is now home.  It feels like we're just emerging from a haze of paperwork, moving, selling, cleaning, digging, planning...  To summarize the last 12 months: Got married, had a baby, sold a house, bought a farm, negotiated an easement, moved an apartment, moved a farm.  Hello.

What made the purchase of the farm possible was help from the Maine Farmland Trust.  They got me connected with the landowner and ultimately purchased an easement to keep this working farmland.  This brought the price within our range and it's providing long term stewardship to a large parcel of land.   See that first picture?  That back field is always going to look like that.  No housing development, no golf course, landfill, etc.  Just great farmland.  Farm infrastructure can of course be constructed, but we're keeping that in the "farmstead area" (not in that field) which will be an excellent guide to keep buildings in an efficiently clustered design.

The front field has the bulk of the infrastructure now.  There is a 30'x72' high tunnel, and a 20' seedling house already, plus an amazing array of perennials (for later discussion).

Anyway, speaking of infrastructure, what were we moving?

 We packed up the chicken coop in Northfield...

...and the coop in Cape Elizabeth 

Disassembled the hoop house in Cape Elizabeth 

Conscripted friends to coil irrigation pipe...

...and lug giant water tanks.

 Crammed perennials into the truck

We had compost delivered by a big yellow dump truck

(Future site of the Cape Elizabeth hoop house)

And hunkered down for winter 

Until we had to un-hunker with the Gravely snowblower (check out the distance on that thing!) 

There was a bit of XC skiing this winter, 

and adoption of Charlie's Tractor! 

(1949 Farmall Super A)

All of it brought to home sweet home 

Winter has been good.