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05/10/2007: "Reaching for the Sky"

A few things around the farm, at any rate! The corn has started to poke out of the ground. It'll be fun to watch the neat little rows spring up, then long leaves unfurl. But the upward growth has started!


More growing things.....

The garlic is looking spectacular. I'm really enjoying the sight of 75 row feet of garlic marching along. That's a lot of garlic bread.


This is a close up of a head of winter barley. Our modest row is heading out and is something beautiful indeed. It's a "six row" variety of hull-less winter barley that Nate planted in the fall. It's a rice or wheat substitute that'd we'd be interested in trying out. But first we need to increase our numbers, so these seeds will be used for next fall's crop. I'm also eyeing it for home grown beer!!


Nate learned something interesting about cold frames. When it's really windy out, even on bright sunny days, the heavy glass can fall over. Noone was hurt, and the plants are just fine too. We had another window that matched the one that broke, and Nate's aware that he cannot prop the cold frame lid up that high.


We learned a few things about the cow too; she can indeed get fatter without popping. Her official first day of full term was yesterday. So anytime between now and August she could deliver us a little calf. We're confident that she'll deliver the calf on her own without any assistance from us, but we're still feeling like anxious new parents.


We also learned that she likes apple tree leaves. I think it's kind of like a dessert for her. After a hard day of mowing the grass in the orchard, she stood under a tree and languidly peeled the leaves from the lower branches. This was a rather nice feature for the taller trees, as that it cleared the lower branches for walking and manuevering. It was not so fortunate for this little apple tree, which is bare of leaves except for a few at the very top. We discovered this before she had a chance to nibble on the young pear tree Kurt planted last year. We fastened a cattle panel around it and she was content to just look.


So this is the new garden. I'm standing in the north west corner in this photo. You can see the cloche near the middle of the picture. It's a cover of ventilated plastic propped up on metal hoops. In theory, it will help concentrate solar warmth into the area it covers, giving it a mini greenhouse effect. The upshot is that it should allow us to have nice early melons. And in the summer, Nate's world revolves around melons. The lumps you see in the field are markers for where Nate planted the squash. I can't wait to see them come up!


In other news, I am recently employed with an agricultural consulting agency in the valley. I'm going around to major industrial farms and surveying for insect pests. Today, for example, I visited filbert (hazelnut) orchards, strawberry fields, and marionberry yards searching for their major pests. It's a job that utilizes my science background, gets me out in the field, and has some very handy information for identifying pests on the farm. The mixed blessing of this job is that it's ALOT of hours, so I'll be relying on Nate to take pictures and perhaps write up posts as the summer gets into full swing for us both. So hang in there. The posts may be fewer, but longer!