Farming Archives - magic is everywhere

Down on the farm

So I’m restarting my blog after a long layoff and I’m trying not to be a perfectionist about it.

I wrote some stuff, I wandered away, and now I’m writing stuff again.

This is fine because the world is still full of magic.

I know because I found my farm.

It’s 10 acres. It has a big bank barn that was built in the 1830s. The “new” part of the house also dates from the 1830s, and the original part – with the big cooking hearth – was built in 1800.

Basically it’s badass.

We’ve been here for about a year and a half and so far we have horses and chickens. Plus the dogs and cats, of course. I’ve discovered that as soon as you buy a farm everybody has adoptable animals for you. We’ve acquired two cats and two dogs this way (from separate people).

One day a random guy stopped on the side of the road and asked me if I could take a goat off him. It wasn’t his goat. It was just hanging around his yard and he couldn’t catch it. He said if I could catch it, I could take it.

What a sweet deal.

I thought hard about it, but then I lost their address, which he had scrawled down on a scrap of paper and I put in a random pocket. It’s just as well because random strangers offering goats by the side of he road is no basis for a system of government. Or something.

So 10 acres, a giant barn, a few other buildings, and a 1/4 acre established vineyard. That was a good start. We spent last winter renovating the house and adding run ins and a riding ring for the horses.

I’m settling in to the idea that I can have some peace now. My brain and heart are still set to chaos mode, so that’s harder than it sounds.

Still here, still figuring it all out.

November 22, 2024

Garden Update

And all this time, the garden has been doing its thing.

Gardening might be my favorite kind of magic because you do all the work up front. Then, one day, you go outside to enjoy the nice weather and surprise! You have veggies.

It’s been raining a lot where we are, and the weather turned cooler than normal, so even though it’s already September, we have a bajillion green tomatoes and only occasional red ones.

Green tomatoes — So many green cherry toms

We need a little heat wave please! Or at least a string of sunny days.

Meanwhile, we have beans! Remember those?

I was so excited when these guys sprouted!

And here they are!

The zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers are also doing well. Hoping for a harvest in the next few weeks.

September 2, 2021

Aggressive tomatoes

The cherry tomatoes are done messing around. They’re coming for us.

That’s just this morning’s haul. There are half a dozen more that will be ripe by the end of the day.

I also picked two raspberries, but my hands were full of tomatoes and too bad they went in my mouth.

Thanks pollinators!

August 26, 2021

Gardenia

Gentle reader, meet our long-awaited gardenia blossom. ❤️🌼

August 23, 2021

The beginnings of an orchard?

Get out your magnifying glass and check out this extreme closeup of our new orchard:

This is by far the craziest idea we’ve had so far. What would happen if I took this peach pit and stuck it in dirt? Would we get a peach tree? Like a for-real peach tree?

You guys, the world is full of magic.

Is that actually a peach seedling, or just some stray seed that got blown into the pot?

Only time will tell. Stay tuned!

August 21, 2021

First toms of 2021

They’re going on a salad tout de suite!

August 7, 2021

Veggie Update

The garden is going gangbusters! Here are my favorite shots:

You guys. There are plants and they’re growing! I’m so excited.

August 2, 2021

Prepping for seedlings

I am so excited about growing stuff. Like stupid excited.

About 10 days ago, I planted beans. What I mean is I actually put beans in the ground and covered them with dirt. Now they look like this:

Bean plants — Multi-colored beans grown from seeds

Take that, Jack!

(That was a Jack and the Beanstalk reference, in case you missed it.)

Filling the Pots

Anyway, John suggested that we use some of our 4 cubic yards of dirt to fill pots for next year’s seedlings. Brilliant! So I did it. Then I lined them up in trays and it looked so cool, I took a photo:

Seed pots — Pinterest-worthy shot of my seedling pots

Interlude

After I filled the pots, I left them on the grass and went back to working on the driveway.

La la la. Stuff happened. Here’s a cute photo of our dogs to pass the time:

The Horror

A little while later, the driveway was finished and John decided to park the truck on it.

Oh god. The humanity.

My screams could not penetrate the air conditioned comfort of the truck’s cab as he ran squarely over my pots.

Broken pots — Oh dear pots, my heart breaks for thee.

Squished!

Since eye-witness testimony is sketchy at best, I did a quick forensic evaluation, which I learned about from television. I submit that the tire tracks in this photo match the right front tire of the defendant’s RAM 1500 on all class characteristics. I also found 18 matching individual characteristics.

So basically, he’s dead.

No not really. I still love him, even though he squished the pots. He even suggested I take this photo to document the act for blogging purposes. You can see how weary and heartbroken I was by the coating of stone dust on my shoe.

I was able to salvage most of them, and even distributed the dirt from the tire-track pot to other pots that were mangled, but not fatally.

So here’s to future seedlings! You are the true survivors.

July 31, 2021

Dirt

So my husband ordered dirt.

A lot of dirt.

I’m told it’s “four cubic yards” of dirt. Which is much more than you think it is. Here’s a video I found that proves that:

A dump truck just like this dumped this amount of dirt on my driveway (but this is not my driveway).

He also ordered one ton of gravel. I always thought one ton was the same as 2,000 pounds but turns out it’s actually more like 47,000 pounds. I know because John and I personally moved all of it from one place to another with a shovel. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Space

Last fall, John and I pulled a Green Acres and moved to the country. At last we would have space for all the belongings that two people can possibly accumulate before finding each other later in life. (Our stuff had exceeded the capacity of our two-bedroom apartment and filled, not one, but two large storage spaces.)

Our new home is a 1930 Craftsman with full, unfinished basement and attic. It sits on about half an acre, with a large barn in back. Half an acre may not seem like much, but to former apartment dwellers like us, it’s expansive.

More important than the physical space, though, is the mental space. We’re both creative, introverted people and we needed a place for our energy to spread out without bumping into other people on all sides.

So we moved to the country. And we had plans. So many plans. We envisioned our large lot as a kind of practice farm, where we could hone our farming skills before buying a bigger, even more remote piece of property in about five years.

Why the dirt?

It started with a garden.

My parents had a big vegetable garden, and John had one for a time as well. We wanted to set aside part of the space to grow our own veggies. We decided to build some raised beds and plant with abandon. This, of course, required that we shovel the dirt into a cart and drag it halfway across the yard, load by load, to fill the beds.

Next, we wanted a wildflower garden. I’m a sucker for wildflowers. And of course I’m going to raise bees. Obviously. So we need pollen. This meant dragging even more carts of dirt to another spot in the yard. There’s progress on that (at least in the dragging dirt department):

These two projects, along with a few smaller planting beds and some pots for seedlings, made 4 cubic yards of dirt seem like a good idea. And it was! Not only did we get all these projects off to a grand start, but we grew new muscles in the process.

We couldn’t be more excited about our shiny new farming skills. And the beans. (Especially the beans!)

And the gravel? Well that’s a subject for another post.

July 31, 2021