Monthly Archives: April 2010

A common sight this time of year

If you were to fly over this part of northern Ohio at this time of year, you’d swoop down over broad patches of green and brown: greening woods and pastures interspersed with newly plowed fields.  It’s time for farmers to plow under the remains of last year’s crops — big plots of corn and soy residue, mostly — and to till the ground into a finer texture for this year’s planting.

Every morning when I drive out to the farm, I inevitably see at least one giant machine working its way slowly through a distant field, churning up dust.  And gradually, the landscape I pass on my journey is leveling out, ready for a new year’s growth to begin again.

While the no-till method has gained a great deal of attention in recent years, I confess I haven’t seen a whole lot of it applied in the areas I most frequent.  There are, of course, benefits to avoiding tilling — chiefly, the reduced loss of topsoil that occurs when dry earth is churned up.

However, the  no-till method often also involves the abundant use of herbicides, something that is not welcome in the organic farming methods I’m trying to learn.  Yes, there are organic versions of no-till; sorry, I am not an expert on them.  I myself have tried not to work the land too heavily each year in my own gardens, knowing that it’s best not to disturb that rich top layer too much, but tilling is still often the first step to preparing a new plot and creating better soil tilth.

No, I don’t really know a whole lot, which is another reason why I am trying to listen and to ask questions and to observe this year.

The walk-behind tiller

In an effort to boost the soil’s fertility, Dave uses cover cropping — using rye grass — to increase nitrogen levels, prevent erosion on sloping fields, suppress weeds, and improve the soil’s tilth.  And though rye grass can be crimped and left to wither while another crop is planted through it, I suspect that that method works better for grains than it does for specialty crops like vegetables.  So come spring, Dave heads out to till the fields that have rye grass, using either the walk-behind tiller for small areas or the tiller attached to the tractor for larger plots.

Over the past week or two, he has had to till a couple of areas twice, just to work the rye grass under and to break up some of the remaining soil clumps, before we could move in and plant potatoes.  But the results have been worth it, as the tilling has left behind soil that is easily worked by hand.  (Since we’re doing the planting all by hand, often on hands and knees, that is a definite plus.)

New garden after first tilling

So in discussing garden plans with my friend Jen, we agreed that a thorough tilling of the plot we wanted to use would be a good first step.  The area hadn’t seen a cover crop, of course, but tilling did help to break up the sod and loosen the soil for us.  I requested a second tilling for the area we have earmarked for potatoes, so soon I think we’ll start planting.  (I’ll also be bringing in a truck load of compost to help give us a better start, since we don’t have the advantage of the years of increasing soil fertility and tilth that Dave has on his farm.)

Taking time to enjoy the world

After all that hard work of tilling — none of which I actually did — it seemed appropriate to spend one day’s lunch break at the farm lolling in the grass and looking up at the beautiful blue sky, appreciating the wonders around me and being thankful that I finally took this step toward farming.  My farming hero, Gene Logsdon, has expressed in his writing many times the sentiment that if you don’t have time to lounge in a hammock on your farm and appreciate what all is around you, you’re doing it wrong.  Today, I did it right.

And I’ll be hard at work again soon enough.

Is it lawn or is it a field crop?

This might look like a piece of lawn to you, grass dotted with weeds (or wild edibles, depending on your point of view).  It’s not.  Well, it is, but on Dave’s farm, it’s more than that: it’s a crop.

See, Dave found inspiration some years ago in the classic book The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, in which the author farmed with as little outside input into the farming cycle as possible.  Fukuoka had straw available on his farm, and using it for mulch kept it from becoming “waste” as well as held moisture on the fields and reduced the impact of weeds.

Dave doesn’t grow the big grain crops that would yield a fine harvest of straw, but he does have a few acres of grassy hills and avenues.  So, when he mows, he gathers up the cut grass and piles it up next to his plots and fields in order to mulch the growing vegetables.

Field #3, fully planted and mulched

Now that I’m working for him, of course, that means that I am the one who gets to spread a lot of mulch.  And so I do.

After transplanting seedlings from the greenhouse to field #3 last week, he mowed around the field and in between rows, scattering the cut grass over the kohlrabi, pac choi, radish, beet, and spinach seedlings.

Neat rows of pac choi, mulched

Everywhere I plant and water new seedlings, I follow up with a layer of fine grass clippings, tucked around the individual plants and hosed down to keep the grass from drying out and blowing away.

Garlic gets a new layer of fresh grass clippings

Even older crops — such as this hardneck garlic planted in the fall, long before I came to the farm — are getting an extra thick layer of mulch as springtime weeds start to poke through the old layer.

Of course, I’ve known that mulch is a wonderful thing to use in the garden to conserve water and to protect the plants, but I had never been very consistent about applying it on my own plots.  Not this year.

Strawberry "babies" tucked in for protection while they grow

After planting garlic last fall, I mulched the area thoroughly.  But this year, especially in garden #1, where we had a leftover bale of straw to use, I’ve mulched after every planting.  I picked up strawberry starts from a friend on Saturday and planted them here yesterday, tucking straw around every plant.  It’s not as neat and complete as the grass mulch, but until we start getting a pile of grass clippings for this garden, it will have to do.

And that’s just the point: you use what you’ve got.  Fukuoka had straw.  Dave has grass.  Right now I’ve got straw and will hope to use grass later, but I could also use the newspapers that have piled up at home or matted leaves from last fall.  All of them help.

It’s definitely better than nothing.

Kohlrabi and other seedlings, rarin' to go

Now that April is here, everything is picking up speed for the growing season.  The seedlings in the greenhouse are growing lush in some cases and slightly more delicately in others, and it’s time to start planting, whether by seed or by seedling.

That means, it’s time for some serious physical labor.

Once the soil started to dry out two weeks ago — with sunshine and warmer weather aiding in the process — I started some heavy duty (for me) work at the farm.  It started with cleanup: Dave wanted me to clear out the seedbeds in field #3 to prepare for tilling and the first seedlings, and I cleaned out all four beds of leftover kohlrabi, leeks, beets, and other rotting goodies.  Before that day ended, we cleaned out a couple rows of stubborn kale plants in field #2 — truly a back-aching effort.

Feeling the pinch of the sciatic nerve and some serious aches and pains after that day’s work, I headed home for stretches, relaxation, and either a solid dose of ibuprofen or a drink.  The next day, I had a bit of a respite as we pruned grapevines, but I was pleased to note that even before we started work, my back felt a good deal better than the day before.

Future garden space in the new garden #3

Once the weekend arrived, though, the physical labor piled back on again.  I had agreed to work with my friend Jen to create a large garden at her place this year — partly to get her started gardening and partly to have a large place for my own crops.  She had plenty of room and a couple of weedy patches that had evidently served as garden space before, but we needed to clear out the brush and the weed trees first.

Not me, but the same kind of back-breaking tree-uprooting that I did

At first, it wasn’t much out of the ordinary.  Bending over to scrape up brush or to pull dried weeds, carrying bundles of dead organic matter to a brush piled, I felt slight pulls in my back, but nothing too horrendous.  Then we turned our attention to those accursed weed trees.  Jen’s in-laws tackled the larger ones with tow chain and then tractor, but we also labored to dig up and yank out the smaller ones.  That — and a tumble or two onto my rear end when the release came unexpectedly — definitely left me sore.

So what did I do?  I headed to garden #2 and dug trenches to plant potatoes, then sowed seeds for beets, peas, lettuce, radishes, and pac choi.  Yes, after that, I headed home, did my stretches, nursed my back a little — and then went out dancing that night.

The next day, I took grapevines to the Farm and bent over for two hours planting, backfilling, watering, and mulching them.  At least by this point, my back muscles were becoming more accustomed to the work, and the pauses and stretches that I included in the work helped me to avoid having my muscles bunch up too much.

First two rows of kohlrabi seedlings planted at the farm, April 5

“No rest for the wicked,” they say, and I must be a terrible person because I went from hard work all weekend to three days of planting seedlings back at Dave’s farm.  This allowed me to kneel or sit while I planted, but even so, I ached at the end of each day (though a little less every day).  By the end of my three-day work week, I had planted seedlings from about a dozen flats of kohlrabi, two flats of turnips, four flats of radishes, and perhaps half a dozen of pac choi, filling field #5 and the better part of field #3.

Each day it feels like I’m getting a little stronger — or at least balancing the physical labor with better stretches or more sensible breathers.  Each evening I have less significant back pain (or any other pain: neck, shoulder, arm, hand, wrist, thigh, calf, foot, you get the picture) and rely less on either pain relievers or a relaxing drink.  I’m nowhere near ripped and perfectly toned — but on the other hand, I’m not the cream puff I thought I was.  It’s satisfying to know that if I can pace myself and adapt my movements to what works best for me, I can work hard and get quite a bit done without feeling completely wiped out or racked up in pain at the end of it all.

It’s early in the season yet, and there’s plenty more physical work to be done.  I’ll be juggling increased hours at the farm, a day and a half of baking and delivery, work in three gardens, and heaven only knows what else, so I don’t expect to put my feet up and relax my way through summer.  But so far, I’m meeting the challenge and finding a way to adapt to a more physical way of life.

That may turn out to be my proudest achievement this entire year.

The original family grapevines, pruned for the season

Last week, my apprenticeship took me out of the greenhouse in gorgeously sunny spring weather as Dave showed me how to prune grapevines.

His vines have a history: two of the three varieties came from his German cousin, who tended and nurtured them for decades.  A number of years ago, the cousin gave Dave many cuttings, which Dave then planted in two rows south of the greenhouse on his farm.  The varieties are red and white, names unknown, sweet grapes that sound like they are good for eating as well as for making juice or jelly.

The third variety, a White Catawba, had a more mundane origin and was planted on the other side of the chicken pen.  But while these vines may not have the sentimental appeal of the family grapes, they have more familiarity for me since Catawba is one of the main grape varieties that has been grown in northern Ohio for many years.  A well-known representative of the labrusca or “fox” grapes, something I’ve written about before, the Catawba grape has a flavor that tastes like “home” to me.

I watched carefully as Dave selected offshoots from the main vines to prune, either knowing that the branch was dead and not worth keeping or choosing a length with enough buds to be a viable cutting for starting new vines.  He worked his way around each main vine with methodical care, instructing me where to tie some vines to the wires to train them for the next year.

Finally, by the time we reached the last row of grapes, he was ready for a break — and I was ready to take over the pruning.  He handed me the pruners and walked away.  I focused on the vines, trying to visualize their growth as he did, and pruned away the dead pieces and added more cuttings to the bucket.  When he returned, he looked it over — and declared it good.

I am sure I will have many noteworthy accomplishments in my apprenticeship this year, but this easily tops anything to date.  I pruned grapevines!

Cuttings ready to plant

The bucket of cuttings, then, were handed to me.  Since Dave wasn’t ready to plant more on his farm, he offered them to me, if I had a place to start my own grapevines.  And I did.

My dear friend Keith comes from a “farm” a couple counties away, and though the land there hasn’t really been worked as a farm as we know it, his brother and sister-in-law (the owners now, though not in residence) are interested in adding gardens and fruit crops to the land.  So I suggested to him that we plant the grapevines there, and after consulting with his sister-in-law, he showed me the slope where he had laid out the rows.

Four of us worked on the project: Keith wielded Dave’s planting tool, a long sharpened metal pole with a handle, used to poke and widen a deep hole in the ground; Peg and her friend Mary followed and stuck the cuttings into the holes, with two buds below the surface; and I came along last and backfilled the holes with sand.

Three rows of new grapevines

We ended up with three sixty-foot rows, one per variety, and after I watered each of the cuttings, we covered the rows with a thick layer of straw for mulch.  Since this slope gets full sun and is in the path of the mower, we knew we’d need to protect the vines while they settle in.  Sometime yet this spring or early summer, we’ll go through and set posts and run wires for the trellising needed for the grapevines to grow.

I’m sure I’ll learn more about viticulture from Dave as the season progresses.  I expect we’ll lose some of the cuttings, based on what he has told me, but I hope we’ll end up with a good healthy set of vines to provide us with tasty grapes for years to come.