Setting Up to Sell

So, in the garden the peas are barely up, the squash is trying hard, and we've got volunteer sunflowers from last year's seed.

Obviously I don't have anything to sell yet, but it's never too early to start planning.

Yes, my friends, I will be one of those people who sit in a lawn chair under an awning and sell watermelons from the back of the truck.  Well, kinda.  Actually not exactly.  We're shooting for something a little more classy than that.

Here's the '69 Dodge Sweptline farm truck, named "Champ" (by me) and "Rat F-ck the Wonder Truck" by Jeff, who has to work on it when it breaks down. It's the only one we have that's big enough to do what we want (and to haul all of the produce without a trailer):

Notice the rusty cattle racks.  They have to be painted white.  With a brush.  Urgh.  At least the truck is already green, a suitable color for a "farm stand".  The paint is faded and ugly but it works.  Of course I need to put "That Little Farm Stand" and "A Division of Sweetgum Farm" and "No Ripley Tomatoes" and our address/phone number on both doors, and on the tailgate.  With a brush.  Urgh.

Jeff and I think we're so very clever.  We're going to hang large, tilted shelves from both sides of the truck (via the cattle rack) to hold the flats of produce.  We're also going to put tarps out from each side to shade the produce and the customers.  (Of which there will be many, we have no doubt.)

The shelf idea will be great - until the melons come in.  Then I'm just going to have to sell 'em out of the bed of the truck.  Like all the other country folk do.  I love living in the South!

The Sky is Falling! The Chicks Are Coming!

Our first foray into raising meat chickens is officially underway.  We ordered 25 Cornish broiler hens from Meyer Hatchery.  We've read a lot of good things about them.  Cute little peeps:

Photo from MeyerHatchery.com

One reason the sky is falling is that the brooders haven't been set up.  One of them is up in the attic, full of remote-control cars & stuff that the last renter left. It's one of those huge plastic tubs.  The other is a 50 (or is it 75?) gallon aquarium that we've used with great success in the past.  I've only ever brooded 6 chicks at a time, so this is going to be interesting.

And although we do have brooder space for them, their pen isn't built yet.  Tomorrow we go to Lowe's with a materials list and Jeff's DD214 in hand; supposedly veterans get 10% off of everything. 

Of course, then we have to build it.  We have to cable tie the (invisible) 1/2" hardware cloth to the sides and top.  We estimate somewhere between 100 and 150 ties.  This build should be a rip-roaring joyride.  Me + Jeff + pipe + glue = lots of "oh, shit!".  Thanks to www.pvcplans.com for the plans! It's a chicken tractor (we'll be mounting the invisible wheels on the back) so there's no floor.  The girls get to peck at bugs and eat grass all day. Assuming they're interested; meat birds are lazy, lazy!  This is what an eat-poop-sleep machine looks like a week or so before slaughter:

Photo from MeyerHatchery.com

We can't sell the meat; these are for our freezer.  We have some practice with slaughtering so we shouldn't have any trouble setting up an area for it.  Once we've processed the birds, here's what we get:

Photo from finecooking.com

Mmmmm.  And by the way - you raise your own chickens, they taste like CHICKEN, not that bland stuff you buy at the grocer's that's been frozen-thawed-refrozen who knows how many times.

I think I'll go fix a chicken salad sandwich.

Pix of Sweet Gum Farm

OK, as I said in an earlier post Sweet Gum Farm has officially started the 2013 market garden for That Little Farm Stand!  

I've been distressed this winter because the weather just would not cooperate.  We couldn't get the cool-weather crops planted in February - the ground was too wet.  And just as it started to dry out, more rain.  Over and over again.  We finally got the English peas in the ground, but I'm afraid the weather is going to turn too warm too quickly for us to get a crop.  See our cute little plants?

The dark stuff is organic fertilizer.  The green stuff is not grass, (Dad, it's not grass!), it's an organic variety of oats that's supposed to provide some trellising for the bush peas.  And green manure.

 I still haven't decided whether to let some of the oats mature.  Hubby's giving some thought to how we can harvest them.  We'll have to do it by hand, but it may be worth it as organic, homegrown chicken feed.

Above is a shot of the garden plots, looking WSW.  The "North garden" is the part right in front of me.  The "South Garden" hasn't been worked yet in this pic.  You can barely see the road that goes between the gardens; look at the left end of the tilled areas.  On the far left is the S. garden.

With these two plots and two others that are fairly small, we'll have a bit over 1/4 acre in cultivation this year.

The structures are, from left to right, our house, the Big House, the garage and the barn.  Yep, it's a huge freakin' barn, almost 100 years old.

Above is a shot of the 40+ squash hills.  Three varieties.  We're going to be overrun with squash, I hope they sell!

Above is our homemade seed starting station, two sets of plastic shelving with lights and warming mats. Crammed into our 2nd bedroom-cum-office.  We have SOOOO many tomato plants - 65 total of three varieties, and 5 varieties to go!  I kind of went crazy (look at the top shelf!).  We can only grow what will grow well, and at our place we couldn't kill tomatoes if we tried.  They grow like crazy and produce like mad. 

Unfortunately we have some pretty strong local competition.  People around here go nuts for something called the "Ripley" tomato.  I can't figure out if it's an actual variety or if it's just tomatoes grown in and around the town of Ripley.  There's a festival dedicated to the damned things!  I hope some chefs cruise by our market stall and decide to try some of my heirlooms or the more unusual ones (like the white paste tomatoes called Cream Sausage).

And above is what's left of my basil.  Roscoe, the Cat from Hell, decided he wanted to sleep in the fragrant plants.  He squashed and killed the sweet basil on the left.  The Italian basil on the right survived.  Yes, I know it needs transplanting.  Badly.  So does everything else but last week we had six nights in a row in the 40s.  The soil (and the air, for that matter) isn't warm enough yet.

I never ever thought I'd find myself wishing for warm weather.  Warm weather around here usually means highs in the 90s...and the threat of heatstroke. 

The Garden Has Been Taken Over by....Grass!

Well, not really.

My ever-helpful Dad called me to task over the state of our garden.  It started with him rubbing his bald head, which he does when something's bothering him.  "What's up?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I really don't know how to put this..."  I said, "Whatever it is, spit it out.  It's OK."

Then he burst out with "It's your garden.  It's in terrible shape!  You need to do something about it or you're going to lose everything!".

Huh?, I thought.  Other than one clump of "bunch grass" at the end of the row of peas, the garden is weed-free.  Again, huh?

Then it dawned on me.  The oats we've planted for green manure are doing quite well between the rows of plantings.

I said, "Oh, you're talking about the oats, right?  Looks like grass?"

"Oats?" he said, bewildered.  "Can't be.  The stuff's about this tall!" and he held his hands about 10" apart.

"Yep," I said, "Those are the organic oats we're planting between all the rows this year.  To till under for green manure.  Remember?"

"Huh."  Pause.  "Well, the peas need the ground broken up around them.  That hard-packed crust is bad for them."  Notice the absence of response to the oats revelation.

"Yeah, you're right.  That hard crust isn't good for any of the plants."  Notice the lack of commitment to do something about the crust.

"I've got a [widget] you can use to break that up, you know." he offered, helpfully.  I can't remember what he called it. "It's got a wheel thing with teeth on it and you just push it along the row and it breaks up the earth so water can get to the plants.  It's in the barn, where I park the mower, look down the right side.  You'll see the handle, it's right there."

Hmmm.  Our clay soil holds so much water that I'm not sure I want even more getting down to the roots. But hey, he wants to help.

"Great!" I said.  "I'll do that."  Me, lying like a dog.

My Dad is not and never has been a vegetable farmer.  Plus, a lot of the info he has is way out of date.  I'm going to research the break-up-the-crust-around-the-plants issue, but I'm pretty sure I don't need to do that.

Of course, I could be wrong.  I frequently am - just ask my husband.

It's Official: The 2013 Garden is Under Way

Date: April 7, 2013

Although we've had starts going for over two months here at Sweet Gum Farm, I don't consider the garden officially underway until something is actually growing in the ground.  I've learned not to count my chickens, so to speak. Earlier this year about $80.00 worth of sprouted seed just keeled over and died.  All of the peppers, all of the herbs except some basil, and a couple of tomato varieties - just gone.

I cried.  Then I beat myself up:  "I'm just no good at this gardening sh-t!" and "I'm a baby (plant) murderer!".

Jeff came to the rescue, reassuring me that 1. peppers are finicky and therefore easy to kill, and 2. we got bad seed.  I've struck that company off my seed supplier list.  We actually had zero germination on one tomato variety and I contacted that seed company.  They sent me double the amount of seed as replacement, but they still didn't germinate very well.

We wanted to sell starts this year and I've got a few tomatoes to sell so I guess it's OK.  Plus I got a wild hair a couple of days ago and ordered more tomato seed (who can resist blue cherry tomatoes??) and 3 varieties of peppers.   Kinda late but, dang it, I've got to figure out how to start peppers.  We can't afford to buy starts when we're growing 150 to 225 row feet of plants!


Anyway, yesterday was gorgeous.  Sunny, breezy, high in the low 70s.  So we went outside and once again checked the soil.  It was STILL too wet to till!  So...we were confounded...what should we do since we can't plant anything??

We had a discussion about the volunteer mustard plants that were already flowering.  Chop them out with the machete?  Yep.  Hmm, me and a machete probably wasn't the safest combination, but I did OK.  Still have all of my fingers and toes.  I also found out that mustard plants have roots the size and density of turnips.  Are we sure these are mustard plants and not turnips??  Jeff said yes.  (Not that it mattered, they were coming out either way.)  I left a few for the little bees that were swarming around them.  They'll get turned under when we till.

Then we moved some dirt around, filling up low spots that had developed in the garden over the winter.  (yawn)  Fill in low spots - check.  Now what?

Well, last year SOMEBODY who shall remain nameless (OK, it was Dad) ran over one of our leader hoses with the mower, ripping the faucet fitting right out of the ground and destroying one of our irrigation timers.  To prevent such catastrophes this year, we're going to run both of the leaders through PVC pipe and bury them.  Asking SOMEBODY not to "help" just doesn't work so we have to Dad-proof as much as we can.  (No, he's not senile, just stubborn!)

BUT FIRST - here we go - we had to move Champ, our '69 Dodge pickup.  It doesn't run (naturally), so we had to move it with the tractor.  Before we could move the truck, though, we had to pick up a bunch of fence posts that had been left on the ground in front of it.  I had to go get Barney (our '94 Ford Ranger daily driver) to throw the posts into for relocation.  Remember, Lisa: sometimes you can't get there from here.  Translation:  you can never, ever just go do something on the farm.  There will always be a bunch of things you have to do before you can do the thing you want to do.  It's a corollary of Murphy's Law. For us anyway.


That list of things we had to do first was mercifully short. 

So Jeff got one of the trenches dug with the backhoe and ready for the hand work of leveling, etc.  The other one is going to have to be dug by hand altogether - can't get the tractor in there to do it.  Fortunately it's only about 12 feet long...

Today is overcast but not raining (thank God).  We're going to till a strip and plant lettuce whether the ground is dry enough or not!  I know, it's very late for lettuce, but we've had cool wet weather.  Maybe it will continue long enough for us to enjoy fresh, home-grown greens.

Cross your fingers!

PS:  We have English peas and their companion oats coming up:

The oats are a special variety, recommended as living trellis for the bush-type peas.  The oats will also provide green manure when we till them under later.  I'm dithering about letting some go to seed.  We can feed them to the chickens (that we don't have yet), but I don't know if I'll have time to hand-thresh them...?