Category: Farming

The Would-Be Farm: Mulch

1/27/2020

Ah, mulch.

Mulch is the collective noun for material that evolves into actual soil. It's organic material (leaves! bark! wood-chips!) that gets defined by function: it's used to protect tender plants, and add good stuff to the soil. By etymology, it comes from a word for "soft."

Wood chips are my preferred mulch at the Farm.

Neem oil in hand, she stalks the orchard...

It's super-neat-o how it works: you apply a layer of wood chips around the base of your plant.

It smothers weeds and –– rather faster than you might imagine –– the mulch turns into rich, light soil in a sweet ring around around young fruit trees and asparagus.

The mulch provides extra insulation over the winter, and gives emerging plants a little additional opportunity to stay safe in the chancy spring weather.

Mixed in with the native clay of at the Farm, these wood chips (plus whatever other amendments we can find) are the start of the most important rehabilitation of the farm: the ground.

First, understand that soil is made up of two things: minerals and organic material. Minerals can be in the form of a very fine grind like espresso, which makes for heavy clay soil, or a more coarse grind (sand), all the way up to, of course, solid rock.

The organic component includes leaves, roots, decaying matter plus soil microbes and other busy little creatures under the surface.

There's an ideal mix of minerals and organic material, and it's rare to find it –– especially on a neglected old dairy farm like the Would-Be. The very best soil is rich, airy, full of nutrition and microbial life.

Unlike most of the ground around the Farm.

First line of remedy: a compost pile.

The Would-Be Farm's main compost heap is slightly disguised by a stack of logs.

Where else to pitch coffee grounds and carrot peelings and used chicken bedding from the neighbors' coop?

Where else to pile grass clippings and weeds?

I took an actual composing class a few years ago. I'm not an expert, though I am a believer. Long story short: a smart gardener just keeps heaping stuff onto the compost pile, turning it from time to time, and using the finished, good-looking stuff from the bottom of the pile to improve the soil under the plants.

Lucky for my trees, a friend had an enormous pile of chipped tree –– the remains of a big ole maple –– to share for mulching purposes.

Truckload by squatting truckload, we've conveyed chips to the farm over the past couple of years. I used square yards of it to coddle my young trees and the asparagus. A few chips made it into the compost heap, along with mule-loads of grass clippings and eggshells.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Even the remains of a big ole maple.

With chips thin on the ground that autumn, I toted a couple of bales of straw to the farm to bed things down for the winter.

Always an experiment.

I figured straw was a better option than hay.

The terms are used interchangeably by some: after all, both are some sort of dry vegetation that come packaged in bale form and are used in animal husbandry.

But straw (like the plastic ones we now think of first), is generally the hollow, dry, stalk of an oat or wheat plant. The middle of the plant. Hay, meanwhile, is the tops of various grasses and plants –– cut green and allowed to dry. Hay might include clover, timothy, broom, alfalfa, and any manner of meadow plants.

Naturally, hay is full of flower-heads. Any gardener will tell you, the point of flowers is seed. So if you aim to smother weeds (and weeds are just plants growing where you don't want them to grow), you do NOT want to spread flower-heads around.

Ipso dipso facto macto, you'd think straw would be a pretty solid choice to protect plants and not compete with the resources at root...

Surprise surprise surprise.

The wheat straw made a miraculous rise from the cold soil this spring.

Instead of simply blanketing my sleeping plants and giving itself over to the forces of bacteria and mushrooms, the straw followed its own generative agenda.

Full disclosure: It did seem odd to see actual heads of wheat in the bale last fall, but I didn't take the time to investigate.

It's always hurry-up time when the cold weather is coming.

Alas.

via GIPHY

Wheat is a lovely crop. I am not knocking wheat. I'm good with gluten, and I admire wheaten gold waving on an autumn field.

But as a crop, it's not a good match for the Would Be Farm. Or a good mulch. I'm guessing it will continue to pop up around my daffodils and plum trees for years. Probably not enough, however, for even a single loaf of artisanal, hand-ground-grain bread.

I vowed not to be caught chipless again. I've been checking Craig's List a little too regularly. So far, none of the chippers are just right for our needs.

Until I find the appropriate tractor-powered equipment –– somewhere between "wimpy" and "Fargo" sized––I am obliged to hunt chips where I may. The county maintenance guys have not panned out, nor is there a lively tree-service economy nearby.

Sadly, in June, I ended up paying good money for a truck-load of funky, treated commercial stuff from the local wood-pellet operation.

via GIPHY

In the parlance of our friend Curt, the going rate for a pickup truck-load of dark brown landscaper's friend is a pizza and a half.

I'd rather have the pizza and make my own dang chips, but as Mumsie used to say, if wishes were horses, and horses could fly, there'd be nothing but horses in the sky...

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The Way-Back Machine: A Natural Bridge

10/21/2019

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I recently re-discovered this tale I wrote in the early 2000's. This adventure pre-dates the Would-Be Farm (though I was dreaming about it back then!) and some of the principals are no longer with us, but here it is, a retread road-trip...

I'd been helping my sister Sarah fix up her first place up North –– after a long break away from the North Country –– when we decided to spend a day away from the project.

I was in the market for some land, imagining (perhaps foolishly) that I could purchase a chunk of attractive brush with some water feature that would keep Mr. Linton and me happily occupied for the next few decades of summertime vacation.

Turns out, of course, that there are many chunks of brush, some attractive, a few with water features, but almost none in my small price-range offered by anyone actually willing to close a deal.

Anyway, it gave me a nifty excuse for pottering around the back roads of rural Northern New York State.

A classmate from high school was a real-estate agent, and although she was out of town on vacation that week, she had provided me with a stack of property listings to look at. On our day off, my sister and I set a goal of checking out a couple of those places (disappointing: peaceful retreats are rarely located within ear-shot of Fort Drum’s gunnery range).

After the unproductive real estate perambulations, our thoughts turned to something more rewarding. For years, we had heard about the reputed natural bridge over Perch River outside of the village of Dexter.

Even though we’d lived in the area for years, and I had ridden my horse all over that particular corner of creation as a young dandelion, this geographical wonder was unknown to us.

Sarah and I had talked about taking the kayaks up the Perch River, but she'd wracked her arm in a nasty boating accident involving a cleat, a big wake, and her elbow (yarg) earlier in the summer.

We looked at the big gazetteer map of New York, and lo and behold “natural bridge” was right THERE in small print, where the thin thread of Perch River took a stitch underground.

So that's where we headed.

I was driving down Middle Road. My sister was navigating and she said, "Hey, turn here."

A mailbox marked the turn, and I said, "Sis, come on, this is someone’s driveway."

Implacable, she repeated, "Turn in."

The driveway was long and twisty and really private. A few yards farther along, a deer stand loomed over a field. I said, "Sis, they hunt."

She said, "Keep going."

With no place to turn around –– and I didn’t like to back up around the curved driveway –– I kept going.

A few yards later, a big carved black bear held a “Welcome Friends” sign.

My sister pointed and said, "But look, they are friendly!"

"Yeah, but it’s someone’s driveway, sis...This could go very badly."

She said, "Look, there’s a spot. Park the car. Don’t be a candy-ass."

I did as she directed, since she is the older sister.

And we got out of the car with our water bottles and our hiking boots and all we heard was birdsong, wind in the treetops, and the whine of a distant chainsaw.

We consulted the map and oriented ourselves toward the river. We were preparing to trespass.

She’s like, "Okay, here’s our story: We are here looking for a friend from high school, and have gotten turned around somehow."

The sound of the chainsaw drew suddenly much closer. I though, gosh, maybe I should have availed myself of the facilities when we stopped at the library in Dexter.

Then a voice: "Helloooo!"

We stopped in our guilty tracks.

A kindly looking woman with a suspicious expression on her face came down the driveway.

"Hi," we all said.

"How can I help you?" she said.

Without even exchanging a look, my sister and I dropped the lie.

We explained that we grew up around here, and we heard that there is a natural bridge over the Perch River somewhere nearby, and we were really hoping to find it.

The woman said, "Why yes, there is. Do you have a half an hour or so?"

Next thing you know, the woman has collected her husband, who pilots a zippy ATV down the driveway to pick us up and they are taking us on a tour all over the 400 acres their son and his wife purchased a few years back.

There’s Perch river. There’s the bridge -- a smidge underwhelming, but aha! ––there’s the river emerging again from the other side of the natural bridge. There’s an old stone fence. Maybe the fence butts up to the Hall’s farm ––The Hall’s farm that was probably our Riggs family farm a hundred years ago. Maybe one of our great-great uncles stacked those very stones.

I mention the Pflugheber’s place, where my mom and I and the horse and the dog lived for a time.

Why, the husband knows Ed Pflugheber! The husband retired from the Watertown Daily Times.

Why then he must know my cousin Scott Smith, who works at the Times.

Indeed he does. He knows Toots Carbone, too, my buddy Care's Dad, our next-door neighbor on the Point.

We talk about the St. Lawrence River, and my sister points to her tee-shirt, which features a snap from our family history: Herbie Ward and Daddo with a string of fish on the dock at Fisher’s Landing.

Well, wouldn't you know the husband knows Herbie Ward.

Small world!

As it happens, the husband is connected to parents of classmates of ours.

And their daughter-in-law? Turns out she is my vacationing real-estate agent/high-school classmate. We trespassed on her land.

Hours later, our unexpected hosts raid my real-estate agent’s fridge for beer and my sister gets them to take pictures of the two of us in the ATV, playing with my real-estate agent's dog, and lounging on the porch with our purloined beers.

Those photos of us having our disreputable way with other people's porches, off-road recreational vehicle, and beer might possibly have been taken on an early cell phone that was unable to resist water when it went swimming.

But maybe one of those images will resurface, possibly on the tee-shirt of one of the great-grand nephews or nieces, who will point to it while trespassing and say, "Perhaps you know these two characters? Our aunts?"

And here's hoping it will parlay into a free pass, a tour, an anecdote.

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The Would-Be Farm: Taking Shape

10/7/2019

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According to cheerful old Plato, an ideal world exists beyond our senses.

Everything we see in the "sensible" world is simply an approximation of the ideal. Just shadows on the wall of a cave.

One of those plastic stacking chairs, a schools teacher's perch, that Frank Lloyd Wright piece, a Heppelwhite seat, Arthur's siege parlous, all are –– according to this argument –– mere reflections of the ideal chair. Imperfect interpretations, shadows, approximations.

Anyhoo. That's one way to look around at the world, perhaps more than a little reductio ad absurdum. But it does somehow lead me to thinking about what makes a shelter.

We humans can live in any manner of places: tents, caves, castles, huts, boats, vans. Even homeless, we have our preferred spots. What's the common denominator?

View from the storage loft.

Maybe that there's an indoor and an outdoor. In most places in the world, I guess, shelter means blocking precipitation. Once the rain can't get in, a spot can become home.

On a build, there's a precipitous teetering moment when the project is "dried in."

It's when the outside stays out and inside is more than a concept. Windows in, roof on, doors that close. It goes from being a build to being a building.

All this noodling as an excuse to post some more photos of the Woodbee.

Thanks for indulging me!

The first of many gallons of paint going up and down.

Modern plumbing essentials...

Safety first! Porch railings a la Mr. Linton installed and approved!

Check one fixture off the list: bathroom sink!

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The Would-Be Farm –– Build Update

9/30/2019

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As some visitors have noticed, I have been away from the keyboard. Thank you for coming back after the long, not-planned hiatus.

Turns out that when you have a wedge of time to work on a dried-in (squeeeee!) building, you make use of every waking moment to work on said dried-in (squeeeee!) building.

And what about that "building"? Is it a cabin? A camp? A cottage?

We're going to try calling it the Woodbee. Maybe a twee moniker option, but there is sits, a 600-square-foot building in the midst of the Would-Be Farm. The Woodbee. Buzz buzz.

Siding and roofing going on!

I'll return to other topics of interest: Mr. Linton's fishing and sailing adventures, for instance, and what books I am currently reading, but not quite yet...

I am the monarch of all I survey.

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The Would-Be Farm: The Build Gets Trussed Up.

8/8/2019

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The most challenging part of building anything?

Probably dealing with the client.

When my Daddo got his terminal diagnosis, he wanted to be sure before going that my sister and I knew how to use his garage full of carpentry gear.

Knowing how much morphine he was taking, we might have been a little reluctant to embrace the idea. Until my sister had the brainstorm of working very small.

We started projects with him in one-inch-to-one-foot-scale miniature.

My sister and Daddo finished Nana's Hat Shop pretty handily. The neat little blue shop has glass fronted cabinets full of wee pairs of gloves, marvelous tiny chiffon chapeau, proportionate wall-paper.

My miniature shingled cottage sits unfinished –– without him it wasn't much fun –– but Daddo and I used his power planer to make itty-bitty hardwood floors, and we constructed nifty little jigs and clamps scaled to handle the delicate woodwork of the house. He helped me fabricate plaster fieldstones for the chimney. We had a ball.

At one point, when I had decided to scoot the dormer windows of the cottage a fraction closer together, Daddo looked at me and said, "You're going to make a contractor tear out his hair."

Not exactly a life goal, but...

I like to think I know my mind, but the thing is, it's hard to visualize construction until it's up...

We returned to the Would-Be Farm in June and were not disappointed to see progress.

The trusty stone-quarry guy had installed a nice gravel driveway right up to the build, including culverts and a sweet level parking area that will be ideal for our friends with motorhomes.

And by the beard of mighty Hephaestus himself, the contractor and his gang were busily putting in trusses.

Behold a driveway.

The camp is taking shape.

Ahhh. Trusses. With trusses, a girl can visualize what the place is going to look like...

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The Would-Be Farm...Build Update

7/9/2019

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So when planning a big capital improvement –– like a cabin! Squee! –– to your Would Be Farm, let me suggest scheduling it around a year without record-breaking floods.

Of course, given the state of the world, that might be too much to ask.

Not that we know any different: we arrived at the Would-Be Farm in April hoping that the contractor was going to surprise us with a big serving of progress at the build.

He's been a little stingy with photos, and while neither my favorite skipper nor I actually speculated aloud, we'd cherished hopes.

Instead, the spring was wet. Like twice the amount of rain as usual. Crazy high water on the mighty St. Lawrence River. All doubling down on mud season.

Spring mud season at the build. Note the deep ruts where the driveway was meant to be.

Jeff contemplates the permeability of blue tarp.

The mud situation was kind of dramatic. Deeper than the hubs on the contractor's big work-truck. Deep enough to engulf muck boots. Deep.

I grant you, the contractor had kind of spaced the part where we said, Hey, you might want to have the gravel guy put the driveway in first thing.

So that was –– what's the word? –– frustrating.

But the remedy was easy enough: apply cash and earth-moving equipment to the problem. Only, well, we'd have to wait for the mud to dry up a little. And it kept raining. Lefty-loosey righty-tighty, Mother Nature.

Meanwhile, the build was stalled. Subfloor in place. A few walls tacked into place. But no roof because no trusses. No trusses of course because, you know, mud. And no workers because no trusses.

As anyone might guess, a Wizard-of-Oz style windstorm came next.

At one point in the middle of the night, a mighty whomping noise –– like an enormous, damp pterodactyl shaking off sleep –– arose. Snugged under covers in our bunk at Base Camp, we speculated that the blue tarp was taking the whole build off to see the wizard.

A rare morning of sunshine.

But come sun rise, the build was still there, flapping but solid.

By the end of the month at the Farm, we learned to keep our eyes averted from that end of the field. "It'll be great when it's done," we reminded each other, "They will get to it when they get to it."

We had plenty of springtime chores –– clearing trail, working on the gazebo, making cool chairs –– to keep us occupied. But still.

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The Would-Be Farm...The Build Begins

6/18/2019

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First-time visitors always ask why we don't renovate the little old farmhouse that's slowly surrendering to gravity at the Would-Be Farm.

It's kind of cute. And the top-line is as straight as a ruler.

Well, we say, shouldering open the door so they can see for themselves, it's only about 20 feet from the road.

And the floor is collapsing into the cellar, which is –– in turn –– earth-to-earth returning. Things roll and gather in the low spots, including the signs of many a wild animal.

Oh, they say, peering in from the doorway and sniffing gingerly. Oh, I see.

Base Camp –– a slightly tarted up camper-trailer that's perched on a bluff at the Would-Be farm –– has served our housing needs with economy. Five years into this adventure, the initial cost and renovations make Base Camp work out to something like $250 a year.

I've nannered on about Base Camp here. (Cliff Notes version: Jeff worked hard and I showed that white paint will cover a multitude of sins)

Cheap yes, Base Camp, but also an excellent starting point: there's a propane stove for cooking, a bathroom with a door, pressurized water, a solar panel that keeps the 12-volt batteries topped up, screens.

After we built a shed roof over the whole production, it doesn't even leak.

But there's one thing.

Well, a couple of things, but the one thing about which I shall complain this day?

An elderly camper trailer has very little insulative chutzpah. Wind whistles through the windows. When it's chilly, an optimist would call it excellent sleeping weather.

But in the morning, when the time comes to emerge from that cozy nest of down-filled comforters, hot-water bottles, and wool blankets?

If it's 30 degrees outside, it's 30 dang degrees inside Base Camp!

While waiting for the little propane heater to take the edge off (in its vaguely hazardous way) one spring morning, I said to Mr. Linton, "Whatever else we might want, I think we start with a wood stove."

And so the Farm will be getting a dwelling. A Cottage. A Cabin. As the locals call it, a Camp. A Woodbee.

Something larger than a tiny house, but smaller than the average American home structure.

Say 600 square feet, not including a wide, big porch.

We've lived through a large home improvement project, but we never hired someone to build from scratch before. Or at this kind of long distance.

It proves a predictably nerve-wracking experience.

I send a check and got a description of the new well (420 feet deep! Dang!) and the pump. Months pass.

The contractor is abstemious with the photos, which might be a strategy for managing his customers.

The piers go in!

I send a cheerful, encouraging text: "Don't be afraid to send photos, even if nothing is going on!"
The contractor replies "K!" And maintains radio silence.

For a Christmas present, my sister takes a field trip to the site and snaps some photos.

Late in January, the contractor sends an exciting visual update:

The suspense! The planning! Ooo la la.

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The Would-Be Farm: Wildflowers

6/12/2019

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They show up. How cool is that?

I may have planted these columbines.

I might have planted them last year.

They might have been growing for decades, regardless my interference or ambitions.

One of the downsides of being an absentee farmer is that things happen –– and don't happen –– without our being there to witness it.

Sometimes we do.

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You Chee, I Chee, We All Chee for Lychee

6/4/2019

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Scientific name: Sapindaceae Lichi.

Yeah, okay, I know lychee-tinis are SO 2012. But a lychee smoothie? With vanilla almond-milk and crushed ice?

Lychee warm from the tree, with the leathery rind splitting under the pressure of a thumb?

Or a plain frozen slurry of lychee, gobbled straight from the cup?

Lychee harvest, 2019

Some fruits are easy: drop a loquat seed –– Japanese plum, or Eriobotrya Japonica –– into the ground and before long, you have fifteen of the things (maybe fewer if you were a more conscientious weeder, but there you go...). And likewise, buckets of the nice juicy yellow fruit. We eat them straight off the tree, bending at the waist to avoid the unavoidable sloppy drips.

So many shirts at our house have been transformed into "work shirts" by the application of loquat juice.

Loquats in March.

Lychee blossoms. No saying how many will set fruit.

Other fruits –– once you see them as fruits –– are even easier to grow. Try stopping staghorn sumac (Rufus typhena).

Plant blackberry canes, forget about them, come back a few years later and they (Rosascea family) have established a stable government, border security, and a thriving economy.

Others, like apples at the Would-Be Farm, are fussier and more delicate. In Florida, I think the fussy ones are the lychees. (We'll avoid the idea of citrus, what with canker and citrus greening and my neighbor with the Roundup through the fence.)

We've planted a couple of lychees, but they break your heart: plenty of leaves, but year after year no fruit at all. Mr. Linton occasionally brandishes the loppers and tells the tree: "Fruit or these. Your choice."

Over the past ten years or so, when the weather and the trees actually do produce a crop, roving thieves have stripped the tree of fruit overnight. Seriously, stealing fruit from my very lawn. It's enough to make a mare bite her colt.

But then comes the odd pay-out year.

When the tree is heavy with fruit and Uncle Markie has put an actual fence around the front yard with the eldest of the lychees, which strangely enough, DOES keep the damnable sneak-theives away.

When there are buckets of lychees. An extravagance of the pearly goodness.

When, at least for a week or two, lychees are our favorite fruit.

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The Would-Be Farm: I Twig That.

5/7/2019

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Reluctantly stepping away from the dusty hallway that leads to a discussion of deverbal nouns, I give you the word "twig."

It's a stick, AND it's a verb that means "to understand."

Okay, maybe just one tiny step down that hallway: twig as a branchy bit of tree derives from Germanic Old English. It's related to the word "twain." As in, to be cleft in two.

Okay, okay, hustling it along: the verb twig comes either from theives' cant or from Gaelic (not pointing a finger, but come on, English scholars, really?!) "tuig," meaning "to understand."

Photo courtesy Mary Tone Rodgers.

Twig is also the name of a genre of decoration. Twig tables. Twig chairs. Twig frames.

Those enormous Adirondack camps, white birchbark stuff, bent willow rustic chairs? All twig.

I picked up a reference book on the subject at the library book sale over the winter and took the instructions at face value.

As one does.

I wanted to construct a couple of chairs for the gazebo, and the book had a nifty-looking pattern.

A folding twig chair based –– so the author claimed –– on a Hopi design. Rugged but comfortable, held together with metal rods that bend slightly to accommodate a rounded human form.

Heaven knows we have plenty of twigs at the Would-Be Farm. And a crafty project is right up the alley for the Farm's stated goal of helping foster fresh neural pathways.

Though it looked "funny" in print, I went ahead and cut the 37 or so pieces of wood –– carefully following the directions.

Do NOT follow these instructions.

And then re-measured and cut most of them again, using my trusty loppers and a measuring jig Daddo would have been proud to see.

Precision is not my middle name, but I was quite careful.

It did not work.

At the end of Day 1, I sat on my heels and considered the challenge of threading eleven twigs onto a quarter-inch rod when the neatly bored holes simply did not line up –– by INCHES.

On the second day, following my favorite skipper/rough carpenter's advice, I started with fresh material and drilled holes to fit the threaded rods.

Ah, so much better!

Until it came to the question of legs.

A full 50% of the chair's legs left unaccounted for.

The diagram I'd been trying to follow simply did not mention how to incorporate the two back appendages.

I should not have been surprised.

Even knowing that the instructions were crap, I couldn't help but bemoan the injustice of it.

Instructions that don't.

Measuring guides that don't.

Reference that isn't.

Jeesh.

Eventually I wandered over to the square yard or so of good cell coverage at the Would-Be Farm –– in the middle of the field –– and Googled some help. Huh. Common theme of the Amazon reviews of the book:

A farther scouring of the inter web revealed many many distractions.

Yet, near the distal reach of the digital universe, a couple of nearly related YouTube videos and websites that at least helped me figure out how to get all four legs integrated into the design.

Day 2 ended when I tested the chair and inadvertently converted it into a recliner.

No blood no foul, but for pity's sake --!

By Day 3, I was grimly determined to best the beast. I studied physics in college. I have been making things by hand and by brain for some years now. I will not be thwarted!

It was so. darned. close. to being there.

Mr. Linton lent his good hand (short story: don't drop a Sunfish. And if you do, don't let your hand be caught underneath the fiberglass boat.) and practical cleverness to the effort. He was the one to suggest using the planks of the deck to square up the legs.

This time when I tested the rake of the chair-back, my own old quads suspended me.

Crouching builder, hidden sand-trap.

By gum, at the end of Day 3, we had ourselves a twig chair.

A bit battered. Not rated to hold an actual human. Handy for keeping my gardening gloves off the floor.

Still, it's a prototype suitable for the next round of construction.

And I can barely wait to begin again.