Mid Winter Blues

The only things left in my pantry from last years garden are some dried beans, a pumpkin, and a few jars of green tomato chutney. Luke doesn't like the sweet and savory taste of the chutney and I can only eat so much of it, so we still have plenty. Its times like this when I miss going out to the garden to pick fresh greens and carrots for a crisp salad.

We've been searching on craigslist for used greenhouses for the past few weeks and finally found something we are going to check out in person. With a greenhouse we can start plants earlier and extend the season. I've even read about the possibility of a four season harvest. I must buy this book!




Here is the greenhouse we are going to see. We would have to label the parts, disassemble it and reassemble it on the farm. New kits are ten thousand dollars or more for something this large, so hopefully our hard work will save us money.

Inaugural Luncheon: A New Birth of Freedom

Today I hosted a small inaugural luncheon at my home. I served the the same meal Obama and Lincoln ate at their inaugural luncheons- cherry chutney with braised duck (don't worry, I used seitan to keep things vegan), and sweet potatoes mashed with molasses and maple syrup. I decorated with patriotic red, white, and blue place settings and a decal from Lincoln's White House china. We made a toast with organic sparkling cider. This was a special day that I won't soon forget.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Let's get that Victory Garden growing:






This Lawn is Your Lawn from roger doiron on Vimeo.

Planning the Orchard

In planning the orchard, I want to pick fruit trees that will survive and thrive in my climate. I found that many varieties were developed right here in Massachusetts. Hopefully they will all produce fruit and become a living collection of local heirlooms. These are the varieties I want to plant:





BALDWIN Massachusetts 1784: Delicious cider base, and great for pies. Fruit medium to large, sometimes very large. Skin yellow, flushed orange, striped red. Flesh firm to coarse, yellowish; flavor sweet and crisp. Often a biennial bearer, but can be regulated with timely pruning and thinning.





HUNT RUSSET Massachusetts, 1750's: A rare apple, can be likened to Golden Russet. This is a little known heirloom apple with an exceptional taste. Generally yellow fruit, lightly overlaid with russet with bronze red cheek in full sun. The Hunt Russet has an acidulous pear-like flavor typical of most russets. A long lived, vigorous tree whose fruit has been known to keep in root cellars over a year!





MOTHER Massachusetts, 1840: Beautiful apple, good size with thin golden yellow skin covered with deep red marbled and striped with carmine. Fine tender, rich, aromatic flesh. Shows some resistance to scab. Great fresh off the tree!





NONESUCH (Hubbardston Nonesuch) Massachusetts 1830: Among the best early to mid-season eating apples. Fruit usually large with clear red skin in our climate, but color is variable. Flesh is white, moderately firm, sweet and rich.





ROXBURY RUSSET Massachusetts prior to 1649: Excellent old American cider apple, a keeper and good for eating fresh. Large greenish, sometimes bronze tinged skin almost covered with yellowish-brown russet. Remarkable for it's amount of sugar. Firm, slightly coarse, fairly tender, yellowish-white flesh. Tree medium to large, a good cropper on rich soils. Displays resistance to scab and cedar apple rust.





SEEK-NO-FURTHER (Westfield) Massachusetts 1796: An old favorite dessert apple. Creamy yellow, firm, medium-grained, crisp flesh rich, complex and distinct flavor. Fruit medium size, uniform. Skin is a beautiful, smooth deep yellow or greenish base, shaded red. Flourishes in well-drained, gravelly or loamy soil.

All photos and descriptions from Trees of Antiquity.

Time to lead a farmer's life.

Go over to sweetlocalfarm.com to listen to the song!

We added the song "Life on the Farm" to the sidebar (right below the weather). It was written by Luke's old band, Piebald. It has special meaning for us now and has become our anthem! Please listen and read along:

Time to lead a farmer's life. You may not know why.
Hell yeah you have heard it right, still, you don't know why.
Well I am unimpressed by the secrets of the mess we've made here.
Peace and trees and peace of mind, now I've told you why.
Just want to live on the Earth, so I ain't a judge of man's worth.
Roam with the animals who live on this farm of mine.
Family and peaceful home on this land of mine.
I wouldn't say I own, its just the place that we call our home.
But I think I'm going back, now I told you why.
Cows, horses, pigs, cats, and dogs, geese, hens, and even the frogs.
Just want to roam with my friends, pet them until the day ends.
In a while I will escape this prosthetic life,
find myself a small farm, and live our own living.
Raise some carefree animals.
Work on a tractor - but mostly just ride my bike.
No one disturbs me. I do just what I like.
The world wants to attack but I ain't got no time for that - I'm planting seeds.
Don't want to see pollution or kill for a good solution. (oh, so lucian?)
Singing songs out on the sunset porch,
everyone's welcome so come and enjoy the peace.
There's never an alarm,
Life on the Farm!

Cold, Cold, Cold

photo by Betsey L. Josselyn





It is cold out there! Tomorrow the predicted low is -6 degrees. Next winter I'll be worrying about my chickens and whoever else joins us on the farm, but for now I'm taking it easy in the city.

Updated Calendar

The seeds from Botanical Interest arrived this week. I opened the box and set out all the packets. Each envelope is filled with starting information so I created a spreadsheet to keep track of things. I'll add the other seeds when they come.

Repurposing Trash

Last spring we bought biodegradable pots to start our seedlings in. We decided not to buy them again this season. It seemed like they didn't decompose and actually stunted the growth of the plants. Instead of buying plastic pots we have been saving our empty toilet paper rolls. Today I transformed the cardboard into mini pots for seedlings. We rarely buy paper towel, but those tubes work well too. All you have to do is cut the tube in half and cut 4 equal slits on one side. Then fold them closed as you would fold a box. Here are some pictures:

This is the tentative plan as to when seeds will start, be hardened off, and eventually planted in the fresh beds. Since I haven’t experienced a Western MA spring, I’ll have to play it by ear and be ready to pull seedlings back inside if the temperature drops. There are several small rooms in the barn with counters or work stations. Hopefully I can set up shop in there and have a seedling nursery.

January 3: Ordered seeds.
January/February to do: find/buy grow lights, seed trays, and potting soil.
March 5-10: Sow kale, broccoli and lettuce, onion, celery seeds indoors.
March 15: Sow pepper seed indoors.
March 28: Sow half of tomato seed indoors.
April 4: Sow seed for peas.
April 10-15: Sow spinach, arugula, and radish seeds. Set out Jerusalem artichoke tubers. Harden off kale, broccoli and lettuce transplants.
April 15: Sow cucumber seed indoors.
April 20-30: Transplant pepper, eggplant and tomato seedlings to larger pots indoors. Sow beets, pumpkins/winter squash and summer squash seeds indoors. Plant potatoes, sow seed for carrots. Plant kale and broccoli
April 27: Last frost date for Worcester / Springfield
April 28: Sow second half of tomato seed indoors.
May 15-20: Sow beans and sunflowers. Set out tomatoes and cucumbers. Sow more lettuce seeds.
May 30: Set out peppers, pumpkin, and summer squash.
June 9: Sow summer lettuce seed.
June 30: Sow more summer lettuce.
July 21: Sow more summer lettuce.

Fall planting schedule to be determined. I created this list based on Kathy's list over at Skippy's Vegetable Garden. She always has interesting garden information and I hope you check out her blog!

Bat Guano - Our First Cash Crap

***warning-don't read before dinner***

Today we spent 5 hours on the farm doing a very thorough home inspection. We asked our inspector to give a once over to the barn. We know its old and wanted to be sure it wasn't about to tip over. Turns out the barn was very well constructed.

Our inspector pointed out one interesting characteristic of the barn. Looks like quite a few bats have made their home on the center wooden beam. You can see their remnants in the picture below:




But this picture doesn't do the pile justice. There is bat poo (guano) everywhere! At first I was disgusted and scared of the thought of so many bats. I'm not scared of bees or spiders, but I am scared of bats. Then we joked that this would make great fertilizer. When I got home and looked it up this is what I found:

"Bat guano is recognized worldwide as a superior fertilizer with fungicidal and nematocidal properties. Guano's basic composition is 10 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorus, and 1 percent potassium. The high nitrogen content makes it an ideal fertilizer for house plants, vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, ornamentals, and lawns. In addition, bat guano contains large amounts of microbes that are highly beneficial to soil.

The preferred method for applying guano is to combine two or three tablespoonfuls with each gallon of water. This solution can be sprayed directly on plants for absorption or as a natural fungicide. The second most common method is to apply the guano directly to the soil at a rate of five pounds (three quarts) per 100 square feet of vegetable or flower pots." From Mother Earth News.

Guano is also sold for $35 dollars a bag. So looks like we have our first cash crap!

2009 Seeds Ordered!

Well now I've done it. This is the list for the 2009 growing season, the very first growing season, at Sweetlocal Farm. Just reading the list below is making my heart flutter with a combination of thrill and anxiety. I hope I do the seeds justice and give them everything they need to grow productively. I'll get mint, chives, and rhubarb from my mom's garden. Who knows what is already growing on the farm. I bet there will be some perennial herbs so I didn't order any herb seeds yet. Without further ado:

High Mowing Seeds





Chioggia Beet
Lacinato Dinosaur Kale
King of the North Bell Pepper
New England Pie Pumpkin
Samish F1 Hybrid Spinach
Table Queen Acorn Squash
Spaghetti Squash
Tango Celery
Cortland F1 Hybrid Onion
Sugar Ann Snap Pea
Red Wing F1 Hybrid Onion
All Blue Potato
Little Leaf Cucumber
Honey Nut Butternut Squash
Musque de Provence Pumpkin
Black Hungarian Pepper
Red Gold Potato

Botanical Interests



Corn Sweet Luscious Bicolor Organic Seed
Carrot Scarlet Nantes Organic Seed
Carrot Carnival Blend Organic Seed
Broccoli Di Cicco Organic Seed
Bean Bush Pencil Pod Yellow Organic Seed
Bean Pole Blue Lake Organic Seed
Arugula Mediterranean Organic Seed
Tomato Pole Black Krim Organic Seed
Tomato Cherry Sugar Sweetie Organic Seed
Tomato Bush Italian Roma Organic Seed
Squash Summer Straightneck Organic Seed
Squash Summer Blk Organic Zucchini Seed
Radish French Breakfast Organic Seed
Pumpkin Howden Organic Seed
Pepper Chile Jalapeno Organic Seed
Muskmelon Hale's Best Jumbo Organic Seed
Lettuce Romaine Parris Island Organic Seed
Lettuce Mesclun Gourmet Baby Greens Organic Seed
Eggplant Rosa Bianca Organic Seed
Eggplant Black Beauty Organic Seed
Cucumber Marketmore Organic Seed
Corn Sweet Painted Mountain Organic Seed

keeping warm

People may make fun of me and call me the girl in the sleeping bag, but this jacket from Nau.com is making my life toasty on wintry mornings. It also saved me when our band's bus broke down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of an arctic blast.

Happy New Year!

I'm snug as a bug in a rug in my apartment in Brighton, MA. Outside the ground is blanketed in snow and we are expecting more tomorrow. It seems funny to be writing in my gardening blog on January first, but I can't stop daydreaming about the spring to come. I am also so inspired by the many gardening blogs I've come across in 2008. Some of these are on my sidebar. The more I explore them and their links, the more I learn and want to keep learning.

My future farm update: We are getting a home inspection early next week. Has anyone ever had a barn inspected? I saw a squirrel making a home for himself in the barn rafters when we first looked at the place. I hope he moves out too before we move in! Here is a picture of the barn: