On this first official day of spring, it definitely felt like spring here. The snow is leaving fast, lots of bare ground. We've been busy with the first plantings in the seed starting greenhouse. Lots of lettuces, kale, chard, collards, leeks, bunching onions, beets, kohlrabi, celeriac, parsley. These crops will spend some time in the warm greenhouse before being transplanted out into the unheated hooptunnel. Here's a few pictures.....
Old Man Winter losing his grip- hooray!
Beautiful evening sky, earlier this week.
Can you "beet" this?
Those are baby beets. Yes, you can transplant beets. Really quite easily, in fact. Some crops like carrots have a big taproot, and if you were to try transplanting them, they would live, but would look unsightly and snarly, since the "taproot", if you will, is the part you eat. Beets have a long taproot as well, but the edible part is the swollen beet that is above the taproot, which gets snipped off when harvested. So, although the taproot usually breaks off when you rip them up during transplanting, new roots form, and the final result is a totally fine beet. Most of our beets are direct-seeded, but for the earliest crop, transplanting works well, until the soil warms enough to plant outside.
These little tiny lettuces, barring unforeseen disasters, should be ready for some tasty salads about mid-late May. We grow most of our full-size lettuces from transplants. We get a much nicer, more vigorous plant when they are started in mini soil blocks, then set into the bigger 2" blocks, before setting out in the ground, rather than direct seeding.
What keeps it going on frosty nights....
Here's the old barrel stove. Years back, I bought a "barrel stove kit" from one of the local hardware stores, installed it on a big barrel, then Daddy welded a smaller barrel inside it, for the fire chamber. The space between, on the bottom and partly up the sides, is filled with sand. This gives a good thermal mass, and really moderates the temps, rather than a hot/cold/hot scenario, which would be more what we would get with a simple single layer barrel stove. I've been happy with it, anyhow. No propane or fuel oil needed here, either; the fuel grows in the back woods. :)
One of the compost piles we've been digging out of....
to get the compost we use in our seed starting mix. We make our own mix, using peat moss, compost, and small amounts of some other soil amendments, namely bonemeal, bloodmeal, greensand, and lime.
Baby "Sunshine Lulu-etta" (the lamb's name, not mine, of course. :) )
Here's the first baby lamb born here this spring. Got some more ewes getting closer, so it'll be exciting to see how many they each have. This momma, who is named "Horn", since she has horns (really original, I know), only had this little single black baby. But she took really good care of it, birthed without any human assistance, and was a bit fractious when we came around, so she has good protective instincts. Definitely a keeper in my books.
Last but not least, here's this one.
Pre-"limb"-inary firewood cutting, yooper country boy style.
In our quest to get ahead of firewood cutting for this fall, since it gets very busy in the summer, and firewood making seems to fall by the wayside in the press of things, we've been really hopping and cutting like crazy. The boys knew this poplar in the north field was gonna be one of the trees feeding the woodstove next fall. I like the little white birch right next to it, so gonna give it more room to grow. Anyhow, my son Joshua got the bright idea to scale to the top of the tree with his little camp saw, and started de-limbing it from the top down. Quite clever, if I say so myself. :)
In closing, here's a neat (about 15 minute video) about urban gardening. Our friends and family reading this who live in town, have a hankering to get their hands dirty, but don't have space for huge fields, take heart- you can grow lots of your own fresh food, and cut the food bill way down. I may not agree totally with some of the philosophical thoughts by these folks here, but they are inspirational in regards to doing a lot with only a little land. Enjoy!
