Black Rot and the Swimming Pool

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After days of fall in mud puddles and traipsing through poison ivy, all of my shoes needed a good run through the washer and dryer.





Funny how kids today have never heard of doing that. I guess when we were kids it was something we always had to do, but these days either kids don't get their shoes that dirty, or they they just toss them out. I'm not sure. But YES! You CAN wash tennis shoes.

You need sustenance for all that relacing though.





Oh, and just because...

This is a great book. Don't let the cartoonish cover throw you. This book is just as good for adults as it is for the younger set.





I am always astonished at the lack of common sense I see in this world, and this book will help you learn to spot it, name it, and answer to it when you are faced with it.

The fig trees were pruned again. We began by cutting out all the bare wood on the first tree.





But we saw that some of that bare wood still had some life in it. It was hard to judge how high up that life went.

So we ended up leaving the rest at shoulder height.





Black rot has indeed made an appearance in our grapes. Michael went out and plucked off all the leaves with spots on them.









I know I should thin the clusters, but it's astonishing just how many there are.





Blackberries just about to bloom.





Maybe these are baby kiwi fruit? I hope so!





Time to take the pool deck apart.









Need to clear the earth away from the posts. None of that was there originally, just a bank. It had all eroded down and piled against the original pool.





Our stash at the back of the place comes in handy. We had torn down a barn a few years ago, and it still yields good stuff.





Part of it up!





Office cleaning awaited us, so we called it quits before we got much further.

A good day's work!

~Faith

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A Tidy Harvest.

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We are using a combination of herbicides since our weed whacker doesn't work. This year is our first year trying out a 1-Year length chemical. We only spray this under fences where we know we are not going to want anything to grow for a long time. It can't be used under trees, or it can get into the root systems.

Here is the garden fence. We sprayed here about 4 to 6 weeks ago. We ended up moving the fence a little after we sprayed. So far the horses are keeping this part chewed, so I'm not going to worry about it.





I did a little spraying around the house with short term spray, Round-Up, to keep stray weeds from taking over, as well as along the side of the property so the electric fence doesn't short out over there.

Here the berry rows look much neater having been sprayed a couple of weeks ago. You have to be so careful not to get any leaves on your plants. I've actually gotten really good at this and can spray even in the wind and right up close to the plants. So far, so good...





The vineyard never got sprayed for weeds, so we'll try to get to that this coming week.





Michael is taking care of push mowing where ever the riding mower could not be taken. We should get a good crop of those bush cherries and bush plums this year. The frost did not get either grouping.





The hardy kiwi are looking good. I hope another mockingbird builds a nest in there again this year. We so enjoyed watching the babies.





I will really enjoy it if we ever get a crop. But wait, what's this....?





Could we be getting flowers for the first time? I hope so, and I hope that means enjoying some fruit from them this year!





Many suckers need to be cut off from the grapes before we can spray for weeds. Also, with the black rot, you want as dry an area near the vines as possible, so the closer to dirt we can make it below the vines, the better our chances of getting a grape harvest.





This vine is always laden with clusters. It's a European grape, and highly susceptible to black rot. Tasty, but after this year, I am probably going to thin out the grapes in each row to about half. This one may go.





The Doyle Thornless blackberries are getting ready to blossom out.





Getting ready to harvest some Red Sails lettuce. I believe the deep red color is likely due to the abundance of sunshine, as I have another bed in the shade, and it is almost all green.





I decide to take the outer leaves rather than cut the whole plant.





And this is what came from one. About two dollar's worth of organic lettuce. I ended up filling the basket to overflowing.





We can't eat it all, so I just take the biggest for now.









I planted Arugula to go with the lettuce...
Now what? LOL I'm thinking it is probably too far gone.





On my way up to pick strawberries, I get to enjoy the variety of herb blooms.

Chamomile.





Cilantro.





Sage.





Here's that marker stone I was mentioning before. I like them, but there were only four available. I would like to make some for all the herbs, and maybe even vegetables.





The chives are about to go to seed now. I need to build alternate year beds so I can have a cutting bed, and a bed to enjoy the blossoms.





This rhubarb's crown ended up being covered by the time heavy rains came. Once I cleared earth away from it, it got a lot happier and sent up some leaves to match it's sister plant.





The strawberry bed. I believe the sparse section is the one grouping of June bearers we planted.





They produce quite a few berries, but look awful. And, of course, I've forgotten which type we put in. Most of what we picked came from here.





The ever bearers are much healthier looking, and getting ready to gear up for production.





About 4 dollar's worth of berries, but half of them are gone. I told Michael to just eat his fruit while we picked. I like the really ripe ones. He likes the ones that are not quite, in my opinion, ripe. So we've got quite a mix here.





Washing the lettuce and hoping it will dry well enough before we have to leave for office cleaning.





Then a fun evening of barn prep!

~Faith

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School and Vineyard Labors April 12, 2010

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Spring days are just too wonderful to do school inside. So Michael brought out his work to do while I pruned and tied grapes.









That's the kiwi arbor.





Sun, cool breezes, blues and greens...

~Faith

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A Day in the Spring-Rush Life

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Every spring is a bit of a rush, everything begins happening at once. This spring has been especially busy. In addition to starting the garden, we've had so many things in need of repair due to years of neglect, we also do not know what the future is going to bring for us, so we are trying to get some bigger projects done, such as building a greenhouse, to help us with our food production.

You might think this is normal for us, but we usually have more time. The key to not slaving your life away on a farm is to plan well, and do your projects in such a way as to eliminate maintenance as much as possible. I happened to marry someone who believed in just getting a job done as quickly as you can, and hang what happens later. So a lot of careful planning went kaput!

So we are scrambling trying to get things done. But as soon as the garden is completely in, the work will slow to a manageable level and we can relax a bit more, have quiet evenings and grill our dinner as we watch the sunset, and relax a lot more, especially in the heat of the day.

Until that time, we are grateful for the cooler weather we've been having. Very mild. Yesterday was mostly cloudy and in the 70's. Perfect for outdoor work. Here are some scenes...

How old is this stuff anyway? I'm trying to frugally use what we have from years ago when I was really working the land here.






Here are the T-posts we finally had time to remove for re-use in the garden. The horses are now officially OUT of the crop area. Since I was not allowed to spend money on the crops, I had moved the fence up there so at least the grass could be eaten. The place was essentially one big horse pasture. LOL






This is the one garden box we put in last year. It was intended to be short term, so we just bought some very inexpensive wood and filled it with half sawdust and half cow manure from the neighbor's barn and sawmill. It was too rich for planting last year, but has broken down nicely. We still need to plant lettuce there.






We used some leftover mix from the pile near that box, added some red clay from right next to the house. (It will not grow anything, but I figure must have GREAT mineral content.)...





I dug up a few shovels full of forest topsoil, while Michael gathered a few forks of grass cuttings and we mixed this unique concoction up for our potato boxes.









We are way behind on this project. The plants are growing very quickly and we still need to gather more wood for the sides. Finding soil is a challenge to me. It needs good soil, but good topsoil is hard to come by on this property and if I take it from somewhere, I am just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Before:




And After. With the mix being nice and light, we were able to just sprinkle shovels full over the tops, working it around the stems with our fingers. I forgot, I need to water them. They need to be good and wet.





My goal has always been to grow organically. But it can take a lot of work. Once a pest finds you, you have to use all your wiles and all kinds of tricks to combat them. Starting from scratch in this spot, having it be such a large garden and being unprepared for them as I would have liked, I may use sprays if I can't keep them from devouring my produce. I was, at one time, going to go for organic certification of my land. But now, it's all about feeding us, not knowing what could happen.

So, I am still trying to foil the flea beetles. They have found and are beginning to eat the large eggplant after eating all 10 of my seedlings. The jar kept most of them off, one or two had gotten in there from the soil, but you can't keep your plants under glass, it was mostly just a learning experience for me on how the beetles find your plants. They are supposed to be attracted to white. These are cut up milk cartons smeared with petroleum jelly.





And the only ones you see on here are the ones I purposefully flicked there when finding the plant covered with them.





The vanishing brussel sprouts. A vole, I think. It's gotten quite a few of my plants. I was hoping the fishy smell from my fertilizer might make it go away. This is the kind of stuff that keeps you busy when you think you are going to be doing something else...





On the right, the carefully planted row of carrot seeds Michael worked on. See them? Yeah, there's a couple. LOL On the left, the packet that got knocked over.





Radish babies!





Getting shoes on for more work. We are doing a block schedule of horticulture for this semester. And math. LOL You can never stop doing math.





Michael, collecting rocks we've picked out of the garden soil to go line the chicken yard fence.





We also spent most of the morning mowing. All the area around the house, the crops, and then any areas those horses don't eat down. If we don't, the scrub trees come up and later we have to go down and chop them. It's just easier to mow everything down when it's small.

We went to plant more of our herb seedlings, but the ground was getting too hard again, so we watered and are going to plant in the morning.





We did a lot of weeding as we mowed. The blackberry row is looking OK. It still needs more manure. They are really heavy feeders. These blackberries were expensive and have not had much care over the last 5 years. One of these, properly cared for can give you 20 gallons of the biggest, sweetest blackberries you ever ate. I'm going to beat those Japanese beetles this year if it kills me.





Here are some coming up in the row. I should probably take them out.





And this one is a little spindly because it's also sharing with another heavy feeder, an asparagus plant. The birds love the bright red asparagus seeds from our bed and we find new plants at many fence posts and tree branches.





We planted over 100 grape vines, about 35 different varieties. The whole thing is a long story that I won't drag out. But they were going to be intensively pruned as I'd read about in one type of grape culturing book. So they are planted quite closely. Because of neglect, quite a few have died. That's OK because at this point I don't have the luxury of spending all that time intensively pruning. Here is one end of the vineyard...





And the other end...





Looking uphill, the vineyard sits low. We did a lot of weeding, mowing and tying up here as well. Much left to do.





Our hardy kiwi arbor. The fruits are remarkable. I hope to get some one day. LOL





It's looking a bit saggy though. I built it out of red cedar trunks harvested from this land, and purchased vinyl lath with a 2x4 top.





Blooms! But is it male or female? Only one produces fruit and needs another. I suspect another fruitless year. I need to replace the ones that died on the other side of the arbor before I get fruit, I'm guessing.





Uh-oh. Need to root out some poison ivy that has found a spot under the arbor.





Our bush cherries are filled out.





Evidence! We will get some cherries this year! As the bushes were planted in a frost pocket, we don't often get them.





Now we are just enjoying the perfect evening. It feels so great to have accomplished things that needed doing, and then enjoy the beauty we live in.

Hunting rabbits at the sinkholes...





Playing in the water...









Some of the gooseberries. Will be time to make gooseberry pie soon.





These strawberry plants only went in a couple of months ago, so they are a little small, but they are still trying to contribute to the season. Mostly everbearers, and a few June bearers.





OK - this one is going to kill itself trying!





This will be the first strawberry to eat. :)





Time for well-deserved play. It was deliciously windy all day and, as everyone knows, jumping is way more fun in the wind.





Fat and sleek horses.





I missed the gorgeous light this morning on those wildflowers. Drat!





Why is it that the volunteers spring up quickly, deep green, healthy and strong...





And the squash I labored intensely over for two months and spent money on seeds and pots for, look like they have malaria?





But don't the sugar snap peas looks amazing? They are covered with blooms. Can't wait to stand in the field and eat my veggies.





I'm going in. It's almost chore time.





Our list is getting shorter. At least until we add to it. ;) Michael came up with some ideas yesterday he wants to do as well.

Faith

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