So what has been going on in the last two months?
Well, February and early March were full of winter work -- Gab has been up to the little farm every day, working at it full time and the late winter weeks he :
- pruned the fruit trees,
- planted new ones (add to our inventory another 16 grape vines, 15 hazelnut trees, 2 walnut trees, a pomegranite tree, 6 blueberry bushes, and 6 current bushes, plus sage, rosemary, and rhubarb in the perennial beds),
- built a super duper mega chicken coop, and a separate little one for chicks,
- hauled about 6 tonnes of gravel to resurface the driveway and build the foundations for the coop
- fixed and refinished some of the fencing
- Built a support for housing the bee hives whenever they finally get here
- Got the house hooked up to electricity and wired
- did some terraforming around the spring, so we now have a pond for the ducks to play in
- Cleared the wood of brambles and undergrowth and started building terraces along the steep hillside
- chipped all the brambles and prunings to make mulch
- hauled over 11 tons of prime seasoned organic manure (he's special friends with the organic cow farmer who shares his special personal reserve stock with Gab...he gives him the good shit) and spread it around the trees and over the terraces where the veggies will go.
And then the winter broke, and we went straight from winter into summer, with 3 weeks of 30 degree plus sunny weather (the recorded high on the little farm thermometer was 37 degrees -- what is this, Africa? geeze!) we had to get our butts in gear to get the ground plowed and the manure spread in and the rows prepared for the veggie garden.
I did a whole bunch of research and studying and planning and designing for the veggies, so that we would have manageable sections of veggies that were manageable for rotations and also companion planted (planted together with other plants that assist each other -- onions keep away bugs, and are good with almost every other plant. Nasturtiums act as an Aphid trap, and are great with everything but especially tomatoes. Beans work well with cabbages, fixing the nitrates that the cabbages eat up. NOTHING with potatoes...they need to stay all by their lonesome. And turnips love to live under fruit trees, who'd a thunk it!). So it was beautiful designed and quite complex...and we followed it for the first ten minutes before we got carried away and just started planting everything everywhere!
And over the course of the next couple of weeks, we kept remembering other things we should have planted, and tilling more new beds...and now we have planted nigh on 500sqm of veggie garden...HOLY SMOKES. I'm a bit scared of what's going to happen when all those plants start producing...but we'll take it one step at a time and see how it goes. And excess can go to the local CSAs who have said they want to buy our produce, and if its still too much, well...it will be time to get pigs! They'll take care of any leftovers, and make really yummy salame out of it too!
So now all the seeds are in, the seedling plants we started indoors are also down, and we are waiting patiently for it to rain. We've watered a few times from the spring, with a diesel pump that takes the water from the spring and pumps it up to the terraces so we have a hose with running water, but it would be really nice if mother nature would do her part and let it rain already. Its been about 4-5 weeks without rain, argh!
And on that note, I leave you with "RAIN IS A GOOD THING" -- was one of our favourites in Vancouver (I guess we figured if we kept repeating it, it might feel true...now and with a lovely irony, we really really mean it!!) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKy69sE4VY
