I haven’t written an update in a couple of weeks! Things have been busy here with farming and with life. The girls enjoyed taking their friends to a tour of the pigs during their birthday party, and I told the children, to the horror of some, that these pigs would be dinner. There were no vegetarians present, and so I reminded them that the bacon they enjoyed came from a pig, and it was probably a pig who was confined to a building who never got to enjoy the outdoors.
In the garden, pollen season has arrived and everything has decided it is time to grow. I am experimenting with growing tomatoes in the hoophouse this year. I set them out inside the tunnel in early March.
Our temperatures have remained above freezing, but even temperatures below 40 will damage the plants, and so on the colder nights I have tucked them under another layer of rowcover inside the hoophouse.
They seem to be reasonably happy in there, and I hope to be able to have an early crop of tomatoes. The soil in the entire garden is still pretty rough. I also have trouble with water draining into the garden area from the top of the hill.
The soil is a work in progress: a little over a year ago this garden site was a pine forest and it has suffered the ravages of a bulldozer. The raised beds have saved my garden this winter, and I can protect the soil in the beds from further compaction by my feet. It will get better, but having to use a tool to get through a dry crust on top of the soil is pretty discouraging when I could open rows with my fingers in my old garden.
I have faith that good treatment and lots of organic matter will bring this soil to life, although I won’t put down heavy layers of mulch the way I did in my old garden because it makes a great habitat for snakes. I will have to tell you my snake story later.
I know you will be happy to get good soil on the garden spot. It’s not fun working in clay.
Oh yes I will! The girls were dismayed by the crust on the soil in “their” garden. I think we are going to have to make a trip to the woods to bring back some “woods dirt.”