Sketchy weather Saturday morning “down on the farm”. A bit of snow, but that didn’t stop us too much. Neil & I gave the shovels new handles and turned the compost piles. Jenny, Fawn and Tracy cleaned up the “PMS hut”… which I’ll be renaming “farm office” or something! Steve helped with the seedling flats and helped check out old hoses.

Sunday Tracy worked on more seedling flats, and her and Nancy laid out the irrigation header and installed the valve the drip tape attaches to. I spent the entire day on the rototiller, using it to cut the pathways. I’m rototilling the pathways and using a v-blade to push the soil towards each row. Since I want to do no-till, I’m not tilling the actual garden row. For the rows I will be using a broadfork to loosen up the soil as much as possible, and then will add the soil from the paths to create raise beds.

Did you miss the garden work party and really want to help? Next we need a hand with using the broadfork on all the rows and parts of experimental/permaculture perennial garden. Only 5000 – 6000 s.f. total. A good day’s work! Stuck behind a desk, this work will get your going!

We only have a couple CSA shares left. Thank you to everyone who has signed up! If you have any friends who may be interested in a share, please have them contact Tracy at hearteyelandtrust@gmail.com or at 303.665.6309 right away.

If you are a chef or food coop in or around Layafette, Colorado who is looking for local food, contact us to learn more about what we produce we can offer you.

We got our soil test back! (wow, he’s excited about a soil test?) It actually looks fairly decent. As expected we need to increase our nitrogen content, quite a bit, and lower the pH, and perhaps boost some of the micro nutrients a bit.

I’m trying to decide if adding a shitload of llama manure (bawdy humor there) will boost the nitrogen levels sufficiently, or if we need to add something like blood meal which has a much higher nitrogen content.

As you may know, my intention is to create and keep the best soil possible in our little farm by using 100% organic methods, combined with cover crops and no-till. I want to do everything by hand for a couple reasons. First, I want the exercise and I want to be more connected with the Earth when I am growing food for all of us. Secondly, I don’t want to use fossil fuels to grow food. I don’t want to use tractors or the rototiller (once the garden is in place), and I definitely do not want to use petro-chemical fertilizers or pesticides. With a small farm like this, I think it is totally possible to do this by hand with not too much additional labor. Considering I have only been a gardener, and not a farmer… I guess we will see what the reality is.

I heard our little budget greenhouse took a hit from the wind the other night. Lost a panel. Poof! Apparently it is MIA. Probably on the roof of the “Super” WalMart or something. I’m up at my cabin in Eldora during the week, so I have yet to see this. I’m just thankful that we didn’t have plant starts growing in there or we would have lost them in the cold. Maybe we’ll need to duct tape the panels so those gusts can’t grab an edge.

I heard Rowan at Jay Hill Farm had some wind related problems too. While it didn’t affect the greenhouses with the inflated double poly covering, it did rip part of the corrugated fiberglass roof off her planting shed.

Well, our little greenhouse will get a new panel in a few weeks, and we’ll be installing a second one up by Sue’s house any day now. Micro farm, micro greenhouses… a great way to start! Part of our idea is to create an inexpensive model for creating a small farm so that others can duplicate this, and more micro-farms will pop up. With our little 1/4 acre farm, we are trying to keep the cost down several ways. The garden will use a weed barrier to help suppress weeds and to cut down the time needed to weed. We chose the minimal greenhouses to allow us to grow our own plant starts. We are having our CSA members help us with some of the labor. This helps keep labor costs down, but most of all lets members work on the farm, get a deeper understanding of how their food is grown, and be a bigger part of making this community what it is.

I have to say I am excited as hell to get growing, to work with all of you with working shares, and to grow the best food possible for all of you!

-Jim

Tracy & I started putting in the rows in the garden. We are using the rototiller, not on the rows that will be planted, but to make the pathways. Doing this, we are loosening up soil which will be piled on the rows, increasing soil depth. If you’ve worked in the garden in the past, you know the soil is clay and it gets to be hard as a rock 8″ to 12″ down. We are working to change that by adding more organic matter, and in the fall planting cover crops. The cover crops will not only add nutrients to the soil, but their roots and plants will add yet more organic matter. It will take a while to build the soil so that we have a deeper healthy soil.