Mud Puddle Farm’s Weblog

THis is no longer going to be our farm blog then I am going to change it. Foci will now include the everything that has the ability to disintegrate our way(s) of life. We have potential,. but such energy and examples are being squandered by global forces of which we have no control. Entities exist to return our gratitude to earth, but the corporate world has meddled enough in our routines, reaching beyond legality of the nation-state, that they are no longer accountable to our livelihoods. A person can no longer make a difference, yet we struggle. This blog from now on will be about struggle to exist, and coexist, which are synonymous, yet we always forget. Organic coexistence should be a struggle demanding critical thought, but we are constantly treating beneficial relationships with indignation. Profit, and market economy, and the nation-state political bodies are antediluvian.

OK, Loyal readers.

Now that we have a farm name, we are getting a logo, and we are getting a brochure for our CSA (both thanks to the talented Greg Cella! Wait til you guys see it all, it is awesome!), and thus, we need to have a better blog address. So, from now on, we will be posting to mudpuddlefarmoregon.wordpress.com

Change your bookmarks. Keep on checking on us. We are trucking right along, and can’t wait to share it all with you. And you should all look into coming out and visiting us. Fly into Medford, OR. The airport there is tiny, but way faster than Midway or O’hare, and only 30 minutes away from the house.

And check the new blog soon, because I have lots of news and lots of pictures to get up!

Nate arrived Monday, after an epic series of flights which routed him through Minnesota, then Portland, then finally arriving at Medford airport. He woke up at 3:30am Chicago time, and stuck it out until 10pm Oregon time. Rockstar.

We had a small barbecue style gathering in the evening, and invited all of our friends from out here to come see the house and eat with us. They showed up despite the fact that the low last night was 26. We even stood outside for a large portion of the time when everyone was here! Also totally rockstar.

Then Tuesday Chad, Nate, and myself got up early and drove to Jedidiah Smith Park in Northern California to wander and wonder at the redwoods. I have never seen them before, and I was a little nervous before we started because 20 extra pounds does not necessarily make hiking fun. But, in the long run, I did great, the hike was awesome, and we had a really good time. I hope one day we can edit the movie together in even a near semblance of the plot we were hashing out while walking, because you people really need to see it… Anyway, here are some pictures of along our hike. Oh, and the answer is WAY too many times.

things i miss about chicago and midwest.

1. Not depressing winters.

2. ramps the harbingers of spring.

I really don’ t care to have more depressing winters, but can i bring ramps to me? Are they farm able? I know they are still cultivated, but can they dig cultuvation, even if it is in Oregon?

http://flavorpill.com/chicago/events/2008/3/28/rampfest-2008

Here are the peas:

And these are the paths that we have put between the fruit trees:

The plan is to utilize this area while the trees are still small, and before their roots have stretched out all over the place. Next year, we will only have 2 rows, and the following year we will have one. Yesterday we planted carrots, beets, and more radishes in the first row. I want to do another round of peas, and we need to get potatoes in the ground.

Our chickens are growing like the dickens. Check out their big fancy new wing feathers:

The Rhode Island Reds are starting to get their combs above their beaks, too. It is so unbelievable that they only hatched 2 weeks ago! They still aren’t so used to us, but they stay pretty calm once we have finally caught them and are holding them.

This week is supposed to be kind of rainy, so we will be working more on moving into the little house on the property. I am trying to decide on paint and curtain colors, but I have never had this many rooms to do before! It is a little overwhelming, and I keep second guessing myself. Off to the paint store for more swatches!

Chad’s garlic that he planted last fall looks GREAT:

Now we just let it do what it does, and when the tops start to brown and die off, then we pull the bulb from the ground and dry it, and put it in storage to eat!

These are the French Breakfast Radishes that I planted in the other raised bed next to the peas.

The peas, by the way, have begun to show their heads, but we will wait to get a picture up until their leaves start to unfurl and you can see them. I was so excited by this development! Just when I was starting to feel like there wasn’t anything we were going to grow this year, up they come!

Everything is starting to bloom around here. The fruit trees are beginning to burst with flowers, and our blueberry bushes are opening up too.

Chad and I got the little asparagus transplanted into their permanent spot yesterday. They look awfully tiny, but their stems are strong and straight, so they should do OK.

Chad is feeling much better. He is obeying a very strict diet, which is hard, but we are trying to make it yummy for him. The lack of cheese and chocolate is the worst, but after a couple more weeks of being REALLY good, we’ll start phasing it back in. Send him positive thoughts to hold out and make his internal organs strong!

So for those of you who have been checking up on our web blog, there has been nothing updated. We are sorry for that.

But now we are BACK! And as you can tell from the top of this page, we have decided on a farm name! Although, we are currently debating whether or not it should be one word or two. Let’s look at it both ways:

Mud Puddle Farm

Mudpuddle Farm

I have to say, my vote remains in the 2 word camp…We will work it out…

Anyway, here are our baby chicks! This is the day I got them:

I got a dozen of them. 7 are RhodeIsland Reds, and 5 are Araucanas. The Araucanas are the kind that lay turquoise eggs. I don’t know how many of them are girls and how many are boys, so we might have to kill some of them when they get older, which is sad to think about when they are so small and cute.  We got them on Saturday, and they had been hatched on Tuesday the 11th. They grow really fast! The day after we got them I saw differences in their size and feathers and everything…It is amazing. They will be laying eggs in 5 months.

This is them Tuesday the 18th:

I am trying to do some research on how to build a chicken ark, because that is how I want to haul them around the property. That way they are protected from the coyotes, hawks, and foxes, but they still get to free range and provide us with the most awesome eggs ever!

In other news, we are struggling with the first round of Broccoli and Cauliflower that we planted. We think we have been treating them too kindly in the germination stage, so they take off right away, and then get tall and spindly. So we are experimenting with different ways to get those seeds started. The greenhouse is sealed off enough that we have moved that first round out there to see if they will recover and make vast improvements, but at this point we are starting to realize that we might lose that whole first planting… Live and Learn, like I keep saying to Chad. It would be different if we weren’t city kids who never have done any of this before. Then I would feel worse about making such basic mistakes. But as it is, I think we are doing A-OK. Especially because the first round of tomatoes we planted look fantastic!

We have done a lot in the last week. And I meant to be better about keeping everyone updated, but we are without internet, so get ready for a whirlwind of pictures and information!

So, Chad worked his ass off over the weekend, and lost sleep thanks to Daylight Savings and his new work schedule, but he managed to get a door structure on the Greenhouse:

Doesn’t it look great? We still have to figure out what goes in the door area, but we now have plastic connected all around and are working on building a raised bed at the back of the structure. That is how we have decided to fix the fact that the ground is not even. Take that land!

Friday night we went into town because the first Friday of every month Grants Pass does a little art walk thing. I was way more interested in ice cream than art though:

It was birthday cake ice cream, and had chunks of yellow cake and chocolate frosting in it. How could I pay attention to mediocre artwork with that on my hands?

Our asparagus has sprouted and is growing like weeds. They are even bigger than this now, but to give you an idea of how little and awesome they are:

The feathery tops you see have really taken off, and they kind of look like solid green sparklers that are frozen in place. They rock. Chad prepared a whole bed for them in the perennial garden. This week I am hardening them off (this is what you have to do to kind of unspoil seedlings from their luxurious inside growing atmosphere.
You get them outside during the daylight hours over the course of a few days for longer periods, and then leave them out over night, still in the flat, and then you can put them in the outside soil), and they will move to their permanent home next week.

This is how our broccoli and cauliflower look now, plus a picture of me showing off the ever expanding belly:

These are ready to be transplanted as well, but our field has been giving us continual frustration with it’s level of moisture. Today, finally, before he went to work, Chad was able to get the tractor out and disc the field:

Pretty cute, huh?

Anyway, this is what discing does. The field on the right hand side of the picture is NOT disced, and the left is:

So, after working the left part a little more, I will finally be able to get my brassicas outside. I started another round of those, as well as my first round of tomatoes and peppers. When those start to come up I will get pictures up.

Speaking of seedlings, still no sign of the peas that I planted last week, but it takes a minimum of 8 days for those to germinate, so I am not going to stress out yet. The one thing with those beds that has caused me major stress is that there have been deer tracks through them! So Chad and
I got fencing around them. OK. I don’t have a picture of that fencing, but here is our deer fencing around the orchard area, plus one wee arbequina olive tree right at the corner.

You will notice a stuffed animal hanging from this. You are supposed to hang fabric off the fencing when you first put it up to make animals aware of its existence. Kirby and I put up the strips of white fabric you see. Chad’s contribution is the Raggedy Ann doll…He wanted to do the whole fencing like that. I am so relieved he has better ways to occupy his time…

Like making a burn pile. you ask? Why yes, indeed!

He did this Monday with our friend Chris while Katherine and I were at the League of Women Farmers meeting.

I think that about sums up the past week. I did want to show you the pretty crocuses that are blooming all over:

And here is a picture of God chilling with his favorite thing in the whole world, a stick:

I am off to buy baby chicks for the house. You better believe I will get pictures of those cute little things up here for you to see!

So we got 30 cubic yards of compost delivered last week to amend our soil in the field, our raised beds, and the beds in the existing garden (which we have taken to calling the Perennial Garden).

30 cubic yards is a lot:

And after taking quite a few wheelbarrows back and forth from the pile to the beds, we were able to plant our first round of peas today:

There are five kinds of peas in the bed. Hopefully we can get some deer fencing up before the plants start poking their heads out of the dirt. Pea shoots are pretty tasty, and, unfortunately, deer know that, too!

We also planted the gooseberry and black currant cuttings that we got from our friend Lori. We put them up in the thick clay soil by the house. Apparently these are a couple kinds of plants that actually prefer the clay, which is great for us.

This morning we went to another meeting of area farmers who are exploring the idea of planting hops. We have met a few times over the last month to share information on cultivation of these plants, and also to meet with local brewers to see what their interest is in buying locally and organically grown hops. It has been a very eye-opening experience, learning about this niche within farming. Hops are a very unique plant, and while we definitely want to get a few in this year to see how they do, we are not going to focus on doing a ton with them because they require a lot of work. So first, we will see how they do on our land, and then if they really take off, we will let them and we will focus more time and energy into them.

The whole reason we first considered getting into them in the first place is that there is a hops shortage going on right now, and that is drastically affecting small scale breweries. You all know we have to do our part to keep beer production up! So, we will see how it goes. They are a very beautiful flowering plant, so at the very least, we will have some pretty flowers around, and who knows, maybe we will try our hands at home-brewing as well!

I made sourdough bread yesterday, and today Chad has made Rye bread, and he is currently working on a brioche bread, some brownies, home-spun ice cream, shortbread cookies, and caramel sauce. I am pretty spoiled by him, huh?

I spent yesterday transplanting our perennial herbs out of their seed start pots and into the next size up. We have lavender, anise hyssop,  winter thyme, orange thyme, winter savory, lovage, rosemary, and sage all going. About a dozen plants each, which should be plenty for a small army, let alone 2 cooks.

That is about it for this past week. Sorry we haven’t been so good on updating this week. My knitted baby blanket is coming along nicely. I will try to get a picture of it up soon.