Tuesday, June 24, 2008

June 14, 2008

Received this email yesterday.

Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 1:45 PM
Subject: auger diggers
Hi

To save Don Proctor lots of labor I will rent a gas powered post hole digger but we need at least one other person to help. We need to bore fifteen hole three feet deep at the sheep pasture. These will be for the post for the bean rows. The event will start at 3pm this Saturday at the sheep pasture.

Thanks

Answer Man

Total time depending on the number of people who show up one to two hours




So I showed up, and after about 15 minutes of breaking our backs with the giant sized super villain style gas powered auger posthole digger we came to the conclusion it would not work worth a damn on the hardpan clay so we tossed it in the back of Answer Man's truck and I dug the rest of the holes with the hand auger. No big deal, so don't get the idea that I'm trying to pass it off as a big deal. The whole thing took about an hour or so after I arrived.



Don had already done half the holes with the hand auger prior to Answer Man bringing the gas auger.



This is the least of what Don has done. At least thats the conclusion at which I have arrived. Retired from something and pushing 70 at least, Don was not one of the original members of the steering commitee for the Sumner Community Garden, but called after hearing of the project to offer his assistance. Seems Don has a hobby of sorts. He likes to grow vegetables for the local food bank (Every mans got his own brand of foolishness")and this seemed the perfect opportunity for him to increase his harvest, I suppose. As we worked this afternoon Don mentioned he estimated this particular field would probably produce between 2500 and 3000 lbs of beans.



Anyway, it seems Don has been busily preparing fields I didn't even realize existed for planting. He has tilled. He has weeded. He has gone out into the community and found people willing to donate loads and loads of seed, twine, concrete, and other necessary materials. He has even constructed reinforced concrete posts to place at the ends of the bean rows, and it was these posts that would stand in the holes we were digging today.



After finishing the holes Don and the rest of us stood one post at each end of each row of beans. Here is a pictuer of Answer Man posing as Don works hard to insert a post.


We then ran two wires, one at the top of the posts and one about 6 inches from the ground, from one end of the row to the other. After this was done Don and I proceeded to run the twine. The twine had already been wound onto a premade (by Don) bobbin so one of us stood on one side of a row while the other stood on the other side. An end of the twine was tied at the top and Don would run the bobbin down to the bottom wire and pass the bobbin under to me and I would run the twine back up, passing it back to Don when I reached the top. This we did until the bobbin ran out and Don said, "Well, I guess that oughtta be enough to show the rest of 'em how to do it."

At this point we went home.




--It's Fosco, Dammit!



Wednesday, June 11, 2008

June 11, 2008

Received an email regarding the chickens. Appears Answer Man will be moving forward on the project. I'm happy to hear this.

Hello

Including me there are eight people interested in joining the chicken team. That’s great. From my initial research it takes about fifteen weeks to raise chicks to the egg laying stage. The commitment require for this will be year round. Though with eight people if we all take turns we should only have to visit the chickens to feed, clean and pick-up eggs less than once a week. Many hands make light work. I’m sure as we progress there will be more people who want to join the chicken team. Futher lightening the work require for all of us. There is a barn on site at the horse pasture that we can use if we partition of part of it for the chicken house we wont need much in the way of materials make it work.

We should all meet together at least at first to get things rolling. Please email or call me and let me know what works best for you to meet on a Saturday, Sunday or after seven pm during the week. Or If there is a time you can’t meet let me know and I will schedule a meeting as soon as I hear from you. We are in inflationary times being we have the space and six 55gallon steel barrels, I would propose we purchase a years supply of chicken feet asap as I’m convinced that the price of feed will continue to rise. Just some of the questions we should consider. In addition the health aspects of raising our own eggs, we should be able to produce our own eggs for substantially less then what it cost at the store. I would greatly appreciate it if those who are interested might consider taking a leadership role and volunteer for the steering committee. The plan subject to change depending on your wishes is for us to operate independently of the community gardens. If we plan things right we design our operation so that new members can join in the future even if they don’t have a garden plot. If that’s alright with you. I will help out where ever I can but in the end this is your project and you will decide how things are run. I’m here to help not to tell you how things will be run and operated. This is exciting and should be fun I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely

Answer Man


--It's Fosco, Dammit!

Sunday, June 8, 2008

June 8, 2008

Discouragement has set in at plot #68.


Yes the radishes were harvested successfully. Yes the radishes tasted wonderful, moist and crisp as radishes should. Yes I was proud as I could be as I carted those radishes to the car, waving them in front of anyone within view and shouting, "Look at what I did, y'all. Look at what I did!"


But those feelings of pride and self worth were short lived, unfortunately, because as the family stopped by the good ol' Sumner Community Garden today to check on things I noticed nothing seemed to really be growing. The carrots are the same size as they've been for two weeks. The beets are the same size they've been for two weeks. The peas are slightly larger than they've been for the last two weeks. The pole beans have been eaten. Two of my eight squash planted have sprouted, and those two are planted too close together so one will likely need to be killed in the interest of thinning. The other is the same size as its been for two weeks (the potatoes are doing well, but we'll ignore that fact for the sake of continuity). And as I surveyed the lush green vegetation filling the gardens surrounding plot #68 I have to admit I was feeling much more like a knifeman than I was a farmer.

Plot #67 (Mr and Mrs Smeltzer)




Plot #69




Plot #58




Discouragement. Sigh.


Plot #68





Oh but hey! Something is growing like a "sumbitch", as Sheriff Buford T. Justice might say. Something was growing all over my lovely yet nearly dormant garden. "What was growing" you ask? I'll tell you what....


...Weeds!




Everywhere I looked were weeds. Weeds, and weeds and weeds. Weeds in the pathways. Weeds in the rows. Weeds squeezing themselves in between all the little seedlings like a bunch of dirty thieves trying to steal any and all nourishment that might actually be required by said seedlings in order to actually grow.

Weeds. Death to weeds. I'm going to get a group of my fellow gardeners together and we're gonna hunt those little bastards down and kill every last one of them. We're gonna light torches and run angrily through the streets of Sumner carrying pitchforks and jugs of Roundup while screaming "Kill them! Kill them! No room for their kind in Sumner! Kill the weeds! Kill the Weeds!"


But I digress.


Anyway, the situation impressed me as being desperate so I dropped the family off at home, and after changing into my farmin' duds I headed down to the Agri-shop to see my friend about a weedin' tool. And boy did I find one.





Don't ask me what its called. but it's made in Japan and its sharp as hell. You just run the blade along just below the surface and it chops those nasty little bastards off at the roots. I will be Samurai Gardener.


Now I know the real idea is to just hoe the weeds up and leave them on top to rot in the sun and add organic matter to the soil, thereby enhancing growth of the desirable plants in the garden, but while most of you are now enjoying near summer temperatures along with minimal rainfall, we here in the lovely Pacific Northwest are suffering through another November with temps in the 50's and rain nearly everyday. Weather like this just encourages those little half dead weeds to turn themselves over and dig their little roots right back into the soil and start growing again. I know. I've tried it, and the problem grows exponentially from week to week. So I want them O U T! And that means I'll need to spend a great deal of time on my hands and knees, toiling in the sun, doing my part to nourish Mother Earth so she may nourish me.


Crap!


So I did. I spent 2 hours squatting like a catcher and slicing those nasty weeds off and picking them up and dropping them in my bucket. I worked my way through the ghost town formerly known as Radishberg. I weeded Spinachtown and Carrotland clean, and did the same for the Wonderful World of Beets. I went ahead and did some thinning of my carrots and beets in the process and by the time it started to get dark I had weeded and thinned one entire quarter of my garden. Yep. 25%. Thats it. Two hours and only a fourth of my work was done.


Saddened and only slightly less discouraged I picked up my implements of garden construction and headed back to the van. As I loaded the tools into the back I noticed what looked like a large mound of bark with a big white sign stuck in the top.




Oh yeah, this mysterious horse lady, Mary, had offered to bring us a load of composted horse manure. I had received an email about this a few days before.



It appears Mary has come through with that load of crap just as she said she would so I felt I would be doing her, as well as myself, a disservice by not actually using some of her compost.......so I grabbed a bucket.

I spread the composted horse manure throughout the weeded section of the garden. And as I stood there, sprinkling horse dung around the plants that will produce the bounty with which I will feed my family throughout the summer and possibly some of the winter, I could think of only one thing...






..wasn't I gonna buy some gloves?




--It's Fosco, Dammit!

Sunday, June 1, 2008

June 1, 2008

Well, hot diggity ding dong damn! The first harvest of the season.



Y'all look what I done! Them's radishes, boy, I say them's radishes.



Now if I can just figger out how to cook 'em.


--It's Fosco, Dammit!