every day is a good day
Eggs laid within the hour, sweet tomatoes, fresh chard, all the makings for a summer lunch.
On the way back inside, I spot what I thought was some paper by an apple tree, and it turned out to be a very late blooming iris. Iris and apples, not two things you usually think of together.
The apples are a long way from being ripe, but the summer sun is turning them red.
Early morning is the time to make my rounds through the fields, checking on how things are growing. The many flowers make it a wonderful time. Potato flowers tend to close at night. They pop open at first light.
Every day now there are more and more white flower beans in bloom. Their soft, white petals dance gently in the morning breeze. The joy of growing food, is that you get to enjoy the blossoms many fruit and vegetable plants have. Every bean you eat at one time was a beautiful flower. Eat a handful of beans and you’re enjoying the results of a huge bouquet of white, orange, pink, purple, and red flowers. Bean flowers come in so many colors.
With their wide field of vision, mother hens can see most anything that might threaten their chicks. The chicks are very aware they have someone looking out for them. As long as their mother is nearby, they are relaxed and run about freely. If they can’t see or hear her, they panic and chirp frantically until she shows up.
This afternoon, I discovered a kale growing at the edge of a porch. I was about to go to the garden to get some greens. I was drying kale seed pods on the porch last summer. Some of seeds must have fallen onto the ground.
The great thing about kale is that you can snip plenty of leaves and leave the main stem alone. Every week or every other week, the plant will be ready to cut again.
It’s time to harvest the garlic. Imelda and Lucky are there to help, along with a handful of other chickens. It doesn’t take long to pull the hundreds of garlic I planted last fall. It’s a great crop this year, and now I know I can easily handle a crop ten to twenty times the size of this year’s small field. There’s time before lunch to weed and prep the lot for summer-fall cabbage and lettuce. Farming at this scale requires one to use of every square inch and then some.
It will be another four years before I plant garlic in this plot again. By rotating and not planting garlic here again for a number of years, any pests that especially love garlic and started to get established this season, won’t find their favorite food here anymore and they will die off in the intervening years.
Yes, The Sainted Gardener will keep excellent records, follow a dedicated plan of rotations and allow each bed to go fallow or be enriched by a cover crop of green manure every seven years. Meanwhile, the other 98% of us will stumble along, trying to pay attention and generally having lots of fun in addition to the occasional unwanted adventure.
You’ll never be sorry that you took the time to think things through before planting—especially with tomatoes and root crops—but rotation is just one piece of the puzzle. Think of it as an odds-improver, and not an impediment to outdoor enjoyment.
If you’d like to purchase some fresh garlic, grown without any herbicides or pesticides, feel free to let me know by filling out the form below or by calling 360-202-0386. I’m selling it for $5 a pound.
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