Farm On!

I’m sure you all remember back in January that I was going to become a farmer, well maybe some Lilliputian version of a farmer…however, there were a few road blocks that needed to be driven around before I could get going.  First, it decided to rain for most of January and being a bit of a fair weather farmer I wasn’t quite ready to slog around in the mud to get this thing started…then it rained in February…same song second verse. Second, the property sold!  Yikes!  Visions of my farm dreams being dashed before they ever got started began to haunt me, but my husband contacted the new owner and asked if we could proceed and he graciously gave his permission. So finally by mid March the rain had subsided and I set out to see what I could do.  So, you know what likes rain…weeds, and you know why farmers

are skinny (at least the real ones that I know) because this is really hard work!  Actually, I’m thinking of writing a diet book ‘Farm Yourself Skinny’ catchy title don’t you think? But I digress…after many hours weeding, weeding, weeding I decided that the 20x25 plot I had originally dreamed of was really unnecessary and 15x15 could probably feed two adults and a few friends quite nicely! So 15x15 it is!  Once I got the whole thing weeded, yes I did it all by myself, the soil seemed fairly soft, thanks to all that rain, and the hard work of all worms who were making their home in my little plot.  It was pretty great!

But then, more rain…

This time however, after the rain it got warm rather quickly and the bummer about that was when the soil dried out it turned to stone…so-o-o-o we borrowed a roto-tiller from some actual farmers we know and my husband toiled away for a good part of a Saturday breaking up the dirt. The next day our neighbor took us in his truck to get a yard of top soil and the three of us managed to spread it over the plot…notice how I keep conning more people into helping me…anyway, we worked all day moving soil,

creating rows and finally planting!  I brought over all the little starts I had going, several varieties of tomato, same with peppers and eggplant as well as all the seeds I had planned to direct seed, sweet corn and popcorn, two varieties of beans, beets, several types of squash, watermelon and zinnias.  I got them all in the ground and watered them carefully, and we toasted the whole thing with a beer, just for good measure.

I will keep you posted on how it goes but so far everything is still upright and the seeds are beginning to sprout, so I think this is going to be good!